Cloak of Fear?

I was thinking of playing a DB/DA brute at first, but there were some heated arguments about DA and fury with Cloak of Fear. As I have a pretty well decked out Brute already, I thought, why not just skip it and go Scrapper for a change of pace anyway.

Where does Cloak of Fear fit into the order of things? I am not noticing it working in my 30's, or at least, I am disappointed in it.

Maybe I am not evaluating it properly. When I think of DA, I think about being def capped from IO/$$$, and using the set's resistance combined with Dark Regen to be tough to kill. I was expecting CoF to be further mitigation to just add gravy to this, but I can't really percieve its value.

I am only 33 on the scrapper, and don't have the IO sets going yet, so maybe it's just too early to call it, but I was curious how people perceive CoF's effectiveness.

Thanks.

I don't like it. It fills the same basic niche as oppressive gloom, but in a very different way. As you are no doubt aware, cloak of fear has a hefty endurance cost, abysmal accuracy, and basically only the -tohit portion of it has any effect whatsoever for practical purposes unless you plan to be a vigilante forever. On the other hand, accuracy is easily made up through set bonuses and made less important by +tohit powers, there are numerous ways to alleviate endurance concerns, and -tohit is pretty desirable in many circumstances. It also accepts a variety of very nice sets.

Oppressive gloom is cheap, has normal accuracy, can be stacked with a more common and reliable status effect (though not by a DB/DA), does a small amount of damage to you, and only has the one trick up its sleeve. Werner has demonstrated that if you build your DA scrapper to be survivable enough, OG may actually become a bigger threat to you than the minions it disables by itself.

The reason I prefer OG is that it's good to go with just one slot. In my view, neither power is something that you will want or need to run all the time. If that's true for you, how many slots do you want devoted to it? Cloak of fear requires at least two or three to even be worth toggling on. OG is perfectly fine with a single common accuracy enhancement. Indeed, enhancing its stun may be counterproductive as the quicker each pulse wears off, the quicker the stunee runs back to you.

At this point on my MA/DA, I virtually never use OG. It is reserved for situations like fake nemeses, where it plus cobra strike equals quicker kills. Of course, that's not really an issue for DB/DA so if anything you might consider forgoing both of them.

I am a huge fan of Cloak of Fear. At base values, before considering IO builds, I agree with PleaseRecycle in that Oppressive Gloom and Cloak of Fear essentially cover the same niche. Considering the poor accuracy and high endurance costs of CoF, and Oppressive Gloom becomes considerably more attractive.

Once you start factoring in IOs, things shift dramatically in Cloak of Fear's favor. Obviously, you must factor in endurance management and compensating for the poor accuracy. Both have various methods for achieving this.

Once you start adding defense on to your build, Cloak of Fear becomes increasingly effective. Defense + tohit debuffs (after resistances) stack very nicely. In the same fashion that moving from 5% to 15% defense seems rather lack luster yet moving from 35% to 40% has jaw dropping affect. The same effect is seen in Cloak of Fear. By it's self, 5% To Hit debuff does very little. Stack that same 5% To Hit debuff on top of 35% defense and things improve dramatically.

One thing to keep in mind at higher levels; + mobs have increased resistance to To Hit debuffs. That's before factoring any specific powers they may have that grants resistance. A +4 mob will resist 48% of the debuff. For this reason, when factoring the CoF Tohit debuff into your survivalblity, I advocate cutting the value in half.


As mentioned, at lower levels, the 5% to hit debuff will have minimal impact. The fear affect will still increase your survivablity. Feared mobs will continue to attack you, but at a substantially reduced rate. Considering the poor base accuracy of the CoF, this will be difficult to notice initially.

In other words, CoF starts off really rather crappy but on a final build, will substantially increase your durability.

As for CoF on brutes, I generally fall into the camp that CoF interferes with fury generation. This can be compensated on with some primaries.

Thanks for the responses.

What I think I am hearing here is that CoF:

o Should probably be called Cloak of ToHitDebuff,
o Like all Tohit Debuffs is very effective when closing in but not at a cap
o Is better when you have global/power accuracy and endurance management

I am less sure about OG. I really like the idea of mobs being disoriented, but something eating my health is just creepy.

Also, I see that DB is a fast fury generator. While we are here... how would DB/DA compare with Brute vs. Scrapper?

CoF and OG should both have a reduction of fury because you'll have less minions attacking you, less often.

Worth considering on DB/DA, imo: if you're not 95% to-hit in Cloak of Fear vs. whatever you're fighting, it's going to mess with your streakbreaker (this is true of any aura, but CoF's low inherent accuracy makes this tougher to achieve). This may or may not be a big deal to you depending on how much it bothers you to miss your combos. If knowing that you're missing more than you could be is a big deal, maybe OG is for you. Also, what kind of baddies you typically fight will matter as well.

An extreme scenario, perhaps, but to cap vs. +4s in MIDs took 5 purple sets (or equivalent, total +75% global accuracy), a kismet, an application of blinding feint and 3 accuracy IOs (2 only gets you to around 90%).

On the other hand, CoF does induce less wandering than OG, and the animation for CoF is oh-so-cool.

The real reason I like it is that Cloak of Fear seems to prevent runners who instead cower until I attack. That itself is worth a power and some slots. My scrappers who don't have a taunt aura are pretty much worthless in high end solo play or small group play without heavy control or a tank/brute. Everything just runs. This is particularly bad on sets with built in debuffs (like Katana and Broad Sword) where the AI hits the "I'm debuffed, run!" code.

I have pretty much abandoned all my scrappers who don't have taunt auras in favor of either Brutes or alternate scrappers where taunt aura power sets can still stay in concept. At least Cloak of Fear seems to reduce runners caught in the aura.

I have a ss/dark brute, and here is my take on it:
A. If you dont have slots, get oppressive gloom. 1-2 accuracies (or a cheap HO) and your good. They (foes) do wander off, which I hate and messes up footstomp. It is best if you have a primary with stuns (to stack on bosses.
B. If you have slots AND powers to spare, add in presense pool. I respec into it.
Slot heavily for acc/end red. Add in invoke panic, and I stop bosses in their tracks.
If you have dark melee, you can use that to stop bosses.

I've had my brute outsurvive my invul/ss tank in the RWZ missions (renegade vanguard). THe cascade failure of their swords killed my tank on a team of 8 (of course, I did my usual, run in to soak invincibility maneuver). My brute, no deaths. Run in, invoke panic, and footstomp to my hearts content. Best control.

Liked the effect so much, I made a dark/dark tank. On incarnate runs, I I can usually hold/fear around 2/3 of the mobs.

It's not something I've done with my Cloaks of Fear, as I usually slot them for the bonuses (S/L Def, E/N Def or Rech depending on toon), but I'm wondering how many damage procs it could potentially hold, and how effective that would be. A couple of Acc/EndRed's, and then procs, maybe. With all the choices available (-ToHit, Acc -Tohit and Fear procs), could it be verging on a basic damage aura output?

Side note, the fear stacks with Touch of Fear from Dark Melee to nerf bosses, and it stacks with Assassin attacks on stalkers.

I don't run CoF on my DB/DA brute that much, although that is more because it isn't slotted yet than anything else. I run OG on my Elec/DA scrapper, but since I despise disorient, it also doesn't get much use. I prefer CoF to OG because enemies will just cower, rather than wander off.

DA is certainly sturdier on a brute with more HP and the ability to reach higher resistance caps, but is an excellent set on either a scrapper or a brute.