Dominating the City

[Scarlet Shocker]

I've never really played dominators as an AT. I've usually much preferred the way controllers play and their overall team benefits.

 

I recently wrote about a concept toon (see General discussion for more info) and that did seem to lend itself to a dommi, which also allowed me to try a new style of play I'm less familiar with. Win win... or perhaps not.

 

I've rolled a Symphony/Mind dom, and I've taken a heavy chunk of Force of Will, and the Leviathan PPP.

 

It's not strong. It's very far from not strong. It's 50 now, and has a mostly stock IO build, no set bonuses, and Alpha slot is unlocked but empty. Domination isn't often up at this stage, but even allowing for this it seems lacklustre. I struggle with even con missions solo and for the most part control seems to be sub-par compared to other controlling ATs. Given that Symphony is meant to be pretty good (I've never played it before) and I have had good results with Leviathan and FoW in the past) I'm pretty disappointed.

 

Endurance use seems to be very high without bonuses - higher than other ATs at this level I'd suggest and I find myself regularly gasping for breath mid-fight, like a pensioner who smokes forty fags a day sprinting up a hill.

 

Have I missed anything blatantly obvious? Is it likely to improve once I've accumulated some set bonuses? It seems so far off the pace at this stage as to be almost junk, so I'm skeptical that it will improve that much.

 

What is your advice to improve this toon's playability?

[SeraphimKensai]

I've played maybe a dozen or so doms to 50 and beyond. Typically end cost is often high pre sets, that's part of the reason domination refills the end bar. That said you say you went Symphony/Mind, so I assume you went Symphony/Psi Assault. Drain Psyche is an amazing power in its own, and you'll want to get decent recharge out of it so you can ideally keep it perma, that will significantly help out on endurance issues. Based on the pairing it makes sense to play from a reasonable range to maximize your cones, however Mind Probe and psi shockwave helps for things in melee.

 

I strongly recommend ice mastery on a domi for sleet and a lesser degree ice storm. Hoarfrost is great and the frozen armor help quite a bit of you build for typed defense (but I'd aim for ranged defense after getting enough recharge for permadom).

 

Biggest issue would be robots or mobs that are resistant to psy damage, so sleet helps there as well.

 

Dominators IMO are typically require more mobility and planning where to engage mobs than most ATs, Symphony because of its numerous cones expounds upon that. That said once you get perma dom, the mag of your controls will be really high especially given the reverb pet adding to it. It gets a lot easier at that point.

Edited October 25, 2023 by SeraphimKensai

[laudwic]

If you do set bonuses, with an eye to recharge (Recharge is the most important area to add - Put Luck of the Gambler and Force Feedback procs where ever you can) you can get the recharge on Domination to be less than the duration and enter the joys of Perma Dom.  With Perma Dom, you'll generally be immune to status effects and it will greatly help your End issues as it recharges your End bar every time it goes off.  There are other posts in this sub-forum about slotting and Permadom.  The main reason you want PermaDom is Endurance recharge, status effect protection, and it doubles the magnitude on your status effects so you can one-shot hold bosses.  

 

You are going to have some trouble with the combination of Symphony/Psionic Assault as you are only using one damage type.  Anything that resists Psi is going to be resisting everything you do (except some Telekinetic Thrust damage as that is Psi/Smashing).  

 

 

 

 

[MoonSheep]

psi assault is quite a low damage powerset and more focused on AoE, this will make solo’ing more challenging

 

fire, earth or energy would likely be more effective. shout out to dark assault also

 

engage mobs by using your control powers and then batter them - a mezzed foe deals no damage

 

i’d also recommend ice mastery for Sleet, it’s defender strength. hibernate and hoarfrost are also good as “oh no” powers if things get hectic

 

work on getting perma dom, it transforms the AT

[Frosticus]

You just need a whack of recharge. That transforms doms. 

 

In your case it will increase the frequency of:

Stun/nuke - quickly kill off fodder

PSW - quickly kill off fodder, flatline enemy recharge

Drain psyche - solve all end issues if used on 2 or more targets. Solve healing if used on 4 or more targets.

Psy Lance + mind Probe - if you want to do decent st damage you need these up as often as possible.

*consider the +dam ATO in subdue. It will easily 2-3x stack which adds a lot of damage to the rest of your build (ie confounding chant and epic aoes)

 

The advice on epics is fine, but largely irrelevant.

Fireball+ rain of fire 

Souldrain + dark oblit

Sleet + icestorm

They will all see similar results. If you team a lot then lean toward sleet, but it doesn't really matter. And you ideally have your character playing "well" before adding in epics/incarnates.

 

Recharge is basically all that combo needs. 

 

 

[arcane]

In a more general sense, what you’re doing wrong is judging a character’s performance before completing it. Don’t do that.

[Clave Dark 5]

I really like Doms, but the one time I tried Symphony (on another AT IIRC), it really didn't grab me; I seem to recall it's got a meh rep around the boards, so maybe that's the problem here...

[EnjoyTheJourney]

The gap between "floor" and "ceiling" performance for dom builds tends to be very large when compared to a high proportion of other ATs. 

 

When a dom build is at its floor domination is often not active (which means mez protection is often not available when it's needed), defenses never really came together, resistance to debuffs is poor or nonexistent, controls recharge slowly and don't last that long, and attack chains have low DPS and have noticeable gaps in them. Attacking solely from range tends to be ineffective because of low-to-very-low DPS and it's too dangerous to stay in melee and fight there. Basically, dom builds at their performance floor suck.

 

Fortunately, the performance floor for dom builds isn't a good basis for judging how a dom can perform when the build is carefully put together and resources are invested in making it perform at or near its performance ceiling. You can try dom builds out for free on the beta server if you're interested in seeing how your symphony / psi dom can work once a strong build is put together for it. 

 

PS: Don't buy the message that psi assault is a low damage set. It's not, especially when a build featuring psi assault is well put together. 

[MoonSheep]

8 minutes ago, EnjoyTheJourney said:

PS: Don't buy the message that psi assault is a low damage set. It's not, especially when a build featuring psi assault is well put together. 

 

unfortunately it is quite a low damage set. people may like the set and that's great, i'm a fan of psi powers too, but it's factually not a high performer. however it has the very popular drain psyche power which aids survival, giving it appeal and bringing something different to the party

 

psi assault has a range of low damage powers on offer and doesn't have a build up type power included in the set. these two things combined make it one of the lowest damaging sets available to doms. it's especially low for single target damage which will be felt during solo play. but as noted, there are other reasons than damage to choose the set.

 

below is a comparison of psi's highest damage attack chain with high damage sets, numbers taken from mids. level 50 without any enhancements;

 

psi assault

mind probe - 114

telekinetic thrust - 86

psi lance quickform - 143

= 343

 

fiery assault

blaze - 152

blazing bolt quickform - 171

incinerate - 123

= 446

827 with embrace of fire

 

energy assault

total focus - 226

power burst - 137

snipe blast quickform - 143

= 506

678 with power up

 

earth assault

stone mallet - 95

heavy mallet - 161

seismic smash - 207

= 463

622 with power up

 

on a single target basis, the damage gulf is colossal. psi assault is around half as damaging as earth and energy and is out damaged by a scale of almost 2.5 times when compared to fiery assault. additionally, a 'well put together build' is also available for fire, energy and earth, further advancing the gap these sets have against psi

 

@Scarlet Shocker i feel a full purpled out IO build isn't going to drastically change your experience with the dom - some of the powers noted on the above example are noticeably strong the moment you gain access to the power. whilst i love my mind/fire dom, i would suggest earth assault will give you what you're looking for on solo play. seismic smash is incredibly damaging and has a mag 3 hold, this'll be great for holding bosses without domination. open with a hold then smash them, reduces the danger of a mob and you'll quickly defeat enemies

 

 

[honoroit]

its not rly a fair compare to pick buffed st (10s in case of bu)

-> where psi is strong aoe, with scream at 60ft range on a 16s cd, and shockwave pbaoe on 20s). 

 

no one ever talks about how awesome thorny assault is, except me, Figs, of course...

 

 

 

[arcane]

Don’t listen to “Figs” either while you’re at it.

[Frosticus]

There is a lot more involved in a build than just looking at the base numbers, but I think we all "know" that.

 

I'm not going to pretend my /psi dom does as much st damage as my Gaussian boosted /sav dom, but it does enough to drop a lvl 54 Requiem (no insp/temps/amps/lore) pretty quickly. Being able to leverage the +dam ATO can be pretty significant. Some sets do it a lot better than others. Some sets can't do it at all.

 

/Psi sets you up to defeat the targets that sustained single target damage actually matters against. For everything else you want "burst" aoe, which doms by and large don't have. In fairness, you generally take /psi for the 16 target PSW (all other pbaoes are 10 target) and for the unparalleled sustain of drain psyche.

 

And while this is far from your typical /psi it is unlikely any /fire, /nrg/, /earth, /sav, or /dark dom is doing this no matter how hard they try:

credit: @Ston

 

edit: while I wouldn't suggest OP creates a /psi dom if their intent is to do big damage numbers, it sounds like they already have it at 50. So advice to pick a different secondary is not particularly helpful. 

Edited October 25, 2023 by Frosticus

[EnjoyTheJourney]

It's fair to say that psi assault is not the most damaging dom assault set. It's wrong to call it a low damage assault set. 

 

As pointed out by others, assault sets should be evaluated for what they allow a character to do, and not be eyeballing DPS numbers that were generated in a way that's detached from a larger build. 

 

Check out the fourth build that's given on the following webpage ...

 

 

It's a fire / psi / ice dom that did 375 DPS in a pylon test. Multiple other such tests were ballpark with those numbers, as well, with similar or comparable builds. 375 DPS is quite good, even if its not the highest total possible across all dom builds and all ATs. 

 

Psi assault has a few things going for it that make it hit harder than you'd believe just by eyeballing peak DPS numbers for other assault sets.

 

1. Drain psyche reduces the need for slotting or incarnate choices that help with managing endurance. Thus, a fire dom running hot feet full time can still comfortably pick a damage alpha, which  increases both AOE and single target by *both* the amount of damage hot feet does and more damage beyond that from having a damage alpha, as well as having a proc'd up hold with a short animation time available to further boost single target damage. There is no downtime for those bonuses to damage and there is never a need to devote animation time to activating a powerup skill.

As a sidenote, I can't remember that last time somebody factored in the animation time or downtime for aim or a power up skill when calculating DPS. Doing that doesn't give an accurate picture of in-game DPS.  

 

2. Even after reductions from AV resistances and purple patch effects the regen debuff from drain psyche noticeably reduces regen for hard targets. That affects pylon times, which some might see as artificial. But, it also affects actual in-game defeat times for mobs that live long enough to be affected by drain psyche, and so it's a relevant factor in-game.

 

3. The single target skills can be combined with a single strongly damaging skill in a primary to form a smooth single target attack chain. Even if subdue is used as part of the attack chain because of the choice of a low damage primary the effects of subdue's low DPA are ameliorated by its ability to slot in the +damage unique IO from a dom IO set. 

Edited October 25, 2023 by EnjoyTheJourney

[honoroit]

1 hour ago, arcane said:

Don’t listen to “Figs” either while you’re at it.

 

mean!

[EnjoyTheJourney]

For the OP, SomeGuy is a frequent poster in the scrapper forum, with a lot of posts in the very long "Pylon testing" thread. He has a link in his Sig that shows up in all of his posts to a spreadsheet tracking pylon defeat times and the calculated DPS from those efforts. Dominators are not listed often in that file. But, then again not many people seem to be doing much in the way of pylon tests for them. Fire assault comes up a lot for the highest DPS dom builds, which is not surprising because fire assault does have very strong single target damage. 

 

The 375 DPS total given earlier for a fire / psy / ice build shows up about in the middle of the pack for the close to 500 pylon tests listed. That doesn't mean 375 DPS is average for all builds, though; that spreadsheet is loaded with very high damage builds being run by players who are typically excellent at executing single target attack chains (I am not in that category, for the record, as most of my pylon defeats are pretty shambolic in their execution). Also, some of those particularly high DPS builds are boosted by amplifiers or use of an assault hybrid, which the fire / psi / ice build is not. 

It's just wrong to call psi assault a low damage assault set. Flat wrong. Full stop. 

[MoonSheep]

10 hours ago, EnjoyTheJourney said:

It's fair to say that psi assault is not the most damaging dom assault set. It's wrong to call it a low damage assault set. 

 

As pointed out by others, assault sets should be evaluated for what they allow a character to do, and not be eyeballing DPS numbers that were generated in a way that's detached from a larger build. 

 

Check out the fourth build that's given on the following webpage ...

 

 

It's a fire / psi / ice dom that did 375 DPS in a pylon test. Multiple other such tests were ballpark with those numbers, as well, with similar or comparable builds. 375 DPS is quite good, even if its not the highest total possible across all dom builds and all ATs. 

 

Psi assault has a few things going for it that make it hit harder than you'd believe just by eyeballing peak DPS numbers for other assault sets.

 

1. Drain psyche reduces the need for slotting or incarnate choices that help with managing endurance. Thus, a fire dom running hot feet full time can still comfortably pick a damage alpha, which  increases both AOE and single target by *both* the amount of damage hot feet does and more damage beyond that from having a damage alpha, as well as having a proc'd up hold with a short animation time available to further boost single target damage. There is no downtime for those bonuses to damage and there is never a need to devote animation time to activating a powerup skill.

As a sidenote, I can't remember that last time somebody factored in the animation time or downtime for aim or a power up skill when calculating DPS. Doing that doesn't give an accurate picture of in-game DPS.  

 

2. Even after reductions from AV resistances and purple patch effects the regen debuff from drain psyche noticeably reduces regen for hard targets. That affects pylon times, which some might see as artificial. But, it also affects actual in-game defeat times for mobs that live long enough to be affected by drain psyche, and so it's a relevant factor in-game.

 

3. The single target skills can be combined with a single strongly damaging skill in a primary to form a smooth single target attack chain. Even if subdue is used as part of the attack chain because of the choice of a low damage primary the effects of subdue's low DPA are ameliorated by its ability to slot in the +damage unique IO from a dom IO set. 

 

i appreciate you taking the time to draw from other testing and giving a balanced view

 

ultimately, if you enjoy the set OP and can make the build workable for you, that’s what matters

 

one of my all time favourite alts is a katana/invul scrapper, i solo’d it to lvl 50.. twice! certainly not top tier damage but good fun

 

i do recommend you try earth assault on the test server to see whether it aligns with your desired playstyle. there are many great powersets in this game but don’t always align to the way everyone likes to play. i like short, punchy, fast paced glass cannon powersets, others enjoy an atmospheric battle. if you’re having a good time, neither is wrong

[Scarlet Shocker]

Some useful info here thanks.

 

This thread came about because of here:

I had the concept and it's not really worked. I've decided I don't much like Symphony, and I've never been greatly into mental powers despite their utility.

 

However I thought I'd try a new concept Dominator, all vegetable, plant control, thorny assault hero who I've named Noble Cabbage

 

Wish me luck!

[Mezmera]

I've played all sorts of dommies and when Symphony came out I gave it a thorough test.  All of those cone controls make you want to play it from range.  Almost all of dom assaults have a mix of powers be it melee or pbaoe along with some ranged attacks that encourage you to play it in various ways.  

 

Alas I did not find Symphony to be a good powerset for doms to use where it feels more suited to the Controller AT.  If you play Symphony on doms you'll want to target assaults with better ranged styles which would be something like Fire.

 

Psi is a good assault but its pbaoe oriented and yes the damage oomph isn't quite like something you'll find in some of the other assaults.  Symphony and Psi is a counterintuitive pairing imo.  I'd honestly avoid Symph on doms.

[Scarlet Shocker]

12 hours ago, Mezmera said:

I've played all sorts of dommies and when Symphony came out I gave it a thorough test.  All of those cone controls make you want to play it from range.  Almost all of dom assaults have a mix of powers be it melee or pbaoe along with some ranged attacks that encourage you to play it in various ways.  

 

Alas I did not find Symphony to be a good powerset for doms to use where it feels more suited to the Controller AT.  If you play Symphony on doms you'll want to target assaults with better ranged styles which would be something like Fire.

 

Psi is a good assault but its pbaoe oriented and yes the damage oomph isn't quite like something you'll find in some of the other assaults.  Symphony and Psi is a counterintuitive pairing imo.  I'd honestly avoid Symph on doms.

 

 

If I'm honest, that wasn't too much of a problem for my playstyle. I found that there's enough range in both sets to keep at a distance - especially with the added FoW powers. There were several cones, a few good ST ranged attacks, but I just find it clunky and squishy.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Plant control has a cone as its key control power. Fortunately it has a longer base range and a wider angle than most cones and you can often pair it with the intuition radial alpha incarnate to make the range even better. You can also use the coercive persuasion set in it and the proc can lead to more mobs than 16 being confused with a single casting. Plus, creepers distract mobs and absorb some aggro. So, despite relying on a cone for it's most important control skill plant control is still an effective and fairly easy to use control set. It's a great choice for doms for general adventuring, in most situations.  

 

Thorny assault is not my personal favorite assault set. It relies heavily on short range and fairly narrow cones for AOE. Damage cones are typically harder to use than other types of AOEs and they tend to miss more mobs, in practice, especially when their range is short and they have a narrow focus. If you didn't have a great experience with the cones from symphony control then it's possible you'll have a similar experience with thorny assault to what I've had. Great on paper, harder to get the set to perform close to the ceiling of its potential. 

Plant / fire, incidentally, is very effective. You can take flame mastery to further leverage the +damage power in fiery assault. If you like ranged attacks then fiery assault does far more damage than thorny assault. 

My own Plant / fire dom is a druid of the forest, nature-based theme. He is very effective, capable of soloing content in the final mission of a +4x8 ITF at a similar speed to what the other seven players can do when competing for clear time directly with them, at least for most teams (ie: my dom clears one tower, the rest of the team the other, my dom clears one side of the map that leads to Rom while the rest of the team clears the other side). That's not something any other dom I've run can do. But, seeds with coercive confusion and extra range in them, creepers when proc'd up, and fiery assault are strong enough to do that. 

Edited October 27, 2023 by EnjoyTheJourney

[arcane]

16 hours ago, Mezmera said:

I've played all sorts of dommies and when Symphony came out I gave it a thorough test.  All of those cone controls make you want to play it from range.  Almost all of dom assaults have a mix of powers be it melee or pbaoe along with some ranged attacks that encourage you to play it in various ways.  

 

Alas I did not find Symphony to be a good powerset for doms to use where it feels more suited to the Controller AT.  If you play Symphony on doms you'll want to target assaults with better ranged styles which would be something like Fire.

 

Psi is a good assault but its pbaoe oriented and yes the damage oomph isn't quite like something you'll find in some of the other assaults.  Symphony and Psi is a counterintuitive pairing imo.  I'd honestly avoid Symph on doms.

I have a few Symphony toons and have had the best results Dom-wise on Symphony/Fire/Fire with zero melee powers, yeah. 
 

Blaze/Blazing Bolt/Fire Blast for S/T with the hold or confuse as filler, and Confounding Chant/proc bomb Dreadful Discord/Fire Ball for AoE.

Edited October 27, 2023 by arcane

[Scarlet Shocker]

21 hours ago, EnjoyTheJourney said:

Plant control has a cone as its key control power. Fortunately it has a longer base range and a wider angle than most cones and you can often pair it with the intuition radial alpha incarnate to make the range even better. You can also use the coercive persuasion set in it and the proc can lead to more mobs than 16 being confused with a single casting. Plus, creepers distract mobs and absorb some aggro. So, despite relying on a cone for it's most important control skill plant control is still an effective and fairly easy to use control set. It's a great choice for doms for general adventuring, in most situations.  

 

Thorny assault is not my personal favorite assault set. It relies heavily on short range and fairly narrow cones for AOE. Damage cones are typically harder to use than other types of AOEs and they tend to miss more mobs, in practice, especially when their range is short and they have a narrow focus. If you didn't have a great experience with the cones from symphony control then it's possible you'll have a similar experience with thorny assault to what I've had. Great on paper, harder to get the set to perform close to the ceiling of its potential. 

Plant / fire, incidentally, is very effective. You can take flame mastery to further leverage the +damage power in fiery assault. If you like ranged attacks then fiery assault does far more damage than thorny assault. 

My own Plant / fire dom is a druid of the forest, nature-based theme. He is very effective, capable of soloing content in the final mission of a +4x8 ITF at a similar speed to what the other seven players can do when competing for clear time directly with them, at least for most teams (ie: my dom clears one tower, the rest of the team the other, my dom clears one side of the map that leads to Rom while the rest of the team clears the other side). That's not something any other dom I've run can do. But, seeds with coercive confusion and extra range in them, creepers when proc'd up, and fiery assault are strong enough to do that. 

 

 

Interesting point about Cones. I must say I'm a big fan of plant... I have a Plant/TA controller who rocks.

 

I've enjoyed Cabbage a bit but I'm thinking you might have  a point about the Thorns. I am not usually a fan of cones myself simply because they aren't always too easy to line up. Thing is, I'm not a fan of fire because of its ubiquity... but I like your advice. Thanks