Honestly?
Dark/dark was the least favorite tank for myself to play.
Only at 50 could I afford multiple impervium armors to increase my endurance and recovery.
dark regen is a god of a heal with a devil of an endurance cost.
As a tanker, you usually take more punishment and need your heal more.
At 50 and heavily IO'd, Im not ashamed of my tank.
But pre 50, esp lower levels, it was painful to level, even on a team. I died more on a dark/dark than any other tanker I've played.
and I had a kick [censored] ss/dark brute before it (no problems with her)
50 Tanks: Invul/ss, Fire/ice/fire, Ice/em, Stone/fire
WP/Stone, dark/dark, shld/mace
50 Other: WS, SS/dark/sc brute, BS/Regen/WM scrpr, fire/fire/force blaster, rad/kin corr, mind/rad ctrl, ill/storm cntrl
<QR>
1. Dark/Dark is a fun build.
2. The Atlas Medallion and Portal Jockey are your new best friends.
3. Stockpile medium blues on other characters
4. Fear is your main weapon. Use it.
5. Slotting and enemy group choice are the key to success.
6. From 1 - 22 You will feel like you are in a nightmare.
7. Trolls... good friends. One toggle.. necessary
8. It's not your powersets, it's how you use them.
Doing this reminded me I need to update my guide.
GIVE TANKS DARKNESS/ELECTRICAL MASTERY! =3
Level 50's: Komrade Kommunism (T); King Darksource (T); Burning Red Star (T); Komrade Kosmonaut (WS); Vredesbyrd (Br); Anarchery (Bl)
Well, compared to Invuln and Stone you'll find the Dark/Dark tank pretty squishy. I haven't played one myself, but I do have an SG mate who leveled one to 50. The results were... a bit of a roller coaster. The set lived and died by Dark Regeneration... one missed heal while tanking was usually enough to faceplant him. Facing anything with tohit debuffs was usually a death sentence for him unless the rest of the team could kill it really fast. Our team at the time didn't include any buffs, the rest of us were playing pure damage dealers.
I will say I didn't know his exact build, and he's primarily a controller player; it was his first tank. That said he really did seem to be very squishy... things an SO'd Invuln tanker would yawn thru were life or death for him, and I know his build wasn't THAT bad... it may have been his first tanker but he'd already leveled 'trollers, defenders & scrappers to 50 and was working on 3 years playing at the time.
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I have 40 odd levels of experience with both sets although on different tanks.
IMHO there are two keys.
1.frankenslot dark regen for acc/rech/end the heal portion is plenty strong unslotted. and remember the combo has two great heals use the one you need don't just spam both.
2.people skip the fear and it is there for a reason. coupled with the fear from the secondary or with the fears from the presence pool it is potent mitigation. it completely shuts off incoming fire to the entire team until they take damage and even then it greatly limits their ability to return fire. Pseudo resists for the entire team basically.
Dark armor has holes(as all sets do)but it shines where most other sets struggle the most. Learn to use the tools you do have and you should enjoy it greatly.
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It's one of my favorite tanks (I have invul, stone, fire) - quirky yes, but I dont' think it underperforms.
As noted, cloak of fear is great but most people skip it because they think it works differently than it does.
As for end, yes it can be a problem. IOs make a big difference and I rarely notice problems anymore.
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2.people skip the fear and it is there for a reason. coupled with the fear from the secondary or with the fears from the presence pool it is potent mitigation. it completely shuts off incoming fire to the entire team until they take damage and even then it greatly limits their ability to return fire. Pseudo resists for the entire team basically.
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How effective would it be to take all the fears and stack them on a mob as control?
Thats exactly what Dark/Dark do best. Resists are great but Darks mitigation is amazing. Fears and -to hit are your best weapons
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After looking at the presence pool, Intimidate and Invoke Panic have very long recharges, so I can't see going that route. Cloak of Fear and Touch of Fear would stack well and combined they are mag 5 so should fear a boss together.
When I played dark armor on a brute I skipped Cloak of Fear since it was counter productive with the damage aura, but I can see it being very useful on a tank where damage is not the primary concern. With CoF, OG, and ToF together it should lock down entire mobs pretty easily.
My dk/dk tank is still a work in progress. He's lvl 46 and I have yet to take cloak of fear or touch of fear, thinking I can put them off as my last two choices(thinking I'll take them earlir in 2nd build). As it stands, it has holes--some you can overcome, some you can patch, and some you'll just have to learn to live with.
Here are the holes:
End- Totally managable with end reduction, IO's, and toggle management. It really is a non-issue if you pay attention.
Defense- Toggles and IO's. After reading Call Me Awesome's guide, my dark tank is soft capped for s/l but I did have to take weave, combat jumping and cloak of darkness to get there. The problem here is...
Defense debuffs- Dark tanks have zero defense debuff resistance. Our attacks and CoF have -to-hit which helps mitigate against this.
Knockback protection- Acrobatics or IO's.
Slows- This is what I feel is our bigger hole but again IO's and haste(not on Auto) for recharge help here. I didn't take haste on this build but I don't feel this as much. However, I have yet to take on a mob/AV that does 90% slow. So I may add it in my 2nd build.
Energy Damage- This is a a flat out lie. Sure it's not at the amount of the rest of our resistances but so what?. Can an invuln correct me if I'm wrong but we have the same amount of energy resistance. How is this a hole for us and not for invuln. Besides, you will come across nrg/neg defense(in case you come across non-s/l energy damage) if you slot for IO's. It's almost impossible to avoid this set bonus.
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Well, compared to Invuln and Stone you'll find the Dark/Dark tank pretty squishy. I haven't played one myself, but I do have an SG mate who leveled one to 50. The results were... a bit of a roller coaster. The set lived and died by Dark Regeneration... one missed heal while tanking was usually enough to faceplant him. Facing anything with tohit debuffs was usually a death sentence for him unless the rest of the team could kill it really fast. Our team at the time didn't include any buffs, the rest of us were playing pure damage dealers.
I will say I didn't know his exact build, and he's primarily a controller player; it was his first tank. That said he really did seem to be very squishy... things an SO'd Invuln tanker would yawn thru were life or death for him, and I know his build wasn't THAT bad... it may have been his first tanker but he'd already leveled 'trollers, defenders & scrappers to 50 and was working on 3 years playing at the time.
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I would like to see his build, because there's no way a well-built Dark/ tank should be that squishy. My Dark tank is level 39, and leveling her has been no more difficult than it was for my two Invul tanks. I also have a level 50 Dark scrapper, btw, so I've played the set quite a bit.
Dark does have layered mitigation, but instead of Invul's combo of resists defense and Dull Pain, it relys on a mix of resists, Dark Regen, and its mez auras. Not taking either Op Gloom or Cloak of Fear is similar to skipping Invinc for an Invul; it's doable, but will seriously compromise the set's mitigation potential.
This is especially true for players who have either Stuns or Fears available through their secondary. My tank is Dark/Mace, and being able to use Clobber in conjunction with Op Gloom is a huge advantage--Op Gloom takes out all the minions, and I can selectively Stun Lieuts and Bosses with Clobber. A Dark/Dark tank should be using Cloak of Fear and Touch of Fear in the same way; if the player you mentioned was not doing that, it could explain why he had so much trouble.
While it's true that Dark doesn't have a lot of defense in the set, fully slotted CoD has the same defense as Weave. Not a huge component of Dark's mitigation, but a player interested in more mitigation can build on it to get fairly significant amounts of defense. Between CoD, Weave, and set bonuses my Dark tank has around 21% positional defense to all, and I'd bet you could get that total up quite a bit higher if you wanted to go for typed defense to selected types.
So I hope you don't take your one experience with a Dark tank as representative of all of them; Dark is definitely NOT a squishy set if you build it to take advantage of all the tools it offers.
EDIT: I just looked at my Dark/Mace build--that 21% positional def is *without* Weave! I also found an old typed def build in Mid's; concentrating on S/L and E/NE defense I was able to get around 32% defense to those types, again without Weave.
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Exactly, you have several layers of mitigation. Expanding any one layer will help you survive. Expanding all will ridiculously increase your survival imo. Also don't try to fit in another Shadow Maul and you're down to 15% health to decide to cast Dark regen. You'll get yourself killed. Maybe this is what your SG mate was doing.
Any good builds that someone could post here?
I love Dark Armor, now but, I'm not going to be an apologist for it. It is an endurance hog, even without Dark Regen. OG is fine, but CoD and CoF are heavy on the end. When you combine that with your other armors and attacks, you've got some major end management problems. With that said, don't use them if you don't need them. DA is not like other sets where you can "Set it and forget it!"
I've rolled two DA Scrappers and two DA Tanks, all with different secondaries, so give me a little credit here. DA Tanks are squishy until they get Tough. Period. After Tough it's a whole new ball game. Normally one application of Dark Regen gets you through a fight, if it's an enemy type it's strong against, then maybe not even once, but it will suffer more damage than some of it's more robust counterparts. But as always, the secondary you choose really helps your survivability. Stone, SS, AXE and Mace are really good for keeping a DA up longer. One tank I rolled is a DA/Fire and it was a pain as there is zero mitigation. That makes a huge difference! But after getting Tough, things got a ton easier.
DA is heavy on the Neg Energy damage and Psi damage. DA is more of a specialized set. It's the set Batman would use if he were a Tanker. Although the OG and CoF only affect minions, that's potentially a lot of minions that aren't attacking you. You choose which to use. I prefer OG if I'm not playing DM as secondary, otherwise I like CoF because of the fear stacking even if it comes with a higher end cost. But that PoV is just from a solo perspective. They both are great on a team if someone else has stuns or fears.
As to how to handle the endurance problems? Many have said it, just use traditional slotting in the armors and at least one in every attack and carry an abundance of small to large blues. I put two end redux's in Tough and squeezed an extra on into CoD since I use that a lot. Pick up some Impervium armors for extra recovery, you only need two to get the bonus. You can also pick up Performance Shifter and the other endurance mod set escapes me at this time. Frankenslot as many of those as you can. I also have the Numia unique and the Miracle Unique and YES Accolades are your friend. If you are serious about making your Dark Armor tank stand out, then I suggest you start working on those.
Hope we helped.
I like Dark Melee a lot - I have it on a Brute and a Tanker (both 50s) and a Scrapper that I rolled for i14 (now 35). It turns out that I like Dark Armor a lot more than I thought I would, and the character I decided to stick with it on is now at 38, That character is Dark/Ice, a pure team tanker that doesn't even try to solo.
The thing is, I don't see the two sets really meshing all that well, and both have more to offer other primaries or secondaries than they do the matched pair. Dark Melee is a control and utility set that benefits chiefly primaries with strong Defense components, because of the -tohit debuff that's the only consistent thing about the set. Ice/Dark, Shields/Dark, Inv/Dark, and WP/Dark all make more sense to me than Dark/Dark. Dark Armor has a once-a-day endurance recovery AoE that might be beneficial to Shields and Inv.
Fire/Dark doesn't make much sense but looks really cool.
Dark Armor seems to be a complicated control set with fears and stuns. The thing is, Dark Melee's fear is strong enough that you don't need to stack it outside of bosses, and recharges fast enough that it is easy to stack on a boss. Sets with a lot of stun, like Mace, or even (turn your head and spit) Energy Melee might be nice combinations. I made Dark/Ice to be a melee controller with a big bag of tricks.
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I have two level 50 tanks, an Invulnerable and a Stone.
I've gotten my Dark/Dark Scrapper up to 35, and once I invested the money in a Knockback protection IO I found myself really enjoying the combo.
It really seems to me like there's the potential for a Dark/Dark to make a very good tank.
So ... anyone out there have a high level Dark/Dark Tank? How do you rate it as compared to Stone, Invul, or WP?
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