The following guide was written by Saist a.k.a. The Very Grumpy Bunny. It has been posted here with permission, but the original can be found here.
Jordan Yen, of Jordan's Town, has been bugging me to join in his ongoing contest with a new player guide. So, here's a new character build, and to date, the most expensive one I've made. It's a Dark Armor / Energy Melee tank, made largely to explore the on-paper issues with both sets.
The Major Issues
I've written about Dark Armor before and what I see as the problems with the set. On the surface the set has low resists and aura's that prevent effective tanking. As I played the set, I found there was another issues, endurance consumption. To put this in perspective, an Ice Armor Tank and a Stone Armor tank can stack the following powers:
- .26 e/s :: Frozen Armor
- .26 e/s :: Chilling Embrace
- .26 e/s :: Wet Ice
- .52 e/s :: Icicles
- .26 e/s :: Glacial Armor
- 1.56 end / sec :: Total
- .26 e/s :: Rock Armor
- .78 e/s :: Mud Pots
- .21 e/s :: Rooted
- .26 e/s :: Brimstone Armor
- .26 e/s :: Crystal Armor
- .26 e/s :: Minerals
- 2.03 end / sec :: Total
Now, Ice gets two Endurance Recovery powers, Energy Absorbtion and Hibernate. Stone Armor gets granite, which produces the following base stackables at high levels.