Frosticus

As with any illusion controller, if it can't kill PA then the fight is yours to lose. Strive for high uptime of PA, benumb, and stack sleet. Proc your attacks including infrig because endurance is a non issue. Everything you build on top of that is more for ambushes/adds, multiple AV's, or dealing with unique mechanics. Most AV's are about as simple as killing a standard boss for ill/cold. It can do well, though /storm/earth(seismic smash) is a huge endurance pit. I like the 2 res uniques for stoney and with a bit of support he can tank a lot of AV's (he taunts) leaving you free to heap on the damage which storm has in spades. Hurricane unfortunately doesn't do much vs AV's so you may want to build up other defenses in the event that stoney doesn't keep their attention completely.

Vs a -1 venonous gas (2 slotted) and weaken (unslotted) should do: (14%+15%)*1.11 = 32% tohit debuff. If nothing else a single small luck insp should pretty well floor their chances of hitting you. I found in my time with poison that mez protection is the most important. The set does well enough, but requires active input, so getting mezzed is problematic. Either a bf vs mezzers or an amplifier made for much smoother solo experience for me.

Sleet is really good, but it shines best on teams or on doms with a bit more aoe. That isn't to say it isn't desirable on a single target dom of course. It is up to 45 second -30% res debuff. I stack it easily on my ill/sav/ice on anything that lives long enough. You'll want to solve your endurance woes and I'm not sure if adding in sleet to the start of a fight will aid in that goal. PA, TF , snipe, and powerburst already use an unmodified 78.2 endurance. Sleet would take that up to 101 endurance. Domination and slotting likely won't cover you if you play at a decent pace. Procd blind vs TF for the ato? It is always 2-3 stacked for me in blind and I prefer triggering it from range. You have the 6th slot free in blind if procing, less so in TF. I use confuse if I need long lasting single target control, which isn't that common. Perma PA is not needed. They are really only supplemental damage. They have mediocre control and you just standing there can basically pull aggro off of them.

It used to! some pets had ai issues so it was taken away for all of them. The upside is they are no longer debuffed by enemy -rech powers either (not applicable to PA anyway). Old lightning storm was something though and was a sadly caught in those changes too.

You can't buff PA externally (ie assault), but they can buff themselves via enhancements. Soulbound proc is just short duration enhancement value They each have a chance of triggering it on themselves with every single attack. So like if you put decimation chance for buildup in you build but it could trigger off every attack you do with just the one slotted. It's probably not quite as potent in dom PA as troller PA as dom version hits softer and uses their ranged attacks a lot more which probably have a bit lower % of triggering than melee attacks. The faster PA defeats things the less impact the healback has. So dropping a lut in 5 sec or less means no additional attacks wasted.

you can just do a fade away call hawk, (or blind) and not lose out on the damage during the 1 second cast of combat teleport. Hoping back 40ft while activating a ranged attack is not much more challenging than the combat tp. Maxing feral charge is definitely a worthwhile goal, but it is pretty easy to do. I'd only use combat teleport for that purpose if I was specifically trying to hit the middle mark of feral charge to limit it to 2 stacks of blood so I could forever avoid exhaustion*. Perfectly spacing that jump can be challenging. Or if I was a hover dom. Fold space might be worth the power picks though for some people. *If avoiding exhaustion is one's specific goal.

Couple thoughts as we are taking pretty different directions with ours. -Call swarm: is a skip now. Especially if left unslotted. You could make the argument for jamming it full of procs, but even then... -Combat teleport: I don't see the need for this when you have feral charge up every 4ish seconds. Unless it is a concept build that just teleports around while your summons kill things? Nothing wrong with that. -Gleam: this should be taken. It is the best aoe stun doms get (by a tiny margin) and aoe stuns are awesome. I'd definitely take this over flash if it was an either or situation. -Call Hawk: I know there is some misguided advice about avoiding exhaustion, but sweet baby j this power hits like a truck. It does comparable damage to seismic smash once the dot is completed.

I have a db/stone that uses the hedge trimmer looking sawblades. Super powered landscaper. Proc damage from brimstone is nice. Damage boost from feint to the damage aura is nice too.

Do you mean if the taunt aura specifically buffs you, irrespective of what is going on in the rest of the set? Your logic stands up. All the taunt auras provide a player buff. Some other sets have powerful self buffs that greatly benefit from saturation, but they aren't attached to the aura - like ice armor. Good deduction!

You know it. I usually tossed in a viscous slash too to unlock boosted rending flurry. I took /fire app on mine to add in fireball (also proc'd). aim+guassian is a pretty good damage boost (110%) for all that aoe+proc'd goodness. A surprisingly good amount of aoe from an AT that tends to struggle in that department.

I always recommend taking a look at /savage if for no other reason than it has feral charge which is unique to doms and call hawk is really cool. If you embrace feral charge the experience is like no other in the game. It has good st damage and is on the higher end for aoe (for doms). Blood Frenzy can be a great buff and is an interesting mechanic if you desire a bit more engagement. The heal is ideal for fixing a mess up while you reestablish control, hence why it is heal+HoT (and unfortunately) on a long recharge. /energy is great. The only drawback is it hits your blue bar harder than enemy health bars, which is impressive because it does quite a bit of damage. Energy focus is a satisfying mechanic. You aren't required to be in melee range all the time, but TF triggering focus is hard to pass up. It has a lot of single target attacks which you wont end up needing. /dark is also great. It does pretty decent single target damage especially considering the utility it provides. The heal is up all the time for chip damage and the ability to powerboost it can get you through situations where other secondaries might falter. I enjoy my dark/sav/fire a lot more than my dark/dark/psi, but there are other /sav combos I like even more, so ymmv.

Taunting invincible summons are probably more problematic from a balance perspective than Rage is on superstrength. I can appreciate that. I'd have changed it and abandoned the power completely the second the powers team said: "hey we are going to swap out the taunt for water balloons and make the ice sword put them to sleep.... That's cool right?" I'd have scrapped PA entirely and put in: Mimic summon 2 powerful illusions that mimic your assault powerset by using the doppleganger system. But only assault powers, no controls. I'd also have abandoned the "indestructible" aspect and just given them super high resistances, so they are practically indestructible. However extremely powerful foes could still conceivably defeat them before they expire without using gimmick powers, especially if you don't help them in battle to further the illusion. -immune to healing/regeneration, but otherwise buffable (and debuffable). -i'd strip secondary effects from the "assault" powers they use and replace it with mag 2 confuse and fear procs (thematic in making the illusionist "slippery" and avoids some potential issues). -keep healback % in place Done. No more broken indestructible tanks. Doms get a unique and cool power that is different with each ill/x combo rather than a drastically downgraded "wish.com PA". No need for gimmick powers to defeat them. Trollers don't feel left out because it only mimics assault powers (that trollers don't get), not controls. *I really enjoy my ill/sav. It is fun and powerful, but damn did they phone it in illusion*

I'm a simple guy. Either blazing aura should cause enemies to flee because it is burning them, or it should infuriate them into attacking me like I'm vaping in their face. The latter is preferred, but doing nothing is worse than doing something imo.

So the rule is: You get a taunt aura if 1. You don't have a damage aura* 2. You have an have an aura that debuffs enemies while buffing the player** * unless you play bio **unless you play invuln There are 11 secondaries with auras of some type, so the rule is broken close to ~20% of the time. Mostly I just want to play ice armor (axe/ice) and it irks me. Edit: the exceptions indicate to me that if you have an aura it should probably taunt for scrappers. I'd be ok even having to slot a taunt enhancement in to activate it (in case anyone enjoys fleeing enemies)

Doesn't bio get a damage aura and a taunt aura?

I dunno. Ice armor is left out in the cold with that description. Chilling embrace debuffs more than most. Dark armor cloak of fear debuffs tohit. And elec armor drains end with lightning field. Mudpots debuffs speed EA actually makes sense without one given it has a stealth power too, but gets a budget one anyway. Unless you mean buffs AND debuffs are both required to qualify, but then invincibility doesn't make sense under that description as it only buffs.

Unfortunately Dom PA rarely uses their melee attacks either. Their AI seems to be set to "ranged" (why can't that happen with phantasm??) With no taunt things rarely close the distance to them so they just sit back pew pew'ing water balloons. Better if you summon them right on your target. Still decent though.

Is there any logic behind which armor sets get taunt auras and which don't for scrappers? Always seemed bugged to me as only a few make sense to NOT have taunt auras, yet it is almost random which ones receive it.

meh set bonuses broke the game. Bring those in line and people won't be able to fit so many procs in while "easily" hitting defense and recharge goals. Perhaps less applicable with tanks as they were overtuned anyway. Some procs are problematic like critical strikes. New Axe and forcefield gives me hope that he is ok with crazy OP stuff and won't gut procs to the point of being worthless. Chasing set bonuses affects the difficulty slider way more than cramming procs in savage leap.

Yes, they also tanked recovery, but that was having the pendulum swung too far in the other direction. Nukes were often skipped, or required specific powers to make them more appealing (like a fire/cold corr with saturated heatloss, or x/elec blaster popping a blue then powersink). Now nukes cost a bit less than 2x a troller aoe hold, but recharge 40% faster. Dominators have single target attacks that cost (about) as much endurance as the "cheap" nukes like Geyser, Rain of arrows, or Overcharge. Even within blasters own sets, some of their secondary pbaoe attacks cost similar to nukes. I have no issue with nukes being desirable, but they are a bit "too desirable" imo. Fast snipes are pretty good.

I'm of the mindset that blaster nukes are ridiculously OP. Especially when weighed against things like troller aoe holds. Somehow city of statues is worse than city of vaporized spawns... To me sentinel nukes are exactly as they should be. I don't particularly enjoy sentinels, but their nukes are the best selling feature for me.

Don't know his build, but even if he had phant, hybrid and offense amp going that still hits the mark factoring those out.

I'm getting a bit off topic here, but... I think dominator illusion is a good set. I don't think it stands notably above or below any of the others. It is good at both single target control and aoe control, but is not the best in either category, it definitely isn't the worst either. Dom illusion is very formulaic and a bit cookie cutter. It gave up most of what makes it unique on a controller to fit a more generic dominator model. Troller illusion offers unparalleled single target control, but is pretty bad at aoe control. It actually makes a ton of sense thematically. The illusions I put out seem to fool no one. But it is still a good set because gleam is a good aoe stun and PA is still a good "pet" if for no other reason than their damage delivery is reliable by virtue of them being unaffected by most enemies. Comparatively, if I jump on my earth dom I really feel like a control earth elements. Dark doms have a ton of thematic powers. Gravity pulls things through time and space... Plant covers the field with massive powerful vines that follow you around wrecking everything. Etc Etc. It's not always about being the most optimized, thematics matter to me and dom illusion doesn't feel like much of a master illusionist. But I'm still playing it because I have mirror images while teleporting around (feral charge), so that is really cool looking even if it doesn't do anything. Dominator PA must have come from wish.com

No, as far as I can tell all pets are a direct port - so fire imps are identical, haunts are identical, singy is the same All psuedopets are identical* - so creepers is the same, ice slick is the same, spectral terror is the same, volcanic gases All direct damage powers follow the damage scale of the appropriate AT. So confounding chant hits a lot harder for doms than trollers (before considering containment) All primary direct powers gain the AT inherent where applicable - so firecages can double base damage with containment and proc +1 mag 20% of the time for trollers. And it gains domination for doms. The only exceptions seem to be found in illusion and darkness *Shadow field (bugged) has an AT specific psuedopet, but it wasn't implemented entirely correct and has matching debuff values (troller have higher debuff AT modifier). So doms version is better than it should be (15% tohit debuff, but should be 11.25%) PA is very different - Troller version is way better Phantasm - decoy power - is a bit different - Troller version is better. Group invis was changed to Gleam (and renamed haha) I'm of the mindset that a lot of things were just copy/pasted to doms that should have been adjusted. Things like psuedopets that do damage should do more damage on doms and things that debuff should debuff better on trollers. That is in line with the AT modifiers. Ex. Dom singy should hit harder, but have weaker slows and shorter base duration controls vs Troller singy Ex. Ice slick should do more damage for doms, but have a weaker -speed competent. I also think all psuedopets (volcanic gases, spec terror, etc) should have AT specific versions (like shadow field) that work with AT inherents. Maybe illusion will make doms popular enough to warrant the attention they deserve to fix up the little errors.

Gander again. Every single power is changed. A new melee attack was added. A different melee attack was taken away. A new ranged attack was added. A different ranged attack was taken away. Melee attacks without weapons now stun Melee attack with weapon now sleeps...? ok that's a new one for an ice sword Ranged attacks now knock down Other ranged attacks now sleep...? ok ice blast is now a sleep power I guess. Every single attack now uses a different animation/cast time Troller cast times range from 1.4 sec - 1.84 sec for 7 of the attacks with only hurl at 2.64 sec Dom cast times rare all 2.64 sec for all 8 attacks By this logic we could tank Taunt from a tanker, turn it into a sleep power and call it good as long as it was still an auto hit? These two phantom army powers are about as similar and as different as the two poison trap powers. But they are found in completely different debuff sets. So I guess that makes it ok for them to share the name...