SpittingTrashcan

Hear hear. What's worse, it would bring back the ability to herd, without bringing back any of the benefits...

Thanks for that reply, Tonality. I have no objection whatsoever to your evaluation - everything you say matches my experiences. What tends to rile me up is when people who clearly don't have experience with how the set works in actual play somehow feel qualified to offer firm statements on the set's effectiveness that clearly contradict what I have seen with my own eyes.

My SS/Elec was actually my second brute, the first being an EM/DA, and I had to do more than a little mental recalibration during the transition. (Incidentally, I've also been quite outspoken about the effectiveness of /DA, another set that looks rather ugly on paper yet performs well in practice). I may be a bit unusual in my insistence that "weird toys" sets aren't broken because their effectiveness comes via subtle routes, but I think it would be a shame if they were made more similar to the more popular sets. I don't see the Energize change doing that - if anything, it makes one of the weird toys even weirder - but I get leery when I see people saying things like "finally, /elec can compete with /wp!" That's missing the point on a grand scale.

I don't believe I ever said I like Dimension Shift as it is. I'm just pointing out the likely limits of suggestions the devs would take under consideration. Changing the phase mechanic entirely from top to bottom is, at this point, unlikely. Making Dimension Shift not phase its targets for at least a little while is also unlikely.

And as a personal opinion, I'd rather not see Dim Shift turn into a standard mass mez. If the devs are likely to change it at all, I'd like to see it changed into something unique and interesting, in keeping with the rest of the set's character. You can go to other sets for simple, effective mass mez; only from Gravity do you get such oddballs as Propel, Wormhole, and Singularity. Turning Dim Shift from a useless oddball into a simple power seems like such a waste of potential. But any change that makes Dim Shift useful, whether it be to my taste or not, would only be for the better for Gravity as a whole.

I'm not interested in a holy war, though. Calm down.

Not so terribly ridiculous. I'm sure there's someone out there who really likes the fact that Dimension Shift phases its targets, and has come to rely on it. And as silly as that might be, the rule exists so that people can rely on powers having recognizably similar effects from one issue to the next. Effects are frequently altered in magnitude, and occasionally supplemented by additional effects, but they're very rarely removed, and that's a good thing on the whole.

Besides the epic pool issue, another thing to note about the change from Conserve Power to Energize is that the new power is still of the same type (click buff), performs a superset of the old power's functions, and accepts a superset of the old power's enhancements. As was noted in the discussion of the change, the "new cottage rule" appears to be that under certain circumstances, effects can be added to powers - Build Up can buff damage, accuracy, and build a cottage at your location. What this means for Dimension Shift is that, even if it does change, it still has to be a targeted power that accept intangibility enhancements - which means it still has to make something intangible.

So the question to pursue, I would say, is what Dimension Shift could do in addition to what it does now that would make it more useful. I rather like Arcanaville's suggestion of a brief intangibility duration, followed by an application of random unpleasant effects as the enemies suffer from exposure to hostile dimensions. Another amusing idea would be to shift a single target and the Dominator, without provoking aggro from the remainder of the spawn, and allow the Dom and the target to affect each other. Pocket dimension duel!

Oh, certainly not! Electric Armor is exactly like having nothing at all. This buff is the least that could be done for it. Why, it's weak as a kitten! I can't tell you how many times I've cast envious glances at my friends' /EA and /Inv brutes and chewed my nails in frustration as they waltzed through Rikti, Carnies, and Malta without as much as a scratch. End my suffering, devs! Do not leave me trammeled into the dust!

(Was that too much? I never know...)

The only AoE control power my Fort has is Psychic Wail, and she does just fine.

Well, hey. If trying to show that /Elec has been working well for me means I don't get this nice buff, then mum's the word. Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more...

I'm not terribly keen on more Fifth Column stuff. When the 5th returned in Ouroboros, long time vets squealed. When they showed up in the ITF, they squealed harder. When AE included the 5th as a custom group, many an arc brought us back to the glory days of Nazi-punching. When the 5th were the focus of I15, I wondered why - they were already pretty much back. I think they can be given a rest for a while.

I'm unlikely to get excited about anything involving PvP; it's just not my bag.

I also didn't mention the endless overflowing font of endurance, because WP has this. However, SR, which has high mitigation and Quickness, is also notorious for not having that side benefit...

Incidentally, my brute is not Stone/ or Dark/ but SS/, and I'm largely exploiting that endless font of endurance and the drain mitigation...

Quick Recovery and Fast Healing are superior to Health and Stamina, so if you feel that Health and Stamina are sufficient for other Brutes, you can safely skip them on WP. That said, they do add a nice additional reservoir of regeneration and recovery. It all depends on whether you're willing to pass up two other powers for that additional reservoir.

It seems to me that, when comparing armor sets, active mitigation is frequently discounted in comparisons to an unreasonable degree. On paper, looking strictly at resistance, defense, heals, +HP, and regeneration, Electric Armor certainly seems to lag. Yet I've rarely found cause to complain about the survivability of my /Elec, in part because I paired it with a primary that complements it well, and in part because I've strongly leveraged its special qualities and active mitigation potential. I've found the same to be true of other "weak" armor sets. While I certainly won't complain about additional mitigation in /Elec (see initial response!), I'm more of the opinion that it makes a good set better than that it saves a bad one.

Some general advice for SM/WP...

Key SM Powers: Fault, Seismic Smash. Don't underestimate Fault: it does no damage, but it's an insanely good mez/mitigation power. It'll do a lot of good, especially in groups. Also, for groups, take Tremor: it's not an incredibly good AoE, but it's your only one, and it's another area knockdown power. Between Fault and Tremor, most enemies will never have a chance to attack you. Finally, take Taunt. WP is less effective than most armor sets in gathering aggro; if you want to tank for a team, you'll want Taunt.

Key WP powers: High Pain Tolerance, Indomitable Will, Rise to the Challenge, Quick Recovery. Pretty much everything in WP is good and worth taking; the self-rez is skippable, as WP rarely dies. Strength of Will is a solid short-duration buff with a minor crash at the end and unenhanceable recharge - it'll get you out of the occasional tight spot.

Good pool powers: Tough, Aid Self, Hasten. The first two will push your survivability from "good" to "nearly unkillable". Hasten just makes you hit faster, and what's wrong with that?

Patron powers: Soul Mastery now has Darkest Night, a toggle debuff that reduces enemy tohit. If you're planning to stack defense, Darkest Night's debuff will help. The other Soul Mastery attacks also debuff tohit, so it would seem to be the way to go. In groups, Soul Tentacles and Dark Obliteration will add to your otherwise lackluster AoE capability.

I'm not sure if this shouldn't go in its own thread, but it is an idea that addresses tanker stacking, end efficiency, and the unwanted threat problem.

The latter deserves a bit of explanation. Suppose a team including two tanks, or a tank and a scrapper, encounters an enemy that one tank is specifically deficient against: a psi AV versus an Inv tank, for instance, or a Stone/Ice and a Fire/EM fighting the same enemy. Clearly one of the tanks wants to be the aggro target, and the other just wants to deal damage efficiently. However, it can happen that the damage-dealing tank generates more threat through damage and Gauntlet than the aggro-grabbing tank/scrapper can overcome. In this case, what the damaging tank would want is some way to turn the threat generation of Gauntlet off.

So, this is my idea. Gauntlet becomes a zero-cost toggle. When it is off, attacks generate threat as normal. When it is on, attacks do not generate additional threat. Instead, the Gauntlet effect grants a short-duration endurance discount buff to the attacking Tanker for each enemy in its effect. The discount should have a larger initial component and then a smaller additional component for each enemy in radius - purely off the top of my head, say, 15% + 2% per enemy. The discount buff could also scale by enemy type, so that a greater discount is gained from fighting higher ranks.

The disadvantage, of course, is that this is complicated to use and possibly difficult to program. The advantage is that it addresses many tanker issues in one stroke. A solo tanker activates Gauntlet to offset the Tanker DPE disadvantage and gains an efficiency benefit from their ability to take on more enemies at a time. In a group with other tankers, the most survivable generates threat and absorbs damage, while the others pile on efficient damage. And when it is not desirable to generate threat, a tanker switches to endurance discount mode and attacks.

The endurance discount could, instead, be a damage buff. The reason why I don't suggest that right off is due to Castle's apparent disinclination to grant damage buffs to Tanks as their inherent, and also because it might be bad to excessively incentivize tanks to turn off their threat generation...

I read this, and then...

Crushing Field has a 45 second recharge, but unlike Wormhole or GDF, Crushing Field does not prevent enemies from attacking you. This is what Vyriss meant by "reliable AoE control" - they were referring to control powers that reliably provide mitigation. On this basis, Wormhole is your bread-and-butter power for mitigating potential damage, as it stuns many enemies at a time.

Grav/Psi is a combo that could go a number of ways. Grav/ is notably stronger at single-target control (due to the Singularity's stacking holds) than AoE control. /Psi used to be the go-to set for high AoE damage, but with the recent adjustments it is now somewhat weaker on AoE and considerably stronger on ST. So, you could focus on mass control and damage at close range, using the combination of Wormhole and Crushing Field to gather and immobilize many enemies, then buffing up with Drain Psyche and hitting the entire crowd with Psychic Scream and Psychic Shockwave. In this case, Soul Mastery would be your preferred pool, as Soul Drain would let you buff your damage from the many enemies surrounding you and clear the crowd quickly before your controls wear off.

Alternately, you could focus on ranged single-target damage and control. In that case, Gravity has a good attack/control power in Lift, and Psi has Mental Blast, TK Thrust, and Subdue, all solid ST attacks.

It should be noted that Grav/Psi is not a combo I enjoyed when I played it, and that was some time ago. I believe there are Grav/Psi guides out there that are far more useful than my speculations.

True, but that's still 31 levels of killing enemies with immob + force bolt.

Also, I'm actually not sure whether the 3 imps together outdamage the golem. It's true that he's gotten a lot stronger now that he uses all his attacks, but he still only hits one thing at a time. FWIW, I'd go with Earth/Son as the best golem-exploitation combo: the shields and -res aura on him basically turns him into your own little pet tank. But now we're waaaaay off topic...

It's worth noting that Radiation Emission is an unusually powerful set, for which there is no equivalent for Dominators. You simply won't find anything anywhere that is as fire-and-forget as a Fire/Rad controller; had you started with, say, an Earth/FF 'troller I think your estimation of Dominator damage capacity would be much more favorable.