Epic Pool: Darkness Mastery

I am just looking for some general opinions on this pool. I have a couple re-spec openings, so I’ve added gaze, night fall and tentacles to my DM/WP scrapper. I am not planning on using too much inf, but just playing around with build ideas.

My first opinion is that although the powers are fun they are not as effective as others. I skills are very template orientated, but I’m sure people have opinions.

Wish to share yours?


I am still going to play around with it some more, so maybe I'll change my mind later.

My opinion on this pool is, sadly, take Pyre Mastery instead unless you really want a specific effect or Pyre mastery is too far outside your character concept.

Torrent: Skip this power even if you take this pool. It's a pretty massive KB cone, which most melees aren't fond of. Even if you want the mitigaion, it's on a 15s base recharge, costs an epic 17.9 endurance, and deals only token damage. I don't even take this on Dark Blast characters.

Petrifying Gaze: In its native Dark Miasma powersets, this power is the least effective hold in the game in terms of duration/recharge ratio. All the epic holds for melee ATs are given a consistent 32s base recharge, but Pet Gaze still has its poor base duration, just a tad over 1/2 that of similar holds, including Char. This can perhaps be defended in Dark Miasma, which is a powerset rich in other effects that make the a strong hold less necessary. Transplanted out of that powerset and left to compete directly with holds in other epic pool sets, its performance is abysmal.

Dark Blast: There's nothing really wrong with this power. Fire Blast does outperform it on DPA, but not outrageously. The time of flight is a lot lower on Fire Blast, which is generally more satisfying to me, but not a big performance issue. No real complaints.

Night Fall: I believe this power is actively bugged. It appears to use the Scrapper ranged damage scale, which means it deals like 1/2 the damage it should. No other melee AT's ranged AoE uses that scale - the rest all use the melee scale. Even if its damage was correct, Fireball is probably a better fit with most melee characters, since you can freely fire it at point blank range, unlike Night Fall's cone which you have to fall back to hit multiple targets with. For its place in the order you can pick the powers, Night Fall might be better than Melt Armor, just because that power has a pretty epic base recharge time, and Scrappers lack impressive debuff scale modifiers.

Tenebrous Tentacles: this power is only really interesting if you need to AoE immobilize stuff. I suppose that might be interesting if you're a /FA with burn, but IMO it's not that worthwhile. The damage is passable, but like Night Fall it's a ranged cone. (A clear indicator that something is wrong with Night Fall is that this power deals more damage than it, which isn't true in their native powersets.) If Night Fall had what I think is the correct damage, it would be a much better cone than TT for damage dealing. As matters stand, I'd rather have Fireball than either of these.

In short, the only reason to choose Darkness Mastery is concept. Personally, I really wanted that concept for my own Dark/Regen Scrapper, but the seemingly bugged Night Fall and the abysmal relative performance of Petrifying Gaze meant I went Pyre instead.

The other reason to take Darkness Mastery is if you are after particular sets, as the pool has a wide variety of effects and it can take many different sets (including purples). However, that's even more of a corner case, as it tends to apply to specialized builds; most scrappers will get more mileage from the more useful powers in the other pools. Still, if there's something specific in the IO world you're after, it may be helpful.

Torrent can be "useful" if you've got the Flight Pool and can "hover cone" stuff straight down into the ground as an opening move before cutting your hover/flight power to drop into the middle of stuff and Hit Puree. Another tactic to use is to simply *hop* straight up during combat and then hit Torrent when you're near the top of your jump (you'll quickly learn the timing for this). Using the "hop" technique while in melee contact with your $target will "convert" this power from a lateral cone into a (sort of) PBAoE-ish power (aimed near where you were standing). This again points the cone straight down at the ground so stuff that's clustered up onto you doesn't go flying over the hills and off the rails. If you're actually thinking of slotting up this power, especially if going for 6-slots, I'd recommend using a full Force Feedback set for the Proc and the set bonuses. The base damage is pretty minimal so the main use for Torrent is really the knockback.

Petrifying Gaze actually can be useful ... if you slot it. Out of the box, it's pretty limited, but with slotting it can turn you into a Scraptroller. VERY useful for dealing with Malta Sappers ... or indeed, any LT type that you'd rather not deal with. Can be very helpful for stacking up Holds onto stuff in conjunction with Controllers. You're going to need to HEAVILY slot it for Accuracy/Hold/Recharge though in order to get the best performance out of it. With sufficient enhancement, it's possible to achieve Perma Gaze allowing you to (solo) keep any LT or Minion on permanent lockdown (while you deal with other problems).

Dark Blast is kind of a yawner as an attack power. It's pretty generic as far as stats go, although it really sounds wicked when you use it. Slotted up with a 6-slot Thunderstrike though, this power becomes a force to be reckoned with and rounds out almost any attack chain that runs on quick animation rotations. Works "nicely" as a ranged pull power for those situations where diving in head first (into the concrete block) isn't the wisest survival tactic.

I have no real experience with Night Fall (sorry).

Tenebrous Tentacles is, for all intents and purposes, best used as a Cone attack that Immobilizes and ToHit Debuffs, so slot for that. The damage output of this power is nothing to write home about, so the best thing to do is to leverage it as an immobilize to keep your targets where you want them. Helps keep pesky runners (and some spastic AVs) "pinned" in place.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

I make Darkness Mastery work solely for concept reasons. If your concept doesn't require it, you'll likely be better off with something else.

The only powersets I'd take Dark Mastery with would be a DM/Fire.

It used to be a decent pick because, until we got Blaze Mastery, Dark had the ONLY true hold available to any scrapper. Sadly, Char is better than Petrifying gaze in every way.

Tenebrous Tentacles can be used to leverage a Burn patch for damage, but that's about the only use left for the pool now that we have Blaze.

I took torrent on my DM/SR/Dark to give a nice space maker and that's really all its for, I hit the mob with Torrent and then hop myself into the pile of fallen bodies hit Soul Drain and back to work!

Another thing I do that works nicely is hit Torrent at Point Blank Range and follow it up with midnight grasp... The MG fires off you see a nice stream of dark and immobilized enemy.