Patron Pool Dilemmas

Working on my highest brute (45 SS/EA) I'm not entirely happy with Soul Tentacles--the narrowness of the cone, especially--other than aesthetically.

I'm thinking about swapping it out for Darkest Night (Gloom will be the other Patron power), mainly to work against the common occurrence of Psi and Negative in the 40+ game villainside. The main drawback I see for Darkest Night is the activation time, though an early-in-spawn rage crash would be the perfect time to turn DN on.

This will lose 4% s/l defense when DN isn't activated, but of course gain a much more effective debuff to all on those in DN's area of effect.

Opinions about this move? Are folks happy playing with DN, or does it seem like a warm-up chore? (That it's a defender thing, not Brute smash nao-ish enough.)

Slotting possibilities--without a whole lot of slots left--and none of these are set in stone:

• Swapping out one Smashing Haymaker Set for a Kinetic Combat set
  
  Kismet in CJ (for stacked Dark bosses)
  
  Possibly an additional slot to Rage for the perception proc (and then maybe squeak a little more +s/l with 2 50 recharges and the tohit/rech Rectified Reticle)
  
  Devastation in Gloom (6 slots) for the hp boost and especially the Psi defense
  
  Or...(and this would cut Gloom's damage by 20-25%) for one of the Accurate ToHit Debuff sets (replacement S/L def or more E/N)
  
  BotZ for ranged (vs. Psi) and E/N (for the Neg) in CJ
  
  Swap out the frankenslotted Footstomp for full Scirocco's set, losing some E/N def and 1.5/2 seconds recharge (hasten up/down), but gaining 3.13 psi def and a little more F/C
  
  Subbing Impervium for Aegis, again for psi def

If rage is perma, your defenses will not be debuffed. I didn't look at the build, so no comments from me.

darkest night works good with EA cause you have the end abilities to support it and it in general is a good debuff, i would use that on the strongest enemy in every group regardless of what is going on with rage.

best strategy with darest night is to use it first thing into battle so it takes effect before they get too many hits off at you

There isn't a best way to slot. So, feel free to modify it to suit your style.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reptlbrain I did have a bit of surplus on s/l, mainly to buffer basically one def debuff. I was wondering whether building the neg def was worth the cost, but I do see that the concomitant range def could help with some of the psi problem.

I think the surplus is not really useful. If your defense is debuffed, the numbers can go down the drain pretty quickly. I would just use darkest night to make up for it. If you really like higher s/l defense, you just need to put kinetic combat into punch instead.

For capping the negative energy defense, it's not essential, in particular if you decide to use darkest night. Actually, there isn't much cost associated with capping it. All the powers are slotted normally with no weird slotting, and I'm not really using expensive IO sets to do it. If you think the slots can be used better somewhere else, you can do it differently.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reptlbrain Why Dampening field? I thought about it--maybe to squeeze a slot by being the +res/def mule--but its benefits seem pretty puny. If 5% of smashing damage is coming in, it's reducing about 0.5% of incoming s/l if my math is correct.

It stacks with tough. It's not essential. You can change to something else that you like. You probably need to move some slots to Dark Obliteration.