Doctor_Kumquat

Stone/Dark is powerful. Stone Melee has quite solid damage in general, and is arguably the "SMASHIEST" melee set in the game with the ubiquitous screen-shaking whenever you crush someone's skull in with your giant hammers. Dark Armor has the biggest self-heal in the game, and while it has less resistance to the more common damage types in the game (smashing, lethal, energy) than most sets, it is well suited to taking on the more exotic challenges.

On the other hand, both sets are very endurance-hungry, and on a brute where the ability to fight indefinitely is so important both to keep your Fury bar intact and for general quality-of-life improvements, it's a big negative. You need to either have a friendly Kineticist, or a LOT of IOs, or both, to not be dependent on a large tray full of blue insps.

Stone/Dark has a uniquely awesome combo in Fault and Oppressive Gloom, which can be combined to provide a permanent Mag 4 PBAoE stun; as long as the enemies are fairly tightly clumped, you can keep an entire spawn either picking themselves up off the ground or doing the drunk-walk until they die. This kind of control offers solid survivability which you may come to rely on against nastier foes, but since almost none of the enemies will be attacking anymore, generating fury is much slower; you can sustain a decent fury level with just your attacks, but if your endurance woes mean that you have to start from scratch regularly, getting it back to a comfortable level is either dangerous or slow.

I too would suggest considering DA/Stone instead of DA/EM for a stun-beast unless you just wanted to stack stuns on single targets. DA/Stone would likely fit better as a tank than a brute because of the effect the perma-mag-4 stun will have on fury generation.

If your concept demands Energy Melee though (dark little beastie w/brightly glowing pom-poms always did amuse me)... I'm not sure which AT. I would generally say to avoid /DA stalkers because stalkers tend to work better with defensive sets than resistance sets, but you said you were going to IO for max S/L defense anyway, so that would be pretty impressive. I would still likely say to avoid the Stalker, since you would have zero AoE output; the brute would usually offer more damage on a team setting with whirling hands and death shroud available. DA Tanks can be scarily durable, esp. with a buffing defender (ESPECIALLY w/a Cold def) to back you up. Anyway, if you're going to IO for defense to layer on top of your stuns, Dark Regen, and DA's considerable resistances, the durability of a tank may be excessive for your needs, which leads me to say Brute. Anyway, go with your priorities: if you demand large damage output, brute it up, if you don't care about the damage as much and want an impossibly hardy stunning machine, get a tank.

Ok, far and away the biggest problem I see with your initial build is the total lack of damage enhancement. Slotting for damage lets you kill things faster (at the ED cap, generally twice as fast) which means using less attacks which means using less endurance. Assuming you aren't dealing with dramatically higher level enemies, 1 acc / 3 dam / 1 end red in your main attacks should let you end fights significantly faster and cheaper. Also note that endurance reduction is not linear - the first slot of end red is FAR more useful than the second or third. The only powers I could see justifying three slots of end red for are ultra-high-price things like Telekinesis, or maybe Arctic Air/Hotfeet.

In the same vein, especially while soloing, taking powers/slots to improve your offense tends to be more effective than just boosting your defense. This may be my blaster training speaking here, but ending battles quickly does improve survivability. Also, now that we have the detailed info ingame, look at what your powers ACTUALLY give you before devoting the slots to them - in particular, while the wolf and crab armors do provide SOME resistance to all, look at the numbers - they're only 2% and 3% resistance, respectively. Threeslotting a 3% res power to get more resistance will only boost it to ~4.7% resistance; a whole 1.1% more than it would have with the base slot (3.6%). Take those and put them in more meaningful powers, like filling out Fortification or your attacks, and probably respec out of Wolf Armor altogether - the only real benefit to it when you already have Crab armor and Fortification is the ability to ignore the stun from using Awakens and shrug off more heavily stacked confuses and fears (with Fortification, you have over 12 points of protection to the common status effects, which is more than enough for regular play).

Stamina is also hugely helpful considering how many toggles you want to run.

Frankenslotting some IOs would net you much smoother performance, but as just an SO build as listed, this should work better. It's still begging for more slots, and will appreciate another attack and getting the pets to shore up its single-target damage, but it should be decently sturdy, powerful, and endurance efficient without shifting the power choices too much from your initial build. I'd suggest replacing Weave with Frag Grenade or Arm Lash, or adding in one of those at 32, followed by the pets in the 30s.

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.601
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 31 Natural Arachnos Soldier
Primary Power Set: Crab Spider Soldier
Secondary Power Set: Crab Spider Training
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Fighting

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Channelgun -- Acc(A), Dmg(3), Dmg(3), Dmg(5), EndRdx(23)
Level 1: Crab Spider Armor Upgrade -- S'fstPrt-ResKB(A)
Level 2: Longfang -- Acc(A), Dmg(5), Dmg(7), Dmg(7), EndRdx(17)
Level 4: Combat Training: Defensive -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(9)
Level 6: Hurdle -- Jump(A)
Level 8: Suppression -- Acc(A), Dmg(9), Dmg(11), Dmg(11), EndRdx(13)
Level 10: Tactical Training: Maneuvers -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(15), DefBuff(15)
Level 12: Venom Grenade -- Acc(A), Dmg(17), Dmg(19), Dmg(19), RechRdx(21), EndRdx(27)
Level 14: Boxing -- Acc(A)
Level 16: Health -- Heal(A)
Level 18: Tactical Training: Assault -- EndRdx(A)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(21), EndMod(23)
Level 22: Mental Training -- Run(A)
Level 24: Fortification -- ResDam(A), ResDam(25), ResDam(25)
Level 26: Tough -- ResDam(A), ResDam(27), EndRdx(31)
Level 28: Serum -- Heal(A), RechRdx(29), Heal(29)
Level 30: Weave -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(31), EndRdx(31)
Level 32: [Empty]
Level 35: [Empty]
Level 38: [Empty]
Level 41: [Empty]
Level 44: [Empty]
Level 47: [Empty]
Level 49: [Empty]
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Conditioning
------------
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The Arachnos maces actually use an entirely separate base weapon model from the war maces; each has a few different skins, but the Arachnos mace shoots lasers from the top and has different attributes than the conventional ones do. Back Alley Brawler has some ideas rumbling around that may remove the need for weapon redraw entirely between powers utilizing different weapon types at some point in the not-all-that-distant future, but no, you can not start using the Arachnos mace as your full-time bonking stick unless you make a Bane spider.

Similarly, using powers from any other patron pool (or generic power pool, or activated power from your secondary, or temp powers...) will force you to put your mace away for a moment, so there isn't all that much advantage in not having to pull out the alternate mace.

Black Scorpion may still be a perfectly valid Patron for your brute, despite this. The advantages of each patron are largely dependant on your particular powerset pairing and playstyle, but if you like the theme and the general idea, no one is saying you can't use two different maces to mess people up with.

Yeah, being able to have mag 20 KB protection on a squishy without the investment of a single power pick or a single added slot, or 15.65 ranged defense for five slots and no power picks (and the same in AoE for 5 more slots), would be a pretty major impact on a character's potential. In terms of IO'd defense, BotZ offers the most defense per slot of basically any set out there. This is compensated for by the fact that while BotZ is not unique, taking many different travel powers to slot it in generally reduces your character's effectiveness in other ways. If there was no opportunity cost to getting all of these amazing set bonuses, practically every veteran out there with the influence and/or merits/tickets to do so would throw a full suite of them in their prestige sprints.

E^3s don't really get much extra punch out of their sapping at low levels because most enemies don't have the hitpoints to withstand more than a couple attacks in any case. If you want to get some visible use out of your sapping as a lowbie, try teaming up with another electric blaster or two; together, you can actually get some serious draining as soon as you get Short Circuit. Solo draining doesn't become as effective or useful until you get at least to the 20s or 30s with SO (or equivalent) slotting, and you'll need to wait until you get Power Sink at 35 to pair with Short Circuit to have a quick, reliable total-spawn drain at your fingertips without the assistance of a teammate.

Banes are squishier than SR brutes against Romans because they don't have any DDR, whereas SR has capped DDR. They will do comparable damage against the riffraff that either one could quickly solo, but Banes will contribute FAR more damage for the team against the numerous EB/AVs thanks to the incredible -res debuffing, and provide a solid safety net with TT:M. Assuming the Bane keeps at least Venom and Surveillance perma, ignoring a possible addition of Achilles proc or Shatter Armor, you get to contribute 40% of the entire rest of the team's damage output before you add any of your own damage to the table. Unless your brute represents more than half of the entire team's combined damage output (so the other 7 people would all do less than 20% of your own damage) then the Bane will put more hurt on the hard targets.

If you want an invincible aggromagnet that also burns things to a crisp, go Brute. If you want a heavy-hitting force multiplier that also has solid survivabilty, go Bane.

Widows can sort of justify it if they have perma mindlink. Soldiers, however, have no sane reason to pass it up other than not knowing what it does. It'd be like asking a forcefielder to skip dispersion bubble.

Tornado, like pretty much all toggle/auto/pseudopet powers, gets a single chance to proc when it is first activated, and every 10 seconds thereafter (regardless of whether there are any valid targets currently in range). The 10 second downtime window is so that a damage proc in something like Freezing Rain would not turn it into a complete shredder; if damage procs could fire every .2 seconds that it ticked, then it would be about as powerful as Blizzard.

As such, while procs could be interesting in Tornado, they will only get four proc chances assuming it stays on a target the entire duration. An Achilles might not be a bad idea if you want the extra debuffing, but I would focus primarily on boosting its enhancement values. 3x dam/mez HOs, 2 L50 +rech IOs, and a proc might not be a bad deal though, if you don't mind ignoring end reduction.

I have to go with a big vote for D) It depends.

Certain purple sets are just phenomenally useful and cost-effective, and can radically transform the powers they go in. The classic example is Coercive Persuasion (esp. the proc, but also the set bonuses) in World of Confusion (and Arctic Air (and Seeds or any of the AoE confuses, really)) which turns an otherwise useless power into a pretty reliable AoE lockdown power, and lets powers that are already reasonably effective lock down even bosses. Since confusion powers are so rarely taken, demand for it is low enough to keep the price within reason. Fortunata Hypnosis is less gamechanging, but it's still fairly cheap for awesome set bonuses on any character with a sleep. The Apocalypse proc in tier 1 blasts (especially Shriek for Sonics or Neutrino Blast for non-blaster rads) can provide a significant increase in dps once slotted.

Ragnarok is very expensive, but a direct upgrade from Positron's Blast; my archer has a set because he got 3 as drops, and it was only ~20M for the other two. Re: DSlice and Adeon, I would put Rag in Fistful since the proc can make a respectable increase in survivability when it's in the constantly-spammed Fistful but not so much in the slower RoA. I suppose if you were going to shell out the inf for all 6 pieces you could put the proc in Fistful and the other 5 in RoA, but while the proc is still cheap (for purples) the rest are still way up there. Also, in my experience, having RoA recharge in sync with BU/Aim is more helpful than having it at max recharge. Low rech in RoA (like a Posi set would yield) means you use your highest damage and DPA attack less, but if you have it synced with BU and Aim, when you use it, it drops everything. If you were arch/dev and had only Aim to pair it with, the full-rech approach that Rag would lend itself to would look more promising.

Loading up your character with a LOT of purples (say, 5 sets of 5) only makes sense in certain circumstances. If you plan on using your character to exemplar down on a regular basis, for a dedicated Positron TF speedrunner or equivalent task, then purples make sense as they keep their powerful set bonuses at any level. If you are going for the bleeding-edge of performance to solo AVs and want to try and pull off the best possible attack chain that requires incredibly high rech then it may be worth it to accomplish the goals you have set for yourself. Getting certain high-power, long rech powers up permanently (or close to it), like Soul Drain, Phantom Army, or Domination may require the extra oomph from purples' 5-slot bonus (or allow the rest of your build to be less tightly wound around recharge bonuses and more focused on actually enhancing the powers).

If you are wondering if having purples on just any old character is worth it, because purples are shiny and better than nonpurples, then the answer is probably no.

Bill Nye = love. Scientific fact.

And yeah, you've always been able to sort of glide across the water by bunnyhopping, so I'm not all that surprised that ninja run enables some cool effects while swimming.

With a maxed out +recharge build, Katana (or Ninja Blade for stalkers) will probably do more dps than Broadsword over the long haul. However, the higher damage per hit of a Broadsword can be an advantage for a Stalker, since much of their potency comes from (forced) criticals and ending battles within just a few strikes. If you're going to get double damage, you might as well get it on an attack that does more damage to double.

The only characters that normally don't need to suffer the redraw when using Mace Mastery powers are Bane spiders, because they'd be using their Arachnos mace as their main weapon anyway. Arachnos maces are classified as different weapon types than normal warmaces, so no dice.

Yeah, the problem with the Rock Wall is not that the Wall itself has incredible resistances, but that the Lieutenants that it summons to defend itself can create Cairns which add +50% resists to any DE nearby. The Cairns are obviously the top-priority targets whenever they pop up, but if you have a Knockback-heavy team or just really crappy luck, occasionally one of the lieutenants can wind up on the other side of the wall and make a Cairn back there. It's only happened to me on two of many, many, many Eden trials, but it's painful. AoEs can sometimes take it out, but it can be hard to find.

As for starting the trial, yes, the team leader must still be naturally within the 39-41 level range. 8 50s is a no-go. Not sure when they plan to change that.

Minor note - Hamidon is still the most challenging, teamwork/coordination intensive encounter in CoH/CoV by a fair margin. The Hamidon fight was changed back in Issue 9 (about 2 1/2 years ago), but this change was not really a nerf so much as it was a restructuring so a more varied array of ATs and powersets were required for a successful run, and a 'failed' run was not such a cataclysmic failure. (In the original Hami raid, if Hamidon was not successfully held, when he reached 50% hp he would summon an Archvillain-level reinforcement for every hero in the zone, right above their heads. Instant raid-wipe, game over.) New Hami (which really isn't very new) allows a max of 50 players to join in, which means somewhat less lag than the 100+ man messes of yore, and is more interactive for more players.

Main point - While your characters do indeed reach much greater potential end-game, letting you demolish far more daunting hordes of enemies than a low-level would dream of, this does not necessarily mean that it is trivial and challenge-free. At all level ranges, there are some enemy groups that are simpler than others, or that your character build is uniquely adept at handling, and these are the ones that many players will focus their attentions on. For example, while an Invulnerability scrapper might not even break a sweat clearing a room full of Council soldiers, plinking away at his iron hide with their mundane bullets, if a couple Rularuu bosses walked on the scene with their crushing debuffs and heavy psychic damage, you might be looking at a much different picture. While the power creep at high levels will make regular encounters much simpler to deal with (and seemingly too easy), you can still try and test your upper limits. Sure, your scrapper can take out that Archvillain with a bunch of teammates at his back, but does that scrapper dare to defeat the AV solo? You can slaughter Rikti with the best of them, but can you last against +4 Rikti bosses? Can you do so without inspirations? How fast can you pull it off? How do you fare against live prey (PvP)? How about end-game TFs and raids? You don't need to be content farming away at grunts that you are perfectly designed to counter (unless you want to), you can go for the brass ring.

And yes, you can get scarily powerful endgame, but CoH isn't nearly as focused on the endgame as something like WoW is. The game is more focused on enjoying the journey to the top, and making lots of different characters to try different powerset combos out. If you wait a few months, Going Rogue should also introduce many new end-game challenges that are actual challenges.

As the voice of opposition, I'll say that my Arch/EM has gone with the //Fire epic since he reached the 40s two years ago, and has never had second thoughts about it.

(TL;DR at bottom)

Char, if you have the interest and slots to take a hold from your epic, is statistically superior in pretty much every way to Shocking Bolt and Cryo Freeze Ray - more damage, shorter activation, higher inherent accuracy, longer duration, same recharge. When I say it has more damage, I mean that Char does somewhere between Snap and Aimed Shot's damage, in addition to packing one of the best ST holds around. Bonfire, if you don't have the slots to invest in Char, is a one-slot wonder that lets you blockade a hallway, stay clear out of melee (very handy against Cimerorans and similar baddies), stop the repairmen in the STF from healing the tower, etc. Fire shield is slightly less useful than Charged Armor from //Elec, since Fire is less common than Energy, but close enough, and any of the epic resist toggles are no-brainer awesome picks. Melt Armor is a tragic waste, since although debuffs are awesome, it is so minor as to be nearly un-noticeable (-8.45% res, -4.9 def) considering the 200s cooldown and only 10' radius. If you want a debuff that badly, I would prefer Surveillance; it at least has reasonable debuff values (-14% def/res), lets you monitor their stats, and can be made permanent on one target with just 30 extra rech from SB/sets/Hasten/AM on top of normal rech slotting.

Rise of the Phoenix, however, is (imo) the single best power in any epic pool a Blaster (or most other ATs) can access. Most players would prefer a power that prevents death in the first place like Force of Nature or Hibernate, believing that taking powers that are only useful after you die means you are planning to die, but hear me out. As a blaster, your primary function on a team (or solo) is to defeat as many enemies as possible, as fast as is possible. Apologies if this seems obvious, but it carries an important correlary; if you are holding back from your full damage potential due to worrying about your personal safety, or because you already faceplanted, you are not dishing out as much damage as you could otherwise. At the level that the top-tier epic power opens, death has a nearly meaningless impact beyond temporarily impairing your damage output. Once you hit 50, debt has literally zero effect on your character other than allowing you to earn the other debt badges; it doesn't affect your influence, salvage, or recipe drops at all. The only actual problem dying poses is that it shuts off whatever buffs you may have running on you, and takes you out of the fight for as long as it takes for you to either safely pop an awaken and recover from the effects, run back from the hospital, or get a rez from some teammate. With Rise of the Phoenix, however, you can use your death as just another weapon - it is no longer a hindrance but an excuse to unleash a boss-level stun/nuke on anything nearby, and for any teammate that has it to use Vengeance and/or Fallout to speed the team's progress up even more. While PFF/Aidself or Hibernate will allow you to prevent death in most circumstances if you can react fast enough, they shut you out of the fight for several seconds just like death would. With RotP under your belt, you can continue to battle as aggressively as possible without fear of death, and when you do eventually fall, you can rise from the ashes and finish the job in less than two seconds. You need not fear crippling end-drains, mezzes, or debuffs (like Mask of Vitiation), as you can use RotP to break any debuffs or mezzes and start the battle fresh with a big chunk of hp/end. Additionally, if you are fully capable of dealing with your death without any intervention from the def/cons on the team, it lets them conserve their rezzes for another squishy that does not have a self-rez and require less effort/stress towards keeping you upright rather than blasting away or tending to someone else near death's door.

This favor for blasting away with minimal concern for personal safety inspired largely by RotP's ability to bounce back instantly from any misjudged encounter does not mean that that I (or a likeminded blaster) am incapable of surviving what I pick off, or chronically over-aggroing, or playing "Stupid Blaster Tricks" on a regular basis, or generally noobish incompetence. Rather, it means that when you are engaged in a situation that you should be able to handle, but things start to turn south unexpectedly, you do not need to freak out and run, but rather pop some insps as may be needed and just fight all the fiercer. If the RNG likes you, it may mean winning a fight that looked like it was going sour, because you saw it through, or it may mean that you get to pop RotP and fry them all that way, or worst case scenario (you got in WAY over your head through some ambushes or whatever jumping you), RotP will give you a window of invincibility (and stun/knockback) to make a run for it and regroup.

Bottom line is, even if you have capped HP, softcapped defenses, and significant +res, sooner or later you will end up cooked; an AV gets a lucky shot in, or two Arachnos bosses landed simultaneous Executioners' Strikes, or you didn't expect that ambush wave would spawn on you, or the defender got mezzed and all his toggle debuffs dropped while you got all the aggro, or whatever. However infrequently that happens (based on how far you push the envelope), //Fire gives you the tool to deal with it cleanly and swiftly, without hassling your teammates.

Edit: Wow, that was ramblier than I expected, but I suppose I should put in an evaluation of the other pools as well.

Munitions probably offers the least to you, as an Archer. LRM (a second nuke) is the main reason people would lean in this direction, but with RoA, you already have a ranged nuke to open every battle with. Cryo Freeze Ray is inferior to both Shocking Bolt and Char in every way except looks (stick with Stunning Shot if you want ranged mez), the new rules where being mezzed does not deactivate defensive toggles removes most of the edge Body Armor had over the toggle armors, and Sleep Grenade is pretty much pointless except as a cheap set mule for Fortunata Hypnosis. Surveillance is pretty nice, and my Bane loves it, but Surveillance alone is probably not enough to justify losing one of the other pools' tricks.

Cold mastery is next up on the list of marginal choices. Frozen Armor is the only epic armor that provides defense instead of resistance, if you are one of the people that prefers defense. The catch is that it is Smashing and Lethal defense, instead of positional defense of some form, which would be easier to stack IO bonuses on for most blasters. If you choose to set up an IO build focused on softcapping S/L defense, Frozen Armor will be a big help in that regard, and would be an effective choice. In this case, you would probably want to take many/most of the melee attacks in /EM and load them up with Kinetic Combats for their 3.75% S/L defense bonus. Outside of this strategy though, the lure of Cold Mastery is Hibernate. If you want Hibernate (the ultimate get-out-of-debt free card, with literal untouchability instead of just really good def/res), then go for it. You probably know who you are. The rest of Cold is pretty much irrelevant. Hoarfrost SOUNDS like it would be awesome for a blaster (Hey, Dull Pain!). Don't get suckered into it. It's not. Blasters have an HP cap of 133.33% of base, and accolades can push you up to 120% of base. Set bonuses can push you the rest of the way if you choose, but even without them, Hoarfrost will not increase your max hp by anywhere near as large a percentage as it would on a tank/scrapper/brute, rendering it little more than a solid self-heal with 9 minute base cooldown. Snowstorm could be nice as an AoE slow, but as an Archer who specializes in AoE carnage, the AoE nature of the slow will likely not be as important (most of the enemies will be dead within seconds of contact) and you will have to choose your debuff anchor carefully. It's a solid power if you don't have a teammate to manage the crowd control though.

Force Mastery is one of the most popular epics, and with reason - it's easily the most defensively oriented, with not only a regular resistance toggle but an Unstoppable-lite and Personal Forcefield. If you want to stay upright, it's hard to beat Force Mastery. If you took Aid Self and/or Power Boost, this pool will be especially attractive since PFF gives you all the time you need to patch yourself back up, rather than getting hammered on as fast as you can heal. Force of Nature lets you pretend that you're a tanker (or at least a scrapper) and be a darned tough fighter for 2 minutes out of every 7 or so (depending on global recharge), and only crashes your endurance at the end, not your hp. Few blasters (or anyone else) take Repulsion Field, but it can serve as an effective substitute for conventional crowd control if you just need everything to sit down for a few moments or the level geometry provides a corner for you to chain-KD otherwise dangerous bosses into. The catch to Repulsion Field is its prohibitive endurance drain coupled with a long (40s) cooldown that prevents you from toggling it on and off whenever you need it. The general downside to Force Mastery, that it was purely defensive, was remedied in part by the new power, Repulsion Bomb. It's an impressive AoE attack with respectable radius and more damage than Fire Blast, but a slow (3s) activation time that drops it down to slightly less DPA than Explosive, and a painful (45s) cooldown. The primary advantage it conveys is the 100% knockdown, which can give you a momentary breather if the enemies aren't dropping as fast as they should.

Electric Mastery is probably the most versatile of the epics. It offers THE best resistance toggle around, a good hold, and a reasonable extra AoE. Although you don't have another hold to stack with Shocking Bolt, just stuns, Power Boost could up the duration enough to make that less important (if you took Power Boost). It's longer-animating and only half as damaging as Char, without Char's inherent accuracy buff, but it still has a 50% longer duration than Freeze Ray and 20% longer duration than Stunning Shot. Static Discharge is roughly on par with Explosive Arrow; not an exceptional AoE attack but by no means gimpy. It has a slightly shorter and wider cone than Fistful. If you're sitting there between RoA volleys wishing that you could fire more AoE carnage than Fistful and Explosive provide, //Elec will fill that gaping hole in your life, and at nearly 1/4 the recharge of Repulsion Bomb it is rather clearly the better choice there. It may annoy you that it will require bow redraw if you want to insert it into your regular attack chain, though. EMP is not for everyone, considering that it floors your recovery and has a base recharge over 13 minutes, but it is still pretty much the most powerful AoE hold in the game, and the Blaster version is considered a Stun instead of a Hold, so it stacks with Stunning Shot and everything from /EM. Surge of Power is a carbon copy of Force of Nature from //Force in all but looks. I already made the case for RotP, but if you want to stay upright, the choice between //Force and //Elec boils down to whether you place more value in PFF or the hold, energy resistance, third AoE, and maybe EMP.

*looks up page, looks at clock* Huh, one of these days I should just write a guide or something.



TL;DR: Fire has the best hold and a self-rez that lets you take more chances in your gameplay. Very fun addition.
Munitions has very little to offer an archer unless you just are deadset on LRM for whatever reason.
Ice = Hibernate = Rest + Phase Shift. Alternatively, Frozen Armor can set the foundation for a S/L def softcap IO build.
Force has PFF and Unstoppable-lite instead of Hibernate, so you can run around while hiding.
Elec offers probably the most versatile package - best regular third AoE option, serviceable hold, still has Unstoppable-lite.

Caltrops is almost never a FIRST choice, but I'm frequently surprised how nice it is to have an area-denial tool on hand. It lets you easily waylay ambushes, take the heat off you if you get in over your head, neutralize the repairmen on an STF, etc. It doesn't really need any slots if you don't want to give it some, but a slow or two can keep enemies running away at a crawl for longer, and it can add up to significant damage against hard targets if you throw some damage slots/procs in.

Alternatively, if your DB chains are already as seamless as you would like them to be and have no interest in cutting corners on it with Hasten, I would go with Hurdle just as a quality-of-life improvement. Assuming you have already built to be accurate enough in normal situations, FA only comes into play against enemies with really high defense or crowds of ghosts that stack -tohit on you. Either way, you can probably just carry a large yellow insp on you if things get messy rather than spend the power pick.

The actual Defense of a crab is pretty mediocre unless/until you invest heavily in IO bonuses and pool powers, since it basically just boils down to Tactical Training: Maneuvers and Combat Training: Defensive. However, that is layered on top of the solid protection offered by Serum (Dull Pain clone), Fortification (+Res, status protection), and the distractions offered by your pets (up to 6 extra targets for your enemies) leading to quite the sturdy package overall considering how much (ranged) AoE carnage you are capable of.

Of special note in the Defender secondary damage debate is the fact that Ignite and Ice Storm (and Blizzard) use blaster damage numbers instead of the much lower defender standards. A defender with an immobilize in their primary (or epic) pool can reliably use Ignite to deal well over 500 damage per shot. While Ignite's damage on a blaster is awesome but possibly not awesome enough to justify needing the setup, it is WAY above and beyond the ST damage potential of the average defender (with sonic blast on teams being a special exception due to -res). Ice blast can similarly butcher large spawns if it has a means to prevent them from fleeing. Archery is awesome because of RoA, but outside of RoA it is fairly average.

Damage procs can also make a dramatic difference for a defender since they add a fixed amount of damage for any AT, and therefore add a larger percentile improvement for those with low base numbers. Radiation would make an excellent candidate for mass-proc attacks, with two damage procs + an Achilles Heel slottable in any power from -def sets, along with any KB/AoE/Snipe/PvP/Purple damage procs where applicable. Neutrino Blast can become an absolute meatgrinder with four or five procs in it. Something like Irradiate could theoretically have six damage procs across 5 damage types, though it would probably not be very efficient. Dark (Cloud Senses proc everywhere + a Trap of the Hunter in Tenebrous Tentacles), Energy (Explosive Strike everywhere) and Ice (Impeded Swiftness everywhere) get honorable mentions in that regard.

With TA, it will be very important to have either an origin-temp attack that can light your Oil Slick, or better yet, have a secondary that deals energy (or fire) damage anyway. Something like Howl is beautiful, since it both hurts the spawn initially, lights your slick, and softens them all up for the fire. Energy blast can light slicks and has decent proc potential, but is probably not the best pairing for TA because of the random KB knocking things out of your debuffs (or back into the patches if you're good at aiming it, but unreliably).

I would totally join you for an all-blaster STF run, except I'd have to do it on Freedom (or test). Ghost widow should not pose as much of a challenge as you might expect. Try to have a designated 'tank' or two that either already has high defense or packs a trayfull of lucks. You should have your blasters surround the AV from all sides so her AoEs don't get several of you at once, and when someone inevitably drops, just get back up asap (Vengeance would definitely help, but most blasters don't carry it except for very specific builds) and keep firing. If you are not averse to making semi-frequent trips to Ouroboros, just chugging a couple stacks of red/orange/purple inspirations as the situation demands can make a world of difference against tough opposition, like Aeon (even a blaster is difficult to defeat if he's got over 50% defense and 75% res-all).

Additionally, standard practice of dropping half a dozen shivans (ideally fueled by a warburg bio/chem nuke or two) should help to trivialize most AVs.

Ahh, Manticore still has the L40 Paragon Protector Elites in it? Huh, thought they might have fixed that by now. Hadn't run it in a month or two.

And yeah, the OP's team sounds like a match made in heaven.

Minor note, Power Thrust is the only /EM power that inflicts KB to its target. It sends them flying, which is the point of the power, but the other punches just stun their target (assuming they survive the hit). /MM's powers can generally be used at a normal range, but /EM gives Boost Range to turn your fire blasts into snipes. If you don't like the melee-heavy nature of /EM and want to avoid too much aggro, I would go /MM over /Fire.