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:

---

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

 

---

 

 

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

[MindOverMatter]

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

---

Dark Armor

 

 Soul Transfer

• Can now be used while alive.
• Using this power while alive will cost endurance.
• This power now grants a minor MaxHP buff per foe hit, as well as Mez Protection for 30 seconds. 
• While conscious, the power will apply mag 3 stun on all affected enemies.
• This power will not inflict damage nor heal the caster if used while conscious.
• Now accepts accuracy enhancements (only useful for alive usage).
• Fixed erroneous enhancement issues.
• Fixed a bug where the power would lockout after used.

 

 

Please enable this power to accept Accurate Heal Enhancement Sets to support the Alive/Conscious use of this power. It currently accepts Heal Sets and the red highlight reflects an intentional desire to require some accuracy slotting. I suspect this was just an oversight.

Edited Sunday at 07:10 AM by MindOverMatter

[Ryko Nailo]

Build 4 Change Feedback:
 

Soul Transfer: I didn't think about testing this power while alive and not near enemies, so I do like the change to basically 'quick reset' the power in those circumstances. However I think, changing from Max HP to Absorb is actually worse. Dark Armor pairs well with +Max HP as Dark Regen can effectively heal better and Obscure Sustenance's Regen also gets increase. I understand why on many sets Max HP can be swapped with Absorb but Dark Armor has no way of getting +Max HP internally and would pair much better with the other powers in the set. So I feel like the Absorb change here is actually a big downgrade.

I continue to believe that with these buffs only lasting 30 seconds on a 5 minute recharge that it's simply not even worth using. The while dead effects are far more impactful and not having that available at a crucial moment would be devastating. I know the point is to try and avoid death and thus not need to use Soul Transfer while dead but it's simply too big of a reset button to pass up should the worst case happen. If the buff duration was significantly long then maybe the risk / reward balance would feel better but right now it feels like the entire while alive portion is just a win more button, one that has almost no impact at that since Max HP or Absorb doesn't really help you win more, As is I just cannot see a situation where I would like to use it when alive not even if I am quite literally the last one standing, and no one else can revive, it'd still be better to simply die and use the massive stun to reset the encounter as much as possible, finish the helpless foes, or even to run depending.

 

Obscure Sustenance: I was hoping for maybe a doubling of HP healed, this is a massive boost. So much so I don't think it even needs Recovery enhancement slotting to be viable. Obscure Sustenance now can compete with Dark Regen, this offers more steady healing over time while Dark Regen is better against burst. Both power's benefit from being slotted up and do a good job of their roles. I don't think you need to tweak anything else, although I'm sure some people would like the Recovery enhancements.

----

Unresolved:

Cloak of Fear: I still think the KB protection and -KB strength should be moved to Cloak of Shadows but that's more just because I worry Cloak of Fear might be TOO important now, it's not a major issue.

 

EDIT: The more I think on it, the more I realize moving the kb effects to Cloak of Shadows wouldn't work well, it'd cause various other issues, if it was just KB protection it'd be fine but its not. And putting it on other powers wouldn't help the issue either as they already do plenty too, I think leaving this power as is is fine.

 

Oppressive Gloom: I still would like some reason to want to enhance this power, though I still have no idea what that could be. Again not a major issue.

 

----

Overall: 9/10

 

As is I think these changes could go live and be fine, having resolved most issues with Dark Armor, and leaves only a few minor issues. The set doesn't feel overpowered or under powered and does feel unique. I can't find any odd bugs or the like either. (Although I haven't tested Stalker / Sentinel much)

Edited Wednesday at 04:08 AM by Ryko Nailo

[tidge]

On 5/28/2025 at 7:05 PM, Warshades said:

Not sure how I feel about the changes to CoF. Not really an issue for melee ATs, but anyone playing a Sentinel at range won't get that KB protection it sounds like? I get why they gave the kb protection to this power as it was notoriously skipped by pretty much everyone and it's now a reason to run it, but it won't benefit Sentinels much unless you play yours in melee (which is now at least doable since they'll have access to Dark Regen). At minimum, the -dmg debuff is a nice change and it's an easy replacement for Acrobatics which I tend to use on most DA builds anyway.

 

I'm not testing in Beta. I've got one Scrapper that has Cloak of Fear for theme, and a Tanker that has it as an extra enemy-affecting aura effect for teams. I've tended to delay the choice of Cloak of Fear until later levels... for all the reasons everyone knows and a few reasons that most people can figure out after playing with it. I generally have it 2-slotted, one 53 HO Accurracy/Mezz and one boosted 50+5 Acc/Endurance Reduction. I don't think I'm going to start recommending this power based on the proposed i28p2 changes, even if it is an improvement

 

Each of my Dark Armor characters ends up with+14 KB (passive) protection from set bonuses that scale down below level 10 (PVP sets, etc.), and I see no reason to (early-build) swap into a toggle that relies on enemies in PBAoE to get a little bit of KB protection from each enemy. This effect will be appreciated when facing the FREEM-tossing Council, because I'm typically facing at least 6 of those guys. The only thing in my current builds that looks like a "compromise" to achieve the +14 KB is using a Karma where otherwise I might use a LotG global recharge... so I suppose that other players that want to make different choices (using three pieces of Gladiator's Armor and Fury of the Gladiator in Dark armor is a sort of no-brainer for me) might make use of the toggle.

 

The big change I'm facing is "how to fit in Soul Transfer"?

[macskull]

8 hours ago, tidge said:

 

I'm not testing in Beta. I've got one Scrapper that has Cloak of Fear for theme, and a Tanker that has it as an extra enemy-affecting aura effect for teams. I've tended to delay the choice of Cloak of Fear until later levels... for all the reasons everyone knows and a few reasons that most people can figure out after playing with it. I generally have it 2-slotted, one 53 HO Accurracy/Mezz and one boosted 50+5 Acc/Endurance Reduction. I don't think I'm going to start recommending this power based on the proposed i28p2 changes, even if it is an improvement

 

Each of my Dark Armor characters ends up with+14 KB (passive) protection from set bonuses that scale down below level 10 (PVP sets, etc.), and I see no reason to (early-build) swap into a toggle that relies on enemies in PBAoE to get a little bit of KB protection from each enemy. This effect will be appreciated when facing the FREEM-tossing Council, because I'm typically facing at least 6 of those guys. The only thing in my current builds that looks like a "compromise" to achieve the +14 KB is using a Karma where otherwise I might use a LotG global recharge... so I suppose that other players that want to make different choices (using three pieces of Gladiator's Armor and Fury of the Gladiator in Dark armor is a sort of no-brainer for me) might make use of the toggle.

 

The big change I'm facing is "how to fit in Soul Transfer"?

One nice thing about the CoF change is that enhancements affect magnitude and not duration, so if it's enhanced you can actually affect bosses with it now. It's not as strong as it was during some of the earlier beta builds but it's still pretty good. It does all do -str(knock) which makes your existing knockback protection go further in addition to doing -dmg, all in a larger radius than before. CoF was an obvious, no-brainer skip before these changes but skipping it now would be a mistake IMO. At the very least I'd recommend most people swap out Oppressive Gloom for Cloak of Fear.

[Monos King]

Current Dark Sustenance, in all of its +recovery, recharge time, heal, and +regen is simply phenomenal. It single handedly makes Dark Armor non-trash in PvP. I'll leave the PvE feedback to my friends Sai and Equinox, but I highly vote in favor of maintaining Sustenance at this type of performance. It adds Dark Armor to the viable armor list on it's own.

 

Soul Transfer being absorb is definitely a nerf in PvE, but it seems better in PvP. I am in favor of all of the new/modified AoE based sustains being given a one target top heavy approach where a greater portion of the buff is awarded to the first target and it evens out to the same as in PvE as the subsequent targets award less. But this one is really good. 

[arcane]

If you want to make CoF feel mandatory, I have no problem with that.

 

But the situational KB protection dependent on how many foes are in range really doesn’t interest me. I’m still going to invest in KB protection IO’s for singular hard targets. 
 

So, to the extent the set could have something else if this situational KB protection were just deleted, I’d be in favor of that. Either a singular non-stacking normal amount of KB protection in CoF or another power or something else entirely. This feature as is is sort of useless considering the highest mag KB powers you will ever come up against are from solo AV’s and GM’s.

Edited Wednesday at 10:45 PM by arcane

[Captain Powerhouse]

1 hour ago, arcane said:

If you want to make CoF feel mandatory, I have no problem with that.

 

But the situational KB protection dependent on how many foes are in range really doesn’t interest me. I’m still going to invest in KB protection IO’s for singular hard targets. 
 

So, to the extent the set could have something else if this situational KB protection were just deleted, I’d be in favor of that. Either a singular non-stacking normal amount of KB protection in CoF or another power or something else entirely. This feature as is is sort of useless considering the highest mag KB powers you will ever come up against are from solo AV’s and GM’s.

Hello @arcane (damn early post....)

 

Anyways... 

 

The way CoF stacking works, you don't need to be surrounded to get the maximum bonus. Being surrounded speeds up how fast  you stack maximum KB protection, but a single foe in melee range will continuously build up your protection.

[Wavicle]

Similar to Memento Mori, if Soul Transfer will have a 300 second cooldown regardless of mobs, then its effects shouldn't scale down quite so much in smaller encounters.

[Captain Powerhouse]

7 hours ago, Wavicle said:

if Soul Transfer will have a 300 second cooldown regardless of mobs, then its effects shouldn't scale down quite so much in smaller encounters.

 

Half the total potential Absorb buff from Soul Transfer comes from the first target. 

[arcane]

18 hours ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

Hello @arcane (damn early post....)

 

Anyways... 

 

The way CoF stacking works, you don't need to be surrounded to get the maximum bonus. Being surrounded speeds up how fast  you stack maximum KB protection, but a single foe in melee range will continuously build up your protection.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. That’s better but I think my point stands. “The AV can only knock me on my ass for the first half of the fight” doesn’t really make me feel like I can forego Blessing of the Zephyr procs. And if I don’t feel confident doing that, the buff really is meaningless to me.

Assuming there’s a zero sum approach to balance where this buff has some value in the equation that keeps the set from getting a different kind of buff, I would most likely prefer a different kind of buff. Or just a reliable version of KB protection even if the overall mag is lower.

Edited 12 hours ago by arcane

[Midnight Mystique]

The entire KB 'hole' thing never made sense to me. I never felt it really balanced out ANYTHING in the armors that didn't have it and always felt the original developers (way back in the single digit issues) idea of balance was the same as 1st and 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons - i.e., whatever sounded cool at the moment. (Don't get me started about druids and metal armor). 

 

Please, just fix the fracking KB hole and do it in a simple way, say just adding 3-4 points of KB res to Obsidian Shield where status protection is supposed to go. This isn't going to overpower DA when compared to armors that have real KB defense - the big deal there is the 10000% kb resistance that reduces pretty much all incoming KB to less than a point before it even hits your KB protection.  3-4 points would let you sail through average content and let the player add in more through IO's if they need it for tougher content.  No need to use some weird stacking that just confuses us poor players. 

 

Really, you need to do this to fire armor as well, but thats another issue. 

[BrandX]

13 minutes ago, Midnight Mystique said:

The entire KB 'hole' thing never made sense to me. I never felt it really balanced out ANYTHING in the armors that didn't have it and always felt the original developers (way back in the single digit issues) idea of balance was the same as 1st and 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons - i.e., whatever sounded cool at the moment. (Don't get me started about druids and metal armor). 

 

Please, just fix the fracking KB hole and do it in a simple way, say just adding 3-4 points of KB res to Obsidian Shield where status protection is supposed to go. This isn't going to overpower DA when compared to armors that have real KB defense - the big deal there is the 10000% kb resistance that reduces pretty much all incoming KB to less than a point before it even hits your KB protection.  3-4 points would let you sail through average content and let the player add in more through IO's if they need it for tougher content.  No need to use some weird stacking that just confuses us poor players. 

 

Really, you need to do this to fire armor as well, but thats another issue. 

 

I like how Dark Armor has it.  Have to say, I get the annoyance of KB.  However, players complaints on it on some armors are just bad imo.  For instance, a defense based set like Ninjitsu should be fine without it.  Don't get hit...don't get knocked back.  Knockback protection.  Yet, people will complain because they got KB once.

 

Also, while I haven't done teaming, doesn't the power give -KB strength to the enemies, so it becomes more of a team support power?

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, BrandX said:

Also, while I haven't done teaming, doesn't the power give -KB strength to the enemies, so it becomes more of a team support power?

Ding! We have a winner!