Lycaeus

Yay, please have the invis mob bug shot in the face and wiped off the face of CoX. I detest it, it plagues me constantly and I have to keep rezoning twice to see mobs. Annoying solo, doubly so in a team. "Sorry guys, wait for me again, I can't see [censored]. Brb."

And yes, the RSF still requires help. But the bugfixes are good news.

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If you are going to offer your services as tutor for the uninformed, you ought to at least tell us how many toons you have, what AT and level they are, and how long you have been playing the game.

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I could direct the same question to you, 515. I'm still waiting for you to reveal some of your alts in-game or to join us in some dominator gathering. You can bring your corruptor if you like.

*boggle* I can hold a boss forever, as long as I have enough endurance. You only need to stack two holds.

The trick is surviving the time in between the first and second hold.

If you don't have the aoe hold/ST hold combo, your first ST hold will aggro the boss on you, and depending on how high level he is, that might get some very unpleasant damage on you - possibly even killing you before you get the second hold in.

Options? One is to let a teammate aggro first, then get the ST holds in. This is not so useful because once they start hitting, the boss is likely to drop dead anyhow. Normally, pre-empting and holding a second boss in place is better.

Another is to use the scenery. Hold, hide, boss runs towards you, hold before he even sees you to shoot.

Or use a knockdown/knockback power in between ST holds. Water spout, bonfire, ice slick all are nifty for this. I hear things like power push, tk thrust work well too.

If you have buffs on you, or aid self, you can possibly just withstand whatever the boss tosses at you. (Can sometimes be a little dangerous but funny on a succubus boss - hold, she confuses you, your second spammed hold hits someone unintended...OOPS, sorry, uhh, didn't really mean it, yea, it's powerboosted, oh you have no bfs, uh, sorry, uh at least it's not a domination powerboosted hold? )

EBs and hold-resistant bosses are trickier, requiring 3 normal holds or two domination holds to lock down. (As long as they don't have the evil purple triangles. Those completely suck for any class reliant on control.)

I'll normally fight EBs in domination and use boss holding tactics on them to lockdown. Only once domination wears and if the EB is still going strong, is where the problem starts. Normally you -can- keep them held by spamming ST holds as often as they recharge. Just barely. Better with hasten. Crummier if they are higher level than you or have hold resistance. This can put serious crimps on the attack chain (and damage done), as you have to factor in the hold every so often, and drains you dry of end fast, which means no hold then.

So either you have a teammate doing damage, or you hope for a maniacal pet like fire imps. Jack Frost in melee may or may not take an EB out. Or you could pop a Shivan, fight fire with fire (or rad, in this case) and pit EB against EB while you just focus on holding.

Endurance management is also important. You can drain dry very fast holding and attack spamming. Eating blues goes without saying.

Sometimes, I take the insane risk of powerboost stacking two holds, (domination charged for EBs) and I REST in front of the mob. As mentioned, it's insane. If you get the timing correct, and have nether regions of steel, you can normally get away with it with bosses, and the odd EB, but a tough one will break out of the hold and give you that sinking feeling of "drat, why was I so lazy?" as he smacks you into next Thursday.

A safer approach is to just stop attacking and maintain the holds. With stamina, that'll regen your end bar slowly. You might kick in the odd blast attack to offset any mob regen, and your last resort (again normally for EBs) building domination again, which will solve all your end and mez and attack problems in a hurry.

A lot of this is tricks for EBs. Bosses aren't usually a terrible challenge unless they've got something special up their sleeve. (Like an uber longlasting stun grenade and you with no bfs on hand.) Just survive the period in between the one-two punch of ST holds, and done.

Oh, and I will normally kill the minion with the boss first. If I'm patient, I'll tp him to me first and whack him, then go for the boss. If I'm not, I'll toss something like water spout or bonfire at them, and lock the boss while whacking the minion around till he dies, then focus on the boss.

On teams where you get multiple bosses per spawn, those are more of a challenge. You can normally lock one guaranteed. Two if you swap ST holds fast with recharge slotted/hasten going or aoe/ST hold combo. Or you could pop domination and go mad crazy holding every single boss in sight, which is fun.

My personal choice without dom up is to go for a one boss lockdown (on the one the brute/stalkers aren't charging at) and hit the lieutenants with holds. I find in a team that most people will zerg rush the bosses anyhow, so I tend to hold back the lts and soft control the minions.

Great guide. Only one quibble. Bonfire can help your survival when fighting +2s/+3s as a "fighting retreat" power. Place just in front of mobs. If you never need to use it, well and good. If things start going pear-shaped, retreat behind the power around a corner or out of range. Mobs chase and bounce back, repeatedly. Even some bosses can be stopped for a time. If you have teammates, this is their best time to get free hits in as the mobs are seriously pissed at you rather than them. Or they can run away to take a breather.

Solo, it's a good way of stringing out enemies piecemeal before the glory that are imps. Sometimes, the imps will engage first if you use this. And it's a nice way of getting a hold lockdown on a boss without putting yourself in harm's way with cinders - say if the boss is surrounded by nearby spawns, well within your sight aggro range as a dom, but not near enough to get held by AoE hold.

Bonfire down, char boss, run behind corner, aid self up if needed from his first attack, boss bounces off and falls down, run back in to hold him a second time before he gets up.

My two cents. Testing out the effectiveness of doms in pvp in Recluse's Victory has been quite difficult, mostly because one keeps mapserver disconnecting every five minutes or so. The one PvE mission I tried as a dominator went well until I got surprised by the end boss whom I didn't see and wasn't expecting, and on return from the hospital, zoning in promptly proceeded to crash me out of the CoX client every time I tried (3 times or so.) I7 stability needs a lot of help.

PvE-wise, domination recharge being upped is a good thing. In the mission I did, it was recharged long before my bar refilled (had hasten), which means the limiting factor is how fast you attack 50 times. It's a small quality of life tweak. My dom plays the same as before, and I like it that way. Have no problems soloing unless not anticipating an attack - which adds some risk/challenge and prevents it from turning into a boring snoozefest.

That said, if one was currently struggling to solo pre-I7, it's unlikely that this change would help you to solo any better. Probably a build or playstyle change would see more significant effects.

PvP-wise, I am really enjoying the domination bar filling faster on hitting players. I popped more domination in the small amount of time testing in RV before mapserving than ever done in say, Siren's on Live. I feel like a legitimate threat, which makes the two-shotting easier to swallow than on Live. It's hard to comment anything balance-wise because heros heavily outnumber villains at this point in time; any AT would die from being tp'ed out and ganked by multiple heroes. I think this change emphasizes a team role in pvp more than anything - something villains are not very good at as a whole, and need to learn before they can start being victorious in RV.

Defence-based classes were as hard to hit as ever, but with the addition of the 'deflected,' 'eluded' feedback, it was easier to opt to switch targets to an easier target.

My main concern is the lowered toggle-dropper numbers, especially for the first melee attack. 50% chance to drop seems more reasonable than 5%, considering the immense risk doms take in closing to melee range. This gives doms a functional niche when not-in-domination and expands strategic choice.

Right now, the best strategy seems to be keep at range, kite, allow others to distract opponents and plink in ranged attacks hoping no one notices you. Targets of choice are squishies without defences, or a tank embroiled in battle. With the overall goal of popping domination and then getting down to massive stacking of holds to turn the tide and/or melee someone held. One smart scrapper skirting the edges realizing what you're doing, and you're in the hospital with an unbuilt bar and having to start all over.

With higher toggle-drop numbers, you encourage aggressive play in dominators and them choosing to approach melee toons to exchange blows, with the risks attached, but still being a viable threat-nuisance in that you're detoggling them and impeding their play when you joust. Otherwise, there's no real point getting near, some of them already do insane enough damage to squishies with their ranged attacks.

Toggle-dropping is important in low level pvp zones like Bloody Bay and Siren's - where dominator pets and high-end powers are not in play. By nullifying the first melee attack especially, the role of a non-charged up dominator in say, BB, is quite questionable. It's not as if dominator base damage was so overwhelming that toggle-dropping made it broken.

It is my hope that the shields in patron pools are very good quality. (Why are there no defence/resist numbers on the plaques?) That would at least increase our pvp survivability to maybe four or five shotting at the high levels? I can hope.

The one power in the patron pool that I have an issue with is the aoe damage power. I don't think dominators at high level have an issue with dealing damage. Mass confusion/pets help a lot. We're able to take many secondary powers by this time. Does this power also add 8 to our bar in pvp? If not, it's practically more worthless than the stuff in our assault secondaries.

We'd be much better off with a power that allowed us to manage or survive the heavy aggro we tend to draw in some fashion - a placate, fer instance, or a stealth or phase shift, heal/buff/debuff if we really must. Mez resistance would put many players into immediate heaven.

I would be highly interested in observing this test. My own personal reasons are that I want to watch multiple tanks doing what they perceive their roles to be, and observing the playstyle of different people. I think this has the potential to suggest future tactics on how to handle various spawns.

A few demorecords would be great for interested people who can't make it or won't fit in the mission.

I'd love to help as well. However, my main tank is an invul/fire, who's happily and shamelessly making use of the bugged invincibility to survive running into the center of spawns to do his job (take alpha and 85% or more of the aggro and keep it and live) until they fix it - so I'd probably invalidate the test with my normal playstyle.

I won't mind turning invinc off entirely to try it out. I predict having to trigger unstoppable every other tough spawn to survive and delaying the team, lowering xp gain rate or being completely unnecessary as an AT a result.

I do also have a very unplayed lvl 33 stone/stone tauntbot who is in dire need of a respec, but can do exemp'ing of 50s and give it a shot at tanking also.

Do add me to the list of helpers, I'll likely be able to make the 25th or the 27th, will have to check back closer to date to see if I can make the 26th.

May or may not be relevant to ya. Was intending to post this up at some point. Working on the fire/invul sections, but it'll take a while - easily distracted with numerous alts.

A Guide to Lowbie Tanking (for tanks) and Surviving Spillover (for squishies)

Thank you for listening, and for coming up with an excellent solution that allows for player choice.

Kudos to the dev team!