Dark Armour or Ninjitsu?

I'm dead set on ninja blade for my new alt, however I'm not to sure about the secondary. Both Dark Armour and Ninjitsu would fit concept-wise but I can't decide.
(BTW, this will be mostly PvE, I'll take a peek in the PvP zones but mainly PvE for now.)

Will be mostly a scrapping character.
So far I figured:

Dark Armour:
-Hide, Shadow Dweller and Divine Avalanche should make for some decent defence, next to it's resistance toggles???
-Has CoF and OG which should make this char more of a jack of all trades.
-Breaks the mold of 'teh n1nja!!!2' a bit.
-Res based, should give it some survivability in RV

Ninjitsu:
-Defence, should be good when combined with Divine Avalanche.
-A more reliable self heal then Dark Armour.
-Also has 'gadget' powers, tho I wouldn't know which are really useful
-A god-mode power. Would be helpful agains't EBs/AVs.

Both sound like fun to me

I'd love to hear from Dark Armour users how they preform. Haven't seen all to many of these yet...

PvE Defence based secondaries FTW

You've pretty much hit the nail on the head there. Couple of things though:

Dark armour has a pretty useful self-heal in the form of Dark Regeneration, which does a hefty heal for every enemy hit in the AoE. Just remember to slot for endurance, and it becomes a lifesaver, literally. The downside is that DA NEEDS to self-heal more often. I have it on my brute though, and love it.

Oh, and the gadgets in ninjitsu are a little hit and miss, not *quite* as useful as you'd like them to be. Personally I prefer the autopowers from super reflexes.

I know from experience and talk that dark armour just consumes too much endurance.
Also it's priamry defence against elements is smashing, lethal and negative energy, at the top of my head I can say that negative energy damage is only common in a few groups like CoT or the council while ninjutsu offers a small amount of protection against all types of damage. (except psych damage)
It's your choice but I'd say that you should go for ninjutsu.
Besides ninjas are never boring.

[ QUOTE ]
I know from experience and talk that dark armour just consumes too much endurance.
Also it's priamry defence against elements is smashing, lethal and negative energy, at the top of my head I can say that negative energy damage is only common in a few groups like CoT or the council while ninjutsu offers a small amount of protection against all types of damage. (except psych damage)
It's your choice but I'd say that you should go for ninjutsu.
Besides ninjas are never boring.

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Kuji-In Retsu offers defense to psionic damage just like Elude afaik. Also Kuji-In Rin offers small resistance to psi damage.

Firstly, ninjas are always boring. You can tell because they can be described in a single word: ninja.

"So what's your CoV character?"
"Ninja"
"Oh."

Aaaanyway, dark armour is endurance heavy, sure, but not critically so, especially if you turn off unecessary buffs depending on enemy damage types. If ninjistu is like SR, then it does offer protection against psych, because it offers defense against melee/ranged rather than actual damage type.

The other thing to take into account is that a defense-based secondary can let you re-hide mid fight without using placate (if you're lucky), but a resistance-based set will not. Ever.

Ninjas are Ninjas, they can't be boring, I mean, they are Ninjas.

If you can work out a decent build and can live being possibly weaker defensivly than the rest till lvl 18, then I'd edge towards the side of DA.

Divine Av is a great tool and helps out my regen stalker a hell of a lot and I'd assume would do the same on the dark armour side of things too.

However DA also has weak resistance figures for the elements (longbow flamers argh! ect)and as already pointed out, its endurance cost seems sky high at times - the heal especialy so but a very strong one if fighting 2+ foes. Also has the bonus of great psi resistance and while it will drop hide, CoF/OG should be handy ... sometimes Oh and don't forget the leaping pool for acrobatics

My solo villain for Deviant is a Nin/DA, only lvl 4 I might add but it has potential.

Edit: But Dark Embrace sound still continues to drone on an endless loop which may break you unless they fix it for live

Dark is da bomb nuff said

Dark Armour stuffed full of AoE - Good for "Team" Stalkers

Ninjitsu - only two AoE - Better for "Solo" Stalkers (But not a bad comprimise compared to /SR and /Regen)

(Applies to PvE only)

I love Ninjitsu and I imagine the /da AoEs are not useful when you want to make attacks from hide.

Nin is amazing and goes great with Ninja Blade. In PvE you should out last every one in your team the heal is awesome (slightly better than reconstruction I believe, and a good recharge), the mez resist almost flawless (needs recreds and can be busted through by about oh... 5 or 6 stacked holds and immobs), toggles have fast animations, Retsu is Elude by another name... just a great set.

plus ninja offorse one thing that is fear protection great to have it pvp

OMG welcome back Soaring, I'm afraid we had to substitute you in that PvP tourney ages ago..

lol well you got it wrong i only lost 1 macth the whole time and you said 2 lol. but who won that macth

I have no idea, you left so long ago..

[ QUOTE ]
Firstly, ninjas are always boring. You can tell because they can be described in a single word: ninja.

"So what's your CoV character?"
"Ninja"
"Oh."

Aaaanyway, dark armour is endurance heavy, sure, but not critically so, especially if you turn off unecessary buffs depending on enemy damage types. If ninjistu is like SR, then it does offer protection against psych, because it offers defense against melee/ranged rather than actual damage type.

The other thing to take into account is that a defense-based secondary can let you re-hide mid fight without using placate (if you're lucky), but a resistance-based set will not. Ever.

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The Ninjitsu Toggles are awesome and the equivilent of practiced brawler is actually in my opinion more useful purely because it gives you a psionic resistance early on. Lack of Knockback resistance can be a problem though.

The gadgets are largely useless. I just respecced my level 32 stalker and dropped smoke flash (Barely ever used it). The only gadget of any use is Caltrops which can buy you some time in a scrap.

I also respecced out the self-heal since it has a long animation time and is pretty useless in the middle of a fight. If you need to heal yourself then you've got big problems. Your toggles should be deflecting most attacks and Divine avalanche triple slotted for defense will do the rest.

What worries me though is that after 32 I don't plan on taking any of the Ninjitsu powers until the last one which is basically Elude.

If this was a Super Reflexes Vs Ninjitsu debate than I'd say Super Reflexes has it. However Dark Armour Vs Ninjitsu? If it wasn't for the fact that I despise the Dark Armour effects I'd go with that.

Having played /ninjutsu and /dark armour excessively I have to say that both are very strong, but very different regarding recommended playstyle.
Dark seems to consume more end, especially if you run something like CoF. On the other hand, OG and CoF offer truckloads of survivability against melee heavy (or corner-pulled) opponents which Ninjutsu just can´t compete with. Dark Consumption will be up most of the time when you need it. The same can not be said for Kuji-In Sha.
With Ninjutsu you will be hit less often and thus need to heal (or be healed) less often, but a strong boss will hit you and it will always be his strongest attack that hits you which will lead to faceplants. (Curse you, Murphy! )
The same attack will leave you noticeably less hurt with Dark Armour (and then you press the "Dark Consumption"-button and all is well), but large groups of ranged mobs will hurt you much more than your Ninjutsu counterpart.
In conclusion, with both sets you will face situations where you think: "This would have been easier with the other set..." So, basically you can´t go wrong, regardless of your choice, if you adapt your playstyle accordingly.