Dark Armour: A Tank for All Seasons
I'd be up for an all dark team as long as the day was right.
There isn't a great deal I agree with in this build about tanks and tanking. From my experience good tanking stems from technique and experience, not builds, and while all tank sets have weaknesses, an experienced tank with good technique will still get the job done with a minimum of fuss.
To be honest, reading this guide was a lot like watching a channel 5 conspiracy theory documentary. Talk up the strengths of the argument and completely overlook anything that doesn't fit in with what you want people to believe. For a start no mention of how a dark tank will have considerably less HP than a stone/invul/ice for half the time which also means less regen. No mention of the fact the self-heal that DA gets is dependant on hitting multiple targets to be at it's best, unlike FA's (non +HP) self heal which is reliable and quick. When tanking an AV the reliability of your self-heal is severely weakened and you won't have any increased HP or regen to fall back on like with ice/WP/invul/stone.
The almost constant mocking of invul throughout the guide is highly misleading too. Invul is a good set for a tank. Yes it has a large problem with psi but that is when your technique comes into it and carries you through, as it does when herding, which is another highly misleading part of the guide. A good invul tank will herd just fine. Of my four lvl 50 tanks, my invul is undoubtably my favourite.
I am not saying that DA isn't without it's strengths. It's a nice enough set, but I find your comments on other tank primaries to be very misleading and I would suggest that those who do not know their tanks take them with a pinch of salt.
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Ummmmm..... NO!
your comment about not having a self heal is actually incorrect..
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Doh! Mea culpa. On the other hand those are all 360s recharge heals, so I consider them buffs-that-heal rather than actual heals. I should have mentioned that in the guide, and mentioned the hp boost.
As for invul, there are reasons it's been significantly boosted with i13. Yes, good play and good slotting can compensate for almost anything - and Invul is superb against smashing/lethal. But as a set pre i13 (I don't know about post the changes) it was weak against anything else. I will plead guilty to focussing on the strengths - DA is IMO an underrated set with the strengths not being that well known.
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