The black set

[Jahf]

So I played from ... eh ... 30? to 50 with 2 Black Rings on.

It is fun. Very fun. 20% Darkfire chance, which when hitting yourself can proc other fun effects that you can easily heal up from ... is intense.

However, agreed, only on normal and not for the final fight (gearing up for that now). Put them on and then go do 1000 hits on a dummy. I had my vim go down to about 33% just from auto-attacking with Abyssal Shield up. And I was down about 20% health. MOST of the time the various burn/shield heals compensated but once vim depleted (around 700 hits) health started going down. Now ... is anyone going to be in a 1000-round battle with all abilities locked up, no, or at least not much. But most times you won't be eating your own vim and health by yourself, you'll have help.

Swapped out for a couple of +Fire damage rings ... 1000 auto-attacks were a lot healthier (less fun) and higher damage (though, since I'm just hitting a dummy, I'm actually getting far less Darkfire than a normal fight).

Interestingly, Black Ring really does have some synergy potentials if you're willing to take the damage (or a class with good darkness affinity). Since proc'ing Darkfire counts as a hit on yourself. Combined with Fiery Choker I've been leaving volcanoes all over the place. And on a number of occasions had enough to wipe out packs. It should proc other on-hits (which means 10% + 10% on-hit chance from 2 rings is actually more like 22% chance rather than 20% chance, since they'll activate each other).

I could definitely see a build stacked with good on-hit proc items, as long as you've got defenses to keep your resources up.

PS. if Pumpkin happens into the training room when a proc goes off, he's a good kitty:
Pumpkin, the little kitty hits Training Dummy for 6 physical damage.
(ended up doing close to .75% of the damage at one point)

[Frumple]

For what it's worth, there is a mod out there that makes it so Darkfire straight up heals you if you're a demon (i.e. you've got flames of urh rok on or one of those artifacts mimics it). I'm not much for the ring in the base game strictly because I hate the baseline darkfire with a burning passion from experiences with it in earlier versions (does it still end up having a radius larger than the range around tlvl 3 or so, rendering the spell basically unusable?), but with the mod, it's actually quite nice, and the ring is without its conspicuous downside.

Pretty sure it still works with the latest versions of T4, too, so... yeah.

[liondriel]

Does that set even still exist anymore? I played several years, never came across any of those pieces ...

Edit: Nevermind. Just found out they are Ashes items, and I've played that campaign very rarely, and never even halfway successfully.

[Moasseman]

Ashes has no campaign, all of the black set pieces drop in all campaigns as long as you have Ashes of Urh'rok enabled.

[mckwack]

Does that set even still exist anymore? I played several years, never came across any of those pieces ...

Edit: Nevermind. Just found out they are Ashes items, and I've played that campaign very rarely, and never even halfway successfully.

FYI starting as either a Doomelf, Doombringer, or Demonologist doesn't count as 'starting an Ashes campaign'. You're just playing the usual AoA campaign albeit having a unique, 'Ashes-only' starting zone.

AFAIK the set will even appear in the Orc/Embers campaign as long as you have the Ashes DLC enabled as mentioned by Moasseman above, CMIIW.