Galaxy Brain

This is not a nerf thread I have not once said to nerf Domination, what has been bounced around is removing the barrier to get to permadom or at least smoothing it out. That is a buff my friend.

What is not fair is that in all the other examples you cited the shift in performace is not as drastic nor locked behind as many resources. A Scrapper on SO's can get merits and just slap their ATO in and be marginally better, but still have to play well and utilize the proc as it occurs, same with even the Stalker ones. A dom cannot do the same thing with as much fluidity, needing on average at least 5 LotG's, and on average the recharge bonus is found on the 5th slot of an IO set and gives between 5-8% recharge, so they need multiple sets of IOs to stack together and as I showed earlier even with Hasten there are gaps until a certain point. If there weren't such an awkward gap to getting just decent Domination up-time, let along perma, Dominators could have a much smoother range of build options not just at the high end but while leveling and learning the game for everyone. What is the solution to that? I'm not sure. Should it break current permadom set ups? Hell no. Would the game be better if this one oddity was ironed out to work "as expected" compared to most every other like power? I believe it 100% would be.

I wanna reiterate this in response here: Lets assume it takes 30 seconds to fill domiantion, what we see is the following: Other long duration / long recharge powers follow more towards that blue line where they have an expected power increase as you invest. The red line shows where Domination can be used. It does not seem fair that Dominators are the one exception to the "rule" and have a stat-wall behind which they are either incredibly powerful at all times or they simply aren't as powerful. This is not to say they are bad without it, but they are certainly not as strong. Is the wall that high? No. In fact, it is one of the easier "big recharge" powers to perma: Seen here, it is the 16th easiest out of the powers that cannot be "perma'd out of the box", of which I counted well over 100. Technically 12th if you group powers that need the same amount of recharge to perma. If you don't count the powers that require under 100% recharge, that even drops to 10th or 6th with the same criteria. The "Wall" is short enough for any Dominator build to reasonably achieve. The question though is one of "Is this fair?" In my opinion, no it is not. Lets compare building for Defense. Adding 10% Def is nice, adding 20% is good, adding 30% is great, adding 40% is fantastic! And so on. For Dominators, it is like they can either build for 0% or 40% with no in betweens since there exists a recharge wall between Normal and Perma that does not close linearly. I think it would be a net benefit to everyone if this were addressed in some way.

Itd have to be like lvl 35+ due to exemplars and how that's when most builds sorta click.

Check my recharge guide, even at 400% recharge there are many powers that can never come close to perma

This is not a nerf thread

To his point Infinitum, what lvl of character are they supposed to challenge? In my difficulty thread this is sort of where it has hit a standstill as well despite everyone agreeing we want "harder content"

Fair, tho compared to say maneuvers and weave it's a toss up.

Theyre more common than you think, pretty much every "Soldier" style enemy type has a "Cryo Ammo" power that slows rech, and all psychic/cold attackers slow rech as well.

I think a big thing people are dancing around is... well, what other options are there? Hasten is godlike for a pool power, Tough resists the two most common damage type's you'll find thrown at you period. Leadership is leadership, etc etc... Stuff like presence, Stealth, and so on all pale in comparison. If there were other legit options that could stand up top the popular pool picks that'd be a different story all together.

It doesn't make it unplayable, but nobody else has a great big "wall" to get to that 9000 lvl. A blaster can get by and be good without being specifically capped, a Dominator needs to pass that perma benchmark or its essentially wasting its time. Why are people against keeping permadom, but making it less "Strict" on how it is achieved while keeping the same goal?

Can we stop quoting the giant first post?

One of my initial thoughts, and IIRC somebody mentioned it on an earlier page, would be that Domination is a toggle that costs (DomMeter)/Sec. You build DomMeter by playing normally, but it does not drain normally. It only drains if you have Domination active, in which case it drains at either a steady rate per second, or you use Meter instead of Endurance. That is super-duper Cottagy tho and would make people flip.

Lets find out 🙂 With 3 lvl 50 IO's hasten recharges in 226s (99.08% vs 450 = 226.04). It's duration is 120s, so it's down for 106.04s. This is roughly an uptime of 53.09%. The weird thing to factor in is that it also provides 70% rech for 120s, So, if I napkin math this correctly... 1 + .7 (Hasten) + .9908 (IOs) = 2.6908 450 / 2.6908 = 167.24s for 120s 167.24 - 120 = 47.24s remaining 226.04 / 167.24 = 1.35 difference in magnitude 47.24 * 1.35 = 63.85s remaining So, with 3 IO's we should see Hasten Up for 120s, and Hasten Down for 63.85s (Uptime = 65.27%) Domination recharges in 200s, and is up for 90s. Lets say you click them both at the same time (essentially at the same time ignoring the activation times for right now) 200 / 1.7 = 117.65s 117.65 - 120 = -2.35s (yay!). Domination should recharge within the time Hasten is active 117.65 - 90 = 27.65 (boo!). Unfortunately, you have nearly 30s downtime where you need to build up Dom and click it again. So, say within the 27.65 sec you build up Meter again and click Domination as soon as it recharges. You get ~ 2.35 seconds of 70% rech, wait 63.85s, then get 70% again for the remainder. 200 - 63.85 = 136.15s where Hasten is applied, total 200/136.15 = 1.47 1.47 * 117.65 = 172.95 total time 172.95 - 90 = 82.95s downtime At least iirc, as the alternating durations and recharge boosts are funky to work with, but you'd sorta rinse and repeat this since the two powers are uneven. Lets add 37.5% global recharge from LotG's into the mix: 1 + .7 (Hasten) + .9908 (IOs) + .375 (LotG) = 3.0658 450 / 3.0658 = 146.78 for 120s 146.78 - 120 = 26.78s remaining 450/2.3658 = 190.21 (IO's + LotG) 190.21 / 146.78 = 1.3 difference in magnitude 26.78 * 1.3 = 34.81s remaining (uptime = 77.51%) Click both at the same time again: 200 / 2.075 = 96.39s 96.39-120 = -23.61s, more uptime for Hasten while you rebuild Dom 96.39-90= 6.39s, just short.... but, in this case we have to rebuild Domination. Lets assume we can rebuild in the same 27.65s as before. 27.65-6.39 = 21.26s downtime before you can click Domination again. (Domination recharges 22% faster in this case, but the actual downtime is 3.33x longer than it "should" be) 96.39+21.26 = 117.65... which essentially brings us back up to the loop where we are wonky with recharges / etc. Ok, one more try with 53% global recharge! Hasten Downtime = 25.24s (82.62% uptime) Domination recharge with Hasten = 89.69! Perma!!!! 😄 89.69 - 120 = -30.31s 89.69 - 30.31 = 59.38 remaining when Hasten drops. Hasten will be down for 25.24s out of this time. 200/1.53 = 130.72s 130.72/89.69 = 1.46 difference in magnitude 59.38*1.46 = 86.69s rech when hasten drops, at least for 25.24s 86.69 - 25.24 = 61.45s when Hasten comes back up 61.45/1.46 = 42.09s rech with hasten up again So, with the second application we have: 30.31s duration when hasten drops + 25.24s of hasten being down = 55.55s into Dom's duration 90 - 55.55 = 34.45s remaining 42.09s rech - 34.45s duration = 7.64s overlap where Domination is crashed. Assuming 27.65s build time: 27.65-7.64 = 20.01s downtime till next Domination That gap where you have to rebuild Domination again makes you continue to have LARGE gaps between applications until you suddenly do not need to anymore, even with 5 LotG's + 15.5% IO bonuses. It is very close here, but the gap between Hastens + Dominations + Needing to build Domination still makes this clunky 😞

tbf, you need decent uptime with Hasten as well if you are using it within the 123%.

I think at that point the domiantion build rate could be looked at set to set. My assumption is that as you play naturally you would be building Domination as you go and be functionally perma. Not having it be "truly actually 110% perma outside of combat" is a conundrum in that it would be lost in theory too but that is sort of an X factor that should really only matter a small portion of the time (the first fight of a mission). What I will say tho, is that if Domination was made more "normal" in how perma-ing it works, it opens up more tools to work with in terms of how you build and maintain it.

One thing to note @Bentley Berkeley, is that domination does not need much global recharge to become perma compared to most "needs a lot of rech" to perma powers. The fact that it only needs 123%, that every dom build can achieve this, and the benefits of doing so does lean towards ot being questionable in how there is a signficant gap between Perma and Non Perma given it's not like you actually need perma hasten to accomplish this. @tidge, the gap in mez protection is noticable, but again that shows the gap between it being off and on all the time. I do not buy the comparison being like a brute as it is not 1:1 between "make sure you are at X meter after 90 seconds, which you build naturally by using your powers within 30 sec" and "you must ALWAYS be in combat and be the center of attention or you start losing".

Then when the mission begins you gain it back in that 1st mob and steamroll again.

You still would not be able to get permadom at low level, but you would be able to get closer and closer to it as you level up and slot those enhancements in a much smoother scale. You already have to build up domination to start anyways, this would be no different aside from how you can no longer afk for 90 sec and still have perma dom. Filling the bar within 90 seconds of playing is something youd do by just putting your T1 immobilize on auto and still have time left over.

The one suggestion I saw and I'm clinging to is this: Change Domination to drain the bar upon activation, but allow you to build and maintain Domination again normally while the buff is active. So, while you play normally and have Domination up you have ~90 seconds to refill that bar while doing your normal thing. Our assumption is that it takes probably ~30 sec to normally do this, even faster when teamed. So in practice if you are actively playing in the mission while Domination is active, and you have the required recharge, domination is still 100% perma. What this changes is that if Domination lapses, you no longer have to rebuild meter and instead can simply wait for Domination to recharge and activate ASAP so long as you had meter built. What would change is if you get perma dom and then dont play for ~90 sec it will drop and you'll have to grab meter. But outside the tightest of builds youd still usually need to at least monitor it or hasten as click powers anyway.

@Zeraphia, the one suggestion made so far shouldnt change that at all for you, but instead make it easier for low lvl or not as built.up doms to come closer to permadom levels while not really impacting existing permadoms in practice.

Can confirm with my testing last night, the soldiers will on *occasion* actually swap guns to the Assault Rifle instead of the SMG, fire the heavy burst, swap back to the SMG, and not cycle back for minutes if at all. Once they have the second upgrade, "Tactical Upgrade", they cycle through AR powers properly.

Mostly the same boat here except I do see the gap as a problem due to what I outlined in my prior post. Talking about this last night, it's most comparable to end drain lol. Everyone with -End powers benefits from it sure, but the difference between sapping 7% end per hit in a fight, and being able to 1-2 punch a whole mob of their end near instantly is night and day despite being the same mechanic. What is trying to be addressed, and what should be addressed IMO, is that unlike any other power or AT you invest in the curve is not smooth and sort of coerces you into one build (recharge) to gather up massive performance shifts. I think making the curve smooth by letting you crash and rebuild Domination while active, and hell making it easier by adding a +20% rech power into secondaries or something, would go a long way towards equity for all dominators and their players.

No, the design of the class is to build up and use Domination often, as seen by the +Dom Build Up while Teamed encouraging it to be used quicker and the fact it can be sped up by outside buffs.

I really like the "Swap Ammo pets" so I'mma focus on that. In terms of cosmetics and even playstyle, this has a ton of potential to liven up MM sets and let them have more primaries while also not needing to be made from the ground up. Like the Ninja example with different weapons / powers as they level, theyre still thematically ninja but you could have everyone use blades instead of just the T2's, or have all electric bots, etc. Its a cool idea 🙂