Defense sets with both stealth and damage/taunt auras

[Heraclea]

These schizophrenic settings appear to be 'features' of some of the older armor sets, especially with the ones that were exclusive to scrappers or brutes at first, like Dark Armor and Energy Aura.  These sets offer stealth that is not useful in practice since they also have various damage, debuff, control, or taunt auras that break stealth and put you into combat.  The stealth can only be used by turning off key powers like Entropic Aura, which is Energy's mez protection, or Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom, which are a big part of what makes Dark Armor interesting.

 

We know that it's feasible now to make aura attacks not break stealth since blasters' Electric secondary was changed in i27.  This feature should be ported to the melee defense sets that include stealth and preserve the stealthy armors' ability to set the terms of combat without losing important abilities.  

 

 

[Andreah]

I have a dark/dark tanker, and the stealth from Cloak of Darkness raised a chuckle on me. On other tanker's I've taken time to right-click and dismiss stealth effects when others happen to put it on me -- I'm a Tanker -- I WANT to be seen! 

 

On the other hand, in practice it seems to do nothing bad. It's only stealth on myself, when I'm out of combat the thinly transparent appearance it grants is consistent thematically with my character, and in-combat I'm constantly doing damage and taunts and doesn't seem to be active.

 

The only downside is when I'm trying to get a hostage to follow me out of a rescue/kidnap mission.

[Steampunkette]

I feel like this is a disconnect between Developer Intention and Player Style.

 

Yeah, you lose the benefits of stealth when you deal damage or debuff an enemy. But that's when you no longer need the stealth benefit as a Scrapper/Tanker/Brute.

 

Dark Armor on Tankers, Brutes, and Scrappers uses a staggered recovery mechanic for the primary survivability. Yes, they also get the decent resistances scattered across their powers, but their main survival tools are Dark Regeneration, Cloak of Fear, and Oppressive Gloom.

 

The Stealth is there so you can get closer to your enemies before triggering their Alpha strike and smacking you through your comparatively low levels of resistances and essentially nonexistent defense values.  Your Cloak of Fear then reduces the incoming attacks to 3 second intervals, and you've got your lovely little self-heal Dark Regen to recover the lost health. Similarly, if you're fighting Fear-Resistant enemies, you've got Oppressive Gloom to provide Stuns instead.

 

And if all else fails, there's Soul Transfer to pick you back up.

 

Energy Aura is built in a similar style, generally speaking, but rather than focus on control effects to reduce incoming damage values, it uses a combination of -Recharge and -Endurance. Energize fills the same role as Dark Regeneration (Though to a lesser degree).

 

Neither one has Stealth to the degree that you can pretend to be a Stalker without using a Stealth IO slotted into Sprint because it's not meant for that purpose. It's meant to let you get close enough to apply some debuffs/controls/effects that reduce the amount of damage you're about to take as part of the set's design.

[Andreah]

30 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

Dark Armor on Tankers, Brutes, and Scrappers uses a staggered recovery mechanic for the primary survivability. Yes, they also get the decent resistances scattered across their powers, but their main survival tools are Dark Regeneration, Cloak of Fear, and Oppressive Gloom.

 

Yep, I definitely do not play my Dark/Dark tanker that way.

 

I didn't take Oppressive Gloom nor Soul Transfer. Self injury and death are not in my attack chain.

 

I have Dark Regen but rarely if ever use it. Inspirations are better self-heals and dark regen does crap all for damage and costs too much end to use.

 

Cloak of Fear seems decent enough. The fear rarely affects any mobs that aren't already about to die, but the -acc is useful, and it's a good mule for IO's. It's expensive to run though.

 

The set works for me because I have soft-capped defense with it and have high resistances, just like many other fully viable defense sets.

[Greycat]

I'd say Steampunkette pretty much has it. The Stealth in Dark - as well as Energy - is there for you to get close to (or right in the middle of) your enemies before eating an alpha. In some ways it's like lightning rod or shield charge. It's letting you almost guarantee that *you'll* be the one initiating combat, not the enemy.

 

So, basically... to me, they *are* letting you set the terms of combat. They're letting you initiate, then with the powers breaking stealth, they're letting you hold attention as melee. Now, whether having specific powers (like Entropic Aura) have a taunt aura to them is good or not - different conversation. But as far as suppression while in stealth and what breaks it... yes, some powers, definitely, but I think it'd be a power by power discussion (I wouldn't *want* CoF Or OG to suppress, I want them working right away, for instance, and would see "suppress in stealth" as a bit of a nerf to them.)

[Steampunkette]

1 hour ago, Andreah said:

Yep, I definitely do not play my Dark/Dark tanker that way.

 

I didn't take Oppressive Gloom nor Soul Transfer. Self injury and death are not in my attack chain.

 

I have Dark Regen but rarely if ever use it. Inspirations are better self-heals and dark regen does crap all for damage and costs too much end to use.

 

Cloak of Fear seems decent enough. The fear rarely affects any mobs that aren't already about to die, but the -acc is useful, and it's a good mule for IO's. It's expensive to run though.

 

The set works for me because I have soft-capped defense with it and have high resistances, just like many other fully viable defense sets.

It certainly a fully viable defense set. And there's really no wrong way to play with it. Set bonuses really changed the way a lot of people play the game. This is one of those power sets that was designed for use with single origin enhancements.

 

And when you play it the other way it doesn't deal nearly as much damage, because it wasn't supposed to. The invention origin enhancements allow us to do way more damage than the original game design allowed for.

 

The question is whether or not we should buckle and build the game around invention origin enhancements or hold to some of the original design intentions.

 

By and large I think the goal is to use both. To leave the old sets more or less single origin while the new stuff is designed around inventions.

[Andreah]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

I'd say Steampunkette pretty much has it. The Stealth in Dark - as well as Energy - is there for you to get close to (or right in the middle of) your enemies before eating an alpha.

It does make sense, but I just don't see it commonly being used that way in today's game.

 

In fact, if one wants to do that kind of play style, then in today's game stealth isn't the way to do it -- Combat Teleport would be much more effective. 

[Andreah]

6 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

By and large I think the goal is to use both. To leave the old sets more or less single origin while the new stuff is designed around inventions.

I wouldn't say they're the majority, but there are still a lot of people who don't use, or only lightly use, invention sets. So I don't think the game should be deliberately balanced around sets. At least, not at +0/x1. 

 

A player at +0/x1, without any invention sets, either solo or in small like-equipped groups, should be able to do most regular content. If these powersets having stealth helps them do so, then that's a good thing.

[Greycat]

1 hour ago, Andreah said:

In fact, if one wants to do that kind of play style, then in today's game stealth isn't the way to do it -- Combat Teleport would be much more effective. 

 

*shrug* Options and/or concept.

[lemming]

Honestly, the only issue I have with any sort of stealth is when trying to lead someone out.  (Maybe plusses to perception only for spotting the person leading.  Don't want them running off and attacking stuff)

[VinceBlood]

6 hours ago, Andreah said:

I didn't take Oppressive Gloom nor Soul Transfer. Self injury and death are not in my attack chain.

 

I have Dark Regen but rarely if ever use it. Inspirations are better self-heals and dark regen does crap all for damage and costs too much end to use.

 

 

1.  No use for a magnitude 30 stun?

2.  Dark Regeneration is absolutely not worse than using inspirations, and it's also not at all meant to do damage.  It's one of the strongest, if not the strongest, self heals (even before enhancements) in the game with the caveat that it has to land a small hit and costs a decent chunk of endurance.  (Protip:  Theft of Essence: Chance for +End will often negate this entirely!)

 

You and I play Dark Armor very, very, very differently.

Edited March 24, 2021 by VinceBlood
Forgot a thing

[Andreah]

23 minutes ago, VinceBlood said:

1.  No use for a magnitude 30 stun?

2.  Dark Regeneration is absolutely not worse than using inspirations, and it's also not at all meant to do damage.  It's one of the strongest, if not the strongest, self heals (even before enhancements) in the game with the caveat that it has to land a small hit and costs a decent chunk of endurance.  (Protip:  Theft of Essence: Chance for +End will often negate this entirely!)

 

1. Not if I have to die to use it. To be fair, I never take powers like this on any character, the whole concept is wrong to me.

 

2. It restores ~20% of HP at the cost of ~30% of end, and has to hit a foe to work. One medium Insp does 25%. Large insps do 50%, and Supers do 100%. That being said, my HP are almost never below max due to softcapped defense and 90% S/L, Negative, and Psi resistance; fire and cold at 85%, and energy/toxic at 65%. Situations where there's more incoming damage than regeneration can naturally take care of are pretty rare, and the inspirations take care of them. Just in case, I also carry charges Med Pack, just in case. I bought 100 of those, and used two in my trek up into veteran levels. 

 

I often use team insps, because if I'm feeling the damage, chances are others in my team nearby are feeling it too.

  

23 minutes ago, VinceBlood said:

You and I play Dark Armor very, very, very differently.

 

I suppose we do, and that's okay. 🙂 

[Zeraphia]

Can't wait to open up this can of worms... but I think "stealth" powers on Tankers/Brutes are useless for those who are well-built/playing properly (only use you should need for it would be speed-running through maps). If they're being played well, they shouldn't need the stealth at all and it gets in the way of grouping enemies. I would much prefer if there was an option to turn OFF the stealth entirely whilst still keeping the worthwhile defenses. 

 

It's actually one of the reasons (besides the better procs and overall just better-ness in general) I choose Rad Armor hands down every single time over Dark. It's clunky to group things up, and it has a terrible stealth mechanic which isn't very useful for me in those playstyles. 

Edited March 24, 2021 by Zeraphia

[Apparition]

I like Energy Aura on Brutes.  I find the concept of having both built-in stealth and a taunt aura hilarious.  In addition, it allows for me to have full stealth with a +stealth IO enhancement without Super Speed, so I can use Speed of Sound and maintain the full mag 4 taunt.

[Steampunkette]

2 hours ago, Andreah said:

2. It restores ~20% of HP at the cost of ~30% of end, and has to hit a foe to work.

Per target.

 

Up to 10 targets.

 

Slot it for End/Recharge and you go from near death to full health in the cast time and for a reasonable end cost and pretty often.

 

Granted, you don't particularly need it 'cause you slotted for maximum durability. But someone who slots for Recharge/Damage/Etc in their set bonuses (increasing their damage output) can use it to cycle back to full health with a quickness! Especially if they use Oppressive Gloom for a low-grade DoT on themselves for a constant massive PBAoE Stun.

 

My hubby, for example, had me do up a Recharge Set for his Dark/Dark Brute. To do that I had to sacrifice a lot of survivability. But the character only has to survive 10 seconds between uses of Dark Regeneration and hit 2 or more targets to max out his HP on a given cast. With Oppressive Gloom and/or Cloak of Fear active enemies can't hit him with any rapidity to drive that health down in the first place.

 

It's just a different way to reach the same sort of survivability, but with a very high recharge rate. (166% without incarnate stuff)

 

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