Dark Blast

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGG I just creamed my pants!!!!!!!!!!!! I hope they replaced dark pit with aim!

They will replace it.

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Originally Posted by Avatea Dark Blast and Darkness Manipulation for Blasters We chose Dark Blast as it would be a fun control centric blast set for Blasters. The power set was changed slightly to make it a better fit for Blasters. Dark Pit was removed, Torrent and Nightfall were merged into a single power: Umbral Torrent, and then Aim and a new power Abyssal Gaze (a single target hold with a DoT component) were added to round out the set. Darkness Manipulation made a lot of sense as it was fairly low hanging fruit and would be a perfect pairing for Dark Blast. The set is made up of powers that are found in Dark Armor, Defender Dark Blast and Dark Miasma. The set can deliver crushing melee damage as well as provide a measure of crowd control and self buffs.

Eww, happy for aim, but converting torrent and nightfall together? Booo, unless they make the knockback in torrent a knockdown

I'd guess 60% chance for 5ish KB. Just a shot in the dark...

My hope would be that they normalize the set's cone areas somewhat. There isn't exactly a lot of precedent for blaster sets with multiple damaging cones, but if you compare defender dark blast to assault rifle there is a clear winner in terms of cone usability (it's assault rifle). Besides, all they need to do to establish umbral torrent's range is the ol' "combining two cones into one in a proliferated set" formula. You know the one! "Subtract The Range Difference Between The Damage Cone And The Control Cone From The Damage Cone And Add Their Arcs," or its popular mnemonic, STRDBTDCATCCFTDCAATA. It's as easy as that.

Replacing Dark Pit with Aim is not a net positive. Unlike defenders, blasters can pick up a big damage self-buff in almost any secondary. Good luck finding a fast animating, decently fast recharging, ranged AoE, 100% chance to hard mez minions power in any blaster secondary, ever.

True, Dark Pit still sucks with fewer than 4 slots. But that stopped being an issue the day IOs went live and 5-slotted stun powers became the fast lane to cheap recharge bonuses.

If they'd left dark pit in, would you use it? Blasters may be, uh, positioned better to get utility out of what some may call the dregs of the control hardness scale, but dark pit seems unsalvageable to me. With blaster values I believe it would be an 8 second mag 2 stun that does nothing else and has sub-par accuracy. I would consider taking that as an absolute amazement mule if I had a major slot surplus but I can think of nothing else good to say about it. This is particularly true because blasters are one of the better archetypes for minion massacring - if tenebrous tentacles and umbral torrent do approximately scale 1 damage, what's the motivation to stun a spawn with one click when you're only two clicks away from killing most of it?

Looking at the blaster secondaries, dark pit actually would make sense as a high tier darkness manipulation power in that it is at least as bad as frozen aura and world of confusion and those continue to stand the test of time. However, if they did nothing else, they would still have to bump it up to normal accuracy for it not to be considered a cruel joke. I would hope that they either revamp or exclude the power and come up with something more interesting and useful.

Quoted from today's Facebook thingamabob:

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Originally Posted by Unknown_User Can you tell us what powers are currently slated to be in the Blaster version of Dark Blast? A. Current powers for Dark Blast (subject to change): - Dark Blast - Gloom - Aim - Moonbeam - Tenebrous Tentacles - Abyssal Gaze - Life Drain - Blackstar Whoops, left out Umbral Torrent! That is also currently in the set.

So yes, it gets Aim, and Dark Manipulation gets Dark Pit. And Umbral Torrent has "the damage of Night Fall and the Knockback of Torrent", which I like even if some other people don't.

The sets look good.

I can see Dark Pit being more useful on Blaster than other ATs that has access to it. Sure, it's only a mag 2 but it's target aoe and stun set is good for +defense and it only recharges in 45s if I remember correctly. Not that bad.

Now if you have two blasters using dark pits, you'll get mag 4. :P

However, I don't like the synergies for dark/dark. Soul drain and dark consumption are pbaoe. Dark Blast is primarily cones and Dark Blast has no stun. Maybe Radiation/dark is better. This way you have a mag 3 stun in Cosmic + dark pit to stun a boss.

Maybe we can convince them to add Stun to Blackstar for the Dark Pit synergy.

Psy has a single target stun and a nuke with stun.

I really like the look of this set, especially after hearing how they are designing Umbral Torrent. I just hope that the end product of Dark Manipulation has better synergy with the powers they have chosen here. As of right now, it looks like it will be a lot of "stopping the enemies, then having to run in and use the melee/PBAoE powers."

I don't mind a bit of random knockback. Stuff happens, they get up and come back or I pick off whatever got separated from the group, no big deal. But combining knockback in a set that also immobilizes, scattering and keeping them scattered? That's just begging for complaints. At least my corruptor can choose not to use torrent and not lose much firepower in the process.

Not AS excited as I was. I would almost give up Aim for another ranged ST damage (more like Archery). And thats coming from somebody who LOVES Aim. Oh well. And I am guessing Abyssal Gaze will be a cone fear. Hmmmm. Time will tell. Hopefully I can see it in Beta if they drop the vet invites.

If the blaster version of Tenebrous Tentacles gets -KB added to it, then any KB in Umbral Aura doesn't matter - you can tentacle things if you want them to stay put, or go straight to UT if you want things on their butts.