oedipus_tex

I totally forgot to mention the worst part about long animation powers on Dominators. You are playing an archetype with a power that crashes if you don't click it fast enough. Sometimes you just know something instinctually and forget how it impacts your thinking. Perma-Domination gives you a small window to click it, usually about 5-8 seconds. When it recharges, you want to click it ASAP. Getting stuck in a long animation power at close range when it drops is a worst case scenario you should avoid. I knew this, and failed to communicate it. 🙂

Sorry for multiple posts on same-ish topic, I wanted to say more about DPA. DPA is slightly misleading because it averages damage. What it doesn't tell you is reaction time, which is why you need to know the animation time as well. Assuming Recharge is the same, a power that deals 100 DPA with a 1 second animation time is superior to a power that deals 100 DPA with a 3 second animation time. Location matters too. Long animations on ranged powers are generally more tolerable than short distance powers. The reason Combustion sucks is not just that it does mediocre damage. It leaves you standing there unable to react for 3 seconds where a power with the same DPA could fire and immediately eat an inspiration, fire a power, or move out of the way. All but 1 one of the Dominator PBAoEs has a 2 second animation time rounded to Arcana values. That's a recipe for a power that is very high risk and questionably useful. While I do think you can probably get away with it in easy mission content, I can also solo with my Ice/Rad troller even tho he's one of the last examples of a soloist I'd recommend.

Well with Combustion its twofold. Even if it had great DPA it's still 3 seconds you can't do anything else, traded for damage in a very small radius. I keep forgetting what the reach is on enemy melee powers. 7ft like players? 10ft? Let's go with 7.... 7ft reach is slightly less than half of radius 15. One thing I'm unsure of is if your character model has width or is just a point, but lets assume its a point. The furthest away you are from getting punched by an uncontrolled enemy is them moving 8ft. That distance diminishes further if we assume the model has width.

I have a funny story about Combustion. One time I took that power on a character not knowing what it was. I pretty much took it off my bar after trying to use it and discovering how terrible it was. One day, as I was running past a Fake Nemesis in Peregrine Island who was +10 to me, I aggroed it without realizing. It fired a Nemesis Bolt that hit me from behind, killing that character instantly and flinging his body on top of a dumpster. I respecced not long after and I've always associated those events with that power.

That's a fair point and I never really thought about that. For Ice -Recharge is a control. I still want a second Mag 3 Confuse in Arctic Air though. That seems like it would be easy to add, but I don't know the database.

Plant/Psi. 🙂 Among the most powerful Dominators possible.

I think we may have miscommunicated. Root time is the time it takes for an animation to play. Most powers lock you out of moving or casting something else while they are animating. Long animation times on powers where you are standing close to an enemy put you in greater danger than shorter animation times, because once the power starts animating you can't react until it's done. Even if the enemy you are attacking is controlled, another enemy could hit you. That's why I don't use Dominator PBAoEs. I've tried. Big battles are just too chaotic and this archetype has a lot to lose from dying.

What I am pointing out is that 2-3 seconds of root time 15ft from enemies on an archetype with no heals or armor is not a good trade off unless the damage numbers are astronomical, which they are not.

So punch slower? 😄 Just playign with you. I hear you on that. Altho it would position the sets with additional single target controls well. Or maybe they could get fancy and allow us to pick what power triggers when we land a punch? Imagine a Mind or Dark Dominator could Confuse-on-Punch. I've been amazed by some of the stuff this dev team has been able to accomplish. The new costumes on Illusion Control? Brilliant stuff. I bet they could find a way to make it work.

I have another proposal which may seem a little weird at first but I'll throw it on the pile. What if using a single target melee attack also cast your single target Hold power if that power was currently recharged?

Since we brought up animation time, let's talk about that. Here's the animation time for the standardized 15ft PBAoEs: Dark: 2 Earth: 2.5 Electric: 2.07 Energy: 2.5 Fire: 3 (OUCH) Icy: 2.67 Martial: 1.5 Psi: 1.97 Radioactive: I'm using 2.97, this one is a bit tricky Savage: 2.17 Thorny: 3 (crying in the corner with Fire) Of these, the only one I tend to use are Energy because of its special mechanic, Psi because I can withstand being pummeled during its cast time thanks to Drain Psyche, and Martial because of the fast cast time and knockdown in the power. I'm playing an unarmored archetype with (mostly) little in the way of heals that relies on fast reflexes and cunning to mezz enemies before they hit me, while doing everything I can to avoid dying and losing my mezz protection. The last thing I want to do is lock myself into an animation at close range for 2-3 seconds and only deliver mediocre damage. The risk/reward ratio seems very skewed. Pure DPA calculations don't tell the full story here, anytime a squishy has to get in something's face to deliver its AoE the damage needs to be very high to justify that risk, particularly on an AT with more to lose from dying than other classes.

When talking about DPA in the context of Dominators or any other archetype that lacks consistent AoE you have to be careful. Most Dominators cannot pump consistent AoE out like other archetypes can. That is why Plant stands so high above the other sets in AoE. Roots is a 30ft radius AoE that recharges in 8 seconds and deals 31.68 damage on Dominators. It's one of the best powers in the game but often goes unrecognized because two of the other best powers in the game also appear in Plant Control. The only ranged spherical AoE attack most Dominators have other than their immobilize is the one in their APPs, which usually has a 32 second recharge. Other than that they mostly have a cone with a 10 target limit and a 15ft radius PBAoE. You can work these into your cycle, but they have obvious limitations. To use the PBAoE you're an unarmored archetype waltzing within 15ft of enemies and to hit more than a few of them you can bet some got missed by mezz and are free to attack. On most Blasters, I have no doubt that you can fill an AoE attack chain in a way that maximizes DPA and still hits enough targets. On most Dominators, other than Plant (because the immobilize is a high damage blast) I do not feel that way. They don't have the access to make it work.

I'm not using DPA because the developers did not use DPA when they created these sets. The damage was based off of Recharge time and DPA was randomized based on what they thought looked cool. For stats though, here are the animation times for each AoE immobilize. You can see that Plant is a bit slower than most, but still a 1.67 cast time is hardly slow. Plant: 1.67 Fire: 1.03 Gravity: 1.33 Electric: 1.17 Ice: 2.07 (why does Ice always get the worst of everything? LOL) Earth: 1.17 If I had my wish all of these sets would just use the 1.17 or 1.33 animation for consistency.

Continuing a look at the numbers, have you ever noticed Plant seems to mow down (har har) enemies faster than other sets? That's because its AoE immobilize does exactly x2 as much damage as any other AoE immobilize except Fire. Plant: 3 ticks of 5.28 Lethal +5.28 Smashing = 31.68 Ice: 3 ticks of 5.28 Cold = 15.84 Gravity: 5.28 Smashing = 15.84 Electric: 15.85 Energy Earth: 3 ticks of 5.28 = 15.84 Fire: 3 ticks of 5.81 = 17.43 With a 1.67 animation time, 8 second recharge, 31.66 damage, Plant's AoE immobilize is a half a point shy of the Defender AoEs Explosive Blast, Irradiate, or Ball Lightning, but recharges twice as fast (8 seconds versus 16 seconds) and has a much bigger radius (30ft radius versus 15ft radius for those powers). Ice, Earth, and Electric are well known to be very low damage sets so I'm not suggesting nerfing Plant to those levels, just shedding light on why different Dominator players are reporting wildly different experiences.

Another thing I'd like to talk about is Fire Dominators. They don't seem to come up too often anymore. Back before Villains could access blueside, Fire/Psi Doms were the analog to Fire/Kin farmers. (Fire/Kin farmers seem to have mostly disappeared in Homecoming, which is an interesting development.) Hot Feet does the following damage on a Dominator versus Controller: Dominator: 13.2 Controller: 7.65 + (7.65 from Containment) = 15.3 Shouldn't a Dominator, the "damage class" version of the control sets, do better damage than a Controller? I mean sure, you "need Containment" to do this, but how hard is that really? On top of this, Controllers get buffs and debuffs to make that damage much higher. Is the existence of an "Assault" set enough to make up for this? (I don't feel it does.) Let's take a look at Gravity Control as well: Propel Dominator: 103.5 + (25,89 from Impact) = 103.5 (or with Impact: 129.39) Controller: 59.95 + (59.95 from Containment) + (14.99 from Impact) = 119.5 (or with Impact: 134.89) Controller Propel is better with Impact or without it. It's such a good attack I don't know that Gravity Dominators have much reason to exist. (They do, narrowly, but you trade away a ton of utility for some mild extra AoE capability and the ability to slot melee and PBAoE powers). This doesn't speak to the fact that Propel on Dominators obseletes some powers in the Assault set, so their damage doesn't actually get better. Maybe 1:1 power comparisons aren't perfect because the secondaries are so different. But a Controller can buff or debuff themselves much better than a Dominator, so these numbers are more drastic in actual play.

RE: The posts that the class is fine and you are able to perform without issues, I think it's incumbent to mention which powersets you are talking about. If you are playing Plant/Fire or something/Psi then yes I believe you. However I think we need to recognize that like all other archetypes, Dominators have outlier performers who are not typical of the class. I can perform pretty well with my Elec/Psi Dom. Based on that performance I decided to try Elec/Energy and Elec/Martial. Both turned out to be "muted Blasters" that I described above. It turned out the heal in Psi was what was propping Electric Control up. I could still play them, it just required staying at range to avoid rapid health loss. If nothing else I hope the folks saying the class should go unchanged don't think individual powers should go unchanged. There's currently a huge power discrepancy between Seeds of Confusion and Synaptic Overload, both AoE confuses on the same recharge schedule, except one Dominates all targets and the other Dominates only the first. And then there is Arctic Air that Dominates nothing. The discrepancies in this class are easy to point out. I don't feel like an archetype should be evaluated only by its top performers.

I just feel like if we get to email millions to our alts and use that as a baseline for how the archetype operates we should use that benchmark for other archetypes as well. I could spend 50 million on a Scrapper and do good things with it. That isn't how that class is normally evaluated.

Sorry I may have misunderstood. Still, that isn't a bad build to share with new Dom players. Low defense but approaching decent recharge, if you used the base buff. One more LoTG (and "just" 6 million influence or so) would carry it to perma dom.

That's not a bad build, but there's no way you're achieving that except by emailing influence to yourself. Your build isn't particularly outrageous, maybe 50million influence, but still waaaay outside what a normal level 30 would have on hand. I don't necessarily mind that, but also don't want to spend 50 million influence to make a level 30 Dominator hit its magic numbers. No other class is pushed to do that.

So, I'm not doubting you, but I feel like maybe we're reporting on different kinds of missions. I'm betting that despite being able to do what you describe above that if join an iTrial you are playing like a muted Blaster. The burst damage from enemies there is too high. Against easy enemies, sure, you can get away with a lot. But in the more difficult content designed to drop a Scrapper or Brute, Dominators have to fall back. A Psi Dominator and a few others can probably break those rules and survive. But I'm not gonna run up on a Victoria with, say, Icy Assault and try to Ice Slash it. There isn't a lot of payoff or incentive in doing that, a PBAoE -damage aura notwithstanding.

I'm actually very confused by the damage that Gravity does. Gravity has that "Impact" mechanic that makes Lift and Propel hit harder after you use Gravity Distortion. On Controllers it works well, possibly too well, because I get the sense that with Containment they either out-damage Dominators or get close enough to obsolete Gravity Dominators. Has anyone who is good at that stuff run the numbers on Distortion > Lift > Propel versus what is available in the Assault sets? I've never been able to decide whether its better to skip Lift/Propel or skip single target attacks in the Assault set. I've long felt that for Dominators, Impact damage should be a proc, not a mechanic built specifically into Propel and Lift, and any Assault power should proc it. That would remove some of the ambiguity.

There are a lot of opinions I respect here. I'm glad to hear the POVs of some the game's veteran players. I'd like to talk about the powers that don't Dominate because they are pet based. What should be done with these? Should developers try to create the tech to fix them? Leave them as is? Generate a second pet? Here's a list of powers that aren't affected by Domination and a little bit about them. ICE - Overall gets a pretty raw deal on Domination. The 4 standard powers Dominate, nothing else does. ARCTIC AIR. This is currently a 30% chance for Mag 3 Confusion, rolled every pulse. The Confusion is a pure luck roll, there is no ToHit roll. Note because base Dominator scale for Confusion is lower than Controllers, this power is actually weaker on Dominators than Controllers. Also, Dominators have a lower Recharge debuff scale (-50% versus -62.5%). This seems somewhat straightforward, put a second chance for Mag 3 Confuse. But I'd really like a closer look at just what the intention of this power is and the hoops players have to jump through to make it achieve that purpose. I happen to think its one of the most fun powers in the game, BUT I resent having to trick out my build with defense and mezz protection among other things to have any hope of it contributing. If nothing else, this should not detoggle on mezz. Restoring the Contagious Confusion proc to its former glory here would also be welcomed. ICE SLICK. 8% chance for knockdown rolled each pulse. It's unclear whether this should do something extra because knockdown is not strictly a "mezz." However, this is one of Ice's main control powers, replacing what in another set would be a hard control. Given that, I wish this either summoned additional Ice Slicks or increased the chance to knockdown. You can see by stacking powers like Ice Slick and Freezing Rain that two pets of this sort in the same spot is very effective, I wish Ice Slick in Domination mode did that. SHIVER. This power just LOLsux. The Blaster version was recently greatly improved, lets hope something happens to this. There isn't any reason to think it should Dominate, because it's a debuff. I am unsure whether that's how it should stay. EARTH EARTHQUAKE. 7% chance for knockdown rolled each pulse, with some unehanceable -ToHit. See Ice Slick above. VOLCANIC GASSES. It's a pet that summons other pets. Controller and Dominator versions are identical. ELECTRIC SYNAPTIC OVERLOAD. The first enemy hit is affected by Domination, other enemies are not. This frankly feels half done. If we can't fix it to make it truly Dominate, it should summon a second chain in Domination mode OR create an AoE effect on the first enemy putting a Mag 3 Confuse on stuff within X radius, possibly with a delay. STATIC FIELD. This power is identical on Controllers and Dominators. If a pulsing Mag 6 Sleep would be overpowered, the option would be to make the first cast Mag 6 and subsequent ones Mag 3. As is, this power does Sleep bosses and even Elite Bosses eventually, if they stand in the field and take no damage. It would just be nice to be able to zap them to sleep more quickly. GRAVITY PROPEL, LIFT. Ok, you say, but these powers are blasts not Controls, which is what it is. But it points to why Gravity needed some revisions before making its way to Dominators. Gravity Assault would have made for a great secondary with these two powers moved there and replaced with some form of Control. It's too late now. So maybe in Dom mode the AoE knockdown on Propel could be bigger (10ft increased to 15 or 20?) and Lift could lightly knock up, but not damage, enemies within xft? FIRE BONFIRE. Probably doesn't belong in this list, just listing since Ice Slick and Earthquake are listed above. This power was never a cornerstone of Fire the way quake/slick are for earth/ice so unsure it matters.

Strongly disagree. Thunderstrike is dirt cheap and has 2 Ranged defense bonuses. It's harder to get both Defense and Recharge in one package, true. That is why Dominators are harder to build than other classes. I can go heavier for defense on a Controller or Blaster and not worry I didn't hit the magic Recharge number,

Then take Ice for sure.

Defense is not a good stat to compare to Recharge IMO. You can eat a Purple and raise your defense, so having baseline Defense in the 32.5 range is useful. Recharge is more limited. For Dominators there's mainly Destiny Ageless and the the workshop buff. That's an idea though. You could put +Recharge in the T5 self buffs. I've seen what this dev team has done with other classes/powersets and been very impressed. Hopeful Doms get that look too, ideally in a full look at the Control sets.