MinMin

It was quite a humourous experiment.

"Who wants to do an Operative Renault SF?"

"Me"

"I'm in!"

"Save me a spot"

"Ok!"

"Well you guys sort it out, I'm too busy"

<stunned silence>

So I pulled my finger out and headed to Sharkshead and got it going. A full team as well. Even then, we had a couple of other people ready to lead it.

It's an experiment I'll probably be trying again tonight with an Ice Mistral SF.

No worse than smashing/lethal and you have Animate Stone for backup.

I'm a fan of Earth/Psi (I have one at L42).

Drain Psyche is one of the best utility powers available to Doms and while it's good for regen and recov as you indicate above, it's also fantastic for shutting down the regen of EBs and AVs. However, it's not a replacement for Stamina early on unless you're very careful. Usually you need a fair bit of +recharge before it's up often enough to eliminate the Fitness pool.

A couple of other things you should consider is that Psi has a good range of useful secondary effects, including the KB from Telekinetic Thrust, the solid slow and -rech from Psychic Scream, the immobilize from Subdue and the stun from PSW.

Something of an odd build.

Here's some thoughts:

• Salt Crystals is a waste of time. Earth has so many good control options; you just don't need this.
• Volcanic Gasses is brilliant and one of your best powers. It can also be procced up if you want to go that route. I have no idea why you've skipped it.
• Animate Stone is better than you have given it credit for. Give it at least 3 more slots and stick a set of Expedient Reinforcement in it.
• The Fighting pool is highly questionable on a Dominator and particularly so for an Earth Dom. You have the control - trust it. Anything that your control can't deal with, Tough and Weave aren't going to help much with anyway.
• I'm not clear why you're 6-slotting Earthquake. A couple of recharge IOs is all you need here. In general Earth lays down so much -def that enhancing the debuff is kind of pointless.
• Quicksand is also very strangely slotted. You can get away with a Slow, a Recharge and a Def Debuff slot.
• Fighting and Leadership without Stamina is sheer folly.
• Lack of a travel power is a preference that's up to you I guess, but you already have Hasten and SS gives Stealth as well ...
• Dark Obliteration needs to be slotted for damage not Defense Debuff.
• Stalagmites is a staple opener - it should have 6 slots.
• Just in general you're taking the set thing too far. Slot for whatever you're trying to hit (typically +recharge) and then use the remainder of the slots to fill out the %s, typically with singles from different sets. Basilisk's Gaze is a good example of this.

I hope that helps, but I think that build needs a lot of work.

Interesting build with some interesting slotting choices as well. My Fire/Earth goes in some very different directions.
Here's my thoughts on what you have:

• You have one too many +6.25% recharge bonuses - the rule of five applies. (See below for breakdown). Because of this, this build is not perma.
  
• You must really, really hate knockback. IMHO Acrobatics is just not worth it these days as situations that call for more than 4 pts of KB protection are rare and you can get that simply from IOs. You have two of those and Acrobatics.
  
• While we're on the subject of Acrobatics - if you take the extra slot from here and stick it in Stone Spears and slot for 6 x Kinetic Crash you'll get +7.5% recharge and 4 pts of KB protection. Kinetic Crash is heaps cheaper than Entropic Chaos as well and you'll go back to having only 5 +6.25% bonuses.
  
• If you're really concerned about endurance use you might find that Power Sink is a better pick than Mu Guardian.
  
• You have Combat Jumping, so you should try and grab a Luck of the Gambler unique. Over a typical character's career you should have enough merits to create one by L35-40 or so. If you fix your rule of five issue you'll be perma, but only just. Give yourself some breathing room and try and get into the low 80s with one of these.
  

Breakdown of your +recharge bonuses:

Basilisk's Gaze
(Char)
7.5% Enhancement(RechargeTime)

Entropic Chaos
(Stone Spears)
6.25% Enhancement(RechargeTime)

Crushing Impact
(Stone Mallet)
5% Enhancement(RechargeTime)

Obliteration
(Tremor)
5% Enhancement(RechargeTime)

Stupefy
(Flashfire)
6.25% Enhancement(RechargeTime)

Basilisk's Gaze
(Cinders)
7.5% Enhancement(RechargeTime)

Crushing Impact
(Heavy Mallet)
5% Enhancement(RechargeTime)

Crushing Impact
(Seismic Smash)
5% Enhancement(RechargeTime)

Expedient Reinforcement
(Fire Imps)
6.25% Enhancement(RechargeTime)

Positron's Blast
(Fissure)
6.25% Enhancement(RechargeTime)

Positron's Blast
(Ball Lightning)
6.25% Enhancement(RechargeTime)

Expedient Reinforcement
(Summon Guardian)
6.25% Enhancement(RechargeTime) (Exceeded 5 Bonus Cap)

Sure.

I have a L50 Fire/Storm Corruptor or a L48 Fire/Storm Controller to offer.

Unfortunately I'm a Queenslander and I really can't get on much before 8:30pm my time (and even then, I'm usually highly interrupted until around 9pm). That's 9:30 AEDT at the earliest.

Tuesdays are usually the best day for me; I can get on the earliest.

I'm not sure what was happening early, but we started a BSF at around 10:30pm AEDT that went to just under 3 hours.

There was also an Operative Renault SF happening at the same time that went well by all accounts.

Personally, I was very happy with Zephyre's performance on the BSF. She's very good against massed minions, but she can find Bosses a bit of a struggle at times and Hurricane is a PITA for the rest of the team if I leave it on all the time.

All the stuff that I'm doing while I'm playing the character tends to get in the way of me noticing that you're in trouble, but if I do, O2 Boost comes in handy. Except with Stalkers. Apparently nothing I can do can keep a Stalker alive.

Just so you know, a better strategy for Earth/Psi is to hit with Stalagmites (AoE Stun) and then lay down your location-based AoEs or DP/PSW. Earthquake (or Ice Slick for that matter) by itself will not absorb an alpha strike.

I'm still playing Doms.

My post-I15 efforts have been a Mind/Elec (currently at 46 with just SOs), a Grav/Earth (currently at 40 with around 60% +recharge from sets) and a Fire/Earth (currently at 28 and rising rapidly; no recharge just yet, but lots of damage procs).

While I may or may not shoot for permadom on the Fire/Earth (I probably will), I will definitely be slotting for recharge.

Actually, in the post-I15 world, I think that's the key. Slotting for recharge is still very important in terms of availability of control options and a stable attack chain, but perma-Domination is no longer the key to getting adequate damage output. It's still very, very good though.

For my 2c I would recommend either Plant/Psi or Earth/Psi.

Earth/Psi in particular has a lot to offer teams with its abundant -def and Drain Psyche's -regen for tough targets.

Had a ball last night folks.

For anyone keeping score there was two racing Silver Mantis runs (won by @Redoubt's team, something of a surprise as @Lili is an expert at this one) followed by a very convenient Arachnos Flier spawn (Heat Seeker at last!) and a 3rd Respec Trial.

Next week will be a Barracuda Strike Force - more details posted closer to the start time.

I would like to be there next Wednesday, but I'm going to be in Melbourne during the day and I'm not sure when my flight back into Brisbane gets in.

I had a lot of fun with this one - it's funny how playing one of my 50s reminds me of how much I enjoyed the character while levelling it.

BTW, which character were you playing Ricktu?

There are three main differences between playing/building a Controller and a Dominator.

- You do not have to set up Containment on a Dominator, so you need to reevaluate your attitude towards ST and AoE Immobs. It just so happens that you have picked one of the primaries that can make most use of an AoE Immob, but it is still something that you can put off in your build and you are inadvisable to spam it like Controllers sometimes do.

- You are not reliant on your controls for damage, so think carefully about when and why you are picking them up and how they get slotted.

- Doms are not support characters; as such your place is at the forefront of the battle and you should not hesitate to melee. Dom melee powers are often high damage.

Other tips for new Dominators:

- Use Domination when it comes up. You can fall into the trap of "too good to use". Particularly in the early game and in the teens when you're slot-starved, enhancement-poor and without Stamina, Domination can be great for it's instant refill effect.

- Target switch. Until your AoE becomes mature (and Fire Control never really gets there), your play style should follow more "blapper" than Controller.

Hope that helps!

There have been a few posts recently on Dominators soloing AVs.

Liliaceae has had some success with his Mind/Fire and Hirsh has had some recent success with his Ice/Earth.

From their experiences it would appear that the best chance of doing so is to have either a fast animating ST Hold (Mind and Fire best for this) and/or using Earth Assault for the extra ST Hold effect as well as having quite a lot of +recharge from IO sets.

I would also think Grav/Earth would be decent against AVs because of the extra hold from Singularity. In the case of using Earth Assault, you would need to be careful as to which AV you were soling. Anything with a decent amount of Smashing resistance (which is unfortunately common) is going to hand you your spleen.

I solo slightly more than half the time and only rarely in large teams.

I normally set my difficulty at +0/x1/+b as soon as I pass a Fortunata and leave it like that until I get DO level enhancements when I would increase it to +1/x1/+b. At SO level enhancements I will either increase levels or equivalency depending on available AoE.

For a Fire/Earth, you can increase your levels to +2/x1/+b as soon as you get Seismic Smash and potentially even higher depending on how you have slotted accuracy. You may wish to experiment with equivalency once you have slotted Fire Imps, but your AoE is not your Assault set's strength.

Personally, with the Fire/Earth I'm building at the moment I'm going to muck around with damage procs in Fire Cages and Hot Feet as an AoE damage mechanism and I intend to work on equivalency in the 20s to get a feel for that.

And I'm not ignoring you, I'm just out-of-town for a couple of weeks.

The scatter effect on Arctic Air isn't terribly noticeable in terms of scatter because of the extreme movement slow. What is noticeable is the mobs preferring to run very slowly away instead of shooting you.

Many of the Aussies on Justice have been there since CoV launch, and we still have a few from CoH launch. It's been the unofficial Aussie server for pretty much the lifetime of the game. There's hasn't been a discussion about moving since CoV launch.

If you're looking for Villains I would recommend the VG in my signature (Sinister) and if you're more into blueside I would recommend the Defenders of the Souther Cross. Either way you should be in the Australia global channel where you should be able to get invites to either.

There are wide open and popular event nights on Mondays for heroes, Wednesdays and Fridays for villains, but nothing explicity set up as an open group for Sundays.

This is a standing weekly schedule of events run by the Oceanic CoH/CoV Community. Please let me know if you would like to add or change anything to this and please remember to include server and timezone information.

Monday
Justice Paragon City Extraordinary 8!
All the info you need is here and it's currently being run by @Final Midnight. Those of you who have been around for a while will recognize that the X8 is a long running RP group with a rich and detailed cannon. So, take up the call. Be Extraordinary. The world won't save itself.

Justice Paragon City Heroes Night
Monday night is Heroes night on Justice! This is a casual group organised by @Metacore that's always happy to see new players. The fun starts around 2100 AEDT.

Tuesday
Patch night.

Wednesday
Justice Rogue Isles Sinister Wednesday
Weekly VG event night starting at around 2030 AEDT, but this one is usually very latecomer friendly. Event composition can be any number of things, from SFs, to badge hunts, to base raids, GM hunts and PvP. @Lili organises this one and maintains a thread on the official forums.

Thursday
Scheduled maintenance.

Friday
Justice Rogue Isles Friday Night Villainy
@Plantatia is running a new group on Friday nights. The action is mostly lowbies at the moment, but it's sure to branch into more interesting stuff later.

Saturday
No events planned as yet.

Sunday
Justice Rogue Isles D.U.N.C.E
Villain intensive-roleplay group run by @Lili. This is *not* a jump in and play group, but they welcome new characters. Please read here for details regarding joining this group. Game starts at around 2130 AEDT.

The intent of this is to get it to a point where it can be stickied and updated as required. Please let me know of any events you might have running so I can get it updated.