dark armor questions

[FullEclipse]

So I rolled a sentinel, ice/dark armor.  I was super excited to get cloak of fear and oppressive gloom, but I am greatly disappointed in them.  They never seem to hit more than two enemies, low lvl minions usually, is there a way to get them to hit at least lieutenants  most of the time.  Should I have taken both powers or just focus on one?  Are they about the same in end game or is one better than the other? How do i need to slot them to make them the most effective they can be?

[Teirusu]

The unfortunate answer is that neither power can fear nor stun lieutenants on their own.  Each power only places a Mag 2 non-stacking control on mobs and lieutenants generally require Mag 3 controls on them.  So, by design, they only work on minions or below.  That being said, there may be some groups of enemies that are weak to either fear or stuns in which they will work on LTs, but that's few and far between.

 

This is kinda bad for Sentinels since they can typically get rid of minions in short order with their fast recharging T9 nukes.  Still, they can save your bacon if you're up against a horde of mobs.  Cloak of Fear is run by END like most typical toggles although it costs as much END/s as a damage toggle.  Oppressive Gloom basically costs nothing for END but, instead, uses HP to power it.  I would say the decision between which to pick and use depends highly on your build and situation and play-style.  If you don't have END problems too much then I'd say Cloak of Fear as you can just toggle it on and not worry about it too much, but it's not quite as effective as Oppressive Gloom.

[oldskool]

Agreed. No reason to run both on any character.  They both disable enemies but do it differently.  

If you're interested, Psychic Shockwave in Psi Mastery can potentially disorient too (aka Stun) in a point-blank area.  Darkness Mastery or Soul Mastery both have attacks with to hit debuffs as well as Darkest Night.  So you could get some synergy out of the Epics/Patrons.  The slows from Ice will keep anything stunned close by for a bit so there is that. 

[Shoulung]

I use cloak of fear on my brute more for the to hit debuff than the fear.

[Xyzor]

DA is so toggle-heavy, do people use these situationally, or run them all the time? Are they slottable as proc monsters at all?

[oldskool]

4 minutes ago, Xyzor said:

DA is so toggle-heavy, do people use these situationally, or run them all the time? Are they slottable as proc monsters at all?

I have no issues running multiple toggles on Dark Armor, but I do dump influence into it to pull it off.  That's getting Performance Shifter in Stamina ASAP as well as trying to get as much recharge as possible to run Obscure Sustenance within its 20% endurance window (about every 20 seconds or less if possible). 

The standard toggles in the set really aren't that bad.  It is just Cloak of Fear that is expensive.  CoF can take a few procs but the base accuracy is very poor (60%).  So you'll need to get creative for CoF to actually hit things. 

I did not bother with CoF on my Water/Dark/Psi build.  I focused on Oppressive Gloom and stuns.  Geyser and Psychic Shockwave can stack magnitude with Oppressive Gloom which I find valuable.  Cloak of Fear doesn't really have any synergy with Water Blast (no to hit debuff, no fear) and I didn't want to chase methods to add synergy (Diamagnetic Incarnate/Dark or Soul Mastery). 

Edited September 10, 2019 by oldskool

[City_of_Jedi]

I noticed that Dark Mastery/Darkest Night and Soul Mastery/Darkest Night have radically different numbers.  Is this by design?

[oldskool]

7 hours ago, City_of_Jedi said:

I noticed that Dark Mastery/Darkest Night and Soul Mastery/Darkest Night have radically different numbers.  Is this by design?

Yes.