Redshadows

I've been running a dark tank for awhile now (he's level 40 something) and I've had a 50 dark/dark brute in the past. I wrote a lot more than I thought I would, and in no way do I consider myself an "expert opinion", but here are some (a lot) of thoughts. Zephyr will work when power isn't on. A good solo combo should always include Hack as the first move because of bruising. It's actually pretty viable to just hack something to death, since it's a decent ST move. I wouldn't recommend even having Slash, and instead just let Death Shroud eat away at the enemy. My reason being is that Slash (going by base damage here) does around 45 Lethal damage while Death Shroud does 8 Negative damage. Slash takes 1.5 secs to activate and 5 end to use, while Death Shroud consumes .5 end a second to do 8 damage to at most 10 targets around you. So with base numbers, Slash takes up a total of 5.5 seconds(recharge + activation) and 5 end to do the same amount of damage Death Shroud does while waiting for Slash to recharge, but it can affect up to 10 enemies. Noted, Slash does have a higher accuracy than Death Shroud, but DA does Negative damage, which is resisted far less than Lethal is. With enhancements, Slash could be worth it, but if you're having end issues, this would be a power you might reconsider. First, you should always have a team. Tankers aren't the biggest damage dealers, but they sure can take it better than most and if it's your team, you decide the flow of the team. If it's not your team, you should either share aggro with another tanker entity (tanker/brute/illusion control) or engage carefully. Plus, you get more xp with more people and it's not just because you're killing more enemies that are stronger. Dark Armor, above all else imo, should have a team. From what you say in your post, you use Dark Regeneration near the beginning of the fight when it's the best heal in the game with 10 targets max and 30% heal on one when it's unenhanced. This should be used when you're near death because then the enemies will have to hit you as much as when you first jumped into the group. Usually, the alpha strike will do this to you, so I understand if you use it because of that. This is similar to Fire Armors Healing Flames, except it's much more powerful, but requires hitting a target and it's probably the thing draining all your end (30 end if unenhanced). This power shouldn't be used for small bruises, but for the worst wounds. I would actually drag the damage from one group, get hit by another one a few times, and then use it. Your combo should include taunting frequently and using parry a lot. I don't know what was going on with your taunt when you said it wasn't working, but it's auto hit and will work up to 5 targets max. It's possible somebody else had a much longer taunt duration in effect on it, or you reached aggro cap (15 or 17 peeps). Taunt doesn't fully pull people to you, it gives them a -75% range penalty, so all but the longest range people (Council and Nemesis snipers usually) will first use their ranged move on you before coming over to use melee. It also costs 0 end to use, which helps since everything costs so much. Damage is a factor in how much enemies will pay attention to you, but taunt is weighed much more heavily. Someone would have to deal, very roughly, 10 times the damage to equal taunt + how long it lasts. Taunts from other people have to be more than half of your current taunt duration to steal the attention away (taunt auras usually do about 13 secs of taunt, so basically any other taunt will steal that away). Parry gives you +15% defense to melee and lethal, which can boost your survivability immensely if you stack it twice. This also works really well with Cloak of Darkness (for some defense) and Cloak of Fear since it has a -5% to hit to the targets it hits as well as fearing them. This should be your bread and your dark regen would be your butter. On my dark tanker, I almost never attack. I taunt the hell outta everything, and use my first power (in your case, hack) since tankers apply bruising with it. That's a -20% resist debuff on the thing you hit it with. I use my auras to taunt everything I didn't hit with taunt, but I'm probably an outlier. I took both Oppressive Gloom and Cloak of Fear and I like how it stuns most minions and fears the lieus. It takes a bit longer for it to work on bosses, but it will if given the time. As for enemies, Dark Armor is unique since it kinda works against most things;however, DA won't excel at anything but Psionic. Energy and Toxic are its biggest weakness. Energy is fairly common, but a lot of bosses and some AVs use Psionic, so DA is pretty good late game. Soloing would depend on the diff. Tanks can definitely handle +0/x0. +1/x2 might be the most I would recommend, otherwise you'll be without end a lot if you had too many enemies. If anything, xN is better than +N, since you can usually AoE things to death with Shroud + BS moves. If you've got the money and Catalysts, try buying a few procs to put into Death Shroud so it pays to have it on, but in your posts, you say you don't have much. I would recommend collectingreward merits and trading those for desperately needed kb protec IOs. The way I play is I run around within the enemy group, letting my auras mez them. Oppressive Gloom will stun minions, which make up the majority of a group, and Cloak of Fear fears lieus. I aggressively use Taunt on anything that looks like it isn't looking at me. If I had /Broadsword, I would use parry a few times before using much else. If it looks like the team can kill, I won't use any AoE since DA needs to conserve end. Dark Armors, imo, are very passive. They're there to get hit and annoy the enemy, and just when the enemy thinks they've got you, you heal back to full. Oppressive Gloom and Cloak of fear are less mezzes and more mitigation. DA doesn't have much else to buff itself, but with that sword of yours, you've got a lot of potential. Sure, it might suck now, but with enough time and practice, you'll be swallowing(?) the enemy.

I've been trying out a Dark Armor tank for a while with a theme of "Fear", so I've gone and taken most powers in the presence set. Since I have such a hard time with end, since DA, I really like using Taunt and Provoke. I deal next to no damage, but I've taken both Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom and I've become something of a tanktroller. Provoke, while being a tohit power, is really useful since I also have Dark Melee, and thus have very little AoE. In other words, Taunt has been invaluable for me because I have such an end heavy set. I let my teamies kill things and I am their shield. I also mez the hell outta everything too, since Oppressive Gloom only really works on minions and Cloak of Fear works on lieus and bosses.

There's also a kb protection IO in defense set. I think it's Karma, and if you take Combat Jumping of Cloak of Darkness, it could help with the kb issues.

DA has three taunt auras. Death Shroud - The neg damage one Cloak of Fear - the fear one Oppressive Gloom - the stun one AFAIR, the three have taunt in them.

Well, I main as a Fire/Ice, but I don't really play many other tanker types. I'm also not the best, so please take my words with a grain of salt. You're not going in the wrong direction, since Fire/Ice used to be a very popular build a long time ago. Ice Patch + Burn has decent throughput of baddies for a tanker set. First long text is basically just explanation on how I see Fire/Ice. After that, is how I slot my powers. Didn't expect to type so much, so sorry about that. TL;DR slot for global recharge. Fire/Ice Fire is a pretty offensive set, with Healing Flames, Consume, Burn, Fiery Embrace, and Rise to keep you in the fight. I really like Fire because of this offensiveness, since it burns through enemies quickly with a great team. Just got to be a little careful not to go too fast and reach aggro cap. Temperature Protection is a great power, because you can slot a +Kb protection in it, as well as resist a lot of slow effects. Slot in a Winter's Gift IO for even more slow resist, and it's pretty great at fighting enemies who want to slow you down. Consume is great too, since it not only gives you more endurance when you're running low, but it gives you end drain resistance, which some other sets don't have. If you know what a Sapper is, Consume is great at countering them, but you're going to want to throw a Freezing Touch their way to stop their nonsense. Fire Armor is very weak to Psionic, as is some of the other sets. It can mitigate that somewhat with Healing Flames, but it's best to not take too much time to get rid of the Psychic baddies. Energy and Negative can be problems, but it's better than Psychic. Toxic isn't a problem, depending on your build. Slot enough global recharge and you can 3 stack Healing Flames to reach resistance cap on Toxic. Ice Melee is a little defensive with the slows, hold in Freezing Touch, and Ice Patch to keep the baddies falling on their backs. It's got some great AoE with Frost and Frozen Aura, although some people don't like Frozen Aura because reasons? One of the things before the shutdown happened was fix a big glitch in Frozen Fists. It used to do half the damage it does now, so it can do a lot at lower levels. Ice Melee is not a very offensive set. It does have great AoE, and Freezing Touch is probably one of the strongest single target damage dealing powers a tanker can have, but only if you slot it for damage. You can slot it for holds, to have more control, but you generally don't want things to live too long since it goes against Fire's focus. Both of them together is pretty decent. You can play it in many different ways. There's the cautious way, where you put down an Ice Patch first and then pull baddies into it. That's probably one of the safest ways to play, and at early levels, you can kill +2 up to +4 depending on your team. There's the aggressive way, where you jump directly into a group and put the Ice Patch down on them. It's quicker, but the alpha strike(the burst enemies do when aggroed) can kill you if you're slacking with the Healing Flames. This is one of my preferred ways, since it's more fun. It's best to do this with a kin on the team so you can get the Fulcrum Shift before laying down that sweet Burn. There's a crazier way where you say "f it all" and jump into multiple groups. I usually play like this because it's fun and Fire is usually good at it. Jump into a group, lay down an Ice Patch, wait for team to come and kill a few off, then jump into a different group and pull them to the kill zone. Use Healing Flames to stay alive, and when everything goes to shit, just use Rise to get back up. It's definitely not the safest way to play, but it's Fire's way to play most of the time. Well, the Fire I know anyway, which might be some sort of convoluted and stupid way to play, but I like it. Slotting Fire/Ice I never take the sword abilities, but that might be something you want. You can usually 4 slot them with Kinetic Combat for a good defense bonus. I always slot for recharge. IO sets with recharge is the #1 thing for my build. You've got a targeted AoE (Frost), and a ton of PBAoEs. If you want, 5 slot Frozen Aura with the Sleep Purple set, but I usually put Oblits in most PBAoEs except Burn, which I put the purple set in. Taking Tough and Weave is pretty necessary for this build, since Smashing/Lethal is one of the most common damage types, and Fire doesn't do super well against them alone. Weave is good for a LoTG +7.5 global recharge, and to build up defense, if you want to do so. I usually use Super Jump, but you can do Super Speed if you'd like, since Combat Jumping is pretty good and Hasten is downright necessary. Fire has no inherent immob or kb protection, so Karma +KB protec and Combat Jumping is good defenses against this. Burn does have immob protection when you use it, so if you don't go down Combat Jumping, just set down a Burn. Don't expect to be the tankiest thing alive, but it's pretty survivable. With a lot of recharge, you're able to put down at least 2 Ice Patches with Perma Burn, hold bosses with Freezing Touch, and stay alive with Healing Flames.

Redshadows messing around on Indomitable