Mezmera

5%

My favorite characters to play are doms, I have little room to worry about chasing proc builds while building using full sets for things like defense, hp and recharge. Trust me I have no want to defend anyone using powers with 4-5 procs in it, I think there's too many damage procs to begin with anyways, but I also do see there should be a viability of being able to slot 2 damage procs into a long recharging aoe power. The damage procs have already been painted into this corner and some builds make use of these quirks to great effect. What these proc players do doesn't make my doms any less fun to play. With that prefaced what this change to Sorcery has done has illustrated how where it required a scalpel to RoP and a unique buff to one of the t1 powers it turned into a hammer to the whole thing. Now large scale that to procs and yeah lots less people playing even though I feel there's too many damage procs I can still see the health of the population we have to play with on Excelsior is at high risk if such a hammer is used in this manner with future changes.

I understand how those Origin t5 powers work, I typically will have Unleash Potential, the Force of Will pool overall feels just right and the other powers I needed to select in it were fine powers in their own right. So my issue was never really with RoP going down to 60s to match the others, it was that the other powers were not attractive to take which you had to do to get RoP. On my dom with 100% global built in recharge, Hasten and then internally on Unleash I have I'd say 120% recharge thanks to Agility alpha. That's quite a lot to build for and still Unleash Recharges at 150s, which would net me 40% uptime without neutering my build in other things. To achieve 45-50% uptime would be quite the feat which would likely be detrimental to the overall survivability of the character chasing recharge bonuses while not targeting defense or hp as well. And yet still I'd like to have that option than a value set lower for me than what I could already get by accident. It's not a buff, it's making it a lesser power for the sake of making it more user friendly for the general population that already didn't take Sorcery.

Yes I can comprehend the notes. Rune is going from an up time of 90s to 40s, less than half. The total up time you're able to achieve went from a max of 75% to 33%. I'd be totally fine with it being a max of 50% but likely only feasibly achievable in the 40-45% range realistically. This change is skewing towards the same reason I don't take Shadow Meld on my stalkers, the constant reapplication of SM is intrusive to my attack chain, which this'll likely be. The ally buff is going to be a small tick up in absorb shield starting at a lower value than what I already didn't have slotted to use in my tray. Best thing was the Arcane Bolt with a mechanic I'm familiar with. I'd venture to say most players will still already have a better attack in their arsenal for their chains. Overall nerf.

Then why even devote time to doing this is the whole point of contention. The whole point of the Travel revamp was to allow for a diversification of selection of pools. But then the nerf to Sorcery seems to counter the very logic they used to revamp travels. With Sorcery already only being selected at a 5% rate, which is abysmally low mind you considering every character made has the option of also selecting this pool, what'll be next? Love it or hate it proc's ARE on deck. Which will really affect the health of the population pool we all will have to play with much more so than any Sorcery nerf. Have at it what you will with Sorcery, I won't miss it. I'll be withdrawing my battle lines to power boost and whatever logic they drum up for Force of Will.

Could I ask in anticipation of any crossover logic being applied to the other Origin Pools that this doesn't apply to Force of Will or Experimentation's t5's please. This being available set at a constant of 1/3 of the time will definitely have me respec out of Sorcery on toons I hardly even play. The changes to Arcane Bolt seemed pretty cool though. If only the duration was only brought down on RoP to 60s but I guess I'll be picking up the old usual pools.

From what I understand the new base flight speed is equal to what we have currently in Flight AND Afterburner (which you're not allowed to fight in). Then you can intermittently buff your flight speed further using Afterburner. Then the old t5 power is now a defense power you can fight with while using plus some control resist. And this is bad in any way how? Plus I never said Afterburner was being "buffed" I said Flight was getting a free buff to its speed along with getting Afterburner to use for even further speed.

Egads! How ever will we be able to have new issues? With continuity?! Pfft!

BUT if with these new speed buffs @Jimmy if I can't actually reverse time in game with Super Speed well my disappointment will be immeasurable.

Yeah I'm gonna have to chime in here from an objective standpoint. Every travel is getting a speed buff at less of a slotting, you can still slot sets if you choose to want to do that. We are getting free buffs to the travels like Afterburner and the like. We're getting revamps of some pools like stealth and flight. Wins all around.... Other than testing for wonkyness and maybe some critiques of what it looks like for SR and Ninjitsu's movement interacting with other travels I don't see where there can be much of a fuss for this. This is a straight change to everything for the better. It would be neat to maybe see a purple travel set added some time later to celebrate the travel revamp.

I have a Dark Assault/Soul Mastery dom I can give some pointers on the powers I take. You take your t1 blast then I go with Gather Shadows, the pbaoe power at 20, the Life Siphon and Moonbeam. I don't target that t9 attack since it's dot and well I just don't feel the want for it. Soul Mastery though is fantastic. I go with the resist shield, Soul Drain, Dark Consumption (helps refill my endo in emergencies) and either the Seer pet or Dark Obliteration depending if I want more aoe damage or ST damage from the pet. You're going to be starved for slots though, it's the Dominator's life. For slotting I go: 1 50+5 recharge on Gather Shadows, the pbaoe 6 slots with winter set, Life Siphon I go 3 of touch of nictus and 3 of apocalypse (as much heal, acc and dmg u can pull) and Moonbeam 5 slots of Manticore w/proc + javelin proc. If you have the slots I'd 5-6 slot that first attack then with winter stuff. I 4 slot the shield w/unbreakable guard, 5 slot SD w/purple set, 5 slot Dark Oblit (or 3 for pet) and 2 slots on Dark Consumption.

Apocalypse I'ma villain gotta have goals. 😛.. 😈

At level 18 I take the aoe hold and don't look back. If you're not putting that into your bag of tricks right away you're doing yourself and your team a big disservice. With domination running you can instantly lock down a group so if you get ambushed you're the one doing the ambushing. Also, based on the longer recharge of these powers damage procs fire off real well on this too so you can always turn it into your own mini nuke, I have mine slotted with 5 of the purple set w/proc + the pvp proc. Most of the standard power availabilities for the control AT's I'd say are in the right spots, give or take a few tweaks here and there. Some pets are pretty good, singularity, while others may need some work so there's where I'd be for adjusting the pet powers to make the pets universally good.

I have an EM/Invuln stalker so maybe I can give a few pointers that may cross over. With ET I slot 5 of the Heca's with the proc plus also the pvp proc. For my pbaoe powers I like the winter set, oblit's and or maybe your scrapper ATO's. Then on my resists I like to slot them all to 4 with Unbreakable Guards for that melee defense bonus. I do take Unstoppable too and slot it with the Steadfast unique plus the Gladiator Armor unique I'd work in on one of the resists too. As for pools I take Hasten, it's too good to pass up and allows you to get out those nasty ET's more frequently. I also have Fighting, Leadership and I like Force of Will for the defense shield when I really need it which'll softcap all of my elementals except psi and positional except ranged which will still be pretty good. I look at Unleash Potential as a longer lasting less intrusive version of Shadow Meld.

Yeah I like to take hasten and put that on auto and then put domination in the area where I'm most prone to click so usually next to the build up type power. On top of hasten I shoot for another 85%-95% more recharge as a buffer in case I get preoccupied or hit with a -recharge debuff that those arach's have. It's a good amount of recharge but not overkill so you have room to build in other things like defense, hp or w/e you like. But you're more slotted for recharge than my dom with the most which has 170%. So likely repetition on the reclick and getting some defense to avoid those -recharge attacks.

Mind/Psi is the highest populated dominator but it's weird I never really saw the synergy of the two. Psi is all about aoe so you want to make sure to rush into melee to take advantage. Mind is more about hard control than it is to adding to aoe damage, which a lot of AT's can do better but when paired with some of the other controls that add to aoe damage like plant or fire it's pretty good together. For Mind control I go with Mesmerize, Dominate, Confuse, Total Domination, Mass Confusion and Terrify. I like to slot a full set of malaise into mass confuse, purple set into ST confuse, Ascendancy full set into the ST hold, 5 of the purple set w/proc + pvp proc into the AoE hold, then 3 slots of the other ATO set into terrify. I don't bother slotting Mesmerize but it is a useful power still if you'd like to sleep something so I put in a 50+5 apoc dmg IO. Just go with hasten, it's too good and fits in your build easy. Maybe the new fly will be good but as it is currently it's not conducive to your melee pbaoe powers, but you'll want hover for the defense power and then target 2 more pools with defense powers like fighting and either leadership or w/e u like with defense powers to slot the lotg's.

The thing I found neat about this game was how much it was allowing you to use your intelligence and creativity to build characters especially with the introduction of IO sets. You can tell we have some very intelligent creatures playing this game and that's a total asset to the community. Some are more helpful than others and some may come off more haughty (raises hand) than they mean but to me there's no need to baby anyone in the crowd, being blunt and forthright does not insult my intelligence and that's how I try to communicate although it'd probably be in a funny tone that doesn't translate to text. You can tell there's people of various trains of thought here, some are the more focused tinkerers working on the engines and then there's the broader scoped people driving the car who have a good feel for the car but may not know exactly how to build the engine. A good synergy to win the race requires open communication on all fronts even if it may be hard to hear or even explain in either direction. I don't mind nerfs so much but I do enjoy diverse creative options which some nerfs it feels like go out of their way to squash especially on things quite outside the norm like the Sorcery pool. Most times the engine builder is best suited to building the car, but sometimes the driver's input should be heeded more.

My question is with Hover and whatever combination of EM and the like will my homage Super Wonder Woman tank now move in the air like that cheating Superman at ease in any direction mid-fight or will it still be more like normal flyers where the ground fighter is the more skilled and maneuverable? Just seeing if I should drop some powers for Hover and EM. Likely not, it'd be a tight squeeze but if it's too fun then I may. Thanks for the free Afterburner though and all the Travel revamps for that matter.

I'm glad they added that QoL feature where you didn't have to retoggle your self affecting toggles, job well done. The values of toggles should suppress as they do and if this team feels the need to devote manhours to making it so offensive toggles don't detoggle but just suppress from working while mezzed I have no issue. There must have been a valid reason for leaving offensive ones to turn off and being that most characters have maybe only one offensive toggle they need to retoggle big whoop. As for dominators yes I do have the status protection but I play blasters and corruptors frequently too so the experience I take from my doms translates well over to my other squishies.

Break Frees, Rune of Protection, take your mez shields, Clarion, Melee Hybrid, team with buffers that give mez protection, cap your defenses. That's just from the top of my head, shall I go on? It's not dismissive, if someone's having issues with mez they've identified their weakness, there's toooooonnnnns of helpful people on the forums to walk someone through how best to avoid being controlled. Being mezzed in this game is a quaint gimmick that keeps you on your toes and should push you to adapt. Yes it'd be funny to watch tanks get mezzed every once in a while but meh.

Back in my day if you got mezzed you had to retoggle everything you had running, even sprint... The change to how detoggling when mezzed works was a great QoL update. I understand the explanation they gave for why the offensive ones just couldn't operate the same way and trust there really was an issue that offensive ones just needed to detoggle. If I get caught by the game and get mezzed and die, I die, so what. Being a Dominator main I see what I do to the npc's and don't wish that onto myself so I know to build to avoid such a happening. Yeah your outward defenses get shut down even though they don't detoggle but I know to build internal defenses up as best I can because that doesn't get shut down. Then there's all kind of things that'll break you out of mezzes. I mean how easy do we need to make the game? Log on, take a gondola ride, pet some geese, punch some monkeys, participate in a CC and log off?

Yeah I've been to RV a tad. I forsee problems tinkering with mez in pve but have at it. Wasted resources though I'd say, mez currently is not the boogey-man some are making it out to be.

Any time there's any suggestion of bringing ANYTHING over from the pvp areas it's met with "Don't bring your pvp trash over to my safe space!" I'd assume if they did something like that it would not only affect controls to player operated characters but also how ones controls would affect non players in the same way. The mez system in any form coming from pvp would need to see controller archetypes and maybe some defenders solely be the only ones with access to actual controls. This'll be a bigger can of worms than just implementing one aspect I would think.

Since burnout from the speed pool affects primary and secondary powers you're able to double the duration of these powers. If meleers were so inclined they could lean onto those t9's heavier. Which you rightly cannot do by insta charging pool powers with burnout.

I have two characters with Rune, a SR stalker and a dom that benefit greatly and solely from the added resistance. This is getting thick, all attributes in Rune are attractive each in their own right. Resistance is a BIG draw for me to the power especially on something where I have my defenses already settled.