oedipus_tex

A surprise for me when I did the math is the DPA for some Dominator AoEs is actually higher than some of their single target blasts. You'll note in the example above that Caltrops, Fire Rain and Fireball all do better DPA than Ice Bolt or Ice Blast. So, if you have the endurance to use those and they are up (their base recharge doesn't make a constant chain possible) it's good to throw them in.

A possible out I would give to Thorny and Martial Assault is how you rate Caltrops. Caltrops frankly has amazing DPA. It deals 134 damage with just a 1.32 second cast time. Here's the DPA of Caltrops compared to Fireball and Rain of Fire: The kicker is that it takes 45 seconds to deliver that amount of damage. If you halve that 45 seconds and allow it to play out for ~22 seconds instead of 45 (ie because stuff died) you end up with a DPA a little below each of these blasts. The longer the fight goes, the better Caltrops gets. If the fight actually lasts 45 seconds, Caltrops produces better DPA than even most single target blasts. Here's the fairly generic Ice blasts for comparison: Also, you can lay down multiple Caltrops at once. The power recharges in just 45 seconds. You can easily get this to around 20 seconds. A second cast of Caltrops on top of a previous cast drains around 6 health/second. This is almost exactly identical to how much damage Hot Feet applies. If you somehow can get into a situation where mobs are piling into one spot you can even layer on a third cast, for Hot Feet damage x1.5. (Oh yeah, any readers playing Fire Control, you should never skip Hot Feet. See above.)

The stealth in Steamy Mist does not suppress in PVE but does in PVP. What you may be thinking of is the stealth in Celerity +Stealth or in Super Speed, which people often combo with Steamy Mist to get a form of invisibility. I believe both of these suppress during combat.(less sure about Celerity). So, if you are relying on Steamy Mist plus one of these your Stealth radius will be 35ft, which is not enough to make you fully invisible.

For a farmer, I'd lean toward /Fire or /Psi. The key to both of these sets is a strong endurance management tool. Fire has Consume and Psi has Drain Psyche (which also provides Regen). Either of these sets makes it feasible to take an Alpha devoted to damage (instead of end redux) and Destiny Barrier (instead of Ageless). On balance, this is a huge advantage. Martial and Rad are both "not bad" sets. Not great. Just "not bad." Nothing about either really stands out. Dominators unfortunately have a number of sets like this that don't stand out in anyparticular way. Icy and Thorny fall into the same category of "not bad" genericness. Earth is a set that does differentiate itself. Some players love and others are more lukewarm about it. I'm in the lukewarm camp. Where Fire and Psi provide endurance management, Earth goes the other direction and batters your blue bar. I haven't done a spreadsheet look at how much more or less damage it does than other sets. I've just noted that anecdotally I'm not convinced the high endurance powers pay for themselves with what you get once all the chips are down. However, one plus for Earth at least is that it is interesting.

Yes the untouchable portion lasts the stated duration. You're most likely to experience it playing Thermal, because the temptation is to rezz and then immediately re-fire-shield your ally. The power will not affect the target if you try though.

These are two wildly different play experiences. Plant/Psi is an in-your-face brawler who can lock down spawn after spawn and, because of Drain Psyche, kind of just not die. Farming is definitely in the wheelhouse for this build. Mind/Fire is probably a ranged character, suitable for Hovering, high single target damage because of Fire, but the long Recharge on Mass Confusion can limit you. If I was going to spend money on one of the two it would be the Plant in part because its better positioned to earn the money back and also because adding recharge/defense to a Drain Psyche build improves it so massively, where Mind/Fire could probably get away with a "trust fund build" I wrote about in a guide on this forum.

Except for the Snipe, Psi has mediocre ranged damage. Mind you, a DPA in the mid 40s isn't strictly terrible; its actually around the strength of a Defender T3 blast like Blazing Arrow before buffs/debuffs. All three attacks have nearly the same DPA before procs, but Mental Blast and Subdue have 8s Recharge time, while Psi Dart recharges in just 3 seconds. Thing is, you're forced to take Psi Dart. If you weren't, it probably wouldn't be worth slotting. But since you are and since Dom builds tend to be tight I don't take either of the other two blasts after leveling.

RE: Psionic Dart, the T1 blast power. When you chart out the DPA of Psi Dart vs Mental Blast vs Subdue you can see that all three do nearly identical damage. Psi Dart technically does ~42 and Blast/Subdue do ~46 but the difference is so minimal that IMO neither Mental Blast or Subdue are worth spending a slot on unless you really need that Immobilize in Subdue. Psi Dart recharges in 3 seconds, almost fast enough to form an attack chain on its own once you hit permadom levels of recharge. If you weren't forced into taking it the other 2 blasts would be more attractive, but as it is you might as well just slot it as your main ranged attack. All three powers are significantly outdamaged by Mind Probe and TK Thrust; Psi Assault is truly a melee oriented set.

I'm not a fan of Jolting Chain. I have not found the animation time to be worth the effect or the damage, even with procs. It also doesn't drain endurance except from the first target hit. After a lot of wavering back and forth, I put Gremlins back in the build. They cast Jolting Chain every 6 seconds and that's more efficient to me than dedicating time to the power myself.

PoTP does indeed provide 15 seconds of Untouchable. It's a bit of a double edged sword because you also can't receive teammate buffs during that time.

I wonder if for X seconds after a resurrection power there's a way to cause a toggle to have no or a very quick cast time.

That's not quite how it works. You do not need to select an enemy to cast Fold Space. You just click it. Up to 16 enemies are then teleported to the location you started the cast from (so if you are jousting they TP to where you started the cast and not where you are when the TP goes off).

If that is how the power is currently behaving, you may want to report it as a bug. I helped the dev team test to make sure the sustain portion works even on a miss. Drain Psyche, the Psi Manipulation sustain, does cancel on miss.

Sonic Attack and the updated Trick Arrow do each other a lot of favors.

Correct, the stealth aura powers don't suppress. If you have multiple players running them the owner and the team are invisible the same as Improved Invisibility works as long as they stay in radius.

I don't have Dark/Psi handy, but I can share an Elec/Psi and Dark/Martial. You could use each as partial guidance toward a Dark/Psi build. Fold Space didn't exist in Mid when I made these, so is represented by the powers that were available. Each build took TP Other, Combat Teleport, and Fold Space. Elec/Psi Dark/Martial Note I've gone back and forth on whether to try to take Caltrops. This build is without.

Grav/Psi is probably the most "functional" of the Grav Dom pairings, so there's that. Drain Psyche is a strong enough power to somewhat justify rolling Dominator. Psi Assault also has atrocious single target ranged damage so benefits from Lift and Propel. Unfortunately I couldn't get the build to load in Mids because I dont have the newest version, so I'm commenting generically. The chart below shows the results with Impact. To get the results without you have to manually calculate them. Note a Mind Probe > TK Thrust chain is still superior to Lift and especially Propel, but its also Psi damage (heavily resisted in some parts of the game) and point blank. I did notice you didn't take TK thrust, which may or may not matter for a Gravity Dom, because Lift mostly duplicates its function even if it does a less damage without Impact. (Note to anyone taking a set other than Gravity, you usually do want TK Thrust for the high DPS + 100% chance to knockback). Fold Space and Wormhole are both teleports that can bunch up enemies but the similarities end there. I think Fold Space is an excellent power for a Gravity character because you can use it to port scattered enemies into a convenient mass.

Resurrection powers! Let's talk about them. This is more of a prompt than an actual specific idea. I'll post some general ideas below, without any actual commitment to them. What would you change? For the purposes of this post, I am focused only on single target rezzes. You can copy and paste the tree below and add your own ideas. In game documentation: Empathy: Resurrect Resurrects a fallen ally with full Hit Points and Endurance. The Resurrected target is left protected from XP Debt for 90 seconds. Nature: Rebirth Rebirth can either greatly heal a conscious ally for a large amount of health over time or it can revive a fallen ally with a large amount of health and endurance and cause them to recover health over time. This power also grants 3 stacks of Bloom. Pain: Conduit of Pain You revive a fallen ally by becoming a Conduit of Pain and transferring the pain that was inflicted upon them back upon your enemies. This will briefly empower you increasing your damage output, recovery rate, attack rate and chance to hit. After a minute the effect will wear off leaving you weakened for 30 seconds. Your damage, attack rate and chance to hit will all be reduced during this period. Poison: Elixir of Life With this Elixir, you can revive a fallen ally and turn him into a killing machine. The revived target has increased damage, chance to hit, Endurance recovery, and attack speed, and gains a resistance to Toxic damage. A brew of this sort is not without its side effects. The revived target will soon become very sick and severely weak after about 90 seconds. All effects of the Elixir will eventually wear off. Elixir of Life can only be used on Players and cannot be used on your Henchmen. Radiation: Mutation Using a concentrated burst of radiation, you can revive a fallen hero and Mutate them into a killing machine. The Mutated hero has increased damage, chance to hit, Endurance recovery, and attack speed and is protected from XP Debt fort 90 seconds. The entire experience is very taxing on the Mutated hero, and they will soon be severely weakened. All effects of the Mutation will eventually wear off. Thermal: Power of the Phoenix Revives a fallen ally. The fiery resurrection blasts nearby foes with an explosion and knocks them down and Disorients them. Your ally will revive with most of their Hit Points and Endurance. They will also be invulnerable for a brief time, as well as protected from XPDebt for 90 seconds. My thoughts: Empathy: Resurrect IMO this is currently the weakest Resurrection power, which is strange to me because Empathy is the set I'd most associate with a strong Resurrect power. Alternative 1: Simple changes. Reduce Recharge to 90 (down from 180). Alternative 2: When cast on a living ally, the ally is granted a temporary power for X seconds that allows them to heal themselves when they click it. Nature: Rebirth This rezz already has an effect on the living, so may be fine. 180s is quite a long time to wait for it to Recharge tho. I wish it Recharged in 60s when used as a Heal and 180 when used as a rezz. Pain: Conduit of Pain Alternative 1: Like Soul Transfer (rezz self from nearby enemies), but uses allies. When player is dead, can cast Conduit of Pain to revive self by siphoning from ally. They can reject the attempt. Alternative 2: Like Howling Twighlight (the aoe rezz). Castable even while dead. Raises all players in vicinity as long as at least one player is alive. If used this way, Recharge time is set to 1000s. Poison: Elixir of Life Seems like this should be useable on the living, possibly with only some of the benefits. Alternative 1: Would be cool if you could self cast this and gain a temporary power that allowed you to resurrect yourself if you died. Alternative 2: Cast on a dead enemy to temporarily raise a Zombie minion Alternative 3: Cast on an enemy, that enemy is prevented from Resurrection (e.g. Super Stunners). Just make sure this doesn't break the ITF. Radiation: Mutation Cast on the living, +damage +toHit Thermal: Power of the Phoenix This power may already be okay. I could see it summoning Bonfire for 60 seconds when cast on self.

It works exactly like any PBAoE power, just bigger.

An easy way to understand ToHit is it is the exact dead opposite of +Defense. This is especially useful when thinking about how much protection powers that do -ToHit provide. If you have 20 Defense and hit an enemy with -10 ToHit, you have 30 Defense.

The ToHit buff is the real gem of Combat Teleport IMO. There are a couple of archetypes that don't get Aim or Build Up. Masterminds, Controllers, and Dominators mainly. But they still have powers that require Accuracy. CT > CT > CT builds a very large ToHit bonus and can help you land important powers. CT into Drain Psyche for example. Or CT > Benumb. Or CT > Glacier/Cinders.

Lifevigiving Spores is a funny power. The combat stats in Mids don't let you easily see but its possible to track the stats down in the JSON files: On Controllers: Triggers every 4 seconds Scale 0.275 Heal (29.45 HP) Restores 1% endurance Since most players have 100 endurance, unmodified Lifegiving Spores provides 1 point of endurance back for every 4 seconds, and when enhanced, provides around 2 points of endurance. I believe the power costs 0.26 endurance every second (assuming the power drains your endurance every auto_cast_interval). Over 4 seconds, that averages out to close to 1 endurance drain. In other words, the power almost breaks even on endurance before enhancements, and actually provides endurance back to you if the power is enhanced for end mod or you slot end redux. [Note, my version of Mids lists an endurance cost for Lifegiving Spores of .07 end, but in game and in the JSON its .26.] To make things even more complicated, the T9 power Overgrowth contains global Endurance Reduction (93%). While that's running, the cost of Lifegiving Spores drops, leaving you with a net gain. I usually do take Spores while leveling up, because its basically free endurance. I don't always keep it in the build. One thing to remember about Spores by the way is enemies ignore it. So you totally can and should drop it into position before launch your alpha strike, since it will stay there til you release it.

I don't envy the person who has to figure out how to balance Sonic Attack. Even with Shout broken, the set has the issue of being more of a debuff set than an actual blast set. Possibly Shout should be a Snipe on Blasters and Corruptors to up their single target damage, but modified in some other way for Defenders to prevent Defender Sonic Attack from elevating even further as a top Defender set.

You don't select a location, you just press the button and the enemies are pulled to where you were standing.

Thanks for sharing your build. Here is some feedback to consider: First things first: as a Dark/Dark you've got two powersets that do -ToHit. -ToHit stacks with +Defense to determine your dodge chances, but (in most cases) only up to the soft cap of 45%. While there are some situations where going over the soft cap can be effective, you're making some steep sacrifices in this build to achieve the soft cap. Your S/L resist is very low and any punch that gets through is going to wallop you. In the end you'd probably be happier with an APP that provides a Resist armor. RE: Hasten. Altho you successfully achieved permadom without out, by scanning over the build I don't see that it translated into more diversity. You've still got the basic CJ/Hover/Weave/Maneuvers formula. Dropping Maneuvers or Hover for Hasten would dramatically improve the build. RE: specific powers Nightfall is a very very narrow cone. Most people skip it. Fearsome Stare: Most people slot this for -ToHit and ignore Terrify OR they x6 slot Superior Ascendancy of the Dom in order to get the +Damage proc to fire Possess: By not slotting the sixth slot of Coercive Persuasion here you're missing out on +5 Range defense, which is too big a bonus to justify skipping IMO Moonbeam: You want a second damage proc here, this power procs reliably and hits like a truck Fly: Some people take this for flavor. That's fine, just be aware that Fly is basically a powerpick spent on a costume option. You can fly just as easily with a vendor jetpack. Heart of Darkness: I don't recommend skipping this, it's just as strong as the stun Fire/Earth/Gravity get, only different in that it's a PBAoE.