AlwaysAPrice

Hadn't taken a close look at Dom Dark Mastery yet but this is really goofy. I can understand the power being generally weaker, it's opening tier in the pool so it doesn't require any additional power picks, and a dominator isn't a support AT, so the recharge, radius, and effect strength all being lower than any Dark Miasma version all make some sense to me. Adding a to-hit check does not. At all. The recharge doubling is already enough to push it out of One Slot Wonder territory, it doesn't need to be made multiple enhancement dependent too. Meanwhile comparing Dom Tar Patch & Sleet to their Corruptor secondary versions in Mids gives me further wtfs. Sleet's recharge increase is only 50% while its duration gains 15 seconds, and its debuff strength is identical while Tar Patch's is 25% weaker. Tar Patch does get a duration buff for doms at least: a whole 0.5 seconds. Edit: Can ignore that bit, Mids not as up to date as I thought. It's hard to imagine how this could be WAI and not a situation along the lines of "oops, made a Tar Patch with ToHit checks to weaken it in the hands of the updated Circle of Thorns but accidentally gave that version to doms instead".

I played a mind/martial/psi focused on being an in-the-mix meleer regardless of domination state for a while. That build ended up soft-capped to melee and ranged and capped to Smethal resist, and still had a sizable window to maintain perma Dom...which admittedly makes that defensive overslotting totally irrelevant most of the time. But when it is relevant it feels pretty badass. It seems like it would be more often relevant for ill/ though, because from the little experience I've had with ill/ doms so far it's focused more on distraction than lockdown. There will usually be enemies loose, spread out and/or staggering around to hunt down which could have you stray into the sights of other things that aren't mezzed. I like Dragon's Tail with the mind/martial, don't feel like I have the attack chain issues with it Luminara described (I mostly alternate Thunder & Spinning kicks between Tails with Trick Shot or Dominate filling gaps as suits what's left of the spawn) but I ended up dropping the similar Rending Flurry on my ill/savage just because things were just always too spread out from Gleam & Phantom Army to get anything bunched up enough to make the most of it. I revisited the mind/martial as an ill/martial after the set was ported to doms but that version's only in the 30s so far and I haven't sorted its build out yet, but I'll attach my mind/martial if it can provide some general ideas - older build, not updated with new power ordering. You mentioned wanting to pick up mez protection where you can and expecting this not to be comparable to a permadom build, but don't forget Domination is mez protection (not in a figurative "mezzed enemies can't mez you" way, it literally provides full status protection for its duration) and since you'll probably want recharge for offensive purposes anyway you could easily end up with permadom, and thus mez immunity (not to mention endurance refills that greatly reduce what would otherwise be a stark need for +recovery), without even necessarily trying. Especially with Defense being one of your goals, you'll probably be after some combination of pool toggles that will give you several places to hold LotG +Recharges as a starting point. Psi is not the greatest epic overall but it works pretty well for your goals here: Link Minds is a big chunk of Defense that doesn't just benefit you but your team as well, and Indomitable Will is...well, almost pointless, unless you're going up against Carnies or Rikti (it gives a massive chunk of Psi Defense), BUT it requires no slotting to do its one job of "protect me until Domination is ready" and is the perfect spot to hold a Shield Wall unique without needing an extra slot. ...also, giving the OP another read, it isn't explicitly stated but it almost sounds like what you're actually planning is a "petless MM" take on the dominator by not even using controls at all? If so, awesome. Ill/'s probably the best set to do it with because it's the one with inventive alternatives to control to play around and deal more damage with, and I can attest to the effectiveness of a defensively built /martial -- I can go long stretches solo where I don't even bother to throw out a mass control because I'm just fightin' stuff, mez-protected and refueled by permadom (and still get some incidental domination popups on Thunder Kick and World of Confusion). Inmi Xayn Again - Dominator (Mind Control).mxd

Oh, that's definitely just put an ice/rad on my to-do list.

Each Alpha provides enhancement to a few or several power qualities. So, what powerset combinations have you played, or thought about, that let you squeeze the most benefit - or more than you expected - out of any particular T4 Alpha? A couple of mine below. For reference: Agility Core: 45% End Mod, 33% Recharge, 20% Defense Agility Radial: 33% End Mod, Recharge, and Move Speed, 20% Defense Cardiac Core: 45% Endurance, 20% Range and Resistance Cardiac Radial: 33% Endurance, Fear, Sleep, and Absorb, 20% Range and Resistance Intuition Core: 45% Hold, 33% Defense Debuff, 20% Range Intuition Radial: 33% Hold, Damage, Slow, and Defense Debuff, 20% Range and ToHit Debuff Musculature Core: 45% Damage, 33% Immobilize and Defense Debuff Musculature Radial: 33% Damage, Immobilize, Defense Debuff, End Mod, and Run, 20% ToHit Debuff Nerve Core: 45% Accuracy, 33% Hold, 20% Defense Nerve Radial: 33% Accuracy, Hold, Taunt, Confuse, and Fly, 20% Defense Resilient Core: 33% Resist and Immobilize, 20% ToHit Resilient Radial: 20% Resist and ToHit, 33% Taunt, Immobilize, Absorb, and Stun Spiritual Core: 45% Recharge, 33% Stun and Healing Spiritual Radial: 33% Recharge, Healing, Stun, Slow, and Jump, 20% ToHit Vigor Core: 45% Healing, 33% Accuracy and Endurance Vigor Radial: 33% Healing, Accuracy, Endurance, Confuse, Sleep, and Fear Two of my favorite builds make very good use of Musculature Radial: a Rad/Dark/Dark Corruptor and a Dark/Elec/Soul Brute. I trade the extra Damage of Core to instead amp up the secondary effects of both the primary and secondary on both builds. Since the brute uses Soul Tentacles and was recently respecced to use Super Speed, she manages to get some use out of every part of Musc Radial except the def debuff. Dark Obliteration slotted with an Acc -ToHit set plus the alpha lets her blanket the spawns she's fighting in a sizable chunk of -ToHit in addition to what her melee attacks dish out, all while rapidly sapping through a Lightning Field and Power Sink that are both heavily slotted for EndMod so boosted past ED by the Alpha. One of my more niche selections that doesn't make use of everything the alpha has but taps more than I realized when I picked it: I have a kin/nin/soul scrapper where the character used to be a mind/martial dom (RP happened, powers changed), so I went Intuition Radial with the new build just because that was what I used on the original, and it's worked out surprisingly nicely. She's well equipped for ranged fights with Focused Burst holding her Critical Strikes, then Moonbeam and Soul Storm, so she gets utility out of the Range, ToHit Debuff, and Hold elements along with the damage boost to all the rest of her fighting.

If they were at least affected by recharge buffs, that'd really be all the fix I'd need to make them a little more than a flavor novelty, something I'd actually think about when making build decisions. But I think I mentioned in some other thread on the topic some while back that I wouldn't mind seeing the alignment powers divorced from Morality and granted in some other way to represent a character's Methods: Inspirational, Intimidating, Mischievous, and Violent, or something along those lines that could be mixed and matched with Morality, which would just continue to govern zone & content access. So you could be a Violent Vigilante, an Inspirational Rogue, an Intimidating Hero, a Mischievous Villain, etc.

Speaking as someone who has actually had someone go out of their way to camp names identified with me and my friends (back when the VIP server opened on Live), this is a wild extrapolation. While the back half about "they just must not have loved the game as much as i did" is certainly smug nonsense, the situation the first sentence describes is clearly: they got some good names early and at some point since then, "at least one" (definitely happened once that they clearly remember, maybe more) of those names was recognized by another player who mistakenly assumed it was held by the same player they knew held it on live. There's nothing to suggest the names were grabbed because they were used on live, the quote just has a finder's keepers attitude about the ones they have. You see a name that belonged to a friend on live and go "HEY FRIEND" and they go "do i know you". You can see character names in many parts of the game besides Atlas Park, including multiple text channels that broadcast to everyone playing who has it on a tab. LFG is how I found out my friend who mained Stranglehold on Virtue is not the Stranglehold of Everlasting, for example.

Makes me wonder if an enhancement could be made with the effect of cancelling/zeroing-out the effects of the power it's slotted in. Call it a Null Origin enhancement, then you could slot a NO in Swift and Hurdle.

Saw mention recently that the issue with DP/Tac Blasters that causes either the left pistol or the bow to be invisible depending on which you edited last is a known issue that, like any other, could be addressed whenever someone with the know-how ever has the time and interest. So just putting in a request that if that ever does make it onto the agenda, a 'None' option be added for the left pistol slot beforehand. That glitch has provided a way to create single pistol users, which is just kinda fun, and enabling that without it would open that visual/RP option up to other ATs and powerset combinations. Most Dual Pistol animations look fine with the left gun missing, since most ST attacks focus on the right hand (or in the case of Dual Wield use both at once so there's still clearly a gun being shot) and the AoEs are frenetic enough one hand being empty is barely noticable. Pistols and Suppressive Fire are the only powers with left-hand specific animations and even then those two have multiple animations, so they actually only use the left hand half of the time (side thought that occurred as I typed: would be neat if "Right Only" and "Left Only" could be added to those power's customization options with "Original" continuing to alternate). (While I would favor a None option being available to every weapon -- hell Shield too, now that we have asymmetrical shoulders/gloves to let us chunk up our defending/bashing arm ourselves -- just for the sake of enabling whatever creative takes people could come up with to explain their invisible weapons in the context of their character's other powers, my only actual suggestion/request here is to give the option to the left pistol, since the bug ever getting fixed would impact existing characters.)

I've run into this with the unholstered versions on DP/Tac, just had a look in the creator and looks like holstered versions do work the same way. Basically: whichever weaponset you edit last is the one that will "stick". If you customize a gun, the bow will end up invisible until you change it. If you customize the bow, the left pistol goes away until either gun is changed. I've actually been relying on this to play a single-pistol blaster for years. I'd somehow assumed this was an "acceptable jank" concession to shortcomings of the costume system, the best that could be done when Tactical Arrow was created to allow it to pair at all with DP, but now I've just gone and checked while I have the creator up and TA/DP does not have this problem.

I have a lot of these tbh, but the one that really sticks in my craw: Null the Gull alignment changes. If it was a thing you could only use before level 20, when Tips to make the shift properly become available, and didn't grant the badges/temp power, or even if it could just be used once per character without any other restriction, I'd be fine with it (though I suspect the badges part is a "has to be this way" for the game to recognize your alignment/function correctly when you do real alignment missions later). As it is, it's just a cheat/test feature that belongs on beta only. There's 161 alignment & morality missions that are all more engaging and usually worth more XP than any radio (and mostly speedable when you do just want quick alignment progress, for which the 5/day restriction is long gone), why disincentivize some of the best PUG content in the game? (that said? 100% grateful for the option whenever Halloween and now April Fool's roll around) As for the biggest improvement, gotta second the earlier mention of SOs from level 2. Massive game changer. That coupled with the earlier availability of primary and secondary powers has truly reinvigorated the early game for me: I'm playing ATs I'd never given a fair shake or only grudgingly endured before. That performance boost against an early game still balanced for TOs and DOs just plain feels good and lets me get a feel for the actual oomph of my powers early on, something I used to have to slog to 22 at half power for a real taste of. I've never run into the significant difficulty with Praetorian content I've often heard about but I imagine this has been a godsend for Praetorian lowbies too. Exploration badge tips are also just. Really good. Both from the QoL aspect of de-Easter-Egging the badges into a little piece of flavor-rich casual game content that encourages you to look around at the game world, and for the effort and quality that went into writing up each zone's guide concept and interesting mission text for each individual badge. Actually kind of makes me regret when I grab a badge out of chance or habit because now that's a tip I'm not going to get to read til the next character.

Honestly I don't think it needs improving, it's a situational effect that is really powerful as-is for soloists and small teams, it's just less important for a large team with enough layers of taunt, harder control, or support to withstand adds - but even then, it can still be an extra layer of security if you're sleeping a side of a sizable swarm most of the team's target-capped AoEs aren't extending to. That said, I wouldn't mind if it was improved, because while it is useful as it is, it sure is lackluster compared to any other control. If it were up to me, I might add multiple tapering effects of lower magnitude and longer duration to every sleep power, like the wear-off of Destiny powers, call it a Drowsy effect or somesuch, that instantly applies a Sleep as normal at the combined magnitude. Then a couple seconds after a Sleep is broken, if any Drowsy effects are still going on that target, give it a chance scaling with enemy rank (less likely to resleep bosses, moreso minions) to either reapply a new Sleep at the current remaining magnitude or dismiss all Drowsy from that target. So a chance to function a little more like Fear, for a longer potential time on weaker enemies, but still essentially fragile. I like 2 best of your initial proposals but that may just be because I play a Spines/Bio stalker who runs Control Core for sleep aura lulz and adding extra damage to that would be hilarious. With 1, maybe a way around the problem of fine-tuning the damage required to break the sleep would be to make an alternative condition numbers of hits of any magnitude taken in close succession, so occasional light splash damage from weak AoEs may not break it but anything ticking rapidly does. 3 I'm not a fan of, to me it just sort of turns Sleep into an engine for more Hold, instead of expanding on Sleep as its own concept. As to 4, like with 1 I like the essential idea of making Sleep less binary but the fiddly and far-reaching extra work involved in classifying every power, let alone developing extra buffs/debuffs that only interact with one kind of control, sounds like a non-starter.

Eyeballing visual guides with the grid disabled requires a level of pixel precision that is easily undermined or made more complicated by lighting, the highlight box, base lag, mouse sensitivity, and/or the user's degree of control over their hand. Grids help limit just how uncooperative the game can be.

A 1/8 x 1/8 grid setting in the base editor would be really helpful for working with Tiny letters, particularly the Motiva font. The extra degree of precision would of course be useful in all other editing contexts, but that's the particular use case that prompts the post.

SG Leader's Global: @AlwaysAPrice Discord handle: alwaysaprice Base or SG Name: Blue's Shard: Everlasting Passcode: DABADEE-29445

Convert the reward merits into Hero or Villain Merits, you can email those to yourself then decide what to spend them on later.

My basic binds: ~: Sprint or Prestige Sprint/Slide as suits the character G: Beast/Athletic/Ninja until a proper travel power is acquired and takes over the bind shift+G: favored temp/prestige travel power such as Rocket Board, or if I plan to keep using the Run I'll move it here and use ctrl+T if I pick up a temp; for teleport, bound to shoot me in the direction I'm looking shift+click: precision Teleport H: Combat Jumping or Hover, unless the character has SJ & SS in which case those will be on G & H and the def toggle will probably be shift+H T: Aim or Build Up shift+T: If I have a second damage/power self-buff it goes here (T for Aim, shift+T for Soul Drain on my rad/dark/dark for example) ctrl+T: Destiny - usually only for characters that take Clarion for the mez protection where I want to hit it the second I can, the rest I'll either put on a bar or click when I need them Y: Hasten U: T9 Armor, Shadow Meld, or other oshit button shift or ctrl + U: as above if more than one shift+1: combine T1 insps into reds shift+2: combine T2 insps into reds just T1 & T2, I turn off larges along with BFs & rezzes Macros I've never used much other than /macro base "editbase 1" on anyone I build on, and on one of my more recent characters who's the only one I've got that uses all three builds, has a couple costumes suited to each, and switches with my whim. I set up a macro button using the Mutation SO's Vitruvian symbol graphic for my Base Teleporter once on my characters in a Mutation-themed group that uses the Vitruvian symbol. I used a "deploy my epic's ice storm centered on myself" macro for my Ice/SJ/Cold tank whose concept didn't allow for her to summon phenomena at a distance, but eventually stopped bothering with it just because it was a little fiddly to keep track of as I still had to keep the power somewhere on my bar so I could see when I could fire it. That's the one thing macros need for me to want to bother with them more: a command that links the macro to one of my powers so the macro button can reflect that power's recharge status, which would let me remove the actual power from my bar. As it is, their convenience comes with a clutter cost.

Just before the quoted bit I mentioned I was talking about a different build that still has all the Stalker tricks, that response was about why I prefer Stalker DB combo implementation to Other DB in general, not in the context of the gimmick build - I acknowledged the main factor in any underperformance for that build is the lack of Assassin's in the OP.

Was just musing to a friend the other day that I'd like to separate the powers from Morality, make them a separate choice called Methods or something and make them either a Prestige Power pick at P2W or use the Field Analysts/Fateweavers to grant/swap them. So you can be labeled as Inspiring (Call to Justice), Intimidating (vigi Fear), Mischievous (rogue Confuse), or Violent (Frenzy) independent of whatever your Morality is, allowing for Inspiring Villains, Mischievous Heroes, Violent Vigilantes, Intimidating Rogues, etc., whatever combination suits you.

For me it's just the opposite, I think Stalker is the best implementation of DB's combo mechanic (attack vitals does suck tho). Before this gimmick respec I routinely used Empower, Sweep, and Weaken and still have all of them on AoE-focused build 3 though I don't often bother with Weaken. Empower & Sweep in particular see a lot more frequent use with Superior Assassin's Mark in play (Empower becomes virtually perma because it's rare to go 20 seconds without proccing a BU refresh; also continuous Sweep may not be reliable but it is not infrequent and can be outright hilarious). Meanwhile, with the DB Scrappers I've played, the performance I got just cycling a handful of attacks in an order that didn't line up with any combo felt way better than anything the combos could do for me. With a Scrapper if the build has room for it I might try to keep one or two combos at least available for situational use but they don't seem integral to the playstyle. On Stalkers they all just flow way more naturally into what I want to be doing. Dual chainsaws/fiery aura for the least hidden hideless stalker possible.

I really enjoy the EBs, they look cool and put up a decent fight, but I've only been ToTing either solo on tricked out 50s who can handle them or in PI/GV leagues. The couple times I have run into them on lowbies have not been so fun and as a result I end up only ToTing in teams/leagues on anything lower level. My hope is, rather than disabling the EBs for soloists altogether, maybe in future they can tie it to the Solo EB/AV difficulty toggle so those who can handle them alone can switch that on to continue to encounter them solo and everyone leaving it at default doesn't have to worry about it on their own.

A "Ninja Assault" mixing a few katana attacks with archery ranged powers could work.

It sure does, makes you Hidden when it procs whether or not you have the Hide power. Honestly, Hide becoming optional made me reconsider just how necessary it is as anything more than a LotG mule, and I'm not convinced it is. It's probably semi-vital for levelling up and obviously from-Hide AS is great burst damage, but aside from quickly eliminating one nuisance minion or lieutenant or jumpstarting the only slightly longer elimination of a boss, I find I don't really *need* that burst very often at all and can just chew through things with my normal ST or AoE attack chains (with fastfire AS that is, not in the AS-less case describbed in my 'Stapper' thread posted earlier) as fast or faster than factoring in the interrupt period allows.

Almost the first thing I did when Page 5 launched was rebuild my recent favorite stalker's (DB/Bio) default build to drop Hide just because I could, then decided to go a step further and ruled out both Assassin's Blades and Placate - no stalker-specific powers allowed unless you count Build Up since DB/ uses a Follow Up type power on other ATs iirc. (For additional context, the character has all 3 builds fully slotted out with different epics to represent different flavors of power she can access with accompanying shifts in offensive/defensive priority, along with various costume slots assigned to build swap macros; I decided her "most human" base build could get away with leaving the supernaturally effective stealth of Hide to her 'powered up' forms). And uhhhhh it's really not bad? As DB/, it gives me an opportunity to play with the combos I passed over on her other builds, and with the ATOs I still have a way to become Hidden. Like I don't proc the Hide as reliably without having it on AS but I still get a hidden crit here and there and even, if I luck out on the proc when finishing the last enemy of a spawn, a period of usable travel stealth now and again. My overall killspeed is down, especially when it comes to cleaning up stragglers that didn't get AoE'd down, since I don't have those quick clean AS crits to mop up with, but really not by that much! It still functions well, it's just a scrapper that uses Stalker ATOs. Anybody else having dumb fun with hideless stalkers yet?

Yeah that's something you have to do to some extent, not really something that can be automated (at least not within the terms of service). Most likely want to dual-box the announcement character on a second account if you want to keep playing normally on your main one at the same time, then just alt-tab over once every 10 minutes or so to send the announcement to whatever channels are appropriate. As mentioned above you can put them on a TF/Ouro/AE arc to disable AFKing out as well, then just leave them whereever you want them with the information in their bio. Use either the character name or an /afk message like "/afk Read my bio for event details!" for something above their head to draw attention.

As Spectral Wounds is not a part of this powerset, recommend changing its mention in Phantasm's description to Phantom Army, which is and explains illusory damage in its own description.