oedipus_tex

As a Controller and Dominator heavy player, it's interesting to read perspectives on Boggle. It's the melee power that sticks out to me as especially attractive. It's a 15 second base Mag 3 Confuse, Most actual control sets do not get a power like this. Boggle has a lower duration than Confuse, Possess and Deceive, less range, and longer Recharge, but is otherwise identical. Someone mentioned Carnies. An interesting tidbit about dealing with them is that if you confuse a Master Illusionist, all of her pets will also be Confused. This will happen to any creature that summons pets, including Masterminds encountered in the AE, Rikti portals, etc. Boggle has recharge of 20, so the lowest recharge you can bring it down to is 5 seconds. More realistically, 7-8 seconds is probably close to where most end game builds will land. That makes it doable. Not a prime strategy for boss level enemies, but worth throwing the Confuses in there when you can. Basically Confuse is the "I win" switch. Any ability a creature has that would normally make them difficult to fight can be turned against them. In that way, Confusion powers work like a reverse card. The more challenging the developers make the enemy, the better Confuse becomes. You especially want to be on the look out for enemies who have + or -Resist powers. Reversing that will directly contribute to your kill speed, either by removing enemy resists or multiplying what wasn't there before. IIRC Elite Bosses have Mag 6 Confusion protection. Boggle is Mag 3, so you need greater than 6 mag to Confuse them. You'd have to build for enough recharge and Confusion duration to do it, but it should be possible. Luckily Confusion sets have excellent set bonuses, at least from the perspective of squishies. The purple set +10 Recharge and +5 Ranged Defense and the Contagious Confusion proc. The cheap-o oranges set has Ranged defense, a damage proc if you want that, and Ranged defense. Maybe that's less important for an armored character, but for sure any set that gets a Confuse power I lean into those set bonuses. The Purple is as good as an ATO set.

I am enjoying the build a lot, yes. The in-game version still needs a lot of IOs. But he's undeniably extremely survivable. Here are some highlights. Around Level 40, entirely on SOs except for the +3% Defense globals I shipped from other toons, I got invited to a fire farm. I was planning to door sit, but decided to explore the survivability of the toon by leaping in. I found that while I wasn't able to primary-tank, if I waited for the lead Brute to work enemies down a little bit I could participate. The Brute even made a statement about Energy Melee hitting surprisingly hard. Around level 44 I joined an ITF. The team was great, and that definitely contributed to my perception. But it's worth noting that still running the very incomplete build, the toon survived every encounter sans two: once when I got cocky and leaped into the pack of Cyclops on the bridge with my team further behind me than I thought, and the second time when encountering a pack of Romans mostly solo. The deaths weren't at all sudden though. It was a long cycle of watching my HP dance at 20% remaining before finally a kill shot came in. At level 50, I did the incarnate mission. This toon destroyed that mission, including the Weakened Honoree. That fight is often a struggle for my new 50s. A Dark/Stone Tank I made a few weeks ago for example had to call in a helper to duo it. On the SR build I don't think even hit me more than one time. After the incarnate stuff, I added a few more IOs, but not nearly the full build. Loaded up an AE Fire Farm (the one set in a collapsed underground road tunnel). After some experimenting I found I could run it at x8+3 with bosses off. After a run runs of that, I managed to unlock all of incarnate slots. The Level Shift, Destiny Rebirth, and the Hybrid Double Damage toggle let me turn the diifficulty up to x8+4, bosses still off. It was 5 in the morning at one point, and a low level Corruptor was looking for a team. I invited him to join me if he wanted. But having a second person there automatically reenabled Boss level enemies. I couldn't complete the run with that build, or even get past the first mob of enemies. Keep in mind the build is still far from complete. Overall, what I found I really enjoy is Energy Melee's AoE attack cycle. Basically, Whirling Hands > Total Focus (to power up) > Power Crash. I'm familiar with Energy blaps from Blasters and Dominators, but on this toon it has a totally different and really satisfying feel. Whirling Hands hitting 16 targets on a Tanker also feels great. OTOH Energy Transfer, the ST melee attack that damages you, was a bit more iffy. In previous convos we had said I probably wouldn't notice the damage to self. Unfortunately I definitely did notice it, and I think it's because of the central mechanism of Super Reflexes. Basically, with SR you get way tougher as your HP drops. Using Energy Transfer at low HP doesn't do less damage to you, though. So using it at a bad time actually killed me a couple of times. I'm sure it gets better with more Regen and better Resists to avoid reaching that point, but on this build at least, avoiding it except at special times was necessary to keep running. Overall I enjoyed Energy Melee enough that I'd like to explore it with some other armor combos. I rolled the same character as an Shield/Energy to see if the extra damage, taunt in Against All Odds, and the extra AoE in Shield Charge made the build more fun. Shield seems to share a lot in common with Super Reflexes, but trades away from survivability for extra damage. I'm interested to see which version I like better. In the meantime if anyone has thoughts about differences between Super Reflexes and Shield please share.

This build is great. On the subject of Tankers operating as team buffers, IMO one of the best powers a Tanker can take that gives meaningful team contribution is Soul Mastery > Darkest Night. The version Tankers get is is identical to a Controller, -30% Damage and -15% ToHit (enhanceable), with an excellent 25ft radius. But Tankers have built in mezz protection to keep it from dropping, so I'd say it's a lot better for them than for Dark Affinity players.

I built a Grav/Rad specifically a while back but was not very happy with the end result. This is partly just related to specific issues I have with Gravity Control. Some players seem to enjoy Gravity Control on Dominators, so don't let my personal opinion color your efforts. It's a perfectly playable set, but also one that I haven't personally been able to make match the performance of many of several other primaries. A quick glance at the starting DPA of Gravity and Radiation Assault gives us this starting point: Your build is currently here: You were right to skip Propel. Propel is a cool looking power that is unfortunately as much trash on Dominators as the garbage it hurls at enemies. It does have AoE knockdown. So do lots of powers, and they hit harder than a T1 blast like Neutrino Bolt. And keep in mind that's Propel's numbers only after setting up the shot with Gravity Distortion for the Impact damage. It's a garbage power. Lift on the other hand is pretty good DPA. Lift 5 slotted with Apocalypse, including the damage proc, and the sixth slotted devoted to a second damage proc, is 227 DPA. Devastating Blow on your current build is 226 DPA. That does require setting up Lift with Grav Distortion first, but you probably need to be doing that anyway. Quite controversially, I also think there's a case to skip Devastating Blow entirely. I'd use some version of a rotation of Grav Distortion > Lift > Contaminated Strike, throw in Proton Volley whenever it's up or Radiation Siphon when you need to heal. You may be able to find a way to proc Devastating Blow creatively and get some great DPA out of it, but I never found a formula that worked for me. Rad Siphon needs Accuracy. It's kind of a frustrating power to use in my experience. Stuff tends to die before you can proc reliably off of the radiation infection. It's fine to slot purely as a heal, just make sure it will actually have enough Accuracy to hit. It's a power that you never want to miss (sadly no matter what you do it always will at least 5% of the time). If this is an AoE/general content build, I'd take Atom Smasher, put the Dominator +Damage ATO in it, and also the Achille's Heel chance for -Resist. You'll be hoovering enemies into tight groups, which can take advantage of the small 10 ft radius. It's a slow casting power, nearly 3 seconds, but not a terrible proc vehicle. I don't think Water Spout works that well with procs. I'd just slot it for straight damage. Either x6 Artillery for the Ranged Defense, or x5 Posi's Blast if you need Recharge.

Good question. I figured I was going for Ageless Destiny to help pay for it, but it might still be too much. Right now, slotting would suggest Focus Accuracy is on most of the time, which may not be realistic. I could try to move slots around to reduce the cost of this power. More food for thought: I'm unsure this build actually needs Hasten. Hasten does speed up how fast the AoEs come back up and reduce some other things. I didn't spend time mapping out a perfect attack chain because Im coming from Dominators, where the attack chain is "what can you press right now?" But if I were to drop Hasten I could swap into something else--perhaps Combat Teleport.

Thanks for the sample builds. 🙂 I've been playing this Tanker in game and so far he's actually really good. Currently at level 40. I happened to join a Fire farm, and although I'm not close to optimally slotted, with careful use of inspirations I was at least able to mostly not die. That's an impressive result I think at this level. I made the toon disco themed and named him "Discobrawl." I think the Energy Melee balls of power look pretty good as disco balls. I put together this potential build. I am still pretty unsure about how best to optimize the Tanker procs and SR's resist. I took two screenshots below, one where the Tanker is getting max Resists for being low on HP. and another where he isn't getting any. Max resists: Min resists: I put the Tanker Resist ATO proc in Energy Punch on the assumption that's where I'll be clicking it the most and have the greatest chance of proccing it, but if this is a bad assumption let me know. Swapping Energy Punch for Bone Smasher is an option if the longer Recharge on that power would be produce better proc rates. The build is very slightly under the incarnate cap, but is that likely to matter? I figure there is any place I can count on a teammate buff pushing me over the top, it's in an iTrial. Meanwhile, debuff resists look good. This is my first high end Tank build, so maybe I'm overkilling here? The build: Thanks again for your thoughts.

Thanks all! I've decided to reroll from SR/Radiation to SR/Energy. I just like the "feel" of Energy Melee a lot, plus it fits the concept better than Radiation did. Thanks for sharing that Energy Transfer won't wreck the build. This sounds like a fun and interesting character. Can someone point me to a basic Super Reflexes build? I know how to build for Defense, but in this case it's practically covered on its own. I'm very unfamiiar with best practices for building for +HP and +Resist. Would be nice to have a starting base to look at even if it's not a Sr/Energy build specifically. I admit I am also a little confused by SR's reactive Resistance feature. I understand my Resists go up as my health goes down, but am not sure what that means for the overall build nand how to strategize around it.

This is part of what the Fold Space is for. 🙂 Fold Space >> Drain Psyche. Although this is a video of a Elec/Psi Dom, not Mind/Psi, you can see the basic technique here. Electric plays very very differently from Mind, so all of the strategies may not be the same. With Electric Control for example it's often effective to drop the Sleep patch underfoot and yoink enemies onto you with Fold Space, so you can drain them the instant they land. There's a reasonably good example of the technique at about 4:00. With Mind Control, it may be effective to Sleep them with Mass Hypnosis first (since it won't alert them) and then yoink. Or Mass Confuse first. Or some other method. Please don't judge my playstyle based on the ridiculous first few minutes of this video where I somehow forgot how to play and opened with some of the worst technique of my "career." I feel like the portions that come later, including the bits with the ambushes, show the technique better. Up until my death at around 18:30 that is due to awkwardly walking right into a pack and letting them open fire on me while Defense was low.

While we're talking about stuff over or under performing, it might be worth dragging up Plant Control's Roots power, the AoE Immobilize. Here is the Dominator version of Roots next to Energy Blast's Explosive Blast on a Defender. It has half the recharge and about twice the AoE radius. AoE radius can actually result in lower proc rates, so it's not the royal flush it used to be, but it's still impressive numbers. It's long been noted that Plant Control's AoE immobilize does twice as much damage as other AoE immobilizes. I'm not saying it necessarily needs to get nerfed. It's interesting though that that power has twice the radius, half the recharge of a Defender's Explosive Blast. Because of Containment, the Controller version is actually a bit better than either of these. Again not asking for it to be nerfed to heck, but it does make me wonder what would come of a review of Control set performance.

I've never played Super Reflexes on any character above level 20. I currently have a Super Reflexes/Radiation Tank. He's not bad, although I'm not sure whether to stick with Radiation Melee or go with something else. Conceptually for this character, Energy Melee works well. However, I was concerned about how the toon would handle the self damage in Energy Transfer without the Regen/healing most other armors have. Kinetic Melee would also work well conceptually for this toon, but I've heard not very good things about it. No idea if they are true, since I never got a Kin above level 10. What's the lay of the land Tankers?

Just had another look at that graph. Adding KB to KD improved Assault Rifle by almost a minute and a half? 😮 That's actually longer than the gap between Tier A and upper Tier D. It's interesting too, coz I think everyone thinks of Energy Blast as "the knockback blast set" but Assault Rifle has nearly identical KB chances in its AoEs, minus the nuke. I'm not backing down from how annoying it is that Explosive Blast doesn't unlock til level 35 on Defenders though, since it's basically the same power as Fireball, Water Burst, Ball Lightning, Irradiate, Explosive Arrow etc. I also actually forgot Power Push existed until just now.

I'm actually impressed that the gap between A Tier and upper D Tier is only about a minute and a half. Considering a full A tier run is 7 minutes, 47 seconds, that's only a 12 percent difference. I'm not surprised to see Assault Rifle dragging in a half hour late though. That set feels like I'm shooting a pop gun. Not sure I'm entirely clear on the category rankings. Is there only a 3-4 second difference between Energy Blast with KD and Archery and DP? I'm surprised to see them ranked B tier since their rating is still the same from the previous column where they were Tier A. Maybe not understanding your ranking system though.

I think a pylon test is going to bear out the predictable result, Sleet adding ~30% damage, and Water Spout dealing 550-ish damage. That would track with how this power interacts with most AVs. I don't feel like it makes a lot of impact there. I'm not sure how much I buy into mission run time competitions, but I think that may be a better measuring tool in this case. It's so hard to put a finger on why this power feels so effective. I picked up a Plant/Trick Arrow/Leviathan a moment ago and ran it through some Council missions, and the feeling was still there. When I pressed myself for why it feels that way, I think it may be connected to never feeling like the Spout is wasted. I can click at the start or end of a fight, and because it will follow me to the next pack, it feels like I'm not trying to squeeze as many clickable powers into the salvo. Not sure if this would bear out numerically..

I don't think so. Sleet also has a defense debuff, and it hits a larger area. What Sleet doesn't have is direct damage, and that could be what's responsible for the perceived difference. Water Spout is mobile, and it moves quickly. I think what may be coloring my perception is the "competition for clicks" that happens in the opening seconds of a fight. Water Spout will trail after you after you've finished the last pack, so there's less concern about "wasting" it like a lot of other long cooldown powers. My builds usually have the downtime on the power to around 20 seconds, so it's up more often than it's down. The actual damage it does is both good and bad. It's 550-ish damage with an animation time of 1.17 seconds, which in a normal attack would be considered incredible. However it takes so long to Recharge and the DoT takes 30 seconds to fully uncork, plus will only rarely focus fire a single enemy, so the actual DPS is pretty low. Or so it would seem. The place I really feel it handling its business is when I come up on a big pack of enemies and need to unload a stack of controls. Sleet also has knockdown, but for some reason I don't feel like it creates the same kind of chaos. I've long wondered if the Spout might be attracted to enemies who are currently not mezzed and that's why it feels that way. Nothing in the code I've seen suggests that, though.

Can I get some validation from my love of Water Spout? I've never seen a numerical analysis prove it, and I don't think a pylon test would bear it out. But in actual play am I am the only one who finds Water Spout more effective than its numbers would suggest? These things are so hard to put a finger on. But I have a Dominator who had been using Water Spout for a long time. I recently respecced him to use Sleet instead. Everything on paper suggests Sleet is the better choice. On teams or versus an AV that's definitely true. But in actual solo play I can feel a huge difference without the Water Spout. Its damage numbers aren't amazing. Not terrible either. It should be doing a little over 530 damage over 30 seconds prior to debuffs. Somehow it feels like its contributing a lot more than those numbers suggest though. Am I mistaken in this feeling or do other people feel that way about this power? Part of me thinks it has something to do with how mobile the spout is, and how if you cast it towards the end of a previous group, it will mop them up and then follow you onto the next pack, so damage isn't wasted. But then the Spout also has a habit of wandering the battle field at times not really hitting anything for a couple of seconds. What are your thoughts?

I was trying to capture something else and ended up capturing something tangentially related to this. I was running an arc in the AE called "Herordrome" that's really intended for groups. The enemies I consider "differenlty balanced." There are lot of minions who summon pets or are balanced in the style of Malta Sappers, meaning you really want to take them out of the fight early. Anyway, although what I ended up accidentally capturing is extreme evidence of how the soft cap treats squishy characters like Dominators. If you watch the opening minutes of this video you can see I completely blow any kind of strategy for opening the fight, but get through it pretty easily. Then, close to the end of the video at 18:00-ish, I've gotten pretty cocky, and let my Defenses drop. They aren't super low. They're dropped to around 30 to Ranged/Melee. The result is instant death. I should have done something to control them first or else got my Defenses up first. Anyway just something to throw on the pile. Using Linea's rankings I'm guessing this toon's survivability is ranking is around 4 or 5.

A kinda nice thing about Fold Space with Gravity is you can go through Teleport Target to get there. TP Target can be used to position Singularity precisely. You actually can cast it in mid air and Singularity should stay pretty close to that height. A dirty Gravity trick I like to use is to put kb to kd in Singularity and Wormhole enemies directly on top of the guy, or just underneath him. If Wormhole is recharging and I just want to burst into the next group sometimes I'll just teleport Singy right into the middle of the pack, and let his reverse Repel recent everyone. If you happen to be /Traps there are a few traps I think you can TP that way too, though I forget which ones. Should be any that can be killed. It's been a long time since I tried so I could be completely lying. In any case yeah, it's totally worthwhile to take Fold Space and Wormhole. They both serve very different functions. Wormhole is used to move a pack of already gathered enemies from point A to B, still in a pack, OR to serve as a Stun in the style of Flashfire. Fold Space is more about gathering a chaotic group and recentering them. Fold Space can be used like Wormhole to position things if you're careful, but it's not ultra reliable when used that way, and of course it aggros, and has no Stun.

Somewhere in my train of thought I lost sight of the fact that this is a /Psi Dominator. You shouldn't be having endurance problems. If you are, it's because you're probably being too timid with Drain Psyche. Even if you are down to just two enemies remaining its usually worth it to Drain them. Alternatively, take off toward the next pack of enemies when your DP is just about to recharge and make the other enemies chase you. Destiny Barrier all the way for /Psi Assault. The ability to pick Barrier is one of the highlights of having Drain Psyche handling your healing and recovery.

I can see that potentially working, maybe. Stuff that doesn't get Wormholed tends to chase you down a few seconds after you injure their buddies (Wormhole itself won't do it). So you might be able to dodge a couple of ranged attacks if you drop it underfoot immediately after a WH.

Dimension Shift will shift everyone inside it, friend or foe, or you, if you're inside. Everyone inside it can affect each other, everyone outside it cannot. Teams generally do not benefit from not being able to affect each other. Nothing outside a Dimension Shift affects anything inside, so this can cause heals, long cooldowns, all kinds of other buffs, as well as nukes and big debuffs to unexpectedly miss. Most people do not appreciate this at all. I assume it's got a 20 second timer so players can't just hide inside it forever. I don't know how long it would have to last for me to consider it for a power pick. At least a full minute or two seems a lot more reasonable. 20 seconds is just long enough in most cases to completely screw things up. I've experimented with this power a dozen different ways to see if I could make something of it. For example, I tried a Grav/Storm strategy where I summon a DS and drop Tornadoes inside while I stand outside. Doesn't work though. I do think "true" pets like the Singularity can do damage inside DS while you stand outside it, but how often do you want a pet fighting enemies without you there to help them? And for just 20 seconds. It might be a viable strategy for a particularly strong Lore pet, but I am not so sure. If you really need a power like this you're almost always better served with a pool or APP power like Hibernate or Phase Shift.

Usually instead of taking Cardiac Alpha I recommend either Musculature (either tree) or Intuition Radial. All of those provide Damage above the normal cap, so you end up with either +22% or +30% damage depending on the one you take. If you still need Endurance, which a lot of Doms will, you can take Destiny Ageless, which will solve your end bar problems permanently, at least as long you stick to level 50 content. A bonus to Ageless is it provides some extra barrier against -Recharge debuffs and can also help you skimp a little on global Recharge, allowing more procs.

There are ways to make it better. For sure I have characters who toggle drop from blue bar overuse, though. I have a Martial Arts/Shield Scrapper who runs through his blue bar faster than I can keep up, for example. It's been a while so I don't remember how kitted he is. Mostly SOs, 1 end redux in each attack where I can slot it though. Still a real hog to play. Earth Assault in the Dominator sets is a real beast too, especially paired with an end heavy primary like Fire or Ice Control.

I think the thing that hinders soloing most often is not having enough endurance/recovery to keep pushing forward. Virtually anything that has enough endurance can likely find a sweet spot of lawnmowerdom or mission clearances and earn XP at a decent rate. Most Blasters probably qualify for this, along with anyone with an armor set that has good endurance management.

Something to be aware of is DS is an oddball of a power, it's a toggle power that has a duration of 20 seconds. Meaning you can only create the intangible aura for 20 seconds before it force drops. That's the reason I don't take that power. 20 seconds just isn't long enough for me to make it meaningful. I usually find it easier to just run away. You can play with it of course if you still like it. Just giving the heads up on what to expect. It's definitely not full time access to a personal safety dimension. More like a toy that can briefly annoy enemies (and sometimes teammates). I hear it's not bad in PVP, tho. Maybe a PVPer can comment on that.

That's interesting that live power attributes suppress for a period of time and then return. I wouldn't have guessed one way or the other that that is how it would work. Most sources of invisibility are toggles. With those, the effect recasts itself so quickly that the invisibility and defense come back on line just because of the refresh rate of the attribute. I believe Group Invisibility stacks with all other sources of Stealth, including Group Invisibility cast by other Illusionists. There aren't a whole lot of situations where it comes into play, although possibly it could matter in PVP. Stealth toggles like Superior Invisibility can't be run with powers like stealth auras like Steamy Mist, etc. That's one of the few situations in this game where powers in a player's primary and secondary can't be combined at all. I'll be honest, I don't think Superior Invisibility does anything that should lock you out of using it with those powers. Group Invisibility should still work, tho.