Dark/Dark endurance concerns.

Dark Melee/Dark Armour as a combo is costly. Also, the world is round and the sky is blue. But hear me out here.

I ran some numbers on a Dark/Dark Scrapper I'm playing right now to see if my concerns for his endurance situation were founded, and they appear to be. My benchmark for unplayably bad endurance woes was always my Stone/Stone Brute, who even after revised slotting still came up to around 1.5 points of endurance of constant drain between his toggles and his attacks, and that's with Stamina. That's rather a lot to suffer in combat, as it gives you right around a minute of action before you crash or need to supplement.

So if I consider 1.5, imagine my surprise when I ran the numbers on my Dark/Dark and came up with a little under 1.9 points of endurance per second lost between clicks, attacks and toggles. We all know Dark/Dark is bad, but I didn't think it would be worse than Stone/Stone. I mean, what ever could? I'm not even running Cloak of Fear, after all. And after seeing the numbers, I never will

But something bugs me - these numbers don't really correspond to my in-game experience, and I think I know why - they assume that I'll be using Dark Regeneration A LOT. Truth be told, I generally don't have to use Dark Regeneration almost at all... When I'm alone. I haven't run much team content with this guy, and whenever I do, I keep finding myself sucking wind much to my complete surprise.

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So, let me form this thread as a question. This Scrapper is getting into his 40s now, so I'll have to start thinking about Epics and eventually at least Alpha Incarnate powers. How badly should I worry about endurance performance with a Dark/Dark Scrapper who doesn't use Cloak of Fear? Should I worry enough to drop all other priorities and go for Body Mastery (already begun) and the Endurance Alpha? Or should I just not worry so much and instead go for something better for output, like the Recharge Alpha, and possibly even the Dark Epic (which honestly sucks) instead of Body? I don't really want much out of Body anyway, other than Conserve Power and Superior Conditioning.

After all, I trust my numbers as general guides, but I know they don't take circumstances into account, such as the good fortune to snag many people with Dark Consumption every time vs. the bad fortune to have it miss or only ever clip one, as well as the incoming danger and the frequency with which I'll have to use Dark Regen. I've likely overestimated the costs and underestimated the recovery options, so I'm asking for more first-hand impressions of how the set combo plays.

And, keep in mind, that I've been playing this character for all of two days, and the last time I played him before was prior to I6 and CoV, so my "experience" with him, if you can call it that, is outdated and inapplicable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Well, spiritual won't help your endurance concerns any. I'm cardiac on my dark/dark and quite pleased. Then again, with the endurance proc in dark regeneration it's not uncommon for that power to function as both a full heal and a full endurance recovery tool.

If you do decide to go for the endurance alpha, it will make a huge difference. I broke my dark/dark scrapper with an experimental build where I slotted Obliteration in places no one would: Death Shroud, Dark Consumption, Soul Drain. (I think I was aiming for melee defense, here.) I also picked up the Fighting pool and Hasten, and I run Cloak of Fear. I was at the point where Fly + all my combat toggles was a slow net endurance loss. I don't even have an epic powerset in this build.

Obviously, the thing to do was to go back and respec into something sane, but instead I picked up the endurance alpha slot. Having 33% extra in everything made a huge difference, and I didn't care about ED issues because mostly I had very little endurance slotting anywhere. (I do have the Theft of Essence proc, of course, and a Miracle proc in Health.)

Every once in a while I think about going back and getting Spiritual instead for the recharge and better healing with Dark Regen on few targets, but actually she's fun to play this way, and the extra damage resistance can't really be hurting either. I still have enough recharge that I can Soul Drain, use a couple quick DM attacks, Dark Regen, finish most of the minions off with Dark Consumption, and by the time I've gotten to the next spawn, Soul Drain is back up.

Long story short, I'm pretty sure my scrapper was hurting a lot more than it sounds like yours was. I don't think there's any chance I could do an entire minute of sustained combat, and simply getting the endurance discount in the alpha slot made this character my default all-around no thought required character. I wait anxiously for Dark Consumption to recharge only because, slotted for damage, it's part of my alpha strike, and things take longer to die if it is not up. (Yes, this is geared towards +0/x6-8, but the build still works against higher-level stuff, just obviously I'm not going to kill all the purple minions with my end recovery power...)

And, when I respec, I most likely will pick up Body Mastery for Focused Accuracy and Physical Perfection, dropping Confront and something else, but that's more so that PP will help pay the cost of FA. It's really fine the way it is.

Samuel Tow, would you be willing to post your build?

It is difficult to ascertain the problem with the information you've provided. I can tell you that at level 40 you should not have any endurance problems, especially if you are not running Cloak of Fear.

I will state that when I design any Dark Armor build, I look at my recovery vs endurance consumption with out attacks. If I cannot not get a net recovery of 2 EPS (recovery - consumption) then I consider the build unmanageable.

It would be simpler if you could post the build you are working with, but if that's not feasible, perhaps indicate how you've slotted your powers.

I run 12 toggles including Cloak of Fear on my Katana/Dark. My endurance should be sustainable (I do a little toggle juggling as fits the situation, but see no reason to consider that a problem). The Cardiac Alpha, Theft of Essence proc, set bonuses, Conserve Power, and so on and so forth take care of everything. You probably won't need the Cardiac Alpha if you don't go nuts. I specifically designed my build around Cardiac, so tons of toggles and powers underslotted for endurance.

I'll avoid making exact quotes so as not to make this too cumbersome, so here are a few points in no particular order:

I'll try to post a build at some point today. I don't have my current build on paper, as I picked the character at 38, did a respec via Mids' but then went ahead and got him to 41 and swapped a few things around in practice. I'll have to redump a new build out of the game, but I need to look up the Sam version of the Sentinel (yes, seriously, Unicode issues) and make another one, put it in Mids', dump a human-readable form from there and post that.

I can give you a fairly good idea of what the problems may be, however. As Claws points out, I don't use Inventions Sets, excluding a single Steadfast Protection knockback protection enhancement that I ferried from another character. I don't want to discuss my reasons for this as that always derails threads into unpleasant directions, so suffice it to say that I don't enjoy working with them. So long as the game works on just Common Inventions (and it does) I intend to stick to those.

I was looking at the Recharge Alpha mostly for the sake of speeding up the three drain attacks. It would hurry Dark Consumption and Soul Drain more than anything else, and speeding Dark Consumption up should actually make my endurance situation better. I don't think it will be by too much, however, considering we're talking about a power with recharge as much as Rest. The most I can do with it is bringing it down to right around 90 seconds without Sets, and I have serious doubts that I can up my staying power to that level. And even then, it will make me dependent on large crowds, which I don't see that many of solo, and lead to the possibility of sudden endurance failure. In short, Dark Consumption is useful, but I wouldn't want to rely on it and it alone.

I also know where my misconception about my endurance drain comes from - I wasn't using Dark Regan very often as most of my sub-40 missions didn't really require it, and I had a bunch of 39-ish content to finish up that was putting me at an effectinve -1 to my level. Not that hard. Daedalus' mission against the Romulus map full of Malta, however, made me step on Dark Regeneration quite a bit, and I saw just how serious of a drain that constitute. With it, I was sucking wind with alarming regularity, and this is something to build for considering how big a chunk of my survivability that power constitutes. I haven't used Conserve Power much yet, but that's because I haven't slotted it terribly well and it's still on an ~8 minute timer, so not much I can do with it, other than prepare for fights I expect to be long, which means Elite Bosses or ambush spam.

I ran some numbers on Superior Conditioning and realised that while the Brute version of Energy Mastery was a huge boon, much of that came from Physical Perfection giving me ~10 more endurance points and not insignificantly more recovery along with it. Scrapper Body Mastery may or may not lead to that eventually, but Superior Conditioning won't be the sole cause. What this means is I'm not saving this guy with it, which pretty much means I'll have to go for the Endurance Alpha. Hearing anecdotes of how much it helps is very reassuring to me, because I have a couple of characters slotted with Recharge Alphas and not a single one with Endurance. It's nice to know it makes a difference.

I don't have much choice with Jack, anyway. Damage is redundant since I have everything 3-slotted for it (other than the drain powers) and accuracy isn't very useful since it doesn't do too much against defence buffs. So it's really down to endurance or recharge, and as I keep hearing, endurance might be the best option.

I actually think that if I can save up a bit on endurance slotting and slots in general, I might be able to expand functionality a little bit, specifically via Hasten. Maybe possibly even slotting Dark Consumption and ESPECIALLY Soul Drain with damage, since they're not too bad as single hits, even though they're not balanced as attacks.

I was originally planning to snag Dark Mastery, but to be honest, it's just blah. The AoEs don't do anything for me, the hold is interesting but unimportant and even Dark Blast isn't all that great AND isn't colourable to match my other Dark powers. Besides, it'd eat up more slots than Body Mastery plus Fly plus Hasten (for example).

I guess it's a good thing I ran the numbers when I did. The endurance scare put my *** in gear and got me to make a halfway decent build instead of just taking whatever and being angry at my endurance costs.

Now I just have to figure out if a Dark/Dark constantly Hovering Brute can work. That might be... Problematic. But that's a story for another time.

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Thank you, everybody, for the advice. I think you just about made that decision for me, and I appreciate it

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

You don't have to use the Cardiac Alpha boost to solve your endurance problems. You can use the Spiritual boost if you desire it. You would only have to wait until you unlock the Destiny slot and make an Ageless boost. At tier 4, it lasts as long as the recharge and boost your recovery by 100% for the last 60 seconds while the first 60 seconds will seem like unlimited endurance.

As others have said, a Theft of Essence proc in Dark Consumption will help immensely. It has a chance to proc for each target hit, so you can easily regain the endurance cost of using Dark Consumption. Often, you will gain more endurance than you used. It won't show up in your set bonus list, so the only one who will know you have it slotted is you.

I meant to post my build yesterday but I, uhh... Pretty much just forgot. Here's a short Mids' export, as of level 41, which is as far as I have this character built. I'm looking at what to take for level 42 now, but that'll take some time to decide.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.93
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Revenant Jack: Level 48 Magic Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Dark Melee
Secondary Power Set: Dark Armor
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Teleportation
Ancillary Pool: Body Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Smite -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(3), Dmg-I(3), Dmg-I(5), Dmg-I(5)
Level 1: Dark Embrace -- EndRdx-I(A), ResDam-I(7), ResDam-I(7), ResDam-I(9)
Level 2: Shadow Maul -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(9), Dmg-I(11), Dmg-I(11), Dmg-I(13)
Level 4: Shadow Punch -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(13), Dmg-I(15), Dmg-I(15), Dmg-I(17)
Level 6: Murky Cloud -- EndRdx-I(A), ResDam-I(17), ResDam-I(19), ResDam-I(19)
Level 8: Touch of Fear -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(21), Fear-I(21)
Level 10: Siphon Life -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(23), Dmg-I(23), Dmg-I(25), Dmg-I(25), Heal-I(27)
Level 12: Obsidian Shield -- EndRdx-I(A), ResDam-I(27), ResDam-I(29), S'fstPrt-ResKB(29)
Level 14: Hover -- Flight-I(A)
Level 16: Teleport -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 18: Dark Consumption -- Acc-I(A), RechRdx-I(31), RechRdx-I(31), EndMod-I(31), EndMod-I(33)
Level 20: Dark Regeneration -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(33), EndRdx-I(33), RechRdx-I(34), RechRdx-I(34)
Level 22: Cloak of Darkness -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 24: Confront -- Taunt-I(A)
Level 26: Soul Drain -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(34), RechRdx-I(36), RechRdx-I(36)
Level 28: Death Shroud -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(36), Dmg-I(37), Dmg-I(37), Dmg-I(37)
Level 30: Teleport Foe -- Acc-I(A)
Level 32: Midnight Grasp -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(39), Dmg-I(39), Dmg-I(39), Dmg-I(40)
Level 35: Oppressive Gloom -- Acc-I(A)
Level 38: Soul Transfer -- Dsrnt-I(A)
Level 41: Conserve Power -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 44: [Empty]
Level 47: [Empty]
Level 49: [Empty]
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Level 1: Brawl -- Dmg-I(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Rest -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 2: Swift -- Flight-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(40), EndMod-I(40)
Level 1: Critical Hit
Level 4: Ninja Run

*edit*
Correction, THIS is the build I was talking about.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.