Dark Armor Vulnerabilities

I'm contemplating rolling a new Fire Melee scrapper and having a little trouble figuring out which defense to take. I really like the mez protection offered by dark armor, but after reading a very thorough guide on it, I realized that it is weak against energy blasts (so i'm assuming there will be issues against rikti later on).

Is there a way to counter this weakness? Do I have to take tough/weave or maneuvers to make up for it?

Also, I read somewhere that DA is annoying with all the toggles. I"m not a huge fan of many toggles myself. Maybe I should roll a Force Field scrapper then?

A force field scrapper? Uh, am I missing something here? Unless it's something being ported and I just don't about it, there's no such thing.

On DA, though, its resists are all fairly low, but you get a HUGE heal that generally makes up for it, and a few interesting crowd control toggles to prevent incoming damage. Energy damage isn't all that big of a deal - just know your enemy and smash them first. With extensive IO slotting, you can get your def pretty high as well.

Yeah, DA is toggle heavy, but most of the toggles will be fire and forget once you log in, or have to rez. Your biggest problem will be endurance, and knockback. DA tends to be a pretty active secondary - lots of strategic clicking and reacting to stuff, vs, say, SR, which you toggle on and then never mess with again. If you want an active secondary, DA can be a lot of fun.

Oh, and fire melee/DA looks badass, too.

I recommend Tough and Weave on pretty much every scrapper, though Tough won't do anything to solve the energy “weakness”. I'd personally just stack defense. You have a little bit in Cloak of Darkness. Add in Combat Jumping, Weave, Steadfast Protection in Tough, and some other defensive set bonuses here and there. It adds up. You could also pile on energy resistance, but I wouldn't approach it that way. I believe it's too hard to get much using that approach, though I admit I haven't tried. You'll also want to slot up Dark Regeneration, in particular dropping a Theft of Essence proc in there so that you can more easily spam it without burning out your endurance. Don't bother with enhancing the heal unless you spend a lot of time fighting single targets.

Some people have trouble managing endurance on Dark Armor, but there's nothing magical about it. You use the same endurance management techniques you use elsewhere – put an endurance in each toggle, one or two in each attack, grab Stamina at 20, frankenslot your attacks for endurance reduction when you're at a reasonable level, and so on. Of particular note is Death Shroud, which I think is poorly understood. Think of it as an attack. In particular, think of it as an AoE that costs only half the endurance of other AoEs. In other words, take it, slot it as an attack, and use it. If you have to slow down on your regular attacks, do that rather than turning off Death Shroud.

Dark Armor also doesn't have any knockback protection. If you have influence, I'd grab knockback protection from IOs. If not, Hover sort of works, or you can go for the Leaping pool and take Acrobatics. Both approaches eat yet more endurance, though, so taking care of it with IOs is preferable.

No idea what you mean about making a force field scrapper. But if you're looking at other secondaries, Fire/Shield is a major powerhouse. Fire/Super Reflexes is end game AV soloing for cheap. Any particular other secondaries you're looking at?

Wow, sorry, i meant shield. Apologies!


Thanks for the advice on the DA. I think I'm going to take the fighting pools and combat jumping to compensate. As for endurance, I'm a big fan of IO bonuses, but I can forgo a bonus or two in favor of a generic end redux IO slotted in each power. I also plan to 6 slot stamina, jes cause i like to, prolly with performance shifters.

It's not weak, it's just less. 30% is nothing to shy from. When it comes to slotting, typed or positional will work for you and Rikti will not be a problem. You have other mitigation that works well against them.

Since you've mentioned IO's, toggle popping shouldn't be a problem and you can fire/forget if you socket for end redux and increase your endurance. I fire and forget my 8 toggles, 9 with sprint.

I want a Force Fields Scrapper

Personally...I much prefere to keep the energy damage weakness and be able to cap NEgative Energy Resistance But that's probably just me.

My Kat/Da scrapper was my first and is still my fave to use. She taught me good endurance management and can deal some heavy damage. She went to 50 fairly quickly. I love OG.

When it comes to aoes you don't get enough effect per endurance point unless you use it on a certain amount of targets, generally if I am looking at less than 4 targets I would probably turn them off however there are sometimes reasons to keep them on. With cone attacks given the option I generally would not use them unless I feel I would hit atleast 2 targets. Its about trying to get the same effect per endpoint as you would with a single target attack. It generally matters most to me from the lower levels and matters less in the higher ones due to gaining slots.

Sorry about that, I was working off tanker resist values (I know, I know) but the point stands. It's just less and can be managed. As suggested defense bonuses from IO's help greatly here, Eradications go along way (+max end, E/NE defense) if you have several PBAoE's. And as Desmodos suggested, positioning against Rikti does a lot for your survivability. I engage rikti to put them in melee range (some of the ranged attacks don't have a smashing component) and position myself so I munch away the Drones with Death Shroud, Quills, and spine burst.

Oh and Rularuu Overseers will F U up.

Ditto on what Sarrate said about Death Shroud's endurance usage. So don't wait for four targets, or even two. Just leave it on.

And yeah, I don't like the new emoticons.