_Ilr_

Raz is absoutely correct about Side-Switching. For the last couple months I've been rolling Corruptors to replace all my Defenders(which would explain my disappearance from the Defender boards...but atleast Defenders were all Unified in our Plea for improvements). Now I will be rolling more Controllers to replace my Dominators in preperation for their side-switching as well.

I'm not going to question anyone anymore who still insists on defending the weaknesses of Dominators just because yours "is just fine", so I don't want to hear one goddamned peep from any of you along the lines of "Dey Tuk R JOBS!" once side-switching is available.

Everyone got that? Not a Peep.

God this is... This is just a joke... I don't even know why I'm putting feedback in this thread other than an obsession for pointing out design flaws. If the Devs wanted to read our opinions about Dominators, then we wouldn't have had to ask for this thread, it would have been here from the start.


Look, Doms have always had serious deficiencies in just about every part of the game and since Beta they've tried to patch it over with the Inherrent. In other AT's, your Role more or less directly synergizes with your Inherrent. Especially Brutes, Stalkers, Corruptors, Scrappers, and Controllers. ...which brings me to:

<ul type="square">[*]Domination Recharge reduced to 200:[/list]-- This change means absoultely nothing for the Majority of builds who have long-animations and End-hogging AoE attacks. And domination will still be down a majority of the time without Hasten. ...All this change is going to do is amplify the obvious deficiency between the good sets like Fire&amp;Ice and everything else that doesn't compete.

Now this doesn't mean that Psi, NRG, Gravity, Mind, and Thorn reliant sets can't take advantage of this reduction, but they all generally have to close to Melee range to do it which means they're taking a lot more mezzing and damage for a reward that pales in comparison to other Inherrents. Afterall, no one's ever said Domination is overpowered meanwhile the AT's that people have repeatedly pointed to as overpowered got BIGGER BUFFS this issue than Doms. ...So these issue 7 changes also fail to address Risk/Reward issues in addition to Synergy issues.

<ul type="square">[*]Assault powers in PvP yielding 8 Dom points:[/list]-- This is the change that we should have gotten for PvE and is an even bigger PvP Synergy issue than the previous topic I just addressed...plus it doesn't work if we MISS. A well built PvP Dom on Live right now has generally 2 melee/close Attacks, and maybe 1 or 2 *other* assault attacks and generally raises their Domination through spamming control while Kiting or setting up for using those melee attacks to drop toggles.... (right before they're 2 shotted by any Scrapper or Blapper that comes along and thinks "Yay!, free points"). Infact, this change will only encourage heroes to Gank us even faster b/c we're a lot more annoying when domination is up. ...which bring me to:

<ul type="square">[*]Main Toggle droppers NERFED from 175% to 5%:[/list]-- This is where our Survivability in PvP actually was being rewarded... (unless against SR scrappers but they've always broken PvP rules since Issue-4) ...Now we don't have any deterrent at all. Worse.. the one Melee attack we get that's supposed to be 64% (though testing suggests it's closer to 33% or less) isn't even available till the 30's for some sets which means Doms need not even Step foot in Siren's or BloodyBay anymore and have seriously gone up a notch on the Scrapper "list of Free-Points". This NERF has no point to it at all. If Blasters were "too good" with Toggle Drops, then why not just nerf theirs? Instead of giving Doms more options in PvP, they've given us LESS. If the Devs can't roll this change back for Doms then you'll never see mine in PvP ever again.... it's just not worth the Gank-Fest.



So the Design-change Failure is Three-Fold, and those issues they failed to address are:
-Lack of Mez-Protection and Staying-Power in PvE
-Crap Damage, and Primaries Negated by Break-Frees, in PvP thus NO deterrants in PvP.
-Lack of Synergy in everything we get NO damage/survival compensation for it.



Doms are already very under-represented in every way and their populations on the live servers have only been HALF of Brutes/Stalkers/Corruptors and only 1/3 of MM numbers. After Issue-7, I won't be the least bit suprised if those numbers fall even farther... I know I won't be among those numbers anymore and will be encouraging other Doms I meet in-game to roll a different AT too.

2 days ago, I PM'd States asking him to "lay the Vision" on us where Doms are concerned, but he most likely just took one look at the subject and deleted it. He didn't respond and obviously hasn't even stepped foot in here...no Designer has and none will at this rate. When issue-7 goes live, Doms will be dead to me just like they are to the Devs and I don't want any of the rest of you people Harrassing me for that. I don't have time to play Broken AT's anymore and you people shouldn't either. So take it up directly with Statesman and Positron like I did....then go roll something else in the meantime b/c it's going to be a long friggin way to Issues 8 and 9.

Yeah I don't know what Positron is smoking lately but there's nothing empowering about these. One of my level 40's over his career and several dozens hours after level capping only had about 20 Material and 30 power components... which is roughly enough to buy 3 to 5 of these buffs.

This is just a bad joke.

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Too bad we're in Northern California.

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Bullhooey... Anything south of the Bay is central or southern...
Sacremento... now THAT'S Northern

PS: And all y'all are a bunch of Carpet Baggers, stop pullutin our midwestern ideals!

Happy Fun Taser sux, bring back Brooding Attack Dog Taser.

That's just wonderful to hear Castle... As if Mind Dominators and Forcefield Defenders didn't have enough working against them already. None of these repel effects are used by most player to "pin" anyone, they're used to keep the goddamned Melee AT's from 1-shotting you or just jousting right through you with a Stun, and then two shotting you while you stammer around helpless.

Here's an idea... since everyone (especially the Melees) gets "25% +DEF" for free in PvP, then how about giving all the Squishies automatic Mag-3 Stun/Hold protection in PvP too so we can get rid of the need for any of these "I win" buttons.

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I based what I said off of an old post by Castle where he said he felt Aid Self healed too much for it's recharge, and bieng a pool power, and said he'd 'look into it.' And I've been around for a while, and immidiately saw 'nerf.'

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WHY would he ever have a reason to say that? Y'know it's not just Scrappers and Stalkers that use this power, a number of Defenders, Controllers, and Dominators especially have to rely on it for not just healing but stun resist too. So many pure support builds rely on it, Even my Ice-Tank. Shoot he'd never a made it to 30 if he wasn't seeing big numbers when he used Aid-Self. Ask anyone, sets that sacrifice a self heal, don't get back near as much utility and survivability. This shouldn't even be a matter of discussion....

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It takes the entire block of damage and apportions it by the ratios described. For the Mastermind, he then gets his Resistances applied, while the pets get no resistance to the shared damage.

In the case of unresistable damage, therefore, all damage is apportioned, then resists apply normally -- the unresisted portion is still unresisted, but it is reduced by the Bodyguard.

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So it's applied First then...Meaning the Unresistable portion IS divied up. Thanks for clearing that up Castle... After I said that comment, a little voice in the back of my head said "you're missing part of the math, stupid"...and it was right. (Note to self: Must drink heavily, and KILL the little voice)

So you're saying they'll divy up the Unresistable portion too?
I duno man, that sounds like more coding than it's worth to me...

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Sounds like something Tankers should also be able to do for their team.

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/SIGNED

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I see so many blapper/scrapper/stalker insta-deaths for MM's. This should help cushion those initial attacks quite a bit. Offensively, I'm sure some nice tricks will develop.

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Well, I wouldn't go THAT far... 30% of all Blaster damage is unresistable and Scrapper crits are the same way. ..so umm.. 30% of 60%(assuming you even have all your pets close and are getting the full %)... would be 42%. ...It might be more like 51% against Scrappers though(unless there's one using powers with increased chances of critting like Gamblers and Eagle).

But I guess that's not SOOO bad, it does afterall turn most 1-shots into 2 or 3 shots.

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Great... Good for MM's...
BUT WHAT ARE DOMINATORS GETTING?

[/ QUOTE ]This doesn't sound good for Masterminds to me. I have all my ninja goto, and attack my target, otherwise they are all over the place attacking individual targets, or attacking at range, with their craptastic bows, and shuriken. So if using the attack my target command pulls them out of this defensive mode, its worthless.

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Whatever... You can still Debuff the living bejezzus out of people in PvP and get 60% resists while doing it. ...right? I mean we're talking about "Heel" mode, right? ...what's so hard about having to wait until there's an opening before you just attack? Stalkers have to play that way 24/7 and they seem to be doing just great.

Doms however...

Great... Good for MM's...
BUT WHAT ARE DOMINATORS GETTING?

That's all credible too... What I really should have put forward as a metric, is Mini-samples taken from 1 team at a time measured against their total Rep earned while in that team -- dataming the number of deaths of each person of the team and put into AT category, and then averaged later with any samples way outside the mean being discarded...but that's really labor-intensive



But I need to clarify that by "lacking deterrants", I'm not saying ALL Defenders are "Helpless"... none of them are Helpless until an /EM stalker manges to TP-Foe one of them and followup with a Stun. As long as they're behind the front line or on their front-line with some sort of Stun protection, they're never helpless in the vast majority of PvP situations.

Then again I could say the same thing about a number of stalkers who thought they could sneak around my Grav Controller when I was teamed with a Devices Blaster and */Empath who kept CM on me... at one point I managed to Wormhole 3 of them at once onto a huge clump of trip-mines. They couldn't stun me, but my Stun comined with the Detoggling of tripmines stunned all of them.

...That's the Defender and Dominator's cross to bear right there. It's all a matter of how much actual time you and your team have to respond. And if we saw the most accurate picture possible through datamining, I'm guranteeing it would show that Defenders and Doms don't have the Deterrants that other classes have which buy them enough time to escape quick deaths... and I'm not talking about a double-stealthed AS that they never saw coming... I mean seeing a train bearing down on you and not being able to slow it down one bit.

*/Devs have Caltrops and Mines.
Blappers have toggle droppers as Melee deterrents.
Tankers and Scrappers have Mez-Resists and +HP buffs as deterrents.
Controllers have Crit-Mezzes, Superior -SPD powers, and Debuffs incase the first 2 fail.
Stalkers have Placate-->AS and Status resists
Brutes have Fury (but it's Bugged currently )
Corruptors have more HP's than defenders and better offensive blasts...Plus Scourge.
Keldians have Dwarf forms.

Now... Storm Defenders and Plant Doms have a number of tricks in PvP that work to great effect... but all other Defenders and Doms must rely on their teammates for survivability in PvP... which anyone who's been on a PvP PuG knows... is a total gamble.

...I hope that clarifies what a real Deterrent is and why most Doms and Defenders lack them.

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I think he was getting at bounty and rep being shared by a team and then comparing how many times the ATs died. That is different from kills which are not shared by teams.

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Okay... maybe that too. But the difference between Rep and Kills is one of them has a timer on it and the other doesn't. Either way, it's impossible to gauge who's contributing to actual kills, and who's hiding in the hospital leeching b/c they don't have any mez/+PER protection of their own.

If it was up to me, I'd Calc these stats off of 2 very specific things:
# of Deaths per hour while 200ft or less from a Teammate
PvP Rep earned per hour.

Raw kill numbers are great and all, but this is a QoL issue too, remember that.

Of Course a Blaster or Scrapper or Stalker or whatever is more likely to biff it when they leave the safety of their team to chase down the runners or take another team on...that's soloing but with the "I'm still in a team flag" up. No no.. I'm more interested in who's really getting GANKED here... sitting directly adjacent to their teammates or following them in, and then getting whacked so fast their teammates can't do anything about it. ...that's the kind of datamining I could trust.

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Gauntlet will help, but only on a proactive level. And its still not clear if this will cover Taunt Auras like Invincibility and Chilling Embrace.

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Maybe Invinc needs it, but to be quite honest, I haven't needed it the least bit in my Chilling Embrace... I mean it's an auto-hit slow and no one's ever AS'd me through it. Tack on the Artic mastery pool and Teleport foe, and no one will escape from your melee range if don't want them too... definitely not SuperLeapers.

..I *think* anyway... Maybe if they had SB on them they could...

Okay, here's Castle's variables in all of this:
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Variables:
Solo Kills
Teamed Kills
Solo Deaths
Teamed Deaths
Number of AT in existance @ proper level range

Yes, there are certainly more sophisticated metrics we could use, but this works fairly well.

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He still didn't tell me the Calculations, as in how these Variables are ACTUALLY used.
...Nor did he answer my quesiton about: "What happens when you remove Storm Defs and Plant Doms from the equation?"...

For me... and this is just my gut instinct... these variables only tell Half the story...
What does "teamed kills" even mean? Is that "I got last hit" Kills, or "Stalker #22814 got 3 more kills for me while I was sittin in the hospital"??

"Number of AT in existance @ proper level range" in particular REALLY concerns me.
I could get the exact same stat right now(but in a smaller sampling) just by hopping around each PvP zone doing /whoalls... it doesn't even touch on Bounty/Rep per Hour.

EDIT, b/c he PM'd me back TWICE:
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Oh, and for all of that, it's also broken down by Primary, Secondary and Pool power selection.

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One word: DWAahh?

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Exactly. The lack of a penalty for death makes the K-D ratio a bad way to balance sets. I think a better judge would be the number of kill per hour.

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How about Bounty/Reputation per hour instead? ...Then divide that by # of deaths.

My Scrapper for instance can walk into Sirens and join a team and walk out with +25 Rep in half an hour and have 1-3 deaths. My Dom might end up on a Stalker-heavy team meanwhile and get +30 rep, but die 40 times getting it.

...atleast that's been MY experience.

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In team play, most AT's are within 30% of one another. The few exceptions should be looked at. Defenders, Controllers, Corruptors and Dominators are NOT at the bottom of this list, by any stretch.

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Is this still based on Ratio only? To suggest otherwise, would be saying that Tankers, Brutes, Scrappers, or Stalkers die more often while on a team... Which is completely perposterous. If you only look at # of deaths for all AT's then Scrappers, Blasters and Stalkers will win that category simply b/c they're the largest populations in PvP.

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Changed To Hit Debuffs to use the 5/10/20 Enhancement progression.

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Does that mean the NPC now have the new to hit system ( to hit check before level check ? )

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No, it means that characters that use those enhances are gimped until I7.

I'm not bitter, I swear.

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Reality check: It means you're Nerfed even AFTER issue-7 changes.
If you look at the proposed "scaling" system... ACC Debuffs still get Nerfed.

4 Reasons:
1) Castle's Stalker posse couldn't handle full strength Hurricane
2) */Dark MM's were soloing Archvillains/Heroes...just like Ill/Rads
3) Rad-Emission in general needed another nerf.
4) Two words: DM/SR Stalkers.

Their original Excuse that it invloved Hammy-O's was closer to the truth...
...We're basically all getting nerfed now and into the future b/c of 4-5 powerbuilds.

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Remember that the attractiveness of targetting a Defender is two-fold -- it's not just that he's the squishiest (I'd probably defer that point), it's also that without his buffs and/or debuffs, the rest of the team often folds like origami. Two birds, one stone.

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Controllers can buff too. ...no, the "attractiveness" you're looking for is their complete lack of deterrents. Blappers and Controllers have ways of making others Sorry that they got up in their grill. Defenders have NONE and Dominators only have theirs when Domination is up, which in PvP, basically never happens.

As for any AT-Rhetoric, I shouldn't need to tell anyone that being somone's Buff-bot and spending all of your time running back from the hospital is no fun... there's nothing "Wholey Different" for a Defender in PvP being solo or being on a team in that regard. And, Dominators don't even get that far. The only thing Castle said that could be construed as "wholey different" was the Blapper who's given shields and clear-mind in PvP by a team-mate. The Defender who gave those buffs still has no personal survivability and no deterrants.

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3) Datamining -- In terms of kills to death ratio, Blasters are slightly behind scrappers with EM, but competing with Defenders and Dominators for lowest value Note, that these are solo values! Things are very different in team play.

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So umm... Naturally, here's my question: If it's acceptable that an AT perform very poorely at this K-D ratio solo, but does better in Teams... then why is it acceptable for defenders and dominators to continue to STAY AT THE BOTTOM of this K-D ratio while on teams too?

My Defenders and Dominators can sit in a huge pack of other Heroes/Villains... corruptors, blasters, controllers, MM's even... But several opponents always single me out right off the bat. I'm always the first to die from gank-squad alphastrikes.

That blue shield and purple lightning bolt are the biggest friggin human-aggro magnets I've ever seen in any PvP game. My tankers and controllers have to work their butts off to get that kind of aggro from other players. Why isn't _Castle_ talking about this? Why aren't any of YOU talking about this?? "My Blaster blah blah blah" ... "My Stalker blah blah blah"

It would seem to me if there's a list, and any 2 AT's are at the frikkin bottom of that list... I would think a Developer's response to those AT's would be something a lot more involved than "I don't know" with Dominators, or just putting a few Defender graphic-bugs we've had since Beta "on the white board" and calling it "good" while at the same time nerfing their -ACC debuffs by 40% -- Nope... not Castle, Statesman, or Positron, they all just take off to spend real time on Scrappers, Blasters, and Stalkers again. Shouldn't the AT's on the bottom of the lists in all categories, be getting the attention here?

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So let's pick a +2 AV. One DDD would drop him to .9/.6016*(1-.35) = 43% of his damage. One character would do that for the entire team. TWO DDDs running DN would drop a +2 AV to 14.25% of his original damage output.

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AV's resist damage Debuffs HEAVILY, there's something definintely wrong with your math if you actually believe an AV's DPS will be put at 43% from a single Defender. You need 3 or 4 of the same kind of defenders to Floor +2 and +3 AV's, nomatter what primary you're talking about. Have you even spent any real time in all-defender Teams? Your rosey tinted glasses suggest otherwise, expecially when you consider each Defender's -ACC capacity with 3 SO's will drop by 40% as soon as this patch goes live.

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One thing to remember though, that is party why this is being done. They heard the cries from the DEF based sets and decided to do something about. You can argue that the implementation is messed up, but you can't really argue that "we the community" didn't ask for this (had the def bases sets not said anything I'm sure they would not have done anything).

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Sure, we knew that DEF sets were overall weaker than Debuff sets at the same strength... but that's only because DEF sets have way too many holes in them(especially Ice Tankers and EA brutes) and were nerfed way too hard in Issue-5. ...But Post I-7, they're going to be too strong in areas that Debuff sets are too weak on, and we'll go round and round again on this Nerf Carousel until no one remembers why it even started.

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The only way to fix it would be to exempt toHit buffs from the purple rolloff. That is the root of the entire problem.

Note, however, that the moement you do that, you are almost certainly looking at a significant nerf to the base values. They aren't going to let us floor the accuracy of +4 mobs just because we can toss 2 or 3 debuffs on them at once.

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The answer has... and always will, reside in a solution that gives us new Aspects to slot for. ...new Enhancements like Damage-Debuff, Range-Debuff, Recharge-Debuff, and Mez-Dur/Mag-Debuffing. As was said earlier, this isn't just a math problem, it's a tactical problem too.