Some advice for my WM/DA build

[Kilrane]

I'm not really familiar with all the changes on HC. Is this still a decent build?

 

Villain Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.6.0.2
https://github.com/ImaginaryDevelopment/imaginary-hero-designer

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Some Guy In A Hoodie: Level 50 Magic Brute
Primary Power Set: War Mace
Secondary Power Set: Dark Armor
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Sorcery
Ancillary Pool: Mu Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Pulverize -- SprUnrFur-Acc/Dmg(A), SprUnrFur-Dmg/Rchg(3), SprUnrFur-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(3), SprUnrFur-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), SprUnrFur-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), SprUnrFur-Rchg/+Regen/+End(7)
Level 1: Dark Embrace -- UnbGrd-ResDam(A), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(7), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(9), GldArm-3defTpProc(9)
Level 2: Jawbreaker -- SprBrtFur-Rech/Fury(A), SprBrtFur-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(13), SprBrtFur-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15), CrsImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(15), CrsImp-Acc/Dmg(17)
Level 4: Murky Cloud -- StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(21), UnbGrd-ResDam(23)
Level 6: Death Shroud -- ScrDrv-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(A), Mlt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(23), ScrDrv-Acc/Dmg(25), ScrDrv-Dam%(25), Arm-Dam%(27)
Level 8: Clobber -- SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg(A), SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx(27), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(29), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(29), SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(31), SprBlsCol-Rchg/HoldProc(31)
Level 10: Obsidian Shield -- UnbGrd-ResDam(A), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(31), UnbGrd-Max HP%(33)
Level 12: Build Up -- RctRtc-ToHit/Rchg(A), RctRtc-Pcptn(33)
Level 14: Maneuvers -- Rct-Def(A), Rct-Def/EndRdx(33), LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(34), ShlWal-ResDam/Re TP(34), Rct-ResDam%(34)
Level 16: Dark Regeneration -- ThfofEss-+End%(A), Arm-Acc/Rchg(36), TchoftheN-Acc/EndRdx/Heal/HP/Regen(36), TchoftheN-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(36), TchoftheN-Heal/HP/Regen/Rchg(37), DctWnd-Heal/EndRdx(50)
Level 18: Whirling Mace -- SprAvl-Acc/Dmg(A), SprAvl-Dmg/EndRdx(37), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(37), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(39), SprAvl-Rchg/KDProc(39)
Level 20: Cloak of Darkness -- Rct-Def(A), Rct-Def/EndRdx(40), LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(40)
Level 22: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(40)
Level 24: Boxing -- Acc-I(A)
Level 26: Shatter -- SprBrtFur-Acc/Dmg(A), SprBrtFur-Dmg/Rchg(42), SprBrtFur-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(42), Obl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(42), FrcFdb-Rchg/EndRdx(43)
Level 28: Tough -- Ags-ResDam/EndRdx(A), Ags-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(43), Ags-ResDam(43)
Level 30: Weave -- Rct-Def(A), Rct-Def/EndRdx(45), LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(45)
Level 32: Mystic Flight -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 35: Electrifying Fences -- SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg(A), SprFrzBls-Dmg/EndRdx(45), SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(46), SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(46), SprFrzBls-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(46), SprFrzBls-Rchg/ImmobProc(48)
Level 38: Spirit Ward -- Prv-Absorb%(A)
Level 41: Rune of Protection -- Ags-ResDam/Rchg(A), Ags-EndRdx/Rchg(48), Ags-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(48), Ags-ResDam(50), Ags-Psi/Status(50)
Level 44: Taunt -- PrfZng-Taunt/Rchg(A)
Level 47: Tactics -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 49: Soul Transfer -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 1: Brawl -- KntCmb-Acc/Dmg(A), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx(11), KntCmb-Dmg/Rchg(11), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(13)
Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Fury 
Level 1: Sprint -- Clr-Stlth(A)
Level 2: Rest -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run 
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Mrc-Rcvry+(A), NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(17), Pnc-Heal/+End(19)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- PrfShf-End%(A), PrfShf-EndMod(19), EffAdp-EndMod(21)
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Some Guy In A Hoodie.mxd

Edited September 10, 2023 by Kilrane

[Uun]

There haven't been any changes to War Mace or Dark Armor, so it should still work fine. Rune of Protection can no longer be slotted for recharge, so you might want to rethink those slots. I'm surprised you skipped Crowd Control. It's one of the defining powers of War Mace. 

 

Personally, I don't bother chasing defense on Dark Armor. The set has no defense debuff resistance and it can be stripped away in a flash. I recommend swapping the defense set bonuses for resistance set bonuses to get closer to the 90% cap. 

[Snarky]

You did not take cloak of Fear or Oppressive Gloom.  Then you built for Defense bonuses.  Play and build any way you want, but this is like driving south on a northbound freeway lane.

 

You have to understand HOW Dark works.  Dark takes the standard CoH Def>Res>Heal and puts that right in the trash compactor.  Then dares you to say shit about it.  
 

Dark uses AoE stun and AoE fear to mezze the nobodies.  This gets rid of a ton of annoying incoming attacks.  If you do not take both those toggles do yourself a favor and quit reading. Dark Dark uses to hit debuffs to also reduce incoming attacks.  Dark has non suppressed stealth.  When they cant see you eating their friend twenty feet away you can call that defense.  So Defense strategy is this.  Do not waste resources building defense.  you have no DDR and shit is worthless in a tough fight, it goes the F away

 

Now, your big bads ignore most of that.  Soooo… some of the best resists in the game. Do not neglect energy resistance.  It can be built into a nice neighborhood.  I have Tanked Rom on a Master Run because i have energy resistance 
 

BEST heal in the game.  Available every few seconds.  Top of my head i think mine sits at 8 sec recharge.  From .0001 health to 100%.

 

Dark Melee provides very good ST damage.  Bolstered by Dark armor damage aura there is decent AoE as well.  
 

since a Dark Dark Brute is rarely killed you will win any and all DPS races.

 

the most spectacular tacoing of my Dark Brute i recall was a shadow shard TF.  A teammate got stuck in a crossroads in a cave map with tons of big spawns all around.  My overconfident butt went in. Those F-ing eyeballs ignore steath. So part of my “defense” was gone.  Then…..oof.  Rikti, some Nemi and a very few Longbow Wardens do the same.  You need to learn the groups and know the odds.  Only bet on winning hands.  
 

that is the cliff notes.  If you dig around the Tank and Brute Forums you will find my builds for each AT.  They differ from how most people build the armor.  A lot of people do not take all the toggles.  Yeah, I do not think highly of that. A lot of people go “oh, I cannot have good energy resistance” Yeah, I do not think highly of that.  

 

Finally, 

Resistance is odd.  It is very simple, and that places it as the odd duck in CoH game mechanics.  
 

I cannot stress this enough.  Resistance is it’s own Resistance debuff Resistance.  Weird sentence.  What it means.  If you have 100% resistance you can ALMOST never be debuffed.  
 

There are a very few (and i mean just a couple) beings in CoH that ignore res debuff res.  One is an odd all Longbow Warden which you will encounter almost freaking never.  But that shithead is out there.  I am sure there are one or two others who do the same.  They are much rarer than a sapper for instance.  But just to be clear, that power exists in game.  

 

So… when I build a Res toon I build for 100% values rather than 90%.  Then my Res cannot be yoinked out from under me.  In say a Dr Aeon. Those brickers tear through resistance like its tin foil on a candy bar.  

Edited September 11, 2023 by Snarky

[Captain Fabulous]

In addition to what @Snarky said, War Mace has a number of stuns, which in combination with Oppressive Gloom will allow you to stun LTs and Bosses.

IMO I would drop Taunt, Boxing, Tough, Weave, Electric Fences, Spirit Ward, Mystic Flight, and Rune of Protection and replace them with Provoke, Intimidate, Invoke Panic, Unrelenting, Cloak of Fear, Oppressive Gloom, and either Combat Jumping+Super Jump/Superspeed or Hover+Flight/Super Speed.

[Kilrane]

Damn alright, thank you all. I've got a long way to go at the drawing board it seems. 

[Uun]

I'm not in the camp that thinks Oppressive Gloom or Cloak of Fear are necessary for Dark Armor. Both affect minions only. Oppressive Gloom can be effective with just the base slot if you've got a spare power pick, but Cloak of Fear requires significant slotting. It has a 33% accuracy penalty and a very high endurance cost. I can't justify devoting 4-6 slots to a power that does so little. I would devote the slots to getting your resists above 80%.

 

16 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

IMO I would drop Taunt, Boxing, Tough, Weave, Electric Fences, Spirit Ward, Mystic Flight, and Rune of Protection and replace them with Provoke, Intimidate, Invoke Panic, Unrelenting, Cloak of Fear, Oppressive Gloom, and either Combat Jumping+Super Jump/Superspeed or Hover+Flight/Super Speed.

 

I don't agree with this at all (although I would drop Electrifying Fences for Crowd Control). You'll want Tough to cap S/L resistance, and unless you've capped all your resistances without it, Rune of Protection is a much better panic button than Unrelenting. It's up 60 seconds out of 180, as opposed to 30 seconds out of 200-300 (depending on recharge slotting), plus the healing and rez in Unrelenting is superfluous when you have Dark Regeneration and Soul Transfer. Taunt is vastly superior to Provoke and Intimidate and Invoke Panic are clicks with short durations and long recharges. Why interrupt your attack chain fearing foes when you can be defeating them? 

[Without_Pause]

I think @Snarkycopy/pasted his response. 😄

[Yomo Kimyata]

@Snarky has a lot of knowledge on things dark, but I have a few comments from a scrapper viewpoint (and I am in the process of trying out a few things with my 50 WM/DA scrapper):

 

21 hours ago, Snarky said:

Dark uses AoE stun and AoE fear to mezze the nobodies.  This gets rid of a ton of annoying incoming attacks.  If you do not take both those toggles do yourself a favor and quit reading.

 

Both the toggles are useful, but I'd understand not taking Cloak of Fear -- it's an extremely inaccurate and high endurance toggle.  Although if you do take it, my endgame slotting is 2x lvl 53 Endoplasms, 2x lvl 53 Enzymes, and Unspeakable Terror +stun proc.  Because you should always take Oppressive Gloom -- it's low endurance, and with your heal up so frequently you'll never even notice losing health from it.  Anything you can do to stack stun is useful.  Put a Triumphant Insult proc in some of your AoEs if you can fit it -- it's a terrible proc by itself but getting more mag to your stun from Oppressive Gloom is always nice.  If you do take Cloak of Fear, taking the Presence pool for Invoke Panic also stacks Fear mag nicely.

 

22 hours ago, Snarky said:

So Defense strategy is this.  Do not waste resources building defense.  you have no DDR and shit is worthless in a tough fight, it goes the F away

 

On the flip side, against enemies without defense debuff, defense works just fine.  I wouldn't build to the soft cap but more is always better than less.

 

 

[Captain Fabulous]

4 hours ago, Uun said:

I'm not in the camp that thinks Oppressive Gloom or Cloak of Fear are necessary for Dark Armor. Both affect minions only. Oppressive Gloom can be effective with just the base slot if you've got a spare power pick, but Cloak of Fear requires significant slotting. It has a 33% accuracy penalty and a very high endurance cost. I can't justify devoting 4-6 slots to a power that does so little. I would devote the slots to getting your resists above 80%.

 

 

I don't agree with this at all (although I would drop Electrifying Fences for Crowd Control). You'll want Tough to cap S/L resistance, and unless you've capped all your resistances without it, Rune of Protection is a much better panic button than Unrelenting. It's up 60 seconds out of 180, as opposed to 30 seconds out of 200-300 (depending on recharge slotting), plus the healing and rez in Unrelenting is superfluous when you have Dark Regeneration and Soul Transfer. Taunt is vastly superior to Provoke and Intimidate and Invoke Panic are clicks with short durations and long recharges. Why interrupt your attack chain fearing foes when you can be defeating them? 

You're certainly free to do a more conventional build, but if you're not going to use the keystone powers why bother with the set at all? Just take Fire and color it dark. If you're skipping OG and CoF there's nothing in Dark you can't get elsewhere. Yes they only affect minions, but that's where the stuns in War Mace and the fears in Presence come in. Stunned critters don't fight back, and feared critters barely fight back. Between this, a moderate amount of resistances and defense, and a massive heal you don't need the Tough/Weave combo, and you'll get a completely different play experience no other set can give you.

[Kilrane]

Not gonna lie, I'm lost now lol. I didn't know DA was such a contentious subject.

[Snarky]

A lot of good points about accuracy.  If you see my builds I almost always take a +to hit power, add a kismet, and have sets with +accuracy.  Therefore Cloak of Fear can be 3 slotted for a different set bonus….or two slotted etc

[Captain Fabulous]

42 minutes ago, Snarky said:

A lot of good points about accuracy.  If you see my builds I almost always take a +to hit power, add a kismet, and have sets with +accuracy.  Therefore Cloak of Fear can be 3 slotted for a different set bonus….or two slotted etc

Agreed, +tohit and +acc are a MUST for dark. Everything requires a tohit check. This is why I didn't say to dump Maneuvers and Tactics. You need Tactics, it's not optional.

[Captain Fabulous]

1 hour ago, Kilrane said:

Not gonna lie, I'm lost now lol. I didn't know DA was such a contentious subject.

It's not really contentious. @Snarky and I are giving you the correct way to build Dark Armor, and everyone else is wrong. 😂

[Snarky]

2 hours ago, Kilrane said:

Not gonna lie, I'm lost now lol. I didn't know DA was such a contentious subject.

Build anything anyway you want.  That is the joy of CoH

 

However, if you look closely, you will notice no one took issues in the basic facts of my “boilerplate wall of rules” on Dark.  They may offer other ways.  But what I said was all true.  
 

Soooo.  You can build to emphasize all the positives in the armor set.   Orrrr.  You can chose to go a different route.  Not necessarily worse, but just starting to drop “the most optimal” for “i wanted this instead”.  The play differences will be nominal until you really Fustercluck the choices and enhancements 

 

But if you want to Tank Lord Recluse on a Master Run Ms Lib with a Dark Armor Brute…. I would not stray far from the basic facts I laid out.  Good luck 

[Without_Pause]

Tactics also covers Perception, Confuse, and Fear. That's outright End Game 101. I'm pretty much putting that in all of my builds. I had a Savage/dark Tanker I liked and was dual boxing with a Savage/rad Brute. While I understand why I rerolled the Brute onto my main account, I'm not sure why I got rid of the Tanker. I should really redo that build even if as a Brute.