Musings on control.

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I'd be interested to hear what large-scale enemy teleportation can be good for.

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It's good for anytime you would get pwnd standing in plain sight of the group you want to mass mezz.

Let's say they have mezzing capability and you know they're going to get a shot off on you before your mezz takes them out.

Or it's a boss or mezz resistant foe that's going to need a stacked hold. If you worm them first, then queue your hold, you'll get one on the boss before he even starts to get up. You can then hit him a second time with your hold or quickly stack with you AoE hold, or Singy's hold.

It's also good for herding a 2nd group into your 1st. This is most beneficial if you have enough AoE dmg to take them all out, or your team does. It speeds things up as you don't have to travel across the room.

It's also good in those multi-level rooms where your target is above you and in order to target with a normal AoE control, you'll have to be in LOS, which will probably expose you to the other groups' LOS as well.

It's also good if you have a teammate with some sort of placeable debuff or trap. You wormhole mobs onto the mines, or oil slick, or caltrops, or quicksand, or whatever.

It's also a good pulling tool. You WH a mob that's out of LOS, knowing you won't get all his buddies, but they'll aggro. By the time they close the distance to you, you've dispatched/incapacitated the mobs you wormed and have a trap ready for their friends.

I could go on, but you really have to see it used to understand what it's capable of. I recommend you team with a high level grav and get some experience by observation.

Okay, why are Dominator/Controller controls better than blaster controls? Some simple answers:

1) Damage. While many other ATs get access to some single target holds and immobilizes, they come equipped with rather perfunctory damage at best. Every Dom/Controller hold/immob comes delivers modest but still substantial damage. This damage can and should be slotted for additional damage, for reason 2.

2) Duration. Non-controller controls have roughly half the duration of the control primary ATs. This means that they get as much duration out of their control powers as other ATs will get after slotting. And with the addition of IO/HO enhancements, you can actually have your cake and eat it too, enhancing both damage and control duration in excess of what any other class can enjoy. For example, my dom's Gravity Distortion is slotted with 4 piece Devastation and 2 piece Lockdown. Result: nearly 90% damage and recharge, plus 40% hold duration, with solid accuracy and end reduction to boot, plus 6% +damage in set bonus from ONE POWER. Bottom line, Blasters, Defenders, et al, can hold enemies in lieu of damage. Controllers and Dominators damage their enemies with their holds.

3) Area of effect. Control ATs are the only ones with access to AOE immobilize, one of the most underrated controls in the game, and their spammable soft controls can render enemy groups helpless, in many cases without exposing the controlling character to an alpha strike. Defenders have some access to AOE controls, but at a lower magnitude, and blasters have some others, with smaller radii. But at the day's end, control ATs are the kings of AOE control.

4) Pets. While they're a late blooming effect of control primaries, (for most sets), pets are a game changer, especially for gravity control. In addition to a big source of damage, pets come equipped with both active and implicit controls that must be respected.

At low levels, yes, Dominators play an awful lot like blasters, but once you're in your 20s and 30s, the playstyles really begin to diverge. Where the blaster begins to leverage more and better AOE, the Dom stacks more and more options to turn the enemies into pinatas.

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1) Damage.

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Respectable damage appears to only be a factor of the single-target control powers, namely hold and immobilise. At least that's true for Gravity Control. Crushing Field does pathetic damage and Gravity Distortion Field doesn't appear to deal any at all. To add, Blaster immobilize powers deal moderate damage, as well. The thing, for me, is slotting these holds for damage. On a Blaster, I can afford that as Blasters can survive largely on killing things. On a Dominator, I need that control to survive, so I can't really prioritise damage. And I don't want to get into Inventions. That's a can of worms I'd rather not touch.

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2) Duration.

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Granted, I was underestimating the duration of the control effects. When I posted my original complain, I was working with yellow DOs a level away from SOs, while the Blaster I'd played before was working with green ++SOs and the durations were STILL greater on my Dominator. I just didn't appreciate by HOW much until I slotted SOs in my holds. What's more, being that this is a control AT, I could prioritise control and slot more hold/immobilise/stun duration, rather than neglecting my holds with just a handful of slots. With just a single green SO, Gravity Distortion appears to be close to double-stacking with itself, which can be enhanced even more and becomes really fun with Domination and Power Boost.

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3) Area of effect.

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Granted, but that was part of what worried me. Control set AoE control powers are always regarded as "really big" and, though their effects are usually strong, their duration, accuracy and recharge are usually in the tank. I have the I5 changes that halved AoE control duration and doubled AoE control recharge for that. They're a tool to handle special situations, not something that can be used consistently. The next level lower below massive AoE control is single-target control, which is about on the opposite end of the spectrum - good duration, recharge and accuracy (especially accuracy), but only a single target can be affected.

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4) Pets.

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Absolutely granted, but itself the source of a very persistent problem: "It gets better after 32." There's this notion that because control sets get pets at level 32, which transform them quite significantly, it's OK for them to be terribly boring to play before level 32. This has actually been said to me in pretty much those exact words, and I just don't agree with it. My single most convincing reason for not playing a control AT before I15 was that I've no interest in playing a terrible character for 32 levels with the hope of eventual payoff, when my average new character "attention span" is ~25 levels. I will grant that control set pets do make a huge difference, but they come FAR too late for them to act as salvation, meaning I have to look to... Just about everything else to make the set work in and of itself. As of the last couple of days, this has seemed to work, but the game is only going to get harder.

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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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1) Damage. While many other ATs get access to some single target holds and immobilizes, they come equipped with rather perfunctory damage at best. Every Dom/Controller hold/immob comes delivers modest but still substantial damage. This damage can and should be slotted for additional damage, for reason 2.

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While this may be true, the dpa and dpe on holds and immobs are considerably worse than assault powers. I highly doubt the majority of doms either recognize they should slot a 9 second dot for damage, or that ticks of 7 damage would be worth slotting for damage. This is the case for all of the immobs anyway.

If they did upfront damage like mesmerize or lift then ya it would be a more visibly intended damage power.

Some of the holds are front-loaded, but the st hold tends to be the lifeblood of control, even less people will consider putting damage in there.

As you mention, IO'ing can open up possibilities, but your analysis seems to be approaching things from a base line standpoint, of which IO's don't apply.

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3) Area of effect. Control ATs are the only ones with access to AOE immobilize, one of the most underrated controls in the game, and their spammable soft controls can render enemy groups helpless, in many cases without exposing the controlling character to an alpha strike. Defenders have some access to AOE controls, but at a lower magnitude, and blasters have some others, with smaller radii. But at the day's end, control ATs are the kings of AOE control.

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The problem with aoe controls right now for dominators is that outside of domination mode they will never last as long as it takes you to kill off the group. From a solo'ing standpoint they offer ok mitigation, but really just buy you a window to layer your st control and failing that, just delay the inevitable. Having played many blasters and doms, for solo I'd take the aoe damage of a blaster over the aoe controls of a dom.

They are very helpful in teams if you have others to kill them before the controls fail, or at least pick up the agro. But even then a bunch of them can't actually be used as a sufficient alpha and require someone else to initialize. For those aoe controls I'd much prefer the aoe damage of a blaster if you are stuck waiting for someone else to start the fight anyway.
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4) Pets. While they're a late blooming effect of control primaries, (for most sets), pets are a game changer, especially for gravity control. In addition to a big source of damage, pets come equipped with both active and implicit controls that must be respected.

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Pets are awesome. The only issue with them is they come late enough in the game where if you need them to survive yourself or do respectable damage you are pretty much in the same boat that old /psi was in with PSW.

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At low levels, yes, Dominators play an awful lot like blasters, but once you're in your 20s and 30s, the playstyles really begin to diverge. Where the blaster begins to leverage more and better AOE, the Dom stacks more and more options to turn the enemies into pinatas.

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Definitely, however a blasters AOE powers are up very fast. No matter how fast the team is moving a blaster will have their aoe's up. A dom's aoe controls (other than the aoe immob) leave much to be desired and leave a dominator unable to initiate combat, which means they are part of the second wave, but then they do almost entirely st damage.

What has always and continues to make doms good is how receptive they are to +rech, they benefit tremendously from it. None of the recent changes even put a tiny dent is how important +rech is to them.

Overall I think you did a good job describing the AT. I believe they are intended to fill a similar team role as blasters, but rather than aoe control through defeat they bring aoe control through control to the team.

When GR hits it will be interesting to see how popular doms remain. I think they will actually go down once you can fill the spot with blasters, who will work (and already do) exceedingly well with brutes because they allow the brute to use his inherent and together they produce astounding damage to the point that the lower survivability of said brute (relative to tankers) doesn't matter.

I will confess to one thing - aside from wanting access to sets I could never use (Control and Assault), by far the key reason I even considered making a Dominator is because there is no conceptual counterpart to the Blaster villain-side. To my eyes, and this can be true in-game, too, Blasters are wielders of dramatically amazing power with which they can destroy just about anything. That they lack protection is true, but this can be made up by just killing what's killing you, which is very much in-character for someone who has more power than he knows what to do with.

Nothing CoV-side comes even close. Brutes are strong, but they are fighters, and by extension don't really fit the "rocks floating upwards" kind of power. Stalkers are even less appropriate, as not only are they fighters, but they rely on hiding and surprise attacks, as well. Corruptors could PASS for Blasters, but they are more backwards Defenders than anything else, and with a playstyle more focused on support with crappy damage (seriously) and very low hit points, they don't end up being that in actual practice. The Mastermind playstyle does fit the right feel, but a Mastermind is a wimp who has help, which isn't really so much raw power as... Well, other people's raw power. A typical Boss class henchman will be tougher and stronger than his master for the most part.

Which leaves Dominators. As a control AT, I scoffed at them due to the developers' phobia of giving support ATs damage. Yes, 30 levels after the fact and with massive use of Inventions, players could put one over on them and still sneak a lot of damage onto their Dominators (and Controllers), but at that cost and delay it was just too little, too late. With the recent changes, it seemed that Dominators might finally fill the role I had always been looking for - someone who wields amazingly impressive power. This doesn't have to mean they do great damage, and lacking self-damage buffs for the most part, as well as appreciable AoE, that's not what's TRULY amazing about them. It's pretty good, but other ATs can also be pretty good at things not their speciality. I expected their true awesomness to lie in an amazingly impressive ability to control, and to a point that has been true, but...

Well, with the complete lack of anything in-between large-scale, long-recharge control and small-scale, repeatable control... That doesn't really add up. If I could use my large-scale control more often, say once per battle since it doesn't last all that long, or at least once per couple of battles, then I might feel like I'm very good at controlling. Or, failing that, if I had some means to control more than one person when my large-scale control WASN'T up, I might still feel better. But I'm finding myself with a conundrum so very often - 4 people are shooting at me, one has been held, and there is NOTHING I can do to save myself. I can't kill them fast enough to save myself from being killed and I can't control them fast enough for the damage to drop off significantly. About my only recourse is to either hit Domination and hope I can hold them in time, or hit Dimension Shift and either run or rest.

Specifically speaking, thanks to Power Boost, I can make Gravity Distortion Field count a little more, especially as an opener. But that's still only when it's up. The problem is that, with AoE control lasting only around 10 seconds and a battle with multiple enemies taking around 30 seconds or more... I'm not sure I'm seeing this "amazing power" I was looking for.

If Going Rogue allows Blasters to cross over to CoV-side, or, even more, introduces a new control AT... I might seriously reconsider my Dominator. He's not BAD to play, mind you, not for the moment. But of all the characters I have, he's at the same time the least survivable and the one I have the least confidence when playing.

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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.

Gravity is always been a hard power set for some people to get their heads around. A good Grav-Dom is an asset to any team and can solo with the best of them, but it's not easy, even for experienced Doms.

If you're dissatisfied with it, check the suggestions given. You don't want to rely on a pet, you want multiple ST holds, and decent AoE options, and the ability to do a fair bit of damage with your primary AND your secondary.

Sounds to me that you should be in Mind Control, son. Start with Levitate, then Dominate, and that's damage and control power right there at level 2. Then pick up Confuse, and that's even BETTER than a hold. Seriously, Confuse is such a problem solver, you will find a way to use it in every situation.

Take your melee attacks from your secondary, so you can beat down on mobs you've locked down, or defeat mobs quickly. Mass Hypnosis will be your openner, so you can set up the control as you see fit.

The best part is that Dominate and Confuse will end up with durations long enough that you can juggle two or even three held enemies -per hold-. Do NOT slot Dominate for damage, even tho it is part of your attack chain. Hold duration and Recharge reduction will go farther towards survivability Dominator in the long run. 'But I wants to blapper!' A good idea, and I encourage that, but a blaster doesn't Caltrops for blasting now does he?

Priority one is to lock down as many mobs as you can. -CONTROL- the battle first. Then -Dominate- by applying your assault powers to remove threats. Don't rely on your AoE stuff to make enemies sad. That's better used as your openner so you can lock them down. Only when you get powers like Terrify can you consider them as longer-term control options.

Actually, I'm finally starting to see the upside of the control deal. I ate my way through to the other end, as it were. I certainly wish I knew what I did right, but I'm not really sure. Fact is, though, that I managed to find a stride that's reasonably safe and quite fast, and that's even before factoring in Wormhole. It really is a culture shock to a large extent, and slotting duration into Gravity Distortion can let it work like two holds, which is something that I never even considered possible.

For the first time in five years, I'm finally starting to appreciate knockback as a source of control, and I guess out of necessity more than anything else. With melee characters, tough enemies I could just out-tough, and with Blasters, tough enemies I could just kill. With Dominators, I have to hold them, but not all can be. Anathema, for instance, are highly resistant. However, between Lift, Power Push and a little timing and thought, it's fairly easy to, if not stop them from attacking, then at least slow them down SIGNIFICANTLY to where I kill them before they pose a gratuitous threat.

It's becoming fairly obvious to me that Power Boost is going to play a significant role in this character's survival. Hold-juggling is all well and good, but a Power Boosted hold can give me a LOT of breathing room, and be followed by another Power Boosted hold if I plan ahead a little, which counts for a lot. A power boosted Gravity Distortion, though rare it may be, is actually as close to an "I Win" button as I've seen on a Dominator. A good Blaster Combo that spawn-wipes everything is still superior, but that's an AT thing. As with a Blaster, recognising and neutralising threats is quite evidently vital, and neutralising even several threats isn't that much of a problem in the long run.

Wormhole DOES change things quite a bit, as well, partly because it's not inaccurate like other AoE control powers I've seen, partly because it's up so frequently I'm not afraid to use it for even stupid stuff, like pulling a couple of lone minions around. Damage didn't seem high enough when that was all I had to rely on to save me, but being able to rely on control (you know, my primary) more reduces the absolute need for damage. Knockback and, more specifically, knockUP is also giving me plenty of opportunity to use Bone Smasher, my so far lone melee attack that does A LOT of damage, which helps a lot.

To a certain extent, the cause for my musings on control was operator error. I had never had to rely on controlling enemies as a primary directive, and so always relegated my primary to a secondary importance. Against friends' advice, I left Lift off until very late, which I now realise was a mistake, as it helps a LOT. Generally, situational awareness and an impetus on control is really how things seem to want to go. Dominators are still somewhat late-blooming from what I'm seeing, not truly coming into their own until the post-20 game, but it doesn't seem to be by much. The central point of my concern was worry for the future, a worry that this trudge would never end. It hasn't exactly become a cake walk, but it's doable, and that's going to have to be enough. More slots and more powers should make things easier, and hopefully Singularity will come around before the game takes its next step up in difficulty.

In short, I was doing it wrong and I had to learn to play.

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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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In short, I was doing it wrong and I had to learn to play.

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That's usually the case around here, actually. No shame in that. Glad you were man enough to say it.

When I'm wrong, I'm wrong

It's still not where I'd ideally want it to be, and it's still pretty easy to get in over my head, but unlike most other ATs, I feel things are only going to get better, or at the very least not get any worse. That means a lot to me.

But, yeah - having a good way to play a Dominator is really essential to making any use of one. The AT is actually pretty strong when used right, at least from what I'm seeing, but it really does work rather differently from just about anything else I've played. Blasters, Scrappers, Brutes and Stalkers I can play more or less the same and get away with it, but a Dominator can't really afford to play like a Blaster. That was one of the really big things to "get."

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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'm glad it's working out for you. Look at it this way: if you can make a solid go of the least popular primary, things can only improve.

Grav might have been the best primary for you after all though. With Wormhole not having an accuracy penalty and all. I'd have a hard time playing a Dom these days if I couldn't franken-slot IOs in my controls to get them maxed on accuracy, duration, and recharge. Doms are very reliant on their single-target hold, and they play very differently to me after I get that hold maxed on duration and the recharge cut in half.

You'll see plenty of people downplaying the value of Power Boost, but most of them are probably using IOs. I love the power, and an SO build will get even better use from it.

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It's still not where I'd ideally want it to be, and it's still pretty easy to get in over my head, but unlike most other ATs, I feel things are only going to get better, or at the very least not get any worse. That means a lot to me.

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Anecdotal story:

I recently took out my L50 grav/nrg/mu out for a spin to see how it worked after the changes.

He's an older character, so I decided to run Ashley's arc; the Amulets of Coralax mission. Difficulty setting of ruthless (4).

Well, I go into the mission, summon singularity, and see a behemoth up ahead. I target him and hit wormhole... and dump a _pair_ of L52 mages in front of me.

I hit one with total focus while both of them were standing up. Singularity and I stacked gravity distortion on the second just as he was finishing up the darkest night animation.

So, caught semi-flatfooted, without domination, grav/nrg managed to permamez two +2 bosses without taking a hit from either of them. [Some of the other mobs managed to tag me a bit, but nothing serious.]

Did I get lucky? Yeah, a bit. Still was fun, and hopefully some indication that grav/nrg should end up being a decent soloer for you.

[Note: While he has IO's, they are all generic, cheap, or mix-n-match... he's at 0% global rch, and I think the best bonus he has is 3 points of -KB. They're all mostly L30-40, too. Oh, and you know that patron armor thing? He doesn't have it. Waste of endurance. ]

I was wondering how you have Gravity Distortion slotted?

One of the real strengths of Doms (and to a lesser extent Controllers) is how quickly they can stack magnitudes of mezzing effects.

Typically a ST Hold like Gravity Distortion will be slotted approaching 100% duration and 100% recharge with some pretty good level of accuracy as well. With that slotting, even a Lost Anathema or an Arachnos Huntsman will Hold pretty effectively on the second and third hit respectively.

Given that Doms usually also slot heavily for global recharge as well, stacking ST Holds on tough targets is a tried and true strategy, much more so than with Blasters.

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Well, I go into the mission, summon singularity, and see a behemoth up ahead. I target him and hit wormhole... and dump a _pair_ of L52 mages in front of me.

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The eternal bane of Wormhole. It doesn't teleport only what you see, it teleports everything that's THERE, including all the other stuff you didn't even suspect was there

You know, sometimes it's the silly things you don't expect that make the game really fun

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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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I was wondering how you have Gravity Distortion slotted?

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So far, not very well. I can't recall offhand, but I don't believe I have it slotted for recharge. Not yet, anyway. The mass of slots in the 30s should help with that. I'm not sure I'll be able to 6-slot it any time soon, but I'll certainly be looking at adding more control to it. Truth be told, it's not half bad now. I'll probably be looking at accuracy, endurance reduction, two holds and maybe one or two recharges. We'll see how that goes.

As for global recharge, that's not really something I can make use of. Let's leave it at that.

Quote:

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.

That's quite unusual.

Most Doms would have their ST Hold 5-slotted by L10 as stacking the power is pretty much key to dealing with a Boss when Domination isn't up.

And that's a fairly leading statement about global recharge ... why wouldn't you want it? The defining factor of Dominators is lots of slow recharging AoE Control; most players looking to get the most out of their Dominator develop the character with some level of global recharge in mind*. It's one of the main reasons that Hasten is so commonly picked for both Dominators and Controllers.

* I'm not even talking about perma-Domination here, just the need to maximise the recharge of your AoEs.

Multi-slotting my hold so early in the levels would have deprived me of much-needed damage, and I took one of the central points of the changes to be the elimination of the "Controller" syndrome where you lock everything down and proceed to brawl stuff to death So I focused on damage. It hasn't exactly been easy, but it's the damage that saved me very often. Why I haven't slotted it NOW is a bit less... Justified. I just forgot I should

As for global recharge, I try not to talk about it, because it always gets me into trouble. Let's say I don't like set inventions and leave it at that. I am not subject to being convinced.

As for speeding up my AoE controls, I can sort of see that, and I might even be inclined to take Hasten if I run out of powers I want, but I'd rather just slot recharge reducers in them as necessary. Global recharge buffs have the tendency of drastically increasing endurance consumption from everything, and my Dominator is already looking at more than enough cost overall. I was never in the habit of boosting recharge and endurance mitigation ever upward and I'm quite very fine to stick to slower recharge as a means of saving endurance. I was never really interested in being very strong. Soloing my own missions is about enough, and that much I haven't had meaningful problems with. There was a Tellus of Earth with his annoying pet that killed me a few times, but beyond that it's been relatively smooth sailings.

Quote:

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.

Doms need hasten, ESPECIALLY if you're taking the high road on Sets. Yes, it speeds end consumption, but it also speeds stacking magnitude, a critical function of dominator play. Honestly, spending endurance to make your opponents die is what you DO as a villain. Spending it faster just means your enemies die faster.

We obviously come at things differently; your preference is "strong enough" and mine is usually "strong as possible". That's fine, we all approach the game in different ways.

I'll put my suggestions forward into a set of simple tips that you can take or leave:
<ul type="square">[*] Controls should be slotted with Accuracy, Recharge and Duration unless they're aura ones (Arctic Air and Hot Feet) or just plain weird (Dimension Shift*, Telekinesis). Endurance is usually a distant 4th (one of the benefits of IO sets is getting this in the mix "for free").[*] Each Control set has at least one signature every-spawn AoE Control. For Gravity that's Wormhole, so slot accordingly, either with a good Stun set (Stupefy is pretty good, leave off the Proc and slot with something else to maximise your numbers) or some good combination of Acc, Rech, Duration. When so much of your performance hinges on these powers it's a very good idea to 5 or 6-slot. (Except for Ice Slick I guess).[*] Domination is obviously brilliant, but one of the key things, particularly early in your career, is the complete refill of the blue bar. Most of your endurance issues can be managed by careful use of the blue bar (at least before Stamina).[*] While we're on the subject, Stamina will improve your performance enormously. Yes, you have to sacrifice cool powers to get it, but you have a big head start here: you're playing a Gravity Dom so they're really aren't many cool powers to get anyway.[*] Power Boost doesn't do much for a Grav Dom. You can put it off until the 20s when it makes a nice combo with Wormhole.[*] It is a perfectly reasonable option to not take your AoE Hold (Gravity Distortion Field) as the Acc/Rech/Duration maths make it marginal even when fully slotted.[*] Wormhole is fiddly and you need to be careful to either use it well on teams or make sure the team knows what you're doing with it. Of course, as with Dimension Shift, the opportunities for schadenfreude abound.[*] Stacking your ST Hold is important, in some cases for Bosses, but particularly in your late 20s and 30s when it seems like every other story arc has a Longbow Ballista or two. You need to plan to consistently stack 3 normal Hold's worth of magnitude on these guys, taking into account that they're FF so they have loads of defense.[/list]Hope that helps!

* Dimension Shift is one of the few powers in the game that gets worse with Accuracy. This is because you typically want to use it to break up a spawn ... so you really only want it to hit about half the mobs.

Pretty much everything I agree with. Thank you

I did take my single-target hold and intend to slot it some more later on. It is quite amazing with Power Boost on, and that's available if not every spawn, then every other spawn. When I need to choose between Gravity Distortion Field and Wormhole, I typically choose Gravity Distortion Field, just because I know I can use it now and then use Wormhole for the next 15 minutes

As for Wormhole being fiddly, I occasionally play with the owner of a level 50 Gravity/Energy Dominator from before the changes, and he praises me pretty much every time I use Wormhole or Dimension Shift well

Speaking of Dimension Shift, I don't believe it gets worse with accuracy. It's just not straight-forward to use. I have three uses for it - handling extra aggro, splitting a spawn and emergency survival. Handling extra aggro and emergency survival both require I ENSURE everything gets shifted, so I need to be able to rely on that. Splitting up a spawn could theoretically be done by counting on the power to miss, but I don't enjoy a crapshot, so that's not something I shoot for. Instead, splitting a spawn is appropriate when the spawn scatters or stretches out in a line so that part of it would be out of range of a Dimension Shift on the farthest enemy, or when the spawn stretches around a corner, so that part of it would be out of line of sight of a Dimension Shift on an enemy from the other part. It requires some lateral thinking on your feet, but it's only as unreliable as I am, rather than being as unreliable as the RNG wants to be.

I'll see about slotting my single-target hold more. I'm not sure I'll be able to quite triple-stack the hold unassisted, but that's what Domination, Power Boost and eventually even Hasten were made for, Eventually I'll probably want accuracy/endurance reduction/x2hold/x2recharge. With level 50 Common Inventions, the difference between two and three enhancements is marginal (on the order of one second less recharge) and I'm really not interested in 3-slotting anything but damage unless I have free slots and room to put them in powers.

Quote:

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.

You'll be able to stack 3 Holds without Domination up, and you'll be able to do it consistently with that slotting.

For a L50 Gravity Dom with 2 L50 Recharge Common IOs and 2 L50 Hold Duration Common IOs [u]without[u] Hasten, GD recharges in 4.36 seconds and lasts for 32.8 seconds.

That means you can stack 2 Holds on a target within 5 seconds for the next 26 seconds or so and 3 Holds within 10 seconds for about 20 seconds. Keep casting it whenever it recharges and you're going to able to easily stack 4 or 5 Holds on a target consistently.

Of course, you need to survive for that first 10 seconds

And with Domination and lots of Global Recharge a Dominator can get to truly obscene levels of Hold magnitude ... enough to permanently Hold an AV all by themselves.

Well, I'm getting to the 30s now, so slotting things should be a lot easier. I tell ya, it's always a boon to stop getting so many powers and instead start getting so many slots. LOVE IT

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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.

Hey Sam.

Something to consider in the future, should you play another dominator, is 6 slotting your single target hold ASAP and neglecting most of your primary until the mid-late twenties (this assumes you solo a lot though, where the aoe control is less useful).

I will consider that, though what swallowed up the bulk of my spawns, realistically speaking, was my secondary slotted for damage. I'll try to gravitate more slots towards the hold, but I'm afraid life would be really hard without damage

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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.

Which is why I'm so gung-ho on slotting everything for damage as a dominator. It's not that Minmin's approach is wrongheaded or anything like it, slotting your single target hold for duration is a good, conservative choice. However, slotting it primarily for damage and recharge pays great dividends.

Stacking magnitude is primarily about recharge, not duration. Two applications of your hold will handle anything in the game except EBs/AVs. With my Dom's slotting, I can maintain mag 12 holds on a single target. With full slotting for duration, you'll get that up to mag 18, but an AV with PTODs up is over mag 50, so really, ask yourself, what's the extra duration getting you?

I also find that slotting your STH for damage changes how you use it. When it's slotted for hold duration, you use it sparingly, trying to eke out as little control as you can get away with so you can use your more damaging and efficient blasts. Once I made my STH damage respectable, I used that sucker all the time! It's part of my attack chain, and I find I want to use it every time it's up. When your hold IS your damage, controlling the enemy and killing the enemy become the same thing, and THAT is what being a dominator is all about.

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You'll be able to stack 3 Holds without Domination up, and you'll be able to do it consistently with that slotting.

For a L50 Gravity Dom with 2 L50 Recharge Common IOs and 2 L50 Hold Duration Common IOs [u]without[u] Hasten, GD recharges in 4.36 seconds and lasts for 32.8 seconds.

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Perhaps you missed the "uses SO's, avoids IO's" bit.

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That means you can stack 2 Holds on a target within 5 seconds for the next 26 seconds or so and 3 Holds within 10 seconds for about 20 seconds. Keep casting it whenever it recharges and you're going to able to easily stack 4 or 5 Holds on a target consistently.

Of course, you need to survive for that first 10 seconds

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Less than that with GDF and/or singularity.