DARK BLAST

Your basic attack. Dark Blast.

Score

5 of 5

Summary

This is your basic power and one you have to take. It's a decent attack with a good recharge rate and will be one of your major attacks throughout the game.

Unslotted Strength

264% of Brawl

Slotting

Slotting Priority

> > > > |

	Attack standard: 80%+
	Attack standard: 50%+
	Attack standard: 30%+
	Not deathly important, but slot it if you've already given some attention to End Reduction.
	Not really necessary. You have tons of powers that add to this already.
	Unnecessary. You already have decent range so enhance it if you have a particular reason to do so or a Set bonus gives it to you only.

Gloom and it's DoT.

Score

5 of 5

Summary

Unslotted Strength

469% of Brawl

Gloom is fun. Fire it and your target takes DoT damage for about 3 seconds. The total damage is equal to a bit more than dark blast and when it hits, your target freezes for a moment while they do a "I'm hit and in pain" animation. At times during my build, I've dropped the power to fit other powers in sooner, but always take it again in a later level.

Compare this photo to the one's in the Moonbeam section below. This particular enemy was hit with Moonbeam first and had to come much closer before he was in range for Gloom. This will give you an idea of the difference in range between the two.

Slotting

Slotting Priority

> > > > |

	Attack standard: 80%+
	Attack standard: 50%+
	Attack standard: 30%+
	Not deathly important, but slot it if you've already given some attention to End Reduction.
	Not really necessary. You have tons of powers that add to this already.
	Unnecessary. You already have decent range so enhance it if you have a particular reason to do so or a Set bonus gives it to you only.

Moonbeam activation.

Score

5 of 5

Summary

I love this power. It has the longest range of any attack in the game and it looks really cool. Like most Snipe powers, the activation is very long and can be interrupted by things like getting hit or moving. So make sure you've completely stopped moving and that nothing's about to hit you before launching this power or you just wasted the endurance cost of activating it.

How to Use

Unslotted Strength

729% of Brawl

Anyway, Moonbeam is an excellent way to start a battle when teaming since your target will take significant damage (about equal to Dark Blast and Gloom combined) and is such long range that it's rare that they'll be able to return fire before you run and hide behind your team mates or a wall.

It's also a very good way to finish off a runner as long as they don't run behind a wall or off a ledge before the attack fires.

Moonbeam firing.

The key is to fire Moonbeam when you have little to no chance of getting interrupted by damage. You will discover these situations very easily with some practice, but here are some that work for me:

• In teams it's usually pretty easy when you don't have Aggro, but make sure to target something that's being hit by someone else too or you might face drawing unwanted attention. Also make sure to pick a target with a fairly significant amount of life remaining or they could go down before your attack even launches.
• When soloing, after you get an activation reduction Enhancement or two in it, you can often fire it between enemy attacks if you time it right.
• Because Darkest Night will make your enemies miss you most of the time, you can often fire Moonbeam safely after they've been debuffed.
• The delay caused by the "Ouch" animation that enemies do after getting hit with Gloom can give you enough time to fire Moonbeam as long as you do it very quickly after triggering Gloom.
• Moonbeam also stacks well with Tar Patch since it slows their attack rate.

Slotting

Slotting Priority

= > > > > |

	Attack standard: 80%+
	The biggest disadvantage to a snipe is the activation delay. Manage it by giving this 80%+ enhancement.
	Attack standard: 50%+
	Attack standard: 30%+. Particularly so with this power since it costs a LOT to fire and can be interrupted (wasting your endurance).
	Not a priority, but nice to have. Take it if you can.
	Unlike Dark Blast and Gloom, range has an actual purpose in this power. It's already the longest snipe in the game, but if you can make it even longer, why not!? You'll be able to attack from so far away that you'll be able to hit them twice before they can even get to you Of course, it's not a priority, but take it if you can.
	Don't slot for this. The other enhancable attributes are far more important.

Throwing sticky black confusion blob

Score

0 of 5

Summary

You target something, fire Dark Pit, and it, along with nearby enemies, get stunned for a while (as long as you've slotted some accuracy Enhancements and they're not too high level). Sounds a lot like howling twilight without the slow, damage, Rez, and a chance to miss (HT doesn't miss). Hmmm…

Ok, 0 out of 5 is pretty low. Well, even if you didn't take Dark Maisma, it's still only a Mag 2 stun that is impossible to stack because of it's recharge delay. What were the Devs thinking? SKIP!

The cone range of TT and NF.

Score

4 of 5

Summary

Holds and damages enemies in a cone in front of you. Controlling a battle where you have enemies running all over is very hard. Using this will keep enemies you worked so hard to Herd together/sneak up on from running all over. Note that it recharges in plenty of time to use it again before the effect from the first one wears off.

You can see that the Tentacles hit this entire group. It has a great Cone range, but doesn't go as deep as Night fall. However, Night Fall has a much narrower cone. Look closely and you can see that the 11's are damage from the TT while the 13's from Night Fall miss four or so enemies on the outer edges. To fix this, back up before you fire Night Fall to fit more people in the cone

The cone is nice and wide, but not as deep as I'd like so you an often miss enemies further away. Even the ones you hit can still hit you back (they're only immobilized), but like most dark powers this drops their accuracy.

How to Use

Use this to make sure that your victims don't get away from you. This is especially important when badge hunting or if you've worked hard to herd stuff together into area effects like Tar Patch. It also helps to keep stunned enemies from wandering off or prevents them from getting somewhere you don't want to be.

Unslotted Strength

298% of Brawl

For the endurance cost, this is a waste to use on less than 2+ enemies unless you just want to keep an enemy from moving. One you have Dark Servant (who uses this and Petrifying Gaze constantly), you won't need use TT on anything but 3 or more enemies (which is, of course, assuming you took Dark Maisma as your primary).

Slotting

Slotting Priority

> > > > > |

	Attack standard: 80%+
	Attack standard: 50%+
	Attack standard: 30%+
	All your attacks do this, but this is an AoE debuff. Definitely take advantage of it and put your efforts on Accuracy Debuffing into this power compared to the rest. 20%+
	Definitely get this up just a bit. It's default range is 40 feet compared to 60 or 70 for ALL YOUR OTHER POWERS. You will definitely notice the lack of range unless you bump it up. 20%+
	If you get it by accident take it. Never hurts.
	It recharges in 10 seconds and lasts for 20. You can already fire it twice before they can move again so why enhance Immobilize at all? Spend your energy on the others.

Overhead shot of Night Fall to show range.

Score

3 of 5

Summary

Unslotted Strength

293% of Brawl

One of the best powers you can have. It's a cone attack that does great damage in a very short DoT. If for no other reason, take this power because of the giant mass of orange damage numbers that will float over enemy heads when you use it .

How to Use

Points to note are that the cone is about half that of tenebrous tentacles, but the range is longer. Back up a bit before you fire it to hit more things.

The range of Night Fall is about the same as Dark Blast and Gloom. If you are in a mission where there are clusters of enemies, be careful not to fire it point blank. You might hit enemies in a nearby group that otherwise wouldn't have noticed you yet.

This power works very well with Tenebrous Tentacles. When you come across a group that's already nicely packed, but tends to spread out after your first hit, open with TT to root them in place so you can hit them all with Night Fall immediately after. This combo works exceptionally well for hunting missions or badge hunting when you want to take down large groups in a hurry (something my scrapper can't do even at very high levels).

Slotting

Slotting Priority

> > > > |

	Attack standard: 80%+
	Attack standard: 50%+
	It's one of the highest damage attacks you have so I like to see it come back more often. Give it 40%+
	Attack standard: 30%+
	Just like Tenebrous Tentacles and for the same reason. 20%+
	It already gives me problems with it's range so there's no way I'm going to extend it! Spend your enhancements on other things.

Blammo! Nice knockback.

Score

3 to 5 of 5 (depending on your other powers)

Summary

Unslotted Strength

133% of Brawl

Torrent does a small amount of damage with Knockback in a Cone in front of you. This would be good for defenders who find that enemies are getting too close too quickly, but not if you have effects that require enemies to stay in one place or stay close together.

For example, with Dark Maisma as a primary power set, I want foes to be in a nice tight pack, not flying all over. What's the point of using Tar Patch to slow them, Tentacles to root them, and Darkest Night to make their accuracy worthless, if you blow them all out of range of these effects?

On the other hand, if you take a different primary (like Storm), you might like this power. It has a wicked-strong knockback on it (check the distance these Hellions were thrown!)

Slotting

Slotting Priority

> > > > > |

	Pointless if it misses. 60%+
	Knockback powers are best when they can be used again soon. Slot for about 30%+ recharge and you'll find it pretty usable.
	It's pretty endurance heavy. Try to give it at least 20%.
	Slotting this would depend on how you handle the rest of your powers. If you use this as a major move in your battles, you should slot it. Otherwise, leave it at its default.
	Slot this way up to just push stuff as far away from you as you can. Leave it unslotted to be able to do more controlled pushing (my preference).
	You could buff these, but it's not really necessary.

A heal which damages.

Score

3 to 5 of 5 (depending on your primary)

Summary

Unslotted Strength

264% of Brawl

Unslotted Heal

8% of Your Life Total

• A D3 has Twilight Grasp which does the same thing except that it heals all allies instead of just you so this is a waste.

• An Empathy Defender has Recovery Aura which doesn't require a target like Life Drain and heals the whole group.

• Rad users have Radiant Aura which also heals you plus the group.

How to Use

I never noticed this until I did the math, but Life Drain has the same range as Dark Blast and does the same amount of damage while healing you. If you want another attack to fill your chain or find that you need that extra heal now and then, this might be a good bet.

In practice, I found that I didn't need the attack and that the heals from Twilight Grasp (along with fluffy throwing the same thing) make this unnecessary, but if you didn't take one of the sets listed above, this could be a very good power. For example, a Storm/Dark (since Storm has no self heals).

Slotting

Slotting Priority

> or > > |

	Pointless if it misses. 60%+
	If you're slotting is primarily as an attack, 80%+. Otherwise 20%+
	If you're slotting is primarily as a heal, 80%+. Otherwise 20%+
	Either of these can be buffed equally depending on your taste.
	No need for further acc_debuff. Your other powers do this better. No real reason to slot range unless you are constantly trying to heal off runners.

Blackstar

Kaboom! Hee hee hee.

Score

3 of 5

Summary

It's a Nova power that's far weaker than those of blasters, but is still a lot of fun. Besides doing massive ammounts of damage (for a Defender), it does significant Accuracy Debuff to all affected enemies.

Honestly, if you're dying for another power, you could skip this one. It's less effective than it is fun, but fun is the point after all. Also remember that unlike other Nova powers, there is no Knockback so even if you don't kill them, they're still nicely huddled for further attacks AND as with all dark powers, their accuracy is Debuffed so you have a better chance of surviving even if you do draw all the Aggro to yourself.

How to Use

Unslotted Strength

1257% of Brawl

That's right. I said 1200 percent the strength of brawl.

Drop a group to between one third and one half of their life total and use this to finish them off. If you have Dark Maisma as a primary powerset, make sure that Dark Servant is out to take Aggro and to perform holds and heals on any survivors while you wait for the endurance recovery prevention effect to wear off. In groups where there are plenty of other team members to get enemy attention, fire it whenever you want though never as an opening move.

I didn't get a very good shot of a large group of enemies, but you can definitely see how good the effective range of Blackstar is.

VIDEO: See Blackstar in action (1.6Mb)

Either way you play it, as of Issue 6, you can take an endurance recovery Inspiration to get a little endurance to use to continue the fight immediately. Though you will run out very quickly, it prevents down time and can give you back your Toggles temporarily. Most importantly, if you have Dark Consumption from the Darkness Mastery set, you can suck endurance from survivors to get back in the game at full force.

I've never seen it miss so I don't recommend Accuracy, but I like it to come up more often so I added three additional Recharge Reductions. However, without being fully slotted for damage, there's little point to taking the power.

Slotting

Slotting Priority

= |

	This power is all about damage. 80%+
	Waiting 6 minutes between uses sux. Give it 80%+ for an ~ 3 minute wait time instead.
	The Acc Debuff is already huge (>60%), you're going to lose all your endurance after launching it anyway, and it never misses. Don't bother with these unless you've found some killer way to use this power that I didn't figure out.