Lord Mayhem

<--- Co-leader of both a villain and a hero SG with a base, and I'm the designated architect.

Admittedly the villain SG just has me and 2 other players left in it now (about half a dozen of our RL friends have quit CoV, but their characters are still in the SG) - and the hero-side SG was made by two of us (the third doesn't want to play CoH)

None of the Mastermind PPPs are overly inspiring, imho - and the choice between them is as much a matter of theme/concept as gameplay.

I went with Ghost Widow purely on concept (dark powers to match my secondary), took all of her powers, and they were moderately useful. The resist shield helps, but I found myself having to toggle it back on often after sleeps/stuns knocked it off. The cone immobilise was quite good after I stuck 3 ranges in it (covered a huge area - I used it after my fear or disorient). The hold was handy for stacking on bosses with my own /dark hold. The damage attack was a bit rubbish and is probably the one thing I'd drop if I could be bothered to respec him (not much else I'd really want).

The shield could be your deciding factor - Scirocco is arguably best for that (resists to Smash/Lethal/Energy - 3 most common damage types in PvE), or Black Scorpion for defence to those 3 damage-types plus Toxic as well (and as it's defence it will let you dodge some status effects typed in that way). Mako and Ghost Widow's shields are both resist-based and offer Smash/Lethal/Toxic plus Cold for Mako or Negative Energy for GW, neither of which you'll run into much.

They all offer a hold, and the holds are pretty similar in all respects. The Black Scorpion one debuffs fly/jump/spd/rchg (in case hold doesn't take effect) but does no damage like the others (which is minimal anyway), so is possibly best. I think Mako's one has -fly too.

The area immobilises are fairly similar too - Black Scorpion and Scirocco offer target-based circular ones, while Mako & Ghost Widow give cones, so depending on your playstyle that might affect your choice (cone worked well for me as I could just follow the cone fear from my secondary with it). Again the Black Scorpion one debuffs fly/jump/spd/rchg, but does no damage, so is probably the most useful again. The Scirocco one is the only one that blocks knockback afaik.

The damage attacks they offer are all cones. The Ghost Widow one is very narrow and only tends to hit multiple targets at maximum range or if they are stood behind each other - not sure if the others are quite as bad. Damage types are the usual for each patron (GW: negative, BS: energy, Scir: energy) except for Mako, who gives the only pure Toxic damage attack in the game - a damage type that is rarely resisted by enemies or players - so that could be a reason to take his pool. Although the base MM ranged damage modifier is so bad I'm sure even that is uninspiring.

I think the only other effects are that all the Scirocco attacks/controls do End drain, but it's so minimal you probably won't even notice.

So Black Scorpion looks pretty good, but as you observed it has that redraw, which might affect you more than most as you'd have a double redraw with your secondary being weapon-based too. Black Scorpion's powers would certainly be easier for you to explain/justify concept-wise (the other shields have graphical affects that might be harder to explain as Victoriana tech), and I could certainly see all the powers being potentially useful to a /TA - in fact you might even find the mace attack handy if you didn't want your plasma gun because of the look, or did you avoid it because of redraw alone? If you used it after you'd used the mace for something else (holding or immobilising) then it would minimise redraw problems.

If you're in need of a mildly LRSF-experienced (and disciplined) reserve at last minute at the weekend when you run this then give me a shout @LordMayhem. I'll be able to stick around as long as it takes, but I won't sign up formally because there's a slim chance I might have to go out that afternoon (won't know for sure until the morning that day). Also I'd like to give others a chance to do it who may not have before.

I could bring either a L50 fire/fire brute or a L50 bot/dark MM along, and I have 7 previous LRSFs under my belt (all with the MM) that went to the final mission - most of them were with Frosthound - I never got past reserve status with BJB, despite several early sign-ups, because of my MM-only status at the time, and BJB told me he didn't really want to do it with more than 2 non-corrs/brutes (even though he was forced to on one occasion, and it took longer than usual).

Oh and if there was a choice I'd rather bring the brute, as I haven't done the LRSF with him before.

CyberCel hasn't posted on the forums in a month, and very few of the posters in this thread have been updated on the list - is the L50 site still being updated at all?

I didn't bother to post when my fire/fire/mace brute Lord Mayhem hit L50 a couple of months ago as there didn't seem to be much point, as my mastermind still hadn't been added from my post in this thread a couple of months before that.

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Hmmmmm. Actually you've sown a seed of doubt in my brain now. I had always assumed it still needed to-hit.

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I nearly posted before to possibly dispute what you said, but I wasn't entirely sure either, so I didn't post.

The Devs have said LR is the only -regen debuff that is unresistable. Either that means the -regen part is auto-hit (and only the -rchg and -spd parts of LR need a hit to work), OR possibly AVs/EBs/GMs have some way to resist -regen debuffs (like /SR defence sets have a chance to resist all/part of defence debuffs) which would mean LR is the only power that circumvents that resist. Either way I'm confused

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Concentrate on your Primary role first and fit in your Secondary role when you can or if its seriously more needed.

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Shannon is right on this - really it is all that needs to be said... for most people.

Sadly others would find the second part of that quote very arguable ("when you can or if its seriously more needed") because of misunderstanding how a certain powerset combo works. You might chuck in a blast while waiting for a heal to recycle, but to another player that might look like wasting End or they might not understand the heal is in cooldown. Heck I've had both of those thrown at me by some ignorant chump while playing a character with the heal in the secondary (my MM and corr from my sig).

Some people just find it hard to re-adjust to different gamestyles when they've come from a game where you just do one thing on raids e.g. Everquest 1 SoV-era raids, where Clerics would only cast Complete Heal on the main tank, Shaman would only use slows, Enchanters would only use tash, the primary Monk would only FD-pull, etc. I think that is what's to blame in many cases, like the weird insistence on Empaths just being pure-healers in CoH and neglecting secondary completely.

Oh and the quote doesn't really apply to most dominator builds where taking more secondaries than primaries, and concentrating on them accordingly, is the way to success.

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Stooop iit! It will collapse!

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I wonder how many pyramid quotes it takes before a forum collapses into a singularity...

Lets not find out

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Mind/Psi and Plant/Thorns sounds like a good duo on paper and it seems like you're both experienced players, so not sure what the problem would be. What usually kills you? Is it alpha strikes, ambushes, control running out, endurance running out, getting mezzed? For a duo like that I think especially the plant dom should build secondary heavy, with emphasis on AoE damage.

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Before my partner got Creeper Patch it was quite often the alpha in double-spawn situations, either because he could only nullify part of that with Seeds, or because Seeds missed a lot of targets. I mention Creeper Patch because it has proved useful against a notable situation in Longbow bases where you have two spawns waiting around an s-bend of a corner - that was always death for one of us before.

Usually my partner leads with Seeds - if theres a boss I'll hit that with Confuse beforehand. But I often follow his Seeds with my Terrify, so we're doubly covered (we can just about perma both of them), as we mainly want Seeds to nullify incoming damage not contribute to a faster time-to-kill (because we lose xp from it, and we're already running out of story content in some level ranges - yes I'm aware confuse can speed up xp-over-time, but it does the reverse for maximising xp from finite contact arcs). Obviously my Terrify doesn't do much for stopping an alpha on its own (and I didn't take Mass Hypnosis as I knew he'd be using Seeds as opener), although sometimes I have to use it in that way when we get ambushes or additional spawns.

I'm usually the weak link - and usually the one that dies. For some reason I get a lot of aggro, even though my partner generally does more damage against everything except CoT spectrals - I know this cos quite often in a spawn with 2 lieuts we will take one each, and he finishes first 99% of the time - he has his cone attack from secondary and I don't (originally I was planning to use Terrify as my cone attack, slotted for damage). And often getting aggro from one briefly uncontrolled lieut can kill me (Council Adjutants have almost one-shotted me) then usually not even Aid Self and Drain Psyche's +regen can save me.

I don't know why I pull more aggro than him - Mind/ is supposed to be a low aggro primary although Levitate does seem to pull a lot more aggro than it should for its damage, maybe due to the knock-up - but then again I'm not losing that because I'm glad of some smashing damage when we face robots that resist psi, lethal and toxic. Therefore my aggro has to be down to the psi secondary. It can't be psi dart (so low aggro I can often pull singles with it), so I'm not sure what it is. Stuff does tend to turn on me after I use Mind Probe or Subdue. I'm also wondering if Drain Psyche causes aggro far in excess of its effects.

Another point against me might be the way I use Domination - my partner always saves it for bosses but personally I've started using it as much as I can (sometimes 3-4 times per mission) for the damage boost if nothing else (because otherwise I feel like I'm slacking compared to my partner on damage) - do attacks under Domination cause more aggro? And I play quite blapperish (spend 80% of the time in melee) so maybe it's proximity too. End usage isn't a problem anymore (since Stamina, and DP for me - without DP I still seem to burn End faster than my partner, while doing less damage), although it was pre-SOs.

That aside getting disorientated will often mean death for one of us, usually me (we both have CJ/Acro and always carry BFs, but often I'll die a second after using a BF) - and while a lot of EBs have been surprisingly easy, we're now getting into AV-downgrade EBs with purple triangles who are stupidly hard, even with a tray full of Lucks.

Maybe by other people's standards we don't die that much, but I hate to die at all if I can possibly avoid it. And our dominators die a LOT more than our other characters. Maybe we need a team, but teams never seem to want us.

With my partner getting a pet at 32 as well... well, lets just say I'm sure he could handle higher difficulties on his own, but sometimes I think he agrees to being on Villainous just because he knows my build would probably struggle if we pushed the rep up (and did when we tried that half a dozen or so levels ago). Even so he still complains nearly as much as I do that his build feels much weaker than all of his other villains (mostly brutes & corrs for him) - maybe he's just saying that in sympathy with me

Ok I wasn't expecting to feel this powerful, but I did expect to at least be competitive with the weakest of my other characters. I could probably have handled dominator being slower to level if they were at least safer than MMs, Corrs or Brutes (I won't mention Stalkers, because I had some problems with mine early on, although it felt a lot more powerful at my dom's current level), but that hasn't been my experience of the AT so far.

Ooops I've typed a lot - I guess I could post my build in a new thread if you think it might help (don't want to hi-jack this one beyond talking about difficulty). I'm wondering if it's just a perception issue though. How much do you guys die on a per-hour basis with your doms?

I must have done something wrong with my Mind/Psi - at 30, duoing with my friend's Plant/Thorns, we found it tough enough on Villainous and didn't dare put the reputation up. Sure we could probably have handled single spawns on Vicious, but it would have been guaranteed death those times we ran into a couple of overlapped spawns around a corner.

We've played brutes, corrs and MMs in duos and always been able to play on Vicious/Ruthless/Relentless with minimal deaths (maybe 1 death every 10 hours played, if that), but with our doms on Villainous we were still getting 3-4 deaths per evening (we play about 3-4 hours on weekday evenings), and tbh I found that pretty bad.

In fact we were levelling so slow due to debt, over-use of confuse and low difficulty level that they were our first duo'd characters that didn't miss a single contact nor mission badge all the way to 30.

For me with a dom it seems like you have to concentrate and innovate more than other CoV ATs - with the possible exception of a stalker played well (mine can be as busy as my dom powers-wise and in terms of tactics, but even more position-dependant) - that's great, I don't mind that at all (I like a challenge), except that my reward for that seems to have been less xp and more deaths.

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Nonono! Whatever you do, DON'T go Bot/Dark.

You won't be able to play another toon without thinking "Bah, my MM could clear these mobs twice as fast".

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Indeed - I know that feeling

It's not too bad, though - all of my other characters can do things my MM can't - its just bot/dark happens to be the safest and probably fastest soloist I have (although my EM brute and Fire/Rad corr have killed some EBs faster solo, with less hassle, than my MM did).

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Bots/Dark is pretty hard to rationalise too other than to say "I picked the strongest combo"

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Not really. I played Bot/FF for a bit in beta, because it thematically fitted, but I grew tired of having to re-buff with mini-bubbles, even with just 2-3 pets, so I knew it would be worse with 6. So in first week of release I made Bot/Dark instead, with no prior experience of Dark Miasma (I only played CoH for 6 weeks before CoV beta and never played that set). Actually it was quite easy to rationalise in terms of game lore - I don't think there are many powerset combos in the game that are hard to rationalise, if you have imagination.

Basically I didn't know it was going to be (arguably) the most powerful combo - but I'm not upset it turned out to be - better that than all the combos I've deleted because the powersets didn't synergise.

I don't really see much wrong with picking strong combos - some people like an easier game, or a less frustrating one. Also more powerful combos let you play on the highest difficulty reputation where, if you make a mistake, you'll die a lot faster than people plinking away on Villainous/Heroic. "Power-builds" can be more challenging sometimes if they let you step up to a higher difficulty setting without it becoming an exercise in frustration (like it would with some so-called "weak" builds... like my Mind/Psi dom...).

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IMO, i feel TK isnt enough for waste that precious respec u got. I have tested it (lvled a mind/ngr till lvl16 to test that) and i wasnt much impressed... I almost used it like a panic button, sumthin like Dimension shift in gravity. Also, its a toogle, so it will sux ur end if u dont enhance it with 3 SO's ENDRDX.

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I just got TK on my Mind/Psi at 30. Recharge is around one minute unslotted and yep TK's End usage is incredibly punishing (I have just 1 L32 EndRdx SO in the basic slot - have planned to add 2 more at L31 when/if I play my dom again), even though I have Stamina. If I use attacks along with TK then I'm fully drained of End in 10-20secs. However if I can get a good few hits with Drain Psyche from my secondary then I can run TK while attacking until DP drops 30secs later - obviously that's not an option for all, but the only other solutions that made it bearable for me was standing by a blue +recov crystal on an Oranbegan map TK seems very powerful against bosses (and anything with them) if you can push them into a corner, but until I put more EndRdx in it's just a situational "toy" at the moment.

I went until L26 before getting my first area control (Terrify) - I don't find it anywhere near perma, but admittedly I have it slotted 2xAcc 1xRchg atm - not sure if I'll go for damage or duration on the 3 additional slots when I get a chance to add them. If I'd soloed my dom I have a feeling I'd have taken Mass Hypnosis (even if I dropped it later) - it would have been nice to have an early area control power that lasted ages without needing slots and that cut out alpha fire. Fortunately I duo'd with with a Plant/Thorn 100% of the time so I was very lucky to benefit from Seeds of Confusion, though I still feel quite inferior to his build both damage-wise and control-wise (Carrion Creepers is damn nice for cutting out alphas too).

I guess the good thing about Mind/Psi is I felt enough powers were skippable that I had CJ/SJ/Acro, Swift/Hurdle/Stamina and AidOther/AidSelf by L22, with Hasten planned as my L35 pick - but then I also went 20 levels using the same 5 combat powers (Levitate, Psi Dart, Mind Probe, Dominate, Confuse) and I wouldn't fancy doing that again, nor recommend it

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Killing speed is definately the issue.

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Of course I agree completely. My duo partner and I have played several duos: Bot/Dark MM + EM/Dark Brute, his Sonic/Kin Corruptor with (at different levels) my Ice/Dark Corruptor \ Fire/Rad Corruptor \ SS/Dark Brute \ EM/Elec Brute \ Fire/Fire Brute, and lately Mind/Psi Dom + Plant/Thorns Dom.

Now maybe we're tainted by the fact our previous pairings were made powerful by the presence of FotM combos or kinetic buffs, but dominators barely feel part of the same game in terms of killing speed. Some native EBs at low levels have felt much easier with the dominators (if slower) because we could perma-hold them (e.g. Ace McKnight, Sea Witch, Ballista-1), but almost everything else has felt either very slow or very difficult (hence why we're still on Villainous instead of the upper difficulty levels as per usual).

My 3 brutes, my MM and pre-I7 my Fire/Rad corruptor were all very well balanced with each other for soloing speed and all felt equally powerful (well, ok, my MM felt slightly more powerful than the others - and my Fire/Rad isn't quite so fast at soloing now post-I7, but he's still pretty good, and great in duos/teams). By comparison my Mind/Psi dom feels really gimped, like my Stalker did early on (but at least he felt more powerful as each level went by).

So I can quite believe your figures, Die_Klip - my dom also seems to clear a spawn at least half as slowly as all my other characters - and in my regular duo that's compounded because we're both doms. I can believe we've been gimped on damage because our control methods are seen as being "too safe", but my MM could lock down a whole spawn just as easily as my dom can - the difference being my MM could kill that same spawn long before his fear wore off!

I've got Subdue now - my dom feels a little more powerful damage-wise, even though I don't have it slotted yet, but that's my last attack now until Psychic Shockwave. Honestly I don't see it getting much better now - a few more slots here and there, Mass Confuse (which won't get much use as my partner has Seeds of Confusion), TK and Hasten, then the uninspiring PPPs (Black Scorpion probably). I'm not as excited to level it up as I should be. My duo partner won't be online after this weekend until probably after I8 is with us, so I think our doms are about to get dropped for a while, and we may not pick them up again.

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The change of ToHitsDebuffs from 33% to 20% happened way after the GDC changes too if I remember rightly. It was only this year sometime they took effect, just before i7 as they impacted my Fire/Rad. GDC happened at i5 didn't it? So I can't see how you had a Corrupter at the same time at all?

*Edit : Unless you mean the i7 Global Scaling Defense changes, which are a different thing to the GDC.

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The I7 one was exactly the one I meant, yeah - I thought that was the GDC (and was obviously wrong ) - I didn't realise there had been another defence change around I5 as well because I wasn't playing back then (I only started playing CoH about 6 weeks before CoV was launched). Sorry for the confusion.

But anyway I just remember Castle on US forums saying that ToHit Debuffs were going to get an unintended nerf because of the schedule changes of the ToHitDebuff enhancements. And sure enough I noticed the nerf on both my /dark MM's Darkest Night (which he wasn't so dependent on) and my /rad corruptor's Radiation Infection (which he was utterly and completely dependent on for his safety when solo and in small teams).

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Shame this thread isn't about improving the build itself.....

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Sorry Jummy

I'll try to be more helpful and informative in future - like your post

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Heh, had occasions over the weekend where when I entered my own SGs base I got booted before the image of the base even showed up, literally one loading screen then the other. Thankfully it was random so just meant I had to click the portal agian and then it was fine.

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Yeah I've had that loads of times. It's annoying, but far less annoying than when you lose base changes you've made in edit mode because you got kicked out

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No, that's me - Yellows are the whirly range head things; the energy melee lot is the Greens, who are also liable to break through mezz protection if they mob you.

I think the sort-of solution still applies though, even though I was a little bewildered about who it would need applying to.

Edit: Looking back, I think I confused myself when the OP mentioned disorients; that's what the Greenies do, whereas the Ywllows do sleeps. Not that a Tanker wants to be hit by either of these in the middles of a fight, of course.

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Yeah I've got confused here as well. The greens are the ones I was talking about, that use energy melee and swarm around you stacking disorients - they're the ones that dropped my brute/stalker toggles (and actually inspired me to create a green ink man costume for my EM stalker, for a laugh).

I've never had a problem with the yellow ink men because sleeps are so hard to stack - iirc their sleep attacks actually do damage (its Mesmerise from the Mind set I think) so its actually impossible for them to stack it afaik. In fact the only powerset combo in the game players have that can stack sleep is I think Mind Control, if you apply Mesmerise first then follow up with Mass Hypnosis (which does no damage so doesn't break the sleep from Mesmerise, which does) - and yellow inks definitely don't get Mass Hypnosis

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All power mags are locked at a set mag and enhancers do not alter the mag in anyway .. i'm 100% sure on that.
Enhancers only alter the distance the target is knocked back.
Power boost does the same .. that will only change the distance the target is KB'ed to.
I'm pretty sure the only power that changes mag on powers is Domination on the Dom.

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Ok fair enough. So basically knockback distance enhancements are fairly useless unless you have a few spare slots and want to have a laugh knocking lowbie enemies across a map?

The other thing that made me think knockback enhancements affected magnitude was that the Devs said that knockdown is basically a low-magnitude knockback (knock-up isn't - it's something else in its own category) - and I know if you use a knockdown attack on lower level mobs it knocks back instead of down. I thought maybe that was linked to actual magnitude, but obviously distance is also a function of level differences as well as enhancements/PowerBoost, and the Dev just worded their quote poorly (I'll try and find it - was ages ago though and has probably dropped off US forum - think it was Castle that said it, and was in a topic about why Jump Kick was broken iirc).

I think that is disappointing though - if they let you slot knockback, and only knockback, for magnitude it might actually make knockback sets more useful in PvP (along with the aforesaid nerfing down of Acro to other status set levels - I've got Acro on loads of my characters and have never ever been knocked back/down/up by anything at all while using it).

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KB buff enhancements dont touch the magnitude though as far as I know.

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Be nice to know that for sure, though. I always understood that magnitude was tied to distance with KB, because there is no duration.

I guess Power Boost would be another way to test it - its supposed to buff durations but not magnitude, so be interesting to see if a power-boosted Power Thrust could get through the status protection of Unyielding - did you try that? Might be a good indicator of how knockback actually works, technically.

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first you have psi and I dont. I dont know how good domination buildup is with psi as my /psi dom is very low.

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The only reason dom-building is fast with /Psi is because of Psi Dart - it's back up almost as soon as it's been used, and it animates quickly, so you can use it as a filler between other attacks. I have mine fully slotted (2xAcc, 3xDmg, 1xEndRdx) and while damage is still pitiful, I use it so much as a filler between attacks I figured it was worth slotting up to bulk up my average dps.

By contrast my Plant/Thorns partner still has gaps in his attack chain while he waits for things to recycle (and he has taken more attacks than me cos he hasn't been able to fit in Aid Other/Self yet like I have).

I took Levitate (so at least I had some non-psi damage for resistant stuff) and Mind Probe, plus will have Subdue soon, so basically I cycle those with my ST Hold, with Psi Dart filling gaps. I avoided most of the other /psi attacks mainly because they either had low damage or long animation times, or in TK Thrust's case an annoying knockback I didn't want.

Lack of attacks is probably part of my problem, but when the alternative is taking Mental Blast or TK Thrust then I'm willing to put up with it. I wish I could have fitted in Mesmerise actually, but it was hard to justify it when I had other stuff to fit in, it was lower damage than MindProbe/Levitate and I already had a full attack chain.

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Some things I have read in this thread confuse me... Talking about confuse: I love my mind/psi dominator not only because of her good looks, but because she is so damn powerful. I am quite impressed how easily she takes on almost anything. Soloing Elite-Bosses is no real challenge... although I have to admit she is quite weak if I compare her to what she will become after I8.
I recently took my I8 build to Test (very aggressive domination building) and was honestly shocked. I took on groups of six +1/+2 enemies and they actually dropped really fast without doing any harm to me. Sure, my brute or my corruptor would have dropped them slightly faster (although not much), but both of them would have taken some damage during that fight. Did I mention that domination was up after one such spawn and the next enemies thus fell even faster?

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I like powerful builds and quite frankly in the mid 20s (where my dominator is now) all of my other CoV ATs have felt more powerful than my dom with the probable exception of my stalker. My Brutes/MM/Corr killed faster and they've felt safer too, whether they had to rely on self-heals or insps to top them up between fights or not.

My MM and brutes sliced through most EBs no problem while solo - sure they each had their own problem ones, usually down to certain weaknesses in resist types, status types or pet behaviour - but they could handle at least six +2/+3s no problem, often more. Before the GDC in I7 my Fire/Rad corruptor was equally as powerful and as fast at destroying spawns - now he can still handle a couple of spawns at once, say 6 mixed lieuts/minions (or 8-9 just minions) on Vicious/Ruthless, but with more risk than he used to before RI's minor nerfing (when ToHitDebuff enhs changed schedule).

My complaint is partly that my dom can't handle the higher difficulties reliably, but also that the dom is so much slower at killing (only my stalker was slower than my dom, but felt powerful if only because of the burst damage). Sure you can make doms totally safe if you over-rely on confuse - my partner and I probably do - but it's not time-efficient nor xp-efficient - if you let confuse do most of the work it totally kills your xp per spawn, per mission and ultimately per arc/contact, which I can already see is going to leave my friend and I doing a lot more newsies to fill gaps (dominator is the ONLY AT I've been able to fit in all of the content at every level range on - I haven't missed a single mission badge or contact - whereas my brutes/MM/corr outlevelled contacts while levelling up much faster).

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conclusion is that PVP players should take acrobatics instead of grounded.

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Yeah I don't think anyone can dispute that.

Be interesting to see how other status powers did against a Force Bolt 3-slotted with KB-dist enhancements with both players at L50, seeing as that's supposed to be the best KB power for magnitude.

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Also, I'm happy with super jump, but I use either super jump (outdoor) or combat jump (indoor), not both. Should I rather take super speed, coming with hasten which would be useful in all circumstances? How bad would it be to loose the verticality of super jump, from a pvp perspective?

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I don't PvP much but some people like to stay high up or even airborne (i.e. jumping, flying or TPing between rooftops), so if you don't have a way to bring them down I guess your only recourse would be to run away. I know a lot of melees use SuperSpeed for jousting too (queueing an attack, then running past someone so it goes off once you're past them, so they have no chance to retaliate unless they saw you coming and also queued an attack) - been in fights like that myself, though they ultimately feel a bit futile (especially as most of mine have been brute vs tanker or scrapper).

From a PvE perspective losing the vertical component could be bad - there are always zones with sunken or raised areas which might prove tortuous to travel around (CoV has lots, like the Pit in Sharkhead, Primeva in Nerva, most of Grandville - CoH has a fair bit too, I understand, like Shadow Shards, Terra Volta, Faultline - probably other areas too). The jump pack from the Good vs Evil edition could mitigate some of that, giving you 30secs of limitless vertical jumping every few minutes, and also the flight/jump temp powers in the game (more of which are being added with Safeguard missions in I8 I understand). So you can mitigate a loss of a vertical component in your travel power, but not all the time. Of course you could take Hasten+SS then still pick up Combat Jumping later - on top of Hurdle and backed by the momentum from SuperSpeed you can jump quite a way with that, though nowhere near as high as SJ.

I think you'll find Stamina very useful to have too (not to mention Swift and Hurdle too - Health won't add much to a blaster as you don't have the hit-points of a scrapper/tanker/brute so the regen gain is hardly noticeable in combat, or even for reducing downtime - honestly it's barely noticeable on my brutes). You may find yourself slotting Aid Self back in later if you have space.

Honestly those Tsoo can give any melee AT problems if you get enough of them beating on you - my brutes and my stalker have had the same difficulty when surrounded by them - those disorients can stack up pretty fast.

I don't know what to suggest except perhaps carry a few break frees or try to avoid herding up so many at once (yeah I realise that's probably not easy if you're primary tanker for a full team).

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Groundeds KB protection scales with your level btw so if some lvl 50 KB'ed a lvl 40 it probably will work thats why most ppl go with acro for the KB res in PVP.

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Ahh yes of course - I remember reading that too.

That could explain the figures on City of Data then, as they all use a L50 character as their basis - maybe at L50 Grounded does offer better KB protection than things like Entropy Shield, with the balancing factor being that of course it won't work on uneven ground or in the air - would sound a fair trade to me, especially if Grounded was weaker at lower levels.

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Yeah, actually I don't mind there being a little variety in the powers and protection power magnitudes. I was just very surprised to come across this as this was the first such case. I wonder if the magnitude is smaller because grounded is an autopower?

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That's probably it - usually click powers are more powerful than toggles, which are more powerful than auto-powers (or passives as I call them, to distinguish them from sticking a power on auto with ctrl+click).

And I don't think it would be too overpowering if dedicated knockback powers, like the three we mentioned (which otherwise do negligible damage), could knockback everyone regardless of status protection, with perhaps suppression kicking in to stop perma-knockdown. Someone taking those powers is only taking them for control reasons, and knockback isn't stackable by one person like most of the other status-type controls are because it has no duration.

Honestly there's no way any power should be totally useless in PvP - in that respect I guess Acrobatics knockback protection should be toned down as well, to be on par with brute/scrapper/stalker status shields.

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Hammerfall, can I make a suggestion since you seem so unhappy with your dominator yet determined to play it?

I think a big part of the problem is that you have decided the secondary is pants and are playing your dominator like a controller with no secondary but instead a few power pool attacks. Maybe I'm assuming too much here, but that's what it sounds like. If that's the case, no wonder you're having a bad time. Why not try to invest in your secondary more, power pick, slotting and playstylewise, and see if that improves things?

Don't get me wrong, I agree with a lot of the suggestions here, I just don't think it's quite so miserable at the moment. Lots of people manage to have good time playing their dominators and in general they seem to be the ones that play aggressively, constantly striving for Domination, and pick and use a lot of powers from the secondaries. Sure, damage is not great, especially before mid 30s, but with enough spamming it adds up.

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On the flipside I've tried to play mine like a blapper, focusing on max-slotting attacks over controls - in fact Terrify is the first AE control I've taken, as I thought the AE hold would be too short duration, the AE sleep would be negligible with my partner having cone confuse, and TK would stress my End too much pre-Stamina - and honestly I haven't found it that much more fun. And control is my second favourite thing in the game after damage, just ahead of debuffing (I'd say my fave ATs are brutes, MMs, blasters, scrappers, debuffing/controlling corruptors then stalkers - so I really am a sustained damage junkie).

Maybe I should have picked a different secondary (I have no problems with my primary on the whole), but I didn't like the changed look of the red blasts in Energy, I had already played most of the Fire attacks on my corruptor and brute, already had Thorns on my Plant/Thorns dom (which stalled solo in the early teens - I definitely know I don't want to solo a dom), and I avoided Ice because I knew it drained end even worse than the other secondary sets, from back when I played them all to early teens in the first couple of months of CoV.

So I don't know what to do - maybe doms just aren't for me. I do like the basic gameplay and the fact its so busy and tactical - I even want to play a controller once my friend and I devote time to CoH post-I8 - I just hate feeling so gimped when I play my dominators compared to every other archetype I've played, in almost every situation.