Dombeg0ne

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I would tend to agree, but what many people seem to forget is Dominators have a dual-use primary (control and damage). It'll take a bit of adjusting to get used to, but Dominators will have a damaging power or two in their primary that they can use to fill in the gaps in the early level attack chain (especially if they are Mind).


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This just can't be said enough. The primary attacks fill in the gaps. The ST immobilize most sets have does decent damage and is a great filler attack. In early levels, slotting the ST hold works well too.

Mind and Grav, have ST ranged attacks which are primarily damage powers.

Using those as part of your chain eliminates most gaps that people are seeing while giving you time to build up your secondary heavy hitters for higher levels when you're going to be tearing mobs apart.

These changes are about 90% win IMO, and that's never a bad place to be. I won't say that there won't be a period of adjustment. Of course there will. But the adjustment is because Doms no longer rely on a crutch inherent and a few overpowered secondary powers.

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On the other hand, gl changing the wide spread perception of how you are supposed to slot holds/immobs

People will always slot them for what they are (people as in the majority of players, not the occassional forum going exception, of which I'm one too). Even if slotted for damage they are inefficient on endurance. When slotted for their purpose they are very endurance intensive for the damage they offer.

Having them perceived as "necessary" to fill an attack chain will not end well for doms. Most of those powers are slow dot, resulting in the perception of less damage and the very real risk of huge overkill by following it with another unnecessary attack. So even if you are dealing more damage those dots will keep the perceived damage lower than reality.

Having them perceived as "necessary" will also cause doms more endurance woes than they likely need when trying to make a second first impression on the player base.

What we have to realize when rationalizing the hiccups in these changes is that:
people won't sit there and calculate - well I'm doing 10% more dps now even when not attacking for 3 second gaps then I was in issue 13. They just won't.
They WILL - spam powers in non-optimized ways until they run out of end at the third spawn and then start [censored] that they are end pigs.

Dom assault sets are set up in a manner that alleviating this "perceived issue" won't come naturally until very late in the game for all the sets but /energy and /psi.

The AT will not prosper "if" it gets labelled as an end pig. Being endurance hungry is ok when accompanied by high output (ie blasters), but being an end pig can assure you numbers that put you on the endangered species list.

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I'm starting realize, this revamp may actually make permadom more needed accross the board then it currently is. Going perma solves two big issues now, endurance troubles and the new increased recharge times.

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It's only "needed" if you define what you need as having a constant attack chain available and fueled, even though in doing so you will be dealing more (single-target) damage than you were before, including Domination.

This is a happy problem.

It's also exactly how other ATs achieve their peak performance. Not with permadom, of course, but with builds that strive for high recharge so they can optimize their DPS attack chains for maximum output. A Dominator who does this happens to get the added bonus of always-on mez protection and a periodic endurance refill.

Meanwhile, everyone else who wasn't a permadom gets to dish permadom DPS full time (not counting the +rech, just the damage per attack).

Maybe I've missed out on some niche playstyle that Dominators found previously, but to me this makes Doms simultaneously more practical at low levels / casual builds while opening up their high-end build capabilities (again, primarily for single-target damage - AoE capabilities didn't really benefit here).

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You and others are looking at this from an "experienced" perspective and already thinking of the many ways you can overcome this issue. We know who doms have to appeal to to become popular and it isn't people that have already ran the AT up to 50 several times, nor is it people with extensive knowledge of IO'ing out the various kinks of a build.

I think it is awesome that a high rech dom will now be loaded with high dpa attacks. Hello min/maxer . But if it comes at the cost of alienating casuals or taking a very real risk of earning a negative opinion with them again it probably isn't worth it. Not if the goal is increasing popularity.

Others have already said it a bit, but outside of /energy the t1 blast should probably be 4 sec and the t2 8 sec. Following the now nerfed /elec the t1 melee attack should be 6 sec and the t2 should be 10.
*/eng has 3 ranged attacks by lvl 10 and one good melee attack, so it can afford the longer rech powers earlier.

I personally don't like standardizing all the early assault powers across the entire AT, but it is hard to disagree that it works to create a consistent impression of the AT regardless of what power set you picked. Also it more or less looks like he's shifting everything into a middle ground of standardization anyway, might as well just finish what he started.

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except you ahve artificially decreased it, you don' tHAVE to have a constant chian of attacks, you're hurting your own endurance per damage by adding in attacks that have bad endurance per end. If you use the exact same chain as before and jsut don't fill in the holes you'll have more damage over time, and better damage over endurance. once you get to higher levels you'll get a full attack chian with good attacks.

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Later levels when the attack chain can fill out and/or higher recharge values were already mentioned.

If you are cool with standing around doing nothing all the power too you. From my experience, most players aside for /empaths aren't (especially on an "assault" designed AT).

we'll see.

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Or they resort to using the hold/immob from their primary, which is generally not very end efficient even assuming they slotted it for damage.

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See, I always used my mezzes as attacks on my Mind/Psi. I never had an adequate attack chain from Psi assault. I still don't, but that means that, overkill aside, I pretty much broke even.

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Indeed, and for that particular combo that was one of the reasons it was recommended. Mind offers the early attacks that /psi sucked at.

On the other hand for the plant/fire I just rolled up I would have been able to chain flares and fireblast with basically no slotting. Now I *have* to use strangle and entangle if I want any semblance of an attack chain.

No doubt the damage has increased, but in that instance the end consumption has actually increased at a disproportionate rate compared to if I could fill the chain with the more efficient assault powers.

The result is mixed for me. Yes I'm killing individual foes faster, but I find it to have less flow and I'm waiting around either for powers or endurance to recover.

Under high recharge I have absolutely no doubt that /fire will be amazing, though it was already pretty fantastic on live under those conditions as well. I'm just not keen (right now) on standing around, or the prospect that I need a lot of rech on my dom to make it play smoothly.

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This game is 5 years old. I seriously doubt they're going to redesign how mezzing works at this point.

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They tackled that project for pvp.

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Yeah, but they likely consider a viable PvP system important for subscription retention/growth. (Let's not get into whether they hit the target here - I'm just saying they have a bottom-line motive there). I have a hard time imagining that they classify a problem affecting two ATs against some occasional foes in quite the same way.

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I agree, but we don't know how high they rank that importance. Proly more trollers/doms complaining about AV's not getting mezzed that total pvp'ers left in the game lol.

It's also why I specifically said "only AV's" a modified version would entail a change only to how the ptod work, thus the effort required compared to unnecessarily reworking the entire pve mez system would be minuscule.

Assuming these "buffs" result in the popularity that Castle is after it will be one of the hurdles he runs into. More doms = more doms [censored] about sucking vs AV's

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In general, the only reason you'll run out of end faster using the [edit] single-target* [/edit] attacks with the new stats is actually by killing stuff faster. The DPE didn't drop on most attacks (on several it improved) - and that's comparing the DPE to having Domination up on live. If you're burning end faster, that means your dishing damage faster. You may not be able to sustain that, but that means that at least the single-target DPS top-end for Doms is actually higher than it used to be if you build for it.

Assuming the same DPS rates, the only place you might really be burning more end is in overkill, using the now bigger attacks (with their increased end costs) to finish off a foe that less damage would suffice for. That's probably not an ingnorable effect if you currently have an "endurance casual" build.

* You'll spend more end using your AoEs now on several sets.

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Yes, while waiting for an attack to cycle most people will just use a different attack, often one that is higher endurance than warranted. (A broadsword player using disem, or HS to finish off a minion comes to mind).

Or they resort to using the hold/immob from their primary, which is generally not very end efficient even assuming they slotted it for damage.

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In terms of damage, corrupters can bolster the team with buffs/debuffs, SoAs have their Leadership powers, Brutes can deal out more damage and take a hit, and Masterminds with their 6 walking meatshields as well as their own buffs and debuffs. Every single one brings damage plus something else to the table, meaning they are more useful. Which, again, leads me to suggest the way mezzing works in this game needs to be looked at.

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This game is 5 years old. I seriously doubt they're going to redesign how mezzing works at this point.

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They tackled that project for pvp. Not that I think that system would work vs npcs a modified version *might* work against AV's specifically.

The answer in either case (pve or pvp) is leviathan or mace.

PvE
Mace: aoe immob = even easier rain of fire death than with just sleet.
Def shield: compliments the slows/-rech very nicely

Lev: cone immob = works nicely with rain of fire, but not as good as the aoe web.
Res shield: works consistenly with slow/-rech
Hibernate: never lose a pve fight again heh

PvP
Mace: unlimited webnades and perception = very good on a /cold
Lev: shark hold is still your most damaging attack
Hibernate and/or phase is pretty much required, lev has hibernate
Res shield rounds you out better inpvp than the loldef shield of mace.

Post deleted by Moderator 08

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For those on the test server. After playing with the changes made to the Dom, which pri/secondary is going to be the best aoe soloer? I get more satisfaction at seeing a group fall than just a st. How is ice looking?

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Fire/fire. FE offers the highest +dam buff and longest duration, which makes hotfeet the best it can be in i15. Firebreath will now be a bit better and while combustion took a hit it is still probably the highest damage pbaoe and with a high rech build having FE up more often should pull ahead.

Fire/fire will also be the best st damage dealer by a large margin too.

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And FYI /elec now needs to use all 3 melee attacks just to equal the two melee attacks of /eng. All while /eng has a full ranged attack chain by lvl 10 lol.

/elec and /psi were bent over pretty hard. /psi might have deserved it, but /elec never hurt nobody other than in pvp.

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Oh? And did you forget that */Elec still has Build Up...whereas */Energy still does not?


Cry moar later. Test and attempt to "adjust" for now.

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Ya that amazing 7.5% damage increase (14.3% with 95% enhancement) sure is awesomesauce.

/eng still has powerboost, ya that single power that Castle has publicly stated he dislikes because it trivializes so many things.

I'm not crying, just see no reason why /elec had to be nerfed.

Yes on test /elec is killing enemies about as fast (bit faster) out of domination and no where near as fast as live in domination. But had it not been nerfed it would be punchasizing faces to the extreme.

I've already clearly stated my position to Castle in the appropriate thread:
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Hey Castle, looks like you might be watching this thread for a bit.

Few questions/observations:

1. Is domination in pvp having the +dam stripped? if so is there any plan to work some of that boost back into the base numbers as was done for pve?

2. Would it be possible for you to post the pvp numbers because they are very different than the pve numbers.

3. If one issue doms had was a lot of click powers available so they said they liked higher rech/higher dpa attacks (which seems to be the direction you went for most st stuff ) how come /elec went the opposite direction? Was it overperforming to warrant such a nerf? Why move it away from the /elec manipulation blaster model that was very well received by the dom community?

4. Regarding /psi; I'm not convinced moving it to 4th place for ranged damage, last for melee and middle of the pack aoe is really "compensating" it for the PSW nerf and its former #1 in aoe position.

5. Are mental blast and subdue not basically the exact same attack now? Should subdue have its rech increased to be more like Bitter ice blast as was done with the other T3 ranged attacks?

6. /fiery was recognized as being the "ranged" set for players because it was so easy to form a complete ranged attack chain without ridiculous amounts of recharge. My earth/fire is a perma dom so will likely be very happy with the new fire, but it appears that a dom will need very high recharge to form a full ranged attack chain with fire. Wasn't the goal to move doms away from feeling the necessity for high recharge and the perma domination it led to?

7. Finally, these changes make it very apparent that doms are not intended to do anything more than low aoe damage and are intended to be st damage dealers. Basically: hold a room>kill them one at a time. If you consult your datamining records for the game how do st damage dealing specialists compare to aoe damage dealers in terms of team popularity? I'm just curious because you said popularity was a goal of these changes. I'm concerned that making doms a "solo" specialist won't go very far in buffing the popularity.

thanks

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which from where I sit is about 6x more constructive than anything you've had to say on the matter.

So just like when telethons are on TV I now challenge you to meet or beat my feedback