Dark Armor/Radiation Melee awesomeness (with an explanation of mez stacking and why it matters)

[Sirrocco]

I just today learned about a kind of awesome thing hidden in the Dark Armor/Radiation Melee combo, and I wanted to share, because it's awesome.  For those of you who already know how this magnitude vs protection thing works, you already know most of this,.. but I only just found this out today, and I've been actually working on understanding how this game works for a while, so I figure that's not all of you.

 

So, first of all, there's the very straightforward "I get to have two damage auras" thing.  Dark armor is one of the armor types with a damage aura.  Dark, Elec, and Fire all get it at level 1, then Stone at 6, Ice at 12, and Bio at 22.  Meanwhile, the only two melee sets that get damage auras are radiation at 24 and spines at 18.  Irradiated ground is 8 ft radius.  Dual damage auras is kind of fun, and having one from the very beginning is great.  This is the reason I built the character in the first place, and I've been quite happy with him.  Admittedly, I *have* had to put a fair bit of thought and attention into endurance management, but that's the game you sign up for when you take Dark Armor, and I've been enjoying it.

 

It turns out that there's another more hidden synergy.  Dark Armor has a disorient aura.  Radiation melee has some high-level attacks that disorient.  This is actually important.

 

First of all, for those of you who've not had the pleasure, disorient is awesome.  A disoriented enemy takes no actions.  They stop whatever they were doing, stand up, and wander sort of aimlessly and slowly around, until they stop being disoriented.  Damaging them does not break the effect.  The only real downside is that we're inflicting this via aura, and it's possible for the enemy to (eventually) wander out of said aura.  That's it.

 

So... disorient is a crowd control effect, which means that it has something called a magnitude.  It also has a duration.  In the case of Oppressive Gloom, the magnitude is 2, and the duration is (AFAICT) exactly as long as the repeat cycle on the aura, which means that anything that sits in the aura is going to be under a magnitude 2 effect at all times.

 

Enemies have a stat called protection with respect to these effects.  In order for them to actually do anything, the total magnitude of effects of that type applied to the enemy must be greater than or equal to their protection.  Protection is tied very directly to tier.  Magnitude 2, for example, means that it'll stick on all minions, and all underlings/small, and no one else.

 

Now, there are ways to fix this.  The obvious thing to do is to try to use enhancers.  Disorient enhancers will increase duration (thus enabling overlaps) and recharge enhancers (and other methods of improving recharge) will let you use your powers more frequently.  Unfortunately, neither one will help with Oppressive Gloom.  It only allows for one stack at a time per caster, and recharge boosters aren't any more meaningful on toggles than they are on auto effects.  If you have a friend who also has Oppressive Gloom, the two auras will stack just fine, but there's no other way to push OG itself.  It does the thing it does very reliably, and is not interested in doing anything else.

 

This is where the other synergy between Radiation Melee and Dark Armor comes in.

 

Radiation Melee has two attacks that also disorient.  Devastating Blow is a single-target attack that hands out a magnitude 3 disorient for roughly 10-12 seconds (depending on level) at a 60% chance with a 17 second recharge time, and Atom Smasher is a PBAoE attack that hands out a magnitude 2 disorient for roughly 6-7 seconds at a 25% chance with a 22 second recharge time.  There's nothing you can do about those percent chances, but you can add disorient duration enhancements and probably *should* be adding recharge enhancements, to cram on more time under the effects, and (if you're quite lucky) possibly get situations where they stack on themselves or each other, cranking it further.

 

It is worth noting at this point that level differentials ("the purple patch") have a direct effect on mez duration (the thing we're talking about here).  So if you're trying the overlap trick on yellow and orange enemies, know that you're going to need to add on more of those duration boosts to get it done.  Some of them are likely to have resistance as well, which *also* directly reduces the duration.  As far as I can tell, OG itself doesn't care much about any of this, because the duration it's throwing around is significantly longer than the frequency with which it fires, but whatever powers you get off of your secondary sure will.

 

Essentially, then, if you don't have Dark Armor, then Radiation Melee's two most powerful attacks have a chance of shutting down minions and maybe lieutenants for a little while.  It's cool, but not that big a deal.  If you *do* have dark armor, those same attacks can shut down bosses, and if you get everything lined up just right and get lucky with it, even elite bosses.  It won't last all that long, but every moment an elite boss is staggering around being ineffectual is a good moment, right?

 

Now, if you don't care about doubling up on damage auras?  If you think that the idea of a tanker specialized in disorient is awesome, and you want to build for that?

 

Well, honestly, it's not hard to find.  Fully 11 of the 22 Tanker secondaries come with some form of Disorient baked in, with some of them fielding significantly more disorient than Radiation does.  Three powers in particular that I'm personally aware of (now) are Stone Melee (Fault), Super Strength (Hand Clap) and Electric Melee (Electric Clap).  Each of those powers is clearly designed as a heavy mez power - dealing a solid 2 disorient 100% of the time, and a 50% to disorient further, and I suspect that with enough boosts to recharge and disorient duration, you could get every one of them to 100% uptime... which means that every boss and below you fight could be permanently under the effects of disorient, and every archvillain/hero/monster could be disoriented a third of the time.  Getting your magnitude up to 7 for the Elite Bosses could be a trick, but that kind of thing is what friends are for.

 

Of the Primary power pools, though, the only one that offers any disorient at all is Fiery Aura, and that's only as a side-effect on its self-rez power.  So practically speaking, if you want to enjoy the benefits of disorient stacking, it's Dark Armor or nothing.

 

/************************/

 

Credit goes out to Psi and Terminal over on the City of Roleplay discord for being willing to take the time to explain to me how this all worked.  Much appreciated.  Further credit to @Psyonico for catching some errors and misunderstandings I'd had along the way and pointing out the Electric, Stone, and Super Strength versions of the combo.

Edited October 2 by Sirrocco

[Psyonico]

2 hours ago, Sirrocco said:

tart overlapping with itself, which means that some of the time, you'll be at magnitude 4

Incorrect, Oppressive Gloom (and Cloak of Fear, FWIW) are flagged as "replace existing effect", so it will always be mag 2.

 

That being said, there are some great combos out there. I've got a Dark/Stone tank that stacks OG with Fissure for a perma-mag 4+ AoE stun.  SS can do the same with Hand Clap and Electric Melee with (whatever that power is called)

[Sirrocco]

1 hour ago, Psyonico said:

Incorrect, Oppressive Gloom (and Cloak of Fear, FWIW) are flagged as "replace existing effect", so it will always be mag 2.

 

That being said, there are some great combos out there. I've got a Dark/Stone tank that stacks OG with Fissure for a perma-mag 4+ AoE stun.  SS can do the same with Hand Clap and Electric Melee with (whatever that power is called)

Ah?  I was misinformed, then.  Good to know before I started slotting those enhancements.  I go in and try to modify accordingly.

 

...and now I can see where on City of Data it indicated that.  It was a very small icon in a place I wouldn't have any thought of havign looked, nor necessarily understood if I'd found it.  Still... good to know that sort of thing for the future.

 

I'm not sure where you're getting Fissure from on a tanker.  If you meant Fault, then that's only Mag 1.  In order to perma Mag 4, you'd have to do something like double the recharge and also double the effect time, plus whatever you need to do to punch through the level difference and any specific resist to stun they might have.  If you're managing *that*, then you have a much better enhancement game than I do.  On electric melee, for Thunder Strike, you're looking at a 50% chance of mag 2 for 5-6 seconds, with a base 20 second recharge... so you basically need to fit another doubling in there somehow.  Hand Clap is running a 100% chance of an 8 second mag 2 on a recharge of 30, but it almost doesn't need Dark Armor, because it also has another 50% chance of mag 2 on top of that, so half the time it's hitting 4s all by itself.  I can see why SS tankers are so fond of it.

 

Devastating Blow from radiation is doing better than Fault on a single target, though you can't really make it as reliable.  It beats Thunder Strike handily, but Hand Clap is in a zone of its own.  Atom Smasher isn't at all reliable, but it is still nice to have.

[Psyonico]

Yes, fault, not fissure.

 

Fault has a 100% chance for mag 2 stun and a 50% chance for an additional mag 1 stun per City of Data

 

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=redirects.stone_melee.fault_tanker&at=tanker

 

For Electric Melee, I was actually referring to Lightning clap, which has the same 100% chance for mag 2 and 50% chance for mag 1 stun (though does full knockback rather than knockdown)

 

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=tanker_melee.electrical_melee.lightning_clap&at=tanker

[Sirrocco]

Bah.  Ugh.  I'm new at reading City of Data, and I keep getting it wrong.  Fine.  One more edit.

[Sovera]

On a purely mechanical level it'll be a big pain to level this between DA being end heavy and Rad Melee being end heavy as wel, with no way to get end back other than with Recovery Serums and inspirations.

 

It would work as you've pointed (with the edited caveats) but without wanting to steal the wind from your sails will there really be a gain in doing so?  We're the most tanky AT in the game and even with our low damage we can almost kill half a group with one BU (+Gaussian) and the first AoEs.

 

As someone who leveled a bunch of Tankers we are already impervious by level 15-20 when most (well built) Tankers can delve into a Synapse TF at +1x8 and solo it with impunity. By level 25-30 we might forget what inspirations are, and by 50 we are consolidated between IOs and incarnates.

 

You can achieve most of your purpose with a single power pick by going into Ice Melee and taking Ice Patch. Ice patch, btw, allowing to do some of the harder challenges like tackling Shephards. But in things like ITF or even fighting cimerorians outside of that TF in particular neuters both Ice Patch and the disorient stacking since they are immune to CC.

 

 

So, definitely, give it a try, and if works for your playstyle and you're having fun then keep at it, but keep in mind you might decide to run an experiment of not toggling your disorient powers and your character doing the same content without an appreciable difference. And then do it again and removing the disorient slotting to replace with damage oriented slotting and be actually faster while still impervious.

[Sirrocco]

11 hours ago, Sovera said:

On a purely mechanical level it'll be a big pain to level this between DA being end heavy and Rad Melee being end heavy as wel, with no way to get end back other than with Recovery Serums and inspirations.

 

It would work as you've pointed (with the edited caveats) but without wanting to steal the wind from your sails will there really be a gain in doing so?  We're the most tanky AT in the game and even with our low damage we can almost kill half a group with one BU (+Gaussian) and the first AoEs.

 

As someone who leveled a bunch of Tankers we are already impervious by level 15-20 when most (well built) Tankers can delve into a Synapse TF at +1x8 and solo it with impunity. By level 25-30 we might forget what inspirations are, and by 50 we are consolidated between IOs and incarnates.

 

You can achieve most of your purpose with a single power pick by going into Ice Melee and taking Ice Patch. Ice patch, btw, allowing to do some of the harder challenges like tackling Shephards. But in things like ITF or even fighting cimerorians outside of that TF in particular neuters both Ice Patch and the disorient stacking since they are immune to CC.

 

 

So, definitely, give it a try, and if works for your playstyle and you're having fun then keep at it, but keep in mind you might decide to run an experiment of not toggling your disorient powers and your character doing the same content without an appreciable difference. And then do it again and removing the disorient slotting to replace with damage oriented slotting and be actually faster while still impervious.

Surely your mastery is without parallel and your understanding beyond reproach.  Perhaps you should write your own guide.