Make Dominators worth playing before Perma Dom.

[Marbing]

Doms are very strong. You can build them with no defense and still be safe. They play different than other ATs and take a bit sometimes to get use to. Have to change your strategy and such but, doms are in a good place IMO. I would be extremely hesitant towards any change.

 

 

[Xiddo]

17 hours ago, Wavicle said:

the issue isn’t damage. It’s survival.

I dunno. Fighting defeated enemies makes it much safer.

[TheZag]

I think its based off the perception of performance differences with and without domination.  Initially,  domination was impossible, and later on,  extremely expensive to make perma.  Now its within reach for those who wish to use it so the performance difference is more easily noticed.

 

My guess is that domination was never meant to be made perma but it was affected by global recharge so that ship has sailed.  And while i dont need perma domination to enjoy the character,  i can see why there are those who feel its required.  I wouldnt want to make it easier to achieve though.

 

[Wavicle]

I’m pretty sure it was explicitly intended to be made perma.

[Rudra]

23 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

I’m pretty sure it was explicitly intended to be made perma.

I'm inclined to disagree. For a while there, the perma-domination Dominators were the exception. Then that awareness was shared with other Doms as "the way to play".

 

It's like perma-Hasten. You don't need it. There are those that swear you do though. To the point of I no longer know of anyone that actually takes Hasten and does not have it perma. (Edit: Also resulting in players like me that adamantly refuse to take Hasten because of that same reason.)

 

I'm inclined to agree with @TheZag. It's a perception thing. I've tried several Doms. I've deleted almost all of them. I readily admit Doms are not an AT I am even close to effective with. Mostly because of things like boss fights, especially EB fights, where I would need my domination bar to actually mez the target, only for it to wear off mid-fight leaving the boss/EB effectively immune to my mezzes and me unable to fend off his attacks. Then I watched a friend in those exact same fights, using either a Controller or Dominator depending on what that particular friend felt like using, just stomp that same boss/EB into the ground. Without perma-dom. (Edit: I should note this was back on Live.) (And I can say it was not a 2-Dom victory or a Controller+Dom victory, because each and every time my character was too busy eating floor to do anything.) Then again, they had their set IOs already fully slotted.

Edited October 24, 2022 by Rudra

[Wavicle]

My memory is that the powers dev who designed the current iteration told people they hadn’t figured out the best thing about the power yet, which led to the discovery of permadom. For this reason I am pretty certain it was intentionally designed to be achievable.

Edited October 24, 2022 by Wavicle

[Rudra]

If the powers dev that came up with the current iteration did not know what was the best thing about the power, leading to the discovery of perma-dom, then wouldn't that mean that perma-dom was not an intentional element but something players figured out?

 

Edit: Otherwise, why didn't the dev  just say "Perma-Dom" was the best part? Or that (s)he added perma-dom to be it?

Edited October 24, 2022 by Rudra

[Wavicle]

Just now, Rudra said:

If the powers dev that came up with the current iteration did not know what was the best thing about the power, leading to the discovery of perma-dom, then wouldn't that mean that perma-dom was not an intentional element but something players figured out?

you are misreading what I wrote.

 

the PLAYERS had not yet figured it out

 

[Rudra]

Okay, that still does not make sense to me. Why would the powers dev need to discover perma-dom? Wouldn't that dev already be aware that it could be made permanent?

 

Edit: Unless it was coded in after, in which case it was not discovered, it was implemented.

Edited October 24, 2022 by Rudra

[Wavicle]

Read it again. The powers dev was perfectly aware. The PLAYERS did not realize it. He then told them "you haven't figure out what's so good about it", which encouraged them, the PLAYERS, to figure out that they could make it perma.

[Wavicle]

Sometimes devs don't want to tell players all the stuff they can do with the game, they want them to figure it out for themselves.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Wavicle

[Rudra]

Got it. Sorry and thanks.

[Greycat]

They likely didn't want to avoid perma because IOs weren't a big thing (or ... well, anything) when they were introduced. You got perma by (a) being on a team (b) with kinetics of someone else who could boost your recharge, so it'd encourage team play. (There were other little interactions between classes, too - I want to say extra damage if a Stalker AS'd a held target, for instance, but it's been a while.)

 

Don't forget, inventions didn't exist until issue 9. The devs had been working on some *other* system which evolved into that. So they didn't design doms (or anything else) with the expectation players would be hitting perma-anything on their own.  So, no, I don't think "you can permadom on your own" was what they were waiting for people to discover.

[Psyonico]

@Greycat took the words right out of my mouth.  Domination existed for 3 issues before IOs were released, players didn't have a way of getting it permanent by themselves before then.

[Wavicle]

20 minutes ago, Greycat said:

They likely didn't want to avoid perma because IOs weren't a big thing (or ... well, anything) when they were introduced. You got perma by (a) being on a team (b) with kinetics of someone else who could boost your recharge, so it'd encourage team play. (There were other little interactions between classes, too - I want to say extra damage if a Stalker AS'd a held target, for instance, but it's been a while.)

 

Don't forget, inventions didn't exist until issue 9. The devs had been working on some *other* system which evolved into that. So they didn't design doms (or anything else) with the expectation players would be hitting perma-anything on their own.  So, no, I don't think "you can permadom on your own" was what they were waiting for people to discover.

when they implemented the invention system you’d better believe that how much recharge it takes to perma hasten and domination was taken into account.

[Wavicle]

When ED was implemented they knew they were planning to introduce new enhancements later already.

[Greycat]

46 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

When ED was implemented they knew they were planning to introduce new enhancements later already.

 

When ED was implemented they were planning the system they scrapped that IOs replaced. I don't think we ever had information enough on that system to say they were new enhancements.

 

Edit: See the below. Pretty sure this was the sum total of what we were told.

 

Edited October 25, 2022 by Greycat

[Wavicle]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

 

When ED was implemented they were planning the system they scrapped that IOs replaced. I don't think we ever had information enough on that system to say they were new enhancements.

 

Edit: See the below. Pretty sure this was the sum total of what we were told.

 

 

Whatever you want to call it, when they implemented ED they knew they were going to be adding more sources of power.

[Saiyajinzoningen]

Currently i have 4 50 doms:

 

grav/martial

mind/psy

ill/psi
Plants/savage

 

None of my doms have hasten. All of my doms have permadom. Most of them have permadom by level 30. Doms are incredible. The archetype power "domination" is the most useful archetype power sans stalkers. before gaining permadom i consider my doms as weak blasters with some control and i have zero issues. The best part of dom is invulnerability to being mezzed which controllers severely need.

[Galaxy Brain]

This came up a while back and the issue is definitely permadom and the weirdness around it.

 

First, its not actually too hard to acheive perma dom. You need 123% global recharge (which makes my brain happy), which can be acheived a variety of ways. Having hasten active already gives you 70%, so you only need 53% from IO's/etc. Hasten doesnt need to be perma either as long as you can average that 123% while Dom is on cooldown. With 3 so's in hasten, it should give enough average recharge to let domination have about 65% uptime with no added recharge bonuses... but it doesnt.

 

Domination isnt just about recharge, but also having enough meter to click the button in the first place. When Dom ends, your meter depletes and you need to spend X time to fill it back up to dominate again. Similar powers do not have this caveat, allowing a scaling progression to perma where you really do have a consistent X% uptime. Domination does not have this, its either perma or some nebulous amount of "up" depending on your targets. Hitting perma status lets you basically ignore the meter entirely until you mess up, totally changing your character and AT as a whole.

 

Domination provides a full endurance refresh, full mez protection, and super-mez for you to inflict. The endurance return is gravy, but the real meat and potatoes is how you no longer worry about incoming mez and the ability to lock down mobs entirely. Having that for every fight is awesome, but unlike nearly every other long term boost you rely on meter which prevents you from having "near perma" status in any real capacity. Going perma allows you to skip half the requirements to actually using the power, and the relatively low requirement to get there swings it from a niche build to the standard. Especially when you objectively compare doms in and out of domination.

 

Objectively speaking, there's no reason you wouldn't want to permadom outside of not having the resources to do so. You *do not have to* make a permadom, but thats like making a Super Strength character and not taking rage. Note that I didnt compare it to perma/double rage, its more like comparing Super Strength without it (non perma) to with it on (rage is more or less perma out of the box). Sure, you are not forced to take rage but holy moly are you better with it to the point of it being a no-brainer to grab / its *the* reason to take Super Strength. 

 

To me, having to plan a build in order to get permadom is fine. The gap between getting there and actually having it is not. Anything that changes with Doms should be addressing that gulf imo.

 

 

 

 

[UltraAlt]

Honestly, I try to avoid using Domination until I really need it.

I don't try to slot/build toward perma-dom on any of my Dominators.

 

I find them fun to play without perma-dom, but I don't play end-game.

[Rudra]

40 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

This came up a while back and the issue is definitely permadom and the weirdness around it.

 

First, its not actually too hard to acheive perma dom. You need 123% global recharge (which makes my brain happy), which can be acheived a variety of ways. Having hasten active already gives you 70%, so you only need 53% from IO's/etc. Hasten doesnt need to be perma either as long as you can average that 123% while Dom is on cooldown. With 3 so's in hasten, it should give enough average recharge to let domination have about 65% uptime with no added recharge bonuses... but it doesnt.

 

Domination isnt just about recharge, but also having enough meter to click the button in the first place. When Dom ends, your meter depletes and you need to spend X time to fill it back up to dominate again. Similar powers do not have this caveat, allowing a scaling progression to perma where you really do have a consistent X% uptime. Domination does not have this, its either perma or some nebulous amount of "up" depending on your targets. Hitting perma status lets you basically ignore the meter entirely until you mess up, totally changing your character and AT as a whole.

 

Domination provides a full endurance refresh, full mez protection, and super-mez for you to inflict. The endurance return is gravy, but the real meat and potatoes is how you no longer worry about incoming mez and the ability to lock down mobs entirely. Having that for every fight is awesome, but unlike nearly every other long term boost you rely on meter which prevents you from having "near perma" status in any real capacity. Going perma allows you to skip half the requirements to actually using the power, and the relatively low requirement to get there swings it from a niche build to the standard. Especially when you objectively compare doms in and out of domination.

 

Objectively speaking, there's no reason you wouldn't want to permadom outside of not having the resources to do so. You *do not have to* make a permadom, but thats like making a Super Strength character and not taking rage. Note that I didnt compare it to perma/double rage, its more like comparing Super Strength without it (non perma) to with it on (rage is more or less perma out of the box). Sure, you are not forced to take rage but holy moly are you better with it to the point of it being a no-brainer to grab / its *the* reason to take Super Strength. 

 

To me, having to plan a build in order to get permadom is fine. The gap between getting there and actually having it is not. Anything that changes with Doms should be addressing that gulf imo.

 

 

 

 

Only 1 of my Super Strength characters has Rage. And even that character doesn't it unless it feels like I can't do any real damage to a given foe. My dominators only use Domination when fighting a difficult EB (I have AVs turned off for them. Always. I can't beat AVs with my doms, and some EBs I can't beat either.)

 

(I also still don't get how permadom even works. I have a dom with better than 123% recharge, with no Hasten. [I never take Hasten on any characters.] And once I trigger Domination and it wears off? I have to start building it up all over again.)

Edited January 4, 2023 by Rudra
Edited to correct "really" to "real".

[Psyonico]

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

(I also still don't get how permadom even works. I have a dom with better than 123% recharge, with no Hasten. [I never take Hasten on any characters.] And once I trigger Domination and it wears off? I have to start building it up all over again.)

If Domination recharges before it wears off, your Domination bar will be full still, allowing you to recast it without having to build the bar again.

[Galaxy Brain]

16 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

If Domination recharges before it wears off, your Domination bar will be full still, allowing you to recast it without having to build the bar again.

 

Exactly, the 123% global recharge is the minimum to get it to return in just under 90s. If you are off by even 1 server tick, you will start back at square one. Building for way more recharge is basically insurance vs slows/etc, as well as better end return.

 

@Rudra, there could be times where it has lapsed and it wasnt clicked in time. I know I have done it where I could be mid animation for something and it drops. Side note, are your SS characters brutes?

[BrandX]

Effects of mez lasts 50% longer (not sure if they're any stronger in terms of mag), refills endurance bar, and gives mez protection.  No change in damage as they changed Domination damage to have that effect permanently.

 

What's wrong with all that exactly?