AreEss

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... bunch of rambling and personal attacks trying to drag irrelevant subjects in ...

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(Removed something arguably a bit too snarky.)
If you've a desire to continue whatever in-game problem you have with me, there's the PM button. This is not the "Issues with Dominators in I6" thread, this is not the "attempt to call out people over things said in Siren's two days ago" thread.

Otherwise, please do explain why people who play Dominators overwhelmingly agree with the asssessment that we are now just free rep. Are we all ignorant fools who should only use the cookiecutter build another player came up with?

(EDIT HERE)

Moving on to actual relevant topics...

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So you think only Dominators are going down fast in RV? Look a little closer.

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Very much not what I said, or would say. Certainly Dominators are not the only AT going down fast. MM's also go down very quickly. To say we're alone in getting our butts handed to us would frankly, be stupid. I teamed with an MM for a bit, and yep, he got two-shotted. Difference between us and MMs however, is that the MM has pets doing damage, and also soaking damage (in theory.) The MM does not have to be in the thick of things. With Ice/Ice, I have no choice but to close to melee range if I want to drop toggles, which is my most effective power. And yes, I have two lvl25 MM's, but I have not put them on test or played them that recently.
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I won't be able to do PvE testing till next client-side patch. I cannot test Grandville due to a very nasty SMP bug that I finally recognized today. It's definitely a bug, and I'm just praying it doesn't prove difficult to track down. I did attempt to do some testing, but it's utterly impossible to test against mobs or missions with this bug.

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I strongly suggest you at least consider taking a Patron Power for the shield it offers, if nothing else. Skip the End drain, pet or AoE if you want since those can bring questionable value. However you just said survivability is your main issue and the shields are designed to address that issue. Is it enough? Probably not since we lack mez protection or self heals. Will it help? Of course it will.

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You're joking, right? What good does a Patron do me? Answer; none. Absolutely none. That's immutable fact. Why? Because I'm HELD and I have 1017HP. Let's do some math; Head Splitter does over 430dmg and takes less than 5 seconds. Lightning Bolt hits for 338dmg. The troller did over 500 points of smashing. Let's say I've got a 10% res. I'm STILL DEAD! That's 1290 points of damage right there; 10% is 129 points. 1290 - 129 = 1161, and I have 1017. I'm dead. And even if I have 20% resistance, I'm still held. They will kill me period. And for the record, that was about 10 seconds of fighting. TEN SECONDS!
And you're forgetting the fact that heroes will ignore other people to hit a Dom, because we're the free rep. That's all we are now. Free rep for heroes.

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I wouldnt bother engaing NPCs in RV unless you're have to. Unless its a Pillbox or some NPC you accidently aggroed then why bother?

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Wow. You don't know the secret to getting Dom up in PvP; NPCs. NPCs are easier to take than heroes, and you build Domination much quicker off of them. Either way, I was watching NPC damage from NPCs that were attacking a pillbox with us.

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If you're not living long enough, then there can be a thousand reasons why: 1) your build, 2) heores outnumbering villains by a huge margin, 3) heroes having access to all their APP while vills are still 40, 4) you're teammtes arent trying to protect you, 5) you don't have any corrupters on your team, 6) Trollers are just too damn powerful, etc, etc, etc

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The simple fact can be summed up in one simple sentence.
Dominators have zero survivability period.
I can't survive one on one. I get killed when it's three villains on one hero. Why? Because that hero goes for ME, and I have NO hit points. Three attacks, I'm dead. So what if they're dead from the others? They got the rep off me already.

So I'm in Test, in RV right now. Got some fights in so let's talk some more on the changes.

I thought Siren's was bad. I've been proven very wrong. I'm getting two and three shotted by trollers. I have 1017 HP - and that's with the High Pain Threshold Accolade. (Yes, I have FIVE DEBT BADGES.) I'd say something about the reduced recharge on Domination, but I cannot stay alive long enough to get it up. I did get it up ONCE working a pillbox, and once again, I had it up to 90 well before it was recharged. Even on a team. Is it building more quickly? Probably, but again, I can't stay alive long enough to tell for sure. Unless I go hide in some corner and try to solo a pillbox I can't tell.

NPCs are laughing at me, doing more than double the damage I am doing. The only rep I've earned in here has been heroes that were trying to solo a team of four villains, and yes, usually gunning for me. Only takes one hold to garauntee my death - when I land a hold, I can't even get them down to half.

No, I don't have PPP's yet and I definitely will not be taking them. (ObGrumpGrouseEtcHere) They offer my build NSB (No Significant Benefit.)

So I'm gonna ask folks the same question I asked here in RV; where's the buff to Dominators that lets me live long enough to actually see and use these other buffs?

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Questions in need of answers: An open letter to the Dom Test Community

We are wasting our opportunity to provide direct feedback to the development team about our AT. Beyond catching bugs, one of the purposes of this thread is to explain how these changes are affecting your Dominator, and currently there's precious little information about this being generated.

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I've provided a great deal of information about how I play now. Unfortunately, I cannot test effectively because the Hospital in Grandville (YES THIS IS A SUBTLE HINT) causes a CTD. So I have had to delete and recopy my 40 Ice/Ice 8 times in the past two days just so I can try and get some testing in.

[ QUOTE ][*]Domination Recharge Reduction: Assuming two states (solo and grouped) and active power useage, how successful are your typical control/attack chains at building full Domination (90%) in the new timeperiod in both PvE and PvP? In the struggle to build a full Dom bar, how much Endurance do you tend to expend? Do you run Stamina or Drain Psyche?

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No change in PvE. PvP I see absolutely no significant change in Siren's as I use NPCs and mobs to build Domination quickly; 90-120 seconds or less typical. Will it have effect? I don't know; nobody in Siren's and I am consistently and repeatedly one-shotted every time I enter RV.
Domination in PvP irregardless, as stated, is a beacon. It says "kill me now." My greatest asset in PvP and the sole reason for having me on any team is my ability to detoggle. I detoggle the stormies to let people hit. I detoggle scrappers. I detoggle anything that moves. I do not get kills on my own, I do not have the ability to defeat any archetype solo save blasters without breakfrees. Any player which is carrying breakfrees defeats the entire purpose of my holds, presuming a troller hasn't already landed a minute-plus hold on me already.

[ QUOTE ][*]Power Pool Attacks: I realize these have their own threads, but we have the unique opportunity to compare these in our official Dominator thread (assuming it won't be locked, of course). 1) How inaccurate is the data on the attack powers in the plaque room?

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Have not looked; CTD. It has been /bug'd. This is a machine-specific or an SMP-specific.

[ QUOTE ][*]Teaming considerations in the post-40 world. Many AT Patron Pools add control elements into those ATs. In the post-40 world, do you find your control is still a welcome addition to your team? In PvE? In PvP? For those familiar with live team PvP, how effective do you tend to be on test PvP with these changes?

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Reiterating that I cannot do JACK in RV. But let's look at it from a current situation.
Ice/Ice is AoE and Slow heaven. This is beyond invaluable against NPCs especially when running on invincible. Despite being the lowest hitpoints (876 at 40 IIRC), I am the last person out of a bad mob, because I have to throw down the AoEs to cover our exit. I usually die more often than not, but the rest of the team escapes intact. Do I expect this to change Post 40? No. Ice/Ice seems to be pretty much -the- control set for Dominators, even if it is horrifically soft.

[ QUOTE ][*]Particular Dominator Primary Set Issues. It has been widely discussed on the Dom boards that some primary sets underperform as Dominator power sets. If you play a Dominator that you would define as "underperforming," how do the addition of the Patron Pools affect your performance, if at all?

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My character won't be taking the Patrons anyways, for RP reasons as well as build reasons. Do I expect this to have a negative impact on my build? No. It has a severe negative impact on my plans for I7, due to the ridiculous requirement of completing a patron arc. (If there's another way to unlock Recluse, Devs, now is the time to either announce or add.)
That said, Ice/Ice is a very underperforming set for several reasons. One, it's not got damage. Two, it lacks control. Three, it's not sure what it is.
Secondary is fairly evenly divided; 3 ranged, 3 melee, a toggle, a cone. This would make a good scraptroller except that I do not have the hit points to even try sustaining this.
The primary is one targeted immob, one targeted hold, one AoE immob, one AoE hold, one AoE sleep, one AoE confu/slow toggle, a cone, and a summon.
This begs the question, what the hell am I? Am I a blaster? Nope, not enough damage. Am I a scrapper? Not enough hit points. Am I a controller? Nope, not enough control. It's the most confused set of all, and really needs to be reanalyzed carefully. Frankly, I think that it may be necessary to remove the cone from the secondary and replace it with a ranged if they're not going to give us more hitpoints.

[ QUOTE ][*]Mayhem Missions. Several MMissions spawn EBs with magnitude resist effects (and other resistances that some might accurately characterise as immunities). As we well know, it can be nearly impossible for our AT to survive encounters with these mob types.

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Seeing as I can't survive EBs now, I don't see a difference beyond even more debt.

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But for an obligatory comment about toggle-dropping - it's now no more than a verrrry minor side-effect to various attacks. I think it's a painful nerf for Blasters, sure, but dominators REALLY did not need a nerf in this department. At least the blaster has pretty high damage to contribute. Dominators, I don't see why a nerf to their toggle drops was required at all. Rotten damage, primary negated by breakfrees - and now a greatly lessened potential for toggle drops.

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QFT+A

That's "Quoted For Truth and Accuracy"

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Well, the floor on to hit is 5%, so statistically, you've never hit someone less than 1 in 20 times . Not only that, but BoI has +20% accurcay built-in, so it actually ends up with a 6% to hit chance even against a SR running Elude fully slotted. If you put in two ACC SO+++ in your hold, you can get a final minimum to hit of 10.56% (1 out of about 9.5).
Not saying that's great, or enough defense, just saying it isn't quite as bad as you suggest.

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Yeah, but the math's off there actually. You also have to account for the stacked Tactics on their team; usually 2-3 deep presuming they aren't running it themselves. I was just out in Siren's a little bit ago, getting 3 shotted by a Scrapper after getting Held for over a minute by a Troller. (Wheefun.) That's when the FoTM Blasters weren't one-shotting me into oblivion. Couldn't even get out of base on a team, because when I go down in one hit, no point in not popping over to kill me. Repeatedly.

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Wow Shiver's that bad? I've heard a good amount of Ice doms say it was useful in PvP. Also, I've heard that /Ice is among one of the highest damage secondaries among Doms, not if that's saying much though. If anything Ice/Ice seems to be one of the combinations that benefits from these new changes the most due to the slows and its ability to kite. Doesn't Power Boost affect slows too?

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Yeah. It is that bad and then some. Numbers may have been a little high too on the damage, couldn't pay attention trying to avoid getting mezzed for minute+ at a shot and one-shotted by FoTM lamers. (Just remember kids; playing an FoTM like a child is just going to get it nerfed. And then I point and laugh.)
Shiver's recharge is painfully slow, and it's late enough that I don't feel it can be slotted effectively alongside the secondaries. Anything that needs slot puts you in a real problem position because you need to 5 or 6 slot your damage dealers to get any use out of them. As far as PB affecting slows, I honestly do not know. I can't use PB in Siren's. If I hit it, I die, the end. Or it runs out before I can get to the mob, and I still die. But mostly the bright multicolor flash just serves as an 'easy kill' beacon.

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In addition I'm much happy with these changes whne PvPing in SC. Every Dom secondary, with the exception of Energy, only had one toggle drop power in SC. In my experience that one toggle dropper (Mind Probe) didn't do much. Even when fighting toons that run few toggles (Regen Scrappers), I was *rarely* able to drop their mez protection. That's all in SC though.

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They're totally unacceptable. Without those toggledrops, I cannot survive any serious attack, nor can I support my team. Currently, I go to Siren's, get on a team, and leech Rep while toggledropping the tankers and scrappers our team just CANNOT kill without that. Otherwise, I am utterly ineffective. Without those toggledrops, I serve no purpose whatsoever except occasionally dropping fliers with Chilblain. Maybe it's just my build, but if I can get a scrapper immob'd, I can hit with IS to drop toggles then hit with BoI so the rest of the team can jump on them and start landing stuns when they hit the BF.
Now? Now I can't drop those toggles, so I can't land the BoI consistently. End result? Well, I throw the immob, I charge in, scrapper drops me to half and a FoTM blaster gets me the rest of the way. Meantime my team is fighting a full health scrapper with their toggles up, and there's really no point whatsoever to my presence. Unless somebody's going for the healing badge.

I honestly cannot see any one fix for Doms either. This is what troubles me most. The Devs are well aware of the problems with Dominators in PvP. They obviously did not look at the cause though. Frankly, in order to make Dominators viable for PvP, it's going to require more than just a Domination buff. It's going to take a careful analysis of the entire AT as a whole, and a lot of little adjustments.

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Um, BoI is your Single-target hold, and if you stack it enough times on someone, it will drop all of their toggles because it's a hold. BoI never had a detoggle ability attached to it aside from the hold...that was Greater Ice Sword, which IS a damage power, so I have no idea what you're talking about.

Way to know your own powers, lol.

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Feh, was late and I was tired. I get a free pass. So there.

Anyways, fact remains that Siren's basically leaves me with BoI and IS. That's pretty much it. Yeah, I got my "ranged" attacks - which do about as much damage against tanks and scrappers as throwing a snowball at them. That's 3 slotted dmg, 2 slotted acc or 3 slotted acc. I'm still working on retesting ArcticAir to see what's going on there.
Something to bear in mind is that I come from an Archery/Fire perspective (which has been turned into FoTM-fodder. To say nothing of Archery/En.) Meaning I'm used to living and dying by my accuracy; no resistance, no detoggle, not a whole lot of anything currently. That said, BoI hits so infrequently as to be utterly useless. Scrappers, I hit maybe 1 in 20 times. PFF? I've never hit a defender with PFF. Stormies and Rads are the only ones I hit, and that's if the Rads don't debuff me to oblivion first.

Once I launch an attack, I'm dead either way. Doesn't matter what attack it is. My only hope is to stack slows with my ranged and run away. That's how it is now, and if others are any judge, I'm not a bad PvPer (as hard as it is for me to believe.) But the only thing I can kill is a Blaster. And I can only kill that Blaster if I A) land a hold B) they don't have breakfrees. Might get a Defender or two, but same situation.

Now compound this with Ice/Ice being basically an AoE heaven/targeted hell. The mix of powers basically leaves you as a weak 'any situation' build no matter what you do. Your primaries are 2 targeted, 1 summon, and everything else is AoE.
In Icy Assault, you have Ice Bolt, Ice Blast, and Bitter Ice Blast at ranged - BIB not available in Siren's as it's a 30+. Then you have Ice Sword, Ice Sword Circle, and Greater Ice Sword which is also a 30+. Rounding it out are Power Boost, Frost Breath (cone slow with Mod DoT), and your ObToggle Chilling Embrace which is a melee-range slow.

Now then, let's take a look here step by step, in order of what exactly these powers do for you in Siren's on Live.
-Chilblain is Chilblain. It's an Immob that does about 9-14dmg for four ticks, and has -FLY. If you catch a flier up high, it's great. If you hit. Destroyed by BFs of course.
-Block of Ice is your one targeted hold. This is the only targeted hold in all of Ice/Ice. It does between 50-80dmg 3-slotted with a long recharge. Have to slot a RecRed or they're out before it's back up. BFs, again, destroy this.
-Frostbite is just suicide. An AoE immob that does 8-12dmg for four ticks. And rarely catches groups of heroes, but always catches the attention of every Longbow for miles.
-ArcitcAir I need to test more; it's a very good power to have, but I screwed up my own build there.
-Shiver I didn't bother taking; it's a cone slow. That's it. It's got a LONG recharge. It's a cut and run that won't cut.
-Ice Slick is only marginally useful. Keeps NPCs off you except the wardens. Maybe keeps some tanks and blasters off you, but not most.
-Flash Freeze is an AoE Immob/Sleep. Does 5-20dmg (though almost always on the low end), eats slots, and rarely hits players. But it's sure great for pissing off the NPC mobs and getting enough aggro to basically get one-shotted.
-Glacier I took past 30; highly unlikely it'll do any good either. It's got an ungodly long recharge, too late to slot much, and is an AoE hold - which I've noticed are very good at missing players. It's done no good in Warburg.
(Jack Frost is 32+)
-Ice Bolt. Let's see; easily resisted slow effect. Low double digit damage - usually below 40. If slow isn't resisted it's very minor. Great for telling them where to direct fire, nothing more.
-Ice Sword is good for detoggling scrappers and tanks. As long as you get in, hit, and run like hell. If you don't run, you're dead. "Detogglers must die."
-Ice Sword Circle is another hit and run. Great for slowing, mid to high high double digit damage, but misses frequently. The after-animation delay just garauntees that if there's a FoTM present, you're dead.
-Ice Blast is the only ranged damage dealer; high double digits typically. ("Wow, I think I did like, 95dmg!") Versus 800+HP. That's only what, 7-8 hits with that, not that you'll live that long since you're probably against a Blaster or someone with a mez or stun.
-Power Boost is Power Boost. It's also a beacon that says "PLAYER AGGRO, COME KILL ME NOW!" Just like Domination.
-Frost Breath is a cut and run slow. It hits fairly well, does maybe 10-20dmg usually, and is only really effective slotted up with slows.
-Chilling Embrace is your scrapper survivability that doesn't work. If they resist the slows you put in it, it's pretty much just a drain on your End. Works great against Blasters, since you have to get in anyways. Just pray you don't lose the hold.
(GIS and BIB are 30+.)

So let's say I run into a flyer and do a chain of PB, BoI, Chilblain, Ice Bolt, Ice Blast, CE Up (quick interruptable anim,) and Ice Sword. For sake of argument, we'll say I've got someone stacking Tactics and I hit every shot. Thusly I do about 300dmg for the whole chain, give or take about 25-30dmg. That's with 3-slotting dmg, bear in mind.

I don't like math enough to figure out the regen with single slotted health. Regardless, we'll say 850HP - 300HP = 550HP or a fair amount over half, and I've just spent more than half my endurance. Slows are stacking, but we'll presume I got the drop on the Blaster.

They pop a BF and 2-shot me. They don't have to worry about their recharge being slowed because I'm dead within their chain damage more often than not. Failing that, unless we're the only two in zone, others will jump me for the rep and bounty and I'm toast.

The only time I have survivability even one on one is when I've got a /Therm corruptor (big shout to Cackle, who is a great guy) buffing and healing me constantly and consistently.

I'm sure some folks will argue it's a build issue, but frankly, I can't say I agree entirely. Yes, the current build does have issues; I should have AA and it should be 6-slotted, I'm aware. Either way, I have two pools; Fitness and Flight. I can't realistically take another pool, such as Medicine, without losing powers that are obviously necessary. I need the slots as well. I could dump Flight (which is only carrying an EndRed and a Flight Speed,) and pick up another travel power like, say, Teleport. But all that does is make it easier for me to run.

Either way, I'm off on a tangent about the build now, so let's get back on track here. Ice/Ice basically leaves you with two "control" powers, a lot of easily resisted slow debuffs, one 5% toggle, and exceedingly low damage. The Domination "buff" is not going to help me in the least, as in Siren's I'll use NPC mobs to ramp my Domination quickly as I said before. I7 will only change this slightly; I'll just get domination up even MORE quickly with the "buff." I still can't USE it without turning into a giant bullseye.

So I am really not seeing any benefit at all here from this "buff" for PvP. Yes, I'm going to be experimenting with builds on Test today to see if I can't do something about my chronic Endurance and Stun problems. Detoggling CE on me has pretty much no effect, because I can retoggle immediately and the anim's interruptable. And I'm going to try CJ to see if it improves survivability at all, but frankly, survivability is pretty useless if it means "I'm alive long enough to get 'em down to half health and run before they kill-shot me."

Somebody needs to look at my crashdumps if at all possible, and soon.

I had no trouble going to RV. No trouble getting a newspaper mish. No trouble getting into the newspaper mish. Unfortunately, I died in the newspaper mish. So I hit the hospital button.

And apparently being inside the hospital in Grandville means CTD on zone load here.

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Any of the dom sets can be good at control if you slot their holds heavily. I have a 30 ice/ice dom that deals almost no damage on large teams, but can put out some serious control. As long as dominators and debuff/control builds remain rare, control is a valuable asset to any large team, and cuts down on healing by a huge amount. You do, however, have to be skilled and be able to move, turn, and hit powers at the same time (which isn't very easy with the default control setup).

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Well it's pretty obvious you don't PvP with your Dominator.
I'm saying this as a Level 40 Ice/Ice PvE/PvP mixed build without AA currently.
You'll die. Period. The end. You have no control in PvP no matter your slotting. Too many heroes. Your saving grace? Detoggles. You can keep the scrappers from hurting your team too badly, and keep the defenders from knocking your entire team into the wall for a week straight.
Now? Now you can't do that. Period. The end. Siren's? Forget it. Doms are now completely useless. We have two toggle droppers available; Block of Ice and Ice Sword. Ice Sword is 5% and my understanding is that BoI - which even three slotted for acc misses more than it hits in PvP - also is affected by the new detoggles. Regardless, BoI is not a damage dealer OR a control. Suppose you might try to count Flash Freeze with the mass-sleep, but that pretty much never works on PCs.

To call this a PvP 'buff' is utterly disingenous. It's a PvP nerf from hell. The already UNBELIEVABLY low population of Dominators in Siren's Call will be ZERO. Why? Because we now do nothing but leech. That's all we can do.

Thanks, FoTM whiners! Makes me glad there's mounting support for major nerfs to /Em.

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If toggle dropping was a characters sole chance to be effective, then I think you need to be looking for a bigger problem here.

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"FF is working as intended."

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dominators are also working as intended I suppose then.

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Dominators are working?
*sigh*

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Doms do more damage in melee than ranged. Suppose I should have gone with /fire instead of /thorn.

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Only if you like scrappers and blappers non-stop one-hitting you. Melee is suicide for Doms.

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Oh there is one. It just involves a large ranged attack chain and hasten instead of melee attacks now. At least the snipes have a use now. >.>

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WHAT ranged attack chain?
WHAT snipes?
WHAT hasten?

I work with an Ice/Ice Dominator. Yes, Ice/Ice, THE Toggledropper. AoE immob, AoE sleep, AoE hold, Hold, two ranged, two melee. My other option is a build with AoE confuse and slow instead of the sleep/hold/slow.
I don't have a snipe. I don't have a ranged attack chain.

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Note that our late game toggle droppers should have the highest percentage out of all the toggle droppers left in the game; once Castle has finished up those tweaks.

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Well that's just brilliant; hang on, I need to pour some more sarcasm onto that statement.
64% toggledrop out of a power that I have to be in MELEE to use. And 5% out of the power that I use the MOST - Block of Ice. WHERE is the benefit? If I'm in range for GIS, I have ONE choice. Hit fast, slow, and RUN. No, I don't get to stick around and finish them off. I can't, because I WILL die. The end.

What the hell were they thinking? "Let's balance out the Enhancements in Siren's, but take away all hope of functionality for an entire Villain AT that's already struggling?" Because that is exactly what they have done.

Based on testing and numbers from others, all I am going to say is this;

Either the Devs are going to have to roll back the toggle-drop, make other changes, or deal with the fact that they have now made Dominators ABSOLUTELY USELESS.

I am well past pissed off, as I have been waiting till I7 so that I can get to 50 and respec my Dom into a proper PvP build. Now there is none.

Obviously the Devs have never, ever played a Dominator or looked at their own datamining. Again.