What are the pros and cons of dark/dark/dark sent

[Washuchan]

I was just wondering what is the pros and cons of a dark/dark/dark sent for overall gameplay and that includes pve, fighting av's, fighting gms, soloing, teaming.   I have never used this power set together before and on paper it sounds fun, but I would like to get input from ppl who've used this power set before or something close to it.  What are the key powers to take to have a strong d3 sent and are the sent ATO worth using. Does anyone have a good build that they are will to share either a poors man build or money hog build. Money is no problem for me. I did team with one the other night on a tf, but he would not share his build 😞 I can say I was very impress with the d3 sent.

Edited August 10, 2020 by Washuchan

[Gulbasaur]

I ran a dark/dark tanker and a dark/dark corruptor. I'm a fan of both, so hopefully enough of this will carry over to sentinels. 

 

Dark's attacks all debuff enemy ToHit, giving you a sort of passive defence boost as long as you keep fighting. The debuff factor on the cones (in the epic is your second one) is pretty useful for keeping your debuffs on enemies. The debuff is -5.25% ToHit, which is quite helpful due to how well ToHit scales. Life Drain is a useful healing attack that you can slot to give you some endurance meaning it's a very useful sustain power in a very heavy set. Blackstar is one of the better nukes and does an absurd amount of debuff - slot it hard for recharge before you slot it for anything else and you'll be very hard to take down. 

 

Dark armour is quite endurance-heavy on a tanker and you'll want to deal with that fairly early. You probably won't be softcapping anything without some serious work, but you also probably don't need to because of the crowd control and debuff elements. It's a decent all-rounder and part of your damage mitigation comes from your control abilities: Oppressive Gloom of Cloak of Fear. Grab one of them as they both provide an absurd about of damage mitigation for a toggle. I prefer Cloak of Fear because it doesn't gradually whittle your health down and enemies staggering about can be a bit annoying. Fear effects lower enemy attack rates on most minions and lieutenants to one attack attempt every five seconds, which is pretty low as you'll be debuffing them and have some defence and decent resists and probably a bit of +absorb going on and a small amount of healing from your standard attack chain... so it's pretty sturdy. 

 

Looking at Mid's, Dark Mastery isn't that exciting. Take the second cone for debuff stacking. I'd stick some procs in Engulfing Darkness.

 

You'll want to slot for endurance hard pretty early on and dark lends itself to proccing quite generously. The sentinel ATOs are solidly middle-tier, in my opinion, but the set bonuses aren't terrible so you can probably find room for them somewhere. 

Edited August 10, 2020 by Gulbasaur

[Six-Six]

/Dark on sent like any sent secondary is fairly robust even if minimally slotted. I'm not from the min-maxing camp, so I tend to slot just enough in secondaries to either address a toggle's end drain, or to extract a nice set bonus. I didn't take the last two of the secondary because they didn't fit my play style. /Dark tends to be a bit end heavy in the lower levels especially with the shortage of slots to address it, but it works itself out towards 30ish.

Dark Mastery isn't as hard hitting, rather it prevents your enemies from hitting you hard. I have them all 5-slotted and didn't really manage to squeeze anything remarkable out of them, so I might respec and just slot them modestly to free up some slots for other powers. All and all, I find the mastery useful. I have my primary to deal damage, secondary and the mastery to protect myself. so true to being a sentinel, my toon is fairly sturdy that doesn't pack a lot of punch. 😃

I haven't tried Dark/ on a sent. I have Dual Pistols on him.

Edited August 10, 2020 by Six Six

[oldskool]

6 hours ago, Washuchan said:

I was just wondering what is the pros and cons of a dark/dark/dark sent for overall gameplay and that includes pve, fighting av's, fighting gms, soloing, teaming.   I have never used this power set together before and on paper it sounds fun, but I would like to get input from ppl who've used this power set before or something close to it.  What are the key powers to take to have a strong d3 sent and are the sent ATO worth using. Does anyone have a good build that they are will to share either a poors man build or money hog build. Money is no problem for me. I did team with one the other night on a tf, but he would not share his build 😞 I can say I was very impress with the d3 sent.

General PvE - Its fine.  Just about anything is.  

Fighting AV's - assuming solo?  Don't expect to do this on max difficulty without some really extreme planning.  Can probably be done, but won't be easy (more on this in a minute). 

Fighting GM's - Probably not by yourself. 

Solo - Fine. 

Teaming - Fine. 

 

Pro's - Dark Blast: 

- Decent damage in either single target or AoE respective to Sentinel modifiers.  Do not compare this with other ATs like Blasters/Scrappers/Stalkers unless you're wanting to be disappointed.  Still, Sentinel Dark has some advantages in its AoE powers that aren't available elsewhere which makes it an interesting set.   

- To-hit debuffing counts as a form of mitigation

- Due the secondary effects, there is room to explore advanced slotting techniques 

Con's 

- The baseline damage isn't likely going to wow a min/max player without going after advanced slotting techniques.  Even then, you'd do more with a different AT. 

- To-hit debuffing gets resisted the higher you push difficulty.  The mechanic known as "the purple patch" reduces the effectiveness of this tactic.  So a +4 AV will practically ignore your debuffs.

- Life Drain's health contribution is the lowest modifier across every AT and its base damage isn't that great.  Without procs or creative slotting it kind of sucks. 

- Blackstar, while amazing, is a PBAoE putting you right into the thick of things if you're not careful and has a 10 target cap.  It will likely blind the targets it does hit, but anything that was missed by the effect is still going to hit you.  

 

Pro's - Dark Armor: 

- Its thematically fun. 

- Soul Noir is worth its own "pro" rating.  It is the reason why I personally have so many characters with dark power sets.  

- Its able to grant moderate resistance across a wide spectrum 

- It has a number of skippable powers around 28+ allowing for some flexibility

- Built in endurance sustain which other versions of Dark Armor do not get 

- Cloak of Darkness gets you some aggro reduction and can stack with the Stealth IO making Blackstar use a lot safer. 

Con's

- It is incredibly difficult to max out resistances, defenses, AND explore advanced damage slotting with Dark Armor.  You're going to give up one or more of those things.  Pick your poison. 

- Knockback hole needs to be plugged with IOs. 

- Energy and Toxic resistance hole are very difficult to increase beyond a certain point without hindering another area of the build. 

- Fear is a weak form of mitigation, works on limited enemies, and has nothing else to stack with like Dark Melee's Touch of Fear.  You could go into Presence for the pool powers, but... yuk. 😉 More to the point here is there is not a lot of synergy with Cloak of Fear outside of to-hit debuffing which has its limits depending on difficulty scale. 

- Cloak of Fear has very high endurance costs in relation to its accuracy check though its pulse rate is pretty fast to compensate. 

- Oppressive Gloom's stun can be helpful, but has no synergy with Dark Blast

- The endurance sustain power is not nearly as strong as other passive options in other secondaries and has its own set of unique mechanics (for better AND worse). 

- Sentinel Dark Armor does not have the clutch heal that Dark Regeneration is from the melee versions.

 

Pro's - Dark Mastery: 

- Power selection is pretty good overall. 

Con's: 

- Darkest Night can be a trap option if you think you're going to floor enemy to-hit checks on max difficulty. 

- Darkest Night has a high endurance cost which compounds with Cloak of Fear

 

I don't mean to scare you off the idea of a D3 if you want to do it.  However, you just need to temper your expectations on what you're getting (hence why you asked, right?).  If you're looking for an AV hunter, then this combo probably isn't what you want if you wish to do it solo.  Its not that it cannot be done, but you're going to need to plan your build out carefully.  That's also going to be expensive because on cheaper IOs you're not going to close enough gaps in order to both survive and do enough damage in a short enough time frame.  I do enjoy Sentinels quite a bit, but I am also realistic when it comes to their limits.  GM's will likely regenerate far too fast for you to solo.  They will also ignore your debuffs.  If you're not also soft-capped to a defense type they do (which is not easy), and pushing some resistance over 50% to their damage type (which isn't easy either), then they'll likely drop you before you drop them.  /DA on Sentinels does not include a burst heal at all.  So it gets very risky to do this kind of thing.  For all other regular mission running it will be fine though.   

There are a LOT of ways to build a solid Dark/Dark/Dark Sentinel.  There are so many extra tool to explore that helps close some gaps or give you new options like Rune of Protection from Sorcery.  That said, Dark Armor on Sentinels isn't nearly as powerful as it is on Tankers.  It isn't really that powerful at all when you look at its baseline numbers.  It ends up being an OK set and perhaps even pretty good depending on how you build it.  As it is almost everywhere else, Dark Armor loves IO sets and the more expensive you can make it the better it will be.   Still, Brute, Scrapper, and Tanker versions can be a lot better for reasons beyond just Death Shroud (which they get and Sents don't).  Sentinel Dark Armor has a lot more in common with Stalker Dark Armor with many of the same challenges while missing out on several of the solutions (i.e., melee/PBAoE IO set bonuses geared towards melee/smashing/lethal defense).  

In my roster I have a Dark Armor/Titan Weapons Tanker, a Dark Melee/Dark Armor Stalker, and a Water Blast/Dark Armor Sentinel.  I have since retired a Dual Blades/Dark Armor Scrapper and a D3 Sentinel.  

Edited August 10, 2020 by oldskool

[oldskool]

Here is a thread (kinda old) that has some build ideas being tossed around.  The epic pool is Soul Mastery, but it shouldn't be that hard to figure out how Dark Mastery might work.  

 

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/8631-darkdarksoul/

Looking over it pretty quick, some of my opinions may have changed, but I think my general sentiment still holds true even now.  I ultimately stopped playing Dark Blast entirely on the Sentinel more due to character conceptual reasons and not so much "effectiveness".  Plus, my Water/Dark project ended up overtaking my interest and so I didn't see a need to maintain two Sents with Dark Armor.  I may revisit the character again later down the road though.