Machariel

Fair enough, but in my opinion that is much less of a case of "lol get good" so much as a case of "I hope you picked the singular Dominator assault set that happens to also contain (one of) the best power(s) in the game for soloing AVs." Not being able to do that with /Fiery or /Dark or /Energy doesn't make you unskilled, it means you didn't pick the set with Drain Psyche in it. 🙄

I don't want to call this player a liar but I would be very skeptical to see a dominator, an archetype that almost completely lacks any form of debuff or self-sustain, soloing GMs regularly while leveling with SOs with no accolades or temp powers. Incredibly skeptical. Would like to see videos.

So... PPM definitely does NOT mean that "it has a chance of firing 4 times in a minute so if you use it on a power that takes 4 minutes to recharge it will proc 16 times, QED." This is emphatically not how procs work in this game. The PPM value means, basically, "If you used this power on cooldown, and only factored in the base recharge, enhancement value slotting, and animation time, how often would you see it go off?" Under these conditions, and in a single target power, 3 PPM means just what it says and you'll see it about 3 times a minute. In a power that affects multiple targets the area factor comes into consideration to reduce the proc chance per target, but overall you should see it MUCH MORE than the 3 times per minute - but maybe you'll shoot the power at 16 duders and only see it proc 3 times. This definitely does not mean that you won't see it proc again for the next 58 seconds because you already hit the "3 procs per minute". You are correct that, due to the area factor, the proc chance, per target, is lower in an AoE attack than in a single target attack. However, it is still very possible for that proc chance, even after being reduced by the area factor, to be over 90%. This is very easy to do in Vines or other AoE holds because their recharges are incredibly long. In fact, as I mentioned in my post above, you can shove enough recharge in these powers to be ED capped for recharge and still have a 90% (maximum) proc rate. The base recharge of Fireball is high enough that procs slotted into it can ALSO have a 90% proc chance. But, because its cooldown is so much shorter, this proc chance plummets dramatically as you start to slot recharge into it (from 90% down to 35% to 40%). Ordinarily you would want to slot recharge into Fireball because it is an incredibly good attack and it would be insane to use it only once every 32 seconds (it's base recharge). But if you're a pimped out Permadom who sits at 175%+ global recharge 100% of the time, slotting recharge into fireball takes it from about 11.5 seconds to 8.5 seconds - so you save three seconds but cut the proc chance by almost 2/3rds. Before typing this I took my main into a Battle Maiden map and threw out a Vines at a spawn. As expected, I got the single damage proc to go off on basically (it may have been literally) all of them - not unlikely with a 90% proc chance. Then I threw a Fireball at the same spawn and was pleased to see the Positron's Blast damage proc ALSO go off on every target (as well as the Annihilation Proc, but less often! Yay!) tl;dr I'm not sure what your math is but the 90% proc chance, per target, predicted both by Mids and by a basic bit of algebra that you can verify for yourself, seems to be correct and there's no fundamental difference between 90% in an AoE hold and 90% in a Fireball.

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Procs_Per_Minute EDIT: I'm currently testing damage procs in both vines and fireball right now. Watch this space!

vov I'll check it out, I just figure that if Mids says 90% chance of a proc on Fireball and a 90% chance of proc on Total Domination or Vines or whatever there's no reason to think that the 90% means "2160 damage on 1.33 seconds" (Total Domination is a 2.03 sec cast time BTW) but that 2 damage procs in Fireball, that also have a 90% chance, don't also mean "an extra ~150 damage per target on average". The proc chance would have to be very low for a 90% chance of firing off, at ANY target, at least once, to not be a statistical near-certainty given a lot of targets. I don't see the justification to start off your post by saying "You don't read very well" and I think you should turn down the defensiveness a fair notch.

Actually if you slot it with positrons blast and leave out the damage/recharge IO you get a 90% (that is, capped) proc chance from 2 damage procs, each of which deals nearly half the damage of the ED-capped power itself. Positrons blast has very low set enhancements for recharge as the damage/recharge IO is the only one in the set with a Rech component. So if you are getting all of your recharge from set bonuses and hasten and can live with fireball recharging in 10 seconds as opposed to 8 I think it’s a pretty good place for damage procs. I absolutely would not say that procs are meaningless in the power.

I really don't understand why some people respond to build advice with "of course I can't do that, it doesn't fit my concept!" - well how in blazes was anyone else supposed to know? It's perfectly reasonable to say "nah, that doesn't fit my concept" (it's the only reason I don't take the Fly Trap pet on my Plant/Fire) but it's crazy to be indignant about it. I was curious about this and went into Mids to investigate and my answer is: one to two Fireballs, depending on slotting, build up effects, incarnate powers, etc, and allowing Fireball to also, of course, hit 16 targets. You can slot 4 damage procs into a power that has only a hold component (discounting the fiery orb ATO which may be super good, I dunno). Those 4 damage procs (3 regular, 1 purple) will do 290 damage on average. My current fireball slotting does about 150 damage without embrace of fire (slotted with ragnarok and the annihilation proc, which I should probably change). With embrace of fire, a posi's blast set, and a javelin volley proc Mids says 310 (and I think I'll be respeccing into that now that I've looked at the numbers). So it's about even, depending on slotting. The AoE hold does have the advantage of being a larger radius and therefore easier to get to the target cap as well as the fact that it, you know, comes stapled to a 20-something second mag 6 hold. Honestly, with how much recharge Dominators are building for anyway, it's definitely a niche idea but not as bad as I thought it would be. A number of people find mass holds to be very skippable powers. I think they're worth taking as "oh-fudge" buttons that also happen to take very good set bonuses (Basilisk's Gaze!) even though I rarely use mine. So in my case, stuffing it with damage procs would be something I might consider. A guaranteed big damage AoE plus a high magnitude, short duration hold sort of feels like a Dominator nuke to me. I'm obviously assuming that Fireball has the same target cap as the AoE hold. If it has a smaller target cap than the hold then obviously I'd be even more sympathetic to this idea. But either way, as a source of sustained AoE, the fireball is going to come out way ahead as the fireball recharges in ~8 to ~10 seconds and the AoE hold recharges in ~65+. (ED capped for recharge and with 177.5% from other sources I got it down to a little under 64 seconds)

Does the Build Up proc actually affect the phantom army? I'm sure it will trigger and the icon will show up, but I'm not sure how the buff actually works applied to them (I think the game treats it as a power that they cast on themselves)? If not, I guess it would go in Phantasm. In any case, looks like solid advice and I'll put it to work on my newly minted lvl50 Ill/Rad 🙂 Thanks!

By golly, you are correct. Time for another respec - thanks for the free slot! 💕

Even if you "know how to deal with it" (not exactly rocket surgery), the extra positioning, communication, or whatever, that's required to get to that point, still slows the team down. Whether that bothers you or not is a personal playstyle preference. "Takes exactly as long as herding the mobs to maximize effect of AoEs." - exactly - it's almost always a waste of time, except that at least a dedicated tank can be one or two groups ahead of the rest of the team dutifully pulling spawns together. My least favorite teams, of all kinds, are ones where the tank insists on pulling spawns together and having the other 7 people just sit on their hands while the tank plays ring around the rosy with the map.

I think at this point the BAF is easy enough and there should be so much AoE +defense that there's no real benefit to making your bots fly, and if it's frustrating people (especially maybe melees who are trying to chase down prisoners?), the polite thing to do is to turn it off. Certainly EVERYONE could go to Null the Gull and turn it off on all of their characters but I definitely haven't, perhaps because I've literally never seen anyone use Group Fly.

Some thoughts: - 28 points of knockback protection is really excessive and you could use different procs in those slots - Dark Nova can take the Gaussian's proc or the Perf Shifter proc, you'll want a slow resist IO somewhere, etc. - I get that you've slotted Stygian Circle for bonuses but you can really slap a recharge or an end/recharge in there and call it a day. With 2 bodies it refills your health with no enhancements and with 4 bodies it refills your endurance. - Similarly, thanks to Stygian Circle you can put a Panacea Proc into Health and save a slot there - recovery bonuses are great usually but when you have access to so much end, why spend the slot? (i guess if you exemplar really low and don't have Stygian, but that's pretty niche) - I'd slot Ebon eye over Dark Nova Bolt but I wouldn't put any slots in either, as you have so much recharge that you can just cycle Blast/Emanation/Detonation in Nova form pretty much - Strongly consider putting KB to KD procs in Gravitic Emanation, Unchain Essence, and the 2 Nova AoEs. (perhaps with the slots you saved from Stygian Circle or Dark Nova Bolt) Here's a few builds if you want to take a look at them. The first is my current Tri-Form Warshade on Excelsior, Novaclipse. I built for 32.5 S/L defense and also wound up with perma hasten, 3 pets, 38 second quasar, etc. I'd like to improve this build by swapping the Positron's Blast in Unchain for Ragnarok, and 4 slot Gravitic Emanation with damage procs, force feedback, and KB to KD, but this is pretty close to the final build and I may prefer to spend the resources on a different character (the cost of 5 purples still goes a long way). If you choose not to slot for defense (as you've done) then you free up a LOT of slots for more damage procs, even more recharge, etc. Here's the same build but slotted for maximum recharge. I'd do further tweaking if this were my actual build (for example, you can then get away with only one slot in Hasten). Warshades can really stuff a LOT of recharge. . . . almost all of the powers that will be taking 4+ slots will accept a wide variety of recharge bonuses. (Everything except Eclipse, really). You could fit even more recharge if you put a Basilisk's Gaze or something into Gravity Well but once you've built for THAT MUCH recharge you should just stuff it full of damage procs (average damage over 1k with both mires maxed out, lmao).

I honestly think it’s fine. Most of the time help is relatively quiet with only a few people talking. Nobody should get mad if someone asks them to take a clearly social conversation out of help chat though.

A little late to this, but in the past few weeks I leveled and IOd out both a Tri-Form Warshade and a Melee Fortunata (for the first time - I didn't get very far on live with either of them), so here's my impressions on specifically Warshade vs Fortunata: AoE: They can both do a lot of AoE damage. Warshade gets a LOT of AoE very early (nova gets 2 good AoEs, dwarf has mire, human mire at lvl 12). Fortunata gets 4 good-ish AoE attacks (spin, dart burst, psi shockwave, psi tornado), each of which is serviceable, and Psi Wail which is insane... but at level 32. The Warshade will have better AoE if you need to do AoE forever. Quasar is great and I wish Unchain Essence recharged faster (it's slower than Quasar!). Single Target: Fortunata / Widow all the way. You get a very nasty ST attack chain very early in the core Blood Widow powers. Warshades can run out of gas against a single target. A note about damage in general: Warshades do almost exclusively (outside of 2 dwarf attacks and Gravimetric Snare (lol)) Negative energy damage. Widows can do Lethal and Psionic and some Toxic thrown in. Averaged over all enemies in the game I'm not sure what is better, but do I know that Psionic has some niche applications. Sustainability: A Fortunata can very readily softcap her own defenses (and her teammates'), but if you want resists and healing you'll have to build/slot for it. The medicine pool is not mandatory, but it's popular and for good reason. Meanwhile, the Warshade can readily hardcap his own resistances (thanks Eclipse!) and has insane self-heal (Stygian Circle!) AND has an actually great self-rez (Stygian Return!). The Warshade is definitely more sustainable, but both of them are pretty tough to kill. Crowd Control: Pretty much a wash, but both Warshades and Fortunatas can spit out a lot of stuns and holds if they're so inclined. However, neither of them feel like they really need access to CC because they have so much AoE and sustainability. Warshades lose a point here to the slot tax to convert their excessive KB to KD, which really sucks on a triform Warshade that is already starved for slots. I think they both have a similar philosophy towards crowd control - they're not using it to keep an entire spawn locked down like a controller or dominator, but they're using just enough to protect themselves while they continue to dumpster everything around them. Team Support / Utility: Fortunatas score a point here for their leadership powers + mind link, if you're not off nuking a different mob. Neither of them bring significant heals, buffs, or debuffs. Warshades get TP friend and 2 different travel powers for free, and my Tri-Form had so many extra power slots that I took Hover, Fly, and Afterburner anyway. Fortunata was more like "I want to take 6 utility powers but I only have room for 4" - quite good enough by any rational standard.

For my money I'd go one of two ways on a Warshade: Either human-only (and I'd respec into this at 50) or Tri-Form, always form-shifting, MF Warshade. Human-only: +Able to run toggles (makes hitting defense values a lot easier + inky aspect + damage aura) +Much less stressful to play, not reliant on keybinds. +Better able to leverage damage procs in your build (probably better for sustained ST damage which is a weakness of any warshade) - Fewer utility powers in build - No mez protection outside of incarnates Tri-form MF pros: +The AoE damage is great. Double mire is 👌 +LOTS of utility powers. Taunt on dwarf form can help keep pets alive. +Really strong when exemplared -Very busy playstyle, can be overwhelming. Heavily reliant on learning keybinds. I prefer the Triform, especially once I've gotten the hang of the keybinds.

Finally managed to make the window, thanks to the dev and GM team again for all that you all do, and similar thanks to everyone else who's been donating and contributing and keeping this great game alive! 💕💕💕

Update: Did Posi 1 and Posi 2 today so I thought I'd share my low-level impressions as well. Dominate continues to be an absolute MVP when scaled down, deleting even level or +1 minions on one shot and taking massive chunks out of CoT bosses. Early access to psi damage continues to be useful (goodbye Clockwork 💁‍♀️) and in these conditions I missed having Subdue instead of Mental Blast, but it was still pretty smooth. It's unlikely you'll have to exemplar lower than this which is nice because it means you'll always have Mask Presence and stealthRecall Friend if you want to speed through TFs (though you're stuck with ninja run). I couldn't quite carelessly hurl myself at mobs at level 15 without Foresight and Mind Link but for any other content I'll do I'll have those. If I respec again I think I'll take Super Speed earlier and put off TT:L or Total Domination. At the other end of the level spectrum, Psionic Wail is such a powerful nuke that I think we might need to ask the UN about WMDs. My goodness.

Yeah, that conditional Absorb + Scaling Damage Resistance is really sweet. 👌 I'm going to have to start working that into my builds and its especially great on widows. I'm having a lot of fun with my Widow. She solos well, she caps defenses on teams, she's got multiple flexible attack chains, access to psi damage on demand (really useful on ITF), and a ton of utility. Thanks again for the writeup!

I recently got my Fortunata / Fortunado up to 50+1 (literally her only Incarnate power is Tier 3 Musculature) and I too had a bunch of attacks: ST Melee: Follow Up, Lunge, Strike, Swipe ST Ranged: Dominate, Subdue AoE Melee: Spin, Psychic Wail AoE Ranged: Psychic Tornado I found I didn't like having only Psychic Tornado for ranged AoE and I wasn't using Swipe or Subdue very much. Meanwhile, I was using the heck out of Dominate because mine is slotted with a +5 acc/dam IO and the rest of it is damage procs. In that case, it deals nearly as much damage as Strike, but from range and with a free hold attached to it. On the AoE side, Psychic Wail is of course amazing but I felt like I was leaning on it really hard for AoE and if enemies weren't bunched up, whittling them down with Psionic Tornado was a real pain. I guess Spin is OP but I found myself wanting another ranged option. I'd like to just swap out Strike for Psychic Scream, but I can't due to level requirements. So I figured I'd swap Swipe for TK blast (or Mental Blast if I want more pure /psi damage) and Subdue (sadly) for Dart Burst. This way I keep the same strong ST attack chain and gain stronger AoE clearing ability, and hopefully I won't miss Subdue very much. Subdue deals about 300 whereas Mental Blast and TK do about 200, but I used it so rarely that it probably won't matter. I also do lose a 3.75% ranged defense bonus but whatever. Meanwhile my two ranged AoEs are both 30 degree, 60 yard range cones, and I prefer cones to targeted AoE anyway. So now I have: ST Melee: Follow Up, Lunge, Strike ST Ranged: Dominate, Mental Blast AoE Melee: Spin, Psychic Wail AoE Ranged: Dart Burst, Psychic Scream Here's the build. I just wish I had room to fit a travel power, but I don't feel too bad getting around with ninja run. I might swap back into it if I find I don't need the Medicine pool. Total Domination is definitely skippable too but it's a nice utility power (stack it with Dominate to hold bosses instantly!) and the set bonuses for Basilisk's Gaze are really good.

I've been playing my AR/Traps and got her up into the high 40s and here's my First Impressions (the character's name, hohoho) of traps: Traps is really good if you are playing with a team that's willing to work around you and, more importantly, you're playing in "challenging" content, whatever that happens to be for your level & skill level. On an 'old school' team with dedicated tankers and if the team has a few unslotted lowbies on it, Traps feels like a very reliable way to make hard fights easier and you can set up ridiculous killzones and pull entire rooms on mid-level missions and get away with it. If you're of the patient build you can drop trip mines everywhere I suppose. But I'm not looking forward to playing her at 50 because in an environment of judgement powers, crashless nukes, and just plain old good AoE, Traps is VERY slow. AR/Traps is particularly painful because then I'm just a bad AR blaster with no secondary. Worse, if you want to keep up with a fast moving team that means that you have to prioritize recharge in your build. Basically what I'm getting at is that if you're on a team that's wiping spawns in less than 30 seconds, you're going to feel pretty silly playing Traps. I've been thinking about rolling the character as a Huntsman instead since that gets you the pew pew of AR, good AoE with 2 grenades, and a boatload of free defense and -Res, which is what I wanted out of Traps, and then I wouldn't have to worry about leaving my debuffs behind on the floor every so often.

I gotta say I dunno about this build. I feel like I must be missing something because it doesn't have defense, it doesn't go nuts on damage procs, it's right on the edge of perma-eclipse (84 second recharge, but a 6 second gap on hasten)... you say you want to be maximally efficient with your slots but you've got 6 slots in Orbiting Death of all things, and I don't think a triform build wants to be pausing for two seconds to turn on a damage aura every time they drop into human form! Meanwhile you've skipped Unchain Essence which is a great power and also takes sets with recharge bonuses. . . I don't want to belabor the point but I see a lot of slots used inefficiently. Like for example all of the slots in Health and Stamina - you have 3 free places to slot a Performance Shifter and Panacea procs, you refill your endurance every 90 seconds with Eclipse and whenever you want with Stygian Circle (which refills your health too). You've made sure to get Dark Nova Emanation out to almost 100 yards, but don't you want to stay close to be using Mires and Quasar anyway?

Yep, all of your set bonuses will work normally in all of your forms 🙂

I thought I remembered that there were some psionic attacks that didn't have a positional damage type, in which case it would have some utility, albeit marginal since the psionic resist is so high. But if I'm mistaken then you're absolutely correct and there's no point to it whatsoever 🙂

It's actually kind of a funny tradeoff: I'm looking at Dominate slotted with a lvl 50+5 acc/dam IO and 5 damage procs, including the Apocalypse damage proc. Meanwhile, the other 5 pieces of Apocalyspe are in Subdue. I can put the Absorb proc into Dominate in place of the Apocalypse proc and then 6 slot Subdue with Apocalypse. If I did this I'd get access to the absorb proc basically on demand (since Dominate is such a good attack as you've noted) AND I get to softcap my psionic defense. But then Dominate does a lot less damage, which is a big deal since it's part of both the melee and ranged ST attack chain, and the purple set is kind of going to waste because it's stuck in Subdue. It's a shame that the absorb proc comes stapled to a 53% recharge enhancement because I feel like that has to be tanking my proc chances :s and going from a 3 sec CD to a 2.5 sec is kind of whatever. I guess I'll try it both ways.

I'm not 100% sure how well this will work, but I definitely wouldn't slot Total Domination with damage procs - sure they'll all probably go off on it but the recharge time is so long as it's an AoE hold. However, Dominate is a great place for them (maybe that's what you meant to do?) 🙂