Mezmera

Typically on characters with lower damage caps like doms I'll go with the double hit hybrid. I'll usually take Soul Drain and having one kin on my team should get my damage to cap at that 300% so the double hit is much more useful. I think the only ATs that benefit from the other Hybrid most are Stalkers, Scraps and Blasters....oh my....

You can hard cap defense at 175% I believe. For incarnate content you'll want to get your defenses above the 56% threshold so there's that. Also, like everyone is pointing out you can never go wrong with more defense in case of things like defense debuffs which can be quite nasty when you're not expecting it. Typically I like to get my defenses to around that 56% mark in my builds as best I can then I have things like Barrier and Unleash Potential to amp up my defenses as much as I can. Where I'd normally carry purples in my inspiration tray with great defenses baked in I will carry oranges instead so I can cap both defenses and resists should I need to.

The Good: - EM. The revision of this powerset had me remake my very first tank which was Invuln/EM but this time around in a nastier stalker version. I'm having a blast with it and it feels good, maybe even a little too good, I'm leery about any future rebalancing seeing how I was having tons of fun on my doms Whirling Hands before this issue. - Asymmetrical shoulders. I'd like to see a few more already in game costume options available (I'm looking at you seer robes) but the new shoulders option is a nice touch. - Athletic Sprint. Is this new or did I just not see until now? Either way I don't see myself crouching as I'm running it's awful on the back so this is a nice addition for all of my characters without Super Speed, which is all of them. The Bad: - Speaking of dominator's Whirling Hands, it's now relegated to mediocre status again. I appreciate the no lockout feature and see how tinkering would be necessary to avoid doms running around dropping double damage Whirling Hands like they're hot all day long but I think this was the worst avenue to take. On the discussion board not one Energy dom player it feels like was given consideration when asking for another avenue to be taken with the tinker even though all seem to have valid concerns and gave objective critiques. I can live with it but I'm saving my chip for that ominous Powerboost nerf being pontificated. - I'm all for new content but sub 45 content is in abundance and would have liked to have seen some later content - More blaster winning. Since the days of live it has been transformative for this AT. Why play anything else? Could we stop nerfing stuff and if that's not a path we can tread then I advocate for toning down crashless nukes if we need parity so badly. The Fugly: - The new teleport accolade. I have a neutral stance on this one. For some reason copy pasting that teleport command never worked for me nor a lot of other "cheats" and I swears I'm doing it right they just don't work. Back in my day getting around with this new fangled Oro portal felt like you were taking a rocket ship so this new accolade button I can press will be neat but just based on habit I don't know how mindful I'll be to use it. But I do empathize with everyone that don't like their keys being taken away from them in the form that it was. Edit: I will defer to @macskull on this power as I've attested to having little experience with the exploit and if it pretty much behaves the same way but now with a button and some adjustment then well so be it.

Yeah the change turned out just as I suspected. The ST damage got a major boost with the no lockout feature which I could tell was going to benefit Power Burst and Bone Smasher. What once was great fun with Whirling Hands is now back to mediocre. With the no lockout feature I can objectively say that Whirling Hands with being able to recharge in 5 seconds doing double damage at all times would be OP as all get out. I feel they went the worst route with it to head off the brokenness it would have been by changing it to instant recharge, but what kind of benefit is that gimmick since most doms would have it recharge so fast already. I rather they found a way to get it so that it does that great damage every 15 seconds so they'd have to raise the recharge quite a bit to compensate. Based on a generous amount of recharge everyone would already be slotted for that'd mean Whirling would have to be like a base 45 second recharge but do that crunchy damage when you do use it. That'd be a hard ask for any unslotted doms out there but it'd still be so much a more fun option than as is. All in all I can live with where Energy is at.

Ah yeah I see that, that big power list distracted me from that small list in the middle.

Based on the recharge associated with the longer recharging aoe holds damage procs work very well in the holds so I drop in the purple and pvp proc into it. It's a quite nice bit of damage.

In domination you have the best mez resistance in the game, the best control in the game, a full endurance gain every so often and a cool rainbow tint to your aura. It was fair what they did to normalize the damage between the have's and the have not's and I'd like no gatekeeping in the damage department. Perma is still a very great goal to build towards as it currently is, it doesn't need any tuning.

That's your damage resistance powers list. Stalkers cap their resistances at 75%, your defenses you'll want to get as high as you can. My SR stalker has 56+ M/R/AoE defenses and still every once in a while gets hit. The chances of you being hit really depend on what you're fighting. It looks like there's an Elite Boss mixed in to what you're fighting and they typically carry a higher tohitt value and so do AVs. The level of your enemies matters as well, if they're +4 or +5 to you there'll be a big difference in how much more often you'll get hit.

Your confused targets will not attack you and instead will direct their attacks towards every target not on your side. Just like all controller and dom pets you can't directly control what they do, just that you can summon them and they attack enemies in the vicinity. You're right confuse is not the same as having a pet ability. It's much better. You can have as many targets on your side as you like to attack other targets, you can confuse Raider force fields to use their bubble buffs not to mention other buffs you can obtain from other factions. Confuse powers are so much better than having a "pet".

Um you do realize that's what Mass Confusion does eh? You also have the regular confuse where you can have as many "pets" as you like which that power is always accessible so...

I'm going to have to go in the opposite direction with this power, for doms at least. I think Seeds of Confusion is OP as all get out and didn't get that rebalancing that Mass Confusion got way back in the day. There's other small tweaks I'd like to see in Mind Control but nothing so game breaking as a fast recharging Mass Confusion. If it were up to me I'd reorganize the first 5 powers so that the Hold is the t2 power like all the other control sets and then I'd move Confuse up to t3. I'd also up the limit of targets on telekinesis from 5 to 8. That'd pretty much butter my biscuit for Mind Control.

I used to have Mass Hypnosis way back when the Lord Recluse Strike Force was hard so I could use the sleep method. Nowadays my dom can just tank that aggro so I'll pick the powers that have more effect like the aoe hold, confuse and terrify. I do take Mesmerize seeing how sleeps are still useful if your team knows not to wake them. Solo it is a more useful power but there's already a lot of good things to choose from, I'd skip this power.

I'd have to agree you'll really want to pick up Total Focus, it's the crux of the powerset. The blasts are nice but you don't really need them all, the last few are mighty nice. Personally I'd drop vengeance but still keep tactics, the tohitt buff is really helpful in every power you use. Someone else on the team is bound to have Vengeance too plus you can make up that Gambler +recharge somewhere else if needed. As for Ice Mastery the best powers to me are Sleet, Ice Shield and Hoarfrost.

Yes. Demonic is a nice extra layer of emergency defenses. I'm not so perturbed by the change to recharge since my characters have a bunch of layers so I don't run around depending on Demonic for my salvation, although it is a nice extra thing in your pocket in a pinch. All of my favorite characters I get the HP accolades and Demonic.

I went with G & H. With greater Incarnate Powers comes greater responsibility to Harder foes. Most other options are pretty decent but I wanted to continue the conversation on more fresh abilities and content.

I think it's the limited amount of new stuff to do for the fully powered characters. You can only run the same ol' TF's and Itrials so much until you start asking what's next? What I was most looking forward to with the Going Rogue expansion was much more to do after you're fully powered. People with alititis have their cake and that's fine but those that were looking for more to do at 50+ they only got a bite. New stuff to do at high level benefits everyone because it's more content for alts. For me I latch onto a few characters I like most and play those and I've watched the same cutscenes over and over so I've found other things for a while so I don't get burnt out on this. The lack of new stuff for quite a while and the disheartening thing I heard about a nerf to Energy doms when they were just revamped really had me just going to do other things. I'm all for rebalancing things when they are made too good by mistake but some changes seem so ham handed and things have been tinkered with for so long without any input from those that have grown fond of the very things they are tinkering with. I'd rather not play that game of constantly buffing/nerfing. I'd so much rather have more challenging stuff to do with these supposedly OP characters. As for powerleveling being any culprit I doubt it. I find the 1-30's mundane I've played them so much in the past, I PL to 30 and play from there. It's a lot more fun to play with more toys and there's probably a lot that feel this way too.

Um unless I've misunderstood the change completely this change to movement powers does not affect how they currently are for a vast majority of AT's like dominators. This change is specific to the AT's with a movement buff power in their "primary/secondary" which would not affect dominators in the slightest. If you hadn't noticed they listed the 4 specific power sets that will be affected by this. There's a few Origin Power pools still left to be ported in and I think they are adding one that'll specifically work well with these 4 power sets. Just my thought but it does seem like there'll be a rhyme & reason.

1. No, inspirations will work just fine for you. Build up those defenses though. 2. I take Mesmerize, it's still a very useful power at minimal slotting. I slot just the Apocalypse dmg +5 IO into it for the psi damage when I need it. Mesmerize is far more useful than Levitate and you have to take one of the two. As for the rest of the powers these are the ones I run with on this dom. Mesmerize, Dominate, Confuse, Total Domination, Mass Confusion and Terrify. On Energy I take the first blast then Power Boost, Whirling Hands, Total Focus, Snipe and Power Burst. 3. If you're going psi mastery for thematic reasons sure. Soul Mastery though pairs real nice with Energy. 4. Force of Will is very much worth it on this dominator. Normally on a dom very well slotted Unleash Potential nets you around 21% defense but if you use Power Boost just before you click UP you'll get another 10% defense. So you're running around with 31% defense to all types with just this one power not to mention all of the other avenues you can pull out defense bonuses. A well built dom with tons of recharge will get this to recharge in say 2:15 so you'll have it available half of the time and the other half of the time I use the Incarnate Barrier so that I'm running around defense capped at all times.

I bet they're coming out with the Utility Belt Origin Pool and don't want that travel power getting outshined by a power that it costs nothing to get. So they're probably going to leave the better coinciding movement ability in that as a reason to take Utility Belt and that's why the nerf to the other travels.

Hence the suggestion of toning down the auto proc damage from 100% to say 75% and maybe even raise the recharge on it so it's not totally exploitable now with the new more fluid Energy mechanic that doesn't have the lockout. As Powerhouse points out it's Energy's only aoe and the old version was subpar and it seems we're just going back to that. Fun.

Well. Instant recharge means you'd still have to toggle up a second animation to achieve what you're already able to achieve with one animation. Sometimes you'll get distracted with having to range blast a target, control another target or aoe control a mob that's aggro'd out of nowhere. Often times you're just not better off having to keep spamming that pbaoe to try to achieve what you were once able to do with one animation and then you could shift gears to another power. As @Carnifax points out Whirling Hands already recharges in 5 seconds and most times you'll get caught up using some other attack and then you can go right back to Whirling Hands without the new special mechanic. Instantly recharging when it's already a 5 second recharge isn't any big deal. What it's really going to do is teach a bad habit of spamming Whirling Hands to try to squeeze out what it once was for Energy Assault. It's just going back to being an underwhelming power for doms.

Valid reasoning and I get where you're coming from about it being just a bit too good as it currently is. The Energy revamp was so fun I remade my Mind/Nrg from live thanks to it so you guys did well with taking a low tier secondary and making it top tier. I think most of the doms more familiar with their Energy Assault don't see the instant recharge to be any real benefit because this attack likely recharges very fast already for them and they now will be doing half the damage per animation. We don't want to get into an endless Whirling Hands loop just to get the same juice out of it as we had before. Speaking from my experience I love the quick burst of damage and then being able to cycle to another power depending on what I need, cycling right back to Whirling feels like it'll be a bit counterproductive to the dom. Typically Energy attacks have the association of being strong in ST so I like what you're doing for the rest of the Energy powers out there. It is tricky with the dom Whirling Hands as you say it's their only AoE and you've seem to have made it a bit too good. I like that you're making the Energy Mechanic more fluid which'll make those ST attacks all the better so there's that. Because I see what's going to happen with the ST attacks I'm more inclined to not be as upset about what's going to happen to Whirling. But it does seem like it's going to go back to being an underwhelming power in their arsenal. If I had the magic wand I'd probably work it out so that Whirling had a little bit higher recharge and leave in some of that extra damage. The formula for more recharge equates to more damage I'd skew a bit lower on it and let some of that proc damage stay to compensate for some of that formula and a little bit extra. So that when you're not using it in Energy Mode then it'll be a little below average based on the formula it should have and a bit above average when in Energy Mode. I just think a lot will be put off by the habit it's going to try to force onto Energy doms. That's just my two cents, all in all I like what you guys are doing with the revamped powersets. Giving blasters a pbaoe -resistance debuff not so much.

Yeah and it already recharges super fast so instantly recharging feels like a big whoop. For the insta recharge to feel useful they'd probably need to raise the base recharge on Whirling which should coincide with a damage increase due to the recharge rate increase so it'll likely be back to being "OP". Any route they take with it I see there being one exploit or another other than this nerf. I too would rather they just lowered the extra damage down to 75% and called it a day.

In it's current form it does feel a little too good but on a dom nowadays should that really be any issue? Constantly spamming Whirling Hands is going to feel very counterproductive to the AT. If they felt it necessary to nerf it I'd rather they just lowered the extra auto proc damage from 100% to maybe 80%. Conversely though with the mechanic being always active it means Power Burst and Bone Smasher should always have that extra damage available. So with the loss on aoe damage by default the change to the mechanic seems to be buffing the ST damage.

The damage is very minor. It's not a great power and the little orb could use a slight upgrade. It does draw aggro for you though and it is a minor damage uptick on it's own so if there's an upgrade to it the orb might be quite nice.