Shadow Maul cone...

You said it yourself (and it's been mentioned several times in this thread). The set has at the very least above average ST damage (Though I think you believe it to be sub-par / mediocre). It has a very nice damaging attack that also acts as a Heal. All of its attacks come with a -to hit debuff. The set also has a nice +to hit /+damage AoE damage attack which can get near Perma with enough recharge. It has another AoE damage attack, but this one gives +Endurance. It can do all of this and you still want to increase its AoE damage?

IMO If something was to be looked at and changed in this set, it would be Touch of Fear.

My DM/SD scrapper has no issue with keeping great ST damage compared to anyone and everyone I've ever run with.

No one from what I have seen in this thread has made this argument. If you were referring to me I mentioned that I dropped Shadow Maul for my DM/SD build because it hurt my ST damage.

I know this set has great single target damage. There are, however, other single target oriented sets that can compete with Dark Melee. Those sets have better AoE options.

The utility is secondary-dependent to determine its worth. As has been said before, any primary that has a defense-buff is going to pair incredibly well with a non-defense secondary (and even with defense-based secondaries before getting a chance to slot up heavily). The knockaround in most of the other sets along with other secondary effects makes them utility enough. All else fails, the AoE lets you kill stuff faster, and damage is spectacular utility. I just personally do not feel like Dark Melee gets enough utility and a bonus to single-target damage for what it pays in AoE potential (Midnight Grasp still, for no reason at all, does not get a boosted critical chance).

I would trade most of Soul Drain and Dark Consumption's damage for better base recharge times. The amount of damage they do, or their base recharge, make them not really worth slotting for damage specifically. I do take some advantage of the fact they do damage and can slot them with PBAoE IO sets, but I would not be opposed to losing Dark Consumption's damage to get its base recharge equal to Power Sink (60 seconds). Performance Shifter and Efficacy Adapter would do the job just fine.

I would like to see Shadow Maul get a wider cone and a faster cast time (The Dual Blades animation for Sweeping Strike except with just the standard "Shadow Hands" rather than blades would be awesome). That would allow for some use in low-level ST chains if needed (like Slice or Flashing Steel) while being able to be leveraged for multiple targets more easily. Obviously, this would probably require it to be rebalanced for something more resembling an AoE attack (I know its numbers are closer to balanced for an ST attack, save its ridiculous cast time), but I think it would see so much more use that it would be worth it.

Midnight Grasp? It does not need a whole lot, but it seems pretty vanilla versus a lot of other T9s. Its biggest draws are that it is all Negative Energy and fires relatively quickly. Some small "Chain Darkness" effect like Chain Induction would be pretty sweet, give the set some small extra AoE (easily making up for the lost AoE from Soul Drain and Dark Consumption), and make "thematic" use of those Tentacles.

Touch of Fear and Shadow Punch are still... Touch of Fear and Shadow Punch. I might suggest Touch of Fear to a random PvPer for the toHit-Debuff, and Shadow Punch to a lowbie for a quick attack (or for Bruising on a Tank), but for general PvE I do not think I have suggested them to anyone in a long time. Better minds than mine can come up with something for them.

You handwave all the DM's utility with a vague reference to knockaround in other sets. If knockback/knockdown in other sets is keeping you from getting hit the direct and sole comparison with in DM is -To-Hit. That leaves endurance recovery, healing, and damage buffing unpaired by what you've offered.

There is simply no way you get to lump all of that utility in as being worth some knockdown/knockback found in other sets.

Frankly the damage on those powers is a little bit of loving you don't find in other powers that provide similar boosts. Power Sink does not deal damage. Nor for that matter does Build Up, which is far inferior to Soul Drain in terms of what they both commonly do for boosting damage.

Arbiter Hawk posting in a Dominator thread today:

That should probably inform you of how the developers are looking at Shadow Maul and how it is supposed to be approached.

Why are you trying to make DM something it isn't? I noted upthread that each powerset has something it doesn't do well. For DM that is area damage. If you want area damage you need to look to your secondary, power pools, and Epic powersets.

Knocking enemies down and spraying them with AoE before they get back up, or giving your secondary time to settle in, comes across to me as far better utility. I am trying not to handwave away damage as utility. Dark Melee's debuff works against single targets at a time (like knock), but any set with a defense-buff gets a better effective To-Hit Debuff against every enemy in the group, and is far more stackable (at the not small cost of DPS).

On specific powers, though:

Endurance Recovery? At what point in the game, during the level-up game where it is not up often enough (and maybe I slot wrong, because in the late teens/early twenties, I would not have slots available for it. If I did, those slots would be better used as Endurance Reduction in my attacks), or in the endgame where most people have their endurance issues already figured out and Dark Consumption becomes unneeded? An extra AoE? At base 180?! I would get more mileage out of taking Shadow Punch at that point and just running around slapping people. Plus it would help fill a chain. Like with Soul Drain, the damage only means I can slot a PBAoE set if I wanted a specific set of bonuses.

Healing? Siphon Life is awesome since the change. No complaints about Siphon Life from me. Take it at 8. Slot it. Love it. Only question is do the healing and single-target debuff offset the defense-buff and secondary effects (defense-debuff, endurance drain, cost and recharge discounts, or combo features) from some of the other sets? Not so sure.

Soul Drain as a buff I will concede. It is better buff than Build-Up over time versus a "whatever-counts-as-standard-sized" group currently. It does require more slots and an Accuracy check for full effect, though. As viable AoE? My point still stands. At base 120, not up enough for the damage it deals.

I already knew what Shadow Maul is numerically. For all the justification of its numbers, that 3.3 cast time is going to turn people away from that power (unless you want it as a slot mule). It is a single-target attack not worth taking as a single-target attack, and the cone perk it gets is not enough to warrant taking it, either.

If you think the cost Soul Drain and Dark Consumption paid in recharge are worth the price they paid for damage, we can just agree to disagree (Devs seem to agree with you, which is all that really matters). Give me an auto-hitting, base recharge of 60 seconds, draining or defense-buffing, Power Sink or Energy Drain anyday. On the one Dark Melee character on my roster that even has Dark Consumption, I can find some other way to get those set bonuses.


How are making Shadow Maul and Dark Consumption easier to leverage and making Midnight Grasp less vanilla making Dark Melee something it is not? Dark pays too high a price for its utility compared to other sets, especially to only be competitive with other sets in ST output.

If your'e knocking them back then its a tradeoff at best because now youv'e scattered them and so much for using Area powers on them. Add too that you know have to wander around picking them up or waiting for them to stand and come back to you. Knockdown is a somewhat better deal (that I enjoy abusing on my Ice/Stone tanker).

In the early game it gives you a one-shot ability to drive your endurance bar back to the top. No, you won't be able to chug-away non-stop, but what you'll be able to do is survive the long fight better than those without such tools and overall drive longer than others. As for not needing it late game. . .that suggest to me you are driving your character hard enoguh because at 50 I can drink Endurance like nobody's business. Handilly I can recover it like nobody's business too. And what I get out of that consumption is perma-Hasten driven attacks by which to deliver damage at a quicker pace than otherwise would be the case and the added safety of tossing out something like Darkest Night (which drinks a copious amount of endurance all by its lonesome) slotted to maximize To-Hit debuff and not slotted at all for endurance despite costing 0.65 endurance per second because (a) slots are precious and (b) I can offset the cost becuase I can gain endurance at need (though to be fair I also have Power Sink so I really am rolling in the realm of copious consumption).

That depends a lot on how survivable your character is already. For me Siphon Life is up every 5 seconds and in hairy battles you can be sure I'm dropping it every time its up. Its kinda nice grabbing back almost 20% (19.78%) of my life every 5 seconds while at the same time dealing out damage. If you're not getting touched enough that you need the healing one supposes that you could in fact be fighting larger crowds where the healing would be more necessary.

Its added AoE, not an AoE power unto itself. Your problem is you keep trying to fit square pegs into round holes. DM is a single target set. Neither Soul Drain nor Dark Consumption are truly AoE damage powers even though they deal AoE damage--they are damage buff and endurance recovery powers with a bit of damage tossed in.


I generally solve the problem by standing in crowds thick enough that using it almost guarantees multiple targets will be hit.

So largely you already had made up your mind and this was an exercize in allowing you to soapbox, eh?

Hmmm. . .drop Darkest Night on a mob in the middle of one spawn, toss Dark Obliteration (area attack btw) on a second spawn while moving to occupy the center of a third spawn. Once they all converge pop Soul Drain, toss out Dark Obliteration, and get to work cycling Siphon Life amongster your attacks (with Energize admittedly up my sleeve to deal with any excess damage that comes about while the spawns are coming together) and all the while Lightning Field is burning away at the crowd. Oh. . .and Shadow Maul doesn't have to be aimed in such a situation. . .use it and it will be hitting multiple targets.

This is what I do with my DM/Electric and it works quite well. Sorry if you either can not or do not want to look at what the set gives you and leverage it properly. I and others can merely point out water is over there. . .getting you to drink it is utterly beyond us.

DM is fundamentally a single target set. You're trying to push it into some sort of equivalence with other sets on the AoE front. As I noted upthread, I tend to look at sets for what they don't do (at least as much for what they do). I wanted AoE damage and picked that up via secondary and epic power pools because I recognized that DM is not fundamentally about area damage.