Do Dominators Need a Buff?

[Runewritten]

7 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

To be fair, that's how every single endgame build is designed regardless of AT.

Yeah, but it's not why you love that AT, right? You don't love blasters because you love the metagame of softcapping defenses and resistances. It's just a natural endgoal to fill in the gaps.

But you can see in this same thread, for some, building to achieve permadom IS the high-point of playing a dom. That just highlights how much of a crutch Domination is for the AT. 
 

[Gentoo]

I think Dominators are broken, but that they always were. They are either too weak as normal, or brokenly strong if they have perma-dom.

[Frosticus]

Yes, but I don't think they will ever be very effective compared to some of the major ATs.

 

At the end of the day (as a whole) they don't stand up well as content becomes more difficult. Their controls lose effectiveness and their damage is difficult to leverage sometimes. 

 

I dont see their control side ever being fixed in any meaningful way, so I'd address their damage. For each rank of enemy it would increase.

Minion (current)

LT (1.05X)

Boss (1.15x)

Ev/av ( 1.25x)

GM(1.3x)

 

That would be in line with the idea of a dominator. The more you resist their will the more they make you wish you hadn't. As a result,  difficult-to-control enemies feel their wrath. 

 

 

[DZKFire]

On 2/4/2021 at 4:47 PM, CaptTastic said:

I think Doms don’t exemplar well, admittedly, because the attack powers that make a real difference are back loaded. A good tweak would be to give them a Blaze or Bitter Ice Blast or whatever much earlier, perhaps in the mid-20s. 
 

 

Finally someone said it! 😛

 

I've wanted Blaze and BiB available at mid 20's for a long time now, but people are probably accuse of it being OP.

 

It's so grating hopping on my blaster and getting blaze at 18, then hop back to my dominator and I can't use it for a majority of the pre-50 TFs. 

[oedipus_tex]

22 hours ago, Frosticus said:

Yes, but I don't think they will ever be very effective compared to some of the major ATs.

 

At the end of the day (as a whole) they don't stand up well as content becomes more difficult. Their controls lose effectiveness and their damage is difficult to leverage sometimes. 

 

I dont see their control side ever being fixed in any meaningful way, so I'd address their damage. For each rank of enemy it would increase.

Minion (current)

LT (1.05X)

Boss (1.15x)

Ev/av ( 1.25x)

GM(1.3x)

 

That would be in line with the idea of a dominator. The more you resist their will the more they make you wish you hadn't. As a result,  difficult-to-control enemies feel their wrath. 

 

 

 

I'm glad you said this. I think a lot of people overestimate how effective a Dominator's controls actually are. 

 

For example, Flashfire, Wormhole, Heart of Darkness or Stalagmites in Domination mode are a Mag 6 Stun. That's pretty awesome. But any of these + Thunderclap on a Controller is Mag 5 which will stun bosses just as well.  It's true the faster animation time is helpful, and having to slot two powers versus one isn't a clear win for the Controller (on the other hand, maybe it is, since control powers slot so well and Dominators have access to relatively few of them, with most bunched up in the Control set). Beyond this though, a Controller doesn't need an expensive end game build to do this reliably. Dominators do. Dominators stand close to alone in leaning so heavily on an inherent to justify their tradeoffs. /Storm is an especially good set for comparison because it is also a backloaded damage set that does damage close to or comparable to an Assault set while still retaining excellent stackable -Resists for the team and a boatload of added safety from knockdown no Assault set comes close to.

For another example Dominators also get a Mag 6 hold on a 240 second recharge that has low accuracy you can overcome with a lot of preparation. Not terrible, but when some Blasters have actual nukes with 100 second faster recharge, some with Mag 3 Holds they can slot a reliable additional +2 Mag that has 1.3 accuracy its hard not to feel a pang of jealousy. 

 

I do like your idea for some mechanism for delivering more damage.

I'd also still like to explore adding more control to Dominators though. Some of the Assault sets are especially good places to look at. Why are Electric Blast and Electric Manipulation so much better at flooring endurance than Electric Assault? What even is the key power in Electric Assault? Build Up? Voltaic Sentinel?😄 All the really fun powers were reserved for other archetypes--Lightning Rod, Thunderous Blast, Power Sink (in the APPs) even Short Circuit. It's basically a combo of mostly generic attacks with electric particle effects. Rather than view this as just a criticism, hopefully it's also an opportunity. For starters, I'd add a Power Sink effect to the Build Up in this set so it actually has a chance to use its endurance drain when comboed with something other than Electric Control, which it doesn't right now combo with particularly effectively anyway.

Edited February 6, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[Vulpoid]

I think Ice both the primary and secondary need help.

[Tantricsecrets]

While I love doms I feel that the secondary mix of having melee attacks, ranged attacks, cones, pbaoes can become a bit difficult to figure out a playstyle and build. I think having more of a focus on melee or ranged attacks in early gamplay could help. 

 

I think by moving some abilities around would help make doms feel fluid. For example moving blaze to t5, would give fire 3 ranged attacks before lvl 20.

Electric assault has the best ranged attack chain and how I feel most sets should be set up. Some other changes like swiping havoc punch with static discharge would be great. Elects t9 needs some love too.

 

Some sets like earth, savage,, and psy would probably benefit better with a focus on melee earlier. While I would love a pure range earth assault build I feel this is a more melee oriented set. 

 

The sets would mostly be the same at 50. Melee sets that would have a t1 melee attack, damage would probably have to be lowered with a increase in recharge. But you would end up with a better build not having to take stone spears for example that you'll may not use anyway. 

 

Increasing the arc and reducing some of the animation times of cones could help doms with aoes. For example electron haze suffers from the same issue that total focus had, things may be dead before you finish casting. 

Edited February 13, 2021 by Tantricsecrets
Thought of something different so I edited.

[Galaxy Brain]

Thinking on this a bit, it would be kind of neat if the ST controls in Dominator primaries were treated more like proper attacks compared to Controllers...

 

Precedence is already set with some of the heavy-hitter melee attacks Doms even have access to (Like Seismic Smash with Smashes AND holds!) for them to have ranged attacks that happen to be a mez.

Edited February 14, 2021 by Galaxy Brain

[oedipus_tex]

Biggest thing with Dominator attacks is they should be thought of by the powers designer as Dominator attacks, and not just clones of Scrapper or Blaster powers.

 

On a Scrapper, a 60% chance to mezz isn't bad, since you have armor to absorb hits. On a Blaster, a 60% chance to mezz isn't bad, because you're a Blaster and are supposed to have limited access. On a Dominator, a 60% chance to mezz is poor. You're a Dominator. This is supposed to be your armor.

 

This can be bent a little bit with AoEs. With single target powers though, if it's not a 100% chance to happen you need to hit the enemy with a power that has 100% chance to happen first, which negates the suppose benefits of having the "chance for mezz" in the attack. There are a lot of small "chance for" effects in Dominator powers that you end up just ignoring because you aren't in a position to chance it. It would be like if Armor powers randomly shut themselves off 60% of the time.


BTW this should probably also apply to Defender blast powers. Always bothered me that what scales for Defenders is knockback Magnitude and not Knockback chance which is what actually provides mitigation. 

Edited February 14, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[Tantricsecrets]

20 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Thinking on this a bit, it would be kind of neat if the ST controls in Dominator primaries were treated more like proper attacks compared to Controllers...

 

Precedence is already set with some of the heavy-hitter melee attacks Doms even have access to (Like Seismic Smash with Smashes AND holds!) for them to have ranged attacks that happen to be a mez.

Crazy good idea! Really though they could just give the t1 immobilize that I see usually no one takes a big damage buff! It'll give a really good reason to take the immobilize. 

[Clave Dark 5]

23 hours ago, Tantricsecrets said:

While I love doms I feel that the secondary mix of having melee attacks, ranged attacks, cones, pbaoes can become a bit difficult to figure out a playstyle and build. I think having more of a focus on melee or ranged attacks in early gamplay could help.  I think by moving some abilities around would help make doms feel fluid.

I haven't played Doms since Live until last month and that's one of the things I love about them, they are fluid (unless I somehow lucked into the most fluid Dom build and power set choice ever, and I am rarely that lucky).  They're not just "go in and punch" or "shoot from distance", or "crowd control from back here."  The one I'm playing right now is the most fluid of any character I think I've played.   I get to choose when to keep tossing controls, or tossing ranged attacks, or going in for melee.  Or not.  Or to build towards any of those, or not.  Jack of all trades, master of none of course, but still. 

 

So please don't "focus" my character for me!

 

Also, perma-Dom is cool, sure, but I'm at 40 (40 levels of fun behind me too) and still don't have it yet and couldn't give a damn.  I think it's over-talked about because so many players still have a min/max attitude about any and everything in the game. (I'm sure I'll get hate for that)

[Tantricsecrets]

7 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I haven't played Doms since Live until last month and that's one of the things I love about them, they are fluid (unless I somehow lucked into the most fluid Dom build and power set choice ever, and I am rarely that lucky).  They're not just "go in and punch" or "shoot from distance", or "crowd control from back here."  The one I'm playing right now is the most fluid of any character I think I've played.   I get to choose when to keep tossing controls, or tossing ranged attacks, or going in for melee.  Or not.  Or to build towards any of those, or not.  Jack of all trades, master of none of course, but still. 

 

So please don't "focus" my character for me!

 

Also, perma-Dom is cool, sure, but I'm at 40 (40 levels of fun behind me too) and still don't have it yet and couldn't give a damn.  I think it's over-talked about because so many players still have a min/max attitude about any and everything in the game. (I'm sure I'll get hate for that)

What I suggested would mainly affect the lower lvls and when your 50 you'll have everything you want, just mainly changing the lvl you get abilities. No removal of abilities but just a shuffle of some. I suggested this because imo some of the sets lack a high damage attack in the early game (mostly the 20s is where I feel this the most). So by moving something like blaze or bitter to those lvls, doms would feel stronger at those lvls solo or team.

 

I also suggested a reduction in animation time for some cones(with a possible arc increase). With some sets having to use cones as aoes I think that these buff would be better than a damage boost. 

 

I believe that one of the ato sets could be changed to reduce the recharge of domination by a % so you wouldn't need to have so much recharge to achieve perma dom. This could also open the door to other players who want perma but don't have the time to invest in making, but they would still have to earn the ato somehow. 

 

You don't have to have perma dom to have fun or feel effective. That's one of the good things about this game, there are no standardized way that you must play. Also not every set benefits equally when it comes to domination but your dominator would benefit from the constant endurance refills, status protections, and mez 6 the being perma offers. 

 

There are some builds that are night and day  with perma for example: a perma mind dom only has to use one power (like total domination) to hold a group if things get out of control in a mission compared to a non perma mind dom who's not going to hold bosses unless they use more mezes and  possibly get held themselves. 

 

At the end of the day, I'm just a random making a suggestion.

 

Edited February 14, 2021 by Tantricsecrets

[arcane]

On 2/5/2021 at 3:27 PM, Frosticus said:

At the end of the day (as a whole) they don't stand up well as content becomes more difficult. Their controls lose effectiveness and their damage is difficult to leverage sometimes. 

Just to clarify: you mean their controls lose effectiveness against AV’s and GM’s specifically right? Because that’s the only scenario in which this is true, no?

[siolfir]

1 hour ago, arcaneholocaust said:

Just to clarify: you mean their controls lose effectiveness against AV’s and GM’s specifically right? Because that’s the only scenario in which this is true, no?

Or downgraded AV->EBs, which are harder to mez than the AV counterpart.

[Ukase]

On 1/31/2021 at 2:31 AM, nihilii said:

Dominators do pretty close to Blaster damage as is. In fact, with some outliers you even start wondering what is the point of a Blaster, given that you're getting a truckload of additional perks for being a Dom (perma mez protection, fantastic controls, and so on).

Either my doms are terrible, and my blasters are awesome, or your doms are incredible and your blasters are horrible. 

Or maybe both.


That said, I don't think Doms need a buff, but maybe some of the powersets could use a boost. In my experience, they do next to no damage, even with domination. They kind of reek of sadness. But - I'm likely playing mine wrong. I swore off of them, but a friend talked me into trying earth/earth, and it wasn't bad. I don't have perma-dom because it's not needed. It's nice for end recovery, but proper slotting negates the need to sweat endurance. But, again, playstyles vary. I may not like them, but others think they're fantastic. And when you team with these folks and you see how they get things done, you can see that it's more often than not a playstyle/player issue, not an AT/Powerset issue. 
 

[oedipus_tex]

If we are allowed to get ultra specific under the hood about Dominators, then there's a specific edit I think needs to be made to powers like Arctic Air that are toggles that contain a mezz with less than a 100% chance to fire. IMO it's unfair that these powers both do not Dominate and suffer a penalty to their mezz duration. Dominators have a lower base mezz duration multiplier than Controllers. Anytime a power is made that uses the base Dominator values but they can't enter Domination mode to overcome it, they end up coming up short. Remember, access to powerful mezzes is one of the main feature of this class. It hits the sets that can't do it hard, since there is very little mezz or other mitigation available in Assault sets.

 

 

The "normal" way Domination is coded for a power is to just add a second mezz AttribMod with a hand-coded Mag 3 mezz effect with 50% higher scale. The issue is that when a power like AA rolls randomly for its 30% chance for mezz effect, the two die rolls would be independent. Two independently rolled 30% chances gives AA too much effect against minions and lieutenants versus the base power. So the closest to correct solution would be to have one Mag 3 effect for outside Dom mode and a separate Mag 6 effect with 50% higher scale when in Dom mode. I have tested this and it works.

 

Here's the part of AA that handles the chance for Confusion:

 

 

(For whatever reason this doesn't care about PVP. You'd have to ask a PVPer what impact this has on that system. In any case, this read out is based on publicly available issue 24 code and may have already been fixed for Homecoming.)

 

 

The right way to account for this style of power IMO is to change the code above to this:

 

 

 

I added the critter stuff to the Requires field assuming a Mag 6 Confuse might disrupt PVP. Maybe it wouldn't but might as well be thinking about it.

 

That code wouldn't perfectly emulate how Domination works, but it comes very close. You can remove the DisplayFloat line to prevent the Domination! red text from popping up over enemy heads.


IMO making this the standard with powers like AA will solve many headaches as the team thinks about adding future Control sets.

 

EDIT: Fixed a mistatement about how much stronger a power is in Domination mode versus non-Domination mode. Powers have 50% longer duration in Domination mode, not 33% like I originally posted.

Edited February 14, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[siolfir]

1 hour ago, oedipus_tex said:

The "normal" way Domination is coded for a power is to just add a second mezz AttribMod with a hand-coded Mag 3 mezz effect with 50% higher scale. The issue is that when a power like AA rolls randomly for its 30% chance for mezz effect, the two die rolls would be independent. Two independently rolled 30% chances gives AA too much effect against minions and lieutenants versus the base power. So the closest to correct solution would be to have one Mag 3 effect for outside Dom mode and a separate Mag 6 effect with 50% higher scale when in Dom mode. I have tested this and it works.

Since the effect group has the 30% chance (now that effect groups are a thing here) wouldn't it also be possible to simply add in the Domination line into the effect group, the same as the 100% chances?

 

Edit: never mind, the check for domination means it has to be in a separate group (posted first, then thought about it)

Edited February 14, 2021 by siolfir

[oedipus_tex]

25 minutes ago, siolfir said:

Since the effect group has the 30% chance (now that effect groups are a thing here) wouldn't it also be possible to simply add in the Domination line into the effect group, the same as the 100% chances?

 

Edit: never mind, the check for domination means it has to be in a separate group (posted first, then thought about it)

 

I'm not familiar with Effect Groups and how they work. I think they may be an issue 25 and later feature. I haven't encountered any in the publicly available I24 code. An Effect Group possibly could work here though, since you could create a group with 30% chance that exactly mirrors how Domination actually works. 

Edited February 14, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[Frosticus]

13 hours ago, arcaneholocaust said:

Just to clarify: you mean their controls lose effectiveness against AV’s and GM’s specifically right? Because that’s the only scenario in which this is true, no?

Nope, I mean for every single rank increase, for every single additional mob and for every single increase in level difference. Their controls lose effectiveness and their damage often becomes more difficult to leverage.

 

It affects doms more than any other AT. 

 

Being severely restricted against EB/AV/GMs is just the most glaring example that most users can quickly understand. However, it is their less tangible,  but no less pronounced, decline in performance as settings increase, that ultimately deters many players. 

Edited February 15, 2021 by Frosticus

[summers]

On 2/7/2021 at 5:53 AM, oedipus_tex said:

For another example Dominators also get a Mag 6 hold on a 240 second recharge that has low accuracy you can overcome with a lot of preparation. Not terrible, but when some Blasters have actual nukes with 100 second faster recharge, some with Mag 3 Holds they can slot a reliable additional +2 Mag that has 1.3 accuracy its hard not to feel a pang of jealousy. 

 

(nerf the nukes)

 

🙂

[brasilgringo]

On 2/5/2021 at 6:27 PM, Frosticus said:

Yes, but I don't think they will ever be very effective compared to some of the major ATs.

 

At the end of the day (as a whole) they don't stand up well as content becomes more difficult. Their controls lose effectiveness and their damage is difficult to leverage sometimes. 

 

I dont see their control side ever being fixed in any meaningful way, so I'd address their damage. For each rank of enemy it would increase.

Minion (current)

LT (1.05X)

Boss (1.15x)

Ev/av ( 1.25x)

GM(1.3x)

 

That would be in line with the idea of a dominator. The more you resist their will the more they make you wish you hadn't. As a result,  difficult-to-control enemies feel their wrath. 

 

 

That's a pretty awesome idea.  It's like a Scourge mechanic.

[Mezmera]

20 minutes ago, summers said:

 

(nerf the nukes)

 

🙂

Have to agree on this one.  The nukes being made the way they are now have kind of put things out of whack.

[oedipus_tex]

19 minutes ago, summers said:

 

(nerf the nukes)

 

🙂

 

 

The funny thing about nukes is they aren't even the worst overperformers. I won't make any friends saying this, but Melee characters simply do too much damage with too much survivability. Everything kind of cascades from there. Blasters got crashless nukes to try forcibly catch them up to Melees. 

[Mezmera]

Every dominator has access to AoE holds.  I wouldn't want them changed in terms of recharge or anything but I wouldn't be opposed to adding damage to every dom's AoE holds somewhere between minor to moderate damage.  Maybe for controllers instead of adding damage something else could be added to their AoE holds.  

 

I also think the nukes have been made too good compared to how much survivability that has been added which in turn kind of nerfs holds.    

Edited February 15, 2021 by Mezmera

[oedipus_tex]

AoE Hold

5 hours ago, Frosticus said:

Nope, I mean for every single rank increase, for every single additional mob and for every single increase in level difference. Their controls lose effectiveness and their damage often becomes more difficult to leverage.

 

It affects doms more than any other AT. 

 

Being severely restricted against EB/AV/GMs is just the most glaring example that most users can quickly understand. However, it is thier less tangible,  but no less pronounced, decline in performance as settings increase, that ultimately deters many players. 

 

 

I'm glad someone else is saying this.

 

Let's say you're a Fire Control Dominator out of Domination mode. You mainly have a version of Flashfire that is 33% weaker than a Controller to protect you, with Cinders as a back up and Bonfire as a knock patch. Because most of the Assault sets are so barren, in most cases you have little else. Against a small group, as long as there are no bosses, this is probably doable because anything Flashfire misses you can probably still get under control with a Hold. However as difficulty increases the stakes get higher. The feasibility of finishing off a group before the mezz wears off gets lower. You don't want to use Flashfire twice if you don't have to because you need it for the next group. 

 

A Fire Control Dominator is, in pretty much exact terms, a nukeless Blaster without a sustain power who happens to have a pretty good AoE stun, an AoE immobilize, and some Fire Imps. Yes you can still kill some things because even a nukeless, sustainless Blaster can still kill things. However sometimes things just are what they are. With no armor, very few available debuffs, and even the inability to stack mezzes between the primary and secondary set like even Blasters and Scrappers can do, Dominators come up short a lot. There are some builds that pull ahead, but Dominators made from randomly selected sets that aren't named Plant or Dark aren't usually among them.