Metatheory

Specifically I'm running Fire/Fire, so I want to slot the whole Stalker's Guile ATO set into one power for the nice res bonus at 6 slots. Guile is the set which gives a chance to become Hidden again after the attack. I'm not sure whether to slot it into Assassin's Blaze or Fire Sword Circle which are both viable opening attacks depending on situation. Thoughts? And what would you slot in the power which doesn't get the ATO?

Don't forget SBB - Summer Blockbuster. A 4 person (only 4) co-op event available from LFG.

I can imagine this one is pretty bad based on my experiences with Psi-Ninja.

Yes... but shadow punch has bruising as well, that's what I referred to

Shadow punch does debuff your target though, and helps to stack -to hit... I would recommend to use it as much as possible

Hopefully the last time I will say it 😄 You can't just look at the res without considering the mez. DA has better protection than it looks 'on paper'.

They have a chance to attack back when damaged, with a base 5% -to-hit effect. Not sure what that chance is, though. I assume at least 50%.

Right. You pretty much have to enjoy mezzing builds to enjoy DA. And to enjoy finding those synergies between your attacks and your layered defences.

Making Soul Transfer usable while alive is an interesting idea. Probably not as a lvl 30 stun though 😄 (I know, that's not what you suggest here). Are there team buffs from armour sets? Shield has one IIRC, but not sure if there are any others.

Because the mez auras matter. An SO'd dark tank doesn't dive into a bunch of +4 incarnate mobs and start taunting. It's gonna die. But running on +1/+2 that 32% - in combination with the one of the mez auras - gets the job done. Maybe with the odd corner pull or whatever, but when the minions come streaming round the bend they are either stunned or feared pretty much instantly. So their damage can be ignored. Now the 32% is only needed to defend against the boss and the lts. And - btw - you do have a little bit of def from probably combat jumping or hover as well as CoD (you did take CoD, right?) and against +1/+2 that does help. And now you can get to work mezzing the lts or the bosses, with your Fault, or your Touch of Fear, or Stone Fist, or AirSup, or Shockwave, or Energy Punch, or or or.... you get the idea. DA requires layered mez, in combination with its heal, to get the job done (or an IO build). You don't just stand there and eat the damage. You switch as much of that damage off as possible through mez, control and then beat on the main threats while Death Shroud whittles down the rest. So you can say that you've watched DA and its a bit soft for tanking, and I would agree so far as it's true if you ignore the mez auras. But ignoring the mez auras, writing them off as not useful, is not how to get the set to perform. It's sad to read in this thread a lot of comments about a third of the powers are skippable. It's for sure true of the self rez, but for the rest the opposite is true. Pick either cloak, gloom, or both, leverage complementary powers from your other main or epics/power pools and tank/scrap/blast/stalk your heart out 🙂

C'mon, it's not THAT hard 😄 Not enough to warrant an 'advanced players only!' warning, at least. For those worried that DA is an under performing set I'll just drop this here: Yes, it's a totally tricked out build, but it's also a no insps no deaths solo +4/*8 ITF for heaven's sake! Not something I would be mad enough to take on... I draw your attention to the second post where the OP regrets not taking Oppressive Gloom and describes perfectly why even out of the box - minions only - they believe it would have negated the biggest issue they faced, caused by the debuffing of the minions.

Quick contribution here from a long time DA player. It is far and away my most played powerset both here and in the original game, and the only set where I have multiple 50's. The only one I don't have is a stalker (even I need a break from DA occasionally!). I would be very careful about buffing it too much because in play it is immensely strong. That is not to say that it doesn't present some fairly unusual challenges to get it purring, but to me those challenges are the reason why it is interesting to play. Historically it has been feared because of its high endurance cost, which seems to primarily come from Dark Regen and Cloak of Fear I believe. But these things can be easily mitigated: I can take a melee set with an endurance recovery tool, or I can slot end redux SOs, or I can use blue inspirations, or I can use Energy Mastery epic (heck, back in the day we used to take Focused Acc to help Cloak of Fear 😄 ) I can benefit from teammates powers which improve recovery or top up endurance, or I can use super-cheap base buffs, or I can be careful which attacks I'm triggering, or I can make use of incarnate abilities, or I can occasionally run out of endurance... and really, so what? It usually doesn't kill me. It doesn't have -KB, but there is acrobatics, or there is hover (not total mitigation because of the flip but it is also pretty useful vs caltrops and loads of other ways), or I can just buy the -KB IO or get one with merits. SR does not have any terrorize mitigation and so far as I know that is much harder to fix (although rare). As to the stun and fear auras... I agree that out of the box they aren't super powerful, but again they shine when you combine them with other powers, for example Oppressive Gloom and Fault from Stone Melee is very nice, or combined with some of the early attacks in Mace you have complete control over LT's and even Bosses. Cloak is a bit trickier, but it has fantastic synergy with Dark Melee (again, high difficulty mob lockdown), with Assassin Strike and the Presence pool is there and actually can be used! For me these auras are the foundations and you build your strategy on top of them to create unusual and satisfying in-play effects. You don't have to take them - and it seems that many don't - but then you are missing out on some quite good potential upside. That said, I would be curious about Cloak offering a +To Hit effect (mentioned on p1). Edit: I never mentioned Soul Transfer, which thematically is DA's version of Howling Twilight. This one does seem out of step with the game meta - it seems like originally some of the Armour sets were expected to die occasionally and that in a sense that could even be a 'good thing' because then you could trigger your uber-stun/rez (or nuke/rez in Fire etc) and create an advantage to yourself and the team. But that really does feel behind the times now, and besides, you can get a better self-rez just by paying off a bit of debt and visiting P2W. Finally, I can see that having stealth on a tank can seem a little odd, but I have never noticed in actual play that my tank cannot acquire or maintain aggro because of it. Quite the opposite in fact, but the stealth does offer interesting possibilities that again can be used as a foundation to build strategies which provide good variation and interest in the game experience.

Yeah, you are right I think, once incarnates are factored in then perma-Soul Drain should be pretty simple to obtain actually. Nice post, thanks! I've been playing this toon for a while now so I can't switch to Fire, but you are probably right, it might be even more crunchy at melee range than Dark! I think it's good that there are some alternative suggestions for visitors to the thread who are just looking for some melee-blaster ideas. Alright, so based on the feedback I have actually made a few tweaks to by concept. The main change is I have removed Neutron Bomb. I ran with it for a few levels and the damage is pretty underwhelming. As people have noted, Irradiate is far more heavy hitting and actual play certainly bore that out. I didn't find the animation too horrible though, I actually enjoyed having one which you don't see that often 🙂 I considered running with Cross Punch instead, although according to Mids at least Neutron Bomb does more damage than Cross with only Punch offering synergy. But I decided to actually go with Spring Attack instead. It's another AoE, sure, but more interestingly gives us a lot of mobility for setting up the start of the fight, and also brings another form of soft control to add to the Stun and Slow already in the build. There are also some slotting tweaks as well, in particular I like the idea of slotting the -Res proc, and found two good places for it, in both my snipe and Irradiate. This meant slightly less slots available for X-Ray Beam, but that's fine. If Soul Drain hits three opponents, which is usually pretty straight forward, then level 50 Proton Volley hits for around 1000 damage before any proc effects. I think the main issue now is that this feels like it will be somewhat of a late bloomer, basically because a lot of the slots won't be available until the late 40s. So until then the Melee Def total will be a touch on the low side as most of the bonuses require 6-slotted powers, eventually reaching around 42% in combat (where Stealth loses half of its value). Here's the tweaked build, though! (If I can get it right this time....)

Good suggestion, thx. I do have combat jumping and I still have this power on my leveling build so I will experiment in actual play. Previously I was hopping backawards and then jumping back in again - I hadn't thought to just jump up. The Force Feedback idea is appreciated. Good info, thx. I will ponder whether or not I can find the two picks and the slots for this to make it worth it. I actually found one other thread on this topic, so I will link it here for anyone who is interested.

Hi everyone! I'm looking for some tips and tricks related to building blasters who can survive in melee range and make good use of AoE and Melee attacks. I enjoy playing power set combinations that I don't see around the city too often and I like the visuals of these two sets. My priorities are: Have fun 🙂 which on a blaster can include glorious death! Stay alive long enough to boost myself and then unleash my AoE attacks, melee anything which survived Move on to the next mob without too much down time I'm not obsessing over solo +4/x8 or anything but +2/x6-8 should be realistic. I team most of the time anyway because I enjoy the interaction. Budget is not too much of an issue. Before posting my build I will share some of the the thought process. None of these decisions are 'fixed' I would welcome to hear alternative thoughts! I've built for positional +Def rather than typed. I have slotted Soul Drain and Dark Consumption as attacks and expect to use them often. Perma-SD would be lovely but feels hard to achieve while also getting enough +Def in the build. When SD is down I'll probably hang back and blast from range for a bit. I omitted Electron Haze because in practice I find it difficult to target at close range and lose the benefits of the cone. In actual play I have rarely seen the the KB fire. Instead I have selected Death Shroud and slotted for Acc/End Redux and procs. I consider this part of my my commitment to staying in close as much as possible, otherwise this pick is probably not worth it. I have absolutely no idea how to slot Touch of Beyond! Right now it has a single Power Transfer proc in it, and should hit often enough. Stealth is primarily just to squeeze in another LotG +Rchg. Cold Mastery is very much for flavor... although a Self Heal/+HP could be useful and Snow Storm has potential to increase close in survivability, these are in no way non-negotiable. But most likely the powers in these positions should be things which don't require slot investment. Because of the positional +Def I haven't taken an epic shield. I did consider Cross Punch as another close range AoE but could not find the slots. I also wasn't sure whether the synergy with Boxing/Kick affects the single target power, Cross Punch, or both. Well, thanks for reading this far! The build is in this here Spoiler: (A) Empty (A) Numina's Convalesence - +Regeneration/+Recovery (7) Panacea - +Hit Points/Endurance (A) Empty (A) Performance Shifter - Chance for +End Edit: Sorry for slightly messy export... at least there is a clicky-link!

this one

See this thread - you have to create the playerslots file yourself using a specific format.

Beehive \0/

Rune of Protection from the Sorcery pool does give protection vs sleep and many other effects, although it will take 3 picks to get it and it has a fairly long recharge. It is the only power that I know of.

Also reporting this one And yes, ctrl does fix it

My experience is that this is also true with Psychic Blast, actually.