oedipus_tex

Between these two, Ice. Mace animates very slowly. The only place I've really used it well is with Illusion Control on Controllers.

It's fine if you believe that. Just it seems a lot of contributors do not. I realize this is a subject a lot of people are passsionate about so we appreciate your comments either way.

I didn't know about the snowballs. I'll need to check it out. If that's possible just giving us a power to instantly fill the bar should be justifiable.

The button has one useful feature that I feel like I should understand but don't. It seems to break you out of your current mezz even if it is stronger than your actual mezz protection. The only place I've noticed it is in AE content, when mobs are given the Dark Armor rezz power Soul Transfer that stuns nearby players, Mag 30. If Domination happens to recharge while you're stunned, you'll be unstunned. Then if another Soul Transfer goes off, you'll be restunned. I'm pretty sure this is how the boss guy at the end of the ITF works too. Overall this is probably not a huge deal. It's just one of the weirder elements of Domination, and I've encountered it so rarely I'm not even sure if my observations are correct.

Although I'm unsure I'm entirely behind it and there may be other ways to achieve similar results, that's an excellent explanation. Thanks for that. A possible alternative that meets half way would be powers that instantly or at least quickly recharge the bar. The AoE Holds and the T5 Assault self-buffs both have a lot of potential for that. Even if the developers feel totally removing the bar is too extreme, would it be possible for the bar to be built in better/faster ways? Right now the way it's built is pretty silly. You get it for activating attack powers. Powers that have no target give it to you even if they hit nothing.

I've had time to digest the idea a few folks posted above about removing the "bar build up" from Domination and making it a straight Recharge power. Doing that would mean it no longer crashes, so there would be no concept of "missing" a cycle. Domination breaks you out of mezz, so if it happened to recharge while you are mezzed, you'd break out. Great idea, to the people who mentioned it. Here's an another idea: On Dominators, instantly fill the Dom bar if the player uses their AoE Hold. Or put mezz protection for the caster in the AoE hold.

Domination is a mechanic with a crash. Keeping it "perma" has more importance than keeping other kinds of powers, like Hasten, AM, Indomitable Will, etc. If I miss a Domination cycle, a few things happen. I don't get my bar refilled. The strength of my mezzes drops both in duration and magnitude. And I won't have mezz protection until I rebuild the bar. I've found its the mezz protection that is the most punishing. The other two things are nice features, but are possible to work around. Losing mezz protection drops me about two difficulty levels down. I then have to rebuild the bar by fighting things, which is mainly done by using ranged blasts. Closing to melee at at a time when I 1) lack mezz protection and 2) have lost the ability to mezz bosses is not a productive approach. If I am on a difficult mission with lots of dying, that means most or all of it is spent playing keep away. This is also how I approach iTrials--it is counterproductive to engage in melee. What it boils down to for me is that the mezz protection in Domination is precious and I should preserve it by avoiding getting too close. Against very easy enemies, say like the level 50s that hang out in the parking lots of Peregrine Island, it's fine. Against stuff tailored to kill Tankers and Scrappers, I drop like a Scrapper who forgot to turn on his or her armor powers. Faster, actually. Psi Assault is the main exception, because of Drain Psyche. With that power I can engage directly and do okay. Combined specifically with Electric Control to sap endurance, I can lower the rate of incoming attacks enough to stand toe to toe with Scrappers, as long as circumstances are controlled. Getting hit with any amount of -Recharge and its lights out the moment Domination drops and I lose mezz protection. Basically, with Domination as it is, if any piece of the puzzle is removed, I'm back to a midling Blaster with mezzes. Even with the massive Regen boost in Drain Psyche I sometimes die. Getting mezzed is a triple punishment--toggle powers drop, Domination bar stops building, and the control I'm supposed to be using as armor are unavailable. Have you ever tried using Arctic Air on a build without mezz protection? Brutal stuff. I realize that the Dominator class will likely always be dangerous to play. But where it resides right now, its dangerous in a way that encourages "safe play." I'd like to have more reasons to use these various melee and PBAoE attacks. Right now I just don't feel they deliver reward for the risk.

I'm enjoying this conversation. It's nice to hear from a wide variety of commenters. It's crazy that old game still generates such passionate feelings from players. Here's where I am sitting right now. I am on the character creation screen looking at the various Assault set choices. On paper they look interesting. I want to want to try them. But with Martial, Thorny, Electric, Radioactive, Icy, I just can't make myself do it, because that type of play is not very effective. I have my good builds--variations of Psi Assault, Fire Assault, Dominators who lean heavily on Plant Control--but on the whole have to admit a lot of the combos feel fragile and fairly pointless. I find myself running out of endurance a lot, melee is dangerous, there's no hit point restoration, there's a mismatch between cone powers and PbAoEs, getting two-shot by Victorias, all of that. The Dominators I love, I tend to love. I mained an Ice/Fire Dom on live (i wouldn't now because procs were nerfed in Arctic Air). I main an Elec/Psi Dom on here. But that's mainly the combo and not the archetype, either one powerset standing above the rest or the combo being very strong. And those combos always leaned very heavily on being permadoms who get much of their damage from the APPs, because the "Assault" set requires putting myself in danger unless I play as a kind of muted ranged Blaster.

Some of the melee attacks do hit kinda hard, but like we talked about, Dominators more than most classes pay a big penalty when they die. This is actually worse for non permadoms than for permas. I always feel infuriated when I finally go into Domination mode and have it cut short by death. When I play my Blaster I can go wild, and as long as I don't die more than once every minute and a half, count on coming back full strength with Rise of the Phoenix. As a Dominator, it's better to play safe and keep Domination going. Dominator armor consists pretty much entirely of the mezz protection in Domination and, with the exception of the Psi APP, a single standardized APP armor power shared with Controllers, Blasters, Defenders, Corruptors, and Masterminds. Don't get me wrong. Psi Assault is very durable. It's the one set I can say I feel comfortable approaching melee in. The others the risk versus reward tips heavily toward playing in a style closer to a ranged Blaster.

As a standard feature, all Dominator sets have a clickable T5 power that is self-affecting. IMO it's a good spot for dropping some favors to this class: Dark: Gather Shadows Earth, Ice, Energy: Power Up Electric, Thorns: Build Up Fire: Embrace of Fire Martial: Envenomed Blades Psi: Drain Psyche (this one requires you to hit enemies to do anything, but is still a self buff) Radiation: Fusion Savage: Spot Prey I could easily see any of these powers providing mezz protection or some of the other things we've discussed in this thread in order to help Dominators fulfill their role as meleeish characters. Something that might be interesting, instead of directly increasing damage, would be to increase damage conditionally if the enemy is within 15ft.

Yeah that's the main scenario I'm talking about with mezz protection. It's all fine and dandy to run around with Domination on but if you die, which you will a lot if you actually fulfill the classes' melee design, you get locked out of Domination mode. In AE content it's not uncommon for me to spend most of the time out of Domination mode because of death lockouts. I don't feel like Clarion or the Psi APP fix this. Those are specialty fixes. This class belongs at close range and should have the tools it needs. Being afraid to approach enemies because getting 2-shot ruins my mezz protection puts a damper on the class. Larger than this, powers like Arctic Air shouldn't be subject to detoggle. There are powers out there that affect enemies that do not detoggle on mezz, like Blaster Cauterizing Aura. You may say, well, that power also provides stats to the caster. And I think if Arctic Air is supposed to function as this "play in the sprinklers at dangerously close range" power it should do that as well. But that's a discussion for Ice Control specifically.

Thanks for your thoughts posters above. I haven't studied the numbers closely but I'm fairly sure the average Blaster beats the average Dominator in AoE damage. There are probably a handful of Dominator builds that deal more damage than some of the lower or mid tier Blasters, but there isn't a Dominator power combo that lands like Build Up + Aim + Geyser. Blasters aren't just good at damage, they're good at burst damage, often at comfortable ranges. Even the nukes that are PBAoE are usually 25ft radius. This is working as intended and is fine. I do find most of the Blaster single target melee attacks mostly silly. However, it doesn't really matter because you can just skip them and still be a great Blaster. A Dominator doesn't really get that option, no matter what happens you will be tooting around with that 15ft PBAoE attack and narrow cone, waiting to get to level 40 before any real AoE attacks finally get slotted. The Assault set is your attack set the same way it is for Defenders or Tankers, who do get attacks later, but not that much later. Dominator is really the only AT other than Controller waiting so long for bread and butter attacks; that's fine on Controllers since they are supposed to focus on other things, but Dominator is a damage class. I don't mean to whine. There's good stuff about Doms. I do find the melee based design doesn't really hold up though. The motif "Controls as Armor" falls apart once enemies can kill you in two hits if you whiff a mezz. Unarmored characters past a certain difficulty threshold just absolutely do not belong anywhere near melee. There are builds that can pull it off, especially using /Psi, but they require a major investment.

Plenty of interesting thoughts above. It's always interesting to hear other player's perspectives. Obviously there is a lot of passion about Dominators, which is great. For me personally, I think three things are true simultaneously for the Dom class: Dominators were always somewhat dependent on perma-dom to be relevant. When Domination was updated around issue 12(? if forget exact issue) very specific steps were taken to not upset how they played, while buffing the nonpermas. Nuke damage has gone up, lowering the value of long recharge controls. Late game enemy Melee and PBAoE damage (in iTrials etc) has gone up, to challenge Scrappers, Brutes and Tankers. The reasons above are why I support moving Dominator mezz protection into a simple click or toggle, like a real melee character. Getting better heals or armor are unlikely to happen because you start stepping on other ATs toes. Mezz protection is well within the definition of Dominators though, and I think we'd make the class better if it was available without an expensive build. What I think what's most important to recognize is this archetype is not a Blaster with mezzes, but is often being played like one. Much of the damage is coming from the APPs because the Assault sets don't deliver like they should. Assault sets tend to be a bunch of cone powers and 15ft PBAoEs. The only other AT that leans so heavily on their APPs is Controllers, who are not a "damage" archetype. A tradeoff I could live with would be Mag 3 protection "all the time" (ie Sentinel level) with additional protection in Domination.

Hmm. I wouldn't say that. I would say Dominator is a mid-level performing archetype that is pushed into a particular build style in order to remain competitive at 50. Other classes in the late game tend to get better linearly as you invest in them. For Dominators, you only really feel the power once you cross into perma-Dom territory, and at that stage you aren't overwhelmingly more powerful than other archetypes, you're just a baseline late game Dominator. Back around issue 20, Dominators held a niche that was unique: squishies with mezz protection. Outside of Force Field and Sonic Resonance Defender/Corruptor/Controller you didn't really see that. This was also before crashless nukes and Blaster sustain abilities greatly increased overall damage and team's abilities to frag a spawn instantly, so the Dominator's relative lack of AoE was less apparent. One thing I definitely feel is like this archetype doesn't keep up at its job at very high levels like other melee-ish archetypes do. The lack of armor and scaricity of healing in most sets makes approaching melee range hazardous in ways it is not for comparable Stalker/Scrapper. Granted, Domination has some team safety utility, so we shouldn't expect total ease. RE: The control sets themselves ,I'm hopeful the team does a full review. IMO no set should be waiting til level 26 for key control powers (Mind , Gravity) and again I think more powers should Dominate. I cases where it's not possible to directly create a Domination effect because of a psuedopet, I think the power should summon 2 psuedo pets, possibly the second one with no graphics so as not to make graphic cards explode.

I'd encourage not skipping Hasten on a Dominator. The asterisk with permadom is that it is always "perma dom under ideal conditions." Getting hit with -Recharge like exists in a lot of Ice or Psi powers will bring a quick end to your permadom ways, so you want some buffer. It's possible, though really hard, for Dominators to slot for -Recharge resistance, but I'm not sure if you can acquire Defense, Recharge resistance, and permadom all in one build. Just because I posted this, someone will respond with such a build. 🙂 But it's rare/hard.

Definitely. I can see leaving it as DoT on Controllers, which are not an AT intended to excel at damage. Dominators though are a strange hybrid of Blaster/Scrapper that has controls in place of armor, to varying degrees of success. Electric Control actually was originally designed to have DoT in its immobilize powers and it was changed to one-hit damage to avoid conflict with Static Field. I think as part of their special abilities, Dominators should always automatically convert DoT to single-hit, even in sets like Fire. There are a few cases where DoT might still be appropriate. Single-hit Ice Storm and Sleet would be weird. But there are a lot of powers that conceptually work as DoTs or single hit, particularly in Fire, Thorns, Dark, and Savage.

For Ice Slick and Earthquake I'd just have the power summon a second, identical pet when in Domination mode. Re: #5 something I just found out is resistable effects rescale strength or duration if the creatures resistance changes. So with that change you could mezz something and hitting it with your ST assault blast would extend the mezz duration.

It sounds like the set you're looking for is Electric Affinity. Its bubble doesnt travel with you and has to be recast, but since you can cast it while mezzed that isn't usually a huge deal. That bubble is the best AoE anti mezz in the game, protecting against all forms of mezz, and even knockback. Electric has some other peculiarities to get used to. I personally think it works best on a Controller or Mastermind, but you can make it work on a Corruptor. If you're going to be playing on a small team you're in the best possible environment for this set. It has some huge bonuses your teammate will love you for, and you'll get the mezz protection you want.

Burnout might be useful for cases where Benumb or Heat Loss misses. No matter how accurate you get them, they will always have a 5% chance to miss, and with perfect accuracy there's a less than 1 percent (0.25%) chance they'll both miss. Hard to say if it's worth it just for that. There might be some unusual scenarios where it's worth it to be able to Benumb two targets, altho again you're only doing it for 30 seconds. IMO Burnout's best use is for players who die occasionally. It's useful to be able to resummon long recharge pets and buffs without waiting. I don't usually see it used for quick power cycling.

I feel like Fire, Plant, Earth or Gravity each have their advantages. I have an Elec/Storm that I'm not as fond of. Mainly it's the Gremlin pets as mentioned above. IMO the developers need to fix the Knockback in Jolting Chain. The amount of knockback should be lower than it is so it stays a knockdown against blue and green enemies.

Well look at that, I learned something. 🙂 Thanks for sharing.

Poison/Water is definitely how I'd go. Water's self heal and minor controls greatly help fill in the gaps for Poison. Water overall is just truly a great set, but especially with any of the sets that lack their own heals. I've got plans to eventually embark on a Trick Arrow/Water Defender.

Dominator is probably my favorite class, but I have to admit there's stuff about the archetype I would change. I'm wondering what other people would change. 1. Make all powers Dominate. Meaning the obvious stuff like Synaptic Overload and Static Field, but also Ice Slick, Earthquake, Arctic Air etc should have extra ticks. The arbitrary distribution of powers that can Dominate or not has always irked me. 2. Front-load most DoTs so that they do single-hit damage. This is an archetype that is supposed to specialize in damage dealing combined with controls. Yet the Assault sets are loaded with DoT powers that interfere with Sleep and Terrorize. 3. Give the AT a mezz protect toggle similar to an armored character. This is likely to be controversial. But the reason I've come to believe this is necessary is perma-Dominators basically have this. The gap between perma and non-perma Dominator feels too wide. I wish this class just had a straight up anti-mezz toggle or clickable and the main benefit of Domination was, well, Domination. This would greatly reduce the pressure for the player to achieve huge amounts of Recharge just to make the class good, 4. Don't force us to play villains to get auto-refill Domination. I hate red side. I hate the way it looks, the red screens you get, really all of it. I really dislike that such a powerful ability forces me to be a red sider. I know the developers created it to entice people to red side, but the fact that it's so powerful and still players stick to blue side should say something. 5. Fix the tier 1 Assault power. The Tier 1 attack powers are almost universally terrible. Most of the time I remove them from my bar as soon as possible. These powers feel like they should have some special utility. A minor vampiric heal, endurance recovery, something. An option would be for them to strip mezz resistance from a target so that mezzes last longer. How about you? What would you change?

Are we talking Superior Dominator ATO or the regular one? Superior I thought was in the 20 mil range. Maybe I don't know how to play markets to get it cheaper. I've only purchased the full set one time.

Oh, I'm told by the way you can also use inventions in bases to get an additional +20% recharge which lasts an hour. I haven't tried it to see if it's true.