EnjoyTheJourney

I'm as puzzled as Snarky. I don't see how this thread has not yet reached a consensus. I've seen rational arguments in multiple game forums for why "additive" increases to damage can have a very marginal effect. But, damage multipliers (such as resistance debuffs, although there are also other kinds of damage multipliers) are usually a crucial focus for builds across ARPGs, MMOs, and other games where damage is important. I can't recall any other game forum in which I've seen players, other than perhaps brand new players, repeatedly assert that double digit damage multipliers won't make a noticeable difference. At this point, there are other things to do.

Try out the math another way. Let's say a generic level 54 boss has 2730 hit points and a generic level 54 elite boss has 5400 hit points. For ease of calculation, they have no resistances to any kinds of damage and their life regen is zero. This makes for conservative estimates of the effects of -res damage multipliers on clear speed. With purple patch effects applied, damage does 65% of its nominal value to +3 mobs. With the above assumptions about enemy resistances and life regen that means enemies have the following effective life pools ... effective boss hit points after purple patch effects ... 2,730 / 0.65 =4,200 effective elite boss hit points after purple patch effects ... 5,400 / 0.65 = 8307 So, let's say a nuke does 2,000 hit points of damage. Very impressive, the boss only needs 2,200 hit points more incoming (nominal) damage to be defeated. But wait, that pesky VG-using poison character was in the vicinity applying VG to that boss. So, they lost about another 240 effective health. Now it only takes a little less than 2000 more (nominal) damage to take down the boss. The same calculation shows the elite boss can still survive 6307 hit points of incoming (nominal) damage before they fall over. Or, just over 6000 damage if VG has been applied. When you add more and more damage to each them the question becomes whether or not the amount of damage added from VG is likely to more than make one or more incoming attacks to the boss or elite boss unnecessary. Since bosses and elite bosses have significant life pools, and in practice they often have some meaningful damage resistances and some life regen, VG is noticeably contributing to damage with every single attack that lands. The odds are quite good that as you're getting close to doing all the damage needed to take out a boss or elite boss that VG already contributed more to damage done than at least one (and perhaps multiples) of the individual attacks being directed at a boss or (especially) an elite boss. This is a more accurate way of trying to analyze the effects of VG effects on clear speed, instead of trying to work backward from a small amount of "remaining life" to figuring out the same thing.

I've been along for quite a few teams for which envenom is the only poison power I'll consider using fairly regularly because movement speed seems to be the main limiting factor for clear speed; maybe weaken would be applied to AVs on such teams, but that's about it. VG will still be engaged because the cost to run it is functionally nonexistent when endurance management is consistently under control. Which it can be with careful build choices, without making major compromises. Obviously all minions and lieutenants are going to fall over in the first few seconds for each new spawn on extreme teams. So, it's usually differences in defeat times for bosses and EBs that will determine whether, for example, a KM ITF will clear in noticeably under 30 minutes or not. That's where the passive application of a 12% damage multiplier^ such as VG is most likely to make a difference for clear speed. ^ VG provides a passively applied damage multiplier of about 12% or higher to +3 mobs, after purple patch effects, and assuming that only the -res effects of VG provide any help with clear speed (a conservative assumption, but let's roll with that). One of the reasons a figure of 12% is probably conservative when considering the effects of VG on clear speed is that regen has a way of extending defeat times for mobs with more hit points, which gets reflected in how DPS calculations increase in a non-linear way as pylon defeat times decrease, especially when doing particularly high levels of damage. Another reason that a 12% increase in clear speed is probably conservative is that sometimes resistance debuffs are reducing resistances that were noticeably above zero, in which case the damage multiplier they provide is larger than their nominal value. For example, a (nominal) 12% resistance debuff becomes a 24% damage multiplier for any damage for which the (+3 level in this case) enemy to which it is applied has a native 50% resistance to the damage it is receiving. With overkill damage potentially being substantial it's possible that clear speed won't increase by exactly 12% because of VG. That's going to be true for most other debuffs as well, though. Plus, for most other debuffs activation time is required that could instead have been used to pile on even more damage. So, the value from using them is even more in question than it would be for VG. Which, again, costs absolutely zero activation time to apply to mobs. Snarky is basically acknowledging this when mentioning that tar patch isn't worth using when a team is clearing things at extreme speed. VG is worth using, though, because, once again, its functional cost is nonexistent once endurance management has been organized and it probably will make at least some marginal difference to clear speed. DarkCurrent has done some interesting, granular work comparing defenders and controllers. The level of precision in measurement is much higher than that being shown by anybody in this thread (myself included, to be fair). I'd be a lot more interested in differing views about VG if there was at least some level of precision in the measurements being done, instead of just a determined, resolute willingness to keep making the same assertion that "I don't see (much of) a difference." But, you're arguing against math and, well, math is math and it shows a lower end double digit increase in clear speed is likely from passively applying VG to mobs. Clear speed seems likely to drop by a couple of minutes or a few minutes for most TFs, except perhaps on extremely fast teams. You might not notice a difference. But, unless you have measurements to show otherwise there's no good reason to disbelieve the underlying math.

In my view feral charge is the set defining power. Proc it up and use it as a substitute for maiming slash when you can. Also, feral charge happens to pair up quite well with incendiary aura for reasons that will probably become clear a little further down. So, consider giving the set a bit more time before reaching a final verdict about how much you might enjoy playing it. Feral charge offers very similar DPA to maiming slash, when proc'd up. But, feral charge hits up to five targets, instead of just one target. When looking across all the different AOE powers to which dominators get access, feral charge offers excellent DPA on a quick recharge, in exchange for being limited to five targets. Also, feral charge does knockdown and can take a force feedback +recharge IO; it recharges in a little less than 4 seconds with good global recharge and no local recharge. So, when you use it a lot recharge noticeably improves for many powers. Finally, feral charge's teleport-to-target-and-immediately-attack ability gives serious Nightcrawler vibes, making it sooo much fun to use (at least for me, YMMV of course). Feral charge from maximum range, followed by vicious slash, can maximize all blood fury stacks, allowing for "rending flurry" cast immediately afterward to have a noticeably larger radius. This combo provides a good alpha strike option for new spawns^. ^ Credit goes to Frosticus for pointing this out. At the end of the day, savage assault doesn't boost defense totals the way several assault sets can with their variously named "boost" power that functions kind of like "power boost" and a "damage boost" power all rolled into one (ice assault has such a power, as one example). Plus, single target DPA while fighting a single hard target is middle of the pack, when compared to other assault sets. But, savage assault has a noticeable heal to potentially help to offset its lack of a defense boosting ability and it has sneaky good AOE damage because feral charge has excellent DPA and you can use it so often. To see how you might IO up a savage assault character, you can check out the build offered here. Click on the RHS of feral charge to see how much damage it does, on average. Click it off afterward, though, as otherwise global recharge values will be out of whack and you won't be able to see what the default recharge times would be for any power, once the build has been fully put together. Also note the presence of unleash potential, which helps to ease endurance problems with a strong recovery boost when active. Unleash potential also offers higher defense totals; it can help for absorbing alphas and at other times when incoming aggro is higher than usual. Dominator (Ice Control - Savage Assault - Dark Mastery),v2.mbd

You waited a fair while before posting a single line response and it seemed clear that something about what you quoted came across to you as untrue and worthy of correction. The wording and brevity of your response seemed to purport to state a general truth, rather than a conditional truth that is based on your preferred playstyle. If the effects of VG are definitionally excluded as being part of a team's alpha then, yes, the effect of VG on a team's alpha is null and void. But, it seems arbitrary to exclude the effects of VG from the effects of a team's alpha. To permanently lay to rest a key argument you've been implicitly setting forth, perhaps without realizing it, using VG doesn't necessarily mean a team "needs" VG to be successful or effective. VG is effective at speeding teams up by passively increasing damage done by all team members, thereby cutting down on the average number of clicks needed to defeat most spawns, and by passively and without any button clicks reducing incoming damage^. In a nutshell, "less clicks for better clear speed" is its primary contribution. Maximizing the percentage of the time VG debuffs are applying to mobs is how you maximize the "less clicks for better clear speed" buff that the poison set can apply to teams. There are some marginal cases where the added debuffs from VG may be a deciding factor for the team succeeding or failing. Those are probably marginal cases, though, and there would probably be other powers on such a team that are also helping to push that same team just over the line needed to succeed. So, even in such cases it seems a bit arbitrary to single out VG as the power that the team "needed." ^ Before something picks a nit, one button click gets VG going and it can carry across multiple game sessions. So, technically one button click is needed, but in practice activating VG is done before engaging with enemies.

Is a team's alpha strike not those things a team does over a period of a few seconds when making contact with a new spawn? In a team of 8 players, why would that team's alpha only be the first power activated against a spawn by a press of one a button by one team member, with any passively activated powers somehow and mysteriously being excluded from consideration as being part of the alpha? The debuffs in VG are helpful for both reducing incoming damage to the entire team and for increasing team damage done to enemies. That's a good thing and it's worth noting that they tend to take effect relatively quickly when heading into melee range with new spawns. It seems awkward and arbitrary to exclude the effects of VG when considering the effectiveness of a team's alpha strike against new spawns.

I'd suggest searching for dominator posts by Frosticus and Voltak. They both describe dominator builds that are effective at soloing AVs. Voltak tends to look most at dark / dark dominators that focus on stacking very high levels of magnitude of confusion on AVs by chain-casting possess. Frosticus tends to look most at control sets that have a sturdy pet with a taunt ability that reduces the amount of AV aggro directed at the dominator themself. The two dominator primaries that I can recall Frosticus using a fair amount for soloing AVs are earth control and arsenal control, as their tier 9 pets both have a taunt and are both very sturdy. There is no long duration single target confusion power in ice control. So, ice control doesn't offer the ability to stack confusion magnitude to such high levels that AVs will cease to view an "ice control" dominator as an enemy. Also, the tier 9 pet in ice control is Jack Frost. He doesn't have a taunt and he's not as sturdy as the tier 9 pets in arsenal control and in earth control.

FWIW, I find that AOE immobilizes offer good utility for little cost for both trollers and doms. A key factor is that the AOE immobilize tends to be available at level 2 and there are only the T1 and T2 powers available in the secondary and primary available as alternative choices at that point in time. And, two of those four powers have already been taken by level 2, leaving only 2 choices left. If I have to choose between the single target immobilize and the AOE immobilize I tend to prefer the AOE immobilize because the ability to hit many targets is sometimes useful. That usually leaves the T1 in the secondary as the alternative to taking the AOE immobilize. Those powers don't tend to offer the package of benefits that the AOE immobilize does (more on that follows below). My typical slotting for an AOE immobilize is two superior frozen blast IOs. The base versions can be purchased with merits earned while leveling up for any new character and then upgrades can also be purchased using merits earned while leveling. They tend to be damage / end red + acc / damage / end red when accuracy is high enough to get 95%+ to hit chances for +3 enemies. Otherwise, I slot in an acc / damage superior frozen blast IO instead of a damage / end red superior frozen blast IO. This offers 15% slow resistance for the cost of 1 added slot, some endurance reduction to make using the AOE immobilize less endurance intensive, and enough to hit chance to make it hit consistently in most circumstances. The main use case for the AOE immobilize is to prevent bunched up mobs from scattering. Another occasionally very helpful use case is when an AV likes to run. A final use case for the AOE immobilize is to take fliers out of the air so they're more closely bunched up together and anybody on the team who doesn't fly can more easily hit them with any melee attacks that they like to use. This is all situational utility and not important for most fights. Still, getting 15% slow resistance and some good situational utility for such a low slot cost makes picking up an AOE immobilize an easy choice. PS: Here's a link to somebody who really, really wants you to skip those immobilize powers ... https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Mary_MacComber I've occasionally been on a team where nobody has an immobilize that can knock Mary out of the sky for her "Ten times the victor" mission and especially if it's being run at +4 that can be very tedious.

It's probably worth mentioning that for wormhole and singularity ... The sudden acceleration KB to KD unique IO works great to reduce knockback and repel effects. The overwhelming force KB to KD / damage unique IO doesn't work as well In this case "not as well" means that you'll still get some quite strong repel effects and some other problems with the overwhelming force KB to KD IO, while those kinds of issues are much less pronounced with the sudden acceleration KB to KD IO. I learned this the hard way by slotting the overwhelming force KB to KD IO into a gravity controller and causing problems on teams that I joined. Fortunately, I ended up teaming with somebody more experienced with the set and they pointed out how I could make KB and repel much less pronounced with the sudden acceleration KB to KD IO instead. The change was immediate and very noticeable once the sudden acceleration KB to KD IO was used in both wormhole and singularity.

Dark control also feels clunky to me. I'd also second the suggestion that haunt doesn't contribute much and is an easily skippable power pick. Dark control is still very effective, though, as fearsome stare alone can win a lot of fights. Also, despite the edge mind has in some key ways, thematically dark powers are a great fit for savage and having a shadowy hound to assist your dark / savage dominator feels so fitting. And, single target damage on dark control will generally have a higher peak because a T9 pet will add damage.

I'm not sure there is a dark control guide anywhere on the forums. At least, I don't recall ever having seen one. Of course, it is always possible there is one and I missed it. You could try searching for posts by Voltak about dark control in the dominator forum. He was definitely one of the better known posters who had good experiences and good things to say about dark control, back when he was frequenting the forums. IIRC, he also has one or more youtube videos that you might find helpful for getting to know how to build dark control dominators and how they can play.

Two key perks for a sentinel are ... 1. Rapidly recharging nukes. They do less damage than blaster nukes. But, they're available about every 25ish seconds with good global and local recharge. It feels good to be able to nuke most new spawns at least once. 2. Vulnerability is a sentinel-specific single target debuff that scales very well against higher level enemies and has high uptime. Only one instance of vulnerability can be applied to an enemy at a time. But, it is a really good debuff and a valuable contribution to a team to use it against harder targets when you can. One not-as-great thing is that cones have a 5 target limit for sentinels, instead of the usual limit of 10 targets for ranged cones. Also, sentinels don't have as much range on their ranged attacks as other ATs.

An ice / ice / ice dominator is very effective. Being able to apply chilling embrace, ice slick, arctic air, cold snap, and sleet to enemies absolutely destroys their ability to move around and also greatly hampers their recharge. Incoming damage goes way, way down for a triple ice dominator in the clear majority of situations. Because they can pile on so much -speed and -jump they're even quite effective at limiting movement for Olympic champion sprinters like mission 4 Romulus and Olympic champion jumpers like Director 11 in the first Tin Mage TF mission. In practice, many mobs tend to spend much or most of their remaining time before being defeated vainly trying to run away from the ice storm or some other effect, getting basically nowhere while trying to do that. Give this combo a whirl on the beta server if you're curious and you'll see that this is not an exaggeration. As one caveat, this combo thrives on teams. If your goal is to solo AVs, then there are better combinations than this. Also, to get the most out of this combo you'll want both arctic air and chilling embrace, which makes managing endurance more challenging. You'll almost certainly want unleash potential from the force of will pool powerset to get better endurance recovery and you may also want some help from incarnates with endurance management. Edit: I had a bit of spare time, so I put together a sample build. Toggle off power up and unleash potential to see the "baseline" defense and endurance recovery levels for the build. It's still good to note the peaks for endurance recovery and defense, though, as you can quite often use power up, and then activate unleash potential soon after. There are lots of reasonable ways to put together this kind of build, of course, and you may understandably prefer a different approach. Dominator (Ice Control - Icy Assault - Ice Mastery).mbd

It sounds very much worthwhile to slot then. Thank you for the information.

I'm building an electric / storm / psi troller. So, having a lot of recharge is very appealing to keep multiple nados / lightning storms out on a regular basis. I'm hoping that jolting chain can help with achieving that goal. Thus, I'm wondering roughly how often a force feedback +recharge proc in jolting chain would proc when there is no local recharge slotted into jolting chain. This would be a team play troller, so spawns will be large and most of the time jolting chain will hit anywhere from several to up to 16 targets. I'll have a force feedback +recharge IO in tornado and in lightning storm as well, in case that matters for figuring that out.

There is no way that firing off a ranged debuff that affects a smaller number of mobs and has a smaller resistance debuff is "more impactful" than affecting more mobs and applying more than twice as much resistance debuffing to all but one or two mobs in the same amount of time. That's like arguing up is down, pregnant is not pregnant, alive is dead, air is water, earth is sky, and so on. There has got to be something that can be improved with how a character is played if they can't make a team move faster with venomous gas and envenom versus just envenom. Fire off envenom while in mid-air and then land in the middle of the next spawn and drop poison trap. Ideally, do that just ahead of the team's alpha strike so everything is choking on a proc'd up poison trap mini-nuke while the team's fire blaster is starting up their nuke sequence. If the team's fire blaster has their nuke started and your poison character wasn't already in melee range, preferably with poison trap already working, then that was a missed opportunity to make lieutenants and higher melt faster. Team play can be pretty chaotic, so it won't always happen. Still, whenever you're not already in melee for the team's alpha then you're not leveraging venomous gas to the extent that it can be.

The resistance debuff from venomous gas is higher than the splash debuff from envenom. And, for the clear majority of mobs in a spawn the splash debuff is the only ranged resistance debuff likely to apply to them. Some numbers for defenders ... Envenom resistance debuff ... Target hit with envenom (maximum of 1 mob per use of envenom) = -40% to all damage resistances Mobs hit with the splash debuff (only affecting mobs within an 8 foot radius of the target) = -20% to all damage resistances Venomous gas resistance debuff ... Up to 16 mobs in a 15 foot radius of the defender = -25% to all damage resistances Thus, a mob with a splash debuff has -20% to all damage resistances, while a mob with a splash debuff and venomous gas applied to them has -45% to all damage resistances. It's baffling how anybody can convince themself that a debuff that will usually affect a smaller number of mobs and consistently has a smaller effect can somehow be more impactful than a debuff that will usually affect a larger number of mobs and consistently have a larger effect. Further to the above, some who don't take venomous gas seem to think that stacking the ranged debuffs is a worthwhile thing to do. However, stacking the ranged debuffs such that there's one full debuff and one splash debuff applied to two or perhaps three mobs does less resistance debuffing, and to fewer mobs, than applying venomous gas to those same mobs instead of layering on envenom more than once. Finally, those taking venomous gas will very likely be stacking debuffs, rather than dropping envenom and only taking venomous gas instead. The notion that comparing venomous gas vs envenom is somehow an important thing to do is at odds with how poison players who take venomous gas tend to play their characters. It's the stacked debuff total that matters, with higher clearly being better than lower. Especially since venomous gas more than doubles the amount of resistance debuffs applied to most mobs, it seems very clear that the argument "ranged debuffs are more impactful" holds no water. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/powerset.html?pset=defender_buff.poison&at=defender

SR provides softcap positional defenses within reach with IO sets, a good amount of DDR, absorb with master brawler, and scaling resists as life totals decline. The heal in water blast's "dehydrate" can address that key gap in survivability tools provided by SR. After the recent buff to sentinel's water blast damage, water/SR is a really solid combination.

Admittedly, I'm not running a psi / martial / mace blaster these days, having replaced that character with a fire / martial / mace. Also, I'm drawing on past experiences in other content given that my psy / martial / mace blaster was retired before the newer KW content was introduced into the game. Perhaps I'm overestimating how well it would fare in the newer content. If there are blasters than can solo KW radios, though, a psi / martial / mace blaster is probably good candidate to be a member of that group.

A psi / martial / mace blaster with rune of protection, inner will, T4 melee hybrid core, T4 barrier, and the usual accolades would probably be able to solo PI, DA, and KW content. There's quite a bit of control and debuffing available in the primary and secondary, plenty of mez protection, good peak survivability options through barrier, accolades, and inspirations, and plenty of AOE and single target damage. There's also a combat teleport available in the secondary with burst of speed.

Probably a 0.05 buff to dominator damage won't move the needle in a visible way. AOE damage is the one kind of damage at which dominators do noticeably lag several other ATs. A change that would help dominators do noticeably more AOE damage would be to lift the target caps for targeted AOEs in the secondary assault sets to 16 targets, which is the usual number for blasters, defenders, and corruptors.

If you try out the dark build I posted earlier, consider dropping the world of confusion power, replacing it with haunt, and then slotting in five pieces of the Glimpse of the Abyss set into haunt. Haunt's damage isn't that high anyways and the Glimpse damage proc makes the damage better. That has the pleasant effect of pushing accuracy to over 95% for dark grasp and to boosting poison trap's accuracy as well. I realized later that I didn't update the dark / poison build to reflect how I had actually done with it in-game (ie: that was an older, draft build). I've since replaced him with a pyro / poison / psy troller that I like better, and so all of the IOs were taken out of my dark / poison to help out my pyro / poison troller. I've heard that the version of Mids that incorporates pyrotechnics control is buggy, I'm still using an older Mids version because of that, and so I don't have a mids build to post for my pyro / poison / psy troller.

My own experience with different ATs was that my original reason for trying and enjoying them usually shifted into something else over time. Not that everybody else's experiences will inevitably match my own, that's clearly not going to be the case. Still, maybe a bit of reflection might help to navigate the journey that's underway for you. I've sampled all the ATs, at this point, and gotten at least one level 50 character in most of them. Some ATs got dropped after a few attempts and have never been re-visited since then. Some got dropped, then were re-visited and were enjoyable enough to keep playing them the second (or sometimes third or fourth) time around. Basically, I've found a range of playstyles that I really like and I've found ways to enjoy that playstyle in different ATs. It's still not that easy to articulate after all these years because it's the "feel" of playing a character that makes it work for me (or not); my expectations about how I might enjoy playing a character can still vary widely from how much I do end up enjoying them. There are also often "bumps" of enjoyment or lack of enjoyment along the pathway to figuring out whether I like playing a character or not. It's a bit confusing, at times. But, I've learned to ride those out and let enjoyment find its way to my characters or not, while focusing on being in the moment along the way. FWIW, YMMV, and all that.

A very thoughtfully done build. Nice. It's clear that this character is designed to fight at range, relying on cones and targeted AOEs to control the battlefield and to do AOE damage. Just as my builds are clearly not your cup of tea, this isn't a build I would ever enjoy playing. I can appreciate that it would be effective, though. It's clear why VG, despite its low slotting requirements, is not a high priority for you. It's also clear why poison trap functions better for you with set bonuses than by being proc'd out for damage because for you poison trap isn't an "every new spawn" alpha strike. Instead, it's a way of responding to the occasional occurrence of mobs getting into melee range when you would have preferred to fight them from range. At the end of the day, it's great that the game supports different ways of building and playing characters.

Sometimes you can apply both envenom splash and direct debuffs on a boss or EB. But, only sometimes. Very often the two bosses in a spawn aren't close enough to each other for that and in those cases it's challenging to get the full effect of envenom on both of them. Often the other mobs die so fast that the minions near the boss you targeted with the first casting of envenom are already defeated by the time it recharges. Also, the time you spend on trying to make that work isn't being spent on other things and those other things you could be doing instead also have value. More importantly, you've accidentally created a kind of false dichotomy in how you're framing the choices available. Having VG passively acting on mobs doesn't prevent you from applying envenom twice when doing that makes sense. I get a sense that some playing poison think that maximizing debuffs is the main minigame on which to focus when playing poison. That's not my experience. Debuff to the extent that it makes a noticeable difference and then do damage or, if needed, apply some controls to better protect the team. The math is that a poison character with VG running has a higher floor and a higher ceiling for debuffs both on average across all mobs and specifically on hard targets than a poison character that doesn't have VG running.