Runewritten

Funny, I just recently reached the opposite conclusion: one of the reasons I think I haven't been able to fully embrace CoH again is that the population feels just a little too old for me. Those loving references posted here make me groan, and I can feel the inexorable avalanche into Monty Python quotes from a mile away, yet feel helpless to prevent the tragedy. It always did skew older-- I was a kid playing with adults back then and had no choice but to nod along with eternal referential humor. But now I do have a choice, and apparently that involves the potential end of CoH for me. C'est la vie, though. Glad you guys found fellow members of your tribe.

Yeah, but it's not why you love that AT, right? You don't love blasters because you love the metagame of softcapping defenses and resistances. It's just a natural endgoal to fill in the gaps. But you can see in this same thread, for some, building to achieve permadom IS the high-point of playing a dom. That just highlights how much of a crutch Domination is for the AT.

What's getting me is how many seem to love dominators not because of the way they play, but for the IO build metagame of reaching permadom. To me, it seems like if your favorite part of the AT is how much INF and messing around in Mids' it takes to overcome their deficiency, that's so glaring that you're spending INF and messing around in Mids to overcome said deficiency, then... the AT needs work.

I think you're extrapolating an awful lot. Moving the mez protection doesn't have to be straight power creep-- it can be for a lower magnitude, as suggested already, and/or domination tweaked to counterbalance the shift. Maybe the mez protection increases with your domination bar. No domination built up, no protection-- but every 20% is a 1 mag boost. Activating Domination no longer adds mez protection, so it ends up being a tradeoff-- you gain offensive power while sacrificing protection.

Doms are my favorite AT, and I've never felt obligated to chase permadom. Controls are my opener, assault mops everything up-- once the fight starts, I don't stop until I stop them, and I like that 'tidal wave/force of nature' feel to the class. It feels plenty synergistic to me. I will admit my doms (especially my gravity doms) can feel pretty vulnerable compared to some of my other characters. After realizing how much less squishy blasters are these days, it does feel a little "off." That said, I would definitely support moving mez protection from Domination to a permanent spot, which I think would alleviate the obligation people feel to be 'permadom or bust.'

Arcane bolt. The way you scribe a rune of fire and shove it forward, and it rumbles the screen when it hits-- just feels so wonderful for such a meager power.

Protecting a bank is an excellent way to case the joint and scope out its defenses before the big score.

I think I had read in a Praetorian mission guide that you need to go through the tutorial to have access to calling as a double agent. If you skipped the tutorials, that character might just be out of luck.

If I were to wholesale replace a single dom power across the board, I'd definitely replace it with some sort of minor defensive power, like blaster secondaries got. Probably a mez resist toggle, so permadom doesn't seem quite so necessary.

I haven't taken the T1 immobilize since... since my first controller on live. I guess if you're desperate for DPS as a controller, it's something to take. But for me, between all the purchasable attacks and epic pools, it still feels superfluous, and doesn't set up anything another control couldn't. And yeah, for a dom, it's definitely an auto-skip. I have a hard enough time deciding on an attack chain without thinking about slow-acting immobilizes. I'm honestly surprised they're getting so much love so far. I'd just flat out replace them, but I guess they have a special place in someone's heart. Maybe increasing/adding some potent secondary effects like debuffs would make them more interesting to the rest of us?

You could roll up a grav/traps controller. Wormhole is the power you seek.

I've been wringing a lot of new alts out of the single concept of alternate-dimension versions of the same person. It started as a throwaway "never meet your alternate self" line in my dimension-hopping staff/elec stalker, and now it's expanded into an entire mythology. Every character needs to have some combination of either electric powers or some energy-based powers that represent warping spacetime (I have grav, time, and psi-melee allowed in that category so far, and probably energy aura if I need a new armor set), and some sort of martial, weapon or tech secondary. I'm not allowing any repeats of powersets, and they can't double down with full elec/energy, or full tech/martial-- it has to be one of both categories. I've squeezed 10 alts out of that concept so far, and have a couple new ideas percolating now. I also squeezed 13 alts out of the idea of a secret society of ancient mages.

Superspeed assault. Sure, you can throw on a travel power and take street fighting and call it a day, but there are a lot of nifty tricks a speedster could do that aren't represented at all. Burst of Speed is probably the best we've got. But beyond combat TPs, you could have an AE that spawns phantom versions of yourself that punch everyone at once, or a extreme-damage ST that makes a half dozen clones all zip-kick into a single target at once. There's a lot of fun to be had.

One of my first characters years ago was Flash Man. He was an ill/rad controller I think, or maybe ill/kin. Anyway, using Blind and Flash felt just right for him. Would definitely go with ill/time these days. I also made a Toad Man, though I think that was a spines/dark scrapper and not a storm summoner, and a Pharaoh Man fire/fire blaster. These days I might take a recolored Rad blast for Pharaoh Man, just for Neutron Bomb kinda feeling like Pharaoh Shot. Rad/fire? Toad Man would be a water/storm corruptor. Good memories.

Yeah, after the patch changed how immobs work, I would revoke my advice to skip them. Though I'd say earth, of all sets, doesn't need the immob from a control standpoint, it couldn't hurt to have some more AoE damage. Salt Crystals is still endlessly skippable, though, if you really needed to take a hard pass on something. And, to me, the single target immob generally feels superfluous on doms. Soul mastery feels great on my grav/earth dom. You're already deep in melee with /earth, so hitting that soul drain to open the pain is just a great feeling.