Frosticus

A little bit. They changed the way typed def works so that s/l def isn't quite as all inclusive as it once was (although that wouldn't change much in the ITF). Also I think they buffed/fixed the way they use phalanx fighting making romans quite a bit better at dodging when they clump up. The latter can cause you to wiff which means you have to survive that much more. I don't think there is a singular test that is going to give you a blanket answer of whether you can solo well or not, and who determines what is well? That said if you can do a 4x8 ITF you probably won't be squished in most content, although you may not be successful either.

I like leviathan quite a bit. If they changed the cone into a taoe I'd use it often as it'd check so many boxes for me. For arsenal specifically I find you want to keep applying aoe damage pretty consistently to keep smoke canister active. It will suppress without activity after 15 seconds which isn't very long for a mob to go unchecked during the multi-spawn ambushes because so many enemies are swarming. Taoes are just easier (and less risky) to use. Against a normal x8 spawn it is much less of an issue and I'd have no qualms about using an epic cone and/or flock of birds cone. Properly leveraging smoke canister is imo the key to getting this set to perform well.

+3x8 Ice Mistral SF No Insp/amps/temps/click accolades No deaths Arsenal Control seems to have little issue with CoT as it plows through the hordes of Death Mages and Succubi that this TF throws at you. While lots of primaries can handle a x8 spawn it's the ambushes that really show off peak control capability and can very quickly overwhelm. Why is this TF important? Ice Mistral sets you to lvl 40, so that means it is a close as you can get to your full build without having access to incarnate powers and a level shift (both accessible at lvl 45). So you get to showcase what your full build can do before ridiculously OP incarnates skew the picture. The AV ensures that you can't just bring a pure survival based build because he has healing flames and twilight grasp. You need a lot of dps* *you'll see I stalemate him at +3 What about other dominators? Here's my earth/psi, which was only capable of passing this at +1x8 and not for lack of trying! The same spawns that I can stroll through with arsenal at +3x8 were hit and miss for the earth/psi and even +2x8 could quickly go south. Strategy Try to stay out of line of sight. There are way too many enemies once the ambushes start stacking. You have to thin them out quite a bit before it is safe to engage. A regular x8 spawn is no issue. Note /psi app is just because I like it. I'm strongly considering going with /fire in a future version as I think the current build is a bit too defensive. Dominator (Arsenal Control - Savage Assault).mbd

It can, but it usually only really matters if you are trying to solo something and you are right on the cusp of succeeding. For example, on my earth/psi dom I put almost the entire build into making stoney resilient enough to tank +4 AVs. If you can get him to survive barrier cycles you will likely win the encounter. In cases like that even something as small as the -damage debuff from paralytic interface can make the difference. Another example is on my ill/cold where the heavily resisted -rech still makes enough of an impact in slowing down the dull pain cycle of Reichman that I was able to drop him. Without it, the fight may have never resolved. But in a team? it is almost irrelevant (outside of -res) because you'll just be hammering anything hard with your lore and/or multiple destinies in play. You'll have so much cross-buffing and powerhouse debuffers present that whatever minor debuffs you contribute will be a drop in the ocean.

Wasn't loving /rad. Good set, but not particularly fun. Decided to reroll to my personal favorite - /savage It's good. Really good. Still finessing a final build Dominator (Arsenal Control - Savage Assault).mbd Here's a +3x8 Yin No insp/temps/amps/click accolades No deaths I don't think there are a lot of combos in the game that can match this.

Doms secondaries need a sweep because only some powers get domination boosts. Unfortunately impale does not and even spamming it high level stuff gets loose more than you might like.

OP - if you are willing to use insp/lore/start temps etc. the better question is what AVs you can't solo? Most regular lvl 54 AVs will go down easily with those tools in play. Best solo def? My Ta/fire/soul is pretty nuts, but I really enjoy my poison/fire/psi even though it isn't nearly as capable.

96% from sets is more than enough with hasten. +5 those rech IO's if you are just gonna 2 slot it though.

+2x8 Penny Yin TF No insp/amps/temps/click accolades No deaths Pretty easy +2x8 clear of this tf. It only got sketchy at one point where a whole bunch of bosses started to squeeze through my choke point and I stood there waiting to see what would happen. If I'd fallen back to the next choke point sooner it would be super easy. Why is this TF important? Penny Yin is the perfect level range to showcase the strength of your primary and secondary choices because you have access to all t9 powers, but it locks out epics and incarnates, both of which can pretty dramatically alter the outcome. Her radiation attacks remove all "luck" from the fight because you won't dodge her. What’s going on here because I heard arsenal control is really bad? As with many things, people have a personal bias that they develop. Some let that cloud their opinions that they feel compelled to share for whatever reason. In reality Arsenal is having an easier time with this content than my Earth dom and that earth/psi sits at the pinnacle of S tier control. Arsenal control is better than Earth is a lot of situations and worse in some too For reference here is the vid of my earth/psi running this at +1x8 (I consistently failed at +2x8), whereas this was actually pretty “easy” at +2x8 for arsenal. *fwiw I think a better earth/psi build could succeed at +2x8, but I just take my lvl 50 build in. Ok, but you built for this encounter! Nah, this is a lvl 50+ content build, it just exemplars well. If I’d built for this TF I’d have x-ray eyes and electron haze to make it way, way easier. Video is kinda boring and hard to see much combat Ya, at this level my damage output is really low so I have to rely on the aoe confuse to clear the spawns. It is a finicky power (great at times) but a +2 freak tank can nearly 1 shot me in melee, so I have to play carefully. That means leaning into two core strengths of arsenal: A/ choke point control - Both arse and earth are phenomenal if they have a choke point to leverage B/ fighting around corners. This set has a lot of target location powers. You don't need to have line of sight to use them. Strategy Make the ambushes travel through as many patches as possible to soften them up. Use tricannon as a last line of defense. It has a taunt aura, so ideally only a few enemies eventually pass through all the patches which are then taunted by the cannon. Ambushes are different than regular spawns because while they obey certain aspects of aggro rules they stay focused on you even though they far exceed 16 targets. They keep coming after you, so the onslaught is relentless and is part of why typical control strategies fail and persistent patches work really well. Tricannon taunts the AV well enough, so kill her. Just mind she has quite a bit of aoe attacks Do you need chokepoints for Arsenal to do well? Not at all, but if you are facing an ambush of 60+ enemies it is probably required. Pfft this isn't +4x8 so it doesn't count! Give it a whirl with your own dom (or whatever character you like) and see how it goes... Dominator (Arsenal Control - Radioactive Assault).mbd

IMO defense doesn't make a lot of sense for most doms and really cuts into their damage output to achieve it. Even more so for a melee-centric dom because you can't chase r/m/aoe which basically leaves you going after s/l, which only works sometimes.

I don't think there is a large enough community to support so many divisions, so it just becomes drowned out. IMO make 2 divisions. Div 1 - real honest attempt at measuring dps that can be extracted to longer fights where dps actually matters. - no insp/temps/amps/lore (probably sounds familiar) *powers like patron pets are used in good faith. Some buff/debuff sets absolutely can utilize them well in difficult situations. A stalker probably can't keep 3 spiderlings alive tho... *endurance consumption is also assumed in good faith. If you can't last an ageless cycle you are just fooling yourself by failing to factor in that period of 0 dps you'd be doing (fwiw most current div 2 builds fail this check). Div 2 - Hidden or on a separate page. The "fun" division where signature summons, daggers, geas, and whatever else people use to game the encounter are used. I personally have zero interest in what lord Recluse can do, or in watching someone spam daggers, but it is your inf to spend as you see fit and your collection of data to shape.

Dominator (Arsenal Control - Psionic Assault).mbd

I do run agility and ended up over slotting retsu for recharge. Agility might not be needed though given the ffback and if you took ageless (I did not because clarion radial and /nin are great together).

This is what my Stone/nin does. It ends up being super easy with all the ffback going off in fault+tremor. Pop unleash just before the crash and retsu is up again before unleash drops.

I like it a decent amount in PSW on my earth/psi. I typically have 1-2 out with occasionally 3 making an appearance while mowing down full groups. The damage adds up, but it also has a low mag stun which again, stacks with the stun of PSW making it a heck of a control power on top of doing solid damage. I find it only useful for melee centric doms as they take too long to fly over to the group otherwise.

Scrapper /nin is one of my fav def sets, unfortunately the stalker version gives up the +end power that gives so much build freedom with an easy 3 eps boost. If smoke flash put you in hide, or better yet unbreakable hide for like 5 sec (chain crits) you'd tempt me. Stalker nin is one of the only sets that offers basically nothing offensively. Blinding powders confuse is too weak to use offensively (should be 100% mag 2, 50% mag 1) and caltrops damage is too slow (good defensive power though). It offers no endurance management, +rech, or +tohit, all of which promote offense in their own way. And as a strictly defensive set it isn't amazing either.

A lot of my solo builds end up doing rop>melee core>rop. But I'm not big on building squishies for defense unless they already have it in their set (ie traps, time, etc) I have powerboost on my defender. I also have unleash potential. It's pretty good. ends up being "too good to use" though ha, but sure cures any situation that trick Arrow can't solve on its own. I cycle unleash as my t9 is about to crash on my /ea stalker and my /nin scrapper. They are both super high rech builds so the t9 is up again as unleash expires. Both those basically feel like you are playing perma t9 mode with a few speed bumps to retoggle every 4 min.

I like shield and stone armor a lot personally. They both add some offense without giving up being tough. Both are easy to slot and still get a lot of recharge into your build. I'm on the fence about rad armor. Tons of offense and so far very survivable, but getting +rech into the build is challenging. If you want to survive almost anything a high recharge t9 /ea build that cycles overload and unleash potential is imo head and shoulders above everything else at this time.

Much moreso on a stalker than a scrapper. AS > viscious by a mile. Savage leap 50% crit from max range > triggering critical strikes and using point blank. Placate is in general way more useful than confront. Jumping away while placating and savage leaping back in with boosted crit chance is something else. Buildup > blood thirst Finally the stalker ATO that refreshes buildup goes off constantly for savage because of the aoes. For instance on my em stalker I almost don't notice it, but on savage it goes off so often you almost get sick of the buildup sound effect haha.

This is all great info! I think CoD is definitely a patch or two behind. It is also missing the updates to Tear Gas (damage to held foes and allowing damage slotting) from that same period. My original plan was with arse/thorn to plant AV's (impale spam) and go to town while tricannon taunted from range. That didn't work out so well due to me pulling aggro fairly often and /thorny having no recourse beyond rebirth destiny. I messed around with arse/psi on test (that's where the CWK vid is from) that was a mirror build to my earth/psi. It seemed to work well. If I hadn't already dumped so many hrs into earth/psi I'd give it a whirl.

Yes I'm familiar with the patches as I'm the one that did bug the report and petitioned the devs to fix it initially. Is there a chance CoD is out of date because it is showing the exact same code that it showed when it initially went live. I dunno what to say, but you can see it taunting a "raid" target from range in the vid and it used to not do that. Before the second I start attacking they'd go after me unless you smooshed them into a corner together. At least against Clockwork King it seemed to tank and taunt better than Stoney which actually surprised me.

The "raid" tag issue was supposed to be fixed a couple patches ago. I know when I tested it out I saw an immediate difference* in the ranged performance against Nighstar. That said, it isn't an awe inspring taunt that's for sure and you can definitely peel aggro off of the tricannon. *CoD still shows it as broken, but at the same time it doesn't seem to indicate that Tri-cannon gets containment damage for trollers either, so I dunno what to think? Honestly, it shouldn't even have those conditions as no other taunting pets do... Some lvl 54 AVs can dish out like 500-800 dps, so you definitely need something in addition to the innate high resistances of tri-cannon to keep it going past the 15 second mark. Spirit ward, or aid other is probably required as a dom. FWIW, i've had AV's literally 2 shot Stoney when I have to resummon him mid-fight. Those fights usually don't go well for me ha. I don't think there is an easy answer for doms (if you don't use lore pets) when it comes to tackling lvl 54 AV's. They don't have the tools like an illusion controller, or the ability to neuter damage output like the debuffers, or the survivability of the melee AT's. Some things that probably don't help the pet taunt: It's only mag 3, ranged, low damage, no additional annoyance, pets only have a 1.5x threat modifier and it is requiring an additional tohit check against "raid"

I have it slotted 4 expedient, 1 BU proc, 1 +5 taunt. Here's arse/psi/psi vs +4 psychic clockwork king (+3 with level shift) Takeaway: he targets me ~6 times over the 6.5 min fight. 1 attack and then back to the tricannon. Easily covered by my resistances and the moderate regen of drain psyche. Here's earth/psi/psi vs +4 psychic clockwork king. Takeaway: he targets me ~12 times over the 6.5 min fight (once stoney joins the fight). At one point he chained 3 attacks in a row. Plus he nearly killed stoney at another point. Still a very easy fight all things considered. Conclusion: I've done a lot of lvl 54 AVs (and various other +3 and +4s on my earth/psi. It takes a lot of effort to keep stoney alive, Void Judgement, barrier, spirit ward, and sometimes support hybrid and/or paralytic interface. He holds aggro quite well while alive and I don't feel he performed his best at tanking in this vid. I haven't tested tricannon (and arse) enough, but I am confident it still takes a ton of effort, game knowledge, and build specialization to make it excel against +4 AVs as a dominator (excluding use of insp/temps/lore of course). Even with a taunting pet you still take a lot of damage, so plan accordingly.

I'm using every /rad power. I cycle meltdown and rune of protection as my "god modes". They aren't up 100% of the time, but it works well enough.

No guide beyond whatever I've posted in this thread. I'm not sure if sav/rad will outperform my sav/shield. I think they are both excellent combos.