EnjoyTheJourney

A couple of very basic questions just came to mind. Beyond function, is there a specific theme or character-driven concept in mind for this build? Or, is it curiosity about how these powersets would play, or ...?

A couple of questions that help when offering feedback are in what content you want to play your dominator and how much of a budget you are willing to spend for your dominator. Also, what mix of teaming and solo play do you prefer? As "first pass" feedback mostly focused on using Mids remember to turn off stealth in Mids when looking at defense totals, and then add 2%-ish to the total you see without stealth activated in Mids. All but about 2% of stealth's defense total suppresses when in combat, so it overstates your defenses to leave it always activated when planning a build. Also, leave power up switched off as well when reviewing totals in Mids (especially defense), as it is typically activated under 50% of the time anyways and leaving it activated in Mids can create confusion about how high your dom's defenses are when power up is down (which it usually is). As a bit more feedback on power selection, heavy mallet and seismic smash are two of the hardest hitting powers in the earth assault set. They hit much harder than project will. Also, mud pots is a very endurance-intensive power that doesn't do much to help your dominator. It's probably better to come up with a build that leaves out the two latter powers and introduces the former two powers.

To add one more set of experiences to the list, I ran a PI radio mission with an endgame-build arsenal / arsenal / mu dominator at +4x8, bosses enabled. If the primary hadn't been used it would probably have been nigh undoable. But, the AOE controls from arsenal control made the mission quite safe. There were only a couple of fights that were semi-challenging and that's because on those occasions I was a bit lazy re-applying controls after initially laying them out. The liquid nitrogen / smoke canister combination worked particularly well for slowing down incoming damage. The single target hold would be used for the occasional boss that wasn't controlled well enough by that combination. Problems with overaggro did come up. But, they were solved by layering on more AOE controls, which arsenal control has in quantity. Edit: After a bit more reflection about why it was a smooth and easy mission to take on the new CoT, cloaking device allowed this dominator to deliver an AOE control alpha in every fight. No going around a corner, getting surprised, and then eating alpha and all the associated debuffs from the entire spawn before being able to react. That undoubtedly helped a lot.

Arsenal control and traps can work together well if fold space is part of the build. Strong AOE control patches, a pet that seems to stay where it is and taunts mobs into swarming it, and the location-based nature of traps can all work together well then. That's a bit of a narrow niche, admittedly, and the pet is a mixed blessing for other kinds of arsenal / traps builds. For doms, it's unfortunate that arsenal assault has anti-synergies with arsenal control. Testing them out made that clear. Not completely sure how that happened or why it wasn't corrected. In a sense, both of the sets across two ATs that would thematically fit best with arsenal control are functionally awkward. And, the "wet" mechanic doesn't help those anti-synergies at all. The hypothesis that comes to mind is that arsenal control and arsenal assault were designed for a kind of internal consistency for how the powers functioned within each powerset, with possible synergies across powersets given low priority. It's a pretty complex undertaking to design a powerset, with a *lot* of detail involved, so it's understandable that those involved would want to narrow down the number of variables to consider. Wasn't part of those conversations, though, so that's just speculation on my part. Arsenal control has the virtue of being a very good set for newer players using SOs and playing on lower difficulty levels both while teamed and (especially) when solo. The patch-based AOE controls are easy to understand and it would be intuitive to stack them together. The pet is an absolute gem for soloing on +0x1 notoriety levels because its taunt and toughness will reliably bring entire spawns over to the dom and it won't be easily defeated while doing that. So, it does have that going for it.

So, noob question ... I couldn't find a combat log file in any file format on my PC. Do I copy and paste the combat log from the in-game "combat" chat channel into a .txt file, save that, and upload that file to carnifax.org?

Tried a PI radio mission on a grav / savage / fire dominator at +2x8. Had no idea what changes had happened to council, went in blind. A level 53 eclipse galaxy archon rezzed after I downed him, doing a lot of damage. He landed what may have been the warshade human form single target hold just after that and a lot of noticeably impactful DOT damage ticks started. Used blood craze, which is a really hefty heal, and started fighing with that boss. At some point the boss then did 766 damage in one hit, and about 340ish on another hit a few seconds later. Some other damage was mixed in and my dominator was down. It was such a sharp step upward from other council mobs that it was a bit confusing. It may have boss level hit points, but it hits more like an EB would usually be expected hit. Cool. 🙂👍

Maybe the name and the conditional triggers could be re-considered? For example, perhaps any power that would soak somebody with water can trigger the "soaked" condition. This nomenclature is intuitive and not quite as obviously sexually suggestive as "wet." Also, establishing a "soaked" condition perhaps leads to a narrower and probably easier-to-visualize boundary between powers that should or should not trigger the "soaked" condition than would be true for a "wet" condition (the term "wet" suggests a lower bar for power inclusion than "soaked" would suggest).

Run Type: pylon test, dominator pylon time contest entry Archetype: dominator Primary Powerset: illusion Secondary Powerset: fiery assault Time in seconds: 64 (727 DPS) - adjusted to 63 (736.5 DPS), see next post Burst: sustained Hybrid: assault radial, activated (also offense amplifier activated) Number of Runs: 2, first run was extremely inefficient Version: Open beta version (sleet already nerfed) Notes: see below Build: attached Notes: The pylon tested against was an "unleveled" pylon, meaning purple patch effects are probably not present. Thus, no adjustments for pet damage seem likely to be needed? Also, this build is a "pylon build" that wouldn't do well in-game. Was interested to see how high damage could be pushed by going all out to increase it. This pylon test was done on the test server. FWIW, the coming nerf to sleet has definitely already taken place there. Not sure how or whether to adjust testing results for that. Leaning toward "leave as is" instead of trying to extrapolate a higher value, given the number of variables involved. Also, began timing as soon as phants were cast, which doesn't fit the "start at first damage" criteria. Not sure whether to deduct all or part of the 3 second cast time for phants when calculating time. Personally leaning toward leaving the timing at 64 seconds because in the past I've seen the earlier-arriving phants start attacking things almost immediately after being cast. I've tried Carnifax's calculator before, but found it hard to use. If there are concerns about this run then I'd be fine with having Koopak or somebody else watch this happen. My chances of winning the dominator pylon test are probably zero anyways, as there are plenty of higher-achieving pylon testers than me. Dominator (Illusion Control - Fiery Assault - Ice Mastery),PylonContest.mbd

If you prefer to fight mostly in melee then you've got a number of good choices to consider. Fire / psi and plant / psi are both very good suggestions. Other good primary / secondary pairings include, but are not limited to ... fire / earth (endurance would need to be managed carefully, but very solid combination) plant / fire (this works best mostly from range, but it's really strong for clearing spawns) earth / savage (earth slows things down or immobilizes them and savage provides good mobility options) illusion / dark (very strong single target damage if procc'd up and very survivable) ... Basically, you have lots of good choices. Perhaps you can suggest some thematic combinations you'd likely find particularly interesting and share the kind of content into which you'd like to bring your dom(s).

Agreed, on reflection. On beta I only tried arsenal control paired with arsenal assault. There are anti-synergies there and I muffed the build by not including KB to KD IOs. Didn't really see arsenal control at its best that way. But, arsenal control can work well with either a ranged assault set like fiery assault or the more melee-focused assault sets (which is most of them). On the controller side, one potentially good pairing is probably poison. Getting a /poison troller safely into melee range to get venomous gas applying to mobs is made noticeably easier with smoke canister.

It's good policy to not make a lot of last minute changes to a set. Totally understandable point of view. Glad to see that the hold was swapped to T2, that was a helpful change. Arsenal control seems likely to land as a set that could use some love, in the future. Hopefully that idea can be borne in mind, going forward.

Illusion control on doms?

Doing a bit of theorycrafting for arsenal / poison ... Smoke canister to start, reduce mobs' vision. Start jumping into the center of the spawn with venomous gas activated. Cast envenom while jumping into the spawn. Land, and drop a procc'd up poison trap to damage mobs and trigger confusion. Drop liquid nitrogen for a bit more damage, to make mobs trip and fall, and to debuff their movement so it's hard for them to run away. Fold space when it's available to keep the area filled with mobs. Perhaps other primaries can make this kind of gameplay work better. But, mitigating the alpha by reducing mobs perception range seems like it could mechanically work fairly well.

Come to think of it, my last storm controller that I played for a fair while was illusion / storm. That was a solid endgame build and that character did just fine. It's true that containment isn't required for storm to work well. Still, not sure what arsenal control / storm brings to the table that would be meaningfully better than plant / storm (roots FTW!). Shinmagmus does have a point in that /storm tends to be noticeably more damaging when paired with sets that have containment.

I haven't played storm on a controller for a couple of years and had totally forgotten that key point. You are correct. A controller secondary that can provide at least some measure of containment, like TA, might be a better fit for arsenal control. That's a pretty narrow niche, though.

Liquid nitrogen and smoke canister work well from range, which makes arsenal control a much better fit for a fiery assault dom than ice control could ever be. Also, because of endurance concerns for ice control arsenal control might be easier to match with endurance heavy secondaries such as storm or poison. Considering storm, for example, with KB to KD in place mobs would tend to stay in the liquid nitrogen / smoke canister / freezing rain zone and get defeated by multiple tornadoes and lightning storms. The set that arsenal control would probably compare relatively poorly to would be plant control. Seeds plus creepers is hands down better than smoke canister plus liquid nitrogen. The synergy from pairing two controls together at the start of many battles is also in a way a drawback of arsenal control, as for plant control creepers are usually already pre-cast and are following the caster, leaving just seeds to be cast on point of contact with a new spawn. Edit: Fold space could be really attractive with arsenal control matched with traps, storm, and poison. Once setup has been done just use fold space to keep inviting more mobs to the party.

Did a bit of back-of-the-napkin math a while back, comparing PbAOEs for melee-oriented doms versus cones such as unkindness. Jumping out of melee, aiming, correcting if a bad target gets selected or the pre-selected target dies or moves unexpectedly, finally casting, then jumping back into melee, then re-starting the melee attack chain can turn a 2 second casting animation for a cone into 6 or 7 seconds of time being used up. Thus, the "on paper" DPA from a cone, which as Sovera points out is usually not great anyways, can turn into 1/3 or less of that amount. Generally not a great use of in-combat time to do that. This math doesn't factor in the lost efficiency due to cones sometimes misfiring in a way that substantially reduces the number of targets hit. Given how cones make my doms less effective at helping out teammates, cone attacks do not make my melee-oriented doms move into and out of melee because for those doms cones do not exist. For my plant / fire dom fire breath was taken and it sees a lot of use. Combustion is not taken for that dom because hopping into and out of melee to use it would mean several less seconds of blaze and blazing bolt (a big single target DPS loss). So, for assault sets that can work well from range the logic flips and then it's PbAOEs that become bad choices. Basically, jumping back and forth between melee and ranged to use a single AOE attack tends to be a bad bargain. Not sure why the devs think we want to do that.

Ah, got it. Thank you for clarifying.

Reviewing the power suggests that it overpowers on 5% of the opportunities to do that and domination activates 25% of the time that confusion activates. Smoke grenade is a confuse-based-analogue to volcanic gasses, which doesn't ever activate domination. Technically, it's a step up on how most pseudopets function to consider overpower or domination mechanics at all.

I do as well, although not for a cone attack. There are usually ways to build around having a cone attack and still get decent AOE; that choice will be more effective and efficient than spending time repositioning just to use a (usually mediocre) cone attack. Less annoying, as well.

If the devs' conception of doms is that they're mostly melee / ranged hybrids, then "mission accomplished", but not necessarily because of cone attacks. Melee oriented doms (most doms?) tend to stay in melee unless there's a survival-based reason for doing otherwise, they're aiming to take out a key enemy away from the main battle (ie: a surgeon on a hard mode ITF), or they're assisting an ally from afar with dispatching a mob that may be defeated before they repositioned to help out in melee. Or, they may back out to survey the scene and decide if and where controls may be used if a battle seems to suggest more control might be helpful. These scenarios happen a fair amount. So, plenty of things other than cone attacks already lead doms to move in and out of melee. For melee-oriented assault sets, at least for me, cone attacks are empty spots in the assault set that are consistently ignored when picking powers. So, at least for me "mission not accomplished" if the goal is to get me jumping in and out of melee to maximize the value of a cone attack. There are plenty of posts on the dom forums that align with that way of thinking, so I'm probably not alone in this. The main exception is that I'm willing to play a melee-oriented assault set with plant control because seeds isn't cast frequently enough to make using it a bother. The same is true for mind control. But, using a cone attack that is available every several seconds isn't worth the time spent repositioning that could have been spent attacking instead. Also, often while repositioning on a fluid battlefield a cone attack will end up hitting few targets because mobs are frequently moving or dying. If there was one power type in melee-focused assault sets that may with many players earn the title "most irrelevant power in the set" it would be the cone attack.

It seems underappreciated. In case you're looking for a "template" build or two for some ideas about how to make your own build, two sample builds are attached. The builds are not perfect. But, they have a fairly quickly animating single target attack chain. Single target attack chain DPS should be in at least the high 300s or thereabouts, depending on execution and luck. Even without devastating blow the heal activates fairly often and the heal helps to take care of chip damage. The fire mastery build is more focused on being part of hard mode content, so defenses aren't given as much weight and leadership powers are taken. The psi mastery build is intended to provide better defenses for PUG teams and to ramp up damage that can be done to mobs that are wormholed basically on top of your dom (or on top the the team's tank, which you would probably be standing close to at the time). Hopefully these prove helpful. Dominator (Gravity Control - Radioactive Assault - Fire Mastery)Domper,SelfRez,MeltArmor.mbd Dominator (Gravity Control - Radioactive Assault - Psi Mastery),Vigor alpha.mbd

I tried out an arsenal control / arsenal assault / mu dominator on the test server for about an hour or two. The very early levels (1 - 6) went well with the hold taken at level 1 and the AOE sleep taken at level 2. Story arcs in AP and radio missions and a safeguard in KR were done with only set powers, vet attacks, and the free low level IOs from P2W. It was quite fun. After auto-leveling to 50 endgame IOs were put into this dominator and incarnates were taken. The two arsenal control powers not taken were the T1 single target sleep and the T8 AOE hold. A pylon test was done, an office mission in the AE was done (+0x8), and a PI radio mission featuring the newly revised CoT was completed (+4x8). Thoughts about each power taken follow, with some overall notes at the end ... T2: cryo freeze ray - Quite like the animation. It's a single target hold and it does its job. T3: sleep grenade - This seems like it may be a clone of flash freeze from ice control. Mobs will sometimes strike the caster shortly before going to sleep. This skill was given the call of the sandman healing proc and that was it. Very useful when soloing, especially at low levels. Did not use it after turning 50. Could also be useful for over-aggro situations. T4: liquid nitrogen - It's almost as if bonfire and ice slick got merged and the result was a knockdown patch that slows mobs and does some damage. Very helpful, well worth taking. Good synergy with smoke canister (explained further down). T5: cloaking device - It provides stealth at the same level as superior invisibility, it seems, it offers a bit of defense, it accepts a LoTG increased global recharge IO, it provides a good amount of to hit buffing, and it provides resistance to "to hit" debuffs. Only needs its base slot to offer all of these benefits. Very worthwhile to take this. T6: smoke canister - This is a unique approach to confuse powers. Domination may or may not activate, it seems, and overpower has only a small chance of activating. But, since it applies a large perception debuff to mobs it can be useful even for bosses or others to whom the confuse doesn't apply. The "when damaged" condition for making mobs confused is fairly easy to meet, at least for most mobs, by first dropping smoke canister and then dropping liquid nitrogen into the same area. Mobs are less likely to leave the confusion area that way. T7: flash bang - Seems to function pretty much as expected. Worked just fine. T9: gun control - The pet is a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the gun drone is quite tough and it has a taunt, which can take aggro away from its summoner. On the other hand, because it stays at range when it taunts up to 4 mobs at once those mobs tend to swarm the gun drone. Thus, mobs taunted by gun drone can end up physically separated from the rest of their allies. That can make it take longer to defeat larger spawns. Overall notes ... This set offers effective control options across the full level range, which is good. As a mid-game to endgame feature, the synergy between liquid nitrogen and smoke canister was quite helpful at reducing incoming damage. Not having an AOE immobilize is fine by me, as the set has strengths that can be built around. I will probably explore putting together one or more "arsenal control" builds to try out as a candidate for play on live. Will probably avoid pairing up arsenal control and arsenal assault on live, at least as they now stand; there are currently anti-synergies between those sets.

Tried out an arsenal / arsenal / mu dom for about an hour or two. Tried leveling as a newer player to see how the early part of that experience might go, getting to level 6 with no XP bonus or IOs beyond the freebie IOs and the vet attacks from P2W. Did story arcs and a little street hunting in AP and then switched to radio missions and a bank safeguard mission in KR. Set missions to +0, 1 player, bosses OK. The hold, AOE sleep, and buttstroke worked well together. No defeats for my dominator, but careful play was needed at times to bring that about, especially when street hunting some red clockwork and an ambush came up from behind. Overall it was quite fun, and also nostalgic because many of my characters followed that path in their early leveling (or the hollows route) back when the game was live. After that, this dominator was auto-leveled to 50 and given endgame IOs. With fairly defensive slotting for incarnates (barrier core destiny, cardiac core alpha, melee core hybrid) a pylon test following the usual parameters yielded 324.5 DPS (195 seconds). For DPS the pylon test was in the top 1/3 or thereabouts for doms for which I do pylon tests. As a bit of a caveat, for most of my dom builds there's no pet from the primary. In this case, though, the arsenal control pet was used for the pylon DPS test. Those who execute attack chains better and who lean heavier toward maximizing damage would undoubtedly be able to get higher DPS than that. In short, single target DPS seems to be reasonable overall, neither wildly higher or wildly lower than most other sets. The office mission in Koopak's clear speed leaderboard post (23868 on the test server AE) was cleared in about 10 minutes. The relative slowness of the run had much to do with three main things: lack of familiarity with the sets, knockback, and fear effects from ignite. Regarding ignite, damage seemed to be quite good. But, it repeatedly chased mobs out of areas that were affected by AOE controls and mobs that ran didn't always come back soon afterward. Regarding knockback, the melee knock magnitude was surprisingly high given the nature of the attack. There's already a lot of knocks in the set. So, it would help to have the melee knock turned into a knockdown effect. On a related note, at the level at which I took trip mine the KB was listed as 0.75 magnitude and I didn't check to see if it changed later. Either knock magnitude for trip mine scaled with level or there's an error in the KB magnitude listed. I would have paid the slot tax to put a KB to KD IO in trip mine if I knew it would undermine efforts to efficiently clear missions. Really, though, hopefully the number of knocks in the set and their magnitudes will be re-considered; if a set has 1 slot tax for knockback then that's easier to accept than if it has multiple slot taxes for knockback. Overall, the number and magnitude of the knocks and the fear effect in ignite makes arsenal assault challenging to pair with control sets that rely on AOE patches and don't have an AOE immobilize. That's unfortunate because the most thematically obvious pairing would be Arsenal control, which has multiple AOE control patches and no AOE immobilize. This late into the design process it's not clear what the remedy might be. But, hopefully there can be a way to get arsenal control and arsenal assault to work together better. Edit: Knockback and fear effects were still an issue in a subsequent PI radio mission featuring CoT and run at +4x8.

It wouldn't be surprising if Frosticus was able to solo part 4 of the ITF at +4x8 without any insps, temps, amps, or defeats. One obvious strategy would be to clear trash out the whole area near Rom and then bring in Imperious, put a well buffed spirit ward on him, use the taunt-using earth pet as a distraction if and when Imperious gets into trouble, use drain psyche to reduce Rom's regen, and beat Rom down. It might take a few runs to get a sense of how to best organize that. But, that's a matter practice and patience, and eminently doable. With the use of lore pets that tactic would become even easier.