City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Questions about Dual Blades and Dark Armor

Graeve_Digger

By Graeve_Digger,
Posted on: 2009-09-21 11:59 in Stalkers

 

Posted

Dual Blades
- One Thousand Cuts, the damage is nice, but the 3.3sec animation is LONG! I see it as more of a team power, but is it useful?


Dark Armor
- Oppressive Gloom, on a stalker is it worthwhile
- Is Shadow Meld in the parton pool useful? Dark Armor is resistance based, so in theory yes, but the 3 sec cast time and the 15 second duration seems to make is kinda limited to taking Alpha hits. Does the 15 seconds duration start at cast time, or after cast time?

Shadowmeld (3.3) - BU (1.17)- AS (3.0) combo leaves only enough time to take the alpha.

What about Hibernation as an alternative to Shadowmeld?

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Graeve_Digger View Post
Dual Blades
- One Thousand Cuts, the damage is nice, but the 3.3sec animation is LONG! I see it as more of a team power, but is it useful?


Dark Armor
- Oppressive Gloom, on a stalker is it worthwhile
- Is Shadow Meld in the parton pool useful? Dark Armor is resistance based, so in theory yes, but the 3 sec cast time and the 15 second duration seems to make is kinda limited to taking Alpha hits. Does the 15 seconds duration start at cast time, or after cast time?

Shadowmeld (3.3) - BU (1.17)- AS (3.0) combo leaves only enough time to take the alpha.

What about Hibernation as an alternative to Shadowmeld?
The range and its ability ro crit alot makes it useful in my opnion. i have shadow meld on my db/regen and it helps. Once they fix demonic i´m weaving mog, shadow meld and the accolade

 

Posted

1kcuts for stalkers is a 10ft range 90degree cone. For the other melee types it's only 7ft so take that for what it's worth. It certainly would be easier to use on teams but then, you can alter your difficulty so you face more foes now. Not that many stalker primaries can BU and 1-shot a bunch of minions. Even if it's a long animation, it's a strong power with control built into it as well. Up to you if it's worthwhile or not.

Oppressive Gloom...hmm, I'd say so. It's cheap and stuns minions. If you stack it with other stuns you can disable Lts and Bosses. It breaks hide if you hit anyone with it though so you'd need to turn it off to AS/crit or time your attacks right before the mez pulses.

Shadow Meld when slotted gives 30ish% defense. Stacked with slotted Shadow Dweller and Hide, it'd put you at 40ish% defense for 15 seconds. Shadow Meld recharges in 90sec (so around 50sec slotted?) so will be available often enough to be useful. I'd say it's definitely worthwhile.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Graeve_Digger View Post
Dual Blades
- One Thousand Cuts, the damage is nice, but the 3.3sec animation is LONG! I see it as more of a team power, but is it useful?
Honestly, Dual Blades is a set that can be somewhat customized to the player's preference, so what one person finds useful in the set, another may not. With that said, I took it at 32 and haven't looked back. It's a great big cone that does a lot of damage, albeit of a type that is the most resisted in the game. I tend to mostly solo on my Stalker and I still get lots of mileage out of the power.

Quote:
What about Hibernation as an alternative to Shadowmeld?
Hibernate and Shadow meld are two different things altogether. I personally went down the Mako path on my DB/Nin, but it was purely for concept reasons. Nevertheless, I love Hibernate and as an emergency power or as a way to quickly recover from a Retsu crash. If I had taken Icepick down the Ghost Widow path instead, Shadow Meld would still have been useful, but I would've used it more as either an alpha power or as a way to survive a spike in incoming damage. It'd still be a valid and useful power, but for a different reason.