Camel

I could see this being true. With the changes to Freeze Ray, you can skip your T1 blast and have an attack chain of T2, Freeze Ray and Bitter Ice Blast, all of which can have 2+procs.

Fire/Earth’s niche is that it has two damage auras. One round of AoE after dropping Sleet + the ticks from the two damage auras would be substantial. Especially after locking them down.

I find that I can get it to proc quite frequently with enough stacks of static and teammates to chain to nearby. Since it’s affected by how many you get in the chain, it can go off about 60-70% of the time. And it’s on demand. So it essentially turns Empowering Circuit into a chained teammate +to-hit/+damage buff and a pseudo build up for yourself on a less than 10 second timer!

Yes, I slotted the Guassian’s and if I have enough static and am surrounded by enough teammates, it goes off very frequently.

What travel powers can you not use with Shinibi-Iri?

I have a level 36 Elec/Elec Controller and it’s pretty good. Gremlins are very tanky with all the circuit buffs. Still play testing before I put a final build together, but I think it will end up being a monster on teams. I’m having a hard time picking which powers I don’t want, so many seem like a good choice! Has anyone gotten one to 50 with a full IO/Incarnate build?

I love the power. On my Fire/Dark Controller it is permanent and gives myself and my teammates +1,000% regeneration and nearly capped endurance recovery. I only play in melee on that build though, so the synergy is great and it's easy for me to stay buffed and keep my team buffed. I 5 slot mine. 1 Heal, 1 Heal/Recharge and 1 Heal/End/Recharge. Then I put two Efficacy Adaptors in it, 1 End Mod, 1 End/Recharge, all +5.

I finally caved and made a TW/Bio. And woah... Uber good. I approach my stance the way Werner explained it. I’d say 75% of my time is in Offensive. The added DPS and +to-hit is incredible. If you build some global recharge bonuses, you can switch modes in Adaption rather quick. Basically, if you need HP, enter Defensive, if you run low in endurance, switch to Efficient. Then pop back into Offensive and tear up some baddies.

1. Energy Melee (pre-nerf)- This set is so nostalgiac to me. Total Focus and Energy Transfer were my first experience with “extreme” heavy hitter attacks when I first started playing this game and I never lost that feeling. 2. Super Strength - Rage, Knockout Blow, Foot Stomp... self explanatory if you’ve played it. If not? You punch things REALLY hard. 3. Dark Melee - Like my ex-wife, this set draws power from your enemies to make you more powerful! Very effective! (Just kidding, I don’t have an ex-wife) 4. Titan Weapons - It’s the best Melee set in the game. Need I say more? 5. Radiation Melee - New set, utility, damage aura... GREAT for farming. Very fun and creative set!

I see a lot of people not take Grant Cover and it’s ridiculous. It’s added defense debuff and your only recharge debuff resist in the set outside of IOs. It’s end cost is negligible for what it gives you. All my /Shield builds have 75% debuff resistance to defense and slows because of it. It isn’t essential, but the difference between a build that does take it vs. a build that doesn’t is huge, especially in end game content where defense debuffs are plenty.

Both are viable, in their own way. I personally have more fun with Rad Armor, but it’s definitely not as tanky (even though it is pretty tanky!)

Inv/DM by far. Invulnerability is one of the best tanking sets around. Rad is great too, but offers no defense debuff resistance. The self heal in Dark Melee will make you that much tankier too. I had a Radiation Armor tanker that had capped resistances to most damage, he still suffered in +4 content with a lot of defense debuff (ITF, I’m looking at you) but my Invulnerability tanker could go AFK in those mobs.

I can’t say that’s my same experience. On my Plant/Psi, even on teams with minimal damage buffs and debuffs, I would see Mind Probe and Psionic Lance hit for very respectable damage. Sometimes over 1k. Although my AoE damage was pretty lacking. Or rather, my AoE damage wasn’t lacking, it was great. But the ceiling didn’t seem as high while under buffs or the enemies severely debuffed.

For Fire/Time, absolutely. Solo it’s incredible to be able to have self damage buffs that are permanent. On Ice/Time, Powerboost is very noticeable given the debuffing nature of the set and being able to stack an insane amount of holds. I team significantly more than I solo, so I’ve had a tendency to lean towards a more team oriented build. Speaking of which, I want to dust off my Fire/Time now! I made a build in Pines that is slightly better than my current Fire/Time and have been meaning to respec into it.

Soul Mastery is still viable. Just because you don’t think so doesn’t make it true. My Fire/Time has Soul Mastery, as well as my Ice/Time. They are much sturdier, and only slightly less damaging. On Ice/Time, Soul is superior as your holds and debuffs become almost permanently more potent. Soul is just as viable as Dark. It just plays differently. Also depends on what you need, I have two builds for my Fire/Time. Both are extremely expensive and very well built, if I’m teaming with a kin and will be at damage cap, or if my team is extra squishy, I use Soul Mastery. If my team isn’t squishy, or isn’t giving me good damage buffs, I switch to Dark. I’d also make an argument for taking Cardiac as your Alpha. Dark Consumption takes a long time to recharge and the +recovery from Chrono is only a short duration. If you’re doing your job correctly and living up to your DPS potential, you will run low on end. The incredible amounts of recharge you will have mean there is zero downtime between attacks. It’s not necessary, but you will be that much more self sufficient if you take Cardiac or the other Alpha that increases healing and reduces endurance costs.

I’m crossing my fingers. But I’m hoping the Devs decision to leave DC alone may have been the realization that Touch of Fear is the power they should be looking at. It’s exponentially less useful than Dark Consumption and merits a rework a lot more than DC does. Just my opinion though. Hopeful that this is the case.

Complaints, balancing issues when tested.. I think it was a complicated matter. They had a vision on what they wanted to do but were also trying to cater to our inputs. I do know the first rendition of the power had the potential to be too powerful and definitely needed a rework. I believe they may look into DM again and am hoping so.

It’s still an FOTM, people just don’t know it yet!

It’s really only good for lower level content and AV killing builds that aren’t defense based And even then, you’re better off just cycling your attack chain and stacking more to-hit debuffs. I would be very excited if they left DC the same and made ToF a PBAoE fear that also does decent damage. As long as they revisit, I’ll be happy. Until then, I guess. The Shadow Maul change is nice, but when I was testing it I wasn’t particularly impressed.

Lots of good DM/ info on this thread!

Here you go, friend! https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/15985-focused-feedback-dark-melee-update-build-2/

Dark/Fire would very good! Consider making it a Scrapper for Soul Mastery! Shadow Meld + Unleash Potential means you can have a considerable amount of defense for a Fire Armor toon. I have a build I posted somewhere on the forums for several Dark Melee pairings. I’ll link it for you!

That being said, I can share/link my original build on this thread if anyone is still interested! Even before the changes I had a fully slotted/functional Shadow Maul, I just didn’t use it frequently because of its tiny cone.

Bummer, looks like my original build is going to be superior then. Hopefully they do reconsider more reworks for Dark Melee in the future. The change to Shadow Maul is nice, but not enough. Still think Dark/Shield/Blaze is one of the best builds for a Dark Melee character 😛 I’m hoping they didn’t ‘scrap’ (lol) the changes because of the community’s input. I really think they were on to something when they tried to reimagine Dark Consumption.

Dm/Ice, DM/Fire, DM/Radiation, DM/Dark and DM/Shield are all great combos. I would recommend any of those. You won’t be disappointed! DM/Anything is pretty good!