The shadow warrior : Claws / Dark Armor Scrapper build by Celidya (i 15)

I) Introduction :


I think the most important thing in a guide is not the raw stats and numbers (you can read them in game whenever you want) but the experience, feelings and points of view about every power. However, we're all very different and we all have our own playstyles and things we like or don't like, so i'm going to introduce myself a bit to let you understand why you should (or shouldn't) follow my advices. If you don't like to read and just want a basic overview of the powers, you can probably skip this introduction.


First of all, i'm going to apologize for the possible spelling and grammars error you'll probably find in this guide. English is not my main language (i'm french ) and I sometime have a hard time explaining what I want, but i'll do my best to make it an enjoyable reading.


Now on to my introduction... A little bit about myself. I'm not a long time veteran as some of you can be (14 months veteran, although I have the game for 2 years), however I fall pretty deep into the “hardcore gamer” category, while being far from the usual cliché. I'm mostly saying that because most of the guide will be oriented towards efficiency and optimization, considering a full IO build and not SO or slotting for the leveling phase. That said, I played a lot of archetypes and powersets, I used to swear soft caped defense was the pinnacle of fun, and enjoyed playing night widows, /shield, invuln... until out of boredom I created a spines/dark scrapper, and quickly fell in love with dark armor. I now have a dark/dark tank, spines/dark, claws/dark, katana/dark scrappers, a SS/dark brute and I tried the MA/dark scrapper as well, all 50 of course. Out of all of them, claws/DA is by far my favorite and probably the most fun character i've played in this game. That's why i'm finally making this guide, to share some of my enjoyment and help counter all the Dark armor clichés I keep reading everywhere.


As stated above, I won't tell much about the leveling phase and slotting with single origin enhancement. I think there's already plenty of guides to cover that, and it wouldn't be very wise for me to do so. I didn't slot a single SO in the character and I would never consider playing anything/dark armor with a SO build. So this guide will be mostly designed for players who want a fun and efficient character with some IO and build investment, aiming for high-end playstyle. A little word about PvP, I don't PvP, so this guide will be PvE oriented. I honestly know nothing about PvP in this game and don't really want to know anyway, but I doubt claws/DA would be a good build for that. PvP seems to be all about burst and 1 vs 1 while claws/DA is all about sustained dps and destroying massive amount of mobs in a very short time.


Now the question some of you might ask : why Claws/DA ? I'm going to expend a bit on this combo. At first glance it doesn't look very synergistic, first there's the redraw, then claws only mitigation is provided unfer the form of soft control, knockdown or knockback, which doesn't seem a very good way to take advantage of Dark armor's auras and heal. Now that's theory. In game I found it's not an annoyance at all, but a very good thing. I'll explain later for each power, however the key word is MOBILITY. If you want to stand toe to toe with a big boss and go through your attack chain while rotating the camera to watch the scenery, claws/DA is not for you. Claws is best used with a very active playstyle, constantly jumping around the battlefield and attacking at a very fast pace. Dark armor is a very passive secondary, the only clicky is the heal and it has a wide radius, I never have any problem using it when mobs are scattered. More on that later.


With that in mind, let's run a quick overview of the pros and cons of the Claws/Dark scrapper:


Pros:


-Claws has a low endurance cost, which helps with Dark armor

-High single target dps

-Awesome AE dps. I would say on par with my spines/dark, really, i'd even say claws if faster, but spines covers more area, which makes for a better AE machine in random PUGS where mobs are scattered. But in a farming map or ITF, claws are awesome.

-decent survivability, nothing as good as a defensive build, but I don't die much. And when I do i'm back to full life in about 2sec thanks to the self rez

-very fast paced gameplay, and fun as well with the mix between melee and ranged attacks, knockdown/knockback, etc...


Cons:


-the redraw after the heal is a minor annoyance

-survivability is still pathetic compared to the high end /SR, /invuln or /shield builds

-can't solo AV or really be effective at the scrapper challenges because of the survivability

-exemplaring down can be painful

-not really effective in a bad team where mobs are scattered to the four winds



Enough with the introduction now, let's move to the power themselves. I'll run a full overview of the powers, then describe some of the commonly used tactics and tips.

II) Claws :


As an offensive powerset, Claws is a pretty well rounded one, and overall very effective. I'd even go as far as saying it has the best of both worlds, really. It combines very high AE damage with high single target as well. All the other powersets have to give up one or the other, especially spines. I never felt good with spines because despite the great AE killing power, I was completely useless to fill my role as a damage dealer against any AV. With claws i'm proud to be a very good damage dealer no matter what the games throws at me. So what prevents it from being grossly overpowered ? Max targets and radius, as well as the knockback in shockwave. Spines has a much easier time hitting the max amount of targets, and any blaster can hit a lot more targets as well. However, in a tightly packed group of mobs, a Claws/DA will murder them pretty fast.



Swipe :


Rating: 2/5


Available at level 1, this is the basic “quick attack” all the powersets get, but you have claws, so it's even quicker. There's not much to say about this power, really. It's great to fill your attack chain in a low level build, but claws are so fast you'll never need it at higher levels, and the dpa has nothing stellar anyway. I tend to consider that as claws' very own Brawl.


Strike :


Rating : 3/5


The second lvl 1 power and it's probably better than Swipe. It's still quite fast and the damage is higher, nothing really special otherwise. Take Swipe or Strike, not both. Unlike Swipe, Strike can be a useful addition to your attack chain at higher levels if you don't have enough recharge to remove it. That's what I took in my build, however, I don't use it, and I didn't even bother to slot it. Wasted power pick for me, but needed.


Slash :


Rating : 4/5


Here's the first really good power of the set. It will feel a bit slow compared to the others, with the 1,33sec animation time, it's the slowest single target attack you'll have. Yeah, claws are so fast 1,33sec will seem like an eternity sometimes. This attack has good damage as well, but the most important thing it does is the defense debuff. Not because of the debuff itself (who cares for 7,5% def debuff) but because it allows you to slot the Achille's heel : chance for resistance debuff. This low level IO will give a 20% chance to debuff 20% resistance on your target. Considering how often you'll spam Slash in any attack chain, this will be a great dps boost for you and the whole team against any hard target.


Recommended slotting : 5 Crushing impacts + the Achille's heel proc


Spin :


Rating : 6/5 (yes, it's that good)


That's your pbae. I'll go as far as saying it's the best power of the whole powerset, and probably one of the best melee pbae powers in the whole game. Let's look at the stats a bit, because they're so great they'll make all the other pbaes look silly:


-2,5 sec animation : average for the pbaes, nothing special here, better than spines by the way
-9,2 sec recharge : woot ! Other similar powers range from 12sec to 20sec. It gets the claws cool effect here.
-9,12 end cost : quite good as well
-108,7 lethal damage. And that's where it turns from good to plain awesome. Spine burst is “only” 82 damage. The only one that beats Spin here is Fire sword circle, with more than twice the recharge as well. And the famed Shield charge is only 133,2 damage for 10 times the recharge of Spin. So what you have if the fastest pbae with a very efficient end cost and one of the most damaging as well.

The downside, as I explained earlier, is the tiny 8' radius.

Now all those numbers translate in a very effective short range pbae. Forget about scattered mobs, what you want is a tight pack around you. Melee mobs will be your friends. You'll need careful positioning so it's not as easy as “jump in, click, boom everything dies”. But once you're getting good at it, it's impressive. My AE attack chain is usually follow up => spin => eviscerate, repeat. Or spin => shockwave => eviscerate. Speedboosted, I just run spin => eviscerate, and if i'm anywhere near the damage cap everything will die in a matter of seconds.

With good slotting Spin will be up every 3sec. I usually just run in, target the boss or a lieutenant, follow up + focus while waiting 1 or 2sec for mobs to gather around me, then spin, eviscerate, spin, and everything is dead. I can kill the packs of 10 romans on the cim wall in about 10sec, if I pop some red inspirations they don't even survive the first Spin. With some lucky crits it turns into an AE one shot.


Recommended slotting : 5 obliteration + the Armageddon proc. Then as soon as you can afford it, 5 Armageddon + a triple or quad to round up the stats.


Follow up :


Rating : 5/5


Some get build up, you'll get follow up. As an attack it's not that great for damage, but the animation is fast (0,83sec), and it boosts your to-hit by 10% on top of adding a 37,5% damage buff. You'll need a good amount of recharge, and it will help both your single target and AE damage. The goal with the single target chain is to double stack it. Base duration is 10sec, base recharge 12sec, when factoring the animation times you'll need more than ED caped recharge to achieve that. Follow up should be the opener most of the time, as it will greatly improve your effectiveness.

The to-hit is especially great when fighting mobs with high defense (nemesis, cimerorians, rikti drones...).

Overall I think it's a lot better than build up. You will lack the burst dps and you won't be able to open the fight with BU + high damage attacks like most other characters tend to do, instead you'll just run in, follow up, then begin your sustained dps chain. The longer the fight lasts, the better it will be for you and this power is the staple of your attack chain and dps.


Recommended slotting : 5 Crushing Impacts + Hecatomb proc. Then 5 hecatombs + a triple or quad to round up the stats.


Confront :


Rating : lol ?


Hmm... Well do I need to explain about it ? I can't really see much use for it especially for Claws since you'll have already a lot of things to do. I don't think wasting some time to taunt a single target could be useful for anything, and with /dark the thing you'll want to avoid is to aggro the big bad boss who will then proceed to kill you in 3 hits. Really. I could see it being useful for some tanking scrappers, but it's not our case here.


Focus :


Rating : 5/5


Aaaah, focus. Your first ranged attack, which happens to be your heavy hitter, does a knockdown as well, and has a lightning-fast animation time. Focus does a lot of things, and does everything well. It's useful in any situation and one of the signature powers of Claws.

The range itself is great for a scrapper, 40'. That's not enough to snipe anything, but more than enough to catch runners or kite bosses around. The knockdown will help a lot as well for that purpose. It has a 6,4 sec base recharge, and you'll quickly find that you can perma-knockdown a boss with focus alone. Considering boss are the weak spot in /DA, we have some synergy here and an awesome tool to deal with them. This will be, of course, the attack you want to spam a lot in any attack chain. It's not in the same league as the other sets big hitters and you're unlikely to see four digits numbers, but the crits are always nice and it's so fast you'll almost fire it twice before the broadword scrapper nearby is done performing Headsplitter. So it's both your main mitigation tool and your heavy hitter. A very useful attack at both range and melee.

What's even better is that being a ranged attack, it takes ranged sets, and will help you avoid the limits in IO slotting.


Recommended slotting : 5 Decimation + Apocalypse proc, then 5 Apocalypses + triple or quad to round up the stats.


Eviscerate :


Rating : 4/5


Your second AE attack, this one is a melee cone. The maximum of 5 targets is the only thing a bit disappointing. Okay, some will hate the flipping animation, I don't count as one of them. That's my favorite animation in the game. So I tend to use this attack a lot, the cone arc is pretty big (90°) so as long as you have plenty of mobs around you, you'll easily hit 3 to 5 of them. This is the most damaging attack available for you, with the base 157,5 damage, however don't let that fool you : the dps is nothing fantastic, so it shouldn't be part of your attack chain, at least for single targets. The 2,33 sec animation is well worth the damage as long as you can hit multiple targets.

With the animation and damage, it's still the closest thing you'll have as “burst damage”. Useful for a little burst as an opener against a healer mob, or to finish off a Fake nemesis, or something like that. It's a very good complement to Spin in the AE attack chain, the recharges and animation times are fairly similar. With very high recharge, both take about 2,5 sec to animation, and can recharge in the same 2,5 sec, see the pattern ? Whenever I have a kinetics with me, I just run spin => eviscerate, it's not only very beautiful to watch in action, it's very deadly as well. Solo, I add either follow up or shockwave to the fill the missing little second.


Recommended slotting : 5 Obliterations + a triple or quad to round-up the stats


Shockwave :


Your last attack, one of the signature moves, and a very controversive one. At first it looks stupid and counterproductive at best: giving a melee powerset a ranged cone with knockback ? Huh. Well, it's an unexpected attack and that's what makes it so great.

Some will hate the cones. I hate them usually, trust me, but this one is a 90° cone. The range is short (30' ) but more than enough to hit a lot of mobs. It's not hard at all, just target a mob somewhere in the back, then Shockwave. If you really want to hit all of them, jump back before Shockwave. However, I usually don't bother, the animation is very fast and the attack has a surprisingly decent dpa, so at best I waste 0,5sec to aim for most of the mobs, then jump in and spin + eviscerate.

Unlike most of your other attacks, this one remains very, very situationnal. There are plenty of ways to use it. As an attack, it's very good if there's a wall nearby, a corner, or the mobs are immune to knockback (cimerorians I love you ! ). As a mitigation tool, it can be used both for some AE knockback goodness, as well as a single target complement to Focus. If I have to deal with a strong boss I usually jump around and focus + shockwave at range to keep him on his butt, while sometimes doing a quick jump nearby for a follow up or eviscerate while jumping out of range again.

I'd say Shockwave is what makes Claws... well, claws. The Tier 9 attack is one that will force you to move, jump, and be quick to react. That should say something. I would NEVER skip this attack. It saved my life countless times, provided countless amounts of fun, and is a great damage dealer whenever you don't need to worry about knockback. If you don't like Shockwave, there's a good chance you don't like the playstyle that goes with claws as well.

Now for the IO slotting, it takes targeted AOE sets, and especially knockback IO sets. There you get the Force feedback proc. It works a bit weird and is not as effective as it looks. As far as I understand (I may be mistaken there), it has a chance to proc on each target. When it procs, it gives a 5sec 100% recharge buff, then a 5sec immunity. If you proc it again before the end of those 10sec, it will refresh the immunity but not the buff. So it's useful, but if you spam a lot Shockwave, it won't do much. Anyway I like it, it lowers the downtime on hasten when it goess off, and it's always nice to have a little boost.


Recommended slotting : 5x Positron + Force feedback : chance for + recharge. Then 5x Ragnarok + Force feedback proc.




That's all for claws. I'll describe more about the attack chains and what works well in the Strategies section.

III) Dark Armor :





My beloved dark armor. I've read a lot of posts about it, even one guide to explain why we should NOT play dark armor. It seems a lot of people hate it, and I thought I did, then I gave it a try. And wow. I'm in love with it now. It's a very fun set, but i'll get it out of the way first : no, it's not the best armor set. I'd even rate it as one of the worst when it comes to straight survivability, unless paired with katana or broadsword, I even gave it a try as a tanker armor and wow, it sucked. Nowhere near as survivable as my soft capped invuln tank. However, for a scrapper, it's worth it.


At a first glance, it has a ton of downsides, i'll list them and add my opinion about them.




Q : Dark armor is an end hog ! How can you play with that ?!


A : It's not as bad as it looks. There's a wonderful IO called the Theft of essence proc. That's probably the most important IO in the whole game for a /dark armor character. This turns Dark regeneration from a major pain to your endurance bar, to an endurance recovery tool. Seriously. Whenever i'm in a big crowd and running low on end, I spam Dark regen. At worst the proc fires once or twice, and it doesn't cost me anything. Then when I get a lucky roll I recover 50 to 70% of my endurance on top of my life. I had some groupmates wondering how the hell I could go from red HP bar and low endurance to full HP and end in a second, and some telling me I was a real energizer bunny. Of course don't forget the miracle + numina uniques in Health, 4 slotted stamina with the +end proc, and some impervium armors 4-slotted in the toggles.


Then there's toggle management of course. I turn off anything I don't need, but I can run fine with all the toggles + tough, sprint, and SS when i'm out of the fight. Don't forget about your inspirations. I used to be conservative and never use them unless I was in a tough spot. Now I just eat all the first column as soon as I drop them, and it helps a lot.


The epic pools, as bad as they are for scrappers, provide you with a cool power called Conserve power. If all the above fail, I use that. I think overall I have less endurance problem on my claws/DA than I did on my BS/Shield.


To give some numbers, my scrapper recovers about 3,9 end/sec while the toggles cost me anywhere from 1,5 to 2 end/sec. I don't have infinite endurance but it usually recovers by the time I run to the next spawn, and if i'm up for a very long fight, chances are I won't need half the toggles anyway and I turn them off as needed. I removed Rest from my hotbar at lvl 15 and never looked back. And I almost never run out of end.


As an added bonus, dark has some serious endurance drain resistance, it takes 3 or 4 sappers on me to make me feel the pain and I just laugh at carnies anyway.




Q : Cloak of Fear or Oppressive Gloom ?


A : The one you prefer ! I tried both and still have them, it depends on the character. I'd say OG is the best, overall. The end cost is low so it will help a lot to get used to endurance management. It doesn't need slotting, the life cost is negligible, and the stun fairly reliable. I never had much trouble with mobs wandering away, they're dead too fast anyway. I'd say OG is a must have if you have other means to stun (like MA).


But I have CoF on my claws/DA. Yeah, that's just to show how i'm fine with endurance, I could deal with Quills + OG on the spines, so I thought I could just deal with CoF here. It's good to 4 slots Cloud sense for some recharge bonus. I didn't take it for the tohit debuff, really, I have almost no def so I couldn't care less. But it can take a damage proc from the cloud sense set, and the fear tends to work better on most mobs than disorient. Cimerorians, i'm looking at you ! I found Cimerora to be a major suicidal act for a Dark armor character anyway. They hit like trucks and I was getting owned so hard on the spines/DA that the self rez became part of my attack chain, lol. Then I tested CoF and my claws/DA is waaay more survivable. It works wonders on them, as well as most mobs, really. But most of the time I don't need this extra mitigation so I just turn it off.


Overall it depends on what sort of stuff you want to do. I'm mostly farming (wall or MA), tf'ing, or just killing everything that moves when I run past Peregrine island. CoF works great for me.




Q : Why playing an armor set that will hide your costume in a game where it's all about having a cool costume ?


A : It doesn't hide much. The only power that hides everything is Cloak of darkness. I have it as a Lotg mule, I never use it. The def ? If you have an offensive build, a few % def won't matter. You'll get debuffed to hell anyway as soon as something hits you. Not worth the end cost. Stealth ? I have superspeed + a stealth IO in sprint. Done. So I never have to hide my costume unless i'm so desespered I need the small % def. The rest of the toggles don't hide much, they just make it darker, which tends to fit the theme of a dark character, heh. I find Fire way more annoying, and most of the tanker sets are worse, so it's quite in the middle.


But then comes the fabled issue 16 ! Then the true power of dark armor will reveal through the sheer amount of toggles and particles effect it has. I swear i'll make a Rainbow armor character as soon I can try the power customization.


Q : Dark armor is way too squishy to be worth anything ! How can you survive with such a bad powerset ?


A : That's not un-true, however, it's not true as well. I like to compare Dark armor to regeneration. Let's look at it that way: the goal with regeneration is to regen your whole health bar as fast as possible, while staying alive at the same time. Now look at Dark armor this way. The goal is to survive before you can go back to full life. I can heal a full health bar every 9sec as long as I have two mobs around me. With more mobs Dark regeneration heals so much it could divide the heal between all the group members and still bring me to full life. While it doesn't work exactly the same, it's the same philosophy.


To help with that, you get decent resists, tough is mandatory to hit the 50% smashing/lethal resistance mark. The only hole is energy with a lower % but nowhere as big a hole as the psi resist for most of the sets. You even get a huge psi resist and I could tank psi mobs better than some tanks with that. Now if it wasn't enough, you also “could” get some minor defense with Cloak of darkness, but I never turn it on. However for a defensive build you can get to the soft cap with a different primary. My Kat/dark is soft caped, can solo AV, and is up there with tanks for survivability.


Dark armor has this little thing very few sets do get : it gets benefit from everything. Recharge buff ? I can heal faster. Resist buff ? It stacks well. Def buff ? Wow i'm a god ! No matter who's in your group, you'll get benefit from their buffs. And if there's no one, not a big deal. I usually keep 4 columns (yes, 4) full of medium/large purple inspirations. Whenever I need to, I pop them, and I'm unkillable. Just watch your def numbers and pay attention to hit the 45% mark with the purple inspirations, and you'll have enough time to kill anything and live to tell about it when your teammates come back from hospital.


And if you die, what else ? I love to die. That puts me back to full life/endurance, with a big stun on everything around, and plenty of time to finish them. Toggle back on, then run to the next spawn as usual. Dieing is part of the playstyle and it's even a good tool to use. For the little story, I remember a LGTF where the group died at the last fight with the riders, leaving the worst one (I don't remember the name) at 20% HP. Everyone was busy going back to hospital, I just rezzed, I didn't bother to toggle back on, popped 3 or 4 reds and some purples, finished it and died again. By the time they went back my rez was ready and I opened the next rush with it to stun everything and avoid the alpha. Most of the time the group doesn't even notice when I die since i'm back to full in a second.


So overall Dark armors is squishy, yes. You'll be very vulnerable to spike damage. But as long as you have 1 HP left when Dark regeneration is back, you're unkillable... And believe me, most of the time, I can avoid death. I could just run back a bit or shockwave to give me some breathing room, but instead I die in the middle of the mobs, rez, spin, shockwave, and toggle while running to the next spawn. There's still one little thing that will make you cry: recharge debuffs. This, more than anything else, completely destroys Dark armor's survivability.


On the other side, Dark armor goes very well with an offensive build. More recharge = more offense, and more survivability as well ! No need to waste slot for defense or something else, you can slot everything for recharge.


Q : Huh ? No KB protection ? Immob protection in Cloak of darkness ?


A : Again, that's why I wouldn't play Dark armor with SO only. Just slot some -KB IO and it will fix that very well. No need for CoD, again, I always run combat jumping and it provides all the immob protection I need. On the other hand, you can turn off your mezz toggle when mobs only have knockback, like... Cimerorans ? Did I already say I love them ?


Anyway, on to the power analysis, now !




Dark embrace :




Rating: 2/5




Nothing special to see here. It's the basic resistance toogle, it's mandatory but a must have anyway. Resistance is average, end cost is average as well. A solid power and probably the toggle you will run the most in your entire carrier.


Recommended slotting : 4 Impervium armor. Add one -KB IO on top of that if you want a lot of KB protection.




Death shroud :




Rating : 4/5


The damage aura. Yes, the end cost is bad, the damage seems pitiful at first glance. But it ticks fast, all the time, and over the course of a mission will probably be one of your main damage contributors. It will also be very endurance efficient for the damage it does. It's tempting to slot some procs, however don't forget they get a chance to activate only once every 10sec.


I usually wait until lvl 24, 26 or 28 to take this power, having it before stamina is not recommended. I have it on all the time unless fighting an AV for a long time. The particle effect is sweet and not eye-catching like blazing aura.


Recommended slotting : 5 Obliteration + 1 end redux IO




Murky cloud :




Rating : 3/5


About the same as Dark embrace but for elemental damage, and an important toggle as well. It has the famous end drain resistance that will make you laugh at carnies and sappers.


Recommended slotting : 4 Impervium armor, and one -KB IO if you want.




Obsidian Shield :




Rating : 3/5


The mezz toggle, but instead of giving KB and immob protection it provides you with a nice psionic resistance buff. It's a huge resist buff on top of that. Now some would run in and slot the power to get the full benefit of it, however, I don't have a lot of spare slots. So it's the one I almost never bother to slot. The base 40-ish resistance is good enough, you'll hate psionic mbos anyway because of their recharge debuff, so avoid them. I turn it off often when i'm farming since I never run against anything that does more than KB. Don't forget to turn it back on when you're back to normal gaming.


Recommended slotting : 4 impervium armors if you want the slot. If you think it's enough, one -KB IO and one res/end IO and call it done.




Dark regeneration :




Rating : 100/5, there's no rating to describe how good is this power.


All hail the Mother of all heals. That's one of the best powers in the whole game IMO. It heals so much most of the time 80% of the heal is wasted anyway. The base 33 end cost is huge... But once slotted with the proc described above and some good end reduction, it's an end recovery tool. It has a huge radius (20 !) so if you're fighting more than one mob, you'll be back to full life. On top of that the timer is 30sec base, 15sec with SO slotting, and 8-9sec with good recharge slotting.


Yes, that's it. One full health bar every 8 or 9sec, and from 10 to 70% of your endurance back as well. The animation time is short, 1,17sec, but it will force a redraw for your claws. Not a big deal.


Now this power can be confusing and is very hard to time properly as well. That's why I like so much Dark armor. It takes a lot of timing, skill, knowing your opponents, how often they attack, how hard they hit, how long you can stay in melee range, and how far you can be while still remain in the radius. Don't expect to know how to use Dark regeneration as soon as you get it. It will take a lot of time to be really efficient with it. I'll talk more about it in the Tactis section, but you're not forced into melee with it. My favorite trick when i'm hit hard is to run in, follow up, spin, shockwave, dark regeneration, more spinning and random AE'ing. Then the chances are, if the mobs are tough enough, i'll be back to red health at the next attack round. Then just jump back, shockwave... They'll try to catch you in melee mode, and waste their time getting back on their feet. As soon as Dark regen is about to recharge I just jump back in the middle of them, start another jump while casting the heal at the same time. And here we go, I land away from them, back to full life, and they're still trying to run after me while I kill them at range.


There's a small delay between the casting and the heal. It takes a lot of practice to get used to it. I usually fire Dark regen when I hit 30% health, or as soon as 60% if I expect 3 bosses to swing at me in the next second. Then when you're good enough, you can fire it before the swing, and make it so that the swing lands between the casting animation and the actual heal. Then you don't even see your health bar moving down at all.


Recommended slotting : 1 Theft of Essence proc. MUST HAVE ! Just beg your SG, farm the Positron TF to buy it with merits, or whatever to have it as soon as you can. Seriously. Then add 5 Doctored wounds, all but the single heal.


What ? No accuracy ? I never need it. You have follow up, if you follow my advice later you'll have the 6% to-hit unique, and a lot of + accuracy from the sets. Don't forget you need only 2 mobs to be back to full. I almost never notice a miss with Dark regen.




Cloak of Darkness:




Rating : 1/5


Blah. It hides your costume. It's ugly. The end cost is noticeable. The def bonus is useless if you don't stack it with anything else. Just take it, slot a Lotg unique, and don't bother filling your hotbar with it. The only useful thing it does is adding to perception, but I never felt the need for it, and I have it anyway so i'll turn it on if I ever need to until the debuff wears off.




Cloak of fear:




Rating : 3/5


Well, I already talked about it above. The end cost makes it signficantly worse than Oppressive gloom, but I still have it. Few mobs resist fear. Death shroud still wakes them up sometimes and they swing at me, but at a diminished rate, and since it works only on minion, most of the time they'll die before getting another swing after the alpha strike. The particle effect is beautisul as well, floating skulls all around you ? That turns you into the death incarnate.


Recommended slotting : 4 Cloud sensed (including the proc) + one endurance reduction IO. As another proof i'm not in a desesperate need of end, I even removed the endurance IO in CoF to slot more KB protection and never be knocked off my feet again.




Oppressive Gloom:




Rating : 4/5


The most balanced aura of the two. It doesn't need many slots, it works fine against most mobs and provides good mitigation. The health cost doesn't matter with Dark regeneration anyway. It's still a minor annoyance to have all the numbers over your head when it drains your health, at least for me. Stun will stack well with some of the other primaries, however with claws it doesn't, and some mobs tend to be immune to stun (Cimerorans... yeah, you already guessed I was about to say that). Oh, and the particle effect can be annoying until issue 16.


Recommended slotting : 1 acc/stun IO. If you have spare slots, 5 stupefy or 5 absolute amazement.




Soul transfer :




Rating : 4/5


Some hate it, some love it, and I love it as well. Yeah, I know. It's best to avoid dieing, usually. However with Dark armor, let's face it : you will die. I would even add, you will die a lot when learning how to play that. My first /dark was the spines ones. I had the 5th debt badge by the time I was 50. I used to hate dieing and did everything I could to avoid that, but there I had so much fun I didn't bother, and you probably won't as well. Because you'll never need to carry a rez, and chances are you won't die enough to wait for the timer on Soul transfer. This power is well worth it: most of the time you will die in the middle of nasty mobs anyway. And Soul transfer will drain them all, restore all your health/end, and stun them. Now it's not a normal stun, but an outrageous mag 30 stun, and if you have spare slots (or want to slot it like I did), it will last for a whooping 20-ish seconds. On top of that you're immune to everything for 15sec after your rez.


So that gives you 15sec to kill them all, or if you can't, 15sec to toggle and pop some inspirations to be ready for a longer fight, or just toggle on superspeed and say bye bye to the mobs. Again, it takes some clever thinking to know what's best to do. It can be an awesome opener as well for a second attack after a team wipe. Wait for your teammates to be ready, then rez in the middle of the spawn, stun them all, and the tank will probably be more than happy to avoid a nasty alpha strike.


Recommended slotting : 1 recharge, or 5 stupedy, or 5 absolute amazement. I added the stupefy proc for fun and I always giggle when I send half the mobs flying during my rez. It detracts a bit from the effectiveness and scatters them, but it's fun enough i'll keep it.

IV) Pool powers and Epic pools:



Most of them are so bad I won't bother listing them and explain why. All the attacks in there will force a redraw for your claws anyway. So none of them is worth adding to your attack chain unless you're going for concept, but then I wouldn't advice picking dark as your secondary.






-Your travel power :


It really boils down to superspeed or superjump here. Teleport has a useless prerequisite for a scrapper, is not practical in combat, and costs too much end. Fly is way too slow and hover even worse, and you need to be very close to the mobs for Spin anyway. Try claws/SR or spines/SR if you want a ranged hovering scrapper build. Hasten on the other hand is a must have. You could skip it if you really hate it, but it's so useful and effective I wouldn't leave home without it. Combat jumping is what I consider a must have as well for combat mobility. So I take both in most of my builds. Superspeed or superjump, as you want, I always go with superspeed because it's like a minigame to dodge stuff on my way at very high speed, and it doesn't overwrite combat jumping, so I don't need to switch two toggles all the time.




-Stamina, of course it's a must have here. I strongly advice going for Hurdle. Hurdle + combat jumping + sprint = all the combat mobility you need for kiting purposes. It's part of my survival tools. Health should be 2-slotted with numina and miracle uniques, and Stamina 4-slotted with Performance Shifter including the proc, of course.




-Boxing/tough/weave :


Well, boxing is a waster power pick, tough is a must have. You need that extra resistance to survive until Dark regen is back. Weave ? I don't care for def and i'm not looking for a Toggle Man build either. I already have enough of them. It's only worth picking as a Lotg mule.


That fills your power pool slots. The other ones are pointless, you already have all the stealth you need, the leadership pool would kill your endurance bar and with follow-up you don't need tactics. A point could be made for the presence pool to stack the pbae fear with Cloak of fear if your concept is important enough for that... But again, save yourself the torture and roll something else. Claws/Dark is a tight build and doesn't leave much room for fantasy or wasted powers, since it's so tight on endurance management.




-Epic pools :


None of the attacks are useful because of the redraw. That leaves us with the “special” powers each pool gets. Darkness is the worst one I think. Cone KB ? You already have a much better one. Hold ? Why the hell would you want that anyway. Tenebrous tentacles is barely ok for what it does. A /fire scrapper could use it with burn, but for /dark it's as useless as it can be. Weapon mastery is a strong contender however, because of the caltrops. I had them in my first build, they were useful, damaging against hard targets, and a major lifesaver against bosses. I remember a tf where I ended up stealthing solo to the last room and had to pick a glowie in the middle of 3 8-man nemesis spawns, on 4th difficulty. I popped some purple inspirations and quickly died. I rezzed, aggroing the whole room at once, popped more insps and ran behind a little corner in the tech base. Caltrops on their way, and I could safely kill them one by one from range, knocking them back out of line of sight with shockwave, while jumping for a second near them to heal myself. Caltrops are an awesome strategic tool... but I ended up discarding them for the body pool.

Conserve power. Yeah, that's it. This power seems designed especially for dark armor scrappers. I don't rely on it at all, but it's there as a safety net, if I don't have a blue insp, if dark regen keeps missing the procs... or if some mobs get a lucky shot with their end drain on me, no problem, conserve power and I shrug it off.


However, it's not “needed”. Feel free to take what you want, another Lotg mule for 7,5% rech (weave) would be useful as well.

V) Strategies and Tactics :




Now that we're done listing the powers and what they do, let's come to the real meat of the guide : how to use them. As stated multiple times, this character works mainly because of the combat mobility. You'll need to be creative, adapt to what you're facing, know every foe in the game and what they can do to make your life miserable. Again, if you just want to run in, target something, follow it and spam your attack chain in total impunity, please, don't play Claws/Dark. Go roll a WP/SS tank or whatever. However if you want something that will remain interesting, challenging and highly rewarding when you succeed, then you're on the way. I was looking for that for a long time and I have tons of 50's, yet the only one I enjoy playing everyday is this one.


-Kiting :


The basic survival method is called kiting. Now, if you already heard this word in some random game, you probably picture a mage casting a snare on the mob then running across half the map while blasting him with instant spells. I've been there, and i've done that, as i'm a long time kiting-addict, however it's a lot different in CoH and a lot more fun as well. You'll first need to learn how the AI works. Mobs can either be ranged or melee. Ranged mobs, well, they'll stay at range unless you move out of their line of sight. Melee mobs will tend to pick their nose while pondering if they should run after you or shoot you with their gun. If you're agile enough to jump from melee to range, back to melee, range again, etc... They'll often spend most of their time running after you or standing still while not doing anything. And that's exactly what you want.


The overall process is always the same. You need to wait for Dark regen to be ready. Mobs will have to kill you in less than 8-9sec or they're screwed, it seems short, but trust me, you'll be dead in 3sec if you jump in a pack. I'm not talking solo missions here, I never run them, i'm talking full team spawns or farming spawns. They will hit you alive because of your lack of def. So at first you'll feel squishy compared to the random /SR or /shield scrapper. So you need to move, and avoid being hit. No, not because your defense will do the job for you, because YOU, the player, will have to actively be evasive and dodge the attacks.


Try to learn how often the mobs hit, and how hard. Take Rikti bosses. They'll 3-shot you but they swing their swords very slowly. Romans mobs hit you about as hard but they spam their attacks. Werewolves will outrun you and destroy fast but are vulnerable to knockdown. Overall, the slow and big hitters are your worst enemies, they'll spike you and kill you before you can say “ouch”. Try to remember how long it takes for them to hit again. I usually run at superspeed in the spawn, jump in while throwing a shockwave, it will scatter half the spawn and they will spend time running back at you. Land near one of the bosses, focus, then unload your attack chain starting with follow up (described later). Usually they'll spend some seconds running near you and doing their attacks. Then begin your AE chain. If it's a big spawn, you'll be in the orange or in the red. Fire off dark regen.


Now the fun begins. You have to survive those precious 9 seconds. At this I usually Spin a bit more, Eviscerate, whatever. Never use those if you're not in good health: by the time they animate you'll be dead. When I hit the orange again, usually by the time they're done with their beta strike, I jump back, shockwave. This will buy 2 or 3 secondes. Focus the boss again, jump in melee, Dark regen should be up, fire it before they animate their swings, and finish them. Repeat as needed.


This works well against many mobs. However sometimes you'll face one single boss or two of them, and your dark regen will not work as good as it uses to. That's where kiting works well. Stay at range and spam focus and shockwave, they'll probably spend some time figuring out what's going on, then switch to ranged. Go back to melee, unload your attack chain, dark regen as soon as you need and when they switch to melee, go back to range. To heal from range, just jump to land near them. It takes some good jumping skill but the sweet spot is when you're at range for Dark regen, and they're out of melee range. Land there for half a second and immediately jump again on the other side over their head, while firing Dark regen at the same time you're jumping. It will animate during the jump, you'll get your heal when landing, and the mobs won't hit you at all.


This is the main move I do when I need to survive. It works well with spin as well, do the same as above, but instead of healing, Spin in the middle of them. When doing well you can hit the middle of a crowd while almost not getting hit. Of course don't forget to shockwave as soon as you can.


So, learn to jump ! With some good practice you can land exactly where you want, or stop at half of the jump then go back to fall exactly where you started. Perfect for a cone. You can simply jump up in the middle of the fight as well yo hit them all with shockwave and avoid scattering them, however I usually LIKE to scatter them. This buys me more time when I need to.


-Your attack chains:


Now that's a matter of maths and numbers. I hate them. So I won't run into detailled numbers, i'll just present some of the most common attack chains, what's good about them, and why you shouldn't be stuck into the said attack chain.


For single target, it's not too hard. Follow up, Slash and Focus are your best attacks for their dpa and utility. I believe the ideal attack chain is follow up => slash => focus but it need very high recharge. I tend to turn follow up => slash => focus => slash, with a very little gap sometimes, it's not perfect but it works well enough. I have enough dps to kill an AV or a pylon, so that's good enough, I just can't because of survivability unless I pop some inspirations. For lower recharge, try to fit Strike in there, one or two times per attack chain. I don't stick to the attack chain a lot so I didn't even bother with Strike and i'm happy with the little gap I have.


The AE chain is a lot more dependant on what I have around me, teammates and mobs included. The best chain would be : follow up => spin => eviscerate. I ran it a long time, then realized follow up was a waste of my time. Sure, it boosts my damage, but it does worthless damage on a single target. And I found Shockwave to be better for overall AE dps if the mobs are immune to knockback. So I run spin => shockwave => eviscerate. Whenever I have a kinetic with me, it's easier : spin => eviscerate.


Those are useful for MA farming. Some are surprised by the mobs I choose, but when solo farming I run with custom mobs with martial arts and regen as a secondary, making sure they get their revive skill. Of course they're all melee, that way I get a nice pack around me and I can kill them easily, they're immune to knockback so I can use shockwave, and they rez back one time so I spend less time moving from one spawn to the other. That's about the only situation where I spam a single chain, the other one being big boss or AV fight with the single target chain.


Most of the time you'll run into many things that will make your chains worthless: overkill, priority on some target, mobs running around, situation around you. I tend to stick to the tank to get the best mob density then target the toughest target and follow up => spin => slash => focus. Eviscerate if there's enough target, shockwave if I feel it's a good idea. Solo I just try to balance single target, soft control and AE damage, it really depends on what i'm facing and how the RNG acts for me.


I see many peoples saying this game is all about pressing the same buttons in the same order all the time. That might be true for some archetypes but not this one. I think it really takes some effort, knowledge about the game and skill to get the best bang for your buck with those two powersets, and the result can be impressive.


-Toggle management :


Again, you'll need to learn what you're going to fight. I usually turn off the mezz protection and murky cloud as needed. CoF is turned off at first if I ever have something wrong with my end bar. Then I turn off Death shroud if i'm really in trouble or if i'm up for a very long fight (reichsman comes to mind). Just be selective and you'll never have to worry much about the endurance.


-Watch your bars !


If you like to go into full scrapperlock and only worry about what you're killing, you'll die a lot. I suffer from heavy scrapperlock, yet i'm still always paying attention to what's around me, my endurance bar, my health bar, the ones of my groupe so I know when the tank will die and i'll end up with all the mobs on me, etc, etc... As a scrapper my role is clear : be the last one standing, kill everything, and secure the rest of the map while teammates are rezzing. Yeah, that's about it. Now it's very hard to do as a claws/dark, you'll generate a huge amount of aggro and you will die fast. Purple inspirations are your best friends, never leave home without them ! That's amazing how many peoples don't realize they could survive the apocalypse if only they used their purple inspirations.


So always pay attention to everything. Never think you're safe because you're full life, the random rikti boss looking funny at you is enough to drop half your health. Most bosses will run to the tank and spam their attacks including the pbaes in the first few seconds. Let the tank go in. Start at range with focus/shockwave, then jump in and fight near him once the first wave of attacks is done. This is especially true with the dwarves in the ITF.


Don't forget to track your stats in combat. Open the combat stats, and right click to track them. I usually go with inf (well... that's important !), damage bonus, recharge, last chance to hit (hit superspeed and run for your life if you're debuffed to hell, there's nothing more depressing than firing dark regen and all you see is “deflected” “missed”...), lethal resist and lethal defense. Those are the stats you need to pay close attention to. Play with line of sight to wait for the debuffs to wear off, or kite the mobs. I never flee, but I never stand in the middle of the melee as well. If you die, rez back instantly, and pretend nothing happened.


Despite being a squishy, i'm often the last one standing whenever I feel it's important enough to use my precious purple inspirations. Think about the computer in the third ITF mission. Any AV fight. Some of the famous death rooms in the LGTF.



-KB protection and IO uniques :


A little word about it. The anti KB IO gives 4 mag protection. Three of them are at your disposal : one can be slotted in the res buffs, one in the def buffs, one in a travel power. I had two of them at first, it's well enough for most of the game. However pylons and fake nemesis will still knock you, as well as Romulus Augustus sometimes, or random explosions from destroyed items. I went up to three IO with a total of 12 mag protection, and i've never been knocked since then. It's easy to fit one in obsidian shield, one in a random toggle. I tend to like slotting some speed in superspeed so I added one slot here for the anti KB IO and the runspeed enhancement from Blessing of the zephyr, getting some minor def in the process.


Numina and miracle uniques are mandatory of course in Health.


The 6% tohit Karma unique is a good investment for combat jumping, as well as the Lotg uniques wherever you can fit them.


For good measure I added the Winter unique with a small recharge debuff protection in combat jumping. Every little bit helps, and I didn't have more useful to do with the last slot anyway.

V) Making your build :



I won't post mine. What ? A guide with no build ? Yep. Not because I don't want to help, of course, nor because it's some super secret build I want to keep for myself. In fact, if you read the whole guild, you can pretty easily figure what's the build by yourselves. I just think it's a lot better if everyone could make its own build. We all have different playstyles and I bet you'll like some things I don't while leveling the character, then decide you want them. I described how the things work, and what works for me. Use it as a basis, not as what you have to do, else you'll end up with a character you don't like because it's not made for YOU.


Learning how to build the character is something important, a lot more than doing a copy/paste of a random build. Adapt your build to your playstyle. Learn the mechanics. What you will learn while building the character will help you for other characters as well. Then maybe you can help someone else to understand how it works. And you will learn in the process to get the “feeling” of your character, which will in return help you to play better, I think.


The key when making a build for me is : what do I want ? I tend to stack as much as I can for one main stat, either recharge or defense. For Claws/dark it's easy, recharge is the way to go : it will both improve your offensive and your survivability. Endurance is close second, Impervium armor will usually cover that, as well as the accolades. Add the purple procs in your attacks as soon as you can, as shown in the power listing above. They're not only good for your damage, but they will help a lot when exemplaring down, and that's important since this character will be pretty bad at exemplaring anyway.


With that said, I think it's possible to make some weird build focused on defense. I have a build with 44% smashing/lethal def and still 65% recharge, attacks decently slotted. I could probably use that to run the scrapper challenges, AV killing, etc... That's just not my thing really, and it will still be a lot worse than dedicated scrappers. Anything is possible, it all depends on the budget.


Do you need purples ? Nope. In fact, despite my playtime, many 50's, farming and all, this character got my first expensive purple set slotted in Spin some days ago. So i'm far from a full purple build, and I probably won't bother slotting more. I'm doing fine with more common sets, I think purples have a terrible improvement/cost ratio.


The total value for my build was about... 500 to 700M, i'd say, with the prices as they were 3 months ago. Half of it was not spend in cash but in merits and tickets. And I bought everything at the “buy it now” price since I hate marketing.



VI) Conclusion :



Omg !! Did I really write that ?! Wow. That's probably the longest text I write in english like that, I spent the afternoon on it, heh. My presentation skills are not that great so I hope it won't feel like a huge wall of text.


Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the reading. I'm not pretending being the best source for all the information you need, I might be wrong on some things, who knows. But so far it works for me and i'm not really exagerating or trying to get peoples to play claws/dark. It's not for everyone, and I bet many players can't get past Dark armor's downsides. Fine for them. What I enjoy is the fact it's a pretty rare combo, I see a lot of claws scrappers, but very few pick dark as a secondary, and I have yet to meet one well slotted. I got quite a lot of funny comments when I first brought my claws/DA instead of spines/DA in farms, then peoples went “wow... impressive”. Out of all the scrappers, that's the only one where I got a lot of comments on my damage in tfs and stuff like that. That's weird but with so many Wolverine clones out there, I found that very few players really play claws to its full potential.


So if you want something fast, very clicky and active, but more than everything, if you want something fun and hard to play well that will keep you on your toes all the time ? Then go for it ! And remember you'll die anyway, so just make sure to do it with style.

Great guide! I'm fairly knowledgeable on Dark Armor but I really enjoyed reading this, especially the strategies section. Great work!

Thanks !

I'm glad someone liked it, or at least did read it.

(+) informative
(+) very readable
(+) good IO suggestions
(+) no obvious mistakes
(+) not about fire/kin or superstrength/wp

5/5 for your work. I like it, as it reflects my impressions of the Claws and DA sets.

There is another aspect to DA that can make the set a lot more survivable and that is maxing out IOs for melee defense. If you take CoF and slot Siphon Insight into it you get roughly 7.5% -tohit on mobs that are close in. You can also slot Touch of Death in single target melee attacks and Obliterations in PBAoEs to get 3.75% melee defense each. Add in Cloak of Darkness and between -tohit and melee defense you can get to nearly the defense cap.

Great guide!

I've been playing Dark Armor on my Tank since I12 came out, but I was floored with the suggestion of adding the Theft of Essence Proc. If it works half as well as you suggest it does, I think I need to invest!

Nice work on this guide!