Really struggling.

Hey guys, well I'm new to the world of city of heroes and villains so hopefully some you seasoned and grissled veterans can help out.

If you took the villain route, well, I have got to level 7 and I am working for mongoose now, and basically Ive got a mission where I have to clear out a snake pit. And this is where I am really struggling.

My character is a level 7 Dominator. Gravity control and energy assault. Basically, the snakes like to get up close and personal to fight, so as a result Im honestly just spending trips back and forth to the hospital.

Any ideas guys?

Four ideas to try:

1. Get help (1 or more teammates)
2. Lower the difficulty to -1 to your level or go to Port Oakes and get your broker, newspaper and do newspaper missions there until you level up and effectively you are +1 to the mission
3. stock up on defense inspirations. You can get them from Mongoose, Kalinda or a bartender in Pocket D
4. buy level 10 enhancements and slot your attacks with accuracy and endurance reduction

As a Dominator, you should have the ability to pick up an area of effect (AoE) immobilize power. For Gravity, it's crushing Field. I'd highly recommend picking that up. It will let you fight more at range, keeping the enemies from moving towards you, but still allowing them to attack.

Edit -> Also, welcome to the game!

There are some other tactics you can use as a squishie attacking groups of enemies.

1) Pulling - use your least damaging attack or even your origin inherent attack. Try to target an enemy that is closest to you, and as far away from the others in the group as possible. Often you will get only that enemy coming after you. Rinse and repeat. If you get more than 1 enemy after you, run until they lose aggro then try again.

2) Aggro the whole group then run like hell. After they lose aggro, they will run back to their spawn point. If you are quick, you can chase them down and catch a straggler without aggroing the entire group again.

3) Carry Awaken inspirations to rez without having to go to the hospital and run back to the mission. When fighting groups, try to move them away from their spawn point. That way if they defeat you they will run back to the spawn point, leaving you alone to rez in safety.

I know those don't sound all the "super", but these strategies can be effective for lower-level squishies until you get some more levels and powers and can take on larger spawns with more success.

Dominators have fairly low hit points, it can be a hard start.

You have to leverage the controls in your primary powerset to hold or immobilize your foes, and the attacks in your secondary to damage them. Snakes in particular are melee types, so if you can keep your distance it is a lot better for you.

Don't be too discouraged at defeats early in the game. There is no experience debt until level 10. If you find the Dominator frustrating, try a Brute or a Mastermind until you've gotten familiar with the enemies.

SwellGuy's list is a good one.

Crushing Field is great but it's a level 8 power. At level 7 you can still use Gravity Distortion on one snake in a group to immediately take him out of the fight. Choose the lieutenant if one exists.

Use Crush while back-peddaling to immobilize a second and keep him at range. If possible try to stay out of his line-of-sight since he can still throw things at you.

The knockback in your energy blasts and Lift if you have it should help keep the final guy away from you and on the ground while you kill him. Don't ignore the first two while you deal with him, keep them mezzed while you deal with the stragglers.

Try not to fight more than 3 at a time and 2 (or 1) is better.

Stay mobile when you can't lock them all down. Know the range of your powers and stay at the extreme edge when possible.

When possible, pull stragglers away from their groups and around a corner out of sight of the others then beat him up for his lunch money. You should be more than a match for any single enemy since you can also hold him. The best way to pull is to throw your origin power and run back. Don't attack him again until he is well away from his buddies and start the fight with Gravity Distortion.

Use your domination any time you have trouble holding an individual. Keep an eye on your domination bar and keep move fast enough to keep it from dropping too much, try to keep it full.

Accuracy in all powers that take it!

When all else fails and you can't find a helper, go outlevel the mission and come back to it later.

And welcome to the game.

Gravity is probably the latest-blooming control set, and Energy has weak ranged attacks and strong melee attacks. While there's no 'better' or 'worse' power combination, the one you selected will have some challenges in the early levels.

I just leveled a Gravity/Storm controller up, and I have a 40+ Plant/Energy dominator, so here are a few tips.

On the Gravity side, you can use your hold in combination with Lift to keep two enemies out of the fight all the time.

If you took Propel, try using Lift before casting Propel. Propel takes 3.5 seconds of animation time before it does it's damage, which is usually time spent being hit by whatever you're propelling at. Stuff you lift has to get back up, which takes about 3 seconds - and then the target gets hit in the face with a street lamp and knocked back away from you. By the time they're back in melee range, Lift is recharged and you can repeat the process.

I would actually recommend NOT getting the AOE immobilize as a new player. It's very expensive endurance-wise, and in groups it's a good way to get yourself a ton of attention from the enemy - which isn't good for dominators.

Make sure to pick up Bone Smasher when you get the opportunity. It's your bread and butter attack until around level 35, so it's worth getting used to playing with it.

I'd also consider taking Air Superiority from the Flight power pool. Air Superiority is a guaranteed knockdown if you hit a target with it, which can help if you're fighting a boss.

Between Air Superiority, Lift, and your single target hold, you can keep two targets juggled and one held. Most groups of enemies are two or three targets when you're solo, so you should be able to keep entire groups locked down long enough to defeat them.

Wow guys, thanks for the very warm welcome!

I don't know about finding help, I reckon everybody is off playing going rogue right now, so for the most part, I've been all on my lone some round the place. So you know, I'm having to battle on. I reckon I may have to try and level myself up a little bit before tackling this one, because my villain, she ain't best served for this kind of thing.

I'm not far off level 8, so I was thinking I might revisit this mission as a level 9 or maybe even 10 and then I should hopefully steamroll the snakes.

It was kind of a rude awakening because till this mission, I'd pretty much been plowing through the game. So I guess this has taught me many a valuable lesson.

There's been plenty of other advice in the thread, so I'll basically just second the advice on pulling, and keeping your foes away from you by judicious use of your control powers. A Dominator is a hard AT to start off with, while a Blaster is equally as squishy, it will also do a little bit more damage. (More due to selection of attacks than AT at that low a level) Fortunately you should have enough hit points to take SOME melee damage. That will get even harder as you level.

Fortunately, as mentioned, you don't need to be that worried about death. Yes, a trip back from the hospital is annoying. An alternative is to get or buy an Awaken Inspiration, and then when you see you're getting in trouble, run around a corner. When the foes kill you, they will try and return to where they came from, and you can use the Awaken.

The main thing is, don't let yourself get overwhelmed. Even on a Brute or Tanker at that level, you want to take on two or three foes at a time, and lead them away from any others that might be attracted by the noise. If the mission is the one I think it is, with the big eggs in the final room, it's a hard one to get through without alerting the whole room. You need to take those eggs out first, as each will spawn a Boss if you don't, making for a harder fight. But it's tough to run in and take out the eggs without either being taken out by their two guards, or even worse drawing Snakes from the rest of the room.

Just stick with it, and it should get easier by the time you get to level 10. You'll hopefully have a large enough selection of attacks that you can keep the foes off of you.

Just curious, but what server are you on? A lot of us on the boards have toons at all different levels and would gladly team up with you.

To help find teammates you should head to the section of the forums for your server and say Hi and join their main global channels since that is where much of the team forming takes place. Also check out the mentor project at the top of this forum for lots of people ready and willing to help new players.

If you are on Justice join the channels JFA 2010 and Justice United. You can also shoot me a tell and I'll help if possible. My global is in my sig.

Lots of good advice on here already - and yes, Grav/Energy can be a tough set to start as a Dominator, but once you get going, you GO! Something else to keep in mind as you play is whether you intend to go more damage-heavy or control-heavy, and remember that you can always respec if you try one path and find you'd rather go the other.

If you should happen to be on Justice, give @Blood Speaker a yell (my husband) - he took a grav/en dom from 1-50 BEFORE they made the changes in the Dominator AT, and has given some really good advice on tactics and powers. Banestar remains one of his favorite characters to play.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

This might be useful for you as well:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=212083

(Mentor Project)

Worse comes to worse, if all else fails - talk to Mongoose and select "Complete Current Mission from this Contact". This will autocomplete the mission and allow you to move on. You can only do this once every three days, however - so it is usually a last resort.

Also, if you use the Fateweaver (check your map, its the blue-"person" symbol; in Mercy she's pretty much in the middle of the map, she's under the clocktower), you can "reset" the mission to your new difficulty settings by returning (or calling) your contact and select "Abandon Current Mission from this contact". This will remove (but NOT complete) the mission, allowing you to re-start it with your new difficulty settings.

However - I hate Mongoose. I hate his missions. They don't get any better. Just skip him. At level 7, you're perfectly capable of handling Port Oakes. Head over there, speak to the Broker Contact and get a "newspaper". This will allow you to select from three random, basic, short missions you can play. Eventually you'll get access to the Mayhem mission.

By the point you get to that bank mission, you're gonna forget all about stupid freaking Mongoose and all his stupid freaking snakes.

A lot of good advice here.

My suggestion is to continue with the Mercy Island missions as they make for good training for new players. Plus there's a badge for snake defeats...

You will get a variety of foes, many will be melee, some will be ranged. Snakes, Longbow, Infected, Skulls, and a couple of others that will be good practice on how your chosen powersets function.

Having a Control set Primary, pulling and separating mobs is your best tactic. Lock down one, pull another out of line of sight (LOS,) that should give you enough time to finish off the pulled foe before the other one releases and comes after you.

If you'd like to ask for some in-game help, head up to the Mentor Project and give a shout-out. You'll find people on every server that have offered to donate their time and knowledge to new players ("newbs", not to be confused with "n00bs" who are players that think they know everything and are unwilling to listen to anyone.)

And, Welcome to CoX.

I'm in the UK so am on the Defiant server, I'm still getting used to all the controls in truth so I think I look like a clumsy fool really, but in my defence I've only been playing for like... 2 days. So I don't think Im doing too bad...

The only thing Im finding a bit disconcerting, is the fact that for a MMPORG, I've barely seen anybody who isn't an NPC

I think the first piece of advice posted here is the best & bottom line: get some help.


Not only is this a multi-player game (duh), it also has the most helpful, polite community around.

If it was me, I'd just hit up some 50s with Tells, explaining that you're new and having trouble with a mission and would they mind helping out for a few?

With the new SuperSideKicking system, they'd be [your level] +5, giving them some higher-level powers that could REALLY help move things along.

Don't underestimate the helpfulness of the players here.

Join the Mentor Project (linked above), and use the N P C global (New Player Channel) to ask for help - you WILL get it, I guarantee.

On Defiant, the most active global channel is Defiant Events. I'm sure that you'll be able to find someone on there willing to help you out, especially if you say you're new to the game.

Mercy tends to be pretty quiet at the best of time, as a lot of more experienced players skip past it as quickly as possible (it's a good intro, but the selection of missions is limited). Once you get to Cap au Diable, you'll find a lot more people around.

Defiant happens to be my server when I'm playing Euro-side - but as you're on the wrong side of the law, I can only give you verbal help until unless you go into a co-op zone

And welcome to the game and the forums