Coyote

To be clear, the 2 second duration is PvP. In PvE I believe they are 8 seconds in base duration.

Statistically, I like Martial, Earth, Psy, and Ice as secondaries for Ice Control. Psy and Ice add more -Recharge to come closer to the Recharge floor for mobs. Martial or Earth stacks the Knockdown so that combined with Ice Slick mobs are constantly going down, and it's melee/short range-focused which works well for a primary that likes to fight on its Ice Slick.

It's a Tier 1 attack, so... they're pretty skippable (not in taking them, but in slotting them). However, it's a GOOD Tier 1 attack. 80% knockup chance is awesome, and it animates fast, and Earth only has 1 other ranged attack... and sometimes you want to finish off some ranged opponent who doesn't want to come eat a hammer, but if you go introduce the hammer to it, you'll aggro another spawn or two. This is less of an issue late-game when you can handle the aggro, but for a while you like to have the option to DPS down some ranged opponent with your Hold, Spears, and Boulder. I'd definitely slot and use it for a while, and then see how tight slots are in a respec in the 40s that may unslot it. 3 Thunderstrike gives you a bit of a Ranged Defense bonus at the cost of 2 slots invested and make it a usable though not fully slotted power, so I'd consider that. Or going higher to 5 Decimation or Entropic for the Recharge bonus.

1: 4 Mag is what you need for Bosses, so if the +2 Mag fires, this will be enough. 2: I actually think that the Devastation: chance to Hold IO has a higher PPM than the Lockdown proc 3: I think that a 16 second base recharge (before global bonuses) is long enough to cap the proc chance at 90%, so you can add in Recharge into the power if you want so you can use it more often. But it might be 20 seconds, I forget the PPM of the Hold procs.

Plant/Savage. Endurance is still a concern, but not that bad, because the Blood stack system gives you an Endurance discount on power usage.

Dominators are a very busy archetype, as has been said. Both their primary and their secondary are mostly or completely dependent upon click attacks. The argument that such a busy AT that cannot afford to be stuck in the wrong action at short range should be full of fast animations is a good argument. I'm not sure how fair it would be to shorten the animation times of Dominator controls and not those for Controllers, but I don't really think it would feel unfair if some Controller sets had a few of their control animations shortened a bit. And the issue is really more with slow melee and PBAoE attacks anyhow rather than ranged attacks/controls. So it seems, without doing my homework to check animation times on everything, that it should be possible to speed up Assault set and a few Control set animations without causing any OP effect on Controller sets. I also agree that if -Recharge and -Slow are considered Control effects, Dominators should get them boosted under Domination. These seem like some relatively clear issues that could be worked on without having to worry about designing, implementing, and testing some major changes to Domination that would fix issues while not making the kind of great changes to Dominators that would annoy current players who like their current versions of Dominators.

You absolutely can and should skip one of the hammers. I skipped the lighter one. Well, unless you just have fun smacking people around with stone hammers. But as an attack, it's not that much better than Hurl Boulder, and HB is ranged, and there are enough attacks between a primary's Hold, one Mallet, Seismic Smash, and Hurl Boulder, not to mention Stone Spears, that I didn't feel like picking up a 3rd melee attack when I am already taking 2 and have a slotted Hold and Hurl Boulder. I did take Mud Pots... damage that only costs Endurance and not animation time is excellent.

I'm not sure I understand the argument that a Stalker must be AoE OR single-target. All Stalkers are capable at single-target due to AS plus a fast heavy hitter, hopefully from Hidden status. Not all Stalker builds are capable of good AoE, but there are a lot of sets and combinations that can pull out AoE that is very useful on teams. If you leverage PBAoE powers from a secondary that do a bit of damage (/Rad, /Bio), Shield, Fire, or mix any non-damaging secondary with a higher damage primary, and add in an APP, you can open every spawn with over 600 AoE damage. Heck, I have Stalker builds with close to 1000 AoE damage up for every spawn. If you're making a Stalker who is ONLY single-target focused, then you are choosing to play a single target attacker, and that is fine with you. So you should be okay with only attacking LTs and above on teams. But if this is not fine with you, there are plenty of other build options, and you can make a Stalker who is not limited in target options although it does mean there is some limitation on powersets.

You have the secret powerset, Logic Control? Or is it Illogical Control? I hate it when people run perma-Logic characters. Hm. I'd like to get the binary nature of perma-Doms removed by removing the bar and leaving it up to the power's recharge only... as a game designer, it's very hard to balance characters who have such a huge step in power. Perma-Dom? Fighting these mezzing Bosses is a joke. Not a perma-Dom? Fighting these mezzing Bosses is a nightmare. If you're a game designer and trying to balance an NPC spawn, the binary nature of Domination already makes things difficult. Making it permanent for some characters but not all is a very large gap. Good game design with regards to character balance has the characters constrained within tighter limits of effectiveness, and separates them via style of play and player skill, not via a huge gap in statistical ability.

Smooth touch.😆

Other than the age and that she's played enough to get a character into the 30s, I'm with you. Curse you Roblox!!! 😡

Hm. A lot of viewpoints here. I've seen my Doms as generally quite powerful and with good damage, leaving Nukes aside. Their DPA on attacks is good if you involve melee. Some don't have a big mismatch between cone and PBAoE attacks, whether because they have only PBAoEs or short-range AoEs (Energy, Martial & Earth), a short wide cone that makes travel relatively short (Thorns), fast change of distance (Savage), etc. Not all escape the problems, but I don't know if I would call it an AT-wide issue. They do seem strong when leveling before perma-Dom, and very strong after. The only problems I have are, first, the low HPs for an AT with melee range attacks and mez protection... why mez protection? If the AT needs protection, then with no armor and very few options for healing, isn't pure damage as much of an issue as being mezzed? So if there is enough reason to give them mez protection, I think they could use some resistance to damage. And the easiest place to put that is via a HP boost. And, second, the difference in effectiveness between perma-Doms and non-permas... it seems too large to me. Either the base controls effects should be increased and the boost from Domination changed to a +1 Mag or +50% Duration or something useful but not as powerful as it is now, leaving Domination as more of a mez protection effect... or the "build up Domination bar by attacking" should be removed so that a gap is only a gap rather than a reset.

You have a good point. For me, a good trick is to look at a character, and try to say "how will this one play differently from others"... if it looks like it's going to play similarly to another character that I have, I will generally skip it. For example, I have a Ninja/Kinetics MM. Not for power concept, but because Ninjas require a Tankermind approach, and Ninja attacks are terrible so I use the Fighting pool, which makes for a very different playstyle for an MM: run into melee, Provoke, punch people. It's unusual, it plays differently, so it has a different playstyle and feels less repetitive. Same with several other characters, designed so that one Blaster plays significantly differently from other Blasters. It's also why I avoid making too many melee characters, the powersets rarely allow much differentiation in playstyle.

Thank you all for demonstrating to me that my alt-itis can barely be considered a minor problem 😛

Positional Defense, Damage bonus, Recharge bonus are the ones I generally monitor. Probably also Smashing (or Lethal) Resistance, and characters with typed defenses will monitor Smash/Energy/Fire rather than Melee/Range/AoE.

Grav/Storm is awesome. Earth/Storm is also a good option. Electric/Storm isn't as great in some ways, but helps with the Endurance costs of Storm.

Not at all, you forgot that Hasten's bonus (not recharge slotting, but the +70%) works for Domination when it's active. And if you're at permaHatin' then that bonus is up all the time. So if you're at 110% global set bonuses to have Hasten permanent, then you have 70% additional from Hasten, and that's 180% for perma-Domination (with over 15 seconds to spare, actually). It's a LOT easier to get perma-Dom than perma-Hasten. So, you don't really need perma-Hasten. IIRC, I run perma-Dom with about 80% global Recharge, then a partial uptime of Hasten fills the rest, and a few activations of Force Feedback during the 90-second cycle (or, in one character's case, Blood stacks) helps give a larger safety overlap on activations.

I run away and mez the Hurricane users if there's more than one. As you say, they're the devil. Trying to fight through one Hurricane is annoying, two is dangerous, and three is dead, so... I have to run, anyhow. May as well use ranged mezzes to drop them. One ranged AoE Sleep, even, is good enough to shut them down for a while. Freezing Rain is also nasty... get 2-3 of them stacked on you and Recharge is toast, movement speed is probably floored, you're taking double damage with mobs at 95% chance to hit. Facing Storm-using mobs is nasty. And both FR and Snow Storm are auto hit, and with the -Movement it's even hard to run away. Ugh.

Well, if you want to debuff AVs for killing, /Cold does it better (almost as good at -Regen, a lot better -Resist). If you want to defend the team well, /Time puts out good -ToHit and also +Defense that doesn't care about positioning. If you want a combination of both, /Dark puts out WAY more -ToHit (Darkest Night, plus Chill of the Night from Dark Servant, plus Fearsome Stare on Defenders or a +Defense power on Controllers), WAY more -Damage (over -100% on a single target), and a stronger heal. With better -Resist on AVs and comparable -Regen. Rad is a good combination, works on everything, but isn't as good as many other choices buff/debuff choices that also offer a defense/-ToHit boost, -Regen, and -Resist.

Plant was my choice for pairing with Poison. Poison or Kinetics were my choice for pairing with Plant. Combining those two, I also went with Plant/Poison, and //Stone is both effective and thematic.

You go do you, and enjoy it. I'll come watch when I feel the need to aspire to something. Until then, have fun. 👍

Weak argument. 1: maybe I don't have a character who can do this. 2: maybe I don't have to time or interest (though the missions DO sound interesting) 3: maybe I'm great at design but terrible at playing 4: maybe my character is better defensively but terrible on offense or control. Using a "play to prove your numbers" argument is exactly the most wrong that anyone can possibly be. When designing (or comparing) game statistics, taking playing ability out of the comparison is the first and most baseline step, because it is impossible to account for players experience, skill, or even compatibility with how a build plays. One should never argue that a set, power, design, or whatever, is good because they can accomplish something with it. It's a reasonable argument if you average it out over a large sample of players, but never when comparing two single players. Oh, just to answer this: "I listed all of the accomplishments of Soul Drain and the Soul Mastery pool in general vs Ice Mastery. It''s a lot to read I know but if you're going to try to insinuate I'm giving generalities then I surmise you're not looking at what I'm saying. " ... I saw what you're saying, and I specifically answered the -Resist vs +Damage argument, only. I mean, it could be possible that Soul Mastery is FAR better than Ice Mastery, while everything that I said is still correct. I didn't address the balance between the two pools overall, just between the two specific powers.

It is reasonable, though, if you build a character who can have a defensive rotation, and alternate Unleash Potential and Barrier so that they're always running at a minimum level that includes a temporary power, as long as you make sure that you have enough defensive coverage to always run at least at that power. For example, I have a Regen Brute who alternates 4 powers (IH,MoG twice, Melee Hybrid)... none of them have more than 50% uptime, but combined I can guarantee that the character is never running JUST at their base defensive level. Then, it's reasonable to plan the character's defense when using their weakest defensive power (IH... except against Psy damage, where there are gaps since MoG doesn't cover that).

This argument is not so simple as saying this > that. If you have an attack that does 100 base damage, and you slot it up and add set bonuses so that it's +100% damage, the attack does 200 damage. Add in a +120% bonus and you do 320, a 60% increase. If the buff is up 50% of the time, your damage increase theoretically averages to 30%. A -30% resist that is up every fight also theoretically does the same thing. Now, a self-buff doesn't care about location, so it is useful against stragglers. But a -resist will boost proc and pet damage (and incarnate powers) while a +Damage buff won't. And a -resist will help team damage, making it more useful when on any team. And Sleet is also a useful debuff with good -Recharge and knockdown, while Soul Drain does AoE damage (though, not much considering its recharge). Personally, I consider Sleet > Soul Drain. It's not so obviously better that there aren't situations where Soul Drain may do better, but... I think the argument that Soul Drain > Sleet is wrong most of the time, and implying that it's clearly better with no caveats is just wrong.

So... you're suggesting Number Blast, Number Assault, and Numerological Affinity sets? As well as a new MM set, Statistical Summoning? 😛