Bradd

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The closest to a consensus that we all can come to is that some change would be desirable. Heck, I even listed down my top five priorities for Dominator change in one thread.

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Hm, what are my top five dominator wishes? In no particular order:

1. A little more health would be nice.
2. Another damage bump would be nice, maybe 80/70 or 75/75.
3. Rein in control powers in other ATs, especially in PVP.
4. Change AV status protection to a happier medium between fighting statues and stripping our active defenses. Heck, I wouldn't mind fighting statues; I'm used to it.
5. Ban the "dominators suck" forum trolls.

Show-off!

More seriously, my dominator is pretty good against bosses when Domination is running, but I personally prefer blowing away the minions and lieutenants while tougher folks take out the bosses.

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I don't find [domination downtime] particularly long either, but by comparison, if we use your number that assume you've got it up every three fights you're still only running at maximum effectiveness 33% of the time. Not great.

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Where are you getting 33%? I said that I typically fight with domination up for two fights, down for three, not one out of three.

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For example, last night I took a team in to the mission where you rescue Wretch in the sewers. Team fell apart by the end leaving myself and a MM. I died on a spawn, so there went Domination. Next group had two bosses.

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It sounds like you were duoing a spawn for a team of four or more. It's not surprising that you had trouble with it, but why blame your AT? With a team actually appropriate for the spawn size, it should've been easy, with Seeds of Confusion helping out significantly. Did you have similar troubles before you tried to tackle two bosses without backup? Dominators are not boss-killers, but that's not a problem unless you mistakenly expect them to fill that role.

Seriously, what's the point in this complaint? That doms suck when you're fighting an oversized spawn with a crappy MM player as your only backup? Well, duh.

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Change acrobatics to being mez resistance, not mag increase. Makes holds last 1/4 of time (click instead of toggle), and make break frees only take you out of one current hold, no lasting effect at all. Add stun immunity to a different power ....

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Acrobatics is currently a better defense for us than for our enemies. It doesn't stop our holds, but it does protect us from everyone but controllers and other dominators. It's also a big help in PVE. Furthermore, changing it from protection to resistance would actually make it harder for us to hold other characters: Holds wouldn't last as long against squishies, and it'd be even harder to stack them on defense ATs. Meanwhile, since it wouldn't even stop minor holds anymore, toggle-heavy doms (like mine) would be in a lot of trouble.

I have a similar problem with eliminating the duration on Break Free inspirations. My biggest challenge in PVP is dealing with controllers and stun-heavy enemies. Removing duration from BFs means that I'll burn through them a lot faster against those foes. Against controllers, running out of BFs is fatal, and they can already exhaust my supply long before the end of a 10-minute arena duel. Energy stalkers aren't much different, except that I can currently expect a full tray of BFs to protect me from their stuns for a whole fight. Even though weaker BFs would help me against some foes, I don't really need the help against them -- I can already stack through or exhaust their BFs. Again, they do a better job of protecting me than hindering me, in my experience.

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I personally don't believe intermittent bursts of effectiveness seperated by long stretches of mediocrity make a balanced AT, but your mileage may very.

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I don't find the stretches between domination particularly long. Domination lasts for about two fights then takes about three fights to refill and recharge. My main dominator is a mind/psi, though, which has good cast times, recharges, and attack chains, so I almost always have the bar full when the button recharges (the major exceptions being at the start of a mission, after a defeat, or when playing with very slow PUGs).

As for mediocrity while Domination is down, I don't feel that either. I don't know whether that's a difference of power sets, play style, or perception. I do tend to suffer more defeats than my teammates, but the same thing happens playing my /regen scrapper. I've always assumed that I'm just too aggressive and tend to get in over my head.

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What I am acutely aware of is that there are too many situations in which I am completely boned without it. Where I literally contribute nothing and can not function. Thankfully those scenarios should thin out now as I approach 18 where I can finally stack holds, but...

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What situations are those, and what are your power sets? Judging by the character level, I'd guess that you're having trouble with boss fights. Even then, you should be able to contribute by holding lieutenants or minions; you don't need to lock down a boss to help out a team, especially if you have good boss-killers on the team.

Also, keep in mind that dominators aren't alone in struggling in the teens. It's a common complaint among scrappers, tankers, brutes, and stalkers too: Just like dominators, they often have trouble with survival and endurance management until the mid-twenties.

To play a specific boombox song, just add the song's title (found on the Quickchat menu) to the emote. For example, /em bbrave to play the "rave" song. Be sure not to put a space between "bb" and the song title.

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In theory you should have seen +150% damage, mag 9 for normal duaration, with a trailing mag 6 for 1.5x. That mag 6 would have made a big difference.

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I'm not sure whether you'd get two extra holds during domination or just the normal one extra hold. It depends on how that power effect is coded, but I suspect that double domination would only increase your damage, not improve your controls. You could test it the same way we tested the normal domination mechanics: Hold a boss and a minion. If the holds last the same amount of time, you're getting a double hold bonus. If the minion hold lasts longer, you're only getting the normal domination hold bonus.

Please note that Martial Arts attacks only have 105% accuracy, not 110%.

Yes, I think so. QR has a better recovery bonus than Stamina, so slot that first. However, the third slot is penalized under ED, enough that I think slotting Stamina next provides a bigger benefit (but I'd have to do the math to be certain). Once they're both two-slotted, QR is worth more again, so three-slot it first, then finish Stamina.

Thanks. I was afraid maybe I'd lost my sense of humor!

6-slotting stamina only gets you to 154% recovery. So if 149% isn't nearly enough, that won't be enough either. You're better off spending those slots elsewhere (e.g., on more end reducers in your most expensive attacks).

Ranged.

There's nothing confusing or silly about using the request channel for event announcements (like Hive raids). Most of the time, people use broadcast and request as intended, but in special circumstances they take advantage of the request channel's bright purple color. Since this only happens in special events, it doesn't interfere with normal use of the channel. Nothing needs fixing here. I could say similar things about most of your other issues and proposed fixes.

That sounds like a mix-up between internal mechanics and user interface. Based on what I've seen of the mechanics (like Iakona's work on tables and formulas), I'm pretty sure that the game tracks security/threat level internally as a number from 0 to 49. Starting at 0 works better in most programming languages for things like table indexing and calculations. However, humans prefer starting at 1, so the UI adds one to the internal numbers. Whoever wrote up the guide material must've forgotten that step.

The semicolon means that they are two separate effects. They stack.

Note that the entry lists 2.5% defense plus 2.5% suppressable defense. Also, I would guess that the suppression works the same way as the stalker "Hidden" state: Attacks suppress your stealth, but only after the attack hits. This is useful against creatures that can attack you even while you're hidden; it helps to evade the first shot. That way, you get 2.5% defense all the time and 5% defense against unexpected alpha strikes.

Where do you get only 8 seconds? That's the total duration at 1st level with no enhancements. And that's also for the AOE hold, which is not practical for one-on-one PVP. The single-target hold, Char, lasts 17.88 seconds unslotted. It lasts about 35 seconds with three green SOs. Is that long enough for you to finish somebody off?

(Also: The guide lists a 9-second PVP duration for the Cinders Domination effect. I'm not sure whether the guide or _Castle_ is in error here. If the game data really does show an 8-second duration, that's probably a bug, since that's only 133% of the 6-second base, instead of the usual 150% duration.)

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also for cinders, with domination active, it has a duration scale of 14 in pvp, with a mag of 8?

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Close. The normal effect versus players is 4 strength with 6 duration. With Domination active, there's a second effect at the same time that adds another 4 strength with 8 duration. The total effect would be 8 strength for 6 duration, then 4 strength for 2 duration.

For example, at 50th level, it would apply the +8 effect for 8.94 seconds, then drop to only +4 effect for another 2.98 seconds.

Thank you for the clarification on Booleans and Domination, _Castle_!

Iakona: Yes, I think you're right. If it were an accuracy buff, it would work the way _Castle_ stated, but a to-hit buff should work the way you wrote it (unless the mechanics changed when Arcana wasn't looking ). It's pretty easy to get the two modifiers mixed up when that's not the main point of the example.

geombear: By the same reasoning, +20% to-hit should raise a brute from 50% all the way to 70% in PVP. Subtract defense and multiply by accuracy to get the final number.

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Update: I understand that Combat Jump acts as a minor anti-immobilization as well.

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It is more than minor- CJ is a very good immobilization protection, and can keep you moving as long as there aren't too many immobs stacked. I don't know what the specific immob protection magnitude is, but from experience I know it is very hard to immob my toons with CJ running.

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According to the Prima I7 guide, Combat Jumping adds a whopping 8.3 points of immobilize protection.

EDIT: I'm not certain, but the fractional number suggests that CJ's protection scales with level. If so, then the 8.3 points only applies to 50th-level scrappers, brutes, and stalkers. Tankers would benefit more (10.38 points at 50th level), and other characters would benefit less. For example, a 6th-level defender would only get 3.264 points of protection. (See Iakona's post for more information; CJ appears to have a 24 scalar coefficient for Boolean protection.)

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Now, from what I recall, all dominator and controller single-target holds are Magnitude 3, regardless of level, and it's the duration that changes by level. That doesn't seem to match up with your "4.47 strength" in the guide (which is 3 * 1.49, the level 50 mez modifier for dominators). Shouldn't it be the 8 seconds that's multiplied by 1.49, for a 11.92-second Hold of 3 strength?

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Yes, based on past tests, it sounds like the 1.49 modifier was applied to the wrong value. For example, the Total Domination entry claims a duration of 8 seconds, which corresponds to player estimates of a base 8-second duration. Likewise, regular play shows that (at least pre-I7) the hold strength is always 3, regardless of level.

I suspect that what happened here is that the guide's values were generated by a program, and the code for protection strength (which does scale with level) was incorrectly reused for control strength also. However, it's also possible that the guide's values are correct, and the game code has it backwards! Confirmation on this point would be helpful.

Likewise, I'd also like to know whether Domination simply adds +100% strength and +50% duration (as we've previously assumed) or whether it effectively adds a second control of equal strength and 150% duration (as the guide implies). It would also be helpful to know for certain whether the Domination duration is +50% base or 150% of base+boosts.

Er, isn't that exactly what he wrote? What am I missing?

Supergroup Name: Venomous Vixens
Web site: http://www.guildportal.com/Guild.aspx?GuildID=83212
Leader: Kelly McKenna (Love-Taker)
Preferred Contact: e-mail Love-Taker or /tell @Bradd
Group Description: Beautiful and Deadly

((Venomous Vixens is a casual role-playing supergroup. The group's theme is pro-women, and most of the membership is female, but male applicants are also welcome. We prefer generally positive and sociable characters; no misanthropes, please. Good RP, PVE, and PVP skills are a plus but not required. Alts are welcome, although we do encourage active play, with a 30-day idle policy. We have a PVE base with workshop, telepads, garden, Italian leather sofas, and 80-inch television. Promotions require a positive recommendation from two higher-level members. See our Web site for more details.))

Thanks! The other thing I'd really like to see is a consolidated and verified table of mixed-level modifiers, both for PC vs NPC and vice versa. It sounds like you're already working on that, just wanted to let you know that I'm eagerly awaiting the results. Thanks for all of your work with this.

Could you please clarify how power and enhancement accuracy combine? Do they add or multiply?

For example, Dominate has 1.2 accuracy. If you add two white accuracy SOs, is the final to-hit (1.2 x 1.67) = 200% of base, or is it (1.2 + 0.67) = 187% of base?

EDIT: Here's why I'm confused about this. The defense formula is (BaseAcc) * (AccuBuffs) * (other stuff). The explanation of the formula first states that power and enhancement accuracy are both "accuracy buffs" (AccuBuffs?) but then later it refers to power accuracy as "base accuracy" (BaseAcc?).

Let P = power accuracy (e.g., 1.2 for Dominate), E = enhancement accuracy (e.g., +67% for two SOs), S = the subtotal after other modifiers, and H = net to-hit. Which is the correct formula?

H = (P + E) x S
H = P x (1 + E) x S

RE-EDIT: OK, I scoured the thread again, and example of a Martial Arts scrapper with 2 SOs confirms the (P x (1 + E) x S) formula. Assuming the example is correct, could you please update the next version of the guide with an example or a better explanation? (Also, note that Castle recently confirmed that MA attacks only have 1.05 accuracy, not 1.1.)