GavinRuneblade

Twice on my BS/Regen I've gotten to this mission to find 6 correct dopplegangers, 1 random person with two dopplegangers, and none for me.

My main has actually not yet fought herself on this mission, and is currently a villain so can't keep trying.

sapping by itself is not enough. You need to combine it with defenses and some other controls.

Enemies seem to be able to attack with very low endurance. I have seen a few posts claim that they don't need the full cost of a power, just 1 point and they can use anything. I dunno if I believe that, but I do know that on my sappers, I keep them flatlined and they still get of some attacks anyway.

Also, as stated, high rank enemies have a huge pool to start. In some cases over 800 points of endurance to blow through. And sapping is an all or nothing protection. If they have enough to attack, you get zero protection from it. So you always eat the full alpha, and often beta and gamma before you have them at zero. At that point the attacks slow but don't stop.

Now, combined with a bit of control and defenses, it is very nice. Just like defense itself, goes best with a bit of resist and a heal for those unlucky streaks. All forms of protection are best in layers. With sapping this is still true.

I only played my /darks on DOs/SOs for a very short time and at low level but still, I think I like the heal being huge.

From a performance standpoint, if /dark were a defense-based set, a cheaper smaller heal would be handy. As a resist set, especially on SOs (my main is a far from softcapped even with IOs stalker) a heal to full is just too handy. One thing Arcannaville didn't address in her solid post is what happens during that rooted time. With defenses you take less hits it is the occasional big hit you gotta worry about. With resists, you're taking damage constantly. On a defense set, you'll probably get through the root unharmed. With only resists (/dark has only token defense built in), you take significant damage while activating the power pretty much every time. Because I'm rooted, I'm not doing anything to reduce that incoming damage.

Making me use it way more often, means I'm taking that unopposed damage a higher proportion of the time. Which in turn means the survivability hit will be far more than halving the heal component might suggest. So when you heal, you need to recover not only what beat you to the point of needing the heal, but also what you will take WHILE THE HEAL ANIMATES. This means a small heal doesn't work so good. /regen has its passive hp/sec to help out at these times. Dark needs the big heal.

There are times that I think having the base cost be 25 instead of 33 would be cool, but then I think about /storm and some of the other end heavy powers, and really, it's not that bad.

Personally, I'd like to see the -tohit of the set get raised to higher values and the fear aura a bit more accurate. But overall, I love dark and I have, errr, I think 6 of them at various levels (only one 50 but my axe/dark brute is growing up fast).

TL/DR = I can't get behind this specific change. But would love to see more accuracy in the fear aura.

Arcannaville gave an interesting suggestion about regeneration and -regen debuffs that might be a cool mechanic to test here before putting on /regen:

a heal over time effect. Give the +HP over the course of the duration not as regeneration but as a heal over time. Works on all types of damage, even PSI and can't be debuffed away.

Make it small enough that it doesn't step on any toes and is only as effective as the +HP should be, but large enough that it IS as effective as the +hp SHOULD be. hehe.

From a gameplay perspective, how do you find chewing through all those mobs with BS?

On mine, I have a build where my attack chain is whirl-parry-headsplit-swipe. I'll do the standard head-hack-disemb-hack vs lieuts and bosses.

But that takes FOREVER to kill a spawn even at +2/x5. Are you in teams or soloing at +4/x8?

Hopeling nailed it. It is just about the worst implementation of the idea you can imagine. So you know how all trials have a minimum number of members? If at anytime the number in the trial drops below the minimum, people in the queue who are willing to join an in-progress trial can get in.

For example, I got into a halloween trial yesterday with 2 people stuck on the last boss. And I've gotten into a failed MO Lamda with the last three people standing around watching the timer tick down for the final minute with marauder at 100% health after everyone else quit.

What it does not do, but should, is check if there is a trial below maximum, and fit you into that one.

I buy medium and don't sell. So I'm helping keep the prices stable. But kinda liking this. And hoping some more of them start dropping.

Cheers Bags, and thanks Myddie!