DarkCurrent

Currently playing an ice/earth and I gotta go on the record and say that ice control is officially THE worst control set available to dominators.

There's the ST hold and the AoE hold. Ok, good.

Then, there's ice slick, which, imo is marginally useful. I say marginally because most immobs negate its knockdown, knockback throws mobs off of it, and fliers are unaffected. There are also a surprising number of mobs unaffected by slows such as Slags and Wolves. Because of slick though, the AoE immob is useless and the ST immob is so-so, not that either was all that great to begin with.

Next, you have AA. AA is a strong power but requires melee range and heavy slotting AFTER stamina just to make the thing an every fight power. I still take it, but having it negates the need for Shiver.

After that you have the AoE sleep. I like it for an alpha, but the damage component means you can't stack sleeps and ice slicks knockdown wakes them up. Ooookay.

Lastly, you have Jack. He's really the only saving grace of the set. I'd rank him up there near the top in pets, although he does have a glass jaw. Not nearly as bad as Audrey, but close.

So really, you could easily take 4-5 powers (ST hold, AoE hold, Slick, AA and Jack) and you'd essentially be stupid to take any of the others. I can't think of another control set that is so self-defeating.

IDK, maybe too much reliance on Ice Slick is the problem. I suppose if you skipped that, the immobs, sleep and shiver could combine for a useful ranged build.

Anyway, people can say what they want about Gravity control or Fire control being weak, but I'd take either to 50 over another Ice.

Not sure you were looking for a critique, but there are some errors in your build strategy that could be useful to others thinking to roll one of these:

As of 8:25 PM eastern, we cannot enter mission doors without the game freezing up.

Oh, this is on Virtue btw. And in Cap Au Diable. Whole zone of people couldn't enter missions and were getting ported to mystery doors when they'd log back in.

EDIT: Switched to Triumph server and not having problems so far.

We rolled up an impromptu all /earth dom team on Virtue tonight. Have 5 regulars.

Team so far is:
2 Ice/Earth
1 Plant/Earth
2 Earth/Earth

The /earth stacks surprisingly well with all the knockdown. Staggered tremors are awesome. I found it really was enough control that our team pretty much ran through the first 11 levels using mostly our secondary. I personally, have a single power in my primary.

We didn't really set out to have a major ST running, but it was a lot of fun, so I figured I'd throw out an open invite in case anyone is interested in running a /earth. We'll mostly be playing sun, tue, thu 8-11 pm eastern. Send me a PM @DarkCurrent.

I had CE on my grav/ice for awhile, but that was solely because I had a slow dmg proc in it and liked to fight in melee. It also helped in PvP when you closed to melee to unload swords on some tank or scrapper.

After the PvP changes and melees all get slow resists, then the dmg increase last update, I just went ahead and respecced into a more AoE-centric build.

Of all the oddball powers available to doms, CE seems the oddest because /ice isn't a particularly melee oriented set and the attacks already have slow side effects, so why have a short range melee slow aura?

From the looks of the /earth set and mudpots, that type of power seems to be a better fit.

The only situation I can see taking it is if you have a primary that's melee oriented like ice/ and fire/. However, both of those already have PB AoE slow powers, so it's pointless to take both. For grav/ you're not really melee, but worm hole allows you to drop mobs at your feet, so you can get mileage out of CE for that purpose.

Grav/Ice is a great combo. I highly recommend it.

You can really focus on your assault powers early as there's not many 'must haves' to take from your primary until after 20.

/ice has ice sword circle for PBAoE at lvl 4... earliest you can get one

Frost Breath and dmg proc'd Crushing Field will give you some decent early ranged AoE. Add in your patron AoE later.

Between those and the swords, you can pick melee or ranged or both.

Only secondary power you can skip without blinking is chilling embrace. The others are good to great powers. And you don't have to worry yourself with taking a snipe or not.

Primary you take grav distortion, wormhole, singularity, grav distortion field for sure. Crushing Field is nice if you proc it up. Then, you can take 1 (maybe more) of the following 3: crush, lift, propel. It depends on your play style and what you like. Early in your career, you'll probably want crush and propel for their control features. You can respec out of them later. Skip Dimension Shift or face ridicule.

That about sums it up.

I'm no expert, but I'll take a stab at it.

Browsing the CoD info I see that wormhole provides a TP mag of 4.1 while TP foe pool power is 2.1. Paragonwiki then lists teleport as a status effect.

My guess is then that those numbers are the magnitude ratings of the powers. So if they're equivalent to those for control powers, that means that WH can tp anything with 4 or less mag resistance (bosses and lower) while TP foe is only going to get targets with 2 or less (lieus and mins). I'm basing that off of the mag resistance table from Paragonwiki

Now, what mag resist do things like mitos have, idk exactly. And I'm not sure if the power analyzer will show them to you or not.

So you're lvl 6. You have what, 3 slots in your single target hold (Char, btw)? And you have it AT BEST slotted with lvl 9 TOs. Accuracy, recharge, maybe hold duration?

Now you're facing an EB that needs 3 non-dom holds stacked. But you only have that one hold at this level. Even if you could by some combination of domination active and blind luck manage to stack enough mag to hold the EB, it'd last maybe 2 sec by virtue of it being essentially +3 lvl to you and your enhancements sucking.

And you're asking about dominator survivability?

I realize you're new to the AT, but come on. That's like driving a 2-seater sports car head-on into a tractor trailer and wondering if the car's safety rating improves with more mileage.

Don't overlook /thorns for AoE dmg.

Congrats to those who made the ride to 50. I know a couple others are close, but I'll be afk for a week, so I can't help you with those last 2 levels.

I have the 2 dmg procs in mine, plus a range enhancer. It adds some decent damage to the mix. But I'm earth/thorn and so I can stack it with Quicksand, Earth Quake and Volcanic Gases. Then hit the mobs with Fling and Thorn Burst while they're slowly baking and quaking away.

All those powers are procd for dmg btw.

I don't think teaming would very accurate from a snapshot. One second someone could be unteamed (just logged on, or just left a team), and the next they could be teamed.

And how would you want to handle HEAT and VEAT data? Combined, separated, or not at all?

From a snapshot of the Pinnacle Server - CoV @ 5:50PM EST I found:

4 SoA
2 Widow
16 Cor
11 Dom
26 MM
15 Stalk
21 Brute

If that's all the data you're looking for, I think you could easily get volunteers to record a log here a few times a day for a week or two. Then, you just need one person to compile the data.

I was more interpreting this as not minimal impact for those permadoms who had enough recharge to 2x-3x stack the dom dmg boost. For them, they got nerfed and they're not happy.

For the 'average' permadom who only had recharge to keep 1x domination dmg boost at all times, they didn't see a damage decrease when the dom dmg boost was moved out of domination.

For the non-perma player, the apparent holy grail for the devs, they ARE seeing an OVERALL damage boost as measured by DPM. There are some exceptions in individual powers, namely PSW.

Here's my analysis of these 3 dominators' performance change from I14 to I15:



1) Earth/Fire/Mace

Before looking at this dominator’s numbers in detail, here are the changes that I15 brought to /fiery assault:

• Flares: Decreased this power's damage scale from 1.0 to 0.878, increased its recharge from 2.2 seconds to 3 seconds and increased its endurance cost from 3.69 to 4.37.
• Incinerate: Increased this power's DoT damage scale from 1.81 to 2.12, increased its recharge from 8 seconds to 10 seconds and increased its endurance cost from 8.53 to 10.2.
• Fire Blast: Increased this power's direct damage component damage scale from 1 to 1.64, increased its recharge from 4 to 8 seconds and increased its endurance cost from 5.2 to 8.53.
• Combustion: Decreased this power's damage over time component damage scale from 1.2 to .8, increased its recharge from 15 seconds to 17 seconds and its endurance cost from 13 to 16.
• Blazing Bolt: Increased this power's direct damage component damage scale from 2.12 to 3.56, increased its recharge from 12 seconds to 20 seconds and its endurance cost from 14.4 to 18.5.
• Blaze: Increased this power's direct damage component damage scale from 2.12 to 2.28, increased its recharge from 10 seconds to 12 seconds and its endurance cost from 10.4 to 11.9.

My testing revealed that this dominator’s power usage change from I14 to I15 matches exactly what a lot of players would expect to be the result of moving the damage boost from domination to full-time. Power Usage dropped across the board with the exceptions of Blazing Bolt and Incinerate, whose usage was unchanged. This suggests that the boost to damage resulted in less attacks being required to defeat the same enemies.

However, diminishing the excitement of that finding is the endurance expenditure data. The changes show increased endurance costs for all of the altered fiery assault powers. In other words, despite using fewer attacks, this dominator spent MORE endurance for Blaze, Blazing Bolt, Fire Blast, Flares and Incinerate. The result was mostly felt by Blaze, which had a 13% decrease in Damage per Endurance (DPE). The other fiery assault powers showed mostly increases in DPE although none were beyond the 30% boost to BASE dominator damage. Therefore, taken as a whole, the set received a ‘nerfed buff’ because while this /fire dom is doing more damage, and using fewer attacks, he’s also paying more end for those attacks and their DPE boost is less than the AT’s base 30% boost with the movement of domination’s damage to full-time.

On a positive note, Damage per Hit was improved for most attacks. Of special note is the damage output of Fire Blast, which experienced a near doubling of its DPH.

Oh, and Blazing Bolt does phenomenal damage now. If you’re going with a ranged dominator build like this one, I highly recommend it. Especially BB after poisonous ray + fiery embrace and you get the Manti’s Sting proc to fire. Ouch.

To conclude, I’m not sure why /fiery assault had to be scaled back as much as it did to accommodate the I15 revamp. My testing with the set (this earth/fire and a plant/fire) before and after the I15 revamp has shown it to be an average performer with regard to IPH earning. I imagine there are some combos that would do better, but so far my /psi wielders are the kings and that set received an overall BOOST. I think the devs need to look at the end costs of these powers again and trim them some.

2) Grav/Elec/Mu

Before looking at this dominator’s numbers in detail, here are the changes that I15 brought to /electric assault:

• Charged Brawl: Reduced this power's damage scale from 1.96 to 1.32, reduced its recharge from 10 seconds to 6 seconds and reduced its endurance cost from 10.2 to 6.86.
• Havoc Punch: Reduced this power's damage scale from 2.6 to 1.96, reduces its recharge from 14 seconds to 10 seconds and reduced its endurance cost from 16.4 to 10.19.
• Zapp: Increased this power's damage scale from 2.76 to 3.56, increased its recharge from 12 seconds to 20 seconds and increased its endurance cost from 14.4 to 18.51.
• Thunder Strike: Decreased the damage scale of single target portion of this power from 2.56 to 2.04, reduced its recharge from 20 seconds to 16 seconds and reduced its endurance cost from 18.5 to 15.2. Reduced the area of effect portion of this power's damage scale from .42 to .31.

The data from this test shows that power usage was up and down, implying for every loss there was a gain. Charged Bolt usage increased, but the tier 2 blast, Lightning Bolt, decreased. Charged Brawl was also up a little, but Havoc Punch and Thunder Strike were down. The ranged AoEs of Static Discharge, Ball Lightning and Crushing Field (3x proc’d for damage) were all up. On the control side, Lift and Propel usage were up, but Gravity Distortion was down.

Oddly, although the 3 melee attacks all had their recharge lowered, 2 of them were used less often than during I14. Some of this can be attributed to the increase DPE and DPH of the ranged attacks, but I think moreso from the increased use of AoEs and their resulting damage. In other words, this dominator was able to defeat mobs successfully at range following the opening control move (worm hole or gravity distortion field), and didn’t have to rely on as much melee damage.

However, looking at the melee attacks’ DPHs shows a disappointing drop in performance for all 3 despite the dominator’s base damage increase. It’s sad to see a set that was once considered the dominator melee king has fallen backward into the pack with the other assault sets. I think similar to /fiery assault, too much was taken from this set to bring it ‘in line’ with the others.

The most positive data from this dominator’s testing is in the endurance department. As a whole, end costs were down or commensurate with increased power usage. This resulted in increases in DPE for EVERY attack power, the only dominator tested to exhibit this.


3) Mind/Thorn/Mace

Before looking at this dominator’s numbers in detail, here are the changes that I15 brought to /thorny assault:

• Skewer: Increased this power's damage scale from 1.64 to 1.96, increased its recharge from 8 to 10 and increased its endurance cost from 8.53 to 10.192.
• Thorn Burst: Increased this power's damage scale from .9 to .95, increased its recharge from 3 to 5 and increased its endurance cost from 4.37 to 6.032.
• Impale: Increased this power's damage scale from 1.32 to 1.64, increased its recharge from 6 seconds to 8 seconds and increased its endurance cost from 6.86 to 8.53.

The data from this test show overall control usage increased while most of the assault powers decreased in usage.

Why would the dominator use more controls after the I15 revamp? Was he more threatened, throwing out controls while battling for his life?

I think actually quite the opposite. Looking at the damage numbers shows that DPM, DPE and DPH were up for every assault power. To me, this means the higher damage led to faster defeats led to increase time and opportunity for control usage.

Another positive result is that endurance expenditures were down for most assault powers, meaning he was able to defeat the same enemies as with I14, but using fewer attacks and less endurance. This is evidenced by solid gains in DPE for most attacks.

I think there’s one power that could use a boost after looking at this data. Ripper. When compared to Skewer, Ripper the tier 9 assault is actually doing less DPE and DPH. I’m not sure if this is because Ripper is a narrow cone, but on a per target basis, Skewer is hitting harder..

In conclusion, this /thorns dominator showed improvement in all areas with the I15 revamp. Despite that, he still finished in last place with regard to infamy earnings. I don’t know exactly why that is considering his vast arsenal of attacks. But comparing the average overall DPM from all the dominators on the same graph (data not shown) shows that he’s in last place.

Why is the big question? I think the answer lies in two areas: pets and procs. As a mind dominator, he has no lvl 32 pet. And while confusion can make anything into a pet, casting that power takes time and the resulting ‘pet’ has unpredictable behavior, making its contribution to DPM sketchy at best. Meanwhile the other 4 doms have dedicated lvl 32 pets. Previous studies I’ve done has put pet dmg contribution at about 20% of the dominator’s depending on the pet. Clearly, confused ‘pets’ don’t offer that level of damage contribution.

The issue of proc damage contribution is also important. The ice/, earth/ and grav/ doms are making extensive use of multiple damage procs in powers that would otherwise do minimal or no damage (Artic Air, Crushing Field, Earthquake, etc). I can’t put a solid % dmg contribution on these procs, but 10% would be a fair estimate. This mind/thorn dominator has no dmg procs in his build, so therefore he’s easily 10% behind the doms that are proc’d up.

Combined with the lack of reliable pet damage explains why he’s lagging behind. While I can’t do anything about the pet issue (he does have his veteran pet), I can go over his build and see about squeezing in some damage procs in powers like Total Domination, Terrify, Fling Thorns, and Thorn Burst.

Grats in advance for hitting level 50 tonight.

I wouldn't take that bet.

Everything you said highlights the situational use of Dimension Shift and the exact reasons it should NOT be the only AoE control available in the early game.

I'll ask point blank, Dahjee, when would you use Dim Shift other than 'oh crap' time? Do you open a fight with it? Do you use it to speed up your team's progress? Does it get used mid-fight? Does it stack with other controls you have?

Compare it to all the other control sets. By lvl 12, all of them have an MULTI-situational bread-and-butter AoE mezz available. And I can answer yes to each of my above questions.

And don't take this as grav bashing. I enjoy the set and think it's the equivalent of the others by the late 20s. I just don't understand why it has to be special at having no AoE control until GDF, which with its super long recharge makes it available every other fight... maybe.

I tried immobilizing the nicti and it didn't seem to work on any of them. Romi, on the other hand, is easy to immob. But unless you can separate the 2 with something like taunt, I don't see that strategy as feasible.

I think we just need a larger team. Then, get a couple people with some good resistance/defense to melee with Rom while the rest of us stay at range. That would minimize the heals and give us enough damage to take him down fast. Plus, we definitely need one person dedicated to killing those spawned nicti that keep shooting us from range.