Dark Tank/Scrapper end usage

Ever get that demo-record done there, Claws? I'm just curious to see some high level dark armor usage.

Any build is fine with procs and such. That wasn't the point of this thread, but anywho.

I rolled a katana/da. Kat has awesome damage, a def buff, and less end usage that spines (with the 2nd damage aura) and he's at level 25 atm. Running ok so far. Really fun build. I need a kb IO tho, bad.

On a side note, i rolled a spines/elec. It has 2 damage auras, plus nice AoE damage. Just got powersink and WOW. Killing non stop.

A little thread necromancy, but...

I'm playing a Dark / Dark Tanker (on Champions). I'm pretty familiar w/ the Dark family across the AT's overall, and spent some time piloting a Dark / Dark scrapper way back in the early days when the Toggles were semi-exclusive.

So, I more or less knew what to expect going into it when I decided to try out a Dark / Dark tanker.

I definitely have some END issues, even with Dark Consumption, if I run all the toggles and also attack full bore. I have Stamina 3 slotted w/ SO END Mods.

I run all 3 RES toggles, Cloak of Darkness, Oppressive Gloom, Hover, Cloak of Darkness, and Death Shroud. Each is slotted w/ 1 SO END Reduction except Hover which has none and Death Shroud which has two.

Death Shroud is tricked out for Damage and Acc, and is the anchor for my offense alongside Soul Drain and Siphon Life, and Shadow Maul for when I'm mobbed.

I run as x8 -1 with Bosses, getting very large mobs with a mild level differential bonus in my favor.

The basic tactic is Burn 101 -> ie Taunt a big mob onto me, Soul Drain and let em cook, periodically targetting something with Siphon Life to keep me healthy. If I'm taking too much damage I pop Dark Regeneration. If I've got a good cone sized pack in front of me (or I'm impatient), Shadow Maul and Sands of Mu thins the herd nicely. Smite and Boxing might be used to finish off something with a sliver if I don't feel like waiting for a few ticks of Death Shroud to roll off.

This basic tactic has gotten me to 35 in a mostly easy and sedate progression. This character is an alt and I give it little attention, so it's on again off again, but the early levels went by a little faster than usual, I got stalled in the late teens leading up to Stamina a little more than normal, and flew through the 20's and slowed a bit up to 35. Now that I have Dark Consumption, the pace has picked up a bit and I expect to cruise into the 40's.


As far as Tankers go, I feel that Dark Dark is good for team Tanking (particularly smaller teams) and not as good for soloing as it takes some patience to roast thru bad guys; on the other hand if you take the Stealth power it gives you some options to finish some solo missions without fighting thru them so maybe it evens out. However, its really easy to hold aggro with Dark Dark running a couple of auras and a Taunt.

Mostly, I find that running my Dark Dark Tank is a trade off -> I don't have to work at keeping aggro and between decent RES and good self-heal and self-recovery I don't have to worry about faceplanting, but I do have to refrain from spamming constant attack chains and let my aura's work for me. Typically, if people want to team and I need a tank in that level range I'll grab the Dark Dark rather than a WP / SS I have in the same ballpark because though the WP / SS is much more brutal and scrapperish, the Dark Dark is much better at filling the Tank role for the team.

YMMV, etc...

Sorry if this is necroing and a bit OT but:

Ok, so as I understand it Dark gets great survivability from controls...but....how does this work for brutes? I mean, a brute wants to get hit to build fury - you don't want the mobs to be stunned or feared! You want them to attack but deal negligable damage. I guess this makes these two powers skippable? (Along with self-res as you don't ever want to die). Is the survivability still good because of the big heal but the need for blue insps larger?

Dark does look really cool...

I don't have much Brute experience; I've only ever taken one up to level 6 or so (I don't do much red side). If the powerset combo is available to Brutes, I imagine it would play more like a Dark Dark Scrapper than a Dark Dark Tanker.

However, to answer your question, if you skipped the Fear and / or Disorient auras you would have to worry about minions, whereas with either one on you can pretty much ignore minions as they'll only ever get an occasional swipe at you in melee range before your aura soft-locks them. In the case of the Fear aura there is also a debuff effect you'll lose out on.

I generally just ignore minions and beat on Lt's and Bosses; most of the minions will get burned down to nothing or near nothing in the time it takes me to "arrest" their leaders.


The increased volume of small attacks might outpace your ability to self-heal. On the other hand, from what I recall of my limited Brute experience, the extra damage dishing might compensate as you can drop foes faster and thus lower your exposure.


It's probably worth the investment of a couple of hours to make a Dark Brute and play thru the easy levels to see.

Small update;

I've played the dark dark tanker a few more times and my expectations were correct; with Dark Consumption its now easy sailing. Without logging very much time on the character I picked up 3 more levels without batting an eye or working at it. I was also able on several occasions to successfully tank for higher level groups so I'm confident that the character will continue to be strong into the end game.

I did supplement Dark Consumption by investing early in Performance Shifter + END and a Miracle +Recovery I respec'd off another character that didn't really need it (a WP Scrapper w Fast Recovery and Stamina).

I was doing ok w/ just Dark Consumption but adding some invention help lets me be more aggressive and toss more casual attacks.


Thus far the payoff post 35 (Dark Consumption) has been worth the extra effort and patience in the low levels, for me.

Just wondering if the REAL issue is that the OP has his toons power level'd. I mean I'm sure that if we handed a lvl 30 DA over to anyone, they'd have issues. If you play the toon from the ground up you'll know the little tricks to manage the toon.

I am also under the impression that the OP just wanted everyone to say "Your right. DA is a horrible set and drains way too much end. They need to fix it". I love my spine/DA and have never had end issues, but I know you don't want to hear that!

I say stick with your sheild toon or what ever AE baby you got in the works. IMO

Maybe, maybe not. I had real END issues prior to Dark Consumption and basically had to adapt my playstyle and be smart about END management and toggle usage to be successful. Fortunately I'm pretty good at juggling END considerations at this point in my CoH career so it was workable, but if I didn't have prior knowledge of some of the higher end Dark powers from using them in other AT's I might not have stuck it out.

This seems as good a place as any to make a confession.

I've been playing since Old Days and until recently, had maintained the idea that DA was end heavy and bad. Mainly since I never actually bothered to look into it at all.

Having looked into it, DA is in fact not only totally manageable end-wise, but an incredibly powerful set.

Sorry, DA. Hope we can grab a beer sometime

In all seriousness, I think this is the cause of a lot of the bad press DA gets. Lot of people who don't bother to doublecheck old preconceptions.

Dark has a lot of toggles. If you run them all, you have real END pressure, especially in the awkward early-middle levels. In reality, you don't need both control aura's and one of them has a very heavy end cost for not much more benefit than the other (CoF vs OG). Also, you don't HAVE to run the stealth toggle, but it has a decent DEF component and stealth is often its own reward.

Death Shroud .52
Dark Embrace .21
Murky Cloud .21
Obsidian Shield .21
Cloak of Darkness .26
Cloak of Fear .52
Oppressive Gloom .08

If you try to run them all, raw, its 2.01 END.

If you also want to run further mitigation toggles such as Tough or Weave, or Hover or Acrobatics to patch the KB hole, you are looking at further END pressure.

Though awesome, Dark Regeneration costs 33.8 END raw. Soul Transfer (the rez) obviously costs 0 but has its own high cost (debt and pride denting).

The set has no 0 END Auto's; OG is the closest with its costing model deferring into HP (which is nothing to worry about for those not familiar with the power - don't be scared off by the fluff text as you are very unlikely to ever really notice it in practice).

Further, as an aside, the set has no panic button / god mode effect, with Dark Regeneration serving the first purpose but no big click boost to be had.


So, yes, DA has a relatively high END cost and no direct means to mitigate it (though the thematic melee set does with Dark Consumption).


However, for the most part, the cost to effect is very good and it is manageable. Being selective about which toggles to take and run is the most direct route, END gaining abilities is another, and proper slotting helps a lot. Ramping up to SOs drags a bit, but after that its a nice progression.




By comparison:

Invuls toggles will cost you .73 raw, and it's clicky heal costs a little over 10 END and its t9 panic costs 2.6 (and a major crash).

Willpowers toggles will cost you .84, it has no click heal but massive HP regeneration, and its t9 panic will cost you 2.6 (and a mild crash). ANd of course, Quick Recovery to make END toggles generally unnoticeable.

I'm not familar enough with the other tanker primaries to present the full set (I've only played DA, INV, and WP to 32 or beyond), but to the best of my knowledge none of them are as toggle-tastic as DA.




However, I totally agree with you that the set is definitely awesome despite the END costs and in my opinion is totally worth the investment for the later game payoff, but pretending like the END cost isn't higher than average doesn't benefit anyone IMO.

If you're running all the toggles at once, you deserve to run out of endurance.

I've never called DA end heavy but you can play it and slot it in a way that uses end in no time. A pit not to fall in but I did with Spines/Dark as it takes omg lvls to get working well

My 1st 50 was a Claw/Regen scrapper. I went from that to my 2nd 50 - Spine/Dark scrapper. Quite a bit of a shock for a while. But I stuck with it. This was back in the days before IOs. I did a couple respecs with trying out ToF and OG and decided to skip them both. I also had accrobatics to prevent KB. I really did not have any endurance issues. All attacks had an end redux in them and the higher end toggles had 2 end redux.

Sure I would still run out of end in a hurry, but I also killed just about everything quite fast so it evened out. If I needed to catch up on my blue bar I could run to the next spawn, use ripper for mitigation and let my damage toggles do the rest. This was on the highest difficulty at the time and I still ended up hearding spawns together so I would not be wasting my aoe potential.

Once IOs came out it was even easier once I had numina slotted.

Yes, overall DA uses a bit more endurance compared to other sets but it is nothing that is unplayable. All just depends on your playstyle. Maybe it is because I acutally use all inspirations frequently and not just when the poo hits the fan, who knows.