EvilRyu

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Out of curiosity, does this tweak include the ability to fire off domination when mezzed?

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Not initially, but the patch following should have it. I forget to stick that in on the original change, and QA helpfully pointed it out, but not in time to reach the version going out.

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Ok Now I can truely say dominators do not flat out suck. All we need is more damage outside of domination, for domination bar to not go away from death and we will have everything we need.

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I made a dominator a while ago, he was fun and did pretty good. I know doms arent as good as trollers but i keep hearing that all doms are gimp and suck and stuff. Is this realy true? I always find a need for em. I dont plan on lvl'ing up a dom, i just came here to ask what the fuss is about. I ihave nothing against dominators because i always find them useful So i'm asking

Do dominators suck?
Are they fun?
Why do people say they arent good?

very curious, what do u guys think?

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Oftentimes, people say we suck in hopes that the devs will give us some love where we need it. They try to make a mountain out of a molehill because, to them, "you have to make a problem look 100x worse than it is to get the devs to fix it."

The bigger reason a lot of people say we suck is we could do with some generous tweaks and buffs here and there, because we are a _tad_ less powerful than everyone else--we are balanced around Domination, which makes us a bit underpowered some of the time and slightly overpowered the rest of the time. Not many people like that, including myself, but I still love Domination. I just think we need to be made so we're not as weak when it's down. And having it up more often, like a loooooot of people wanted and got, hasn't solved that problem.

EDIT: Another big part of the "gimp" calls is a lot of people state we have "two secondaries" because Controllers get a Hold modifier of 1.25 and ours is only 1.00 (same as Defenders'), and our ranged modifier is the same as Defenders' (.65). In a way, I agree it shouldn't be like that. Even if the difference IS only two or three seconds, people underestimate how much a difference two seconds really is--with my Terrify power, it's only two seconds shy of being perma against +3 mobs with Acc/Acc/Duration/Duration/Recharge/Recharge slotting. Additionally, at level 50, Controllers' base duration bonus amounts to 4.5 seconds for the Single Target Hold--a 9 second increase when enhancements are factored in. Yes, that's pretty huge.

[waits for Shubbie to come in, stating that Plant is the only half decent set and all the others are gimptastic]

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You pretty much hit it right on the money. My main gripe with doms is that you have nothing to fall back on when holds fail. Some enemies are hold resistant, we can not rely on domination always being up and we have sucktastic damage. If we had better range damage than corrupters and gimped holds I can see it working for us. Or if we had uber holds all the time and gimped damage I can see it working for us. We just cant defend teams the way controllers can.

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A tip to the OP, if you are going jitsu secondary get the trops....it helps, toss the trops on a door way, run in AS one guy, run away...granted I have not tested this, just something that I thought would be good to try out. My only question is, will you be able to rehide even though the trops are doing damage?

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This does NOT work. Every time the trops deal damage, you are unhidden. Once a hero lands on your trops and takes damage, you will be visible, even if you placate that hero, you won't be able to AS him due to the damage dealt by the trops canceling your placate effect.

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Unless something has changed, caltrops do not unhide you. The mobs will aggro on you but it does not take away your hidden status.

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If you gain all of that.... AND controller level holds.... That will NEVER happen. NEVER! Think about it, you would be able to hold just as much as a controller... and do 500000x the damage. I'd be pretty mad, even though I have a dominator, that just goes WAY too far.


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Why would you be mad, this makes no sense? We already have poor damage. Controllers have superior hold times and awsome secondaries to fall back on if control fails. What do we have if control fails? Absolutely nothing. This is why we should have superior controls compared to controllers. Our domination power should have just been icing on the cake and not just a power we live and die by. Honestly would it have really hurt anything if we had controller length holds, critical mez and domination? No it would not, it would make us a little more wanted on teams. We would have reason to finally take those area holds since now we can get them to last a bit longer. Now I would say we would have a huge problem if they gave us containment, along with the before mentioned stuff. That would be going over board.

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And you don't have awesome secondaries to fall back on? Dominators can hold an enemy, making it unable to act, THEN use some blaster powers to quickly take the enemy down. BUT NOW you want the same holds as controllers, MORE damage, and still have domination to raise your damage AND controls up even higher! Oh and I have heard that "dominators need more hp" So now you want controls that could challenge a CONTROLLER's controls, damage that could eventually challenge a blaster, AND more HP than both of them. Sounds pretty selfish

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Umm, dude, have you ever played a dominator past, say, level 20?

And I see you have 2 high-level controllers in your sig, but let me ask you, are those pre or post-containment trollers? If pre, do you remember what it was like back then playing a sub level 32 troller? I do, and it wasn't fun. Trollers were squishy, did little damage, and their defender secondaries were of little use in taking out bosses they couldn't hold for more than a few seconds at best. It was very hard to solo a troller back then, so you were pretty much relegated to teams till you got your pets.

Now with containment trollers can do significantly more damage (at the expense of control) which makes them a lot more soloable. Add in the defender secondaries and now they rock on teams too. What they lack in control they make up with double damage and buffs/healing/debuffs.

But dominators aren't so lucky. The can't control as well as controllers (whose controls now suck as it is), meaning it's just not feasible to "hold" a boss, let alone an EB/AV/GM. Domination helps alot in getting that inital boss hold to stick, but in reality it just doesn't last long enough to be overly useful. If you slot your hold for holds, then they last longer, but do less damage, making it more difficult to actually defeat the boss you're holding. If you slot damage into your holds then you can't hold them as long and you're going to take more damage over time. It's a lose-lose situation, IMO.

Couple in the fact you don't have defender secondaries, but blaster secondaries (perhaps the most reviled sets in the entire game) that don't do anywhere near blaster-level damage, and it's an all around "meh". I mean, most of those secondary attacks are MELEE attacks -- on a toon with sub-par damage, no defenses, and no buffs/debuffs. And the devs wonder why so few people play them and no one wants them on teams?

IMO I think dominators should have BETTER control ability than controllers to make up for their lacking in everything else. As it is now their control is worse, their damage is perhaps on par (due to their secondaries), but they have none of the benefits of the defender secondaries.

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QFT

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If you gain all of that.... AND controller level holds.... That will NEVER happen. NEVER! Think about it, you would be able to hold just as much as a controller... and do 500000x the damage. I'd be pretty mad, even though I have a dominator, that just goes WAY too far.


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Why would you be mad, this makes no sense? We already have poor damage. Controllers have superior hold times and awsome secondaries to fall back on if control fails. What do we have if control fails? Absolutely nothing. This is why we should have superior controls compared to controllers. Our domination power should have just been icing on the cake and not just a power we live and die by. Honestly would it have really hurt anything if we had controller length holds, critical mez and domination? No it would not, it would make us a little more wanted on teams. We would have reason to finally take those area holds since now we can get them to last a bit longer. Now I would say we would have a huge problem if they gave us containment, along with the before mentioned stuff. That would be going over board.

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And you don't have awesome secondaries to fall back on? Dominators can hold an enemy, making it unable to act, THEN use some blaster powers to quickly take the enemy down. BUT NOW you want the same holds as controllers, MORE damage, and still have domination to raise your damage AND controls up even higher! Oh and I have heard that "dominators need more hp" So now you want controls that could challenge a CONTROLLER's controls, damage that could eventually challenge a blaster, AND more HP than both of them. Sounds pretty selfish

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I did not say boost our damage anywhere in that previous post. All I said was we needed controller length holds and the occasional critical mez that they get. I did not say containment, that would be too much considering how many of us have alot of aoes. Domination as I said would be like an extra thing for us, kind of like how corrupters have scourge as an inherrent. The key to this is to have an inherrent that is useful but at the same time not be so dependent on it. That is the problem with doms we have now. We are too dependent on this power.

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If you gain all of that.... AND controller level holds.... That will NEVER happen. NEVER! Think about it, you would be able to hold just as much as a controller... and do 500000x the damage. I'd be pretty mad, even though I have a dominator, that just goes WAY too far.


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Why would you be mad, this makes no sense? We already have poor damage. Controllers have superior hold times and awsome secondaries to fall back on if control fails. What do we have if control fails? Absolutely nothing. This is why we should have superior controls compared to controllers. Our domination power should have just been icing on the cake and not just a power we live and die by. Honestly would it have really hurt anything if we had controller length holds, critical mez and domination? No it would not, it would make us a little more wanted on teams. We would have reason to finally take those area holds since now we can get them to last a bit longer. Now I would say we would have a huge problem if they gave us containment, along with the before mentioned stuff. That would be going over board.

Honestly this is one of those exploits you should have just not said anything about. We are already gimped I can see them putting domination back at the old timer just because of this. But who knows what will happen to us now.

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Just want to update, I went to atlas park today with my level 10, so it is indeed level 10 that you can get to atlas.

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Honestly I believe this is contact specific or bugged. If I got Boris the Russian as my contact I would get the kings row mission at level 10 but if I got Stella the Glint she would send me to do the atlas park mission at level 10.

Grats on this again guys, but I do have one question is the SHOE you get pickable or is it random? Also do you get SO's for kill the AV/Heroes too?

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you.
Thank you.
Thank you.

Don't like the way PvP in CoH is set up? Don't come in.
Don't want the debt? Don't come in.
Don't think you should be targetted without some sort of rules to meet your maker? Don't come in.
Don't understand basic concepts? Don't come in.
Can't read the WARNING at the entrance or understand the WARNING given by the Security Office? Don't come in. Or if you do, don't come on here cryin' about "unfairness" or "unsportmanship playing" or "TPing you into a mess of NPC's is nasty". You got busted up, annihilated, a** whacked bright blood orange red... suck it up, write down the nasty buggers name who did it to you, go lvl up some, then challenge that player to a one-on-one. Jeesh...

As a lvl 33 who got their butt kicked yesterday in pvp...to coin a phrase to that sob that totalled me "I'll be back." lol! He got his shortly after anyway. Sucka!! He'll get it from me soon too...

Really, all the whining about PvP attacks, what part of Player versus Player are those people missing??
PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER.
Hmmm... this concept seems pretty self explanatory and simple to me.

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Then how do you explain them putting badges in these pvp zones that people will want then? It is not fair to them in that instance. Personally I dont pvp as I see it as a big waste of time in which I could be leveling more alts. For me the only reason to go to those zones is for the badges.

So that means it takes 6 lucks to equal the defense protection that mog gives minus the psi of course?

I actually changed it to black because someone actually said the white words were harder to read. DOH!!!

Here is the link to my new guide.

In this guide you will learn the proper way to care for and feed your ninja henchmen.
Before I talk about the ninja primary I want to talk a little about the mastermind AT. Masterminds are a unique AT to City of Villains. Unlike most primaries or secondaries in other ATs the bulk of our damage does not actually come from us but our henchmen. As a mastermind you have a special aura called supremacy. All of your personal henchmen within about 65 ft will gain a buff to accuracy and damage. This buff is about 15% for both accuracy and damage. This was done as a counter to the fact that when progress through levels some of your henchmen will be lower in level than you. This will be discussed later in the guide. Also new to issue 7 is a new feature called body guard. If you set your henchmen to defensive follow they will absorb a lot of the damage instead of you. With all henchmen guarding you, you will have about 75% resistance to all damage.

Why choose a mastermind? You actually solo well at higher levels with your henchmen, you get to order your henchmen around, you are a lot less likely to die because your henchmen will almost always have more aggro than you and because they are your body guards. It is an easy AT to learn and level up.

Why choose ninjas? Ninjas are similar to a scrapper stalker hybrid. You will do a lot of damage in a very short period of time. Ninjas look cool. The ninjas have very small crowd control ability. It is mostly for their survival. Ninjas have incredible speed.

Now let’s look at the Ninja Primary and choose a good secondary to pair it with.
We have the traps, dark miasma, trick arrow, force field, and poison secondary.

Snap Shot
Single target arrow shot that does lethal damage. This attack does very little damage but can be used for pulling. Slotting- just one accuracy SO.

Summon Genin
Your first ninja henchmen, these guys are ok at first but get worse later on. As a mastermind when you reach levels 6, and level 18 your first tier henchmen go down in level. At level 6 they will be -1 to your level but you get two of them, at level 18 they are -2 to your level but you get 3 of them. The Genin have Thunder Kick and shuriken stars initially. With the first ninja upgrade they get Storm kick and Snap shot. They also gain a quiver on their back for the arrows. On the last upgrade they get Crane Kick and Super Leap. They get a head band and mask for their faces. Also the Genin have about 7% defense to range, melee and aoe attacks. If any Genin die in battle you can summon more to replace those that are lost, if you attempt to summon more and none are dead the power does nothing. I can not stress enough on how the final upgrade ups their survival. Having them to chain knockback mobs is a beautiful site. Slotting-2 accuracy, 3 damage and 1 disorient or knockback SO’s.

Aim Shot
Single target arrow shot that does lethal damage. This attack does more damage than snap shot but recharges a little slower. It is also good for pulling. Slotting-1 accuracy SO

Train Ninjas
Your first ninja upgrade. This power grants the ninja additional abilities and changes their appearance. Slotting-1 reduce endurance cost SO

Fistful of Arrows
A aoe cone arrow shot that does lethal damage. It does ok damage but uses more endurance than the other shots. Slotting-1 accuracy, 3 damage 1 range 1 reduce endurance cost SO’s.

Call Jounin
These guys are your main damage dealers. They are also very stalker like in how they attack. Their initial abilities are Sting of the Wasp, Gambler’s Cut and caltrops. After the first upgrade they get Soaring Dragon, Super Leap, Poison Dart, and Placate. The get an additional sword on there back when they are upgraded. After the final upgrade they get Golden Dragonfly, Blinding Powder, and Hide. Hide is a little bugged at the moment, the Jounin will not start hiding on their own, and you have to use a power to trigger it. You will need the next power Smoke Flash or Noxious Gas from the poison secondary. Currently this bug was fixed on issue 7. Also fter the second upgrade they get a head band and shoulder pads. These guys have 14% defense to range, melee and aoe attacks. The are very good at surviving but are a little shy to get their swords out at the start of the battle. Once they do that they do very good damage. At level 24 your Jounin becomes -1 to your level and your get 2 of them. Slotting-2 accuracy 3 damage 1 slow SO’s

Smoke Flash
This power is an aoe version of the placate power. It makes your ninja untargetable by other mobs. It puts them in a pseudo hide status and enables criticals on the henchmen you have flashed. This is a good power to use to double the damage of your henchmen for 10 seconds or to save a henchmen till your heal comes back up. Slotting-3 recharge, 3 reduce endurance cost SO’s

Oni
This is your boss level henchmen. He is more crowd control than damage. He is like a fire dominator corrupter hybrid. He is ugly as hell. His initial abilities are Super Leap, Fire Sword Slash, and Fire Blast. After the initial upgrade his abilities are Fire Sword Hack, Ring of Fire, and Fire Breath. His hands glow after the initial upgrade. For the final upgrade his abilities are Char and Rain of Fire. His eyes glow after the final upgrade. He also has 14% defense to range, melee and aoe attacks and 14% resist to fire, smashing and lethal damage. He does great aoe damage when you use smoke flash with him. Slotting-2 accuracy, 3 damage, 1 reduce endurance cost SO’s
**Special Note** Slotting a reduce endurance cost on a pet summon does not reduce the cost of the summon but gives the henchmen summoned an endurance discount on their powers.

Kujin In Zen
Your final upgrade for your ninja henchmen. This power grants the ninjas additional abilities and changes their appearance. Slotting-2 Recharge 1 reduce endurance cost.

Now we need to look at each of these secondaries to see what works best with your play style and how it affects the ninjas.

First we look at traps. Traps is a good set but not a solid set for ninjas. The ninja henchmen’s defenses are defense based meaning they avoid damage as opposed to resisting it. The ninjas take a lot of damage in a short period of time so they need constant healing, and the triage beacon in the traps secondary is not going to cut it. This secondary is actually better for the mercenaries primary.

Next is dark miasma, this is a good secondary for ninjas if you team a lot or do missions with a higher spawn count. You get an aoe slow, damage debuff, heal and accuracy debuff. While it sounds good this set is very endurance intensive and the aoe heal radius is very small and has to hit an enemy target to heal. Also your weakness is that if you are hit with certain status effects your debuff toggle goes down. Which can be certain death for the ninjas.

Next is trick arrow this set looks good on paper but all the powers that make this set shine have really long recharges. You have no way of healing the ninjas with this set. It does have a lot of ways to increase the damage your ninjas do. Lastly the Oni can light the oil slick power for more aoe damage.

Next is force fields, this power has a lot of synergy with ninjas except for the last power in the set. The bubbles provide additional defense that stacks nicely with the ninja’s defense. This set has no way of increasing the damage the ninjas do and the final power keeps mobs out of melee range but the ninjas do more damage in melee range.

Lastly is poison. It does have a single target heal but it uses a ton of endurance. It has a lot of other single target debuff that will cripple bosses, elite bosses and AVs. It is great for solo play but in teams it is really good for AV fights. Also if you get mezzed your debuffs will still be in effect for their duration. Poison gets some aoe debuff later in the set.

I choose to go with the poison secondary. This was because most of the time I would be soloing in CoV. Here is the break down of the poison set.

Alkaloid
A single target heal that is endurance intensive. This power also gives a minor resistance to toxic damage. Slotting-3 heal, 2 reduce endurance cost, 1 Recharge SO’s

Envenom
A single target debuff, this power lowers the defense and damage resistance of a target. The damage resist debuff is about 25%. It is extremely good for those hard to hit targets and targets with insane smashing and lethal resists. This power also makes the target stop regenerating health and the target will heal for less when it tries to heal itself or other targets. Slotting 2 accuracy SO’s

Weaken
A single target debuff, this power is awesome. It lowers the accuracy and damage of a target. It also works like a reverse version of power boost on the target. All secondary effects that the target can do are halved. Slotting-2 accuracy, 3 tohit debuff SO’s

Neurotoxic Breath
This an aoe cone debuff that slows down a targets attack rate and run speed. This combined with the Jounin’s caltrops can put mobs at the slow cap. Slotting-2 accuracy, 3 slows, 1 recharge SO's.

Elixir of Life
This is a single target resurrect power that grants the target increased damage, accuracy, endurance recovery and increase attack rate, but this power has a bad side effect. After about 90 seconds the target will begin to puke their guts out. Slotting-1 reduce endurance cost SO

Paralytic Poison
A single target hold that holds mobs in place with 1 application that are lieutenants or lower. Once your oni gets his final upgrade he will be helping you hold bosses. Slotting-2 accuracy 3 hold 1 recharge.

Poison Trap
A point blank aoe that sleeps minions, sporadically holds mobs caught within the cloud of poison left by this trap. This power has a minor end drain component but it is not worth slotting for. This power was recently fixed in issue 7. Slotting-2 accuracy 3 recharge SO’s

Noxious Gas
An point blank aoe that is centered around one of your henchmen. It lowers accuracy, damage and resistance of your foes around the effected henchmen. Slotting-3 recharge

Strategy
As you should know by now the ninjas are melee henchmen but for some reason they prefer range and will stay at range unless you command them to goto melee. It is best to learn how to use macros to get them into range.

For poison what I usually do is command the Jounin and oni to go into melee. If there is a boss or troublesome mob in melee I will hit them with weaken neurotoxic breath and envenom to soften them up for the Jounin. I use the Genin as meat shields if anything comes near me in melee range. They usually do a ok job at getting their attention.

For traps what I would do is place caltrops near a boss and he will not cross that path to get to you. I used the acid mortar to lower the resists of the incoming targets. Poison trap is always a good opener against a lot of mobs. Trip mines also make a great keep away zone.

As a mastermind it is better to not get the attacks in your primary, your AT modifier is so low that you will not do much damage with those attacks compared to the other ATs. Besides these attacks will draw more aggro to you. This may change in issue 7 with the body guard feature as your henchmen will absorb most of the damage instead. Also if you pick the ninja primary it is best to keep both Jounin alive at all costs they are your best source for damage and they usually do fine on their own. The Genin are basically meat shields for you past level 18. Smoke flash can help end a boss fight a lot faster, as will your debuff. Without your help your henchmen will eventually die as they will need help mitigating damage. The henchmen AI is very weird at times, just remember the goto command is your best friend.

Here is the build that I used all the way to level 40
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Exported from Ver: 1.7.6.0 of the CoH_CoV Character Builder
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Name:
Level: 41
Archetype: Mastermind
Primary: Ninjas
Secondary: Poison
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01) --> Call Genin==> Acc(1) Acc(3) Dmg(3) Dmg(7) Dmg(7) KB_Dist(36)
01) --> Alkaloid==> Heal(1) Heal(5) Heal(5) EndRdx(17) EndRdx(17) Rechg(23)
02) --> Envenom==> Acc(2) Acc(9)
04) --> Weaken==> Acc(4) Acc(9) TH_DeBuf(11) TH_DeBuf(11) TH_DeBuf(21)
06) --> Train Ninjas==> EndRdx(6)
08) --> Hasten==> Rechg(8) Rechg(40)
10) --> Neurotoxic Breath==> Acc(10) Acc(37) Slow(37) Slow(37) Slow(39)
12) --> Call Jounin==> Acc(12) Acc(13) Dmg(13) Dmg(15) Dmg(15) Slow(21)
14) --> Super Speed==> Run(14)
16) --> Elixir of Life==> EndRdx(16)
18) --> Smoke Flash==> Rechg(18) Rechg(19) Rechg(19) EndRdx(23) EndRdx(31) EndRdx(31)
20) --> Antidote==> DmgRes(20)
22) --> Aid Other==> IntRdx(22) Heal(40)
24) --> Aid Self==> IntRdx(24) Heal(25) Heal(25)
26) --> Oni==> Acc(26) Acc(27) Dmg(27) Dmg(29) Dmg(29) EndRdx(31)
28) --> Paralytic Poison==> Acc(28) Acc(33) Hold(34) Hold(34) Hold(34) Rechg(40)
30) --> Stealth==> EndRdx(30)
32) --> Kuji In Zen==> Rechg(32) Rechg(33) EndRdx(33)
35) --> Poison Trap==> Acc(35) Rechg(36) Rechg(36)
38) --> Noxious Gas==> Rechg(38) Rechg(39) Rechg(39)
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01) --> Sprint==> Empty(1)
01) --> Brawl==> Empty(1)
01) --> Supremacy==> Empty(1)
02) --> Rest==> Empty(2)
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I choose the slotting I used for specific reasons. This build is not really for pvp. I went with 2 accuracy in everything because I don’t like to miss, and none of the powers that I choose appear to have accuracy bonuses. Missing a hit with weaken can be deadly to the ninjas in pve. I did not 3 slot accuracy in pets because the already get an extra DO’s worth from the supremacy buff and the poison debuffs to enemy defense. As stated earlier in the guide it is kind of useless to get any mastermind attack powers as they do pitiful damage and draw you unneeded aggro. The only reason to get these would be for pulling. For that you could just get teleport foe and save yourself a lot of grief. Pretty much every power in poison is useful except poison trap but this is currently fixed for issue 7. So all powers are solid at that point. Most useful secondary power for me was Paralytic Poison. This helps a lot against longbow flamethrowers, Tsoo Sorcerers and those Nerva Ghosts with that black stuff on them. A good use of this power will keep the ninjas alive longer if those mobs get held faster. If I had to leave out a power it would be Elixir of Life and that is only if I did not team at all. Also the buff of resistance in poison is not worth slotting for either so If a power gives that it is just good to leave it at the default slot or slot for other effects.

Pool Powers that helped me the most were hasten and stealth. There are going to be times when on teams where your henchmen get totally slaughtered and you have to summon more. Because you cant slot the summons for recharge hasten is essential for that, also the final upgrade takes forever and a day to comeback, in issue 7 they have dramatically reduce the recharge time on it because it takes so long for masterminds to get back in battle right after death or if you zone out. My only regret with my mastermind is that I could not fit stamina in my build as it would have helped a lot soloing elite bosses. Maybe in the 40s I may get it instead of the epic pools. I also used stealth to help me get around some missions just to find a glowie or skip to the end. I mostly got this just incase a contact gave me a Circle of Thorns mission. Although in battle stealth wont help you much aside from the tiny defense buff, this is because every time your henchmen attack your stealth gets suppressed.
Leadership powers are good but I did not have room to fit them into my build. I would only go with assault and tactics, never bother with manuvers as it is just a waste of endurance even fully slotted.


Lastly I want to say that I hope this guide will be of some use to new ninja masterminds.

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For the few days I had Smoke Grenade on my AR/Devices, I would swear on a stack of Bibles and Korans and, I dunno, Necronomicons...anyway, I'd swear that not only did SG not debuff anything, but it drew aggro once they saw you. I teamed a lot during that time, mostly facing Trolls, and I can promise that every Troll in the spawn, once aggroed would turn and throw rocks at me and only me, even if I hadn't attacked at all. It was not perception, it happened, and over and over.


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This is what happens to me every time I use flash arrow on teams. I have stopped using it. I could even have a tanker go in and taunt and yet I still get stoned to death by trolls when I am well outside the normal critter perception range.

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If there were AT modifiers at work on that 0.5 (50%), then a defender, the buff/debuff AT, would have a higher value, not lower. Certainly not 70% lower.

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Actually, about 90% lower, assuming you're talking about the base. The Defender multiplier (the highest) is 0.125. The Controller/Corrupter multiplier is 0.100. A scale of 0.5 means that Controllers and Corrupters should be seeing a 0.5*0.100=0.05 final base debuff (5%), and Defenders should be seeing a 0.5*0.125=0.0625 (6.25%) final base debuff. The blaster multiplier is only 0.070, so Smoke Grenade from /Devices is only providing a 0.5*0.070=0.035 (3.5%) final base debuff, which is the reason why every time that I've read about it being tested it has never shown up above the statistical noise even in large samples. It's literally so small it needs special tools and large amounts of time just to detect.

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That's essentially correct.

A 0.5 scale would be:
Defenders = 6.25%
Blasters = 3.5%
Masterminds = 3.75%, etc

A Defender with 3 SO's would be ~9.6% to hit debuff.

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Sorry but this just cant be right. There is no way 1 smoke grenade from a night widow is supposed to turn an entire team into Whiff Fest 2006. If it is this is not fair. You will not always have yellows or a teammate with tactics and in our case they only reason we even got past that part mission was because kept resummoning pets and let them kill. The only explaination I can give for this is your guys arent giving us all the information. Night Widow is using 20 slotted pre-nerf Hammi-Os in her smoke grenade.

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It took over year too and some people seem to conveniently forget it happened whenever their dominators are the focus of discussion, but it happened all the same... Suddenly, fewer Tankers and Scrappers were being rolled, and the controller population grew until it was on equal footing with everyone else once they were finally given real damage in early game too. Nevermind that people like me and Ishtar already had guides and lots of positive encouragement (prior the big change) showing that controllers could also be damage-dealers before getting Pets by taking the right powers. ...No, the big splash was made when people finally saw for themselves a well-rounded AT that wasn't shortsheeted(underpowered) on any of the essentials required to do a majority of the tasks this game called for.

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I dont think this will happen to doms without some earth shattering changes. I do not even think it would work if they had earth and illusion dominators now. The problem with doms is it takes forever to solo unless you have fire as your secondary. For me the first 12 levels are a nightmare with my doms. Only when I get DO's my doms become somewhat playable. To me there is no reason why doms should not have controller level holds and tanker level damage. Until these 2 aspects get fixed fully doms will never be popular.

But this still does not make sense when it is applied to these so called melee cones. Since there is an AoE limit there should be no reason for them not to increase the cone width. 5 targets is 5 targets whether we use the stacking exploit or not. I just want the cones wider so I wont have to herd all my missions just to get good usage out of my aoes. If they wont increase the cone width then they need to increase the max amount of targets. My guess is their logic is if we make this cone so tiny the will never hit more than 2 mobs so a 5 mob limit wont matter because they will never be able to reach it without stacking.

I still dont see where the problem is on this _castle_, there is a limit as to how many we can hit anyways so what difference does it make? Widening the cone just makes it where we dont have to actually use an exploit to get some utility out of a power with a high end cost.

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FYI: Electric Shields' Grounding Power will have Immobilize and Knockback Protection added. The set will still not have a Heal power or HP Buff power.

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Now if we can get you to do the same for ninjutsu, dark armor, and fire aura I will personally buy you all the pie you will ever need. Is there anti-kickback policy for the devs if not name your pie and it shall be yours.

This is so unfair that this mob does what it does. I dread Arachnos mission even more now, its not fair that she can single handedly cripple, and slaughter a whole team and not be an AV? I guess this is what would happen if they gave stalkers smoke grenade. I also believe the tohit debuff is too extreme most likely she is using that original smoke grenade that was pre-nerfed. If she gets Assasin's Strike I will quit the game.

I have noticed that most melee cone powers have an extremely tiny cone. You pretty much have to do the stacking herding exploit just to hit more than one mob consistantly. Since melee cones are limited to 5 targets why not widen this cone? This would be extremely useful on teams when you are trying to save your teammates. Since we can no longer get the benifit of HO's that had the range component in them we should get a wider cone.

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I find the absence of Red Name comments on either the Elec Armor or the Elec melee to be quite sad at this point. We know they are reading the boards, but their lack of comment to me at this point is that both versions of Elec are " working as intended ".

Given the potential for this set - not really looking for uber, but was hoping for par - in its current form it will be most likely relegated to theme/concept builds only.

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Can't really comment yet, other than to say I've read the thread and am making recommendations based on the feedback here.

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For starters you can remove that GAWD-awful recharge from tele-smash it does not make sense for an AT that thrives off of quick attack chains. Second you guys should now go back and re-think the whole philosiphy you guys have on powersets that have status protection holes because for some sets the reasoning behind your original decision no longer exists so it is time for a change. This needs to be done so we can finally give this dead horse a proper burial instead of beating it on a weekly basis.

After reading this whole thread I am going to be bold and say this, we have been cheated big time on these powers. How can they expect us to actually pick a permanent patron when they still do not give out all the power information? Some of the info on the plaques is kind of vague, and from some of the testing in this thread alot of the info appears to be wrong. I sure as hell wont be picking a patron on live servers especially without all possible information on the powers. To me this is flat out unfair. You come out better just picking what powers you have in your sets as well as power pools.

I just wanted to ask how are the end cost on the powers so far. For those that are Dark/Dark are you having extreme end issues that scrappers and brutes get with this set? Also is the AS 100% dark damage or is it split smashing/dark?