WM/Dark Synergy?

I'm not really into melee toons, but I decided to roll a new brute. I decided to go with WM for the disorient and I was wondering: Does WM disorient coupled with Oppressive Gloom give good mitigation? Is the combo viable? Also, does OG stack with its self for higher mags?

It's a solid combo. You get a lot of stunning out of it. You can keep a boss stunned for a good portion of the time you fight it. Theoretically you could go for perma-stun, but given that Clobber is one of your best attacks, I'd max out the damage/recharge slotting before worrying about enhancing the stun.

Oppressive Gloom does not stack with itself, but you tend to see a lot of drunk-walking after you fire off Whirling Mace in a big group with OG running.

Crowd Control is <3

Endurance will be an issue. Plan on getting a Theft of Essence proc for Dark Regen, and ideally a Miracle, Numinas, and Perf. Shifter proc.

Yeah it's a lot, but Dark Armor isn't the most end-friendly set, and War Mace can burn through end pretty quickly too, especially when you're spamming AoEs.

Thanks for the reply. I was wondering thought why WM is not that popular. Looking at the numbers, it seems to be equally powerful with popular sets like Stone Melee, but lighter on the blue bar, with 5% increased accuracy and solid AoE damage. Is there something I'm missing?

One player once said here that he hated his WM/DA because he stunned everything - so w has a great 'Tanker' but a terrible Brute because he had a lot of difficulty building fury.

Don't forget about the Razzle Dazzle: Chance to Immob proc if you're going to be running Oppressive Gloom. It won't keep everyone in place all the time but it should keep enough of them there (sadly there is currently no visual effect that enemies are immob'd by this proc).

My guess as to the main thing keeping War Mace from greater popularity is that it's a weapon set. That means Gloom, one of the best single-target attacks available to Brutes, is not nearly as good for the War Mace user because it triggers redraw. For the number crunchers that's a strong negative.

If you look at the set in isolation, it's very strong. It has one of the best balances of single-target and AoE. It's not the best at either, but it's very good at both.

As to over-stunning with Dark Armor, I haven't experienced that myself. I don't have any problems generating Fury. I leave Oppressive Gloom running full-time too. It's a potent damage mitigation tool, but if you find you don't need it you can always turn it off to help generate more Fury. Like I said I haven't felt the need, but the option is there.

Thanks for the feedback.

I decided to roll a WM/Dark after all, mostly for playtesting. I do like him so far, so maybe I'll get to stick with him. He is lv16 now, just got my Dark Regeneration. Yay

As for the fury issue, yes, I imagine it can pose a problem, but honestly I'm willing to sacrifice some damage potential in favor of greater survivability. So far all the AT I chose were based on the idea of "playing safe": Ill/Rad Troller, Bot/Trap MM, Sonic/MM Blaster, several Dark Defenders. Maybe this logic is flawed on a melee AT, but I can always reroll, right? Altitis FTW

Edit: Yeah, I hadn't thought about the redraw issue. I'm not used in weapon sets (I don't play melee toons that much), so I imagine it may be too much to handle. Well, time will tell

I don't know why redraw would be a problem unless you're determined to take and use patron attacks. I do hope BaB is able to come up with a clever solution that will allow him to eliminate the redraw problem for weapon sets, but I'm not holding my breath.

On mine I just stuck to attacks from the primary, so redraw was a non-factor.

I wanted to be able to be main tank with mine, so I took Tough and also built for S/L defense. It worked out really well, I can tank and solo spawns on full teams. I only run into problems when facing enemies that target the build's weak points. Anything that does lots of energy damage and/or heavily debuffs defense usually. High level PPD are .