It's Official: I Love Soul Mastery

Way back in Issue 12, I rolled a Dark Armor/Ice Melee Tanker. People called me crazy, saying it was a totally wacky combination, but nowadays people seem to think it's the bee's knees. I guess some unforseen region of my id knew what it was doing when it picked those powersets for me. The build was a late bloomer, but that's what happens when you don't get very many attacks until level 38, so it wasn't something I was unprepared for. When I got to 41, though, I had to make a decision.

See, when I do my character builds, I like to stick with some semblance of consistency. The primary/secondary combinations can be whatever I can imagine, but when I put in the epic set, I'm gonna want it to do the function of one set using the theme of the other. In this case, I had Dark for protection and Ice for offense. Since Tanker epics don't give yet more protection, that left me with the desire for a Dark-themed offensive epic set.

Distraught was I, for Tanker had no Dark-themed epic sets, so I settled on Arctic Mastery instead. I figured I could at least take a character-themed offensive set, and add in some more attacks from the Ice genre, but it never felt right. It just felt like an extension of Ice Melee, and I didn't feel the variety was there, so I pouted. I did make good use of the ranged hold, however, which stacked great with the melee hold. Ice Blast and Ice Storm were kinda yawn-worthy, but they beat out Chilblain and, once Issue 13 came around, Shiver.

And then they announced Going Rogue, and the ability to switch sides. Of course one of my first thoughts was grabbing Soul Mastery on my Tanker, what with it being a Dark-themed offensive epic set and all. And now that Going Rogue has been released, I finally got around to moving my Tanker over, completing the patron arc, and respecing out of Arctic Mastery altogether.

I'm an avid frankenslotter, and that Tanker was one of the first characters I did, so my knack for selecting Enhancements has improved since that time. Although I kept all the same powers up through the level 38 selection, I ended up gutting the build and peeling off 20 set IOs and a dozen or so common IOs during the revision process. I had to burn a respec to keep all the Enhancements around for other characters, but since I got one free with my purchase of the Spider's Kiss and had the Going Rogue freespec in tow, it wasn't a big deal.

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The result, now that it's all said and done? It is awesome. Part of this is that I've never selected Soul Mastery on any of my characters in the past, despite having multiple Villain 50s and four years of gameplay under my belt. So a part of it is the awe factor, and the other part of it is the "aw yeah" factor. It really does feel like this is what the character should have been all along. It also isn't slotted suckily with heavy Endurance usage and a focus on damage for some oddball reason, but I'm gonna give all the credit to Soul Mastery anyway.

Ice Blast became Gloom, a single-target, ranged attack. While the former was just hurling a snowball at the enemy, the latter is a surprisingly high-damage DoT that caught me off guard.

Ice Storm became Dark Obliteration, an area effect attack. Ice Storm is a location summon that does a fair amount of damage to anything that didn't bring an umbrella, but its recharge is so long that it's just not very practical. What's the DPS on an attack like that? Dark Obliteration is a ranged targeted AoE, though, with much faster recharge and essentially covers the same damage area. Damage from the epic set took a big leap with this one.

Lastly, Block of Ice (single-target ranged hold) became Darkest Night (targeted AoE debuff toggle). I was a bit sad to see the ranged hold go, but what I got in its place is arguably better mitigation overall. The damge and ToHit debuffs, stacked with the ToHit debuffs from the prior two attacks, make me harder to hit and harder to hurt.

I did not take Soul Tentacles, though I considered it. Between Ice Patch, Oppressive Gloom and Dark Regeneration, I reasoned that I'd be much better off in the middle of a big group rather than in front of it, and a cone attack would therefore only affect a little wedge of the available targets. So I went with the sphere AoEs instead.

Then something unexpected happened; something I've never had to deal with before. After I had all my powers fully slotted exactly the way I wanted them, I had two slots leftover and no idea what do do with them. I usually have other powers that could stand to be a little more powerful, so those get any extra slots I might have, but this time, I was just drawing a blank. I put one in Greater Ice Sword for more recharge (it's only 10s base, but why not?), then the other turned into a -Recharge proc in Darkest Night. There, problem solved.

Next, I took it out for a spin. I could handle x8 aggro well enough with the crappily-slotted Arctic Mastery build, so I figure +1x8 with bosses should do juuust fine on the new build. Of course half the enemies on the map were +2. They did make me use Soul Transfer once, but that was because I felt like using Dark Obliteration when I should have used Dark Regeneration. All-in-all, despite fighting +1x8 solo, the enemy didn't stand much of a chance.

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I guess this counts as my longest-running character, then, as far as development is concerned. It started in Issue 12, just after Dark Armor became available to Tanker, and finished in Issue 18 when Soul Mastery did the same.

Add this to the list of Going Rogue success stories. (-:

I love my darkness.

See sig.

*Views public profile*

Ah, yes. There it is!

*Applause*

I really like the recent rise in Dark Armor tanks. I understand that yours is old, but it's still nice to hear about.

Likewise, in my signature. I love my DA tank, and urge others to try it.

Soul Mastery is just great. I love it on my DM/SD/Soul and will love it on my Ice/SS/Soul once I have respecced him.

It is my understanding that the powers are added to your inherent list at level 2, much like rest and walk. No choice; they just show up.

Of course, this only counts for new characters. Any character made now has to respec in order to gain them.

Actually, DPA-wise, Incinerate is the best Fire attack (60.17 vs 57.48 for GFS for tanks), which is why a very good (but not quite top end) attack chain for brutes & scrappers is Incin > Scorch > Cremate > Scorch, not available to tanks due to the lack of Cremate. GFS does have the 2nd highest DPA value and is part of the very top chain, but that one requires a lot more recharge.

As for why anyone would infer GFS's (lack of) gimpiness from GIS... well, one's on fire, it should do *some* more damage. Just not that much more, which is to say, bring up GIS. In fact, you'll notice that it's a rather popular sticking point among the more informed Ice Melee'ers that GIS is the one lagging power in the set that may need to be normalized. I actually think the set as a whole is very well balanced for AoE damage & mitigation, but that's another discussion.