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Achieving Perma-Dom (in the current HC game) is one of those incredible sweet spots that I think folks should be incredibly reluctant to interfere with. I believe that almost all of the suggested 'small tweaks' I've read risk upsetting what I see as the delicate balance that gives this AT its flavor. One of the least stated synergies between having the Global +Recharge necessary for perm-Domination is that with so much Recharge, a Dominator can be spamming clicks fast enough that the Endurance bar refill provided by Domination becomes an incredibly important method of Endurance management. For my Dominator, refilling the Endurance bar is my Endurance management strategy. Yes the control boosts and the mez resists are awesome, but for my money it is the in-battle twin cycles of Recharge -> Domination -> +Endurance and Recharge -> Attacks/Controls -> -Endurance that really make the AT click for me. I can play it like a madman if I have to, but I don't have to keep up the constant fight if I don't want to.

I can only share my experiences, but on my lvl 50+ Dominator: When playing solo I spend time traveling between missions and watching cutscenes/NPC dialogue in addition to visiting my SG base, vendors, AH, etc. There are significant in-game mechanisms that prevent a character from constantly "fighting". On team missions, sure the bar can refill faster, but on most PUGs there are also periods of just 'standing around'. As I wrote initially, from my PoV 'fighting constantly to maintain a bonus effect' feels much more like a Brute. I don't like that part of the Brute AT, and so porting that effect to another AT (Dominator) does not appeal to me. I am not unsymapthetic to characters that don't have perma-Dom; I especially feel on my Controllers as they are leveling up.

It would make Dominators play like Brutes (having to race to refill a bar), which is not appealing.

Also not a "real pet", but the ATO spawns can have multiple instances at once.

I'm going to chime in that the Traps T9 (for Defenders/Corruptors and Masterminds... but to be fair, with MMs it is more because the loss of the pet is a combined loss of DPS and a waste of time) is (in most cases) a waste. I can imagine the reasoning behind trying to make that set's T9 a 'nuke', but I feel like that was the wrong direction for that set to go in, considering the (other, placed on ground) powers that come before. If I was going to spitball a replacement T9 power for 'Traps', I'd start by considering some sort of 'mechanical device' that behaved like an aura that provided +Res(All) and/or +DMG. You know... like a vastly improved version of what is in the Leadership pool.

I had exactly one "Dark ______" on live, and it was entirely due to the name of my original launch character on one server being taken on another. This seems like a rather petty thing to be annoyed about. Given the (forced) name change I opted to start the character red side. You could make the same point about 'Rad' or 'Frost'.

Is this true (for Patron pool pets)? The only reason I have to doubt this is based on my experience with Crabber's "T1" pets; they behave subtly different than Fire Imps (my experience with Dominator pets) . I never had my Crabbermind playing with a /Kin, and I had the recharge for the Patron pet set to be just good enough that I could resummon it when it expired (from the timer). From memory: Fire Imps: Stick around until defeated; if fewer than three are defeated, a resummon gets you three new instances all at once. Spiderlings: Stick around until the timer expires (or defeated); if fewer than three are defeated, a resummon will 'reload' you up to three, but the new ones will expire on the original timer (of the previously surviving/non-replaced pets). Patron pets exist outside the Crabbermind secondary, and neither of these describe the T1/T2 mastermind pet resummons, so I suppose the Patron pets could behave 'better'.

I can include my Dark/Temp/Force Build. This build doesn't worry about Defense so much. It isn't soloing EXTREME content much, but it was part of a successful 3-man Master of ITF (where one of the triumvirate was a lvl 42 scrapper!) It also has some odd choices (some made for flavor) that I can try to rationalize. I went heavily into set bonuses for Global Recharge and Accuracy, trying to pick up Global Defenses where possible. It includes Hasten, but in practice I rarely use it. Chronos is on Auto-fire. Hasten could be perma if I bothered to pay attention to it. The Defiant Barrage set is not Superior as it would be a sixth +10% Global Recharge. Chronos fires so frequently (~every 22-ish seconds, with the 90% extra %proc chance) that I only added Aim as an extra to cover the occasional times when I want a boost and Chronos has worn off. I added the Kismet: +Accuracy (really +ToHit) to Maneuvers basically to keep the Moonbeam (Snipe) damage boosted/capped. This was a late tweak to the build... it wasn't having any Endurance issues, so I pulled an extra slot from Stamina (or Health?). Maneuvers has to be toggle on for the bonus to work. The extra Snipe damage from +ToHit will be capped during the periods when Chronos/Aim are active, so this Kismet bonus is really just covering about 10 seconds in the attack chain (the gap from Chronos, assuming Aim isn't used). TBH, my build has too many attacks; the less frequently used ones are for set bonuses. I basically spam the Primary attacks, and mix in the Temporal ones when the mood strikes me. Repulsion Bomb is almost never used unless I want to try knock a large group around or try to apply some -Res. That attack was essentially added because I dipped into Force Mastery for IO mules. Arcane Bolt is part of the flavor, and made Rune of Protection possible. You may notice that I skipped Tenebrous Tentacles. I considered using this in place of Repulsion Bomb, but honestly I like the look of Repulsion Bomb more! EDIT: I used Time Shift while leveling up, but I found that it was interrupting the flow of my attacks. Normally I am a fan of Stuns, but on this DPS-focused character it wasn't helping. The Build: Here is the code:

I'm curious to read if anyone has tried alternating the Soulbound Allegiance %Build Up proc between the 3 Lil' pets and the 1 Big pet? I have always included in the lower level pets, with the assumption being that they "need it more". I often see more than one of them with the %Build Up icon in their buffs. EDIT: we had some discussion about this a while back. You can see in the linked thread that I also put the Overwhelming Force KB->KD piece in the Lil' pets, so to increase their contribution to the madness.

My experience is that the ATs only start to differentiate around level 14, by level 20 most will start to feel and play in different ways. You've identified a couple of the sets that don't exactly fit this pattern. My experience with Masterminds is that the play experience shifts as you level up. At low levels, you have to focus on keeping your (small number of) pets alive to be able to provide your DPS. At higher levels, you have more strategic options... and more powerful pets. Dominators are the latest of the late bloomers. You really do need to plan to have as much +Recharge as possible to achieve perma-Dom. This is typically achieved through Global +Recharge bonuses from IO pieces and sets... and this requires the correct powers and slots that you won't have until you have leveled up. One irony of Dominators is that once they have the Recharge (from sets), they can exemplar down and will be MUCH more powerful than they were previously. This is true of all ATs (with level 50+ slotting) but Dominators really notice it. I've been taking (mostly solo, 2xDFB for some stat boosts) a new non-DPS alt through blue-side without using XP boosters, and I am surprised how quickly its progressing. I'm primarily doing a combination of old solo missions and radio calls. YMMV.

Controllers: I see a lot of people pairing Gravity/Time, but I honestly think Gravity/Kinetics is the basic pairing that demonstrates 'mastery over the forces of nature (and all who obey those laws)'. For both Controllers and Dominators: If there is a single pool power that screams 'I AM YOUR MASTER' I would nominate using Hover (or even better Group Fly) to slowly progress through mission maps as you lock down enemy after enemy as you (appropriately) look down upon them all.

I feel like somebody moved into the PVP space, and relisting seems like part of their strategy. I can only describe my own use of the PVP pieces. I tend to use PvP pieces while leveling; it's uncommon that I have a 50+ build that includes non-proc pieces. My (personal) SG is catalyst/merit/inf rich, so since PvP recipes drop at all levels, my SG crafts them all and stores them... lower level ones get slotted (and often attuned, despite the potential 'waste'). If storage is getting tight, I will often roll un-attuned sub-50s into something 'valuable' and list it on the market... but never in quantity. After the lvl 50 respec, attuned pieces go back into the bins... and if keeping the pieces in the build I'll switch to level 50s for boosting...I'll greedily try to get as much of everything as possible (watching Recharge, naturally). Just last night I realized I didn't have an attuned Panacea proc handy for a new character, so the new character grabbed converters (from 'Character Items inventory' ) and just rolled into one.

I feel like the game would have morphed at least a couple more times, and almost certainly in at least one direction I would not have appreciated. In some ways, I'm still not over the (relatively neutral) changes to zones that added Universities, Auction Houses, and Arenas! Please don't bring up the zones that were destroyed/re-imagined. I did not appreciate the grind... either for build-crafting or Incarnate content. The future plans included more zone remodeling (Perez Park was to be made into some combination of Dark Astoria and Grandville, with high-level content that existed on geographically high levels) and more Incarnate grinds. The Live Incarnate system really rubbed me the wrong way. I saw it as "in order to be really good at running this content, you have to run the exact same content a whole lotta times to maybe get the rewards that will make you even better at running the exact same content." I know that people held out hope that more incarnate content would be the answer, but I always saw that as a dead end. Writing only for myself: I appreciate the Lore the best when it is essentially open-ended. I understand that the Live Devs felt like they wanted to tell stories about certain characters, but the game didn't need that. There is a reason the Golden and Silver ages of comics lasted a combined 50 years, and 'modern' comic universe re-imaginings last less than 5.

I haven't done anything like serious market play in quite some time; personal observation bias has me believing that until the market goes the 'path of fire' it is unlikely to affect my participation. There is still Inf to be made, but aside from some specific high-end pieces everything seems relatively smoothed out. Recently: I almost find myself spending merits for a Winter-O! A character had hit 50, and it was time for the build-tuning. The Winter set in question was being used at 5 pieces, but I had been sloppy/cheap with the 5 used during leveling. The AH didn't have one at what I thought was a reasonable price (even for buy-it-now) and I wasn't sure I wanted to commit to converter roulette. I actually remember to check a semi-retired market toon who had the piece I wanted. I used to think that the market was the best place to store certain items, but recently it feels like hording some pieces has been better for my toons' budgets. It felt like some previously available PvP pieces have been in shorter supply than I remembered.

Most of my Villains will become Rogues/Vigilantes, with the RP head-canon reason being that there are somethings (like accolades) Blue Side that are simply easier to get (or can be gotten earlier in a career). For example, the Ironman/Ironwoman requirement (take 1M damage) for Born in Battle is not as easy to get (for many ATs) by lvl 45 as it is to get the Dimensional Warder at lvl 45... even if it means I have to pretend to be a 'Vigilante' to get those missions myself. I suppose Task Force Commander is also an easier accolade than Invader, but my villains don't go out of their way to join Blue Side TFs unless they want those easy merits. Typically, my red-aligned characters keep their mouths shut when on blue-side teams. Those characters will almost always have a red-side title, so it isn't exactly a secret where true allegiances lie. While on blue-side missions, my characters (depending on their AT) will subtly play differently... they will behave a little more selfishly by trying to click objectives first, or race to the bosses, or drift away from the team. One red-aligned toon particularly enjoys being in a massive dogpile of enemies, and has been known to grab as much aggro as possible... she likes to see if the heroes can keep up!