Help me build dark/dark.

You can earn 3 respecs by doing the trials. You can earn respecs based on veteran badges for length of CoH playtime. You can purchase respecs from the auction houses. You can also receive a free respec with just about every issue that comes out; however, these freespecs don't stack up -- use them or lose them. On rare occasions, respec recipes drop during regular missions.

You seem to have a pretty good handle on the powers, I would play a few more levels then respec by doing one of the trials. Respec teams aren't usually terribly hard to find. Join a global chat or two for your server that focuses on Task Forces/Trials (e.g. I use FreedomTF and just ask on there, much easier than sitting around in Ind. Port and hollering for a team)

I suggest Leadership very strongly for Defenders because not all Leadership powers are created equal (comparing archetypes). Defenders get the best bonus/use out of each of the powers, because by design, they are generally support characters. Use this link and scroll to the bottom to see what I mean:
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Leadership

And yes, Dark Pit can stack with HT. I use HT every time it is up, offensively. Also, Recall Friend can stack all your dead buddies together in the middle of a mob and rez them all at once with a single HT (of course you hope it shouldn't come to that).

-MT

Can recall friend stack more than one friend? I guess it has a pretty short recharge.

I think wanting leadership and recall friend just makes my "too many powers" problem worse. So does wanting dark pit to stack it with HT. But the character's a djinni, and really HAS to fly. (And really, I want Shadow Fall just because the blue cloud at her feet Looks Right for hovering.)

This is how I'd do it.

01: Dark Blast - One of your two good single target attacks. Give it 5 or 6 slots with 30-60% acc, 90% damage, 30-60% endurance reduction, 0-60% recharge.

01: Twilight Grasp - Early on, it's a decent self-heal that splashes to teammates. Later, it becomes a spammable damage, tohit, and regeneration debuff, good for helping to neuter and take down single hard targets. 4 to 6 slots, 30-60% acc, 90% heal, 0-60% recharge, 0-60% endurance reduction.

02: Gloom - Your other good single target attack, unusually strong for its cast and cycle time. Slot as Dark Blast.

04: Tar Patch - A powerful movement and damage resistance debuff. Note that debuffing damage resistance also debuffs resistance to damage debuffs, meaning that Twilight Grasp is even more effective against targets in the patch. At least 3 slots, at least 90% recharge.

06: Hover - It's Hover. It's also a somewhat expensive toggle to run. If you have room, consider adding a slot or two for endurance reduction. Early on, it's fine with just a Fly.

08: Swift - Don't put Flightspeed in this, as the bonus is minuscule. Put in a runspeed instead for when it's inefficient/unnecessary to run Hover, and call it done.

10: Shadow Fall - It's Shadow Fall. Another expensive toggle. Put in two endredux; after that, whether to enhance its resistance or its defense depends on how the rest of your build works out.

12: Fearsome Stare - Keystone Power. Cannot emphasize enough. Slot for accuracy, recharge, and tohit debuff. 5 slots at absolute minimum, 6 vastly preferable.

14: Fly - One Fly and done.

16: Tenebrous Tentacles - Your first powerful cone. Slot it as an attack. It is possible to get quite fancy with IOs here, but save that for later.

18: Health - That little regeneration boost is more useful than you think, and eventually some very nice IOs can go here. Early on, put in 3 slots and 90% Heal and call it a day.

20: Stamina - Vigilance covers a lot on teams, but this one is key for soloing. 3 slots, 90% Endurance Modification, done.

22: Night Fall - Your second powerful cone. Slot as an attack. Remember that it is longer and narrower than Tenebrous Tentacles.

24: Hasten - Because you want to have Tar Patch and Fearsome Stare up against every spawn. 3 Recharge enhancements, 90% recharge.

26: Darkest Night - Not necessary for fights against minions and lieutenants, but good against Bosses and higher. One endurance reduction immediately, 3 tohit debuffs at your leisure.

28: Petrifying Gaze - A situational power, but the situation is not uncommon: a single obnoxious minion in a spawn who you'd rather not give a chance to use their obnoxious powers. 4 slots should be enough, with 30% acc and 90% hold, but you can add more to taste.

30: Howling Twilight - It is a strong area stun and regeneration debuff that also happens to resurrect any of your nearby teammates. Put in a recharge in the default slot, and a few more if you like to have it available more often.

32: Dark Servant - Fluffy is a tiny god. He packs his own Twilight Grasp, Tenebrous Tentacles, Darkest Night, and Petrifying Gaze, and a special aura: Chill of the Night, which damages and debuffs tohit of nearby enemies. Be aware that slotting enhancements into him only benefits the powers for whom those enhancements can provide benefit, and also be aware that his powers cannot have their recharge time reduced through any means. With that in mind, slot him for Accuracy and Tohit Debuff, since all of his powers debuff tohit.

35: Assault - It boosts your damage, and also that of Fluffy, and oh, if you have teammates hanging about it helps them too, to the tune of +15% damage enhancement. It also consumes quite a bit of endurance, so give it 2 or 3 slots of endurance reduction.

38: Tactics - Since none of your other powers reduce enemy defense or increase your own tohit, you may find yourself having trouble with enemies that have high defense or strong tohit debuffs. Tactics helps with that, for yourself and Fluffy and also associated hangers-on. It also eats as much endurance as Assault, so slotting up endurance reduction as well as tohit buff is recommended.

41: Dark Consumption - A PBAoE that damages enemies and transfers endurance to you. Handy for keeping your other powers running. It does involve wandering into melee range, but when your enemies are immobilized, feared, stunned, and tohit debuffed to hell and gone that's not so terrible a prospect. Slot one acc, and then recharge and endurance modification to taste (it's on a rather slow timer).

44: Dark Embrace - Boosts your resistance to smashing, lethal, and negative energy damage. Handy in and of itself, and also a good home for a number of fancy IOs if you're inclined in that direction.

47: Soul Drain - A PBAoE that damages enemies and increases your own tohit and damage for each target hit for 30 seconds. Same caveats as Dark Consumption, but the benefit is quite sizable. Needs a bit of accuracy and a full complement of recharge.

49: Oppressive Gloom - A very endurance-cheap aura that stuns nearby enemies at the cost of a tiny bit of health. This power is insanely good, and with slots getting tight at the end of the build, it's handy that you only need to slot one or two acc to get its full benefit.

Of the above powers, I would call the following key: Dark Blast, Gloom, Tenebrous Tentacles, Night Fall, Twilight Grasp, Tar Patch, Fearsome Stare, and Dark Servant. Everything else is nice but not strictly necessary and can be rearranged or swapped out to taste. The Fitness chain and Hasten are strongly recommended, however. One popular variant build swaps in Tough and Weave from the Fighting pool on top of Dark Embrace and Shadow Fall, and uses set bonuses to build for high resistances and defenses, resulting in a solo powerhouse at the cost of some team synergy.

In terms of strategy: I would recommend fighting large groups, even solo - try x3 or higher. Open up with a Fearsome Stare, aimed to hit most of the enemies, and immediately follow with a Tar Patch and Tenebrous Tentacles. At this point, every enemy in the spawn should be one or more of: immobilized, slowed, feared, tohit debuffed. Then just go to town with your AoE and ST attacks until everything falls down, using Twilight Grasp for spot heals if necessary. Lather, rinse, repeat. If a boss or higher rank enemy is present, drop Darkest Night on 'em to open and then proceed as usual, focusing ST attacks and Twilight Grasps on the boss.

You can also use Darkest Night to pull enemies: activate it on the farthest enemy back, then duck around the corner as it finishes activating. He'll come running and bring all his friends with him... right into a Tar Patch. At this point, proceed as above. Giggling maniacally is optional, but highly recommended.

That does look quite nice. It doesn't give me recall friend, but that's the only thing I can think of that I'm pretty sure I want that's not in it. I might be a bit concerned about HT coming in so late, because it's such an awesome power, but well, there's an awful lot of awesome powers to be had.

The historical reason for which I've put flight speed in Swift is that it affects both fly and hover, although I've now reached the point in my current setup where hover is, if anything, too fast -- I can run into stuff because I move too fast. So I could certainly rethink that.

I've tended to keep Hover and Shadow Fall slotted for -endurance just so I can keep them on without worrying too much.

I will stare carefully at this one, it has a lot of appeal. With my current slotting, there's enough -recharge in fearsome stare and tar patch that I don't necessarily need hasten to keep them up -- rather, I don't for soloing, in groups I still end up with a given batch of critters being dead before tar patch has fully recharged. Presumably it will get easier as I level, because three higher-level recharge IOs would get Tar Patch up faster, though if I start slotting it with more complicated stuff, that could change.

Tar Patch really doesn't need "more complicated stuff". 3 recharges and you're good too go. The slow is pretty irrelevant with TT and FS to keep foes from moving, then end cost isn't too bad and there's nothing else to enhance.

About the only thing I'd consider is that, if there is a End/Rech IO in one of the slow sets (can't check, wiki doesn't work when I'm in the office), then one of those at lvl 50, and 2 lvl 50 Recharge IOs would probably be slightly better than 3xrech due to ED, but it's no big deal either way.

I'd mostly been thinking that it might be worth putting a set into Tar Patch to get set bonuses, but that may not be a good use of slots.

I'm really liking SPTrashcan's proposed build. Here's the big mystery to me... I am really liking the notion of getting Recall Friend, because with a stealth IO and Shadow Fall, I can basically go anywhere in most missions, and then summon people. (The relevant vet reward is a LONG way out.) I'm pretty sure I'd have to give up something to get it, though. So here's the question: How crucial is Hasten? How much shorter would recharges on Fearsome Stare and Tar Patch be if I had it?

I'm also getting semi-conflicting advice about Petrifying Gaze, because I think Darkity's guide to Dark/Dark sort of deprecates it, but I am not sure either way. I think the biggest surprises for me were putting HT and DN off so far, but on reflection, I guess that makes some sense -- the stun/rez is a pretty good power, but it's moderately situational, and rarely makes or breaks something, and the content where I'm most likely to care about it is mostly 25+ anyway, so I'd have it available. Similarly, DN matters a lot more on higher-level content, where you're more likely to see things that last long enough for it to matter.

Also, a newbie question strikes: What specifically are the usual requirements of "slot it as an attack"? Once I've got Tactics, I'm assuming a single accuracy enhancement (or a couple something/accuracy) should be plenty, yes?

My casual reading hasn't turned up a reason for which a flight speed on Swift would do less than a flight speed elsewhere; is that because it actually modifies only the speed modification, rather than the underlying flight speed, or something? I could easily have missed such a distinction, and that would indeed explain it.

One other comment; while Dark Consumption requires being in melee range, usually if I'm grouped I spend a fair amount of my time essentially in melee range, hovering over the tanker or close to it, because that lets me heal the group. This becomes less significant as the other defenses and debuffs start dominating, but I still find it awfully handy to be near the group in case people start taking damage. I'm not sure, though, whether DC's concept of "melee range" would extend to "hovering right over the tanker".

Finally, last but not least:

Is there a way to make Shadow Fall less graphically intensive? In a full group, it's pretty intense, and if I'm hovering behind the group, my footcloud tends to clutter peoples' cameras.

Hmm. If I were going to move DN earlier, though, what would I bump later? That build's pretty tight on power choices prior to 28-30.

Thanks for the information about Swift, I didn't realize that. I think I may stick with my basic model, then, of having +flight/-end in hover.

Hover's weird, it's sorta marginal in combat, except I keep finding it to be awesome one way or another -- someone will run up a flight of stairs and start fighting above me, and I can just hop up and start debuffing, I can stay out of range of the melee guy who comes after me so instead of knocking me back and doing 60 points, he shoots at me for 10, and so on. The +defense bonus is pretty marginal (although it ends up being pretty noticeable when I have everything else up), but the manuverability is joy. When I can't hover, I spend a lot more time getting stuck on intervening terrain or creatures.

Personally, as I suggested in my build earlier, I put off Shadowfall. DN is far more useful overall than a weak stealth and some minor buffs. Not saying SF is bad, but there's far more important things.

Regarding Hover, I probably find it so awkward cos I'm used to Hurdle+CJ. Which is pretty much the best unsupressable movement available to everyone.

Regarding Shadow Fall versus Darkest Night: Phrox has the right of it, IMO. I put in SF early mostly because I didn't expect you to accept a build that had it later. Swapping DN and SF should work fine.

Regarding Recall Friend: I think I have been negligent in failing to make clear just how rarely stealth is of any value whatsoever. In other games, enemies pose such a significant threat that you can't reasonably run past them, there's no aggro cap and thus no limit to the amount of threat you can generate by running around, and there are non-combat objectives that it's worth skipping past enemies to get to. In City of Heroes, the enemies are generally there to be fought, and fighting them offers better rewards for time invested than skipping past them - to the point where stealthing is actually considered annoyingly counterproductive behavior, as the team would rather have you with them helping to defeat swarms of enemies. The candy is inside the dudes, not behind them. The number of times where it is actually useful to avoid enemies I can count on two hands, and the number of times where avoiding enemies actually requires significant stealth or the assistance of someone who does I can count on one. You don't need Recall Friend. You really, really don't.

If you still must have it, you can swap out Petrifying Gaze for it.

(Incidentally, this is also the fundamental issue with Stalkers: they're stealth and assassination masters in a game where there's neither value in sneaking past enemies nor in defeating single targets quickly. They fill a conceptual need, but they don't fill a gameplay niche.)

Ah-hah! That makes a lot of sense.

It does lead me to wonder why stealth IOs are so highly valued, though. (Actually, a related question; if I get a stealth IO, how does that interact with exemplaring down? Shadow Fall's defensive effects are relatively minor, the stealth is the major benefit of it so far as I can tell.)

I've seen a fair number of cases where people found team teleport or similar powers handy -- gathering people together, getting a corpse out of a mob so someone could be rezzed or awakened without going back to hospital, etcetera -- but many of them were pretty avoidable circumstances, because they were cases where the circumstance arose through carelessness or inattention. Of course, calling carelessness and inattention "avoidable" makes significant assumptions about the general player base.

As to where the candy is: I was doing AE missions, and I found that I got more XP per time period by stealthing to specific targets when a mission allowed this, but not all missions do, and obviously I get a lot less loot that way -- and that may be a significant disadvantage. I think a lot of my instincts are off. Also, of course, I was doing this on solo maps, where the mission completion bonus and/or arc completion bonus are much larger with respect to the XP for enemies; if I swapped things around so that I was fighting 3x-4x as many enemies, I might well find that completely reversed.

So at this point, it looks like I'm within a couple of tweaks of a truly lovely spec, so I should probably start figuring out whether to try to get a respec trial group together or just pay the tenbux. Probably the trial group. (Although, depending on how long it takes, it may be more cost effective to pay the tenbux and spend the same amount of time doing consulting work.)

I appreciate the offer, but I think I'll give it at least a brief try at fighting my way up the old-fashioned way. Probably. I may suddenly change my mind and take you up on that later if I hit a rough patch. :P

This is my 3D Flea, he is very effective on team and my SG always wants me to bring him ( annoying sometimes ). He was actually quite cheap to build other than the Numi and Miracle

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.707
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 50 Natural Defender
Primary Power Set: Dark Miasma
Secondary Power Set: Dark Blast
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Teleportation
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Dark Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Twilight Grasp -- SipInsght-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(A), Nictus-Heal(5), Nictus-Heal/HP/Regen/Rchg(7), Nictus-Acc/Heal(17), Nictus-Acc/EndRdx/Heal/HP/Regen(39), Nictus-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(39)
Level 1: Dark Blast -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(9), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(15), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(19), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(36)
Level 2: Gloom -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(9), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(15), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(19), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(36)
Level 4: Tar Patch -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(5)
Level 6: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(7)
Level 8: Shadow Fall -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(11), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(37), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(40), RedFtn-Def(40), RedFtn-EndRdx(40)
Level 10: Darkest Night -- DampS-ToHitDeb(A), DampS-ToHitDeb/Rchg(11), DampS-ToHitDeb/Rchg/EndRdx(17), DampS-Rchg/EndRdx(31), DampS-ToHitDeb/EndRdx(31)
Level 12: Fearsome Stare -- SipInsght-ToHitDeb(A), SipInsght-Acc/ToHitDeb(13), SipInsght-Acc/Rchg(13), SipInsght-ToHitDeb/EndRdx/Rchg(37), SipInsght-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(37)
Level 14: Super Speed -- Run-I(A)
Level 16: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 18: Health -- Mrcl-Heal(A), Mrcl-Rcvry+(42), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(48)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(21), EndMod-I(21)
Level 22: Night Fall -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(23), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(23), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(27), Posi-Dam%(29)
Level 24: Tenebrous Tentacles -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(25), Posi-Dmg/Rng(25), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(27), Posi-Dam%(29), Range-I(42)
Level 26: Howling Twilight -- Stpfy-Acc/Stun/Rchg(A), Stpfy-EndRdx/Stun(34), RechRdx-I(42), EndRdx-I(50)
Level 28: Recall Friend -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 30: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(31)
Level 32: Dark Servant -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(33), ToHitDeb-I(33), ToHitDeb-I(33), Heal-I(34), Heal-I(34)
Level 35: Maneuvers -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def(36), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(39), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(43), RedFtn-EndRdx(43), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(46)
Level 38: Vengeance -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(43)
Level 41: Dark Consumption -- Acc-I(A)
Level 44: Dark Embrace -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(45), RctvArm-ResDam(45), RctvArm-EndRdx(45), S'fstPrt-ResKB(46), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(46)
Level 47: Dark Pit -- Stpfy-Acc/EndRdx(A), Stpfy-EndRdx/Stun(48), Stpfy-Stun/Rng(48), Stpfy-Acc/Rchg(50), Stpfy-Acc/Stun/Rchg(50)
Level 49: Oppressive Gloom -- Acc-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Vigilance
Level 0: Ninja Run

Okay, here's what I ended up with.

http://planner.cohtitan.com/view/1820

Haven't put in any particular IOs, I don't know what's available well enough.

A few comments:

* Dropped Hasten in exchange for Recall Friend, just because, situational though it may be, it's sometimes super handy to have, and that veteran reward teleporter is a LONG way out.
* Shuffled things around, and in particular, moved Fly quite a bit later. In practice, I don't have to do much travelling when exemplared, and I do have Ninja Run if I need it.
* Dark Embrace is fully slotted just because it's a defense set that I'm likely to have always-on once I have it.
* I am totally open to the notion that Petrifying Gaze doesn't really need all those slots, or something.

The goal of this build, basically, is that if someone at any level needs "help with a mission", I can probably help with that mission, through some combination of heals (more relevant at lower levels) debuffing enemies, helping allies, etcetera. Assault, Tactics, and Recall Friend are more there for other people than for me, although Tactics will also affect my slotting at higher levels probably.

Current plan is that since there are likely to be free respecs "sometime soon", I'm just gonna sit on this until that happens.

That looks well within reason. I'd make a few small recommendations:

I personally would six-slot Fluffy (=Dark Servant), using the extra two for recharge (for when he has a derp attack at a horrible, horrible time, which he will do) and/or healing (because why not). And If/when you feel up to tackling IOs, slotting him with a Cloud Senses proc (currently easier said than done) will provide hours of hilarity.

You can pretty safely take two slots from Petrifying Gaze. Four acc/hold/recharge IOs (which must come from four different IO sets, note) at or around 30 will give you better values than you could get with six SOs, and pretty cheaply if you're patient.

Two slots in Assault is plenty. The only thing Assault takes is endurance reduction, and the difference between two slots and three is about 0.04 endurance per second, best case. The third slot could go to Tactics.

The only reason to six-slot a resistance or defensive toggle is if you want a six-slot IO set bonus out of it. Anything above 3 SOs worth of resistance slotting is going to get hammered by diminishing returns, and much as with Assault the difference between two and three slots of end red is negligible.

More as an advance notice than anything else: Don't plan to rely too much on Dark Consumption. The general rule on epic power pools is that they have twice the recharge and cost 25% more endurance than primary/secondary equivalents, and Dark Consumption is preeeeeetty slow cycling even in Dark Melee.

Thanks, useful tips. I don't now remember why I put all those slots in Petrifying Gaze.

I'm also looking at another key question: Stealth IOs. These have some utility, and certainly, the stealth from Shadow Fall isn't quite as much as I'd like for soloing.

It appears that there's three; Celerity (running abilities), Unbounded Leap (jumping abilities), and Freebird (flying abilities). The obvious candidate would be Hover. So a couple-few questions...

1. It seems like I still want an endurance reduction in Hover, at which point I might as well do the one from Freebird... Would a third slot, to get the set bonus, be worth anything to me?
2. In what ways does the level of a stealth IO matter, if any? Does that affect when it is or isn't effective when exemplared down?

FWIW, just made 29, and got about 4.5M inf from a couple of good salvage drops. Currently thinking about starting to save up reward merits to try to get the freebird +stealth.

Stealth IO are "120 procs", so they're dependant on the level of the power they're slotted in, not the IO itself. If you have access to the power, you have access to the stealth.