MinMin

Doms like +recharge. Expedient Reinforcement gives you a good +6.25% with only 4 IOs slotted and you can round out Damage and Hold Duration in the remaining 2 slots.

Day 41 - Straddling Maintenance Again
A little bit of play before maintenance and a bit after has Capella close to L34 and doing Hard Luck's arc. Hopefully I'll get some more time tonight.

That's certainly something I'm willing to try.

Singularity is the only power in Gravity I would describe as a pleasant surprise. It's far more effective than I thought it would be. In fact, it begs the question that two sources of ST controls backed up with poor AoE controls may well be equivalent in effect to a single source of good AoE controls backed up by ST controls. At least on small teams anyway.

Day 39 - It's going to be a tough week
This is the last week of school for my kids before Christmas holidays. In Australia, it being Summer, the kids won't go back to school now until the end of January. That means this is a busy, busy week with awards nights, school performances and band performances. As a result, I'm not getting much time to play.

Tonight's effort is pretty much the Vivacious Verandi arc (that contact needs another arc or two) which goes down pretty quickly solo.

Day 40 - VG night
Another late start-early finish night has me doing badge missions on a lowbie VG team with Capella. On a team of 8 we had 5 Doms, which by the time I left was a team of 6 with 5 Doms. The one remaining Brute was feeling the peer group pressure because he offered to switch to a Dom

We motored through some paper missions and a mayhem, and Lili even got motivated to bump the difficulty because we were doing so well.

By the time I left I'm about half way through L33 and I'm beginning to pick up Crushing Impact recipes on the various bids I have outstanding.

I'll address the "traditional role" comments. I'll also point out that I'm addressing a team role. Solo, I have few issues with this Dom.

IMO, the traditional role of a Dominator is to:

#1 Start the fight and eliminate the alpha strike

#2 Disable key dangerous targets

#3 Apply situational awareness: reapply control where necessary and take the initial brunt of ambushes

#4 All while doing a fair share of the team's damage

This Dominator is doing an excellent job at #2, a good job of #4 and a mediocre job at #1 and #3.

The first problem with #1 is that Wormhole is good, but it has a few issues. For me the largest issue is the radius of the effect. A substantial number of groups are not all going to be hit by it, even before the to-hit roll. Secondly, it's fiddly. Targets that you miss are free to attack you at the start of the horribly long animation so you really need to be careful about LOS. It's also got a fairly poor range. So you have to worry about the size of the AoE, you have to announce where you're placing the output, you have to be careful about LOS and range. Oh, and the knockback at the output point. All for an effect that's far better done with Flashfire and Stalagmites.

What exacerbates the issue here is that this particular Dom has almost no AoE damage (yet), and ST attacks take a while to deal with a group even when they are very good. Wormhole's duration, even with Power Boost, is not normally enough to last more than half the fight, so I'm often needing to use GDF far before I want to. Which means I have to wait a while before I start the next fight. See point #1. A Dominator that can't start the fight isn't much of a Dom.

As for #3, this is also made worse by #1. I've either used GDF or WH to start the fight and it's highly likely I'll need to use both. So what's left for ambushes? This is where other Doms use their lesser AoEs. Mind throws a Sleep, Plant and Ice probably already have their key powers recharged, Earth uses whichever of the big three it hasn't used yet or simply throws a QS patch in the ambushes way. Even Fire, which is largely in the same boat as Gravity with only having two real AoE controls has the option of using Bonfire.

DC, the things you're describing about how to get the best out of your Grav Dom? I'm doing nearly all of them (no range slotting in WH yet). But they infuriate me, because they aren't strategies - they're coping mechanisms. As in something most other Doms just don't have to do, because they simply don't need to.

I haven't unlocked Kheldians yet - all my 50s are redside.

If I'm there it will be with Min Min, my Fire/Storm Controller.

Better! It's likely to be Mud Pots.

Day 38 - Late Night Cameo
I don't get to play much tonight; it's a bit of a theme for Monday nights which will hopefully change soon. When I did get on I worked my way through a few more MA arcs and hit L33. That means 3 slots in Singularity and some IOs become available.

I've been sitting on various IO bids aiming around 34-36 for some relatively cheap IO sets with good recharge bonuses. That's Stupefy and Expedient Reinforcements and together I've slotted enough for +12.5% recharge. I'm sitting on about 175 reward merits so I'm closing on a LotG +recharge as well; I guess it's time to do real arcs again. I'll be putting in quite a few bids for Crushing Impact sets in the 35-40 range as well and that should help with my endurance woes as well as smoothing play somewhat. I need to look into the availibility of Kinetic Crash too, as I wouldn't have to put many more slots into Lift to pick up a set there as well.

So why slot for recharge? Am I going for perma?

I'm slotting for recharge for two reasons. Firstly, I want every spawn access to my AoE controls which I don't quite have for Wormhole yet and I want better access to GDF. Because Wormhole is so bad (it's good for Gravity, but it's bad compared to other Dom staples), I rely on GDF far more often than I would like. Secondly, if this character is ever going to be good at anything, it will be EB and AV killing. To do that I need Seismic Smash up way more than it is now and to be able to stack GD very, very quickly. An attack chain of GD, SS, hammer, GD, hammer, GD, SS, etc. is the goal.

So, am I going for perma? I doubt it. I'm not sure how far I'm even going to take this character: I figure once I have slotted my L38 power I've had the experience of the powersets I was looking for. There might be the bragging rights of a "I've got a L50 Grav Dom, next stop: petless MM" t-shirt, but I'm not convinced I want to do the slog and inflict such an underperforming character on the teams I'd be with. We'll see; it might be worthwhile doing to pass the time until GR.

Good news! I might be able to make that (or soon after that anyway).

Day 37 - Something Different
I am heartily sick of the CoV L30-40 content. Unlike the low levels where each character can alternate contacts, by the time you get to these levels you don't get to skip much so it's stuff I do over and over again. The cure of course is the Mission Architect so I head over.

For this evening's exercise I spend some time with the Scott Kurtz LOLBAT! arc which was quite brilliant. The LOLBAT's dialogue was brilliant as was the Culinary Institue of Evil. It's a shame it's so hero-biased, but you can't have everything.

The second arc I tried was the next one of the guest arcs which deals with a magic student trying to become a superhero and having you run around looking for magic items for her to do it. Obvious foreshadowing is obvious. This one is even more obvious than the obvious foreshadowing in Kelly Uqua's arc IMO, the only way that this story arc would work is as a villain arc, where your character is playing along just to have an opportunity to prove to the contact that no matter how powerful she can get, you'll still win.

I get a start on the Rooster Teeth arcs, but the warning about Exteme Elite Bosses seems ominous.

Day 36 - A Better Team Experience
I get a team going late with a Stalker and a low level MM from my VG. Much, much better than the previous days effort and we have a lot of fun going through some paper missions, one of Hardcase's ones and a Mayhem. The team was not familiar with Wormhole, and there was a whole lot of fun to be had while educating them. wormhole whack-a-mole may have been mentioned.

The wheels fell off a bit during the Mayhem though as it was down to the Stalker and Capella and we got hit by too many PPD Hardsuits and Equalizers at one point.

I'm beginning to see something of a theme with where Capella falls down. I've very much taken for granted that the places that Doms are really, really good on teams is managing encounters with mobs, both by starting fights and by dealing with ambushes. This is a role I find very comfortable filling, but the tools are simply not there with this one. Reminds me greatly of a high-level Blaster.

Anyway, the poor performance with ambush control has me contemplating Dimension Shift. I feel I need a small green alien telling me to avoid the dark side ...

No gauntlet being thrown, just adding a datum to the discussion.

However, the thread title is misleading and I think that's the point people were making earlier in the thread. If you label a character as an AV killer, then most people would think you mean that the character can kill AVs by itself.

For instance, my L50 Fire/Psi permadom is very handy against the Hero-1 AV in the LGTF because Psi is one of the few damage types that he is vulnerable to and that Drain Psyche can shut down his regen for periods of time. By your usage of the term, she would qualify as an AV-Killer.

To be clear: I agree with your point that /Earth should be excellent against AV-class enemies and that your videos show a lot of promise in that area. I just hesitate to call such a character an AV killer until that character actually kills one without help.

Liliaceae showed a while back that it can be done with one, and against some fairly beefy AVs too: Positron and Ghost Widow.

• Can you explain Frostbite? Lots of Controller players forget that you don't need to set up Containment on Doms. AoE Immobs are questionable on most Doms in the first place, but when it interferes with your main control I think it's more than questionable.
  
• Also, skipping Psionic Lance and Psychic Scream is a mistake. Scream is excellent AoE and has a handy secondary effect. Lance makes a great cheap 7.5% +recharge and these days, you can't afford to ignore the damage.
  
• Your slotting for Drain Psyche will maximise its usefulness, but personally, I'd go with 5 Doctored Wounds and a recharge IO. DP is still good, and it's more recharge.
  
• Why are you 2-slotting Health? 1 slot is fine, 3 slots is understandable (but paranoid), but 2 is just odd.
  
• I'm not sure 6-slotting Obliteration is worthwhile. The set bonuses for that aren't great, and with a frankenslot IO there you should be able to max out Acc, Rech or Damage.

Hope that helps, but I'm just a bit puzzled about some of your choices.

I'd advise against it.

Sometimes they get stuck, sometimes they bounce off and sometimes (rarely) they go through the War Wall. Which is a real shame if you need to defeat the whole group to meet a mission objective (like the Carnie one I was doing).

But then again, I've seen that with knockback in the Troll cave missions too. It's not a fault with Wormhole per se.

Yes, I'm fairly sure I had Mynx perma-held through the second half of the fight pretty much overpowering the PToD. That's very nice.

To make this a real AV killer though I'll need more slots so that I can bring in some endurance reduction.

Day 33 - Demonic with the VG
Wednesday is VG night and this week we're doing the Demonic accolade en masse. By the time I get on there's a convenient 8th spot in a L30 team running around the Sharkhead sky raiders base beating up L31-33 Hellfrosts. I get to about 60-odd against the badge before the rest of the team has Coldhearted so we move on to the badge mission.

Most of the team logs once they get Demonic (the History and Exploration badges were gotten earlier in the evening), but a few of us stick around for some missions. Unfortunately the other guys don't want to play with a Grav Dom ( but extremely understandable, given that I've inflicted this character on them for a month now) so I switch to something slightly more competent.

Day 34 - Maintenance
I get on for about an hour before maintenance hits and use the time to finish off the Demonic badge and progress through Hard Cases' arcs. By the end of it I'm within a bubble or two of L32.

Day 35 - Demonstration of Failure
I get on a small team doing missions at +2 to me against Carnies. The mission in particular is the Merecedes Sheldon mission with the Queen of Diamonds, Spades etc. The rest of the team is a Stalker and a Night Widow. I literally cannot remember a poorer performance from a character I have run and I felt like a combination of comic relief and a leech.

A number of issues became obvious:

* I hate L31. Yellows SOs with only a smattering of IOs means levels ending in 1 and 6 hurt.

* I'm not slotted for regular outings against oranges and reds. I have one Acc SO in most powers (two in GDF and WH) and that SO is yellow at this level. One very humorous use of Wormhole against a group of 7 resulted in no hits at all and Capella checking the dirt out before the Wormhole animation had even finished.

* After years of Doms team expectations have been set: we're expected to open fights. I have two powers to do this: Wormhole and GDF. Neither last very long, even with good slotting and Power Boost, and on this team with nearly no AoE, the mobs last too long and I wind up getting way too much aggro to survive. I end up working out a compromise where I use both controls in some fights, and I go just single target in the rest.

* After years of Doms *my* expectations have been set: my playstyle is biased towards having good AoE Controls to rely on and decent AoE to work on groups. All ST grates on me horribly. It's an adaption that I need to make to have this character work, but it grates all the same.

On the good side one of the team members has a high level Grav Controller and he gives me some useful tips on managing the Knockback from Wormhole, and he obviously understands the power so he's looking for the output spot.

I log off just short of 32 and I log back on later that evening and hit 32 and push a fair bit further into that level. Singularity is the first Gravity power that hasn't disappointed me (more on this in a later post). Singularity has me victorious against Mynx in short order and I'm already noticing a better solo playstyle with it around.

I wish I could say the same about Back Alley Brawler though, but I suspect he has a high Smashing resistance so I think I'll need a team for him.