Schwarzherz

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A good way to look at it is not by thinking the secondary is devoted to damage, but numerous attacks. The more the better imo. Heh, the only AT in CoX that comes close to having as many damage deaing powers as doms are blasters I believe. These attacks are what lead to domination or "(as someone has phrased it) "Ultra Uber God-Mode"... and whether or not we like it, this "jeckyl and hyde" playstlye is built into the design of the dominator.

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Access to more powers does not automatically translate into more damage. Most AT's can do as much or more damage with anywhere from one to four attacks than most Doms could with access to their entire secondary. And they can survive long enough to do it from whatever their optimal range may be. The idea that the entire nine-power secondary exists solely for the purpose of building Domination is absurd. If that truly is its intended purpose, then they need to change the name from "Assault" and lower the end costs so we can hammer them out with reckless abandon.

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It's at this realization that leads me to think that the biggest problem people face when playing doms is not the dom itself, but the expectations some players place on them.

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I don't see anything wrong with expecting Doms to be desireable for teams, on par (or at least closer to it) with other AT's soloing, decent in PvP, not an unbearable grind to for half of the total levels (and especially low-level), and not useless if we do take the trouble to level them to 40. I don't see anything wrong with wanting my Dom to be effective outside of Domination.

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Every tweak to Doms (except the minor increase to melee attacks) has been centered around domination: reduced recharge, pvp booost to domination, the soon to be mez protection during domination...

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Which is why very little improvement has been seen. They've already turned us into veritable golden gods while running Domination, and most of us still aren't happy.

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One shouldn't be searching for more defense, or better damage, or longer mez durations, or shorter recharge and lower end costs... One shouldn't be looking to completely change what the AT is designed for. One should only be foucused and concerned with getting to DOMINATION asap. Once any dom player learns to actually get domination up consisitently 3-5 times a mission... like we should be and are fully capable of, then most, if not all other concerns will cease to exisit if ya ask me.

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If you don't have Domination running you do sad damage and can't hold bosses (until 18 at earliest, and then there's the slow recharge rate of your AoE hold to contend with). If you die, you lost Domination. If you use it consistently and then don't have it in a situation you need it (especially with the upcoming Mez crutch), you're boned. I guess I just have a hard time accepting a class that operates on the two extreme ends of the wavelength and is down more than up.

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I personally don't think of doms as being "dependant" on domination. I think of them as being constantly driven and determined to reach it at all costs.

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So you don't particularly consider yourself "dependant" on oxygen so much as determined to breath at all costs?

/e sighs and rubs his temples.

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Masterminds are sort of the other white Controller. They take the Controller's pet aspect and run wild with it, while retaining the same buff/debuff/heal secondaries. They're not quite entirely worked out yet I don't think, but I like the concept of them.

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One power available at level 32 doth not a pet class make. Controller pets are far more limited then what a master mind can do and is not what the other eight powers of each set being the basis of the archtype: holding foes.

Dominators get some of the same sets as Controllers along with the pets. Do you consider them a pet class as well?

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Now, now, don't put words in my mouth. I never said the Controller was a "pet class". I simply said the Mastermind makes use of the pet aspect of Controllers and takes it to a new level.

That Dominators' primary power sets are all Controller primaries is also maybe part of the problem. Do you think it's any coincidence that Plant is considered the most balanced (I hesitate to use the word "best") primary when it was also the only one made specifically for Dominators? The devs want us to stop looking at Dominators as the "CoV Controller" but I certainly can't find much reason to do so.

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We went through a lot of effort to make sure that the ATs played and felt different between the two games.

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Honestly, I whole-heartedly believe that. And I think a lot of the problem with CoV in general is that, with the exception of Stalkers and (arguably) MM's, none of the villain AT's are really original at all. They're all just different aspects of the hero AT's with the power sets spliced together in different ways. You guys were so preoccupied with making them fundamentally different that you never stopped to wonder if they would be effective or balanced.

Brutes are a combination of Tanker and Scrapper, which I think was a great call. You guys have been wrestling yourselves hand-over-fist from day one to try and make these two AT's different. Just meshing them into one AT was the right call.

Corruptors are just Defenders combined with Blasters, or arguably, just more powerful Defenders. Once again, I don't have a problem with this AT. I think it works fine all around.

Masterminds are sort of the other white Controller. They take the Controller's pet aspect and run wild with it, while retaining the same buff/debuff/heal secondaries. They're not quite entirely worked out yet I don't think, but I like the concept of them.

Stalkers are all good. They could maybe use a slight HP boost, but that's just a personal preference, not really a complaint. Yay Stalkers, I love 'em.

And that leaves us with the Dominators. Honestly, I feel like at this point the devs were just running out of ideas so they sat back and said, "Hrm... what two concepts haven't we fused yet? Control and direct damage? Deal." I get the impression no one really took the time to wonder if it would work, they just threw all the ingredients together and put it in to bake at 350...

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Then of course there is the Domination ability, which is the real Jekyl and Hyde of the AT. A mild-manner Dominator with a full Domination bar can, at his or her discretion, become an unstoppable machine of destruction and control. While it never lasts "long enough" (even I am disappointed at hearing the sound effect of it wearing off), I've had missions where I have gotten Domination off four times from mission-entry to having Mission Complete appear on the screen. Good times indeed.

We've got a nice tweak to the Domination ability coming down the pipe (it will crank up your Mez resistance while it is active), and are currently data-mining PvP to see what effect our last set of tweaks to the AT have had.

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... and then the real problem occurred. Someone decided to add a super secret special sauce: Domination. I think Domination is a steller inherent. But it keeps getting used as a crutch. Honestly, at this point you may as well change our names from "Dominators" to "The AT That Uses Domination", because that's what I feel like. Every time I see a red name post or patch notes concerning Dominators it always seems to go back to Domination, not the actual AT itself. You keep looking at new and bigger and brighter ways to push Domination on us when that's not what most of us really want. I may be presumptuous to speak on the part of the entire Dom-playing community here, but I think the majority of us would just like to see some basic, flat improvements to our AT across the board, and not yet another reason to force us to lean on Domination for all that we hope to be. We want to play our AT from level 1 to level 50, not for 00:01:30 at a time.

We're Dominators. Domination is not the AT!

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Dominators give up a bit of control for some good direct damage attacks that Controllers would give their left mouse button for.

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That one hurt my soul.

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From my experiences Doms don't suck. They just aren't obvious like some of the more favored classes. Because they take more than a day to become proficient at, they are regularly deemed crappy by the general populace of A.D.D. Avengers and re-roll queens that inhabit our fare fantasy world. This also explains why Doms become less frequent as you go up in level, yet for some reason are on everyone’s friends list, persistently in demand and are often highly skilled.

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I'm really sick and tired of hearing the, "You just don't know how to play them," or the, "They take more skill to play," arguments, or any variation thereof. I really am. It's baseless justification that assumes the CoV community as a whole is inept at playing just this particular AT. There is not a single other AT in the game that has to be played to such an utter degree of perfection to be considered acceptably functional.

It's like an argument over Interpretist art. The artist decides without any base or justification that his work is the greatest work ever, and if you disagree then you "just don't get it".

Doms are not the least played AT because they're some big enigma. They're not the neglected emo kid that sits alone in the high school lunchroom because no one's taken the time to understand them.

Are they playable? Yes. Can they be effective? Yes. Are they the worst AT? It's arguable, but I think most people would answer yes. Do they need help? Yes, yes, and yes.

If you sit down and look at JUST a Dom, then they don't suck. If you line them up against any other support AT, they fail. They most certainly fail when compared to any damage-dealing AT, and if they don't do either thing well they most certainly do not become effective by doing two sub-par things at the same time. I would pick a Def, 'Troller, or Corr for any party any day for any mission or really any reason, before I would invite a Dom. Without a second thought.

Is there a general concensus as to the most RP-intensive server? I've heard Virtue, but I wanted some confirmation before I get too heavily into a new toon.

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The other AT's don't need their inherents to function ....

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I'd like to see you say that with a straight face to brute, stalker, and tanker players.

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My problem is not that I couldn't kill the bosses. I understand that it would have been of marginal difficulty for any two AT's to tackle two bosses at once. My problem is that I contributed nothing.

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First, I'm confident that "nothing" is an exaggeration. Second, I still don't see any point in complaining about how well a character contributes to a nigh-impossible fight. Game balance is tough enough without worrying about pathological cases. Sorry, but I'm not going to take that kind of argument seriously. If you want to talk about troubles with normal encounters, or even if you want to argue that the "pathological" cases come up all too often, that's cool, but I'm not going to worry about how well a dominator contributes to scenario that's already broken for other reasons.

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You're obviously not listening to thing I'm saying, and you've apparently convinced yourself you're talking to someone who doesn't have a single clue how the overall game works or how any AT functions. Based on your replies I'm left with little choice but to form the same opinion of you, so let's just agree to disagree and end this debate here.

The bottom line is that Dom's still need help. No one can agree on what that might be or to what degree its necessary, but at least most of us seem to have accepted that there is am underlying problem.

To the original poster, if he's even still paying attention to this thread, my advice remains the same: If you want to know what all the fuss about Dominators is, you'll save yourself a lot of grief (or maybe directly create some) by just rolling one for yourself.

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It seems kind of off to factor in the inherents that way.

Scourge only kicks in 12.5% of the time, on average.
How often is a brute at max fury?
A stalker gets one critical every how many hits?

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Which is exactly my point. The other AT's don't need their inherents to function, regardless of how often or not they kick in or how good they are. They're just icing on the cake.

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I don't find [domination downtime] particularly long either, but by comparison, if we use your number that assume you've got it up every three fights you're still only running at maximum effectiveness 33% of the time. Not great.

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Where are you getting 33%? I said that I typically fight with domination up for two fights, down for three, not one out of three.

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My mistake. I misread your statement. So let's bump it up 7% to 40%, shall we? But using it contstantly like that is a gamble unless you know you're not going to have to deal with bosses. If you run into a situation like the one I listed and you don't have access to Domination, you're done.

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For example, last night I took a team in to the mission where you rescue Wretch in the sewers. Team fell apart by the end leaving myself and a MM. I died on a spawn, so there went Domination. Next group had two bosses.

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It sounds like you were duoing a spawn for a team of four or more. It's not surprising that you had trouble with it, but why blame your AT? With a team actually appropriate for the spawn size, it should've been easy, with Seeds of Confusion helping out significantly. Did you have similar troubles before you tried to tackle two bosses without backup? Dominators are not boss-killers, but that's not a problem unless you mistakenly expect them to fill that role.

Seriously, what's the point in this complaint? That doms suck when you're fighting an oversized spawn with a crappy MM player as your only backup? Well, duh.

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Aside from my usual one-lt.-per-spawn-without-SoC, no, I wasn't having any exceptional trouble until that point.

My problem is not that I couldn't kill the bosses. I understand that it would have been of marginal difficulty for any two AT's to tackle two bosses at once. My problem is that I contributed nothing. The damage I poured on the bosses before they glared at me and I spontaneously combusted was pitiful.

A Corruptor could have healed, buffed, or debuffed and probably still done more damage.

A Brute probably would have survived the encounter outright as long as he didn't have both bosses wailing on him simultaneously, and could have at least pounded a sizeable amount of damage into one of the bosses if not killed him outright before he had to retreat.

With as shoddily as this MM was built/conducting his pets/managing aggro my Stalker probably would have had to retreat, but not without doing mentionable damage beforehand. With a good MM he could have been in there the whole fight.

Another MM would have made it a breeze.

So why on earth would I want to have a Dominator as my partner in that situation if I was the MM? Other than cannon fodder, I certainly can't present one.

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I don't find the stretches between domination particularly long. Domination lasts for about two fights then takes about three fights to refill and recharge. My main dominator is a mind/psi, though, which has good cast times, recharges, and attack chains, so I almost always have the bar full when the button recharges (the major exceptions being at the start of a mission, after a defeat, or when playing with very slow PUGs).

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I don't find them particularly long either, but by comparison, if we use your number that assume you've got it up every three fights you're still only running at maximum effectiveness 33% of the time. Not great.

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What situations are those, and what are your power sets? Judging by the character level, I'd guess that you're having trouble with boss fights. Even then, you should be able to contribute by holding lieutenants or minions; you don't need to lock down a boss to help out a team, especially if you have good boss-killers on the team.

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That's exactly my point. I have been relying on my team so heavily that I might as well just be an extra MM pet.

For example, last night I took a team in to the mission where you rescue Wretch in the sewers. Team fell apart by the end leaving myself and a MM. I died on a spawn, so there went Domination. Next group had two bosses. After SoC wore off I was dead before I even saw my life start dropping. Then we got the mob whittled down to just the bosses and it got even worse. I couldn't hold, couldn't confuse, couldn't do anything and my damage was laughable. Laughable, but my quick-cyclying, low-damage attacks still managed to draw aggro through the MM pets, so I pretty much just chain-died and/or ran until the MM finished the mission for me.

The alternative would have been to just stand there and watch the MM fight, which I don't think he would have appreciated. Also, I feel it's worth pointing out that the MM was one of the worse MM's I've partied with, but because I was so powerless myself, I was still forced to rely entirely on him, which I don't think I should have to do. And if he'd left? I would've really been in the [CENSORED] then. That was the last spawn left in the level so there were no more minions to build Domination on, but I had to beat them since they were guarding Wretch. Without that MM or waiting around for more people to pop LFT, I'd have had to restart the level to solo it on villainous.

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Also, keep in mind that dominators aren't alone in struggling in the teens. It's a common complaint among scrappers, tankers, brutes, and stalkers too: Just like dominators, they often have trouble with survival and endurance management until the mid-twenties.

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Well, that's true, but I can't say I really agree with it... I think Tanks, Scrappers, and Brutes' complaints stem largely from the fact that they were spoiled in the older issues and they're not very good at aggro, damage, and endurance management in general whether in spite of their AT's or because of it.

Most Stalker players just don't know how to play their AT. There are a hundred and one bad ways to play a Stalker and only one right way: Play a Stalker like a Stalker.

I've played a Brute, Scrapper, Tanker, and Stalker all through the mid-20's and I honestly can't say I've ever had a noticeable problem with survival with any of them unless I simply bit off more than I could chew.

They all have endurance issues until Stamina since they need to be constantly running toggles (especially my Stalker and Scrapper since they were both the very end-intensive /Dark), but they all chew through mobs consistently faster, safer, and overall more effectively.

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Count me in the minority I guess who likes Domination. I can control it. It boosts more than just holds. And it makes my character very strong for a pretty long time.

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I'm aware of what Domination boosts. I'm also aware that it lasts for 00:01:30. I personally don't believe intermittent bursts of effectiveness seperated by long stretches of mediocrity make a balanced AT, but your mileage may very. This is all assuming, of course, that you can even build Domination in the first place. Dying at the wrong time in the wrong place can really cripple you, and don't even get me started on PvP.

What I am acutely aware of is that there are too many situations in which I am completely boned without it. Where I literally contribute nothing and can not function. Thankfully those scenarios should thin out now as I approach 18 where I can finally stack holds, but... For these first 17 levels it has been a total crutch.

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You're ignoring part of the problem. While I am comparing us to Controllers, that's really why you hear everyone saying "I feel like such a leech when I'm on a team because my hold suck..." 25% is a very big number, and the reason Corruptors don't complain about their damage is they're designed like Offenders were--weakening the opponent with their debuffs to approach Blaster-level damage while keeping the team safe, getting the benefits of both ATs. Corruptors also get Scourge, which further increases their damage. Some could argue Corruptors are BETTER than Blasters, and they are often considered the most well-designed AT.

Dominators, however, don't synergize so well with their secondaries. Our secondary is all about doing damage (and not very much at that). Two sets have Power Boost, so we get many bursts of time when we have increased hold times, but in the long run, our hold times are nothing special. We bring two things: Damage and Control. Corruptors bring slightly less Control, but they bring more ST damage, AoE damage, debuffs, buffs, heals, and arguably more Soft Control.

Brutes vs. Tanks is easier: they're designed to be a mix of Scrapper and Tank. Therefore, they are squishier than Tanks but do much more damage, but since they are more durable than Scrappers, they do less damage than they do most of the time.

So, while Doms may be designed as a team support AT, the level of team support we bring is near the same amount a MM or a Corruptor would bring--and they surpass our damage. Though, oftentimes, our holds do bring less lag than a MM would bring. Do you see why people compare us to Controllers? We have nothing meaningful BESIDES Control to bring to a team, so why is it weaker than a Controllers' 70% of the time? We should be be equal 70% of the time and better the other 30%, no questions asked, because the only team support we bring are Controls. We're designed like the Defender AT: they specialize in one area and dabble in damage a small bit. We, on the other hand, don't specialize too well at all.

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I want to say that you are dead on. That right there is a huge problem with our archetype. We have no distinct advantage.

The Domination inherent is the problem. It needs to be nerfed I think. It was dreamed to be something fun and exciting...but became a ball and chain for the dominator. There is probably simply too many variables involved when trying to buff/nerf a dom and then factor in the domination inherent...

We most likely end up staying nerfed because the balance for domination is probably worked in with it being on whenever it is done recharging....which is not how our AT works all the time...

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That is probably the best I've seen it said so far, both of you.

Honestly, as much as people compare us to Corruptors, the problem with Dominators isn't Corruptors. That comparison is easy to hype because it's largely true (Corruptors bring more damage to the table in addition to a wider range of more effective support), but as ExIan pointed out, at the end of the day the problem with Dominators is Domination.

That the AT is balanced around its inherent is, I think, a little ridiculous. The inherent should compliment the AT, not define it. The devs need to stop looking to Domination for a quick fix and a crutch and address the fundamental problems with the AT.

For as weak as our holds and damage are, and considering our complete lack of passive defense, I don't see why a number of things couldn't be done to improve our situation. They could raise our HP, raise our damage, strengthen our holds, or a combination of all three.

Domination should be relegated to a passive that marginally increases hold duration and magnitude the closer the Dominator gets to death. At an orange or red bar, our holds should have the current Domination's duration and magnitude. That would keep it from being overpowered and would also contribute to the AT's lack of self-preservation.

To the OP: Honestly, nothing you can read on this board can answer your question as well as you could by playing one yourself. Yes, Dominators can be fun and effective, but they can also be extremely frustrating. It's really not hard to see why they're considered the weakest AT.