Dark/ Invul

For the Dark avoid the maul attack due to animation problems.

For the Invul I avoid the Resist Elements. The rest is up to player desire .

Recent improvements from devs on damage to the Dark set for this take to take on individuals more from Superior attacks.
Sould Drain and another one. Dark consumption is great as it is used to drain opponents of endurance and give you some.

This tank will keep going from mob to mob with little endurance help.

I dunno about Brutes as far as Dark is concerned, but I have a DM/RGN scrapper and I had a hard time with it at first because I couldn't get it to do what I wanted it to do (such as run the wall by itself), but now it's pretty self sufficient.

I don't mind the Shadow Maul. I know that it is similar to the Sands of Mu so most people don't take it, but I find that it is more accurate, does better damage, and has a good ToHit Debuff that makes it superior to the Sands of Mu.

Shadow Punch is pretty worthless, so I would avoid that, but I took everything else in the DM set (other than Confront. That isn't a bad power, I just didn't need it).

The only grievance I had with the DM set was that Soul Drain and Dark Consumption take too long to recharge. I like dealing AoE damage against a mob, so my solution to this problem on my scrapper was to take the Weapon Mastery set and get the Exploding Shuriken. After popping off your Soul Drain, you can tear a mob in half with an Exploding Shuriken.

The Regen is also somewhat squishy on the wall, so I also took the Caltrops from the Weapon Mastery set. Basically, I run into the mob, Midnight Grasp the Surgeon to death, throw down the Caltrops to keep the mob off me while simultaneously slowing them so they don't get too far away and then BOOM... hit em with the Soul Drain and an Exploding Shuriken. Most of the mob is dead at that point and it's an easy matter to pick off the stragglers.

It's actually a fun and somewhat challenging build to do things like running the wall with.

It's also awesome in PvP since they made the changes they did in i13.

you want challenging? Run a dark/regen stalker, and then we'll talk about challenging.

Well, it's an entirely different approach, but the stalker would have some advantages over the scrapper, and some disadvantages. I dunno that either would be particularly harder than the other, depending on what it was you were trying to get them to do.

In the example of the wall, I would imagine that the stalker would probably be tougher since it's so squishy, but I would bet that with some work, it could be done effectively just like I eventually got the scrapper to (that took some respecing, let me tell ya).

Well, with the Stalker, you don't get dark consumption, and you lose the inherent end recovery from the regen set. It is more difficult, and the stalkers are so squishy, but if you do it right, you can be a wrecking ball. I'll have to show you what I mean with my Dark/Regen one of these days. Maybe next week I'll transfer him to Virtrue.

Sounds good. I was planning to make a DB/RGN stalker and an ELEC/SHLD brute, which I need you to get invited and promoted when we get the chance.