Voltak

I can and will always approve of this build. I have tested this build with @EJ many many many times. We have done lots of ITFs as a duo or trio in max diff settings with no inspirations. Results don't lie 🙂

I cover a few useful Strategies or Tactics to use when using the Storm powers. Storm powers have some bad reputation among many players. I think many times it's due to many players not using some finesse or sound tactics when handling storm. Whatever the case, I want to help wherever I may.

That's got to be one of the top earth doms build that I know of, and excellently played.

Sonic blasts takes Annihilation - resistant debuff proc as well Sonic blasts also takes fury of the gladiatior Sonic blasts each one does a minimum of -20 % resistance debuff and each one stacks upon the other. Making each additional attack do greater dmg, dmg which is already amplified by Kin. When I am hitting +4 Bosses for 520 dmg without procs with Shout from Sonic Blasts on my defender, it's a strong statement. Shout is not even a snipe. Sonic has no snipe. I can't do that dmg on my fire corruptor (kinetics) with Blaze to the same bosses, even at cap dmg, unless I hit a critical (Scourge) Each sonic attack makes Fulcrum Shift MULTIPLY in STRENGTH , NOT add, but multiply in strength in terms of debuffing enemy dmg, same thing with siphon power. LIke I show in the video -- easily do 32.5% dmg debuff in the whole Area of Effect, just kinetics alone with FS alone. Each sonic attacks multiplies this strength of dmg debuff. With siphon power and FS , no sonic, you can reach over 80% dmg debuff on target. With sonic blasts you can multiply that but you can also speed up the dmg debuff rate.

For starter doms, especially grinding, I recommend dominators with single target possess or confuse. To that end, Mind is a phenomenal starter dom, and so is dark. Mind has an advantage when leveling, the sleep and the confuse and the hold are all early. You can control a pack of 3, play with the 4th enemy, and so on. Easily the safest to level with from 1 - 20 because all 3 of those powers are early and recharge is good enough for every encounter. You sleep enemies fight the others at your pace. Confuse, hold, you got it. Mind has additional dmg to compliment the assault. I would hold off on plant until you have enough money to get that recharge way way way low with IOs in the build. Dark can confuse, fear, and has early pets to get you going.

The dmg both have is strong enough to get it done, that's top reason. Serves no purpose to get to the final fight and not being able to kill the AV would be very bad. If I had used a different build, I could have had 3 pets. Instead of doing that, I used a build that gave me a safeguard in case I could not get Yin off my back. Yin's PSI dmg is very scary. I was too worried about that. In retrospect, that could have been done differently. But dark assault has by itself very strong dmg, top tier indeed. Had I blended that with all 3 pets from dark, it could have been done faster. During the hardest fights vs range targets, the to hit debuffs certainly shined. One such fight was vs Chronos or Kronos. Soloing him is no joke. He has good range attacks that hit very hard. So, I feel like that helped there. No other combination of dom powers debuffs to hit values like dark/dark does. The healing from dark assault was immensely helpful, especially boosted from gather shadows. Gather shadows from dark assault helped to ensure that Possession lasted much much longer which allowed for easier stacking. Dark/Dark is a very very proc friendly combination, if not the most proc friendly of all of them.

Every time you apply a damage resistance debuff, your dmg debuff strength is multiplied, not added, so the dmg debuff becomes stronger. So, if the damage resistance debuff gets higher, then the higher the multiplier to the dmg debuff strength. Then the combo of Kinetics and Sonic blasts looks even better. That's nice.

Because ... DARK / Dark dominator is awesome

AVs do not resists damage resistance debuffs nor damage debuffs. From Paragon WIki, I get the list of As of Issue 9, this resistance applies to -RunSpeed, -Recharge, -Endurance, -ToHit, -Defense, -Perception, -Regeneration, and -Recovery. Those only. So what's going on ? Power analyzer is calculating the resists to the resists debuffs. You see Fulcrum Shift, when you read the power description, the debuff is NOT 16.25%, it is higher. But when you see power analyzer, the debuff is lower than the power description. So I provided on video what the debuff is to their dmg. Also, damage resistance debuffs make AVs even weaker to dmg debuffs. Like stated above, a 50% dmg resistance debuff will make dmg debuffs increase in strength by 1.5

Very welcome. Please check out my YouTube Chnl - NIA MAC. Plenty of videos of feats, videos of play using doms, from plant to Dark, to earth. I want to second that Dark/Psi would be an amazing combo as well. Definitely the way I would suggest if you don't want Ageless as a Destiny. Of course, my favorite is Dark/Dark if I am going to be soloing content to include AVs in the mix of things being solo'd. But Dark/Psi would be something I endorse as well.

The evidence is on the video. I presented the numbers using power analyzer. The numbers do not lie. Fulcrum Shift debuted the dmg of +4 enemies, all enemies in the AoE by 16.25%, TWO Fulcrum Shifts debuffed 32.5% of the dmg to all in the AoE. I furthermore added that doing damage resistance debuffs WILL MULTIPLY the STRENGTH of the Damage debuff done to the enemies. I don't know of any resistance in the game to neither 1) Damage resistance debuffs nor to 2) Damage debuffs. Also I added additional information to make things more clear on the matter of resistance debuffs combining with damage debuffs. Also, Kinetics is not a big deal when it comes to playing it, so it is not too busy that you can't do these significant things. I played tons of it, and I can tell you it's just a matter of getting a routing down, getting yourself in an almost auto-pilot, and you will be fine. FS is reapplied in a few seconds, and in between you can blast with sonics, and, like I mentioned above, the resistance debuffs multiply the strength of your dmg debuffs. It is a significant difference.

The animations are just sooo looong, and I love the set, theme, flavor, and so on. It could benefit from shorter animation times for some things I mentioned specifically. These are not assault powers I am talking about here at all. I said that a few times. I am talking about the buffing and debuffing or Rez . I don't want to argue, but I just want to see if anything is provided that demonstrates to me that the animation needs to stay that way because of game balance issues and it cannot therefore be improved. Since I don't think that's the case, I am holding on to the proposal to the Devs to address this.

This is old info. They know about this. Kin/Sonic combo is indeed as good as any other or the best for debuffing enemy dmg in an AoE basis, as long as you are combining both. It is something rarely talked about and I am just referring mainly to the benefits of Fulcrum Shift. Very very few appreciate the high value of of having 32.5% reduced dmg at +4 content in an AoE situation from a SINGLE kinetics using only Fulcrum Shift. With two kinetics, those numbers stack. Single targets, one kin can go higher than 80% dmg debuff vs +4 targets using kinetics alone.

That is correct. For some reason, the way the game is working is -- when you debuff their resistances, there is also a dmg debuff applied to the enemies. The numbers are NOT identical. In some cases it is only about half but it does stack as well. This is not only with sonics, but it works even with something else, so for example, with Poison resistance debuffs.

All right, @TygerDarkstorm I will oblige. You can make any Dominator work. The Dominator I think is right at the top or at least competes at the highest of difficult challenges is Dark in the combo Dark/Dark. That said, Plant, Mind, Earth are all amazing. If you are looking to do extreme challenges in small teams, I would recommend Dark, Plant, Mind, and earth is not too shabby either there. But generally, in this game, possession or confuse is the single most powerful form of control in the field of dominators. Having the enemies in your team is the most powerful control or domination you can exert, especially because they help kill all other enemies. That's how I took my dark/dark dominator to solo the LRSF 54x8 , no inspirations, no deaths and beat all the Arch Villains at the final fight - I posses one and then use him or her to kill the others. But Dark has 3 pets which further pushes your dmg vs single hard targets. Dark is a strong force at debuffing enemy to hit chances. Dark is missing a sleep and a power similar to earthquake or Ice Slick. Plant Dominator in a duo beats any other duo of dominators. Plant in a duo will leave Dark and Mind in the dust. Seeds in a pair of Dominators is using the most powerful form of control but in mass at a fast recharge rate, outside of seeds, Plant is not a big deal at all. But seeds makes Plant, when combined in numbers, even just two, into something to behold. Creepers is an amazing AoE dmg instrument. Mind has a ST and AoE confuse, but the AoE confuse is on a LOOONG recharge. Mind control without creepers it's not doing nearly the AoE dmg as Plant. Roots is perhaps the hardest hitting AoE immob in the game. Mind has no immob power. Without pets, it's not going to beat Dark in ST hard target dmg if you are up vs an AV. Mind has sleep in two forms and they are now auto hit , like all other sleep powers. Mind will confuse an AV faster than any other Dominator and will stack holds faster than any other dominator vs an AV. The confuse or possession is what sets the above - plant, dark, and mind, ahead of the rest. Earth has lots and lots of controls, it's just missing the most powerful ones. But in things like the ITF, earth has something the other's don't - Cimerorans may be able to break free of holds or confuse but they can't break free from the combo of earthquake and quicksand. It's a great form of control and it kills their ridiculous high level of defenses, it also kills Nemesis defenses when their vengeance start stacking. Check out my channel on YouTube. I have plenty of videos with dominators, I don't have anything with Mind, but I have seen plenty of other players use them. For mind, I suggest you also seek @FUBARczar and @Mezmera. For secondaries, at the highest levels of difficult challenges, I always favor sets with self heals, therefore 1) dark assault 2)Psionic assault 3) Radiation assault If you don't care for self heals, then besides Dark assault, please consider - Fire, Energy, and even Savage. Psionic assault will be the assault set to go to if you are not going to use Ageless as your Destiny incarnate power.

Kinetics is very popular because it is normally the most powerful means to buff dmg in a team, and because of Speed Boost. The rarely talked about benefits of Kinetics is the AoE and the ST damage debuff which stacks, and those debuffs are powerful indeed, even vs enemies +4 lvls above you. In the video I give a live example of the debuff vs +4 enemies and I talk about how that is combined with sonic attacks. Let me provide additional information to clarify one of the issues I mention in the video. Damage resistance debuffs make enemies WEAKER to damage debuffs. So, for example, 50% damage resistance debuff would multiply the strength of the damage debuff by 1.5. That's a very significant jump. So hitting the targets with an AoE from Sonic, will make Fulcrum Shift significantly stronger when considering how much damage debuff is applied to the enemies.

Are you saying that the animation times for those specific powers I listed of Dark Miasma, and some powers of radiation emissions, or any other powers buffing or debuffing are exactly that long because if they were shorter or they would break the game or cause it to be unbalanced ? If you are saying this you are kind of inferring something is set on stone here. If so, where is this stated or written ? I want to know why we need 3 second animation or 2.37 seconds or otherwise the set is broken. Where is this stated? Are you coming up with this on your own ? If you are not saying any of this, then I can't even understand why are you even discussing or what direction you are going. Remember, I am not talking about assault sets The change is warranted because the animations are just way too long, they don't need to be this long for Dark Miasma and other sets to be just fine, with nothing to worry about. . It would be much funner to have a shorter animation. IT's a quality of life issue for many powers like these. In no way is it going to break the game. Dark Miasma is no where near being OP. You worried about game balance if they shortened the animation times for some of these things? IO's , sets, bonuses, incarnates, AE... those things and others have caused unbalanced or caused toons to be way more overpowered than shortening the animation times of some of these powers ever will. I love IOs, and incarnates. I have found my ways to engage in greater challenges now that the characters are a lot more powerful. Thus the game is rebalanced. That's how it works.

Improvements done, better the performance of some powers or sets, along with bringing new challenges, more difficult challenges, and so on... That's a great system, a proven system that works across the game industry. We move forward. Cutting the animation times for, let's say, three powers that if you cast them one after the other, could take you about 10 seconds, before you engaging in moving around or attacking or evading. It's a quality of life issue, fun issue, and so on. This won't break the game in the least, and it won't make the sets mentioned OP, not even. No one is saying Rad is not top tier , especially for what it does. I am saying some powers in many sets could use some cut in the animation times, and I am not talking about assault sets. Listen, the game, no game is, but the game is not perfect. We can keep improving. No need to be conservative here. The game works well with progress and movement forward. These changes will still keep the CoH flavor. @Rudra -- my proposition still keeps in mind what we all want, not just the devs. We want CoH , we want the flavor of CoH, and we want this game to go on for as long as possible. My proposition does not go counter to that in the least. I agree, let's bury that.

THis statement will not impede nor stop improvements. For you to try to dare to define in detail what this means is impossible, and I am not saying you are, but you do come across as you knowing that somehow this is relevant to making these changes requested as something that goes against the above statement. If you are not inferring this, cool, and carry on. But that statement there has no weight as to why the changes requested should not happen. Elec blast being improve, tanks being improved, energy melee being improved after the nerf to ET, the inclusion of incarnates , the invention of AE... lots of things have changed the game or improves significantly... CoH still the same game we love. IOs, changed the game a lot, a whole lot, and so did the market system. So there is no way to define the above statement in any detail. That statement could still be honored even if the changes I am requesting are done. Shake hands ? ** Now, the rule across the industry is "give players/customers what they want" so we keep them or gain more, and in the vast majority of cases, the motive is to make a profit. Profit is not so much the issue with CoH, but providing the fun to the players is. **

There is no rule, nothing set in stone saying that the power needs a nerf anywhere in order to shorten animations of powers that buff or debuff or even rez. There is no breaking balance in shortening the animation of a mower that is 3.17 secs long animation when buffing or debuffing. Activating, say, 3 powers, taking about 9 seconds to do so... then waiting to move or attack... Shortening the wait time for you to buff or debuff is not going to break CoH in the least, certainly not even close to what AE or incarnates have done. Even then I do welcome AE and I welcome incarnates. The game is always ready to receive new challenges in other ways. This is certainly a practice in place across the gaming industry -- Improvements done and new challenges presented to players. That is a fun way to proceed, and it beats swinging nerf bats all over the place or refusing to improve some quality of life to some sets. I don't mean to straw man. But it seems to me that your argument is a straw already. To care is good. To make things more fun is good. There is no need in bringing a more negative aspect to these powers across various sets by giving them such long animations. Shortening the casting times will not affect in the least the life longevity of CoH. The improvements to tanks did nothing to hurt CoH. I dont even play tanks, or have not played them since Live. Improvements to electricity blasts did not hurt the game either.

Anyone interested in practical tests, real in-game results ? As someone who has done over 50 DUOs with defenders and over 50 Duos with corruptors The difference between the two doing the same, or doing the ITF with same objectives, the difference is roughly 3 minutes. Corruptors are only 3 minutes ahead of Defenders, doing 54 x8 , no inspirations, no temps, no P2W. I have mixed and match lots different power sets. Taking roughly the same power sets, it's only roughly 3 minutes. The difference is relatively small. I time all the runs, I record so many of them and I analyze for improvements , tactics, strategies, build tweak, and so on.

I am in total opposition of nerf bats for balance in the general sense, not as a first option. I am in favor of improving the others. There's more than one way to approach some issues. Spreading nerfs , moving other things backwards, is not the way. Improving others is the better way. Spreading the fun is my preferred way. Spreading the "blessings" not the "misfortunes" is my approach. This is a much more appealing approach to players. Dark Miasma powers I mentioned above need a reduction in animation times. The animation times are just too long. By the time you finish the animations of all those powers, it's been a long time passed already. Those shortenings will not break the game in the least. It will be very nice to reduce the animations and start doing other things, moving or attacking, and so on. Again, I am not talking about attacks from assault sets here.

I have recharge on Tar Patch. It's not up every mob. The recharge times are longer than Darkest Night, which is available at every mob, of course, in teams. Do you have a problem with the animation times being shortened ? If not, will you like the animation times shortened? As it is now, they are too long. There is no need to keep them that long. There is no game breaking if they were shortened. The faster the animation is over with, the sooner you can get on with doing other things, and that will be an improvement.

There is no way making the animations faster would break the game. The ones I mentioned will not break the game in any way. They are too long. It would be much funner if they shortened the animation times. I don't see anywhere that says or establishes that long animation times for buff or debuff determine how powerful they are and no where does it say that if that were the case, then it cannot be changed. There's no rule for that across the gaming industry. I do know that the funner things are, the more people enjoy them. Shorter animation times are or will be an improvement for the set. It cannot hurt us the gamers if animation times were shortened. I cannot see how anyone's gaming experience will be worse with shorter animation times. I frankly do not understand the conservatism that so many players have concerning improvements or positive changes for anything in the game. No game is perfect, and every game has improvements to be made or improvements that have been made. In no way at all does a suggestion for improvement means there is no love or there is not enough love for the game or for the set. Yes, it would be very nice if they shorted the animation times for these powers. As an experience gamer, CoH and others, I just can't see how this would break the game in anyway. And I am one who goes out of his way to find difficult and challenging things to do in CoH because the easy stuff I just don't care for anymore. But these long animation times for what I mentioned are just not fun and so unnecessary.

Hmmmmm.... You were told ? Hehehehe I thought you saw this idea on video or something 😜😂