EnjoyTheJourney

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.

For a bit of context, consider the following tidbits about the area coverage for circles of different sizes ... 8 foot radius circle encompasses roughly 200 square feet 15 foot radius circle encompasses close to 700 square feet 25 foot radius circle encompasses close to 1960 square feet The 8 foot radius for envenom and weaken gives them a noticeable amount of area coverage for their respective debuffs. It's very clear that VG can affect noticeably more mobs than either of them, though. And, the area coverage for poison trap is in a league of its own when compared to weaken and envenom.

The math doesn't math on -60%, -100% being the norm for enemies because the radius for envenom and weaken are both just 8 feet. If a spawn has over 10 mobs in it then the clear majority of mobs will have just the splash debuff or no debuff at all from envenom and weaken, whether envenom has been applied twice or not. VG becomes a key source of -res and -def, given the small radius of envenom and weaken. In addition, poison trap makes a great alpha strike on new spawns, helping noticeably to weed out the weaker mobs. Then the small number of stronger mobs are alone that much faster and the team moves faster. Also, VG (15 ft radius) + poison trap (25ft radius) are going to consistently affect more mobs on a large spawn than the more narrowly focused debuffs from envenom and weaken. On a related note, poison trap will do little or nothing to improve clear speed if a poison character is steering clear of melee range. In addition, waiting 3 or 4 seconds to get the second application of envenom going means the team's alpha strike has already happened and that time interval during which VG was probably operating on the mob won't happen unless the poison character is in melee range. As well, trivializing the role of to hit and damage debuffs in venomous gas and the hold in poison trap doesn't hold water. They contribute to clear speed by reducing incoming damage, especially to those in melee range. When any tanks, scrappers, stalkers, melee dominators, and blasters in melee range on the team take less damage, everybody gets to focus more on offense and less on healing / resting / inspiration management and the team can move faster. Finally, consistently operating in melee range means that a poison character gets any AOE-based buffs that are most often applied to those in melee range as a matter of course. That means more consistently applied defensive shields and, importantly, more consistent uptime on fulcrum shift. That makes a poison character's survivability and damage noticeably go up on many teams. On a related note, in my experience once teammates see a crazy controller poisoning mobs in melee range, they sometimes become more aggressive themselves. That indirect effect on teammate choices also tends to make a team move even faster^. ^ This doesn't always happen. It sometimes does, though. I don't know how to characterize tidge's experience. I've no doubt that is their experience. It's just head-scratching how a choice that is obviously and inevitably mechanically inferior* produces a faster clear speed. That doesn't match my experience at all. FWIW. * "Mechanically inferior is admittedly a loaded term. But, it's technically accurate here. You can't do less debuffing and less damage and call that mechanically superior. You. Just. Can't. Still, operating fully from range is absolutely viable and somebody can make an effective poison character doing that. If somebody doesn't want to make the kinds of choices that support operating in melee with a poison character, whether it be bolstering defenses, avoiding taking the alpha, accepting more defeats, or whatever, then that's totally their call. CoH is an easy game, at the end of the day, and even if it wasn't then if somebody enjoys their character more when played fully from range I wouldn't call making that choice wrong.

Here are two builds for two different primaries. The electric control build has lower ranged defense, but is generally still defensively fine because endurance drain ends up being helpful for surviving in melee range during a fair percentage of longer fights. Also, the gremlins confuse a noticeable number of mobs with the cupid's crush proc slotted in them, thereby reducing incoming aggro. The darkness control build is still generally safer, though, partly because of better ranged defense and partly because fearsome stare is a really good opener which recharges for pretty much every spawn. All those to hit debuffs also help. Controller (Darkness Control - Poison - Psi mastery),v3.mbd Controller (Electric Control - Poison - Psi mastery),v2.mbd

Regarding the "dual boss" scenario, having everything around the one boss that didn't get the "big kahuna" debuff melt faster also makes the one boss who only got the splash debuff melt faster because it will tend to be the last undefeated mob quite soon after the fight starts. If you really feel the need to speed up that process then you can click one button after only that boss is left and apply the full debuff if you'd like. One surviving boss is seldom more than a minor speed bump for a team anyways, either way. Still, if somebody enjoys their character more when played at range, then that's more than reason enough to do it. CoH is a pretty easy game and optimizing for fun will usually still lead to a mechanically effective character. It's when you're operating in melee with a poison character that you can really accelerate a team's rate of progress through missions, though. Venomous gas increases the -res and -defense debuffs on enemies, which is helpful for clear speed. And, venomous gas also helps to make it safer to keep drop a highly damaging poison trap loaded with procs as often as possible, which also noticeably helps to improve clear speed.

It is true that that the stacking mechanics work differently for the T2 and T3 poison debuffs when compared to other debuffs that can stack, such as tar patch and freezing rain. For the T2 and T3 poison debuffs you get the highest debuff on the one targeted and a lesser debuff for those affected by a splash from the targeted debuff. That seems mechanically reasonable to me and probably ultimately to the advantage of players because you get to choose which target gets the "Big Kahuna" debuff and which get the lesser debuff. It is more work to double up the T2 and T3 debuffs on mobs, for sure, compared to freezing rain and tar patch. But, venomous gas will usually get applied to mobs only affected by the "lesser" splash debuff, which still makes for a higher total than the T2 / T3 splash debuffs on their own. In practice, it's usually only when fighting EBs and above that it's worth bothering to both target mobs directly with a T2 debuff and to also stack a "splash" of the T2 debuff on them. So, in practice the "wonkiness", as you're calling it, which I would call instead "a welcome opportunity to stack debuffs when they're useful", tends to come up only every so often. I can empathize with finding it bothersome that a clearly melee-focused set is given a cone with a lot of range on it and a long casting time. Mechanically it seems at odds with the rest of the set. In a similar vein, I've often found it bothersome to have those kinds of cones in a melee-focused dominator assault set because to me those are "dead spots" in the assault set that I'll never touch. Still, I don't see how having a cone is relevant for making judgments specific to just the poison set. It seems to me that's part of a larger discussion about set design, at the end of the day.

Even though it means not having a nuke, I tend to prefer controllers when using the poison set. It's typically not difficult to get ranged defense into the mid 30s on a controller. That level of ranged defense paired with good resistances seems to be a kind of "sweet spot" for surviving most +4x8 alphas when heading for the middle of new spawns to drop poison trap. If I'm not sure about how well taking an alpha will go for a particular spawn or if a team has very little support / healing and my poison character is the alpha taker then I'll have a control option that makes getting to the middle of new spawns safer. Plus, with one or more controller pets along for the journey single target damage can be very good, especially with the strength of resistance and defense debuffs offered by poison. Taking enflame boosts AOE damage and also works well against single hard targets. So, overall damage tends to be in a good enough place that the lack of a nuke isn't a significant concern. Another benefit of controllers over defenders is that you can get rune of protection from the sorcery pool at level 20, indomitable will from psionic mastery at level 35, melee core hybrid T4 after reaching level 50, and some knock protection from IOs; together these provide a fair amount of protection against mezzes and knocks even when exemp'd down for lower level task forces. It's not necessary to build with taking alphas in mind, though, as there is usually at least one other character on the team who can take alphas fairly well. In the end, there are a lot of good choices available for building a poison character.