First Tanker...Help?

So, I'm new to playing tankers and I made one not too long ago.

Hes Dark Armor/Fire Melee.

I know Knockback protection is a key to fixing holes in Dark Armor, but what else are weaknesses of Dark Armor that I might be able to patch up?

Also, any tips for IO'ing, since I plan to, the tank?

That's a pretty wide open request.

If memory serves, a weakenss is massive end usage. Otherwise, just slot it on up and you'll rock socks.

Others will obviously be more informative than me.

ETA: just slotting up Res in Dark Embrace, Murky Cloud, and Obsidian Sheild, all available by level six, you get around 50% resistance to everything. Negative is 63% and Psionic is 79%. Energy and Toxic are in the low 30s.

Your IO slotting, you could go for whatever type bonus you want. Rech wouldn't be a mistake, or getting more def or res. Your choice. [I think.]

As Postagulous mentioned, besides needing KB protection, endurance recovery is a big concern.

Specifically, since the three main Dark shields, Dark Embrace, Murky Cloud and Obsidian Shield have a very low endurance cost they're much less of a issue than 1) making sure your attacks are well slotted for end reduction, and 2) that the 'big three' end eaters in the Dark set (Dark Regen, Death Shroud, and Cloak of Fear) are *very* well slotted for endurance reduction. Slotting for +end and +recovery bonuses is also a good idea, as are epics like Conserve Power and Physical Perfection.

Immob protection for Dark is available in the stealth shield, Cloak of Darkness, so be sure to pick up CJ for its immob protection if you decide not to take CoD. Keep in mind though, that fully slotted CoD provides as much defense as Weave, so if you opt for a defense build getting CoD is a good idea.

Dark has a little less than 50% S/L resistance with DE fully slotted, so many Dark players get Tough to boost that a bit.

Since FM provides little additional damage mitigation, I strongly encourage you to pick up either Cloak of Fear or Op Gloom, since either will effectively take minions out of the picture. CoF uses Fear and Op Gloom uses stuns, but otherwise they're similar in the amount of damage mitigation they provide. One big difference between the two is that CoF has a very high endurance cost and needs several slots to be most effective, where OG is dead cheap, end-wise, and can be left at the base slot if necessary.

End recovery, +end, and defense are probably the best set bonuses to shoot for, IMO. Recharge is also good, but not as helpful as it would be for a set like Shields that has a mac-daddy attack, or one with a long recharge heal--Dark Regen's base recharge is 30 seconds. I focused on typed defense for my Dark/Mace since Dark has significantly lower Energy resists than any other type, and I was able to get my Energy defense up pretty high to compensate.

Hope that helps!

Findulias covered things pretty well, so I'll just add a few tidbits on top of that. With Dark Regeneration you'll be able to completely heal yourself every time it's up, so a focus on +recharge works nicely for this kind of Tanker, especially if you manage to get your hands on a Theft of Essence: +end proc which greatly helps with the endurance cost for Dark Regen. How much endurance recovery and +end you really need depends very much on your build. I'd also add that +regeneration isn't all that great for a Dark since you'll be healing yourself to full routinely anyway, though +HP is still nice to have.

The first order of business is good endurance management and once you have that, I'd advise going either for Defense or for Recharge, both if you can manage it. The extra Defense helps protect you from high alpha strike damage and you really don't have to worry about anything else so long as you don't run dry of endurance. If something can't kill you fast, it can't kil you at all.

It plays a little differently than other Tankers, but since you're new to Tankers it's all new to you anyway.

Seeing lots of good advice here. My guy is dark/dark with Tough and Weave. He runs TEN toggles so IO'ing for +recovery and +END was definitely necessary. I also went for positional defense.

As for Dark Regen, that's a power that begs for frankenslotting. You can get over 90% on heal, recharge and end reduction in five slots.

Definitely want to echo the sentiment here with regards to focusing on +recovery and +max end. As a Dark Armor, you'll likely be running tons of toggles and depending on your slotting, you may end up having to do some toggle management depending on the situation.

My preference is to grab Oppressive Gloom and two slot it for +recov like Acc/Rech and the Acc/Stun/Rech from Stupefy for +2.5% recov. Like the other said, going Cloak of Fear means another heavy endurance toggle.

The build can be tight especially if you go the power pool route for some protection like Acrobatics rather than rely on KB protection IOs as well as dipping into the Fighting pool for added toughness and defense.

A question that often hits Dark Armor players is "How do I balance between the number of power selections to the number of slots to make each selection worthwhile?" And this will come from your experience and others if you ask here.

If you 5-slot attacks and you are going for defensive build, you will be missing a lot of tier 6 bonuses that give out defense such as Mako's or Touch of Deaths. It just depends on where you want to take your DA tank.

As far as Dark Regen, I'm in the camp that DR recharges fast enough that I prefer to not slot it up but I can easily see how a set up of:

Dark Regeneration
2x Theft of Essence (Acc/Heal, Acc/End/Heal) = +regen bonus
2x Touch of the Nictus (Acc/End/Rech, Acc/End/Heal) = +hp bonus
2x Harmonized Heal (Heal/Rech, End/Rech) = +recovery bonus
which yields 80% acc, 82% endrdx, 83% heal, 69% rech at max level for each IO

Not quite the numbers Ironblade gives out but I don't know the slotting he uses offhand.

But in anycase, DA is a slight different beast and is a lot of fun! Hope you enjoy it!

Slot the Chance for +End in Dark Regen. It only has to hit 1 target to cover its cost. =)

Alot of good advice so far for the OP.

Figured I could throw my 2inf in the hat as well. I run a WP/Fire Tanker and a guildmate runs a Dark/Dark scrapper, so cannot comment on Dark/Fire per se, just what I know of the two sets seperately.

Endurance issues will be big.

Dark Regen has an insane cost and even fully slotted, will run you 17 end per use.
That power needs Accuracy, Endurance reduction and Heal.
Helping my Guildmate IO out his Dark/Dark, this is what we came up with for Dark Regen;

Miracle-Heal/End
Miracle-End/Rech
TheftofEssence-Acc/End/Rech
TheftofEssence-Acc/End/Heal
TheftofEssence-Acc/Heal
**If you can spare the slots to 6-slot this power, then go with other suggested slotting,
this was 5-slotted due to scarcity of slots and will yield;
56%ACC, 82%End, 63% Heal, 41% rech
Set Bonuses: 2.5% +recovery, 1.87%HP, 9% ACC global

Fire Melee (if you plan on taking the AoEs) can be expensive. They will need endurance reduction, expecially if you want to also slot them to recharge faster and farm with them. The reason I mention the AoEs, is that there is a really great synergy with Dark that is much like a Fire/Fire Tank, and thats Death Shroud. You could probably melt thru spawns pretty quickly with just Death Shroud + Fire Sword Circle, assuming they are slotted well. I chose to go WP/Fire instead of Dark/Fire or Fire/Fire because I wanted the hands-off healing of willpower and the extra endurance recovery to fuel Fire's AoEs. They are expensive. Did I mention that ? Hehe

As others have mentioned Dark has three toggles which are not too bad on the endurance bar, until you decide to add Death Shroud and/or Cloak of Fear. Then you are going to need serious endurance recovery help.

For a Tank, I think its kind of unfair that Cloak of Shadows was not changed to something else which gave defense but not stealth. But thats just my opinion.
The reason I say this, is that if you are planning on tanking for a team, being Invis/stealth is counter-productive to your role. I am sure there are some folks that have a way around this, but just seems like your starting from behind the aggro curve running this toggle for defense AND THEN trying to build aggro. I would probably go after tough/weave and CJ to get back the defense and Immob protection, OR... Take Death Shroud and make sure your teams give you some time to generate aggro. You can see just how many toggles you could end up with, and they will all add up quickly. So as has been mentioned +Recovery, +End, and then more +recovery.

Get the Accolades for +End as soon as you can as well. And I highly reccommend Physical Perfection.

Good Luck, I hope everyone has given you good ideas to work off.

Dark armor takes the most end to run. 6-7 toggles are never fun to run. I've seen plenty of end redux builds (with heavy IO use) so I would suggest another AT. But if you just need to play that AT I would suggest dropping a lot of inf on the character. Hopefully you have a lvl 50 that has collected a couple millions. Best bet is to invest in IO's as soon as possible. And that's from a dinosaur like me that hates em.

Thanks for all the advice guys. Currently hes sitting at 22, I've been right down busy in other things, but I will use all this advice so I can play a good tanker.