Dark Armor/EM - suicidal or stun wonder?

Just looking for any feedback from experienced tankers, those who played them and kept or deleted them.
Pro's, Con's, possible build and slotting suggestions. Also what's your prefered Travel power(s) for this?

Idea is Oppressive Gloom and Whirling Hands stacking up Stun power nicely.
I'd opt into Quick Sand from epics to slow down any stunned mobs.

However there's that END problem for Dark Armor and then Oppressive / Energy Transfer with the -HP self applications.
EM attacks aren't particularly easy on END drain either.
Can this be overcome with a lot END RED slotting and extra HP/regen respectively?

Lastly should I just look into Oppressive + Stalagmites (on high recharge) and go for a different secondary?
Thanks in advance

DA/EM should work. The HP cost of Oppresive Gloom is laughably tiny; the HP cost of ET is no big deal either, considering that DA has the single most powerful heal in the game. DA is somewhat heavy on end use, but not impossibly so, and choosing your toggles carefully will help with that (Oppressive Gloom is quite light on end cost, for one).

There are other alternatives you might want to consider, though. DA/Stone would be more costly, but also a much better AoE stunner. DA/Fire would combine good survivability with good AoE damage, letting you plop down in the middle of big spawns and burn them down in safety. DA/Ice would be low on damage, but give a huge variety of mez and debuff powers: stun, fear, knockdown, hold, sleep, slow/-rech, -tohit...

The stuns in EM will stack nicely with Op Gloom, no doubt about it.

I haven't played the combo, but I doubt the HP hit from Op Gloom (which is very small) and ET would be much of an issue for a character with a tank's HP. Perhaps back when ET was a much faster attack if you had chained it while surrounded by the full 17 foes, but not now.

There's no doubt that DA can be a challenge to manage, end-wise, but Op Gloom uses very little endurance. The powers that will kill your end bar are Dark Regen, Death Shroud, and Cloak of Fear, but their affects can be mitigated to a great degree by slotting end reduction in them, and slotting for +end and +recovery bonuses in your build.

If you want stun stacking, I'd personally recommend War Mace as a secondary instead. Not as endurance heavy as Stone Melee, (another good option for stun stacking) it does much better AoE than EM. Its big hitters aren't as big as EM's, but they are much quicker attacks.

I have a 45 Dark/Energy Tank and I've spent close to 400 mil on getting the uniques and softcapping Smashing defense. He's pretty tough but requires very close attention in order to get the most use out of Dark Regeneration. OG pairs wonderfully with the Stuns from EM and if I play my cards right I can stuns most minions, LTs and even bosses all at the same time, if I get lucky enough.

It's mainly for concept and has been sitting at 45 for a few months now. If it were a brute I might like the character better since I solo more nowadays and prefer and AT with more damage output.

I have a Dark/Ice/Enrg that I leveled to 50. What I noticed was that OG didn't seem to have much affect on +2 Lts or better. Not sure if this was a bug, just my experience, Acc slotting isn't high enough (I think it is around 45%) or what. I ended up not going with either OG or CoF, instead I kept Ice Patch and Energy Torrent to maximize the number of goons I could keep KD'd. I found this combo more effective than DAs inherent powers. I did take all the "Armors" and ended up with around 26% Melee Defense , 24% Range and AoE Defense without expensive IOs Sets. Believe it or not even those "low" defensive numbers help.

I do like the resists to Psi and Energy Drain (Carnies and Malta are not a problem at all), but not sure I'll roll another DA.

Hm. So I had a post but it got eaten. I'll try to summarize.

1) Air Sup is okay, but CJ is very cheap, actually less EPS, doesn't reduce your DPE or DPS, protects against Immobilize, can be slotted with KB prot, and is a prereq for a KB prot power.

2) End costs are not nearly as bad as they're being made out to be - my DA runs 7 toggles all the time and does not have end problems.

3) Def is irrelevant. DA functioned fine before high def was even achievable.

4) OG by itself will not stun any LTs; it's mag 2. Hence the synergy with /Stone and Fault. But even only stunning minions (and providing enough stun to stack mag 5 onto a LT/boss in one shot from Stun, TF, Bonesmasher, or ET), it's so cheap that there's no reason not to take and run it.

It's worth drawing particular attention to DA's useful exotic properties. It has no damage type mitigation gaps - it's somewhat weaker against Energy, but Dark Regen works against anything. It has fear protection and end drain resistance. It has a functional combat rez - if you do go down, you come back invincible and just about anything near you will be stunned. It has a damage aura, a very cheap stun aura, and an (admittedly very expensive) fear aura. It's a quirky set, but decent in its fundamentals.

Thanks for all the replies
Oh my, I totally forgot about the adjustments to Energy Transfer and Total Focus animation and recharge times.
I once had a Ice Armor/EM tanker when I still had a grudge with all stalkers, but it got deleted a long time ago.
EM seems to be neither good at AoE or a good single target attack cycle now.

I have a 50 Invul/Fire and a 44 DA/Fire and was about to remake the DA/Fire into DA/EM since I don't like having the same powerset on multiple toons.
Now I'll look into DA/Stone Melee.
Positional Defense could be brought to around +40iesh % (Melee bit less, AoE bit more) for a medium budget build (under 1B inf going by the current low "2XP" aftershock prices).
That would be without a travel power though and no Hasten (Hasten END crash won't be doing much good either).
So there's high defense, decent RES, close melee AoE stun and a heal (slotted more for ACC and END).
If that's still manageable with /Stone Melee, I'd be set! (Still getting Quick Sands and Stalagmites to double up on Stuns)