Syntax42

Conductive Aura in Electric Control (Controller and Dominator primary) boosts the recovery of the user when enemies are in range of it. Tesla Cage gives endurance to your allies if it drains from the target. Maybe those are what you were thinking of.


Slotting Lightning Field depends on your strategy. Draining endurance is a better strategy for leveling up because it is hard to obtain high defenses. Ignoring the endurance drains and focusing on defensive set bonuses works well at 50.

If my SS/Fire Brute can get by with 20% defense on most trash spawns, then 45% is definitely overkill.
Stock up on inspirations before you start the TF. Pay attention and combine when your inspirations fill up. Trust me; inspirations can be relied on for getting from 32.5% to 45% if you know when to use them. I have used the strategy on several characters and not had issues with it. Besides, many teams will have someone who can buff your defenses, then the person with 45% has wasted defense while the 32.5% person is soft-capped and does a lot more DPS.
The only TF with heavy enough defense debuffs to destroy a character without defense debuff resistance is Imperious Task Force. Anywhere else, defense has full effect, for the most part.
Recharge bonus doesn't have diminishing returns in a direct sense. It does take more and more recharge to shave one second off, but that isn't due to diminishing returns. It is due to the way the math works: Recharge Time = Base Recharge / (1 + Recharge Bonus).

I hope you don't think that build is amazing for DPS. It can't run the top attack chain of Gloom -> Haymaker -> KO Blow -> Gloom -> Haymaker -> Punch because KO Blow needs to recharge in 7.524 seconds and Gloom in 3.168 seconds as I posted above. I even checked it with the tier 4 Spiritual Alpha. You will likely do 50%-75% of the DPS of someone who can run the top attack chain with your build. It really is that much of a difference if you pause between attacks or use lesser attacks to fill in the gaps in the chain.

Reaching the required recharge times would take 233% recharge bonus in KO Blow and 278% bonus in Gloom. Hasten gives 70% bonus. Slotting can provide around 95% bonus. The Spiritual Alpha can provide about 35% bonus. That's 200% so far. That means you need about 78% from sets to make Gloom recharge fast enough to run the top attack chain without pauses.



The OP needs to consider the role they want to fill on teams. If they want to be as self-reliant as possible and never use inspirations for surviving, aiming for 45% defense is the way to go. If they want to be DPS machines and have enough defense to survive anything the game can throw at them as long as they can pay attention to their inspiration usage, 32.5% defense is the way to go.

Resistance bonuses are a drop in the bucket when you attempt to get those from IO sets. You simply can't get enough to make a useful difference on a character. Instead, stacking defense is the best way to ensure a character turns out much tougher than they currently are. Also, fire and cold damage attacks are relatively rare. You can basically ignore F/C defense unless you are making a Fiery Aura farming character.

Foes of higher ranks get accuracy bonuses, not to-hit bonuses. This means that no amount of to-hit debuff will decrease their chance to hit you if you are at the defense soft-cap. Also, ranks above minion will resist the effects of Darkest Night more. Higher level foes also resist the effects. A +4 AV resists 85% of your to-hit debuff, making it a waste of endurance to use it. I wouldn't take Darkest Night unless you need it for a set bonus mule. It isn't very useful in actual gameplay.


I looked at your new build. You still have more powers than you need from your primary and secondary pools. Did you read any guides on Dark Melee or Dark Armor? I suggest you skip Shadow Punch, Shadow Maul, and Touch of Fear. Shadow Punch is lower DPS than your other attacks. Shadow Maul has an annoyingly long animation and root time, as well as low single-target DPS and a difficult cone to hit multiple enemies with. Touch of Fear is not useful because fears are simply not useful in the current state of the game. Enemies need to stay in melee range for you to do full damage to them. In your secondary, I would skip Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom. Oppressive Gloom's stun is not powerful enough to affect anything higher than a lieutenant.

Instead of taking those powers, you can use pool powers to fill in your build. I would add Maneuvers and Combat Jumping so you don't have to use as many set bonuses on defense. You could also add Recall Friend and possibly work your way up to Vengeance. Most of the pool powers do not require heavy slotting. Hasten is another good power if you want to do DPS.

The Musculature is not a very good choice on a Brute. Damage bonuses add to each other. Normal attack slotting gives about 95% damage bonus and Fury gives about 150% damage bonus. That would make a 100 damage attack do 345 damage. Adding Musculature would bring that up to 380, which is a 10% increase in overall damage. Instead, I would take the Spiritual Alpha boost to increase your recharge bonus. Having Soul Drain on permanently would add much more damage bonus than Musculature.

The Ageless Radial is not a reliable recharge time buff. It only provides 10% recharge bonus for the second half of the duration, which isn't enough to boost your recharge rate to run a good attack chain. Instead, use the Ageless Core because it provides a reliable amount of endurance recovery. You will likely have endurance problems because this is Dark Armor. The Ageless Core can fix those problems.

Dark Regeneration seems over-slotted. It hits everything around you and heals for every target hit. If you want to heal to full with only two targets hit, aim for about a 50% heal. If you want three targets to bring you to full, 33%-40% is fine. Basically, put healing enhancement on low priority with Dark Regeneration. The "Dark Armor Sucks" thread in the Tanker forum should have some discussions on different slotting options.

Stamina should be slotted better than Dark Consumption. The recharge time on Dark Consumption makes it more of an emergency-use power than something you can rely on to keep your endurance full.

I would also wait until 49 to take Soul Transfer. That helps you use more slots on more important powers, like Gloom and Dark Obliteration.

Your overall performance is still lacking. Your energy defense is still a bit low to tank energy-based enemies and your recharge is too low to run a good attack chain. Hasten and the Spiritual Alpha would allow you to run a good attack chain until you run out of endurance. Ageless Core would ensure you don't run out of endurance. Fixing your defense would require another pool power at the very least, and better overall slotting to ensure you get enough defense and recharge at the same time.