Dark Armour advice

I finally made a DA character after years of resisting (initially because of the way it covered costumes). The character I have now has turned out to be a lot of fun until recently. Now in his 20's he is getting bounced around the map so much that he barely gets to attack and mainly defeats enemies using Death Shroud. I am getting a little tired of spending 75% of my mission lying down. Any advice on the best way to defend against KB/ KB?

There is a low level Damage Resist set that has 4 pnt Kb protection in it. Forget the name but if you look it up in market it starts at level 10 i think. Maxes in the the 20's or 30 tops. Last time I checked they were under 10 mil but they are worth that much at least by principal alone. I glady pay out that or more to folks being generous enough to actualy list one in the genral market. When I tried to find it in merit rewards I couldn't. Perhaps a second pair of eyes can find it, but I'm pretty sure it's oddly absent form the merit recipe selection options.

Little distressing and annoying since the Def set Karma one is selectable.

Appart from those two your stuck going deep into leaping pool for acrobatics as we did for fire dark and ninja beore the invention system. You could also take hover but will still get "flipped" in mid air. You want Combat Jumping for immob protection anyway I think....

There is a unrelated to karma and (whatitsname lowbie damage resist set) set bonus offered for having 4 of something. Dang it. My memeory is terrible. I'll re-edit this post if I can find the name... unless I'm beaten to it. Which is likely. It's probably a melee set....

Good luck. Modern DA is fun.

EDIT: The Resist set with the 4 pnt KB protection is called Steadfast Protection.

*winks to RogueDemonhunter


Karma and Steadfast Protection are in the 10-30 range, while Blessing of the Zephyr is 10-50.

I've used the first 2 on my Dark Armour guys succesfully in the past, and in conjuction to CJ you'll be fine.

So far I've had 5 Dark Armour scrappers / tankers / stalkers / brutes - 3 of which I took to 50.

Quite possibly my favourite set for the versatility it offers. It has great synergy with Dark Mélée, and is indecent with Spines.

Also, 4 Kinetic Crash will give you 3 points if you have a knockback power and wish to slot it as such. (6 will give you a 7.5% recharge bonus too, which is pretty nice.)

True but Combat Jumping iz teh ubers

Absolutely. I only skip it on my flying characters. But my point is that it's not needed for any form of mez protect on a Dark Armor build, except maybe as a -KB IO mule, and Dark has plenty of other places for one of those.

CJ is needed on a DA stalker.

Three IO sets offer a KB protect enhancement

Resist - Steadfast Protection (75 reward merits, not available with Hero/Villain merits)

Defense - Karma (75 reward merits, not available with Hero/Villain merits)

Universal Travel - Blessing of the Zypher (240 reward merits, 2 Hero/Villain merits)

As noted the Knockback set Kinetic Crash offers Mag 3 Knockback Protect with 4 slots.

Acrobatics Offers mag 9(?) knockback protection

There are 3 PvP sets that offer KB protect also.

With my Dark armor I usually slot two of the KB enhancements for a 8 Mag protect. One I get at level 10 the other can be anything up to the 30 max. These are dependent on the level of the enhancement so you will only have the protection from 3 levels below the enhancement and up. 4 Mag protect should be fine into the 20's then 8 mag from there whenever the second one kicks in.

Steadfast protect also has the +3Def enhancement (this one is available with Hero/Villain Merits) in it so if you put both in a power you pick up 1.5% recovery which is very nice with the endurance hog Dark Armor is.

Edit: forgot Blessing of the Zypher

Everyone else covered the KB stuff well enough, I just want to throw out a few more bits of DA advice.

Get your hands on the Theft of Essence proc, which is a chance for +endurance, and slot it in Dark Regeneration. With ten targets around you, it almost always pays for the endurance cost itself, and if you're lucky you can actually fill both bars.

Oppressive Gloom is amazing. It costs health to run (not as much as it protects you from), but almost no endurance. With a single accuracy SO, the power is perfect. Cloak of Fear, on the other hand, costs as much endurance as Death Shroud but has an abysmal accuracy penalty.

Cloak of Fear does have to be slotted well for endurance and accuracy but it puts a definite slow down on attacks from most of a mob you might have close to you. But where it really shines is when you have a second source of Fear such as Touch of Fear from Dark Melee. You can make anything short of EB's (and many of those) cower before you. Very nice for putting the bosses in a spawn on hold while you deal with the minions and lieutenants.

If you don't have a second Fear power I agree that OG is definitely the way to go and I've always been of the opinion that you take one or the other but not necessarily both.

... I was like "Dark Armor running sprint? WTpancake?" And then I realized, stalker, so no damage aura.

Another vote for the theft of essence proc here. I made the end use work on a DA/stone tank (is there a heavier toon on the blue bar with no means of boosting their own end in primary/secondary), but that was a real work of art.

I then took end/res alpha, and slackened off a bit on the end reduction/recovery slotting.