Buffs in a Nutshell


Arcanaville

 

Posted

Will it still be worth it to go permadom? Depends on whether you consider mez protection, the ability to hold bosses in one shot, and a full endurance refill every 60-90 seconds worth it. It certainly will be for me...


Cascade, level 50 Blaster (NRG/NRG since before it was cool)
Mechmeister, level 50 Bots / Traps MM
FAR too many non-50 alts to name

[u]Arcs[u]
The Scavenger Hunt: 187076
The Instant Lair Delivery Service: 206636

 

Posted

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Unless perma doms have a different icon next to their names than regular doms do there's no way to judge how the general public views the teaming capabilities of perma doms.

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ya just like there is no way to tell what kind of corruptor you are recruiting...


 

Posted

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perma doms still weren't near the top of the list of desired teammates

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There's no way you can know that, which means your argument is based on a flawed premiss.


 

Posted

Well, despite this being based on a personal opinion, here's an attempt at your questions...

What are the damage modifiers now if Castles plan goes through?
He has proposed numbers previously, however there's absolutely no guarantee there won't be last minute changes until the patch notes are properly announced. Furthermore as some assault sets might be altered, that makes it even harder to predict precisely what numbers you'll get out of your dominator in the future at this stage. If you're interested in the numbers, perhaps try looking at the dev digest and going back a while to find castle's posts in that thread.

Will this affect my Earth/Fire Dom in anyway?
It effects all dominators, like it or not. If you've got a fresh Earth/Fire, you should like it because it means you should do better damage than you do currently. If you've a 50 dominator which hasn't gone for perma-dom, quite the same. In the end though, generally speaking you're more than likely to benefit from the changes than suffer.

Will is still be worth it to be a permadom?
PVE wise, probably yes. Chances are that if you're really going to deck out your dominator, you'll probably pick up perma-dom on the way as a part to all your other bonuses anyhow, so there isn't too much to worry about. To aim for it specifically would still get you mez resistances, endurance refills and considerable controls in most of PVE.

PVP wise, no. The mez bonuses in PVP don't account for much (with magnitude doing absolutely nothing and a marginal increase in duration), mez resistances making marginal differences to the amount of time you're mezzed (you'll still get one shot mezzed). That leaves just an occasional free endurance refill, which a non perma-dom would get once in a while anyhow. For the ridiculous amount of recharge required in order to achieve perma-dom with diminishing returns, actually aiming for perma-dom for PVP reasons (once the damage buff disappears) just doesn't weigh up too nicely.

Edit: Oh, and in regards to your question about what the best damage secondary is, that's arguable and will depending on the coming changes for assault sets. At the moment /fire, /elec and /psi (with PSW, which is likely to be knocked outta here) are strong contenders.

And to Blue_Mourning, if you were really looking for "A little icon signifying a perma-dom", I suppose you could look for multiple stackings of domination as a sign. That of course isn't going to point out all perma-doms for players and even if it did, many people don't bother looking at buffs.


 

Posted

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You are not supposed to be able to solo AVs on any AT anyway, its a team objective, that said some can do it easier than others but such is life.

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QFT, if an AT can't solo PToD I don't think it is broken, if an AT is having trouble soloing mishes on villainous/heroic then I would think there is some room for improvment


"Yes, winning all the time can be boring."
-Knight_Chill

"It's amazing how well you can put up with endurance issues if you hide them under a large enough pile of bodies."

-Spiritchaser speaking on Dom Revamp

 

Posted

If anyone can solo AVs, the idea of them being team content is pretty meaningless.

The problem is when theoretically soloable content - the downpowered EBs - are functionally unsoloable.


 

Posted

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You are not supposed to be able to solo AVs on any AT anyway, its a team objective, that said some can do it easier than others but such is life.

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QFT, if an AT can't solo PToD I don't think it is broken, if an AT is having trouble soloing mishes on villainous/heroic then I would think there is some room for improvment

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The problem is that a lot of missions at higher levels end with an AV, which gets downgraded to an EB if you are solo. But even on Villainous, these EBs still have the PToDs... which means they are almost impossible to solo without dumping a full tray of inspirations or using temp powers.

Not that this is a huge deal... Blasters can say the same for most EBs, purple triangles or not. At least after the damage boost Doms can use the Blaster method: pop Lucks and Enrages and kill it before they wear off.


Cascade, level 50 Blaster (NRG/NRG since before it was cool)
Mechmeister, level 50 Bots / Traps MM
FAR too many non-50 alts to name

[u]Arcs[u]
The Scavenger Hunt: 187076
The Instant Lair Delivery Service: 206636

 

Posted

Doms can do that already.


Duel me.
I will work on my sig pic more when I have time.

 

Posted

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Ultimately, the issue is that EB PtoD is too much. No complaints about AV PtoD, though.

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Wellllll ...

One of the side effects of having enough recharge for perma-dom is that you /also/ end up with enough recharge to hold most even-level EBs pretty regularly, triangles or not. And once you're up in the stratosphere of perma-Hasten or better, things get truly goofy.

That's my biggest complaint about doms; it's not that perma-dom is the Grail, but that nothing improves dom performance as much as having huge gobs of recharge.

Most of other ATs benefit from milking other kinds of set bonuses ... but having soft-capped defense is, IME, not as good as having a hard control up for every spawn you face.


 

Posted

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perma doms still weren't near the top of the list of desired teammates

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There's no way you can know that, which means your argument is based on a flawed premiss.

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Of course I can only know it as well as say an elec melee, or spines stalker knows it,or a /traps corr knows it.

I never said it wasn't flawed, but so is 99% of all posts on these boards because we simply don't have all the information.

Subjectively based on having played multiple perma doms a spines stalker and a /traps corr I'm confident when I say they all land in a similar range of team desireability.

Stalkers were and largely still are viewed as the suck in teams. So having a decent aoe build is pretty meaningless in the eyes of most.

Dom's are larely perceived to be the suck overall, so even advertising what you are capable of seems to have little impact.

Sorry I have doubts that a buff that really does very little to their team performance abilities will have much of an impact overall on their team desireability.

Yes of course that is imo, just like every single post on these forums that isn't red or Arcanaville.


 

Posted

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dude, the basic premise of the "buffs" is to make the dominator the first primary/primary AT in the game

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Arguably, Scrappers were intended to be balanced between their primary and secondary powerset. Perhaps more significantly Blasters are explicitly intended to be damage dealers with two powersets directly supporting that archetypal design. The ranged modifier notwithstanding, Castle explicitly stated that the intent of the I11 Blaster changes was *not* to make ranged damage preeminent, but to better balance the choice between ranged and melee offense, to better represent the archetype as a damage dealer with both ranged and melee options.

So Blasters are actually comparable to Dominators in terms of dual-primary design. It may not have always been that way, but its definitely that way now.

In any event, the Primary/Secondary distinction has always been significantly overplayed by the players, relative to the importance that the devs themselves give to it.


[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]

In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Well, despite this being based on a personal opinion, here's an attempt at your questions...

What are the damage modifiers now if Castles plan goes through?
He has proposed numbers previously, however there's absolutely no guarantee there won't be last minute changes until the patch notes are properly announced. Furthermore as some assault sets might be altered, that makes it even harder to predict precisely what numbers you'll get out of your dominator in the future at this stage. If you're interested in the numbers, perhaps try looking at the dev digest and going back a while to find castle's posts in that thread.

Will this affect my Earth/Fire Dom in anyway?
It effects all dominators, like it or not. If you've got a fresh Earth/Fire, you should like it because it means you should do better damage than you do currently. If you've a 50 dominator which hasn't gone for perma-dom, quite the same. In the end though, generally speaking you're more than likely to benefit from the changes than suffer.

Will is still be worth it to be a permadom?
PVE wise, probably yes. Chances are that if you're really going to deck out your dominator, you'll probably pick up perma-dom on the way as a part to all your other bonuses anyhow, so there isn't too much to worry about. To aim for it specifically would still get you mez resistances, endurance refills and considerable controls in most of PVE.

PVP wise, no. The mez bonuses in PVP don't account for much (with magnitude doing absolutely nothing and a marginal increase in duration), mez resistances making marginal differences to the amount of time you're mezzed (you'll still get one shot mezzed). That leaves just an occasional free endurance refill, which a non perma-dom would get once in a while anyhow. For the ridiculous amount of recharge required in order to achieve perma-dom with diminishing returns, actually aiming for perma-dom for PVP reasons (once the damage buff disappears) just doesn't weigh up too nicely.

Edit: Oh, and in regards to your question about what the best damage secondary is, that's arguable and will depending on the coming changes for assault sets. At the moment /fire, /elec and /psi (with PSW, which is likely to be knocked outta here) are strong contenders.


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Thank you for that Raemos.

My Earth/Fire is lvl 20 atm, which I might stall to see what the changes will bring.


 

Posted

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So Blasters are actually comparable to Dominators in terms of dual-primary design. It may not have always been that way, but its definitely that way now.

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I think where Blasters have a "Secondary" is with the control powers in their Secondary. While their melee attacks are at Primary level, their control powers aren't.

This is fine, and I don't think that Doms having a full two sets of "Primaries" will be imbalancing. Although if it's a problem, they could always lower the damage of ranged attacks and empasize the "Blapper" strategy for Doms. Fire would be hardest hit by that, but Fire already does significant damage. (Honestly, I would rather just lower the change from Domination to base damage somewhat, say give Domination a 25% damage boost, and rebalance the base damage to that)

As for the topic, I think the main advantage of this change is taking the 75% damage boost out of a buff to the base damage, and making it the base damage itself. This will make Dominators MUCH more powerful on a team, just about doubling the advantage they get from offensive buffs and debuffs. This should make up for the loss of double and triple Dom, along with the buff Dom's are getting to their damage cap.

Having that damage all the time is even better. But the best thing IMHO is making it BUFFABLE.


 

Posted

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Perhaps more significantly Blasters are explicitly intended to be damage dealers with two powersets directly supporting that archetypal design. The ranged modifier notwithstanding, Castle explicitly stated that the intent of the I11 Blaster changes was *not* to make ranged damage preeminent, but to better balance the choice between ranged and melee offense, to better represent the archetype as a damage dealer with both ranged and melee options.

[/ QUOTE ]

so dev blasters are the developers running joke?


 

Posted

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If anyone can solo AVs, the idea of them being team content is pretty meaningless.

The problem is when theoretically soloable content - the downpowered EBs - are functionally unsoloable.

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functionally unsoloable to who? I never had real problems with EBs on any of my dominators at any level range, even back in i6. I will admit some dominators will have more problems than others due to the nature of their secondary effects in both primary and secondaries but the same can be said of any AT, a mind/ff controller isnt going to set the world alight in the same way as other combinations will.


 

Posted

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I never had real problems with EBs on any of my dominators at any level range, even back in i6.

[/ QUOTE ]Eating a handful of candy that anyone could eat does not actually address the weaknesses of the class.


 

Posted

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Eating a handful of candy that anyone could eat does not actually address the weaknesses of the class.

[/ QUOTE ]

The duration that you can spam Lucks ends up being a problem on a few bosses. I ended up just throwing my hands in the air trying to kill Silver Mantis for Scirocco's patron arc and abandoning the mission because getting hit even once by any of her attacks irreversibly destroys me, and she had far too much longevity for my Lucks to be maintained.


 

Posted

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I think where Blasters have a "Secondary" is with the control powers in their Secondary. While their melee attacks are at Primary level, their control powers aren't.

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Control powers in blaster primaries are not intrinsicly stronger; there's no advantage or disadvantage to control powers being in a blaster primary or secondary that I'm aware of.

Important to remember that all utilitarian arguments notwithstanding, blasters have at least two control-significant primaries dating back to release: energy (knockback), and Ice (slow/hold). It isn't just the damage modifier changes that are making blasters and dominators more closely related than they were originally intended to be.


[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]

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Posted

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Perhaps more significantly Blasters are explicitly intended to be damage dealers with two powersets directly supporting that archetypal design. The ranged modifier notwithstanding, Castle explicitly stated that the intent of the I11 Blaster changes was *not* to make ranged damage preeminent, but to better balance the choice between ranged and melee offense, to better represent the archetype as a damage dealer with both ranged and melee options.

[/ QUOTE ]

so dev blasters are the developers running joke?

[/ QUOTE ]

In general. Obviously, /dev blasters have limited melee offensive options in particular. However, its true for most sets of powersets that the members of the set are intended to represent a range of options centered around a particular set of features, but representing extremes in different directions. You see this in the Controller primaries and the Scrapper secondaries most vividly. Dominators, interestingly enough, seem to have one of the smaller ranges in qualitative design extremes (at least in my opinion).


[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]

In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
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Posted

Thank you for once again answering when a developer should have,Arcanaville.


 

Posted

Well, Castle would come back to post D_B, but he's worried that you'll find out where he lives and poop in his underwear drawer.


 

Posted

I'll have to play with the changes to see if I like the change.

Based on the discussion, I'm not thrilled about it.
I like the damage boost, of course.
But I liked the AT design.
It's definitely going to take some getting used to not hitting Domination.

This seems to be an attempt to address the permadom fixation and tangentially on the inflated economy.
At least to me.
I've never had a problem with my one and only level 50 dom.
She's incredibly fun to play and just crushes maps.
She's not permadom.
Just your average, run of the mill Mind/Psi.

I guess Domination becomes an, "Oh, snap!", power.
I'm not excited about the changes.
If we also got to actually mez people in PvP (if they can take down all my hitpoints is seconds, I should be able to throw them around like a ragdoll in seconds) again with dom running I guess it would be ok.
Now we're just Blasters with pets.

Oh, and the popularity issue?
wtf?
Are you seriously not getting picked for a team because you're a dommy? You should probably thank your lucky stars you weren't picked by that team.

This thread has made me wanna go solo EBs tho.


 

Posted

I find it ironic people are making fun of popping inspi's and calling the need to do so a "flaw" specific to the dominator AT.I frequently pop inspi's on any AT I play if in a tough encounter. IE running cysts inITFon one of my widows or in an RSF when going to the glowie room in mission 4 to unlock Miss Libs door on my brute or one of my corruptors.. If the situation warrants a full tray of purples and demonic accolade too? Oooo well. No big deal. Eat what you have to to get r dun.

Maybe I need to "lrn2ply".


 

Posted

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What are the damage modifiers now if Castles plan goes through?

Will this affect my Earth/Fire Dom in anyway?

Will is still be worth it to be a permadom?

[/ QUOTE ]

Someone can feel free to correct me....I think it was said the damage mod for Doms would be .9

You Earth/Fire will be effected...with doing more damage

Will Permadom be worth it? It's a breakfree, end refill and mez protection rolled into one click power, I say HELL YEAH!

[ QUOTE ]

I find it ironic people are making fun of popping inspi's and calling the need to do so a "flaw" specific to the dominator AT.I frequently pop inspi's on any AT I play if in a tough encounter. IE running cysts inITFon one of my widows or in an RSF when going to the glowie room in mission 4 to unlock Miss Libs door on my brute or one of my corruptors.. If the situation warrants a full tray of purples and demonic accolade too? Oooo well. No big deal. Eat what you have to to get r dun.

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something I can agree w/ you on ;P I pretty much play my Doms like I do most my squishies when facing a tough encounter, I carry a tray of inspirations, especially w/ my Elec/EM Blaster when I was playing him through the upper 30's and the Praeotorian arc.

Find it funny I didn't see anyone knocking on Shred_Monkey when he posted his AV soloing videos w/ his DB/SR Scrapper, and he used a full inspiration tray of 12 Tier 3 Reds and 4 Tier 3 Purples.

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I ended up just throwing my hands in the air trying to kill Silver Mantis for Scirocco's patron arc and abandoning the mission because getting hit even once by any of her attacks irreversibly destroys me, and she had far too much longevity for my Lucks to be maintained.

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bold emphasis, mine

I believe just about any EB NPC that has Unstoppable is a problem for most, but that depends on power combinations sometimes it seems...

I couldn't solo Silver Mantis or Miss Liberty as EBs on my SS/Stone Brute or my Nin/Regen Stalker, when I leveled up my EM/WP Brute, he made them look like a joke.