Justaris

Dark Armor, while it has amazing potential at endgame with a fully realized build, is certainly not the most accessible Tanker primary starting out. If you're looking for something you can dive right into, you might consider shelving your DA for a while and returning to it later when you're ready to create your superlative signature tank (and have the bankroll of influence to manage it without too much strain). In terms of primary powersets I would say Invulnerability and Shield Defense are good places to start. They do well in lower levels, they don't require a lot of tinkering to do well in a majority of content, and you'll get a good sense for how to tank. I personally prefer Dark Armor over both of them, but that's with a carefully considered Invention-based build. What makes Dark so good is the combination of insanely powerful heal in Dark Regeneration, good Resistances in the toggles, and above-average Defense for a Resistance-based powerset allowing for leveraging of both Defense and Resistance to high degree with a careful build. For reference, Resistance is damage reduction upon being hit while Defense is reduction in the chance of being hit. Layering both, and the game's most powerful heal on top of that, and you've got a mighty Tanker indeed. However, Dark Armor also has a high endurance cost in its toggles (particularly Cloak of Fear and Death Shroud) and lacks knockback protection in its status effect immunity powers - these are both things you must build around and compensate for, otherwise you will struggle. These can both be entirely remedied with Inventions, but out of the box it's a problem. If you want to stick it out with Dark Armor, I encourage you to do so, and I'd be happy to help you fine-tune your build, just want you to know what you're in for. In terms of secondary powersets, there are some that offer synergy of one kind or another with the primary powerset and others that just offer variations in damage type or position. Many of the weapon sets (specifically Broadsword, Katana, Martial Arts, Titan Weapons and Staff Fighting) offer powers that boost Defense - this makes your task building Defense with Inventions that much easier. Some powersets offer ways to help manage endurance - Electrical Blast offers some mild endurance drain, while Dark Melee offers a much stronger endurance drain in Dark Consumption which works similarly to Dark Regeneration but for endurance instead of health. Staff Fighting also offers an endurance discount, another means to arrive at a similar end. For a Tanker, you'll want to look for utility powers like those I've outlined above that synergize well with your primary powerset. Failing that, look at the secondary effect - every powerset has an effect added to its attacks and you'll ideally want one that's useful. -Resistance is a good all-around effect as it functions as a damage boost not just for you but for your entire team. Slows can be useful to reduce the volume of incoming damage and keep enemies clustered around you more easily.

Depending on your build you may want to adjust the difficulty settings so that a single minion is a level or two below you if they're killing you through Rest on even con. Thanks for the earlier correction on Cataclysmic - I'm not aware of any effective way to farm damage dealt badges other than just playing a lot of high-end content to maximize the numbers you're putting out and using Judgment frequently.

I don't think Cataclysmic and the other high-count AE badges are still in the game, unless the homecoming crew has added them back and I'm not aware. As for Immortal, your best shot is probably to get a single minion alone in a door mission and use Rest. So long as your regeneration can keep pace with the damage (i.e. so long as you don't die) you can then afk farm for damage taken. Even so, it takes a while.

Cardiac is a solid choice, helps a great deal with your endurance management and gives you Resistance as well. In my own build I use Resilience for even more Resistance to stack with my softcap Defense, but I use Ageless to give endurance and defense debuff resistance - if you're mostly using another Destiny such as Rebirth or Barrier than you'll likely want to be running Cardiac instead. Judgment and Lore are mainly down to flavor, though personally I like Void radial for -DMG and a radial Lore for extra buffs and support - Banished Pantheon is a good choice here, though there are many good ones to choose from on this. In my experience radial Lore pets are nice for TFs, small teams and solo, while Core is often better on league-based content such as incarnate trials and mothership raids where having more DPS is preferrable and you'll be saturated with buffs and debuffs for the most part For interface, Reactive is always popular and other solid choices include Degenerative, Diamagnetic or Paralytic. The interface procs can stack up to five times, so this is another area where you may want one thing for small team / solo content and something else for league play. Reactive will often net you very little in most leagues as it'll already have saturated from other players, but it's a great choice if that's not the case. For hybrid I'd recommend Melee or Support depending on what other build choices you've made. Support's endurance discount can be helpful but Melee is likely stronger overall in most cases as it makes you tougher overall across several types of mitigation and the active form supplements your KB protection when you need it.

Call of the Sandman also has a heal proc which you may want to consider, can be significant in powers hitting multiple targets

Welcome home.

My primary Tanker is Dark/Elec. I use the following: Alpha - Resilient core - brings up my resistance numbers allowing me to focus slotting more on Defense set bonuses and optimal slotting for certain key powers Lore - Vanguard core - for character backstory purposes, might make a Longbow core here as well to help on some of the higher-end runs Destiny - Ageless radial - for the DDR, though the endurance is sometimes helpful too. Interface - Paralytic radial - while degenerative, diamagnetic and reactive are the most popular and for good reason, I prefer something that both plays into my tanking role and is unlikely to be saturated even on large league encounter. Reactive will saturate almost immediately as the most popular, but sometimes the others will too. If I did more solo I'd probably opt for diamagnetic Hybrid- Support core - for the extra Defense and for the endurance Judgment - Void radial - similar rationale to Paralytic as it offers -damage to help me tank and doesn't suffer from the target lockout you can get if you inadvertently use Ion right after someone else

I can see a few tweaks I'd recommend but this looks pretty solid. 1. Dark Regeneration needs some love. I recommend a Theft of Essence: Chance for +End proc here and then some Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge frankenslotting. This is arguably your signature Dark Armor power and you want it well-slotted. It's so powerful at base that it doesn't really need much healing slotting. 2. Panacea: +HP/+End over the Regenerative Tissue: +regen proc for slotitng in Health. You'll get a lot more out of that. The Preventive Medicine proc is also pretty good if you can work it in. 3. You'll probably want to use boosters to +5 the recharge IOs in Conserve Power and Hasten, as well as the Endurance Reduction in Assault and the Endurance Modification in Physical Perfection. 4. Might consider Kick rather than Boxing to slot an extra Force Feedback proc 5. I'd cut down the slotting in Tactics - you're not getting a lot of great Set bonuses here and we can use the slots for Dark Regeneration. A couple ToHitBuff/End IOs (or Cytoskeleton HOs) should cover this just fine. 6. Consider Dampened Spirits for Cloak of Fear. 7. Consider taking Taunt - it can be difficult to maintain aggro without it especially on a high-damage team. I think you could comfortably lose Super Speed or Assault to pick that up, depending on your personal preference. My recommendation would be to lose Super Speed as there are plenty of other options these days to get around quickly (Ninja Run, temp powers from the P2W, Team Teleporter, Mission Teleport, teleporters to almost all zones in most SG bases, etc).

Agreed, it's hard to provide meaningful advice without context. Just based on what you posted, it appears you're mostly interested in secondary powersets? Titan Weapon vs Rad Melee, vs Dark Melee? You talk about being tanky being more of a priority than DPS, but without knowing what primary you want to pair these secondary sets with it's hard to really say which would work best.

I'll just chime in here as someone with multiple Dark Armor characters to say that while you do need to factor the high endurance costs (particularly if running Cloak of Fear) into your build, Dark Armor is not only viable but extremely durable with good Invention slotting. It's a bit expensive to get everything you'll want, in terms of Sets, but well worthwhile.

Generally the proc at least greatly improves the endurance cost of the power and will occasionally make it a net gain on endurance when used.

I think conventional wisdom is to take Cloak of Fear all other things being equal, although it's endurance cost is quite high. If you have other stuns to combo with Oppressive Gloom, it gains value. I'll leave Street Justice to someone with more experience on that powerset.

You should also absolutely get a Theft of Essence: Chance for +End proc and slot it in Dark Regeneration. This alone does a great deal to help with endurance management on Dark Armor characters.

Anything been decided on this? I just finished making my travel arrangements, looking forward to the con. I realize it's a bit of a necro, but this is happening in a couple weeks...

I've dabbled some with the AE both on live and now on Homecoming, but I still feel my implementation is a bit rough. Appreciate any constructive feedback to help me improve. This arc is meant in part as a further exploration of the Tin Mage mythos as I always felt it was an underused part of the game's canon. I also have several Tin Mage themed characters myself (primarily on Torchbearer) so this also serves as a showcase for them.

I enjoy playing my Rad/Rad in melee, the -def from Irradiate synergizes nicely with Choking Cloud. I still have ranged blasts as well in my build, but I'm often found right in the thick of melee.

Worth noting, however, that while Vengeance cannot be triggered off of a dead pet, all pets (yours and those of other players) do benefit from the buff. With just one MM this can be a major shift in the course of a fight that's going badly (and most times if one of your teammates died, either the fight's going badly or someone got aggro on another group and it's about to go badly). With two or more MMs this is basically an instant win button. Despite the limitation, I typically take Vengeance on my MMs for this reason

I'll be there this Saturday on Forever Tin Mage

Bit of a loaded question, but I'll take it at face value. If you're trolling, congratulations on your success. I find that challenge comes in different flavors. Attempting badge hunts, particularly of the incarnate trials, can be challenging and requires coordination and skill. PvP, while not my personal cup of tea, is also a place where some people look to find challenge. You can run any TF solo now, so attempting to solo various TFs could also be a way to push your character - there was a blaster recently who posted about soloing a Master challenge rated +4/x8 ITF, so that's something. There are also AE arcs written by players specifically to offer extra challenge, so you can seek out those and test yourself against them as well. The only new TF that wasn't available on the live servers before shutdown (as far as I know) would be the Market Crash TF in Kallisti Wharf, level 40+. It's relatively brief, but the boss at the end can be challenging particularly solo / with a small team.

Winter Event enhancements or Very Rare (aka purple) recipes are probably the best uses in terms of influence return per Merit spent, though sometimes Converters and Calalysts can also go for a premium especially in high-traffic periods like weekends. You can probably get most elements for your build off the market without too much cost, so those are likely the areas where you want to focus your Merit purchases - either to make influence to buy other things, or to acquire high-cost items yourself that might otherwise be difficult to afford starting out.

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It's not going to be a top-notch farmer, but you should be more than tough enough and Spine will give you decent AOE damage output. I just wouldn't expect clear times comparable to Scrappers or Brutes. As for TFs and missions, that doesn't really say much about your goals for the build. I'm going to assume you'll be mainly concerned with being a primary tank, so you'll likely want to build for typed S/L/E/N defense softcap with Tough and Weave from the fighting pool. Make sure to get a Theft of Essence proc for Dark Regeneration.

They're in the next two tiers up in the flashback system from the first arc, though I believe the second only appears once you've completed the first and so forth. That's how it works with Dr. Graves - it's been a little while since I did Twinshot, but they're basically the same arc mechanically, serving the same extended tutorial purpose, and I'm fairly certain they work the same way.

While adding on Defense would certainly further increase durability, outside of certain edge cases it's unlikely that you'd need that level of toughness so overall you might be better served going for better damage output slotting - even from a pure tanking perspective this is useful, as your damage output factors into your threat calculations. Ultimately, though, it's down to what you personally class as 'important'.

In general? The two powersets don't really have any direct synergy but neither is there anything particularly problematic about the pairing. It's perfectly viable. It's hard to say more without knowing what specifically you're looking to get out of the build, as your question is a bit vague.