The_Cheeseman

What the OP is trying to do is define a set of player psychographic profiles for CoX. This is a concept used a lot in game design, and can be very helpful to deciding how to develop a game, and who the game’s target audience will be. For more information, here is a decent primer on the subject: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/CalebCompton/20180626/320706/Player_Psychographics_Why_Do_We_Play.php I think the psychographic profiles in the OP illuminate more about the author’s own biases than any kind of objective science, however. It’s not really possible for an individual player to gather the quantity and type of data required to design valid psychographic profiles, after all. But the idea is an interesting one to ponder, even if the conversation always inevitably devolves into an argument over character optimization and difficulty (neither of which are concepts most players really understand well enough to debate intelligently).

Yep, the above poster pretty much got it. They are intended to be a powerful, situational buff with a strict uptime that is used more thoughtfully than just a "click it whenever it's up" power. The way the powers are designed is to allow an AT to temporarily gain the ability to fill a role on a team that it couldn't normally handle. A Controller can tank for a while with Melee, a Blaster can lockdown MOBs with Control, or a Defender can be an effective blaster with Assault. But you can only do that half the time, hence the name, "Hybrid". Of course, that's not how anybody actually uses the powers, but that appears to be the clear design intention.

I will echo what others have said: "steamroll" is a judge of performance, not a tactic. It just means that your team is overpowered enough that you don't really have to stop or think, you just nuke whatever is in front of you and keep moving. You can steamroll a kill-all, you can steamroll a speedrun, it's just a matter of how quickly and effectively you flatten the MOBs you want to kill. As to the "going off on their own" thing, I think there are some very good reasons to do this. First of all, if you have multiple tanks/brutes, they can often be redundant. I've run into this a few times on Brutes, especially, where I just can't build fury or leverage my PBAoEs because I am competing for aggro with the Tanker. As long as the squishies aren't dying, there's no real point to staying with the rest of the group when I can be more effective elsewhere. You say the person isn't being a team player, but I'd say sticking with the team and being mostly ineffectual is worse for the overall kill speed than heading off to solo spawns (assuming they actually can, if they keep dying they're just wasting time). Secondly, I think we've all been on the team where a couple people's playstyles just don't mesh well. If I am playing a Brute, or an AoE focused attacker, or whatever, I'm not going to get along well with an NRG blaster or Stormy who is tossing MOBs all over the place and making it impossible for me to herd or get multiple foes in range. Everybody has fun in their own way, so I am not going to tell that person to stop using their KB powers, that could be the whole reason they play the character, after all. But I am also not going to stick around and be useless because of their power choices. If I am able, I will go kill some other spawn so that we can both enjoy ourselves without conflict. A team doesn't have to be all in one place to cooperate. The best teams are entirely capable of divide and conquer tactics, and doing so can significantly reduce clear times and improve exp gain. If a given character build is more suited to soloing spawns, let them go do that. Don't guilt them into following the group just to play at a fraction of their potential.

Mind is still the best, it’s just more subtle and strategic in its application, so it’s not as easily recognized as such by those who haven’t played it sufficiently. But that’s fine, let them play their inferior sets while we dominate the world and laugh.

I would like to warn against settling for "good, but not softcapped" defenses. Due to how the calculations are made, every point of defense you add increases the value of every additional point you add afterwards. Investing in ~30% defense isn't that much easier than 45%, and the last 15% is going to do more for your survivability than the first 30.

Yeah, my Dom is Mind/Fire/Fire, so not so much DOT as BOOM. Since Mind has rather subtle animations, I have been mistaken for a fire Blaster on several occasions.

I agree that both Dual Pistols and Devices prefer being in the middle of packs. I like to open fights by stealthing into the spawn, laying down a Trip Mine, and then immediately following up with Hail of Bullets. Then I either leap out of the pack to use Bullet Rain and Empty Clips, or if there are just bosses left, drop Caltrops on myself and start picking them off with ST blasts. It’s noteworthy that Trip Mine grants a sizable damage bonus from Defiance when you place it, and its detonation doesn’t end the extra, out-of-combat damage buff from Targeting Drone, so the above combo amounts to a significant damage boost to Hail of Bullets. Another great thing about DP is that nearly every one of its attacks can slot the Force Feedback +Recharge proc, making it possible to keep it up almost constantly during combat. Trip Mine can also take that proc, and it triggers each time you lay a mine. If you forego recharge slotting in Trip Mine, and use the proc instead, you can drop mines regularly to help recharge your other powers, even when not in combat. I also find DP’s inherent knockdown a very useful soft control tool. It makes Hail of Bullets’ animation time much more forgiving and allows you to juggle bosses pretty reliably. Swap ammo also let’s you trade that utility for extra damage in teams or when KB is counterproductive. Overall, I have been really enjoying my DP/Dev blaster, it’s a fun, active play style and allows for a variety of potential tactics for handling encounters. I mostly just made the character because I wanted to try playing solo with /Devices, but it has far exceeded my expectations. Not that it isn’t still immensely satisfying to asplode all four of the New Praetorian EBs at once with a pile of mines, though. 😉

There’s a reason my Dom is a demon. 😉

I think how long it takes depends on how much aggro you’ve generated. I assume that it fades over time, so the more you did to annoy it, the longer it will take. Sight aggro doesn’t last too terribly long (as we all know from trying to pull MOBs long distances) so I doubt it would take longer than a couple applications. I’ve never tested it in Mezmerize, as my Mind character is a Dom, so it’s functionally useless for me. But I suppose it would depend on whether it triggers on activation, or when the delayed sleep effect is applied. The latter would mean that it works as intended. In the former case, all I can think of is to try and clear your accumulated aggro on the target to allow the tank to take it back. Neither application really warrants its use, in my opinion.

Mass Hypnosis, in particular, is great for stealthing, as you can put a spawn to sleep, click and glowy, and generally, by the time they wake up, they've dropped aggro. I use this all the time in the warehouse phase of Lambda or in TPN to handle trash spawns on the way to the main room. Do be advised that sleeping foes do still aggro when you get close, they just can't take any actions, so be careful with this tactic if your sleep has a short duration. As mentioned above, sleep is amazing for splitting groups of AVs into more manageable units, and is often key to MoLRSF or MoMLTF runs. Finally, if your sleep is non-aggro (such as, again, Mass Hypnosis) the Fortunata Hypnosis Placate proc can be super handy to reset an encounter that didn't go your way. Just spam it until you've placated everything, and then you can regroup and try again. Overall, I find Mass Hypnosis to be a power I rarely use, but absolutely essential in those rare situations where I need it.

I found it pretty easy to softcap Ranged with sets like Thunderstrike and Artillery. But I guess it depends on what you consider to be “gimped” damage. I am still experimenting with the build, so I don’t have anything fit for sharing yet, but it seems pretty fun for me, so far. What kind of benchmarks are you looking at? Do you have a specific play style? I enjoy soloing on my DP/Dev as well as teaming, so that affects my priorities.

Oh, and a QoL thing for Demons MMs: you can use the command, "/macro Idle "/petsaypow "Summon Demons" <em ghoulflex>" to create a macro that maks the T2s do an animation that looks basically like their normal idle, but eliminates the constant roaring! Nice for keeping them quiet while standing around.

On my Demons/Thermal, I tend to leave the T1s and the Ember Demon in bodyguard mode, and let the Prince and Hellfire Gargoyle run wild. Those two do the most damage, and the Prince even has some control powers to protect itself. The Ember Demon can heal when needed, and I prefer that he not run too far away, so that I can keep his Ember Shield. The Demonlings are mostly there to absorb hits for me, but they have the KB proc in them to help distract anything that tries to focus on me. However, I find that opening with Bonfire is more than enough to activate all my bodyguards. 😉

You should probably be killing faster than a Defender, as Dom's have a much higher damage scale (0.95 ranged, second only to Blasters and Kheldian Novas), and the secondaries between the two are pretty equivalent (with Doms having some strong melee options). But it is definitely true that Doms play less aggressively, with the ability to neutralize foes and take their time killing them in relative safety. In a way, as soon as you land a hold/confuse on a spawn, you've already won the fight, it just takes a bit longer to reach the inevitable conclusion than a Blaster.

I mean, you do you, but if you’re not chasing IOs to improve your build, what ARE you doing with all the inf the game throws at you? I mean, it’s not exactly expensive to outfit a character with SOs/basic IOs, so you’re bound to have millions of inf just taking up space if you actually play a character post-50. And if you don’t play that character after hitting level 50... well then I guess you took my advice, anyway. Permadom really isn’t hard to achieve. It’s not some huge sacrifice of your chararacter’s identity, it’s just slotting the right sets. If you don’t care about defenses at all, you don’t really even need an optimized build, just drop whatever sets contain global recharge bonuses and you’re off to the races. I’m honestly perplexed as to why anybody would be so adamantly against such a straightforward and ridiculously profitable build goal. Intentionally playing a sub-optimal character for no legitimate reason just doesn’t make sense to me. If you actually enjoy playing a Dominator, why not make it as effective as possible? What else is there to do with your resources?