Mezmera

I hear DFB is something you don't wanna skip blueside. Something played that much has gotta be good amirite?!

Badumpa badumba badunnda

Weelllll.... A lot of defender's could make use of a 30% -resistance debuff. Less so Cold's yeah but my TA uses Weaken Resolve frequently granted I had to compare and contrast this and Entangling Arrow which I dropped since I was only getting to use one or the other and find the other arrows to give me other tactics. Power Build Up boosted Unleash Potential and Vengeance is just too good of defense numbers to pass up.

Force of Will pool is my favorite of the Origin pools. Mighty Leap is a great all around travel power and Unleash Potential is a fantastic defense power for tight situations and it benefits greatly from power boosting effects. I don't do much with Weaken Resolve but it is my go-to second pick in that pool. I don't slot it for more procs than the Achilles Heel since that's the most useful one I'd want anyways, 27-30% -resistance on an AV during a fight is a great debuff for your team to take advantage of. I'll let my accuracy bonuses and tohitt carry this power and use it in team situations on tough fights to amplify our damage potential. Sneaky good power on boss fights.

Yeah I love the bonuses and intent of that set but that whole set should be configured to boost assault powers and then redo the other ATO a bit so its more attractive to use in a control power.

I've never run a Hasten-less Dom going for broke for recharge bonuses to able to ctrl+click Domination but I believe 126% was the number if not somewhere in the 130's but I do think you're close.

@Sessa won the 1v1 ranged tourney on her Nature/Ice. Totally terrible yes do go on. Blasters and Defenders galore. One lone dom for giggles, gee..... This was before the Elec Blast buff which I'm seeing members of Platypus in Excelsior Pocket D shaming people to switch off of the uber sapper they just brought to their casual fight unless they want to up the armament. See @Alouu with his Nature/Elec? Mac maybe you should get out more. Someone's speaking out of their rear and I'm not entirely sure its me.

I don't recall Thorny Assault being looked on as a top tier assault set. The lack of flexibility of a snipe is a minus plus I prefer Power boosting abilities on doms although Build Up is a nice little power itself. Here's a few things I always will do with some of those powers I'm familiar with that you have. With Weaken Resolve I just slot the Achilles Proc since it would have a 90% chance to fire and 27.5 -resist is always better than just 7.5 -res. Trust your built in accuracy and tohitt plus team buffs to carry that one. For Unleash Potential I like to slot 4 Shield Walls +5 all with recharge/defense and the unique and on doms I'll leave an extra slot for a LotG. On Soul Drain I will slot that Armageddon set to 5 there since the damage proc fires nice and consistent on this one, if I lack Tactics or a BU power I'd slot the Gaussian proc 6th. On Dark Consumption I'll slot that winter set to 5 there plus then the gladiator -resistance proc since it'll be sure fire with the recharge on this power. Slotted decent Dark Consumption moved up into my rotation to add some more pbaoe potential which is good since I know I can count on it to debuff consistent when I use this power so I know I'm getting good value on follow up attacks. I only slot the Panacea on Health since I look to lean on Domination and can count on Dark Consumption more frequently.

Yes the buffing was tossed in as a generality when looking specifically at Nature and all that it can do. It seems right now it's "make Nature/Elec Blast, Win". But the flip side is the damage Defenders can attain when also they can have better control over a match than an actual control AT which as you pointed out that Poison does this better than Cold. So you're being disingenuous when you even know yourself that debuffs not being subject to the same cockamamie rules as mez allows things like -recharge to shine while a mez on a control character is laughed off then the Defender shoots back a better proc'd mez. Anything say 6v6 or less and its just better to have the debuffer which you'd only find actual control mattering in your 8v8 meta you all keep shaping things around to fit all the while the control AT has been relegated to a gimmick role since sunset. I stopped playing pvp two years ago when I saw how much worse things had gotten and yet for some odd reason in patch notes I was seeing "fixes" to mez powers and not much else. That had me like "wait are we playing the same game?", I get it though it's tough to roll up your sleeves and try to come up with a fix to things that actually suits how you like to play, but not all of us like playing the same fotm thing day in and day out.

I get that it's night and day between the two systems. I'm sure there's little focus on PvP and rightly so, there's a lot less ego's to massage in PvE, just give them a bunch of toys to play with and they're mostly happy. Maybe a little more self awareness is in order. You all know the real worst offenders but it looks like any attempt that would be made to do anything about it is met with disdain because it directly affects most players *or it's more control nerfs... Lets say they're not going to pre-i13 pvp either because of lost code or sheer manpower to redo it. Now what? They seem adamant leaving the HP of blasters where its at along with all of the other extra toys they got. Now what? Defenders buffing/debuffing is a smidge too good. Now what? I get that you're not full on board with the devs being able to dictate any little thing they should do with areas of pvp but also throwing them under the bus isn't helping the cause. I agree with @MJB that you all should be looking at damage, healing and some other values in relation to their AT rather than pining for a system dead and buried.

On behalf of the devs I'll just say this does not show the PvP community to be very reasonable. We're talking about a temp power accolade being pivotal in attacking, not a power pick which there's oh so many of them that underperform, but a temp power. Maybe the devs want your actual power picks to matter? I'd say toss out all of those temp accos but the furor over losing the defensive ones would be deafening, and since they are defensive and less noticeable on some ATs it wouldn't be worth the headache of all that whining. But you'll forgive me for not siding with the "pros" about their offensive non power pick getting a nerfing. Maybe they should look at all of the other regular power picks that are inconsequential and be thankful their main powers aren't as trash. Or blaster TA getting a tuning down, like TA blasters aren't still able to do awful well for themselves (the blaster I'd PvP with would be my Dark/TA for reference). Blasters and Defenders are still unreal damage platforms pumping out way more damage than they should be allowed to do compared to how much risk they can mitigate. I won't even get into Stalker snipes hitting for the base hp of some ATs when their procs fire. If the devs catch heat for tuning a few minor things down that affect the meta I can't imagine they'll ever really be able to get any impactful changes through with such an unreasonable crowd. Lots of cleanup to be done in Isle 6 but don't dare mess with that Crey Pistol! Poor devs...

They are a fun AT to play and yes you can easily build yourself a budget permadom by level 30. The only real barrier is knowing the sets to target that offer the 7.5 and 6.25 recharge bonuses and making sure to take ample defense powers to slot those LotG +recharge. The LotG's really will likely be the priciest thing you'll need, you can totally get a real good dom for 50-100 mil. The higher priced builds really turn the dom into an animal but that's true for any AT.

It's not exactly "Unstoppable". The crash is hardly noticeable in OWtS. Much more user friendly even if you get caught not paying attention mid crash.

Shield Charge, the best AoE attack in your secondary and 2-3 more attacks will suit an attack chain very well. I take One With the Shield even though I hardly use it. It is good for sets like @Onlyasandwich says and it also gives you more oomph in your ability to tank in emergencies, it's much better to have on the back burner than another moderate damage attack you might use. That should free something up for your taunt.

Plus it's like 15% defense bonus for everyone else but you. As the tank its your job to protect others, this power goes a good way in helping you do that.

I love my Shield tank! She has the defenses of SR along with tons of extra resists, lots of extra hp and then yeah Shield Charge is a blast and a boon to your aoe potential. What SR really has on Shield is the ease of building that defense and the DDR but Shield's DDR isn't too shabby once you can double stack the mez click and the opportunity offered for builds in IOs makes Shield shine. I do like Street Justice quite a bit. I see it as a more hip mix of Super Strength and MA. I don't care much for the gimmick of Rage and MA's gimmick of +def is kind of wasted on well built defense based characters. StJ to me seems much more fluid and has better damage with the combo mechanic. Plus CU is quite neat in that you can slot all kinds of Hold and Stun procs into it.

Ditto

And for two years the PvP community has just withered away.

You said it was useless after the i13 change which I've proven unequivocally it wasn't. Which now you're implying its usefulness is now dependent on what some arbitrarily have decided should be not allowed to be used as a basis for its usefulness as opposed to being actually a very effective power to have especially on a well disciplined control player. This takes us right back to what you find to be broken is subjective. I find the current meta to be wildly broken, no harder to play than someone using TK, so where's the ban on all of these blasters/defenders?

But if it was useless after the i13 change why the ban?

I've fought some mighty fine Mind/Fire's that would beg to differ on your critique of TK being useless. If you're cognizant of how to use your controls effectively and not just some Neanderthal you could time it out to get yourself a nice breather/hard snipe (irrelevant now with the snipe change and interacting with the target). In lesser matches like 2v2 up to like 6's you can drop the TK onto the off target and chase around the main target with one of the support incapacitated. It gets harder to maintain the TK with the heat you catch in 8v8 and having far less hp or tricks available like other ATs can bare. Pretty unimaginative if you found TK to be "useless".

And again. How monumentally broken you find this Dark control hold to be is contingent on a coordinated 8v8 match whereas I find Nature/Cold/Poison and the new OP elec sappers to be broken in lesser matches so where's the fix on those? Not to mention how good Blasters and some other power sets are just great all around and have been so since sunset. We also can't come up with a good solution for TK so we're just going to nullify that power altogether? If you don't think defenders should be able to do what they did with TK sure I'm with you there but the total disregard of the control AT to appease the 8v8 meta has kind of screwed the pooch a tad for attracting anything new to the community.

Why would ANY team be running more than 1-2 Domi's? That right there seems like a very dumb thing to be doing on its face what with crossing over each others Mez timers and all. Seems like a real inefficient lineup to start when you can replace 1-2 of those Dom's for better burst damage on target with more blasters that also have such better survivability. If teams were running 3 Doms it'd seem more for luls and sentimentality than making an actual efficient game of it. Messing up mez timers was a big no-no on jump teams back on live which is why psi blasters were directed to not lead with that sleep attack. I also find it real hard to see how it took ever so long for people to realize how good Nature is when it took me a whole 5 minutes in a zone seeing my target just be able to stop mid-zone and absorb/heal through the damage I could put on them. Coming from last what I knew on live to playing HC's version of PvP I knew going in that Dom/Controllers were already a handicap for the team. Then we've buffed the meta even further for some ridiculous reason and took away anything competitive for underperforming ATs to leverage and that seems reasonable to you eh? And you hope to attract more people with this strategy? Fact of the matter is the already PvP meta has been exacerbated since the sunset of live and some of the current community can't come to terms with the fact that they may be playing some small part in its demise.

Nope it works just like the Malaise proc if you'd slot it into Mass Confusion. Without that proc you get no aggro but if you have the proc slotted and they get out of their confused stupor they come at you. @Carnifax is right I slot Flash Arrow to 4 without any proc since it's a handy power in and out of stealth best of all situations.

To be fair there were a lot more viable characters to play in PvP at sunset compared to how it currently is, so it has regressed under all this expert tutelage. A lot of people that have a gripe with the current state of PvP has a lot to do with how it was left last on live to how it is now. The "professionals" keep getting things fixed to suit their 8v8 format because a hold dares last long enough to get someone a kill. Yet quite a few of these people that have a problem with a hold are content with all of the other broken things about their 8v8 format. Maybe the people getting things "fixed" should play these highly squishy characters more often and try to survive in the 8v8 format when the other team should be ruthlessly spiking and harassing the shit out of that easily killable scary character. Thanks to all of these "fixes" we've marginalized a whole subset of ATs to where they are absolute trash outside of that 8v8 format. I like to think myself pretty objective. I know how harsh control was pre-i13 and can only imagine how rough it could be with Dom's now being able to instantly start off in domination if we reverted the mez system so if we're going to go brow beating people that want to have more options to play outside of the blaster/defender/melee character when these people keep seeing their already limited options consistently being "fixed" then that just makes me want to toss out objectivity and say screw it lets just turn mez back to how it was and let things like TK work again. You could create more "viable" options if say you lowered the ranged damage a blaster can do or the buff/debuffing values a defender can bring instead of nerfing a hold that lasts a few seconds too long for your taste. Before you go mentioning the AS stalkers can set up better with a better hold well them's the breaks. I just find it peculiar the "experts" keep getting subpar things nerfed to keep broadening the gap for these characters to compete against the meta all to suit a coordinated 8v8 match. Maybe the rule makers should just put other rules in place rather than further breaking things that don't suit their taste anyways...