Seldom

I really have to agree. They've done a re-jiggering at one point, but it's still very high. Much of this goes back to the simple fact that the set has a great many tools in power form that do very special, and many times powerful, things on their own. The much berated cloak of fear can indeed make many foes near you quake rather than hit, and they'll stay put for the beating for a bit too.

Dark regeneration can heal you by ridiculous ammounts.

Cloak of darkness gives unsuppressed stealth.

Death shroud is a vary good damage toggle.

All in all you have a set that can be less careful about where it starts fights, come back from near death, stop 10-20 low-tier enemies from punching their face much, all the while damaging them...then if they go down they can recover completely. This with the best psy resistance, resistance to toxic, and resistance to some nastier side effects. It looks darned good on paper.

It also has access to dark melee, which supplies an endurance recovery tool.

All this seems to mean the set needs a weakness, and the devs seem to have chosen endurance.

The problem is that the real-game iteration of the set just isn't the same as the paper version. The toggles miss, and overlap. Big foes are unaffected by them, yet eat up headcounts on that 'max 10' list. Many foes actually prefer range, or wander when stunned, making the melee auras less potent. Linked aggro makes unsuppressed stealth less potent. The exotic resistances are related to damage types not faced as often. Though dark melee can be paired up with it, and was probably designed in conjunction, it should work for itself, and never be even thought of in relation to dark armor's balance.

I do hope the devs look at it again; it is potent armor, but the endurance tools the devs have laid out as extraneous/optional do indeed make such a difference in normalizing/boosting the set that it could use a look-see. I can do awesome things, but before the +recovery/stamina acquisitions, my 'toggle management' consisted of slotting everything for endurance, still having trouble, and wondering what powers I HAD to run because it was more appealing to leave them off. Giving players powerful tools that they can't afford to use is a troublesome design perspective from an enjoyment perspective, and can cause frustration.

The nice thing in the case of dark armor is that making it affordable endurance wise doesn't become overpowered in light of using 'optional' tools like +end/+recovery bonuses, using the fitness pool, or possessing outside endurance management skills. Having 'too much' endurance is less troublesome than changing how much a player regenerates, resistance/defense values, or adjusting other such modifiers. It simply changes pacing, pacing already being overcome by means dubbed 'not necessary.'

The fun with brute's auras eliminating threats? You can spawn more of them. If you can guarantee that 10 members of every mob, more if you have CoF/OG together, will do very little fightback...you can do crazyier stuff. Then a mob of 15 means 10 minor threats and 5 normal threats. /DA axcells at messing up large messes of mobs. It's a less strong vs. hard targets, unless those are neg energy/psi in nature...even then it's still decent. You may have to pop candy, but having some well-rounded resistances means you have few achilles moments, and a heal can put you to 75% health per enemy is no small thing.

Wait, what? If it can't solo a zeus, do 4/8, and/or has trouble with mu it's broken? Sorry dude, wrong. My aforementioned brute has soloed four or so AV's (using candy, though) and has no io defense. The guy bought a pair of impervium armors for his armors to asuage the endurance costs because the set has some nice +recovery, and his stuns the same for the +recovery bonuses, but he's cost me on the whole no more than25million. (Half of that cost being a numina unique I recently bought.)

ANYTHING you want to do zeus, solo 4/8, and have no problem with mu will cost you big. ...And sorry, at that point dark's not far behind many other sets with the same investment.

After level 20 they can. Everybody can do side switching tip missions. Just the basic AT guys can start in the new dimension.

As for me, I'll be making quite a few of my big SF-friendly toons go rogue, then a few heroes go evil. The rest will stay red, where the fluff/repititious missions are low, the travel is easy, and the arcs concise. I can enjoy the task forces, especially new ones. I find a lot of the blue story arcs, especially the old ones, hard to slog through. My badger may do just that, and it will feel like work.

Just FYI, the phantom armies have a lot of melee atacks, so they'll be in the thick of things to be a good -res anchor. Phantasm is ranged and usually hangs back, so he will give you far less mileage on that power.

Doms are incredibly versatile...they're very much a 'team support'-ish AT at some times, but completely Team independant at others. The upside is you can have a great ability to help team survival without having powers you can't use when solo. On a team that needs help? Hold/stun/confuse/sleep chumps giving you a hard time. On your own against things that want to pound your face in? Hold/stun/confuse/sleep chumps giving you a hard time. As it is, doms do great damage all the time, so domination is just fine resting until you need mez to stick longer, make a biggie sit out, or top off your blue.

If you like melee, fire is a bit lower on that rung. /Earth LIVES in melee, thorns is close, the /energy, /ice, and /electric have some to use.

I'm very much looking forward to what new APPs the doms get.

I'm wondering if +100 merits for those who haven't explored wouldn't incentivize this. But yeah, a Sunday afternoon would work for me, usually after 2:00 P.M. CST. If we can turn this into a merit+badge+monster mash, it would be a hoot.

Well, for the cross-faction thing it would be after August 17th, perhaps longer depending on the side-switching timeline. It just seemed like a fun/useful event thing to do...but I'm not set on it yet. I just wanted to see if anybody would be up for it.

Hm. yeah, that may go too far. I was thinking it of what would make it palatable...the KD would, but your point is taken. What if it were a continuous 50% chance of KD, +15% chance of medium KB? (Both values enhancable to full KB)

May I ask why a medium resistance buff is uncalled for, compared tot he -regen/-dam you mention?

Huh...I checked the number off of red tomax, it was listed as .52 end...1.04? i need to check it off the game. .26 was listed as the cost of just about every buff/debuff toggle in game..the only one I could find @ .52 was enervating, which is .52 but is -30% res AND -25% dam. Since disruption is only -res, normalizing it to common toggle buff/debuff costs seemed logical. But basically yeah, it costs twice the normal buff/debuff. I thought it should be the same.

Honestly? I'd be far more interested in the effect being the same, but the endurance cost going down from .52 to .26, the same cost as darkest night, snow storm, steamy mist, shadow fall, dispersion bubble, sonic dispersion, radiation infection, and arctic fog. You know, the same cost as just about every other buff/debuff toggle in the game.

It's constant unless you get out of range, which is equal to one person going up elevators. The target must be in the middle of a group for it to work; a member of a group will pretty regularly be in the midst of its group. A player will not. Also, the upside you mention is also a downside: an enemy center debuff will go down when the fight finishes. A sonic pays for their debuff between groups, when it has no effect. As such, I find the practical balancing of disruption to be very off, the the point of head-scratching. Most powers in the game get bumped UP in strength when they require an ally...disruption is the one that seems to be penalized for it in its costs. Yes, I am aware the set is balanced, not just individual powers...but the endurance cost just seems far afield for the effect.