Dark Control: Haunt is a Skip power.

Can anyone convince me to not drop haunt when I respec?

Now that my dom has hit 40 I find I never use them anymore, as they offer practially nothing to me. Slow damage, useless fear, they have a tendency to run into other groups and cause cross agro...

What am I missing? What is good about this power?

If you're going PermaDom, it's good because you'll likely have PermaHaunt then. All that said, it's... pretty much just good for extra damage on AV's. I said on Beta that this power was pretty lackluster as it was, with slow damage, a fear you don't really need ( I guess it can fear bosses ho hum), and they're a little spazzy. BUT, people said I was wrong and it was awesome, mostly.

...

/shrug.

Keep it for AV's, I guess. But otherwise it's just Gun Drone, but ghosts.

I thought it was ok during beta, but now that I have started maxing out my toon.

I never use it....

Its gone as soon as we get a freespec.

A lot of darkness control feedback during the beta was far more controller focused than dominator focused. On a controller who gets much more debuff even from the primary set and can buff up the pets and/or debuff the enemies even more with their secondaries the haunts are not that bad. They are not awesome but probably have more potential.

I think a lot of feedback on how badly fearsome stare worked on a dom as an alpha breaker also got glossed over due to the controller love. On a controller, you can alternate the fear and stun since you have your secondary to add to any debuff from the two controls so the soft control from the fear is not as much of a penalty. On a dom fearsome stare does a lot less debuff (11.25% vs the controllers 15%) and without a debuffing secondary is not as good an alpha breaker on its own. That means a dom either has to fear things and then hit everyone with a single target control before opening up with attacks or open with fearsome stare then move in and follow up with heart of darkness.

The sad thing is that darkness control was touted as the 'special thing' dom's got to make up for being ignored in the previous proliferation pass but I think its a far better set for controllers than dom's. Don't get me wrong, my current dark/fire dom is doing pretty well but its more due to getting 2 great single target controls early on than it is due to fearsome stare.

Don't get me wrong....

I have a really fantastic Dark/Psi/Psi build.
Fearsome Stare totally breaks alphas for me fine, and its enhanced 16% debuff on top of the 5%ish from the Cone added to my Ranged soft cap is dandy.

But I can't find a use for Haunt.

Doing Fearsome Stare into Heart of Darkness is hardly a big deal, though. Short enough cooldowns and yeah.

Honestly I doubt Darkness Control was the 'special dominator' thing. More like Darkness Assault, which is an AMAZING set.

Darkness Control? Shrug. It's good because it has both Fearsome Stare and a PBAoE Flash Fire. The rest of the set is largely forgettable although the Umbral Beast is nice. Like with most Control Sets for Dominators, the pets are just 'there'.

Haunt is likely skippable on Doms and probably ho-hum on Controllers although their buffs and debuffs and lack of self-damage likely makes them a lot more appealing. That all said? You shouldn't go into Darkness Control for the -ToHit, but the fact you get Fearsome Stare and Heart of Darkness. Everything else is simply nice.

Then you ask yourself why you didn't roll Plant Control?

Dark/Dark and Dark/Fire Doms in the 40's. Not agreeing with the deal about the Haunts. Not at all.

Once you are perma-dom you don't really "need" the haunt. Your secondary lets you make up the damage difference and increased fear mag from perma dom means that you don't need the extra fear. It's different for controllers though since they still need both.

Play style choice really when I hit 50 and get my planed IOs to perma I'm showing haunt the door.

Okay, let's run some numbers.

Let's assume the damage numbers on City of Data right now are correct: http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/

Dominator Smite does a total of 95.76 damage with an activation time of .97 seconds. (this is mostly for a comparison).

Haunt has an activation time of 2.33 seconds. It summons two shades. Each shade has shadow punch that does 46.72 damage total, .83 second cast time and 3 second recharge time. So they punch about every 4 seconds and deal around 15 punches each. So each shade deals about 700 damage, or about 1400 damage between the two of them. For an activation time of 2.33 seconds. That sounds like a good deal to me.

Even if they don't last the full duration they only have to get off 3 punches each to do better than smite's damage per activation.

I have Haunt on my dark/dark dom, but it is also lightly slotted compared to my other powers. It is not something I use every fight, but I find it is useful against bosses/ebs/avs

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

One of the problems here is that Haunt grants the target +1000% taunt. The pets stick to the target even as it flees, which is likely due to Fear and debuffs. My suggestion in beta was that they should be given Shadowy Binds as well to help. Controllers are a little less likely to encounter that behavior if they're spamming the immobilize for damage so I can see it happening more often on doms.

I dont spam the aoe immob, but I usually have 1 casting in play. So for me, even on a dom, running isnt an issue.

Lewis

More fear, more damage IDK seems straight forward to me. I guess its a YMMV thing.

I kept it cuz they look cute, like the dog. I use it to show it off. They are so lazy too, and slow...

Haunt and the beast are good places for 4 slotted EP for the 6.25% recharge, at least while leveling up anyway.