Machariel

This is a great build and a great writeup! I've been tweaking the build for almost 2 hours now it feels like and I came up with this - it was largely inspired by yours and I think I adopted a lot of your build goals. I went a slightly different direction in my utility powers and power selection (might be nice to have an AoE early so I took Dart Burst) and built for a LOT more recharge (5 seconds off perma hasten), because. . . well I'm just used to having hasten, haha. I made a bunch of other changes and wound up with a little bit improved resists, pretty much a wash on defense, and a different set of utility powers. Based on your early level testing I tried to find room for a well slotted dart burst as it's a nice AoE at lower levels (I prefer it to Psychic Scream because it casts faster). A few questions: 1) Do you have to actually use Dominate to get the Absorb proc or does it just go off on its own when you're at low health? I'd love to be able to toss the Entomb proc into Total Domination and forget about it. 2) Would it be worth dumping the Unbreakable Constraint proc from Dominate in exchange for the last piece of Apocalypse, which would give me 0,2% off of softcapped Psi defense? Here's what I'm looking at for my newly minted Fortunata:

I'd definitely take Strangler, Roots, Seeds of Confusion, and Carrion Creepers. I strongly prefer taking Vines as a backup big AoE control power. The pet is pretty good, though I've always skipped it on my Plant/Fire (concept mostly). Roots is very useful for keeping enemies in one place after dropping Seeds and while creepers does slow and immobilize it's not quite as reliable, and Roots is also IMO the best place for the Ascendancy of the Dominator set. I'd take Psychic Scream if you want a decent AoE power that will be available to you as you exemplar down. But it's skippable. Either way. For pools I'd recommend either Leadership (Maneuvers, Tactics, Vengeance) or Fighting (Kick, Tough, Weave). The former is useful on its own merits and gets you 2 places to slot a luck of the gambler. The latter is also useful on its own merits, gives you 1 LoTG in weave, and lets you slot the 2 +3% defense IOs in tough if you don't end up taking an epic shield (in which case you can put them there). Honestly I'd drop the Stealth pool and get your stealth from super speed + stealth IO in sprint, and then take both the fighting and leadership pools. For Epic / Patron pools, both Ice and Fire are very good, but if you don't want those Leviathan Mastery is pretty good (Water Spout does a lot of AoE damage) or Mace Mastery for the ever popular scorpion shield if you're going the S/L defense route. I'd stay far away from Psionic, Primal Forces, and probably Soul as well.

Will starting a slow snipe and deliberately cancelling it put you into Combat mode? i like to use my snipe power to rapidly build up Domination by repeatedly activating and interrupting the power and it would be nice to keep that functionality. Other than that, I’m 100% on board with these changes! (What, no buffs for Fiery Assault? :P)

A few thoughts about the first build (didn't look at the second one) 1) As I understand it a big selling point of /psi is that you can get Drain Psyche to be perma quite readily, since you're already building for recharge for perma hasten and permadom. So, I would definitely slot some recharge into Drain Psyche to get it close to 30 seconds. 2) Once you have perma drain psyche you definitely don't need Spirit Tree, which is a pretty marginal power. You could swap it for Mind Probe or something which is a very high DPA attack if i remember correctly. 3) You can swap Invisibility for Afterburner without really losing anything 4) I'd take all the sets out of Carrion Creepers and instead stuff it with procs. I like the annihilation chance for -res, and then the damage procs from Posi's, Gladiator's, Trap of the Hunter, and Impeded Swiftness. Creepers with procs is a lot of free damage. 5) Put 6 slots in the snipe and get a 5th piece of Sting of the Manticore (7.5% recharge!) and the Decimation build up proc - trust me :) 6) I'd swap the -rech proc in Basilisk's gaze for a 4th enhancement to improve the enhancement values, and free up 2 slots in vines by swapping the Lockdown set for another 4 basilisk's gaze. The chance for +2 mag hold in Vines feels pretty silly when it will probably go off on a minion or LT or something, doesn't last very long, and when you can just follow it up with Strangler for 8 mag of hold anyway. Similarly I'm not a huge fan of the chance for hold proc in Psionic dart. 7) Why bother with all 6 pieces of Positron's blast in Psychic Scream? the 6pc bonus isn't that useful - I'd make that a proc or frankenslot for better enhancement values as Positron's blast doesn't have the greatest enhancements (not much recharge) 8- Similarly I think the psi/status resist proc in Fire Shield is kind of whatever since your status resist is 100% uptime on Domination.

Shield Charge definitely works while flying and my Stalker has hover for exactly this reason. I just wish Hover was faster!

I think Fire Mastery is a great choice as it has two quite strong AoE attacks in Fireball and Rain of Fire. I like Rise of the Phoenix as well - the ability to erase most mistakes lets you sometimes play a lot more aggressively than you'd be able to otherwise. Ice is also excellent and Sleet is a much better debuff than Melt Armor on Dominators (Melt Armor has a very small radius),

Huh. I always felt that Incinerate was better but I guess that must have been subjective - guess I should consider swapping Incinerate for Fire Blast then (though then I won't have a place for Hecatomb. . .). Thanks for crunching the numbers!

Oof, that's a rough hit. I'll probably still take them because it's still a pretty nice power (definitely I'll continue to take it over Fire Blast), but that's a pretty big hit to dominators. One nice thing about taking snipes on Dominators is that you can build up your domination bar very fast by starting the power and deliberately interrupting it, so I often use that + Ageless epiphany before fights if I didn't have Domination up already.

I think the Chance for Hide should always go into your Assassin's Strike/Flurry/Slash/whatever, because you don't want to run the risk of going into hide off of a different attack, having 3 stacks of assassin's focus, and then not wanting to use your AS because you'd be stuck in the longer "attack from hide" animation. Conversely, if you slot it into your AS itself, then whenever you open up with an AS from hide or use it because you have the 3 stacks of focus, you can then usually follow it up with a guaranteed crit of your best non-AS attack. This is "pretty dank", as the kids say. I believe the Chance to Recharge Build Up ATO proc gives ALL of your attack powers a chance to recharge build up, so I don't think it actually matters where you put it.

I honestly think they're worth taking anyway since Tactics + Kismet + small yellow will get you perma for the duration of the inspiration, and the to-hit buffs from Build Up (and build-up proc effects) and Domination are all up collectively often enough that you can get a lot of uptime on the snipe. I take it on my Plant/Fire/Fire, which has neither Link Minds nor a +tohit effect from Build Up (because /Fiery gets Embrace of Fire instead), and I definitely get a lot of mileage out of it. My preferred slotting for snipes is the Sting of the Manticore set (5 pieces for the 7.5% recharge) and the Decimation chance for build up, which goes off quite frequently in a snipe power. (Though statistically maybe it's better in Blaze or something, I dunno).

I believe it was a design choice on Gravity to make the Hold powers, rather than the immobilize powers, prevent knockback. Why that choice was made (by the original Paragon devs), I'm not sure. Maybe I'm misremembering but I thought that back on Live, Immobilize powers usually just prevented the knockback instead of converting it to knockdown (which is why AoE Immob + Bonfire didn't work before the KB to KD IOs).

Even without perma-snipe, I would probably take the Snipe in every powerset at this point - Tactics + Kismet IO + a small yellow gets you fast snipe on demand and it seems a small price to pay to get access to such a high-DPA attack. I find the Snipe to be a good place to slot the Decimation: Chance for Build Up proc as well. I haven't played much with /psi myself, but I'd definitely plan to include Lift in your attack chain since it gives you some smashing damage, which is usually good against enemies that heavily resist /psi.

A couple thoughts off the top of my head: 1) Can you actually even slot both Frozen Blast and the Superior Frozen Blast in-game? 2) Carrion Creepers is a great power to put damage procs into since it takes so many kinds 3) The contagious confusion proc in Seeds of Confusion is absolutely insane (it means it effectively never "misses" and will generally mean that you can get a few seconds of confuse on bosses even if Domination is down for some reason) and the 5% ranged defense bonus isn't bad either. 4) You probably don't need so much +tohit in Spot Prey, and you should definitely put the Gaussian's chance for build up proc in it. 5) I assume you meant to put the +3% defense Steadfast Protection in instead of the knockback protection IO. 6) Taking the 2nd slot out of Assault and putting it into Health lets you slot the Miracle +Recovery IO, which nets you +0.19 end/sec recovery (Assault uses 0.06 more but the IO gives you +0.25) 7) A full Panacea set is a pretty expensive way to get 7.5% recharge. I'd put either 5 Doctored Wounds into Blood Craze (5% recharge) or the full set of Preventive Medicine (8.75% recharge and a nice endurance discount) After playing in Pine's for a while I came up with this, which I don't think is perfect, but I do think it makes better use of your slots in some ways :) I dropped Cross Punch because i feel like you should have enough good attacks with Savage Assault. I'd like to take the slots out of Kick, too. http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1462&c=680&a=1360&f=HEX&dc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

I really like the idea of Dual Blades and I don't mind the damage type, but I thought I read somewhere that to get the best performance out of dual blades you had to pretty much forgo the combo system for the best DPS? I just got my BS/SD up to 50 and I wish I had picked a faster animating set than Broad Sword, but I'm not sure whether I'd pick Ninja Blade or Dual Blades if I rerolled.

Manuevers w/LoTG, Tactics + Gaussian's (if I don't have a build up power), Vengeance w/LoTG is my general go to. I like the extra tohit and the Leadership pool is great because it gets 2 LoTG mules attached to pretty decent powers. I guess if you have +tohit from somewhere else then I'd take Assault, and if I'm not taking both Maneuvers and Vengeance I'm probably not taking Leadership at all. That's just my preference though :)

You know what's faster? not having 7 people sit bored at their keyboard while the designated Lord And God Team Leader Tank plays ring around the rosy with the mission map :)

Stalker's Guile should definitely go into Assassin's Strike, because if you put it into any other power then you'll use the power, go into hide, and then not want to AS because you'd get stuck with the long animation. Conversely, if you put it into AS, you can AS from hide, immediately go back into hide, and get a free crit with your next-best hitting power. This is Pretty Great . The other set (i forget what it's called) can actually go into any power, since the proc gives ALL of your powers a chance to recharge build up for free (!). The Stalker ATOs are both completely insane.

I don't think I've ever seen a thread turn into a absolute sh--show faster than this one. "Hey, maybe it would be a good idea to have a dedicated DFB channel" turned into psychoanalysis and accusations of elitism in the first few posts.

As someone who enjoys the high-level content and runs level 50 radio and tip missions just to relax I resent being called a "Locust." If you want to run low- and mid- level content, just start a team and post in LFG. It's not rocket science?

This sounds awesome and might actually provoke (no pun intended) me to try out my first Mastermind. A Scrappermind. (I'm new here but this must be a thing?)

I remember enjoying this change when it came out on live and as far as I understand it, you are correct. This is one reason why I always try to cram as much recharge into a build - it sometimes makes sense possible to underslot for recharge, let your global recharge cover it up, and use the extra slots on damage procs. Unrelated to PPM, this also means you can sometimes underslot for accuracy as a great many sets gives substantial accuracy bonuses (my main is sitting on +48% accuracy from sets which is almost a free IO to every power). However, I didn't get to play with it much on live before the game ended. I've been having a lot of fun with it on Homecoming, though. I'm a big fan of slotting the Decimation Chance for Build Up proc in Snipe powers, since the Snipe sets don't have a lot of recharge enhancement and it's a reasonably long recharge power, so I feel like more often than not I get a free build up out of my snipe. Anytime I can replace Flares in my attack chain with Blazing Bolt + free build up, it's a good time. :P It is pretty much an end-game concern, but I feel it's a significant one. It adds an interesting question to builds: "Do you have too much recharge?"

I would think that Infernal Assault would be about in line with Thorny assault in terms of its melee/ranged breakdown, and there's definitely room for an ability power alongside the 7 attacks and self buff - Fiery gets Consume, Earth gets Mud Pots, Icy gets Chillling Embrace, etc. I really like the idea of using the Summon Hellfire animation as a close range patch attack, similar in concept (though hopefully not cast time) to Ignite. Overall, great concepts. A Fire/Infernal Assault dom would be super cool.

With an afternoon playing in Pine's I came up with this as a sort of no-holds-barred, this is what I would build if it were my main - it ticks off basically all of my goals above: 1: 45.7/38.5/38.5 positionals before Parry & Shadow Meld 2: 1.7 seconds off perma-Hasten (effectively perma) 3: Great mobility - Combat Jumping + Hasten EDIT: Hover! :P for tactical movement and enhanced Afterburner to cross zones :D 4: Triple stealth, if you're into that 5: Lots of useful unique IO procs 6: Exemplars down pretty well - the slotting is quite "bottom heavy". I had to drop the Fighting pool, so S/L resist could be higher, but One With The Shield will cap it anyway. (I'm curious about the Kinetic Combat knockdown proc in Parry with the rationale that if you need to parry you'll benefit from the mitigation, but Parry recharges so quickly that the proc chance will probably be quite low. Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.962 http://www.cohplanner.com/ Click this DataLink to open the build! Smoke Sentinel: Level 50 Magic Stalker Primary Power Set: Broad Sword Secondary Power Set: Shield Defense Power Pool: Flight Power Pool: Concealment Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Leaping Ancillary Pool: Soul Mastery Hero Profile: Level 1: Hack -- SprAssMar-Acc/Dmg(A), SprAssMar-Dmg/Rchg(3), SprAssMar-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(3), SprAssMar-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), SprAssMar-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), SprAssMar-Rchg/Rchg Build Up(7) Level 1: Hide -- Ksm-ToHit+(A), ShlWal-ResDam/Re TP(7), LucoftheG-Rchg+(37) Level 2: Slice -- Obl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(A), Obl-Dmg(9), Obl-Acc/Rchg(9), Obl-%Dam(11), Obl-Dmg/Rchg(11), Obl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(13) Level 4: Deflection -- LucoftheG-Rchg+(A), LucoftheG-Def(17), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx(19), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(19), LucoftheG-Def/Rchg(21), ResDam-I(21) Level 6: Assassin's Slash -- SprStlGl-Acc/Dmg(A), SprStlGl-Dmg/Rchg(23), SprStlGl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(23), SprStlGl-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(25), SprStlGl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(25), SprStlGl-Rchg/Hide%(27) Level 8: Build Up -- GssSynFr--Build%(A) Level 10: Battle Agility -- Rct-Def(A), Rct-Def/EndRdx(27), Rct-EndRdx/Rchg(29), Rct-Def/Rchg(29), Rct-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(31), Rct-ResDam%(31) Level 12: True Grit -- UnbGrd-Max HP%(A), UnbGrd-ResDam(31), GldArm-3defTpProc(33), StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(33), Prv-Absorb%(33), Prv-Heal(34) Level 14: Fly -- BlsoftheZ-Travel(A), BlsoftheZ-Travel/EndRdx(34) Level 16: Active Defense -- RechRdx-I(A) Level 18: Parry -- LucoftheG-Rchg+(A), KntCmb-Acc/Dmg(34), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(36), KntCmb-Knock%(36), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx(36), Mk'Bit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37) Level 20: Against All Odds -- EndRdx-I(A) Level 22: Stealth -- LucoftheG-Rchg+(A), LucoftheG-Def(37) Level 24: Hover -- Flight-I(A) Level 26: Disembowel -- Hct-Dmg(A), Hct-Dam%(39), Hct-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), Hct-Acc/Rchg(40), Hct-Dmg/EndRdx(40), AchHee-ResDeb%(40) Level 28: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(42) Level 30: Afterburner -- BlsoftheZ-Travel(A), BlsoftheZ-Travel/EndRdx(42) Level 32: Head Splitter -- Arm-Dmg(A), Arm-Dam%(42), Arm-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(43), Arm-Acc/Rchg(43), Arm-Dmg/EndRdx(43), AchHee-ResDeb%(45) Level 35: Shield Charge -- Obl-Dmg(A), Obl-Acc/Rchg(45), Obl-Dmg/Rchg(45), Obl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(46), Obl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(46), Obl-%Dam(46) Level 38: One with the Shield -- UnbGrd-ResDam(A), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(39) Level 41: Moonbeam -- StnoftheM-Acc/Dmg(A), StnoftheM-Dmg/EndRdx(48), StnoftheM-Dmg/ActRdx/Rchg(48), StnoftheM-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(48), StnoftheM-Dam%(50), Dcm-Build%(50) Level 44: Grant Cover -- LucoftheG-Rchg+(A) Level 47: Combat Jumping -- RedFrt-Def(A), RedFrt-Def/EndRdx(50) Level 49: Shadow Meld -- DefBuff-I(A) Level 1: Assassination Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Clr-Stlth(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A) Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A) Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 4: Ninja Run Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A) Level 2: Health -- Mrc-Rcvry+(A), Pnc-Heal/+End(13), NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(15) Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A) Level 2: Stamina -- PrfShf-End%(A), PrfShf-EndMod(15), EndMod-I(17) Level 0: Portal Jockey Level 0: Task Force Commander Level 0: The Atlas Medallion Level 0: Freedom Phalanx Reserve Level 50: Musculature Core Paragon Level 50: Void Radial Final Judgement Level 50: Degenerative Core Flawless Interface ------------

So the build that I'm going for is... not done yet. But I feel like if I just try hard enough I can hit the following goals: 1) 45% Melee Defense before using Parry or Shadow Meld - It's pretty easy to build for this because there's a lot of useful sets that give 3.75% or 5% melee defense - I want to keep Parry and Shadow Meld in the build anyway for defense debuffs / exemplaring / doing Incarnate content 2) 32.5%+ ranged & AoE defense - 32.5 means a small purple softcaps you - You get really close to this anyway with Hide + Battle Agility + the two 3% resist IOs, so it's an easy target 3) Enough recharge to have the ideal attack chain - Whatever that is - I figure Build Up -> Moonbeam -> Disembowel -> Headsplitter -> AS 4) High Smashing/Lethal resistance - Should I bother taking Tough? 5) Moonbeam - Even without access to perma-fast snipe, Build Up + Kismet IO puts you over 22% on its own, and Build Up is up a LOT. Plus, you can put the Decimation Build Up proc in Moonbeam, which means that your first two attacks after Moonbeam have THREE!! build up effects (one from the power, one from the Gaussian's proc in build up, and then one from the Decimation proc) 6) Hover/Fly/Afterburner - I'm not a fan of super jump and being able to hover over my teammates to move into position would be pretty sweet. Maybe I won't care about this once I have access to Shield Charge and can yeet into spawns. 7) Perma-Hasten, if possible I'm actually toying with the idea of dumping Hasten. BS/SD doesn't seem to have any big "nuke" powers on very long cooldowns (Domination, Mind Link, Psionic Wail, etc), and with IOs you end up with a ton of recharge anyway. Also, I've been putting my status protection as my autopower and I frequently forget to turn on Hasten (I can manage two autopowers on my Dominator, but tracking Assassin's Focus and my own positioning is a lot more taxing), and I haven't noticed a huge difference. I took Placate but I'm definitely not keeping it. Honestly I just forget that it's there.

Welcome back! My general feeling about Control archetypes is that you should pick one type of defense to build for, and figure that everything else will be covered by your controls, your support abilities, or your AoE damage. If you live in Melee, build for Melee or Slashing/Lethal defense. If you spend most of your time at range, build for Ranged defense. Totally ignore any other form of Defense when you pick your IOs - if you're building for ranged, consider melee to be irrelevant, and vice versa. As a /Kin, you'll spend most of your time in Melee, so I'd build for Melee or Slashing/Lethal defense and Recharge. But, building for Ranged defense will help you absorb the initial volley better. Probably both can work. The low-hanging fruit for defense, in general, is things like the +3% defense IOs (Steadfast Protection, Gladiator's Armor), Scorpion Shield, Weave, Combat Jumping/Hover, roughly in that order. For Weave, Combat Jumping, and Hover, it's sometimes not even worth slotting them for defense, because their defense values are so low (2.25%), and you can better use those slots to get defense bonuses out of other sets. Consume doesn't "need a target" in that you can activate the power at any time, but it 100% definitely needs to hit $targets if you want to get any endurance out of it. I definitely wouldn't take Consume if I had access to Transference.