Partner for a Min/Psi Dominator?
By
Hart,
Posted on: 2009-09-08 10:55 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
My main is a mind/psy, whom I play quite often- early on, single target damage is good, favoring the stalker. Stalkers deal very good damage, but lack durability. Ealy on, the best mind control powers are not AoE, except for mass hypnosis, which can be broken. Stalkers are great here. AoE sleep, ST hold, assassinate missed targets or held targets.
The AR/kin corrupter I'd advise against. Psy gets a few foes that are highly resistant to their damage, adding another, even more highly resisted damage type might be trouble. Speed boost on a dom is wonderful, especially one as full of excellent but long-recharging powers like mind, but it is terrible for the AR user, who operates better outside the range of his buffs in this case.
The mercs/ff mastermind, see damage issue above. I haven't tried mercs, but it is heavily smashing/lethal. Forcefield is good as a set, but with the control from mind/, it's superfluous. (Especially once the dom gets good slots and a feel for the powers.)
Dark/Rad....this has potential. Corrs lack mez protections, doms stop things from using such powers, or in this case, can turn those on foes. Good choice. Doms do good damage, corrs scourge highly damaged foes. Good plus there. Doms can shut down all in the game but the toughest foes, in which case /rad truly shines, besides which case the rad makes most everything die faster. The mind/ user can stop runaway toggle 'anchors,' keeping debuffs well clumped. good plus here. Negative energy damage is less resisted, so you'd be good with a /psy.
A second dom? It's good, but I'd avoid fire/fire. Fire is about burning things as you mess them up. Problem is, it's slow to start up, breaks all of mind's sleeps with ease, and cannot stack controls except for holds. If you go the double dom route, which can be good, I'd go with something that could make use of the mind's control and double up controls to instantly lock bosses and such, or at least has powers that won't so easily break the sleeps. I'm leaning towards a second mind/, but that level of control is almost silly.
Brutes are a bit funky with doms...if you do go this route, go with a fast attack set, as few things will be fighting you to add fury. Also get one that can heal itself, for the few things that slip the control. A brute should eat up all the aggro from things that escape the dom, so that controls can recharge. Weapons alongside a /psy have the same resist issues as mentioned earlier.
Me? I'd go with the corr.
I figured War Mace would be good since Smashing is good against Robots, who resist Psi. I figured most mobs with generic S/L resistance probably don't resist Psi overly.
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If the Fire/Fire Dom isn't so good, what about Plant/Thorn. We are eco-terrorists after all. And then we could stack sleeps and confuses.
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This is probably the part that's making things hardest for you. Magic usually isn't synonymous with gang or paramilitary; pretty much any -other- origin fits better. Magic -is- pretty much synonymous with outlandish-looking powers.|
Originally Posted by oriand
The conceptual limits are: Magic origin, should feel gang/paramilitary, no outlandish-looking powers like spines or ice or whatever.
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I'd probably go with a brute with Super Strength, Mace, Axe, or Stone Melee as primary and Willpower as secondary. Pretty easy to play, gets an early start on survivability, and doesn't mess up her early controls. As long as you're not facing large numbers of enemies, Willpower can take an alpha fine even without much defensive slotting, and her AOE sleep actually helps once you get Rise to the Challenge. Later on you'll be able to tank Elite Bosses while she slows them and the two of you whittle them down.
Shield Defense is more large group oriented, and relies on multiple allies being in melee range with you for it's scaling defense buff, so I'd steer clear of it for duoing.
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The Mind/will lock things down pretty well, meaning the brute has to make its own fury. While I like war mace, it is a slow set, so it takes a very mature primary to have a fluid attack chain.|
Originally Posted by oriand
I figured War Mace would be good since Smashing is good against Robots, who resist Psi. I figured most mobs with generic S/L resistance probably don't resist Psi overly.
--- If the Fire/Fire Dom isn't so good, what about Plant/Thorn. We are eco-terrorists after all. And then we could stack sleeps and confuses. |
Hm. Plant does have many good possibilities. It's got it's confuses early on, so you can group confuse with seeds, then use mind's confuse on leftovers or a boss. Thorns really has some okay AoE's, which should help clear out groups. sounds like a good plan. Thorns will have some resistance issues, but from what I understand, the set's been buffed up to do lay some decent hurt even despite this.
I'm still leaning toward the dark/rad, though. /Rad has a toggle hold (choking cloud) to stack with the mind's holds, (Mind/ has three holds, though telekenisis is a mag 1 hold/repel, as I recal) and a very good AoE hold as well later on. (EMP Pulse) The fact it also has a heal for damage that gets through, the mez resists for when domination is down, +rech for all the controls and domination, and +dam to the red AT with the second highest damage rating is not insignificant. Add the fact that the -dam and -tohit from the toggles make uncontrolled foes less potent a threat, (not to mention the -tohit from dark blast) I'd say it's at least good on paper. It's all about playstyle, though, so if you can't get into it in-game, definetly go with what you like.
(Oh, and as a side option, sonic/rad would be another very good option, on paper. Sonic has another AoE sleep, and almost all attacks add -resistance, making no foes as psy resistant, and stacks with the -resists from rad and +damage from accelerate metabolism to really get the damage going.)
Nice thing is, there are no bad options. Some would be slower than others, some a bit awkward, but the point is to have fun. I hope some combo you find gives you both a good time. I duo my mind/psi often enough with my brother on his various characters, and it's quite fun to do so. Trying different combos can be fun, too, as you'll find new chemistry you hadn't thought of.
Try AR/Rad, skip buckshot and grenade and take assault tactics instead. The rad toggles are seriously powerful, and it has 2 nice holds.
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Snakebit -- If I were skipping Buckshot and Grenade, what would AR give me that would be more useful than, say, Ice? Or Archery?
Edit to add: Seldom, I've started the Dark/Read and I like it a lot. I'd consider sonic but there's lots of other opportunities to play sonic whereas the number of dark builds I like is small. I'm also leveling a Plant/Electric dominator since they get such good single-target attacks without spine's AoEs and DoTs.
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The paramilitary feel can be achieved well thru costume options. As much as I like the look of Assault Rifle, it's not very magic origin-ish.|
Originally Posted by oriand
The conceptual limits are: Magic origin, should feel gang/paramilitary, no outlandish-looking powers like spines or ice or whatever. here are my current thoughts, and concerns.
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As far as a partner. I like the Corr you are working on. (I may give it a try) I could also recommend you try a brute, maybe Dark/WP. It gives the magic look and should have enough single target dmg to not mess up all the mezzes also, survivability to boot.
Just some ideas.
currently reading: A Mighty Fortress (David Weber)
You are right. The Brute should be the ideal partner. I teamed with a Battle Axe/DA with my Mind/Psi Dom and we made it to level 50 in record time. Incidentally, the Brute in question was Magic origin and really looked the part with a zombie/lich-type costume and a shovel as his campy yet deadly weapon of choice. If you do go this route you and your teammate should carefully select Patron power pool powers with an emphasis on Energy or Negative or Toxic damage to help out when you run into an AV that resists Psi and Lethal/Smashing.
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Eh. Brutes do quite well with force multipliers around, as they have such high potential. Doms, on the other hand, do not provide this, but give such good safety that they can allow squishier things to do stuff they usually couldn't. When I play with my brother's brute on a mind/psi, he can indeed go smashy all day long, which is helpful to him, but has less fury than when he is simply shielded or healed. I dunno.|
Originally Posted by Irresponsible
You are right. The Brute should be the ideal partner.
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The best dom duos I've used were dom/dom, dom/corr, and dom/stalker. When doing a dom/brute duo, strangely enough, we did best soloing different groups. But that was at high levels, with both of us being very self-sufficient at that point. This, of course, could change widely by tactics and powersets.
Hello all!
My girlfriend recently started playing City of Heroes with me, and for her first character rolled a Tech origin Min/Psychic Dominator. The concept was that she had a headband that amplified neural activity until she could impose her thoughts upon unwilling victims. She then set out to forcibly reeducate the masses and found an anarcho-eco-communist state.
So I decided to play her right hand man, bodyguard, and leader of her troops. Magic origin, as the sole sorcerer in her organization. I rolled an Assault Rifle/Kinetics Corruptor. I figured that with Inertial Reduction and Speed Boost there'd be no pressing need for her to go for Fitness or Travel pools, giving her total flexibility to play around and take whatever powers looked interesting. Anyway, we've been duoing almsot exclusively and it is a NIGHTMARE. there is NO synergy between our builds. She loves using Mass Hypnosis and Confuse, neither of which works well with my abundance of AoE, knockback, and DoT. She doesn't benefit all that much from kinetic support either; with domination, and drain psyche down the road, she has the tools to stay in the fight while I'm sucking blue. She already has status protection for tough fights from Domination, so increase density isn't doing much either.
Anyway, she's only level 14 now, so I'm rolling a new toon to replace mine. The conceptual limits are: Magic origin, should feel gang/paramilitary, no outlandish-looking powers like spines or ice or whatever. here are my current thoughts, and concerns.
Stalker -- Katana/Regeneration. I have this one at level 12 and he's a lot of fun. Opening fights with Hypnosis, assassin strike, placate, autocrit sting of the wasp, rehide, autocrit flashing steel is just too awesome to contemplate. I'm just not totally satisfied with this one because I was hoping to bring enough support or tanking to reliably keep us both alive.
Mastermind -- Mercs/ForceFields. I have this one to level 10, and he's been amazingly effective. I can solo most content effortlessly, and I can still carry an assault rifle like my original toon. I just worry about potential boredom, as this is two defensive sets. Neither of us will have big damage, and the defense/control combo might make life TOO easy. Plus, bubbling 6 pets and one teammate... bleh.
Corruptor -- So the problem with my previous corruptor was a VERY late-blooming secondary. I'm thinking Dark/Rad. It's a build I've wanted to try for a while, the secondary is great from day one, and since I refuse to play Dark Blast on Defenders this might be my only chance to try the set. I have one to level 6 and he's been SCARY good. The only downside is that Sleep and Confuse don't exactly synergize with my debuff toggles and area to-hit debuffs.
Dominator -- I could play a second Dom. Her dominator isn't exactly the most reliable control. Her reflexes just aren't very good yet, so she can't handle cycling through her songle-target controls to lockdown three or four enemies. She'll frequently hold, then levitate or confuse, then mental dart. Then everybody else kills me. If I played Fire/Fire I could show her how it's done and we could stack holds on everything dangerous. I just worry about elite bosses crushing us mercilessly during the triangles of doom.
Brute -- A brute would seem to be ideal, since It would be survivable without her help, able to tank for her, and to do some damage. I'd be looking at weapon primaries, probably War Mace with the baseball bat. Unfortunately looking at Mids it seems the stun on war mace would never work when I wanted it to, so maybe Battle Axe with the Hatchet. Anyway the secondary needs to feel magical, so I'm thinking Energy Aura or Shield Defense with the energy or dark shield. I have a Mace/Shield up to 4 who seems to be decent.
Thoughts on what combo I missed or how to allay the downsides to these?