Jordan’s Guide to Dark Miasma
Last Modified: June 10, 2021
Dark Miasma is a very strong set with a variety of interesting and powerful abilities including the almighty Dark Servant who is your loyal fluffy pet of darkness (Mua ha ha!)
Twilight Grasp
 | Score |  | 5 of 5 |  |
Summary
Select a target, activate, reap.
TG is just a cool power. Sure, you're not the uber-healer that Empath Defenders are because you need a target enemy to suck from in order to fire your heal, but as with other dark powers, there are significant benefits to balance the drawback.
In the picture, you can see the effect as it hits my target healing me for 292. My pet launched TG at the same time healing me for 368 :). Note that your heal and Fluffy's are the same strength when unslotted.
First, your target loses accuracy, damage potential, and regen. HUGE benefit when fighting mean things like AVs, other players in PvP, or GMs.
Second, you and any of your nearby teammates or pets get healed.
This is a great heal and there's no reason not to take it. Even if you didn't want to be in the "team healer" role, you still want it to heal yourself and it has pretty significant debuffing effect on your targeted enemy.
How to Use
You need a target enemy and it has to hit that target. The battle can take a nasty turn when your heal misses once or twice so slot with accuracy first. If you find that you're missing too often, target minions rather than lieutenants and bosses until you can get stronger enhancements or can make changes to your build.
Even if you're not the primary healer on the team, spamming heals with TG is a good idea to reduce the enemy's accuracy and especially regeneration (since AVs and Monsters regen so DAMN FAST)Remember that the heal affects only people close to you and it's the only heal you have that helps others so you'll have to train your teammates to stay close for heals. I find it's easiest just to announce that you'll stay close to the tank or a scrapper (pick which teammate you like more) and if someone wants heals, they need to stick close to the two of you.
Note that the same power from the same set for Masterminds has a much smaller heal radius than a Defender.
If you're hanging out with a melee character, remember to control your aggro by avoiding attacks when necessary and sticking to heals and debuffs.
Because TG roots you temporarily and there's a short activation delay, you may find that you miss healing some teammates who are moving around a lot. Using the heal is a bit of an art form that you'll learn with practice.
When fighting a boss or monster, stand in melee range with your damage dealers and CTRL click it to put it on autofire so it launches whenever it comes up. This way, even if a long attack chain starts to do damage to you or your team, you have a better chance of the heal hitting in the middle and saving you.
Recommended # of Slots and Enhancement Priority
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This is a six-slot power no matter how you look at it. It's so important and used so much, that you can't afford not to buff it as far as you possibly can.
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 |  | With Issue 13, the new "accurate Healing" IO sets are your friend. They provide heavy accuracy and healing at the same time allowing you to do more with fewer slots |
Tar Patch
| Score | | 5 of 5 | |
Summary
Click the power and then target a spot on the screen and click again. That spot becomes the center of the Tar Patch in which enemies find that they can no longer jump or fly, have slowed reaction time, and lower resistance (note that this is auto hit and can't miss though high level enemies and certain kinds of enemies (like Warwolves) are less affected).
With this in effect, they can't get to you as fast, can't run or fly away, and you can hit them a lot harder.
How to Use
- When playing in a team with a tank, as the team prepares, click Tar Patch and select a spot under the group you're about to fight, but don't drop it yet. Tanks work in one of two ways: they rush up to the group and get to work or they herd. If they like to just rush in, drop the TP as soon as you see the group notice the tank (meaning the aggro is on him). If your tank is a herder, wait until they have stopped running and start fighting and drop the patch there.
When doing pulls, enemies will run towards you immediately after the pulling attack. So before firing, place the tar patch in the doorway, hallway, or on a corner that you know the enemy will run through while trying to get to you. Your goal is both to prevent them from getting to you and to lower their defense for the team to take them out faster. This also groups them together as the people who hit the patch first will run slowly allowing the ones behind to catch up.
Just make sure that you and your team mates are far enough behind the tar patch (or are around a corner) so that the enemies don't stop short of TP to shoot you from the other side (before getting in the patch). Also make sure that when playing on a team, your team mates know what the Tar Patch is and if they hold their fire until the enemies are in it, the attacks will hit a lot harder.
- When soloing, using the corner technique is good, but if you're higher level, using Fearsome Stare or Howling Twilight is a great way to open. Both will prevent an Alpha Strike and allow you time to get the debuffs active (Tar Patch, Darkest Night etc) before the enemies start attacking.
- Also note that for missions where you know enemies are going to be in a certain place (Respec Trial, some Croatoa missions, Ambushes, etc.), Tar patch is a useful thing to have down before they get there. Not only does it debuff and slow them, but they tend to get bunched together making for more AoE damage goodness 🙂
Recommended # of Slots and Enhancement Priority
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No matter how I wanted to slot this power, four slots was enough.
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Darkest Night
| Score | | 5 of 5 | |
Summary
Target a foe, click the power and as long as you don't turn off the power, lose your endurance, or have your target die, the target and all nearby enemies lose accuracy (20% unslotted) and damage potential (about 40% unenhanceable). Note that his power is also auto hit (never misses). The only drawback is when you're teaming and killing things too fast to use it effectively (which doesn't matter because you don't really need it in those cases).
You can see the darkness effect at the target's feet and a reddish black glow on the chest of enemies close enough to the target to be affected too.
How to Use
This is not a hard power to use. Just hit the toughest or most annoying enemy you see (Sappers anyone?) to make their attacks largely ineffective.
Difficult to use in large teams, but killer when fighting AVs/Monsters, soloing, or for PvPWhen soloing, it's invaluable to keep them from hitting you but because you have to debuff and damage, you'll lose endurance fast! Be sure to turn off unnecessary powers to save endurance (like fly, super speed, sprint etc).
When teaming, it's less of a problem since you can easily let others do the damage and concentrate on debuffing. The main problem is if your team is cutting through enemies too quickly for you to make use of Darkest Night. But really, that just means you don't need to use it so don't waste your endurance.
When your team accidentally aggros another group, Darkest Night can often handle them until the team is ready.However, if your team is having to progress slowly due to a particular type of problem enemy or if you've run into something tough, now's the time to use DN. It's also useful for handling enemies that are sniping away at your team instead of closing to fighting distance.
DN also makes a great Pulling move. First, DN has a great range. Second, return fire from your target and nearby enemies doesn't usually hit you and if it does, has reduced damage. If your pull was not effective and you grabbed the whole room, you will likely survive long enough to run since the effective accuracy and damage of many of the enemies will be cut down.
On that note, you can use Darkest Night to HERD! (Yeah, you heard me). Try this sometime: sneak to the back of a room. Use Darkest night on one of the enemies in the back, run out of the room while the effect starts and around a corner. Drop Tar Patch on the corner between you and the enemies. Once the train of enemies shows up, they will bunch up on the tar patch as the first ones in it will slow down and the ones behind will quickly catch up. Now it's easy to hit them all with AOE attacks, but it also makes sure they're all in range of the Darkest Night debuff. Proceed to cut down at your leisure 🙂
| | Don't underestimate Darkest Night as I first did. This will become one of your most used powers in the game! |
Recommended # of Slots and Enhancement Priority
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You can only slot a few aspects, but with 3 slots, you can max the endurance reduction and get at least one set bonus from the -acc
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Howling Twilight
| Score | | 6 of 5 | |
Summary
Wow. Where do I begin?
To use this power, you have to target a living enemy nearby (in about the same range as one of your regular attacks). Ok, so as a rez maybe it's a pain to use since you have to have a "victim" enemy to suck life from, but here's what you get instead:
- Rezzes ALL of your dead teammates that are within AoE range around you. They get mostly full life and endurance, no disorientation (so they are up and rocking right away).
- It does AoE damage to your target and nearby enemies (though it's a pretty small amount)
- It's an AoE slow effect to your target and nearby enemies
- It does -recharge of 63% to all affected enemies. So not only can they not run fast, but their attack rate is lower too.
- Your target and nearby enemies are stunned for a few moments
- There's no accuracy check, it just works
- It destroys enemy Regen (one of the very few powers around that does)
How to Use
As an attack, it's weak. Don't do that. But as an opening move… SHA–ZAM! Think about it! They get stunned and slowed instantly eliminating an alpha. It's cake to lay down your other debuffs and control with the enemies wandering around stunned (even if it's only a few seconds, that's usually enough).
You can also hold the power until the battle starts getting bad. When it does, select one of your team members who's in trouble and fire it to stun all enemies near their current target (this only works if you're in range of their target). At this point they can retreat (or the whole team can depending) and heal.
Lastly, when you have a group of 3 to 6 sniping enemies who aren't in melee range with your group, hit one of them with HT to stun the whole lot and ease the pressure on the rest of your team for a few seconds. It's also useful if you accidentally aggro a second group of enemies.
Remember that HT is not interruptible. Even if you immediately take lethal damage, as long as you began the animation, the power will rez all your team mates.
Even though it won't stun or slow AVs or Monsters much, it's still good to spam HT on them for the strong -Regen effect (thus helping to kill their health regeneration which is usually very strong). If Mid's planner is right, this is a -500% to regen! Use it appropriately.
Recommended # of Slots and Enhancement Priority
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Though this power is very useful and has many enhanceable properties, recharge is your focus. I found 4 slots to be sufficient to max recharge while getting a little extra slow and stun just for fun.
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Shadow Fall
| Score | | 5 of 5 | |
Summary
Not only does it give you stealth, but any nearby team members/pets also get stealth. It also gives defense and damage resistance. The icing on the cake is that the damage resistance includes Psionics! This is one of the few powers in the game that protects against Psi, and it's a team AOE. Right on.
How to Use
Remember that no other stealth powers combine with SF, but Super Speed does (and also Stealth IOs)! Man do I love sneak and TP. Better yet, you can sneak and TP without shadowfall, but you might get noticed before you're ready like in this picture (my Warshade did sneak and TP, but one of my guys drew aggro).
Instead, warn your team not to move when you begin the TPs and you'll typically be fine with Shadow Fall covering your team. Once everyone is there, you can start the attack.
Recommended # of Slots and Enhancement Priority
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This is a 6 slot power, no question. If you could slot it 8 or 10, you would.
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Fearsome Stare
| Score | | 4 of 5 | |
Summary
Point at an enemy, fire it and a wave of fear hits all enemies in a Cone near your target. It also decreases their accuracy.
When I used it, the range was excellent and the cone width was ample enough to reduce an entire group of 10 to 15 or so enemies into an "afraid" huddle. When under fear effect, they will not attack unless they are attacked first and even then only fire one shot before resuming the fear stance.
How to Use
- Opening attacks – since you won't get return fire except for enemies that the power missed and, even then, they'll have reduced accuracy (I still think Howling Twilight is better for this, but depending on recharge, you might need to stagger them).
- For halting the attack of a second group you accidentally aggroed
- Or for getting that small group of snipers to stop taking potshots at your group while you're all busy taking out the enemies in melee range.
Note that if you have DoT powers (like Tenebrous Tentacles), this power is less useful for the group you're fighting because every time they take a hit from the DoT, they'll fire back. Granted, it's still slower than before so there's still solid advantage to this power, but less so than if you didn't use the DoT.
Your choices are to avoid a secondary powerset with DoT damage, don't use the DoT on the group you used Fearsome Stare on, or save Fearsome Stare for the "right" situations (like the three listed above).
Recommended # of Slots and Enhancement Priority
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4 slots is enough for everything you'd want to do, though in practice, I use 5 for a set bonus and to make Fearsome Stare an AoE attack with a chance of damage
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Note that I really like to add "Chance of Damage" procs to Fearsome stare making it both a control power AND an attack.
Petrifying gaze
| Score | | 3 of 5 | |
Summary
A true hold power, when you fire it, the target is frozen in a "shocked" position and can't move or activate powers until the power fades. Even though this only works on minions and sometimes lieutenants (rarely if ever bosses), it's great for controlling some of the aggro and damage that's on you. It also effectively keeps runners from getting away.
How to Use
I've never had great luck holding bosses and stuff that I really find dangerous, but it is good for holding problem enemies like sappers and such. It's possible to hold higher enemies with the help of you Dark Servant (who also has Petrifying gaze) or with other holds from teammates. Also, if you can fire the power often enough, you can sometimes hold them and perhaps even lock them down.
Recommended # of Slots and Enhancement Priority
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You might go 5 if you use this enough, but I didn't find that to be the case. 4 was enough for me especially once you get into more expensive IO sets.
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Black Hole
| Score | | 0 of 5 | |
Summary
When I read reviews and talked to people, the answer was always the same: Don't take Black Hole. Just to see, I copied my character to the test server to see how it works.
The Jaeger in the back is hard to see and smoky because of the effect of Black Hole. He'll attack and move like normal, but won't be affected by anything until he phases back in.
You pick a target and launch the power. The target and nearby enemies have a chance of being "phased out" where they turn partially invisible and can't affect you or be affected. After a little while they come back, but until then, you can effectively cut the numbers of opponents down.
How to Use
The only time I would ever use this power is when soloing against enemies that are too high to take alone, or as an emergency retreat tactic for yourself or a team. The rest of the time, you want the enemies to be able to take damage. What's the use of cone attacks, AoE's, or Novas if some of the enemies are gone?
Not only that, you have to teach teammates what the power is an how it works so they don't waste their time trying to attack the phased-out enemies. This often proves to be more of a hassle than it's worth. The benefit is just too iffy. If your goal is to take normally useless powers and find a way to make them useful, this would be a good candidate.
Slotting
If you find a good use for this power, then you can share the slotting with me.
Dark Servant
| Score | | 6 of 5 | |
Summary
You are nuts if you don't take this power. Fluffy is a good pet who follows you around and hits enemies with Darkest Night, Twilight Grasp, Tenebrous Tentacles, and Petrifying Gaze. He's basically a spare Dark Defender which effectively doubles your effectiveness.
Isn't he CUTE?! 😀
His tenebrous tentacles don't hit as hard as yours do, but his heal works very well and can take some of the pressure off you since you won't have to heal as often.
How to Use
Simple. Have him out whenever you're fighting. Period. Just be sure to dismiss him before you try to go sneaking around.
He'll obediently follow you around mostly only attacking if you attack something first or if something attacks him (or you). If you get held, he'll keep them busy until you come back.
Recommended # of Slots and Enhancement Priority
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Six slot power, hands down, no question. He's just got too many attributes to buff though be sure to follow the listed priority.
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