lobster

Has there been any movement or news about overhauling the MM epics in the last 4 years? It looks like they renamed the elemental epics and added Dark Mastery (which is an interesting set with 0 attacks (yay!), 1 armor, 3 CC powers and Soul Consumption), but no changes to the main ones? Almost all of which I still consider meh, being worse than the new Dark set with the previous exceptions (Mace and Ice for the DEF armor, potentially fire for Bonfire/rise + if it ever dumps an attack for an armor).

So I took a couple years off from playing (not intentionally, life is a river!) and now I'm back, for the next couple bends at least. I've been playing a bunch of alts, but recently started 3 or 4 new doms and have been cycling through them leveling into the 30s (and one into incarnation), so I of course have more/updated thoughts! Without digging into all the patch notes, here's what I think I noticed: snipes have all been given the 'no interrupt when in combat' treatment, resulting in much stronger attack chains across the board two new sets (Arsenal and Sonic) It looks like there was standardization pass at some point - the sets seem a bit more closer to a shared baseline of damage/energy/recharge, making it easier for me to pick out what's actually different. We can choose between 1st and 2nd secondary powers - pretty sure this is new to when I last played? Really helps with building. I generally always want to skip one of these powers, and often it was the first one, so it wound up no slotted. Now that can go to a useful no slot power! Note : People seem to slot way more procs now than I remember, was something changed about proc performance, or is that just a build preference? I'm not building this way at the moment, once I figure that out it may change my thoughts again. Here's my updated summary comparison: Arsenal Assault Unique: A fast recharging (and lower damage) cone - good for procs?, Targeting Drone, and the second best ranged attack (even better if you can lock target down in the ignite patch, which we can!). Verdict: Overall I've found this a great set for a pure range dominator (even though I'm not a fan of the shotgun sets visuals in general), and I've taken my plant/arsenal deep into incarnate content. Note: The melee attacks look very boring to me so it was easy to skip them. Trip mine looks to be balanced exactly with the pbaoes, and it has a really fast animation time, so you can function in melee just fine if that's your thing. Dark Assault Unique : two tier 2 ranged blasts, one with a heal? The final power is balanced well below other top tier melee attacks. It does have to hit debuffs, but other than that, not much going for it. Verdict : super middle of the line set, the numbers say nothing special to me, I'd only play it for theme. Note : I think this needs something to make it special. If Midnight Grasp is the signature power it needs something to make it so. It's currently set as like a faster, weaker version of the stone/sonic/rad/etc. big damage+CC abilities, I guess the idea is you can just use it more? At high recharge levels typical with perma-dom, I don't see that extra second or so mattering that much, I'd rather do more damage in a single hit, or have some kind of special effect. My suggestion is to make it something like Thunder Strike, where it has pbaoe spillover effect, and add immobilize instead of hold to the pbaoe hit. I think that would be enough for me. Earth Assault Unique : Slow/damage aura, very good melee attack chain, functionally 2 pbaoes Verdict : A set that was fun and impactful when it launched and still feels the same, feels great to play numerically and viscerally. Pick for theme or pick for power. Note: None Electricity Assault Unique : the final melee power is also the pbaoe power, unkillable damage pet (basically a long dot) Verdict: Not amazing, but not terrible, a fun set to play with two unique powers, with the rest being very middle of the road damage/effect wise. Note : 2 "average" melees and 2 "average" ranged attacks plus a snipe gives you flexibility to build either way, but going to shine best in melee/hybrid due to Thunderstrike. It's too bad we can't skip both the the tier 1 and tier 2 powers. Energy Assault Unique : newly added "energy focus" mode makes it much more interesting to play. Can double up your pbaoe, or make your final blast hit really hard. KNOCKBACK. Verdict: Energy has always been a "fun" set to pilot, I think the changes added a nice extra level to it, and I look forward to my next /energy dominator. Note : None, I think the set looks great now. It's got mostly baseline damage balancing, but the ability to choose one of two items to boost and the hardest hitting melee attack make it a very well designed set now imho. KB can be annoying though if you're not used to managing it. Learn! 🙂 Fiery Assault : Unique : an end bar refiller, extra dot damage on everything, Embrace of Fire Verdict: If you like damage in your damage, but don't need it all instantly, this is your stop. Still a great set. Good candidate for 100% ranged dom. Note : I much prefer having a weaker build up type effect with a longer duration, that fits my playstyle better than the bursty standard build up. The pbaoe does have a long animation time, so keep that in mind when you unload in the middle of a pack. I'm working on an illusion/fire mostly pure range dom right now and it's working well. Icy Assault Unique : slow/damage aura Verdict : sort of like a better version of dark? In the sense that it's kinda average and only has one special thing - the aura, but all the slows feel more noticeable to me than the -tohits, so I'd rate this set a little above dark. Not a bad set, play it if you like ice or want a slow aura and don't like stone. Note : I don't know why this set has a second low power range attack instead of a medium one, these are generally unnecessary once your build starts to tighten up. Since Ice Bolt is always going to be skipped (right?) for the slightly harder hitting Ice Blast, that means you are locked into taking Ice Sword...which works out because you took this set for the pbaoe aura right, so you're definitely going to be in melee. What this set is really missing for me is a ranged attack with a hold on it, one of the characteristics of its blaster counterpart. I would add a hold to ice blast or bitter ice blast (preferably bitter), and "do something" to Ice Blast or Ice Bolt to make the choice more interesting/difficult. Maybe Ice Bolt is like a snowball and it bounces once for half damage (like a 1 bounce Trick Shot), so you have better AOE but less ST? Martial Assault Unique : A richochet shot, big ranged attack has splash damage, caltrops, no target melee cone, Envenomed Blades, Verdict : Given its one of the newer/added sets, this set has a lot going for it. It's another good option for pure ranged dominators, or if you want some extra control/denial from caltrops. Note : I miss Eagle's Claw. I'd like to see that in place of weird no-target cone, but I know that's too much to ask in an already kinda loaded set. Psionic Assault Unique : pbaoe has a 16 target cap (instead of 10), recovery & regen via drain Pysche Verdict : Really strong set based around Drain Psy & Psychic Shockwave. Single target range/melee is MEH but that's fair given the power of those two powers. Note : I'd like Mental Blast to do more damage than Subdue, so you have a reason to take it other than you already skipped Psionic Dart (if you skipped it, it's one of the 3s recharge powers, so maybe you kept it for that), but really the set is too solid in total to complain... much 😉 Radioactive Assault Unique : hardest hitting (but smaller size) pbaoe, top tier final single target attack, ?contamination mechanic?, strong t1 melee attack Verdict: This is the set I have the least experience with, but on paper it looks above average, heavily favoring hybrid or melee approach. Note : I'm still waiting for the right combo/inspiration to strike me before I dig too deep into this one. I've done elec/rad but only into the 30s or so. I do wish it had a version of Irradiate, as that's one of my favorite powers. I'd favor swapping that in for the cone and making this a heavily favor melee, like stone, but I get that people want to blast with radiation too. Savage Assault Unique: combo/power-up mechanic similar to energy's (but harder to track because it has multiple stages), teleport pbaoe, two pbaoes, longer duration+weaker effect build up, a self heal. Verdict : An all around strong set with lots of uniqueness. Note : Still felt a bit janky for me to play, something to do with the animations maybe? Still, fun and strong set. Sonic Assault Unique : Pbaoe -res aura, top tier melee attacks Verdict : Maybe the best set for a pure melee dominator? Definitely in the running. Tiny bit of power creep? 😉 Note : Playing elec/sonic right now and it feels great in the 30s. With the damage aura, the melee attacks are the strongest dominator attacks, except special cases like energy & savage charge effects and psychic shockwave target cap. Earsplitter+Disruption Aura is more damage, faster animation, less recharge and less endurance than Total Focus, and keeps the hold effect (but shorter duration hold at least). Honestly the set might be a bit overtuned. Thorny Assault Unique : caltrops, very wide/short cone, the best baseline ranged blast, final melee attack is a cone - if you hit 2 targets with it on average, it out performs every other final melee attack (even Earsplitter+disruption aura), you only need to average ~1.3 for it to keep up with Total Focus/Earsplitter. Verdict : very solid set that can shine at range, melee or hybrid. Note : Really good set if you have patience for dots (like fire, and arsenal to a lesser degree). Here's a chart I put together to help me compare them : M = melee, R = range Set T1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Arsenal R1.1 M1 FAST CONE M2 PU TRIP MINE +2HIT DRONE SNIPE R4.5 Dark R1 M1 R2 CONE PU PBAOE R2+HEAL SNIPE M2+ Earth R1 M1 PBAOE R3 PU M2+ M3+ 15slow Aura CONE* (small TAOE) Elec R1 M1 R2 M2 BU SNIPE CONE M3+PBAOE SENTINEL Energy R1 M2 R2 R2.5 PU PBAOE M3++ SNIPE R4 Fire R0.9 M2 CONE R2.5 EMBRACE 30/180 PBAOE CONSUME SNIPE R4.5 Ice R1.2 M2 PBAOE R1.5 PB CONE 15slow aura M3 R3 Martial R1 M1 TRICK SHOT M1-CONE ENVENOM 40/160 PBAOE CALTROPS SNIPE R3+aoe Psionic R0.9 M2 M1+KB R2 CONE DRAIN PSY R2+IMM SNIPE PBAOE+16cap Rad M1+ R1.1 R2.5 CONE WEAK BU M2+Heal Small PBAOE+ SNIPE M3+ Savage R1.1 M1 M3 CONE MID BU 25/90 SMALL* PBAOE SELF HEAL R4 PORT PBAOE+5cap Sonic R0.9 M2 R1.5 CONE PU PBAOE -15RES AURA R4 M3++ Thorns R1.1 M1 SHORT WIDE CODE R2.5 BU PBAOE CALTROPS M3+CONE R5 My earlier commentary about how I pair sets still holds - I try and find mechanical aspects that complement each other, and ideally a way to thematically tie them together for name/costuming purposes. I'm currently playing: ill/fire (30+) and focusing on the ranged aspect of fire to complement illusions mostly ranged focus elec/sonic (~35) since elec/ wants to be in melee with its pbaoe aura and sonic is best in melee plant/arsenal (53+) because I wanted to do another pure ranged dominator dark/savage (~40) - this is an old project character I need to finish up, it was chosen for more thematic than mechanical reasons as dark control doesn't favor melee to the degree that /savage does. I believe I was initially trying to build a ranged focused character, but that didn't work out with this combo, so I'm retooling as time permits. gravity/martial (~40) - another old project that I think has a lot of potential for a pure ranged dom, just need to rework post changes to both sets. On the drawing board: symphony/thorn - I don't really like symphony control much BUT I'm going to try and make this work, choosing a heavy damage secondary to pair with a heavy control primary. I haven't played thorns in a while, and haven't played symph on a dom, so here we go! Not sure why they didn't just make the symphony hold a cone to keep up with the others in the set.... fire, earth or ice / rad - Haven't decided between primaries yet, but I'm looking for a heavy melee focus since I haven't really dug into rad yet. It's been the longest since I've played fire or stone so it will probably be one of those. something/energy - definitely need to do a new play through and check out energy. no arsenal/?? - probably not, I find the set very powerful, but visually boring (played it on a controller), and its best combos look to me to be martial and fire and arsenal, all of which I'm already working on characters with.

Yeah, it's very satisfying to me when the conditional formatting for "50" kicks in - I *DO* need to update that so HC 50s get a new color. Hah, I still have all the live sheets as separate tabs, no reason to get rid of them! Here's a bit:

Yours (visually at least...and probably entirely!) puts mine to shame. To be fair, mine is the same one I was using 20 years ago in live and I never bothered to updated to current stuff, but still! I mostly just track what I've played (I try not to re-create combos), levels, creation & 50 dates and sometimes incarnate stuff. I color code the grids - orange and red are live chars and purple is HC. Black means I will never play that combo (pretty much just empathy because I hate it and the new electric support set because the status prot aura triggers my migraines). I want to say yours has inspired me to update mine but...I probably won't, visuals are a pretty low priority for me ;).

I dunno, there might still be some players out there who aren't min-maxing! 😉 Also, keep in mind that I consider this guide/post laying the groundwork for my epic overhaul/rebalance suggestion post here.

They did not use to. Some did and some didn't - the fact that the fire one did gave it a specific use that the other ones didn't have. I haven't kept up on all the patch notes, so they may have changed this.

I was able to hop in and try a demons/elec at level 40 with full basic level 40 ios for a few missions. It felt...OK. Like. Kinda. Just there? The elec pet didn't seem to do anything. I guess it was debuffing end, but as a whole I wasn't draining enough to make it matter? I basically just kept chaining the 4 chain buffs on my pet and...that was it. Not particularly interesting. I'll put some more time into it this weekend and try and drill down on each power a bit. I will say that, knowing it wasn't a damage pet, I instinctively wanted the pet to change into melee and pbaoe debuff enemies end and recovery, but it seemed to just sit back and "blast" it's minor end drain (I only had 2 end mods slotted in it, but my pets were killing everything too fast for it to matter)? It's probably too late for raw set feedback, but it feels like it needs at least 1 less buff and 1 more offensive ability. Removing or combining one of the chain buffs and replacing it with something like ?jolting chain? (the chain knockdown ability from some other set I can't remember right now), but with an extra offensive effect - maybe -res, or stun or something, would go a long way to making the set feel more interesting. Or maybe something using the short circuit animation, some kind of EMP or magnetic field manipulation effect. Maybe a pbaoe transference type thing that drains endurance and buffs ally recharge and movement speed based on # of targets hit? I mean, there are ton of things you can do with electricity.... Also, I think you guys missed an opportunity on Faraday Cage - making it so this also debuffs enemies would add some more build and playstyle choices. It could drain end every tick like static field, or debuff res (I like debuffing res for the symmetry with buffing res, but that could just be me!) or def or whatever. (I get that set has an end manipulation feel but...there's only so much of one thing that you can do. Also, at the point I was testing it, it felt like Kinetics or an elec/elec blaster or anyone with short circuit+a secondary effect buffing buff is better at draining (and filling in kin's case) endurance. Don't get me wrong, I definitely thing a set named "Electrical Affinity" belongs in CoH...I just want it to be more interesting.

Sorry about that! Left in there in the final edit it looks like, just removed it. I think I was confusing Bitter Ice Blast as having the hold from Bitter Freeze Ray. Maybe? It's been a while ;). Either way, everyone is correct, no holds in /icy.

This looks great gang, can't wait until I have time to get back in and play again 🙂 The mastermind changes in particular were asked for for SO LONG on live - it's really great to see them implemented in what seems like a measured way. Also can't wait to try my tank!

At this point, I don't care how ugly the UI is I'd take it anyway! 😉 Can't wait until this happens.

It's hard to go wrong with sj/anything. My sj/inv is a blast to play, up there in the top of the competition for most fun melee - and very, very powerful in general Just pick a secondary you love, pair it and go! /elec in general is a really strong set (maybe a bit stronger on non-stalkers due to the res/def mechanics). Elec is easy to softcap s/l/e resist and get respectable f/c, but it can be tough to get decent defenses. I did a quick mock up build converting my sj/inv, and wound up with around 27% s/l def, 22% e/n and 30% f/c with 75 s/l/e res, 40 neg, 58 f/c, 5 tox, 62 psi.

I dunno man, you skipped Parasitic Aura, which is fun! and DNA siphon is a bit handicapped - all the Bio clickies are worth using. Here's the build I'm working on now - would be 4s of from perma hasten with T4 alpha (which is fine for me), capped E/N/F/C (hide adds about 3% suppressed), 23% S/L def + 75% S/L res, plus all the toys and doesn't need maneuvers/tactics: | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1526;701;1402;HEX;| |78DA65944B53134110C767B31B319048304040F284102031212B78B644D42A21824| |5E9C5435C934DD8329254C2017C1CFC0A5E3CF9BC79F15B6895379F5F411E9280E5| |D1D2D84CFF03A9DAA9DAFACDF474CFFCA7A767B31BF3EE77579F5C108AE752D9A8D| |7732BEB46F99E5973668D92955705B52EFA0230E7B266D934D3342A167357ACD2EA| |BAB5568AB627E7CDA2B95637D3735625B7542B196B563E77B176BF5213EEE54AA59| |C5E348D2AF977CBC14AD5340B1ED96D2FD4DBF62A98B5FAAA551DBE5CB5F2E9B94A| |61339735EAEB666DB32D6F8834A5E8DB8A0AB49653DC21E89A7018E05DA696070B4| |CBD454DFC183B8A54C5822A674EFC060714C993FDCC6DDA45C12E4AD3214490E61A| |CCEE3DF09F43FABA5BCCA1BFCC2DDA47553856F52BD2D79DE1754FCD80B3C4094D7| |8751E9F39C73A76685F27629D9FD8E6FDCC3CFD05FCCAECFF067E67EE46F9E62856| |74BD652D3BA4C5C5EBA92E2FEF35E80371E6219CD94FC13D88EF9119DBA6680F473| |B3CB7A0F426337083B94B3EBDECD3DA23057DC85A1FB21440D642C86208D90A217B| |1164AD49EBF83856F32DF2DA912C789D195D02977102523CC07B2B03384D0AA719A| |5393FE6FCC9C33A708928D8209DC3D039FC5CC89B187B01BE045F3163AFC1375C4B| |FBA473043A47A033069D71E88C43671C3A15D21244668332B34D52108682F08626B| |D2636C107E043E6D423F031F380148CA28E47DFF30E531F98898FE06DCEEA2FF21D| |170EA9763CC075920832CF86C03018616A7485939C393119E15377912D095B32C63| |6954E95466DA551DFD3E741D4F9F42C5323DF0C2A29833AD471633A6E6C443B7A9F| |ADC071FF7048194BD82C199B45B759666C96599B65D16659D68E5EBF50A4C5E5A53| |70D6D8D6E9A553A67F78F2D8A728D5F762ACAD96CDABC0F3ABD9FF13DA59EE2DF31| |789C83ED8EFE4E477FEFF0C5A1FFB3A3DFE8E8CBF68782743CCDFF5B8412B8| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

It's been a while, but you might just be able to copy and paste that text itself into the pines import? Edit: Nope, that doesn't work. But if you right click on: Click this DataLink to open the build! and save as a mids file, you can open it with the editor, if you have the same version I used...which is "Mids Reborn v2.6.0.1".

Yep, I've been using this since it was offered. Still takes me a bit of time to spin up a new character from scratch, click through all the windows, then get all the ios, slot them, etc. I do it, I'm just saying it would be way easier if I could use my existing characters, especially given I'm familiar with exactly how they play. I have limited time to play, and spending 1/4 of that on putting a character together makes psyching myself up to spend my time testing tougher than it might otherwise be.

Makes it hard to know what I'm testing though : how many targets should this be hitting, should my radius be bigger than X? Etc. kind of thing. Especially if there are going to be exceptions- I think I saw one of CPH's posts say there would be some exceptions to the cone size boosting. BUT, that makes sense and I'll just have to take the additional testing difficulty into account.