Does dark armor maybe in need of a buff

I understand what you are saying but I find it hard to believe given how easily it is to slot for ACC with Set IO and obtain accuracy bonuses. Are we assuming SOs or Common IOs only? What type of accuracy slotting in CoF? OG?

I was talking about my experience leveling the set up: from level 1 to level 49 I leveled Dark Armor with nothing but DOs and SOs.

That is an interesting game mechanic related effect, but I am not sure that it justifies the End cost of CoF for me.

I would love Cloak of Fear to be worth running more often as it has one of the coolest graphic effects in the game.

In the olden days when as a DA scrapper you had to choose between having Damage Resistance or Status Protection (without KB protection) Cloak of Fear had major mitigation effects. The Fear was nice, but it’s 25% To Hit debuff was what I used to blunt the edge of a lot of Bosses.

I can see why now that you can stack the toggles and neutralise minions with Oppressive Gloom having a PBAE 25% To Hit debuff toggle would probably be a bit OP. But it is a shame that such a cool power has become so niche that many people have plenty of reason not to bother taking it/

I am currently trying to make a Respec build to take me from my mostly pre-IO / pre-Inherent Fitness Pool Spines Dark Dark build to a more current set up. I thought that CoF would be a power that I could drop as I don’t use it much and I would get slots back, but working with Mids I seem to have lots of slots left so with IOs maybe it can be made to work.

I am still not sure that without another source of Fear I am going to get good value out of CoF.

Has anyone tried slotting the Clouded Senses set in it, did you get good value from the Neg Energy Proc or is the CoF pulse too slow?

Regards, Screwloose
“I am not young enough to know everything.”

You don't play redside much I'm guessing. Blade Princes = cold. Hellfrosts = cold. Hordelings = cold. Ice Thorn Caster = cold. Our COT do a fair bit of cold (definitely not as much as say Malta does S/L) all the way from 1 to 50.

Bueside there's the outcasts too. Cold is the rarest damage type, but it's not seasonal.


I tried both the fear proc and clouded separately and together. Not really so handy. I have left fear in for now because it's not worth selling. I've found that slotting for the fear is decent if you need time to kill lots of minions because you lack AoE. slotting for the -tohit is more powerful in the long run. Any damage is nice, but totally unreliable.

Cloak of Fear is 5% ToHit debuff, which is very nice. It is also a taunt aura with decent 13.6 s time which is good for a tank. As far as I understand the ToHit debuff is auto-hit and only the fear component needs a hit roll, correct? If this is the case, this aura is worth it just for the debuff and taunt with the fear being the gravy.

The reason I take this is that I refuse to take Cloak of Darkness unless I somehow can disable its horrific graphic effect. I mean looking like that for a minute in a tier 9 god mode could work, but all the time ?! I happily give up 7% defense and immobilization protection just not to look like that. Does the "no pulse no something" option in the power coloring disable the cloud of $#!t effect? It is hard to tell from the short animation in character creator.

Yeah, but it is relatively easy to patch that hole. I'd consider the lack of Confuse protection a bigger problem, especially since Devs seem to be using Confuses more and more.

It's pretty embarrassing when my Spines/DA stuns AND terrorizes half a dozen squishes on a BAF. Not to mention skewering them with hell spikes. Sorry. my bad.

"No fade or pulse" setting does exactly that. Your character model no longer fades out when the power is turned on. All my DA users set it to that now.

I find it funny >_>

I had a bit more of a think about Cloak of Fear after my last post and that was pretty much the conclusion I came to. After I looked at the To Hit debuff sets you could slot in it I thought What if I just look at it as a To Hit Debuff power?

Base value is 5%, maxing out to about 7.5% when enhanced. Not instantly exciting, but equivalent to 7.5% Defense against all attacks by Critters in Melee with you, with the bonus of it working for all your Team Mates too.

It’s End cost is about on par for most mitigation toggles. So pricey to run on top of the 3 Resistance toggle, but not expensive for itself.

If I ask myself the question would I run a toggle that just gave me 7.5% Defense against all attacks by Critters in melee with me then the answer starts to look like Yes. And in a decently IO’ed build it is going to pretty much effect all the Critters in Melee with me pretty much all the time.

It still looks like the last mitigation toggle I would turn on, but probably worth having for the situations I need it and maybe extra value when teamed.

I don’t recall where I get the info from but as far as I know both effects are subject to the same to hit roll, so either both hit a target or neither do.

Do you need the Taunt from CoF, shouldn’t you be getting a Taunt from Death Shroud?

Regards, Screwloose
“I am not young enough to know everything.”

Wow thats a great tip, have to give that a go on a few characters.

Regards, Screwloose
“I am not young enough to know everything.”

In regards to the bolded bit, it's equivilent to 7.5 defense vs even con minions. Higher levels or ranks will mitigate the tohit debuff, so in cases where you really need it (like say against a 54 AV) it'll be all but useless. And that's assuming you can even hit with it and land the to-hit debuff.

If if either the taunt or to-hit debuff were auto-hit, I could see a few uses for the power. If both were auto hit and only the the fear needed an accuracy check I could see a few more uses. If to-hit debuff and taunt were auto hit, the fear had much better accuracy (say 80% base, vs it's current 50%), and the end cost was dropped by 10-20%, it would then be a power I'd consider taking, but most likely would still skip.

However, aside from CoF, the rest of the set is pretty good on it's own, and awesome with IOs.

Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler That...was a Herocon 09 exclusive easter egg. The powerset will not have doves associated with it. Namely because you guys would want to color tint the damn doves, or make them hawks/ravens/flying sharks/etc and that's just a headache I do...not...want...to deal with.

On teams (DA tanker) I am not really concerned about damage. Most other ATs will do it much better than me and my weak damage aura. The contribution is nice but not really important. I consider it much more important to build aggro really fast so the ranged toons can go wild with their damage powers.

Taunt and mitigation outweight tanker damage on a large team. I still take and use the damage aura if I can spare the endurance or when solo/small team and my damage actually counts.

DA does not get much def to soft-cap it easily and I cannot afford expensive sets, especially while still leveling. This only makes the -ToHit even more valuable. Also, I was not taking Cloak of Darkness because of aesthetic issues, but that may change:

thanks Schismatrix!
I'll have to blow a respec and try it.

Trust me on this. You only need the one taunt aura to maintain aggro just fine. Only time my DA/SS tanker loses aggro is to an ice tanker, and that's because their taunt auras are ridiculous (No CoF, but has OG and Death Shroud). And the slot investment required to make CoF work is far too much in my eyes.

Originally Posted by Back Alley Brawler Did you just use "casual gamer" and "purpled-out warshade" in the same sentence?

My point was that if I drop Death Shroud I miss a taunt aura.

DA has 4 toggles on top of the armor: Death Shroud, Cloak of Darkness, Cloak of fear, Oppressive Gloom. I did not take CoD because it is ugly (need to test the no fade option) and so was missing defense. Clock of Fear gives defense and mitigation on top of it, so I took it instead, but it is too expensive to run together with DS and OG. When ignoring DS damage it gives only taunt and no mitigation, so I was able to not toggle it on and get taunt from CoF instead. On that specific toon I also had DM and could stack fears giving it extra value. I was never able to fit the Presence pool into the power selection for fear stacking.

There's only one problem with you're argument here: Damage is part of the threat formula. To keep and hold aggro, you must be doing damage.

The no fade option just makes you slightly transparent with some added tendrilly things. You can still see your character.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

I admit that I don't know how exactly aggro is calculated. Taunt (the click power) does no damage, but generates a lot of aggro. All the DA auras, according to the data sheet ingame have a taunt component, even the non damage ones.

Then I encourage you to read my guide to tanking, linked in my signature. It clearly spells out the aggro formula as best we understand it.