This guide is intended to help in choosing powers for a dm/da scrapper, as well as using those powers strategically.
Scrappers are the lightly armored/high damage archetype, usually specializing in damage over time (DoT) over massive alpha strikes. Although they arent tanks, most can manage a considerable amount of agro and deal with the incoming damage it causes. A dark dark scrapper uses a combination of damage resistance, powerful self heals, and minor control abilities to mitigate incoming damage. It is not a simple fire and forget build, because /dark has an obscene number of potential toggles (seven, not including pools), and because its mitigation really requires a lot of active (and proactive) manipulation of powers and toggles. If you want to just run into combat and start smacking opponents, /da is probably not the right choice. If you like having to use some strategy, and like having lots of tools at your disposal, give dm/da a shot.
Im going to go over the powers available in both the dark melee and dark armor powersets.
Dark Melee
First, a note about the accuracy debuff that is a component of almost every dm attack it is a very minor debuff, not sure of the exact number, but its around 3-5%. Debuffs from different attacks will stack. In the low levels, before 20, the debuff seems to actually be noticeable, on occasion. Bad guys will hit you less after you hit them. Later on in the game, it makes less of a difference, and I dont really recommend slotting for it. I have seem some people slot for acc debuff on the low damage fast attacks, but in general hitting opponents really hard and killing them fast is a better alternative then debuffing them and hoping they miss while you whittle away at them.
Shadow punch : typical quick animation, low damage, fast recharge melee attack. Nice initially to fill out the attack chain, but can easily be respecd out of. Slot 1-2 acc, 3 damage, other slots as you prefer.
Smite : typical mod damage/mod recharge attack. This one should probably always be in your attack chain. It has a very fast activation time and packs quite a wallop. Slot the same as shadow punch.
Shadow Maul : This ones a bit funny. It does a lot of damage in a very narrow cone, and roots you during the approximately 3 seconds of its animation time. In the lower levels, before stamina, SOs, and effective end red slotting, I tried very hard to actually line up minions to squeeze them into the cone. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt, and targets that actually physically occupy a lot of space will always move around each other to reach you, thus messing up your line. Devouring Earth are impossible to dual-shadow maul for this reason. Theyre too fat. In the higher levels, I never bother trying to line up targets. I have enough stamina for it, and in the time I spend trying to maneuver targets into a line, I could have already killed them with some other attack. A note about the rooting effect: Avoid firing off shadow maul when you expect to be getting hit very hard very soon. Use a faster animating attack instead, so you have a good time cushion to heal yourself if you take an alpha strike. Slot the same as shadow punch, though this one sucks some end...
Touch of Fear: This is an excellent control power, and one of the staples of the set. This one actually is worth slotting accuracy debuffs on, as I think the accuracy debuff on it may be higher. Fear duration is also useful if you intend on not killing the feared target immediately. ToF will fear minions and lts but not bosses. However, ToF used with Cloak of Fear, will fear bosses, and even some AVs, briefly. Ill admit that in the higher levels, I use ToF less than I did at lower levels because I can just kill them very easily, but its an excellent power that I recommend taking. One note- Fear is NOT a hold. Targets will occasionally retaliate if you attack them while theyre feared. If you dont hit them while theyre feared, they just sit there and cower. Effectively, fear sort of slows their attack rate. Slot 1-2 acc, and a mix of to-hit debuffs and fear durations, end-reds, as you see fit.
Siphon Life : This is a pretty good spot heal. Until recently, the attacks end usage was a bit too high to be viable, but it has since been lowered. It can be slotted for a good damage attack with a small heal, or a small damage attack with a good heal. On my scrapper, dark regen is up often enough that I use it exclusively for healing. I dont have siphon life, although its probably better than dark regen for PvP.
Confront: The best thing about this power is that it is so useless its a no-brainer to skip it. If you want to tick off a mob, just punch it. That being said, Ive seen some people take it, but I really dont advise it.
Soul Drain: This is dark melees build up. It is both better and worse that normal BU. Worse because it recharges more slowly, requires hitting opponents, and has a fairly slow activation time. Better because the buff lasts longer, and has the potential to boost damage well above what BU can do. It buffs damage by 12.5% per mob, and accuracy by 5% per mob. This power shines in large teams, where you can jump into the middle of a spawn, hit SD, and watch your damage get boosted to obscene levels. Solo or small teams, the number of mobs you hit is usually too few to appreciably boost damage. In PvP, it is garbage most of the time. SD has a built in accuracy bonus, so I slot it 3 recharge, 3 damage, and use it as a mini nuke. An additional accuracy wont hurt though, and it doesnt recharge all that fast, so you may want to put off damage slotting till later.
Dark Consumption : A signature power for dark melee, this should be taken and slotted asap, especially if you are dark armor, which uses a lot of end. Slot it 1-2 accuracy, 3 recharge, 1-2 end mod. It will refill your end bar if it hits 4 mobs, but often the time you run out of end is when youre beating down a boss, so its beneficial to regain more end when it hits a single target.
Midnight Grasp : DMs final attack throws a lot of people, for 2 reasons. One, half its damage is a DoT, so if youre looking for a massive alpha strike, look elsewhere. Like Broadsword Two, by the time you get this, you are comparing an unslotted attack to all your other fully SO slotted attacks. Of course its gonna suck. Once slotted though, this is a great attack and shouldnt be skipped. It does good damage, massive damage on a crit, and includes a strong immobilize, which is good for soft control. Just slot for accuracy and damage, not immobilize duration.
Dark Armor
The first thing to note about /DA is that it has a lot of toggles. Because of this, it is a very end-hungry set. This can be dealt with by end-red slotting, good use of dark consumption, toggle management, and having stamina in your build. For the most part, all scrappers are going to need stamina. Dark armor especially. By toggle management I mean shutting off toggles that are protecting you from damage types youre not taking. For example, Family do mostly smashing /lethal, so you can get away with not running Murky Cloud. Later on, though, most enemies do mixed damage types, forcing you to run most of your shields.
Dark Embrace : Damage resistance vs. smashing/lethal, toxic, and negative energy. Slot 1-2 end reds, 3 damage resistance.
Death Shroud: A Point Blank damage aura. Early on, this will likely just get you more agro than you can deal with, so it can be put off till later. When slotted with SOs, and coupled with Soul Drain, this becomes one of your most damaging powers. Soul Drain + death shroud used on a large spawn can pretty quickly kill everything, unless the Blaster beats you to it. Slot 3 damage, 1-2 end reds, 1-2 accuracy.
Murky Cloud : Provides resistance from energy, negative energy, fire, cold, and endurance drain. The endurance drain resistance will save your butt later on, vs Malta and Carnies. Slot like dark embrace.
Obsidian Shield : Prevents most status effects, and provides resistance to psionic damage. OS does not protect from knockup/knockdown, so youll have to use hover or acrobatics. I use acrobatics on my scrapper, because constantly being kbd as a melee toon sucks. Dark armor scrappers are one of the few ATs that can resist psi damage, so on some occasions, you can out-tank a tank. When you first get this power, you can just slot a single end-red in it. Later on, if you wish, you can add damage resistance to it.
Dark Regeneration : This is one of the most important powers in dark armor. However, until it is fully slotted, it kind of sucks because it uses 1/3 of your endurance. Mine is slotted 3 end-red, 1 acc, though I should probably stick another heal in there if its a single target Im hitting.
Cloak of Darkness : This provides a small amount of actual defense, and stealth without slowing movement rate. I love this power, because not being seen is incredible damage mitigation, and it allows me to stealth missions if I want to. I just slot it one end-red.
Cloak of Fear: This is probably the most debated power in the set. Cloak of fear is a huge end-hog, requires excessive slotting to be functional, and then the actual function can at times be lackluster. I use the power, since its fun, and allows me to fear-tank mobs that I couldnt otherwise survive fighting. I slot it 2 end-red, 2 accuracy (it has horrid out of the box accuracy), and 2 fear. Combined with touch of fear, you can perma fear bosses. Note that some enemies, Nemesis and robots in particular, are fear resistant, or fear immune. Also, fear doesnt prevent enemies from attacking; it just slows the attack rate. If you run CoF and death shroud, you will still get attacked. Some villain types, notoriously Circle of Thorns, will run away from you given the chance, and shoot at you from range. If CoF did not synergize with ToF, Id drop it.
Oppressive Gloom: This is the other crowd control power that /da offers. It is quite simply better than Cloak of Fear. It requires minimal slotting, and affected mobs do not attack at all, even if death shroud is slowly killing them. Each target OG hits will drain you a few hp per tick. Unless its a huge mob youre standing in, the damage you take is much much less than the damage the mobs would otherwise be doing to you. OG affects only minions, although the disorient effect will stack with anyone elses disorient effect. The primary complaint with OG is that disoriented minions drunkenly stagger away from you, eventually leaving the radius of the effect. It isnt a problem, in my opinion, because they stay disoriented for a while after leaving the aura. Just kill them before it wears off, or move around so you keep catching them in it. The first time I truly understood the power of OG was dealing with Malta. With Cloak of Darkness and OG running, I could run into a spawn, and have all the sappers disoriented and reeling before they even knew I was there. Awesome. I just slot 1-2 accuracy.
Soul Transfer : In exchange for all the uber control powers /da gets, we get a polished turd for a tier 9. Soul Transfer is a self rez that stuns any enemy near you when you use it, usually even bosses. You are also temporarily invulnerable afterwards, but the invuln only lasts long enough to turn a few toggles back on. It is extremely situational, since it has the unfortunate prerequisite of getting killed. It can be quite potent if used correctly (it can be killer in PvP, I hear), but I think its garbage.
Pool Powers:
Fitness: This is as close to required as you can get. Nuff said.
Leadership: These powers are mostly end-hog toggles, which a /da scrapper certainly doesnt need more of. Scrappers get minimal benefit from these powers anyway. Skip it.
Presence : dm/da already has better control/fear type powers available to it. I never experimented with this pool, but I doubt its useful.
Medicine : Useless. You have better heals already. If you are a glutton for punishment, you can try to get the healing badges with this.
Concealment : Useless, since you have Cloak of Darkness, unless you really really want to be totally invisible, or make your team invisible.
Speed : I use hasten from this power pool, to bring dark regen, dark consumption, and soul drain up more often. It also helps fill out my attack chain, since I skipped shadow punch. I believe superspeed will stack with CoD, making you totally invisible, which is cool, but I prefer power pools that help with knockback protection.
Teleportation : In my opinion, teleportation is a poor travel power for a scrapper, since its pretty clunky in combat.
Flight : Personally, I dont like flight very much because flight speed is suicidally slow at low levels, but hover provides knockback protection and can be pretty quick if slotted up. Furthermore, /da has no slow protection, making caltrops and quicksand really nasty. Hover can save you from some of this annoyance.
Fighting : In my opinion, the fighting pool has been nerfed into uselessness. The attacks are wimpy filler, and tough and weave suck too much end to justify the added damage mitigation. And again, /da already has too many toggles. You can get close to maxing out your s/l resistance with dark embrace + tough, but you have better and more interesting damage mitigation options in your secondary. Finally, in the late game, a lot of incoming damage is not necessarily s/l anyway, making tough less useful.
Leaping : Superjump is my personal favorite travel power. Its easy to use, fast, offers great vertical travel, doesnt use too much end, and opens the way to some nice status resists. Although obsidian shield reduces immobilization, some will sneak through anyway (Death mages will always get ya). OS + combat jumping will pretty much prevent you from ever being immobd. Acrobatics is something of an end-hog, but is a boon for /da scrappers. I highly recommend it. People who claim that knockback wont kill you are lying! Fight devouring earth with no kb protection, and you can faceplant without getting in a swing.
Epic/Ancillary Pools:
The only epic pool I have experience with is Body. I initially wanted to go with Dark Mastery, for concept, but it doesnt offer anything I dont already have. I took Body Mastery because it addresses dm/das greatest weaknesses: rotten accuracy, and intensive endurance usage. Focused accuracy is hands down the best power available for a melee toon, if not any toon. Slotted 3 end-red, 3 tohit buffs, the end drain isnt that horrible. Before FA, I had most of my attacks slotted with one accuracy, and I missed like crazy. With FA, I rarely miss. Unbeatable power in both PvE and PvP. I took conserve power to help when dark consumption is down, and I also use it as my god mode. CP + cloak of fear + touch of fear allow me to perma-fear almost any boss without running out of end. Laser beam eyes filled out a small gap in my attack chain, and its a decent ranged attack that dm is missing. It seems to crit pretty often. I skipped energy torrent.
General Strategy: Unless you have strong team support, I find that when taking on a boss, it is often beneficial to have a few minions near the boss. Dont kill them! You can use them to make dark regen, dark consumption, and soul drain more effective. You should be tough enough to handle a few minions hitting you, and they will probably be neutralized by one of your control powers anyway. If you have death shroud running, most minions will be dead or nearly dead from the DoT while you are hammering away at the boss.
Remember that midnight grasp has a lengthy DoT attached to it. IF you hit a minion with it, and theyre left with a sliver of life, just let the DoT kill em; dont waste another attack finishing them off unless theyre a problem minion.
In competent teams, my usual strategy is to jump right into the middle of a mob and hit soul drain, then dark regen, then kill the rest of the stuff with SD-boosted single target attacks. Effective and fun. Use ToF, CoF, or OG as needed to neutralize some of the mob.
A Word on PvP: dm/da is possibly the worst scrapper PvP combination, due to the lack of build-up and burst damage, high endurance usage, and the fact that a lot of your heals and buffs need to hit several targets at once to be effective. On the other hand, fear is an infrequently resisted status effect that can be quite deadly in PvP. Im not saying youll be totally useless in PvP - Ive won a few matches myself - but if you want to focus on PvP, do yourself a favor and roll a spines or broadsword/regen, like everyone else. Since my dm/da scrapper is now 50, Ive been toying with a PvP specific build, but its tricky without gimping myself badly in PvE.
Thats it! Have patience, and have fun! DM/DA has a steeper than average learning curve, but can be quite rewarding.
Complete Guide to the Dark/Dark Scrapper
Two, by the time you get this, you are comparing an unslotted attack to all your other fully SO slotted attacks. Of course its gonna suck. Once slotted though, this is a great attack and shouldnt be skipped. It does good damage, massive damage on a crit, and includes a strong immobilize, which is good for soft control. Just slot for accuracy and damage, not immobilize duration.
This guide is intended to help in choosing powers for a dm/da scrapper, as well as using those powers strategically.
Scrappers are the lightly armored/high damage archetype, usually specializing in damage over time (DoT) over massive alpha strikes. Although they arent tanks, most can manage a considerable amount of agro and deal with the incoming damage it causes. A dark dark scrapper uses a combination of damage resistance, powerful self heals, and minor control abilities to mitigate incoming damage. It is not a simple fire and forget build, because /dark has an obscene number of potential toggles (seven, not including pools), and because its mitigation really requires a lot of active (and proactive) manipulation of powers and toggles. If you want to just run into combat and start smacking opponents, /da is probably not the right choice. If you like having to use some strategy, and like having lots of tools at your disposal, give dm/da a shot.
Im going to go over the powers available in both the dark melee and dark armor powersets.
Dark Melee
First, a note about the accuracy debuff that is a component of almost every dm attack it is a very minor debuff, not sure of the exact number, but its around 3-5%. Debuffs from different attacks will stack. In the low levels, before 20, the debuff seems to actually be noticeable, on occasion. Bad guys will hit you less after you hit them. Later on in the game, it makes less of a difference, and I dont really recommend slotting for it. I have seem some people slot for acc debuff on the low damage fast attacks, but in general hitting opponents really hard and killing them fast is a better alternative then debuffing them and hoping they miss while you whittle away at them.
Shadow punch : typical quick animation, low damage, fast recharge melee attack. Nice initially to fill out the attack chain, but can easily be respecd out of. Slot 1-2 acc, 3 damage, other slots as you prefer.
Smite : typical mod damage/mod recharge attack. This one should probably always be in your attack chain. It has a very fast activation time and packs quite a wallop. Slot the same as shadow punch.
Shadow Maul : This ones a bit funny. It does a lot of damage in a very narrow cone, and roots you during the approximately 3 seconds of its animation time. In the lower levels, before stamina, SOs, and effective end red slotting, I tried very hard to actually line up minions to squeeze them into the cone. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt, and targets that actually physically occupy a lot of space will always move around each other to reach you, thus messing up your line. Devouring Earth are impossible to dual-shadow maul for this reason. Theyre too fat. In the higher levels, I never bother trying to line up targets. I have enough stamina for it, and in the time I spend trying to maneuver targets into a line, I could have already killed them with some other attack. A note about the rooting effect: Avoid firing off shadow maul when you expect to be getting hit very hard very soon. Use a faster animating attack instead, so you have a good time cushion to heal yourself if you take an alpha strike. Slot the same as shadow punch, though this one sucks some end...
Touch of Fear: This is an excellent control power, and one of the staples of the set. This one actually is worth slotting accuracy debuffs on, as I think the accuracy debuff on it may be higher. Fear duration is also useful if you intend on not killing the feared target immediately. ToF will fear minions and lts but not bosses. However, ToF used with Cloak of Fear, will fear bosses, and even some AVs, briefly. Ill admit that in the higher levels, I use ToF less than I did at lower levels because I can just kill them very easily, but its an excellent power that I recommend taking. One note- Fear is NOT a hold. Targets will occasionally retaliate if you attack them while theyre feared. If you dont hit them while theyre feared, they just sit there and cower. Effectively, fear sort of slows their attack rate. Slot 1-2 acc, and a mix of to-hit debuffs and fear durations, end-reds, as you see fit.
Siphon Life : This is a pretty good spot heal. Until recently, the attacks end usage was a bit too high to be viable, but it has since been lowered. It can be slotted for a good damage attack with a small heal, or a small damage attack with a good heal. On my scrapper, dark regen is up often enough that I use it exclusively for healing. I dont have siphon life, although its probably better than dark regen for PvP.
Confront: The best thing about this power is that it is so useless its a no-brainer to skip it. If you want to tick off a mob, just punch it. That being said, Ive seen some people take it, but I really dont advise it.
Soul Drain: This is dark melees build up. It is both better and worse that normal BU. Worse because it recharges more slowly, requires hitting opponents, and has a fairly slow activation time. Better because the buff lasts longer, and has the potential to boost damage well above what BU can do. It buffs damage by 12.5% per mob, and accuracy by 5% per mob. This power shines in large teams, where you can jump into the middle of a spawn, hit SD, and watch your damage get boosted to obscene levels. Solo or small teams, the number of mobs you hit is usually too few to appreciably boost damage. In PvP, it is garbage most of the time. SD has a built in accuracy bonus, so I slot it 3 recharge, 3 damage, and use it as a mini nuke. An additional accuracy wont hurt though, and it doesnt recharge all that fast, so you may want to put off damage slotting till later.
Dark Consumption : A signature power for dark melee, this should be taken and slotted asap, especially if you are dark armor, which uses a lot of end. Slot it 1-2 accuracy, 3 recharge, 1-2 end mod. It will refill your end bar if it hits 4 mobs, but often the time you run out of end is when youre beating down a boss, so its beneficial to regain more end when it hits a single target.
Midnight Grasp : DMs final attack throws a lot of people, for 2 reasons. One, half its damage is a DoT, so if youre looking for a massive alpha strike, look elsewhere. Like Broadsword
Dark Armor
The first thing to note about /DA is that it has a lot of toggles. Because of this, it is a very end-hungry set. This can be dealt with by end-red slotting, good use of dark consumption, toggle management, and having stamina in your build. For the most part, all scrappers are going to need stamina. Dark armor especially. By toggle management I mean shutting off toggles that are protecting you from damage types youre not taking. For example, Family do mostly smashing /lethal, so you can get away with not running Murky Cloud. Later on, though, most enemies do mixed damage types, forcing you to run most of your shields.
Dark Embrace : Damage resistance vs. smashing/lethal, toxic, and negative energy. Slot 1-2 end reds, 3 damage resistance.
Death Shroud: A Point Blank damage aura. Early on, this will likely just get you more agro than you can deal with, so it can be put off till later. When slotted with SOs, and coupled with Soul Drain, this becomes one of your most damaging powers. Soul Drain + death shroud used on a large spawn can pretty quickly kill everything, unless the Blaster beats you to it. Slot 3 damage, 1-2 end reds, 1-2 accuracy.
Murky Cloud : Provides resistance from energy, negative energy, fire, cold, and endurance drain. The endurance drain resistance will save your butt later on, vs Malta and Carnies. Slot like dark embrace.
Obsidian Shield : Prevents most status effects, and provides resistance to psionic damage. OS does not protect from knockup/knockdown, so youll have to use hover or acrobatics. I use acrobatics on my scrapper, because constantly being kbd as a melee toon sucks. Dark armor scrappers are one of the few ATs that can resist psi damage, so on some occasions, you can out-tank a tank. When you first get this power, you can just slot a single end-red in it. Later on, if you wish, you can add damage resistance to it.
Dark Regeneration : This is one of the most important powers in dark armor. However, until it is fully slotted, it kind of sucks because it uses 1/3 of your endurance. Mine is slotted 3 end-red, 1 acc, though I should probably stick another heal in there if its a single target Im hitting.
Cloak of Darkness : This provides a small amount of actual defense, and stealth without slowing movement rate. I love this power, because not being seen is incredible damage mitigation, and it allows me to stealth missions if I want to. I just slot it one end-red.
Cloak of Fear: This is probably the most debated power in the set. Cloak of fear is a huge end-hog, requires excessive slotting to be functional, and then the actual function can at times be lackluster. I use the power, since its fun, and allows me to fear-tank mobs that I couldnt otherwise survive fighting. I slot it 2 end-red, 2 accuracy (it has horrid out of the box accuracy), and 2 fear. Combined with touch of fear, you can perma fear bosses. Note that some enemies, Nemesis and robots in particular, are fear resistant, or fear immune. Also, fear doesnt prevent enemies from attacking; it just slows the attack rate. If you run CoF and death shroud, you will still get attacked. Some villain types, notoriously Circle of Thorns, will run away from you given the chance, and shoot at you from range. If CoF did not synergize with ToF, Id drop it.
Oppressive Gloom: This is the other crowd control power that /da offers. It is quite simply better than Cloak of Fear. It requires minimal slotting, and affected mobs do not attack at all, even if death shroud is slowly killing them. Each target OG hits will drain you a few hp per tick. Unless its a huge mob youre standing in, the damage you take is much much less than the damage the mobs would otherwise be doing to you. OG affects only minions, although the disorient effect will stack with anyone elses disorient effect. The primary complaint with OG is that disoriented minions drunkenly stagger away from you, eventually leaving the radius of the effect. It isnt a problem, in my opinion, because they stay disoriented for a while after leaving the aura. Just kill them before it wears off, or move around so you keep catching them in it. The first time I truly understood the power of OG was dealing with Malta. With Cloak of Darkness and OG running, I could run into a spawn, and have all the sappers disoriented and reeling before they even knew I was there. Awesome. I just slot 1-2 accuracy.
Soul Transfer : In exchange for all the uber control powers /da gets, we get a polished turd for a tier 9. Soul Transfer is a self rez that stuns any enemy near you when you use it, usually even bosses. You are also temporarily invulnerable afterwards, but the invuln only lasts long enough to turn a few toggles back on. It is extremely situational, since it has the unfortunate prerequisite of getting killed. It can be quite potent if used correctly (it can be killer in PvP, I hear), but I think its garbage.
Pool Powers:
Fitness: This is as close to required as you can get. Nuff said.
Leadership: These powers are mostly end-hog toggles, which a /da scrapper certainly doesnt need more of. Scrappers get minimal benefit from these powers anyway. Skip it.
Presence : dm/da already has better control/fear type powers available to it. I never experimented with this pool, but I doubt its useful.
Medicine : Useless. You have better heals already. If you are a glutton for punishment, you can try to get the healing badges with this.
Concealment : Useless, since you have Cloak of Darkness, unless you really really want to be totally invisible, or make your team invisible.
Speed : I use hasten from this power pool, to bring dark regen, dark consumption, and soul drain up more often. It also helps fill out my attack chain, since I skipped shadow punch. I believe superspeed will stack with CoD, making you totally invisible, which is cool, but I prefer power pools that help with knockback protection.
Teleportation : In my opinion, teleportation is a poor travel power for a scrapper, since its pretty clunky in combat.
Flight : Personally, I dont like flight very much because flight speed is suicidally slow at low levels, but hover provides knockback protection and can be pretty quick if slotted up. Furthermore, /da has no slow protection, making caltrops and quicksand really nasty. Hover can save you from some of this annoyance.
Fighting : In my opinion, the fighting pool has been nerfed into uselessness. The attacks are wimpy filler, and tough and weave suck too much end to justify the added damage mitigation. And again, /da already has too many toggles. You can get close to maxing out your s/l resistance with dark embrace + tough, but you have better and more interesting damage mitigation options in your secondary. Finally, in the late game, a lot of incoming damage is not necessarily s/l anyway, making tough less useful.
Leaping : Superjump is my personal favorite travel power. Its easy to use, fast, offers great vertical travel, doesnt use too much end, and opens the way to some nice status resists. Although obsidian shield reduces immobilization, some will sneak through anyway (Death mages will always get ya). OS + combat jumping will pretty much prevent you from ever being immobd. Acrobatics is something of an end-hog, but is a boon for /da scrappers. I highly recommend it. People who claim that knockback wont kill you are lying! Fight devouring earth with no kb protection, and you can faceplant without getting in a swing.
Epic/Ancillary Pools:
The only epic pool I have experience with is Body. I initially wanted to go with Dark Mastery, for concept, but it doesnt offer anything I dont already have. I took Body Mastery because it addresses dm/das greatest weaknesses: rotten accuracy, and intensive endurance usage. Focused accuracy is hands down the best power available for a melee toon, if not any toon. Slotted 3 end-red, 3 tohit buffs, the end drain isnt that horrible. Before FA, I had most of my attacks slotted with one accuracy, and I missed like crazy. With FA, I rarely miss. Unbeatable power in both PvE and PvP. I took conserve power to help when dark consumption is down, and I also use it as my god mode. CP + cloak of fear + touch of fear allow me to perma-fear almost any boss without running out of end. Laser beam eyes filled out a small gap in my attack chain, and its a decent ranged attack that dm is missing. It seems to crit pretty often. I skipped energy torrent.
General Strategy: Unless you have strong team support, I find that when taking on a boss, it is often beneficial to have a few minions near the boss. Dont kill them! You can use them to make dark regen, dark consumption, and soul drain more effective. You should be tough enough to handle a few minions hitting you, and they will probably be neutralized by one of your control powers anyway. If you have death shroud running, most minions will be dead or nearly dead from the DoT while you are hammering away at the boss.
Remember that midnight grasp has a lengthy DoT attached to it. IF you hit a minion with it, and theyre left with a sliver of life, just let the DoT kill em; dont waste another attack finishing them off unless theyre a problem minion.
In competent teams, my usual strategy is to jump right into the middle of a mob and hit soul drain, then dark regen, then kill the rest of the stuff with SD-boosted single target attacks. Effective and fun. Use ToF, CoF, or OG as needed to neutralize some of the mob.
A Word on PvP: dm/da is possibly the worst scrapper PvP combination, due to the lack of build-up and burst damage, high endurance usage, and the fact that a lot of your heals and buffs need to hit several targets at once to be effective. On the other hand, fear is an infrequently resisted status effect that can be quite deadly in PvP. Im not saying youll be totally useless in PvP - Ive won a few matches myself - but if you want to focus on PvP, do yourself a favor and roll a spines or broadsword/regen, like everyone else. Since my dm/da scrapper is now 50, Ive been toying with a PvP specific build, but its tricky without gimping myself badly in PvE.
Thats it! Have patience, and have fun! DM/DA has a steeper than average learning curve, but can be quite rewarding.