Darkness Mastery: Torrent

Working on a build for my dm/sr and decided to randomly take torrent, mainly because it can take a purple set and seems kinda/maybe semi usefull. Really just needed a final power for the build but wondering if I should just grab touch of fear instead. I know theres probably some things I could fix with the build besides switching those two out (low on hp and such) but I mainly just wanted to see what others would do regarding my last power selection.

Oh and I plan on using the build for random higher end tfs/killing avs/normal play. Here's my current build, thank you.

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Didn't look at your build, but I will tell you that torrent from dark mastery is awful. Unlike the version from body mastery that does knockdown, dark mastery torrent does knockback. Some players may like this, but I just found it frustrating and irritating. It will scatter mobs all over the place and pretty much ruin any follow up AoE.

Yeah I mainly plan on being single target, just thought I could use the kb for mitigation if need be. Plus kb can be kinda funny on things like pug itfs :P I love my stormy on them.... tornado 6 slotted with kin crashes ftw.

Yeah I see your point :P I guess I could just get petrifying gaze, if I mainly just care about slotting a purp set, since the hold and aoe sets have the exact same set bonuses. Thank you.

How about switching to Blaze Mastery and using Char with Unbreakable Constraint? Char has about 180% of the base duration of Petrifying Gaze, and animates much faster. That way, if you actually want a single-target hold to nullify a Sapper or something, it's actually a much more effective hold.

About the only use I found for Torrent - when I had it - was to play Hellion Golf in Atlas Park. You know who they are - those first two Hellions stealing someone's purse out on the sidewalk directly south of Ms. Liberty? Yeah. You get a hole in one if one of them lands in the water around the base of the Atlas Statue directly behind Ms. Liberty. It's a par 1 course.

That game kept me entertained for all of five or six minutes before I respecc'd out of the power.

I have Dark Mastery Torrent on a character. But it's strictly for concept. I decided to take it after playing with the holy shotgun shells temp power -- cone knockback amused me so much.

I found a use for it -- in AE missions, when a custom boss hits Build Up, he will hit right through my soft-capped defense (MA/SR). A single hold won't neutralize a boss. But most of them can be knocked back, and then I keep them at arm's length for ten seconds until Build Up expires.

And one time I blew some baddies off a ledge while they were smashing one of the Blasters into the red. But that was the only time I ever felt like it saved a teammate from defeat.

Note that, as MA/SR, the character is primarily single-target focused anyway, and is used to chasing things Crane Kick knocks back, or using positioning to nullify the disadvantage of knockback. Scrappers with more AoE may find Torrent more disruptive.

The build predates Physical Perfection being added to the Scrapper epics. Also, I did not have room for a third-tier power like Energy Torrent. If I did have the power picks to spare, I would seriously consider respeccing into Physical Perfection and Energy Torrent.

I don't really think Torrent is that awful. Well, maybe I think its endurance cost is awful, but mostly I just think it's not that helpful to a lot of Scrappers in a lot of situations compared to some other powers. That said, I think Sailboat gave a good example of a niche use for it.

Sadly, I do think that Petrifying Gaze is awful. I have a lot of Dark Miasma characters, and I tolerate the power's statistics there, because the powerset has a lot of other nice powers that can be viewed as compensating for the hold being weak. However, in an epic pool which is much less character defining than a primary/secondary powerset (and which can be changed in a respec), PG's functional weakness compared to Char is pretty bad indeed. Worse, I don't think Darkness Mastery has anything that makes up for that the way I feel Dark Miasma does. It makes me sad when someone who chooses a pool based on concept has to pay that much opportunity cost for doing so.

There *IS* a way to keep Torrent from hurling things far away from you (thus making you chase them down). All you have to do is ... HOP.

All you need to do is have your target_enemy_near selected ... and jump straight up. This will point the knockback direction into the ground. If you've got Combat Jumping running you can simply jump up to your maximum height and hit Torrent when you reach the top of your straight up vertical jump and it'll cone KB everything underneath you where you were standing. Very effective as a makeshift PBAoE knockdown (sorta), and can even be done without Combat Jumping. Obviously the radius of "impact" at ground level will be larger the higher you can jump (up to the 60ft cone radius maximum, of course), but even "short legged" characters with only Swift instead of Hurdle can still make use of this tactic (even though their jump height won't be all that impressive).

I do something relatively similar on my Ice/Ice/Arctic Tanker when using Frost, another Cone attack power. Difference is that with Frost the radius is short (~14-15ft after enhancement) and the angle is large (~90 degrees), so it isn't quite exactly the same ... but the tactic does let me "convert" Frost from being a 1/4 pie slice attack into an "off center" PBAoE attack that catches everything I've got clustered up on me, thus dramatically increasing the effectiveness and throughput of my Frost power attacks. I do a LOT of Hop+Frost attacks on my Tanker, to the point where it's now pretty much second nature to me and thus I just do it automatically. Jump ... Frost.

So next time any of you actually use Torrent ... try jumping up into the air to aim the power DOWN into the ground and see if that isn't more useful to you than "punting" your victims far away from you (where they need to be chased down). Slot up with Knockback Set(s) (6-slot Force Feedback?) and you'll be able to start knocking over piles of Romans around where you were standing every time you jump straight up into the air for some pretty serious damage mitigation. You're dealing with a +10.386 MAG KB to start with, and enhancing that can earn you some pretty serious "hang time" even when you're pointing the KB straight into the ground ... and have a recharge time of less than 10 seconds.

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