Replacement

I haven't played with this set since the beta testing (and all of that solo). Some notes. -Your Galvanic Sentinel is your AOE shock. I think people keep feeling like it's weak because -damage, -recovery, -regeneration are all "invisible power" type debuffs. That is, even when they're significantly helping, it's hard to notice. That said, since I haven't played this set in a full team environment, maybe the problem is squishiness? -Energizing Circuit's +recharge seems very much like a consolation bonus for folks who maybe didn't need the +endurance. Personally, this is the power I'd consider ditching after 30 or so. It seems like it feels wasted when you aren't using it, but that it was never truly meant to be a normal-rotation click. Self-counterpoint: I think the short duration super burst is neat and thematic. -I'm not thrilled with heal AND absorb using the same mechanics. I could see, for example, changing the Absorb to a smaller but recurring +absorb to make it more of a duration buff. -I never tested Defibrillate after they fixed some stuff (25000 endurance drain, lol) but it should still be a really powerful sap and sleep. It's pretty neat to use it offensively while everyone's still alive. Basically betting the house that you won't lose.

At some point I envisioned 4 ATs to represent "Gold-side" (with Sentinel as the 5th). My thinking was you could sort of map the AT groups to Starcraft concepts (emphasis on concepts, people who played competitively know this falls apart): Blue ATs are like Protoss - Strong and unified, focused on stability and survival. Red ATs are like Zerg - disposable numbers plus nefarious tactics. So the Gold side would be like Terran - technical and relying on tactics that stagger and break overwhelming forces. In addition to Sentinel and an obligatory melee/support AT, I also envisioned a Manipulation/Pets AT with fewer pets and a support-heavy passive, the Operative (Assault/Manipulation), and finally the Disruptor: an Armor/Control tank that's less hardy and more... well.. disruptive. It relied on the T1 control to "detonate" control effects, which is why I needed Control to be the secondary. The Disruptor concept actually clicked really well but I never got around to posting the full version because... well, what's the point? If we're going to get a new AT, it... should really be Support (be it paired with Manipulation or Melee).

I just remember some posts by BAB talking delicately around the topic of just how damn sexy the female walk is, lol. I'm all for this. I would happily pay a "redraw tax" where every action has to first move you to neutral to play out (since the engine is already set up to pick up the slack from there and correctly move you to combat stance) with a full transition back to Walk every time 2 seconds lapses, or 8 seconds, or whatever's appropriate. Always wanted Walk to provide slowly scaling (with level) benefits so it slowly replaces Rest as you level

Agree with just about everything in your post, wanted to call attention to this: this is an issue made worse by the pursuit of global recharge. You can ignore global recharge and just gun for the powers you want, but it's objectively worse for your power level (which for a lot of players, hurts our enjoyment when we don't feel like we're contributing). I don't like seeing unaware players penalized for not knowing there is a hidden "correct" way to build a thing. (caveat: I use "correct" in quotes to indicate the best min/max path. Everyone is free to build how they want.) @Golden Azrael Your opinion is fine, I'm not actively trying to exclude you. Your post didn't read like you were saying "I love that there's a magic tipping point where my performance doubles because I know how to get there and all the players who fall a little short of that mark deserve to not even compare. Snow, uphill, both ways. Rahh." That is specifically the only mindset I was calling out upfront as unhelpful. I made that disclaimer not to piss people off (though boy did I achieve that) -- I made it because if I didn't, this would have immediately turned into a repeat of the Quick Snipe thread, as that was the primary argument against it.

Yeah, I'd get behind giving it a bit of love. Pie in the sky? Fear protection. Improving the set bonuses might be nice though. That 2-piece benefit certainly hasn't done me any favors.

I've experienced this before. It straight up refused to proc... until I exited the mission. I didn't repro so I didn't make a bug report, though. EDIT: Regular door mission for me but I remember I was with someone else so it may be Examplar-related.

Sadly, this wouldn't work. At least, as specified here. Right now, Domination stays full while Domination is up and only empties out whenever your character passes to the state of "Domination=false". What you would need to do to achieve what you've said here is to a) change Domination to empty on activation and b) go a step further and prevent it from refilling while active. This is... Significantly more impactful than what I was proposing (which was just part A). I don't think I would want to start at a point so drastic. @Vooded I think we're getting close to the point of fixing things like Synaptic Overload with the new pseudopet tech being rolled out, fingers crossed. Would it help if I clarified that it's bad design? It's extremely powerful, actually, but the sudden binary tipping point is bad from a game design standpoint. Novice players don't know that they they can completely change their power scale, Veteran players have to choose between neat and optimized... And most importantly, there's no smooth progression between these extremes (these issues exist for other builds, but none of them have a 1% recharge tipping point).

Jeebus, you seriously want me to measure on a 255 point scale? Well, let's see if we can get you some actual numbers before page 2. I'm just going to use your chart and mention what I think I would change: Swap stats between Assault and Ranged Support - I'd lower the damage even further to 25. Control - Damage 100, support 150, mitigation 200. I acknowledge I'm mostly forgetting pets in this estimation. About the Assault/Ranged deal: * Ranged ST holds and such mean it has more mitigation in my mind than support. There's not much meaningfully different between the rider effects of blasts and melee attacks, which is what I'm characterizing as their "support" contributions. * I'm less sure of Assault. I'm afraid of biasing towards the sets I'm most familiar with (electric and martial), which have very little damage mitigation, but I'm focusing instead on the fact that most sets have Power Build Up. Still, feel free to toss out my opinion on this one because it's... hard. "Support" as a category itself is pretty rough. Like, is Dark attacks' -ToHit Support, or mitigation? I'm considering it Support, here but that's not a firm line in the sand.

Mechanics should never carry theme considerations in a game like this. Full stop. I'll happily bow out this request if that overarching issue were addressed.

This is a really good argument against letting anyone obtain badges via Flashback missions at all. Either way, I get it. I agree that it's not the best solution. It seemed to me like a simple way to fix an issue I (personally, subjective) have, but the general consensus of this thread is that it's better to take more time and do it right (like what @Blastit mentioned about adding the missing themes) and I can get behind that. Cheers.

Thank you. Yes, the CON is a big one to current permadoms. That's why I wanted to get more data on just how heavily that would impact folks. Would it be terrible if you could consistently count on having your bar filled by the time you cleared the first mob? Would you even miss it if you logged in one day and there was no Domination bar (cooldown only)? @tidge I gave you "it seems" in two preceding sentences to inform the reader this is supposition, and then I tried warning you that I was using your post as a jump-off point to a tirade that wasn't singling you out. Your issues with my specific adverbs are not worth addressing further. I will respect you if you vote for "I just don't want things to change" and I will hear other, more concrete reasons to not want changes.

This reads to me as "I just want things to stay the same." Wanting to keep this game as a museum is an acceptable argument. No seriously, I'm sure I haven't come off like this, but I truly feel like this would be a much better received argument. I wish it hadn't taken you so long to get to it. This is why I get frustrated when I see something like this: Which seems to me like you running out of dance floor, trying to dance around your real opposition. It seems like it's not about any of these reasons you've put forth. The reason you dodge our questions and ignore our solutions to the issues you raise is because you don't want solutions. Tidge, I have to warn you that what comes after this point is not a direct indictment against you personally. I just don't want to break this into two posts. Conclusion. Over this thread alone, I have been called petty and a liar. I've been insinuated as lazy. I've been called overemotional, but I've also been called disingenuous and I'm pretty sure that's because I'm filtering a lot of my emotions. I have no super-secret intent, here. I gain exactly what I said I would gain out of this: a chafe-less Dominator where I don't feel like I'm making bad decisions when I ignore global recharge. By contrast, most of the "leave it as it is" camp has instead concern trolled or made vague excuses about what will be ruined. After 7 pages, I've seen literally 2 good counterarguments: * Current permadoms will have to start rebuilding their bar more (fixable, but curiously, no one wants to hear those solutions) * Desire to never change anything (valid, if you'd be honest about it). Who is truly being disingenuous here? One other thing I've been accused of is being dismissive. You have me dead-to-rights on that one. I don't actually like being an ass. It's not me in real life. But I will offer an apology on this for what it's worth.

I have 12 characters who either were brainwashed or were double agents. Sometimes I just want a character who was purely good and never faltered. Like, I couldn't stomach being a double agent in real life. It's not hard for me to imagine characters that are not, either. Now, a better solution would be removing the patron flavor from these additional pools and adding a different reward to the patron arcs. But that's more work. Even better would be simply adding more Epic pools, but that's an unrealistic amount of extra work. Either way, I wanted to propose this as a simple way to fix an annoyance. Not the end of the world if people are against it. This is obviously super subjective.

This underlined part is certainly a solution -- simply lowering the cooldown. And I thank you for stating a simple fix like that. The issue with this fix then, is that if it's not attainable by SOs, I would argue it fails to break the performance binary. Now, maybe that wouldn't be bad if we could add slots to Domination itself like Inherent Fitness. My thought of simply dumping Domination on activation instead of buff expiration seemed like a lot less work, but I could absolutely be wrong and I'd be open to a suggestion like this (though I think it may open a can of worms about having enhanceable passives for everyone, I think this thread proves I don't mind getting wormy). Again, my particular suggestions for how to combat the issue don't need to be this holy grail of "my way or the highway." That's HC's unlucky job. But I do not like this characterization of turning it into brute thrill-seeking. It wouldn't be any more than it's already the status quo for non-permas, and I have reiterated several times that I'd love to see the Domination bar made easier to fill if this performance binary was broken. Different Thought: I'm entertaining the notion of completely removing the bar and Domination just becomes a Duration click with all its current stats. How many veteran Dominators would be against this?

A good designer will assess the problem, consider the context of the problem, consider if the proposed fix would have consequences, and decide if it's worth devoting resources to, over say - buffing regen. A post where you literally cut out my using your exact same logic. Pot, Kettle, all of that. Anyway, happy to continue to agree to disagree. Good day.

I'm not sure if you just like disagreeing, or if your threshold for acceptable change is "correcting apostrophes." It seems from my perspective that you have assumed there is a cost at all, which you have not explored, and that is enough for you to say no. This is my issue not just with you, but basically everyone who has said they do not want Domination to change. It's vapid to claim a cost to others without expressing that cost, while Galaxy Brain's charts show the issue plainly. The only criticism I view as holding merit has been that a permadom character cannot idle without facing a reset, and I'd be thrilled if we were discussing other concretes like this. And we've already addressed several times about how that becomes balance-able in a way that we cannot do currently if we break the binary. (And I have very much soured on the "I'd rather HC devs focused their efforts elsewhere" argument. I file the report; management decides the priority, including the decision to mark it Deferred/WAI.)

I don't see how any of that addresses the OP. You're right that Redside needs more love. But that's really not in the scope of this thread. It's not like this "price of admission" is livening up Redside for you. It's just adding tourists. This is a change for RP and concept characters who dislike having to sideswap for the powers they're after, and being stuck with this when they look in their badges: This stuff about how they should have remained redside? That ship sailed 10 years ago. Silly reason to shut this down. Meanwhile, I think I gave a pretty good in-world reason that I think a lot of us would enjoy exploring: the idea of using Ouroboros to glimpse timelines without them remaining "canon" to your character.

I'm getting pretty tired of all my characters being double agents who went Redside for their patron arc "but actually I was a double agent and I arrested lots of bad guys!" I don't really like having the Descended badge on all characters and the like. Suggestion: Add patron arcs to ouroboros for all alignments. Rationalization: Experiencing an alternate timeline to learn from an alternate version of yourself. Short and sweet, and hopefully less cause for revolt than my uh... other thread.

Alright, I'll give you a better answer: Perrmadom should be earned. That's no reason to penalize builds that fall just shy of it. That's the current reality of it. My suggestion to remove this binary is just like Practiced Brawler: It sucks until perma. Being even 4 seconds shy of perma is miserable. But it's not half as good as being perma. My strong opinion follows I seriously think people should remember, when visiting Suggestions & Feedback, that you're putting on your own Developer hat. Think like a an online game designer, and that means considering (Emphasis: CONSIDERING) changes even if there is an edge case cost. It is your job to scout out those risks. What I'm saying is: I will never ever agree with any of you saying "I am opposed to this because of [[UNSEEN RISK]]." The world's stupidest Trolley Problem is the one where the "other track" looks completely empty. How long are you going to obsess over if it's rusty? How do you ever leave the house (present circumstances not withstanding) if you think you might step on an ant that causes a volcano to erupt? Scientifically speaking, there's a chance at any second we will all turn into twinkies. You have to accept this risk if you want to get anything done, and that means you may as well assess the odds and talk about how to improve things instead of being happy with broken. If that's treading a little too deeply into morality for you? That's fine. But consider that's what you're saying when you shut down ideas like this because of nebulous "someone will suffer!" A good designer, like a good author, will kill your darlings. For this thread, that's the hazing-esque outlook of "I earned this so everyone else should as well!"

The problem I'm having with your opinion is you keep insisting it's radical, that it "is a solution in search of a problem" and such, but it feels like you keep driving the conversation towards something mostly irrelevant: This is not a thread saying Dominators are OP, or UP, or whatever direction you want them to pee in. The OP notes that No other AT has a magical cliff that suddenly doubles their power when viewing their IO progression curve. Galaxy Brain's chart shows the sudden cliff, but you need to remember that it's representing "access to double mez power and personal mez protection." No other AT has to give up as much for the expectation of their "tier two" performance. Because of the specific clickiness of Dominator primary/secondary, this results in a great deal of undermining their own fiction. If you want to say this is a "me" problem and is subjective, that's fine. And a different way to stress it: I'm imagining if Scrapper Critical Hit chance suddenly doubled but only when you're at the Defense soft-cap. How you would /jranger its implementation right now, but if it existed, would be so opposed to its removal.

Pride.

What, exactly, are you giving a hard no? If it's a ridiculously powerful ability, then you would logically need to acknowledge that not having that means your entire AT is missing that ridiculous power. If Permadom is expected, then I shouldn't ever see you backing SO-only players, or RPers, or any other non-elitist opinion. And yet, you are not an elitist, from my observations, so this is a weird line to draw in the sand. I know you and I disagree... every 18 minutes, and I'm sad to see that continue. But this is a very strange premise for keeping normal-dom builds so far into subpar.

I kind of think a lot of people view additional inspirations as a sort of... Bedrock upset. Personally? I'd love it. In addition to a +Recharge inspiration, I'd love to see a +mez strength, +power boost inspiration (though I think it would be hard to get it to balanced numbers).

Sigh. I really wish you had made this thread. I want to emphasize that if this change were made, it would add a lever for tuning performance. We could mess with the fill and decay rate, we could improve the scale of which actions contribute (like how HC recently scaled Fury generation to animation time), we could start having threads brainstorming new ways to fill the bar. None of which is currently on the table, since any change you currently make applies to both, a very strong and a very weak version of the same AT.

I'm glad you enjoy it, and I don't mind you expressing this sentiment one bit! But consider this: what if you really liked an MMO class despite it being weak? You would say you're having fun regardless, but I believe most players would still be happy to find it buffed. Dominator is 2 classes: the weak, fun class with insanely cool flavor and abilities but the lowest survival of any AT, and the crazy powerful permadom with no true weaknesses. My suggestions to the first version would only be buffs to you, and would be immensely beneficial to people who sit in the middle of the road of wanting high performance, but not at the cost of their flavor picks. First off, no you're not unwelcome. You don't seem to me making the point that I was outright dismissing as pride ("I like it how it is because it separates the men from the boys"). You are actually hitting on what I feel is the biggest - nay - only downside of my primary suggestion. It seems like you're treating Domination like a Level Up mechanism you need to partake of once per login and then you're at full strength. However, if this change were made and the binary were broken, we would become capable of discussing things like Domination bar fill/decay rate. Personally, I think it's not a bad idea to expect high end permadom builds to have to kill the first spawn of any mission without their buffs (thrive on that pain high to get yourself to the next level; whatever your fiction is). Remember also I think this would end up including a fill rate multiplier in teams to ensure you can fill it as fast as they deem balanced. I feel like you're saying nope to my suggestion? But I can't tell because this is exactly why I want to see this changed. If you like normal Dominator, you will see huge improvements if we break this binary, and no negatives. Err yes, I do think it's an unprecedented benefit. Getting permanent drain psyche is strong, but if you are one second short of it, you're still a mostly-perma drain psyche. You have no objective reason (based on your presented reasoning) to be against bringing Domination in-line. Subjective reasons that may apply: -Don't want to rock the boat -Not sure what the impact is on unconsidered options Both of which are the Dev's job to assess. Not a reason to poo-poo the idea out of hand. It would bridge the gap, as was discussed earlier here. Those builds you're talking about sacrifice a lot of the AT, making extremely precise power purchases. Are an abomination. A single IO to completely rebalance an AT is the subject for a different thread, however. About D&D: your whole post on that was completely irrelevant. I'm glad to have a true veteran gamer among us and your credentials check out, but it has literally nothing to do with the point I was making. The fact that you couldn't see that means I'd appreciate dropping that topic.