teflonshugenja

Cloak of Darkness definitely does suppress when clicking a glowie.

I think this is actually assuming too much of the current functionality is protected by the Cottage Rule. So long as Photon Seekers continues to summon damaging pets, the Rule is preserved - it doesn't demand that PS continue to be used as a mini-nuke. That is a player-derived convention stemming not from the fact that PS is a good nuke, but from the fact that it is bad at being used for anything but a nuke.

The ELA change from Conserve Power to Energize may have retained some of the old functionality, but it dramatically changed the way the power was actually used. We could use some o' that. I would much rather Photon Seekers became a genuine pet power - which presumably it was intended to be at one point - rather than a poor nuke masquerading as a pet power.

Okay, some things. A lot of this is subjective opinion, so take it as such.

- I'm not liking Touch of Fear. It's not a terribly useful power to begin with and is eating up a ton of slots you desperately need elsewhere. Against a single hard target (the only useful situation for this power) you should be stacking enough -tohit just from your DM attack chain that ToF isn't necessary. If you really want to keep the 5-set bonus from Siphon Insight, put it in Cloak of Fear instead, where it'll do some good.

- Dark Obliteration: x3 Nucleolus is way too much accuracy and totally ignores both endurance and recharge, both of which are high. I like to give it x5 Positron's and a Cloud Senses damage proc, but really this is your only true AoE, it's an awesome one, and you're skimping on it. Why?

- Dark Consumption seems overslotted. Don't try to turn this into an attack, it's pretty lousy at that. Three slots is fine, there are other things that need the love way more.

- Drop the fifth slot in Shadow Punch. It's doing almost nothing for you, and with this much recharge you'll barely use it anyway. You still have Smite, SL, MG and Gloom. SP is really just muling for a Kinetic Combat set.


Here's a slight tweaking of your build - I changed as little as I could, but feel free to ignore it anyway if you don't like it. It moves around a few powers and slots, drops ToF and adds Maneuvers (for giggles). Big perks are that it makes Cloak of Fear functional and turns Dark Oblit into a much cheaper, faster cycling and more powerful attack. It also has slightly higher defense and recharge. With access to Cardiac, Ageless and Dark Consumption the slightly higher cost of running more toggles shouldn't be an issue.

I like DA. It's a lot stronger than it tends to get credit for. Good places to start for information are Des' guide and also Dechs Kaison's stuff.

In terms of pairings, lots of people will point you toward specific primaries to shore up the "weaknesses" of Dark Armor, but you can get away with whatever. My brute is SS/DA and used to have some serious endurance issues, but robust IO slotting made that much more manageable. And of course once I added Incarnate stuff to him he became an unstoppable one man army with no real weaknesses. So, go with whatever is concept-appropriate and enjoyable for you, Dark Armor played well is strong enough that you don't need your primary to "make up" for anything.

Pluses: Dark Regeneration is the best self-heal in the game. Solid resistances across the board, including Psionic damage and very strong endurance drain protection means that there are no enemies that pose a special danger to you. Death Shroud is a great source of both passive damage. Cloak of Darkness gives you easy access to stealth, +perception and is a decent defense toggle. Soul Transfer is an amazing self-rez and requires no additional slotting to be very, very useful. Your choice of crowd control toggles can help protect you and your teammates. Can achieve incredibly high survivability constantly with heavy IO slotting.

Minuses: Can be rough on your endurance bar, especially since Dark Regeneration can eat huge chunks of end. No knockback protection. Both can be addressed with Inventions. The set as a whole responds very well to heavy IO slotting and can seem unimpressive without it. Responds well to pool powers to beef up your layered defenses, which may mean that you need to limit how many attacks you take from your primary. Recolored DA toggles can look bad very easily.

At very high levels with IO'd builds you won't use Shadow Maul in your single-target attack chain. It still remains useful for groups of enemies, and is a staple while leveling.

Because the devs intend for antimez buffs to be reactively applied, not on-all-the-time. Things like forcefields and sonic shields and speed boost are meant to be on-all-the-time. It's a deliberate design decision, not an oversight.

Your entire argument seems to be based around the idea that these changes are aimed at making the game "easier" for people who play certain sets and that out of fairness it should also be made "easier" for everyone else. I can't really think of anything to say to this except to point out that it fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of the changes.

I'll second what lots of people have been saying. Recolored Radiation Blast works very well. Energy Blast also works well. Peacebringer is thematically exactly what you are looking for but definitely underperforms so I cannot in good conscience recommend it (my PB is the only level 50 I can no longer play, and it makes me sad). Recolored Gravity might also work if you want to do a controller or dominator - the powers look very good in bright white or white/bluish. A Grav/Energy dominator might be what you are looking for.

If Kineticists being able to offer meaningful partial mez protection to their team is all it takes to send FF to the trash heap...

You know what, I'm not even going to finish that thought. It's too ridiculous.