Werner

I figured Super Reflexes would be good for this, and was wondering if my Dark Melee/Super Reflexes would be better suited to this challenge. But I just like playing my Katana/Dark, and seeing what he can and can't do, even when he's not the ideal choice. That and it might take me months to get all incarnated up on a different toon.

Skipping the heavy hitters was deliberate, though arguably a bad choice. It looks a lot worse than the standard defensive chain on paper, but in practice, the damage isn't that far behind on something like a pylon. I specifically wanted to avoid the way that Soaring Dragon can reposition enemies. I worry that chasing or switching targets can occasionally cause a Divine Avalanche unstack. It would also slightly reduce damage output. I'm thinking in groups, that might make the damage output even out. I also wanted a chain with a more comfortable Divine Avalanche overlap than the typical defensive chain (which is just over 10 seconds, and that's assuming you're glued to a single target). I do give up some active mitigation in the form of knockup/down, but that's only on a single target. Mind you, even mitigating a single target COULD make a difference here, but so could keeping Divine Avalanche better stacked while moving around and changing targets. I've played both chains. I still haven't decided which one works better for me.

I don't think I have enough AoE potential for that o do much. Right now, all I have is The Lotus Drops.

It might help a little. If I'm considering Ageless and Leviathan Mastery, I could maybe fit in Spirit Shark Jaws. I'd have to be juggling that along with doing damage, but yeah, maybe with slotting and practice I could lock down a couple lieutenants that way. On the other hand, the spawn that killed me in arc four was mostly boss debuffers. I think there was one Elder of Sorrow, though, and every little bit might be the little bit that saves or kills me.

Thanks, that looks like a good change to me. With Melee Core capping me, Tough is no longer providing the benefit that it was, so I can afford to slot it poorly. I never use Vengeance - it was just a home for the Luck of the Gambler global.

I normally consider Oppressive Gloom counter-productive on soft-capped builds, particularly when also running Cloak of Fear. But in this specific case, where my defense is in really bad shape anyway, and damage is pouring in like mad, Oppressive Gloom might just be a life saver. It's certainly worth a shot.

OK, I'm sold, at least for trying it. The numbers seem to support it, plus a personal recommendation from someone using and loving it. I'll start working my way up that tree. I'm slow, though, since I'm mostly solo and on small teams, and I dislike the iTrials.

Active mitigation might help. I've actually moved away from active mitigation in my current built as a bit of an experiment. I don't like how Soaring Dragon can move the enemy to where I need to reposition to keep Divine Avalanche stacked, so I have neither it nor Golden Dragonfly. But single-target knockup/down isn't going to do much. Something like Energy Torrent, though, might. Positioning could be trouble for anything but a radius PBAoE, though, since I'm often standing almost immobile in an ice patch. Also, at this point, I can't afford to give up Body Mastery, as I need the endurance, and in particular Conserve Power for some spawns. But Ageless could serve that need, opening up new build possibilities. I hear good things about Water Spout for both mitigation and damage, plus Hibernate might serve as a reset button.

I don't really want to bust out with the lore pets. I know they're mine, a real power, one that I bought my way up a skill tree for, but it just FEELS like I'm no longer soloing, somehow. It also goes against the spirit of the original "Scrapper Challenge" rules, where we disallowed click accolades (I'm not using those here either) due to their long recharge. I think we figured if it wasn't going to be available every spawn, it wasn't something we should be using. We were working on a worst case scenario kind of thing - you're all out of inspirations, you've already burned through all your long recharge powers, you need to beat this spawn now, so make it happen. But I'm already violating that by waiting for Conserve Power or Barrier or Void. But I guess I've slid as far down that slippery slope with those as I want to slide.

I should at least experiment, though. My theory is that they'd be down in the first 30 seconds of the fight, and so pretty useless with their 10 minute (?) recharge. But my theory could be wrong.

Definitely good advice, but unfortunately, I'm already using that trick. In the spawn where I died, I first attacked an Elder of Sorrow. Then I moved on to an Ancient of Sorrow. Then I started in on another Elder of Sorrow right before going down. I actually have a "Dark Astoria" macro to set my tab key to target sorrows first, pains second. Pains seem to do a 30% defense debuff.

Ah! Question: Do the debuffs come from the summoned Spirits, or from the Elders and Ancients themselves?

I guess I can answer this for myself by fighting some and then reviewing the combat log. If from the Spirits, since those are easily destroyed, I could prioritize Spirits of Sorrow, then Elders of Sorrow, then Ancients of Sorrow. That seems like it would wipe out the maximum amound of debuff source as quickly as possible. I'm pretty sure the debuff from the Pains comes directly from them, though. It seems like they do some AoE shout thing, a red wave explodes out, and that's the debuff. I could be mistaken, though. Again, I should review combat logs.

Banished Pantheon are also nasty enough to deserve their own tab macro. I'm not sure if this is the right order, but just for instance, I could set it up to target Spirits of Sorrow, then Elders of Sorrow, then Ancients of Sorrow, then Elders of Pain, then Ancients of Pain, and so on for as many characters as it will allow.

Literally laughing out loud.

And yeah, my version of "fun" probably looks a whole lot like "working really hard to make things really painful" to most people.

I do still need Task Force Commander. I'm sure it would help, but I don't think it would help enough.

Finally, here are pictures of the arcs I've completed so far. I guess I'm proud to have at least gotten this much, even if I can't complete arc 6.

I admittedly didn't look very closely, but I bet all I'd do is find a couple more nitpicky things and things I might personally do differently. One reason to think that is the numbers you hit compared to Bass Ackwards' Dark Melee/Invuln, which I kind of consider the benchmark. Both are soft-capped with one in range, but I believe yours by more (it has Enzymes, so I'm relying on memory that it was right at 45%), some of which is surely the split up Scrapper's Strike and +5s, though it's hard to say whether that or Enzymes are more of an advantage. After that, it gets more difficult to compare - Super Jump vs. Resist Elements, Fire Ball vs. Body, but Invuln has its own recovery power so can pick up damage because of an advantage in that regard, while you already have two AoEs, yours has a lot more regeneration, but a little less recharge, and so on.

Where you go with incarnate powers might change things. If you picked up enough endurance recovery, you might be able to go with Fire Ball or Waterspout or something, but I have overkill levels of endurance recovery and I still at least get worried occasionally during no temps no insps incarnate play.

I'd probably do a one Parry chain, and it almost certainly has the recharge for that, so I didn't even check.

I'd want to fit in an Achilles' Heel in Hack, though it's not nearly so important as in Gambler's Cut, so may not be worth the slot.

Yeah, maybe there's something big here that someone can spot, but all I see is fiddly stuff.

Oops. Typo. I DID use an acc/dam/end. Fixed my post.

I could see an argument for recharge if you're trying to stack it super quickly to absorb an alpha or respond to defense debuffs on an otherwise low-recharge build. But I hit 54% lethal and 53% melee with one Divine Avalanche, Dark Armor is pretty good at breaking up an alpha already, and I generally use Barrier to respond to debuffs heavy enough to otherwise kill me.

My build also has a lot of global recharge. Not perma-Hasten levels, but +127.5% while Hasten is up. That's there almost entirely for the benefit of Dark Regeneration, but a side effect is quick stacking of Divine Avalanche if desired.

Yeah, I don't think it's going to happen, but I'd love to see them officially support Mids', and allow for some sort of import.

My understanding (I believe from Arcanaville) is that this is a misunderstanding of what was actually said by the devs and of their actual policy. The game may be primarily balanced around SOs, and intended to be playable with SOs, but it is ALSO balanced around IOs.

Even if they meant it like you've heard, that was before free-to-play. I'm sure their official line hasn't changed (wouldn't want to alienate people), but unofficially, as a company in the business of making money, they WANT us suggesting IOs as a solution. So if you want to talk about what the devs intend, the devs intend for people to use IOs. They intend for people to use the market. They intend for people to buy enhancement boosters. And so on and so forth.

You don't have to believe that they consider IOs when balancing. We may be wrong. But many of us DO believe the game is balanced around IOs as well as SOs, and consider IOs to be a perfectly valid part of balance discussions. I've not seen "No, I only want to talk about SOs in this balance discussion!" get much traction on this forum. We'll talk about SO balance, as most of us will probably agree that the sets should be relatively well balanced on only SOs, but we won't talk ONLY about SO balance.

Well, since I think the devs balance around IOs as well, it seems appropriate to me.

And even if the devs DO only balance around SOs, I still consider my response to be appropriate, particularly with the hindsight of the OPs second post, including "Should have just posted my build for advice." The OPs build is a top end IO and incarnate build. Giving IO and incarnate suggestions is perfectly appropriate for someone with an IO and incarnate build. It doesn't address the BALANCE half of what was being discussed, but it does address the "help me I'm burning blue" half of what was being discussed. So to insist that the focus of the discussion should be ONLY SOs, and that all of us are posting inappropriate comments, when the OP has an IO'd out build, well, it just makes no sense to me.

I'm not entirely opposed to having an SO balance discussion about Dark Armor. However, I don't think that's what the OP was after (I could be wrong of course), and I'm not happy with being accused of making completely inappropriate comments for bringing up IOs.

Except for the OP, who uses IOs and has a woefully-underslotted Dark Regeneration. And we also gave non-IO advice, such as toggle management, power choices, picking up the accolades, and considering Cardiac Core.

But we can look at SOs. For SO play, I'd probably slot Dark Regeneration with something like one accuracy, two recharge, and three endurance reducers. Let's say I trigger at no lower than 1/4 of my health, so I get a 3/4 heal for 17 endurance, or about 4.5% heal per endurance.

The OP wanted to compare this to Drain Psyche, but that's very hard since that's a regeneration and recovery power, NOT a heal. But then, that's probably the point - the OP wants a recovery power for Dark Armor, and may consider this more valuable than a heal. But it's hard to say that a heal is underperforming by comparing it to a regen and recovery power.

So let's look at some other heal, something from a set much closer to Dark Armor on Scrappers, like maybe Healing Flames from Fiery Aura. On SOs, I might go with one endurance reducer, two recharges, and three heals. That gives me about a 1/2 heal for 8 endurance, or about a 6% heal per endurance - advantage Healing Flames (and a possible hint that we're balanced around a full heal from Dark Regeneration).

There are, of course, differences. Dark Regeneration activates and recharges faster, but it requires enemies and an accuracy check. Healing Flames gives some toxic resistance. Dark Regeneration does a little damage. Healing Flames is available at level 4. Dark Regeneration is available at level 16.

If I had to pick one for an SO build, I'd probably pick Healing Flames. But then, for an SO build, I probably wouldn't pick Fiery Aura. Not EVERY power needs to be in balance with their closest equivalent in other sets. It's the sets as a whole that need to be in balance.

And along those lines, the OP was probably more after some endurance recovery in the set rather than saying that the heal itself was underperforming. Endurance cost is an acknowledged weakness of the set. Now, do the pros of the set make up for this when running with only SOs? I kind of doubt that Dark Armor is very popular with the SO crowd, but popularity doesn't equal balance, and I'm not a datamining dev to know that sort of information. I'd personally go with Super Reflexes or maybe Willpower, but that doesn't suggest that Dark Armor needs a buff, as that's just a personal choice.