oedipus_tex

The Level Shift is a hard lean. It's not IOs or build or investment really, its just a level spread that halves the damage of some team members. I wonder if I proposed this differently if it would get more takers: Have super-sidekicked players sidekick equal to the level of the leader instead of one level lower. That would even out the spread. You'd still have players who are ahead or behind, but not such a hard lean. You could also then safely reintroduce +4 enemies for players who are Level Shifted and want to extend that far, because then the teammates are fighting +5s and not +6s. Alternative 2: When sidekicked by a player who is Level Shifted your level is one level below their adjusted level, not their "real level." Same result, different strat.

Like the title says, "If you could slot one ATO on a different archetype, which would it be?" I'm not intimately familiar with all the various ATOs myself so I am curious to hear people's answers.

Good summary. As a tangent, it's been a little surprising to me that Buff-style support characters sets like Thermal, Cold, Empathy, Electric Affinity, etc. haven't become more popular than they are. These sets mostly don't encounter the Purple Patch, so their buffs are always full strength. I can build a Force Field Defender and other than not having Power Boost yet, by level 10 and he'll offer full strength shields to a level 54 team. I don't think that's necessarily an action item we need to do anything about, it's just an interesting data point. It's also the case that shifting +3 mobs down to +4 reduces in-coming damage by around 30%, so maybe the reason these defensive sets aren't as popular is because you basically get a "free" Sonic Resonance character from the Level Shift in terms of damage reduction. Actually, it's a bit better than that, because damage reductions from Level Shifts don't count against your Resistance cap, so toons with 75% or 90% damage resist are getting an additional 30% resistance on top of that. I don't necessarily mind players getting the rewards they currently do for fighting +3s. I just would like members of the same team to be having closer to similar experiences. When I lead teams currently and set the difficulty to +4 I know a lot of my teammates are fighting +5s and I and a handful of others are fighting +3s. There isn't a setting that really evens out that difficulty. I'm excited by the changes Arachne mentioned but also a little nervous, partly because I wonder if the teammates fighting+5s will feel they're too debuffed to contribute. I think the Homecoming team has always been fair and reasonable, so I am excited to see what they settle on.

It's the freebie version of OBS. It doesn't sound too awful on my end, a little clippy and canned maybe. But maybe thats just how the game sounds on this laptop so I am just used to it.

There are a couple of videos posted recently where you can see how other people are approaching Doms. You'll see some melee attacks in there. That's where your highest damage is in most cases so you'll want to figure out how to use that. One thing about this class is it can be a death trap. You really do have to understand what you're doing probably more than any other class out there, and maintain constant situational awareness. Even after "mastering" it a lot of builds are still high risk / high risk, not high risk / high reward. One thing in particular to unlearn, if you're used to true melee characters, is the trap of leaping into a spawn Tanker-style just because the team has moved on, even though your key controls haven't Recharged. This is an extremely key-power dependent class. It can work okay, in a handful of cases more than okay, in some cases (hi Ice/Rad Dominator I shelved) not at all.

I just shot another one showing how it plays versus (some) bosses. This is Circle of Thorns, who aren't a real threat to me, so it's not quite indicative of a really dangerous fight. You'll notice a couple of times rather than keep slugging at a boss it was easier to just walk away or let them follow me. This is the benefit of high Defense on a Dominator. A different Dominator could deliver more damage and not get stuck slugging at stuff. On the flipside /Psi is the one I trust to be in the middle of a pack like that and not die. Note the changes in attack strategy when fighting bosses. It's actually somewhat to my benefit to keep easy enemies alive for a while in order to re-drain them with Drain Psyche. The electric aura keeps them more or less subdued. Full confession, right now some of my slotting is not ideal. I don't have any damage slotting in the Electric Fences for example, so they're not dealing as much as they would (not that they are ever a high damage power, but its still helpful to have them do some damage.) None of the pets are very good on Dominators after a certain difficulty threshold, in my experience. The two best ones are Dark's hounddog (because it sprays a -ToHit cone) and Singularity. The Earth pet is at least worth casting. Gremlins on the other hand I have specced into and out multiple times, and finally settled on out. The build is too tight and they are too prone to pulling aggro down on top of me. It's too bad, because I could use their damage. But in a high stakes fight they're a liability.

With the lift on the moratorium on video content I was hoping we could get some vets to share some Dom videos. I recently took a few I'm willing to share. I think with a lot of other classes people basically know what to "expect" from an end game build, for various reasons not so much Dominators because they play so differently from everything else. I kept the cursor turned on so you can see what I'm up to each moment, and you'll notice right away how shaky my hands are. Plenty of mistakes made in these vids, but also a few moments I was like "Oh yeah that was a good move." Video 1: Elec/Psi/Psi This is a recently rebuilt character, previously Elec/Psi/Mu. I backtracked to the Psi pool for some extra defense. I got super lucky in this mission and there were very few bosses. In missions with a lot of them, he's a lot slower. It still took 16 minutes to clear, which I'm sure is well behind other archetypes at end game. There are some interesting and flashy effects going on though. You may be able to get a sense from this how realistic it is to maintain endurance drain on enemies using this set. On a team I wouldn't open with Static Field this way, but solo it makes a sense for me to do that, partly because I have the Defense to weather the return fire, partly because I have a Dom +Damage ATO in Static Field. It's slightly wasted by following SF with Synaptic, but, I find it useful to Sleep them first and then Confuse them. You may also notice me re-layering Static Field often. With two patches down, bosses get Slept with some regularity. Video 2: Earth/Savage/Leviathan This build is less complete and follows instructions closer to a "Trust Fund Dominator" I wrote a guide to a while back. You'll notice lower overall Defense. There's a stressful near-death about midway through. This video was supposed to be longer, but I accidentally clicked the OBS button outside the CoX window and it froze the game, thus suicide by video recorder. I've mentioned in a few posts how effective Water Spout is in particular. Part of the reason I wanted to capture this particular build is to show how often it can be up and how generally effective it is. Sleet is best in show for many people for a lot of good reasons. In solo wrecking ball mode though I feel like Water Spout carries me through more reliably. I have not a single piece of data to back that up, hence a video. Despite being more fragile than the Elec/Psi (at least in this content) this toon does do a lot more damage and struggles much less with defeating bosses.

I mostly agree. I was speaking more to the "game is balanced around SOs" folks. Other than Dark Control's and Earth Control's improved AoE Holds, the standard AoE Holds either require an end game build, a commitment to swallowing inspirations, or a lot of +ToHit and -Defense support. I don't take them anymore when leveling up, they don't land. For reference, after enhancements, with SOs the Mag 2.8 Hold you get from an AoE Hold when fighting +5 mobs is about 2.5 seconds longer than the Confuse duration of a tick of Arctic Air against same level enemies.

Thank you for organizing this event. I saw the billboard toon in Ouroboros and it was cool to have that kind of rep in game.

IMO what stands out about Dominators and Controllers in the current meta is the inaccuracy of their AoE Hold power compared to Blast set nukes. I mentioned a bit up thread about how currently some team members are fighting +3s and some fighting +5s. For a Controller level 49 or under fighting a +5 enemy, their AoE Hold is reduced to 30% strength, from Scale 8 to Scale 2.4. I don't actually know how much Accuracy and ToHit you need to hit with such an inaccurate power, but it's not possible to do that if the game is "balanced around SOs" as is the saying. You have to eat Yellows or get a lot of buff/debuff elsewhere. Part of why I am pushing to refactor Level Shifts is so that when the difficulty is set to +3, the team leaders are fighting +3s and teammates are fighting +4s, not +5s like they currently are. The purple patch is brutal on a lot of effects, debuffs and control powers in particular.

That's very exciting to hear. Thank you for sharing this update, I look forward to hearing more.

A starting point would be converting a number of enemy Auto armor powers so that they shut down while the target is mezzed. That would translate directly to a desire to mezz things before killing them. Would have to not be every Auto power though. Some armors should stay up full time. For future iTrials, loading some enemy packs up with hard to crack armors and forcing players to use controls to overcome the toggle would be a nice touch. There are two methods of accomplishing this, self toggles, and auras. Note you can already do this in the AE by giving a bunch of enemies Sonic Resonance or Storm (Steamy Mists) type powers.

I think -Knockback Resist would be subject to Purple Patch first, then act on the raw KB protection. -KB resist would resist KB resist, but the bots didn't have any I could see. Keep in mind I just looked at the public DEF files, didnt actually look at them with an Analyzer, so there could be a nasty surprise in there. I reserve the right to be wrong in my calcs below, quick math while dressing to go out tonight. 😄 Poison: Against a +3, -37% becomes .37 * .65 = -24%. 1 - .24 = 0.76, War Walker should have 38 KB protection remaining. 38 = Val x 0.65 = You need about 58 KB to knock the target back. Cold: Against a +3, -75% becomes .75 * .65 = -48%. 1 - .48 = 0.52; War Walker should have 26 KB protection remaining. 26 = Val x 0.65, You need about 40 KB to knock the target back.

You can read the reasoning for my thoughts on AoE Confuses in the Dominator and Controller forums. I'll nutshell it here: Mass Confusion On Doms and Controllers: Reduce recharge from 240 to 120. Or use 125 if you want to explicitly connect it up with Blaster nukes. Synaptic Overload On Dominators: Fixed to include Domination on the chain pseudo pets. In Domination mode these pets should be delivering an additional Mag 3 Scale 22.5 Confuse. The Controller version Overpowers already, the Dom version should Dominate. On Controllers: Pseudo pets should be using archetype tables, not pet tables. (This fix wasn't possible until Homecoming found a way to make this work. Not needed on Dominators because Dom Confuse scale is the same as pets.) Arctic Air On Dominators: Should Dominate. 30% Chance for Scale 4 Confusion. On Controllers: Will leave up to with whether this should Overpower. World of Confusion does though. On both: Seriously consider whether this power needs to detoggle when caster is mezzed. If it really needs to do that, lower Recharge from 15 to 3 or so so that players without mezz protection don't get chain-locked out of it. Seeds of Confusion If this were a beta test power on the test server, I'd say the Confusion Scale needs to be lowered from Scale 20 to Scale 12. However, I can't see you touching this without a Player's Civil Rights movement forming. Might get away with lowering to Scale 15, which is Synaptic's scale, but this is less important than the fixes above.

Just glanced though the War Walker files. They appear to have Mag 50 protection to knock up, knockback and Repel, but no resistance I can spot right away. To overcome that you'd need to also deal with the Purple Patch. So if they're +3 to you at the end game, you'd need 50 = Val x 0.65, or Mag a little over 76 knockback to overcome them. Should be a lot more doable versus a low level War Walker. I didn't check to see if they have additional sources of knock resistance, which could render this moot. FWIW it's only just now because I'm looking at these files that I realize War Walkers have a self heal. It's on a 30 Recharge. So overcoming their mezz may actually have some value. I confess since I usually encounter them while playing an Elec Dominator I haven't noticed them use the heal, since I guess I was always robbing them of being able to cast it... it costs 19 endurance so they can't use it while drained. So there's something I didn't know about the usefulness of one of my toons.

Pretty sure Snarky is right. What I think you'll need is a macro that performs the button click, then rebinds the key to a new command file. Clicking the macro again would execute the second power, then rebind back to the first. So, you can do it all with one macro button, but its still multiple clicks.

I've been pretty critical of incarnate abilities in the past, so I'll give the flipside on what I think is good about them. In actual iTrial content, they fit well. With so many players running around on a league, it would be easy to feel like you're not doing anything. Judgment and Destiny guarantee that with some time investment any character is guaranteed to have some impact on the proceedings. Destiny in particular works well in iContent because those missions are written with clumping strategies in mind. The "patches of doom" were extremely controversial when they first appeared--to put it mildly. Those conversations make our discussion about game balance here look like a picnic with Pollyanna and the cast of Bambi. But I think they have proven their value as a balance mechanic. I wouldn't want to lose Destiny on iTrials, it's very dynamic there and really feels like part of the action. The other plus with Destiny is the strength of it allows even non-multiplier players to serve as multipliers. This lessens the impact support characters would otherwise have. They'd be nearly required otherwise. It was a smart move to include an ability of that type in iContent. I do like the idea of more customization or options of some sort like Snarky suggested. In the past I've also suggested being able to slot a version of Judgment that doesn't actually provide a nuke but instead provides an additional chance to roll for a Purple recipe, or some other trade where you deliberately make the fight more difficult but get something for it. The alternative could just be "You get a small chance for a purple recipe roll if you have not clicked Judgment in the past 3 minutes." Fuzzy math not actual math.

Here's another one for thought: One way a hard-ish core server could add implicit difficulty without enforcing it would be to publicly display a character's Debt Ever Earned.

You make a good point here. I hadn't thought about enemies locked at Level 54. I can see how that throws a wrench in my proposal--you're right that as written, they'd get harder for Level Shifted people, which wasn't the intent. Just for clarity, non-level shifted people in this scenario (assuming they were level 49 or lower) would still be fighting a +5 enemy as they currently are, its the Level Shifted people who would be fighting a true +4 instead of a +3 like they are currently. I think there are only a handful of Level 50 Task Forces? It could be handled by making those enemies appear as 53s, or other means. Thanks for pointing out that hole in the idea. I can see why it would need more thought.

Can you elaborate on why you think people would hate it? Do you think they would just not understand that it's level difference, not absolute level, that determines difficulty? If they opted to, they'd still be fighting +3 enemies, same as they currently are, and getting the same rewards. The only difference would be the ability to crank it up to +4 and be fighting +4s for more reward. You have the ability to fight +4s all throughout the rest of the game, so the relative challenge level should already be familiar.

There are some good thoughts in this thread. Thanks to all for keeping the discussion civil. My personal take on "more difficult" would have a starter template like this: The Level Shift that is provided at the Alpha Slot would be re-flagged so that it only applies in incarnate content, like Destiny and Lore currently do Reward tables would be shifted: Fighting Level 53 enemies provided rewards previously provided for fighting Level 54 enemies Fighting Level 54 enemies would provide somewhat more rewards than before This accomplishes three things: Players could use the abilities provided by the game without locking themselves out of being able to easily access +4 challenge level. This is the "harder" part. Players would do not like this challenge could fight +3 enemies and retain the same rewards. This the "I'm not interested in forcing anyone to play my way" part. The spread of levels on teams is lowered. The sidekick'er would now only be one level higher than his or her sidekick'ed teammates, the same way the pre-end-game works. I don't personally have any interest in slowing people's progression or lowering rewards. In fact this change would mean people fighting at "true" +4 would be getting more rewards than currently, which they'd deserve, because the fights would be harder. The two biggests requests I have is preserving the challenge of +4 enemies and keeping team level spread closer together so that the pack leader isn't carrying the team as much.

I outfit at level 22 with level 25 IOs, so all of my characters are effectively SO builds til the 40s. Sometimes I throw them a bone with a Miracle if they are really struggling for endurance, or some KB to KDs if they are Stormers. There's also often a mercy Knockback protection IO. I don't usually bother upgrading the IOs as I level up and just leave them at level 25. I do tend to slot 30s and sometimes 35s in the new slots, rarely bother with 40s, 45s, or 50s.

Interesting idea. Here's a salad bar of random things, with little consideration of what's realistic vs not. Tanker, Scrapper, Stalker, Brute more vulnerable to mezz than currently, have to rely on T9 to achieve current levels of immunity All classes: IO bonuses shut off when mezzed, like armors do No emailing inspirations Incarnate: Destiny only affects self and pets Incarnate: Judgment toned back or given stricter requirements (e.g. given longer recharge and a Snipe cast time) Inspirations of same tier replace rather than stack Enemies randomly carry inspirations for themselves Hero AoE attacks have a chance to injure rescue targets, need to use restraint Villain players depart to jail rather than a hospital Farming too much of a single enemy type draws attention from elites within the group Enemy bases have alarm systems Heals from certain sources are less pure, temporarily reduce max HP Enemies can use incarnate powers Some enemies have the abilities to "catch" nukes and fire them back at you

It's the thing I really don't like about level shifts on teams. The lowbies are fighting +5s, the level shifted members are fighting +3s and doing most of the work. They would be anyway, just from having more powers available and slotting, but the game is tilting the board heavily. If we went up a difficulty notch to +4s and +6s it would be even more extreme. I think the sidekick system is fascinating and well designed overall, minus that one part. What I find strange about Level Shifts more than anything is how they show up at the end of the game right as players hit the ceiling. But we don't have them at any other point in the gameplay, so we know exactly how the game would play without them. The team is closer to each other in level and more cohesive. Level Shifts were invented as a marketing gimmick to keep people paying their subscriptions. If they want to bump rewards for enemies up a tier to compensate for removing the shift, I'd be fine with that, so that you'd still get identical reward. It's the level spread and inability to encounter +4 enemies that populate the rest of the game that rubs me wrong.

The screaming all caps response when you post something unpopular in the Suggestions forum.