Dominator Buff/Nerf in i15

If one is as blind to slot is toon as he his to post about doms in the city life general forums, either he's a troller, either he should try Bingo.

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This looks like a great buff for my dominators. My Mind/Energy in particular is shifting into high gear with the Energy Assault upgrades. I'll glady take all those changes for my Plant/Psy too.

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...You love firing off two /energy attacks and losing half your blue bar? I exaggerate a little, but really not that much; the END issues are just horrible.

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I'm afraid I won't be in much of a position to comment on that. My Mind/Energy is at a level where endurance is no longer a concern (outside of endurance drains from enemies). I tend to overdo it when slotting for endurance reduction...

[/ QUOTE ]How dare you compensate for endurance issues. The proper response is to complain. :|

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

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This looks like a great buff for my dominators. My Mind/Energy in particular is shifting into high gear with the Energy Assault upgrades. I'll glady take all those changes for my Plant/Psy too.

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...You love firing off two /energy attacks and losing half your blue bar? I exaggerate a little, but really not that much; the END issues are just horrible.

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I'm afraid I won't be in much of a position to comment on that. My Mind/Energy is at a level where endurance is no longer a concern (outside of endurance drains from enemies). I tend to overdo it when slotting for endurance reduction...

[/ QUOTE ]How dare you compensate for endurance issues. The proper response is to complain. :|

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I thought the proper response was to blow it up and exaggerate it to the point of absurdity?

Golly, I'm so out of the loop! I should attend the meetings.

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If one is as blind to slot is toon as he his to post about doms in the city life general forums, either he's a troller, either he should try Bingo.

[/ QUOTE ]Are you sure you're not ELF_STALKER?
i have no idea what your post is supposed to mean. My best guess is that you're saying that anyone who would post anything about Dominators in the General Discussion forums is blind for some reason, and that blindness extends to... slotting decisions?
Not quite sure how Bingo or "trollers" figure into that at all. i can only guess it's some sort of odd insult against people who play Controllers, or something?

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This looks like a great buff for my dominators. My Mind/Energy in particular is shifting into high gear with the Energy Assault upgrades. I'll glady take all those changes for my Plant/Psy too.

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...You love firing off two /energy attacks and losing half your blue bar? I exaggerate a little, but really not that much; the END issues are just horrible.

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I'm afraid I won't be in much of a position to comment on that. My Mind/Energy is at a level where endurance is no longer a concern (outside of endurance drains from enemies). I tend to overdo it when slotting for endurance reduction...

[/ QUOTE ]How dare you compensate for endurance issues. The proper response is to complain. :|

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I thought the proper response was to blow it up and exaggerate it to the point of absurdity?

Golly, I'm so out of the loop! I should attend the meetings.

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I thought the correct answer was to threaten to cancel my subscription after deleting all my dominators. At least that's what I got out of the first dozen or so pages from the Official Feedback thread.

Personally, I'm loving the Dom changes. Maybe I can get my poor neglected plant/thorn past level 22 after 3 1/2 years. Baby Doms seem to play a lot lke BabyBlasters for the first 10 evels or so - I'm still testing how they play in the teens and higher, mainly because I couldn't stand to level any on Live and therefore don't have any to copy to Test.

To throw some math into the endurance issue... the total net change in Endurance for powers affected was ~30% in the upward direction. Electric Assault actually got a 14% reduction in total endurance use, and Psi took the biggest hit at 40% (Neither Icy or Electric were considered in the calculations, as Icy only had one power change [8%], and Electric had a reduction).

So, for all of those sets negatively effected by Endurance changes, an average of 30% total increase occured... with, often, a change in Recharge to compensate (as in, recharge also increased). Didn't run numbers on that, though.

The endurance use over time will most likely average out, except in high recharge builds that don't adjust for the increased endurance usage per power (very likely with perma-dom/perma-hasten builds). But those can probably be fixed by shifting slotting around a bit to still achieve similar bonuses in places, with an additional focus on Endurance Reduction.

...I'd still like to see this brought back to maybe a 20% or 15% average total increase in recharge/endurance, just for the sake of fluidity and endurance management, but there it is.

All relevant info pulled from the Dom Change thread on the Test forums, averaged out by hand in ~10 minutes. Errors likely, but I don't expect by any wide deviance. Can go back and get a definative number on Recharge, but then I'd feel it necessary to also get a net change on damage as well as I do believe a lot of the ones that got an increase in rech/end also got an additional boost in damage.

But do carry on.

EDIT: Also pointing out that the numbers in question are only for those powers actually affected within the set. Powers that were not affected or changed (read: grand majority of Icy) were not factored in, because the net change would have cancelled out, and I didn't wanna bother digging up the base numbers. I don't think it'd change it all that much, but I could be wrong. It happens.

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I've always liked the idea of Doms, but never liked their actual implementation that well, so I tested this a little, and looked over the numbers. The nerfs outweigh the buffs, leaving Doms still the worst, most underperforming AT in the game as far as I can tell. Still no reason to play one.

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What numbers did you look at?
Because none of the numbers i've seen and analysis i've read from people whose knowledge of the game's mechanics i trust suggest this anything but a buff to overall performance outside of level 50 Dominators who routinely double or triple stack Domination. Even then you can alter your slotting to take advantage of the higher damage cap, making the difference minor at worst.

Admittedly none of my Doms are 40+ or heavily IO'd, but so far they perform much better solo with the changes, but i haven't done any teaming on test.

What is the "idea of Doms" as you see it, and how does it differ from the implementation?

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To everyone who played a dominator, it's a buff.

To those people who played PSW PSW PSW PSW PSW PSW PSW it's a nerf but well, [censored] them.

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Yeah, because expecting a really cool tier 9 to be truly effective is an EXPLOIT!! Call the XP Police, someone's actually using a cool power for fun, we can't have that....!

Honestly I can't say enough how sad I find the major push for mediocrity on these forums. Some of you will not be happy until every last decent thing in the game is nerfed into the ground.

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I can't honestly say I know what you're thinking, but this is an extremely selfish and misguided view of the power and subsequent change.

You realize that even with PSW reduced in attack power, halved in radius, doubled in recharge, and doubled in endurance cost, it's STILL more powerful than comparable PBAoE powers? That's, what, about 8x more powerful than it was supposed to be?

To even suggest that the power should have remained how it was and was somehow undeserving of a change is basically ludicrous. It doesn't matter that it was a tier 9. If other tier 9s followed the same system, Fire Controllers would summon 6 imps that do more damage and attack twice as fast. Head Splitter would do 300 damage base and recharge in 7 seconds. Strength of Will would last for 240 seconds (with 300s recharge) and offer 37.5% RES base. If other powers were as comparatively off as PSW was, it would be painfully, painfully obvious how incredibly unbalanced they were.

Now, you can call it "cool," "fun", "effective," "sad," or "mediocre" if you want, but the fun police are all in your head. This isn't a random or even unwarranted change of the power. It makes the set in line with all other sets. If anything, allowing a set that's tremendously better than all other sets is more "fun police" than the opposite, because if you actually want to make an effective character, you only had one option: Psi. Period.

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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

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To throw some math into the endurance issue... the total net change in Endurance for powers affected was ~30% in the upward direction.

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*sardonic laugh* yeah, that's... reasonable.... Pfffffffbbbbtttt

If they implement this, the Doms are shelved. 110% guarantee. I doubt the developers care much about my Dominators, but they ought to care about how Doms overall will become even rarer than they are now.... and they're pretty damn rare right now.

Man, nothing is safe these days.

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If my Dom has the END issues of heavy-duty melee-types, then I will be expecting the DAMAGE she does to be equivalent. But we're not gonna get that and..... *reaches for top shelf of the storage-closet*...

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Bad, what you're missing is that Dominator damage got buffed twice. Once their base damage mods were increased by around 50%, for which they paid with the damage buff in Domination. Thing is, though, the increase makes their attacks deal as much damage as before, only ALL the time. They got buffed a second time when their attacks were almost all increased in scale damage INDEPENDENT of their base damage. For this, they paid with a recharge and endurance increase. However, DPE is a constant defined by power type which remained the same, and DPS is defined on a sliding scale ever so slightly favouring faster attacks, which also remained true.

The net result is that you do more damage with fewer attacks and pay about as much per enemy. What changed, however, was that now they have "gaps" in their attack chains. People are trying to fill in those gaps, which costs more endurance, and they use silly stuff to fill in, costing themselves more endurance still. I don't know how Dominators played before, but I can clearly see how they're supposed to play now. Rather than needing a full attack chain to loop over and over again, they play like Blasters, applying heavy damage quickly, then pausing to control. These "gaps" are, in my eyes, to be used to apply your actual control powers for the sake of controlling the enemy.

The damage buff is significant. Dominators now have enough damage to rival a Blaster outside of Aim and Build Up, and some Assault sets seem to have those, to boot. Dominator Snipes, for instance, do more damage than Blaster Snipes even at a ranged damage mod .1 lower. With a melee damage mod the second-highest after Scrappers and overpowered melee attacks added to that, the damage output is SIGNIFICANT.

This is a buff all around, there is no question about that. It's a CHANGE, of course, and a change people will have to adapt to, but it is nothing short of a significant buff, Psychic Shockwave notwithstanding.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Every time I wonder if my position on this issue is unreasonably positive I see the sort of people who oppose it and feel better.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

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If my Dom has the END issues of heavy-duty melee-types, then I will be expecting the DAMAGE she does to be equivalent. But we're not gonna get that and..... *reaches for top shelf of the storage-closet*...

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Bad, what you're missing is that Dominator damage got buffed twice. Once their base damage mods were increased by around 50%, for which they paid with the damage buff in Domination. Thing is, though, the increase makes their attacks deal as much damage as before, only ALL the time. They got buffed a second time when their attacks were almost all increased in scale damage INDEPENDENT of their base damage. For this, they paid with a recharge and endurance increase. However, DPE is a constant defined by power type which remained the same, and DPS is defined on a sliding scale ever so slightly favouring faster attacks, which also remained true.

The net result is that you do more damage with fewer attacks and pay about as much per enemy. What changed, however, was that now they have "gaps" in their attack chains. People are trying to fill in those gaps, which costs more endurance, and they use silly stuff to fill in, costing themselves more endurance still. I don't know how Dominators played before, but I can clearly see how they're supposed to play now. Rather than needing a full attack chain to loop over and over again, they play like Blasters, applying heavy damage quickly, then pausing to control. These "gaps" are, in my eyes, to be used to apply your actual control powers for the sake of controlling the enemy.

The damage buff is significant. Dominators now have enough damage to rival a Blaster outside of Aim and Build Up, and some Assault sets seem to have those, to boot. Dominator Snipes, for instance, do more damage than Blaster Snipes even at a ranged damage mod .1 lower. With a melee damage mod the second-highest after Scrappers and overpowered melee attacks added to that, the damage output is SIGNIFICANT.

This is a buff all around, there is no question about that. It's a CHANGE, of course, and a change people will have to adapt to, but it is nothing short of a significant buff, Psychic Shockwave notwithstanding.

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This sounds good to me. Of course I never used Perma Dom...

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This sounds good to me. Of course I never used Perma Dom...

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More than anything else, it seems like it's just a huge change. Like, say, if someone took Tankers and turned them into Scrappers, except there is precedent for what Dominators have become. In my admittedly limited experience, it has been very positive. I'm a bit biassed, I should say, because I've been asking for a Damage/Control AT for some time, and Dominators post-change are about as close as we're going to get unless we get more ATs in Going Rogue. Granted, damage is in their secondary, but their damage mods are through the roof, so all that affects is when powers come about.

Like I said, Dominators now have the second-highest melee damage mod in the game and a ranged damage mod up there with the big boys on top of the increased attack damage is SIGNIFICANT.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

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It's a solid buff. The only thing that really got nerfed was psionic shockwave, which needed to be nerfed. The entire rest of the set got buffed to make it viable.

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I see it as a nerf, my Dom on live has end problems and now they have buffed my damage but made my end problem even worse and tacked on recharge to totally screw it up.

I'd take damage problems over endurance and recharge problems any day. I can play a toon that doesn't dish out a lot damage, but a toon that doesn't even have the endurance to activate the powers and the recharge to keep the powers up? No thanks.

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This is wholly an issue of perception. Endurance costs went up for the most part only with increases in damage which are on top of the AT modifier buff. Mobs die much quicker on test, one-two shots instead of three-four.

As for recharge, I've always had the problem with Doms that they get too many attacks. Low recharge (esp 4> recharge attacks) attacks typically becomes wastes of time.

Except for the tip top of top tier builds, I see nothing but buffs. PSW is still a good power. Saying it's been gutted is hyperbole.

The way I see it, the DPE stayed roughly the same, maybe even went up.

What changed is the ability of Doms to put out MORE damage per second, leading to higher End usage.

If the mob you needed 3 attacks to kill now goes down in 2, that's however long the third attack took worth of end recovery you're missing out on. Per mob. It adds up.

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The way I see it, the DPE stayed roughly the same, maybe even went up.
What changed is the ability of Doms to put out MORE damage per second, leading to higher End usage.

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Precisely. Long-recharge, high-cost, high-damage attacks make for exceptionally good spike damage, but also cost a lot if you spam them. And with more attacks taking longer to recharge, this leaves the room for more powers per attack chain, leading to still more cost. The baseline consumption doesn't appear to have changed. In fact, it should be better. But now that there are gaps here and there, people are going to want to push it, speed their attacks up and plug up those gaps. THAT is where the EXTRA cost comes from.

If anything, high-damage, high-cost, high-recharge attacks cost LESS than low-damage, low-cost, low-recharge attacks over time because their high up-front damage is balanced by lower overall DPS, and hence a lower overall EPS. A certain playstyle can go some way to favour small, fast attacks, but in my experience, that's a playstyle most people don't like, and even then it doesn't make up the difference.

Far as I'm concerned, waiting around a bit when everything else is held and harmless is actually in keeping with the spirit of the AT.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

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Every time I wonder if my position on this issue is unreasonably positive I see the sort of people who oppose it and feel better.

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I must say, this is precisely how I feel on this topic.

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It's a solid buff. The only thing that really got nerfed was psionic shockwave, which needed to be nerfed. The entire rest of the set got buffed to make it viable.

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I see it as a nerf, my Dom on live has end problems and now they have buffed my damage but made my end problem even worse and tacked on recharge to totally screw it up.

I'd take damage problems over endurance and recharge problems any day. I can play a toon that doesn't dish out a lot damage, but a toon that doesn't even have the endurance to activate the powers and the recharge to keep the powers up? No thanks.

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This is wholly an issue of perception. Endurance costs went up for the most part only with increases in damage which are on top of the AT modifier buff. Mobs die much quicker on test, one-two shots instead of three-four.

As for recharge, I've always had the problem with Doms that they get too many attacks. Low recharge (esp 4> recharge attacks) attacks typically becomes wastes of time.

Except for the tip top of top tier builds, I see nothing but buffs. PSW is still a good power. Saying it's been gutted is hyperbole.

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This is no illusion, my Dom is a level 50 Plant/Fire, he is slotted with Genric level 50 IOs and has even worse end issues on test than on live. His recharge isn't as good and he seems to be killing just as effectively except with end issue while some of the fire powers not up as much.

After a rebalance you may need to reslot to refocus. This is why you get a respec when these changes go live.

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This is no illusion, my Dom is a level 50 Plant/Fire, he is slotted with Genric level 50 IOs and has even worse end issues on test than on live. His recharge isn't as good and he seems to be killing just as effectively except with end issue while some of the fire powers not up as much.

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It's not an illusion, but it is also not a direct result of the changes. To a great extent, it's the effect of player perception causing players to do MORE than they used to, and thus use up more endurance. That, and the increased overkill from bigger attacks are the greatest contributing factors.

To my eyes, what counts the most is that Dominators are now awesome without Domination. I can't say what effect the changes will have on permadom Dominators, but then the stated aim of the changes was to improve regular-play Dominatiors without affecting permadom Dominators too much. Which kind is yours?

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I haven't played with the new Dominator rules on the test server, so hopefully it'll be OK to ask these questions:

1) Popping domination still instantly refills your end bar after these changes, right?

2) Popping domination still provides a buff to the magnitude and/or duration of mez/hold powers, right?

These changes are certainly going to require a change to the way one plays dominators, or at least the way I play mine, which was to continuously spam powers and hope I could keep the mobs mezzed long enough to whittle them down to nothing. While that can be frustrating in cricumstances where your damage type is resisted, I for one still found it a fun playstyle. I love my BS scrapper, but if there is one thing that drives me crazy about her, it's the wait for my powers to recharge during a fight. Still, if these changes will make my mind/fire dom kick even more butt, I'll adjust my playstyle accordingly.

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1) Popping domination still instantly refills your end bar after these changes, right?

2) Popping domination still provides a buff to the magnitude and/or duration of mez/hold powers, right?

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Yes to both.

Myself, I'm happy for those changes.

This will make my Mind/Thorns, who suffered from a terrible case of "too many powers, not enough time", much more enjoyable. I don't know what it'll do to my Earth/Ice, since the fact I don't have much powers to spam is one I like (I didn't take either Immob).

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This is no illusion, my Dom is a level 50 Plant/Fire, he is slotted with Genric level 50 IOs and has even worse end issues on test than on live. His recharge isn't as good and he seems to be killing just as effectively except with end issue while some of the fire powers not up as much.

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It's not an illusion, but it is also not a direct result of the changes. To a great extent, it's the effect of player perception causing players to do MORE than they used to, and thus use up more endurance. That, and the increased overkill from bigger attacks are the greatest contributing factors.

To my eyes, what counts the most is that Dominators are now awesome without Domination. I can't say what effect the changes will have on permadom Dominators, but then the stated aim of the changes was to improve regular-play Dominatiors without affecting permadom Dominators too much. Which kind is yours?

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PFFT!

Now you need permadom more than ever for the end drain! I never had permadom on my Dom but now it seems like I will have to get it to perform as well as I do on live.

I'm popping [u]less[u] attacks, have [u]more[u] end drain, and killing [u]less[u] efficient as I was before. Popping less attacks but I have just as much to more end drain and it is keeping my blue bar empty, which keeps me popping less attacks, which from there holds me back on killing effectively.

It is a chain of cause and effect.

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After a rebalance you may need to reslot to refocus. This is why you get a respec when these changes go live.

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You mean I might need to respec my dom when it hit live because they made a change to the AT

As for the change to doms I love it! It is a lot more fun for me to play on Test and I can't wait for this to come live

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