What Would You Change About Dominators?

[oedipus_tex]

Another thing I'd like to talk about is Fire Dominators. They don't seem to come up too often anymore.

 

Back before Villains could access blueside, Fire/Psi Doms were the analog to Fire/Kin farmers. (Fire/Kin farmers seem to have mostly disappeared in Homecoming, which is an interesting development.)

 

Hot Feet does the following damage on a Dominator versus Controller:

• Dominator: 13.2
• Controller: 7.65 + (7.65 from Containment) = 15.3

 

Shouldn't a Dominator, the "damage class" version of the control sets, do better damage than a Controller? I mean sure, you "need Containment" to do this, but how hard is that really?

 

On top of this, Controllers get buffs and debuffs to make that damage much higher. Is the existence of an "Assault" set enough to make up for this? (I don't feel it does.)

 

 

 

Let's take a look at Gravity Control as well:

 

Propel

• Dominator: 103.5 + (25,89 from Impact) = 103.5 (or with Impact: 129.39)
• Controller: 59.95 + (59.95 from Containment) + (14.99 from Impact) = 119.5 (or with Impact: 134.89) 

 

Controller Propel is better with Impact or without it. It's such a good attack I don't know that Gravity Dominators have much reason to exist. (They do, narrowly, but you trade away a ton of utility for some mild extra AoE capability and the ability to slot melee and PBAoE powers).

 

This doesn't speak to the fact that Propel on Dominators obseletes some powers in the Assault set, so their damage doesn't actually get better.


Maybe 1:1 power comparisons aren't perfect because the secondaries are so different. But a Controller can buff or debuff themselves much better than a Dominator, so these numbers are more drastic in actual play.

[oedipus_tex]

Continuing a look at the numbers, have you ever noticed Plant seems to mow down (har har) enemies faster than other sets? That's because its AoE immobilize does exactly x2 as much damage as any other AoE immobilize except Fire.

 

• Plant: 3 ticks of 5.28 Lethal +5.28 Smashing = 31.68
• Ice: 3 ticks of 5.28 Cold = 15.84
• Gravity: 5.28 Smashing = 15.84
• Electric: 15.85 Energy
• Earth: 3 ticks of 5.28 = 15.84
• Fire: 3 ticks of 5.81 = 17.43

 

With a 1.67 animation time, 8 second recharge, 31.66 damage, Plant's AoE immobilize is a half a point shy of the Defender AoEs Explosive Blast, Irradiate, or Ball Lightning, but recharges twice as fast (8 seconds versus 16 seconds) and has a much bigger radius (30ft radius versus 15ft radius for those powers). 

 

Ice, Earth, and Electric are well known to be very low damage sets so I'm not suggesting nerfing Plant to those levels, just shedding light on why different Dominator players are reporting wildly different experiences.

[Chrome]

4 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

Continuing a look at the numbers, have you ever noticed Plant seems to mow down (har har) enemies faster than other sets? That's because its AoE immobilize does exactly x2 as much damage as any other AoE immobilize except Fire.

 

• Plant: 3 ticks of 5.28 Lethal +5.28 Smashing = 31.68
• Ice: 3 ticks of 5.28 Cold = 15.84
• Gravity: 5.28 Smashing = 15.84
• Electric: 15.85 Energy
• Earth: 3 ticks of 5.28 = 15.84
• Fire: 3 ticks of 5.81 = 17.43

 

With a 1.67 animation time, 8 second recharge, 31.66 damage, Plant's AoE immobilize is a half a point shy of the Defender AoEs Explosive Blast, Irradiate, or Ball Lightning, but recharges twice as fast (8 seconds versus 16 seconds) and has a much bigger radius (30ft radius versus 15ft radius for those powers). 

 

Ice, Earth, and Electric are well known to be very low damage sets so I'm not suggesting nerfing Plant to those levels, just shedding light on why different Dominator players are reporting wildly different experiences.

comparing the damage between all of these different powersets i have a feeling you are not using DP animation to show proper damage comparisons, however plant does have a higher DPA than some of the control set equivalents. my suggestion is to bump up the other control set aoe immobilizes to plant level. id be pretty surprised if people even noticed a difference.

[oedipus_tex]

2 minutes ago, Chrome said:

comparing the damage between all of these different powersets i have a feeling you are not using DP animation to show proper damage comparisons, however plant does have a higher DPA than some of the control set equivalents. my suggestion is to bump up the other control set aoe immobilizes to plant level. id be pretty surprised if people even noticed a difference.

 

I'm not using DPA because the developers did not use DPA when they created these sets. The damage was based off of Recharge time and DPA was randomized based on what they thought looked cool. For stats though, here are the animation times for each AoE immobilize. You can see that Plant is a bit slower than most, but still a 1.67 cast time is hardly slow.

 

• Plant: 1.67
• Fire: 1.03
• Gravity: 1.33
• Electric: 1.17
• Ice: 2.07 (why does Ice always get the worst of everything? LOL)
• Earth: 1.17

 

If I had my wish all of these sets would just use the 1.17 or 1.33 animation for consistency.

[Chrome]

5 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

I'm not using DPA because the developers did not use DPA when they created these sets. The damage was based off of Recharge time and DPA was randomized based on what they thought looked cool. For stats though, here are the animation times for each AoE immobilize. You can see that Plant is a bit slower than most, but still a 1.67 cast time is hardly slow.

 

• Plant: 1.67
• Fire: 1.03
• Gravity: 1.33
• Electric: 1.17
• Ice: 2.07 (why does Ice always get the worst of everything? LOL)
• Earth: 1.17

 

If I had my wish all of these sets would just use the 1.17 or 1.33 animation for consistency.

just casually glancing at mids most of the control sets damage per animation seem fairly equal but i can totally get behind normalizing the damage per activation with fire control getting a bit higher because fire

 

jsut equalizing the animation times will create a larger discrepancy between the different sets instead of aligning them more closely with each other

Edited August 1, 2020 by Chrome

[oedipus_tex]

When talking about DPA in the context of Dominators or any other archetype that lacks consistent AoE you have to be careful. Most Dominators cannot pump consistent AoE out like other archetypes can. That is why Plant stands so high above the other sets in AoE. Roots is a 30ft radius AoE that recharges in 8 seconds and deals 31.68 damage on Dominators. It's one of the best powers in the game but often goes unrecognized because two of the other best powers in the game also appear in Plant Control.

 

The only ranged spherical AoE attack most Dominators have other than their immobilize is the one in their APPs, which usually has a 32 second recharge. Other than that they mostly have a cone with a 10 target limit and a 15ft radius PBAoE. You can work these into your cycle, but they have obvious limitations. To use the PBAoE you're an unarmored archetype waltzing within 15ft of enemies and to hit more than a few of them you can bet some got missed by mezz and are free to attack.

 

On most Blasters, I have no doubt that you can fill an AoE attack chain in a way that maximizes DPA and still hits enough targets. On most Dominators, other than Plant (because the immobilize is a high damage blast) I do not feel that way. They don't have the access to make it work. 

[Frosticus]

15 minutes ago, Chrome said:

comparing the damage between all of these different powersets i have a feeling you are not using DP animation to show proper damage comparisons, however plant does have a higher DPA than some of the control set equivalents. my suggestion is to bump up the other control set aoe immobilizes to plant level. id be pretty surprised if people even noticed a difference.

People not noticing things is basically the theme of this thread.

All the aoe immobs have pretty much the same cast time. Ice is the only one that actually feels any slower in game play. His point is apt and has been a long standing bug in plant control.

 

Controllers have always gotten as much or more damage out of their primary than doms due to containment and superior buffs/debuffs and getting way more mileage out of pets. Some notable doms that bend this a bit are high recharge fire/fire leveraging embrace of fire (don't be too attached to this though) to greatly improve fire control's damage. Or a plant/ma running high uptime on envenomed blades.

 

 

[Frosticus]

21 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

• ICE  - Overall gets a pretty raw deal on Domination. The 4 standard powers Dominate, nothing else does. 
  • ARCTIC AIR. This is currently a 30% chance for Mag 3 Confusion, rolled every pulse. The Confusion is a pure luck roll, there is no ToHit roll. Note because base Dominator scale for Confusion is lower than Controllers, this power is actually weaker on Dominators than Controllers. Also, Dominators have a lower Recharge debuff scale (-50% versus -62.5%). This seems somewhat straightforward, put a second chance for Mag 3 Confuse. But I'd really like a closer look at just what the intention of this power is and the hoops players have to jump through to make it achieve that purpose. I happen to think its one of the most fun powers in the game, BUT I resent having to trick out my build with defense and mezz protection among other things to have any hope of it contributing. If nothing else, this should not detoggle on mezz. Restoring the Contagious Confusion proc to its former glory here would also be welcomed.
•  

 We accept that artctic air is a much weaker slow/-rech debuff for doms because we've been told that doms aren't buff/debuff specialist. Yet controllers have all those values (all slows and -rech) BOOSTED to match defender values because it is considered control for them. Ergo, domination should boost those attributes as well.

 

And if we accept that domination boosts controls to higher levels than controllers then under domination they should actually have superior slows and -rech than controllers in shared powers.

[oedipus_tex]

Since we brought up animation time, let's talk about that. Here's the animation time for the standardized 15ft PBAoEs:

• Dark: 2
• Earth: 2.5
• Electric: 2.07
• Energy: 2.5
• Fire: 3 (OUCH)
• Icy: 2.67
• Martial: 1.5
• Psi: 1.97
• Radioactive: I'm using 2.97, this one is a bit tricky
• Savage: 2.17
• Thorny: 3 (crying in the corner with Fire)

 

Of these, the only one I tend to use are Energy because of its special mechanic, Psi because I can withstand being pummeled during its cast time thanks to Drain Psyche, and Martial because of the fast cast time and knockdown in the power.

 

I'm playing an unarmored archetype with (mostly) little in the way of heals that relies on fast reflexes and cunning to mezz enemies before they hit me, while doing everything I can to avoid dying and losing my mezz protection. The last thing I want to do is lock myself into an animation at close range for 2-3 seconds and only deliver mediocre damage. The risk/reward ratio seems very skewed. Pure DPA calculations don't tell the full story here, anytime a squishy has to get in something's face to deliver its AoE the damage needs to be very high to justify that risk, particularly on an AT with more to lose from dying than other classes.

Edited August 1, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Frosticus]

11 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

Since we brought up animation time, let's talk about that. Here's the animation time for the standardized 15ft PBAoEs:

• Dark: 2
• Earth: 2.5
• Electric: 2.07
• Energy: 2.5
• Fire: 3 (OUCH)
• Icy: 2.67
• Martial: 1.5
• Psi: 1.97
• Radioactive: I'm using 2.97, this one is a bit tricky
• Savage: 2.17
• Thorny: 3 (crying in the corner with Fire)

Also of note is that savage's rending flurry is only 8ft unless you use it at full blood stacks and cause exhaustion.

All other pbaoes were normalized to 15ft (excluding atom smasher sadly)- even dragon's tail (which is probably the best pbaoe doms have now aside from psi shockwave, which has higher target cap). 

Edited August 1, 2020 by Frosticus

[oedipus_tex]

I have another proposal which may seem a little weird at first but I'll throw it on the pile.

 

What if using a single target melee attack also cast your single target Hold power if that power was currently recharged? 

[Frosticus]

6 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

I have another proposal which may seem a little weird at first but I'll throw it on the pile.

 

What if using a single target melee attack also cast your single target Hold power if that power was currently recharged? 

Sort of the inverse of how controllers get free damage just by controlling things via containment.
Neat idea. My only reservation is that I may plan to use my st hold in a moment on my next target, but it goes onto cool down because I havoc punched a minion. 

[oedipus_tex]

16 minutes ago, Frosticus said:

Also of note is that savage's rending flurry is only 8ft unless you use it at full blood stacks and cause exhaustion.

All other pbaoes were normalized to 15ft (excluding atom smasher sadly)- even dragon's tail (which is probably the best pbaoe doms have now aside from psi shockwave, which has higher target cap). 

 

So punch slower? 😄 Just playign with you.

 

I hear you on that. Altho it would position the sets with additional single target controls well. Or maybe they could get fancy and allow us to pick what power triggers when we land a punch? Imagine a Mind or Dark Dominator could Confuse-on-Punch.

I've been amazed by some of the stuff this dev team has been able to accomplish. The new costumes on Illusion Control? Brilliant stuff. I bet they could find a way to make it work.

[Chrome]

comparing the animation times without damage is misleading, i appreciate you took the time to list them here, but all you are really saying is that these attacks have different animations. which i assume means something to you, however to me and maybe others without both sides of the equation...i am not sure what you are trying to point out.

 

for example :

Martial Assault -Dragon's Tail  1.5 seconds - 55 smashing  damage +kd 17 sec recharge (36 damage per animation)

Fiery Assault     -Combustion   3 seconds  - 75 fire damage  17 sec recharge (25 damage per animation)

 

while i do not expect you to do every single set like this, it is important to show that while fire has a huge cast time it has a significantly larger damage number and is using a damage type that is largely unresisted by mobs and martial assault has an added effect of KD , but even with the increased damage per button press, the damage per animation time is still higher for martial assault.  this shows the clear picture of how the two abilities differ and maybe where the ability should or should not be changed.

 

 

 

[oedipus_tex]

2 minutes ago, Chrome said:

comparing the animation times without damage is misleading, i appreciate you took the time to list them here, but all you are really saying is that these attacks have different animations. which i assume means something to you, however to me and maybe others without both sides of the equation...i am not sure what you are trying to point out.

 

What I am pointing out is that 2-3 seconds of root time 15ft from enemies on an archetype with no heals or armor is not a good trade off unless the damage numbers are astronomical, which they are not.

[Chrome]

 

7 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

What I am pointing out is that 2-3 seconds of root time 15ft from enemies on an archetype with no heals or armor is not a good trade off unless the damage numbers are astronomical, which they are not.

that would not be good at all but to my recollection most immobilizes have a duration of around 20 seconds or so.  with 3 Immobilize duration S.O. s that is around 40 seconds of immobilization. immobilizes are also on very short cooldown which enables you to stack magnitudes extremely easy. also these immobilize abilities are not meant to be a primary source for damage.  

[oedipus_tex]

1 minute ago, Chrome said:

 

that would not be good at all but to my recollection most immobilizes have a duration of around 20 seconds or so.  with 3 Immobilize duration S.O. s that is around 40 seconds of immobilization. immobilizes are also on very short cooldown which enables you to stack magnitudes extremely easy. also these immobilize abilities are not meant to be a primary source for damage.  

 

I think we may have miscommunicated.

 

Root time is the time it takes for an animation to play. Most powers lock you out of moving or casting something else while they are animating.

 

Long animation times on powers where you are standing close to an enemy put you in greater danger than shorter animation times, because once the power starts animating you can't react until it's done. Even if the enemy you are attacking is controlled, another enemy could hit you. That's why I don't use Dominator PBAoEs. I've tried. Big battles are just too chaotic and this archetype has a lot to lose from dying. 

[oedipus_tex]

1 hour ago, Frosticus said:

 We accept that artctic air is a much weaker slow/-rech debuff for doms because we've been told that doms aren't buff/debuff specialist. Yet controllers have all those values (all slows and -rech) BOOSTED to match defender values because it is considered control for them. Ergo, domination should boost those attributes as well.

 

And if we accept that domination boosts controls to higher levels than controllers then under domination they should actually have superior slows and -rech than controllers in shared powers.

 

 

That's a fair point and I never really thought about that. For Ice -Recharge is a control.

 

I still want a second Mag 3 Confuse in Arctic Air though. That seems like it would be easy to add, but I don't know the database. 

[Frosticus]

 

37 minutes ago, Chrome said:

comparing the animation times without damage is misleading, i appreciate you took the time to list them here, but all you are really saying is that these attacks have different animations. which i assume means something to you, however to me and maybe others without both sides of the equation...i am not sure what you are trying to point out.

 

for example :

Martial Assault -Dragon's Tail  1.5 seconds - 55 smashing  damage +kd 17 sec recharge (36 damage per animation)

Fiery Assault     -Combustion   3 seconds  - 75 fire damage  17 sec recharge (25 damage per animation)

 

while i do not expect you to do every single set like this, it is important to show that while fire has a huge cast time it has a significantly larger damage number and is using a damage type that is largely unresisted by mobs and martial assault has an added effect of KD , but even with the increased damage per button press, the damage per animation time is still higher for martial assault.  this shows the clear picture of how the two abilities differ and maybe where the ability should or should not be changed.

 

 

 

And you've only painted part of the picture too. 

 

You are probably thinking of lethal damage, that is really the only damage type that frequently faces significant resistance.

 

Yes combustion deals more total damage than dragons tail, however; if you've used both of these attacks you would understand what he is talking about. Combustion is a really bad attack. It deals about half the damage that dragon's tail does upfront and then the "extra" damage that you highlight is dealt as a painfully slow dot over the next 7 seconds. No secondary effects.

[Chrome]

i see, and i do understand your point of view, however i think that utilizing all of your ccs makes for a strong defense as well as pool powers to add to defense, as well as secondary effects such as KD or -to hit etc.  this offers you enough leeway to blow some dudes up, of course getting the timings down for each AT can be tricky, but that is one of the things i appreciate about dominators

[oedipus_tex]

I have a funny story about Combustion.

 

One time I took that power on a character not knowing what it was. I pretty much took it off my bar after trying to use it and discovering how terrible it was. One day, as I was running past a Fake Nemesis in Peregrine Island who was +10 to me, I aggroed it without realizing. It fired a Nemesis Bolt that hit me from behind, killing that character instantly and flinging his body on top of a dumpster.

 

I respecced not long after and I've always associated those events with that power.

[Frosticus]

4 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

 

That's a fair point and I never really thought about that. For Ice -Recharge is a control.

 

I still want a second Mag 3 Confuse in Arctic Air though. That seems like it would be easy to add, but I don't know the database. 

Yes, I'm on the same page as you. I think just about nearly every control power should gain some kind of bonus under domination.

Could you imagine having this discussion with scrappers if a third of their attacks didn't critical? It would be open and shut.

[Chrome]

3 minutes ago, Frosticus said:

 

And you've only painted part of the picture too. 

 

You are probably thinking of lethal damage, that is really the only damage type that frequently faces significant resistance.

 

Yes combustion deals more total damage than dragons tail, however; if you've used both of these attacks you would understand what he is talking about. Combustion is a really bad attack. It deals about half the damage that dragon's tail does upfront and then the "extra" damage that you highlight is dealt as a painfully slow dot over the next 7 seconds. No secondary effects.

i agree. i also did not know that half of that damage was over 7 seconds, i have never been a fan of fire abilities in this game.  that being said making sure the whole picture is painted, is more important when comparing abilites.

[oedipus_tex]

Well with Combustion its twofold. Even if it had great DPA it's still 3 seconds you can't do anything else, traded for damage in a very small radius.

 

I keep forgetting what the reach is on enemy melee powers. 7ft like players? 10ft? Let's go with 7....

 

7ft reach is slightly less than half of radius 15. One thing I'm unsure of is if your character model has width or is just a point, but lets assume its a point. The furthest away you are from getting punched by an uncontrolled enemy is them moving 8ft. That distance diminishes further if we assume the model has width. 

 

 

[Frosticus]

1 minute ago, Chrome said:

i agree. i also did not know that half of that damage was over 7 seconds, i have never been a fan of fire abilities in this game.  that being said making sure the whole picture is painted, is more important when comparing abilites.

Agreed. More info is almost always better.

For what he was trying to highlight though I think it was sufficient.

 

All the pbaoes ultimately do similar damage as they mostly fall within the same range of recharge time. It's only a difference of around 10 pts of damage excluding a few that have bonus dot damage for various reasons.

 

he was just highlighting the importance of risk vs reward of the pbaoe attacks. The slow animating ones can be extremely dangerous to use, whereas the faster ones allow you to quickly vacate the area and reestablish range. All pbaoes regardless of cast time can sit unused on some teams as it is just too risky to enter the fray unless you've heavily invested in personal protection beyond what your primary offers.