Dark armor: Should I try to get +defense?

I'm running a dark/dark tank, currently about level 28. I'm wondering whether I should be trying particularly hard to get defense. I'm nowhere NEAR softcap, but I suppose with the to-hit penalties I could be pretty well defended against a couple of things.

I took combat jumping mostly for the immobilize protection -- I was finding being immobilized pretty frustrating, as I could taunt things to just outside my range. With that on, and cloak of darkness, I have about 8% defense, more if I slot up cloak of darkness a bit more. That's... pretty far from 45%.

Presumably it's not too hard to get capped at 50 with sets and purples, but in the mean time, should I be paying attention to that, or focusing on my resistances

Getting your defense into the mid 20's is very helpful. You don't get hit as often and that gives Dark Regen more time to recharge. Even against defense debuffs it still gives you a greater ability to take the alpha. Obviously, the more defense you have the better your ability to survive is. If you can get to the soft cap without sacrificing playability it's certainly not a bad thing to strive for.

If you're going that direction I would suggest getting both Tough and Weave. Tough can get your s/l resists around 70%, and Weave gives a nice extra boost to all your defenses.

I prefer focusing on Typed defenses, S/L/E/N etc, but there are those that prefer to work on Positional defenses; Melee/Ranged/AoE. I lean towards Typed defenses as you can get good typed defense set bonuses in 4 slots vs. needing 5-6 slots for the better Positional set bonuses.

As always YMMV

I found that building towards Defense made a huge difference in my Dark Tank. He was good before, but once I got him to 50 and started IOing him out, he became downright phenomenal. Now, the only Tanker I have that can even come close to him is my Stone tank, in Granite.

So there's a lot to be gained. I'd say getting your immob and KB holes patched is priority one (if you don't already have Cloak of Darkness), along with getting yourself a ToE proc for Dark Regen. After that, I'd start looking at Defense. Whether you go for positional caps or typed caps depends on your preferences and what else you have in your build. Going for positional caps seems to be a bit more effective but is also more expensive, requiring PvP IOs and significant sacrifices to reach. On the flip side, it's damn tough.

Personally I went for S/L/E/N soft-capping and it's worked well for me.

I think regardless of whether or not you plan on spending a ton of money to softcap, you should get Combat Jumping and Weave.

Cloak of Shadows gives you a decent base to start from. Add Combat Jumping, Weave and the Steadfast Protection unique IO (3% defense to all) and you have at least 20% defense to everything once it's all slotted.

You will DEFINITELY notice that.

Just a quibble and if your trying to build for defense id suggest takin combat jumping anyways, but cloak of darkness has immobilize protection in it already.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadow Ravenwolf My favorite combo is Faceplant/DebtCap with the TeamWipe Ancillary

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Originally Posted by Dispari Yeah, I like Blasters too.

Yeah, I went for some defense on mine. You get some to start, add in Combat Jumping, Weave and the Steadfast 3% def unique. Then with a few set bonuses, you've got some decent defense. You're probably also going to need to get set bonuses for +recovery. My dark/dark tank runs 10 toggles.

You know, I just realized -- all the time I spent being immobilized was while trick-or-treating... meaning I didn't have cloak of darkness up.

Heh.

I've got a steadfast -KB in one of my resist toggles, and a kismet +acc in cloak of darkness. I may well move that to combat jumping, though, as cloak of darkness is incompatible with costumes. I guess next time I get free respecs, which will probably be I19.

Sounds like it is worth looking more closely at defenses, so I'll put some more thought into that. I was planning to take boxing/tough/weave as time allows, although the endurance cost is gonna be pretty noticeable. It'll get a lot easier once there's inherent stamina, because that'll free up three power picks for cool stuff.

If you get to 32.5% defense, a small purple will get you to 45%. Aim for that 32.5% if you are going for a cheap build. I made a relatively inexpensive build for my Dark/Fire tanker based on that concept. Perhaps you could adapt it to yours. It is for I19, so I'll let you figure out what to drop to get Stamina if you need it. Hasten isn't as important as some make it seem, especially on a tanker.

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Yeah, IME with two DA characters, Halloween costumes and other stealth toggles are the only things that will detoggle it besides the usual things that turn off toggles as mentioned by C&E above.

It's worth noting that although you can't use other stealth *toggles* with CoD, if you want to stack stealth, anything slotted with a stealth IO works just fine with it. As a matter of fact, I used that technique last night to stealth to the end of the Halloween tip mission.

Yeah, already planning to get a stealth IO, because nothing says "effective tanking" like complete invisibility. :P

Stealth Tanks are fun. "Ok, I'm herding this group, running through another group en-route to and from"

I've actually been considering taking Teleport on my DA/Ice tank when I hit my 60 month reward (next month, yay!).

Picture it: Group of baddies just standing around, nothing anywhere around. Then, out of nowhere they are stunned, terrorized, and falling on their butts, all while really pissed at the guy who suddenly appeared in their midst.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it?