Oedipus_Tex

I would say silver. Ice Control on IOs is quite a bit different than without. Perhaps shockingly so if you haven't yet tried it with IOs, particularly on Dominators who don't have to rely on Containment.

I think a lot of people give up before they get there and I don't blame them. The 30s-40s on Ice Control are hell. Carnies will constantly detoggle you and drain your endurance, Malta are Malta, Council WarWolves touch Arctic Air and the fear sends them racing off, your endurance is constantly crashing, and you lack the defense to survive more than a few attacks. I really can't stress enough the massive issue with Arctic Air detoggling and the terror of its 15 second recharge, which is why most of my suggestions for changes to the set have called for this power to either be unsuppressable or for Jack Frost to gain a mezz protection power to cast at you sort of like Bots cast shields. I've also generally concentrated on making the knockdown in Ice Slick unresistable so that it would work even if a teammate uses cages.

However, while it takes a LOT of work to prop the set up, I also do generally feel that it improves more than other sets once you do it. Arctic Air's utility is mostly tied to your ability to survive at close range and your mezz protection (which if you go Psi APP is mostly a matter of recharge). I find that late in the game that ranged alpha-breakers begin to become less important and things start to come down to how spread out the enemies are. Some maps hide members of enemy groups around corners or behind walls or just generally stretch them out, and Ice Control is really good at dealing with this as long as it can survive initial attacks. It's also a set that requires some tactics (in particular casting Ice Slick around an obstacle at the edge of a spawn for really tough groups, so that the idiotic enemies all run toward it and pile up at its edge as hit the slow and collide with their allies who fell right in front of them). I'm not saying it can match the insanity of Plant Control but I do feel the set improves more than some other low-powered sets like, say, Trick Arrow.

Also note that IMO at least part of the reputation of Ice Control comes from players trying to skip Arctic Air and replace it with Shiver in order to play Ice at range (sometimes even skipping Glacier as well). Shiver is a power I rank somewhere around Earth's Quicksand. While I can understand why people do this after being murdered trying to use AA prior to mezz protection/defense, I also think at least some of the problem is people not playing to the set's strengths. The set is very melee-based (or at least "donut range" based as I play it) and trying to get away from this doesn't work well. just as it really wouldn't with Fire Control.

[EDIT: I should probably also add that Ice's main issue is that it doesn't have a good mezz tied into a single specific power. Most suggested fixes to Ice revolve around modest changes to it's sleep power or Shiver, but this isn't really what's wrong with it. Fire and Plant have some fairly weak powers as well. What they have and Ice generally doesn't is most of their strength wrapped in two or three powers. Ironically, those set's supposed lack of control flexibility is a huge part of what makes them so strong. A slightly tweaked Shiver or Flash Freeze would just mean my Ice Dom would be dropping pool powers needed for survival/recovery while a Plant or Fire could still pick up just a small number of powers and get the same level of performance. That's why I've always been fine with skippable powers; the number of skippable powers in a set is a good thing if the set is still competetive based on the powers you really need.]

I recently completed a build on my Ice/Fire Dominator that gives me perma-domination from levels 25 and up. That character is a bit of a monster. Probably not as good as Earth or Plant/Fire would be, but when I lead radio tip teams at 50+2 or even 50+4 he can easily be the first person into every spawn. It's sort of humorous to me to watch a group of Tankers and Brutes follow behind me into each spawn because I out survive them. But most of these characters are a few levels lower than me and not IOed yet. Still I think that's a lot better than most people assume Ice would perform.

In fairness, those are the numbers before applying buffs and debuffs. The Corruptor probably does typically do less damage than a Scrapper in my experience, but not 50% less when all is said and done. Most Corruptor sets carry around a 20-30% resist debuff at minimum or else +damage (sometimes both).

On a team, of course, it gets trickier: both the Scrapper and Corruptor benefit from the Corruptor's debuff.

I can actually picture the exact argument already: It starts with "But Seeds of Confusion is a CONE and those are NEVER better than regular AoEs."

Anyway, the reason TW suffers more than other powersets against -ToHit (or +Defense) was stated by other posters, but it's because the speed of future attacks requires the previous attack to hit. This is glossed over by DPA calculations, which assume all hits connect. When a hit misses, TW falls further behind than other sets. This applies both in terms of -ToHit but also applies to the 95% accuracy check cap.

Anyway, it doesn't take a -ToHit situation necessarily to produce this. Someone who PUGs a lot leveling up probably spends a lot of time below the 95% hit cap. The reason: super side kicking. It is nowcommon for people to join teams 5, 10, 20 or more levels higher than them, most often with most of their attacks not fully slotted. TW is in a more precarious position than other sets if it coms up against mobs it can't hit.

Not to mention one other penalty it has: if you queue up attacks to take advantage of max-speed attack chains, you could stuck in an extremely long animation if one attack misses. This has killed m Electric/TW Tanker when a heal I was hoping to fire miissed due to animation lock. I bet it's even more of a nasty surprise for people running away from death patches.

And then there is knockback and enemies that run away/die halfway through your chain to worry about too...

I can say with near 100% authority that if either Plant Control or Fire Control were released today, people would be screaming that these are the worst sets ever, based on "the numbers" and those terrible powers, Smoke, Bonfire, Spore Burst and Tree of Life.

This is not true, especially in the case of Titan Weapons.

I have no direct experience but my guess is no to most of these. The power has a 20 second duration and can't be perma'd.

The power briefly went through a period in open beta where rather than phasing allies it only phased enemies. IMO it was much more powerful in that form, but players convinced the developers to change it.

Good point.

I would use Frenzy myself but I really dislike red side.

The main time I drop Domination is getting killed, mainly in incarnate trials. But Arachnos and some other enemies can make it happen with their Psi powers.

The way -Recharge works, the closer you get to the floor (-75%) the more each point increases your penalty. Here are the numbers from a chart I did a long time ago:

So in other words, at -50% Recharge, your powers take twice as long to recharge. But it only takes around another -17 recharge to triple. And if you're unlucky enough to have recharge triple, you are now a scant 8 points from having it quadruple. This is a large part of why I encourage everyone to take Hasten, even people who think they don't need it. The size of the Hasten buff (++70%) means enemies need to hit you much more drastically to significantly affect your recharge; once they've got you, something similar to cascading defense failure occurs.

Dark Energon,

I'm going to take the step of apologizing for using the term "suck it up" when referring to Hasten. I wasn't trying to tell you you had to take it. I was saying that you are paying a very large price for lacking it. Whether you keep Flight or not is ultimately up to you, but I would be derelict in my duty if I hadn't told you a Dominator without Hasten is fighting an uphill battle. I personally don't like Hasten's graphics either, and have campaigned relentlessly to have them squelched. In the mean time "suck it up" is indeed what I have done with this power. I'm sorry if it seemed like I was just trying to force you into accepting the change.

I understand that you aren't familiar with Dominators and like I said in my first post, the fact that you tried to build something at all shows character.

But it also true that, being new to Dominators, you don't know how much you don't know. I posted a build to give you an idea of how you could improve yours. I didn't intend for you to literally throw your build away completely. I even told you that my build wasn't a template and you would need to change it based on your needs.

The fact is you have a number of relative experts at your disposal to help you understand what the issues with that build are, and please do not deceive yourself into believing they are not issues. I understand if you don't want to actually make the changes, but it is apparent to all of us who are posting you are hanging onto this build out of personal pride and not because you understand what you have built or what its significant shortcomings are.

If it seemed like I was being too harsh in my initial criticisms, I apologize, because that was accidental. I had just spent 45 minutes building a RPG character for a stranger on the internet, and I guess I figured that posting a revised build made it evident I wasn't just being nasty. So hopefully if nothing else you'll at least look at the build I posted and some of the others around, see what the issues are and consider either revising your build or at least posting a disclaimer prior to dropping it into a discussion about 7 purple sets.

Sorry, this is just silly. This is a video game. I don't get what people don't get that if teaming isn't fairly quick and easy, I and some other people are just going to sign off and do something else. All of this talk about just "make a team or its your fault" completely misses the point of what people are talking about. This isn't something anyone needs to feel guilty over. It's no different than showing up at a nightclub and finding no one dancing, and then deciding to go or do something else.

Did you notice that when Dark first entered beta, its immobilize also did the same double-damage as Roots--in mainly negative damage? I think I earned some permanent scars from the flaming I got for pointing out how overpowered that was, but to the developer's credit, they did bring this power in line with other immobilizes (which are still pretty crazy).