Onlyasandwich

From city of data, as follows: Meteor: -25 sec Stalagmite: -2 sec Tombstone: -3 sec Upthrust: - 4 sec Entomb: -2.7 sec Rock Shards: -2 sec Shatter: -1.7 sec Encase: -1 sec Honestly really good! For anything but the nuke, I think it would be sort of finicky to rely on this as a substitute for Hasten, but it is a significant effect, as you observed. Even better since it's not a %, but a flat recharge reduction in seconds. This means it's taking off 50% or even more of the total recharge of a power if timing is right! The challenge then becomes not just timing the use of Seismic Force to make best use of this reduction, but also to leave yourself with enough shockwaves to trigger the effect in time again.

Edit: @Shred Monkey's comment on another thread got me to thinking about the implications of Seismic Force on overall cooldown, and whether it might be viable to skip hasten. I have entered a second hastenless build. Have any of you tried relying on this mechanic without hasten, and did it leave you wanting to go back to the land of glowing yellow hands? Edit 2: Further optimization added to squeeze some more resist and def, fit in buildup proc for snipe. Update for any interested: Added the final version of this build. Loving it! Absolutely my most fun blaster yet built on Homecoming. Good evening, blasterinos! I've had my eye on the newish Seismic set, and feel like Blaster is the best place to start with my next concept. I know there are quite a few builds shuffling about the forums, which I have reviewed for inspiration. I have a few goals in mind, and would love to see if you can spot any interesting optimizations I missed, or standard idiocy that my silly monkey brain has engaged in. My goals with this build: Ranged softcap is a "soft" goal. I'm okay being a bit short in pursuit of other goals, but would like to be there. -recharge resist. This is a real in and out melee/ranged build, so mobility is important, and I just hate being slowed down. I'm not sweating +recharge stacking too terribly much, as I have a pretty good stack of active powers to keep throwing, but every ounce here on the side is useful. Hit reliably against +4's. I love the flexibility Beryl gives me here. Proccy proc proc proc where it makes sense, or even sometimes where it's pretty edge case. I like extra damage for doing silly things. : ) Where I feel this one falls a bit short: Just an edge shy of softcap. If I can get that extra ~2.5% without eating into other things, that would be great. Softcapped! I am a bit on the lower side for global recharge. Some extra juice here wouldn't hurt, though with FFback firing it looks pretty good. What do you think about skipping Fracture? I like that it can stack with stalagmite, and how fast activating it is, but the acc is tough to get up to par, and it isn't up very often. Also lacks good procability. Things I'm just unsure of: Is it dumb to skip Entomb? The DPA isn't all that impressive, and I feel like Heavy Mallet fits the slot better for a similar purpose,. Also I'm not a huge fan of the animation. Will I have room for all my clickies in the normal combat flow, or have I given myself too much to do? A few of these aoes especially are on a pretty short cooldown. Unusual bits: I actually like the idea of Salt Crystals as a super fast cast debuff/moderate pbaoe that heals. The in-combat pause from auto-hit sleep might even come handy at times. I'm actually really enjoying aoe sleeps these days, especially proccable ones. I skipped Char! Silly I know given the proc potential. My rationale is that I want to focus on keeping a constant flow of seismic shockwaves activating so I get more empowered Rock Shards and Stalagmites, and I don't have room to siphon slots to Char either if I chose it. No -KB in Meteor! Forget it man - they just gonna be dead. The timing game for getting all the aoes to hit at once is just more important now. : ) The Build: Hastenless version:

Fortunata is definitely #1 in this regard, but you've already been there. My next choice would be a Dominator with the Ice APP specifically. Sleet here is just as powerful as the Defender version, and Sleet is already one of the best support powers in the game. Choice of primary and secondary does matter to a degree here as well, as some are just a bit underwhelming on a Dom. My personal high performance choice would be something like Plants/Fiery/Ice. You get: Very strong controls and mez protection with perma-dom. Single target damage that runs with the best of them if procced out accordingly. Decent aoe (this is a little lacking as combustion is poop). If you want stronger aoe, Fire APP is phenomenal, but you have a much weaker support power in Melt Armor. Hibernate is actually a really nice fallback tool to reset the world and survive no matter what. Solid defenses through APP and IOs, though you have to commit to types/positions, rather than getting the all-around protection of a Fortunata. Grav/Energy/Ice is also great fun, and has similar strengths, but achieves them in a bit of a weird way. Here, a big part of your aoe damage is tp other, enflame, and singularity. It is truly a blast. /Energy meanwhile has adequate aoe in and of itself, and really good single target. The Blaster route isn't too bad either. Anything /Time is going to have access to a pretty decent aoe mez in Time Shift, and you can even grab Bonfire with -KB from the Fire APP for extra controllery fun. Combine this with a strong defense-oriented IO build and you have a very tough blasty controller, though lacking the mez protection of a Dom.

I do use it on all 4 of my doms, and many controllers (energy font is identical). I agree that it's generally more useful on a controller, given that they are more likely to have mobs survive longer to take further ticks. As I mentioned, it's certainly not super inspiring in and of itself! However, neither are damage procs in these sorts of powers. Sometimes builds have extra slots, or you just really want to eke every extra bit of damage possible, and if doing so in a toggle or fast cycling aoe, the orb is objectively superior to a damage proc, even under the worst possible scenario. On characters that have meaningful aoe damage, it's also quite helpful that the damage from orb is applied evenly throughout the spawn. One-off damage proc hits in an aoe often go to waste on minions that would have died to the normal aoe chain in a moment anyhow. If you've ever been in a really chaotic jumble of over-aggro where you're using all your controls to stay alive, the orbs can really start to stack up, and they even survive well enough if you're being proactive with your lockdown. That extra damage is quite subtle, but really adds up in these scenarios. All that being said, go with what feels best for you! I'm not criticizing you for not choosing to include it in your build, but do want to put out relevant information for someone who might be balancing whether it's worth using in some circumstances. Looking at the optimal scenario (max target saturation and full ticks), I can see where it is a tricky thing to balance. For doms specifically, I think it would be impactful and thematic to double the tick damage and reduce it to half duration, or somewhere along that spectrum (50% more tick damage, 30% less duration ,etc).

I had this a bit at first. Whenever I had a concept for a domi, I just ended up going controller instead. The first domi that really clicked for me was grav/energy. Part of it was just that this was the first time I played with tp other and singy, but the much higher ranged damage modifier for enflame helped as well. Honestly my Plants/fiery dom is now my current overall favorite character! It has more lockdown power than most of my controllers, and the damage is much higher and less conditional. I feel like most of it for me comes down to executing on a particular character concept in the most satisfying way, and what types of powers match that fantasy. My ice/savage domi suffers very much from what you describe here though. His assault set damage just doesn't bridge the loss of a powerful support secondary.

Thank you kindly for the data, @Carnifax! You are a champion. This is super helpful. The immobile nature of Volcanic does indeed limit it in comparison to Creepers, but I suppose it's too much to ask for any power to measure up to that level of perfection. 😃 I suppose the next question I need to ask myself then is how much baseline rech/acc/hold enhancement I am willing to sacrifice in exchange for more procs. Part of me was almost hoping ranged aoe procs would come up short here so that would be an easy choice! I'll have to put both strategies into practice and see first hand.

It's definitely not amazing for an ATO, but I did some (hopefully correct) proc math to compare it to a damage proc in arctic air specifically. At 3.5 PPM, a normal damage proc in Arctic air has below minimum chance to proc, so gets clamped to 5%. If facing the max 16 targets, this means you have ~56% chance for 74 damage to fire on one target for every 10 seconds. If most other powers, Fiery's 2 PPM would produce a lower per mob chance to fire, but since both clamp to the minimum 5%, this will also have ~56% chance to summon a fiery orb every 10 seconds. Even if that orb only survives for one tick, that means ~176 damage over the entire mob area. If it lives to tick 5X, you have ~880 damage total. Of course this is assuming a very optimal target saturation in both instances, but the total damage capacity is quite a stark contrast! Assuming worst case scenario where Fiery only fires one tick, Fiery and a normal damage proc provide roughly equal damage value against 7 targets. This scales much higher for Fiery as you increase targets and account for more tics, up to 5 (maybe 6). This is all ignoring the possible benefit of it taking a hit for you, or even the ~3 sec Mag 2 stun, which isn't actually as bad as I thought if it's hitting every 4 seconds. In short, it's actually superior as a pseudo damage proc in toggle aoes or short cooldown, wide aoes. I'd prefer a normal damage proc in a longer cycling, more traditionally proc-optimized power, but it would be my first choice when adding damage to an aura or the aoe immobilize.

Thank you as always for the feedback, @oedipus_tex! I took a few of your suggestions to heart and updated the build in OP. As noted in my write-up, I was lacking KB protection, but was stretching for what to pull. I decided that the extra S/L beef in Cages from Overpowering, while nice, wasn't worth the slots dedicated as you mentioned. Siphoned slotting from Salt Crystals to round this out with Ragnarok and used the extras for -KB and also FFback in Earthquake. Keeping Salt Crystals instead of another one slot wonder like Quicksand or Power of the Phoenix for now, but may change with play. The fact that it's auto-hit, huge radius, and super fast cast makes it a pretty handy pause button solo if I need a moment for more durable controls to recharge. If only it took -Def IOs so I could proc it! I do like to be a bit mindful of slot value in addition to set value, and am not sure the 4 slot Dark watcher's is really worth the payoff here in Earthquake. The D-sync does a decent enough job of getting it up often enough for cheap. I had avoided FFback here, as it is on a mediumish cooldown. However, similar to tornado on my stormies, this is a power that I will be casting on cooldown most of the time, so FFback will still have reasonable uptime overall. Good advice! I did take the -slow hit and swapped some slotting for better mez in Stalagmites. Still retained 50%, so not too bad. I may have become a bit too stuck on this stat lately, as good as it is. Those new D-Syncs are mighty handy! Acc/recharge is a powerful combo, especially in a power that doesn't take have access to it through a purple set. Particularly useful in powers like Heat Exhaustion that don't otherwise take sets, giving you that little extra squeeze of value over a plain IO. End/Rech/slow is also a new favorite, though the slow is often wasted. Extra bonus if it's also a slow power like Tar Patch or Howling Twilight - perfect for these.

Edit: Updated build per some suggestions by @oedipus_tex I posted on a Plants/Thermal in an earlier thread, but ended up deciding to make a Plants/fiery dom instead, which worked out beautifully. In my previous discussion around /Thermal, I received some feedback that perhaps I was undervaluing the support power it brings, especially in really tough content. My very proccy Plants/Thermal put minimal investment into the shields and heals, but I'm here to correct that with a new combo, and as always would love your collective insight. Goals for this build: As is my way, proccing them powers out real nice-like. S/L softcapish - achieved. Would love ranged too, but this is a no go with a proc focus. A side dish of recharge resist as I can squeeze it in. Reliably hit +4's. Where I'd like to see some improvement if possible: Some more S/L resist to supplement the defense would be nice. I don't want to sacrifice above goals, however. More recharge would be good. In my proccing, I have sacrificed some of the obvious big recharge opportunities. One free slot somewhere to drop a -KB IO in. Not really sure where right now. I gueeeess I could downslot stone cages a bit more, but I like the S/L resist. Adjusted for this. General unanswered questions: Ideal proc slotting for Volcanic? @Carnifax gave me some guidance on how to test, and I will do so for sure once leveled. I don't really feel like spooling everything up on Beta to test in the meanwhile. Right now I'm going with hold procs as optimal, but if anyone has done the testing already on how effective Ranged aoe is, I'd love to hear, or if it's just a waste of time entirely and I should just do a Purple set instead. Is Earth's Embrace a waste? Between the Extra HP here and the occasional burst of absorb, this guy could theoretically get quite a big pad! I'm open to other ideas about a better one slot wonder though. Quicksand is a consideration - I have always liked it in the past. The build:

That makes sense! In this case, it sounds like using a cone just doesn't align with easy use for your other powers. It's worth noting that Fearsome provides similar -tohit numbers to Darkest Night for a much more manageable endurance cost over time, and more controlled application as you aren't tied to following the anchor. If you haven't played with it, you might consider swapping to see how you like it. You can also drop a couple procs into it to give some reliable punch to your opening salvo. I can definitely understand just wanting to pow pow pow without having to hop back and forth though.

Only local recharge slotted into powers will reduce proc chances, but not outside sources like set bonuses or buffs from powers. Alpha slot enhancement counts as local recharge, and will therefore affect proc chances.

Your emp is looking very clean! Some decent damage squeezed in while maintaining good resists and ranged softcap. Looking at the others, I'm seeing a pattern in these same priorities as well. : ) Is the Rad/AR just pointed thematically towards flame? The lack of M30, Buckshot, or even Ignite seems like it would make aoe time a bit rough. We all have our own priorities of course, and it is still well put together. I must admit though, the lack of Fearsome Stare in your Dark/ is raising my eyebrows! What is your typical opening combo this this character?

Excellent detail and analysis! I had a 10 sec tick rate in my head and, like a fool, didn't bother to check. As for the point above, I feel the low PPM is mitigated to a degree by the unique way this proc works compared to a damage proc. It's a bit more similar to a buff proc like FFback, where as long as one of them goes off in the aoe, you're good to go. My observed behavior thus far is that it will only ever summon one at a time no matter what, and they appear at the caster's position. If you are hitting a solid aoe, you're going to get an orb with most casts. As for the squishiness, what better AT to leverage such a weak little creature than the lovely dominator, who can lock down those bosses and smash them to bits before they can retaliate? 😄

I'm putting together a rather proccy Earth/Thermal, and see that Volcanic Gasses has fun pet power spam behavior similar to Carrion Creepers, and is ripe for proccing. However, it looks like Hold damage procs are likely to be much more effective given the way these entities work. Has anyone done any testing on how Ranged aoe procs stack up in comparison? My current slotting maxes out on the hold procs, but I'm weighing how worthwhile it is to fill the remaining slots with others. Thus far, I'm not seeing any such results in the forums, but perhaps one of you has some first-hand perspective!

It's subtle, but they're not actually as bad as they seem. They provide a useful distraction, and get two aura ticks off before they die. They add more aoe damage to your aoe immob than any damage proc by far. It's best used in powers that are aoe, but suboptimal for regular damage procs. Even under ideal proc scenario for the aoe immob (no rech enhanced), a regular damage proc adds ~9 damage on average. Fiery Orb adds two ticks of ~11 damage - more than twice as effective, (it ticks much more often for an even higher total as @oedipus_tex corrected) and also still procs reliably for the whole aoe even if heavily recharge enhanced. The 30% chance for 3 sec Mag 2 stun is pretty useless of course. As a fun nod to your comparison, @MoonSheep, this is roughly the same as an ED capped brawl. 😄 It just so happens that a brawl on every target in an aoe for the cost of one slot isn't so bad.

I would guess that it has chance to spawn an orb every 10 seconds for every mob in range. Each mob should increase the chance to spawn, but only one will actually spawn. Would love to hear if this is true for anyone able to test!

Absolutely nothing wrong with going all out offence, even if the cost for hitting softcap isn't much of a diversion from this goal. /Rad should still be reasonably sturdy in most circumstances anyhow. New build looks good! No real criticisms here. Note that you can safely +5 boost any PVP or Purple IOs without affecting exemplar set bonuses. They act as attuned no matter what. If money is no object, this can bump Ball Lightning, Zapp, and Weave a bit further. While you're at it, hit up Hasten, Build Up, and any other plain non-set IO in the build as well. If you want to squeeze a bit of extra offensive power, consider doing the same Ribosome/+5 Resist IO maneuver to one of Proton or Alpha You could use one of the saved slots on a damage proc in Incinerate. The other saved slot could go to a damage proc in ball lightning or fire sword circle.

It sounds like a blast! I think force field is a bit more interesting on controllers, as you have some built in teammates that will really benefit from the otherwise excessive defense, and repulsion bomb's damage is actually really welcome.

Claws/ is such a joy on Scrappers no matter what direction you go, and /EA is of course a champion as well. Is there anything in particular you like best about this build in terms of what it has achieved, or how it plays? I always love hearing what excites folks about their builds, as it helps with any new inspiration I might have to pursue something similar. : ) On my own /EA builds, I find Energy Drain is a sufficient crutch if hungry for end, but it can monopolize a lot of animation time, so perhaps you don't prefer to rely on spamming it. Ageless or even the Alpha is always a great option for high level play, as you note!

I have a new build I'd like to share here now that I've had time to settle it in and really evaluate performance! With the help of the lovely minds in the Dominator forums, I put together a Plant/Fiery/Fire Dom recently. The goal here was to use the many distractions and controls Plant provides, and ignore defense completely in favor of every ounce of damage possible. Perma-dom is a given as well of course. All respect to the softcap chasers out there (I still do it on many builds), but it really feels good to drop these shackles on a control AT and let those powers do the heavy lifting. I was afraid that it would be a bit risky in practice, but it actually works really well! I certainly can't stand still doing nothing and stay alive on a moon base farm, but really there's nothing I've found that gets in its way. and the damage is very juicy indeed across the board. Fun strengths: Really strong aoe and single target damage. Mez protection, plenty of end support with active powers. Can take tons of extra aggro safely and consolidate mobs very efficiently, as each confused mob and carrion creeper vine has its own aggro cap. Even if you make a mistake, Rise of the Phoenix is there to delete it! It's just fun! Survival requires engagement and active use of your tools. Every power does a nice chunk of damage, even your controls. Seeds is even doing good work here! Near immunity to slows - especially important to keep perma-dom, and avoid many annoying powers. Really low toggle management. If you die or run out of end, just turn on your epic resist, hover, and CJ and you're off to the races! No need to spend the next ten seconds doing the weird little leadership salute and chest pounding dance. General playstyle: Alpha with Seeds, drop your immob, and unload aoes. Spam immob whenever possible between other activities. Pop Rune and/or Vines when you get many adds, giving you some breathing room for Seeds to recharge if needed. Resummon Carrion Creepers on cooldown. These are vital distractions, and a big part of your damage. Fly Trap is just sort of a bonus friend that sometimes survives. If you're taking chip damage, drop Spore Burst on cooldown for some modest healing and to slow down incoming damage. It can even be a good reset if all other tools are recharging. Remember that sleeps are auto-hit in pve now! The basic idea of a damage-optimized Plant/Fire dom is certainly nothing revolutionary. However, I'm really happy with the end result here, and don't see further room for it to optimize towards the goals of the build. Build:

I'll take a look later when I'm not on mobile! I would only bother with one tohit proc, though yes I believe they can stack. You can always run with one and see if the uptime feels good enough, and modify later if needed. The -defense values on beta decay are not super strong, and they will be strongly reduced by purple patch against +3s and +4s. Edit: Looking really nice! Accuracy is great now across the board. One little idea that could push you closer to softcap and free up a few slots: Swap the slotting in your resists armors for a +3 ribosome and +5 resist IO. This keeps the enhancement totals and frees up 6 slots. Use 3 to mule brawl for Kinetic Melee, bringing your S/L up. You lose melee defense, but get higher S/L. Now you have 3 slots to have fun with. Another consideration is that damage procs are sort of dicey in Beta Decay. It's fine free bonus damage, but a bit unreliable, and you might be better served by a 5 slot siphon insight. You still have room for a proc of your choice here if you like, and will be even closer to softcap, with some enhanced -tohit as well. The Siphon proc is more reliable than damage procs, as it buffs you directly, rather than going off at random on mobs unevenly. I actually messed with this concept further, while keeping the bones of your build the same, and put together one in which you have S/L softcap. You do sacrifice one purple set, but gain softcap here, along with a modest boost to S/L resist as well. Acc is still solid even without Siphon proc going off, and perfect with the proc firing. Build:

The bones here are not bad at all. Broadly speaking, you are a bit short on effective accuracy if measuring against +4's, especially in Greater Fire Sword, which has below 70% chance. Go to Options > Configuration > Exemping & base values and set base tohit to 39 to see these effective acc against +4's in power mouseover. Consider finding a way to squeeze in some more local or global acc to a few powers that are running short. Kismet would be a big help as well for very little investment. Another neat trick is to put the Siphon Insight +tohit proc in Beta Decay, as it will go off with very high uptime, given that it is checking for every mob in range every 10 seconds. Your aoe is of course solid here between FSC, Ball Lightning, and Ground Zero. Single target is a bit lacking, as you have a weakish Fire sword for filler. It's not too bad once you factor Zapp in the equation, but finding some room for giving Fire Sword a little love would make a good difference when on hard targets. In aoe situations you'll be kept busy enough rotating other powers that it won't matter as much. A few more small notes: You are lacking the reactive scaling resist IO, which is especially helpful on a resist based set like Rad. A good spot would be weave, swapping 2 of the lotg's for reactives as well for a nicer set bonus. No reason not to move shield wall unique to weave for earlier access. You can then match the two non +rech lotgs to Shield wall instead and get a better +HP bonus. Consider swapping the strict +Damage IO in Ball Lightning for the KD proc, which is actually really nice mitigation, at the expense of very little damage given ED caps. You can save a slot by muling the Gladiator +def IO in Meltdown. /Rad already has it's fair share of built-in end support between Gamma, Rad therapy, and Particle Shielding. You can easily toss numina and at least the two extra slots in stamina and use them elsewhere. Remember that Rad Therapy returns end per enemy upon cast.

You can freely cast any of your storm powers while flying, though as @Psylenz0511 notes if you're herding with hurricane this is a bit easier close to the ground. However, even this doesn't preclude flight, as you can just hover close to the ground in such situations. Thunderclap is pbaoe so perhaps not ideal if keeping distance, but honestly it's not an awesome power anyhow, and I skip it on all my stormies. As psy mentioned, going high does not change hurricane KB to KD. It does however allow you to basically change lightning storm knockback to knockdown, or knock in corner with good positioning. The KB effect of Hurricane is really very minor, and I wouldn't worry about it at all. You will get the occasional stray bounce out, but it happens with fairly low frequency, and you have other positioning powers to keep things managed in situations where you might actually use Hurricane. If you are on a team that doesn't need the tohit debuff, consider turning it off if controllers or tankers have positioning under control. 100% hover is great on a stormy. Of course you can pick up CJ as well for the immob prot and extra cheap defense. You don't want to rely on Fly for in-combat maneuvering both because it's heavily suppressed and also for the end cost. I'm not convinced - this is exactly what a Wind Wench would say.

Hello there! This is a great powerset combo, and I'm sure you'll have a blast with it. However, this build really needs a ground-up rework - it would be hard to provide effective input in detail in its current form. With a defense set such as Shield/, you want to consider first hitting your softcaps for positionals (ranged, aoe, melee), achieving this in the most efficient way possible. This is actually pretty easy to do on a Tanker because base values are high, but you have enhanced many of the wrong powers, and enhanced some powers in a very inefficient way. In mids, pay close attention to what each power does. A few examples: Deflection is primarily for melee defense, though it's worth hybrid slotting for S/L resist as well. You only have it slotted for resist. Phalanx Fighting doesn't benefit from defense enhancement at all - these 6 slots are wasted completely. True grit is way over slotted past ED caps, and the set bonuses aren't anything great for this investment. Generally speaking, you have some weird set choices across the board, and have overinvested in full 6 slots for these sets with no great pay-off. Even if you find the 6 slot bonuses worthwhile, balance that against actually enhancing powers for their baseline value properly as well. I don't mean this to be overly critical! I would encourage you to take a look at one of the many great Shield/ builds on the forums and use that as a basis to move on from. Every build will have its own priorities of course. As an example, here is a SD/BS build I put together for someone lately. I'm not saying this build is actually perfectly optimized (though I think it's solid for sure), but it will give you a useful framework to go by: The build: Note that the build above is very geared towards extra layers of defense, achieving not just 45% normal softcap, but hitting incarnate softcap (or near) for most positions. You could strip some defense and gear it more offensively for sure. Resilient core is not really doing much at all for you here either. If you want an Alpha that hits +resist, go for Cardiac Core, which will provide outstanding End support as well. Personally I prefer Musculature radial, but this is a matter of taste and how you balance other priorities. Make sure you disable Barrier when looking at your totals in mids as well. When you are building, it's worth asking yourself what goals you are chasing: On defense sets, at least 45% defense to all positions should always be your first goal. (or types if typed defense instead of positional) Beyond this, you might also choose to hit ~59% for incarnate softcaps. Perhaps instead you chase damage through maximizing ED and proc damage in powers that benefit from this the most. You might also prioritize recharge in order to create optimal attack chains and abuse high-cooldown powers. You could even try to squeeze every ounce of resist across the board, or chase 90% in S/L or other key resists. Not all of these goals are mutually exclusive, but there is a trade-off between them in where your slotting focus can stay. Consider what is important and build toward it.

Holy cow! That is...wow.