MoonSheep

i wouldn’t think of any alt in terms of “melee” or “ranged”, it’s fairly meaningless. play wherever is best suited for that moment in time and as others have said, your best defence is a mezzed enemy. when you start noticing which enemies cast the most impactful debuffs or attacks you’ll learn to lock them down first - that’s where dominators can really shine with that in mind, you have two options in any combat situation: mez or damage. you may not always need mez and can simply focus on damage if the team is permanently at full health. if things are looking spicy, you’ll want to throw out some targeted lockdowns, or some big AoE lockdowns for the “oh no” moments

i would highly recommend making sure conductive aura is available at Posi TF levels and is nicely slotted for end mod i’ve been playing an elec/earth dom on test for a few years and the -endurance aspect of it provides incredible levels of enemy nullification. it would be a game changer on tricky, slower paced TFs

hey, have a read through this thread and some of the links, it might help the best way to assist others in supporting you is to post a draft build and describe how you like to play (solo, teams, hardmode content) and what you want to get out of the character (maximum damage or survivability, good buffs or debuffs etc)

which is based on factual evidence from detailed testing across (melee) powersets where it consistently ranks in the lower end of the damage output spectrum i like dark powers, melee and blasts, but they are not particularly impressive in their damage output - especially the melee powersets is dark fun? yes can you complete 99% of content with it? yes is it a high DPS powerset? generally not the most impressive but it looks great, is a fantastic all rounder, has nice icon colours and is the king of ranged cones (blasts) if i ever remake my kin/sonic defender it would be a kin/dark purely because i like the look of it

to be fair, when running large events or trials, you can get spammed with a lot of messages including: - people on the opposite side that need to switch (red/blue) - people that need to alt - people who are in a team - people who are not in a team but are tagged to a TF and forgot - people who are in a mission - people who don’t know how to get to the zone - people that aren’t ready yet but will be in 5 minutes - people that would like space for them and two others - people that aren’t a suitable level - enquiries about the content - snarky asking for money which are all fine and if i’m running a TF i’ll respond and keep track of it, isn’t too hard for an 8 person team if the league has 24+ people, trying to keep track of all this is quite difficult. therefore sometimes it’s easier to just invite from broadcast as you know they are there in the zone and ready to join

what would be more valuable in combat compared to fiery orb? - throwing small pebbles at your enemy - playing a flute off key - responding “i guess” after each villainous remark from the enemy to demotivate them - rustling a packet of peanuts on a quiet train without regard to those around you as someone who part-mains a dominator i am legally obliged to say disparaging things about fiery orb fun fact: did you know the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs was actually targeting the fiery orb ATO but inadvertently wiped out Team Dino instead?

don’t forget sands of mu, could probably rotate the 3 of them as your full attack chain

if the devs want shield charge to break hide, then it should become a regular target AoE power that procs and allows for crit hits now it offers the worst of both - breaks hide but isn’t a fully fledged attack

wow, quite a lot of interesting changes i’m looking forward to this more than the previous patch - i’m all about them power changes rather than content (i have no creativity, the inside of my head has no thoughts, just TV static) flurry having its endurance cost reduced is a massive change. i expect it’ll now become mandatory for hard mode content. 8 whiffers, whiffing away at AVs. devastating.

from what i’m reading, it seems that SD/MA is strong and pretty?

i was just about to post and say how much i enjoy both the stalker ATOs the chance for build up is such a nice boost also

inspirations

yes! the exact same happened to me i agree with your views too. i found it palatable and fine but quite forgettable and a bit cramped a new ITF style TF would be well received

great points of view which i agree with i think overall though the biggest impact to radiation has been that the default playstyle has changed to now focus much more heavily on DPS and outright pace, whereas on live, not being dead and having endurance were notable issues, therefore setting up the enemy toggles was not a disadvantage (other than someone killing the anchor) if radiation infection and enervating field were turned into PbAoE toggles like venomous gas from poison i would expect radiation’s popularity would soar. still a great set regardless

very true from my experience. i spent around 150m a few years ago as an experiment to try and control a specific item but it was futile within around 1 day and was a massive net loss the behind the scenes programming that an invention recipe or enhancement of any level are all placed into the same bin seems to create a mechanic whereby influencing the market for personal gain doesn’t seem to work