Unanswered Pummit Questions

The real problem is that blasters are, as I keep saying, hung up on the generally unspoken archetype requirement that they should be vulnerable. That's why you can't give them shields, that's why you can't give them mez protection, that's why you can't give them almost any passive defensive ability above a certain strength, except as epic selections.

Then you can't give them too much mez, because that steps on controllers. You can't give them too much offense because then they'd kill too fast. That leaves mechanical offensive tricks and soft control, and you can't make knockup the blaster inherent effect.

Even you're showing a hint of that intrinsic prejudice. Blaster mez protection options could leave them with less magnitude, or no magnitude and high resistance, it could break out of mez but not prevent mez, but even with all those potential short comings there's something that just doesn't seem right to you if blasters don't need to burn power picks for it while there exists a scrapper out there that has to burn two. Because blaster mez protection isn't just required to be lesser protection than the melee archetypes, it must be lesser in every possible way or there's something wrong. There's no other reason to believe blaster mez protection must be more difficult to achieve than domination, even though domination does more than provide mez protection: it provides full endurance refresh and a strong boost to dominator mez.

In fact, here's one way to describe domination: it returns you to full endurance, it grants you mez protection, and it allows you to mez bosses with one hit. Total focus was reduced to mag 3 because giving blasters a single mag 4 stun was considered wrong. Dominators get to have *all* their mez be mag 6, *and* have both ranged and melee attacks, *and* their melee attacks even have a higher modifier than blasters, *and* they get to have mez protection. Why? Because they do not need to be vulnerable. Its actually just that simple.

Even I find myself doing it, which is why I *know* its the reason blasters are the problem child they are. Blasters are a sacrificial lamb to the gameplay concept of needing to be occasionally rescued, or bouncing back after being nearly defeated. That's why Defiance 1.0 was what it was: it was actually the mental image of blasters to the designers. Something that was beaten up, and with their last gasp vaporized everything in the room before falling over.


Here's something that I've thought about ever since dominators were buffed. A hypothetical archetype with dominator numbers, dominator assault sets as their primary, and scrapper defense as their secondary, would I think be a fairly popular archetype. It would be defensively weaker than scrappers because it would have less health, but it would have a mix of melee and ranged attacks, which would be an offensive advantage. It would be the perfect platform to build an Iron Man-like character, for example. But it wouldn't really be any stronger than a Dominator. By taking away the control set we've actually taken away some offense, so this hypothetical archetype would have lower theoretical offensive output than a dominator. It would have higher personal mitigation, but I don't think in most cases that scrapper mitigation is massively higher than dominator control mitigation. They have to be similar, or dominators wouldn't work. So this hypothetical archetype would be a ranged/melee/defense archetype that I can reasonably prove has equal to or less performance than actual dominators now, at least on average.

Anyone want to bet that this hypothetical archetype would *not* outperform Blasters, even if Blasters might have *some* small offensive edge (mostly in ranged AoE)?

Dominators > X > Blasters. QED: Dominators > Blasters. Not in all possible ways, but in terms of overall performance, that conclusion seems inevitable. But the thing that I've *really* thought about a lot is it begs the interesting question of why does there seem to be so little headroom to buff blasters, when there's clearly enough headroom for me to invent a whole new archetype above them and below dominators in performance.

Also, people do like playing blasters, because I think people are attracted to playing something that is all-out offense, and because at lower levels blasters tend to be a more "active" archetype offensively. I wonder, though, if the Assault/Defense archetype was created as an epic archetype or something, how many people playing blasters it would steal away. Perhaps that is the best way to address the gap with blasters; not by changing blasters but by making a new archetype that addresses those issues, leaving blasters to be a legacy archetype that retains that original vulnerability. After all, lots of people still like to play blasters, including me. Even if its broken, it might be too late to really totally overhaul it.

I'm a sole point of anecdotal data, but I just have to mention that I basically completely stopped playing my Fire/Dev Blaster after leveling my Crab Spider. The Spider misses some utility that Devices provided, but it's basically Assault/Defense as you suggest, and there's just no need for me to go back to the Blaster. The Spider provides all the spawn wreckage I could ever want WITH personal defenses WITH team support WITH pets. The offensive power is less than a Blaster's, but the extra versatility and tools and mitigation it gets more than makes up for it.

I think you misunderstand. I don't see Blasters as needing to have much worse status protection than Scrappers, myself. I'm merely speaking of what's reasonable to expect for them, because like it or not, the development team still seem to consider them a glass cannon in a game where a glass cannon really isn't all that necessary. If I had my way, I'd redesign the whole AT, or at the very least every one of its secondaries, and draw them up with much more self-protection inside. In fact, I might go whole hog and shoot for something like Fiery Aura - primarily defence, but with offensive capabilities.

The reason I mention Blaster status protection as needing to be a powerset pick isn't to make it weaker, but rather for two other separate reasons. One reason is because I want status protection to be written into the AT as it is for Scrappers. Having the power be inherent feels like a gimmick, and there's no way we'll ever see full inherent status protection. It will always be a gimmick, and therefore weaker. I don't want it to be weaker. I want it to be strong, which means it needs to cost at least one power pick. Blasters may be Range/Support, but they still have a very high melee proficiency and very few tools for self-preservation. I aim to give them ore tools, and more tools that are actually decent, not token. The ability to fire your first two primary powers and first secondary power is a token benefit. It prevents you from being permaheld by things that can't kill you anyway, like Sappers, but it doesn't prevent you from being held and killed because you can't defend yourself.

The other reason is I want to involve status protection into the Blaster sets, themselves. Scrappers, for instance, don't all have the same protection from status effects. Some sets lack knockback (BAD idea), some don't have much terrorize protection, for some it's a click, for others it's a toggle, Electrical Aura only gets knockback protection when near the ground and so forth. Putting status protection in the Blaster inherent power means all Blasters will have the same status protection using the same mechanism for the same values. Putting it in their sets means it can be unique to the set it's in, or at the very least somewhat variable.

When it comes to Blasters, I'm conflicted with myself. I'm conflicted between what I want to happen to them, which is quite extreme, and what I feel is the most that will ever be done to them, which is "not much." I want big changes, but I don't feel that these big changes will ever be accepted by those in charge. They're too big, too much work and stand to yank the AT from under people who, for some reason, enjoy it.

In other words, an Assault/Defence AT. Yeah, I've heard of the concept before, and even made quite a few suggestions about it. One I PMd to Castle by the suggestion of other participating in my suggestion thread, and the response I got from him was disheartening. While we argued mechanics, the bottom line was he simply didn't see a role for such an AT on a team and I, not having really even considered the need for one, had nothing to respond with. That was more or less the end of that, so every time such an AT has come up, I've held little hope for it.

That said, hell yeah I'd like to see it! I'd play that in a heartbeat. I like your suggestion and your reasoning, and I'd probably shoot for Stalker level survivability, speaking solely of defensive powers. I recall trying to come up with a gimmick which would encourage players of this AT to use their ranged attacks at range without really penalising them too much, but that was a long time ago. Instead, I'd be interested to hear your take on an inherent power for this AT.

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 don't believe in deliberately going out of the way to make a "special" inherent. Frankly, I think every time you give something an inherent that is an admission you screwed up and didn't do it right the first time. And really, the devs just make it up to silence the people who think everything is supposed to have an inherent. The stalker inherent is "assassination." I rest my case.

Having said that, I'm not sure what I would do to distinguish the archetype, in terms of special effects or special additional effects to powers and attacks. If I had the time and resources, I would want to make up something really interesting. But with less time, I would probably take the VEAT route, and fiddle with the archetype's base numbers to give them some offensive edge. Perhaps non-zero base recharge, or non-zero base endurance discount, or both.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

Because they can be stacked to overcome low mag protection, for one; for another not everybody has it (until Clarion, and even then I think it's t4 for perma). I have several Kinetic Corruptors that would love mez protection. >.>

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

Even I've said this in the past, but that was in the context of talking about full mez protection. We all have damage, that doesn't mean its pointless for the critters to have health.

Melee gets mez protection: mez just doesn't affect them, at all. If we gave blasters mez resistance then the *duration* of mez would decrease but they'd still be affected by it. That wouldn't make mez pointless. In fact, it would cut directly to the heart of one particular problem with mez. In order for mez to have *any* chance at affecting a melee archetype - and they are supposed to be *theoretically* threatened by mez - it has to stack. To stack, it has to last long enough to have a chance to stack. But that duration is not just acting to give mez a chance to affect melee, its also just plain killing squishies. There's no other rational explanation for 30 second stun grenades except a) they are long duration to have a chance at stacking on melee if they allow themselves to get pounded by them or b) the devs are sadistic bastards.

Another thing about mez protection is that there's no specific reason why blasters would have to obtain protection against *all* mez. In fact, only two mezzes are problematic: stuns and holds. Both prevent the blaster from taking reactive action, like using inspirations (except break frees). I don't care if blasters are vulnerable to sleep: sleep will only incapacitate until the blaster is hit again, and that train is never late. Terrorize is more problematic, but at least its a problem most things are in a similar boat to: most melee don't have terrorize protection either.

But when you can be held or stunned for a longer period of time than it takes to roll a new alt, that's a problem. And I do think there is something to the notion that long-duration mezzes are long duration at least in part to have a chance to stack, which means giving blasters mez resistance acts less to escape mez, and more to bring it back to reasonable levels of duration in the first place: levels of duration that would have been more likely if the devs didn't have to consider stacking and building mez against melee.

Wow, well said.

I love my blasters but nothing infuriates me more then chowing down on a few purples and reds only to be stopped by that lucky LT. who used Dominate and it somehow was able to hold me...only to have 6 Hurl Boulders hit me all at once when I could of easily Nuked the lot of them without them even knowing what happened.

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.

Honestly, I think this is an example of legacy design that has little relevance to today's late-game. Enemies just plain don't live long enough for a single enemy to stack mezzes on a melee. When melee gets mezzed, it's usually because they get hit by multiple mezzing enemies at once.

That philosophy is itself problematic for squishies, since it means that there may be more mezzers in a spawn than a Blaster can hope to neutralize with their few control powers, and that enemies pretty much have to open with mezzes if they're to have a chance to use them at all, but it renders the 30-second stun grenade obsolete.

Huh. I thought they did.

I know for a fact that many do. I often use this to my advantage when playing control heavy characters on teams.

I actually think the problem is not the binary nature, but a combination of the 'perceived' binary nature and the perma nature of mezzes.

In certain other games, I have liked the fact that controls almost always 'penetrate', but have short durations that you cannot really extend. Even when playing a controller-type character, it made sure that you had to actually fight. This extended to the critters as well: a mez meant that you were going to miss an attack or few, but you weren't going to get mezzed at the start of a fight and stay that way through the whole thing.

Long duration mezzes and chaining mezzes make the game more boring regardless of who has them.

Sadly, I think it's a bit late to insert that philosophy here. But we have purple triangles and Break Free inspirations, so there you go.

I'm not really sure what a non-binary mezz would do or look like. I'd hate for every opponent in game to have a visible bar for each type of mezz all the time; maybe as an option.

Holds stack with other holds, but a hold can't stack with a stun because they apply different types of magnitudes. What this means is that, instead of a toolbox of tools that he can stack, a controller gets a toolbox of tools that only really stack with themselves. Gravity Control, for instance, can only ever stack Gravity Distortion with Gravity Distortion field or Crush with Crushing field, and it has nothing to stack Wormhole with.

By contrast, a Blaster (much as I dislike the AT) can use any attack on any enemy and still contribute towards the one effect damage eventually leads to - death. There is only one kind of death and every type of damage contributes to it. There's more than one way to fall under the effect of control, however, and each type of control only stacks with other control effects of its own type. So instead of being a control powerhouse being able to pull all his might together and hold some tough foes by attrition, a controller is given effect that are not just mutually exclusive, but often mutually detremental. An Earth Controller who wants to use Earthquake for its mitigation but accidentally hits all his enemies with Stone Cages has just screwed up his own powers. By himself.

To be honest, I feel that games of this type only really need a single control effect, which is "hold" and everything else can be debuffs like slows, damage resistance debuffs and so forth. If we had only one control effect, a Controller would have a large collection of redundant tools which he can stack to overcome high levels of protection, thus allowing enemies to HAVE high levels of protection and also allowing bosses to have much higher protection than minions.

Right now, status effects are instant, ultimately only secondary. You can control things, yes, but not for long and you eventually still need damage to kill things. I'd like to see controls be made less instant, but much more deadly. Even if you can't kill things through direct control, I still want to see both NPCs and PCs have the ability inflict ridiculously long control effects, but ONLY if you stack enough first. Let's look at an example:

Suppose there's only one type of hold, and all our hold powers are mag 2. An enemy has mag 3 protection and mag 7 "critical protection." Anything below 3 doesn't affect him, so a single hold does nothing. Two holds bring you up to mag 4, so the enemy is held for as long as you maintain a magnitude of over 3 on him. Slap a few more holds, however, and you build up to mag 8. At this point, the enemy is held as long as even a single hold of ANY mag remains on him. In essence, you've broken his resistance and he's easy to control from here on out, until you let him go and he regains his senses. We can go even further and give gim mag 11 "final protection." Once you exceed that, the enemy is not only held from ANY hold, but the duration of all holds applied to him is doubled.

Now, that's just a concept I came up with in 60 seconds, so I'm sure it's broken in a number of ways, but my point is that if we could stack holds, we could design enemies who become increasingly more crippled and increasingly more vulnerable the more holds you put on them. After a while, they're held. A while after that, they're held more. A while after that, they're permaheld. If we want to be diabolical, a while after that an they defeated through status effects alone. THAT is the kind of control system I want to see. I just don't think there's any room for it in this game. Control effects are support, pure and simple.

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.

This may be picking nits, but this is where set synergy can come into play. Grav itstelf may not have multiple powers to stack stuns, but my Grav/Storm/Stone can stack Wormhole, Thunder Clap, and Fissure.

I have wondered why we even need stuns as opposed to holds though. Other than to wander around loopy at 2ft/sec anyway.

Gameplay-wise they aren't needed, but they are so much a part of the genre and character individuality, I'd be sad to see them gone.

Yep, "flavor" is basically why I figured the distinction was initially made, and I'm fine with it (I don't think there's any going back anyway). It does provide more build variability (both selections and slotting), which I can also appreciate.

Here's the problem, though - where you see synergy, I see limitations. Yes, some sets work well with each other, but suppose my concept calls for a set combo which doesn't? My foray into control ATs was a Gravity/Energy Dominator. Energy's primary form of mitigation is knockback, which either Crushing Field or Gravity Distortion Field suppresses.

To be quite honest, I feel that creating artificial limitations for the sole reason of promoting specific approaches is not the best of approaches. I say this to explain why I feel having a single status effect type might help things along.

If all stuns contribute is the thematic of a person being smacked silly, then holds already do that. In fact, holds like Knockout Blow and Seismic Smash already have all of the graphics of a stun, just without letting the enemy affected walk around. It actually took me nearly a full year of playing a Stone/Stone Brute back in the dawn of CoV to figure out that Seismic Smash wasn't actually a stun.

I have nothing against having different status effects look different from each other, but having many types of them means it's harder to stack them.

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 Distortion Field (AoE Hold) negates Knockback, Crushing Field (AoE Immob) does not.

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

The flip side is that the amount of control you have is dictated by the maximum effect of the maximum stacking possible for the one effect that exists. When you design a set like Illusion control in City of Heroes, you can give it one single target hold, one long recharge AoE hold, a terrorize pet, and another pet with knockdowns. If the only mez that existed was holds, there's no way Illusion would get the Spectral Terror. Being able to provide multiple ways to mez a target that don't stack offers the same advantage as having multiple defensive systems that don't stack. You have more opportunity for variety, and less mandatory requirement to limit everyone one-dimensionally.

Non-binary mez effects don't mandate having only a single type of mez. There's lots of ways to do that with the mez system we have now.

Let's look at "status" as a counterpart to "damage." When you deal damage, it has a type, and different enemies resist different types of damage in different amounts. However, all types of damage reduce a single stat (hit points) and lead to a single eventual outcome (defeat). Having just one type of control doesn't actually mean you have just one type of control, but rather that all control effects affect the same metre (I like to call it "status") and lead to the same eventual effect (held if we're being realistic, defeat in my dreams).

I don't really mean to eliminate different status effect types, different themes and so forth, I just do want them to stack with each other the same way damage does. You say that having different, non-stacking control effects is a benefit, but that's only true if their effects are immediate and difficult to resist by our enemies. If every minion had mag 10 status protection, every lieutenant mag 20 and every boss mag 30, having non-stacking control effects would turn from a benefit to a serious liability.

I could, similarly, argue that having different types of non-stacking damage is a benefit because we could have many deadly attacks. A good example of this is actually Earth 2160. There, units have four separate health bars: hull damaged by physical weapons, electronics damaged by EMP weapons, crew damaged by x-ray and other radiation-based weapons and mind damaged by psionics. A tank with full hull could still be "defeated" if the crew inside were microwaved, but a tank at 1% crew, 1% mind and 1% electronics that's currently under fire by a conventional gun is still going to have 100% hull and be just as resistant as if it were brand new. This is why having separate damage types that affect separate health status bars is a liability - when fighting a single enemy, you're effectively fighting three of them because your three damage types don't help each other in any way. That's good when some enemies could be one-shotted by certain types of damage so having more means you have a wider toolkit, but when all your enemies are literal and figurative tanks that take many, many shots to kill, having a lot of one type of damage is always superior.

Control effects in this game are binary by design. Because there are so many types of them, the game makes it easy for enemies to be affected, as no-one is expected to have the capability to stack much of anything. They are binary exactly because it's so easy to apply a hold's full effect on an enemy. And by "full effect," I'm not talking about duration. That's really not something I feel is that interesting to play with. I'm talking about the actual effect. Hit a Wolf Spider TacOps with Char and he'll be held every time. Hit a Night Widow with Char and she'll be held never at all. You could try stacking it if you build for recharge, but how many times can you conceivably stack it?

Now contrast this with something like Power Bolt. I shoot Night Wolf Champion with Power Bolt and he takes damage. Only a little damage since he's resistant, but he'll take a while to regenerate from that damage. In the mean time, I can keep hitting him over and over again. I may have to use Power Bolt 20 times, I may have to use it 50 times, but eventually I will win, because the damage I do doesn't expire in 10-20 seconds. In fact, imagine a game where every attack was Spectral Wounds and healed back up to full within 10-20 seconds of you inflicting it, so the only way to kill an enemy is to either one-shot him or burst-kill him within seconds. THAT is a binary combat system.

The reason I want only one type of status effect is so that status effects can always stack and have the basic ability to overcome high levels of protection, so that enemies can then be given high levels of protection. Once the game supports fair ways for high levels of protection to be overcome, our own can then start being overcome without it feeling like the AI is cheating.

Status resistance is, to be frank, wholly uninteresting to me. Whether I'm held for 2 seconds or 6 seconds, my Blazing Aura is still dead, my Hot Feet has been disabled and I have been held. I'd rather be held as rarely as I am defeated, but when I am held, that I feel my defences have been overcome, rather than like I was just cheated.

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.

And we do: one of them is called "endurance."

And other games go farther: they have gear damage.


That's actually not true. Control effects are explicitly designed to stack, and critters are designed with the expectation of stacking. That's why most controller mez is mag 3, but bosses require mag 4. Bosses are specifically engineered to require a stacked mez to affect them.

And while control effects are binary in the sense that each individual effect is either off or on, its the variety of the effects themselves that give us *any* non-binary attributes in the first place. Holds prevent movement and action and suppresses toggles until they expire. Sleeps prevent movement and action and suppresses toggles until they expire, but damage breaks them. Fear prevents movement and action but doesn't suppress toggles until it expires, but damage can temporarily break it.

The problem with a mez meter is, what if I want to give something a sleep but not a hold. In your system, stacked sleep eventually becomes a hold, so I can't allow that sleep to stack. But what if I need the sleep to stack to affect stronger foes?

Moreover, a meter is linear. Notice a mez can do several orthogonal things. It can detoggle or not. It can stop action, stop movement, or both. And it can be broken never (by expiration only), temporarily by damage, or permanently by damage.

Our mezzes are a subset of all possible mezzes. Immobilize is movement stop, expiration only. Hold is detoggle, movement stop, action stop, expiration only. Sleep is detoggle, movement stop, action stop, damage break. Terrorize is movement stop, action stop, damage temporary break.

It might seem obvious that hold is a stronger sleep. But its not clear that immobilize is a weaker sleep: its stronger in terms of expiration. Sleep can be more easily broken than immobilize.

So how do you make a linear scale that encompasses all of this variety? You can't. So in exchange for simplifying the stacking, you eliminate mez options. Because it would be nonsensical to start with a permanent immobilize, but stacking it turned it into a sleep that can be broken. It would break before you could continue to stack up to a hold. And how do you deal with terrorize.

The fundamental difference between personal damage and mez effects is that I can think of lots of orthogonal effects for mez that can't be linearly ordered. I can't think of such for damage in our game. You could, particularly with a game that supported called shots. But our game doesn't have the mechanics to leverage the distinctions we'd be allowing. They'd be extra complexity for no benefit. The extra effects in our mez system *do* offer actual benefit.

This is probably where we simply see things differently. You appreciate this system and the variety it brings. I don't. In speaking of simplifying status effects, I mean that quite literally: I want to remove much of the complexity behind status effects and smash them all together into the same system. Obviously, that would hamper variety, but again - I don't appreciate this variety to begin with.

That's part of why I don't believe this will ever happen - it changes the system in a fundamental way that might well yank people's playstyles from under them. That's obviously not OK, especially since the system is seen as working just fine, thus my arguments are hypothetical at best, pointless at worst.

That said, if you want to entertain the notion, it is actually possible to string status effects on a linear scale if we accept that many of them will be bastardised and some outright rejected in their entirety. I'd start with immobilization which breaks, which turns into unbreakable immobilization with a breakable hold component, which then turns into an unbreakable hold component with enough mag, which can then turn permanent or extremely long. It puts a damper on opening with control, obviously, as it would take multiple applications to get back to the same level, and that's an obvious problem as a change from the existing system.

---

Sideways of that, you say the status effects system is designed to stack, but my question is "how much?" Most bosses can be two-shot held, and often one-shot held with a critical hold or Domination. Yes, status effects are expected to stack, but just a little, which is why the interval of expected protections is somewhere between 3 and 6, or at most double that. But what about something with mag 50 status protection? What about something with mag 100? 1000?

We can kill an enemy who has 100 000 hit points and ridiculous resistances AND regeneration on top of that even though our attacks don't break 400-500 damage, yet we can't really ever be expected to break through 100 mag protection, can we? I mean, seriously - what would you need in order to stack 100 points of status effects all at the same time, and how long could you keep this up?

I get that we're not supposed to be able to permahold things, but I really wish we were allowed to. Not just perma-hold them and chip-kill them. I mean perma-hold them and leave them held literally permanently, such that they count as a defeat. THAT is what I want to see in at least one game that's not so old I no longer remember it.

Though I will admit that Crusader: No Regret had a cool "Cryo Rifle" that turned people into ice statues which you could later break.

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.

The fact that all of the Incarnate trial bosses have Mag 1000 protection and 10,000% resistance against all Mez effects tells me that the devs have absolutely no idea how to make stackable mezzes useful and balanced in large-team content.

The purple triangles were explicitly designed so that a single controller would be essentially unable to hold an AV, but multiple controllers could. It was a concession to making AVs vulnerable to mez, but not trivially easy to lock down, and balanced around being teamed content. Two or three controllers can break the triangles (mag 50). One or two dominators can under domination. One mind control dominator can perma-confuse most AVs.