/dark armor toggles

[OdinAZ]

I have a SA/DA brute I am working on building and I had questions about all the toggles.  

 

Cloak of Fear - fears all the mobs around you, unless they are attacked

 

Death shroud - attacks everyone around you, which seems like it would counteract the above CoF

 

Oppressive Gloom - disorients everyone around you, but it seems like that would negate the need of the other 3 resistance toggles?  

 

What do people usually choose?  And what's up with all the toggles?

[ZorkNemesis]

I think the consensus is that Cloak of Fear isn't worthwhile (the fear isn't good enough and the -ToHit is negligible especially with a resist focused set, plus end cost) and Oppresive Gloom is really only good if you have a primary that deals Stuns on the regular anyway (Energy, Kinetic, Mace).  Both Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom are only Mag 2 Fear/Stun so they only work on Minions without extra layering, Minions should drop like flies to your AoEs anyway.  Death Shroud is certainly worthwhile since it's a standard damage aura.  It's also the only one of the three that Taunts so you'll want it if you plan on holding aggro.

[Uun]

In addition to only affecting minions, Cloak of Fear has a massive (33%) accuracy penalty and a high endurance cost. You need to invest 6 slots before the power does what it's supposed to do, which isn't particularly useful. Definite skip.

 

Oppressive Gloom also only affects minions, but it doesn't require more than an acc IO in the base slot to be effective. Take it if you have a power pick to burn (and have another stun to stack with it), but very skippable. 

 

Death Shroud is your standard damage/taunt aura. Very efficient damage source if you surround yourself with a lot of foes and aids in building/maintaining Fury. Must take.

[Yomo Kimyata]

Death Shroud — pretty standard damage aura.  If you like using damage auras, you’re in!

 

Oppressive Gloom — Mag 2 stun for 7+ seconds, which means it will affect underlings and minions.  Pulses on a ten second period and it says that it will stack once but I haven’t noticed that.  Low endurance cost and will drain your health slightly.  I find this worthwhile on my melee alts, especially if I have stuns from other sources.

 

Cloak of Fear — aura with very high endurance cost and very low accuracy.  Applies mag 2 terrorize which is kind of like sleep and kind of like immobilize and kind of like avoid.  Applies -to hit debuff.  A good power but I feel that you really need to plan around this power in your build.  Fear isn’t as easy to stack as stun.  I will always six slot this when I take it.

 

in general, I will always take OG on a melee alt.  If I take DS, then I won’t take CoF and vice versa.  OG synergizes with CoF if you put the stun proc from that low level fear set in there.

[Snokle]

Currently on my DA brute, I am running all three toggles. Death Shroud was always #1 for this as it is a damage aura, and I put a Brute ATO in there for the fury generation. I take Oppressive Gloom, as it is very low cost to run, and only really needs base slotting. While I am chomping at a boss or AV, it keeps the minions a bit at bay and fodder for fury buildup, and various toggle buffs.

 

And cloak of fear I have running no on the build, as another layer of defense with how it works. End is heavy for it, so I did not really use it till I had my Alpha done. Since then and the rework I have been enjoying it just to add another layer of mitigation to the set. Also since it can have Clouded Senses slotted into it, a nice set of IO bonuses.

[tidge]

On my /Dark Scrapper and Dark/ Tanker

 

Death Shroud

• Fury of the Gladiator Dam/End/Rech (50+5)
• Fury of the Gladiator Acc/Dam/Rech (50+5)
• Fury of the Gladiator Acc/Dam/End/Rech (50+5)

Cloak of Fear

• Hami-O Endoplasm Acc/Mezz (53)
• Nightmare Acc/End (50+5)

Skipped Oppressive Gloom

 

I usually take Cloak of Fear as my final choice from Primary/Secondary, and only if the build has Global Accuracy (or ToHit) in it, because of the terrible inherent Accuracy.

 

My Stalker has multiple other Fear powers, otherwise I'd skip Cloak of Fear. My characters do not have other Stun powers/effects, so I skipped Oppressive Gloom on both. I'm simply not a fan of PBAoE status/effect toggles. I can almost feel good about them on Tankers/Brutes because of "aggro", but I generally don't like having to worry about their Accuracy against +N and Endurance costs. I slot for +Mezz because the base fear effect is something like 7 seconds, so if trying to stack the effect longer is better. The base -ToHit is IIRC -5%, so boosting that is marginal without an investment in slots. YMMV but I never trust PBAoE debuff toggles.

 

Death Shroud is a power that I usually only work into a build early after respecs when I have Global Accuracy/ToHit bonuses. My level 50 Scrapper has it as a "first choice", my level 50 Tanker didn't bother with it until level 18... my general opinion is that for content below a certain level it isn't doing that much. It becomes more important for soloing a increased spawn sizes or when teams are facing enemy spawns that can't be defeated in a couple of attacks.... so something like a +2 Synapse TF.

 

I opted for the 3x Fury of the Gladiator because of the lack of Knockback protection in Dark Armor. Dark Armor allows for 3xGladiator's Armor as well, so using that along with two of the 4-point KB protection pieces gets 14 points of KB... and it is important for Dark Armor types to not get knocked around or knocked down to be able to spam Dark Regeneration.

[Yomo Kimyata]

3 hours ago, tidge said:

Cloak of Fear

• Hami-O Endoplasm Acc/Mezz (53)
• Nightmare Acc/End (50+5)

 
I could not imagine using this power with less than 2x endo and 2x enzymes 

[tidge]

17 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 
I could not imagine using this power with less than 2x endo and 2x enzymes 

 

As I wrote: I think chasing enhancements for enemy debuffs, especially those below 10% isn't worth trying to enhance them for enemies that are not likely to be sticking around long.

 

Also because it's a "no more than 2" stack on the Fear portion, I concluded that once I had the base accuracy above 110% (because the two other Fears are about 150% base accuracy) that was all I needed to invest in a rather meh power (that I don't even need to keep toggled on). I had originally 6-slotted it for set bonuses, but I had to pick either Fear or -ToHit, and invest a rather large number of slots that could be used elsewhere. For example, adding a Kismet +ToHit to a toggle... which I did on the Tanker but not the Scrapper, so the Tanker has an even better ToHit chance with the toggle.

 

Frankly, I find the practical effects of each of the non-damage auras by themselves to be insignificant enough that I wouldn't fault someone giving up both of them and just go with a %-Resistance piece in the Damage aura. The %proc rates will be horrible, but in terms of how it would improve performance... I don't know that we could tell a difference. between all these middling choices.

 

[Captain Fabulous]

I like pairing DA with the vastly underrated Presence pool.

[Frozen Burn]

All Dark Armor toggles are great and useful EXCEPT Cloak of Fear.  Cloak of Fear is a sub par power because of the inherent lower base Acc and heavy End cost.  It takes full slotting to get it work or at minimum 4 HOs.  When it works, it's good.  But I'd rather invest those slots in all the other powers than trying to make a sub par power average - and not wait to lvl 50 to get the HOs to make it passable.  I always skip CoF.