Zombie_Butler

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EvilRyu,

So you and your ilk spend years telling everyone how gimp and useless doms are, trashing their reputation over and over again, and now you want those of us who've enjoyed the AT that whole time, as well as who've led by example, to help noob doms how to play just because you asked?

Your audacity borders on lewdness.

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This

I couldn't agree more except for this part, [ QUOTE ]
Get on Steam

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Steam is the friend that doesn't leave after the party's over. What is Microsoft's obession with creating programs that run when you don't need/want them too?

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In all [censored] seriousness though... when I first joined TA, I didn't know anyone, didn't talk to anyone, and no one talked to me. Yet Jack seemed to go out of his way to make me feel welcome in TA, and invite me into TA groups, and sometimes just hang out and chat about nothing. If it weren't for him, I probably would have left the channel a long time ago, which probably would have led to me leaving the game altogether a long time ago.


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Out of the Blue he bought DOs for my BF the first month of COX. They just happened to be standing in the same store. What a fun guy.

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but there was just no way to match the amount of damage Psi was capable of doing, and with only one power.

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Ahhhhh, dur <smacks forehead> I see what you mean. I guess I'm too wrapped up in this debate and it created a blind spot for me.

I'm seeing nothing but damage damage damage from the various posts on this topic. When what I've considered brilliant about Dominators are the controls plus damage. The fast and hard fights with no quarter given. The thinking that has to go into those fights. The change from meek to monster.

About PSW, it did sting a bit seeing how it performs on test but I'm honest and I knew it was going to get the bat sooner or later. I'm glad they evened out the set abit more, however. I'm just loving Mind Probe and TK thrust now.

If anything, this has shown me that I'm far too wrapped up in this topic. The devs are going to do what they do. Time for another break from the boards

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because if you actually want to make an effective character, you only had one option: Psi. Period.

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I would completely disagree with this. I suspect it's because your ideas and my ideas of what "effective" means are different.

Is effective saving your team from an ill-timed ambush with well placed controls? or is the measure of how "effective you are" only in how much damage you pump out. In that case, my Earth/fire and Fire/Electric are laughing at this statement. (Not you, the statement)

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I have used a very detailed image analysis and have come to the following conclusion.

I am ready to state at this time with 99.999999995% (+/-
0.000000004% margin of error) certainty that the object in the avatar's mouth region is a pacifier.

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Hahahahahahahaha. Awwww so cute. Who's a cute lil Babs?

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AOE powers less accessable and more costly.

[/ QUOTE ]Less accessible? Yes, they put all the AoEs up on a high shelf.

The attacks do more damage. They're going to cost more endurance as a necessity. Longer recharges means more damage. It means doms are going to be less able to lean on single powers to supply all their aoe damage and might have to consider, if they want to focus on AOEs, focusing on AOEs.

Terrible news, I know.

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I think we are saying the same thing but yours is flavored with a heavy dose of sarcasim.

I don't think longer recharges mean more damage, I rather think they added longer recharges because of the increased damage. I don't get the whole focused on AOE bit, please explain futher.

Let me tell you what kind of a Dom player I am before you jump to conclusions again. I love the juggling that I do as a Dom. For me, that's the fun of the AT. Single target IS my fun. Keeping the status of a whole group in my head as I fight is fun for me. The battles I walk away from saying whew! are my favorite fights. If I were on the "special board" <yack> I would've asked for more potent controls but of course I wasn't given an invitation to that.

Edited for clarity

No ridicule here just a few bits of advice. This advice is based on the assumption that you will be playing your Dom all of the way up.
Move crushing field to waaay later in your build. Unless you are playing with a corruptor with a rain power, CF is generally just an aggro grabber and you have very few hp. You can use it on a group, run around the corner and deal with the ones that were missed by the immob then deal with the others in the group as the CF wears off. However, I skip the AOE immob on all of my Doms.

I would also take the early melee attack (I can't remember the name right now, too little caffine ingestion.) It hits hard and willl increase your damage output.

Also you need Lift. They call knockdown the 3 second hold for a reason. Holding one mob and bouncing the other one around works very well.

Best of luck and have fun

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I'm okay with the recharge being higher on my Ice Sword Circle, I really don't use it all that much anyway, and now when I DO use it, it will hit harder (when solo there usually aren't enough mobs in one place often enough to justify a high end cost AoE)

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Ahhhhhhh Nuts! My Ice/Ice is going to Hate this.

Nyn said
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and what do the dev?
they cut our AoE potential IN ALL THE SETS by increasing rech and end cost of all the interesting AoE/PBAoE powers


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I knew it. I haven't been able to get to test yet nor have I read the test boards. However, I was pretty sure that there would be a cost for the gift and here it is, making the AOE powers less accessable and more costly. Leaning Dominators towards single target heavy hitters and controlers. Actually pretty clever if you want to control the farming but not hit the AT so hard that no one wants to play it anymore.

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No, the coolest animation bug ever is finding out that walking in dwarf form on a Kheldian doesn't interrupt emotes.

*plops down a boombox*
*slides around dancing*

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I think I can top this. Before they fixed it, the squid form couldn't hold a shotgun in it's tenticles. So, the holy shotgun temp power (given in Striga arcs) was held in it's mouth. I thought, "Welll thanks for this weapon but, um, what do you want me to do with it? No hands people!!! no hands!"

The first time I saw it I was laughing so hard, well the debt was worth it.

I've been doing some Oroboros missions with my mind/psy and I remembered why I slotted damage in memorize early on. There are two aspects to soloing a Dom your safety and your ability to take them down.

First your ability to surrvive the fight. At first your control options are all single target. Keep switching targets!!! This advice can't be stressed enough. Your single target hold at that level tend to be a bit on the week side and the single target sleep, while it lasts a while is a sleep. Keep switching targets to make sure that they are controled. In a 3 man group. Keep one held, one slept and one bouncing around with lift. The single target confuse is also really nice. Before you have SOs the AOE sleep is nice to initally control a group but RECONTROL the mobs while they are sleeping because before SOs the sleep won't last long. Last bit, single target sleep the hardest hitting mob, it lasts so long that generally you will have the minions dead before the Boss/luetenant wakes up. Try to pull single mobs if you can.

Ok now the ability to take them down. Mind Probe is a must have, get it as soon as you are able. Lift is a control and damage, I dropped it later on in my build but for the early years, it's nice to have. Many folks are hating on mind dart but it recharges very quickly, costs little to no end, and stacking it over and over again it gives respectable damage AND it's affected by Domination unlike any Vet attack powers you might have. It's also a great way to keep that Dom bar up. Use mind dart for pulling, it's far more likely to pull just one, than other harder hitting attacks.

Best of luck!! play around with the sets and find what works best for you. In the beginning, while you find out what works for you, you will die, don't let that discourage you.

As to the question if Mind/Psy is soloable it absolutely is. I've been running Oro missions on the 4th teir of difficulty without many issues. I'd rather solo a Dom than a controler any day- seriously. No matter what damage set you pick, you will run into mobs with resistances early on, Hellions-fire, Trolls-smashing, Mu-energy ect. . . .

I love your concept btw.

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Oh, and all the 'my doms can't solo 2 mins and 1 lieutenant' people better be there, too. Just make sure you run some Live tests first to establish a baseline performance.

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This is essencial. If they are mucking about with my favorite AT to drawn in more folk, then the folks they are trying to please must have a more "pleasant experience" playing it or all this drama will be for naught.


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Well, historically speaking, one of the trouble areas for Dominators is the 10-22 run. I'm thinking one good test would be to try a Dominator from 10 through as far as you can get towards 22, but staying away from the obvious crutches like really large teams or PL-like lackeying. It would be worthwhile seeing if there is both a qualitative and quantative difference from as it is currently.

I would also recommend a few arcs in the 40s. With the preponderance of mezzing foes, heavily damage resistant foes and AVs it's a good region to assess performance.

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These are excellent suggestions, as is ususal from MInmin. I would also like to see how the Perma's do after this how effictive are they after the changes? Although I'm assuming that the farmers will be there to test this waaaay before I get out of outbreak.

I truely believe that the folks who couldn't stand the AT before and had trouble getting through the first levels will encounter the same troubles and still not play the AT. The idea of active defense is hard to explain. Also farming will go back to Brutes leaving Doms with a smaller population than before.

WOOOT WOOOT congradulations, now that's the Dom I'm talking about. Here have a drink, um. . just ignore the floaty bits.

I've been doing Oroboros missions and I just had a similar experience.

I'm playing at tier 4 and not only does my pull go terribly, just as I'm trying to control 3 minions (orange) and two luetenants (red) the unexpected patrol starts creeping up on me and will see me in moments. The controls I have availible at that level are, mesmorize, domination and confuse, all single target. In other words, oh dear gods, I stepped in it.

I pop a medium purple and red and hit Domination. It was a rediculous fight controling as soon as the controls came up. Trying to watch to make sure the confused ones didn't hit the sleeping ones. Throwing holds around where nessisary and at the same time trying to finish off the week. Well, I won and as it began to sink in that I was still standing I started thinking "I remember why I love this AT, fights like this."

Congrats again, your fight sounds like amazing fun.

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I'm guessing PSW will have its damage decreased or its recharge increased (I wouldn't be surprised if it were doubled). I don't expect anything to happen to DP, but an increase in damage across the board for the rest of the powers in the set would be in order - I'm looking at you, Psi Dart.

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Ok, I know I'm opening a firestorm but. . . I posted this elsewhere in the Dom forum but it's more apt here.

I've been running Oroboros missions on my Mind/Psy and my thoughts on Psy Dart have changed, let me explain.

I, like many here on these boards, don't slot up Psy Dart because I have other "tastier" powers that need the slots. I put a recharge in it (for Dom building) and called it good. Well, being exemplared down, I don't have many choices of what I'm going to attack with so I put dart on my main power choices and I find now that I have to take back all the bad things I said about dart.

First of all, it's an awesome pulling power. That little "dink" of damage is far more likely to pull just one than other harder hitting attacks. The next thing I noticed is that it recharges so fast and costs so little end that you can constantly use it as melee-orientated mobs as they come towards you. On yellow Hellions, I generally have them down to just above half before they reach me, on Orange a little below a quarter (minions). Add in the quick building of Domination from Dart and it's not a bad power at all. (for fairness sake I must say that I have +20% acc, +20% recharge and +4% damage when exemplared down to the 9-15 range)

If the Devs are going to change Psy assualt I hope they leave this power alone. I wouldn't have said that 3 weeks ago but some play back at the lower levels has completely changed my tune.

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Poisonous Ray does not accept Defense Debuff IO sets.


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It doesn't? did this change? I have a defense debuff IO set in mine right now.

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It was fixed. It's probably mentioned in this thread already.

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Now it is .


MadScientist said,
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Psi Dart is a worthless power. I haven't slotted it, nor have I considered slotting it. I'm only level 17, only have a handful of powers to activate, and it's not worth clicking Dart.


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I've been running Oroboros missions on my Mind/Psy and my thoughts on Psy Dart have changed, let me explain.

I like many here on these boards, don't slot up Psy Dart because I have other "tastier" powers that need the slots. I put a recharge in it (for Dom building) and called it good. Well, being exemplared down, I don't have many choices of what I'm going to attack with so I put dart on my main power choices and I find now that I have to take back all the bad things I said about dart.

First of all, it's an awesome pulling power. That little "dink" of damage is far more likely to pull just one than other harder hitting attacks. The next thing I noticed is that it recharges so fast and costs so little end that you can stack damage on melee-orientated mobs as they come towards you. On yellow Hellions, I generally have them down to just above half before they reach me, on Orange a little below a quarter (minions). Add in the quick building of Domination from Dart and it's not a bad power at all. (for fairness sake I must say that I have +20% acc, +20% recharge and +4% damage when exemplared down to the 9-15 range)

If the Devs are going to change Psy assualt I hope they leave this power alone. I wouldn't have said that 3 weeks ago but some play back at the lower levels has completely changed my tune.

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What general population?

There are like, ten people who play doms. Half the posts on this forum are me and the other half are Liliaceae.

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Am I one of the ten? or did you miss me and we are at 11?

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(raises hand) must be 12 by now.

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Poisonous Ray does not accept Defense Debuff IO sets.


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It doesn't? did this change? I have a defense debuff IO set in mine right now.

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They are just as tiny, they are relentless, they come out of the woodwork from every direction and they spawn in droves. They are irritating little brats to say the least.

I just did the mission after the Wailer Lord where you save the 4 Mu Magii. My god, just as you clear an area 6 more would spawn on top of you.

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Aye, that mission. Fun but dear gods was it a pain. My SG was on Vent and the cries of "another ambush" "WTF, again???" were plentiful.

I gotta say I love the way the wailers walk, just so darn cute.

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I already play all the ATs.

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I have played them, but I don't like playing in the Rogue Isles.

I have a feeling, though, that switching sides will amount to switching over solely in the mirror universe rther than, say, having a Stalker running around in normal Paragon City with the general hro populace.

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I hope your right to some degree, though fear your not based on the mail out.

I am the opposite, I dislike Paragon city and most hero archtypes,
I will realy get anoyed seeing blasters and scrappers villain side.

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This.

I've always considered Villians a much better game as a game. If you strip away the graphics and the story and just look at the powersets and how they work, the balance is much better in Villians. Every AT has a defensive side and a damage side and they all have thier weeknesses. Where in Heroes you have that tremendous gap between the damage and the protective accross the ATs. While you can improve upon that gulf with IOs and such, the design of the ATs starts of with that gulf.

I don't think my Scrapper will see the Von Gruen arc anytime soon. I'm guessing this will be a world where you can transfer your characters to this alternate world. I'm also wondering just how much it will set me back.

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I'm very disappointed that this arc was banned. I thought it was very clever and no more sexual than normal CoX content is violent. But of course, violence is OK and sex is bad.

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This.

I liked the arc and found it enjoyable. What I was expecting wasn't what I got and I found myself smiling at the end. I'm crossing my fingers for ya Herc

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My big problem with Purples is more something strange I see going on with my 50 toons,
Drops in general seem a whole lot sparcer than earlier level ranges, in that its not unknown for me to run through an entire cycle of newspaper missions( that is 5 or so before your asked to visit Wiggy), and get only maybe 2-3 recipes( any recipes), out of it. Contrast this my lower level alts, where I can get maybe 2-3 recipes per mission at least.

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I guessed this is going on as well. Human beings are notoriously bad at guessing at randomness so I won't call it a "fact". However, I do keep wondering if the devs have lowered the drop rate.

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Bah, do what you want. I don't have time to install CoH HeroBuilder, I can't get it to update anyways. With IOs pretty much eliminating the need for any skill in correct slotting and a tiny bit of thinking and experience needed to correctly or even decently slot in SOs, I don't think I need to tell anyone.


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I've been here a while and I found slotting (especially during the 20-35 levels) very difficult. Each slot was carefully considered and I took my Ice/Cold to test many times to finally come up with a build I was happy with. As a matter of fact, as an experienced player, I can look up City of Data anytime to find out the numbers, what I'm looking for in a guide is experience playing the set beyond the numbers. You do this with the powers in the guide but slotting is so tough for this set that a good guide for this set really needs a hardy discussion of slotting and practical experience.

A discussion of various builds would also be helpful because of the many different ways you can lean with these power sets.

An example of such:

-Buffer/debuffer
Focusing on the Shields and the debuffs this build (I tried this for a while) is great with the medicine pool. I also would recommend hasten to get Frostwork, Sleet, and Heatloss up more often. A very tasty set especially when you consider that the attacks that the foes (with floored power-regeneration) do manage to get off will often be deflected by the Shields and what does get through the shields will corrected by medicine pool and absorbed by Frostwork. I would also recomend tactics for this build. This build is terrible for end usage. This is a great group-support build but not so great for PvP.

There are many many other twists on these power sets, a control-focused build, AOE damage build, a single-target focused build, a PvP build. Describing the advantages and disadvantages of each of the builds would be very helpful to a new-comer to the sets.

Other recommendations I would suggest is a discussion somewhere in your guide about end usage. Sure once you hit 39 (heatloss is slotted up) your blue bar concerns will be a thing of the past. Until that time this AT is an end-sucking monster. I had to put end redux in many attacks and double slot endredux in Arctic Fog to make my end usage manageable. Not everyone who reads your guide will team with a Corruptor that buffs recovery and I think it would be helpful to address the endurance issue in a practical sense.

As another poster stated, I absolutely disagree with your opinions on Frostwork. A castable dull-pain, how anyone could skip that is beyond me.

When I first picked up Blizzard it was a killer. Seriously. Even with Snowstorm running the Longbow I was fighting ran out of Blizzard and proceeded to knock my vulnerable, endless, happy butt into next week. I've learned some tricks since then that help and with Sleet, Blizzard is devastating. It's great that you are so good at using it but if you are writing a guide, you should probably share with the class.

Thank you for the time you took to write this guide. The fact that you put yourself out there and took the time to write it, was a lot more than I did. I just found some parts that could use a bit more explanation. Perhaps on your next version you could try less entertainment and more information.

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I took your information and made a spreadsheet from it to make it easier to quickly find what drops a particular piece of salavge. I'll try to keep it updated with the information you have here.

Invention Salvage Drops

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Ah ha! I finally found this, do you know how long I was looking for this spread sheet?

Thank you Colonel /em slaute

YES! Thank you, thank you and may I say it again, thank you.

Villain and Heroteaming? Actually getting to see inside the mother ship? Pure sweetness.

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Recursive irony story:

I ran into a woman I hadn't seen in a very long time, and we got to chatting about this and that, when I mention I play this game. She then mentions that she is a *very* fanatical WoW player. I know I shouldn't think this, but I'm still struggling with the concept of a middle aged mother leading WoW raids at four in the morning, when she mentions to me that she was one of the midnight shoppers to buy the WoW expansion that went on sale, and she just *couldn't* get over the ~90 year old man waiting in line ahead of her, just dying to get his level 70 smack-down.

I think it says something both good and yet scary about the video game marketplace that there is no segment of the population that isn't playing something, and yet its happened so fast that everyone is still surprised to hear who *else* is gaming, especially on line.

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It's funny about 7 years ago a friend and I were talking about MMOs. One of the hottest topics between us was what sort of impact they would have on society if many more than the current (at that time) people got involved with MMO gaming. At the time we were just debating for the fun of it. We knew that the type of impacts we were talking about couldn't happen because MMO gaming couldn't grab enough people to make a difference.

Yet, here we are. I wonder if there will be a day where MMO gaming is thought of in the same vein as going to the racetrack or watching a sports event.

"Goodnight Tom"

"Nite Steve, hey you going to be on X server tonight?"

"Nah, going to watch X with the wife."

"Well, good night then see ya tomorrow."

Will people skip out of work in such numbers on release day that it's acknowledged as a problem by employers? Will E start doing shows about developers? Rhetorical questions to be sure but fun ones to think about none-the-less.