Welcome to City of Heroes, and welcome to the Titan Network!
Since you are new to the game, before we get to talking builds I'll mention a few more resources you might also find very useful:
Titan Members:
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CoH Build Planners - I'm guessing you've already checked out this area of the network, so you may already know this. There are two basic planners that most people in the game use when they want to create a build for a character. SuckerPunch's Online Planner is an online interface that allows you to create a build online that you can access from anywhere you can find a web browser. Mids' Hero (and Villain) Designer is a downloadable application that allows you to create builds and view detailed information about your character right down to how fast you regenerate hit points or how many miles per hour you're running when you turn on Super Speed.
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Paragon Wiki - If you're looking for information on anything you might find in the game, this is the place the start. Paragon Wiki has information on just about everything under the sun concerning City of Heroes/Villains, the cononical game universe, and real-world topics related to the game. (And if you can't find something you're looking for here, we can probably help you out down on the Paragon Wiki section of these boards.)
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City Info Terminal - In this area of the Titan Network, you can track the progress of your characters as they level up, earn badges, and explore the game's content. (The easiest way to do this is with either the Glycerine or Herostats applications - more on those later.)
(I feel like I should mention the other sites here, too, but we'd be here all day and this isn't really the place for it.)
In addition to the Titan sites, you'll probably also find a lot of good info on the official
City of Heroes Forums. In particular, you'll probably find the
Scrappers and
Tankers boards useful in figuring out what you might want to play.
Now, all that being said, let's get down to answering your questions.
There are a lot of similarities between
Scrappers and
Tankers. Both are melee combat classes, they share a lot of the same power sets, and both are fairly solo-friendly archetypes for a beginning player. The biggest overall difference between the two is that attacking is the primary function and defending is the secondary function for Scrappers, while Tanks primarily concentrate on defense and function in a secondary role as attackers.
So, the first question you'll need to ask yourself is this: Do I want to be able to take a beating more than I can dish one out, or do I want to hit harder at the cost of being hit a little harder myself. The difference isn't
huge, but it is noticeable.
Once you've decided on the answer to that question, you can ask yourself what style of character you want to play. This will help determine what power sets you want to try out.
If you like the idea of being able to take a lot of hits and shrug them off, then you might consider taking
Invulnerability or
Stone Armor. If you'd prefer not to be hit at all, you might think about taking
Shield Defense,
Ice Armor, or
Super Reflexes. If your preference is being able to recover quickly from attacks, then maybe
Regeneration or
Willpower is more your style. Or, maybe you'd like something that can add a little extra offense like
Fiery Aura or
Dark Armor.
When considering offensive sets, if you're looking for something that can fire off a lot of attacks in quick succession, perhaps
Claws is the set for you. Or maybe you're looking for something that's slower but packs a bigger punch like
Super Strength or
Energy Melee. Maybe you'd like to eat away continuously at your opponent's hit points with
Fiery Melee, or perhaps you'd like to take
Dual Blades and become a living, breathing weedwhacker, cutting a wide path through the enemy spawns.
As you can see, there are countless different ways to go about building a character. It gets much easier once you have a basic idea of what you think might be fun to try. And don't be afraid to try something out just to see how it feels. If you try a Claws/Regen Scrapper, you might find that you like the Regen, but Claws just aren't working well for you with it. You might like a different primary set instead. You might even find that even though you don't like Claws with Regen, you do like Claws with Super Reflexes.
At any rate, if you have any specific sets in mind - or at least a good idea of what flavor of sets you'd like - then it'll be much easier to help create a good build that you'll find fun to play.
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OK, so I'm long winded. I
could have just put up a build and said, "Here, try this." But I don't always find the same things to be "fun" as everyone else does, so I like to make sure I'm not just imposing
my fun on other people. I also find that characters mean more to someone if they put some time and thought into the character themselves than if someone just created their build for them.
