Weekly Discussion 48: Dark Armor!

[ArchVileTerror]

Yup.  Someone and all their friends might be IO'd out to the nines, and support one another financially so all their alts are also spec'd to cover all their weaknesses.

 

But the game doesn't start that way for anyone.  Not all of us are even going to -reach- that level.  The game is just as much for us as it is for anyone else.

 

I think folks need to stop trying to balance around IOs because that perspective is so skewed.  As what is "normal" for them, is not necessarily truly normal.

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 minute ago, SwitchFade said:

Uh, so the point is, that DA isn't just flavor different, it's severely underperforming.

 

So much so that it's significantly un-fun for the majority.

 

I'm not voting either way, but if you want It playable in the baseline game, which is SOs, it needs either an end cost reduction or a justification of why end cost is so high. It currently has neither.

 

Making any argument based off of "shouldn't be balanced around SOs" or the equivalent, ignores a basic foundation of system mechanics, you MUST have a baseline. It cannot be io's, as this would break the game.

Again, I hear you but in order:

 

1st sentence, no, it's really not, since it does what it needs to do.  It's not as powerful as other sets or as powerful as you may like it.  So what?  Is it stopping anyone from meeting their goals in this game?  Nope.  Do you have to manage endurance throughout most of the levelling process and make power selections that help with endurance?  Yup. 

 

2nd sentence, this may be true, so great, don't play it.  Why in the world would you play something that is not fun?  "But I have a great concept about dark, but Its not as powerful as bio armor."  Great, play bio armor and rationalize your back story.  Don't play something you don't enjoy (I say as I'm trying to run my elec/kin corruptor through a Malta arc, oy).

 

3rd sentence, the baseline game is the game which everyone plays.  Even a brand new player with no inf will use basic invention IOs rather than SOs.  Use your baseline as common IOs if you must.  But it's a lot more playable if you 4 slot Dark Embrace with 2x end red and 2x dam res than 1x end red and 3x dam res.

 

4th, why would IOs break the game?  Is it because set bonuses are too powerful?  I'm not understanding this.

 

Dark Armor is not unplayable, not even close.  It's quite strong.  Why in the world do we have to buff it?  Because all the bio armor users are snickering?  Because your pylon time is 5% slower?  No, I'm putting down my foot against power creep.  If you don't like the animations, fine.  If you want a bio armor clone, nope, I can't support that.  

 

[metacore]

Both the original and new devs have stated that the game is to be balanced around SO's so thats where the balance points need to be viewed at.
Not even normal IO's, just SO's.

DA's lack of KB protection can be solved without IO's by using Hover or Acrobatics. Both have additional toggle costs (0.19/s or 0.26/s) which just piles on top of the rest of DA's end usage issues.
Remember based on SO's means no Miracle or Numi or Panacea or PerfShifter procs. No UnbreakableRestraint, or other, -EndCost Set Bonuses.

Maybe would be good to compare a SO only DA/?? (not Staff or Savage) vs another powerset/?? and see what EndRed SO's are needed to run the build and the loss of survivability/damage you get (less Res Enh, less Dam Enh, etc).

[DougGraves]

DA does use too much END.  It does not need an END reduction.  It needs its mezz protections changed so you don't have to run all of your toggles to get them.

 

Specifically it needs immobilized resistance removed from Cloak of Darkness and put into Obsidian Shield so you can get by without Cloak running.  You would also get immobilize protection much earlier, which is needed.

[ScrewlooseCohh]

In general I am pretty happy with the way Dark Armour is.

It isn’t a defensive powerset that is going to suit everyone.  It is kind of like the Storm Summoning of defensive powersets.  Some of it’s powers are indirect, they work in ways that some players aren’t comfortable with and they require enhancing in ways that go against the grain of lots of players.

For all it’s basic mitigation powers I think Dark Armour gives as good as return for End as other powersets.

Dark Regeneration works well if you emphasise the End reduction, which can make it hard to slot well with IO sets, but that shouldn’t be an issue to balance things on.

Oppressive Gloom is one of my favourite powers, even on non scrapper characters when I can get it.  But the stun wander makes it unpopular with some players.  If I was going to suggest tweaks maybe a slight move speed debuff to reduce the stun wander a bit.

Cloak of Fear is a problem child.  It does give just about decent returns for the End cost, but the low Base Accuracy and high End cost means that you have to enhance those two attributes heavily before you can think about enhancing the To Hit debuff.  That is not comfortable for some players, but the alternative of lower End Cost and lower To Hit Buff would just be a different kind of lack lustre.  Also as soon as you get Oppressive Gloom a significant proportion of Cloak of Fear’s mitigation is overwritten, which makes it hard to justify the investment you have to make in it.

I haven’t read the other comments, but I am sure someone has mentioned lack of knock back protection.  For me this is not a big issue when I am playing a scrapper.  I find it more immersion breaking on a Tanker or Brute, but with the mitigation available from IOs and IO sets it is easily dealt with.

A further issue with Dark Armour is that Oppressive Gloom and Cloak of Fear give threat mitigation to all the members of the team, not just the scrapper, and they are balanced that way.  This means they look a bit costly compared to powers in sets that are just personal threat mitigation and as team mitigation itself is a depreciated factor in the post-Incarnate Post -IO world that increased cost gets you not as much return as it did in a purely SO world.

Dark Armour is one of the powersets that does things a bit different to the other powersets in it’s group, and I think that is a good thing and it doesn’t need a lot of changing, if any.

Regards, Screwloose.
“I am not young enough to know everything.”
 

[SwitchFade]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Again, I hear you but in order:

 

1st sentence, no, it's really not, since it does what it needs to do.  It's not as powerful as other sets or as powerful as you may like it.  So what?  Is it stopping anyone from meeting their goals in this game?  Nope.  Do you have to manage endurance throughout most of the levelling process and make power selections that help with endurance?  Yup. 

 

2nd sentence, this may be true, so great, don't play it.  Why in the world would you play something that is not fun?  "But I have a great concept about dark, but Its not as powerful as bio armor."  Great, play bio armor and rationalize your back story.  Don't play something you don't enjoy (I say as I'm trying to run my elec/kin corruptor through a Malta arc, oy).

 

3rd sentence, the baseline game is the game which everyone plays.  Even a brand new player with no inf will use basic invention IOs rather than SOs.  Use your baseline as common IOs if you must.  But it's a lot more playable if you 4 slot Dark Embrace with 2x end red and 2x dam res than 1x end red and 3x dam res.

 

4th, why would IOs break the game?  Is it because set bonuses are too powerful?  I'm not understanding this.

 

Dark Armor is not unplayable, not even close.  It's quite strong.  Why in the world do we have to buff it?  Because all the bio armor users are snickering?  Because your pylon time is 5% slower?  No, I'm putting down my foot against power creep.  If you don't like the animations, fine.  If you want a bio armor clone, nope, I can't support that.  

 

No one said unplayable, I said un-fun.

 

I didn't advocate buffing it, so arguing that while quoting me is irrelevant.

 

The baseline is what the game was built on, SOs. There's no debate there, sorry.

 

You aren't the majority, so blanket statements that it's fun and fine without facts are your opinion, which i respect. Factually, it's unpopular, derided and lags almost all other sets.

 

How and why making IOs the balance point breaking the game has been explained to death, you'll just have to trust the dozen of us that always show up and state it's game breaking, or research it yourself, should you so choose.

 

Again, I'm not saying DA needs a buff, it is an end hog with NO justification for that.

Edited April 27, 2020 by SwitchFade

[ForeverLaxx]

My Dark Armor character is a Dark Armor/Stone Melee tank that tries to lean into the notion that DA wants to be a "controlish" armor and combines that with Stone Melee and its plethora of low-mag area stuns. To do that, though, one has to run Oppressive Gloom and someone touched on the main problem with this -- the power works against itself due to how stuns cause enemies to wander around aimlessly. Very often, they'll split entirely and now the mob is split with only some of them stunned. It's fairly annoying and I can only manage it somewhat due to SM's stuns also coming with knockdown. I've also tried fixing this with a Chance to Immob IO proc in OG, but it doesn't seem to ever work or I'm very unlucky.

 

Anyway, the set itself is mostly fine barring the stagger and oppressive endurance costs. In a game that's supposed to be balanced around SOs, feeling like one needs multiple IO procs to manage your endurance if you pick the "wrong" combination feels bad. Even with IOs for recovery, I still find myself toggling the energy resist armor off and on depending on what I'm fighting, and while I'm not necessarily against this sort of thing it feels like only DA really has to do this anymore. DA's resistances really don't necessitate this level of micromanagement just to keep yourself afloat on endurance, and woe unto you should you take on Tough and Weave to further your survival.

 

To me, it feels like the set was originally designed to be paired with Dark Melee in a world where everyone was expected to only run "relevant" toggles. We left that world a long, long time ago and I feel either the costs of the armors need to be looked at, the resist values need to be looked at (to justify the overall cost), some kind of recovery bonus be added to an existing power where it thematically would make sense, or maybe even consolidate the armors to free up a slot for a brand new power to manage endurance.

 

I dunno. Seems like most everyone is saying the same thing here: the set is mostly fine but has endurance issues that aren't really balanced around SOs correctly.

[SirXeno]

I personally would like to see it get baked in knockback/down(its absurd that it doesnt have it already) protection and have the immobilize protection put into obsidian shield, otherwise i dont really have number knowledge to give more input.

[Parabola]

To reiterate my earlier point I think it might be hard to buff dark armors SO performance without also buffing it's IO performance which is already fine or better than fine. One thing might be to give it knockback protection natively. If you are SO's only you are forced to run an extra toggle to get this with the resulting endurance cost. Having knockback protection would benefit IO users too but only to the tune of freeing up a couple of slots, I think it would be a bigger buff to SO users overall.

 

I still believe that cloak of fear is a weak power and needs buffing even though the overall set performance is fine with IO's. At the moment it's an automatic skip for me in favour of oppressive gloom and no power should be that easy to drop.

 

I'd also like to put in a good word for the self res power. I absolutely love it and take it on every dark armor character. It's so thematic to rise from the brink of death sucking life out of nearby enemies. And it does a mag 30 stun. 30! I have occasionally let myself fall just so I can use it. I know this goes against some people's religion (particularly on a tank) but falling down isn't failing, you've only failed if everyone is dead and in hospital. Mind you I saw someone arguing the other day that having to use dark regeneration on a tank was failing in some way...

 

My only complaint about it and all other self res powers is the toggle drop. It takes ages to retoggle everything, particularly running the number of toggles dark armor is likely to. Could we not change the unconcious state to suppress toggles like a mez effect rather than turn them off completely? Then all we'd need to do is retoggle damage auras and could get on with the fight. I imagine that would make self res powers much more popular.

[Greycat]

I like some of Cutter's ideas. To me, DA felt like it was thought of as "paired with DM," because, yes, that does have an end drain and works well with DA.

 

Throwing one thing out there, since there seems to be a little dislike for Cloak of Fear - since it's a control (and some -tohit) aura, why not add something else thematic and let it sprout some immobilizing tentacles? Say, max 5 targets. Immobilizes targets, keeps them in the fear and -tohit as well as OG's damage. Heck, add some small drain here - even tics of END drain returned to the player. It comes a touch late at 28, granted, but it would help a little with the END *and* be thematic (a nightmare of being weakened to the point of not being able to do anything?)

 

Edit: Trimming out "I didn't get enough sleep and couldn't get to sleep" idea that... is still basically an end discount. 🙂

Edited April 27, 2020 by Greycat

[Myrmidon]

4 hours ago, parabola said:

I know this goes against some people's religion (particularly on a tank) but falling down isn't failing, you've only failed if everyone is dead and in hospital. Mind you I saw someone arguing the other day that having to use dark regeneration on a tank was failing in some way...

Exactly right. Falling while still keeping your team alive is also Tanking.

[Shred Monkey]

The set is great if you do have a way to manage endurance.  My recommendation would be to add a 7.5% recovery buff (enhanceable) per target hit to Dark Regeneration.  It fits thematically and since it has some requirements to get the most out of it, it won't be game breaking.

 

[ArchVileTerror]

Or, hell . . . less about buffing Endurance or Recovery directly, and maybe if something could grant Endurance Discount.  So the more enemies you have around you, the less Endurance all your Powers cost.

[SeraphimKensai]

I generally agree with a lot of what has been said:

1). Reduction in End Usage so that the set is reasonably usable while using SO's.

2). Cloak of Fear, increase accuracy, increase ToHit Debuff.

3). Oppressive Gloom, make the stun more of a lingering pulse that stacks potentially up to 2-3x, so that the power can be useful for players that don't have any other stun powers.

4). Soul Transfer useable offensively while alive.

 

Stretch idea:

1). Modify Death Shroud so that as it's ticking away at mobs' HP, that amount is being siphoned into an absorb shield on the player, so that you're truly shrouding yourself in someone else's death. *It would have to a limit to cap it to maybe 25-50% base HP, and also I see each damage tick only adds 1%/mob in range up to 5% at a time.

 

[Naraka]

14 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

Again, I'm not saying DA needs a buff, it is an end hog with NO justification for that.

Saying DA is an END hog and thus needs a reduction is like saying Regen is click intensive and so should get a +rech bonus.  That isn't how this works.  And the justification is Dark Regen.  It always has been and you know it.

 

I think the only reasonable request here I read was moving the immobilize protection out of Cloak of Darkness into Obsidian Shield.  In and of itself, DA's toggles are no more expensive than other sets, it just has a couple of optional toggles you can use if you have the endurance and need for them.  I might even see a good reason to add a -ToHit debuff to Dark Regen (or a -dmg debuff) for flavor.  But the set's endurance hit comes mostly from Dark Regen which you can whittle down with slotting.  The other is Death Shroud which is likely the culprit of requiring a lot of endurance and needing a lot of slots.  For a Tanker, you can choose to forego using Death Shroud completely in favor of CoF or OG (or both).  On a Brute or Scrapper, it might be the reverse and running Death Shroud but not CoF or OG.  If we're talking about SO slotting, that is an important and viable option to consider, taking and/or running all the toggles at once or not.  You can choose to ignore that option in favor of your personal opinion but I feel you're wrong in doing so.

 

EDIT: Isn't Stone Armor a more needy set to be talking about here?  Or maybe how we can get Energy Aura or Regen on a Tanker?

 

Edited April 27, 2020 by Naraka

[Parabola]

1 hour ago, SeraphimKensai said:

1). Reduction in End Usage so that the set is reasonably usable while using SO's.

...

4). Soul Transfer useable offensively while alive.

What if in a two birds with one stone kind of way soul transfer drained end while you are concious? It would step on the toes of dark consumption but the devs are looking to change that into being primarily an aoe attack anyway. It would need a bit of rebalancing obviously but might be a thought?

[KelvinKole]

It's not always well understood, but Dark Armor's "Core" shields do cost less than comparable powers in other sets, the sheer number of toggles that DA runs is what makes the endurance demand feel so high. It needs something to make it more self sustainable, but its endurance costs haven't been totally overlooked. 

 

I've spent a lot of time on DA. I love the set, so I can't help myself from making a few suggestions:

1. Oppressive Gloom and Cloak of Fear are both entirely skippable in the game now. I haven't taken either one since like issue 7. Cloak of Fear needs its accuracy increased to be useful, but I'd also like to see it increase recovery by a small percentage for each affected Foe. Feasting on your enemy's fear and all that. Let's say the first enemy in range provide 10% recovery and each additional target provides another 2%, and it's enhanceable.  This helps offset the endurance demands of the set, while adding almost necessary-to-have value to a power that is often skipped. It would also fit thematically. 
2. Oppressive Gloom could use at least a chance to land as a mag 3 stun. There's really no need to stun minions when you can just kill them.
3. The entirety of the set offers no debuff resistance. This is basically unheard of. It offers some resistance to end drain, but many other sets offer defense debuff resistance, slow resistance, or -recovery resistance. Cloak of Darkness, another power that is sometimes skipped, should provide resistance to tohit debuffs. Your Dark Armor; resisting negative energy damage is your thing and resisting its effects should also be your thing.

That's it really. I almost prefer the self rez to some of the other ultimate powers which have crashes, I never take those, and I can live with the lack of knockback resistance and build around it. 

[SeraphimKensai]

8 minutes ago, parabola said:

What if in a two birds with one stone kind of way soul transfer drained end while you are concious? It would step on the toes of dark consumption but the devs are looking to change that into being primarily an aoe attack anyway. It would need a bit of rebalancing obviously but might be a thought?

If it granted either and end discount or recovery per mob it hit then it could be useful.

 

The issue is that power is not available until lvl 32 for tanks, and lvl 38 for everyone else.

[Myrmidon]

23 minutes ago, Naraka said:

EDIT: Isn't Stone Armor a more needy set to be talking about here?  Or maybe how we can get Energy Aura or Regen on a Tanker?

Yes, however, Dark Armor has the discussion votes. The others will get their time.

[Parabola]

7 minutes ago, KelvinKole said:

Cloak of Darkness, another power that is sometimes skipped, should provide resistance to tohit debuffs. Your Dark Armor; resisting negative energy damage is your thing and resisting its effects should also be your thing.

Yeah I like this in particular. The two most dangerous debuffs for dark armor are -tohit and -recharge, both neutering dark consumption. Resistance to one of these would be very helpful, not to mention thematic.

 

[Cutter]

3 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

If it granted either and end discount or recovery per mob it hit then it could be useful.

 

The issue is that power is not available until lvl 32 for tanks, and lvl 38 for everyone else.

Yup, that was one of the things I suggested in my too-long post, tho it might have been buried in there 🙂

 

Let Soul Transfer work as-is when you're dead, and like Dark Affinity (controller version) Soul Absorption when you're alive and kicking. Sure it comes late, but better than never, no? (My "CoH 2" suggestion would be swap this new ST with CoF, and truly buff CoF to be an amazeballs capstone - Terror with chance of Hold maybe? - but we're not in CoH 2 territory and I know better than to suggest a power reorg!)

[SwitchFade]

I want to get clear answers from the dissenters:

 

Why, EXACTLY, are you objecting to a reduction in end consumption?

Edited April 28, 2020 by SwitchFade

[ArchVileTerror]

Guessing based on past posting history?
"Game's too easy already."

[Troo]

This is not the power set I was looking for..

 

Energy Melee where are you?!!

[Sakai]

I am new to DA.  Love it. 

I was aware of the End requirements going in so not an issue to me. 

 

My only wish is for Cloak of Fear to have a minimum effects option. 

 

Perhaps in a year when I have played him much more I may have thoughts but for now that's it.