D0mbegone

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Also, snipes are amazing if activated at the last second of a build up attack chain.

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Well lets think about that example. If say we looked at a 10 second attack sequence that had a 2 sec gap .....

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Read what he said again. It's not a 2 second gap, it's not even a 1 second gap. It's clicking the snipe right before the build up buff goes away, essentially extending the build up time from 10 seconds to just under 12 seconds. If you can figure out an attack sequence that leaves you just a breath of time at the end of it so you can do that consistently.... That's what he's talking about.

(I do something similar on all the ATs that have build up/aim, put the longest animating attacks at the end so I get that -> <- much more of a boost. It's not often OMGAWESOMESAUCE! but it *is* significant. For example, my Electric Melee stalker saves Thunder Strike for last, "adding" 3.3s to Build Ups buff time.)

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Perhaps you should reread. Two distinct scenarios were raised.
1. attack chain gaps, of which 2 sec was cited
2. end of a buff cycle

I addressed both.

I'm very familiar with using long cast powers right at the end of a buff cycle. It is indeed very good. The difference between using a power like total focus in that role and a snipe is that outside of the buff cycle total focus is still a regularly used power. The snipe is not.

Just to reiterate, the snipes won't be part of a regular attack chain (even pretending they weren't interpretable). If the best "sell" for taking it is to time it right at the end of a buff cycle while assuming you have a suitable target to use it on, I think that is the definition of - highly situational. (especially considering only 2 of the 4 dom sets with snipes even get a +dam power)

Some highly situational powers do make it into builds. In this case I don't think snipes will be one of them. (I mean actually used in the build, not just an IO mule).

Basically, because of all the drawbacks that snipes have they need to break the mold and offer something very attractive. Increasing the DPA by upping the rech was a good idea (they also realize snipes aren't used in normal attack chains).

It just has to go even further imo. However, they already cost nearly a fifth of an end bar, so at this point I'm backed into a corner and have to suggest that the get "free" damage added to make them more attractive.

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Don't take the Snipes. They run completely counter to the Dom play style. And given the changes to Doms, building Domination out of combat is nowhere near as useful as it once was.

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The Fiery Assault sniper is actually VERY effective. Fiery Assault > Blazing Bolt = Dead +2 minion.

Great way to kill off a Sapper then can hold one of the mezzing lts.

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Certainly. As stated they could be used by a solo player to fair effect. Of course a solo dom already breezes through the game so I'm not sure how much that is really saying.

Snipes on a dom are pretty much useless for team play.

I'm just gonna go ahead and say it: if the grounds for taking a power is highly situational it will not be taken by very many people.

Who's keeping score?

I see 4 reduced, 1 improved quite a bit, and one wash. Which is exactly as I said in the first post.

And compared to had they just left them as they are on live they are all weaker damage (cept WH? I'd have to look closer) though the increased range is nice on the powers that got it, but the decreased range on psw hurts.
2 got increased range, 1 got decreased range, 3 remain the same. If you were to say the range changes were a wash I'd agree.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on brute TS vs dom TS.
brute TS: medium st, medium aoe, aoe knockdown
dom TS: high st, low aoe, massive aoe knockback

Lots of powers use that animation, I'd say tremor has about as much in common with brute TS than brute TS does with the dom version. But to each their own.

I'm not going to argue with you, the numbers are right there, you put them up lol.

I'm not sure how you take something with a lower DS, higher rech and higher end cost and call it a happy medium, but ok.

Once again though brute thunderstrike is nothing like dom thunderstrike. You may as well compare poison: poison trap to traps: poison trap. They have the same name, thats about it.

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But if nothing else is recharged, you may pause for 2 seconds to gut that dps?

Also, snipes are amazing if activated at the last second of a build up attack chain.

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Well lets think about that example. If say we looked at a 10 second attack sequence that had a 2 sec gap that we decide to fill with snipe we'd get:
9.28 vs 9.935
So in that case adding snipe benefited us with 0.66 DS compared to without. Sounds worthwhile?

Well 0.66DS is lower than any other dom attack you could stick in there. Imagine sticking incinerate into that 2 sec gap. And instead you'd get a 2.12DS increase for nearly half the endurance and without the risk of interruption, or being locked into a 4.5 sec cast.

Assuming we were going pure ranged even the poor efficiency of a st immob or hold would prove a better choice for the gap you gave.

Like I said, you need a very large gap to make the snipe the best choice to fill it, even before taking into account the drawbacks it brings.

Also, I'm afraid you'll have to do a better pitch than saying a snipe is awesomesauce at the end of a 30 sec duration once every 90 sec (10 sec of every 45 for bu) *rough SO'd numbers*. Not only does that put it in a "barely ever used" category (assuming you have a damage boosting power, which psi and eng don't), it also makes the gigantic assumption that you have a suitable target at that exact moment in time.

Sure I've lined up 5 targets and crit all of them with Headsplitter (actually I haven't, I think I've only gotten 3 to crit), but I'm not going to base anything off of once in a blue moon performance.

IMO snipes still don't cut the mustard outside of concept/thematic reasoning and need a serious overhaul for all AT's that have access to them before they become better than bottom of the barrel.

Combustion is clearly worse, it is the same as the tanker version for DS, but with longer rech and end cost. It is 15ft for all AT's. where is the dart landing here?

ISC has a longer rech and higher end cost with a lot less DS. The increased radius may warrant that large of an adjustment, but I'd prefer the 1.55 DS version myself. Not sure where the dart landed for this power either.

Thunderstrike isn't the same attack for brutes as it is for doms, so the comparison doesn't work. The blaster compared to dom versions look identical just with the dom adjusted down a bit for the faster rech. In terms of balancing this dart landed right next to the blaster version.

PSW is a mess right now, we should just wait to see how it turns out.

WH seems to be the only one that is clearly better, with more DS, larger radius and higher rech/end to match. Makes sense as everyone has agreed this power sucked bad before.

You don't have thornburst vs spineburst, so can't compare those attacks.

Perhaps "shaft" is too strong, but taking a hit for the team fits imo.

Now then if all the pbaoe's get bumped up to 16 targets like they should I'll gladly swing my vote.

It's funny I like street sweeping with my doms too. I miss the days when street sweeping was popular, the game felt much more alive compared to everyone being a vegetable plugged into VR machines

but that is a whole other can!

Nice work, interesting read.

A lot of the changes look like a dart was thrown at a board, while others seem to fit a consistent design principle.

pbaoes certainly got the shaft (other than psw) in the process of removing most aoe prowess from doms, but it is what it is.

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Don't take the Snipes. They run completely counter to the Dom play style. And given the changes to Doms, building Domination out of combat is nowhere near as useful as it once was.

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I very much agree, snipes have no role on doms.

domination is still very useful. I find aoe mag 6 mezzes to basically be god mode for most content.

domination is building slower in combat on test, which to me just adds more pressure to build it outside of combat when possible.

Admittedly, that will vary depending on how much the user values domination now.

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it's a ranged Total Focus!

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In the time it takes to cast you can launch
flares>fireblast>blaze (~4.25sec arcanatime) vs 4.48 for the snipe

That is 4.95 DS vs 3.56 DS (according to the numbers TheOcho posted)
So 1.16 DS/sec vs 0.79 DS/sec
(same dpe)

You'd need some big gaps in a a fire attack chain to fit in the snipe and not be losing damage. And that is before one even considers that it is interuptable and locks you out of other powers/insp for ~4.5 sec.

It could have use as an opener to drop a minion while solo. That is a pretty limited role. Snipe for me will remain either an IO mule or possibly even removed.

Snipes still need a "bonus" value to make them worth while to use as an attack. That "bonus" might be breaking the damage rule to artificially increase their attractiveness, or it may be some other free value.

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I'm still floored by how much damage /nrg does now. I'm 3-shotting +2 Minions with RANGED attacks, not even using Power Burst in some cases. With Total Focus, I can 2-shot +2s by finishing off with Power Bolt. I can 3shot +2 LTs with TF>BS>PBurst. This is amazing. Oh and don't even get me started on what happens when you use Reds. Reds now beef you the F up. I've been impressed by how much WHIRLING HANDS does when you use reds. These buffs are Fing awesome. I still can't wrap my head around the idea of Doms having the second highest ranged and melee mods in the freaking game, but wow, there it is.

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I never thought /Energy would be this good either not in a million years. Glad it didn't take that long though

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It makes me a bit sad that we never got to see all the versions of energy blast/manip/mele/assault be great at one time.

When the rest were up /eng assault was way down. And now that /eng is up, energy melee is down

Pink pom poms should always be ftw.

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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.


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The numbers I'm looking at show that many of the pbaoes had a damage cut, recharge added and end increased.

With the new modifiers they end up close to the live version, but with longer recharges and costing more end.

In other words at the damage cap live or test they do about the same damage, but test version takes longer to cycle and costs more.

Live version can of course self buff with domination.

I don't think any of the pbaoes improved, though I suppose the range extension of WH and ISC might make them overall a bit better.

roots is tasty with the extra base damage.

I appreciate the sentiment, but taking the earth st immob is not going to happen. It uses the same animation as siphon power, with the same stupid pause at the end. Numbers wise it is already longer than all the fire attacks and ingame feels considerably longer.

Unfortunately the only place you can slot an Achilles in earth is earthquake. and I have.

Fire snipe is something I'm looking at while solo, but I'd probably only cast it when FE is up. But even then when I hit FE I like to go into overdrive so sitting still and firing off a 4 second snipe (I know you can start moving after ~1.5 with int reducers in it) goes against "rage/FE" mode.

Perma dom for me was less about the +dam (though nice) and more about having aoe controls up more often, 1 shot holding everything all day, maximizing an attack chain and getting FE up over half the time. Full time complete mez protection is nice too.

For this particular toon perma dom will still rank as just as high of a necessity. Though I have been looking at some other dom builds that might not focus on that goal as much. But ultimately domination still has more draw than any other IO bonuses can offer (including softcapped def), so the draw remains just as fevered.

Overall it should be fine though, just spend a few hours tweaking and buying. Shouldn't be a huge issue. And like I said, worse case is I just start using incinerate rather than heavily changing things around.

Edit: I'm one of those stubborn players that disagrees that the immobs make good fillers on doms. They have poor dpe, slow dot damage, most players don't think to slot them for damage and doms have an entire assault set full of attacks, so it just seems wrong to feel the need to use the immob as a damage power. Especially in this case, where it has been so easy to build a full ranged attack chain out of assault powers for years now.

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Heh, they're making the snipes worth taking....and I happened to pick one of the only sets with no snipe as my sole Dominator.

At least they're buffing my primary's damage. I'm Gravity/Ice btw.

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Are they worth taking? as an attack I mean.

When would you envision using it? I can't see a time outside of solo play and then meh, for how often it would be used it still ranks very low as a power pick.

Dom will never lead with it in a team, that is a sure fire way to die. Dom's lead with aoe control in teams.

Can't use it mid combat because of the interrupt, well you can if the whole group is locked down, but it still looks like you can use other attacks to produce more damage in the same time.

I could see using it in pvp. After you hold a squishy and then that expires, you proceed to knock it down and if it is still alive and running away fire a snipe and kill it. But ever since i13 it has been LOLpvp rather than just lolpvp.

qr

excellent IO mule for +rech. If you don't want to spend the big bucks it is a cheap lotg's worth of rech. But domination isn't necessary any more right?

sure, but it is still by far the strongest way to build a dom. Whether it is necessary or just highly recommended is up to the user :0

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but 80 + 60... oh also hasten.... missed that.

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Any chance your charts could show the EPS burn?

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Not in their current form, would be a bucketload of work as they were not designed with endurance use in mind. I did some math to assume what would prioritize more end effective powers for the amount of foes.

Although I may do something in the future that reflects this it may not be any time soon, and by soon i mean few months.

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hmm one more question though. Any chance your charts could show the EPS burn? (no end reduction slotting is fine for comparison imo).


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Oh there is impact alright. You will notice various sets jumped from requiring 3 attacks in the chain to requiring 4 (not the full secondary as some have tried to cliam.)

AoE damage now works based on hitting more foes for bit less damage, it evens out but those that would only fight 10 foes would find themselves underfperform unless they change that way of fighting (although if they were farmers they may had also taken the PPP aoe that hits 16 so it would had been a waste from the start to only do that)

There will be performance changes to specific builds, some builds will have to change to come out back on top, some cases may just require play style to change a bit.

But the overall potential of the sets, that technically didn't suffer THAT much.


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No worries on EPS.

agreed, the peak potential is still there, possibly even a bit better in some cases. Just have to unlock it. I'm just a little concerned on my earth/fire primarily. It is perma dom on live and even with numina, miracle and perf shifter as well as the +end accolades I can still tank out before dom is up again.

I'm sure with a bit of tweaking to the build it should be ok, though I'm also a bit concerned as I prefer a full ranged attack chain and that needs lots of rech to fuel it as well.

Lots of needed rech, lots of needed end red might mean franken IO'ing rather than using sets.

Or perhaps a playstyle change to use incinerate, it is a great attack. Would make me sad as I love that earth is all ranged and so (was) fire.

Meh, if I can't get satisfactory answers through my excel, then I'll just reactivate that account.

thanks again Starsman.

Tornado is imo the second best power in storm (FR is first) since the nerf to Lightning storm.

If you have the end to spam your aoe immob then nado is hell on wheels.

I almost always have two following me on my fire/storm. I'm just sure to always lead with firecages. The build has softcapped ranged def so it is fine to not lead with some form of hard mez.

Nado is reason enough to make a troller with an aoe immob that has -kb (so not grav).

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I've been greedily awaiting the chance to IO out a Mind/NRG. Permadom for under 25 million? Why yes, I think so.

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Hey you aren't supposed to feel the need/desire to perma dom anymore

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Need? No.

Desire? who do you think you're kidding...

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I don't think I'm fooling anyone hence the ":P" symbol. I think the people that are suggesting doms will now start building for other bonuses than recharge first and foremost, are the ones kidding themselves.

Perma dom still is (by a large margin) the most powerful build you can make for a dom and will still be chased with nearly the same (or the same) fever as it is on live.

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I've been greedily awaiting the chance to IO out a Mind/NRG. Permadom for under 25 million? Why yes, I think so.

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Hey you aren't supposed to feel the need/desire to perma dom anymore

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Hey Starsman,

I didn't see if you said you'd be willing to make up a chart of a high recharge dom (ie perma dom rech, with hasten, and decent rech in each attack)?

I'd say: 80% global, hasten, and 60% in each attack (I know you just use it as one value, just breaking it down to show the rationale), but anywhere in that neighborhood would be awesome.

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Here you go

Its set at 150%, bit higher than you noted but figured I'd stick close to the High Recharge value I use in my other melee charts.

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150 is actually a bit lower as I was thinking 200+, but this does the job just as well.

Thanks much.

It does certainly show that the goal of minimally impacting perma doms was achieved.

hmm one more question though. Any chance your charts could show the EPS burn? (no end reduction slotting is fine for comparison imo).

Quality work.

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Could never get into doms before. I played a few and it just took too damn long to kill anything out of domination. After playing around on test I can hardly wait for I15 to go live so I can try out all the different combos.

As far as those complaining about a lack of an attack chain, I have to wonder if you know you can put recharge reduction enhancements in your powers. Even at a low level on the Mind/Energy I rolled I almost always have at least 1 attack ready.

Roll a brute and try to get an attack chain at level 10 without counting brawl. It is a whole lot easier on a dom.



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Ya mind having levitate and mesmerize as direct damage attacks doesn't skew perspective at all. Nor does energy getting 3 st ranged attacks by lvl 10.

Not sure why you bring up brutes, but roll a dom and see how many armors it gets by lvl 10

The dom changes are snazzy, but unless I'm misreading you are being overly assertive about how they play for every dom based off of arguably the most beneficial dom combo in early game.

/eng is the clear winner in this round of changes.

I actually hope its t1 blast stays at 6 seconds because it has 4 st ranged attacks, 3 of which are available by lvl 10!

All the other sets need their t1 at 4ish seconds or else require such high recharge to build good chains, or you have to resort to using control powers from your primary at attacks (which is fine for grav and mind, but not so much for everyone else).

As I predicted in the i15 dom buff thread /eng came out smelling like a freakin rose from these changes.

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I've never seen Matt outside of Sirens, which is the zone where Stalkers have the greatest advantage. He's one of the best in Sirens, but that's not saying much.

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Lets be honest, playing a stalker in any zone pvp isn't saying much.

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I've always wanted to try a blapper but have never had the courage to start working one.

So the question is, what primary and secondaries are best suited for it?

I've heard energy/energy
Fire/energy
electric/energy
All having decent synergy with the blapper mentality.

Would I be going down the wrong route picking any of them?
Is there something I missed?
What pools are recommended?

Leaping - +def and mez protection
Fighting - ? Costly, but worth it?
Fitness - Obviously
Speed - Hasten?
Medicine - Self Healing

How about Epics?
Force Mastery seems to stand out with PFF, TI and FoN all giving some nice defensive bonuses.

I'm very much considering making a blapper now though, just looking for more information.

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This may sound strange, but I'd say an i15 dominator.

The new buffs make them into blapper2.0's.

Not all that much less damage than a st blapper, but heaps more safety.