Fearsome Stare, slot for -to hit or Fear

I recently posted a Fire/Dark build for review but after that I got to thinking about Fearsome Stare. I have 5 total slots to use on this power, I have a couple other Dark/ toons and I always slot for fear but I wanted to know if anyone has slotted for -to hit and if so how effective was it? I'm still leaning toward fear but I wanted to get some other opinions as well.

It's got the same tohit debuff as DN - in my opinion, it's silly not slot it for such.

Level 12: Fearsome Stare -- ToHitDeb-I(A), ToHitDeb-I(13), Abys-Acc/Fear/Rchg(13), N'mare-Acc/Fear/Rchg(15), Fear-I(15)

Or you can go 4 dark watchers and an endoplasm hami if you desperately want the set bonuses.

Thanks kinaki, I really like that Dark Watcher/Hami-o combo. It leaves the acc for FS at 120% though, do you think that will be enough? I think I'd like a little more acc but could probably live with that.

Yeah, I probably wouldn't go with just 120%, but that's me. Anything less than 130% in my builds, I look for ways to bump it up, either through tactics, a kismet in CJ, or accuracy set bonuses. This is somewhat more imporant for /dark since it has no -def.

Well that makes sense. If I add a kismet I get 129.84 plus I'll have Aim up every 30 seconds too. Thanks for the help Kinaki.

Siphon Insight is a good set for Fearsome Stare. It has good enhancement values and S/L defense at the 5 spot.

If you're shooting for ranged defense and recharge, which I can't imagine not doing on a squishy myself, a full set of cloud senses is far and away the best slotting for both fearsome stare and dark servant. I'd call it overkill in darkest night, however, and it is the most expensive set available for the purpose. So, so worth it, however. There's always some way to extract a slot from something else for bonuses that good.

I've done the set of Cloud Senses in Fearsome Stare on a defender, and found that I miss the fear duration a lot. Partly this is because I'm putting level 30 IOs in what to me is a key power, and partly the set just doesn't have enough recharge. The fear wears off before the power recharges. If that's not an issue for you, or the debuff is really important, then it works. I'll probably shift that set to Fluffy next respec though, and go back to five Glimpse of the Abyss and a recharge in Fearsome Stare, because overall I've found the fear effect to be more helpful in survivability than additional to-hit debuff. If you're not maxed in ranged defense the debuff might be more crucial.

Slotting both is nice, but the ToHit debuff is significantly more important.

5 Siphon Insights + Endoplasm HO
5 Siphon Insights
4 Dark Watchers + 1-2 Endoplasm HOs
4 Dark Watchers
5 Glimpse of the abyss + Tohit Debuff IO

^ all good ways of slotting it, probably other good ways also.

The fear wears off before the power recharges, but by that time everything in the spawn has a 5% chance to hit the broad side of a barn, and many of them are dead.

Fearsome Stare is supa-pimp when used for -ACC. Massive damage mitigator and a big number to start with for the percentages to work off of good. Take in mind that -ACC IO's increases the EFFECTIVENESS of the ToHit debuff. Fear IO's affect the LENGTH of the "possible" fear animations, NOT the effectivenss.... Incurring damage can easily snap some out of the animation & wont affect bosses. Much greater gains in -ACC stacks, w/ DN and such....

ok .. n00b question time .. lol.

I noticed you mentioned about bosses, so does the -tohit still work even if the mob is immune/resistant to fear?

Yes, the -tohit debuff applies as long as the mob is hit by Fearsome Stare, doesn't matter if they get feared by it or not.