Castle's post on Toggle Dropping
As for the changes to Dom, my MC/Psi is happy with them. I'm finding that Domination is coming up every other mob for me now in PvE. Psychic Shockwave is pretty decent for building dom and I do have Hasten on auto.
As for the complaints about Dom's pets, they're still permable. 3 SO recharge + Hasten will get it down so that the recharge is done right around when the pet dissappears.
An interesting note, Psychic Shockwave's chance to toggle drop feels like it's been boosted, not nerfed. On the same note, its chance to Disorient feels like it's gone up too. No longer am I disorienting 1 minion in 10, it's more like 4 or 5 in 10.
Another testing note, in Mayhem missions I'm finding that the PPD Psi Corps LT's are taking 2 holds to be held, just like their bosses. Is this intentional? I'm gonna cross post this bit into the Mayhem thread.
domination only generates 2 ticks of damage if you miss with an assault attack. Is that as intended?
Okay. Here is what is most wrong with Doms, and here is how to fix it.
What is wrong with Doms is that their inherent power only works to their advantage a fraction of the time. You cannot say that about ANY other AT (except perhaps Defs, who need to be on a team to benefit from Vigilance). There is absolutely no difference between a Dom at 5% Domination and a Dom at 85% Domination. Even a Dominator with a full bar will often sit on it, saving it up for a boss fight, battling through fights in which it does them no good at all - what other AT has to do anything of the kind, ever?
This makes PvP especially insane. We have scant chance of winning unless we have Domination up, and to get Domination up, we have to enter fights in which we have scant chance of winning. It's a Catch 22.
Here's what to do to fix it. Let our damage increase as our Domination bar increases, much like Fury, but obviously at Domination pace instead. Once the bar is full, we ought to be dealing equivalent damage to that which we do when Domination is activated. However, we won't have the bonus to control mag and duration that activated Domination gives.
We will then have to make a tactical choice: keep the bar full and continue to deal good damage, OR activate Domination in order to get a brief period of good damage AND good control, only to see it drop back down to zero when that expires.
Hey presto. Doms become viable.
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Okay. Here is what is most wrong with Doms, and here is how to fix it.
What is wrong with Doms is that their inherent power only works to their advantage a fraction of the time. You cannot say that about ANY other AT (except perhaps Defs, who need to be on a team to benefit from Vigilance). There is absolutely no difference between a Dom at 5% Domination and a Dom at 85% Domination. Even a Dominator with a full bar will often sit on it, saving it up for a boss fight, battling through fights in which it does them no good at all - what other AT has to do anything of the kind, ever?
This makes PvP especially insane. We have scant chance of winning unless we have Domination up, and to get Domination up, we have to enter fights in which we have scant chance of winning. It's a Catch 22.
Here's what to do to fix it. Let our damage increase as our Domination bar increases, much like Fury, but obviously at Domination pace instead. Once the bar is full, we ought to be dealing equivalent damage to that which we do when Domination is activated. However, we won't have the bonus to control mag and duration that activated Domination gives.
We will then have to make a tactical choice: keep the bar full and continue to deal good damage, OR activate Domination in order to get a brief period of good damage AND good control, only to see it drop back down to zero when that expires.
Hey presto. Doms become viable.
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I kind of was thinking along those lines but was thinking that with both increased Control and Damage. I knew that no one would go for that. Admittedly, it would be too powerful. But I like your idea of just the damage escallating. (sp?)
I kind of feel for Dom's with this issue like I did with my Blasters and their inherant ... you know, the invisible inherant. The one they refuse to make more adventagous with at least some reguard to the Blaster surviving. (oops...not a Blaster thread. Sorry! 
) It least we get 90 seconds. They get faceplanted. I guess we're lucky? 
or maybe just related.
God this is... This is just a joke... I don't even know why I'm putting feedback in this thread other than an obsession for pointing out design flaws. If the Devs wanted to read our opinions about Dominators, then we wouldn't have had to ask for this thread, it would have been here from the start.
Look, Doms have always had serious deficiencies in just about every part of the game and since Beta they've tried to patch it over with the Inherrent. In other AT's, your Role more or less directly synergizes with your Inherrent. Especially Brutes, Stalkers, Corruptors, Scrappers, and Controllers. ...which brings me to:
<ul type="square">[*]Domination Recharge reduced to 200:[/list]-- This change means absoultely nothing for the Majority of builds who have long-animations and End-hogging AoE attacks. And domination will still be down a majority of the time without Hasten. ...All this change is going to do is amplify the obvious deficiency between the good sets like Fire&Ice and everything else that doesn't compete.
Now this doesn't mean that Psi, NRG, Gravity, Mind, and Thorn reliant sets can't take advantage of this reduction, but they all generally have to close to Melee range to do it which means they're taking a lot more mezzing and damage for a reward that pales in comparison to other Inherrents. Afterall, no one's ever said Domination is overpowered meanwhile the AT's that people have repeatedly pointed to as overpowered got BIGGER BUFFS this issue than Doms. ...So these issue 7 changes also fail to address Risk/Reward issues in addition to Synergy issues.
<ul type="square">[*]Assault powers in PvP yielding 8 Dom points:[/list]-- This is the change that we should have gotten for PvE and is an even bigger PvP Synergy issue than the previous topic I just addressed...plus it doesn't work if we MISS. A well built PvP Dom on Live right now has generally 2 melee/close Attacks, and maybe 1 or 2 *other* assault attacks and generally raises their Domination through spamming control while Kiting or setting up for using those melee attacks to drop toggles.... (right before they're 2 shotted by any Scrapper or Blapper that comes along and thinks "Yay!, free points"). Infact, this change will only encourage heroes to Gank us even faster b/c we're a lot more annoying when domination is up. ...which bring me to:
<ul type="square">[*]Main Toggle droppers NERFED from 175% to 5%:[/list]-- This is where our Survivability in PvP actually was being rewarded... (unless against SR scrappers but they've always broken PvP rules since Issue-4) ...Now we don't have any deterrent at all. Worse.. the one Melee attack we get that's supposed to be 64% (though testing suggests it's closer to 33% or less) isn't even available till the 30's for some sets which means Doms need not even Step foot in Siren's or BloodyBay anymore and have seriously gone up a notch on the Scrapper "list of Free-Points". This NERF has no point to it at all. If Blasters were "too good" with Toggle Drops, then why not just nerf theirs? Instead of giving Doms more options in PvP, they've given us LESS. If the Devs can't roll this change back for Doms then you'll never see mine in PvP ever again.... it's just not worth the Gank-Fest.
So the Design-change Failure is Three-Fold, and those issues they failed to address are:
-Lack of Mez-Protection and Staying-Power in PvE
-Crap Damage, and Primaries Negated by Break-Frees, in PvP thus NO deterrants in PvP.
-Lack of Synergy in everything we get NO damage/survival compensation for it.
Doms are already very under-represented in every way and their populations on the live servers have only been HALF of Brutes/Stalkers/Corruptors and only 1/3 of MM numbers. After Issue-7, I won't be the least bit suprised if those numbers fall even farther... I know I won't be among those numbers anymore and will be encouraging other Doms I meet in-game to roll a different AT too.
2 days ago, I PM'd States asking him to "lay the Vision" on us where Doms are concerned, but he most likely just took one look at the subject and deleted it. He didn't respond and obviously hasn't even stepped foot in here...no Designer has and none will at this rate. When issue-7 goes live, Doms will be dead to me just like they are to the Devs and I don't want any of the rest of you people Harrassing me for that. I don't have time to play Broken AT's anymore and you people shouldn't either. So take it up directly with Statesman and Positron like I did....then go roll something else in the meantime b/c it's going to be a long friggin way to Issues 8 and 9.
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Another testing note, in Mayhem missions I'm finding that the PPD Psi Corps LT's are taking 2 holds to be held, just like their bosses. Is this intentional? I'm gonna cross post this bit into the Mayhem thread.
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This is consistent with Fortunata/Night Widow Arachnos mobs and also with the Lost LTs. I suppose the thematic idea is that Psionic mobs resist holds better. Sure would be nice if our own powersets had features like that.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
Let's not forget Stalkers. Their inherrant ability is the crits from Hidden, which on a team happens once per fight unless they hit and run all day or a Dominator holds them. The long and short of it though is Dominators aren't damage dealers and most Doms need to accept this.
Now at the risk of a Dev reading this and deciding to Nerf it, my solution to the lack of Damage has become Confuse. "But it steals all my XPeeeeee" you cry? Well, sort of. At some point along the way, Confuse hits a cap as to how much XP it can *actually* steal from you. The trick is you actually have to damage everything the confused target hits before they kill it. So, I confuse a boss, toss down my AOE Fear (MC/Terrify) which retardedly does damage (another sore spot for me but I leave it alone) and let the boss kill everyone. I currently don't have mass confusion but I'm probably gonna spec it back in.
Plant Doms: Seeds of Confusion + AOE Immob
Fire Doms: [censored], you do damage and smoke owns
Ice Doms: Ice Slick FTW, and you get a confuse.
Grav Doms: Atleast you have a pet >_>
So the cap for the confuse XP seems to be roughly half at lvl 40. Perhaps it has always been half, but at lvl 40, Half is still good XP and this tactic allows you to solo Newspaper missions on Relentless.
The other thing is it has been my experience, even more so with i7 than prior, that AOE's build domination up a lot faster than single shots. I'll get some hard numbers later tonight perhaps but it feels like 1pt per hit foe as a general statement about PvE.
For those complaining about PvP, go try it on test please and/or READ THE FREAKING THREAD because it's now ~13 hits from a secondary in pvp to build domination.
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I don't have time to play Broken AT's anymore and you people shouldn't either. So take it up directly with Statesman and Positron like I did....then go roll something else in the meantime b/c it's going to be a long friggin way to Issues 8 and 9.
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My sentiments exactly. When CoV went live, I loved the concept of doms, and rolled 6-8 of them, with my highest level now being 30-ish. I knew doms were borked, but had high hopes that I-7 would provide some good buffs. Looking at the low number of people playing doms, especially at higher levels, and their obvious flaws, I felt that doms would be a high priority for the devs to fix in I-7.
Well, I-7 is on test and there is nothing that helps doms in PvE. The reduced recharge on Domination won't help people who team, and it is only likely to be useful to a few of the solo scraptroller types who think it is fun to run around with Brawl on auto.
Unless some major changes are made, I'm done with this AT. I have rolled some MMs and a couple of Stalkers, and I already have high-level corrs. All of these toons are so much fun, solo well, and contribute a lot to teams. Count me as one more dom drop-out.
FivefifteenA
It's getting cold in here... 
so very cold.... 
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The long and short of it though is Dominators aren't damage dealers and most Doms need to accept this.
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Then why do we have a damage focused secondary?
On these boards I constantly see what Dominators aren't, but can anyone tell me what Dominator's are? Please don't be a smart [censored] and say "Dominators"....
Despite the pleasant changes in i7 so far, some hard facts remain in place: Our Primary, Control Sets verbatim from Controllers, are weaker than Controllers. Our secondaries, hodge-podge attack sets from blasters mostly, are weaker than Blasters...So what the hell are we supposed to be?
We have worse hitpoints than the majority of ATs in the game, however those below us have elements that balance for that fact. So in addition to our weaker Primary and Secondary we are also less survivable (low hp, no protective powers).
Oh, and one thing that would help the discussion is the disillusion of the facilicy that Controllers are low-damage AT. Whats not to love with them? Control, Buff/Debuff and damage...is there anything else? Once side switching comes into the game there will truely be no use for Doms...
Just switch our primary and secondaries. Up the damage and make us a damage set that can kind of control....you know, what were are now, but it will be on purpose. 
Dominators don't need mitigation from their secondaries. Even if they did, there's ice (slows), psi (-recharge), and fire and elec (death).
-Talen_Lee commenting on Energy Assault's Utility
Everyone else has said it but I'll throw my 2 Infamy into the pot as well.
I'm out of PvP with my Dom. The absolute lack of anything of value has done it. Let's (like everyone else) break it down a bit:
The Good
<ul type="square"> [*]We can Hold.[*]We can toggle-drop.[*]We can do damage.[/list]
The Bad
<ul type="square">[*]Holds are easily taken out of the mix by a Break-free. Additionally, most heroes have some mez protection or have several AT/power sets that can give mez protection.[*]Our toggle-drop capablities have been slashed. Additionally, we have low hp, no mez protection, no defense and no damage resistance (until at least lvl 41) so going into melee range to attempt is virtual suicide.[*] Our damage is low and only goes to medium with Domination. On top of this, our Level 38 power is underwhelming at best (possible exception of Psychic Shockwave which many report being very happy with.)[/list]
The Ugly
The one thing that we can bring to the table in PvP, i.e. control, will not be needed at higher levels since every AT has one.
Final analysis
I (and from the sounds of it, several others) am out of PvP with my Dom. I am hoping that I will still be able to solo decently since large teams mean instant debt for most Doms.
Addendum: I am going to suggest a few things that I have posted before in the hopes of getting some RED NAME to see them:
<ul type="square">[*]Change all the self-buffers to be combined Power Boost/Aims. So Energy and Ice would keep Power Boost as it is now and gain a slight increase in Accuracy and Damage (say a 25%/40% increase). Fiery Embrace would get a 25% Accuracy increase and effect all damage (maybe add the excess as Fire damage). Plant's Aim would get a slight increase to secondary effects (again 25% seems fair since they would have a greater plus to ACC and DAM). This only leaves Psionic Assualt, since they don't have a PB/Aim per se. But they could get a minor "Mire effect" from Drain Psyche to go along with the bonus they recieve (makes sense since they have to be in melee range to use this power, give them a real whammy of a power.) [*]Remove the Burst powers at level 38. Make Psychic Shockwave the standard for the new powers. High damage PBAoE with some specials would be much more helpful than a high damage single-target Ranged attack (which seems more like a moderate melee in use.)[*] As Domination bar fills, we get an increasing amount of mez/defense. This should top out at just under what a Stalker has. I wouldn't even mind if we lost this protection when we fired off Domination. (This is something new that I thought of. My apologies if someone suggested it befre and I am not giving credit where it's due.)[/list]
Raz is absoutely correct about Side-Switching. For the last couple months I've been rolling Corruptors to replace all my Defenders(which would explain my disappearance from the Defender boards...but atleast Defenders were all Unified in our Plea for improvements). Now I will be rolling more Controllers to replace my Dominators in preperation for their side-switching as well.
I'm not going to question anyone anymore who still insists on defending the weaknesses of Dominators just because yours "is just fine", so I don't want to hear one goddamned peep from any of you along the lines of "Dey Tuk R JOBS!" once side-switching is available.
Everyone got that? Not a Peep.
Ok, got a lot more testing in last night so here are some more impressions and findings...
First up, the increased Domination build up from our secondary is only being applied when we attack another player. Attacking npc mobs or objects, including the artillery guns at the control points, still only yields the base 2 Domination to our bar.
Second, spent some time last night working with the heroes to spawn both the hero and villain signature characters in RV. Went up against Sister Psyche, Manticore, Positron, and Back Alley Brawler in the course of the evening. Even with myself and at least two other Dom's popping Domination, I did not see them get held once. I was chaining my mezzes at them as fast as I could and running TK, still nada. Spoke to some controllers and they could not hold the villain signature characters either. I don't know if this is intentional, it might be a balance thing they did for RV and I will be posting in the RV forum about it. However, this really brings up the AV issue for me in the late PvE game. I felt totally useless once those Heroes came out. Since mezzing seemed a hopeless endeavor I started trying to lay in with the damage. Well, when Domination wasn't up I kinda felt like I was throwing toothpicks at Hami. When it was up, and my dam was kind of respectable, I quickly got one-shotted into next week. Not fun, and if I was putting together an AV team for the late game, I probably wouldn't even want me on it.
Anyway, some other PvP Dom impressions. There were a lot less people in RV last night, so it was a lot easier to tell what was going on. Sure enough, under normal conditions with a normal number of players Doms are quickly singled out and ganked into a fine red paste. However, even with the target on my back I still got Domination off several times last night, so I am convinced this was an effective and worthwhile change. Don't think it goes far enough, but definitely a good start.
Dom's vs. Scrapper and Tanks in the late game -- I did notice even wtih Domination up I had trouble getting my holds to stick on scrappers and tanks. I think it comes done to an issue of the Mog, Unstoppable etc. final tier powers in their defense lines. Gonna try to get a scrapper or tank parnter and do some solid testing on this tonight, but near as I can tell from last night if a tank or scrapper has activated their final tier defense power, well we're not gonna hold them even with Domination. And I'm not saying this is a bad thing, because hey, when that Unstoppable runs out they are gonna get toasted and that's the way unstoppable and similar powers have always been. Just saying that it appears they do trump Domination for those wondering and I'll try to get some solid numbers on it tonight.
So, to sum it all up, I feel pretty confirmed in the initial impressions. While the change to Domination is great and does have an impact on our PvP experience, it is still a ways off from correcting our rather glaring shortcomings. We are still an easy target in PvP, and I am even more concerned about our PvE role in the late game where AV's become so common. I Dom's Dom's may be too much of a hybrid, part control, part ranged attack, part melee attack, and I understand the difficulty in balancing these three aspects. I'm wondering if maybe we shouldn't lose our melee attacks altogether in favor of a stronger ranged secondary?
Oh, and we seriously need an hp boost.
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We have two toggle droppers available; Block of Ice and Ice Sword. Ice Sword is 5% and my understanding is that BoI - which even three slotted for acc misses more than it hits in PvP - also is affected by the new detoggles. Regardless, BoI is not a damage dealer OR a control.
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Um, BoI is your Single-target hold, and if you stack it enough times on someone, it will drop all of their toggles because it's a hold. BoI never had a detoggle ability attached to it aside from the hold...that was Greater Ice Sword, which IS a damage power, so I have no idea what you're talking about.
Way to know your own powers, lol.
[ QUOTE ]
Anyway, some other PvP Dom impressions. There were a lot less people in RV last night, so it was a lot easier to tell what was going on. Sure enough, under normal conditions with a normal number of players Doms are quickly singled out and ganked into a fine red paste.
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This kind of reminded me of something else about my own personal experiences in PvP...basically that anything you seem to accomplish in PvP as a Dom is mostly due to the fact that the opponent didn't pay attention to you, or basically ignored you. If they decide that you are worth their attention, then you will come to a quick death.
My current PvP system was to team up (always a solid start, also the only real way for a dom to build up Rep points or bounty in SC), then hang in back until my target was engaged with another villain...then swoop in to attack and hope they were too occupied to realize that an easy target was right there. Sounds solid at first read, but actually quite sad when you realize that the AT has holds and a damage secondary that encourages melee..... 
Dominators don't need mitigation from their secondaries. Even if they did, there's ice (slows), psi (-recharge), and fire and elec (death).
-Talen_Lee commenting on Energy Assault's Utility
[ QUOTE ]
Ok, got a lot more testing in last night so here are some more impressions and findings...
First up, the increased Domination build up from our secondary is only being applied when we attack another player. Attacking npc mobs or objects, including the artillery guns at the control points, still only yields the base 2 Domination to our bar.
Second, spent some time last night working with the heroes to spawn both the hero and villain signature characters in RV. Went up against Sister Psyche, Manticore, Positron, and Back Alley Brawler in the course of the evening. Even with myself and at least two other Dom's popping Domination, I did not see them get held once. I was chaining my mezzes at them as fast as I could and running TK, still nada. Spoke to some controllers and they could not hold the villain signature characters either. I don't know if this is intentional, it might be a balance thing they did for RV and I will be posting in the RV forum about it. However, this really brings up the AV issue for me in the late PvE game. I felt totally useless once those Heroes came out. Since mezzing seemed a hopeless endeavor I started trying to lay in with the damage. Well, when Domination wasn't up I kinda felt like I was throwing toothpicks at Hami. When it was up, and my dam was kind of respectable, I quickly got one-shotted into next week. Not fun, and if I was putting together an AV team for the late game, I probably wouldn't even want me on it.
Anyway, some other PvP Dom impressions. There were a lot less people in RV last night, so it was a lot easier to tell what was going on. Sure enough, under normal conditions with a normal number of players Doms are quickly singled out and ganked into a fine red paste. However, even with the target on my back I still got Domination off several times last night, so I am convinced this was an effective and worthwhile change. Don't think it goes far enough, but definitely a good start.
Dom's vs. Scrapper and Tanks in the late game -- I did notice even wtih Domination up I had trouble getting my holds to stick on scrappers and tanks. I think it comes done to an issue of the Mog, Unstoppable etc. final tier powers in their defense lines. Gonna try to get a scrapper or tank parnter and do some solid testing on this tonight, but near as I can tell from last night if a tank or scrapper has activated their final tier defense power, well we're not gonna hold them even with Domination. And I'm not saying this is a bad thing, because hey, when that Unstoppable runs out they are gonna get toasted and that's the way unstoppable and similar powers have always been. Just saying that it appears they do trump Domination for those wondering and I'll try to get some solid numbers on it tonight.
So, to sum it all up, I feel pretty confirmed in the initial impressions. While the change to Domination is great and does have an impact on our PvP experience, it is still a ways off from correcting our rather glaring shortcomings. We are still an easy target in PvP, and I am even more concerned about our PvE role in the late game where AV's become so common. I Dom's Dom's may be too much of a hybrid, part control, part ranged attack, part melee attack, and I understand the difficulty in balancing these three aspects. I'm wondering if maybe we shouldn't lose our melee attacks altogether in favor of a stronger ranged secondary?
Oh, and we seriously need an hp boost.
[/ QUOTE ]
/signed. Anyone who tries to tell us that we aren't a DD class and should get over it needs to realize that if we aren't a DD class, why don't we have a buff secondary? What good are we when our primary is a nerfed version of a Controllers' and our secondary isn't important? Bring up Defenders and I'll tell you Defenders get the most powerful Debuff abilities 100% of the time (even if Controllers do some of it better) while Dominators only get their better Control a fraction of the time.
And if anyone says "you get Domination" then I will slap them into last christmas. We are weak as hell when Domination is down. LIKE I SAID when I said I didn't want a change to Domination. All of you who said you wanted Domination to recharge faster got what you wanted, but as you can see it still doesn't fix anything: the problem wasn't with Domination, it was the fact that without it, we suck, and we need fixes OUTSIDE of it instead of being given more band aids that make us more and more dependent on it to not suck. So, maybe Domination will change us from good to awesome instead of Gimped to Un-Gimped.
Maybe it's time they actually gave us stuff like Blaster HP, Controller Durations, and 75/80 damage modifiers (Corrs have 75, but they have enough buffs where they can approach blaster ranged damage, they get all the good attacks earlier, they get NUKES, AND they have Scourge, which is always there unlike Domination). This is the stuff we've been begging for since as long as I can remember. At this point, I don't care what the detoggle nerf is. I just want to not be the gimped villain AT anymore.
Another thing I fear out of everything else is the Lord Recluse SF. You only have 8 slots on a team for people, why waste one slot on a Dominator if he can't hold the AHes? Control? Everyone is getting Control in the Patron pools, why pick a Dominator when everyone else can do that too? Damage? LOL. You're better off taking a Corr who uses Flurry, Jump Kick, and Air Superiority as his attack chain - at least he can SCOURGE off of them.
Good points Vidszhite, it is really showing what a mistake of an AT Dom is turning into at the higher levels thanks to the PPPs giving mez attacks to everyone else resulting in Doms becoming potentially useless. I will still enjoy my Doms below level 38 or so though I have a fairly hard time getting invited to teams when they are often looking for damage dealers or healers.
I tend to like Controller better than Dom with its secondary being very useful in debuffs and team support, Dom's secondary seems very geared towards self-support and pseudo-Blaster style, if everyone else gets holds and such in PPP then Dom should get mez protection like Controller did or some kind of buffs for team support that way Doms can be more desirable in the high 40-50 game.
I am however happy with the reduced recharge time on domination, as often as I get it up in PvE this will easily speed up my mission runs.
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Um, BoI is your Single-target hold, and if you stack it enough times on someone, it will drop all of their toggles because it's a hold. BoI never had a detoggle ability attached to it aside from the hold...that was Greater Ice Sword, which IS a damage power, so I have no idea what you're talking about.
Way to know your own powers, lol.
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Feh, was late and I was tired. I get a free pass. So there.
Anyways, fact remains that Siren's basically leaves me with BoI and IS. That's pretty much it. Yeah, I got my "ranged" attacks - which do about as much damage against tanks and scrappers as throwing a snowball at them. That's 3 slotted dmg, 2 slotted acc or 3 slotted acc. I'm still working on retesting ArcticAir to see what's going on there.
Something to bear in mind is that I come from an Archery/Fire perspective (which has been turned into FoTM-fodder. To say nothing of Archery/En.) Meaning I'm used to living and dying by my accuracy; no resistance, no detoggle, not a whole lot of anything currently. That said, BoI hits so infrequently as to be utterly useless. Scrappers, I hit maybe 1 in 20 times. PFF? I've never hit a defender with PFF. Stormies and Rads are the only ones I hit, and that's if the Rads don't debuff me to oblivion first.
Once I launch an attack, I'm dead either way. Doesn't matter what attack it is. My only hope is to stack slows with my ranged and run away. That's how it is now, and if others are any judge, I'm not a bad PvPer (as hard as it is for me to believe.) But the only thing I can kill is a Blaster. And I can only kill that Blaster if I A) land a hold B) they don't have breakfrees. Might get a Defender or two, but same situation.
Now compound this with Ice/Ice being basically an AoE heaven/targeted hell. The mix of powers basically leaves you as a weak 'any situation' build no matter what you do. Your primaries are 2 targeted, 1 summon, and everything else is AoE.
In Icy Assault, you have Ice Bolt, Ice Blast, and Bitter Ice Blast at ranged - BIB not available in Siren's as it's a 30+. Then you have Ice Sword, Ice Sword Circle, and Greater Ice Sword which is also a 30+. Rounding it out are Power Boost, Frost Breath (cone slow with Mod DoT), and your ObToggle Chilling Embrace which is a melee-range slow.
Now then, let's take a look here step by step, in order of what exactly these powers do for you in Siren's on Live.
-Chilblain is Chilblain. It's an Immob that does about 9-14dmg for four ticks, and has -FLY. If you catch a flier up high, it's great. If you hit. Destroyed by BFs of course.
-Block of Ice is your one targeted hold. This is the only targeted hold in all of Ice/Ice. It does between 50-80dmg 3-slotted with a long recharge. Have to slot a RecRed or they're out before it's back up. BFs, again, destroy this.
-Frostbite is just suicide. An AoE immob that does 8-12dmg for four ticks. And rarely catches groups of heroes, but always catches the attention of every Longbow for miles.
-ArcitcAir I need to test more; it's a very good power to have, but I screwed up my own build there.
-Shiver I didn't bother taking; it's a cone slow. That's it. It's got a LONG recharge. It's a cut and run that won't cut.
-Ice Slick is only marginally useful. Keeps NPCs off you except the wardens. Maybe keeps some tanks and blasters off you, but not most.
-Flash Freeze is an AoE Immob/Sleep. Does 5-20dmg (though almost always on the low end), eats slots, and rarely hits players. But it's sure great for pissing off the NPC mobs and getting enough aggro to basically get one-shotted.
-Glacier I took past 30; highly unlikely it'll do any good either. It's got an ungodly long recharge, too late to slot much, and is an AoE hold - which I've noticed are very good at missing players. It's done no good in Warburg.
(Jack Frost is 32+)
-Ice Bolt. Let's see; easily resisted slow effect. Low double digit damage - usually below 40. If slow isn't resisted it's very minor. Great for telling them where to direct fire, nothing more.
-Ice Sword is good for detoggling scrappers and tanks. As long as you get in, hit, and run like hell. If you don't run, you're dead. "Detogglers must die."
-Ice Sword Circle is another hit and run. Great for slowing, mid to high high double digit damage, but misses frequently. The after-animation delay just garauntees that if there's a FoTM present, you're dead.
-Ice Blast is the only ranged damage dealer; high double digits typically. ("Wow, I think I did like, 95dmg!") Versus 800+HP. That's only what, 7-8 hits with that, not that you'll live that long since you're probably against a Blaster or someone with a mez or stun.
-Power Boost is Power Boost. It's also a beacon that says "PLAYER AGGRO, COME KILL ME NOW!" Just like Domination.
-Frost Breath is a cut and run slow. It hits fairly well, does maybe 10-20dmg usually, and is only really effective slotted up with slows.
-Chilling Embrace is your scrapper survivability that doesn't work. If they resist the slows you put in it, it's pretty much just a drain on your End. Works great against Blasters, since you have to get in anyways. Just pray you don't lose the hold.
(GIS and BIB are 30+.)
So let's say I run into a flyer and do a chain of PB, BoI, Chilblain, Ice Bolt, Ice Blast, CE Up (quick interruptable anim,) and Ice Sword. For sake of argument, we'll say I've got someone stacking Tactics and I hit every shot. Thusly I do about 300dmg for the whole chain, give or take about 25-30dmg. That's with 3-slotting dmg, bear in mind.
I don't like math enough to figure out the regen with single slotted health. Regardless, we'll say 850HP - 300HP = 550HP or a fair amount over half, and I've just spent more than half my endurance. Slows are stacking, but we'll presume I got the drop on the Blaster.
They pop a BF and 2-shot me. They don't have to worry about their recharge being slowed because I'm dead within their chain damage more often than not. Failing that, unless we're the only two in zone, others will jump me for the rep and bounty and I'm toast.
The only time I have survivability even one on one is when I've got a /Therm corruptor (big shout to Cackle, who is a great guy) buffing and healing me constantly and consistently.
I'm sure some folks will argue it's a build issue, but frankly, I can't say I agree entirely. Yes, the current build does have issues; I should have AA and it should be 6-slotted, I'm aware. Either way, I have two pools; Fitness and Flight. I can't realistically take another pool, such as Medicine, without losing powers that are obviously necessary. I need the slots as well. I could dump Flight (which is only carrying an EndRed and a Flight Speed,) and pick up another travel power like, say, Teleport. But all that does is make it easier for me to run.
Either way, I'm off on a tangent about the build now, so let's get back on track here. Ice/Ice basically leaves you with two "control" powers, a lot of easily resisted slow debuffs, one 5% toggle, and exceedingly low damage. The Domination "buff" is not going to help me in the least, as in Siren's I'll use NPC mobs to ramp my Domination quickly as I said before. I7 will only change this slightly; I'll just get domination up even MORE quickly with the "buff." I still can't USE it without turning into a giant bullseye.
So I am really not seeing any benefit at all here from this "buff" for PvP. Yes, I'm going to be experimenting with builds on Test today to see if I can't do something about my chronic Endurance and Stun problems. Detoggling CE on me has pretty much no effect, because I can retoggle immediately and the anim's interruptable. And I'm going to try CJ to see if it improves survivability at all, but frankly, survivability is pretty useless if it means "I'm alive long enough to get 'em down to half health and run before they kill-shot me."
First, I dont find my dom underpowered in PVE. I can solo at the highest difficulty setting. I can only speak for ice/nrg and fire/fire, but both solo fine in PVE. As for having to team for EBs, I have generally soloed EBs, the exceptions being Infernal and Aurora Borealis. On teams, Ice/* is a good contributer with ice slick. Fire/* is much harder to contribute on a team, if facing higher level mobs due to accuracy and reduced durations.
The problems I see are:
1) Breakfrees prevent control in PVP
2) Doms still have no ability to survive until building domination (which will penetrate 1 BF).
3) In PVE, AVs/EBs are immune to holds, which are a doms main capability.
4) Now that all ATs will have holds and AV/EB are immune to holds (the ones you really need to be able to stack holds to affect and the ones people would really want you around to affect them), what role are dominators going to play in the 40-50 level game?
I like the way my dominator plays in PVE. Its why my dom made it to 40, and the other COV ATs are at 20-26. I dont enjoy having indirect attacks like immobilizes doing all my damage (ie. trollers). However, the Patron power pools seem to have plugged the holes in the melee toons (brutes and stalkers getting holds and ranged attacks) while the only real thing doms got were an armor (and another pet - had one already, another weak AOE - already had one, and a specialty power - endo drain already had one).
I think something that needs to be considered is that controllers have control, with containment they have more damage, and with defender secondaries are more able to survive when things dont get held. There is simply no advantage to playing a dom versus a controller, except having a more fun style of play, which is very much based on an opinion.
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That said, BoI hits so infrequently as to be utterly useless. Scrappers, I hit maybe 1 in 20 times. PFF? I've never hit a defender with PFF.
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Well, the floor on to hit is 5%, so statistically, you've never hit someone less than 1 in 20 times . Not only that, but BoI has +20% accurcay built-in, so it actually ends up with a 6% to hit chance even against a SR running Elude fully slotted. If you put in two ACC SO+++ in your hold, you can get a final minimum to hit of 10.56% (1 out of about 9.5).
Not saying that's great, or enough defense, just saying it isn't quite as bad as you suggest.
Wow Shiver's that bad? I've heard a good amount of Ice doms say it was useful in PvP. Also, I've heard that /Ice is among one of the highest damage secondaries among Doms, not if that's saying much though. If anything Ice/Ice seems to be one of the combinations that benefits from these new changes the most due to the slows and its ability to kite. Doesn't Power Boost affect slows too?
In addition I'm much happy with these changes whne PvPing in SC. Every Dom secondary, with the exception of Energy, only had one toggle drop power in SC. In my experience that one toggle dropper (Mind Probe) didn't do much. Even when fighting toons that run few toggles (Regen Scrappers), I was *rarely* able to drop their mez protection. That's all in SC though.
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Raz is absoutely correct about Side-Switching. For the last couple months I've been rolling Corruptors to replace all my Defenders(which would explain my disappearance from the Defender boards...but atleast Defenders were all Unified in our Plea for improvements). Now I will be rolling more Controllers to replace my Dominators in preperation for their side-switching as well.
I'm not going to question anyone anymore who still insists on defending the weaknesses of Dominators just because yours "is just fine", so I don't want to hear one goddamned peep from any of you along the lines of "Dey Tuk R JOBS!" once side-switching is available.
Everyone got that? Not a Peep.
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AFAICT, every AT (except, maybe, scrappers) has said that controllers are replacing them in their own job.
[Whether it's contained fireballs, phantasm tanks, or the empath h34l0r who can stop mobs from attacking too.]
Dominators as a whole *are* just fine as-is in PvE.
[EDIT: At least pre-PPP.]
It's controllers that are, apparently, seriously out of whack.
More accurately, it's certain controller builds that get their cake and eat it too.
If I quote #'s, they're from City of Data.
Global: @Kazari
It was either Taunt or Purple Triangles of Doom. I stand by my decision!
-BackAlleyBrawler
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1) Breakfrees prevent control in PVP
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IMO, with toggle-dropping restricted, inspirations should be disabled in PvP zones.
Since *team* PvP is the supposed goal, I don't see this as a problem. Especially since suppresion is still in play.
[Except, obviously, for the PvP player outcries. 
]
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3) In PVE, AVs/EBs are immune to holds, which are a doms main capability.
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I don't see a good way to deal with that, except to treat less-than-mag controls as debuffs.
Immobile -> -SPD.
Hold -> -SPD, -RCH.
Sleep -> -ACC.
Confuse -> -PER.
... or somesuch.
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However, the Patron power pools seem to have plugged the holes in the melee toons (brutes and stalkers getting holds and ranged attacks) while the only real thing doms got were an armor (and another pet - had one already, another weak AOE - already had one, and a specialty power - endo drain already had one).
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Agreed.
If I quote #'s, they're from City of Data.
Global: @Kazari
It was either Taunt or Purple Triangles of Doom. I stand by my decision!
-BackAlleyBrawler
controllers are over-powered, yes
but doms are under-powered too
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This does not match my experience in I6, nor does it match the early I7 reports coming from Fishw0rk.
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It sure as hell matches mine. If I go on to the field as a Dom, I'm a target. I'm an EASY target. I can only hope to build up Domination if I am to stand a chance of not sucking for a few minutes; but the Domination bar drops to zero on death, so a simple two-shot from any of the plentiful scrapp0rz in RV is enough to scotch that.
Doms are the only AT to have a qualifying round in PvP. Survive long enough and attack often enough to build up Domination, and you might have a chance.
They are the only AT to have a mediocre primary and a mediocre secondary. Other ATs have inherent powers as a bonus; Dominators are the only AT to DEPEND on their Inherent power.
We need some serious fixing, and this was sadly not it.
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I agree. Doms need some PVE and PVP love.
The big defference between COH and COV is that COV AT's all depend on their inherant powers to function well. The big difference between Dominators and all other COV AT's is that Dominators are the only ones that get a double hit against their Inherant, recharge and buildup.
Brutes can use their inherant as they build it up.
Corruptors use theirs whenever the target is below 50%, a minor form of a build up.
MM's use theirs all the time, by just standing their.
Stalkers can pick and choose when to use theirs, and at the most have a 10 second timer after placating a target. But thier secondaries give them the tools to use their inherant whenever they want.
In PVE Doms not only have to attack 45 times (with no decay), but they have to wait 200s (used to be 300) for the power to recharge. Then they get 90 seconds of above average - but not great - damage, and extra magnitude and duration on their holds.
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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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I agree. Obviously Dominators are completely dependant upon their inherant to function. Take away some of that dependancy in the form of damage from the inherant, and give it to their base. That way the inherant is still beneficial as far as the primary is concerned - controls, but the dominators secondary functions fine without the inherant.
As it is, the dominators primary and secondary are both dependant on their inherant. What other AT has both their primary and secondary sets dependant upon their inherant?
Brute - primary is affected byt the inherant, secondary is not.
Corruptor - primary is affected by the inherant, secondary is not.
MM - Primary is affected by the inherant, secondary is not.
Stalker - Primary is affected by the inherant, secondary is not.
Dominators are the only one. Fix the secondaries, and leave the primaries to benefit from the inherant, just like all the other AT's. Stop double dinging dominators.