Need some advice about Darkness/Supernatural

[Archived Post]

I've been having a hell of a time coming up with an idea for how I wanna create my flagship character in this game. He was a dark brawler in CoH, which I thought was pretty perfect, but obviously the closest that we can get in CO is Supernatural, and that is full of a lot of elements I don't particularly care for, at least not for this character. Particularly, all the ghost rider-type chains and stuff, which unfortunately makes up a good chunk of supernatural. So my next thought was to check out the Darkness powers, but I guess I didn't really want to turn him into a blaster type character too much either. I suppose to be more clear, I should note that this character is thematically sort of a vampire-type. So he's bound to be teeming with all sorts of dark energy but as I said, I didn't really wanna have him firing it out of every orifice or anything. So bearing this all in mind, I used the Champion builder to take a look at what would be available to me between the two power sets that would fit what I was going for, and I did end up with something, but it seemed to be, more than anything else, a lot of self-affecting stuff and I wasn't sure if it all equaled out to something that would be useful with much less in the way of direct offensive maneuvers. Here's something I just whipped together, not as something that's set in stone, but as a general idea of the kind of thing I'd be going for, and again, I'm mostly just curious to know if this sort of setup would be useful. I'm not married to it the way it is (with the exception of maybe a few abilities that I have to have, like the wolf summon), and obviously I haven't even seen half of these abilities in action, so please, if you think I should pick things up in a different order, drop this, pick up that, let me know, I'd very much appreciate it.

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anon: Level 40 Champion

Superstats:
Level 5:
Level 13:

Powers:
Level 1: Bestial Fury
Level 1: Bite
Level 5: Devour Essence
Level 5: Flight
Level 8: Command Animals
Level 11: Regeneration
Level 14: Shadow Embrace
Level 17: Lifedrain
Level 20: Shadow Form
Level 23: Resurgence
Level 26: Aspect Of The Inferno
Level 29: Rebirth
Level 32: Grasping Shadows
Level 35: Spirit Reverberation
Level 35: Teleport
Level 38: Condemn

Talents:
Level 1:
Level 6:
Level 9:
Level 12:
Level 15:
Level 18:
Level 21:

I suppose I'm not really sure exactly how I'd wanna put my stats together for this hypothetical powerset idea either, so let me know what you all think for that, too.

Any comments or suggestions are greatly appreciated!

[Archived Post]

Mine's only level 22 or so, but kind of follows a similar route:

1) Stats: Constitution and Recovery are tops. After that, Endurance for more energy, then Presence would bump wolf HP and healing. The rest is negligible, strength probably being the least useful.

2) I'd take Regeneration ASAP, I think it unlocks at level 8. Reason being, the life leech skills won't be doing a whole lot until you have a decent energy pool. Ditto for Resurgence, it'll be your Hail Mary button.

3) Chain-whip stuff might not fit the concept, but without some sort of quick ranged attack you'll be running laps trying to get to any mob before it drops in teams. Sometimes it'll be better to just stand still & be able to hit something. Alternately grab an offensive slotted passive (a la Cloud of Flies, but there are probably better ones) for teaming, but you'll be swapping out Regeneration for it which will always hurt a little.

4) Wolves aren't too amazing. If you're really tied to them, expect to recast them every fight or two because they die fast, and expect to stand around waiting for the skill cooldown if you rage them. I'll use them on bosses and when soloing more than a few mobs, but they're just bodies - they'll take aggro until they die, while I try thinning out the numbers. Definitely useful, but I doubt I'll ever upgrade to rank 2.

5) Maybe move Grasping Shadows to late teens / early twenties as well, along with the damage upgrade. Firing it off fully charged can take care of 3-5 regular mobs while you point & laugh, awful nice. It'll take a lot of energy though, so not too early (once you break 100 max energy, or thereabouts).

Hope that's not too specific, since I hardly know what I'm doing anyway. Have fun eating people.

[Archived Post]

Shadow form increases dimensional and ego damage, so i would be sure to have powers that cause those kinds of damage otherwise it's kinda pointless.

[Archived Post]

If you really want to avoid Darkness/Supernatural nukes (which benefit from Shadowform and hence END) probably CON + REC with minors (using gear) in STR. Maybe pick up a few martial arts or might powers.

As mentioned above, Shadowform won't help you much if you aren't using darkness or dimensional damage... Of course you can just run regeneration constantly in balanced/defensive roles and you'll be fine. Eventually you'll probably want a slotted passive for your offensive (avenger) role, and your options are a bit limited if you don't like the Supernatual powerset.

Alternatively, maybe just bag the idea of starting as Supernatural and go Might (STR/CON), take invulnerability instead of Regeneration, and feel free to add in Bite and Devour Essence and other vampire like powers as you level up?

[Archived Post]

Shadow form increases dimensional and ego damage, so i would be sure to have powers that cause those kinds of damage otherwise it's kinda pointless.

But it looks cool ...

OP: I would recommend getting regen and shadow embrace before command animals. The AoE of shadow embrace will make getting to the higher levels that much quicker. command animals was kind of a cosmetic power for my char in beta (functionally wasn't very helpful), so I personally wouldn't worry about it til much later (I plan on getting March of the Dead instead for my vampire zombie army on my live toon).

I don't have a lot of experience with the Aspects, but I did play with Aspect of the Dragon in OB and wasn't impressed. Most of the effects are for supernatural powers only that I didn't pick (I don't care for the chains either), and when it did proc it wasn't enough to warrant the power slot.

Last bit of 'advice' would be to bump up Grasping Shadows and/or Condemn. Both are good holds and Condemn is decent DPS (GS is too with the advantage), but I prefer GS for thematic reasons (Condemn looks more like a holy strike of some sort IMO)

As far as stats, REC for sure (supposedly Regen is getting more of a buff from it next patch and it's just a good stat to have), END or CON as the other.

This is all my personal opinion and should no means be taken as fact.

[Archived Post]

I've been working with Darkness builds since CoX and have done so with CO since open beta. My alt is a Darkness/Supernatural build too. Our concept ideas are similar even. I got around the idea of Darkness powers being more ranged by explaining it as he spreads fear that paralyses.

Three Darkness powers I really bank on are Shadow Bolt, Shadow Embrace and Lifedrain. I can't say enough about Shadow Embrace. Talk about spreading a little fear, that does the job. Lifedrain is a fav of mine because I get to eat my cake and have it too. With Lifedrain you literally suck the life out of your target, thereby gaining the health they lose. A lot of people prefer the regeneration/resurgence pairing becuase it makes you extremely robust (you are nearly untouchable while blocking for most flavors of opponent too), but I like the concept of draining life more for my character. I will say this though: if you want a character that can come out of any fight alive, get the regen/resurg pairing. With block up, you'll be able to get hit by mobs of 6-8 and read a book.

I stayed away from all the lashing powers since they had nothing to do with my character concept, which left me to using Bestial Fury and Bite for my melee powers. The thing is you don't really need a lot of attacking powers, since ranking them up keeps them effective anyway.

You basically want to get some good ranged powers, some melee powers, good defense, good heal, buff, debuff. The cool thing about the two powersets mentioned is that they sort of combine two aspects into one. In Darkness, we have attack merged with a heal (Lifedrain), and in Supernatural you have accelerated heals triggered to damage (Regeneration). As a side note, Supernatural's Devouring Essence isn't as effective as Darkness' Lifedrain, in my opinion.

Lastly, combining Darkness with Supernatural makes your stat building easier too, Both use Recovery, so your overall stats focus is for three stats rather than four: CON, REC, END.

Hope that helps.

[Archived Post]

Thank you everyoen for the input! I have a much more solid idea of what I'm working with here. If anyone else has any further suggestions or comments, the concept remains a work in progress, so I'm definitely still listening.

[Archived Post]

My personal suggestion? Don't do Shadow Form if you want to do Supernatural. The only skill I can think of off the top of my head from Supernatural that is affected by Shadow Form is Condemn. My current build abuses Shadow Form, but, it also takes a ton of skills from Telepathy and Telekinesis, as Ego damage IS affected by Shadow Form.

[Archived Post]

I've been having a hell of a time coming up with an idea for how I wanna create my flagship character in this game. He was a dark brawler in CoH, which I thought was pretty perfect, but obviously the closest that we can get in CO is Supernatural, and that is full of a lot of elements I don't particularly care for, at least not for this character. Particularly, all the ghost rider-type chains and stuff, which unfortunately makes up a good chunk of supernatural. So my next thought was to check out the Darkness powers, but I guess I didn't really want to turn him into a blaster type character too much either. I suppose to be more clear, I should note that this character is thematically sort of a vampire-type. So he's bound to be teeming with all sorts of dark energy but as I said, I didn't really wanna have him firing it out of every orifice or anything. So bearing this all in mind, I used the Champion builder to take a look at what would be available to me between the two power sets that would fit what I was going for, and I did end up with something, but it seemed to be, more than anything else, a lot of self-affecting stuff and I wasn't sure if it all equaled out to something that would be useful with much less in the way of direct offensive maneuvers. Here's something I just whipped together, not as something that's set in stone, but as a general idea of the kind of thing I'd be going for, and again, I'm mostly just curious to know if this sort of setup would be useful. I'm not married to it the way it is (with the exception of maybe a few abilities that I have to have, like the wolf summon), and obviously I haven't even seen half of these abilities in action, so please, if you think I should pick things up in a different order, drop this, pick up that, let me know, I'd very much appreciate it.

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anon: Level 40 Champion

Superstats:
Level 5:
Level 13:

Powers:
Level 1: Bestial Fury
Level 1: Bite
Level 5: Devour Essence
Level 5: Flight
Level 8: Command Animals
Level 11: Regeneration
Level 14: Shadow Embrace
Level 17: Lifedrain
Level 20: Shadow Form
Level 23: Resurgence
Level 26: Aspect Of The Inferno
Level 29: Rebirth
Level 32: Grasping Shadows
Level 35: Spirit Reverberation
Level 35: Teleport
Level 38: Condemn

Talents:
Level 1:
Level 6:
Level 9:
Level 12:
Level 15:
Level 18:
Level 21:

I suppose I'm not really sure exactly how I'd wanna put my stats together for this hypothetical powerset idea either, so let me know what you all think for that, too.

Any comments or suggestions are greatly appreciated!
Going on what you have said I made some alterations to your build to what i think suits it. I have 3 characters which all use darkness and supernatural abilities. I hope this helps.

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anon: Level 40 Champion

Superstats:
Level 5:
Level 13:

Powers:
Level 1: Bestial Fury
Level 1: Bite
Level 5: Regeneration I put this earlier due to it being a really helpful ability to have and will help you level up quicker
Level 5: Flight
Level 8: Devour Essence
Level 11: Command Animals
Level 14: Mighty Leap another move from might could also work, for a melee character you need something from either might or martial arts to do some good damage.
Level 17: Ebon Void its a darkness sheild
Level 20: Shadow Shroud you said you wanted shadow form but it powers up moves you wont use. shadow shroud is similar but powers up "non-energy generating attacks" so it would power up some of your moves and though i havent got it yet on my character i think it probably would look similar (or you could make it look similar by changing the colour)
Level 23: Resurgence
Level 26: Aspect Of The Inferno
Level 29: Rebirth
Level 32: Grasping Shadows
Level 35: Burning Chi Fist same as with might leap
Level 35: Teleport
Level 38: Cloud Of Flies

Talents:
Level 1:
Level 6:
Level 9:
Level 12:
Level 15:
Level 18:
Level 21:

[Archived Post]

For making a Superatural/Darkness character, which super stats should i choose? I'm torn between REC/END or REC/CON..

[Archived Post]

I also am unsure in what direction I should take the super stats. It's a little confusing because end and rec both seem to achieve the same goal, they just do it in different ways, so I don't know which is really supposed to be better.