Dark Melee and Energy Melee if you don't mind being single-target focused.
If you value AE more highly, Battle Axe and Fire.
War Mace is also a good choice, with good ST and AoE. Clobber's guaranteed stun will stack with Oppressive Gloom, this way you can stun bosses.
You know if its anything Energy Melee, im gonna give it an A+, but for Dark Armor, I'm going to have to respectuflly disagree with you Talen. DA suffers from tons of end drainage. Seven toggles arent exactly stam friendly, so synergizing with DM would be fitting for the Dark Consumption power. Though any AT can be coupled with anything, its really how comfortable you wish to be. I say go with DM for the health and end mitigation, or stone for the aoe stun locks (fault and tremor), gives you time to heal or deal some dmg.
"If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything"
"You're like Giraffe's, the way you look down on me, with your vegetarian scorn."
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Dark Melee and Energy Melee if you don't mind being single-target focused.
If you value AE more highly, Battle Axe and Fire.
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Depends how much cash you're prepared to throw at the project. Stun stacking is very necessary for survival unless you're going to do something like build for ridiculous amounts of melee defence.
That means EM, WM or SM and a large investment in extra recovery.
My tank is dark/axe, a friend made dark/EM and EM just seems to work better.
It's true. This game is NOT rocket surgery. - BillZBubba
Dark/Energy with the Fighting pool works really nicely for me solo and on small teams.
I think the end woes of dark Armour are a bit overrated, and only really manifest seriously if you rely on Dark Regeneration a lot. I find between the extra Resistance from Tough and stunning most nasty targets pre-emptively, I can go for several spawns without needing Dark Regen - its more a panic button than a way of life.
Its comes with seven toggles, how is the total end drain of running even five of them seem ?overrated"?. And you even mention using Tough, a total of eight toggles....yeah I'm sure you won't notice the end drain. -.-
Secondly you get Dark Regeneration at level Eight. It's pretty much, THE way of life for lvls 8-22. Not to mention the cool down can be reduced to 15 secs. I don't know what you were doing at level 8, but I can be sure it wasn't taking on huge mobs without Dark Regen.
"If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything"
"You're like Giraffe's, the way you look down on me, with your vegetarian scorn."
I recommend mace, stone or ice.
I do not recommend fire... I have a 50 dark/fire/pyre that is fairly gimp. I'm getting ready to IO her out to insane defense levels, but the lack of mitigation in fire/pyre is noticable.
QR:
Go with whatever fits your concept. If you don't have one I recommend finding one.
"Fasting at the feast of power refreshes the spirit"
i.e. Choose what you want, not what necessarily the most broken thing on the menu.
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)
Putting in my suggestion here of Dark/Stone. Yes, it's rough on the endurance. Yes, it's a challenge to play. But it's so, so worth it.
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Its comes with seven toggles, how is the total end drain of running even five of them seem ?overrated"?. And you even mention using Tough, a total of eight toggles....yeah I'm sure you won't notice the end drain. -.-
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That's what IO's are for. +recovery is usually (always?) the first bonus in a set that has it so you can frankenslot for it cheap. My shield tank runs 7 toggles. My defender without Stamina runs 5. Neither has Conserve Power, because they don't need it.
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The Mentor Project
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You know if its anything Energy Melee, im gonna give it an A+, but for Dark Armor, I'm going to have to respectuflly disagree with you Talen. DA suffers from tons of end drainage. Seven toggles arent exactly stam friendly, so synergizing with DM would be fitting for the Dark Consumption power. Though any AT can be coupled with anything, its really how comfortable you wish to be. I say go with DM for the health and end mitigation, or stone for the aoe stun locks (fault and tremor), gives you time to heal or deal some dmg.
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Yes, synergizing with Dark Armor is important but it's in synergizing the secondary with your mitigation, not Dark Consumption if you're running with IO's. They will negate any issues you have with endurance if you make sure to socket for end redux and bonuses.
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That's what IO's are for. +recovery is usually (always?) the first bonus in a set that has it so you can frankenslot for it cheap. My shield tank runs 7 toggles. My defender without Stamina runs 5. Neither has Conserve Power, because they don't need it.
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I would advise you socket for +max end and not +recovery. All of this is explained in my sig.
As for which secondary to pick, you can really choose anything. However fear or stun stacking will greatly add to your mitigation.
I also suggest Dark Melee for the strongest synergy, unless you have a theme you've gotta stick to:
- Touch of Fear stacks with Cloak of Fear
- Soul Drain buffs the accuracy of Cloak of Fear and Death Shroud, and buffs the damage of Death Shroud for constant AoE while you punch other things
- Dark Consumption keeps your endurance topped off
- Siphon Life means Dark Regen is the panic/post-alpha heal, rather than your only heal, which saves huge chunks of endurance
I haven't found a combo that works as well as DM/DA or DA/DM. However, I have a DA/Super Strength tank that dinged 41 last night, and it's a ball of fun. Rage buffs the DA auras that need accuracy, and I slotted Kinetic Crash into every SS attack that takes KB enhancements, so I have 12 or 15 points of KB protection, including 4-slotted Kick as pre-req for Tough. I took those instead of the mitigation auras, and am happy with the increased damage resistance.
However, going for max resistance instead of DA's unique auras means I'm just a funny-looking Invuln.
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However, going for max resistance instead of DA's unique auras means I'm just a funny-looking Invuln.
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Invuln's a hybrid defense/resist set, key being defense... there's a massive difference between a dark on an itf and an invuln.
Dark Armors true endurance useage comes from relying on using dark regen for key survivability...theft of essence (healing set) chance for endurance proc actually just about negates the endurance cost of dark regen all together once properly slotted. In fact dark regen usually costs me nothing or on some occasions with a large enough mob I actually gain endurance.
Death shroud is standard damage aura cost
the resistance toggles are cheaper than most other armors
cloak of darkness doesn't really need to be ran and really isn't a factor
and Oppressive gloom saves you endurance if you consider how much mitigation is gained from pretty much taking out all minion damage.
Cloak of fear shouldn't really be messed with due to being able to stack stuns from mace or em as mentioned above...
I would also suggest cj so that you don't have to run cloak of darkness as you immobolize protection.
Other tips...your attacks cost more endurance than your secondary (with the exception of dark regen). Try to get a good amount of endurance reduction from frankenslotting your attacks if you don't have a planned out build for maximizing your defense.
I'm considering venturing into the world of Tanking, and from browsing in Mids' planner, I quite like the look of Dark Armour.
What I'm wondering is what secondaries go well with Dark/, and if I'm looking at PvE, sometimes solo and sometimes grouped, what build choices should I be looking at?
Any advice would be welcome!