Miladys_Knight

I would reconsider it especially if you begin to take into consideration the effects of secondary powers. Rad/Dark Defenders using T_T and CC are almost as good as controllers. You can immobilize a spawn, then hold them, and your anchor has very little chance of running off. Only a Boss would be a problem and a hold from an Epic power would solve that.

Can I have my 2 front teeth?

I think BaBs has them. I was standing next to him in Galaxy City taunting him and he punched me in the mouth.

Ice/Fire can be nice as Dslice suggests but if you really want to kick out some sick blaster AoE then you might wish to try Rad/Fire.

It's not just that. The elec secondary has a 30% chance per attack to refund 50% of the base end cost of the attack. That's a sizeable end savings.

Good luck on the exams.

Then you know that the uses aren't very limited at all. Situational awareness and playstyle can actually be better than a defensive toggle. If you properly slot your accuracy to 95% and use Aim, geas, and the occasional yellow insp you shouldn't have any trouble hitting 95% of your targets. Energy Blast's cone and AoE have a 50% chance to cause Knockback. Against 8 targets that means (.95*.95*.5*.5 = .2256 * 8 = 1.8) that 1 or 2 targets are all that is standing after your alpha. 95% of the time force bolt makes that 1. 15% defense from dispersion bubble alone should be more than adequate to handle a lone mob.

The KB from those 3 attack powers against 8 mobs (including misses) has provided mitigation that is equivalent to a defense toggle of 38.72% (it's also done a decent amount of damage even for a defender). No single defensive toggle in the game even slotted up to the ED soft cap provides that much defense value. I expect that you haven't looked at it from that point of view though.

Also as I pointed out earlier and as Catwhoorg has confirmed there are relatively few mobs that are immune to KB effects and with a minimum of KB slotting those that are resistant to it or have some protection to it can still be knocked down/back.

My guess is that you have played so long relying on mitigation provided by toggles that you haven't developed the situational awareness needed to survive in typical CoH missions.

It's much the same situation as believeing that healing is the game's best mitigation (it obviously isn't.)

Yes Dark blasts do that. All ranged damage powers have secondary effects. /Dark's secondary efffect provides what amounts to 10% more defense per blast and I can stack 2 AoE attacks (3 if I don't mind bottoming out my blue bar). I have an FF/Dark because it exemplars well. You can see from the above numbers that a properly played FF/Energy has equivalent amounts of mitigation.

Trading safety for speed is a common theme through out the game. If my goal had been to do the RWZ challenge in 5 minutes I would have brought my IO'd BS/Shields scrapper. It is my only other toon that has 0 failed attempts at the RWZ challenge. I went in with my FF/Dark/Dark to see how well I could succeed. I was unconcerned with the time it would take.

It goes back to the proper use of tools. The scrapper is designed to do that the defender isn't. It's similar to using a spark plug puller, a ratchet, and spark plug gappers to tune up your car. Those tools are all designed to do just that. You can do the same thing with a pair of pliers and a screw driver but it will take you much much longer to do so using tools that aren't designed for the task. You shouldn't expect it to be the same.

Same thing goes the other way. Yeah you might be able to use a set of spark plug gappers as a screw driver if you don't mind ruining them in process but you won't be able to tighten down a bushing connecting 2 pieces of copper tubing with a ratchet.

No it doesn't, but not seeing how it helps goes back to a lack of situational awareness. While a mob is on it's butt it's damage output is 0. Lots of people get this. What most people fail to take into account is that mob ranged attacks do roughly 60% of the damage that mob melee attacks do. The farther the mobs fly the longer it takes them to get back into melee range especially since the AI will have them stopping to take ranged pot shots at you. When you have your KB distance slotted up enough that your AoE KB powers are recharged before the mobs can return to melee range you have increased your mitigation to what is roughly equivalent of 40% resistance to all damage types.

If you've been following all this 2, 50% chance to KB AoE attacks against 8 mobs gives you similar mitigation to unslotted granite armor. Against fewer targets it's even better. Against more targets it is admittedly worse (though not significantly worse.) That's all free and entirely due to situational awareness. You don't really even need the extra defense from dispersion bubble, just the mez protection.

This is exactly how my Energy/Energy/Force blapper survives in melee range with only 7% defense. The tool kit for a FF/energy defender are almost identical.

That's quite a bit out of context since it was in regards to endurance use and not mitigation. In regards to mitigation, it takes an FF/?/elec 2 applications of Power Sink (even when soft capped for end mod) to fully drain a spawn. With ED capped recharge and no outside sources of +rech that's a bit over 60 seconds. With hasten and some global recharge the best you are going to get it down to is in the vicinity of 45 seconds. Several multiples of the amount of time it took a +4 PP to one shot you.

With your current play style I certainly wouldn't consider it good mitigation for you.

Which goes back to both power selection and situational awareness.

Ah yep that's right it's the Ruins. That'll teach me to post after working a double.

Knockback is one of, if not the most, powerful soft control in the game. Not to belittle your experiences but I would suggest you give FF more practice as is and see just what you CAN do with it instead of being quite so concerned with what it can't do.

Just as 2 examples.....

My FF/Dark/Dark did the RWZ challenge the first time right out of the box and has done it twice since without any failures. It is the only toon I have that can make this claim. I faced a ritki mezzmerist in each of the challenges and the only way I could survive was timing my KB to keep him on his butt so that he couldn't mez me. My first attempt took 27 minutes 17 of which was dealing with the mezmerist (btw that first attempt was about 2 weeks before no toggle drop on mez went into effect).

My Energy/Energy/Force Blapper has the AoEs slotted FOR KB and I use it very successfully for mitigation. I routinely out survive scrappers and brutes on ITFs yet only run a total of 7% defense to all positions ALL of the rest of my mitigation is provided by situational awareness and KB. I've done the RWZ challenge on this blaster and have about an 80% success rate.

If you have a toon on Justice and want a demonstration of either or both toons I'd be happy to give them to you. (Global is @Grandpa Squeak)

2 last comments on the subject:

1) PK.... er Westley has no endurance issues because he plays FF/Elec and uses powersink to keep his blue bar topped off. Any other combination is going to have endurance issues even with 3 slotted stamina, all the +max end accolades, and a Numina and Miracle unique slotted. This can be true even while teamed since if your team plays smart they will take little to no damage and "vigilence" will give you squat. My FF/Dark/Dark has all those things, doesn't run hasten, and has an attack chain that is limited by endurance rather than recharge even with sets slotted that have very high end red numbers.

2) The final comment is that the power that you have been eschewing as of low utility, Detention Field, if properly slotted would have entirely prevented the problem you cited with the PP. A Mog'd PP is pretty much unkillable until MoG expires unless you have a rad (or a combination of similar powers from other power sets) on the team or a team of experienced players with IOs. Slapping the PP with Detention field and then just letting MoG expire would have saved you and your entire team from every scrap of damage that the PP could have put out.

Because of defiance more recharge also gives you more damage. I'd focus on the recharge and only pick up damage bonuses where you can't get recharge ones.

If you wish to be truely annoying play a Grav/FF controller. Then you get Dimension Shift AND Detention Field.

This is really not the case. Knockback is a status effect that functions differently than other status effects in the game. Slotting for increased Knockback increases the MAGNITUDE of the KB. Duration (ie: the time it takes a mob to get back up) remains constant.

Knockback is also Schedule D which means that one SO gives an enhancement value of 60% as compared to Schedule A's 33%. The ED soft cap is going to be around 168% so force bolt's mag 18 will be up to mag 50ish. (With Cat's example of focus's base .67 ED softcapping this for KB would only yeild mag 1.8)

That means that a mob has to have a bit over mag 49 KB protection to avoid being KB'd. KB distance is a function of how much mag the protection was exceeded by. The higher the difference the farther the mob flies. This is modified by any KB resistance the mob has. 100% KB resistance would reduce the above calculated distance by 50%. 200% KB resistance would reduce the distance by 66% etc.

KB resistance values can be quite high. Tanker invulnerability has a resistance value of -10,000%. The key though is exceeding the KB protection. Resistance just reduces the distance they fly.

IIRC (I could be wrong) one of the Rikti mentalist powers has no positional component. This means that defense isn't any good against it. Like I said I'm not sure I remember correctly. Fleeting Whisper would be able to tell you for certain though.

I would have to say your description is off. Excluding situations where the power does work to great advantage is disingenious. It's a classic example of giving a false choice. A perfect example would be when a polling company calls and asks you if you believe that we should have a tax increase of 10% or 17%. They only wish to receive one answer or the other even if you believe that there should be no tax increase what so ever or if you should believe that there should be a tax decrease. They frame the question in a way that skews the results in the direction they want it to go.

Your scrapper also can't heal the rest of your team, or cast a powerful debuff, or a powerful buff, nor can it keep your entire team at the damage cap like a kinetics can. Does that make this a discrepancy that should be mitigated? Does this mean that scrappers are broken and need fixed so that they can do these things? Certainly not.

Expecting a defender to do things a scrapper can is akin to using a hammer to make repairs to a ceramic mug. The results will be unfortunate since you aren't using the tools for the purpose they were designed for.

All right if you want to look at it that way. I can tell you that my Rad/Sonic has solo'd a couple AV's (I haven't tried it with my storm dark but I doubt he could pull it off) none of my buffing defender's can. . They just don't have enough damage out put to overcome AV regen rates. I can just about guarantee you that proposing Defenders soloing AVs as a performance guideline will give Castle a hearty chuckle.

I doubt that you woud disagree that the buffer loses the ability to use some of their most potent powers while solo. The debuffer has access to all of them all the time.

That leaves performance while teamed. While teamed a buffing defender gets to use all their powers. Buffs are unresisted so the players that receive them get full value. Most mobs have little to no resistance to debuffs. The mobs that do have resistances are not all that common.

Next go to a comparison of buffs vs debuffs. Mechanically Defense and Acc Debuffs are the same thing so comparing Defense Buff powers with Defense Debuff powers should be a good baseline for power set balance.

Deflection Shield has a base defense value of 15% (Ice Shield has the same defense values but provides different resistances). Defense enhancements are schedule B so the ED cap is going to be around 23.8% and other than providing 40% unenhanceable resitance to toxic that's all it does.

Darkest night has a base acc debuff value 18.8%. Acc debuff enhancements are schedule B so you are going to get an Acc debuff value of 29.7% AND Darkest night reduces the target's damage output (all damage types) by 37.5% which is identical to having an additional resistance of 37.5% to all damage types.

Rad Infection has a base acc debuff of 31.3% so a final value of -49.5% AND it also gives a defense debuff value of 31.3% (this is schedule A) with a final value of 51.9%.

Hurricane has a base Acc debuff value of 37.5% and a final value of 59.4% AND it reduces mob range by 60% meaning that those blasters in the back are out of range for the targets you are debuffing.

Mobs with resistance are not common. Mobs with massive resistance are exceedingly rare. Debuffs are quite a bit more potent than buffs. The few mobs that do have resistances "might" reduce the debuff values to the level of buffs.

I don't know about you but I still believe that the debuffer has it better in 99.9% of the situations and especially solo when the buffer loses the abilty to use those ally only buffs. I don't think I can go along with the view point that they are in balance.

As far as concept goes you'd still be able to skip the pet. Also I didn't say "it has to be these pets" I just gave examples using existing critters that fit the particular Epic power.

To be honest its not really a good argument. The buffing Defender has no more chance to solo an AV than does a debuffing one (with the possible exception of Rad/Sonic and perhaps Storm/Dark). Score card still higher for debuffers taking this into consideration as well.

While teamed it may be true but fighting an AV is a relatively rare occurance especially when you take into account how many Minions, Lieuts, Bosses, and EBs you had you chew your way through to get there. I'd still say the debuffer has the advantage.

Just as a few quick points of order so that we don't get too far off track.

Force Bolt is mag 18.7 unslotted. Using KB sets like Kinetic Crash increase that to mag 51 or Force Feedback which gives mag 50. Slotting with these sets is relatively cheap and either set provides excellent set bonuses for the FF user. Mag 50 KB will move just about any thing that isn't essentially immune to KB. Even things like Cimerora bosses and Rikti Magus go flying when hit with slotted up Force Bolt.

I agree that Repulsion Bomb is good mitigation the main problem with it as mitigation is it's excessively long (30 seconds) recharge.

Also you are selling PFF short. Slotting PFF with a single level 50 defense IO gives a defense value of 94.1 % to all positions. Even with no DDR you aren't going to be dropping below the soft cap except under MASSIVE and stacked defense debuffs. Additionally PFF gives 40% unenhanceble Damage Resistance to all types except toxic and untyped. Stacked on top of an epic shield this is quite a bit of mitigation. The trade off of course is that you can't hurt any thing. I've used a lowbie FF defender as a tank by toggling PFF on, getting the mob's attention, then toggling PFF off, unloading AoEs and toggling back on. At higher levels the presence pool can be used to make the FF defender a tank also.

A buffable pet power solves all most all the disparities though. It gives the buffing defender the ability to make use of all their very potent ally buffs. Currently it's all when teamed and nothing while solo. A pet solves this problem when soloing for all buffing sets not just FF.

A single pet isn't really a killing machine especially since the pet recharge nerf. What it would do is split the aggro and provide some damage with out costing any endurance other than the initial casting cost. This would have the effect of increasing the Defender's DPE which is a problem for all defense based defender sets and those defender primaries/secondaries that operate by preventing damage rather than repairing it. This is something that many buffing sets need but is especially true with FF and to a lesser degree with Sonic Resonance.

I find soloing a buffing defender a painfully slow way to advance. Yes it's possible to do so, no it's neither quick nor exciting. That means that if I am going to solo my buffing defender it's going to be late game or at level 50.

Adding a pet to the Epics allows the individual buffing defender to choose which type pet will give them the most synergy and allows it to remain thematically consistant with the Epic. It also allows the devs to maintain the buffing power sets as is with out changing powers and violating the cottage rule.

As examples the following could be done:

Dark Mastery - a CoT ghost pet. (Not Dark servant because it's all ready available in Dark Miasma)
Electric Mastery - a Coralax pet.
Power mastery - a Tsoo Green Ink man.
Psy Mastery - a Rularuu Wisp.

None of these pets exist for any other blue side AT so they would be instantly recognizable as defender pets instead of getting confused with existing controller pets. To work properly they would have to be permanent buffable pets like controller pets rather than temporary pets like Blaster pets and Villian Epic Pets. The recharge could be longer than those of the controller to provide the needed AT difference that the devs always seem to cling to.

It may not be a perfect solution but it comes the closest to providing the missing balance between buffing and debuffing defender power sets without violating any of the devs written or unwritten rules.

Edit -

Blaster /Devices - Gun Drone
Blaster Elec/ - Sparky
Defender /Elec - Sparky
Defender Dark/ - Dark Servant
Defender Traps/ - Seeker Drones
Corruptor /Traps - Seeker Drones
Corruptor /Dark - Dark Servant
Corruptor Elec/ - Sparky
All Controllers save mind
All Masterminds
All Dominators save mind
Arachnos Soldiers
All Villian Epics save Masterminds
Peace bringers
Warshades

All of these have pets available (defenders are all ready on the list btw) so the precedence has all ready been set. Additionally there are far more ATs with Pets available than without. I don't think it's too far a stretch to add them to defender Epics.

Yes I know, and this is my point. There is a difference between jumping around because you are assesing a situation (which I do enjoy) and jumping around because your AT/potential power selections give you little to no choice (which I don't enjoy). The first is a choice you make based your own skill level, the second is forced upon you. I have always been a proponent of more choices and options rather than fewer.

You shouldn't have to wait until high levels to finally be effective. You shouldn't have to rely on IOs as a crutch to make up for short comings in an AT. You should be able to be good at "something" at each stage of the game (1-12, 12-22, 22-32, 33-41, and 42+) instead of being relatively weak until the end game and then finally come into your own.

For this reason I have problems with Super Reflexes which doesn't come into it's own until late game, Shields which doesn't come into it's own until the late game and also requires IOs to meet it's full potential and the Dominator AT which doesn't come into it's own until late game and which IOs and perma make not only a difference but make a magnitude of difference.

Dominator controls don't last long enough out side of domination or recharge quickly enough until fully slotted or beefed up with IO set bonuses both of which are things that typically only happen in the late game.

Add to that, that Dom AoE controls have less than standard accuracy (just like controllers) so that not only do you not get to use them often enough early, they also aren't ready as often as you need them early, and you don't hit enough targets to make the control you do get effective. All these things balance out in the late game but can make the early levels tedious.

I realize that the devs can't reasonably add duration to the AoE controls. That would make perma insanely overpowered BUT giving dom AoE controls standard accuracy might go a long way towards balancing out the early levels.

Then the AoE controls could be slotted more effectively early and the short duration would at least be counter balanced by being able to affect a majority of the targets. It wouldn't be over powered for perma since to get perma you need to slot sets. Most Control sets feature over slotted accuracy anyway to counter the low base accuracy of most AoE controls. Permas are going to be wasting the extra accuracy in ED.

In my opinion that would be a good step to take to balance the lower levels while not making late levels or perma overpowered.

That's all I'm really saying.

Edit - You know what. I found a document that says better exactly what I've been trying to say here all this time. You wrote it Liliaceae. It's in your sig. Dominator Problems. While the revamp has addressed many of the minor problems you pointed out. It did little to address the major ones and it also increased the time it took to build domination as you predicted.

This begs the question of the purpose of having AoE attacks in the Dominator AT if using the single target attacks are more effective. Or even the question of why all or at least most of the single target attacks aren't early in the power set and all the AoE ones late. That would certainly have made the early levels go much smoother.

@Quijon. Your described play style didn't work for me. When I was playing as you described I took an unacceptable amount of ranged damage. I was soloing at +1/x4 and running hero stats I learned a few things.

Fire cages immobilized the spawn. This made the avoid in Hot Feet ineffective. I took as much as 2x more damage when the mobs were immobilized than I did when I let them grind away near the -run speed cap.

According to Hero stats the total damage contribution of Hot Feet was greater than either Breath of Fire or Combustion (but not greater than Breath of Fire and Combustion combined.)

Most of the potent mezzers in a spawn are lieutenants. I found that out side Dominaton I had to open with an AoE control, follow up with Breath of Fire, then move into melee and let loose with Combustion. At this point I had to start thinking about applying Char to the lieutenants before they recovered from being stunned and alternating Flares and Fire Blast, bunny hop in to leverage Incinerate and then bunny hop back out and waste a couple seconds lining up Fire Breath again.

When I was running hero stats I discovered that when I stopped bunny hopping that my DPS increased by a noticeable amount but my survivability decreased by a much greater amount.

The following spawn I'd have to open with Cinders since Flashfires wasn't recharged. On the 3rd spawn I wouldn't have an AoE control available as neither one would be recharged. This situtation remained until I had Hasten and enough global recharge to have one or the other available as an opener every time. IIRC that wasn't until the late 30s/early 40s and I was nearing perma Dom levels of recharge.

Many of you in this forum may enjoy the enforced bunny hopping playstyle of the dominator but in my experience and in my opinion it is most likely the thing that prevents most other players from enjoying it and accounts at least partially for Doms being one of the lowest population redside ATs especially pre-revamp.

As far as the contention that had CoV been released first the game would have been entirely different. I agree. Based on red side population numbers from release to now had they been released in reverse order CoH would never have gotten off the ground. The greatly reduced income from a much lower population of players would have prevented further development during the period of time when there were few developers and little money was being made available for new issues. This would have caused the franchise to be disbanded.

No disrespect to anyone here on the Dom forums. I'd really like to enjoy my Doms more. A Dom was the first thing I rolled when CoV came out and I was greatly underwhelmed and disappointed. The concept of the Dominator is a good one but the power sets fail in execution especially when compared to Brutes, MMs, and Veats.

Going back to the OP and my point. Yes, a Dominator can solo, I've soloed mine almost exclusively.

If you are comparing the Dom to a Controller and not taking it on it's own merits you will be disappointed in the lack of duration of the controls, especially the AoEs, especially before you can afford enough slots to make the power effective.

If you are comparing the Dom to a Blaster and not taking it on it's own merits you will be similarly disappointed in the gaps in your attack chain(s), and the lower amount of AoE damage, especially before you can afford enough slots to make the power(s) effective.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not disagreeing with any of this merely pointing out the aspects of the low level dominator that I find unfun or annoying. The Dom really didn't get fun until the very late 30's and early 40s. Power and playability weren't on par with any of my Blasters or even my Defenders and still pale beside the Brutes, Masterminds, and even Corruptors I have played.

I recently rolled a Fire/Dark Corruptor and at the low levels had far less survival and endurance issues even though the Corruptor has a much lower base damage level and lacks hard controls.

The problem is that they don't compare well to Blasters either. Most Blasters have a plethora of single target AND AoE damage powers and with just SOs and hasten can have both a seemless AoE or Single Target attack chain and have them as early as level 24. They don't require as much slotting to be effective and there is always an end cost appropriate attack recharged and ready to go.

Most blasters can just target the boss in a spawn and let loose with Aim > Build Up and their AoEs and have only the boss standing after that. A smooth single target chain can then finish the boss quickly all with a minmum of endurance expediture.

In comparison my Fire/Fire Dom didn't have a smooth single target attack chain until after level 38 when I finally got Blaze even when I was pretending I was a psychotic ADHD bunny and hopping in and out of melee.

The AoE is lacking as well since what should be one of the highest damage sets (fire) has 2 AoE damage powers that don't play well together. Breath of Fire's cone will miss targets that are in range of Combustion and vice versa. Being short on AoE damage means that you won't wipe out minions until your second round of AoEs. Outside of domination your AoE controls don't last long enough to cycle your AoEs twice..... until you are mostly fully slotted in the early 40s and by that time IO'd doms are running perma and have solved most of the early level problems.... Problems Blasters don't run into.

I really dislike the ADHD bunny range dance and was happy to be rid of the play style when I got perma. Even after the dom changes it's the main reason that I haven't rolled another Dom and probably won't.

All of which I would call "an issue" when comparing to controllers. For Dominators it balances out in the late game when you have enough enhancement slots but can be an issue in the early game when you are slot poor. That and a lack of powers (both single target and AoE) until late game levels when you get your pets (level 32) to share aggro and level 38 when you get your final attack.

This leaves the dom with either holes in the attack chain until late game and full slotting or wasting endurance using an AoE damage power or a high damage/high end cost power to finish off one or 2 nearly dead mobs. The play style is surprisingly different from the controller and can be difficult to adapt to at first.

It also gives you the largest pool of potential junk...... caveat emptor.