Delerious

Geez, I must have touched a nerve huh?

I come back days later to see some butthurt people.

Too funny.

You really don't need high levels of defense as a necro/dark. It's just a nice bonus.

The key is to maximally slot your darkest night, fearsome stare, lich and Dark Servant for -tohit. Throw a single -tohit into your grave knights and zombies as well.

Necro/dark slotted for -tohit can sustain somewhere around -110-130% -tohit on a single target and enough on whole groups of enemies to give you nearly pseudo-soft capped defenses.

Keep in mind that -tohit essentially stacks with +defense. Shadow Fall can give your around 5% defense last I remember. Add in combat jumping and weave and you can be sitting at around 13% defense. Then you can grab either soul or mace patron powers. Soul has the best synergy overall with necro/dark, but if you want to tankermind then mace is a very good option as well. With just so's and mace patron scorpion shield, weave, shadow fall and combat jumping you're looking at around 30% defense to s/l the most common types in the game. Throw in manuevers and some set bonuses and you can easily hit 40% s/l defense. This is not even counting your MASSIVE -tohit debuffs. Against anything other than av's the defense is overkill and soul patron's Oppressive Gloom stun aura would be better for groups of enemies. It could be said to be better for tankerminding av's as well since with tough and shadow fall+dark embrace and your strong aoe heal you can be pretty durable.

Necro/dark goes beyond even Stupidly Op with incarnate powers.

I don't think the most of the guy's giving you pro-/rad advice have really played /cold much.

I have both an ice/rad and a fire/cold corruptor.

My fire/cold corruptor is far superior imo. Part of that is fire being better than ice in pretty much most every aspect that matters, but ice pairs extremely well with /cold too.

For soloing once you get sleet at 35 for /cold it rapidly surpasses /rad in solo power even on so's. Once you get fully io'd heatloss can be nearly perma and keep you near the end recovery cap. Trust me, heatloss used against just 1 target from range is superior to AM. If you get into melee range you'll get at least a double stack giving you massive end recovery.

Heatloss is a star power for the set both from it's end recovery and its debilitating -resist and -recharge.

Benumb neuters bosses. All their special effects are reduced by 55% if I remember right and it reduces their damage by 50% as well. It also cuts their regen by -500% just like rad's lingering rad. rad's -regen power has a shorter recharge, but /cold has superior -resist and can keep it's -regen nearly perma on a full io build. You slap both benumb and heatloss on an eb or av and watch them cry.

Sleet is THE solo power. It reduces resists by 30%, reduces defense and knocks mobs down. You drop and sleet+ice storm and melt the enemies. Sleet+aim+ice storm+blizzard=nuke rain heaven.

The shields are fantastic and can be made UBER if you take a patron/app power pool with power boost.

The +hp frostworks is fantastic on tanks and brutes.

Your arctic fog is a nice stealth power and provides some decent resists and defense.

A couple of things to keep in mind when solo'ing is that:

A. /Cold is stronger 1v1 vs an EB/AV than /rad. Look at the debuff numbers and the amount of debuffs. /Cold wins.

B. /Rad is far more difficult to solo against groups of enemies especially large groups because mobs tend to wander out of your anchor's rad infection -tohit radius. Even as ice/.

I'm not trying to imply that /rad is not a great set because it is. But, comparing /rad to /cold both when teamed and solo I have to give /cold the nod. It has no setup time for it's debuffs and transitions faster. It's end recovery power is FAR stronger and will often uber buff multiple team mates near mobs. It's shields are always very beneficial.

The only thing I would say /rad truly does better in a team setting is having an aoe heal, a weak aoe heal, but even then I consider that countered with /cold's shields. Almost everyone will have a small amount of defense anywhere from 2-5% running combat jumping, or weave, or an aura of some sort. Stacking 15% defense on top of that is very helpful.

Now that you have been more accurately informed you'll have an easier time deciding which you would rather play.

Sypher vendetta I just looked at that build of yours.

That would certainly be really tough.

It still wouldn't be tougher than /Inv against anything, but psi and here's why.

/Inv with perma dull pain will have over 1000hp more.

/Inv has better defenses and has 50% defense debuff resistance.

/Inv resists the most common damage types s/l better.

I will say that any /DA character that is build for high defense and then recharge that has endurance taken care of is going to be very tough thanks to it's solid resistances across the board and dark regen.

That said /Inv just get's so much from io's. My em/inv brute has 3003hp with the first use of dull pain and capped 3200hp every use thereafter. He has 44.1 s/l defense with noone around and 52% with 1 foe in range and soft caps all others, but psi with 6 enemies.

Combining the t4 spiritual alpha with the t4 rebirth he regens no less than 74hp per second at all times now and over 100hp for 50% of the time.

I've done comparisons between alot of secondaries and I have a handful of brutes in the 40's and higher and I can say my /Inv is the toughest with io's/incarnates.

Here's some food for thought. If you fully io and incarnate both a Invulnerability and willpower the Invulnerability will be superior in literally every aspect. /Wp will have to use it's tier 9 strength of will just to equal Inv's normal resists and still have less defense capability. The regen upperhand that /wp has over /Inv is almost completely negated with spiritual and rebirth thanks to /Inv's higher hp.

Basically /Inv is total winning on io's/incarnates. I'm not saying /DA isn't either or /wp for that matter, but imho /inv reaches the highest performance level out of all other than granite.

Elec fully io'd vs Inv fully io'd Inv still wins.

I have both.

While the /elec has better all around resists and ignores end drain my /Inv resists the most common damage type better, pretty much never gets hit by end drain powers in the first place and has ALOT more hp besides having alot better defense. That and having 50% defense debuff resist is quite significant. Take an /elec brute into an ITF and watch cascading defense failure vs a well built Inv receiving nary a scratch.

I've heard it said and I agree that a fully io'd and incarnated /Inv is the toughest build after granite.

I've built maxed out /dark armor and /willpower builds in mid's and they still fall short of my /Inv brute.

Back when IO's first came out I would have said my so'd /elec brute was my toughest and most versatile, but now it's my /Inv and it's no contest.

Dark armor is another set that goes from middling to uber with enough cash. Get soft capped or close to s/l/e, get your endurance solidly squared away and if they can't kill you in the 8-12 seconds before dark regen recharges you ain't gonna die.

Honestly even with a 30 minute recharge burnout sounds lame to me.

The power that has me most interested is the leaping aoe attack.

You might want to consider fire/cold.

Some pro's of this combo:

1. Kick's *** for aoe. Sleet+fireball+rain of fire is winning. Sleet being superior in terms of mitigation vs tar patch thanks to the knockdown.(tar patch is winning to, have necro/dark mm)

2. It's super team friendly. Defense buffs, a hefty +hp buff and some resistance and defense from your aura.

3. Huge endurance refill and recovery for you and anyone standing next to the enemy you cast heatloss on.

4. Basically all your debuffs are clicks. They don't come off if you're mezzed.

5. Has the nastiest overall combination of debuffs against a single target out of all corruptor secondaries.

6. It's WINNING.

I've just recently gotten my fire/cold to 50 and fully io'd. I've solo'd 4 av's so far with it np. Once I have a lore pet(you can cast your defense buffs and +hp on your pets, epic winning) and the reactive fire dot proc it's gonna be serious pwnage.

/Dark's -tohit by itself "MAYBE" isn't enough against AV's, but /dark paired with necro is -tohit insanity. I have checked the in-game stats and I can keep perma -130% tohit on 1 target, -50% damage, -600% regen, -50% resist.

I can say with in-game experience that I can floor most av's tohit chance. Add in all 4 of the unique pet defense/resist io's, shadow fall and maneuvers and my zombies have around 18% defense to all last I checked on top of -130% tohit.

If you play necro/dark as a tankermind against av's it's pretty insane. With proper use of howling twilight and fearsome stare it's pretty stupid what kinds of scenario's a necro/dark can handle.

Basically with necro/dark and some built in defenses as long as you make first contact with the enemy you might as well have soft capped defense along the lines of a bots/traps. This includes av's.

/Poison has some very nasty debuffs, but I would take a well built and played necro/dark over literally any possible primary with /poison. In fact, I would go as far as to say necro/dark is stronger than any X/poison combo one can make in almost any scenario and very possibly in the top 2-3 strongest possible mm combo's.

I've seen what my necro/dark at 41 can do already. I can literally solo Deathsurge already except he runs around so much that it's hard to keep maximum -resist and -regen on him. His aoe attack hits maybe 1 out of 10x and doesn't 1 shot even the tier 1 zombies with -50% damage on him.

I originally made my necro/dark after pvping against a skilled necro/dark on my ss/ela brute. I still remember(and this was about 3 years ago, severe altitus is why my mm isn't 50 yet) how even with rage's 32% tohit, 2 acc so's in attacks and popping an uncanny insight and small insight I could not hit him and was summarily execute'd repeatedly. I never could beat him.

Zombies by themselves aren't the greatest, but their synergy with /dark is practically unrivaled by any pairing save bots/traps. I cannot comment on their performance with any other secondary besides /dark and I can see how people would think they weren't that hot with certain secondaries. Necro/dark is in fact not squishy. Every zombie can self heal itself for around 15% if I remember right on top of your twilight grasp AND your dark servant's twilight grasp. I routinely see +300hp heal from my twilight grasp immediately followed by my dark servants for another 275 or so and he fires his off about once every 10 seconds.

Also consider that while ninja's have higher dps they are actually squishier than necro's having lesser resistances and no self heal. Also consider that necro's do negative, toxic, smashing and lethal damage and all in steady amounts.

Going off what I have seen and heard bots/traps is the king. High defenses, basic mez protection, ranged damage, UBER -regen and decent debuffs all around.

I think a well built necro/dark is pretty close though. My lvl 41 is fully io'd and has already solo'd 10 different av's. Almost all of those on the first try.

With patron powers, and t4 incarnates it's gonna be stupid nasty.

Another thing to consider is /dark can stack -50% damage on a target. Add in the -damage proc from interface to your pets and you can easily stack -70% damage. That's huge. Or go for reactive and do bookoo more damage.

Blasters are great at one thing and that is damage.

I have several lvl 50's of various classes and have one of most every class at least in the low 30's and I can tell you that none of them are as damaging as my blaster.

That said I do feel blasters are pretty lacking for solo play even with epic shields.

As a comparison recently I leveled my old fire/em blaster sitting in the 20's to 50 and ran the ourorobos initiate missions and the incarnate alpha unlock missions. I died 3x on my fully io'd blaster when dealing with the hero, Holtz and the room packed with rikti.

A couple weeks before I had gotten my fire/cold corruptor to 50 and ran him through all the same missions and he never died once. Coming into the room full of rikti with the hero and Holtz he mopped up thanks to his crippling debuffs, sleet and oppressive gloom. And I had him set to +0/6 vs +0/1 on the blaster.

I generally feel way more usefull and have a much more enjoyable time solo'ing my corruptor, but even though he does excellent damage he doesn't even come close to my blaster unless he's sitting on one target and has that target fully debuffed and even then I'm pretty sure the blaster still does more damage.

A good comparison was when I checked fireball's damage on my corruptor at 107 damage with t3 musculature vs the blasters at 165 damage with t2 musculature. That's a big difference and a HUGE difference with aim+bu in the blaster's favor.

So when you need more damage you can never go wrong with a blaster imo.

My full build is only 1.6% off incarnate soft cap to s/l and energy is well over. Ranged is 41% to help with psi.

For this build I felt that uber defenses were more beneficial than uber recharge. Having over soft capped defenses helps during incarnate content especially during the labs and warehouse of lambda where many times your buffs wear off. Also during the ITF it is very noticable having above soft capped with all the -def attacks.

As you said there are clearly different design choices, but I don't sacrifice any slots as you mention simply because everything I wanted slotted is slotted. All my attacks are slotted fine and defenses obviously are more than fine.

Also consider the t4 rebirth. With the new changes this build most likely with the new +def aspect will be incarnate soft capped to all and have t4 rebirth+ energize. Also the passives are being increased a certain amount that hasn't been disclosed yet.

I personally feel having maximum defense, adequate hp and 2 heals with a little resistance is the best way to build an /ea, but everyone has differing opinions.

I made that build on the fly in about 5 minutes so it was bound to be less than perfect.

That said on reviewing the build I agree tentacles is lame and gloom would be better overall and even for the specific defensive bonus's I was going for.

Darkest night imho is pointless with the build I posted considering even without the glad 3% defense io the build has no less than 52% defense to all types except psi, and 55% s/l and a whopping 64% energy defense. I took one slot out of hasten and popped it in gloom and slotted another set of thunderstrike's. I can see using darkest night for the -damage mainly, but even then it would only be used when av soloing while dark obliteration would be used constantly with footstomp. I will admit that stacking darkest night+the -damage interface would be a very nice combo for av soloing since /ea resists are paltry.

I have a lvl 40 SS/EA I'm about to dust off and get incarnate and io'd soon.

/EA is gonna be REALLY nice after the coming changes.

This is a pretty solid build. It certainly isn't cheap and the Gladiator 3% defense IO is completely optional. This is a complete build with accolades and t4 incarnates, but this shows you what a well built /EA can achieve numbers wise.

Possibly a beam/dark blaster for somethin oddball and since they're both new, maybe go dark/em or dark/dark though.

titan/inv brute, already have an em/inv, won't be surprised if he's superior remade, might change my mind and go titan/regen

?/time mm.

Feck I dunno. More and more choices and combo's coming along.

I'd say mind is a great set for a first time dom.

The single target hold animates fast. The single target sleep is super long. The single target confuse is useful all the way to and at 50.

And your controls just keep getting stronger as you level up. It's an incredibly safe primary that pairs well with any secondary imo.

Insulting me wasn't necessary. Also you should be careful assuming anything.

I played a rad/cold corruptor. Not once have I ever seen another rad/cold corruptor in game.

You were saying?

I rolled an elec/em guy quite awhile ago that sapped pretty well with power boost and end mod slotting.

After awhile I came to the conclusion that:

A. Electric blast sucks, and

B. Sapping was pointless when I could trow fire on my fire/em and kill them faster.

With io's and incarnates now you can make a solo blaster pretty survivable. Nobody really saps because in practice it's not as great as theory.

If you're gonna go corruptor I would go fire/kin for the BOOM factor. Build his defenses to s/l and steam roll hard.

I think the set is already solid fully io'd. Without IO's it's middle of the road.

With these changes imo it's likely to become the premiere defense set.

At soft capped defenses hits hardly come through and when they do you'll have energize's heal+regen. Stack t4 rebirth and you are going to be very solid. Add spiritual alpha into the mix for bigger heals and regen and it's just gravy.

If the +recharge per foe hit is decent and the +defense is this set is gonna go from decent when IO'd to really nice.

Mark my words.

/ELA is the secondary for tanking rikti with tough.

It's not even close to a debate. My ss/ela was farming +2-3/8 rikti missions on SO's.

While I don't like /ela nearly as much as I used to with io's allowing many armor sets to surpass it I feel that /ela is tailor made practically for rikti and malta.

I think an IO'd and Incarnated ss/inv brute would be about the best all around brute you could roll. It won't have the highest damage since it only has 1 solid aoe and no damage aura, but for most content you'll basically be unkillable and you can take the spiritual alpha and ageless destiny to boost your recharge on footstomp. Toss in either mu or soul mastery and you are good to go.

What it loses in damage it gains in survivability. Properly built with the right tools you'll be smashing non-stop.

That said an ss/fire built for higher defenses and recharge will be very capable as well for most content and do it faster.

I would probably recommend claw/fire. My friend has one that he is retardedly fast at pl'ing on and I have run regular missions set to +2/8 with him and he absolutely steam rolls whatever the enemy may be.

That said he is IO'd out the wazoo and fully t4 incarnated. A /fire on SO's by itself isn't even close to what he can do.

I have a 50 ss/ela and 50 dm/fire among others and I feel that /fire has more to offer when fully io'd with incarnates included.

For solo against AV's I would take a pimped out claws/fire because you can get it at or close to s/l soft capped defense and you will have the dps to whittle them down. That and healing flames with spiritual alpha is really nice and heals fast.

I think claws/ela would be a strong offensive build with less weaknesses than /fire especially if you build for s/l defense on the /ela and take the cardiac to boost your already solid all around defenses. I just feel you get more return on investment with /fire because if you're going uber sturdy than you're better off rolling an /Inv, /Wp or even /Da rather than /ela when io's are in the mix.

I'm gonna have to say make a blaster as well.

If you want to make things go boom fast that is the AT to roll.

For a couple billion and some trial grinding you could make a build that has s/l defense soft cap and can alternate aim+build up each group you run into plus have mez protection or zero end worries. You will kill stuff retardedly fast with fire ball doing over 450 damage with reactive and build up and around 350ish with aim.

Run up to a group trow a fireball and then hop in and promptly 1 shot whoever is left standing and move onto the next group.

A fire/cold corruptor or fire/storm will do some sick aoe damage once they get their freezing rain/sleet, but neither will trow fire balls like a blaster nor have the spike damage capability of a blaster. Pyronic judgement+Aim+bu+fireball+inferno will pretty much drop any group in the game and do it in seconds.

That's big, fast AoE.

I'd have to toss my vote in for necro/dark mastermind.

You get the dark secondary and zombies. Who doesn't love zombies?

Besides enjoying the perks of the dark secondary this combination is stupidly powerful even on SO's.

With this combo you can effectively pretty much floor an AV or GM's tohit.

Invulnerability with IO's is a solid contender for strongest secondary for all melee characters after granite armor. At this point in time the gap between an IO'd /inv and a granite is pretty small for 99% of content in the game. Only the absolute most insanely demanding challenges would require a granite over an Inv and this is without buffs. With buffs Inv is right there.

My IO'd /inv brute has out tanked IO'd Fire/, WP/ tanks so far where I was in a solid team running an SF and could compare survivability. I have literally not been in a situation for a while now that I could not tank whatever any tanker can tank. This wouldn't be the case on SO's, but IO's and incarnates have changed the game completely.

I've also gone head to head with an uber ss/dark brute(+10 billion build) on my 5.5 billion Inv build and easily out survived him having superior defenses, defense debuff resist and higher hp.

Invulnerability is stupid awesome with IO's. I remember when IO's first came onto the scene and my SO's only brute felt a little weak. I remember feeling like my ss/ea and ss/ela brutes were tougher. Now it's not even a comparison. League's apart in performance.

Not to brag, but a couple nights ago I was thinking of the scrapper challenge which I had never done and decided to try it out. I could literally stand next to a pylon with a full group of lvl 54 rikti and never use a single insp.....indefinitely.

Not sure how that rates nowadays, but without using incarnates or insp I'd call that pretty damn good.

So Inv sucks?