D0mbegone

Oh I didn't forget C.

C - strategic, real time combat anaylsis and decision making combined with real time repositioning to most effectively execute a desired result.

With how good you guys talk about the average player being at "C" i12 pvp would have been excessively popular in this game

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In all fairness, they also intended for people to embrace the jekyl/hyde design. So standing by a "jousting" design doesn't necessarily hold water.

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That makes no sense. The Hyde concept did not turn the Dominator into a strong defensive meleer, it increased its damage and holds. It should remain just as dangerous to be in melee as Hyde as it is for Jeckyl, just the reward is higher.

Again, it's not jousting, it's waiting until the foe is held and can't hit back before closing to melee, but that strategy doesn't change when you go into Domination. Not that it wouldn't have been interesting if, when you went into Domination, you gained a huge amount of HP and defense, but that does not seem to have been the intention. You still need to weigh the risk of using your melee attacks against their greater damage, even when Domination is going.

Another reason I don't like the Jeckyll/Hyde analogy, Mr. Hyde was usually percieved as being much stronger AND more resiliant than Dr. Jeckyll. If anything, it is a misleading comparison.

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tl:dr version - you may not consider full mez protection an increase in resilience against mez loaded melee attacks that npcs use, but I'd bet my first born daughter the devs do.

...

You missed the point or you are taking it out of context...again

I was saying that originally doms were envisioned to be this crazy on/off AT and people would just love that dynamic. Some did, most don't.

In addition to that it is envisioned that doms will make critical mid-fight analysis and strategically pop in and out of melee range.

I'm saying that the first intended use of dominators fell on its face in actual play (for the avg player, ie the majority of the player base). I'm also saying that the second intended use of dominators ALSO falls on its face for the majority of players.

It just doesn't happen, people literally stand in ONE spot and play the game until the mob is dead and then they move to the next static location.

As for the Jekyll/Hyde analogy of the AT, I didn't come up with it, but it is very applicable. You say it lacks resilience and fails? I say full mez protection definitely falls under the category of increasing resilience and definitely makes the AT a more competent melee'er (on live) by greatly increasing damage output and being able to shrug off all those status effects that npc melee attacks often have. On live the damage is designed to be secondary to the control and domination boosted mez powers also add a great deal of resilience through active armors.

But that is live dominators, they are being "revamped" to be dual role/dual primary and to need domination much less.

If domination (mez protection and active defense) was a large part of what made them "competent" in melee range (and it was) what is going to happen if domination is used less on average, but the necessity to use melee has increased?

Is that going to help dominators? Or is it going to do something else?

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Casuals don't jump in and out of melee. They didn't on blasters, they don't on doms, they don't on any AT.


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1) When I note in and out of melee I dont mean jousting, I mean staying at range doing poor damage if you dim melee too dangerous and go in close and personal in situations where your controls are strong enough to keep the melee safe.

2) You keep bringing the casuals into the topic but I seen enough casual doms doing good in live now to think that you want survivability compensated not for the casuals but for the retards. The game won't be balanced around retards.

3) Blasters did it and do it all the time, even casuals. Specially newbies. They tend to be more open on picking every power from their primary and secondary and actually test it and find how hard they hit with them.

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It's generally the retards and the pros that color the AT for everyone else . It gets buffed if retards can't use it, and nerfed if pros are too good with it

1. If people really did what you suggest they are doing in a somewhat effective way I seriously doubt doms would be rated as low as they are.
-BS, mindprobe, havoc, icesword, incin et al, they are all on like 8-10 second timers with DO slotting. Do you seriously think the avg player is popping in and out of melee at 10 second intervals? Or do you think they.
a/ forgo the use of melee and put out subpar damage?
b/ use melee and just stand there the whole time?

2. lrn2ply didn't work for blasters to save them from being made retard friendly, it didn't work for pvp either lol. Sooner or later it won't work for doms. I'm just forward thinking

3. Yep they pick all their powers, find out that melee is most powerful and then use everything from that range while waiting for melee attack(s) to cycle. Have people forgotten the range damage increase during the blaster revamp so they'd feel much less inclination that melee > range?

Meh, will dom is pretty much in line compared to what bitter freeze ray does. I'm not sure "why" they matched it to that power, but sometimes they overvalue things that the player base does not.

BFR is overall a bit better numbers wise, but is so slow most people skip it. At least will dom is so fast that it can still fit into a build.

When you look at psy blasters compared to defs though you get this:
Code:[/color]

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 Blaster		Def	

tier	useful	tier 	useful

1	yes	1	no

2	yes	2	yes

3	yes	3	no

4	yes	4	kinda

5	meh	5	yes

6	no	6	yes

7	kinda	7	kinda

8	no	8	no

9	nuke	9	nuke

 

---

they just frontloaded the set. I psy blaster has everything they need by lvl 8 and then never really gets better. I personally like late blooming sets, but that's just me.

At least for blasters it isn't forced into a throwaway attack and they are pretty much identical for st DS output (before aim).

Frequently using psi dart and (useful) mental blast easily provides more mitigation than defender willdom.

Are people really that upset at the exchange of psyscream for aim?

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If I recall, one of the issues is HOW that power affects other aspects of the archetype. For example, Brutes initially had Ice armor and melee but they were finding that it caused a serious drop in building fury so they had to remove it. Likewise Illusion Control with a Dominator may very well not have built up Domination quickly because alot of its major powers are passive, like Phantom army and spectral Terror and Group invis, so they wouldn't help build Dom (though now that team attacks build Dom this may be less of an issue.)

As for Katana...I dunno. Something about a"brute" gracefully weilding a sword seems...off. I mean, they BRUTES...they're supposed to be while, raging hulks of power.

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It was ice melee that was causing fury issues. Ice armor is less constrictive toward fury than dark armor. That said a stone/dark brute can reduce enemy fury generation to 0 in many fights and it still went through as is...(ice/ice certainly couldn't do that as it is usually the alpha that bumps fury and then brute attacks that sustain it).

I think ice armor didn't go through because brutes can hibernate and still gain fury I'm sure a creative person could think of how that would be OP'd, especially when at the time there was no "no phase" rule in place and hibernate could be up like every 30 seconds.

Doms are being revamped to be much less reliant upon domination. If that is to be believed, then it would be reasonable to suggest that illusion would be fine for doms now.

As for Katana, have you seen the rusty blade or the rikti model? they look brutish to me. Easily as brutish as dual blades and the pirouettes he does

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Why would the developers or anyone else want Heroes and Villians to have the same powers?

The uniqueness of Heroes powers vs the uniqueness of Villians powers makes things much more interesting and helps define the essence of what it means to be a Hero or Villian.

The powers shouldn't have to be the same for Heroes and Villians to have(on paper) an equal chance to win one on one fights.

IMO, it is much better to have new power sets for Heroes and Villians, than it is to just move one over to the other side. Of course that would be way more time consuming and work to get said power balanced with other primary/secondary sets of AT.

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When hero powers consist of riding ponies and singing songs around the campfire, while villain powers consist of eating babies; then what you say might make sense.

This argument barely worked for empathy and falls flat on its face when you consider how "heroes" already dispatch common purse snatchers.

Of course new powersets would be more ideal. But the devs seem pretty much tapped out in the creativity department and the rate that new powers come out is barely a trickle.

oh ya, forgot; all those people that cry that the blaster version of psi is inferior to the def version seem to look right past the fact that most defenders don't slot or use mental blast. I know I'm a big fan of mandatory powers that get tossed asap

I'd really like to know why some people have it stuck in their head that defender psi is some amazing set rather than the at-best average set that it is.

I still remember when people were begging for psi blast for blasters I asked: why? it is a crappy pve set and barely anyone pvp's in this game. I wanted rad or dark, both of which would be wicked on blasters.

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Doms are not melee AT.
They are no ranged AT either.

Look at the sets.
It's not Fiery Blast.
It's not Fiery Melee.
Its Fiery Assault.

Melee are expected to jump in and out of melee, the are meant to get close to do damage and the foe is not capable of getting out of range to be safe. That is what Assault sets are really about.

I still remember this line form beta too: There is no safer moment to close in and use melee attacks than when your foe is held.

I think the devs sort of got the idea for Doms after watching pre-pet solo controller builds using every melee attack in the pool powers to solo a bit faster and effectively.

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In all fairness, they also intended for people to embrace the jekyl/hyde design. So standing by a "jousting" design doesn't necessarily hold water.

Casuals don't jump in and out of melee. They didn't on blasters, they don't on doms, they don't on any AT.

If they feel pressured to use melee that is where they will be most of the time for better or worse.

Exactly like Talen said (for my /elec and /icy) the only time I'm out of melee is when there are no targets left.

"I never said doms fight up close but out of melee"
hmm
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Dominators are not really intended to be in melee, like a Scrapper or Brute, they are intended to be at close range, just outside of melee range, but close enough to use a Cone or PBAoE.

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Well you did say exactly that, but I'm guessing it isn't what you meant.

Unfortunately the devs are out to lunch if they expect the majority of players to adapt a highly maneuverable combat style that utilizes unsuppressed movement to constantly reposition during a fight.

lol people park it and pew pew.

I'll just state with absolute certainty that most doms (except live fire and test energy) spend most of every fight standing right next to the enemy(ies).

You may joust in and out, I definitely do, but I am not typical.

I certainly never implied that by "dual role" they should be doing blaster damage. They don't come close, no one does. That doesn't mean other AT's aren't classified under the role of damage dealers.
Dom's two roles are:
1/ control
2/ damage

The definition of dual role means they are interchangeable as in:
1/ damage
2/ control
Which is also supported by Castle stating they would have two "primary" strength sets.

Range is irrelevant if you are standing 7 ft from your enemy when you are casting all those 80ft attacks
I think you have it stuck in your head that their are droves of noob doms that are somehow experts in jousting.

The truth is: if your attack chain requires you to be in melee that is where you will be (you as in avg player). Expecting anything else is just fooling one's self.

I actually now agree with you that doms are supplemental damage dealers, but for none of the reasons you state as those simply aren't why.

It is supplemental because they HAVE to use their primary to live long enough to deliver melee damage in a team scenario. Therefore it always comes secondary to their control and supplements it.

If they were true dual role their primary would stand on its own (and it does). And their secondary would stand on its own (but it doesn't). And they could choose to focus on damage supplemented by control in a team environment and solo. Or control supplemented by damage in either environment.

Unfortunately part of the puzzle is still missing. I doubt it is going to get fixed...

But then again, I also don't think the changes done so far are going to do much of anything in terms of popularity.

I also think doms will be back whining for more adjustments before the end of the year

Rereading the i15 dom thread I see I was right on pretty much every comment I made. And I'm sure the remaining ones that were forward thinking oriented will happen too. I also think the problems I'm talking about here will manifest in the near-ish future.

I guess we just have to wait and see. I know you won't convince me I'm wrong about the problems I see everyday, or the problems that I can figure out as easy as adding two figures together, but I applaud your efforts. Virtually every position you have taken is one of massive experience that avg players just don't have.
-whether it is slotting control powers for damage; if they even take them
-or apply advanced combat maneuverability
-or picking specific powers that allow a spawn to be neutralized so they can deal damage with ease.

(arguments like those are exactly the same as the old defiance supporters used, basically they said lrn2ply, which is what you are now saying)
All those things are basic for you and me and many others on these boards, but I continually see young doms spamming aoe immobs and then standing in melee waiting for bonesmasher to cycle and then getting pissed at the /cold corruptor for not healing them

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Benumb looks pretty much like freezeray. It is a slow moving snowball. It makes the "zing" sound identical to freezeray as well.

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Benumb has no projectile. It's just a hand thrust/shake/whatever and ice chunks fall off the target.

The slow moving snowball w/ Freeze Ray sound is Infrigidate.


EDIT: In that video, starting at 0:20, the Corr uses Aim, Infrigidate, then Benumb, in that order.

Benumb can be seen used again at 2:35.

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Right you are. I haven't fired up any of my colds in some time and the set recycles so many animations it gets muddy in my old brain

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Psi/* is pretty pathetic. All the best things out of Psi attacks from defenders got removed from the blaster version to keep it from being overpowered in PvP.

Then they changed PvP but didn't repair Psi/* for PvE.

The only decent pairings for Psi/ are /energy as a single target focused hover blaster with boost range and /MM which makes up for many of Psi/* weaknesses.

*/MM is as unique as is /Devices but /MM works well whether you are teamed or solo. */MM goes well with every blaster primary.

Bottom line is the devs did an excellent job with */MM and a very poor job with Psi/*.

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This is flat out false. The blaster version of psy and the defender version have almost identical st DS output. If you actually look at the numbers they just shifted it around.

They made tk blast the hard hitter rather than willdom and based on how many people have yapped about psy resistant foes you'd think that is a good thing

The only difference in performance is the removal of psy scream being replaced with aim. Thankfully psyscream (non dominator version) is really crappy.

Personally I would have pulled scramble for aim, but all well.

Blaster sets that lack self buffs (aim/bu) get b*tched about all the time. If blasters had gotten defender version it would be whined about as well.

The fact of the matter is:

Defender psy isn't very good either, but it gained legend status in pvp and for w/e reason people everywhere think it is really good. It is a very low performance pve set and so is the blaster version.

Bottom line is that /mm is coveted because of 2 powers (DP and PSW - lol sounds like dominators all over again), the rest of the set is pretty lame. Psi/ is comparable to the defender version of psi in that they are both pretty low on the performance scale in pve.


Is the set fun? fun is in the eye of the beholder.

The lack of noticeable effects for mind and grav is a complaint that has been in place for years.

On the opposite end the intrusive effects of stone cages has been complained about for a long time as well.

Complaining that teammates can't see what he is contributing and they can't adjust strategy because of it has little to do with mind being a "bad" team set.

I'm game if anyone does want to have an argument that mind is a subpar team set. Because it is. My 50 mind/kin was one of the most useless team controllers (as in actual control, not the awesome team buffs of kin) I've ever used and that is with perma hasten bringing the actual "team strength" controls up a whole lot more often than a normal mind would have access to them.

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I've played with one Cold Defender (and 1 Corrupter) ever in three years of playing. And most of this is on Virtue, where Defenders and Controllers are not hard to find. I don't team heaps, I often solo or duo by myself, but I have found Cold Defenders very rare.

I have no idea what Benumb or Heat Loss look like. That says something

So I'd say if you're trying to avoid FoTM, Cold is a very good place to start.

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Benumb looks pretty much like freezeray. It is a slow moving snowball. It makes the "zing" sound identical to freezeray as well.

Heatloss is a double hands up cast that old flares used.

Seen at 8 seconds into this vid (not my vid)
ice/cold corr

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Not meaning to repeat myself or anything, but if I can get similar results to Thunderstrike, from 80 feet away, for 7 less endurance, with some time to move in the middle of the cast time, and can do it over and over again, not to mention reduce their resists by 20% some of the time, why is Thunderstrike better? Having a knockdown and a mez seems redundant in PvP for a Mind Dominator, as my primary will take care of those on demand, from range, and then they will be immune for a bit. I'm just not feeling the idea of intentionally going into melee range as a squishy, seems counter-intuitive, and it seems to me that there's a better option available.

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gl w/ your mind/thorns. Just don't say no one tried to tell you

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Nice for building domination in pvp.

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What exactly does domination do in pvp now?

(I know the answer, but I'm curious what others think)

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ah my bad. Southern and I aren't saying the same things though, I certainly never said they are a melee AT, which seemed to be a part of your counter to things I was saying.

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Well, I posted my contradiction to that quote, and you posted to contradict me. So you'll forgive my conclusion that you were supporting that position.

When you get right down to it, both Blasters, which aren't a melee archetype, and Stalkers, which are one, have the same hit points. So honestly, I don't think whether or not an AT is a "melee archetype" really has any bearing anyway. As I said, I don't think the Blaster hit point boost was anything but a bone tossed to the player base. It might help Blasters on a team, where they can get some defense, and it might help Dominators on a team, too. But I think the fact that Dominators can more consistently hold foes than Blaster can will make a bigger difference to the devs.

It's not that I'm opposed to the idea, I just don't think it's realistic. Either because it would be acceptable to the devs, or that it would actually help with a Dom's soloability, or performance against an AV.

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I sort of suspect, not very much time is being taken to read other points being made.

I certainly never countered you in supporting that doms were a melee AT.

I countered your assertion that doms play "up close" somehow outside of melee but still in range to make good use of pbaoes. That really didn't make much sense when you said it as we know pbaoes are fired from the middle of spawns and melee attacks are used in melee range.

(Of course you also recent said doms assault sets are still intended for supplementary damage despite Castle publicly stating they are "dual role" now and should be legitimate damage dealers.) So it is a bit confusing trying to get behind anything you are saying.

I said why doms often find them themselves fighting from that range, but said in the exact same post they aren't a melee AT.

The fact of the matter is they have always experienced pressure to fight at that range for optimal damage output. That has not changed on live or test. Though test is even moreso.

All well, no harm, no foul.

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I can build dom in under 30 seconds under the 6 second psi dart, the 3 second psi dart and Live. I don't use the snipe exploit.

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Are you representative of players as a whole?

The impact on building dom was hardly the central focus on why some people were experiencing issues with the long recharge of psi dart et al.

I'm not sure if people are simply misremembering something that only happened a few days ago, or some other phenomenon is occurring

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You seem to be the only one that keeps trying to pigeon hole them into a melee archetype. They aren't.

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Quoting Southern_Comfort:

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I'm going to bite here and cross my fingers that it doesnt go awry.
Dominators all have a damage secondary chalk full of melee attacks. Why in the world would a dominator NOT be considered a melee archetype?

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ah my bad. Southern and I aren't saying the same things though, I certainly never said they are a melee AT, which seemed to be a part of your counter to things I was saying.

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We aren't saying Dominators are a melee archetype, just that they are often pushed into melee range to play, similar to how blasters used to be.

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Blasters still have that option. And in fact, Blasters still do considerable damage with their melee attacks. There's just less of a feeling that they HAVE to enter melee to do enough damage to survive.

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Are you just summarizing what I said? because this is exactly what I said for some reason you cut off the line above the one you quoted that said exactly that though.
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With Dominators, there probably is a sense that they have to enter melee to deal enough damage to survive. But that doesn't make them a melee archetype. Meleers remain in melee, and they have Defense, that is what makes them able to remain in melee and not have to wait until it is safe to move in, and move out of melee when it is not.

Dominators, like Blasters, are a combination of range and melee. They're not going to get the hit points of a meleer. And they're unlikely to get the hit points of a Blaster as long as they have longer lasting holds than a Blaster.


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You seem to be the only one that keeps trying to pigeon hole them into a melee archetype. They aren't.

The rest though I'm not sure why you are just repeating what I said.

Seeing as how it feels like I'm more or less talking to an argumentative version of myself, heh, I may as well just think out loud:

I don't think a mild hp boost would do much of anything for them. If anything I'd give them scaling resistances while domination is down that are null while it is up.

That would help with the 20 some odd levels where doms all but require melee attacks, but lack the developed controls to promote that playstyle. It would also lessen the continued perceived notion that domination is "ideal" because out of domination you lose a ton of defense through control. Scaling res outside of domination would help to close that survivability gap and further reduce the on/off feel. (which I don't like, but hey if you are going to do it, might as well finish the job).

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when GR comes we won't need Proliferation. We'll be able you take whatever power and switch sides

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So I can make a trick arrow corruptor when GR hits? How bout a cold domination controller?

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I case you all havent noticed I am still pretty nerd raged about this nerf because it was completely unjustified.


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I don't disagree with your nerd rage in this case, although, I wouldn't necessarily call the lack of justification 'complete'. +rech is something that pushes coh's current combat processing into very worrisome areas. It's not like mapwide-taunt that can be capped or stacked mez that can be purple-triangled. The engine itself starts to sputter as increasingly more things want to be processed in decreasingly small windows of time.

Let me put it this way. In part of this game review the point is made that game quality is very strongly served by a 1:1 input-to-game-response ratio between the player and the game engine. If you increase the quantity of input (for example because players/ai have less recharge delay between actions) and the game's ability to respond is not increased, game quality suffers. For a game like coh where much of the game's ability to respond to input is locked in (and would get lots slower if the devs put in even half of the crazy stuff the playerbase keeps asking for), +rech is a variable threat to the overall quality of their work.

The devs may not handle the pr side of +rech nerfs all that well, but if they really care about getting the best quality into their game's experience, then it seems they have some reasonable justification to aim nerf guns at abusive input situations.

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This sounds plausible. How does it impact single power entities? As far as I know single power entities experience no glitches from the recharge cap down to the negative recharge cap (which I've tested with LS). And why doesn't this come into affect with player recharge? My player is at the recharge cap far more often than any "pets".

I hope GR has something better than just sideswitching. That has been possible since CoV came out

Arch is perfect to include, I said in one of the other posts it is the other long range set.

It "should" be ahead of psi, it has almost no mitigation, and psi has heaps from that range.

The pve performance is irrelevant in a pvp discussion.

I certainly didn't say it was OP'd, just a very good pvp set.

Personally if I were rolling a new blaster it would be arch/em. Astounding pve performance and very good zone pvp performance. But if for some reason I forgot that new pvp is teh suck and rolled a toon specifically for that it would probably be psi/em.

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Sounds to me like a good thing. PVP being approachable might mean people do it.

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by approachable do you mean:
slept, then knocked on your butt and dead before you get up from 100+ft away?

tk blast does 17kb (when slotted) that is enough to knock over most things you encounter in zone pvp.

I don't think psi is OP'd, but it is very easy to use. Most fights are over before they start. In a way similar to some stalkers, but usually requiring less offensive skill (all that range you know), but offset by requiring more survival skill (though phase and hibernate and hoarfrost make even that pretty easy in zone, but not as easy as never being seen heh).

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Ah. I keep forgetting about that. :< Which means I'll have to run another estimate...

EDIT: And with those taken into account... The new figures:

Fire Blast: 444 damage
Ice Blast: 366 damage
Psi Blast: 411 damage

Psi Blast is still lagging behind Fire, but gets a significant boost over Ice. Telekinetic Blast actually has pathetic damage using the PVP values, but Mental Blast and Will Domination both made up a huge chunk of the difference in and of themselves. Yowza.

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Now run the numbers again, but only include attacks that can be used from 120ft away (/em boost range).

I used to run a lol fly, lol tp psy/em with range slotted attacks and perma boost range. I would just hover over any squirmish and rain death from about 150ft away. Most things would be dead before they could even figure out where the attacks were coming from heh.

Outranging everyone else AND dealing high damage has its perks. You have to get double AS'd to die too, now that ET is so slow. Any attack that could follow up kill you after an AS leaves time to pop a green or two. (Not that AS+ET can kill a +hp blaster unless they pop reds )