Dark Armor

Hey there, I get the general feeling that Dark Armor seems to be either misunderstood or plain frowned upon by the majority of people on the forums (eu+us).

But looking at it and doing some builds in hero planner, it sort of feels way more powerful than at first glance.

First off without any powerpools you can get the following defense/resists with the standard 3 SO defense/resist usage:

Defense 17,4%
Resists 35,1%

if you put in combat jumping + concealment youll increase your defense up to 28,4%.

Comparable as I understand it both Ninjitsu and Energy Aura are around 40-50% Defense depending on powerpools. But have nearly 0% Resists.

So Basicly your sacrifying around 10-15% Defense vs Nin/EA and gaining 35% Resists.

So in conclusions, am I missing something critical or whats up with the Dark Armor hate? At least on paper Dark Armor looks like a kickass secondary, especially considering the toggles have a really low endurance drain to start with.

Main problem is the place where got those numbers(pretty sure is hero planner) are wrong.

Hide is:
1.75% All but psionics when suppressed
3.75% ALL but 37.5% AOE when not supressed
Shadow dweller is:
3.75% All but psionics

I dont really know how you could get to 17% even 3 slotting both for defense.

Are you making calculations based on 7.5% hide and 5% shadow dweller that hero planner states?In that case you could get to 17% but thats not the case.

Just run hero stats and compare hide+shadow dweller with just danger sense from ninjitsu and youll see hero planner is terribly wrong.

Well,every set has hide so lets get it out of the equation for comparing purposes(just ranged to simplify)

Dark vs Ninja
3.75(SD) vs 12.75 --- 3 SO --> 6 vs 20
Dark vs SR
3.75(SD) vs 17.75(just 1 so on passive) --- 3 SO --> 6 vs 26
Dark vs EA
The same as Nin for most damage types --> 6 vs 20

Add hide on everyone of them and you got the numbers.
If your numbers were right...../Dark would be the uber of the uberest(and its real far from there)

Besides....how could NIN and EA get to 40-50% def??? are you including overload and retsu?

Using the CoH/CoV Character Builder, the stats seem to be correct in there (although reports Hide supressed as 1,875%), seems more like im doing the math wrong instead.

edit: actually now that I looked again, it reported Shadow Dweller as 1,75% Defense... you sure its 3,75%?

Guess theres a differene on Melee/Ranged and the DmgType defenses? Hows that work anyway? First it counts out the ranged/melee miss/hit and then Dmg Type miss/hit if ranged/melee check failed?

yeah i think your figures for def on dark are not quite right.
When i worked out my dark/dark build the most i could get was 13% def All and 67% AoE def
hide is 4.5% def with 1 def enh
shadow dweller is 2.8% with 3 def enhancers

No,youre right about sd:1.8%(memory fails sometimes )

[ QUOTE ]
Guess theres a differene on Melee/Ranged and the DmgType defenses? Hows that work anyway? First it counts out the ranged/melee miss/hit and then Dmg Type miss/hit if ranged/melee check failed?

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The way I understand it is the game uses the highest of your typed or positional defence totals (any that apply) against a certain attack.

So if you have, say, a total of 5% Melee/Ranged Defence and 28% Smash/Lethal then against:
- against any kind of Smash/Lethal attack you'd have 28% defence
- against melee or ranged attacks that do Energy/NegEnergy/Fire/Cold/Toxic/Psionic damage you'd have 5% defence
- against area/cone attacks that do Energy/NegEnergy/Fire/Cold/Toxic/Psionic damage you'd have no defence at all

And if an attack does two types of damage I think you get a defence check against each portion separately.

ugh, well that kinda spoils it for me... infact thats pretty horrible system if it thats how it works.

And Shadow Dweller is 1.8... thats almost worse that the defense provided by Combat Jumping... I guess its only worth it for the immob+perception it adds or should I still 3SO slot it with defense?

Im getting kinda skeptical over picking Dark Armor, especially considering I always get my Hide interrupted while attempting to re-hide. Anyone have any positive insight on the Resist part of Dark Armor?

i've said it before in another post simlur to this and i'll say it again.
Due to all the scrappers and tankers in PVP taking FA/tactics it renders any defence type powers useless thus making a resist set more practical in a PVP enviroment.

FA/tactics doesn't render elude or the ultimate tier power from the defence bases sets useless.

To be frank, dark armour is gimp for PvP. A res based set with something with so little hp is stupid. Not only that you lose a lot of damage, by being res you have pants defence, and so will be spending most of your time out of hide, therefore you actually lose a lot of damage, by means of criticals. Not to mention the crappy final tier power.

If you want to scrap and be able to take damage and "scrap" go regen. It has way more survivability than dark armour and better endurance managment.

Well, for me Dark is not a res based set but a fear based set with some res thrown in.