What to pair with /da?

I agree that "end drain resist" and "psionic resist" is nice.

The main problem I had with my /DA during the leveling process was that you have so many toggles its ridiculous. And what do we do to add defense and recharge to our builds? More pool toggles. Fire, on the other hand, has two essential toggles. One offensive toggle. Etc.

Now, obviously fire has the farming advantage. However, I would say that /electric is stronger in regular content than dark. You can have your psi resistance. I'll take my 90 percent resist to energy over psi resist any day of the week. I mean, what are you going to fight in a ticket farm with /da? 20 mobs with -to hit negetive attacks stacking all at once? Good luck with that.

Well, S/L are about equal, Energy yes, but Negative Energy is a strong point on Dark Armor, next to Psi. and F/C are tipped slightly in Elec's favor. But Dark has a built in Defense power, and other layered mitigation, like OG or CoF, in addition to a monster heal, and a rez with a mag 30 stun to keep you cozy while you're recovering. Neither of my Dark armor toons are ever out of endurance, and I run 11 toggles...

Dark Embrace
Death Shroud
Murky Cloud
Obsidian Shield
Tough
Weave
Cloak of Darkness
Cloak of Fear
Combat Jumping
Manuevers
Sprint

(you may laugh but sprint burns more than most of my other toggles when it's on and I leave it on all the time...only CoF burns more by .04 end/sec)

Kathari is a troll, or needs educating.

Plain and simple, /da is a strong set when setup correctly. I don't bother with the fears usually, I have softcapped s/l defense, and I CoF does not inhibit fury. My Claws/DA is a beast, and I still haven't come close to maximizing it's build. I would go for softcapped positional defense, but I already did that on my DA tank a few years ago.

Almost any powerset is viable "with proper slotting". I have, perhaps, an irrational hatred for Dark Armor. I'll admit that. What you all seem to be missing is that (like DA) Fire can be paired with other sets to make it more viable. So much has to be done to make DA suck less endurance from your blue bar that it detracts from other areas.

Katana/Dark is one of the few combinations with DA I might try. But what is the experience like on the way?

Now take Fiery Aura and pair it with Dark Melee's to hit debuff attacks and soul mastery's powers and you have a very survivable build just on cheap ios. So fire only has to reach 30 positional defence and then its softcapped without using purple pez. And it has no endurance issues, nothing but exotic damage, great heals, great aoe, great st, great controls.... I could go on.

Just for fun, I threw together a claws/dark brute. This is not helping my altitis.

40% s/l, 37% e/n (to help cover the lowish energy resists), 2000+ hp, 12 pts kb protection, all attacks 95% vs +3s including cloak of fear with a single followup (it double stacks). Nothing too pricey in the build, no pvp io, purples, or even purple ATOs. So there's room for improvement, but I don't have the time to grab all those goodies for all my alts... Recovery is over 2 end/s with accolades before the 3 pshifters are accounted for. I built to my own taste, which means no epic aoe as I dislike redraw and spin + dmg aura is AoE enough for me. I doubt it would ever see the inside of the AE building . cloak of fear gives a 7.6% to hit debuff, but one could replace it with taunt 6 slotted with Zingers. (I may have to try this on a scrap... once I get some other stuff finished up and provided I'm not working on some new staff toon)

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Much is often made of Dark Armor's supposedly horrible endurance usage, but in my experience that's a significantly overblown issue. In fact, most of the powers are actually very cheap in terms of endurance. The main offenders are Cloak of Fear and Dark Regeneration. One could make a case for Death Shroud as well, but the armor toggles actually cost a bit less than many of their counterparts in other powersets. '

As for the endurance hog powers, Cloak of Fear isn't even taken by all DA users and with intelligent slotting can be used to good effect, though I often delay it to late game on my DA users if I take it at all, as I usually prefer OG. As for Dark Regeneration, again, intelligent slotting is key, but even more so is the use of a single IO - the Theft of Essence proc.

I've found that my DA characters are no more endurance hungry than any other character at the same level range with equivalent slotting, aside from the two powers I mentioned above. The real trouble the set has is the KB hole and the vulnerability to Energy damage. Fortunately, one is easily fixed with -KB IOs and the other can be addressed late-game with Defense from IO sets. Dark Armor benefits immensely from Inventions.

While I have been playing around with Mids for a few years on and off, I have only recently started playing the game again in Jan 2012.

(**RABBIT TRAIL COMMENT: While I value "real" game experience, one of the primary draws of COH for me is the ability to design my own missions; I farm like the rest of them, for tickets and leveling, but most of my AE time is spent building and customizing my own stuff).

Justaris, it is not simply the individual endurance cost of each power in Dark Armor but rather the fact that all but two of its powers are toggles. This combined with the fact that unlike Fiery Aura and Electric Armor, it has no PBAOE stamina power. And you can't tell me that Dark Armor performs the same as other sets endurance wise..... the most you can say is that with effective slotting, the right incarnate powers, and strategy you can MANAGE endurance. But you can't tell me its as endurance friendly as, say, Willpower/Regen or even Fire/Electric. The beauty of Fiery Aura and Electric Armor is that you have both a heal and a PBAOE stamina power in the same set.

Planet J, your Katana/Dark build is a good one. Katana + Cloak of Darkness makes soft capping possible if you use PVP uniques. I rolled a Katana/Dark on Freedom the other day and will follow your build to experience it myself. However, the need to use the Energy Mastery to help solve endurance problems limits epic pool choices. I suppose you could always forego the Energy Mastery primary and simple hog up more endurance.

(**RABBIT TRAIL COMMENT: Soul Transfer might have a Stun 30 for 30 seconds, but how much of that 30 seconds is spent just getting all of your toggles back up???)

As previously stated, I have - perhaps - an irrational hatred of Dark Armor because of my experience with it with my first toon. I agree that much has happened in game development to make it better. Do you guys remember when Dark could only have one of its armors on at a given time? When I rolled my Claws/Darkness, there were only four scrapper secondaries and Dark seemed the coolest, and the closest to my concept. The scrapper trend back then was /Regeneration, and I rebelled.

Or you just take oppressive gloom and slot for a set bonus I hate wandering enemies but I concede OG burns far less endurance...then take the epic of your choice.

Retoggling after a death is trivial at 50, and reasonably trivial before 50. At 50, res, pop barrier (res at least 1 other person while you are at it), toggle defense granting powers first, toggle resists second. Trivial.

If you are toggling your defense powers second, you should expect to die then.

Planet J:
Your Katana/Dark build is impressive enough that I rolled it and am going to play it when I have time. I agree that OG would be better than COF, but that isn't my point. I'm not into either power. But maybe I will be after playing your Katana/Dark build. I can be converted. But if I wanted to be a brute with control powers, I could pick Earth Control.

Justaris:
I am not the one who made this "uncivil." My sardonic quips in my original post were directed at the powerset, not a person. And Planet J has been civil since his initial "what are you smoking?" post so I don't feel the need to exchange insults over what should be a FUN debate.

Energy Aura, Fiery Aura, Electric Armor, Regeneration and Willpower each have endurance help. Invulnerability, Super Reflexes, Shield Defense and Dark Armor do not. To offset that, each of the latter four has extra strengths (i.e. goodies). Honestly, I guess it comes down to preference, but I would rather carry purple pez than blue pez. At least its predictable.

As far as Dark Regeneration being superior to Healing Flames and Energize, it definitely has more healing potential. But to take advantage of it you have to let your health bar get REALLY low in the middle of enemies. Slotted, Healing Flames recharges 50% of your health every 15 seconds. So in practice, you don't really need a power to go from 0-100% in a second, and if you do "yer doin it wron!" as some would say.

OH. AND ONE MORE THING. Since so many players are F2P, this whole discussion of "builds" and "slotting" is entirely moot for them. So, can we least agree that Dark Armor, on SOs and without AE, is a pretty rough way to get to 50? Of course, Fiery Aura would also be pretty rough ride.

Some might say you don't really need a power to give you endurance help either. And I didn't mean to suggest you weren't being civil, but rather giving you kudos that you were. Also, you've left out Stone from your list of those that don't have an endurance power, so it's five with and five without.

I actually carry mostly yellow pez on my DA characters, since they don't usually need any other kind but can be killed if they get debuffed and can't hit with their mez auras or with Dark Regen, with a few blue to top off in the early levels before I have my IO build done. I think it's a preference, as you said.

Justaris, that is an interesting point you made about carrying yellows. Dark Regen is great (if it lands) but useless if it doesn't. Healing Flames, available at level 4, is my favorite heal in the game because it comes early, often, and can be slotted with resist sets if I need it.

Well, I see a couple of holes I can fill...

Keep me posted on your progress as you level up playing that build...what you think about how it plays out...

Dark regeneration can be made extremely accurate, as I did in my build, I have used it in AV battles with 1 target and recovered on a few limited occasions. It is up around 10 seconds or less, and if you go one further and use a miracle instead of a ToE then you absolutely will regain more endurance than you burn everytime you use it. Essentially making it a Heal +End Recovery power, because miracle will temporarily boost your recovery after it fires for a set amount of time on top of the End boost.

The only thing in my build that I am not 100% happy with is the 93% accuracy on CoF(I have the nightmare IO's at +5 boosted)...that hits even con and +1's regularly...however, +2 or more and you get less and less hits from it.

Dark Armor on SO's would be a bear to get to 50...but so would most things...think about Granite armor on SO's? Really, SR is about the only thing that might be somewhat manageable with no IO's at all...or perhaps regen simply because you have a very strong powerset to begin with that would benefit most from SO's...I could see that, with the right primary, that would work...Willpower also...but not much else really.

Healing Flames can take resist set pieces but it only buffs toxic resists, unless you slot it as a mule for uniques or something similar.