DA/???

I want to make a Dark Armor tank, but I'm unsure of the secondary to go with. This will be purely PvE and will be for mostly teaming with a little bit of soloing here and there.

I have a lot of /Fire or Fire/ toons, so I'm not sure if I would want to go with Fire again. But I know that it's a great set for the AoE and just overall damage.

I have never really tried Dark Melee, and I'm not sure how good it is.

I would be interested in trying Electrical Melee too.

I'm not sure how great Ice Melee is as far as damage, but I do really like Ice powersets in general.

I would actually be interested in trying whatever is best to pair with DA. I'm looking to go rip right through a group.

I would recommend stone melee. With oppressive gloom and fault you can stun everything up to boss level. On top of that stone melee has some impressive ST damage and your heavy hitter is also a mag 4 hold.

My DA uses Fire, but if I had to choose something else, it would likely be Stone.

I've gotten a DA/DM tanker up to 27 now, and I'm really having a lot of fun with him. He might not be the toughest tanker who ever lived, but I run him with a fairly constant team and he's no slouch. The two sets work really well together, and that's easy to take advantage of. =)

I don't know if Stone Melee is for me. I don't want a slow, heavy damaging set. I'd rather have more fast paced attacking. So it's probably between /Dark, /Ice, or /Fire. Can anyone persuade me more to go to one of those?

Personally, I went for Dark/Fire. Endurance is a bit of an issue with that build, however. Made up for by the fact that most everything is dead pretty quickly, though.

I'd say Dark/Dark would be good. Dark Melee gets Dark Consumption for an occasional endurance fix, and Siphon Life can give you a heal that doesn't cost a third of your endurance and will work fine against a single foe like AVs and such. Soul Drain can really boost your damage, Shadow Maul is just all sorts of awesome, and all the -tohit really helps boost your survivability.

Just looking over the powers and sets available to slot into them, seems you could get a pretty proc happy build going, with lots of chances for extra damage and other effects. Whether or not that would be "optimal" remains to be seen, but it could make for a rather fun "let's see what happens" type of build. Just some food for thought.

~WP

I'll probably make a DA/Ice and a DA/Fire and see which I like better.

I have a 50 DA/DM and I enjoyed getting him there.
/DM is pretty fast and has a good heal component in DM
DM may not have a huge AoE component, but between SL and MG, id does some pretty nasty ST damage.
Also, with CoF and ToF, you can keep almost any mob you want in a constant state of Fear. They only get one attack for every one you put on them, so if you're focusing your ST attacks elsewhere, they won't be shooting anything.

Dark/Ice is the best control you'll find in a Tanker set, imo.

Dark has a PBAoE Stun and Fear, both Mag 2.

Ice is (of course) loaded with slows, a Single-target Mag 3 Hold, a PBAoE Knockdown, and a PBAoE sleep (which is, admittedly, not very useful as a control).

But do something like take Dark Armor, activate Cloak of Fear and take the Presence pool for Invoke Panic, and you can apply a Mag 4 Fear effect to an entire mob. Build Up, Frozen Aura (for damage), back up, Frost, then wade in with your Ice Sword.

The problem area is that Ice is *not* good at damage.. at all. I'd really like it to be looked at, but I think it's going to just be the black sheep of Tankers, which is a shame.. but oh well.

Dark/Ice is great for teaming; I wouldn't try to solo with it. It's got great defenses and control options available to it, but they don't mean much if it takes you five minutes to defeat one group.

Edit: Dark Melee is great for single target damage, but not so much for AoE damage, which is what I'd say Dark Armor really is best suited for.

I went SS with my dark tanker for rage. Not the damage buff but for the tohit.
CoF OG DS and DR all have to hit to have an effect and rage provides and if I when with pool taunt+panic they both also require a tohit check.
It is also fairly Endr friendly so with 12 toggles (4 sheilds,3 auras, 1 mez pro,1 cloak and any leaderships Im running) endr light is needed.

Mace is also a good pick. Not as end heavy as Stone, the stuns have a nice synergy with Op Gloom.