I don't expect mez protection on Dom's. In PvE I normally play them the same way I play Blasters. It would be nice, but not a requirment IMO.
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
Maybe they could put a mez protection power in the Psi secondary instead of that garbage drain it has. I bet we'd see more /Psi Doms then! 
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Maybe they could put a mez protection power in the Psi secondary instead of that garbage drain it has. I bet we'd see more /Psi Doms then!
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Hmm, you know that wouldn't be such a bad idea - although personally I'd much prefer ditching Mental Blast rather than Drain Psyche - shift Subdue to Mental Blast's position, and plonk Indomitable Will into tier 7 - job's a good'un
Right.. the catch would be that it's a pbaoe mez resist drain like the Warshade Stygian Circle.
In other words, good luck getting any use of it in pvp. 
Honestly, pre-40 I think our active defenses are adequate. But (as posted by someone previously) tacking a limited mez protection on to the PPP armors would be an easy and a good addition.
but blasters have more HP and dmg
dmg > holds (cuz if they're dead they sure can't attack back, lol)
I don't believe Thoriz for one second when he says the PvP changes are fine... No Energy Dom who's out there naked as a jaybird in PvP (IE: not protected by a Jack, Grantinvis, and flanked by gobs of Stalkers) is going to say this is hunky dory. Energy did 2 things well, it dropped toggles and Stunned with longer Duration b/c of Powerboost. You don't get Domination up before you're dead by using energy attacks; they just recharge too slow, have too short a range, and nothing to offer for protection except KB (which is totally negated by Acrobatics or most Melee Status toggles).
Most doms don't have a dedicated PvP supergroup to support them so the realities they'll be facing will be in stark contrast to his. Plain and simple, Thoriz is sheltered, not creditable, and basing almost the entirety of his opinions on this matter off of FotM Ice builds in his elite SG.
I PvP with SG's built for PvP from the ground up too, so I know a difference it makes. But expecting everyone else to do the same is like yelling "134rN 2 P1Ay n00b" and that's not a casual solution to the problem. It totally ignores the Weaknesses that people are pointing out here.
(I tried to point this out in another thread but an altercation with someone who it shouldn't have even conerned resulted in it being "trimmed out" of existance. That's why I'm pointing it out again. this was a pre-existing statement and I will continue not to challenge anyone else to their opinions in this regard unless they're basing those opinions off of incoreect power Stats)
PvP play tends to gravitate to the most solo friendly classes, because teamwork is difficult and most people just want to feel uber while pwning with as little risk and effort as possible. Doms are by no means a solo AT in PvP, they just don't have the survivability to win even a fraction of their fights. In a sane game Controllers wouldn't be 3-shotting with Fire Mastery and containment, which would put them in a similar situation - support units but needing allies to truly work and take down a foe. This is the situation Defenders find themselves in with PvP today and you rarely see those in the zones either, and also why Blasters, Scrappers, and containment-abuse Controllers are so popular.
Don't expect the devs to make Doms solo friendly, you are barking up the wrong tree if that's what you expect them to do.
On the other hand, the Assault sets need to be fixed so act times are fair in terms of spamming ranged attacks for a dom bonus in PvP. Energy Assault and Fiery Assault need to have their ranged blast ACT times fixed. Power Bolt and Power Blast have acts of 1.7 and 2, the Flares act of 2.2 is gimp with only Fire Blast to make up for it. Currently Ice Assault has it best with the three 1 act ranged blasts (that also happens to be the best dps attack chain for dom secondaries), Psionic Assault has Psi Dart (not nearly as much dmg but can still be spammed at range), and Thorny Assault is nearly as good as Psi with Thorny Darts.
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Most doms don't have a dedicated PvP supergroup to support them so the realities they'll be facing will be in stark contrast to his. Plain and simple, Thoriz is sheltered, not creditable, and basing almost the entirety of his opinions on this matter off of FotM Ice builds in his elite SG.
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I have to laugh at this, FOTM? My Ice/En Dom was my very first villain character when CoV released. I didn't finish leveling him because I could see how broken they were for PvP. I have resumed leveling him because that is no longer the case. I compare Dom's to Blasters since they do have similar play styles in PvP, there are differences as well, but in both cases your defense is your ability to neutralize threats before they can hurt you. As for how I play, yes its almost entirely with members of my SG. However, the argument that my viewpoint is irrelevant because of that isn't particularly relevant. Is it so much to ask that /Thermals have, and use, Thaw? or /Sonics do the same with Clarity? I don't believe so, nor do I believe that it takes a dedicated PvP VG to do so. The only real justification that I can see for giving Doms mez protection in their PPP's due to factional balance. Controllers do get those powers, which brings the number of hero AT's with mez protection to 3 while only 2 villain AT's have mez protection outside of normal pool powers.
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I PvP with SG's built for PvP from the ground up too, so I know a difference it makes. But expecting everyone else to do the same is like yelling "134rN 2 P1Ay n00b" and that's not a casual solution to the problem. It totally ignores the Weaknesses that people are pointing out here.
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Blasters, Defenders, and Corruptors manage without self mez protection, I don't think that everyone should have it. IMO, Controller ought not to have been given mez protection, but that's already out there. Just because an AT requires team support to be good doesn't mean it needs a buff. Solo Blasters get chewed up pretty badly, just look at the number of threads in the Blaster forum saying just that. The devs have said that they are balancing around team v team PvP and everyone should carry BF's with them when they enter one of the PvP zones.
Whether you want to believe me or not is your choice. I can say that Doms are worth having on PvP teams. Doms on good teams do quite well, we ran with 3 last night, 2 VG members and a pickup and did very well in RV till our /Thermal ran into network problems.
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
I would rather discuss PvE play but since the only thing that people want to discuss here is PvP, I'm game.
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I compare Dom's to Blasters since they do have similar play styles in PvP, there are differences as well, but in both cases your defense is your ability to neutralize threats before they can hurt you.
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Unfortunately, the ways we "neutralize" a threat is vastly different. Damage is always effective, control is seldom effective (especially at higher levels).
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Blasters, Defenders, and Corruptors manage without self mez protection, ...
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As stated before, Blasters have damage on their side. But both Defenders and Corrs have the ability to buff/heal themselves or debuff their opponents. As Doms, we have nothing to fall back on. It's hold or nothing in most cases.
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Doms on good teams do quite well, ...
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This can be said about ANY AT. I've done some amazing things in Siren's with my Warshade if I can get on a good team. Still doesn't make Warshades very suitable to PvP.
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The only real justification that I can see for giving Doms mez protection in their PPP's due to factional balance. Controllers do get those powers, which brings the number of hero AT's with mez protection to 3 while only 2 villain AT's have mez protection outside of normal pool powers.
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This is a big point you bring up. I'll counter with the number of support AT's per side that can grant mezz protection. Obviously heroes get Defenders and Controllers. Both very powerful and abundant. Villians get Corrs and MM's. So on the surface it looks even, except the only power set for MM's that can give a Clariuty/Clear Mind style of protection is Poison. The others only offer PBAoE resistance. This tilts the advantage away from viliians (very much away from Doms.)
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Unfortunately, the ways we "neutralize" a threat is vastly different. Damage is always effective, control is seldom effective (especially at higher levels).
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I'd have to disagree, I never had problems with Doms in PvE. My Fire/Fire in the CoV beta was able to solo Relentless contact missions with ease. My Ice/En can't solo as quickly, but he runs on the middle setting in most cases simply because he doesn't have the AoE damage to handle the larger spawns. Control isn't his problem at all. My Mind/Ice is also fine in PvE. Now, some can and do have some issues, but I don't see that as a global AT level problem.
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As stated before, Blasters have damage on their side. But both Defenders and Corrs have the ability to buff/heal themselves or debuff their opponents. As Doms, we have nothing to fall back on. It's hold or nothing in most cases.
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Ice certainly has other options, Ice Slick, the cumulative slows, Artic Air, etc. Mind also has plenty of options and Confuse got a buff to its animation speed which will help even more. My Fire/Fire had zero problems, but Imps are the best PvE pets by far.
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This can be said about ANY AT. I've done some amazing things in Siren's with my Warshade if I can get on a good team. Still doesn't make Warshades very suitable to PvP.
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Warshades have a rather large dependency that Doms don't have. Far too many of their good self buffs and other powers require mob's. With the changes to Domination you won't see a Dom off to the side beating up npc's to get ready for a fight. Unfortunantly you will see this with WS's.
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This is a big point you bring up. I'll counter with the number of support AT's per side that can grant mezz protection. Obviously heroes get Defenders and Controllers. Both very powerful and abundant. Villians get Corrs and MM's. So on the surface it looks even, except the only power set for MM's that can give a Clariuty/Clear Mind style of protection is Poison. The others only offer PBAoE resistance. This tilts the advantage away from viliians (very much away from Doms.)
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Factional balance is one of the things that concerns me. I think the devs need to make MM's more a good buffing class. The mez protection buff in Poison only last 45 seconds!
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
Thank you for bring this discussion back to PvE. I think this is where it should be since there are a lot more PvE'ers than PvP'ers.
Soloing currently isn't a problem due to the minions abilities (Ive been soloing on Relentless since 32 with my Grav/Eng so I know it is very possible.). Pre-35, there are very few minions that have stun/holds. They are fairly easy to deal with. The only things that are a concern are Lts. and Bosses. Even at 40, Air Thorns arent that bothersome.
But if CoV follows the pattern of CoH, the sheer number of minions that have some sort of mezz attack will increase until nearly everyone has one. Maybe its my play style but I see my job, either solo or on a Team, closer to a Tanker. Prevent the mob from damaging my teammates so that they can dispatch them, then help with the mop up work. Im in close and get dirty. This imho was reinforced with the increase to our melee damage. Unfortunately, this could mean insto-death in the later levels.
I still don't see this as a big issue. The complaints about the strings of AV's that heroes encounter in the 40's has been corrected, the one thing that does need to get fixed is that AV's that get dropped down to EB's need to lose the AV "purple triangles". Other than that I don't see a big problem, will there be mez resistant mobs? Certainly, but there should be a "paper" to our "rock".
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
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Whether you want to believe me or not is your choice. I can say that Doms are worth having on PvP teams. Doms on good teams do quite well, we ran with 3 last night, 2 VG members and a pickup and did very well in RV till our /Thermal ran into network problems.
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I was that pickup last night playing my Ice/Fire Dom, Glacier Mistress. It was a thing of beauty I'm telling you. I teamed with LoTD for about 1/2hr or so. Everything and I mean everything fell to our group. Tanks, scrappers,blapper trollers. I was building domination so fast it was crazy. Popped it 4 or 5 times in that 1/2hr. I'm gonna miss teaming with LoTD when I7 hits as they aren't on my server.
The thing I have taken from this as a player is: COX PVP is balanced around teams. Trying to fight this is futile and counter productive. I have done it myself, but carping about the PVP capabilites of a solo Dom is pointless. They were never meant to be solo. No AT is. Even Stalkers benefit from a team environment. How much easier is it to AS a held and helpless foe than someone jumping all over the map?
PVE wise I have never felt gimped as a Dom. Running missions on the test server and it is even better. The quicker recharge on Domination is making a difference to me.
Thanks Atomic, you're always welcome to fight with us.
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
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Thanks Atomic, you're always welcome to fight with us.
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Sadly, I cant join in this because now my second copy of my dominator is crashing on signing in (is it the Mako missions causing this?).
When I've been able to go to RV, its been 500 jazzillion heros to ~10 villains. Cant test anything, too many heros, all wanting to kill a poor helpless villain.
and our rock shouldn't be just a wet ball of dirt
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I still don't see this as a big issue. The complaints about the strings of AV's that heroes encounter in the 40's has been corrected, the one thing that does need to get fixed is that AV's that get dropped down to EB's need to lose the AV "purple triangles". Other than that I don't see a big problem, will there be mez resistant mobs? Certainly, but there should be a "paper" to our "rock".
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It's not the amount of mezz resistant minions. It's the amount of mezz producing minions that I am woried about. We have no "scissors" to their "paper."
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and our rock shouldn't be just a wet ball of dirt
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What PvE content makes you feel that useless and what's your pri/sec?
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
Acrobatics.
i've tried about 5 different combos of doms up to about lvl 12 (have a plant/fire i've gotten to 14)
yes i took the holds and not the immobs
but the control is just lacking on most until past lvl 20, it's like I could hold 1 guy and do some soft control on another, and do some piddly-[censored] damage, and leech off the team mostly
I'd rather have 2 control sets instead of 1 control set and 1 crappy damage set
oh well, guess doms aren't for me
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Whether you want to believe me or not is your choice. I can say that Doms are worth having on PvP teams. Doms on good teams do quite well, we ran with 3 last night, 2 VG members and a pickup and did very well in RV till our /Thermal ran into network problems.
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I'm aware of ALL of this... Infact we agree more than most anyone else on the Boards that it's meant to be balanced for Team VS Team.... IE: How we've always agreed that Stalkers should be encouraged to team more as well.
The Problem is... Doms are unwanted on teams in general. They suffer from the Glass Cannon syndrome Blasters used to suffer from: IE: when everyone preferred Scrappers b/c they had much more HP's thus didn't need a wetnurse/rezzer. Well... everyone would much rather take another Stalker or Corruptor over a Dom... ESPECIALLY IN PVP. The complete lack of self +DEF buffs and Ally-Buffs, lack of Mez protection, lack of Hitpoints, and lack of Alphastrike capability makes a majority of them practically useless.
Take what I've done... I rolled my Grav/NRG up to 33... did well in PvP but also got 2-shot Ganked by blasters/scrappers everytime I left the Base. But I was okay with that because I was Dropping scrapper and tanker toggles left and right in LESS THAN 3 ATTACKS which allowed me to hold them and contribute to easier kills for my team.
After seeing the I-7 Patch notes... I abondoned my PvP Dominator and rolled an Nrg/Traps Corruptor instead who's already 3x less "squishy", has more damage, and so much utility it's not even funny. His final build is still pending... but you can bet that if I'm already at 3x the REP points of my dom at level 30, without being respec'd for PvP like my Dom is, and play both builds exclusively in Teamed PvP -- that a Corruptor is obviously the way to go. Plain and simple: Anyone who rolls a Dom is just gimping themselves in PvP.
Here's what my Corr can bring to the table:
Web'Nade: -JMP ...(only 1 Dom build gets this) and its a HUGE DEAL in PvP
Caltrops: -SPD
FF Gen: Very high +DEF and Status Resists to Stun/Hold/Immob ...again, HUGE in PvP
Mortar: -DEF debuff with a VERY HIGH base Accuracy, even hit defenders in PFF consistantly
Seeker Drones: -ACC/-Per Debuff: Both a HUGE deal in PvP
Sniper Blast @ lvl 18: This crap plus Scourge OWNS "runners" in outdoor PvP Zones
TripMine: High Damage plus toggle Dropping.
PoisonTrap: Easily the most broken AoE hold in the game: Not only does it cycle in 30 secs for me, but it also autohits and "pulses", thus dropping toggles MUCH faster than Domination ever could.
The best part is, /Cold and /Rad is actually preferred by most PvP Corruptors while traps is only preferred by Masterminds in PvP so no one will ever be able to call me a FotM like /Ice dominators obviously will be. IE: to Clarify I wasn't calling YOU a FotM... Ice/Nrg is FAR from it. However all /Ice doms will be FotM in I-7 ...very squishy and in need of contant buff-bottage...thus a burden to their team but a FotM none the less.
THAT is how badly Doms will continue to suck in PvP, teamed or not... IE: to the point that a PvE built corruptor almost no one else in their right mind would level up to 30, but can totally leave them all in the dust.
Certainly your /Traps Cor will have more solo ability, especially if ya add Aid Self, but I wouldn't give him equal billing in a team situations. Dom's do require some care and feeding, but no more and no less than all but /Traps and /Sonc Corruptors, which are the only ones (IIRC) that get their own mez protection. Web Grenade is good, its one of the few reasons my /Dev Blaster is still ok. However everyone and their brother, on the villain side, is going to have Web Cocoon and/or Web Envelope that its value is going to go down. The devs have always had a hard time balancing damage as a secondary. It never seems to work out that well, however with Doms having the best toggle drops left in the game and Domination much more often, there are lots of options to deal with the lack of damage from Doms.
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
Funny thing is, I was talking to a VG-mate of mine tonight and he said that he would rather I bring my Ice/Dark Corr into RV instead of my Dom. He pointed out that I can spam my two holds (Freeze Ray and Petrifying Gaze) and have better luck trying to hold someone then trying to survive long enough to build Domination.
I was going to argue but then I realized he was right. Plus my Corr can Debuff and self-heal. Add into the equation that my Corr does more damage. The only time I think I would actually bring my Dom in is if the villians had a huge numbers advantage. Kinda sad.
This is not saying that I will abandon my Dom. In PvE I'm sure I can do fine.
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I'd suggest you test this before commenting, this is a buff and quite a large one. I personally don't believe that Doms need anymore big adjustments. Some small ones would be fine, but the biggest PvP issues have been addressed.
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Unfortuneately there are several PvE issues that have not (mez portection for one) but I don't hold much hope that the devs will do anything else for us.