EnjoyTheJourney

The OP is on to something when saying that it's hard to pick "best" powersets for dominators. They can all play quite differently according to which controls they best support, whether they're better at single target or AOE damage, and the extent to which they can buff allies or debuff enemies. The masteries can provide quite different defensive tools, as well. In the end, different players tend to assign different value to the controls a set brings to the table, to single target vs AOE damage, to burst vs sustained damage, to the amount and kind of defenses powersets offer, and to the buffs / debuffs available. A lot also hinges on how well specific primaries, secondaries, and masteries mesh together. Another non-trivial influence on choices is the kind of content players like to run (a solo AV hunter vs an endgame teaming speedster vs always-on-a-budget players). And this probably isn't an exhaustive list of significant differences in what players might value when ranking powersets. I chose earth / ice / psi for my picks. Earth offers strong AOE controls and valuable debuffs, making it my favorite primary. Ice is my (new) favorite secondary, although radioactive is a very close second choice for that. Ice offers a good balance between AOE and single target damage when key powers are proc'd up, power up enhances defense totals and damage, and chilling embrace is a strong and versatile power. There are some really good synergies with certain other sets for the ice secondary, as well. For example, the movement and recharge debuffs in the ice secondary pair well with knockdown fields such as earthquake. Psi mastery is unique in what it offers, so it's fairly predictable that views about it are split. I like everything about psi mastery other than the AOE damage pick, which offers strangely low DPS for such a long cast time. The confusion aura more than makes up for the bad AOE damage spell, though, and because it takes zero cast time to do its thing it's easy to underestimate its value in both keeping a dominator alive and in speeding up spawn deletion.

Attached is a defender version as potential food-for-thought. Wouldn't claim that what's here is necessarily superior to what you've done. But, perhaps there are some ideas you might like. Or not, not sure. Good luck with your poisoner, however you decide to move forward. Defender (Poison - Electrical Blast - Mu mastery).mbd

Dragons with two or more elements may not be common in fantasy literature. But, if the OP wants to roleplay a dual element dragon there doesn't seem to be any harm in that. Tiamat might agree with this line of thinking. 🙂

Here's a potential "dragon" build ... Damage should be pretty good overall. It can be made better by stacking weaken resolve and melt armor on hard targets, when you can. The -resistance unique IO can be swapped into weaken resolve if you'd like more uptime against hard single targets (ie: if you team a lot and fight a lot of AVs). Intuition radial is a good choice for improving damage. The key reasons to take intuition radial over musculature are that increased range makes fire breath a lot more effective and the boosts to hold and to slows are very helpful for the build. Stone cages isn't something I tend to spam for an earth dominator, in part because the visuals make it harder for melee and in part because the damage is so low. Unless you're willing to spam stone cages, though, the dominator IO AOE damage proc won't make much difference. So, it has been left out of the attached build. Regarding defenses, dragons are seldom glass cannons. Usually, they're not easy at all to take down. This build offers more toughness than a lot of other dominator builds you might see, with unleash potential, barrier, and melee core hybrid. Unleash potential has about 33% uptime without any external speed buffs and it softcaps ranged defenses (without assistance from barrier) while its up. Barrier has 30 seconds of extreme toughness, followed by 90 seconds of somewhat better toughness (huge defense / resist buffs for 30 seconds, followed by a 7.5% defense buff and a resistance buff for another 30 seconds, followed by a 5% buff to defense and resistances for the final minute of its duration). Melee hybrid will help to increase toughness during the "low buffs" portion of barrier. As an easy-to-miss benefit of this build, and in exchange for all that influence spent on winter set IOs, resistance to slow and recharge debuffs sits at 65%. With recharge being so central to dominator effectiveness that ends up being helpful. Also, the buffs to fire and cold resistances and to ranged and melee defense can be helpful, at least at times. So, those winter sets can noticeably toughen up a "dragon" dominator. If you'd like another AOE you can swap out consume and swap in combustion. It may be better to stick with consume, though. The cast time on combustion relative to its damage is so high that it's tough to justify taking it and keeping consume raises the odds that you can get an endurance refill if and when you need it. Dominator (Earth Control - Fiery Assault- Fire Mastery).mbd

About the beam / SR sentinel ... Beam is great on sentinels. It has a chain AOE with up to 10 targets, giving it noticeably better AOE than beam on any other AT. SR is one of the tankiest secondaries for sentinels. Plus, SR gives you a lot of freedom to slot other powers as you like because it's not that challenging to softcap positionals.

My own experiences with Ion judgment are that it can draw a noticeable amount of aggro when it hits dozens of targets distributed across a large area. Many of the mobs hit may not have aggro'd onto anything before that and they will target your blaster, chances are, if you wake them up with an Ion judgment. Thus, ion can backfire for a build with a strong lean in the direction of damage-without-defenses or "defense through teammates." With a view to maintaining a limited and controlled amount of aggro you might like pyro better for judgment. It also fits thematically with a fire / fire / fire character, in case that matters. Also, and especially if you ultimately choose fire breath over rain of fire, intuition radial may end up being more to your liking over musculature core. In exchange for giving up about 3% of your total damage or less (when various buffs are considered), compared to musculature core, intuition radial provides its own solid boost to damage and some helpful utility, including ... 20% more range. Basically, move less, blast more, and get noticed by mobs less often while getting into position to blast away 33% increase to slow debuffs for mobs from hot feet, 2/3 of which will not be reduced (other than by purple patch, no getting around that though) increased hold duration in case you pick up char from fire mastery ... and you probably want char because it's a very good pick for triple fire build and it is in Nemu's suggested build for your blaster. Whichever route you pick hopefully you thoroughly enjoy your blaster.

Beam for sentinels is well regarded and EA is a very solid pick for a secondary. The chain AOE in beam rifle is very good, as is the quick-recharging nuke. Psi is the "go to" mastery for many sentinels because of strong DPA for multiple attacks. But, if for thematic reasons that seems like an odd pairing for your first sentinel there are other good masteries. Mu mastery can give you a quick-recharging targeted AOE with good DPA and mag 3 immobilize if you'd like that, for example. Prepare to be pleasantly surprised with how effective your sentinel can be solo or on teams, especially after the build all comes together.

It's a thoughtfully done initial build with a clear focus on ranged defense and a decent amount of melee defense. Are you on a budget for this character? If you are, then sticking with the build above and not using D-Synchs, Hami-Os, winter sets, and some of the other unique IOs makes more sense. If you're free to spend as much as you want, then the build given above can be tweaked. Here's a few thoughts ... Global recharge seems somewhat low for end-game play There is no -recharge / -movement speed debuff resistance in the build - These two things mean that if recharge gets substantially debuffed then a blaster with this build won't be seeing some of their powers recharge for a long time. Partial winter sets can help a lot with this, as well as the Winter's Gift (universal travel) unique IO. Unique IOs that might help: Kismet +to hit, reactive defenses +resistances on a sliding scale, 20% -recharge debuff resistance in the unique Winter's Gift IO, preventive medicine chance for absorb Build up and aim have no recharge in them, which means they're up only a little quicker than once every 40 seconds. These are big buffs to damage, so one of the quickest ways to increase damage is to have these up more often. Ring of fire isn't needed for the build. It would be fine to drop it and take evasive maneuvers instead. Put a LoTG +defense / 7.5% global recharge IO into the base slot for evasive maneuvers. All the above aside, the build you're citing is still a thoughtfully put together budget build for a defense-minded player. With no changes at all it's still a fire / fire / fire blaster and it should still contribute fine when handed well in all but the most extreme kinds of content. If it's what you can afford then it's not a bad build at all.

Thank you both for the feedback. Based on these last two responses, a misperception on my part seems to have emerged at some point. I thought 4* runs filled fairly quickly, in general, and that the process of being accepted into one would be more selective than feedback here suggests -- as long as certain core build types that are needed are present, which is an understandable prerequisite for broadening selection criteria for remaining slots on a team. If teammates and team leaders are OK with the kinds of characters I'd enjoy playing then that's a preferred situation. Challenge runs are a lot of fun and actually working together as a team at least sometimes is also welcome.

I ended up hiding the post to which you responded, but perhaps I shouldn't have done that. A bit of "napkin math" follows for the slotting given in the post you quoted ... Dehydrate damage / listed cast time = DPS 341.4 / 1.87 = 182.6 DPS with zero buffs from other sources and assuming no -res procs ever apply to a hit with dehydrate That compares fairly well with 155 DPS, being about 27 DPS or 18% higher. It probably doesn't move water blast up in the rankings, in the end. But, the gap does close at least a little.

Thank you for your reply. It seemed almost "too good to be true" because a high recharge build can make power boost essentially perma. But, -3.57 hold protection isn't that robust, so it may not be as powerful as I initially thought. Still helpful, though, and I'll keep acrobatics in the build.

Dark / energy is a solid combo with particularly good single target damage. For the dark primary you can search for Voltak's builds and they can give you a solid starting point. For the energy secondary there are a fair number of builds. To help with getting started, you can do a search for "energy" in your browser for each of the webpages for the following thread to get some ideas ... This ends up being a "stitched together" solution that can help with putting together a first draft of a build. You'll probably get solid feedback after that. Good luck with your dom, however you proceed.

Recently put together a blaster build using the energy manipulation secondary. Mids showed that without power boost active acrobatics provides -2 hold protection. When power boost was activated hold protection in acrobatics went up to -3.57 in Mids. Is this a display error, or does power boost actually increase hold protection in acrobatics? Thank you in advance for any insights offered.

Thank you for your reply. I've run a couple of 4* ITFs and they were a lot of fun. They were both successful runs with few deaths. But, the teams' success definitely wasn't because of me or my characters. Rather, those teams were led by people who knew what they were doing and they gave good advice which I followed as best I could. My sense before posting was that the character builds I listed above might be more or less "swimming against the tide" when it comes to getting recruited to 4* runs. Implicitly what you're confirming is that none of the characters listed, except perhaps the bubbler, are likely to be highly valued on 4* runs. Which is fine. I simply won't ask to join 4* runs as all the preferred character types happen to be the kind I don't enjoy playing. Plus, taking up team leaders' time with requests to join with characters they're not that interested in having on the team seems a bit inappropriate. All good in the end. I'll just run other content instead. There are plenty of other fun options available beyond 4* runs.

After more than a year away, my knowledge about 4* content is not particularly deep and my experiences have been very limited. Also, criteria for recruiting / building 4* capable teams is still somewhat of a mystery for me. Thus, picking characters to offer to bring along is a bit of a barrier for me when thinking about asking to join 4* teams. Trying to match characters I enjoy playing with the characters / builds 4* team leaders may (or may not?) want on their team, a handful of character builds have come to mind, as outlined below ... electric / SR / mu sentinel Debuffs include vulnerability and endurance drain. Barrier T4 and ageless radial T4 destiny available. Obviously not a fire blaster with a 16 target cap for AOEs. But, nuke is up every 23 seconds without external speed buffs and has high DPA, quick recharging AOEs beyond the nuke, with single target damage of about 300 DPS based on pylon testing done that follows the usual pylon testing rules. Quite durable. earth control / ice assault / fire mastery dominator Debuffs include strong -defense, strong -movement speed, noticeable -recharge, and melt armor with a 20% -res proc. Minor -to hit debuff from earthquake. Quicksand isn't needed or used every spawn. But, when helpful it provides an autohit -def debuff and movement debuff that is made stronger by a slotted D-Synch deceleration IO and by intuition radial alpha. With domination active, without power up active, and without external speed buffs stalagmites is about 2 seconds shy of being perma against +3 mobs. Very strong on AOE controls overall. A high mag single target hold is useful against hostless nictus. Has single target damage of close to 300 DPS based on pylon testing done that follows the usual pylon testing rules. AOE is probably not as high as many other 4* characters. But, it is still noticeable with one AOE damage toggle and two other AOEs. Has T3 barrier destiny currently (T4 soon) and good defenses overall. illusion control / poison / psi mastery controller Regen debuffs are not the strength of poison, but key helpful debuffs are otherwise very strong. Spectral terror allows for control and substantial -to hit against ranged mobs. Phants are 0.6 seconds from perma without external speed buffs, they taunt and damage enemies, they're nigh unkillable, and they apparently distract hostless nictus aspects from targeting player characters (or so I've heard). Single target damage is about 360 based on pylon testing done that follows usual pylon testing rules. AOE is not high overall, even though without external speed buffs a proc'd up poison trap does about 330ish damage about every 18 seconds or thereabouts. Two other build concepts that I don't yet have fully developed in-game characters for at the moment are a seismic blast / force fields / power mastery corruptor and a poison / fire blast / mu mastery defender. Not sure how welcome they might be on a 4* team. Thank you in advance for insights offered.

Given the look, perhaps other reasonable candidates could include the ice primary or DP primary matched with /dark, /ice, or /ninja secondaries.

If it's possible to do this on the beta server then that would be quite helpful. Thank you either way, though. I've never bothered with base buffs, but it may be something to consider for the future. Knockback has been muddying up results from pylon test results on the beta server for quite a few character builds in the recent past. I know that pylon defeats are showing a lower level of single target damage than would happen in actual gameplay. But, it's not easy to figure out how much of an impact it's having on pylon test results, so making knocks completely go away would help quite a bit.

I went back and checked on my character's beta build and found a glaring problem that created confusion on my part. I had several open IO slots from a respec, with one of those slots intended for blessing of the zephyr: knockback protection. I had been testing the character that way while believing those slots had been filled (not totally sure how I lost track of filling the slots with IOs, but it probably had to do with a 10 year old needing attention on a priority basis). Naturally, with many empty slots and only 8 knockback protection from IOs knockback was still occurring. Once the empty slots were all filled the "base" knock protection was set to -12 magnitude from IOs and T4 clarion destiny brought knockback mag reduction to an even higher level. There was no knockback or knockdown after the missing IOs were put into their respective slots and T4 clarion was put on "auto-activate." Returning to the dialogue about weaken, Frosticus seems to have been right all along; if knockback protection of -11 magnitude doesn't work with weaken being used then weaken probably doesn't reduce pylon knock magnitude in any way. A bit of math, assuming AV-level 85% resistance to debuffs and no purple patch effects because it seems that level-shifted characters shouldn't be lower level than a rikti pylon ... "base" pylon knockback mag * ( 1 - ( weaken debuff * proportion of debuff applied after reduction from AV-level resistances of 85% ) ) = pylon knockback mag if affected by weaken 12 * ( 1 - (0.74 * 0.15) ) = 10.67 So, even if weaken is severely reduced in its effect by AV-level resistances to debuffs it seems that -11 to knockback magnitude would prevent knockback and knockdown. Did I completely or partially muck up the math on this?

If pylons con even to characters then purple patch effects shouldn't matter because there are no adjustments to any numbers subject to the purple patch when enemies con at even level. Then -12 knock magnitude should be enough to avoid any knocks whatsoever. And yet, Frosticus has found that -14 is what is needed. I'm confused. What am I missing?

Wow, are we ever deep in the weeds about mechanics. I'll put a couple of thoughts below and see if they check out ... Rikti pylons can do 12 knockback (40% chance). If the magnitude is increased by the purple patch then they have 1.11 * 12 = 13.2 knockback magnitude against -1 enemies. If -14 to knockback magnitude were subject to the purple patch then 0.9 * 14 = 12.6, which should lead to knockdown every time a character gets hit if a rikti pylon cons at +1 or higher to our characters. But, that's not what's happening in the video Frosticus provided. Am I getting the rikti pylon level relative to characters wrong? Are they considered even level for calculations, despite conning yellow?

After making my last post the thought occurred that perhaps weaken really does nothing and knockback protection does not get reduced by the purple patch. That could fully explain what I'm seeing. The purple patch affects debuffs that characters place on mobs. But, debuffs are delivered either by hitting mobs in order to apply the debuff or by an auto-hit power (usually an aura with a fixed area of effect, such as venomous gas). Knockback reduction (in percentage terms or in points reduced) doesn't seem to function as either an auto-hit aura with a fixed radius or as an "on hit" effect. So, perhaps the purple patch doesn't apply to knockback reduction.

Maybe a gravity / electric / psi dominator? Although, for a lightsaber, perhaps a re-colored ice assault would work better than electric assault.

Luminara - Knockback magnitude reduction always seemed to be a number that functioned much like character resistances and defense totals and which wouldn't be subject to purple patch effects. But, thinking of it as a "debuff aimed at enemy actions, and therefore subject to the purple patch" makes good sense, on reflection. And, it makes what's been happening in-game easier to understand. Thank you. Frosticus - Thank you for clearly outlining the dividing line between "get knocked back" and "never get knocked back." It could have taken a fair amount of time spent testing to find that out otherwise. For me pylon testing on the beta server functions as one way of gauging whether builds are likely to be fun to play or not before spending a lot of influence and many hours on them. Doing that has greatly cut down on the number of characters that turned out to be unenjoyable to play after they were leveled to 50 and fully kitted out. It seems unnecessary to have 14 knockback reduction for general in-game adventuring. So, I'll just apply some kind of rough, estimated mark-up to estimated DPS to try to account for the time lost to knockback when gauging whether a character is ready to be played or not, instead of designing all characters with 14+ knockback reduction in mind. It's been over a year since I spent significant time doing pylon tests. It would seem that I forgot about all those knocks from that earlier time period.

If weaken doesn't work as per its power explanation then it all makes sense. Thank you. I'll look at squeezing 2 extra slots into knockback protection. It will also boost resists offered by rune of protection, so knocks should be no longer happening from the pylon after that. Thank you for a road map forward. Edit: In the end I took one slot out of enflame, proc'd enflame up for better damage, lost 6.25% recharge by doing that, and put a blessing of the zephyr: knockback protection IO into mystic flight. I'll test it later today. After testing even at 12 magnitude knockback protection from IOs and clarion core T4 going once in a while there's still knockback. That's a bit surprising. That said, knockback frequency went down by a lot, which made the pylon fight more enjoyable. 👍for the advice, thank you again.

A search didn't turn up information, hence this inquiry. It seems like lately rikti war zone pylon knockback has been a noticeable factor affecting pylon times. I don't recall having it be so noticeable in the past when I did a fair number of pylon tests. Has there been a change to pylon knockback in the last year, while I was taking a break from the game? Or, is my memory just in need of a reboot? Also, is the knockback magnitude calculated "per missile", with the magnitude stacking for every missile that hits? Here is the City of Data link for rikti pylon ... https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=rikti.war_zone_pylon.swarm_missile&at=boss_archvillain A sample of things done very recently to better manage knockback for a recent set of pylon tests for a poison / fire / mu defender ... - 8 knockback magnitude reduction from slotting karma: knockback protection and steadfast: knockback protection - keep casting weaken on the pylon, which is supposed to noticeably reduce knockback magnitude - having rune of protection engaged when it can be, which is supposed to subtract 10 points from knockback magnitude, alternate with melee hybrid core - having T4 clarion engaged and set to automatically re-activate Doing a bit of math based on the foregoing, there's a steady 11.5 knockback magnitude reduction (IOs = -8 magnitude and clarity >= -3.5 magnitude). There's a 95% chance of a knockback magnitude reduction from weaken at any given point in time (not sure how much of a reduction, but it should be impactful), based on the "to hit" chance of >95% for weaken against +3 foes. Knockback magnitude reduction peaks in the 30s when clarion is in a "high buffs" part of its cycle and rune of protection is engaged. Knockback from pylons looks like it shouldn't be happening unless knock magnitude is stacking "per missile" when hit. Sometimes this seemed to work because even when hit my poisoner wouldn't get knocked back. But, often it did not work, especially when clarion was in the "low buffs" part of its duration. Any clarity offered would be most helpful and appreciated.