At level 8 on a plant dominator, all your survivability problems should vanish. Seeds of confusion is probably the best single control power in the game - as long as it's up for a spawn, that spawn should be toast. Mitigates their damage, causes them to weaken each other, bunches them up nice and tight for fire breath, and even at very low levels lasts something like 20 seconds completely unslotted. If you're not using seeds, I would very strongly suggest doing so.
If you are trying to use seeds and are still running into problems, could you tell us exactly what you're doing and how fights are usually going, so that we can see what the problem might be?
@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.
This is what it means to be a tank!
I typically use seeds when it is up (which is for most spawns). I seem to run into problems when the confuse effect wears off or especially if and when it misses (and I have been slotting the power for accuracy). Maybe it's that things vary in level, but I don't think I'm getting the full 21s confuse all of the time. Generally a single Lt. that gets free of holds/confuses or a pair of minions seems to be enough to do some serious hurt and while I'm not actually dying, I figure if I'm eating inspirations now things might get even touchier as I level.
Edit: Also, it would be nice to be able to kill more than one spawn a minute, though I recognize that that may be outside of the bounds of low level ability.
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#1, don't open with roots unless you have a wall to hide behind. Especially on teams.|
Originally Posted by Mordheim
So, after the various suggestions here I ended up rolling a Dominator. Given that I solo a lot due to playing at odd times surviving is relevant to me and I have found so far that I have issues with it. Assuming I pause a bit between fights I can usually kill things, but anytime I have more than one Lt. or even sometimes a pack of minions that are yellow, I seem to have great difficulties.
What suggestions are there for increasing survivability at low levels? Power choices, slotting, etc. are all fine options. I'm currently playing Plant/Fire but as I'm sure the character will be lower level for a while (since I haven't leveled to 50 before I'm interested in the dev-made mission arcs more than AE) I'm perfectly fine changing sets to have a better leveling experience. |
#2, for bosses solo, stack the hold fast as you can.
#3, as said, confuse as fast as you can
"Hmm, I guess I'm not as omniscient as I thought" -Gavin Runeblade.
I can be found, outside of paragon city here.
Thank you everyone at Paragon and on Virtue. When the lights go out in November, you'll find me on Razor Bunny.
Leveling my plant/fire/fire dom I had Seeds 6-slotted as soon as possible with 2 acc, 2 recharge, and 2 confuse, which helped a LOT.
I forgot to ask, are you willing to slot sets early on?
Because there are some dirt cheap early sets that help a fair bit. And once you hit 27 you can slot the chance to hold into EVERYTHING. And that is a game changer.
"Hmm, I guess I'm not as omniscient as I thought" -Gavin Runeblade.
I can be found, outside of paragon city here.
Thank you everyone at Paragon and on Virtue. When the lights go out in November, you'll find me on Razor Bunny.
Quote:
I'd be willing to slot whatever, but as I have no lvl 50 to farm up cash, even relatively cheap is...pretty expensive as far as I've seen.
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Originally Posted by GavinRuneblade
I forgot to ask, are you willing to slot sets early on?
Because there are some dirt cheap early sets that help a fair bit. And once you hit 27 you can slot the chance to hold into EVERYTHING. And that is a game changer. |
Low level plant/fire?
Either spore burst or seeds of confusion the whole spawn. Then strangler the most dangerous enemy type in the spawn. Then kill stuff with assault powers.
You have enough control that you really shouldn't be running into problems with normal spawn sizes of 2-3.
"Hi, my name is Ail. I make people sick."
A partial selection from my 50's on Freedom: Ail = Ice/Traps, Luck = Street Justice/Super Reflexes Stalker, Mist = Bane, Pixy = Trick Arrow/Archery, Pure = Gravity/Energy, Smoke = Fire/Fire Dominator
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I don't have stranglers yet and spore (at least) is definitely not that useful unless I need an emergency button. I do use it to sleep a group and run away if I need it, but it hasn't helped a lot on an average pull. I think my biggest issue is that often things are +1 and it seems like seeds misses a fair amount on them. If that happens and strangler also misses, I'm running or dead. And if seeds misses multiples, it is very sad for me =/ Maybe I'm not putting enough slots into my assault powers instead of the control ones to dish out damage fast enough?
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Originally Posted by _Ail_
Low level plant/fire?
Either spore burst or seeds of confusion the whole spawn. Then strangler the most dangerous enemy type in the spawn. Then kill stuff with assault powers. You have enough control that you really shouldn't be running into problems with normal spawn sizes of 2-3. |
I'd say the best choice is honestly to drop your difficulty to fight enemies at -1 your level. You might level a bit slower but in the long run it really doesn't matter a ton, and plus you want to have fun right?
I just hit my plant/fire to 20 and while it wasn't *too* bad, yes, if you miss too often they'll just eat you. Also any time a mission throws a boss or two at you up front you tend to be very squishy if you can't manage to lock them down fast enough (And no domination to ensure a fast lock). I finally got sick of it because I have things slotted kind of decently, but hitting a mission where the enemy spawns *mostly* yellows can get pretty frustrating when you start whiffing. In fact it was a mission up against a lot of Wyvern agents and Professor Echo that finally made me just say 'screw it' and drop the difficulty.
Otherwise all the advice is pretty sound, the seeds are the definite go to crowd control power. Don't be afraid to spam embrace of fire for the big damage bump to chew up a crowd faster. Time is your enemy probably more than most ATs solo.
The other thing I'd advise, and it will have to wait til you're level 20 and requires you to be a villain, but get Frenzy, the villain alignment power by affirming your alignment (That is, run 10 villain tip missions and do a Villain morality mission). After 7 days you'll earn it as a temporary power. It gives you a 100% domination bar when you like. Haven't got it yet m'self actually, but it's too good to pass up for a dominator
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It looks expensive, but what you're missing is how easy it is to make money. Several players have done all kinds of experiments. Project mope was my favorite. Nethergoat started a stalker ran only solo and only on 0/0 settings. He put all of his drops on the market for 1 inf. By level 30 he had almost 40 million. Also lots of the reasonably decent IOs you can get for less than vendor price. For instance, sure the crafted Crushing Impact Damage/Recharge is 4m, but the recipe is only 50k to 200k.|
Originally Posted by Mordheim
I'd be willing to slot whatever, but as I have no lvl 50 to farm up cash, even relatively cheap is...pretty expensive as far as I've seen.
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But anyway, here's my suggestion:
1. sell all your DO and SO drops to the vendor of your choice
2. sell all common recipe drops to the vendor of your choice
3. sell all orange/yellow recipe drops that are not defense, resist, heal, or attack to the vendor of your choice
4. craft all yellow/orange recipes that ARE defense, resist, heal or attacks*
5. put the crafted IO on the market for a price of 400-800kinf (if no rare salvage needed) or 1.8m inf (if it needed a rare salvage)
6. sell all remaining salvage drops on the market for 1 inf
7. sell all tier 3 (aka large) inspirations on the market for 1 inf
Unless you power level you should be swimming in inf very shortly after following these steps. For crafting, don't spend more than 8k per common salvage, 30k per uncommon (possible exception being living tatoo and carnival mask run 100k from time to time), and never bid more than 1.3m for rare salvage.
* don't craft air burst or detonation. they are vendor trash.
This is basically what I do. The only difference is I craft some of my common recipe drops for badging purposes so if you follow these instructions you'll have more money than me. Anything with a last 5 going for more than 20 million, it's safe to put a decently high sell price rather than 1.8m if you want to avoid the lowball bids. I don't really care unless it's really valuable so I tend to just use the 1.8m guideline.
I have my elec/stone dom about to leave praetoria, only level 19 and he has more than 21 IOs slotted, half of those he bought. And he has 17m inf. Granted, I got a few lucky drops with him, and I did level lock him twice to finish out story arcs. But still. All I did was follow those 7 rules. The game literally throws money at you if you let it.
Ask for help in the Marketing forum, those guys are spectacular, very helpful, and they know a lot more than me.
"Hmm, I guess I'm not as omniscient as I thought" -Gavin Runeblade.
I can be found, outside of paragon city here.
Thank you everyone at Paragon and on Virtue. When the lights go out in November, you'll find me on Razor Bunny.
So, after the various suggestions here I ended up rolling a Dominator. Given that I solo a lot due to playing at odd times surviving is relevant to me and I have found so far that I have issues with it. Assuming I pause a bit between fights I can usually kill things, but anytime I have more than one Lt. or even sometimes a pack of minions that are yellow, I seem to have great difficulties.
What suggestions are there for increasing survivability at low levels? Power choices, slotting, etc. are all fine options. I'm currently playing Plant/Fire but as I'm sure the character will be lower level for a while (since I haven't leveled to 50 before I'm interested in the dev-made mission arcs more than AE) I'm perfectly fine changing sets to have a better leveling experience.