ninja surprise

Here's one to get you started. Good defense and resist in Defensive mode and survives pretty well in Offensive. Basic goals are soft-capped defense on Energy/Negative/Fire/Cold, plus lots of resist to S/L and Toxic. Trying to get lots of resistance to Slows because they stop your heals, and that's what kills you. Winter sets + recharge buffs help here.

Plus, Claws is a beloved and powerful set despite being lethal.

Just to clarify in case readers get confused, Energy Armor isn't available for Tanks, but it is good for any AT that gets it.

Endurance is fine, you have two clickies that boost recovery plus a "stance" that makes you more endurance efficient. Bio can be really strong until you get hit with slows. If you really want easy mode though, go Ice Armor. It has two taunt auras (Icicles and Chilling Embrace), endurance recovery, heal+max HP, and it is simple and fairly cheap to soft-cap to S/L/E/N in the twenties. Then you're on cruise control 'till incarnates. Shield Defense and Invulnerability also get really strong taunt auras. Invuln's taunt aura increases your defense the more enemies you have in range. The resistance armors are much more expensive to max out and until you're almost there you're fairly squishy. Defense armors leave you squishy until capped too, but you can soft-cap defense earlier and cheaper. If you do Ice/Dark Melee you get two AoE attacks really early to spam your Gauntlet attack-taunt, plus real taunt. But if your team or toon have a theme or concept already, you'll do fine with Rad Melee and whatever primary you pick.

Totally agree with you. No self respecting Scrapper can look a boss in the eye and run away instead of punching it! A technique I call "Wiping The Booger": When you have unwanted aggro, run/fly/jump past the Tank. The aggro will follow you but peel off in the Tanker's taunt aura/punchvoke. The mobs will usually get caught up in the team's AoE attacks and attack the PC with the highest threat level. Unless you're all at the aggro cap, then things get dicey.

Correct, all of Spine's attacks have slow. Rad/Bio would be a good combo! No weapon redraw, just smash!

Wonder if it would be worth slotting these into the attacks on my SR/Elec Tank? Or is it better keeping them in the autos?

I 5-slot the purple stun set and top it off with the +Rech proc. I love that by default it doesn't do knockback.

If you watch the enemies, when the taunted effect hits they get a little "sunburst" thing around their heads.

It's not that much of a hog, just the standard 3 toggles for defense + status protection. But then Chilling Embrace + Icicles bumps it up a bit. Energy Absorption resolves the problem though. Rad Melee is a pretty nifty set with good damage and AoE (despite Proton Sweep). But I get underwhelmed with it because the two big attacks have dopey animations: "Squat down, hold still, then punch" (But I do really like the expanding circle VFX); and the "Jump 1 foot into the air, hover a sec, then land and punch the ground". It's made worse by my preference for minimum-height toons. I can't even see them when they squat or jump in the middle of a big spawn so it doesn't look like anything is happening during the attack animation.

Life pro tip: Don't worry about the runners if you're on a team. Free yourself from feeling you personally have to defeat every last critter. There's up to 7 other people on the team and highly likely at least one of them has ranged attacks. Let them blast the runners. And unless you're on a defeat-all it doesn't matter if a minion runs away. You're a Scrapper! You should be cultivating a severe case of Scrapperlock: The Pursuit of Big Spawns. Go poke the boss in the face! When he's down, claw up the Lieutenants! With all your Spins, Shockwaves, and Eviscerates you'll mow down most of the spawn along with the tough target. Then go find more! If the team has a good Tank or Brute they should be leaving the spawn by the time it's 3/4 defeated, go follow them instead of mopping up the leftovers! Let the squishies clear the runners and leftovers! One thing that's always amused me is how often multiple people attack the same target. Often it's auto-selected for them, but the fewer targets there are, the more people will be attacking it. It doesn't take a team of 8 to defeat the last minion, so you can save endurance and go find more mobs in the next room. Edit: But also take any excuse to make more alts! That's the true joy of the game.

This would be nice, or if it were added to every Trainer and bases already get trainers.

It would be cool if Clear Mind were a PBAoE toggle similar to that in /Elec, /FF, etc. But it's also cool being different.

Not sure if you know this, but the AH displays IOs for sale in whatever category you're looking at them, regardless of how they were posted for sale. So it's not that people are selling attuned purples, they are probably standard level 50 crafted purples, but if you're looking in the Attuned section, that's what you'll see. If you look in the Crafted section you'll see the unattuned ones that you can boost. I agree there's no point in adding Catalysts to them because you keep the bonus while exemp'd anyway. Maybe they should be flagged as not attunable. As far as slotting them earlier, like Winter or AT IOs, I don't really care. It would make build planning & implementation easier if I could slot the final build as I go, but making people waste inf to prevent inflation is a big part of game strategy.

Same with the Assembler Bots, always summoning two Clocks right as I defeat the Assembler, then have to defeat their summons too.

Hopefully Dual Blades or Staff can scratch her itch. DB has a bunch of combos that do bonus side effects. If you set up your trays to group each of the combos of 3 attacks she can pick combos that debuff the enemy then do extra bonus damage. Staff has Stances that give a bonus side effect after doing a combo. So by choosing a Stance and then doing one of two combos they get either a self-buff or a bonus damage and secondary effect. I really like Staff's sound effects. Plus you get a ranged attack that knocks flyers out of the air!

I believe WP and Inv both have minimal FX settings so they don't look obvious. But two other sets that are great on a Scrapper are Super Reflexes and Shield Defense. Shield has an option (I believe it's under Elemental/Energy) that you can color to match your Psi attacks and would look like you're using a Psi shield. SR has an absolutely minimal FX setting where you won't have any visual stuff cluttering your costume and you can role-play it like you're using your psi abilities to deflect attacks. Or you can color it to match your attacks. Plus you get a boost to speed and recharge that brings your attacks back faster. SR and Shield are both easy to maximize your defense as high as a Brute could get. WP and Invuln can't get as high of resist values as a Brute and since Scrappers have less HP they get less regen. Like Gobbledygook says, Scrappers are always at max damage and get crits on top of that. Brutes start every map at the absolute bottom of the damage scale and ramp up as fights go on to do almost match Scrappers, but can do a lot more if they have teammates who buff damage output. I prefer Scrappers because it's always a bummer on a Brute to clobber something with your big punch, run to an elevator and then to the next spawn, punch it with the big punch, and have it barely notice.

I really wish they'd given the new Afterburner a new name because it's a different power. They buffed Fly to be the same speed as old Fly + Afterburner (so combined two toggles into one) and then tacked on this new Afterburner that is a pure but low duration speed boost to make you go even faster. They should have called it "Turbo Boost" or "Nitrous" like that. Old Afterburner could act like a Personal Force Field: Only affect self with high defense for blasting through a map in relative safety. New Afterburner can't do that at all. Evasive Maneuvers does it a little, but not as well as old AB did. (That's what Taboo refers to above) I like being able to run Hover and Fly at the same time for speed and maneuverability, but haven't used Evasive Maneuvers enough yet to see if it's worth taking.

What's this about? I haven't done a respec yet or hit level 40 on a new alt.

Two things I'd love to see, both based on characters interacting with NPCs: Firstly, every single pedestrian can shove any hero or villain out of its path. I'd love to have a sort of "repel" effect on player characters that affects NPCs that scales with level. So maybe a level 1 running through Atlas has to run around pedestrians and cars and stuff, but a level 50 running through PI can shove them out of the way and send 'em flying. Secondly, I'd like powersets that have more interaction with enemies. Currently we have KB/KU/KD, but you never really touch an enemy. Knockout Blow could be the attack that really gets close. I want more grappling attacks where you can pick a sucker up and do a bodyslam or throw them at other badguys and they all take damage. That'd be pretty cool.

That's one of my mains right now too! Lumpy Puncher is a hoot! The big Tank AoE on Shadow Maul has spoiled me. I haven't tried to new Touch of Fear though, does it do decent AoE damage?

Yep, but they just changed it overall in today's patch. It was auto-crit after hiding for 20 seconds, now it's very big chance to crit after 8 seconds -- about how long it takes to run down a hall and find some badguys.

Just dropping in to say HOLY MOLY!

Which primary did you go with? I would have suggested /Nin to go with Titan Weapons, because the +end recovery power saves your hide more often than the heal does. You'll defeat stuff super quick but run out of endurance in the second spawn. Plus, doing a massive AoE from hide with auto-crit is a blast! But if you get good endurance discounts via set bonuses, it's fine. Street Justice / SR is a great combo though. Plus it has the auto power with +speed and +recharge and I love it so much I totally miss it on any other toon.

Like xl8 says it comes down to play style. Dark Melee is indeed great on a Tank because Shadow Maul gets bumped up to 180 degree arc with like 10 targets max and it's amazing. You never have to worry about lining up the cone, just attack whatever you see and it punches everything. But you'll never one-shot something with Midnight Grasp... I still haven't tried the new Touch of Fear out. I didn't like the Stalker version of Elec/Shield because Stalkers have trouble holding aggro. With a Scrapper you can almost herd, but with a Stalker I had to chase down and defeat everything one by one. I like Lighting Clap, I six-slot it with the purple stun and a KB->KD to keep things stunned at my feet. You could try out the Stalker on test, kitting it out for free to see how you like it.