tidge

If you are seeking employment as a mind reader, or as just a reader, you are not demonstrating excellence. You have to warn me? Am I in trouble? Is something bad going to happen to me? Is what follows an indirect indictment against me? Is it a direct indictment of me but not a personal one? Your delivery is really uneven. Sometimes it really is better not to put in writing everything you are thinking. I'm not trying to hurt your feelings, and I didn't see a lot of those accusations in this thread. (I'm pretty sure it was someone named "jranger" that was called lazy.) You probably could sit out this thread for a while and feel a little better about things. Roll up a new toon go hunt kill skulz. At the risk of upsetting you further, before returning to the thread maybe you should spend some time googling logical fallacies, starting with the "double-barrelled question" and "false dichotomy".

My reason, as I have stated, is to not mess with the core mechanics of the game (this is an AT inherent power, not a pool power choice)... especially when the problem as stated is straightforward to overcome. All Dominators play by the same rules. Now, why did you dodge my question?

We've each demonstrated our ability to perma-post. Let's let some other folks participate shall we?

Don't read more into my response than is intended. I don't worry about trying to fix things that I am not convinced are problems. Fairness isn't a consideration here when it is fairly easy to get to 123%.

Procs are a bit of a trap. Too many procs and you sacrifice set bonuses. Powers with inherently short recharge times won't proc that often. Sometimes you just want the slot that might go to a proc to go somewhere else. I like procs, but attention must be paid to them. A proc on a T1/T2 power that doesn't work below level 30 is not always a good choice. I understand that NOBODY likes my use of Chronos on auto. It is firing every 22 seconds (or less) giving me 10 seconds of the boost plus the build-up proc firing (if not all the time it is at least 5-out-of-6 times... everytime I look for the little mauve fist I see it). I want extra damage ALL THE TIME, and I am settling for getting it HALF THE TIME rather than just SOME OF THE TIME. If heaven forbid I WANT THE EXTRA DAMAGE but for some reason I'm not in the heat of battle ALREADY, I'll wait for it... probably because the extra wait is also now going to give me the Sniper's Shot bonus, because I WANT THE EXTRA DAMAGE. I can always delay the auto-firing by having another attack queued. You don't have to play my way. Hasten is already relatively deep-perma on my build, it is ready for a click long before it is going to expire.

I gotta say: I think you've been slacking lately on buying some of the items I recently posted. It's been like 12 hours and they haven't sold. That's on you bro'. Cut out the jibber-jabber and get back to spending that sweet sweet inf.

I didn't miss the question, I didn't want to answer it because my reasoning isn't germaine to the beautiful metamorphosis some folks refer to as a cliff! I shall now think of Permadom as a quinceañera. I'm generally not a fan of extra bars, or combo-builders or anything else on the HUD that I'm supposed to pay attention to, but even so I'm less inclined to support changes to the ATs, especially for something so fundamental. The (relatively) late brouhaha about changes to Bruising in the recent Tanker updates comes to mind. Different kettle of fish perhaps, but I still wouldn't want to poke in it.

Outside of teaming, at lower levels it was taking my Dominator quite some time. He couldn't handle large mobs, and didn't have the end or recharge or damage to be particularly quick about the groups he faced. Even now when running Incarnate content solo (from memory) it takes me about 3 groups in Heather Townshend's first map (at x8). But even this is on a character with enough Global Recharge for permahasten as well as permadom. Keep in mind that during that arc there are plenty of cutscenes, and I will stop what I'm doing to craft items or use the AH or answer questions in Help. There won't be taking breaks of any kind under the proposed change, and I simply see no need for that change.

There is no good reason to use Pacify when teaming... a bad reason would be that the team has wiped! You would have to be paying close attention to notice the difference between Provoke and Confront. The fears can be slotted with damage procs, which make Mayhem missions even more fun. Unrelenting is crazy fun, but you have to have the Recharge to get the most out of it. I realize the Presence pool is unloved, but it has utility for certain builds. If you have a Widow or a SR scrapper, try it out on the test server (or just use a second build). I suppose some Mastermind builds might have the slots for it: Provoke is favored for Tankerminds anyway, so burn a choice on the ST fear but use the PBAoE fear to further lock down critters you have aggroed?

While my Dominator was leveling up, I used Domination as a boost much like Aim or Build Up for certain combat situations. At low levels, I didn't have many powers to even take great advantage of Domination, much less run from fight to fight. Attacks aren't that powerful, endurance costs are real, cycle time on powers aren't that great. Running from fight to fight would have been a trip to the hospital five times out of eight. As I wrote earlier: I didn't get permadom 'naturally' until level 31 or so... and it was nothing magical: Hasten, LotG Global Recharge, a set bonus and a +Recharge proc. At level 50 I change my slotting, added Purples and permadom is now available at lower levels... but I certainly encountered non-exemplar Dominators who were permadom much sooner than lvl 31. When I play really low level content with PUGs, I barely miss having Permadom (and I'm surprised when it ticks off!) One thing I don't think that has been mentioned: The current means of attaining Permadom (high Global Recharge) and the effects of Permadom (Endurance bar recharge, Mez resistance, increased Control) are a positive feedback loop that allows for more attack spamming (with many-slotted powers) and more control spamming (with many-slotted powers) all while being less concerned with actually taking damage... these are the effects that make the Permadom player that much more impressive. I feel that without the Global recharge there would still be a significant difference between Doms... and under what I think of as the proposed Brute-bar-model it might be difficult to refill a dumped bar without resorting to large Global recharge... and at a large enough value of Global Recharge the character would have achieved permadom under the current system anyway.

I often swim in the Presence Pool. I never take both Provoke and Pacify, but either is useful. I prefer Provoke to the single-target Confronts. Once a toon is soft-capped for defense, Provoke can go a long way towards helping teammates. The best (IMO) use of Pacify is limited to long 1-on-1 fights in which you need a breather. The single-target Intimidate is my least favorite power in the set, but the PBAoE Invoke Panic is a very nice control option. Unrelenting (with enough Global Recharge) is either a strong offensive boost, a strong recovery tool or both. In terms of IO mules, 6-slotting Unrelenting with Preventive Medicine has been common for me when I take it. The most effective use of Presence in my experience has been on low-resist, high defense characters like a Fortunata. The taunt is better (YMMV), the PBAoE fear is another control mechanism that fits nicely with the other controls and attacks, Unrelenting is there for extra damage or for those times when the massive defenses aren't holding. The short straw is Intimidate; it is pretty much only used to help stack fear (from myself or a teammate) when necessary.

My opinion is that Domination does not require change. This is hardly radical. The title of the thread is "It's time to recognize Domination is bad", but the complaint has essentially become "Domination is bad because it doesn't work the way *I* want it to work." The followup posts which vaguely fall in favor of the premise of the OP have been variants of "Permadom is too good, and it isn't easy enough to get to permadom." There are plenty of quantum leaps in this game: The AoE nukes aren't available at level 10. The VEAT specialists don't even unlock until the 20s. T3 pets are in the late 20s, and the final upgrades aren't until the T9s. There are folks who want powers like Dull Pain to be perma (more easier than it can be made, I suppose). Folks want Mind Link to be easier to perma, they want their defenses to be higher and their resists to be stronger. All of these wants can be already be addressed in different ways: IO choices, power choices, empowerment buffs, Incarnate choices, team buffs, etc.... yet a favored solution is to crack the code and add a bunch of new mechanics to an AT that is not only working but (to some folks way of thinking) has too wide a spectrum of performance! The most straightforward fix to making permadom "easier" to achieve is to turn down the recharge timer or increase the duration... but instead of proposing that, we have to entertain the idea of a change that will make the Dominator AT challenge the Brutes for thrill-seeking, and why again?

I counter with this: If you play a tank with a Resist/Defense hole against certain enemies, your "damage" drops by a helluvalotmore than 20% if you are unable to hang with those enemies and attack them. I suspect that folks aren't noticing this (or just aren't remembering it) because they are playing ATs with soft-capped defenses. Building for Defense across all ATs is almost certainly more common than building for Permadom. This thread is literally just another: "I have ideas how to radically change a core (as of CoV) class. Let me spitball some rationalizations for my ideas in the forums." The only post in the thread that leaned towards there being an actual issue that got me curious was Hereclea's post about how she felt that her Dominator was weak when exemplared to level 20 (specifically when teaming on TFs like Synapse)... but that is because I'm curious about the specifics of her build as far as power choices. The OP specifically wanted to avoid build discussions, so I've let that lie.

I play content more than anything else; it is the regular content that drops most of what I want (non Inf) for 'high end builds' (Catalysts, Purple and PVP recipes). As near as I can tell, lvl 50 common recipes are the funding source for all my lvl 50 recipe builds. I experimented with 'farming' AE (foolish me, I didn't know there was an 'Inf' exploit) for a little bit, motivated entirely by the drops! This was with a Mastermind, and I was actually experimenting with different combinations of IO slotting. Prior to that AE farm experience, that very same toon (The first on HC) had run a lot of lower level Ouro missions to collect merits, salvage and seed Inf. Those were used to get into the market. He played the market, made his first BInf and then I switched to other toons. These days, a new character starts with 200 MInf to get started at the P2W and to have seed money to turn its own recipe drops into more useful/desirable IOs for the market. By the time that toon is lvl 50 it usually has its full kit of IOs, short of the Purples, and will have at least that 200 Minf still available. Those non-Purple IOs were either bought off the market or pulled from the SG tables... there are a few categories of sets I know will be more expensive on the market or otherwise are in short supply, so those get saved. As a new level 50 is playing Incarnate content, they will be marketing... by the time the Incarnates are advanced, that toon will have ~ 1BInf of its own, from the Market mostly. I bought Winter packs during the sale, but I haven't even touched them! My builds don't gravitate towards those sets, so they are literally just there in reserve for the future where I want to slot Winter sets. I actually don't like all the clutter in my account email, so I only rarely play with packs of any type.

As near as I can tell, the (inappropriate, IMO) request is that there are a few people that feel like there is some lop-sided play in the Dominator AT. I disagree with that assessment. My opinion is that the Dominator AT plays like most other CoH ATs (classically) in that at some point in the life of the Dominator it blooms into a class of character very distinct from the other ATs. Along the way, hard choices have to me made between controls, attacks, but this is literally no different than any other AT. We can talk about a "wall" for Permadom, but this wall is one that is particularly easy to hop over (or just install a door in the wall to walk through). Edit: From GalaxyBrain's latest post (just above) I accept that people may roll up Dominators not knowing what they are getting into. I remember (on live) those disappointing early missions hunting Snakes in Port Mercy. Those early disappointments didn't mean I gave up on the class because the game made it unfair! Try tanking at low levels with very few slots and no IO set bonuses and tell me that it doesn't feel like there is a "wall" in performance.

Precisely. My Dominator wasn't strapped for Inf, yet my choices of powers, slot allocations and IO choices were not specifically chasing Global Recharge and IIRC that toon didn't achieve Permadom until lvl 31. While leveling up, that toon didn't feel gimped, but it certainly felt much more powerful once I was getting the Mez protection, the +Magnitude controls and the Endurance refills. Once my Dom hit level 50 and the Superior / Purple sets become usable (and scale with level) Permadom becomes available at lower levels... but that doesn't mean that my Inf-rich character is 'better' than other lvl 20 ATs, it means that I'm playing an exemplared lvl 50 with access to beaucoup set bonuses! This is no different than ANY OTHER LVL 50 that exemplar's down to play low level content. Pay attention to the levels of the people you are teaming with on low/mid-level content and you will notice that it usually isn't the exemplared lvl 50s that are struggling, it is the folks who simply don't yet have the slots (or are still getting a feel for their powers). One other point I'm reminded about my own journey with my Dominator: More than any other build, my Dominator was the one that I had to make hard choices about not just which powers to take but how to invest the slots. I found it to be a real balancing act between both Control and Offense, independent of the chase for Global Recharge. Even though the choices were 'hard' for me, I had many different choices. I think I may have used more respecs on my Dom than on any other character except for my multi-build VEATs. The game gave me all the tools to do this. I could totally play this toon differently, but I like the way it is. I don't need the Domination mechanic to change because I've already seen how to use it with a different variety of builds under different constraints. I know the OP didn't want us to argue for 'build moar betta', but this request (completely change the mechanic so more people can get permadom at lower levels, or not have to make actual build plans) seems like asking for a handout. Are we going to get threads asking that Tanks get more inherent Defense and Resistance so they don't need to slot such powers as much as they do? Or that every toon gets an inherent +5 Res (all) or +3% Def (all) because "every build uses those expensive IOs"?

For non-attuned enhancements, 1 converter converts among the same rarity for sets that exist at the level of the enhancement. 2 converters converts among the same type for the sets that exist at the same level. If you want Karma's you have to be converting in the range of 10-29 (ideally 10-14, because there are fewer sets below level 15). Gift of the Ancients is in a wide range (15-40) which cover a LOT of sets. I have a lot of experience converting recipes at all sorts of levels. I typically stop converting (usually lvl 50 commons) after spending 2 converters to get to a rare and then 3 or 4 rare rolls. This puts an upper limit on my out-of-pocket inf at about 1 Minf. I know which recipes go for at least 2 Minf, so I'm doubling my Inf. This is a small potatoes strategy, but I am past the point of needing to generate HUGE profits... this conversion process is literally just a way for me to consume drops and make new IOs available on the market. I don't have a bunch of junk IOs taking up my AH slots, so other players must be finding something useful to do with them. Now in the case of PVP and Purples: The SG base has so many of these stored (from running content) that when it comes time to slot a character with them, I play converter roulette to get about 80% of what I want and then I go to the market to fill the gaps. Purples DO drop, its just that they aren't guaranteedTM. If any other EbilTM marketers want to chime in, I'm sure they can offer you more encouragement. I have a few other tricks, but EbilTM has its limits.

Many of us love EM, and with all the suggestions made over the past year I have faith in the Homecoming team to review. My personal opinions (as another Invuln/EM tanker) are that I don't want gimicks, I don't want more AoE. As far as tanking with it, I want it to be the premier single-target Tank secondary, preferably by improving damage, and shortening animation (and possibly recharge) times. I think the Stun secondary effect (and power choice) is absolutely fine, and my opinion is that it was almost entirely due to the Stun effect of EM in PvP that led to the nerfs and the steadfast refusal to revisit them by the original team(s).

Here I come to argue that I want to keep Hasten as is for builds I have yet to make, but you have proven to me that I don't exist. I donate all my Panacea procs to the game to heal the damage I was going to do, along with a Scaling Damage Resistance IO. /em puff_of_logic

Vernon Von Grun approves this message. Also BEES!

Spoilers: The Clockwork have a special weakness that belies their origin.

Grouchybeast is actually underselling this point, because the 12 MInf cost will buy you that very IO at ANY level (10-50) Or catalyzed if you prefer.

This sort of comment reinforces my opinion that the original post is looking for a problem to fix. We HAVE levers for tuning performance, but the OP implied that there was something distasteful (perhaps only in attitude) about leveraging power choices and IO slotting to achieving permadom. Rather than jump immediately to "we must change the AT", why not consider alternate options. I personally don't think we need any, but if it is simply the bar you want refilled faster why not propose a new type of Inspiration that does it?

No matter how sincere the suggestion, I am NOT going to throw snowballs at my Fire Imps just to maintain Domination.

You are in luck! The HC devs have implemented the converter system which allows you to converter non-common recipes and IOs from one type to another type (and rarity as well!) It is orders of magnitude less expensive to get the the PVP/Purple/ATO/Winter enhancements that you want then it ever was on live. The fact that you can convert uncommon and rare recipes into IOs that PEOPLE WILL BUY will put you on the path to accumulating the Inf you need to buy the ones you want, even if they never drop (ehem, ATO).