How should I be slotting Dark miasma/Ice?

[Sou1catcher]

My 1st defender and my first time into Dark Miasma paired with Ice.

 

I have run Ice Blasters/Sents before so feel comfortable with that But Dark is giving me fits trying to Slot it for enhances.

Any Guides out there for it?

[Uun]

Twilight Grasp: Slot for accuracy, heal, recharge, endred. Slot accurate healing sets once you get to IOs (I have 6x Touch of the Nictus).

Tar Patch: Slot 2 recharge IOs.

Darkest Night: Slot tohit debuff and endred. The tohit debuff sets are pretty cheap. You can get away with 2-3 slots, but you may want more for set bonuses.

Howling Twilight: Slot 1-2 recharge IOs.

Shadow Fall: Start with 1 endred, but lots of options here once you get to IOs, as this takes defense and damage resistance sets. Can hold LOTG +recharge, Steadfast +def and -kb, etc.

Fearsome Stare: Slot for accuracy and recharge. While you can slot for fear, the base duration is pretty long and I prefer slotting for tohit debuff. Accurate tohit debuff sets work well.

Petrifying Gaze: Slot like any ST hold (accuracy, hold, recharge). There are some very cheap hold sets that you can slot early.

Black Hole: Skip

Dark Servant: Some combination of accuracy, heal and tohit debuff. Some combination of accurate tohit debuff and accurate healing sets (I have 4x Cloud Senses and 2x Touch of the Nictus).

[Doc Ranger]

Are you planning on getting IO sets? 

[Erydanus]

Dark Defenders are pretty flexible. Most of the powers are good, many are good out of the box with minimal slotting (as uum noted, 2 recharge for tar patch and howling twilight and 2 end reducers for darkest night will carry you far) but at the same time it can benefit from heavy investment. Do you want to focus more on the damage side or the support side?

 

My overall recommendation is that Dark Miasma benefits greatly from Frankenslotting, which means using Invention Set pieces for their values but not their set bonuses. This is particularly good in the 22-47 range. A very important thing to keep in mind is that if you start slotting your powers with sets, you often have to 6-slot them to get the full enhancement mix that would work best, and even then until you're 50 the sets you can use won't necessarily add up to the desired values even if you're using attuned sets. I recently got smacked hard by this realization because I 6-slotted a melee attack with an attuned PBAOE set and it was only 80% damage total at level 35 (and would only be 89% at 50, yikes), an actual downgrade from just slotting 1 Acc and 3 Damage generic IOs.

 

On the other hand, with any 2 slots if you use 2 of the same pieces that are 3 parters you get excellent numbers. For instance in healing most sets have a Heal-Absorb/Endurance/Recharge piece. Using level 25 IOs each of those parameters is 16%, so if you put in 2 of them it adds up to 32% Heal-Absorb, 32% Endurance, 32% Recharge - the effect of 3 slots in just 2 slots.  This is big bang for the buck when you are lower level and don't have the full slots! In the case of Twilight Grasp there are unfortunately only 2 accurate heal sets and there's more emphasis on end reduction than recharge but you could definitely cook up decent leveling slotting with them. For instance combine 2 accuracy/heal/something pieces from the accurate heal sets and 2 heal/recharge pieces from 2 regular sets and you should end up with roughly the equivalent of 1 Acc, 1 End, 2 Rech, 2 Heal all in just 4 slots.

 

Shadowfall for instance is a tremendous buff to both defense and certain resistances. I adore slotting it in this formula in general, from 1 set Defense, Defense/Endurance, Defense/Endurance/Recharge, and from another set the same pieces but for RESISTANCE. That way you can have a piece bonus for both a defense set and a resist set, near capped values on the protections and a reasonable amount of end reduction. However you could cram a couple def/end and resist/end from different sets to get you going. Again about 4 slots in that power is pretty functional if you use mixed pieces.

 

Fearsome stare is amazing. It benefits from having as much recharge as you can get into it because you want to spam it on every mob; you will need some accuracy; the rest not as much. Fear duration is not as important since it's beefy out of the box; it's about -18% tohit but because tohitdebuff is on the B schedule for enhancements (20% for an SO instead of 33%) a single enhancement only gets you a slight increase. Endurance cost is very low (8 end! So CHEAP!!) it's not worth slotting for it. A couple Acc/Fear/Rech to get you going and then maybe just shove a couple extra recharge generics in until you're happy with its spammability.

 

Petrifying Gaze was nerfed at the same time controller holds were, it used to be so spammable a Dark defender could hold a boss. Now it's been nerfed so bad it's just a lt holder. It's definitely an optional power; since you have freeze ray and bitter freeze ray available you'll have to make your own call about getting it and getting it to stack with other holds, if you even think it's worthwhile.

Black hole is reviled, you should skip it for reasons you can find if you pop over to the controller forum.

 

Dark Servant is wonderful and if you only put 1 proc in your build consider feeding Fluffy a "Cloud Senses: Chance for Negative Energy" proc because it can trigger on every one of his powers - and in fact that proc can go into almost all of your powers too. (Though, in general, you can get pretty wild with proccing out Dark powers but proccing the set for damage is actually a completely separate topic beyond general functional slotting tips!) Fluffy has several powers he cycles through including a heal, a hold, an immobilize, and that annoying damage and tohit debuff aura that Tsoo Sorcerers have, Chill of the Night. A lot of people just slot him for the tohit debuff, I personally have a little accurate healing in mine as well; it's definitely a personal choice.  Accuracy/Mez hamidon enhancements are also a possibility at 50.

[Sou1catcher]

7 hours ago, Ice_Warden said:

Are you planning on getting IO sets? 

want some decent sets eventually but only have about 77mil. Already have the Health and Stamina bought tho, and a few others.

Need to find Cheaper sets until....

 

 

Edited January 4, 2020 by Sou1catcher

[Sou1catcher]

@Erydanus

That's some Beefy stuff to absorb.

Just using the basics I have also found that Frankenslotting is working very well in Dark Miasma.

Only real Issue I am having is Twilight Grasp. Slotted for ACC, tohit debuff and Heal and it's working Great. But it's a heavy End cost for a power I like to spam.

Still tinkering with it to see what results I like.

Edited January 5, 2020 by Sou1catcher

[Doc Ranger]

6 slot it with Touch of the Nictus.

 

Dark Servant I 4 slot with Cloud Senses.

 

Shadowfall I 6 slot my troller with various DEF and RES IOs. It depends on what you have your other DEF and RES powers slotted to determine what you need. I personally have mine 4 slotted LotG, 1 Reactive scaling res, 1 Kismet accuracy. 

 

Fearsome stare is really a star of the set. Instant lockdown of a mob. I 6 slot this with one of the controller ATOs. But since you don't have access to that  I would likely slot it with Cloud Senses and/or Glimpse of the Abyss for some extra fear duration and/or to hit debuff. 

 

Darkest Night 4 slot with Dark Watcher's Despair.

 

Tar Patch 2 Recharge IOs.

 

 

 

Edited January 5, 2020 by Ice_Warden

[Erydanus]

On ‎1‎/‎5‎/‎2020 at 3:03 PM, Sou1catcher said:

@Erydanus

That's some Beefy stuff to absorb.

Just using the basics I have also found that Frankenslotting is working very well in Dark Miasma.

Only real Issue I am having is Twilight Grasp. Slotted for ACC, tohit debuff and Heal and it's working Great. But it's a heavy End cost for a power I like to spam.

Still tinkering with it to see what results I like.

I wouldn't bother with putting any -tohit on there, even for a defender it's only -6.25% tohit. Tohit is on schedule B so if you put a whole enhancement on that it's just be upping it from -6.25% to -7.5%. An additional 1.25% tohit debuff is worthless; just treat what you get as icing on the cake spelling out "Screw You $Target!". Use the space for end reduction; it's still not going to be a big number but it will measurably help you. (7.8 end -> 5.85 end for 33% end reduction). Darkest Night has 18.75% tohit debuff and I don't even think THAT is really worth a heavy investment in slotting for. But, if you stack darkest night and fearsome stare and various other dark powers with a smaller debuff including Twilight Grasp on a target then the cumulative effect is very noticeable. Twilight Grasp also has an unenhanceable -damage and -regen power so basically you want to spam it as much as you can anyway. 

[Sou1catcher]

On 1/4/2020 at 1:02 PM, Erydanus said:

Dark Defenders are pretty flexible. Most of the powers are good, many are good out of the box with minimal slotting (as uum noted, 2 recharge for tar patch and howling twilight and 2 end reducers for darkest night will carry you far) but at the same time it can benefit from heavy investment. Do you want to focus more on the damage side or the support side?

 

My overall recommendation is that Dark Miasma benefits greatly from Frankenslotting, which means using Invention Set pieces for their values but not their set bonuses. This is particularly good in the 22-47 range. A very important thing to keep in mind is that if you start slotting your powers with sets, you often have to 6-slot them to get the full enhancement mix that would work best, and even then until you're 50 the sets you can use won't necessarily add up to the desired values even if you're using attuned sets. I recently got smacked hard by this realization because I 6-slotted a melee attack with an attuned PBAOE set and it was only 80% damage total at level 35 (and would only be 89% at 50, yikes), an actual downgrade from just slotting 1 Acc and 3 Damage generic IOs.

 

On the other hand, with any 2 slots if you use 2 of the same pieces that are 3 parters you get excellent numbers. For instance in healing most sets have a Heal-Absorb/Endurance/Recharge piece. Using level 25 IOs each of those parameters is 16%, so if you put in 2 of them it adds up to 32% Heal-Absorb, 32% Endurance, 32% Recharge - the effect of 3 slots in just 2 slots.  This is big bang for the buck when you are lower level and don't have the full slots! In the case of Twilight Grasp there are unfortunately only 2 accurate heal sets and there's more emphasis on end reduction than recharge but you could definitely cook up decent leveling slotting with them. For instance combine 2 accuracy/heal/something pieces from the accurate heal sets and 2 heal/recharge pieces from 2 regular sets and you should end up with roughly the equivalent of 1 Acc, 1 End, 2 Rech, 2 Heal all in just 4 slots.

 

Shadowfall for instance is a tremendous buff to both defense and certain resistances. I adore slotting it in this formula in general, from 1 set Defense, Defense/Endurance, Defense/Endurance/Recharge, and from another set the same pieces but for RESISTANCE. That way you can have a piece bonus for both a defense set and a resist set, near capped values on the protections and a reasonable amount of end reduction. However you could cram a couple def/end and resist/end from different sets to get you going. Again about 4 slots in that power is pretty functional if you use mixed pieces.

 

Fearsome stare is amazing. It benefits from having as much recharge as you can get into it because you want to spam it on every mob; you will need some accuracy; the rest not as much. Fear duration is not as important since it's beefy out of the box; it's about -18% tohit but because tohitdebuff is on the B schedule for enhancements (20% for an SO instead of 33%) a single enhancement only gets you a slight increase. Endurance cost is very low (8 end! So CHEAP!!) it's not worth slotting for it. A couple Acc/Fear/Rech to get you going and then maybe just shove a couple extra recharge generics in until you're happy with its spammability.

 

Petrifying Gaze was nerfed at the same time controller holds were, it used to be so spammable a Dark defender could hold a boss. Now it's been nerfed so bad it's just a lt holder. It's definitely an optional power; since you have freeze ray and bitter freeze ray available you'll have to make your own call about getting it and getting it to stack with other holds, if you even think it's worthwhile.

Black hole is reviled, you should skip it for reasons you can find if you pop over to the controller forum.

 

Dark Servant is wonderful and if you only put 1 proc in your build consider feeding Fluffy a "Cloud Senses: Chance for Negative Energy" proc because it can trigger on every one of his powers - and in fact that proc can go into almost all of your powers too. (Though, in general, you can get pretty wild with proccing out Dark powers but proccing the set for damage is actually a completely separate topic beyond general functional slotting tips!) Fluffy has several powers he cycles through including a heal, a hold, an immobilize, and that annoying damage and tohit debuff aura that Tsoo Sorcerers have, Chill of the Night. A lot of people just slot him for the tohit debuff, I personally have a little accurate healing in mine as well; it's definitely a personal choice.  Accuracy/Mez hamidon enhancements are also a possibility at 50.

So How am I doing so far?

 

This Villain build was built using Mids Reborn 3.0.5.9
https://github.com/Reborn-Team/MidsReborn

Click this DataLink to open the build!

BIack Staff: Level 49 Magic Corruptor
Primary Power Set: Fire Blast
Secondary Power Set: Dark Miasma
Power Pool: Sorcery
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Fighting

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Fire Blast -- Thn-Acc/Dmg(A), Thn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(3), Thn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(3), Thn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Thn-Dmg/EndRdx(5)
Level 1: Twilight Grasp -- ThfofEss-Heal/Rchg(A), TchoftheN-Heal/HP/Regen/Rchg(7), ThfofEss-Acc/Heal(7), TchoftheN-Acc/EndRdx/Heal/HP/Regen(9)
Level 2: Tar Patch -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(13)
Level 4: Fire Ball -- Dtn-Dmg/Rchg(A), Dtn-Acc/Dmg(13), Dtn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), Dtn-Dmg/EndRdx(15), Dtn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rng(17)
Level 6: Mystic Flight -- BlsoftheZ-Travel/EndRdx(A)
Level 8: Rain of Fire -- PstBls-Acc/Dmg(A), PstBls-Dmg/Rchg(17), PstBls-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(19), PstBls-Dmg/EndRdx(19), PstBls-Dam%(21)
Level 10: Combat Jumping -- BlsoftheZ-Travel(A), Rct-Def(21), Rct-ResDam%(23)
Level 12: Darkest Night -- EndRdx(A), ToHitDeb(23), ToHitDeb(25), EndRdx(25)
Level 14: Howling Twilight -- EndRdx(A), PstBls-Dmg/Rng(27)
Level 16: Shadow Fall -- TtnCtn-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RedFrt-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(27), RedFrt-Def/EndRdx(29), TtnCtn-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(29)
Level 18: Blaze -- EntChs-Acc/Dmg(A), EntChs-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(31), EntChs-Dmg/Rchg(31), EntChs-Dmg/EndRdx(31), EntChs-Heal%(33)
Level 20: Fearsome Stare -- Hrr-Acc/Fear/Rchg(A), Ngh-Acc/Fear/Rchg(33)
Level 22: Maneuvers -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), EndRdx(33)
Level 24: Tactics -- GssSynFr--Build%(A), EndRdx(34)
Level 26: Blazing Bolt -- Thn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(A), Thn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(34), Thn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(34), Thn-Acc/Dmg(36), Thn-Dmg/EndRdx(36)
Level 28: Boxing -- Empty(A)
Level 30: Tough -- StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), EndRdx(36)
Level 32: Inferno -- ScrDrv-Acc/Dmg(A), ScrDrv-Dmg/EndRdx(37), ScrDrv-Dmg/Rchg(37), ScrDrv-Acc/Rchg(37), ScrDrv-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(39)
Level 35: Weave -- Rct-Def/EndRdx(A)
Level 38: Dark Servant -- CldSns-%Dam(A), Heal(39), ToHitDeb(39)
Level 41: [Empty]
Level 44: [Empty]
Level 47: [Empty]
Level 49: [Empty]
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Scourge
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Swift -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Health -- Pnc-Heal/+End(A), Mrc-Rcvry+(9), NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(11)
Level 1: Hurdle -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Stamina -- PrfShf-End%(A), PrfShf-EndMod(11)
Level 49: Quick Form
------------

 

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[Doomguide2005]

In the long run you probably want recharge in Tar Patch and Howling Twilight.

[Doomguide2005]

     How's your endurance holding up?  I don't see any obvious KB protection as set bonuses or special IOs, do you have any (sorry dead computer, only this phone for internet so can't use Mids)?  If none then consider swapping out the BotZ in CJ for either the BotZ kb prot or a Karma kb prot (which ever your budget allows).  I'd favor the BotZ -4 kb IO.  In general you got great advice up thread and it should apply to a Corruptor as readily as a Defender.

     Time for sleep back later.

[Ankhammon]

Saw the hate on Black Hole and had to comment.

 

There are a few instances in which it's an awesome power.

 

If you leave it single slotted and with only a single TO Acc in it, you can use it in times when the team is getting overrun and it will intang. enough of the enemy to allow your team to thin the rest of the herd.

 

If the need is real bad, you can always pop your aim to make it hit lots of the enemy and potentially save a team wipe.

 

It's a great power to have on a lrsf to get rid of a LR power tower for a minute or so.

 

Lastly, if you are ever on a pvp team event you can pop it at the right time to leave the other side with fewer teammates who have their back.

 

If it's worth the pick is up to you but it does have some instances of goodness.

 

 

Oh and slotting fluffy is a pretty decent place to put a grav anchor: chance for hold. It uses tents and that can put a few more baddies on hold for a few seconds which is always good. Don't add it above acc or tohit debuff, but a decent choice.

For solo tactics, the best I ever found was stealth+Shadow Fall for inviso power. jump over the group you want to hit and let fluffy engage, then fearsome stare and go to town. This will work with only SOs and will keep you very safe against +3 or so.

 

Last piece of advice is fluffy is pretty good at keeping stuff immobed and locked down for your rain powers so don't wait too long to get him.

 

 

Edited August 12, 2021 by Ankhammon
oopsie

[Psylenz0511]

48 minutes ago, Ankhammon said:

<snip>

 

It's a great power to have on a lrsf to get rid of a LR power tower for a minute or so.

 

<snip>

 

 

The intangible powers: black hole, sonic cage, detention field no longer have enough mag to detain the towers in the Miss Liberty Task Force. I am not sure at what point in time this changed, but I do remember that it was a valid tactic during LIVE

[Ankhammon]

1 hour ago, Psylenz0511 said:

The intangible powers: black hole, sonic cage, detention field no longer have enough mag to detain the towers in the Miss Liberty Task Force. I am not sure at what point in time this changed, but I do remember that it was a valid tactic during LIVE

Oh no. that was a good tactic. Guess I don't tf enough these days