Dark Armor... I’m in love

[StriderIV]

Hi all!

 

So I built my first Dark Armor hero: DA/Staff Tanker. He was a BLAST leveling, and is now even more fun with incarnates. Dark, as a defensive set, just feels so robust. I also dig the animations and sound effects on Staff Fighting!

 

That being said... I NEED ANOTHER DARK ARMOR HERO!

 

I’d love to crowd source ideas here. What is one of YOUR favorite Dark Armor heroes? What power sets do you feel mesh particularly well with it?

Do you like to run it on a Tanker, Brute, Scrapper or Sentinel?

 

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

 

Onward and upward, heroes.

[Sovera]

You're a fickle beast, Strider.

[Coyote]

2 hours ago, StriderIV said:

What power sets do you feel mesh particularly well with it?

 

Anything with a lot of Stun effects. Energy Melee, Mace, Stone Melee.

[StriderIV]

15 minutes ago, Sovera said:

You're a fickle beast, Strider.

True. Loyal to my wife and kids, ever changing in COH 😂 I’ll take it that way though hahahaha.

Edited February 28, 2021 by StriderIV

[Snarky]

my dark/dark brute build is on the first page of brute forum still i think.  very tanky, very mean....

[StriderIV]

2 hours ago, Sovera said:

You're a fickle beast, Strider.

Also, you’re to blame. Stop posting so many good builds 😉

Edited February 28, 2021 by StriderIV

[ZorkNemesis]

I ran a Rad/Dark Brute.  Absolute faceroller with all of Rad's splash damage.  Super durable, super strong.  Endurance management is a bit of a pain though and I wasn't really able to get by without drinking blues or popping that recovery drug P2W sells before slotting Cardiac Alpha.

[SuperPlyx]

I have a TW/Dark Brute that turned out to be a very fun and extremely durable. 

[Rokkeb]

Fire Melee / Dark Armor stalker - 2 sets that people say aren't good for stalker, and see how you do with it. You already crushed it with dark/staff tank so try something that's a challenge. 

 

You could ramp up your damage from tanker and go brute. A super strength / dark brute would probably be pretty potent. Couple knock downs/backs in SS to go along with your soft controls in dark.  

 

or the old reliable claws/dark scrapper. A time tested favorite ever since release. 

 

[nihilii]

12 hours ago, Coyote said:

Anything with a lot of Stun effects. Energy Melee, Mace, Stone Melee.

EM is great fun, every attack stunning coupled with OG and ET's -health being irrelevant with Dark Regeneration.

 

It's actually so powerful it gets annoying, as everything is permastunned and waddles out of range of your AoEs.

 

If only Cloak of Fear was mag3 rather than mag2. Then it would be worth running for a pseudo-immobilize.

[Heraclea]

I have a dark armor/claws tanker that always surprises me whenever I bring her out. 

 

I do think that the armor set shines on tankers, where endurance is not as pressing a need as on a brute, and you get higher caps and closer to them out of the box than with brutes or stalkers.  How about another tanker, this one Dark/Ice or Dark/Stone Melee.  This will not be a DPS character. But both of these combos could become the melee controllers that team oriented tankers should try to be, incapacitating the mobs en masse while holding and surviving the aggro.  

Edited February 28, 2021 by Heraclea

[StriderIV]

1 hour ago, Rokkeb said:

Fire Melee / Dark Armor stalker - 2 sets that people say aren't good for stalker, and see how you do with it. You already crushed it with dark/staff tank so try something that's a challenge. 

 

You could ramp up your damage from tanker and go brute. A super strength / dark brute would probably be pretty potent. Couple knock downs/backs in SS to go along with your soft controls in dark.  

 

or the old reliable claws/dark scrapper. A time tested favorite ever since release. 

 

I like the idea of taking 2 that most think aren’t great together and making it work!

 

Also, for the Claws/Dark, why do you think it is so popular on a Scrapper? I would think it could be better served on a Brute, with their higher resist caps.

[StriderIV]

34 minutes ago, Heraclea said:

I have a dark armor/claws tanker that always surprises me whenever I bring her out. 

 

I do think that the armor set shines on tankers, where endurance is not as pressing a need as on a brute, and you get higher caps and closer to them out of the box than with brutes or stalkers.  How about another tanker, this one Dark/Ice or Dark/Stone Melee.  This will not be a DPS character. But both of these combos could become the melee controllers that team oriented tankers should try to be, incapacitating the mobs en masse while holding and surviving the aggro.  

Claws/Dark Tanker was actually one I had my eyes on. I feel like, after the AOE buffs to tankers, that claws could be REALLY good in them.

 

Dark/Ice sounds really cool, a true “Tank-troller” haha. I have a baby Fire/Ice Tanker I started leveling, but Dark/Ice might be an even better pairing.

[Erratic1]

My first successful attempt at a Tanker and Dark Armor user was a DA/FM Tanker. Nothing really special about the combo though.

[StriderIV]

5 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

My first successful attempt at a Tanker and Dark Armor user was a DA/FM Tanker. Nothing really special about the combo though.

What do you feel does go well with DA, in your experience!

[Erratic1]

1 minute ago, StriderIV said:

What do you feel does go well with DA, in your experience!

Dark Armor has a bit of a reputation for being endurance hungry, so you can see why Dark Melee would be a perfect fit for it.

 

Not sure I have ever  paired any two powersets, primary/secondary, which have the same theme (which is one reason I didn't do it on the Tanker) but it makes so much sense in this case.

 

Dark Armor's offensive calling card is Disorient (once you get to Oppressive Gloom). I would look to pair a powerset with Disorients dripping from it,...Energy Melee or War Mace

 

 

[StriderIV]

1 hour ago, Erratic1 said:

Dark Armor has a bit of a reputation for being endurance hungry, so you can see why Dark Melee would be a perfect fit for it.

 

Not sure I have ever  paired any two powersets, primary/secondary, which have the same theme (which is one reason I didn't do it on the Tanker) but it makes so much sense in this case.

 

Dark Armor's offensive calling card is Disorient (once you get to Oppressive Gloom). I would look to pair a powerset with Disorients dripping from it,...Energy Melee or War Mace

 

 

True! I hear different things about Oppressive Gloom. So love it, some don’t because it only works on minions. Would pairing it with something like EM allow you to stun higher level baddies?

[catsi563]

May seem silly but Any Dark Dark combo is a lot of fun. 

got Pandas all D3 and a D4

Blaster Sent tank Scrapper Controller and my personal Fave the Original Panda the Best Darned Dark Dark Dark Defender on Champion 😸

[Greycat]

... don't forget, you can recolor DA for new looks that can inspire new ideas. Super Sand Witch, for instance, is a Water/DA (... whichever order that goes in) Sentinel with it tinted tan/brown for a sandstorm....

[Rokkeb]

3 hours ago, StriderIV said:

I like the idea of taking 2 that most think aren’t great together and making it work!

 

Also, for the Claws/Dark, why do you think it is so popular on a Scrapper? I would think it could be better served on a Brute, with their higher resist caps.

Well yeah all resists sets are technically better on a tanker but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be played on a scrapper or stalker. If you follow that logic, nobody should ever play a tanker because all the damage sets are better on a scrapper or brute. 

 

Claws / Dark was probably popular because in early game it was very hard to mitigate Dark Armors endurance requirements. You couldn't get Stamina (that power you get for free at lvl 2 now) until like level 20 or 22 I can't remember and it took a lot of power picks to get it as well. Also there were no Set IO's with all those nice effects to help offset it either. So you had to straight slot it for endurance reduction but the most common tactic was to pick and choose which toggles you had on, for each fight, and most of the time people skipped the fear, and the disorient, and sometimes even the damage aura. So Claws being about the least endurance hungry set a scrapper had access to made an obvious pairing for the most endurance hungry armor set a scrapper had access to at the time. 

 

Also I can't remember when it happened, but when the /Regen nerf came, it killed a lot of the playstyle for /regen characters and many people were looking for something that came close to that same level of sustain. Dark Armors heal is massive, and that could have drawn a lot of people to it as well. 

[StriderIV]

17 minutes ago, Rokkeb said:

Well yeah all resists sets are technically better on a tanker but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be played on a scrapper or stalker. If you follow that logic, nobody should ever play a tanker because all the damage sets are better on a scrapper or brute. 

 

Claws / Dark was probably popular because in early game it was very hard to mitigate Dark Armors endurance requirements. You couldn't get Stamina (that power you get for free at lvl 2 now) until like level 20 or 22 I can't remember and it took a lot of power picks to get it as well. Also there were no Set IO's with all those nice effects to help offset it either. So you had to straight slot it for endurance reduction but the most common tactic was to pick and choose which toggles you had on, for each fight, and most of the time people skipped the fear, and the disorient, and sometimes even the damage aura. So Claws being about the least endurance hungry set a scrapper had access to made an obvious pairing for the most endurance hungry armor set a scrapper had access to at the time. 

 

Also I can't remember when it happened, but when the /Regen nerf came, it killed a lot of the playstyle for /regen characters and many people were looking for something that came close to that same level of sustain. Dark Armors heal is massive, and that could have drawn a lot of people to it as well. 

REALLY good points!!!

 

Plus, Claws/Dark just feels edgier on a scrapper, right? 😂😂😂

[StriderIV]

24 minutes ago, Greycat said:

... don't forget, you can recolor DA for new looks that can inspire new ideas. Super Sand Witch, for instance, is a Water/DA (... whichever order that goes in) Sentinel with it tinted tan/brown for a sandstorm....

Absolutely! I have a Shield/Dark Melee scrapper. I gave him an energy shield recolored DM as all white and blue. Kind of like an “Energy Aura” type of theme, without going Energy Aura 😂

[Erratic1]

From live, an example of DA recoloring:

 

 

The red miasma surrounding the character is Dark Armor. The black sword is Flame Sword from Fire Melee.

[Sakai]

3 hours ago, StriderIV said:

REALLY good points!!!

 

Plus, Claws/Dark just feels edgier on a scrapper, right? 😂😂😂

Seeing the crit is a good time. 

 

[StriderIV]

27 minutes ago, Sakai said:

Seeing the crit is a good time. 

 

It does add up to a good time 😂

Edited March 1, 2021 by StriderIV