Seldom

Dear devs: you have made me very happy.



VERY happy indeed.

Well, I think the biggest thing is that radiation blast is just an 'old' set. people, especially vets, just want to change things up and playing a set that's been around the better part of a decade isn't as intriguing.

The second thing is that its effect isn't as powerful in the grand scheme...it basically just gives you better accuracy against things you've already hit, not hit them harder or mess up the victims' ability to hit back as well.

It also is more rapid-fire, cumulative damage set than hard hitting, so you tend to attack a lot fast, making it feel lower damage just because you are pounding buttons more in the same time. (This for the corr/defender version especially with its fast neutrino bolt, but the fact that irradiate is DoT contributes too)

Besides all this, there are three attacks people may avoid in it: electron haze with its knockback, and then there's the snipe/nuke that folks find too situational.

It's still a great set, in my opinion. the -defense is handy not just on high defense foes, but on anything that debuffs accuracy. They may debuff your ability to hit, but once you tag them they are a much easier target. Special note: irradiate's defense debuffs is beastly. The nuke is also a hold, making it a better panic button than most, and it's all flat energy damage, which fewer thing resist. Cosmic burst is not just great damage, but a great stun too, and the fast damage attack style means less attacks wasted, and other than neutron bomb most animations are pretty quick, leaving less time locked in shooting. Personal opinion: proton volley is the coolest snipe in the game too. :P

Note that the blaster version had its neutrino bolt normalized with all other blaster tier one/two attacks, so it's slower but more damaging. Not a good/bad, just that it is different.

My list:

• Bonfire: I took it/liked it before, but only used it once every other month. Now it's soft control+damage! (Almost hard control, before its upcoming changes)
• Tornado: I only used tornadoes when I had -KB immobilizes available or on an AV. Otherwise they counteract much of storm's placement debuffs. Now? let 'em rip!
• Solar flare: because foostomp>trying to hit a group of enemies now blasted to the four corners of an area
• Electron haze: I couldn't take it as it worked against my rad/rad defender, rad/rad corr, or rad/kin corr's toggle/buff&debuff concentrations. Now? more AoE!
• M30 grenade: I hade to relegate this to 'finisher' using only after all other AoEs, and/or only if it would kill the mess it made. Now? It actually helps with the use of all the other AoE's, as enemies are stopped, flat on their backs!
• Explosive arrow: See above.

.....This issue has me more excited than all the taskforces, trials, and storyarcs they've done for years ever has. O_o

...and it makes me realize that all the comments about melee damage superiority may have come from the fact that the biggest hitting single target and AoE attacks in many older ranged sets were held back from consistent combat use. It should be interesting how legacy blast set damage in practice goes up with this.

My personal favorite for char, cheating (though it uses boosters and purples) slot char with 4 basilisk's gazes. Then fill inh a +5'd (using boosters) Apocalypse pure damage IO for +60% damage, adding a hamidon +acc/dam. These two give ~100% damage with good holds, great accuracy, and +recharge bonuses besides. Then you can use the rest of the Apocalypse set in subdue with boosters to bring damage up to ~100% and the dominator +damage proc in the sixth slot.

I don't have access to mids right now but a couple things stick out:

Char:
You NEED to slot char. I try not to make blanket statements, but char keeps you alive. Without it, you have no fast, reliable way to stop things from attacking you. Slot this with the dominator AT set or basilisk's gaze and you can have some good bonuses too.

Fire cages:
While handy, this can wait until later. It does less damage than your attacks, draws a lot of enemy damage right back at you.

Subdue; While mental blast comes earlier, and is this power's twin in damage and all, subdue takes the dominator +damage proc, and is a go-to attack. Do yourself a favor and slot it here, rather than in flashfire. Sure, you are then splitting up the bonuses, but it's worth it.

Cinders:
The higher your +recharge bonuses, particularly for a perma-dom, the more handy your group hold becomes. The main issues with group holds are the low accuracy, short duration, and the long cooldown. The amount of recharge needed to get perma-dom means the holds come up fast. Usually the same sets that give the recharge bonuses give you "free" +accuracy bonuses. Domination gives better magnitude and duration, making the AoE hold last longer and handle tough foes in a hit. Besides this, basilisk's gaze gives some good bonuses, so a second set in cinders helps a lot. I'd slot it with Basilisk's gaze, or the dominator set.

An easy solution would be for bonfire to grant a delayed, short lived resistance to knock to any critter it knocks. In standard practice this would never be an issue, as it would have already sent the critter back out of the KB area before it could be reapplied, so it would not need to again. In the KD version, it could allow them to get up, and perhaps fire a shot back before being knocked down again. This would ostensibly make it on par with ice slick.

For secondaries, Psy has very good solid damage and good AoE...but it is far more a DPS set, as it tends to have lots of medium damage attacks that you use in turn than big attacks that pack a wallop. It should be noted that psy scream now does even more damage than psy shockwave, so it's an integral part of /psy's AoE. As mentioned /psy has great -rehcarge debuffs, but also has a great number of other side effects: the PbAoE stuns, it has a 100% KB to get thing out of your face, it has an immobilize in one of its best ranged attacks that will also take the dominator +damage proc.

Playing 'pure' range on any dominator will leave you in trouble as far as a pure min/maxer perspective as your biggest, best damage will always happen close.

Most ancillaries/patron pools give only one ranged AoE attack, fire being the only one with two. With gobs of +racharge, you can use rain of fire/fireball with your cone (most secondaries have a cone) for ranged damage, but that's with lots of expensive IO's. my fire/fiery/fire dominator went this direction and simply melts through all enemies, but he does get close for things as well.

Purely ranged, as mentioned, you'll have difficulty. /Dark will skip using its very good PbAoE often, as well as it's heavy-hitting tier 9 melee. Fire is a favorite as it skips its one melee and its PBAoe, (people dislike the DoT nature of the PbAoE at times) but still gets blase at range and consume is needed less often. Psy, with its buffed Psy Scream/Mental blast does better at range than before actually, but still needs some crowd diving for saturated Drain Psyche. Thorns has the most 'ranged' AoE, but misses its good pbAoE and its cones are both medium rather than full long range. Icy and earth are both better closer, as they have their heavier damage centered there. Electric has decent range, but not very good AoE.

I've played and love electric blast for awhile, but it does have its issues. As awesome as short circuit is as a debuff, I agree it could use some love in the attack side. Frontloading damage would indeed help.

Voltaic sentinel is hard to use. Game responsiveness has gone down, so placed summons sometimes don't work correctly...and the summon takes far too long to work easily in combat, while the duration isn't good for the pre-combat mode. While many have been suggesting it go to the "more permanent pet" mode, I'd rather it function like it does now, but taking a cue from dark control's haunts...a targeted summon, though giving it a faster summon cast, same cast as a blast. This way it could be summoned quickly in combat without any delays. I would LOVE for this to also be targetable by foes, even if that means it can die faster. This would give it a dual use...damage or a quick distraction to make using the PBAoE short circuit safer.

I also agree with tesla cage getting damage. Ice blast gets damage in its hold, why not give tesla the same? It could be a damage over time if they were worried about too much bang in the set, but this would give the power a better use against tough, mez resistant foes as well.

Heck, I wouldn't care if a blade comes out even while using ray claws. The aforementioned long claw/blade/whatever comes out from a different point as the 'normal' claws do, as the earlier image shows, so it could just be a retractable spine in addition to the customized claws. I don't see how having two different weapons is a problem.

So yes, I completely support this suggestion, and would be fine with it even at the uncomplicated "customized claws with a metal spike" state.

Despite sharing primaries, I do find the two are incredibly different. One is not better than the other, just different.

Controllers play very differently solo vs. teamed. They 'Naturally' gain very little attack power until far later in their careers, meaning you have to choose powers and slot enhancements with the express purpose of finding damage, unless you are satisfied with the limited forms you start with. Mind control controllers have okay single target damage, but direct damage on controllers is pretty low except on certain combinations. (Radiation and kinetics being old favorites for this) On teams this isn't such an issue, as you can let others do the damage and focus on controlling/buffing/debuffing.
Controllers have two innate abilities: 'overpower' which is a random double-powered control, and 'containment' which means they do double damage to things that are controlled. On the plus side, this means that just focusing on controlling, you can lock down tough targets with your first control, snd just doing your job stopping things from attacking will often be the same as attacking. On the downside controllers have no way to reliably lock down tougher foes, and do less damage vs. things that are harder to control.

Dominators play about the same, teamed vs. solo. Find the threat, lock it down. solo it's what wants to punch you in the face, teamed it's what wants to punch you in the face or punch your team mate in the face. Then you kill it with your attacks, or while it's locked down, kill the thing that is still punching you/your allies in the face. Dominators are more reliable, as their damage is the same in almost all situations, and they can double the power of their control with 'domination'. Domination also frees/protects them from control, and refills endurance so it's doubly good. The downside is that past control you have little else to directly offer the team, and while domination is down you'll never get a lucky control that locks down hard targets right away. (Except mesmerize, which can put bosses and stronger to sleep in one hit)

It should be noted that dominators probably get the most out of mind control, as all powers but levitate can be directly boosted by domination. Controllers get lots of overpower, but mind control has few powers to give direct containment damage bonuses as the powers it has to set it up can often be 'broken' by any bit of damage; as it lacks immobilization powers and instead uses sleep powers. (Which damage wakes people from.)

Hm. If one fully slotted soul mastery's Soul Drain and had the spiritual radial paragon and a kismet +tohit, it only takes one target to hit that. I see some possibilities...

Just to note, as you are taking both hover and stealth (which I did as well) those are excellent places to but an extra luck of the gambler: +recharge. Two power pools, zero slots burned, +15% recharge.

*Edit* It should be noted there's a big reason people shoot for "Perma" domination: it refreshes its durations, meaning if you activate it before it drops, there is zero 'building domination' time necessary.