Hey!
Sorry for the delay reply post and stuff, been away from CoX for a while ¬ _ ¬ anyway. . .
Yeah! I Loooove Dark Armour! Got my brute to 50; woooop! So i will be doing the final build and slotting for him soon, hopefully with 20% extra recovery, 100% end reduc in Res Toggles 70% end reduc in all attacks! IO's ftw!
As for your comment HardRider about how much damage i do? Well i usually have perma full fury with my Fire/Dark Armour, my attacks are still slotted for 100% damage and i have build up, so it usually takes me Fire Sword Circle, Ball Lightning and Electric Fences and the +2-3 mob is dead, with a few Liets to kill xP
For those who are interested in Dark Armour i would say go for it! Pick your primary wisely, if they are end heavy; slot for end reduc! But always fully slot the Dark Armour toggles for End Reduc; the Resistance toggles are actually ok endurance wise, its just with extra toggles like Clock of Darkness, Fear and Death Shroud; which are usually situational.
I have made a Dark Armour/Mace Tank to stack Stuns (i found the amazing usefulness of Oppresive Gloom from 48-50) and for concept reasons and i think it will be my first Tank to 50 =D.
Good luck with those who choose the Dark-side (could'nt help it xP), you wont regret it; totally different and alot of fun!
Hope i have helped ^ _ ^
Hey!
Sorry for the delay reply post and stuff, been away from CoX for a while ¬ _ ¬ anyway. . .
Yeah! I Loooove Dark Armour! Got my brute to 50; woooop! So i will be doing the final build and slotting for him soon, hopefully with 20% extra recovery, 100% end reduc in Res Toggles 70% end reduc in all attacks! IO's ftw!
As for your comment HardRider about how much damage i do? Well i usually have perma full fury with my Fire/Dark Armour, my attacks are still slotted for 100% damage and i have build up, so it usually takes me Fire Sword Circle, Ball Lightning and Electric Fences and the +2-3 mob is dead, with a few Liets to kill xP
For those who are interested in Dark Armour i would say go for it! Pick your primary wisely, if they are end heavy; slot for end reduc! But always fully slot the Dark Armour toggles for End Reduc; the Resistance toggles are actually ok endurance wise, its just with extra toggles like Clock of Darkness, Fear and Death Shroud; which are usually situational.
I have made a Dark Armour/Mace Tank to stack Stuns (i found the amazing usefulness of Oppresive Gloom from 48-50) and for concept reasons and i think it will be my first Tank to 50 =D.
Good luck with those who choose the Dark-side (could'nt help it xP), you wont regret it; totally different and alot of fun!
Hope i have helped ^ _ ^
Oppps! Double post xD
Sowry!
[ QUOTE ]
Hi there. I have just created a dark/dark brute myself and have found this thread very interesting so thanks to all those who posted. My theme also invloves flight which is annoying as I'll have to get sets that increase KB defence to try and make up for the lack of Acrobatics but thats's what you get for having themed villainesses I suppose.
My question regards the death shroud power and whether it is a neccessary skill to have. A lot has been said of it's endurance drain but not so much about it's damage potential. I myself was going to skip the power as I will be doing a lot of teaming with this villainess and value the defences side of her more than her DPS.
I look forward to hearing the opinions of more experienced players.
[/ QUOTE ]
Flights a nice idea with Dark/Dark but I hate kbs. KBs are bad because you rely on positioning yourself to leech the most heal, end, tohit or damage from foes. Hover helped, I haven't tried it lately to say whether or not it still does but I went acrobatics route earlier on because hover is somewhat slow and with a spin can add delay to the Dark Regens delay (heal happens about 2 secs late) BUT I will be likely to revert to the concept build at 50. Seeing as I wanted Acrobatics by 20 I skipped on fitness pool and took hasten to Dark consume and Dark Regen more often. I often ran into groups with nearly no end, full barred fought and ran into the next group with nearly no end. When solo its nice to find the right level of mobs to be able to leech, withstand and defeat of the right amount your build can.
Death Shroud is an aura that is rubbish to even bother with on 1 foe but outstanding on 10 foes. I turn death shroud off on 3 or less foes.
Your damage per endurance goes up with fury, the more targets attacking you means your fury will be higher, it actually does get higher faster from a group of foes hitting you than you hitting a foe. I can go from 0-90 in one fight XD Death Shroud will pull aggro onto you which will increase your fury which will make death shroud hurt all the more as well as all your other attacks.
My single target attacks focus on those with more hitpoints than the others ie Bosses or Lieuts and whilst doing them I find death shroud has taken care of the rest. The more soul drain effects the better too as my damage is up to the max and I won't miss.
Dark/Dark is basically a messed up set in my mind, I have to try and get killed, to give myself the best buffing without the control. Getting close to defeat and dark regenning out to full just adds to the fun but if I end up using Soul Transfering then thats all part of playing the character. With the control well you can buy time. I just wouldn't use Death Shroud and Cloak of Fear at the same time and if playing with a Dark/Dark, as soon as I see the fear I might ST more, most definitely on a higher rank or the mobs buffer/debuffer.
Being a brute I put most my slotting in the attacks and dark regen - theory : attacks are schedule a, anything like res slotting not worth worrying till DOs, I end up in teams get shields taking me to res cap anyway if not then either my death shroud can keep enemies in debuffs or I am solo working on the kill or be killed basis.
In practise: In teams you do fine with the buffers but when it comes to debuffers there is always some one who has no idea of what debuffs are for and how many they are meant to effect and so you see anchor deaths seen to first or spread groups.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
I have a Dual Blade/Dark Armour, and whilst endurance management was a problem initially, sets and a refining of my playstyle have helped. Also my fury generation is consistently quite high.
I don't have Oppressive Gloom, I tried it and found that I disliked mobs wandering off and away from Death Shroud and the AoEs from Dual Blade.
I have Cloak of Fear, mainly for when fighting bosses (or a panic button if I bite off more than i can chew 
). For Brutes, Cloak of Fear is Mag 3 fear so affects both minions and lieutenants. I tend to turn this on when fighing Bosses/Elite Bosses so the minions, etc won't attack me and they are a ready source of healing for Dark Regeneration.
My normal approach is to run only the basic armours if fighting disparately located foes (does not seem efficient to use Death Shroud in this case). If groups on a map number 3 or more I'll tend to keep Death Shroud turned on.
I do have Tough but only use it when fighting lethal/smashing damage enemies who are particularly hard hitting.
I do find if I have to run more than one of either Death Shroud, Cloak of Fear and Tough, my endurance can start to take a hit.
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@Moondog
Union:
CoH: Moondog (WS); V-Rock (Tnk, semi-retired); Pole-Star (Bla); Demon Dog (Scr).
CoV: Midnight Gunner (Corr); Operative John Doe (Ban); Day-Star (Dom); Commissar Jaeger (MM).
[ QUOTE ]
For Brutes, Cloak of Fear is Mag 3 fear so affects both minions and lieutenants. I tend to turn this on when fighing Bosses/Elite Bosses so the minions, etc won't attack me and they are a ready source of healing for Dark Regeneration.
[/ QUOTE ]
On mine they'd be a source of endurance with Dark Consumption as well. Tough does make a difference, I doubt I'd go and have OP on a Tank whereas on a Brute you can mass immob later and OP may be better than CoF in teams at times. Although the immob aoe is small and the power itself would need slotting love.
The build looks good, I wouldn't want to be a twonk and try to re-slot it with enhancements that take weeks to earn inf for when DB/DA is so much more PVE anyway (I prolly do basic IOs myself and soul transfer more often XD ).
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
Looks like Death shroud is more or less a must have then for generating fury. I guess I'll have to find room for it in my build. Whats's perhaps more concerning is the need for a DA brute to take acrobatics. My angel of death obviously needs to fly otherwise she'd be more of a frog of death and that's not quite so fitting with her backstory!
I might go have a play with mids hero builder and see what I can come up with.
I played a elec/da brute on a trial account well past lvl32 (lightning rod). I toggled between deathshroud and cloak of fear, depending on if I wanted damage mitigation or offence. Cloak of fear was like night and day for keeping me standing till the next dark regen in a large spawn i just alpha'ed. I believe I used to lightning rod and then run back round a corner to get the mobs bunch and all effected by the auras. This takes co-operation though so if there is a dominator who won't listen and area holds them before they have been pulled then leave the team. I believe elec/ has some minor +end attributes so this may have helped on the end usage side.
After doing 2 respecs to finetune my toon i managed to create a very good build.
This time i have added Death Shroud.(mainly using it to herd).
Then i try to finish them off with Lightning Rod.
When things get a bit tough i hit Cloak of fear.
The end-use got a lot better now by dropping Acrobatics, in turn i whasted a lot of infamy on Karma: KB protection.
The end-leach on Electric is minor, and is more about exausting an enemy.
But all tiny bits help
And about your build Moondog: quite impressive !
Slotted with Numia (+regen/_+recov) Yummie !!
Your build is not very different from my build (Elec/DA).
And i'm happy now.
Still think this is one of my coolest toons.
Playing a Fire/Fire brute at the moment, and it's a lot of fun too.
I'm even thinking about creating a Nrg/Nrg brute.
Just want to experience the incredible defence on this one.
However, i have heared some strong enemy's bypass defence easely with their accuracy.
But that will be a different story.
Anyway, i want to thank you all for all the comments and help !! (specially Shannon).
Death Shroud is an odd power. It's benefits aren't immediately seen. It's damage output isn't great and the end drain is quite high, but it does build fury, albeit very small amounts. Speaking of fury, once it's high enough DS does do noticeable damage and can really help with your DPS.
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