Blight and Bleak: A History of Dom Powerset Development

So after reading about all the wonderful new sets that are in the pipeline, I thought about sets for doms and how it takes forever to get anything made or proliferated. Based on paragonwiki, here's the history of dominator power development:

(I6) CoV launch - doms get all controller sets sans illusion and earth + they sport a shiny: Plant control

crickets chirp for 6 issues

(I12) Earth control is proliferated and electric assault is added.

crickets chirp for 4 more issues

(I16) Doms get earth assault

crickets chirp for 2 more issues

(I18) Going Rogue launches - doms get electric control and Hero APPs

crickets chirp for 4 more issues

*Doms are skipped for a proliferation round here, but devs ask doms to be patient as something 'special' is planned.

(I22) Freedom launch - doms get dark control and dark assault. The special treat (umbral beast) is highly criticized for its appearance and noise, plus hits with a dull thud after 4-legged pets for MMs were leaked. The other special treat (inky blackness animations) is only used for controls and not the assault powers due to time constraints.

crickets chirping again for just about 2 issues ... but for how long?

(I24+) Future word - more armors (bio and radiation), more melees (psi weapons), more blasts (water), more buffs (nature affinity) being added to further the development gap between dominators and all other ATs. No new controls or assaults in the works. Air control loses popularity contest to Rad Armor at pummit.

Overlay the other ATs' development time (powerset creation and proliferation) and you'll see it's not even close. Dominators are the red-headed stepchild of the dev team.

My question is, why? If the answer is popularity, then just cut all the low pop stuff out of the game and reduce it down to City of Brutes and Blasters and be done with it.

You forgot the Dom revamp in your time line.

Several ATs get ignored in cycles that's the way it is because of available dev time.

Of all the ATs that need some love blasters top the list.

If you really want to do a comparison you should do a time line for each AT. It might get the dev's attention if there is really a huge disparity AT to AT.

Yeah the Dom revamp was probably the biggest thing that happened to them and you missed it off ...

It could be worse though, you could be a MM player and have been lumbered with Demons (Moo) and Beasts (Lol)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

The focus of my post was powerset creation and proliferation. The revamp is neither. The revamp wasn't really that intense - dmg boost from Domination removed and placed in full time. But if you want to lump that in as dev time, then don't forget stalkers got a revamp and so did brute fury.

As for a timeline and side-by-side comparison, I've selected just the villain ATs that launched at the same time as dominators:

AT brute
CoV launch: 5 primary, 5 secondary
issue 7: electric melee, electric armor
issue 11: dual blades, willpower
issue 12: battle axe, war mace, super reflexes
issue 13: shield defense
issue 16: claws
GoingRogue: kinetic melee
issue 18: APPs
issue 21: katana, broad sword, regen, street justice
issue 22: titan weapon, staff fighting
future: psi weapons, bio armor, rad armor
total: 16 primary, 10 secondary
increase: 11, 5

AT: corruptor
CoV launch: 7 primary, 7 secondary
issue 7:
issue 11:
issue 12: electric blast, storm
issue 13: pain dom
issue 16: archery, TA
GoingRogue: dual pistols
issue 18: APPs
issue 21: psi blast, poison, beam rifle, time manip
issue 22:
future: water blast, nature affinity
total: 13 primary, 12 secondary
increase: 6, 5

AT mastermind
CoV launch 4 primary, 5 secondary
issue 7 thugs
issue 11
issue 12 storm
issue 13 pain dom
issue 16 thermal
Going Rogue demon summon
issue 18 APPs
issue 21 sonic, time manip
issue 22 beast mastery
future nature affinity
total 7 primary, 10 secondary
increase: 3, 5

AT stalker
CoV launch 5 primary, 4 secondary
issue 7 dark melee, dark armor
issue 11 dual blades, willpower
issue 12 electric melee, electric armor
issue 13
issue 16 broadsword
Going Rogue kinetic melee
issue 18 APPs
issue 21 ice armor, street justice
issue 22 staff fighting
future psi weapons, bio armor, rad armor
total 12 primary, 8 secondary
increase: 7, 4

AT dominator
CoV launch 5 primary, 5 secondary
issue 7
issue 11
issue 12 earth control, elec assault
issue 13
issue 16 earth assault
Going Rogue elec control
issue 18 APPs
issue 21
issue 22 dark control, dark assault
future
total 8 primary, 8 secondary
increase: 3, 3


If you look at the hero ATs you'll see the differences are even worse.

The gap is real. It's existed for years and will continue for the foreseeable future. So why are dominators being overlooked time and again with powerset development and proliferation?

Dominators share one powerset with Controllers, and have one powerset that they don't share with anyone else. (Assault sets can be composited from melee and ranged sets, but there's still the problems of making them non-redundant with all the epics and APPs.)

There's currently one powerset that could be proliferated - Illusion.

Compare this with:
Melee attack sets - used by 4 archetypes
Melee defence sets - 4 archetypes
Support sets - 4 archetypes
Ranged attacks - 3 archetypes

If you divide the number of sets Brutes have been given by the number of archetypes that get them, you probably see a different picture.

Dominators are not so much the red-headed stepchild as a more unique archetype than most.

Assault sets aren't as limited as Manipulation sets are in that Manipulation sets need some Control powers. Assault sets, on the other hand, need melee, radiation and utility (often from a Defence set) - those are extremely abundant. A lot of them can just be done as proliferations, such as Kinetic Assault (based on Kinetic Melee but with different ranges), Radiation Assault (with Shivan Radiation Melee attacks) and lots of weapon sets.

The reality is that melee sets are getting more ranged, ranged sets are getting closer, and debuff sets are getting more controlling.

Controllers and Dominators are done.

So why not Water Assault? Or Water Control?

Why another blast set? Did blasters, corruptors and defenders need another new set?

Or do controllers and dominators need a new control set more?

And the assault/control sets can be turned into blaster manipulation secondaries.

I'm curious how the development process works. It's clearly not based on need. So is it purely on how many ATs can use a set? Is it on how many characters exist in the database that can use a set? Or is it simply 'hey I have this idea' design process?

Ultimately, how do control ATs and dominators in particular get on the development radar? Getting one new set every 2 years isn't cutting it.

Yeah, I would imagine that the number of archetypes that can use a set does figure heavily into these decisions.

"Need" is a pretty strong word. Dominators curently have 8 primaries and 8 secondaries.
I'd estimate it takes me about 100-150 hours to get to level 50, so that's 1000 hours of gameplay right there with unique and different Dom characters, longer if I decide to carry on and incarnate any of them.

Dr. Harmony (Earth/Energy Dominator) will have easily clocked 300 hours of play.

I'm not feeling the need for a new set to extend this to 1200 hours or whatever. I don't feel that Doms are hurting with each new non-Dom power set that gets added.
I still havent got around to playing Darkness Control, despite actually hearing a lot of good things about it. I'm no fan of the Umbra Beast, but then I'm no fan of either Animated Earth, Jack Frost or Fire Imps either - I dont like any anthropomorphic pets.

I guess Water Blast has also been made rather than Water control or Water Assault (or Water Melee or Water Armour, or Water Imps for MMs or whatever) because it makes more sense. What would you do if you could control water? Probably fire it like a fire hose (Water Blast) is the first idea that comes to mind for most people.
I cant think of melee attacks for Water Assault that would look natural rather than forced.

Similarly for Water Control - the holds are easy enough to envisage (globe of water surrounds the target and they hover like Gravity?), but then there's making pets, other controls (Stun, Immobilise, Confuse?) and flavour powers to deal with. Should Water Control have some knockback? Its sounds good, but you've seen how controversial that can be. What about pets? As you yourself have shown, we dont appreciate badly designed pets.

I'm not saying Dominators shouldnt get new stuff at all, just trying to speculate on why.

It's not as if character animations are an issue for Control and Assault sets. For Control - Dominators and Controllers always do the same actions, and for Assault - it's simply a proliferation, the only effort needed is to rebalance powers.

As for Water Melee, it may be difficult to think of a whole set of them, but one or two aren't that difficult and could be done with existing animations. You could go the Kinetic Melee route, firing short ranged bursts of water, or you could go for a touch attack kind of route, such as a drown power where you push water into an enemy causing DoT.

Water Control would most likely use powers similar to Water Blast, but more controlling. A geyser knockup patch that does minimal damage but functions like Ice Slick, small whirlpools around the feet of enemies to immobilise them, spheres of water to hold, a different take on dehydration where the enemies are stunned instead. The pet could simply be like a water version of Animus Arcana based on the water gathering part of Hydro Blast with its attacks including Aqua Bolt, the single target immobilise and maybe hold, and a weaker version of Dehydrate.

It's not as if they've ran out of concepts either - there's Radiation, Sonic, Water, gadgets, guns, martial arts, close-range weapons, even Illusion could have an Assault set if they put their minds to it. The only thing I can think of holding them back is that they want parity for Dominator sets and aren't willing to dedicate time to Assault sets if there's nothing there to proliferate from. So rather than creating two sets from scratch, they'd rather make one set from scratch (or at least effects and the numbers) and then proliferate powers from blast and melee sets to make Assault.

ATs with the highest number of unique sets get the fewest of them. A melee set is shared among 4 ATs, Blasts with 3, Buff with 4, Assault with 1. Divide any set by the number of ATs it's shared with and Dominators are in first place, with 8 sets all to themselves.

Unfair? Well, it's also not "fair" that some ATs get sets all to themselves, either. Why should Dominators get as much development time to themselves as 3 or 4 entire ATs do? It just is what it is. At least be glad Dominators are a fanastic AT and well worth playing.

I would like to add some retrospective thoughts from the most recent Twitch TV about the questions asked about Dominator sets and the answers given (paraphrased).

One question was along the lines of asking if there were any new sets coming out for Dominators in the near future. Positron responded, after some thought, that there was "nothing original" coming because Dominators are so left-field and are difficult to build for. From the "nothing original" statement, it can be inferred that Illusion Control is going to be proliferated to Dominators at some point in the future, alternatively a looser connotation could be that sets like Water Control could happen because, technically, they are no longer original concepts to the game.

A second question was asked - whether sets such as Staff Fighting or Water Blast would ever be proliferated to Dominators as Assault sets. Positron's answer was interesting - he said that there were some cool things coming up for Assault sets. This should make the stance on Control sets quite clear when put aside the response to the previous question - Control sets are difficult to create, most likely because they have to be balanced around Melee, Ranged, Buff and Debuff sets. This would most likely explain the current disappointing trend of non-Control sets becoming more controlling than before.

They were also asked about whether Autumnal Control and Autumnal Assault (those sets that caused quite a commotion a while ago) would be staying as NPC exclusives. Positron responded by saying that Nature Affinity is the player equivalent. Quite peculiar really consider the Autumnal sets were all about fire and ice whilst Nature Affinity lacks those elements completely. However, the only thing worse, to me, than Dominators not getting anything new would be the AT getting the Autumnal sets.

Doms are the least played AT, thus the least invested time wise. I see half as many doms as I do stalkers and I see way too few stalkers. They are a unique AT with MMs but I don't think it is as hard to make sets for them as it is claimed. They could easily make a DEVICE control set, hell all the required powers are already in the game. Webnade, Stun Grenades, Gun Drone, etc. However everything created now has to have some great visual flare that devices lacks, atleast from a graphic p.o.v.

Assault sets can easily be put together with minimal thought. The question is if its worth the time. With most new sets being PREMIUM sets they want to make sure there is something to entice people to buy them. Be that a gimmick, animations, and what not. I can't believe that with all the time they have given melee sets with new animations, models, mechanics, that they seriously couldn't put together a solid Device Control/Riot Control what ever you wanna call it set for way less investment then it took to animate Staff. But I would rather have them make a new device set with better looking grenades/boomerangs/bolos what ever they choose, if they ever get around to one.

We could go on for months about all the things that people want to see/have for their AT. Doms are unique but I don't think that should really exclude them from getting atleast half as much time as other ats get simply because there are 4 melee ATs, which are all fairly similar with the only variation being what kind of Chocolate you want. At the lvl 50 game I don't even think the flavors make a difference. However if your making a product you want to go for the largest target audience to justify the massive amount of hours/manpower used. That is just how it is. So any lovin is good lovin so I'll take what I can get for control sets.

Would I love to see new control sets? hell yes! But I also want those new sets to get the attention they deserve and not just something thrown together to appease the masses. Maybe issue 25 will be: All your control belongs to us!! Wait that didn't work out so well when they said it for bases, nvm.

You forgot issue 9 and IOs with their +Recharge boons, which made PermaDomination an exquisite addition to the archetype. In fact, they had to strip the +Damage stacking bonus because of that.

Also skipped Psychc Shockwave getting its legs cut off at the knees, unfortunately for my Plant/Psi.

Dominators are pretty damned awesome. All the controls of a Controller plus a heck of damage from the secondary to boot. Should they get Illusion Control at some point? Hopefully they do, but they may examine the pets for high recharge builds (making PA un-permable would anger Controllers though) and so on.

Have a ton of Doms in my stable (all perma) along with my friend's Doms, we duo TFs, rule the world, are never lacking for teams. Life is good.