First of all, follow Kalyth's Dark Miasma & Dark Blast Guide. It's truly excellent. Also, the Dark/Dark Defender's Guide: Issue 6/ED by BlackestNight is a great update for all the powers and a fantastic guide in its own right. I highly recommend it.

The Dark Defender archetype is VERY difficult to solo play at the lower levels. I tried, I got my butt kicked nearly every time. It's not until you get into the upper levels does soloing become possible by holding your foe with Petrifying Gaze while you slowly whittle away at their hit points, and then still very risky and very slow going. My suggestion is to focus on healing, debuffing, and buffing abilities for team play at first. Forget about doing damage until much later. Max out all 6 enhancements slots for Twilight Grasp, Darkest Night, and Shadow Fall as soon as you can (in that order). Focus on these powers first, they will save your team (and you) on numerous occasions. Darkest Night is very fun. You slap DN on the big, bad boss and then jump right next to him during the fight because it's the safest place (if it has 5 Single Origin To Hit debuff enhancements in it, that is)!

You will need a weapon, and that weapon is Moonbeam. Slot it up quickly with damage enhancements, and perhaps an interrupt enhancement. Forget about the other blast powers. It's slow to activate, but it deals a heafty punch. In those rare cases where you actually need to do damage, it will save your hide (especially at lower levels). Also, it is an EXCELLENT sniper blast that has a very long range.

Another thing to note about Dark Defenders is their concept... many, if not most, of the powers are vampiric... meaning, the powers are designed to suck the life force from enemies and transfer that energy to you or your team. This did not particularly fit my concept for my hero, but most of the vampiric powers are too important to do without. In gameplay, the biggest drawback to these vampiric powers is that you either need a bad guy around to suck the life from, or you need to touch/hit/blast a bad guy in order to drain the life from him -- and you're not always going to hit them. This makes powers such as Twilight Grasp, your healing power, somewhat unreliable... certainly far more unreliable than healing powers of non-dark defenders, such as empaths who merely need to click a button and the whole team is healed every time. The upside of this is that these vampiric powers usually have short term, secondary effects that are fairly powerful... typically buffs and defuffs to increase your team's defense or reduce your enemies' ability to hit your team with their attacks. Twilight Grasp, for example, reduces you enemies' accuracy when used, while Howling Twilight (your resurect or revive power) disorients enemies and reduces their ability to regenerate as its secondary effects, etc.

A Dark Defender is NOT a powerhouse built to do damage, not a blaster, not a tanker. He is a jack of all trades... a little bit of a blaster, a little healer, a little controller. He is not going to be the most powerful hero on the team, but he WILL be the most versitile. There are so many options to choose from, so many different kinds of powers, that you'll never get bored playing him. Also, the Dark Defender has so many abilities, that he is often indespensible to the team. I've found that the Dark Defender's strength at the early levels lies mainly in healing and buffing/debuffing, while in the mid to higher levels it lies in crowd control and buffing/debuffing. A team can easily be over-run by a huge mob, but not when a dark defender is around.

I RESPECed my character to change his powers only once between levels 1 and 40...when I finally realized that I was far too weak to hold my own on a team (I think it was around level 25-30). I had decided to take a travel power as early as I could (and would still do that), but I also took another whole power pool early (Concealment). This last was a mistake. Focus on your primary Dark Miasma and Dark Blast powers until you get nearly all of them -- then branch out. They are what make your archetype useful and powerful.

That said, I recommend you take Stealth (from the Concealment Pool if it fits your character's concept) as early as you can, at level 6. It will protect you while going to and from missions. Forget about the other powers in the Concealment pool until much, much later. Next, start working toward your travel power (Fly, Super-Speed, Teleportation, or Super-jump).

There are a few powers that you should avoid, that are optional, or that are worthy of comment...

Tar Patch -- interesting power. Good for baddies that attack hand to hand or who fly (it knocks them out of the air and keeps then down), but useless against ranged attacks. It's one of the few powers that actually affects bosses right off the bat. What it does is give your team TIME to attack by slowing down the villains. It also helps prevent the villains from running away, and it also reduces the baddies' damage resistance through a nice debuff. It's a highly useful buffer between the bad guys and your team. It's a darn good power. Highly recommend it.

Black Hole -- avoid this one. Not very useful, and more often than not causes confusion amongst the team when they try to target baddies that are phased. Save this power slot for something better.

Dark Pit -- getting better. I used to consider this power as utterly ineffective, but that was before I discovered that it had a built in accuracy penalty. Slap 2 SO accuracy enhancements in it, and it's suddenly good. Great to use in conjunction with Fearsome Stare when dealing with spread out groups of baddies... throw Fearsome on one side of the room, and Dark Pit on the other, and your team is covered. Still, because this power REQUIRES enhancements to be at all useful, I still consider this power as somewhat optional.

Torrent -- in team play it's usually NOT a good idea to spread out the baddies because it prevents you from using your Area of Effect (AoE) attacks/debuffs, and that's what this power does with its knockback. Somewhat useful to try to keep a few charging baddies away from you at the lower levels, but I'd avoid taking it. There are better powers you could have.

Life Drain -- Ok. It does moderate damage, about the same as Dark Blast, but heals you at the same time! It would be insanely powerful if not for the power's long recharge time and heavy endurance cost. Essentially, it takes 4x longer to recharge and costs 3x more end than Dark Blast, but recharges only twice as long and costs only 1/3rd more end than Twilight Grasp. Most guides recommend avoiding this power, however if you want to solo or are having trouble staying alive in normal combat because you just can't absorb the damage, this is the power for you! Yes, it's no better a heal than Twilight Grasp, but with Life Drain you can now spam heal yourself without missing attacks. Heal with Twilight grasp, attack with Gloom, then heal and attack with Life Drain, then attack with Gloom, then heal with Twilight Grasp, and repeat. Your survivability just increased twofold. Further, Life Drain allows you to increase your DPS (damage per second) by healing and inflicting damage at the same time. This is especially important for Dark Defenders because their attack chains are so slow. If you get this power, 6 slot it with 2 ACC, 1 END RED, and 3 RECHARGE. This power is optional -- but in a good way.

Dark Servant -- this power is... complicated. The dark servant is great... he heals, casts Darkest Night, Shadow fall, Petrifying Gaze, and Tenebrous Tentacles all by himself (if you have those powers too). He acts as a good sacrificial lamb to take villains' attention away from you, and is almost another team member. Extremely useful, and the "fluffy" offers a real advantage in combat. That said, I didn't like him much until the Issue 5 game update came out. My playing style and concept of my hero just didn't fit with "Smokey," as I like to call him. More often than not, he'd get me (and often my team) in trouble by attracting the attention of villains I did not intend to aggro (the dark servant followed me everywhere!). But with the advent of I5, we can now dismiss our pets on command (/release_pets). NICE! I was going to RESPEC out of my Dark Servant, but am now going to keep him.

Blackstar -- the Dark Defender's Nova blast. Used to be a great power. With Issue 6 and Enhancement Diversity, you can no longer 6 slot this power with damage SOs (only 3 slot it), which means that it no longer inflicts enough damage to take out +2 minions. My new recommendation now is to avoid this power. It's too dangerous because it leaves you drained of endurance and completely at the mercy of any baddies still alive, and there will be a lot of baddies still alive. This power is no longer worth the risk.

Recall Friend (from the Teleportation power pool) -- indispensible. Not only useful for getting the rest of your team to the mission door or out of a sticky situation; but when the team gets knocked out in battle, you can use Recall Friend to make a pile of unconscious team mates, and then resurect them all at the same time with one click of Howling Twilight. Incidentally, Howling Twilight is arguably the best resurrect power in the game as it lets you resurrect unlimited numbers of allies as long as they're in range.

Later on, I did take the Fitness Pool to get Stamina, as Dark Defenders use TONS of end. However, it comes at a huge price... 3 power slots. Once I got it, though, it made gameplay a whole lot more enjoyable.

At level 41 you can pick from the Anciliary (or Epic) Power Pools. Of the 4 powers in the Dark Mastery set, Oppressive Gloom at first seems the least valuable, especially if you already have Dark Pit (which does about the same thing), but it may be the best pick for your first Epic power. Dark Consumption, similiarly t is as useless, if not more so, than Opressive Gloom (especially if you have Stamina). I'd avoid it. Soul Drain will increase your damage output by up to +50% IF you are able to hit at least 10 villains (5% per villain). Because of this, it is somewhat unreliable. Dark Embrace on the other hand, looks GREAT! It's the best damage reducing shield available to defenders. There's one caveat regarding the Dark Mastery epic powers, however... these powers force one to jump right next to bad guys who want to hurt you. For this reason, it may be worthwhile to seriously consider some of the other Epic Power Pools. I eventually ended up picking Oppressive Gloom and Dark Embrace, and am very happy with my choice.

I suppose I should mention my last power, Phase Shift. It was nerfed in the Issue 5 update (meaning it was severely weakened and made as harmless as a nerf arrow). Now it has a 30 second shut off deactivation time limit which, when combined with it's long activation time (I clocked it as taking 6-10 seconds in real time to activate), has made the power almost completely useless. It's 30 second deactivation time prevents the power from being used in any other capacity other than as an emergency button to prevent you from being KOed. Unfortunately, the long activation time usually means that you will be killed before the power takes effect. So the power has been made fairly useless. I took the power only beause it fit the concept of my hero. Somewhat of a waste, I agree, but we all make sacrifices for our heroes. Avoid this power if you can.

I hope some of this has been helpful, or at least ammusing. This has only been my opinion, for my personal playing style. Your character's conception or the way you play may be different than mine, so take all this with an eye toward fine tuning your own character, and have fun!

******************* BLACK SPECTRE'S TRIAL *******************

Ok, experiment time! I've reached lvl 41 and have just acquired Dark Consumption, the transfer of end power. I RESPECed my dark defender a second time at level 40 so that I would have enough power slots to get the concealment pool AND at least 3 of the powers in the Dark Mastery epic power pool. The cost? I had to get rid of the Fitness Pool and the awesome power Stamina. I slotted many powers with Endurance Reducers and got Hasten as an added bonus (because I knew that I'd need some help with slotting -- hasten allowed me to get rid of all of my Recharge enhancements, and replace the allotted slots with End Reducer SOs). Black Spectre is holding his own, but it is a trial. Near the end of a battle, he is often left just standing there unable to do anything because he ran out of end. So I stocked up on Take A Breath inspirations. No problem. He's doing ok. Needed two, rather than one, End Reduction SOs in Fly, but other than that... he's doing... marginally o.k..

The plan was this... wait for level 41 and get the power that will give me end points... Dark Consumption. This will replace Stamina. At least that was the plan. There are three potential problems now looming... Dark Consumption is a click power, not a toggle... so it merely gives a single burst of endurance -- better as an emergency boost (but you need to hit at least 3 bad guys to get a full bar of end). It also has a very long recharge time -- as long a recharge as Howling Twilight or Dark Servant (3 minutes). And lastly, it requires you to get very close to villains, within 8 feet, in order to work. It's a power that will force you to place yourself in danger in order to use it. The upside is emergency endurance points and more powers.

So I'm going to try to make this work. I'll test this out for at least the next two levels. I figure Dark Consumption (DC) will have to be slotted with 3-6 Recharge SOs. The question is... how many times will I need to use it during the course of a battle? How long does the average battle last? And is the quickest recharge time of 53 seconds worth the 6 slots?

Well, from my experience, the average battle lasts 75 seconds. The length of most battles range between 10 seconds to 2 minutes, with only the very rare battle lasting longer. So this means that during the average battle, Dark Consumption will only be able to be used once regardles of how many Recharge SOs it has slotted. At the fastest recharge rate of 53 seconds (including Hasten, 60 seconds without), DC would be able to be used twice during the longest battles -- activating the second time approximately 22 seconds before the end of the battle. However, by this time in the fight, there are usually only a few enemies left (typically bosses who are very hard to hit), and they are usually spread out enough to prevent you from hitting more than one of them, thereby reducing or making Dark Consumption completely ineffective for this second volly.

The major consideration seems to be to make sure that you have Dark Consumption available to use for every battle. I figure 3 SO Recharge enhancements (74 second recharge with Hasten, 90 seconds without) should make DC available right at the end of the longer 2 minute battles -- ready for the next battle or to be used again if the battle happens to go long. Adding 1 Accuracy SO should also help to hit more baddies more often, which is something you want to do with this power.

The jury is still out on this power, though. I'll let you know what I think in 2 more levels, once I've been able to slot the power and have some good gameplay with it...

------------------------------- UPDATE ----------------------------------------

Having played with Dark Consumption now, I can heartily NOT recommend it. It is NO substitute for Stamina, not even close. It gets you killed (I've been knocked out numerous times now because of it). It's unreliable, more often than not only fills your endurance bar half way because of the requirment to hit multiple enemies. And it's one more thing to juggle during combat.

I tell you... the LAST thing I want to do as a squishy dark defender is to jump next to dangerous enemies and offer myself up as a target just to get a little more edurance. It might be a little different if I had something like Dark Embrace to help protect me, but even then Dark Consumption is a real hassle to deal with. As a scrapper, I can see the appeal -- you'd be in the midst of the battle anyway fighting hand to hand. As a defender... it's suicide.

Oppressive Gloom is also a suicide power for defenders. It might be useful as an emergency (but unreliable) disorient power in case you ever find yourself fighting hand to hand in the middle of a big group... but how often is that going to happen? Answer: Almost never.

Dark Embrace is the only power in this set that is any good. It's better than the corresponding power in the Power Mastery epic pool because it resists against more kinds of damage... but it may not be worth getting a useless power before you can take it. On the other hand, it may be worth it.

Soul Drain, though I haven't tried it, has the same critical flaws as Dark Consumption.

At this time, I would NOT RECOMMEND the Dark Mastery epic power pool. These powers are for hand to hand, melee combat specialists... not dark defenders. Although the "dark" special effects and animations of these powers are undoubtedly cool, they're suicide powers. Avoid them. There are two alternatives still open to a dark defender: 1) simply avoid the epic power pools and get more powers from your primary, secondary, or normal power pool sets, or 2) choose from one of the other epic power pools.

Of the available epic pools, it looks like the Power Mastery epic power pool might be the best choice. There are two potential jewels in the PM pool: Power Build Up and Temp Invulnerability. Both of these powers deliver something dark defenders have never had... the ability to do serious damage and the toughness to withstand attacks. Conserve Power comes highly recommended, and it is doubtlessly a good choice as well, but somewhat redundant if you also have stamina. Total Focus is a single target, extreme damage hand to hand attack. Attractive for it's ability to knock out most foes in one hit, but dangerous because you have to get close to the villain. Choices, choices...

************************** UPDATE *****************************

Well, ok. Black Spectre is level 44 now. I'm going to RESPEC my dark defender BACK to the way he was before... with Stamina and without the Dark Mastery pool.

****************************UPDATE ***************************

Black Spectre is now level 50. The Power Mastery epic power pool is fairly nice. I took Power Build Up and Temporary Invulnerability. Power Build Up has been useful, especially as a to hit buff to let me hit some bad guys easier... but it does not increase my damage output as much as I had hoped. It's become fairly unimportant in combat, and I now often forget about using it.

Temporary Invulnerability is a very good power. It has worked well, but it also leaves something to be desired... it only protects against physical damage, and I keep going up against energy blasters! Since Power Build Up is really not too useful, and Temporary Invulnerability only protects against one type of damage... I'm thinking about RESPECing Black Spectre one last time to give him back the Dark Mastery power pool.

I'm going to pick Opressive Gloom as my first power. Although it'll be mostly useless, it's got to be better than Dark Consumption. In any case, I don't plan on using Opressive Gloom very much. The reason for the change is to get Dark Embrace which protects against many different kinds of damage -- including energy, negative energy, and toxic. I've realized that the only goal I should have for Black Spectre at these high levels is to make him less squishy. I'll be sacrficing Power Build Up for Dark Embrace, since I don't expect Opressive Gloom to be useful, but when everything is cosidered, I think it's probably a good trade off. More often than not, I get hit by ranged blasts rather than hand to hand hits. So Dark Embrace seems like the best choice.

------------------------------ UPDATE ---------------------------------------

Well, hello again. I am happy to say that I am happy with Black Spectre now. Opressive Gloom, although mostly useless, has turned out to be an ok power. It costs very little hit points to use and very little end, which has allowed me to click it on and leave it on. Dark Embrace doesn't seem to protect against physical/lethal damage as much as Temporary Invulnerability, but it's a nice power. No complaints.

I don't ever use Phase Shift. There really hasn't been any opportinity to do so. Either my team kills the baddies without any trouble, or the baddies overwhelm and kill us so quickly that Phase Shift doesn't have a chance to kick in and activate. The 30 second shut off time makes it silly (and suicide) to use it to go exploring. So it just sits there taking up a power slot that I'd like to use for Tar Patch. Oh well.

With the advent of the Issue 6 update and the Enhancement Diversity changes... I'm not certain that stamina is required for Dark Defenders anymore. It might be better to simply slot all powers with 2 endurance reducers instead. In any case, the recommended enhancement slotting in Kalyth's Dark Miasma & Dark Blast Guide should be adjusted to conform to the new enhancement rules. As a general rule of thumb, putting more than 3 of one kind of enhancement in a power is not recommended (assuming they are single origin enhancements). Essentially, 3 SOs will give you a +95% boost, and each additional enhancement after that only gives you a +5% boost.

I think the biggest revelation I've had post level 50 is that my dark defender is still squishy. With Black Spectre's new shield, Dark Embrace, the fight lasts longer but the same end result occurs... Knock Out! To give you an exampe, I recently took on 3 level 48 Carnival baddies... 1 boss, 1 LT, and 1 minion. Keep in mind that I'm level 50, 2 levels above them... and yet still they kicked my butt. Oh it was a good fight, don't get me wrong. It lasted 5 minutes, which is almost unheard of! But they were able to inflict far more damage on me than I was able to inflict on them. At the end of the battle I had only taken away 10% of their hit points, when, of course, they were able to take 100% of mine.

I think, in the future, if I were to alter the dark defender archtype a bit to make it more viable, I'd suggest one of two things... or both: add a single target "heal other" power to the set, and increase their damage output.

I've laid out how I would build my dark defender below. This is merely my considered opinion, but it's what worked well for me during gameplay. You may find a different way that suits your character concept or game style better, as certainly not all dark defenders are going to have the same powers or power pools that I chose. For example, a more efficient use of the power slots than I used would be to avoid taking the Flight power pool, and instead focus on Teleportation. This would open up the possibility of getting a different power pool or more powers from your main set. But I really like flight, and it fits with my character's conception of a mysterious, ghostly hero... so I made a choice. The most important thing is, however, to have fun with your hero...

------------------------UPDATE 1/07 -----------------------------------------------------

Well, I RESPECed Black Spectre once again. In all honesty, the epic shield Dark Embrace didn't do much to keep my dark defender alive. I wish it did, but it didn't... and it's just not worth the power slot. With the advent of the recent nerfs, Blackstar also has become rather worthless. I had it six slotted with damage (I hadn't changed Black's enhancements for Enhancement Diversification yet) and Blackstar didn't kill level 33 minions and lts. Prior to ED and the other nerfs I could actually kill stuff with the power, now it's become nothing more than a liability. So I RESPECed out of it as well... sadly. The good news is that I've discovered a wonderful power that has solved all of my endurance problems... the Power Mastery Epic power Conserve Power. Awesome power! Finally! My end troubles are gone. Now that I know how good it really is, I recommend taking Conserve Power as soon as possible at level 41.

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