Upcoming Blaster Changes - How do they benefit Dominators?

Firstly the Snipe changes - at first I thought "cool, this could make them useful".

Then on closer inspection it's apparent that they are still useless. Why? You need 22% To-Hit buff. Unless you slot Kismet in Electricity Assault that value is unattainable without using yellow inspirations.

Blazing Bolt - Embrace of Fire. No to-hit buff.
Moon Beam - Gather Shadows. No to-hit buff.
Sniper Blast - Power Boost. No to-hit buff.
Psionic Lance - Drain Psyche. No to-hit buff.
Zapp - Build Up. Medium to-hit buff.

Wasn't the whole point of Moon Beam staying in Dark Assault down to Snipes being made viable?

At least the range increases will benefit powers like Blaze and Bitter Ice Blast. I'm also hoping that the devs can be convinced into changing Chilling Embrace for Frigid Protection (30ft range, enemy Slow, self Absorb) in Icy Assault to help set it apart from other Assault sets and to provide synergy with its sister Control set.

Hm. If one fully slotted soul mastery's Soul Drain and had the spiritual radial paragon and a kismet +tohit, it only takes one target to hit that. I see some possibilities...

The problem with that is that it necessitates villain or rogue alignment, which not everyone wants, as well as foregoing a defence based armour, just to make a snipe better.

Is it worth it?

I've got to agree that I don't see this really helping out Dominators at all. Electric is the only Assault set that's even capable of hitting the 22% buff, assuming you slot at least ~30% tohit enhancement in Build Up.

I suggested this instead in the Summation thread:

@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too

Unattainable, not completely. Hard for some set's SOLO, yes. I have seen that much ToHit plenty of times teamed. One NW alone can put you real close or even there if they slot ML fot ToHit. We now have a use for all those yellows you get in game and just covert 3 into something else. I like this change. Does it benefit all set's the same, no. Electric benefits the most but to be honest it needed the buff more than the rest.

I have an /Electric and /Ice dom. I'm looking forward to these changes.

Had to add this, one Precise will boost your ToHit by 29.53% AND your damage by 39.38%. They last for 5 minutes and only cost 10 points each (15 cents or less). I understand if you don't want to use 'potions' but there are plenty of ways to make your snipe very useful after this change.

The OP's problem is assuming dominators were even a consideration when these changes were made. That'll never be the case when power changes/additions are being made (refer to gravity tweaks for the latest example).

It clearly wasn't changed for Dominators, it was changed for Blasters as explained in the Video going over the changes. The benefit is that it also buffs Dominators and Defenders.

EDIT: If you haven't see the video, here is the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coNj0...feature=colike

It is titled Issue 24 "Blaster" changes.

A little birdie informed me that he may be willing to have snipes quick-cast in Domination with the drawback of bringing the damage back in-line with the standard snipes. I personally never even realised they did more damage than usual.

It is true that the changes were for Blasters, but Defenders and Corruptors benefit just as much from the snipe changes, possibly more so if they get access to to-hit buffs or tactics running off higher numbers.

It's basically the bait and switch that prompted me to make this thread.

Sadly, I doubt that Dominators will get the buffs to utility powers like Chilling Embrace and Mud Pots. So there will always be a disparity between the survivability of, for example, /Ice and /Elec Doms and /Psi (and to a lesser extent /Dark) Doms, just because some of the control sets are better than others at what they do for Doms.

How do the BLASTER changes effect DOMINATORS?

Not much. The snipe thing is really a residual benefit of them changing how all snipe powers work instead of making brand new snipe powers exclusive for blasters.

Out of the three changes, two of them benefit four AT as well as ancillary pools and patron pools. Not really just Blaster changes - that's just how they've been advertised.

Yes and no. It's the combination of all three buffs that make it "Blaster" changes, the third being the biggest IMO. You asked 'how does it benefit dominators', well all your short range attacks are now long range and you can insta cast your snipe if you reach the ToHit goal. That's how it benefits Doms. If you expected to get the SAME benefit for all ATs/sets, that's not going to happen. It's up to you and your build if you choose to use these buffs. Maybe you won't benefit enough from the snipe change to pick it up but your short range blasts are now long range so you still 'benefit' is some fashion or another.

Something else I'm interested to see is the fallout of the +regen buffs being added to blaster secondaries even when the power chosen doesn't make sense. For instance, with elec there's a question why not Lightning Field? Why Thunder Clap? And Synapse replied it was because they wanted to provide these survival tools in a certain level range.

So you know there'll be calls to reorder the powers to solve both problems. I'm curious to see what response that will get considering gravity control was not reordered.

A friend and I worked on mids while skyping and found you can get the 22% if you take Psi Mastery (Mind Link) + Tactics + a Kismet. We got our tohit to 22.1%.

I never noticed how much leadership sucks on a Dom before we starting messing around in mids.

Needless to say I will not be switching to Psi Mastery on my dom though. Having an insta snipe just isn't worth it even though it does awesome damage.

Quote:

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

Just to say its hardly a chore to softcap a dom using psi mastery, iv managed 2 builds in mids recently with a range softcap and 35% to melee and AoE using link minds

On top of that you have the 22% tohit seems not too bad to me?

And I know psi mastery isnt the best epic/patron for AoEs but psi tornado isnt totally bad and it does do Knock up which is a half decent softcontrol