Meknomancer

You have no choice but to melee for at least drain psyche and psy shockwave, those 2 aren't powers you can skip and get away with. Your force picked into a t1 ranged blast that does almost 0 damage and pre page 5 would get taken and left unslotted in most builds or mind probe which is a useful hard hitter and takes good sets but again requires melee'ing. Or you can simply use it as a mule for a recharge bonus. If the plan is to stay purely at ranged and only go in for DP and PS something like this will get you 45% ranged with perma hasten+PA (once you boost the PA pieces) and leave alpha options open for whatever (musculature/intuition etc). Quite a few power picks taken just to mule pieces or because they had to be picked to get the next power in the set. Hitting link minds (which isn't perma and indom will0 before jumping into the mob should be enough, wish there were more slots, i'd like to throw in the preventetive proc somewhere, it could go into health instead of the miracle/numi/whatever:

Bit surprised nobody put anything down for this. I don't have 1 but i do love myself some /dark controllers and i quite like grav. If i were to roll one i'd probably go for something a bit like this:

@serxiom I don't have 1 of these but i do play an earth/storm, earth/kin, earth/fire domi and i have about 8 toons running /nature but it still looks like a hard build to make due to the lack of single target damage. If i were you i'd drop the pet for soul drain and find a way to fit in arcane bolt or just switch epics for 1 with a good fast recharging single target attack. The ff+rech in quake is pretty reliable so you could drop a little recharge, you don't hit 45% ranged but that doesn't matter either if spore cloud is on. I had a quick fiddle with the build it lost a teeny bit of ranged def+recharge, still doesnt have the 2 def uniques in and it has an artillery set (yuck) Fossilise needs damage as you have no other st dmg but slotting the apoc gives up the mez, basilisks give almost no ranged def- you get the same from a couple of zephyrs. I like 5 adjusted in overgrowth but when i dont have the slots i toss a couple rech io's in and boost them. Quake slots achilles proc and it will go off with the force feedback. Quicksand, it does extra - defence. I put 6 slots in dark embrace and that felt like a waste just to keep you close to 40% ranged. Its probably worse than your own build but....ideas:

@Nemu, ive seen you on your kin scrap hiding behind blasters......

Ok @Swordacool i edited the first build i posted with the experimentation pool in and it looks like it might actually work. I have 0 experience with corrosive vial so i don't know what slotting works best though. Theres plenty of slow res in it maybe too much which would let you pull 2 slots from toxic dart and toss them in either rad therapy (oblit and eradication procs) or corrosive vial (probably lady grey and achilles/shield breaker/posi/bombardment proc) Obviously some powers got dropped. Shadow maul i find useless on scraps/brutes its basically single target unlike the tank version on a power set that already has more than enough st attacks and lacks aoes. No room for taunt if i toss in hasten and leadership had to go. Resists went down but i found that it was possible to hit 45'ish s/l/melee defence which makes for a much smoother play. Recharge doesnt appear fantastic until you hit cross punch (essential for the force feedback) and then you'd probably find you have perma hasten/soul drain. Ground zero/dark consumption are interchangeable depending on which you'd prefer. You could drop gloom for whatever its just there for the 10% recharge and because i love it (take taunt for instance and toss the apoc bits into toxic dart) . Its not fantastic its just something to look at and fiddle with til you get the build you want. The biggest thing i noticed after running the moonfire was that even if my to hit got floored by the vamps and all my attacks missed if i hit soul drain (which would miss everything) the gaussian proc would fire off and i'd then be able to punch stuff til the debuffs wore off so that piece alone made a huge difference. Thanks to @Spaghetti Bettyand @Nemu for tossing in builds and ideas. Certainly gave me some thoughts about my own build. Last thing i'll say on this is it makes a huge difference when other players chime in and post stuff but i'd advise against directly copying a build and then making it in game. Nobody plays the same way and i can tell you from experience (and having team up with @Nemu on torch+excel) that the builds players post will not work for you. I once copied someone elses and then tried it in game and it felt like a glass cannon and i got hammered after watching them tank and dps +4 mobs with ease. Everyone has their own way of playing the game and unlike other mmo's where you could just straight copy what someone else uses and make it work , you need to make your own builds that work for you in coh. So stick to your theme, keep experimentation as it fits the character idea you have in your head and you'll have alot more fun once you find the build you like and it works out for you.

Without putting it into mids manually the first things i'd say are to put ff+rech in place of explosive strikes. Most axe and shield charge itself will take them. You want active defense up permanently and you can stack it (not sure if stacking gives extra DDR but i'm sure any shield tanker player will tell you if it does or not) i like 2 rech io's in. Grant cover doesnt need all those slots. It also provides DDR to yourself but otherwise its only offering defensive bonuses to team mates so its usually just a mule for a lotg 7.5%. I like having focused acc for the same reasons, resistance to anything debuffing accuracy and you'd have access to PP and conserve power, both useful picks on an end hog like shield. Medicine pool is a waste unless you can properly slot aid self with some heal/rech and interrupts and even then it takes an age to activate. I never understood field medic, the recharge alone makes it almost useless. Pretty sure phalanx fighting can't be enhanced and the buffs only apply when your near team mates anyway. Another power you can just mule a kismet/lotg in. Spare slots i'd be throwing in health for the preventetive 2-3 pieces for hp s/l res and the proc. And a 6th slot in deflection, another def piece.

Ok my last attempt. There's no room for experimentation as far as i can tell. I often say to new players that every combo can be made to work on every AT. Just not this one. Dark Melee has no soft control other than the - to hit and thats mostly single target. You can toss avalanche/overwhelming procs into pbaoe's and hope they fire off but thats not reliable. Moonfire run reminded me that resist sets with no defence are about as useful as defence sets with no resists (unless your running SR) and that defence trumps resists in 90% + of game content. And accuracy matters...a lot. So i started from scratch gave up recharge/procs/resists. Cross punch makes up for a lot of DM's weaknesses provides a little soft control and bumps recharge. i don't know why i ever took it out the build in the first place. Still can't fit in ground zero/dark consumption/shadow maul and some of the slotting just looks wrong, but its just mids isn't it? In game should be a totally different matter *fingers crossed*

I just logged mine on for a bit, ran a +2 moony, got repeatedly hit, slowed, immob'd and had my - to hit floored so its back to mids for me. It needs more defence and slow resist and better to hit if it can't even handle a group of archons without panic clicking insps.

I'm wishing i'd made mine a scrapper/tanker both get access to better AT sets and even with the lower res cap the scrap has the option to take shadow meld from soul which can be a lifesaver.

Not sure this is one of mine ( I often copy builds and have them in mids for a later look ) but it looks ok despite having downtime on soul drain and hasten, good res+def to most stuff and most importantly its got gloom and dark oblit, not sure how you'd swap in ground zero and experimentation but maybe you can:

@Swordacool this might help: Its an old thread not updated builds for page 5 but you can re-order power picks as you like. Yes i find soul drain to be the base for my dm builds and yes it will bump you to max damage if you can find and keep mobs around you to drain off. This works really well with /rad as its not running a damage aura so they don't tend to evaporate as fast and you can just use them to keep the damage high and focus on single hard targets. As to set slotting that all depends on the player. If you look at other builds on other AT's posted by various players you'll soon start to notice they slot in a particular way with specific goals in mind. For example @Hyperstrike builds tanks, irrelevant of the AT it will be built for maximum defence and resists. You'd be able to jump into the centre of a mob and survive and click attacks til they die. There won't be a single extra chance for damage or much recharge but you won't die. On the other hand @Nemu will build to maximise the primary and secondary in the opposite way with a very specific goal in mind, tons of recharge, tons of extra damage and just enough survivability (provided you know your primary+secondary extremely well and the enemies your facing, where to position yourself and which ones to take out first) to murder mobs at speed and look cool doing it...and not die. Build like a tank and you'll feel very safe have a 'clean' build (by clean i mean you'll have a ton of set bonuses, like 2 pages long, usually every power fully slotted) but you'll have 0 recharge in the build and do very little damage. Build a 'dirty' build (very few set bonuses but tons of extra recharge and extra chance to damage pieces) and you'll have a much higher dps toon. What you build will depend on your playstyle as we all play differently and enjoy the game in different ways. For the Dm/Rad you need to understand the primary and secondary and how the 2 mesh and decide which route you want to go. Do you want to max damage and recharge or do you want to max defence and resists. You won't get both with this combo. Your a brute not a tank so i recommend getting enough recharge to keep soul drain up for the damage with just enough defence and resists to keep you standing and kill stuff before it kills you. Or make it a tank. Or go dm/bio. I was going to post another old build but i won't bother, it had high resists but was so dull to play i respecced out of it. Make your own, take gloom and dark obliteration and have fun with it. Or roll it as a tank. Or make a dm/bio instead.

First thing i did was turn off meltdown. Do that and look at your resists. Without hasten you won't get perma soul drain and thats a large dent in your dps. You could dump corrosive vial for adrenal booster, even with a couple of boosted adjusted targeting bits (recharge+to hit/recharge) it'd make a difference although its got a downtime even longer than meltdown it could fill in a bit when soul drain's down. I'm not convinced 6 slotting winter bits is the way to go, fire/cold def doesn't seem that necessary i'm pretty certain you can get much higher resists to it more easily. I do have 1 of these but it rarely/never gets played i find dm/bio/soul much more fun and easier to build but i did post the dm/rad somewhere on here when others were asking but it runs hasten. Seriously i'd find a way to fit it in purely for soul drain even if it means dumping manouvres which is making next to no difference anyway. Possibly something like this although the defence drops . the resist are up and with spiritual/agility in you'd have perma hasten/soul drain. Its a rush job using whatever build i had in mids theres gaping resist holes and i'm sure it can be done much better but its just an example of how to bump the recharge sufficiently to raise the dps (drop cross punch for shadow maul and i think its all your power picks )

If your not slotting/planning to use gale dump it for 02 boost and toss a preventetive absorb in. Hurricane with a full dark watchers is a wasted slot, the 6 th piece does nothing for you. Better off with 5 dampened spirits-same recharge and damage bonus but useful res bonus on top. I'd use a FF+rech in lightning storm instead of the rech io. Your a little short of ranged defence and now you have tesla cage but no elec shackles to stack with it, maybe better off with VS. I'd try to find an extra 2.5% ranged def. Theres enough recharge in build you could pull a few slots from powersink.

If you run the Hero's Hero arc via ourob you'll get shrouded from the 'save the hostages from the shadows' mission and all the av's bar anti matter in 1 go (assuming you remember to defeat Black Swan on the old BM farm map). Unlike the old ourob arc, if you run the new version of MJ arc from PI you appear to get the missions in a random order with no guarantee of the shrouded badge map with the NIghtstar fight or even Siege until you complete the arc save Posi and contact MJ again to get what seems to be a 2nd run through with some of the older maps in. The PI contact arc has the added irritant of finding Black Swan in the shadow shard mission (sometimes twice if you have to keep going after saving Posi) as she often doesn't appear in the central globe but could be anywhere on the foggy map and even a target macro doesn't always help locate her. My long rambling way of saying run the ourob arc and save yourself some grief and not have to re-enter ourob for shrouded too.

I have one of these its great fun, i did originally run with elec epic for the immob because once you drop the storm powers stuff will run away, not a problem for minions etc but when its an av it can be a pain and i like to pin those down. Ended up respeccing in psi epic because i just love dominate and i run it with voltaic over tesla and i never took shocking bolt before but with a little fiddling on current build it could end up something like this:

My vote will be surprising....invul or wp primary with elec or.....ss. Both primary's are shockingly bad for slotting damage and recharge while maintaining any sort of defence/resists/healing. Elec has no st attack chain to speak of. Invul is a 3 trick pony consisting of footstomp/ko blow/rage and if it didn't have rage it'd be at the bottom of the secondaries list. I've yet to see an invul build that isn't ss and can put out any damage and ss isn't great even on other primaries unless you've skipped the entire set bar the above 3 and taken and slotted fighting and soul. Scrolling through the forums there's only about 2-3 wp builds and only 1 of those is procced out for damage and looks fun but won't survive harder content. Every single invul build (every single one.....) 0 recharge. 0 procs. Pretty much identical with the unbreakables/imperviums/shield walls/winter sets everything put towards resists and defence and nothing left for fun. They may not be the worst tanker primaries/secondaries is just that every other one is more fun to play and allows far more diversity building them so if you want a challenge level up one of those through content and try not to fall asleep waiting for the mobs to drop.

Looks like this now, bots have high 50's def to s/le/ne/c mid 70's aoe def with high 80's resist to psi, pretty much unkillable pets especially with some frostwork on. Not sure i've done the best slotting for the pets , endurance isn't really an issue once heatloss kicks in and i'm a little unhappy with snowstorm detoggling when mezzed but at least it floors the fliers keeping stuff out of melee:

Yup my mistake. Wondering to myself when the change occurred in game and had multiple arch/nin builds open at the same time and lost track.

@oldskool Mids lets you slot zephyrs in shinobi but not in game . Or am i looking at your older build.

I slot with some accuracy, set bonuses, then procs if i have room.

You lost me at blazing bolt (i skipped past arcane bolt i pretended not to see it)

I haven't respecced mine for page 5 but i'll be looking at something like this. Resist sets need some defence the same way defence sets need some resists. You can build both in. Its not looking great but it'd be playable (i'll probably stick with the elec/bio) :

Lots of procs in the traps. I'm pretty lazy i superspeed in and hit poison trap/acid mortar maybe caltrops. I dropped triage temporarily to test maintenance drone on the bots/traps. What you should be doing....at least the way traps was made, is hitting seeker drones before piling in.

T4 barriers, lots of amplifiers, teammates buffs. Most important thing is your positioning. You need to be close enough to get hit by the buffs without the person using them clicking on it and wondering 'why did the camera just spin round to the blaster thats 50 feet away hovering in the air out of range? screw them they're on their own i'm not chasing after them to give them my cold shields :p'

Honestly i don't know how/if its worth building for defences when so many run t4 barriers and bring along buffers for hardmode stuff and your waiting for tank to take aggro anyway. Its such a melee oriented combo you want to be right down in the thick of it and kite/joust as much as possible but if your insisting on flight as a travel it got me wondering - do you play at ranged as a hover blaster? Threw this in mids but its got a lot of room for improvements and i'm thinking soul epic is a better pick just for the neg nrg res: