Mezmera

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.

Aiming for the HP buff I 3 slot that set with the orb into my fast charging aoe control like terrify and aoe immobilize powers. You can only spawn one at a time and with that many available targets it's almost always guaranteed to spawn one. I have Whirling slotted with a full set of Obliteration's and I don't see any reason to change that.

Oh and also can we get the Stalker version of TF that can crit and build an extra reserve stack? Asking for a friend... ☺️

I don't like what's happening with Whirling Hands as I like to get that real good beefy damage out there as it has been and then follow up with the other stuff in my arsenal. Yes it has more potential for proc'ing but I don't like the idea of getting caught in a Whirling Hands loop just to maintain the damage I had been doing with it because it is now doing half the damage per animation. That being said I like this change to the Energy Mechanic being always available with no lockout and hopefully the buggyness has been worked out. So it seems to be a nerf to the aoe damage (especially based on playstyle) for a buff to the ST damage. Some doms are aoe machines but for the most part by just the sheer design of their attack structures they seem to be more specialized in ST damage. So if we're making the mechanic consistent and getting what is the likely outcome of a buff to Energy's ST damage I can live with this.

I'm glad they're fixing the mechanic but I detest the change to Whirling Hands. I get that it'll have the chance to proc more but the damage per animation just got cut in half and I don't want to get caught in an endless Whirling loop trying to make up for what we're losing out on what it was before this. If they just had to do this to fix whatever was going on with the mechanic so be it but if not then I wish they'd have just left Whirling as it is.

I'm going to have to agree on this one. Heard about this happening a few months ago and was utterly disappointed for my Energy dom. They just made Energy Assault great for once and then they go and do something like this and totally don't redeem themselves. You guys made a good attack for a dom and now you want to undo that why, too much fun? Glad they're working the bugs out for the mechanic but this one sucks.

You're playing the best dommie you can play. Lots of tools in the kit and superb melee, pbaoe, ranged and ST damage all in one. If you're not in the 30-40's with this dom you don't know yet it's full potential. My Mind/Nrg is my favorite dom and I'm kind of a vet on them. Get yourself perma and get those defenses up, you can tank and blast something fierce once you're built well. I fire farm on my Mind/Nrg. Plant, Dark and Mind are the better control sets. Fire, Energy and Psi are the better assaults. Some pair well and some not so much.

The Praetorian zones are completely going to waste. They never should have made new tutorial zones out of them and just made them 35-50 and 51+. The gold zones should have been the progression to PI+ instead of going unused. I don't DA so much because it's more of a hassle to get there. I bet if DA and if the content level was raised in the Gold zones to 51+ and was accessible through Oro and the trams there'd be a lot more people there.

To be fair to @Lockpick almost all of that is 35-50 or 45-50 content. His assertion is spot on that the overwhelming majority of content is all accessible in the 1-50 range. With Going Rogue we were promised a lot to do extra added onto the tail end of our high level characters so in effect we were supposed to feel like we were getting 51-60 content as per the 10 new levels of incarnate powers. All we ended up getting for the majority of Going Rogue was a ton of new low level content and a start towards more to do for 51-60. I'm not going to begrudge everything the people with altitis got but there's far and away more on your plate than someone who may have been clamoring for more to do with their favorite character. If they'd have made the new zones and focused on 51+ content everyone wins out because people that like to alt a lot have just as much more to do as those that play a few favorite characters exclusively.

My very first character when I found out about this being back was my Mind/Dark. Gather Shadows and Life Drain are the main reasons to go with Dark Assault, kinda sucks a lot of the revamped dom power sets took some of its uniqueness. You'll take the standard pbaoe attack, Gather Shadows, Moonbeam and Life Drain. With the heal I like to go with the dominator epic pool with Energy Transfer. There really is no ST attack that's better for doms and by such a large margin and the fact you can heal right back the damage it does to you kind of alleviates the worst part about it. The playstyle is a bit mixed but if you're taking ET you're going to want to melee quite often.

Mmhm. Don't trust this one! You'll somehow "stumble" into that dungeon and then walk out a NXS member for life.

All that info and no mention of your secret dungeon...

As others have been saying it's typically better to have it in Aim or BU because you have control that this proc will fire almost for certain every time you click that boost. I like to slot that whole set of Gaussian's for all those juicy bonuses but it's somewhat not optimal to do that in Aim or BU. Typically I like slotting that whole set into tactics as it has been suggested as a good alternative spot for that proc.

Placate is good for allowing you to go back into hide in effect and strike for a critical out of hide. But you'll only placate one person out of a group that you are in so odds are you're going to get hit again before you get to get that critical hit in. It is better on defense based stalkers where their defenses are capped but yeah I'd drop placate. The stalker ATO hide proc gets you about the same desired effect without wasting a power pick or animation time of placating.

There's no argument here with you, you can call gaming whatever terminology you'd like. To me a gamer is a gamer, someone who has the fundamental mindset required for the task of gaming. To what degree they take the time to hone their skills after that is just creatures being creatures. Wikipedia can call things whatever but life has been around a lot longer than Wiki, same with Webster's.

Well I've played with some very good basketball players who aren't "professional" being paid to play. Being paid doesn't make one any less good or bad and I've seen "elite" recruits get outplayed by a bunch of nobody's. Some people just fall through the cracks but to not say they're all just basketball players at the end of it would be fundamentally in-factual. I get there's a difference where you're playing pickup games there's sometimes the kid that never practiced and just shows up not knowing the fundamentals and expects to contribute in a game, and on that same token you can tell in a pickup game where someone has played all of their life. Mostly it's the time and effort someone has given to that chosen activity that determines whether or not if they are an actual "basketball player" or "casually playing basketball", nothing power about it. If someone shows up to CoH for 5 mins once a week and learns nothing then yes they are more "casual" but for the most part everyone is just gamers, how they choose to develop their gaming habit is up to them. So for me the only negative connotation would be the casual person showing up not knowing a thing expecting to contribute which I don't think this game really has any actual casual players, by now everyone at least has the fundamentals down, especially if they even found this game to play on again to begin with.

Yeah like where doesn't one try to maximize their results in most anything they are doing. Do they call football players powerplayers because they train to be as effective as they can be? How about dancers, they train to be as good at dancing as they can be, you won't call someone that dances a powerdancer. The negative connotation with "powergamer" assumes all that person does is sits in a basement playing videogames wearing diapers so they don't have to get up from playing while being some slob. The Southpark Warcraft episode did a fairly decent job depicting the stigma of "powergaming". You don't have to play this game days on end to be good at it. All one needs to know are what are the better powers available to them and how best to incorporate those into a fun experience for yourself. Trying to be effective and efficient is completely normal at anything you're doing be it dancing or gaming. I consider myself then a power monopoly gamer.

A lot of people that to you seem resistant to change in this thread are not. They are mostly looking at the nerf to TW and PPM and asking why not then Fire Blast by their justification. Sure if they'd like to tinker and spend all their energy constantly nerfing and buffing have at it. But as the example for Tanks goes. They were already easy mode characters with that bag of hp and plug and play defenses/resists. Giving them moar damage seemed to be counter intuitive to how they were typically designed to be the lead for the team and with more damage they've just become Brutes. Tanks were more looking at Brutes jealously it seems. So another avenue for "change" could have been looking at Brutes being almost the same defensively to Tanks. I don't know for how many I speak for but I don't think people are opposed to change, for me it's more about a varied approach. Honestly I'd just like the endgame content that was promised when I supported Going Rogue.

Well with Soul mastery you'll want to get the most out of the best power in that Patron being Soul Drain which will put you in melee with nice pbaoe damage plus it amps all of your following damage. I believe Dark control has a pbaoe toggle so that might be helpful. I've not played Dark control but I have experience on the other two. For Dark Assault the must haves are Gather Shadows, Moonbeam, Life Drain (you'll want to split this with 3 Touch of Nictus and 3 Apocalypse) and the pbaoe attack. Maybe the t9 attack as well but it's a ST DoT which I tend not to like. As for Soul Mastery all of these powers are actually quite nice. For sure the resistance shield, it's the best armor on doms. Then Soul Drain and you might run hot on endurance so I like taking Dark Consumption just in case I ever need it plus it's a decent little pbaoe damage boost if you'd like to use it that way too. The last two I don't as often take but the Seer boss is quite nice too and then there's the standard target aoe blast doms get in their Epics.

Who says the workbench isn't IO'd?

I'll always take one of the Origin pool powers for that last power. Even Experimentation can be good if you're set on defenses. I've taken Unrelenting for one of my tanky stalker builds when I can taunt but yeah the presence pool power picks are a whole lot of meh to get Unrelenting. At least with the Origin pools you get your travel and with Force of Will you get a sneaky nice little ST debuff which can slot the achilles.

Yeah there's no crash like Mr. Doom says. Typically on most of my characters I'll take one of the Origin pool powers for either Rune of Protection or Unleashed Potential. I will balance them out so if they have high defenses already I'll go with Rune and vise versa. My stalkers are quite tanky with one of these powers and some Incarnate power I can cycle in right after like barrier or the melee hybrid. My Invuln stalker has Unleashed and with it runs 56+ melee and elemental (30% psi) defenses. Paired with Invulns already nice resists she's quite a tough cookie.

I'm not talking about hover tanking. A portable workbench could do what you did...

I believe one of the remaining Incarnate powers left unfinished (Mind I think) was supposed to offer forms of aoe control not unlike how Judgement horns in on blasters area of expertise. I'd think it would be a novel thing to flesh out the last remaining Incarnate powers and then come up with some itrials, task force, DA mish that really promotes the use of an aoe control to make the enemies vulnerable.