Dark/Dark Defender Help PLZ!!!

I just started playing my 2 yr old dark defender, she is lvl 36 and I need to update her build. However she is the only defender I have and I don't have thefirst clue on how to build her or slot her. I've read some of the guides and have the basic idea of the powrs + from what memory recalls, but i want to give her a build that would be all around decent. So any help would be usefull!!! Thank you!!

Do you have a build now that you are working from? Are you wanting power selections and IO set slotting? Some folks wait till much later in the career to IO set out their heroes.

Well my build is so bad i just wana get rid of it compltely. I would like some power selections advice. I'm going for SO's at the moment, will be going for IO's after i hit 47 so any advice is helpful.

Almost every power in your primary is worth takin.
The only 2 I wouldnt take would be black hole and petrifying(?) gaze.

Tarpit and fearsome stare are must haves.

Secondary? Im not a fan of snipes or nukes on defenders. If you like them have at it.
Nightfall and Tenebrous tentacles are must haves.

Power pools are your choice as well. Fitness, travel, I took leadership and went heavy into dark epic.

No hasten for me as well. If i had 1 extra powerpick it would be that.

Search back maybe 2 or 3 pages and a dark/dark discussion was brought up not too long ago that had good info in it.

Hope that helps.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadow Ravenwolf My favorite combo is Faceplant/DebtCap with the TeamWipe Ancillary

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari Yeah, I like Blasters too.

I would not take Dark Pit. It has a terrible duration/recharge ratio and only stuns minions. It can be worthwhile if you plan to take the Dark Mastery epic pool at level 41+ and stack it with Oppressive Gloom (PBAoE stun aura). Some people advocate taking Dark Pit and stacking it with the stun from Howling Twilight. I don't advocate this - its functional, but the long recharge on Howling Twilight combined with the short duration on Dark Pit means it's not something you can rely on frequently enough for my tastes.

I am not a big fan of Defender Nukes unless you are buffed to the gills for damage. Since a Dark/Dark can't do that, I wouldn't recommend the nuke. However, if you know you have other circumstances, like you will frequently play with a Kinetics ally, this may change the value of the nuke.

I do recommend Petrifying Gaze. Honestly, it's not a very good hold when contrasted with comparable powers in other powersets. However, a single-target hold can be extremely valuable for dealing with single high annoyance mobs, such as Sappers or mezzing LTs. Your main mez, Fearsome Stare, will not fully prevent such foes from using their high annoyance powers, so having a way to disable them is important. This is where the long recharge times of Dark Pit and Howling Twilight can be the liabilities that prevent me from recommending them instead - while PG's duration/recharge isn't great, it's better than either of those powers.

I would recommend only one of Moonbeam or Life Drain. If you take Life Drain, slot it as an attack in your single-target attack chain - you don't need another heal given the magnitude and recharge of Twilight Grasp. I like Moonbeam for ways to pull things or open with a nice burst of damage, but it's definite conditional utility.

As mentioned, Tar Patch and Fearsome stare are workhorse powers from your primary.

Slot Tar Patch for as much recharge as you can, and then maybe some slow speed.

Fearsome Stare requires you to choose whether you want it to be a stronger debuff or mez. I like for the mez to be nice and long so that I don't have to recast it as often to keep foes trembling and not doing much. However, if you plan to slather your attacks all over your feared foes, you want them to miss more when they do retaliate.

Darkest Night is highly recommended. You won't need it on "normal" spawns. I use it when fighting bosses solo and when fighting things like EBs and AVs on teams. Otherwise things die too fast to make the debuff generally worthwhile. It's also nice for pulling a large spawn onto a Tar Patch.

Shadow Fall is highly recommended. If you build with set IOs for +defense, it provides a decent base value to build from. The stealth it provides does not suppress when you fight, which can be very valuable in crowded situations. It also provides pretty respectable resistance against energy, negative, and psionic damge.

Dark Servant is highly recommended. He's a bit like another version of you wandering around. He's not terribly reliable on who he'll attack or what powers he uses. Because of this I like to focus on his toHit debuff slotting, because he debuffs anything he's near very strongly, and also has debuffs on all his attacks except his hold.

I slot Night Fall and Tenebrous Tentacles as attacks, not debuffs or immobilizes. I pull foes onto Tar Patches or terrorize them in place and drop a patch under them. I then lay cycles of Night Fall and Tenebrous Tents on them until they fall over. Generally, the tentacles then trap them on the Tar Patch.

Hasten helps all this - most of Dark Miasma's key powers are clicks. Getting them back faster helps you maintain or even stack them. I do recommend Hasten with a Dark/Dark build. I also recommend Stamina.

I hope that helps.

As far as worthwhile powers go, my personal opinion is that everything from the primary except black hole is worth taking, and everything from the secondary except moonbeam (the snipe) and torrent (KB cone) is good. However, in this particular combo, twilight grasp outdoes life drain in every way possible, so that's another skippable power in your secondary. You can fill that hole with moonbeam or torrent if you like (neither are *bad* powers, they're just not needed in my opinion) or take an extra pool power. I wouldn't skip petrifying gaze - while by itself it's nothing special (although taking an annoying lieut or minion out of the fight for a bit is still nothing to sneer at), once you get to your epic you can pick up a second hold and go instahold bosses.

As for slotting, with SOs here's how I would go:

Tar patch: 2-3 recharge (2 is passable, 3 if you've got the extra slots)
Twilight grasp: 1 acc, 2 heal at minimum, up to 2 acc, 3 heal, 1 rech if you have the slots.
Darkest night: 3 tohit debuff, 1 end redux
Howling twilight: If you're strapped for slots, you can get away with 1 rech since the stun is autohit. Otherwise, 2-3 rech and 0-3 stun depending on how many slots you've got free. This is both a rez and a debuff/stun power.
Shadowfall: 1 endredux, 0-3 resistance if you have the spare slots.
Fearsome stare (aka 'I win'): 2 acc, 2 fear, 2 rech. This is the most important power in the set - most controllers would *kill* for this power. 6 slot this bad boy immediately.
Petrifying gaze: 1 acc, 1 hold, 1 rech early on, if you want to stack it later, beef it up to 2 acc, 2 hold, 1-2 rech.
Dark servant: 2 acc, 3 tohit debuff, 1 heal/hold/rech/end/etc - your choice. The thing fluffy does best is tohit debuff, and he should be slotted accordingly.

Dark blast, Gloom and Moonbeam (if you take it): 1 acc, 3 damage, 1 end, 1 rech. I almost hesitate to suggest this, because I hate running with less than 2 acc in a power, but there aren't enough slots. This is the one place I would suggest grabbing some sets before 50 - 2 maelstrom and 3 ruin can net you 60% acc, 95% damage, and 35%ish end and rech in only 5 slots with level 30 IOs, and are usually very cheap.
Dark pit: 2-3 acc, 1-2 stun, 0-1 rech. This power has an accuracy penalty, so acc is important, but since you'll usually be stacking it with howling twilight, rech is less important.
Tenebrous tentacles and Nightfall: 1 acc, 3 damage, 1 end, 1 recharge. Again, frankenslotting some air burst and detonation sets could really help these powers.
Torrent (if you take it): 2 acc, 0-1 end, 0-1 recharge.
Blackstar: 1 acc, 3 damage, 0-2 recharge. I am a fan of defender nukes, and blackstar carries an absolutely *crippling* tohit debuff (62.5% *unslotted*), making it one of my favorites.

As far as epic choices go, I would choose between electric and psychic, just because they both have a hold to stack with petrifying gaze. Psychic gives you your hold earlier and has some other control tricks, while electric fence would help round out your ranged attack chain and power sink would solve any end problems. Both are great pools. If you don't want the hold stacking, then I would go dark mastery. Oppressive gloom would stack well with dark pit and howling twilight, soul drain + blackstar would be awesome, and soul transfer -> howling twilight would allow you to rez the entire ream at once including yourself, which would be a neat trick.

Twilight grasps -tohit debuff is so large that if used pre-emptively those annoying lts, problem mobs will usually miss.

Why pick another power (PG) when you already have soo many powers that neuter problem spawns/mobs?

If dark miasma had another hold in the powerset id be all for PG. With an autohit stun (HT) that has the benefit of a team rez why wouldnt you take dark pit? And slotted for recharge the cooldown isnt horrible long on HT.

And yes id skip torrent and life drain as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadow Ravenwolf My favorite combo is Faceplant/DebtCap with the TeamWipe Ancillary

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari Yeah, I like Blasters too.

Because "usually" isn't good enough.

Also, TG is one of the smaller -toHit powers in the set. It's also a very long animation time. Spending time stacking that on foes is terrible for your damage/time.

Even well-slotted Fearsome Stare, which has nearly double the base -toHit of TG, is not sufficient to provide certainty that you will be missed by a mezzing mob. Certain critter factions have frequent mezzers in nearly every spawn. Making the mezzers "usually" miss means you're going to suffer a lot of mez in the course of a mission.

I explained why I do not recommend Dark Pit. It has one of the worst mez statistics in the game. I also explained why I do not rely on HT as a mez. It is extremely long recharging to rely on this way, and extremely expensive to cast on top of it. Its mez is nice to have in emergencies, but it is not a tool you can rely on using every spawn.

*takes the podium*

As the high priest of Howling Twilight, I must implore that the original poster not waste any time in selecting this power for its fabulous ability to CRUSH potential alpha strikes from foes and targets. It's crowd control on steroids. It's auto hit, stun, regen debuff, slow. Now some folks think at first glance that Howling Twilight misses lieutenants and bosses. It doesn't, it's a low mag stun. THIS my friend is where a case can be made for dark pit, since it too is also too low to stun lieutenants and bosses, but it stacks nicely with Howling Twilight.

Oh by they way, you may have heard that Howling Twilight does a nice AoE resurrection of all fallen teammates in a decent radius area around the caster.

Whos the ****** bag that gave me negative rep for my opinion?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadow Ravenwolf My favorite combo is Faceplant/DebtCap with the TeamWipe Ancillary

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari Yeah, I like Blasters too.

There is a matrix of responses to fearsome stare and howling twilight that experienced dark users rely on to assess groups. For instance, I know that if I use fearsome stare on a skyraider engineer, he will set up his forcefield generator, and then go into the terrify animation. If I use Howling Twilight to stun the skyraiders, the minions are all taken out of action with the autohit stun. On the other hand, fearing Malta seems much easier even hitting gunslingers while Malta appear to me to be stun resistant. A sapper will superjump out of harm even while stunned.

Fluffy does help with stacking on holds on bosses, though I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

Also, the Lockdown proc in Pet Gaze is another way to periodicallly one-shot hold bosses.

Independently, these are almost irrelevant, but together, they're two "procs" to increase the odds of one-shotting a boss.

I prefer the the ability of being able to hold a sapper, freak stunner or a warwolf ect.
Quite often having a single target hold is invaluable.