Silas

Total Domination is actually fairly skippable. I did take it on my Mind Dom, but fairly late in the build and I don't get a lot of use out of it. It's mainly a tertiary panic button, Terrify/Mass Confusion/Mass Hypnosis being my main big spawn mez powers.

The thing about Mind is that it's fantastic at locking down small spawns, with Levitate, Dominate, Confuse and Mesmerize you've got all the tools you need to ensure a solo spawn is totally shut down as you kill them.

AVs and EBs can be very tricky on Doms because of the purple triangles. For a significant portion of the fight your mezzes won't count for diddly, so you'll be reliant on teammates/insps to keep you going. If you know you're going up against an EB solo, you can always just stock up on enough purples/greens to keep you on your feet and just go full damage.

Confuse is of much more limited use teaming, but can still be handy sometimes. Mesmerize is almost never going to be useful teaming, since sleeps get broken all the time and Dominate/Levitate are much better options for taking a single target out of the fight.

I've got all of the ST controls from Mind, because they're all useful and ST Domination (pardon the pun ) is Minds forte. I don't really use Levitate as an attack, so much as a backup temporary mez while Dominate recharges.

Solo I can Mesmerize one target, then use Dominate on the other and kill it. Teaming I'll Dominate one mob, then use Levitate on another while Dominate recharges. You want to be cycling Dominate through to mez the troublesome mobs in a spawn like Sappers, Surgeons, etc.

Levitate: good filler mez for when Dominate is recharging, decent damage.

Mesmerize: much more useful solo than teamed, comes in very handy if you're sleeping the Freedom Phalanx in the RSF.

Dominate: bread and butter hold. Slot it, use it, love it. It cuts through ranged defense since it's only typed as psi, animates fast and is generally great.

Confuse: Useful soloing, more niche use teaming. Can be put off till the 30s/40s.

Mass Hypnosis: Your soloing "I win" button. Take ASAP, love it.

Telekinesis: eh, gimmicky AoE hold. I skipped it. Huge end cost for something I didn't really need. For big spawns I have Terrify, Mass Confusion/Hypnosis or Total Domination.

Total Domination: can be put off till later, good panic button. Stats are pretty poop though, needs a fair few slots to be good.

Terrify: fantastic power, teamed or solo. My default go-to power for big spawns on teams. Fear the minions/lts, ST the bosses.

Mass Confusion: hilarious power. Another good AoE control power.

Mind has a whole lot of awesome powers, which unfortunately means there's not much I'd recommend skipping. Telekinesis is fairly skippable, Total Domination sorta but I like having it.

Good call, it's a very strong combo both teamed and solo.

Yeah, Doms can have a lot of offensive oomph but don't forget your controls. I tend to play mine mostly like uh, Blaptrollers I guess? Blasting stuff, smashing stuff, mezzing stuff.

While the Kin Crash set is decent for cheap permadom, one of the main advantages of Mind/ is how easily you can get cheap and effective recharge. Kin Crash gives kinda crappy values for acc/dam/end/rech, so I'd not put it in your attacks. It's alright in Levitate, but that's the only place I'd put it.

Having 2 confuse and 2 sleep powers, you can slot Call of the Sandman and Malaises Illusions for cheap recharge. Depending on your funds, the purple sleep and confuse sets are also fantastic as well as very affordable.

You're right, defense can be pretty expensive, especially in conjunction with permadom levels of recharge. It is still pretty great on teams though, since you're more able to take the alpha as you mez stuff and are less reliant on team support so you can play more aggressively.

While Doms do have good damage, building for +dam isn't a very effective route to go. I generally view any +dam I get from bonuses as a nice side-effect, but not a main goal to build for.

Permadom is very worthwhile, but you don't have to lose out on damage to get it. You definitely shouldn't either, since a lot of the benefit of permadom allows you to play more aggressively where you'll want as much damage as you can get.

Castle (iirc) said that characters who swap sides will keep their APPs/PPPs until they respec on that side.

So if you've got a Blaze Mastery Scrapper and take him redside, you'll keep Blaze Mastery until you respec, when you'll have to choose from one of the PPPs. For a villain with say, Mu Mastery who went blueside, you'll keep it until you respec over there, at which point you'll have to pick from APPs instead.

AFAIK, it's not been clarified whether the side-swapped ATs will get new versions of the APPs/PPPs or their rough equivalents. I'd say getting their own versions is more likely, since it's mostly copypasta work and there are all kinds of problems matching up the ATs with their rough equivalents.

Brutes and Scrappers/Tankers being more or less the same in terms of APP/PPP stuff aren't a big problem. It's the other ATs that are problematic.

Tell me, do you smoke it or take in the arm?

There's no incredible synergy to speak of, but it would be a solid character. Sonic being fairly end-efficient helps a lot with Storm being fairly end-heavy.

Suggestions: For survivability, build for softcapped (45%) smashing/lethal defense. With Scorpion Shield, a Steadfast +3% def, Weave and Steamy Mist you need very little in the way of bonuses to get you there. It'll greatly increase your survivability, which helps a lot with the aggro you can draw with /Storm.

After that, build for recharge and recovery. Get lots of end rdx in your storm powers, the Sonic blasts will generally be fine on endurance with whatever they get from a set.

I've got a guide for Storm in my sig if you want to take a look. I personally went with Ice Blast, but you may still find it useful for general Storm stuff.

For PvP...eh, I wouldn't get your hopes up. I know Stormies were pretty good disruption in Arena way back, I dunno about now. Workable, I guess? Not very good though.

I'm far from knowledgeable about PvP but I see the same suggestions for almost all PvP builds. Build for as much +hp as you can (ideally capped or close to), 41+ points of KB prot, proc out your attacks, get Phase/Hibernate, get SS and SJ.

The problem is, unless you dual-build you're either going to have a crap build in PvP or PvE, because aside from the +hp most of the stuff you really need in PvP is largely a waste in PvE and vice versa.

Hope that helps

Nope, that's basically how it still is. KBing something from directly above it only minimizes the KB, doesn't fully mitigate it.

Your character will still try to always face whatever you're shooting at, so you will still see the jittery spinning. If you're blasting something that is standing still you won't see it, but if the mob is running around at all (especially under you), which most mobs will do if you're hovering above them, it'll happen.

Him and his bodily functions, god, what a griefer.

fyi, almost none of the EBs got their Unstoppables off because they were hella sapped :P

No, if you reduce the KB mag to <1 you can have the best of both worlds. People who want KD can leave the attacks as is, if you want the KB you can put in a KB IO/SO/Set IO.

If you want KB most of the time but KD sometimes as you've said, slot some KB enhancement in your blasts but hover above stuff when you want it to be KD just like you would now.

It doesn't reduce your versatility at all. If you want KB, you slot for it. If you wanted KB so you slotted for it but sometimes want effective KD, do the exact same stuff you do now to turn your KB into KD.

Most fire/kin farm builds around here will only have melee/ranged/AoE defense in the 20s because with Rock Armor you aim for softcapped smashing/lethal defense, not any of the positional ones. Any positional defense you get while building for s/l is just a nice bonus. Getting softcapped s/l defense will often get you a decent chunk of melee defense.