What was the assault change thing?
Using their secondary powers in PvP give them more Domination points now?
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Formerly known as YFNDBA
*shrug*
Faster Domination in PVP = good
Removal of Dominator toggle dropping = bad
You took a patently underpowered archetype, buffed it with one hand and nerfed it with the other. Underpowered +1 -1 = Underpowered.
Dominators, of ALL the ATs in the game, needed toggle dropping in PVP. Their damage is horrendous and their holds are 80% Controller strength. Toggle dropping was not only one of the only things they brought to a PVP team, it was fun. Removing toggle drops on Blasters who can 2 shot people is smart, removing toggle drops on Dominators who can 30 shot people on a good day is not.
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Dominators Domination inherent ability will charge much more quickly when fighting PvP.
Domination recharge time reduced from 300 to 200.
Player Pets should no longer attack the lava in the Batzul mission.
Dominator Psionic Assault Drain Psyche now accepts Accuracy enhancements. The power was intended to accept them originally, but was unintentionally left off.
Dominators: Domination inherent ability will charge much more quickly when fighting PvP targets. Each attack from the Assault secondary power sets adds a bonus of 8 points toward filling the Domination bar over the normal value.
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Yippe flippin skipee...now if only I could build domination fast enough to use it more than once per mission this might actually be useful.
Or maybe if I could ...oh I dunno. Kill things inside of 2 minutes.
Its pretty sad when it still takes 4 attacks with +3 SOs to kill some -12 mobs.
@PlasmaStream
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Niska: Are you Familiar with the works of Shan Yu?
Would someone please provide a list of which toggle-dropping Dom powers were changed and how? Then we would at least be able to assess the scale of the changes.
I love the changes to domination. I do find that damage is still too low even with domination running. In PvP I find that controls come a dime a dozen, and due to that, most come prepared. With our controlling abilities mostly negated, that leaves us with our damage. Yet we have subpar damage therefore even with domination running, I'm not much use for my team, against any decent team. Would we really be overpowered if we did more damage? I don't think we'd be.
I may be the only one that feels this way, so my opinion may not mean much.
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I love the changes to domination. I do find that damage is still too low even with domination running. In PvP I find that controls come a dime a dozen, and due to that, most come prepared. With our controlling abilities mostly negated, that leaves us with our damage. Yet we have subpar damage therefore even with domination running, I'm not much use for my team, against any decent team.
I may be the only one that feels this way, so my opinion may not mean much.
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I had a tiny little arachnobot kill a hero faster than I did.
We have less control than controllers. Less damage than almost anyone I think (though if someone has numbers I happily rescind that statement), are nigh expected in Melee (at least with all of Ice PBAOE we are) with no HP or defense.
Cmon someone please give us something. in PVP control is temporary at best with people regularly making shopping trips for Break Frees every 6k bounty or so!
@PlasmaStream
"Big Bada Boom(tm)!"
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Niska: Are you Familiar with the works of Shan Yu?
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Faster Domination in PVP = good
Removal of Dominator toggle dropping = bad
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I couldn't possibly agree with Doc more!
Please give us back our 100% toggle droppers, pretty please? 2 steps forward and 3 back is still 1 step backward.
Let us have toggle dropping as our powerful little niche ability. We are already priority target #1 for every hero, let that mean something. Fast Dom buildup + ability to drop toggles would make the Dominator a dangerous opponent, give us a great role on teams and wouldn't be overpowered in the least.
Puh-leeze?
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Dominators Domination inherent ability will charge much more quickly when fighting PvP.
Domination recharge time reduced from 300 to 200.
Player Pets should no longer attack the lava in the Batzul mission.
Dominator Psionic Assault Drain Psyche now accepts Accuracy enhancements. The power was intended to accept them originally, but was unintentionally left off.
Dominators: Domination inherent ability will charge much more quickly when fighting PvP targets. Each attack from the Assault secondary power sets adds a bonus of 8 points toward filling the Domination bar over the normal value.
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Yippe flippin skipee...now if only I could build domination fast enough to use it more than once per mission this might actually be useful.
Or maybe if I could ...oh I dunno. Kill things inside of 2 minutes.
Its pretty sad when it still takes 4 attacks with +3 SOs to kill some -12 mobs.
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Let's not call a good thing bad. Domination is useful. I easily get it off twice in a mission, and with a reduced recharge time, I'm less nervous about using it more often. Being able to get it off with more regularity in PvP is extremely useful. ONCE Domination is off, we do more damage than Blasters and have longer control than Controllers.
I still think we could use a damage buff, a few of the sets need a look-through and I think blaster-level HP would be reasonable, but that doesn't mean we should dump the Domination changes.
They removed Dom's toggle dropping in PVP? I don't remember seeing that in the patch notes...
But still I fear and still I dare not laugh at the madman!
One man's "meh" is another man's "zomg". - Leatherneck
Procrastination meter coming soon.
HollowKing: Team or Solo?
I usually run with a Brute or 2, a Kin corruptor and a Rad/Dark. if I get enough to fill the bar ONCE I consider myself lucky
@PlasmaStream
"Big Bada Boom(tm)!"
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Niska: Are you Familiar with the works of Shan Yu?
The overall changes to toggle dropping are universal, not Dominator specific. The percentages have been lowered, not removed. There's no more 100% chance to drop a toggle anymore.
"Null is as much an argument "for removing the cottage rule" as the moon being round is for buying tennis shoes." -Memphis Bill
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I love the changes to domination. I do find that damage is still too low even with domination running. In PvP I find that controls come a dime a dozen, and due to that, most come prepared. With our controlling abilities mostly negated, that leaves us with our damage. Yet we have subpar damage therefore even with domination running, I'm not much use for my team, against any decent team.
I may be the only one that feels this way, so my opinion may not mean much.
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I had a tiny little arachnobot kill a hero faster than I did.
We have less control than controllers. Less damage than almost anyone I think (though if someone has numbers I happily rescind that statement), are nigh expected in Melee (at least with all of Ice PBAOE we are) with no HP or defense.
Cmon someone please give us something. in PVP control is temporary at best with people regularly making shopping trips for Break Frees every 6k bounty or so!
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HollowKing: Team or Solo?
I usually run with a Brute or 2, a Kin corruptor and a Rad/Dark. if I get enough to fill the bar ONCE I consider myself lucky
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Both. And I can fill Dom on both. If you sit around in the back throwing off holds and occassional attacks, you won't do it. You need to get stuck in. That's what we do. That's why we have melee powers.
And you'll notice I had two Dominators, so it's not just a matter of a single set doing it for me.
Getting Domination up isn't really a problem. Sitting on it is. Once you have it up, it's not really worthwhile to use it and then discover that the boss was right around the corner. Then you're screwed. Or in PvP, trying to build it up only to die and have it reset.
Both of these changes fix both problems (especially as many Dominators, including myself, can charge the Dom bar before Domination itself has recharged, which is why Hasten is popular among some Dominators)
Is it enough? Well, it's the test server... so we test. And we'll see. I was already pretty happy with my PvE performance (I have some issues with my survivability, but the fix to Drain Psyche, at least, will fix it for my Psychic Dom. Still a little worried about my Thorns Dom), so we'll see if the Domination changes fixes us or not.
So far, it seems the Devs are playing a conservative game. People like buffs better than nerfs. They'd rather hear that under-powered Doms are getting a buff than that over-powered Doms are gettnig a nerf. So when looking at numbers, they fudge low to stay safe. This looks like another low fudge. We'll see if it's enough, or if we need to slide up again.
*nods*
Just amidst the inevitable complaints, I'd like to thank the devs for lowering the recharge on Domination. I haven't tested it yet to see how it feels, but I guarantee you I'll be happy about it in play to some degree.
One drawback of the internet is how it has trained so many people to think that one day is a long time.
Frankly I think that the domination boost should be lowered by 50% and have the standard attacks boosted in damage to compensate. The domination bonus of increased duration, mag and endurance refill is enough without making it the sole way for a dominator to deal damage. Give it a minor damage boost rather than a major one and tip the scales for the more attacks.
there are a bunch of ways they could fix domination :/
at least they reduced the recharge by 1/3
Ok, as I actually did manage to stay on Test for a while last night, here are some of my initial observations. I spent almost all of my time in Recluse's Victory, as all of our changes are PvP only.
Domination - it took exactly 13 attacks from my secondary assault set to enable Domination. This is a marked improvement and I was able to utilize Domination a few times in PvP last night.
Toggle Dropping - I only have Ice Sword in my build, my tier 2 toggle drop power. A controller running 3 toggles allowed me to test it out on him, thank you Balshor. End result, Ice Sword did not drop a single toggle on him after thwacking away at him for about 2 minutes or so. Another Dom, Nouveau Paris, went at him with Mind Probe and Psychic Shockwave. Mind Probe also did not drop any of his toggles. Psychic Shockwave dropped one toggles every three or four hits. Check with Nouveau for a more precise count if he has one.
General notes - I had a lot of fun in RV last night. Granted, it was a major lag fest, one count had over 220 players in the zone, but I was still able to engage in some solid pvp during a few smooth moments. The increased Domination build up was helpful, and I did bang a few times last night to significant effect. However, the loss of toggle dropping was also noticeable, and Dom's are still meat as soon as any damage dealer actually looks our way. That being said, I think my improved performance last night was aided the most by the sheer number of combatants. In that kind of mass melee I had an easier time keeping myself out of the center of attention. I expect once we all return to our normal live servers, and the sheer number of combatants drops back down, I will again become the first one down during any engagement, I'm just that easy a target.
In terms of build, almost certainly dropping Ice Sword now. Useful for damage at the lower levels, but one you get high enough to respec it does more harm than good, drawing you into melee where we die fast and the damage just isn't enough to justify the risk. Greater Ice Sword might, if it hits hard enough and still has a chance to toggle drop, normal Ice Sword definitely not. So that power is toast.
Tk still is da bomb for Mind Dom's, it was my bread and butter in RV last night along with Terrify, Dominate, and Levitate for the -Fly. Oh, and the new Confuse animation... yay! Losing that delay at the end of activation really did make a differnece in the power, so thank you devs for fixing that one.
Did get in a little PvE last night as well, really not much though, but I am disappointed in the total lack of any PvE boost. To cap it off AV's just got an undefined buff, which were a sore point for us already due to the "we are now totally useless" purple triangles of don't bring a Dom with you for this one. Coraling the minions for the Corruptor to wipe up is nice and all, but do Dom's have any other purpose in the End game now? What exactly are we going to do on the Recluse SF against Statesman and the Freedom Phalanx? I'm sure they are trembling in fear of my devastating Ice Bolt and all, but really.... And before someone warps that out of context, no I don't think a lone dominator should be able to chain mez Statesman or any other Hero/AV, but I do think we should be useful to the team in some fashion and I'm just not sure what that is in the end game.
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Frankly I think that the domination boost should be lowered by 50% and have the standard attacks boosted in damage to compensate. The domination bonus of increased duration, mag and endurance refill is enough without making it the sole way for a dominator to deal damage. Give it a minor damage boost rather than a major one and tip the scales for the more attacks.
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QFE
Even the people who complain about it usually dance around the subject. There's probably some pre-conception reason it doesn't get addressed. Or it's just not a priority. Or whatever. But this is the place so I'm going to state it as baldly and simply as possible.
Dominators need more _base_ damage.
We bring poor control and poor damage with no passive type defenses and tiny hp to the table. The last two are actually fine as it creates the tiny margin for error in play that most Dominators seem to live for overcoming. The weakened control is fine as we aren't trying to shape a battlefield like Controllers. It's used to let us attempt to control the thing we are immediately killing and leave us relatively undistracted so we can do so. The damage output though leaves the whole construct weak. Dominators can't kill appreciably fast so they tend to fall back most heavily on their control powers in a team, but again the controls are weaker than a Controller. Nor is the control primary a panacea. It works excellently when least required (against a few minions) and begins to struggle or fail when it is most needed (against large targets such as EBs, AVs with their triangles or anything carrying a Breakfree). I would draw a parallel to the drop off in Defense effectiveness that led to the changes in this Issue.
Higher base damage would let Dominators bring either damage output -or- some lesser control as the situation dictated and would tread lightly on the 'make a mistake/miss an enemy and faceplant' nature of the AT that makes it so fervently (though often with chagrin) loved by its players. More damage would even out the AT.
Indeed, Domination -does- help for 90 seconds when it is on, but even with a reduction of the recharge timer we are still comparable to the effectiveness of other ATs only a minority of the time. Imagine if the +Dam of Domination were stripped out entirely and folded into the AT: The inherent would still be used at the times and in the situations when it most usually is as it most commonly is saved for extra protection against large targets. The extra damage though would allow the AT to keep pace rather than trying to mezz various targets that other villains have probably already blown through with damage and kept going. (This is not a proposal, it is an illustration).
Dominators need more _base_ damage.
It's not going to happen in I7. But it has at least been said.
(To Corruptors who might feel this could tread on one of the two things they do: Dominators do have ranged blasts, but our most damaging attacks are Melee and we do not have damage increasing buff/de-buffs or an 'always on' inherent that increases damage ~25%)
(To other Dominators: The nature of the AT, and the fact that any routine Dominator player is quite proud of their ability to function as one, leads to comments such as the above often being construed as 'whinying from someone who doesn't know how to play and is having a hard time trying to ruin our AT'. I do -not- want Dominators to get "easier", else I would by complaining about survivability. I argue for more effectiveness.)
Thanks for the information Dayraven. It honestly looks like 1 step forward 2 steps back IMO. Is there really any point in melee attacks for dominators now? What is the reward (hello dev's...risk vs reward 
) for going into melee range? Oh... i know, DEATH.. you get another debt badge, SWEET! 
Melee attacks do 7.7% more base damage than ranged / aoe attacks.
Phantom Rose: Ill / Kin / Psi
Soleau: Ice / Icy / Ice / Core: Ice / Fire / Pyre / Wind / Eclipse / Flare / Corona
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Solo Space
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(To other Dominators: The nature of the AT, and the fact that any routine Dominator player is quite proud of their ability to function as one, leads to comments such as the above often being construed as 'whinying from someone who doesn't know how to play and is having a hard time trying to ruin our AT'. I do -not- want Dominators to get "easier", else I would by complaining about survivability. I argue for more effectiveness.)
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As one of those posters who usually growls at people who complain about Dominators (and in my defense, there's alot of annoying whiners in the Dominator forums, so it's a knee jerk reaction), I have to say I'm coming around.
Corruptors have ranged, blaster-style attacks as their primary. If they had this alone, one would assume that the value would be 100% of what a blaster does. But they do 75%. Why? Because they buff, and they can self buff, and that evens the difference out.
75% seems to be the golden number for secondaries. Controllers and Corruptors, for example, are 75% as effective with their secondaries as Defenders are with their primaries. Defenders break this trend by having 65% in their secondaries (their attacks). But that's ok, they can self-buff, and this evens it out.
Dominators do 65% damage with their secondaries (Yes, Melee does more damage, but with greater risk comes greater reward. Blasters do more damage with their melees too). Shouldn't it be 75%? That would be more consistent. We don't self-buff, not in the consistent, perma-manner that Defenders and Corruptors can. Couple this with the fact that we have low hit points and no passive forms of defense, and it becomes troublesome.
Domination does throw a spanner in the works. Does the massive bonus we have on for 90 seconds out of 200 (rather than 300, what it used to be) even things out? I'm not sure. I need to test to find out. >.< Too bad the test server is still down.
*sighs and waits patiently*
You know, I keep seeing people talking about how Domination is the sole way to deal damage, and I keep looking at my secondary set and my actual damage output and, frankly, wondering what these people are defining as 'damage' that I don't seem to be doing.
From my perspective, a Dominator should play somewhere between a Controller (whose primary sets are similar) and a Defender (whose secondaries are similar). They're never going to be a primary damage dealer, but they should be able to do a reasonable damage output, combined with holds and debuffs.
Assuming the numbers over in this thread in Guides are more or less correct, Defenders and Dominators both do approximately 65% of Blaster damage for ranged attacks, while Dominators do 65% for melee (compared to Defenders 55%), which does give me some hard numbers to back up my feeling on this.
It's hard to precisely compare Defender and Dominator secondaries, of course, but the feel I get is that Defenders overall get a slight boost to BI in some attacks, so in absolute terms they probably do a bit more ranged damage overall, though likely a bit less melee. On the other hand, most of their primaries don't have damage-causing powers at all [Storm is the big exception, Dark the small one], whereas Dominators don't have that issue.
As far as their effectiveness on control goes, the numbers I see around the boards say that they're about 80% as effective as Controllers... while having vastly more attacks available to them in their secondaries. So while it's true that with Containment, per-damage attack for Controllers might end up higher, and it's true that the holds for Dominators might not work quite as well as Controllers, it's also true that both for non-contained enemies (hey, they do happen to controllers) and overall, there's less damage potential for a Controller than a Dominator.
My personal opinion is that comparing them to Controllers, Corrupters, or Defenders means expecting things from Dominators that they aren't. They're not any of those things, and if you go into it expecting identical abilities in any way to those things, I would not be surprised if you're disappointed.
On the other hand, if you go into it expecting them to be what they ARE -- a moderate-damage causing AT with some ability to hold and debuff -- then they play quite well.
At least in my experience.
As to Domination? I don't want it changed (other than the nice recharge boost it's getting, which I'm happy about). I don't want Containment-for-Villains (Domination does more than just boost damage, after all), and I don't want it lowered in effectiveness just so it's available all the time (triggering it in key situations has been extremely useful to me and I'd like to keep it that way).
Please note, you can argue with this all you want. I sha'n't change my mind, I doubt I'm changing anyone else's, and I have more interesting things to do than to get in a flaming match with people. Like, say, test Thugs. But y'all had your say, now I'm having mine, and I'm done.
One drawback of the internet is how it has trained so many people to think that one day is a long time.
This thread is solely for discussions regarding the recent Dominator changes in Issue 7. Please read the Issue 7 Training Room Patch Notes for details.
All off topic posts will be removed. Please do not post bugs/feedback/balance issues before testing this content. All bugs/feedback/balance issues should be posted after playing a Dominator on test.