Dark Current

Doesn't appear on my blaster either.

Titan Weapons or Large Stick Affinity? Sonic Resonance or Sound Affinity? Dark Miasma or Smoke Affinity? Beast Mastery or Zoological Affinity? I could go on. The point is you're launching a new set. Giving it a boring affinity name isn't selling it. And if this game ever goes legit you need a creative team leading it that can do better. I think the new name should have Elec- in it so it follows shorthand naming convention: elec/elec. A simple change like Electrical Conductance (while not the sexiest) is more unique than Affinity and specific to what the set does. It also sounds cooler and fits the naming theme of other sets like Radiation Emmission and Sonic Resonance. And for the record Darkness Affinity is another terribly boring name. Please change.

Exciting names get people to want to play them. What would you rather play: Street Justice or Asphalt Affinity?

Why can't sets that have a build up mechanic provide a new power button like domination that you can click when you want to use it? I don't like having to build something like static only to use it willy nilly when you click some other power. Why can't I build up 5 stacks and store until I want to make use of th hem fully charged?

New name is very, very boring.

But you miss his point: "...the game just feels kind of "meh" because you get into a team and just faceroll through +4 x 8 mobs like they're butter in a frying pan. It feels like the overall higher survivability of classes in general has devalued debuff mechanics, healers, and tactical game play." He's already at the max difficulty in the game and it's easy mode. Several types of gameplay are devalued compared to raw DPS. And he's not the only one who's brought this up over the last few months. But every time it is brought up, the response is a lot of hate and boils down to 'we don't need more challenge, so shut up'. My caution to you and others is to watch what you ask for. If all those people start leaving, the population will erode and you may end up with a husk.

But you miss his point: "...the game just feels kind of "meh" because you get into a team and just faceroll through +4 x 8 mobs like they're butter in a frying pan. It feels like the overall higher survivability of classes in general has devalued debuff mechanics, healers, and tactical game play." He's already at the max difficulty in the game and it's easy mode. Several types of gameplay are devalued compared to raw DPS. And he's not the only one who's brought this up over the last few months. But every time it is brought up, the response is a lot of hate and boils down to 'we don't need more challenge, so shut up'. My caution to you and others is to watch what you ask for. If all those people start leaving, the population will erode and you may end up with a husk.

So if this complaint about the game being too easy keeps coming up then why do others ignore it and shout the person down? This is a perilous response.

Do you think the devs thought Psi Dart was part of the Regen set? That would explain the stealth nerf.

Doesn't every TF place you in subservient role? Positron could save the dam in 30 sec but instead he finds some lackeys looking for influence to do it for him while he stands on a pedestal.

This sounds like a 'how to play' guide.

Sounds like the next XP farm to me!

Are you going to answer the question or continue to tell them how unimportant you think it is?

So casual play. Fire is mainly ranged and so is dark control. So stay back and control, blast, blast, control. Sorcery works well with that strategy. You can replace your t2 blast with arcane bolt. Use buffs on your pets... enflamed haunt? Skip .most/all melee attacks. Slot up living shadows to keep groups at distance. Take fire epic pool for more ranged air. Hunt kill skullz

The real outrage is how the phalanx dumps miss liberty's body on the cold stone of atlas' pedestal while lamenting her loss.

What is it you're planning to use this dominator for?

I have one with permadom build that focuses on Stun stacking as his thing. In his mid 20s atm, but will be a monster when I'm done.

I have Melee Partial Radial Core on a Brute. I felt the same as you, but decided to really test it after reading this post. Here's what I did: I shut off all toggles. I opened my combat attributes and toggled monitoring on several positional and type defenses. I went to sharkhead isle and stood in a crowd of angry miners... 10-12 I clicked Melee Partial Core hybrid toggle and observed. Primary results: My defense increased by 1.20% for each mob in melee range up to a maximum of 7 stacks (+8.4% total). This is one less than the target cap listed in the Info box. Other observations: There seems to be a 'to hit' requirement. At least it was a guaranteed Def boost for in range mobs. The duration for each mob 'hit' lasted only so long as they were in range it seemed. The moment them moved more than a few feet away, the Def boost was lost. There seems to be a delay between reacquiring the Def boost and when a mob came back in melee range. There is a 'Critical' hit component whereby some 'hits' award double Def. I saw my def boost go up to +12% total at times (so 10 stacks, but some of those were 2x 'critical' stacks). However, this only seemed to work in the first portion of the power's activation. I suspect this is a type of decay effect like you see with Destiny powers. Conclusions The power works, but it can seem like it doesn't at times because of the following factors: There is some sort of to hit roll / pulse frequency, so the power is not 'always on'. The Def boost duration is only a couple seconds after a target leaves melee range. If mobs are not in range or leave range when the power checks for 'to hit' / pulses, you don't gain the benefit until they reenter the area on a later pulse and get checked again. You can get double critical stacks but only in the first portion of the power's activation, so some times your Def boost is really high, but later it decays to not much. So for a longer fight, it will basically be gone if you kill all the mins and are left with a solo boss.

Static Field is a bit more OP than that. It's hands-down the best sleep in the game. From the in-game stats from my lvl 50 controller: 1.88 endurance on target 3.00 magnitude sleep for 25.33s on target 5.00% chance for 1.00 magnitude sleep for 29.06s on target 50.00% chance for -3.00%% endurance on target -40.00%% run speed for 25.50s on target -40.00%% fly speed for 25.50s on target -40.00%% jump speed for 25.50s on target -40.00%% strength to jump height for 25.50s on target So it does the mag 3 sleep, drains endurance as you mentioned, but also has a pretty hefty slow effect. By comparison, Ice Slick does -90% run spd only and Quick Sand does -50% run and prevents jumping. I find that amount of across the board slow pretty tasty and actually slot mine for slow with dmg proc as well. Keeps the group in place sleeping and slowed while they get slowed (hover in melee running Conductive Aura). If you were to give each of the other AoE sleeps a trifecta like that: some sleep, and 2 different debuffs, they were be really solid. Much better than they are now. I suspect that because they do some minor damage that they were nerfed in effectiveness by design. However, that initial damage actually makes them dangerous to use as you trigger a response attack before the sleep takes hold (that's why mind's AoE sleep is way better). I'd remove that damage in a heartbeat to get something akin to what I proposed above - patch sleeps with debuffs. As far as losing the domination boost... I'd be willing to sacrifice that. I'm pretty confident most doms aren't relying on their AoE sleep (outside of Mind and Elec) as an effective longterm boss control anyway.

Earth Control comes with gobs of control and most of it is AoE patches and clicks. So mobs will always be locked down and debuffed to oblivion. I'd put a bunch of dmg procs in those powers. With all that control and debuff, you should be able to get right into the thick of fights and start pounding. Sadly, dark is a little light on melee... you don't get a 3rd melee attack until lvl 38. But all your attacks are going to bring -to hit, so you should be pretty safe. I like soul mastery for Dark Obliteration and Soul Drain to help with the melee combat. Combined with your 2 punches and Engulfing Darkness + Gather Shadows and you should be able to mash enemies into paste. Don't forget you also have your earth pet who prefers melee as well and can tank for you.

I think the solution to all the AoE sleeps is not upping the magnitude, but to give them the same treatment as electric control's sleep. Static Field is both control and debuff that reapplies its effect every couple seconds. What if Ice's Flash Freeze was a super cool patch that slept and slowed anyone who entered? Earth's Salt Crystals was a fossilizing patch that slept and crystallized anyone who entered, lowering their def? Plant's sleep spores created a lingering cloud that slept and debuffed regeneration? Mind's sleep I think is okay as a click, but I'd add in a -rch or -dmg debuff when the creature is awakened. Overall numbers are kept the same, but the mechanics are altered with debuff side effects added.

Wind / Savage would be beyond cool. No Ball Lightning? Basically PB AoE, which would fit your concept of melee only. Probably get more mileage than the Guardian.

Please stop with the imaginary situations for when / how dim shift is useful. Here's what actually happens on a team with a grav using dimension shift: Brute / Tanker type engages in melee drawing aggro. Ranged attackers and controllers launch powers at clustered mob. Ranged attackers and controllers scream WTF because none of their powers land because the one knuckle head grav tossed Dim Shift on the melee. Brute / Tanker get pwnd because they're now soloing a bunch of mobs without back up. Ranged buffers and debuffers fire last desperate powers to save brute/ tanker. Ranged buffers and debuffers scream WTF because none of their powers land to save the brute/tanker because knuckle head grav's Dim Shift is still lingering on the melee. Team manages to escape / overcome after dim shift finally dissipates. Team is wondering wtf just happened. The missions were going so smoothly before the grav dim shifter showed up. Team thinks it was just a fluke and the guy mis-clicked his power. Team realizes in horror that no, this grav actually thinks dim shift is a useable power and keeps tossing it every encounter the rest of the mission. Team ends up breaking up because now everything is taking 3x as long to defeat and half the team's powers keep getting wasted.

Why is this download taking so long?

I went fight pool for the added smash / lethal + elec mastery shield and ball lightning. You do your best controlling in melee for sure. Mobs are sleeping, drained, and to hit debuffed to the point of pitiful. You just keep hitting them with jolting chance (hold proc added) + your ST attacks until defeated. Damage is a bit plodding, but survivability is sky high.