Dr Harmony

I'd have to say my pet peeve is the people who immediately tell you you're doing it wrong in an in character conversation.

e.g. you're talking to someone in character and they emote:

/e looks nervously at the woman's hands because they're on fire!

Yeah, I had Hasten activated. I get it.

I've similarly had people complain about my use of emotes in IC speech, which I'd defend since I'm manipulating a character with an immobile face using intonation-free text chat.

I understand fully that we all have different preferences, but saying something like this as a first line of dialog when someone talks to you gives a really bad impression.

It doesn't matter one bit to me.
Its purely cosmetic and has no bearing on gameplay.
Other damage types are equally vague eg Sonic, Electricity, Energy Blast and Radiation are all lumped under "Energy" damage.

I'd much rather the devs not spend time on this fix.

A year or two ago, sometime before super-sidekicking, there was an exploit where Bonfire would do knockdown against +5 or +6 Neuron robots in the Maria Jenkins arc. (The robots resist knockback, and the purple patch brought the resultant Kb down below 1)

Bonfire was fixed to ignore the purple patch, I believe, so that this could no longer happen.

So it would not surprise me at all if this particular use of the KD IO gets nerfed. I'd say slot it for now, but have an unslotter handy in case you want to move it.

It gets better.

Aim for as much recharge as possible, via Hasten and set bonuses, and you can soon have Mass Confusion and Total Domination alternating per-spawn for total lockdown.

Confuse is in my opinion the bees-knees. It lasts a very long time, can help lockdown other enemies if you confuse the right target, and its aggro free. Cast it at range as an opener on a couple of enemies before they see you.

Terrify is great both as an alpha-brekaing opener and for tagging everyone with damage before they die from a confused ally.

I always liked Repulsion Field better.

It has a very small radius, so it affects who you want to affect.
Its also autohit, which can be very handy against enemies with god-mode powers like Paragon Protectors.

I remember using it to juggle a +5 boss without much fear of reprisal.

Force Bubble always seemed a bit more situational, whereas I could make good use of Repulsion field solo or in teams during normal play.


And yeah, I'm amazed that they're allowing that Knockdown enhancer to be slotted in Bonfire. Fire Control just gained Ice Slick with damage.

The easiest fix, and the one I'd prefer most, would be to add another epic pool for squishie archetypes that had something equivalent to Scorpion Shield in it, ie a defence shield with non-intrusive graphics.

This would have the added bonus of not displaying an embarassing Arachnos style logo when you activate the shield, and having some other powers that weren't concept breaking in the pool.

Scorpion shields great, but the Arachnos mace and spiders aren't always suitable.

If you wanted a quick Demonic Aura you'd still have to switch sides, but pretty much every case I've heard of people doing this involves the Scorpion Shield, and often for mainly cosmetic reasons.

I agree. This and your other posts are full of really cool information.
Thank you for assembling it.

I'd go for this.

Hero/Villain tip missions can be picked up in any zone, and this tends to encourage teaming across the level spectrum in pick up groups.

I used to run my 50 hero tips in Atlas Park, and have a combination of other 50s, new characters tagging along for the ride and anyone else who happened to be there. That was good for game diversity and giving new players a good alternative to sewer runs.

I've seen people advertise for members of hero tip teams in Steel and Talos too, just because they're populated zones, and Peregrine remains a litle bit off the beaten track.

I'd be happy to extend this to radio missions.

Yeah, I would imagine that the number of archetypes that can use a set does figure heavily into these decisions.

"Need" is a pretty strong word. Dominators curently have 8 primaries and 8 secondaries.
I'd estimate it takes me about 100-150 hours to get to level 50, so that's 1000 hours of gameplay right there with unique and different Dom characters, longer if I decide to carry on and incarnate any of them.

Dr. Harmony (Earth/Energy Dominator) will have easily clocked 300 hours of play.

I'm not feeling the need for a new set to extend this to 1200 hours or whatever. I don't feel that Doms are hurting with each new non-Dom power set that gets added.
I still havent got around to playing Darkness Control, despite actually hearing a lot of good things about it. I'm no fan of the Umbra Beast, but then I'm no fan of either Animated Earth, Jack Frost or Fire Imps either - I dont like any anthropomorphic pets.

I guess Water Blast has also been made rather than Water control or Water Assault (or Water Melee or Water Armour, or Water Imps for MMs or whatever) because it makes more sense. What would you do if you could control water? Probably fire it like a fire hose (Water Blast) is the first idea that comes to mind for most people.
I cant think of melee attacks for Water Assault that would look natural rather than forced.

Similarly for Water Control - the holds are easy enough to envisage (globe of water surrounds the target and they hover like Gravity?), but then there's making pets, other controls (Stun, Immobilise, Confuse?) and flavour powers to deal with. Should Water Control have some knockback? Its sounds good, but you've seen how controversial that can be. What about pets? As you yourself have shown, we dont appreciate badly designed pets.

I'm not saying Dominators shouldnt get new stuff at all, just trying to speculate on why.

Dominators share one powerset with Controllers, and have one powerset that they don't share with anyone else. (Assault sets can be composited from melee and ranged sets, but there's still the problems of making them non-redundant with all the epics and APPs.)

There's currently one powerset that could be proliferated - Illusion.

Compare this with:
Melee attack sets - used by 4 archetypes
Melee defence sets - 4 archetypes
Support sets - 4 archetypes
Ranged attacks - 3 archetypes

If you divide the number of sets Brutes have been given by the number of archetypes that get them, you probably see a different picture.

Dominators are not so much the red-headed stepchild as a more unique archetype than most.

Electric Blast's problem in my opinion is the effectively non-existent secondary.

End Drain means nothing until its all gone.
The -endurance on all powers is pretty much negligible apart from Short Circuit, to the extent that an Electrical Blaster will drain an enemy's health bar well before they drain their endurance bar.

Short Circuit requires standing in close with a 3 second animation.

I'd compare it to Ice Blast. By attacking, the enemy's damage output is gradually reduced. No slotting required, no extra animations to do this, just a free debuff as you do your primary goal of damage.

Electrical Blast should work the same - attacking say an even con boss with your single target and AoE attacks should cause them to be drained
around half way through their health bar, thus halving their damage output over the fight?

That would be worth giving up a Tier 3 blast for.

I also completely approve of reducing the cast time on Voltaic Sentinel.

BTW, I think the fast-snipe change is a brilliant idea on the whole. The fast-AS change has made my Stalkers a joy to play, I expect to get some of the same feeling on Blasters when this rolls out.

Devices getting a boost is good.

Time Manipulation getting a boost is not a good thing, and probably an unintended side effect of this change.

I'm surprised that it's been leveraged off an existing variable and not had a new one added. Gravity Control got its own variable for Impact effects for a minor damage boost to two powers - surely all blast sets are worthy of a variable that gets triggered by Build Up and Aim and Targetting Drone.

Its interesting how the snipe changes affect some of the support sets.

Empaths can now give any Blaster (or any ranged user?) permanent snipeability via Fortitude if they enhance for it. Between the recharge and defence slotting this could require a bit of tricky frankenslotting, especially on a Controller.

Time Manipulation and Pain Dom fall a little bit short of dishing out enough To Hit even if fully slotted for it.

And of course Tactics will become a lot more popular. A Time or Pain Dom Def/Corr will be able to use Tactics and their powers to give themselves perma-fast snipes. Almost makes me want to respec my retired Beam/Pain Corrupter.

Thats if the snipe changes are across the board to all archetypes and not just Blasters.

Apart from clockwork, what else is vulnerbale to Psi damage?

Above level 20 you've got enemies liek Banished Pantheon and various robots that resist it by about 50%.
You've got Carnies who have a natural defence to it.

On the plus side you've got the occasional enemy like the Honoree or Paragon Protectors with a god-mode that you circumvent.

I'd say that on the whole, over an entire career, doing Psi damage isn't that great.

These would be pretty powerful frankenslotting tools, since six would max out every aspect of a power.

Currently, full sets of Thunderstrike or Crushing Impact sets give you around +3 SOs Damage and +2 SOs to Acc, End redux and Recharge. You can get better with frankenslotting if you dont chase entire sets.

Certain powers like Parry (with its +Def), MM Thug or Robot leiutenants (with +def powers) or Dark Blast (with enhancable -To Hit) would really benefit from this, other sets with unenhanceable effects (say Sonic Blast or Ice Blast) wouldnt benefit as much.

And thats without the converters - they woudl really drive this over the top.

I would deeply regret living through an age where I could be an online superhero and NOT taking advantage of it.

Yes, Force Fields is definitely a contributing factor to Fulmen's experiment. I was just pointing out that it wasnt the only factor.

As for Resistance debuffs, they get resisted by damage resistance. The net effect is the same, a 20% resistance debuff means you will do 20% more damage, whatever the target's resistance.

In the case of Honoree hitting Unstoppable, if that gives him 100% resistance to energy and smashing, then the debuffs from Sonic Blast will have no effect, and subsequent attacks will still do no damage. They will however increase the damage he takes from Psi attacks.

I always feel Sonic Blast does OK for area damage.
Howl does around 80% normal AoE damage, more like 100% normal the second time you use it. Shockwave does 65%-ish, which boosts to about 80% again after Howl's debuff. And both have a very fast recharge compared to many other sets.
IF you have a corner (to keep them Shockwaved in) its not bad for chained AoE damage, but lacks the burst AoE of some other sets.

With Wundastar (SS/Fire Brute) I picked Citadel purely on a whim, because I liked his dialog I think. I flew off looking for Clamor, he got lost and I never saw him again. Next time I do this I'll probably go for Manticore as ranged backup while I take the lead.

With Princess Amtora (Fire/Cold Corrupter) I picked Back Alley Brawler as a suitable bodyguard and he was brilliant.

Plant/Storm is well worth trying, as a choatic melee-range option.

The AOE immobilise does double the usual damage to the point where its worth slotting for damage. Carrion Creepers, Tornado and Lightning Storm provide extra damage to everyone whose locked down in your Roots, and Seeds of Confusion keeps you safe while causing the enemies to do even more damage to each other, all boosted by Freezing Rain.

Optional powers here are Spore Burst, and probably Snow Storm.
Spirit Tree and Hurricane can be skipped.

I've played both sets on Corrupters, and they're like night and day.

Beam Rifle has a single target -Res (well, a very narrow cone that hits 3 targets that yopu use as a single target attack), Disintegration, and a lot of good single target attacks.
On a full team, I found I was best used at focussing on the bosses and clipping a few minions with Cutting Beam every now and then.

Disintegration on Cutting Beam gives you about a 30% extra damage, so its still nothing close to two area effects that most sets get, even when perfectly set up.
I found myself happiest with the set when I ignored disintegration spread altogether.

Overcharge is just on a long enough recharge that I worried about wasting it, unlike Full Auto.

So if you like roasting heaps of minions, stick with Assault Rifle. Beam Rifle's OK, but a very different set mechanically.

If you're not bothered about re-rolling, I'd suggest going Scrapper.

Elec/Shield has the two "tele-nuke" powers at level 32 and 38 - where you teleport into a group of enemies and do a rather hefty area attack with knockdown.
The Scrapper versions of these are more effective than the Brute ones.

If you're running with a team doing radio missions or something similar, these will be more than enough to help you tank because they knock everyone over, and will clear the minions from each spawn if followed up with some back up AoE from your team. Having two, you can alternate them.
Against All Odds gives you a taunt aura as well as a damage boost, so you'll be able to tank fine in run-of-the-mill missions as a Scrapper.

Either will work though - Brute or Scrapper. They'll both be able to take punishment and dish it out.

I'd first and foremost aim for the Thunderstrike set.
Do a respec and take those 3 extra slots out of Sonic Siphon and place them in Shriek, Scream and Shout. Then six slot all three with Thunderstrike for a big boost to recovery, accuracy and ranged defence, to say nothing of the bonuses for the actual powers.

Recharge isn't going to be a huge deal, with Liquefy being the one power that really needs speeding up in this build.
I'd build for ranged defence.

Make sure Dispersion and Sonic Haven/Barrier are well slotted for damage resistance - maybe the best set for this is Aegis, which offers a lot of AoE defence for 5 slots. Also drop the Steadfast Protection +Res/Def unique in one of the ally shields to get more defence for yourself.

I'm not sure where to fit the Defender ATO set. Its good to have the minor heal proc in there, since Sonic Resonance slows down damage but never really prevents it, so even small heals are very effective backup? Howl? Does anyone know how it acts with AoEs?

I wouldn't bother with Phase Shift, just use the Ethereal Shift temp power from the market for emergencies when you're solo. On a team, you Phase Shifting can drop ally's mez protection and so on, so I wouldnt advise it as a regualr tactic.

Ive played it to 50 on a Stalker and Tanker, and to the 40s on a Scrapper.

Cons:
You get a single radial AoE that doesnt come until level 26/35 (or never if you're a Stalker)

The mixed bag of secondary effects: Knockback, unreliable stuns and an immobilise don't gel that well.

Pros:
Good fast single target attacks. Storm Kick is one of the best damage-per-animation attacks going.

The AoE does knockdown, providing extra mitigation and a good place to slot a Force Feedback +Recharge proc.

+10 Defence from Storm Kick on a Tanker

Its not a bad Tanker set due to the bonus Defence. It pairs very nicely with the +resistance/damage aura sets like Electrical and Dark, which provide extra AoE and provide layered defence with the resistance. The Stuns from your attacks also stack nicely with oppressive Gloom from Dark Armour. These sets also balance the lack of AoE in Martial Arts. Its a good defensive set, best paired with a more offensive primary.

On a Stalker it's not so great. You cannot leverage all the single target attacks and Assassins Strike due to animation time no matter how good your recharge is, and you have no area attacks.