noogens

I was thinking about more in the context of being strictly dedicated to healing and buffing, meaning very little doing anything else including blasting. PA can do non-trivial damage against a single target and provide a little aggro-control. But after watching your videos, it seems that there's too many chaotic swarms of mobs for PA to matter much.

Would an illusion/emp controller make more sense for a dedicated healer/buffer? I know the heal/buff numbers wouldn't be as high on a controller but I'm thinking that you could just pop out phantom army for the passive damage and ghetto tanking while you go full emp mode. I don't have a ton of experience doing hard mode stuff so I'm just curious.

I think the changes (for defender) are fantastic. I never felt the original set’s abysmal damage was worth tradeoff for the debuffs. It feels like a proper blast set now. You can actually be part of the dps instead of just firing a howl out occasionally and do nothing between heals (I don’t play that way but have seen instances of this in pugs). The solo and small teaming ability are greatly enhanced which allows more versatility for the set in general. I get that people can’t stack crazy amount of -res on targets but that only matters in niche situations. Being better overall 99% of the time is easily worth it for me. Tested on storm/sonic and TA/sonic defenders.

My initial thoughts with playing with all the powers with the Crystal animations The graphics are a bit loud. Tombstone and Upthrust are way too large. The screen shake with each power is a bit much even though I know you can turn it off in the settings. I wish upthrust and meteor hit enemies quicker. I got a slight headache playing this but I'll revisit the set if the graphics get a tweak.

Well the lore pet does massive -regen which is one of the reason Longbow is picked so often .

I actually fixed the posted build slightly. My live build has two damage procs in Masterful Throw and Explosive Shuriken where the original posted build only had one damage proc. I have other dom builds which I can post more vids of as well.

Here is the build which is min-maxed for level 50 but does decently well when exemped down. It has softcap to range/smash/lethal with the use of enhancement boosters in a few powers. It's not as high recharge as other dom builds but it makes up for it by taking Ageless and by proccing force feedback from dragon's tail. It also forgoes slotting of lots of good uniques in favor of damage procs. This build can be made tankier or with more recharge but I'm currently happy with the build where it sits for my playstyle. Incarnates: Alpha - Intuition Radial (Best slot for this build imo) Intefrace - Reactive radial Destiny - Ageless Core (mandatory for this build, use recovery serums from p2w when exemping) Hybrid - Melee Core (activate this for status protection before you get domination going or for extra survivability) Updated Build Below

I tried a fire/ice dom on the test server. It was decent but I felt that fire/earth was the better double damage aura character so I rolled that one on live. As far caltrops is concerned, I didn't need the utility of the power and it only does 127 damage unslotted over 45 seconds. That damage was too low to fit into a very tight build.

Here is my fire/martial dom which I think is a pretty underrated combo. It's one of my faves because it plays fast due to the quick animations of most the powers. It also does good AOE damage which I find lacking in many dominator builds. This character is not the tankiest build because I like to go offensive as I almost always play on teams, but it easily solos 4/8 Council and CoT mishes.

To me, the change could be thought of as a slight damage buff to whirling hands but at the expense of endurance cost and cast time. Before the change, the double damage boost didn't boost proc damage. So now that you have to activate the power twice, procs now have twice the amount of chance to fire. So this means that any Interface or slotted procs can now hit twice as often.

While leveling up, I definitely encourage to try all the earth powers to see what you like and don't like. I actually found all the powers useful. I personally liked having a melee attack chain so I took all the melee powers. I actually didn't mind hurl boulder but didn't find myself using it enough to keep it in the build. As far the question about what AOE to drop for imps, for me it would be a toss up between Fissure and Ice Storm. Fissure is available earlier for exemping, takes a lot of diferent proces, and recharges fairly quickly but has a tiny radius. Ice Storm has a much bigger radius, does more damage, comes later when leveling up, and has a long recharge. So pick your poison. If you want to be tougher, you can skip both AOEs and pick up Hoarfrost for the +HP. As far as dealing with end costs while leveling up, I didn't bother with the fighting pool and took leadership for victory rush until I had enough IOs to manage end better. I stuck only end redux and no damage in hotfeet until I could frankenslot IOs. Mudpots is actually a very expensive toggle so I would put more end redux in there too. I made a lot of sacrifices on slotting for recharge, procs, and durability in order to chase defense bonuses. You can definitely go for a lot less range defense bonuses to round out the build better but you just have to be more dilgent on CCing mobs before jumping into them. Other thoughts I usually put the stealth in IO in all my builds and forgot to put it in the one that was posted. I like Force Feedback in Heavy Mallet so that I have a ff proc in both melee power and aoe. It fires pretty often in your attack chain. I played around with the Fiery Orb proc and found it to be very underwhelming performance-wise but at least it looks cool. Dominating grasp is a pretty bad ATO set. Overwhelming Force Kb -> Kd applies on every hit so it works like Sudden Acceleration.

The videos are set to not be public and are only viewable by people with the exact link which hasn't been posted anywhere outside this thread. Also there aren't any labels or descriptions on the videos mentioning homecoming so I didn't see an issue. If i'm wrong I'll take the vids down. It's the same base damage according to mids. The earth aura does fire damage and the ice aura does cold damage.

Luck of the gambler recharge bonuses are considered separate from other 7.5 recharge bonuses. It actually has a differently named bonus in the description which is the key.

It’s a decent power at low levels when everyone lacks defenses but it’s the least needed power at steamrolling incarnate levels. I’d also argue that the hold powers are not as essential so that’s why I take them so late in the build. You can also use flash arrow to help stealth-click mission glowies but having super speed + stealth IO + soft capped defenses negates the need for it for me. You could always swap out assault if you really like the power.

I think that containment needs to be removed and damage needs to be adjusted back up to more tolerable levels. There’s already too many barriers to damage for most combos such as having weak attacks and no appreciable aoe outside of fire. There are many control resistant mobs late game which makes the problem worse.

I just installed homecoming this week and quit live before the final issue was released so I may not be the best expert. However when I was playing I felt that my plant/fire/ice dom was a much better performer than my fire/kin/earth controller in many situations. Controllers typically do fire or smashing/lethal enemy farms depending on what mastery shield they took while my dom was mostly enemy agnostic. I think that ice mastery for doms is generally more damaging mastery between fire and ice. Fire mastery gives you extra aoe attacks and ice mastery gives less aoe but gives access to one of the better debuffs in the game. The -res in freezing damage multiplies ALL damage for both you and your team. Bosses melt much faster with freezing rain applied. Seeds is a pretty OP power late game with purple io set and extra range from slotting or incarnate abilities. It can confuse a massive spawn and the purple Proc can get additional enemies. Also the power recharges quicker than most of the other hard control powers. Seeds, in a round about way, adds to your damage because the confused mobs allow you to drop the group faster. I’m trying to level up my plant/fire again so we’ll what it can do in the late game with the different changes such as permasnipe.