Cardea

The first person to find 20 wins!

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States plays a plant/psi Dom (I think), I don't know what level he is yet. Around the end of April, I started a Fire/Energy Dominator on Justice. I'm level 37 now.


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I would advise you, to help the customer base have more faith in your discovery methods, playing not just a plant/psi. Speaking from first hand experience I can say that plant/ is arguably one of the most powerful dominator skill sets. Perhaps it would provide you a more comprehensive picture and your customers more assurance in your experiences if you were to also play a dom type that is notoriously broken. I don't have the experience to say what dom build that would be, but I do know that the gravity set is historically something that people are disappointed with. You or one of your developers might want to give one a go. Plant on it's own is not a good representation of the Dominator AT. Trust me, I play one.

Just an update for anyone using this guide (I know it was helpful to me). Drain Psyche has been fixed as of I7(June06). It now accepts accuracy enhancements.

I'm still trying to figure out why you would need titles to classify the opinions of a debate involving 4 people. This isn't politics. You can have your own viewpoint here. Not that I'm involved really, but it just seems...odd.

This goes without saying but you know this is easily, like, 5 or 6 threads.

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heh, Gravity
(slow, most resisted damage in the game, no soft control AoE until the late twenties)

/Forcefield
(teaming power waits to level 12 to get ONE personal power for something other than running away)

is slower than your Dominator?

No wonder you like yours!

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Exactly. But you know what? While grav/ff is a build most people would complain about you can totally make it rock! I had a blast playing mine! It takes a ton of skill and thinking to play it unlike my fire/devices blaster, which I find a bit too fire and forget to be fun. But still most people will complain about that contoller builds' deficiencies and think I'm some elitiest d00d for my comments about my fire/devices blasters. Their opinion, my opinion, but I'm not going to speak for all controllers, or all blasters. What I am attempting to illustrate is this:

-There are things worse off than some dominators.
-There are some dominators that are better than some other character builds (including other doms).
-There are a lot of people who are obviously experiencing some issues, but instead of narrowing in on their issues they're simply deeming everything broken and asking that everything be looked at.

The opinion I glean from these points is this. Dominators need to be looked at, because there are a lot of people who are unhappy with them. However, the process will never be furthered by throwing around aggrandized statements about whole populations of which people might only have experience with 1/5 of. I'm living proof that all are not discontent with this AT that's supposedly horribly broken. Please don't ask for my junk to be changed because you cannot take the time to put a finer point on your issue. Yes, Doms are sometimes more difficult because of their shortcomings, but some of us like it that way.

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I'm really sick and tired of hearing the, "You just don't know how to play them," or the, "They take more skill to play," arguments, or any variation thereof. I really am. It's baseless justification that assumes the CoV community as a whole is inept at playing just this particular AT. There is not a single other AT in the game that has to be played to such an utter degree of perfection to be considered acceptably functional.

It's like an argument over Interpretist art. The artist decides without any base or justification that his work is the greatest work ever, and if you disagree then you "just don't get it".

Doms are not the least played AT because they're some big enigma. They're not the neglected emo kid that sits alone in the high school lunchroom because no one's taken the time to understand them.

Are they playable? Yes. Can they be effective? Yes. Are they the worst AT? It's arguable, but I think most people would answer yes. Do they need help? Yes, yes, and yes.

If you sit down and look at JUST a Dom, then they don't suck. If you line them up against any other support AT, they fail. They most certainly fail when compared to any damage-dealing AT, and if they don't do either thing well they most certainly do not become effective by doing two sub-par things at the same time. I would pick a Def, 'Troller, or Corr for any party any day for any mission or really any reason, before I would invite a Dom. Without a second thought.

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And I am really sick and tired of the "The WHOLE AT is broken" argument. They too are baseless. Like I've said in so many posts now, that's just too general of a statement to ever hope to be entirely accurate. All I can tell you about it is from my experiences (which, as it turns out is all you can really tell me about too, which is convenient), and from that experience I can easily say that my plant/psy dom really puts my gravity/forcefield controller to shame. But she is...guess what.... tougher to play! She's also tougher to play than the 4 blasters I have. Tougher than the 2 defenders, 1 scraper, 1 tank and 1 of the brutes I've played (oddly enough, she's about as difficult as my stone/stone brute, those have issues too imo).

I really want you to understand that I'm not just going off halfcocked and arbitrarily regurgitating the "ur just n00bs lrn 2 play kthx" line. I haven't played every AT enough (i.e. up to 20 or higher) to feel familiar with it, but out of the ones that I have played I honestly have to say that my dominator is the most difficult yet rewarding to play. Maybe it's the builds I've played (because the difference between one type of an AT and the other will create a different argument entirely, because they are too different to really be lumped into one single argument), but at the end of the day it is my expererience; Doms are tougher to play. Sorry.

I agree Malrathad, but you can't pick specifics in a game of generalization, which is the game here that I'm objecting to. And this is exactly the point I've been trying to make. Sometimes forcefields suck. Sometimes energy blast sucks. And even sometimes the more helpful support sets like kinetics can suck. Our world (even this virtual one we play in) is varied enough that everything has its Waterloo. Every street in Paragon and the Isles has the opportunity to make your abilities an Etzel, even if only temporarily. So if you generalize that all things for X are absolutely one way or the other, then at some point you're going to find yourself to be wrong.

Frankly, speaking as a grav/ff who is leveling up a plant/psy, I can't tell you how excited I am about the extra damage! But then again with that scenario I am probably one of the most likely people to disagree to the thought that doms are weaker than controllers. All this damage plus seeds of confusion that's a perma control (something my aoe hold on my grav controller isn't) that not only controls but forces them to kick the tar out of each other? Plus Carpet of Doom!?! Sold! Screw bubbles, none of them will get a shot off!

Keep in mind that it isn't that I don't see your point of view. Yes, support roles are generally more needed and favorable than "yet more" damage. Heck there's whole AT's out there who do nothing but damage, and do it far better than a dominator ever will. All I'm saying is that this generalization isn't always the case. A good dom, like a good anything, will figure out what it takes to be effective and pursue that course. And that approach will inevitably un-gimp any power set. It isn't as easy to figure out what that takes with a Dom as opposed to other ATs. But that doesn't mean it's broken, it just means it's difficult.

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Controller: Control/Support
Dominator: Control/Assault

When a Dominator's assault is as valuable to a team as a Controller's support, we'll talk

Don't hold your breath, guys.

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That's a fair assessment. But I've been on teams that needed more assault, needed more support, had too much assault and had too much support! So the question is, when is one unequivocally superior? It's situational. You may think that extra assault sucks, until that day you get on that pick up team at 2am PST (when you server is empty) and you have two controllers and four defenders.

As said before, each rocks in some respect and each sucks. It's just a question of the specifics - who, what, when, where, why - just like anything else in life. The scenario above is one that I've been in, and I would have to say without hesitation that a dominator would have been welcome over my redundant forcefields. Tony Danza killed more than that group. Some damage would have been welcome.

Edit: Assult? assassult? assasuklt??

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1, doms and controllers are close on this, controllers start better Containment is powerful at low levels, then dominators get better, and post pets controllers are better again.


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I guess there are some things that we'll all never agree on.

I have a level 39 grav/ff controller and a level 28 plant/psy dom. I can personally attest that the creeper my dominator got at 26 is worlds more effective than the single singularity my controller got at 32. And the creeper is that Doms' sub pet.

But this is what I was trying to say before; You can't paint with this broad of a brush and hope to be even remotely accurate in your assessment. Every AT down to their individual builds are so different from each other. To say that one whole AT is better than another is going to always be essentially wrong.

Everything.Is.Just.Too.Different.

Now, if you wanted to talk about inferior builds, that is a different story. While I'd never agree that one whole AT is insufficient, there are some builds that make Stan Lee cry.

I understand. All I can say is that they're not at my breakfast table then. Perhaps, if they're seeing pits when others are seeing bowls so often, they should question whether digging/eating is the right line of work for them.

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How could anyone compare Dom to Trollers? They are different, Controllers are way better due to their secondaries and epic pools plus the bloody containment that does triple damage in PvP!

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You do realize that you just indignantly asked how anyone could ever compare a dom to a controller, and then proceeded to write a two paragraph comparison of them, right?

But to support your initial statement, yes. You cannot compare them because they are different. One is a truck, and one is a sedan. They are both cars. One will haul your firewood. One will not haul a family of five. And so on. I've got both a dom and a controller (the controller being my main) and I'd have to say that both are unique little snowflakes in their own right. They both rule in some respects, and they both utterly suck in others. And if they didn't both equally suck and rock, well, there wouldn't be much point in playing any AT but that flawless one, right? Just change the name to City of Controllers, or City of Blasters and be done with it.

To make comparisons between things that are so different is pointless. You can tell me a shovel is better than a spoon until I hand you a bowl of cornflakes, but then what is your assessment? Did it change?

ATs are different. Not better or worse. No one will ever rule the universe without the others standing right next to it.

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Do dominators suck like people say they do?

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Yes. I suck on a phenomenal scale. And if you disagree I'll hold/sleep/confuse you until my garden composts you at it's leisure.

From my experiences Doms don't suck. They just aren't obvious like some of the more favored classes. Because they take more than a day to become proficient at, they are regularly deemed crappy by the general populace of A.D.D. Avengers and re-roll queens that inhabit our fare fantasy world. This also explains why Doms become less frequent as you go up in level, yet for some reason are on everyone’s friends list, persistently in demand and are often highly skilled.

When you were a kid did you ever play console games with your friends? Remember that one game, character, or level that you or your friend just couldn’t master, so one of you eventually threw down the controller in a fit of frustration and proclaimed “This game/guy sucks!”? Dominators are that game/guy. And like that guy/game Dominators really rock once you take the time to learn them.