Mezmera

Whenever I create a dominator once I reach level 32 I stop what I'm doing and go build in my IO's. You don't need to be level 50 to be permadom. Heck my doms are set for perma in the low 20s if they ever exemp. Someone experienced at playing them doesn't even need to be perma to be big time influential on the team, permadom just pushes you to the front of the team. It's not like it's expensive to do so either, I can scrape some money from a 50 or two.

But that doesn't really only belong in the Dominator wish list then. Those other typed powers don't have purple or winter sets for a reason. They already have a plethora of great uniques, it'd be hard to outdo those with a whole new batch of enhancements. I mean I wouldn't flat out say no to new sets but lets not kid around that defense, resist and heals don't already have some fine IO's, just because they're not colored purple doesn't mean they don't act like purples. Getting back to doms I'd venture to say they have it real good in terms of what they can slot. Yes it's a slot starved AT but there's so many winter and attack sets you can slot plus controls have a slew of purple sets. Ascendancy of the Dominator is a great ATO set as well, the only thing that requires some attention is the lackluster second ATO set. Other than that in terms of what doms can use for enhancements they are in the best position to make use of everything.

What you mean like be a brute? How about once the target is completely controlled and under 50% health we do double damage to the target. Or maybe every so often our attacks crit for double damage, well that'd be awesome but still. So you'd just have doms revamped into the ability of another AT? Such variety.

Yes now it's a year later and am still waiting. For two weeks I had been waiting for you calling you to come compare and contrast your dom to mine since you give some peculiar advice. It's too bad you never did because maybe you'd have learned not to give such a bad take earlier in this thread which I gave that big fat "no" to. From now on don't talk if you won't show, that'd be my advice.

Right back at ya! Still waiting on you to come show me how to dom.

no

I slot my Terrify to 3 with the Fiery Globe set for the hp buff plus I'm slot starved. The little bugger will only spawn one at a time anyways and with the target count of 16 and the longer-ish recharge he'll always spawn when I use the power. I do agree the set in general could use a bit more tuning, the pet could be made a tad better. Ascendancy of the Dominator is a great set. I slot that into my ST hold for the juicy bonuses and the AoE hold I slot the purple set with the proc plus another proc, based on the longer recharge those procs are almost all going to fire so it's a nice boost to aoe damage.

As a purely QoL feature that'd really help those that aren't trained to keep their eye glued to re-clicking domination I'd totally advocate for a way to have there being two auto-click powers at your disposal. I know that may be a hard ask with the coding as it is but this feature would benefit everyone plus make life easier for new dom players. Also, it'd be nice if we could switch the villain alignment auto fill domination power to either vigilante or rogue since most people would like to team on whatever side they are on without having to jump to pocket D every time. It's a nice little power and even though I may be a villain I masquerade as a rogue so I can gather intel on them pesky heroes.

I'd say if you feel you have too many attacks/controls at your disposal and not much time to use them then you are probably correct in your assessment. Typically on any dom I have I take 5-6 of the best controls/attacks with a good mix of aoe controls and attacks along with the stronger ST damage. I cringe anytime I see a dom with more than 6 attacks, I get sometimes for set building reasons but the AT is already slot starved so focusing on the important stuff is where it's at on a dom. With the open powers I build myself up with the pool and epic powers. My dom has better defenses than my stalkers with hard aggressive controls to boot. She's much more fun than playing my tank, my tank can't aggro control 48 targets at a time if she so chooses.

Being a Dom main for a long time now I'll chime in here. Leave domination as it is, it's been tinkered with already, this ability is what sets it aside from other easy to play zombie AT's. It's too hard for you and you have problems grasping how to make a good dom and are unable to get a good feel for it, that's fine, but that's not so for everyone that plays this game. I find most other AT's mind numbingly easy to play but I don't go asking for a change to them to quench my thirst for more challenge, I'll just stick to my doms. Domination should be left as it is, you want to change the fundamental base of an AT go do that for something else. The better thing to do is to modernize their assault sets as they have done some already. I think AT's like blasters and stalkers have just outpaced in their upgrades in comparison to doms so it's not as appealing to play one but you can still be a fantastic animal on one although it's a bit of a challenge. Before we go asking for a wholesale change if anyone would like to see what a dom is capable of in experienced hands I'd challenge anyone to bring their favorite toon and see if you can keep pace with my dom. You might just find out it's not the dom it's you.

My Mind/Nrg can solo AV's. Controls are a bit useless but they do eventually kick in for a time so I'll still work the ST hold and confuse into my arsenal. Energy has fabulous ST damage plus you can also powerboost your defenses so I'll typically have capped defenses thanks to alternating Unleash Potential and Barrier. I also have pretty great resists should anything get through and I carry a tray of greens/reds and some oranges. A big thing you'll want to get is some way to get -resist and -regen that's where I use Weaken Resolve and Envenomed Daggers when needed.

On my doms that I have the option of a ST immobilize or the hold as my first power pick I always take the hold. Control sets get better power choices later on so I'd rather have a real control in a hold to start. It's kind of tough for doms too because the t1 blasts are obsolete real quick as well and you HAVE to take that. Then there's mind doms who get either a breakable ST sleep or a knockback power where the draw is damage but dom's later attacks outshine this power as well. My mind dom has the sleep and t1 blast both unslotted and mostly unused. So in some cases on doms you're getting the option of two underwhelming powers. I'm not too keen on buffing control sets but some tweaking may be in order, maybe reshuffle certain powers up and down.

If you only want to make one why not Mind/Energy? Energy has surpassed Fire in all aspects. Thanks to the Energy Release mechanic no longer locking you out there's for certain no combo of attacks on a dom that can keep pace with the damage of Total Focus, Power Burst and Snipe. On top of that you get power boost which amplifies all of your controls and defenses. I cap every aspect of my defenses on a dom with a power boost ability, not so for one without, so you can play your capped defense dom any which way you please, be it hovering or zerging. Yes with the nerf to Whirling Hands Psi is back to being better in pbaoe damage but there's other areas you can pull pbaoe damage from. Plant is strong though yes, the confuse is too good and because they were busy with other things it never got the rebalancing that Mass Confusion received with Mind being a legacy power from the beginning.

Dom's can be built very tough. Typically I'll get around 90% recharge baked in from the various bonuses and then focus on my defenses and hp. I like to take the fighting pool for the defenses and resists plus you can slot things like gamblers and the resist unique +defenses. I also can't stand missing on my doms, I like to pair an offensive playstyle with my beefy defenses, so I like to take the leadership pool for Tactics and Maneuvers. Additionally Unleash Potential from the Force of Will pool is a fantastic defense you can alternate with something like Barrier for crazy defenses at all times. My dom runs 56+ positional defenses and 50+ elemental for redundancy. She also has 70% s/l, 40% toxic/negative, and 20% other resistances along with 1500 hp. Built right there's nothing like a dom. Where there's a will there's a way.

Not gonna get too detailed in the slotting but the power choices for the Secondary match how I run my Energy dom. I also take Soul Mastery but I skip Dark Obliteration in lieu of the Seer pet since I can skimp on the slotting, I do like to slot that resist shield well though, I see it as the best overall shield a dom can get. I'd also suggest something to ponder. With Power Up being able to boost defense values it'll boost a long lasting defense click very well. My Unleash Potential goes from 20% defense for all to 31% by just clicking Power Up prior. It's an easy way to build out those defenses. I'm not too familiar with Dark Control but on a dom the goal is more to dabble in some important powers and then build yourself with pools and such. The confuse, hold and aoe hold are a must and then a few others. Dark seems like it'd pair nice with Energy.

Thanks for all you guys and gals do! Have a great holiday!

All in all I think it's a great community. A lot of people lost something they loved and never figured it'd be back so I think some of the good vibe stems from just being able to play again. I pretty much enjoy all aspects of the community, from the hardcore statisticians to the rp'ers and even the trolls for the most part. I mean pretty much the only thing that irks me is when some more "authoritative" people start to ramble on about how much they know because they were in closed beta back in the 90's. Even then though some of their perspective I've found helpful so I'll usually stick to my guns but also keep an open mind that there may be broader perceptions that I might not have seen. I'm glad the game isn't in corporate hands anymore and in more caring control. Although, I don't like at all how the closed testing for i27 went on for so long without any mentioning months prior to engage in any discussion. Really my disappointment stemmed from the fact that most people care about the game that could be trusted some to have a good discussion about the state of the game prior to a bunch of implemented things because as you say it's a pretty reasonable community. Just about everyone cares about the game that is still around so a bit more dialogue I'd hope for in the future with tempered expectations on all sides. So far I like what the team has done with their version and hope to see greater things to come!

There's no crash on those last Origin pool powers.

I've taken Unrelenting and spec'd out of it a few times until I came to the conclusion that there's just better things to chase than to waste 2 powers for one that's somewhat useful. I tried to give Unrelenting a fair shot but that it lasts only 30 seconds and yet still has a long recharge it's just not a reliable power to factor into your build the boosting abilities from this one. At least the origin pool powers stay active for at least double the amount of time. Rather than taking two useless powers I found it much more beneficial to just take defense powers where you can slot gamblers to get almost the same recharge numbers PLUS get the side benefit of always active defense values. Then there's the damage boost which if you just take assault having that one always active turns out to be better in terms of keeping better sustained damage. Adrenal would be okay to try to factor the alternating boosts into your build but having given Unrelenting it's fair look over I just wouldn't vouch for it.

Don't know if it'd be feasible. I usually take Unleash Potential which is about the same in terms of recharge and structure. Typically I'll get 90-100% more recharge into my build plus also hasten. Even with that Unleash Potential is active for a minute and down for 1:20 so even with AB's 35% more recharge I don't see it being able to be perma without an unnecessary amount of baked in recharge. Better off optimizing in defenses and other things.

I heard through the grapevine that the all being power tinkerer when the idea was floated by someone on their closed server with these other energy melee changes his response was not a chance in hell. Reasonable response seeing how it'd be bs if one powerset in an AT would be able to take such a huge advantage over all of the other powersets of that class of a shared epic pool. Yes there's fiery embrace and the fire pool but fast ET on one secondary of a dom would be hax. It's already great damage as it is.

That .75, 1.05 and .95 doesn't have the bearing on the Assault Hybrid as you may think, at least for the damage boosting tree. Yes the lower damage scale characters would get better use out of the proc if it was solely based on not factoring how much damage boost you can attain already. The global damage bonus you can attain factors into those multipliers so if you can reach the damage caps it's just better to do that on a dom at 1.05 x 300% damage boost than a brute at .75 x 300% boost yes (brutes have a higher cap though). That's just the base damage signifier for certain ATs and their attacks. Some dom attacks have a significantly higher damage scale like the snipe which is base 3.56 damage. You take that snipe and then you can magnify it tremendously with global damage boosts. A better thing to equate the one hybrid to is Build Up or especially Fury. It's an internal mechanism for boosting your overall damage for a short time through clicking that certain power whereas the assault toggle gives you a boost in damage by maintaining your attacks, which would be just like a "fury" mechanic but on any AT you want to use this incarnate power on. The one Assault Hybrid boosts your current global damage for a time being for every attack you execute which equates into that 300% damage cap you can reach for a dom and is nicely suited to characters with a lot of aoe. The other Hybrid gives you a damage proc of especially more use if you're already able to near that 300% mark or don't constantly zerg all over the map to get full use out of the other hybrid and this proc damage is then where some of that AT base damage scale weighs in based on a certain percentage of that specific attacks damage. So yes on a Brute it'd be a proc percentage based on whatever attack it may be like Energy Transfer as opposed to a Jab. But since you're already basically capping your damage boosting with fury the one assault hybrid that boosts your damage is meaningless therefore it's just better to have the proc anyways. Tanks and other characters sub 1.0000 damage scale would be better off with the proc and higher damage scale characters would be better with the damage boosting but ultimately the question you want to ascertain for your character is how close are you already to capping your damage boosting abilities.

On a squishy character you can get tons of defense and defense bonuses from so many different things. It's much harder to get your resistances high. I'd rather not rely on the possibility of scorpion shield giving some lucky defense based on the factor it defends against S/L. If I went scorpion its for the easy gambler mules and the bane mace. I do my best to avoid having to look to the epics for any defenses mainly because there's no focus on positional defenses which I can cap without the epic shields. A broad resistance based shield from the epic pools is much more attractive to me and the soul shield offers so much coverage that I can't otherwise obtain. I get it with scorpion though, it's easy if not efficient.

I think we have a plethora of underutilized zones as it is so I don't think making any more new zones is necessary. But what I would like to see is harder new content developed with neat new features introduced such as when you have to fight your clone in the villain tip missions along with new mechanics like the blue circles of death when you fight Battle Maiden in the Apex task force. We have a few zones pretty much wholly unused at the moment like Khalisti. I'd like to see the next chain of fights building on the incarnate contacts after Dark Astoria with harder fresh content. If "develop new zones" was dropped from this topic I wouldn't see why the rest of the topic wouldn't just fall in line with itself. More hard fresh new missions utilizing places like Khalisti Wharf would be my vote for high priority among any future features being discussed.

Pulled straight from this link it reiterates what I was saying. Damage bonus factors into how much damage you can do until it doesn't, which is then where you are at the damage cap by factoring in the damage enhancement from slotting your powers combined with the global damage bonus for all your powers you are able to achieve. Doublehit is not subject to the damage cap, because it's not a damage buff, it's a proc. If you're often at the damage cap, Core does nothing for you, so go Radial. As I was illustrating there's ATs that benefit more from the double hit like Brutes because thanks to a high amount of Fury they'll have their damage boosted to the max typically so they get much more use out of an additional amount of proc damage. Along with most AT's that have lower damage bonus caps if they're able to already considerably boost it on their own.