Filth_EU

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Meh gratz on winning anyway.
And I was only away 10 mins for dinner!

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Certainly the first thing I would do in an arena event...is go and have my dinner...
Everybody lost lost because they were beaten by a gang, except one, so you are in the company of losers. Awesome way to most ungraciously concede victory duder jeje.

I don't think the villain heavy is more dagerous. The fact that you have to (as the player controlling it) position it correctly to maximise its attacks makes it hard to use - most people I've seen using it don't know how to order it into place and I don't think there is an icon command for this either.

The hero heavy has some nasty mez, control and debuff attacks, especially whatever the one that prevents interuptable powers completely; I can't use Aid Self at all if that hits me.

Most of what you're talking about applies to Tanks, Scrappers, Stalkers and Brutes only, for all other ATs each is as lethal as far as their attacks go.

The thing about the heavies that I wonder about is their weakness to Holds and Knockback.

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bile spray is possibly the worst looking power ever but the rest of the Mako powers are pritty cool, for the minion take a look round port oakes for a coralax they look like that as for the armor, slight bluey glow with makos sybol flashing up every now n then

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Back when I7 was on test there was a thread on the US board that had pictures of all the new Patron Powers. Can't find it now, though.

If I rememver right, the creatures around Port Oakes are Coralax Hybrids, whereas the Patron Pets are true Coralax - they look somewhat like Earth Control's Animated Stone pet.

The Water Spout is awesomeness. Behaves much like Storm Control's Tornado, but looks much, much cooler.

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The Dominator Pet for Mako *is* a Coralax Blue Hybrid, Corruptors and Doms get the hybrids, Brutes and Stalkers get the Coralax Guardian big guys.

nofuture reference

...just to add...I think Ghost Widow as a patron is by far the worst one for the actual powers in the dominator set. The +End power has such a long recharge I'd say it's worthless, the armour is OK, a fairly weedy AoE attack and on paper a so-so pet.

Mako gets you a reasonable extra control power, probably not a bad cone attack power (all toxic damage), a resistance armour for S/L and cold which is fairly rare but probably useful in PvP, the pet looks like it would be pretty good.

Mu Mastery seems to be the most well liked because of the great Power Sink for +End, good armour, and now a pet which has turned into a great healer - a better heal than Aid Self every 20 seconds. Find a corruptor that can do that.

If you wanted to go all out attack, Black Scorpion might be a good option with a -Res power and what looks like the most lethal pet. A weak +Def armour makes it not great for PvP but probably OK for PvE especially with Power Boost which apparently boosts Def while active.

The power pools are tough for a Dominator. It seems Medicine, Speed, Fitness, Leaping are must haves which leaves no options, or that's what it seems like.

But to go through your list -

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concealement: for phaseshift, as i have no def and as it's the only way to getrid of a debuff it's IMO a must have
(2 prerequis)


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This is so expensive to take in terms of powers, and the pre-requisites turn out to be pretty poor for a Dominator Phase Shift is not something I would even bother thinking about. My answer to dropping anchors on yourself is to move swiftly out of range of the caster and then come back.

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speed: for hasten, as it became a must have since the domination buff.


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Although Hasten is very useful it's something I've thought about dropping for PvP, crazy as that seems. At high level I've got a lot of attacks and don't rely on any slow recharging powers, except maybe the Patron Pet. Hasten buffs Domination recharge and not domination build up, which is the key thing in PvP.

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leaping: for CJ and accro in order to not be chain kb


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I generally go with leaping but I think Hover/Fly could also work.

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fitness: for endurance (2 prerequis again)


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Possibly a */Psi Dominator with Power Sink could do without Stamina, which frees a power pool and three powers. I tried doing this on test with Plant/Thorns and Power Sink - it's very hard to play but I can see how it might be possible.

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medecine: for aid self 1 prerequis)


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Medicine Pool would be very tough to drop unless again you are */Psi. I've thought Plant/Psi might be able to drop Medicine pool successfully - with Spirit Tree and Drain Psyche you end up with good +Regen. I know everyone says Spirit Tree is rubbish but it's possible to have it up 100% of the time - even with a 20 second overlap, two up at the same time

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leadership: for the confusion and taunt/persuasion
resistance


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The resistance is pretty poor, although the +Per and the +Acc can be worth it.

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fighting: for though


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Tough works out great with a Patron Armour, something like 57% S/L resistance.

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charisme: for the fear


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Presence Pool - I think fear is over-rated, or at least mis-understood in PvP. It's a defensive not offensive power not that great for a Dominator I think.

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i want more flexibility ! i dont level char to 50 to feel spoiled of the fun

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I can say it is fun and playable at high level with a Dominator, even just using the obvious Speed, Fitness, Leaping, Medicine Pools. The real differences are of course with the Primary and Secondary powers you take with your character.

I don't see the big deal about the giant robots, I can take a Cat down with a dominator. They have extreme damage but they are just EBs, I can even knock them back all the way down the street.

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Do the other patron pools have anything similar to offer?

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Not really, each pet is unique and the Mu Guardian is the only one that heals; Soul Mastery has a Seer pet which gives you +Per and Confuse resistance. This change just makes Mu Mastery even more compelling choice if you're going to take the patron powers, mostly because of Charged Armour and Power Sink.

Apologies if I'm out of date on this - I've noticed the Mu Guardian patron pet has changed in that you can now slot it for heal.

On my level 50 Dominator this means a heal of 417 with 3 slots of heal SOs, which is about 40% of my total health. To compare, Aid Self is 389 also with 3 slots. According to nofuture.org the heal (Touch of the Storm) has a recharge of 20 seconds.

This means it's twice as powerful as it was previously as a healer, now I'd be tempted to slot it for 3/3 recharge/heal. Which would give it an uptime of 4 minutes, downtime of a minute and a half.

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With the AoE and single-target immobilize powers found in 4 of the 5 Dominator primary sets, it's quite easy to perma-immobilize multiple AVs/Heroes (the ones without any special immobilize protection powers).

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And I was just going to comment that not all dominators get immobs. Mine doesnt. (Besides I hate immobs and don't want to make a character pony to pull off this one particular trick.)

edit. Ps. I dont get -regen either. I must have a destiny to play only gimped characters

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Mind/* gets to sleep them instead.

Lecxe, I think you might be confused - you are talking about "Dominateurs" (which of course are great) - you don't have any experience with "Dominators" which totally suck. Please, make sure you get your facts straight next time.

Asraf to Charles for winning that. I was surprised to find that Midnight Thunder waxed "super robot monkeys" (ice/ice griefer tank), "Globo" (Stone/Axe griefer tank) left after he realised he didn't have the stamina to bore everyone to death. After Sweet Chilli bit the dust, there wasn't much point in sticking around. ;D

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You soloed them? I hope thats sarcasm since I do not believe you if you claim it to be true.

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It's both sarcasm and true, ain't I just a card?

Is it ok if I bring my Spines "Hydra"? a spines/regen, spines/inv, spines/sr, spines/dark and spines/spines? Sounds sweet.

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Short answer: doms are useless in any high level group that faces anything higher than a boss.

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Drat! I knew I shouldn't have soloed Synapse and Mynx. If only I'd have known . Down the tracks not across the street.

That is a lean, mean build.

Aid Self - PvP slotting should be 3 Interrupt 3 Heal. For the longest time I didn't have this. With this slotting you can heal in between damage ticks, without it you can't.

My power sink is 3/3 recharge/endmod.

The biggest problem for me in Warburg is Stalkers - since I don't have any +Per it's virtually impossible for me solo. Maybe the sword is better there since it's more likely for the pets to get lost than RV.

I would get Mu Guardian instead of Fire Cages and get some slots in. In my experience in RV it gives you a definite edge and it also moves like lightning.

The ST immob is very useful in PvP, it's less costly in endurance, it's much more accurate and faster to cast. That said Roots + Seeds of Confusion + and AoE/Cone Assault attack go very well together in PvE.

There is a little twist in PvP with the AoE immobs - someone without AoE defence will not defend against the AoE attack whereas they might against the ST attack.

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Dominators are quite weak in PvP. The holds are nasty of course but they just have so little health and crappy damage output that the fight is quickly over if/when you manage to break free.

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You're absolutely right, except for the factual content.

Hi second dom team are you full? I have a level 11 grav/fire I'd like to bring along, name of Tar.

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ps. As a rule, I dont read peoples guides. I dont trust them. No offense Well in this case I also wasnt interested about plants..

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That's a reasonable point, I read guides and then don't trust them ;P.

I think Light Petting's post explains why /En seems lacklustre, it does have Power Boost though, I also would have thought TF hits hard and it's available in Siren's. My money is on /Ice for the most effective PvP assault set.

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That secondary attacks build domination well ONLY applies to PVP as well, which is why I havent noticed it until now. I still have trouble quite comprehending this change. Where exactly has this been mentioned?

Unslotted power bolt does exactly same amount of damage as dominate and mesmerize. Apart from being mostly smashing damage. Power blast does same amount of damage as levitate. And their damage still sucks in domination as well. Ive always thought dominators are more 'controllerish' than controllers themselves because the secondary attacks suck so bad.

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The Plant/Thorn PvP guide I wrote more than six months ago makes this clear:
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Issue 7 has changed things for Dominators since it's possible to build up domination with just a few attacks in PvP, for me that means around 20 seconds. This compares to several minutes in Issue 6 - if you're able to build dom at all in PvP. The way domination building works currently from my experience on Issue 7 test is that every successful assault attack will add +8 to your domination bar, and any other attack adds the usual +2, when you reach 90 you have domination. The recharge of domination has been reduced from 300 to 200 seconds in both PvP and PvE.


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Where did I get this information from? From the release notes. The change is obvious as soon as you start playing in PvP.

The "Dom's suck" routine was tiresome months ago. I'm amazed anyone is following that line now and this is beginning to look like a troll. Even a casual reading of the UK dominator forums and especially the US forums will tell you how playable dominators are now.

Here's the deal: they're fun to play. As far as damage goes they are at least up to Corruptor level. Here's a fun post from the US Forums: Doms are better soloers than Corruptors

If you haven't been playing dominators and all this comes as a surprise, then ok, I suggest you do some reading, do some testing and not keep asking on the forums for people to prove something to you that everyone else takes for granted.

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Argh that domination buildup thing is true. Dammit.


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Yes.... this has been true since the release of the Issue 7 beta when it was a big deal because it was a big leap in the effectiveness of Dominators. This happened in April 2006.

I remember Stalk_obot's post:
Dominators coming of age in RV

Who is that fourth post down? It can't be Hammerfall!

...but to reinforce what Cybercel has said, the Assault powers are crucial in building domination and of course doing damage, slowing, stunning, -Recharging etc. I can usually build domination in 30 seconds and I have a pretty slow attack chain.

It's worth noting that domination 'decays' much more slowly than Fury so the process of building doesn't have to be a single get-dom-or-die-trying exercise, you can be tactical about it. It was possible to play a dominator in the zones before this but domination was hellishly hard to achieve and the situation is very different now.

Spoon Weasel is right, if stealth/invis is a problem for heroes, it can be used by them as well, so it's tedious for both sides.

My take on it is that the visibility mechanism is crude and a bit of a bodge, surprising since CoV's Stalkers were implemented a fair while after PvP was released. I find it difficult to imagine the designers sitting around saying:
"lol, let's make one of the villain ATs revolve around being invisabel, lol it will rock in teh PvP!" ... but apparently they did.

It's a bit short sighted to think that Stalkers couldn't work without -Visibility constantly. I think Placate and the Ninjitsu powers (yes I know they are a bit rubbish) are a step in the right direction. I've also seen stealth abilities implemented in a more interesting way in at least one other mmo.

On Sunday I logged into Siren's as a hero, found 3 controllers and a couple of blasters fighting one or two stalkers so I logged back in with a dominator. I was joined by another dominator with an almost identical build and one stalker; the heroes had 3 controllers, all stealth/invisible (one was illusion) 2 blasters, one of which was playing the Defiance game (stealthed) with another blaster. The only visible hero was a tank who stood around as bait. This was the setup for the dullest little skirmish this side of a particularly dull day in Dullville.

Chasing the blaster Gargoyle Rex around as he TP'd about was approximately a billion times more fun, and illustrates that illusiveness does not necessarily mean unseen.

The way I see it the visibility issue is less of a problem for heroes since they know with complete certainty they will need to deal with it. For villains I've played building in +Per has either been practically impossible or a secondary issue because even in PvP you won't have much use for it (even when a few heroes are stealthed/invis), except when you come across a bundle of heroes all using it and if you have low numbers and are out numbered you are pretty much screwed...unless of course you are a stalker and the game then becomes a submarine vs submarine hunt; the net result encourages a stalker monoculture in PvP.

There's no need to be unhappy about the performance of Dominators in PvP I think Max's "Very unforgiving, challenging and frustrating but also very rewarding" is about right, but you can also exaggerate the problems of Dominators and forget that they have similar problems to blasters, defenders, controllers and corruptors.

If you check the US forums there has been a lot posted about Dominators and there are a lot more people playing them in PvP. I've just read a great post here:

Hambone's Guide to Dominator Zone PvP

It says everything I wanted to say and a lot more about playing Dominators, and it's zonal PvP - the only kind I'm interested in. If you want to play a Dominator in the PvP zones, read this post.

I've only played Thorny Assault to 50, the other sets to the teens.

Pros:
It's a high damage single target set, and has a pretty good cone attack (Thorn Burst is lousy though). You get Skewer and Impale very early on, and the last two attacks are killer.
Soft Controls - Impale is a very good debuff & control attack. Thorntrops is the same as Caltrops. Every attack has some -Def element, some more than others.
Poison damage - not easily resisted and with some attacks poison can be about 50% of the damage.
Accuracy - Thorns is the only set which has Aim which means it is the most accurate of all Dominator assault sets, this has good synergy with the -Def debuffs you get in the attacks. Aim buffs damage some as well.

Cons:
No Power Boost (has Aim instead). Of course Fire doesn't have Power Boost either but this is worth thinking about if you want to make the most of your control powers. With Fire you are going for all out damage.
Slow to build domination - slowest of all assault sets. This is less true in PvP where hitting your target is more important and difficult than having a super-fast attack chain. It is noticeable though - fire is faster to build domination, not quite as insanely fast as the machine gun of Psi but still faster. Note that "slowest" doesn't mean "slow" - it's just slower than the other sets.
-Def is nice but not great. having -Def is useful but in general will not make as much of a difference as -Recharge does in say Ice or Psi, or the stuns in Energy simply because your accuracy is likely to be very high already. This means playing either Fire or Thorns is more dangerous since neither of them has defensive secondary effects in their attacks.

I've only tried Fire at low level but I liked it. It's fast, and the damage is very good. I think there are only two downsides to it - one, no secondary effects - it's all damage, two, it has a snipe which with my playstyle wouldn't fit.

I think Fire/Fire would work in PvP if you know how to handle yourself.

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Has anyone actually slotted them? Most people take priority slotting pets for damage, and feel weaker in comparison.

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yup, slotted both Dual Wield and Empty Clips, problem is you run out of End using them if you also want to use a lot of your secondary as well (which I did) and the damage doesn't get better when your pets do with upgrades. You can take a look at the numbers in the Prima PDF.

The pistol attacks I think are vying for "worst ever attack" in CoV. It's the endurance/damage ratio that's so bad. Empty clips is very End hungry and does terrible, terrible damage, it's a bit better than Brawl...but in a cone!

If you must get one, get Dual Wield, it's still pretty bad but at least you won't kill your endurance using it.

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just gonna drop in with some comments as too slotting Granite, those of you slotting 3def 3res i assume dont have Stone Skin (do you?)

bc with 3slotted stone skin you hit rescap with 1-2 +Res in Granite, and since it is quite heavy on endurance i'd really recommend 1-2 End reducers

just because toggles doesnt carry over into Granite doesnt mean Stone Skin doesnt [img]/uk/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

i've slotted GA 2End 3Def 1Res and i'm as just about as immortal as i can get (imo)
you dont even need that many slots if you dont want to or just cant spare them.



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I have to say that is pretty nutty.

Stone Skin has a base resistance of 12.5% to Smashing and Lethal damage (only). 3 slots resistance in Granite gives you 78% resistance to *all* damage types except Psionic. This means that you only need one slot in Stone Skin to hit the damage cap of 90% (but only for smashing/lethal) - adding more slots to Stone Skin is just a waste. 3 slotting stone skin might make sense if you were thinking of S/L resistance pre-granite but those extra 2 slots buy you an extra 4.5% resistance.

If you only slot Granite for *one* damage resist your resistance is 60% and not 78%. You don't even hit the damage cap for Smashing / Lethal with one slot in Granite and three (as your suggestion) in SS - you get to 79.5% which means that you're getting 1.5% more resistance from 3 slotting SS and only putting one slot in Granite - and *only* for Smashing/Lethal - all other damage is hitting you for 40% of its value instead of 22%, in other words your slotting makes you take almost *double* the amount of damage from ALL damage types than you would if you put 3 slots in Granite. In the late game I think this is unwise (in fact, it's just unwise. [img]/uk/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img])

As far as endurance goes running Granite is only a little more than running Rooted + one other armour, and less than Rooted + 2 armours.

With all the limitations Granite has I can't see the logic in not taking advantage of the fact that Granite armour is the number one resistance armour; you might want to put endred or defence in the other 3 slots but you're crazy not to but 3 resistance in the first 3 slots in GA.

About mez resistance - Granite is a fair bit higher than Rooted but it lacks high Knockback resistance which means you can get thrown about a bit sometimes if you get hit by multiple Knock Back attacks and you're only running Granite.