dm/da

how is dm/da at 50? Is it worth leveling?

honestly i know very little about DA, all i know really is that it drains ALOT of endurance, all i know about DM is that it is seriously lacking in aoe damage and it can have very good ST DPS, it is also endurance heavy, so you most likely will have trouble with your endurance

As a returning player, I'll throw my 2 cents in...

My Dm/Da was only level 39 when I returned and I have to say that I struggled. Thankfully though, with some helpful players, some helpful guides and some effort, I found that most of the difficulty was re-learning how to play.

I have some issues with players that tend to judge a set by itself, and both DM and DA get this treatment a lot it seems.

But the short answer to your question is yes. It is a good combo at 50.

As far as Aoe, I play +0/x5 regularly on a build I have only put a few 100mil into and I do fine. I jump right into the middle of the spawn with death shroud proc'ing, hit soul transfer, hit dark regen, dark cons, and then single target the few that are left with DA's not to shabby ST chain.

I improve my IOs and my build, and my incarnates and slowly increase the diff. But as it stands right now, with approx 20% Def and 30% resists, I can easily see myself running x8 as a regular setting by the time I'm done.

EDIT: I meant Soul Drain and not Soul Transfer up there, but it makes me wonder if Soul Transfer works like Howling Twilight. If it does, then I might respec into it and drop Shadow Punch or Smite. That would really work to further round out the AOE power of this combo...

I do enjoy my DM/DA at 50, although I did some slotting to ensure that endurance is not a problem for me. I suspect I my have overdone it as my end bar rarely moves, but I'll live.

I have the 12 points of KB protection, and I found 4 to be frustrating. I also found that Spring Attack was a very nice followup to Soul Drain, as the set lacks a lot of useful PBAOE.

I went for Cardiac, but I'm thinking of switching to Agility after I get my +3 adjustment.

Same here Bella, on all points. I already have T4 Agility, T3 Interface and I have very few problems with the blue bar. That's running all the DA toggles except OG, and running CJ, acrobatics, Maneuvers and Focused accuracy.

I probably do need to post my build here so I can get some help tweaking it, but I have so much fun on this scrapper that it has almost completely killed my alt-itis.

And back to AOE, with 2 procs in death shroud and Interface, it is a monster. I'm seriously considering adding a 3rd proc. I use dark regen and dark con as AOE attacks too. With agility, 2 Lotgs and hasten, Dark regen is up every 7 seconds.

I do struggle on Itrials though, but I attribute most of that to lag and not doing a better job on def/res and max HP.

I run all the DA toggles but oppressive gloom. Also tough, weave, combat jumping, and focused accuracy.

Does Dark Regeneration even do more than a negligible amount of damage? I never saw the point of slotting it up for that. Right now, I have two or three LOTGs, three or four global recharge bonuses (I think from crushing impact) and Hasten, and it's up every 12 seconds or so.

Ah, yeah, City of Data says its damage at level 50 is 12.51. How can you get it to do appreciable damage from that kind of basis?

IO procs in toggles only trigger once every ten seconds. I know that Interface can trigger more frequently, as I see mobs just light up around me when they get into my death shroud, but I find having click AoEs does a lot more for me than waiting for death shroud to do a lot of killing (not that it doesn't do a ton of damage, it's just not frontloaded).

John, sorry that was a little misleading. I have other recharge bonuses, but my train of thought was to list my Alpha and the expensive IOs. But you just might be right about the recharge time, it's possible I was under the influence of a buff when I checked it.

As far as Dark Regen being an AOE, yeah it's not much of one, and aside from the nictus proc in it it's not doing a whole lot of damage, but I hit it twice a fight anyway and it fills up my green bar as a side effect. Soul Drain and Dark Consumption though are moderate damage, and they do good job of killing things. You also have to keep in mind that Soul Drain is a good damage buff of up to +70% if I remember correctly.

I would say that wasting the buff on Dark Regen is a bad thing, but I usually need it anyway. And while the procs may just be considered a waste in death shroud, I really only have to fight bosses after that 1-2-3.5 AOE on /x5. Well bosses and runners because stuns are silly and CoF isn't slotted enough.

I'm not trying to say that DM is the AOE king by any means, just that it does have two medium damage AOE powers and they both have significantly awesome side benefits. Every 15 seconds? No. But you can get SD almost permanent and DC up around 45s or so, and that's not too shabby.

I considered Spring Attack too, but how do you work around the knock-back?

Eradication is a PBAoE set with decent recharge values.

I have them in: Slice, Whirling Sword, Head Splitter (full sets in each), and I have 4 each in Dark Regen and Soul Transfer. For a little over 15% additional Energy Defense, and almost 10 extra endurance. It also gives me a couple hundred more HP.

Might not work out as well for a DM/DA though, my BS/DA is slotted for positional soft-cap. He is soft-capped to melee with 2 Parries, soft-capped to ranged at all times, and is sitting at 43% to AoE. He also has the best self heal in the game, 1900 HP, a self rez that will stun the bejeezus out of anything nearby while filling my health back to full, and a couple other goodies.

Yeah, he's pretty tough. Defense debuffs SUCK for him though.

I'm quite confident you could build a DM/DA to be just as tough, just about as easily. Especially if you get 6 Scrapper's Strike and Catalyze all of them. Split them between 2 powers and you get an easy 10% defense to S/L. Pretty sure it would be possible to soft-cap a DM/DA to S/L/E/N doing it that way.