Coyote

Mind on Doms is actually a good powerset. Getting double Mag on mezzes and not having to worry about Containment for damage are two huge improvements. Mind on Controllers is pretty bad. It doesn't set up Containment very well, several useful DoTs from the secondaries put out debuffs but break Sleep, and you may have a buffing secondary and no pet to buff if soloing.

Well, if that's what you mean, then there are some basics: Panacea and Numina's IOs into Health (unless you're 6-slotting Numina into your Sustain power for the Ranged D bonus, in which case the Numina IO goes there) Unique IOs from Steadfast Protection, Gladiator's Armor, and Unbreakable Guard into Tough. Unique resist IOs from Shield Wall and Reactive Defenses into some defense power that you'll always be running. Combat Jumping is good, but Weave is an option, and you might also run either Stealth or Maneuvers. Both of the Blaster ATO sets give Ranged Defense as a bonus. And if you can spare one ranged AoE to mule, the Frozen set for it gives 2 AoE Defense bonuses. The full Gaussian set into your Build Up or Aim gives 2.5% Defense to Melee/Ranged/AoE, so unless you're going for S/L Defense, it's a pretty good option.

I would, but only with /Storm or /Traps. The ability to turn small-radius AoEs from the secondary to reliably hitting all 5 targets that they can, or to turn 2xTrip Mine plus Poison Gas Trap into a 800+ damage nuke every spawn by combining them with Wormhole is a huge benefit. In both cases, it's really Gravity leveraging the secondary, rather than Gravity Control itself being top, but sometimes that's how really good builds work. You still end up with good AoE, good ST, and team support... it's just not really burst damage. Well, other than 2 Trip Mines and Poison Gas Trap going off counting as "burst", but the setup time is so long that it's a different type of burst damage.

Titan Weapons is bringing the challenge for second place. Because Stone Melee is in first 😛

Just to note with running a Fire/Psy (End hungry due to running Hot Feet)... the only reason to bunch up mobs is for the Regeneration bonus. Hitting 2 is enough to conver Endurance for basically anything, and hitting just 1 target pretty much solves Endurance issues (pushes it to over 4 EPS without any accolades and with only 1 slot in Stamina... if I add 1-2 slots and got some Accolades, it may break 5 EPPs, and that's also with Drain Psyche slotted with a full Heal set). Regeneration helps, but honestly, as a Dom you're in charge and not taking much damage, or you aggroed another spawn without having an AoE mez ready, got him with defense debuffs, and died too fast for Regeneration to help. The argument about "Psy ranged ST damage sucks" is a good one, though, cause it does.

No, that's not what it does. What it does is that a PPM proc with a 3 PPM slotted in a power that can be cycled 6 times in a minute, will have a 50% chance to proc. So you'll AVERAGE 3 proc activations per minute, but there is no cap. And, the calculation only counts the Recharge slotted into the power to determine its cycle time (activation time plus recharge time). So if you have high Global Recharge, or get Recharge buffs, you can activate that power 8 or 10 or 12 times in a minute, actually averaging 4-6 proc activations in that minute, rather than the expected 3. The activation chance is also capped at 90%, and there is a floor... I think 5%. But the main concept is that it's based only on percentage chance to activate, not with any kind of cap being tracked.

Controllers also have access to better position-based secondaries, so throwing down mobs into a kill zone with Wormhole is a lot better than just clumping them up like a Dominator would. Double Trip Mines, Poison Gas Trap, Caltrops, Seeker Drones, and Acid Mortar make for a much hotter landing for the mobs than just a set of AoE attacks from a Dominator secondary. Storm also benefits greatly from bunching mobs up for Tornado/Lightning Storm.

Almost everything in Stone Melee or Earth Assault. It hits hard, shakes your screen, and puts a low-grade subsonic rumble in your video card. Spring Attack has a nice animation and crunchy landing. Too bad the damage is so bad, although I think that may be due to some bugs.

Even if nothing else, putting more slots into the Protector Bots allows you to slot Defense enhancements into them, and the bubbles are the biggest source of defense for the other bots. Each ProtBot puts out a bubble on the other Bots worth 10% base defense.. the bubbles you put out are 11.25%, but the non-Protector Bots get double-bubbled, once from each Protector, so their base Defense from both shields is 20% (and the Prot Bots each get 10%). Increase that to about 14% with two Defense SOs, and it's a big increase to each henchman. As for affording, if you're not using IOs, what are you doing with all of the recipes and salvage that you've gotten? If you create an IO with every recipe that you've gotten by 28, and used Converters that you gain from Reward Merits, you should easily have enough money by that level to afford the 4 base pet Resist/Defense IOs.

I would put more slots into the pets, and get the Defense and Resist IOs. Adding +10 Defense and +20 Resist to everything is nice. Even better if you can afford the more expensive MM ATOs with 10% AoE Defense and 10 more Resist. The non-ATO ones are usually obtainable for 2 million or less each, so for 8 million you can get a huge improvement in the character's abilities. Also... I would be slotting IOs at level 27, as they are better than SOs, and it's cheaper to buy them once than to upgrade every few levels. The pet upgrade powers need Endurance Reduction, not Recharge. I would take out the End Reduction out of the FF ally shields, as they're not too expensive and you're not casting them that often. I would take out some of the slots from PFF, it has a very high value base, so one Defense IO (or SO) is quite enough. Use those slots to 6-slot the pets so you can put the uniques into them. Change the Fly slots to Flight Speed. You won't be leaving that on in missions, you'll be using Group Flight. Ironically, it has a lower End cost. But you'll want your Bots off the ground to keep them out of melee. I don't think I'd slot Boxing up unless I were using IO sets for bonuses. Cross Punch might be worth slotting up, but not Boxing. I'd switch both slots to Air Superiority since it's an actually good power.

I think there are three ways to slot Imps, depending on your build 1) 6x Expedient Reinforcement, gives you Recharge, and is the slotting for a Ranged Defense build 2) 4x ExpR, for Recharge. Gives decent set bonuses on the cheap for when you're not looking to max out their effect and aren't going for Defense. 3) 4x ExpR, Soulbound proc, Overwhelming Force Knockdown. Recharge bonus, extra damage from the Build-Up, and occasional knockdowns on their targets to help them survive. There are some other options, but I'm not crazy about them: going with Hami-Os... if money is of no interest and you want to squeeze out some extra damage, okay, but I don't think Imps are worth the investment. It does allow you to max them out in 3 slots, but that's all. 4x ExpR, and 2 more Defense or Resist IOs. I don't like this, I think Imps are better treated as expendable. The majority of the time that they die, extra D or R wouldn't have helped, because they chased a runner into a new spawn and took the alpha that would have killed 3 of them instead of just the one suicidal flame monkey. 1 Hami-O, Soulbound Damage. Especially if you have other sources of +Accuracy for them, or -Def on the mobs. It's not bad slotting, gets good results out of minimal slotting, and is useful for high-difficulty builds where often the Imps get squished fast so it's not worth it to invest too much in pets who don't live long.

Fire if you want to stay ranged. Add Earth and Energy if you are willing to enter melee (both have a good melee attack with a mez that allows you to "wake" mobs up with a Hold or a Stun). Psy is pretty good also if you're willing to take melee attacks (it sucks at range) and Drain Psyche is always great... but you'll have to use a KB converter in TK Thrust if it's going to be part of a chain rather than as a push back power.

The sets that kept most or all of their AoEs, I would say probably. The sets that traded some AoE for more ST damage, I would say probably not.

Really? 🥺 I'd rather look at Defense set bonuses, but I don't mind a consideration of damage procs... and my Blasters proc out multiple attacks, usually at least a ST Hold. There are lot of reasons to consider the issue that aren't based on Blaster Insecurity Syndrome.

Illusion/Traps, Earth Control/Thermal are good options. Illusion version is more effective, Earth version is a lot cheaper. Another interesting option is Fire/Dark Controller... Dark's -Damage will neuter the damage of almost all AVs, and with its -Regen and -Resist, the damage from Fire Imps will whittle down the AV. And Fire/Dark does more damage otherwise. An interesting option might be Dark/Psy Dominator. You can perma-Confuse the AV to take care of defense, and the strong -Regen from Drain Psyche helps with doing damage. 3 pets do decent damage and you can sneak in some attacks between Confuses, and Sleet is available for -Res.

Grav/Storm is an excellent pairing. Leviathan would fit well with it, though I'd rather run Mu personally. /Storm does need KB->KD IOs, as does Wormhole.

The Regen increase wouldn't matter to Bots since they'll shut down Regen, but... 80k DP every six minutes is over 200 HP/s worth of healing that has to be overcome. Behind some high resists even aside from Unstoppable. I thought it was about 30k heal, and that seemed doable... 80k is probably out of reach. I remember draining Nosferatu before Incarnates... but at a lower level, he didn't have the top AV resistance to debuffs. I doubt that Khan can be drained by a /EA without another source of draining even with Musculature and Preemptive.

Absolutely. You can try one without Fighting, but it will take a LOT more damage, and now that we get Fitness as an inherent pool, it's a lot easier to fit in Fighting. Also, Tough allows you to slot the two +Defense unique IOs earlier than waiting for an Epic armor. Scrappers certainly have better survivability, though Blasters do more damage and have the option to stay at range if a foe is especially dangerous in melee. Be sure to build your Blapper so that if it's stuck staying at range, it's not losing too many attacks. Other defensive options are melee-range crowd controls... Electric Manipulation has a couple of PBAoE knockdowns, Ice Manipulations has Ice Patch, etc.

The Hybrid Control toggle is a great addition to these toggle Holds (and Oppressive Gloom), as it has a flat % chance to activate regardless of the power's recharge or radius. So it really turns them up to being 3 Mag most of the time. I wonder how it works with Fissure... Fissure checks twice for Stun, once at Mag 1 with 80% chance. If it adds +1 Mag to each check, that's yummy.

Oh, ho. And what are your difficulty settings? One problem with Calystix is that his stats are lower as an EB than an AV... but his summons are the same. So THEY will do the same damage even if his damage output is lowered by dropping him to AV. So you may want to drop difficulty from x4 to x1, as I believe that the number that he summons at a time is related to the team size. Also, Bots can soft-cap Defenses... with the Pet Defense IOs. Without them, their defense goes from about 45% to 35%, and they take 3x as much damage. They're not even highly expensive for rare IOs, so given how useful they are for Bots, I would prioritize them over almost any other proc for that character.

I mostly play Dominators, but I wish they played differently. 🤪

AoE powers and longer-recharge powers. Energy Assault with one in Power Burst and one in the Snipe can have it up a good amount of the time when using a single-target rotation. Earth Assault is very good, with two AoEs that can proc it, as well as putting it in one or both of the hammers and/or Hurl Boulder. Martial and Thorny Assaults also have options for it, with Thorny having both a melee cone and a ranged attack with it, while Martial has two melee AoEs that can slot it. In the long run, you don't want to depend on it, but if you're not powerleveling the character, using it in the mid-late 20s up until you get perma-Dom without it can get you to run as a perma-Dom only while actively fighting, but that's still better than not having perma-Dom. Especially as a Villain since you can use the Alignment power to bootstrap Domination at the start of a mission, hammer through it with constant fighting, and then if it drops between missions the Alignment power will be recharged for the next one.

Yeah, that's the power, -500% Regen for 30 seconds. Could it be a misunderstanding thinking that "Cold Dom" refers to an Ice Control Dominator?

What about a Robots MM? The Assault Bot can put out -1000 Regen on a "permanent" basis (other than when it misses with Dual Plasma Blast), so the real issue would seem to keep the Bots from folding to AoE slams. But Tankerminding combined with a Resist-based secondary (EA? Thermal?) may limit the one-shotting, and then AoE heals cover up the damage. I'm actually planning a 2nd build for my Bots/EA to try this, depending on how well he does with Siege (who, unfortunately, has a cycling Heal rather than just Regen, so I can't shut that down).

Yeah, I'm kinda agreeing with this... Cold has much better End management, so that may be a thing, but it has very little self-defense ability other than -Recharge (and -Damage for a single opponent). Thermal has a self-heal to top up between fights. Both have to depend on IO set bonuses for Defense to solo well, but that works well backed up by heals. My main problem with Thermal is the -Res power is so much weaker than Cold's and you don't get +Recovery, so it's weaker on damage, not survivability.