Focused Feedback: Powerset - Dark Armor

[Awilix]

Feedback: I didn't expect the turn-into-a-click suggestion to be the first route, but playing with Obscure Sustenance after the update I find that it's both more enjoyable and remains just as thematic. Mystical Nether Power taken from the netherworld instead of straight from a living body near you. And in an armor set with no other clickies (making it unlikely for me to have hasten) I can just turn it on auto-click and have a nice buff going on.

Bug?: But! While this also solved the lack of accurate healing IO sets in a roundabout way, the power still does not take Endurance Modification IO sets. Soul transfer in the very same set allows endurance modification despite the usage being more unlikely and the slotting less useful.

Suggestion: Additionally, it'd feel even nicer to use if the 'movement lock' that freezes you in place while you use it was removed, seeing as it is now a pure armor clicky power and no longer an attack. Light heals from armor sets rarely root you in place.

Suggestion: It'd also be nice if the animation time was cut in half as well. It's a little annoying to use -during- combat; a full two second pause for an a fully slotted 8%ish heal is rough. And the long-term benefits of the power don't seem their balance is too concerned with the animation time.

[Wavicle]

If Obscure Sustenance no longer interacts with enemies then it should definitely not root.

[Crimsanotic]

Trying to reinvent the wheel by adding a bizarre implementation for KB protection is unnecessary and unneeded. I would rather standard KB protection just be added to obsidian shield and for cloak of fear to be better, yeah. Even making the magnitude of the fear higher (or at least a chance for it to) would be nice.

[Ryko Nailo]

Bug Report: Cloak of Fear, enhanced with Fear enhancements is still showing it as buffing duration. With testing I can confirm that it is CORRECTLY buffing Magnitude as per changes, although the enhancement changes don't take effect until you detoggle / rezone.

Feedback so far:

Just prefacing this by saying I'm not reading other's feedback or will be replying to defend my feedback. This is simply to keep my feedback as untainted as possible though I will admit I am also an ancient Dark Armor player, one who hates the current meta of only having a few power picks, spamming damage procs, capping your defense, and spamming recharge bonus. I also dislike a lot of end game because it's incarnate nuke / buff spam, so I'll admit my feedback will be biased as I believe every power should be worth using and worth investing into and do not factor in the above into my decisions on what makes a power fit those criteria.

 

Shadow Dweller: I didn't test this too much and I don't play Dark Armor Stalker enough to say I qualify enough for feedback, so this just gets a "Neat" from me.

Tenebrous Regeneration: I don't actually play Sentinels beyond my one token character and they aren't Dark Armor so again, no feedback.

 

Soul Transfer: My most used power during the early years of CoX, that said while there is alot of changes to try and make this useable while alive, I don't think it does enough. I think at minimum the duration of the Max HP needs to be 3-4x longer, the stun is nice for stacking with Oppressive Gloom but not nice enough to risk trading away by far one of the best momentum shift powers in the game and frankly best revive IMO.

 

Soul Transfer's massive magnitude and duration stun with it's large aoe basically means that if you go down, you can reset the fight single handedly so long as you died in a good spot. You will have bought enough time to not only get yourself up and be able to retoggle all your abilities but, since it stuns the enemy, it also buys your team time to rez, rebuff, and retoggle as well. Used well Soul Transfer can take what could be a team wipe and give your whole team a redo. Howling Twilight is the only power in the game that can contest with the momentum shift IMO. So I can understand why you want to give Soul Transfer something to use while alive, and I do absolutely love the idea you came up for with the new Regen revive where it is both buff and revive in one. I think the foundation of what you have here COULD do the trick, It's just that as is I don't think it's risk vs reward is quite there. Dark Armor is a set that wants Max HP, it pairs amazing with Dark Regen, the stun also pairs well with Oppressive Gloom. So it's thematically right, it's why I think it just needs the Max HP portion to last longer, if it could get closer to 50% uptime with enhancements, I think it'd much better fit the balance. You would mix having more hp to survive better with a short stun burst to give enough of a reprieve that it could very well be worth the risk of trading in your reset button, of course if your wrong or timing is off then it very well might mean things start to fall apart and that's the risk.

Obscure Sustenance: Needs the ability to enhance Endurance Modification, would also personally like to see maybe 15 seconds shaved off the long regen buff and the recharge lowered the same OR the actual heal portion increased (maybe doubled).

Personally I can understand why people might want something that isn't Dark Regen, needing someone to heal off of and the heavy investment it needs can be offputting. To me whose lived with it for years I honestly can't think of many situations where I want Obscure Sustenance over it. The amount this heals even factoring in building around the regen, just doesn't feel worth it to me. The long duration regen buff is nice bonus but it counters the actual healing portion. Dark Armor is about layering multiple levels of mitigation to survive so it's main weakness is when something spikes through those layers or otherwise ignores it. In those moments Dark Regen has the risk / reward of being a full restore of hp at the cost of endurance and recharge, meaning you need to risk letting yourself get low before using. I feel the best 'counter pick' to this would be a power that doesn't have that risk, to that end the regen buff fits, its consistent and constant, What Obscure Sustenance lacks, is the 'burst', its too long of a recharge to be treated as a minor heal, and too minor of a heal to be treated as a more moderate one. Essentially if something can overcome your layers, you are toast with it if you can't change the situation in your one minor heal attempt. So that leave's the other aspect to try and 'make up' for that short coming, namely the Endurance Recovery. The endurance recovery to me seems the real reason you'd take this power but you can't even enhance it which sorta weakens that sales point. Further, thanks to Cloak of Fear changes, the end burden on Dark Armor isn't as bad so the benefit of Obscure Sustenance feels... lost over your characters lifetime. It really should be enhanceable to compete as more of a buff power. Besides that gives you more of a reason to want to invest slots into it and that's never a bad thing.

Cloak of Fear: I think the changes that have been done to this power are fantastic, it solved most of the core issues I had with it, my only nit pick would be to move the KB protection to Cloak of Shadows or another power as I don't want Cloak of Fear to be doing too much.

To me this has always been the thematic star of Dark Armor and it's long been trash (still used it though), the accuracy, tick rate and endurance issues made it very bad especially with fear being IMO now worse then Sleep with it's recent changes, leaving it's main use in the past to basically be a minor tohit debuff as Oppressive Gloom just did crowd control better in every aspect. Making the -tohit auto hit as well as lowering the end costs, and increasing the accuracy of the fear solved the big issues with the power, however making it so Fear Magnitude gets buffed by enhancements was a genius move, it actually rewards heavy investment as you can now fear LT class mobs with it, or you can still go the more traditional -tohit build too now that it autohits. The fact it weakens kb attacks and lowers damage is also nice, however I do feel that as is though it's a bit too much in one power and to maintain some balance it might be worth shifting the kb debuff and protection to Cloak of Darkness, that power needs a bit more IMO and to me it makes more sense thematically that turning into a cloud would make you harder to be knocked back and would be obscuring enough to make it harder to land a solid blow in general too.

Oppressive Gloom: This hasn't been changed but since I'm giving Dark Armor feedback I figured I'd mention it. Frankly this power is too good for the wrong reasons. It locks down all the minions for basically nothing more then a power pick. It needs no slots, costs nothing to maintain as the 'health loss' is so minor its negligible, and so it's basically an autopick. I do feel like the Cloak of Fear changes help tip the balance between these two. Before it wasn't a contest, Cloak of Fear simply couldn't even pull its weight with full investment. Now however, Oppressive Gloom offers cheap reliable hard mez, while Cloak of Fear offers debuffs and softmez. Even when using both, they compliment each other quite well now. However Cloak of Fear has costs, and investments required to make the most use of it, Oppressive Gloom does not, simply slap in an accuracy enhancement in the base slot and you are good. I want to see a good reason to want to invest into this power, and I want to see it being more of a choice to take.

Sadly I am not sure how, even if you make it so Stun Enhancements boost Magnitude instead of duration like you did with Cloak of Fear, I worry that might be too powerful having the ability to hard lock down minions and LTs just by existing and it would also would step too hard on Cloak of Fear's toes. I almost feel like some sort of effect should be added to Gloom, one that might make it worth possibly paying a higher health loss to do so and also one that might be worth investing slots to boost. I couldn't tell you what though, a slow or immobilize or even a taunt would all help Dark Armor as a set but I feel like it might also be too much when you consider the whole of the set, well okay the taunt might help but that's hardly worth investing into. There are other effects that could be added but they aren't exactly "enhanceable" so sort of defeat the point.
 

[csr]

On 5/26/2025 at 4:57 AM, The Curator said:

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Dark Armor

 

 Obscure Sustenance

• This power is now available to Brutes, Scrappers, Stalkers and Tankers as a mutually exclusive option from Dark Regeneration.
• Fixed a bug where Soul Nier theme would trigger the incorrect animation
• This power is now a click, no longer requires foes in range.
• No longer accepts damage or accuracy enhancements or sets

 

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For clarity it should probably be noted that the changes to Obscure Sustenance apply to Sentinels as well.