MinMin

Day 15 - Difficulty
One of the nicer things about where I live is that I'm only an hour away from this place and we're coming into summer. After a lovely day at the beach boogie boarding and rockpooling with the kids I finally get on quite late.

The very first thing I do is get Capella Rising to a Fortunata. With SOs the default difficulty level is embarassingly easy. Tentatively I raise the setting to Bosses, +1 level. Without any AoE I'm reluctant to raise the equivalancy settings. Turns out that I'm being quite conservative as yellow minions prove to be two-hammer laydowns and orange minions not much worse. I'm really loving these mallets.

I was just on the way back to the Fortunata to try out +2 level when I get an invite to a ToT team in the RWZ. I'm not particularly enamoured of the low 20s missions and I did the one I wanted to do (the Lt Chalmers Ballista-1 mission) so I head over there and spend the next 45 minutes doing ToT. Much better experience than last time and I really feel I'm contributing this time around. It also takes me from L23 to just into L25 before I say my goodbyes and head to bed.

L24 was Power Boost in anticipation of Wormhole at 26.

Day 14 - Late Night
Third day of downtime in a row is a lot frustrating, but because it's Friday I don't mind playing a bit late. So I get on at about 11pm and after a few missions (Captain Petrovich's Iron Widow arc to be specific) I hit L22, Stamina and SOs. I'm thinking this is going to be a profound difference, and it doesn't take long to realise that it is.

After about half an hour of soloing I get picked up by a L23 MM and we do a few newspaper missions. He's Necro/FF, probably the first of those that I've seen and seems to be quite effective, if a little lacking in punch. For the last mission of the night he suggests a mayhem. Sounds like fun, so I foolishly agree.

Aside: I quite enjoy mayhems. The low level ones are reasonably challenging and the upper level ones are a source of much mirth as you ambush the ambushers. What I'm going to talk to at this point is the low level type (or it's equivalent: too gimpy low 20s characters). In my experience there are three ways to do a mayhem mission at low levels:

1. The Right Way - Move steadily to the bank, destroying objects for time and dealing with ambushes as they come.

2. The Wrong Way - Run straight for the bank and wait in the foyer to deal with the ambushers. This actually becomes the right way with good teams or higher levels, but at low levels Longbow are too tough in comparison to you and you can get swamped.

3. The Really Wrong Way - Same as the Wrong Way except that you use Fly or Super Jump and it's a map with the Longbow Eagle Assassination Squad.

About 15 seconds into the mission I realise "we" have chosen option 2. Except that I'm wrong, "we" have actually chosen option 3. (Only, I'm still wrong). So we're in the bank foyer when the Longbow arrive. Unfortunately they continue to arrive for some time and in numbers that seem inordinate for the threat that they are facing. The good news is that the bubbles, enhanced with some handy Luck inspirations, are keeping me alive to deal with a good half of them. The bad news is that the MM goes down and goes straight to the PPD jail.

In favour of Capella Rising, rapid target switching and knockdown in nearly every attack as well as her entire inspiration tray keep her alive long enough for the MM to come back to the lobby where I learn that option 3 is no longer on the cards. This genius of an MM has invented a whole new option.

4. The Really, Really Wrong Way - Same as the Really Wrong Way, except that you repeatedly go to the PPD Jail and return to the bank via a different route while flying or super jumping every time. Thus bringing a whole new set of Longbow to the already active pile-on in the bank foyer.

Eventually, I run out of insps and I join the MM in jail, but we return to finish off the Longbow and complete the mayhem. It's fortunate at this point that I'm going to bed, but I do ask about how much experience this guy has with mayhems ...

Mind/Energy is solid for solo play, particularly if you leave the number of enemies low on your difficulty as the AoE damage potential is pretty bad.

My personal preference is for something a bit less single target (Fire, Psi, Thorns or even Ice), but strangely my highest Mind Control is /Elec which is nearly as single target as /Energy.

I haven't forgotten the Journal.

My VG is trying out a hero night, so that consumed Monday. Family commitments precluded Tuesday, and the last two nights have been wiped out by maintenance and an install. The Wednesday patch has the Oceanic community in something of a tiz given that there was a commitment made only a couple of weeks ago that patches would be on Tuesday with maintenance on a Thursday. Makes it hard to plan anything regularly ...

Anyway, Capella will Rise again!

That works out well for me anyway, I'm going to be on a plane tonight.

I think you're right in that exploit is a bad word to use. The word "exploit" has some bad connotations and a specific legal meaning in the context of the EULA, but I simply don't have a good term for describing this sort of behaviour.

I also agree that Burn Tanks are also a bad example to use because, as you say, there was no clearly nothing unintended about that feature; it simply wasn't tested enough in terms of balance. A far better example IMO would be the L44 Rikti Communications Officer AE farms. Do I think double and triple stacking Domination for the damage bonus was equivalent to the Rikti farms? No, not at all. But what term would you use to describe leveraging such an obviously unintended feature as the main focus of your character?

Perhaps the difference is one of a little-e exploit as opposed to a big-e Exploit.

That would work.

Some points on your slotting and IO choices:

• Unless Basilisk's Gaze got a lot cheaper while I wasn't looking, you might have better luck with the purples. I'm almost not kidding. Either way, you only need 4 of these for the recharge bonus. You can use the other two slots to make up the %s that you sacrifice by slotting a L30 set. So you probably need to 6-slot GDF and GD.

• You have overslotted a number of powers. Health doesn not need 3 slots, both Crush and Crushing Field only need 5 slots to get the +rech and Singularity only needs 4 slots of Expedient Reinforcement.

• You have underslotted a number of powers. Wormhole is a staple. You want maximum recharge for this power, so 6-slot it and use the last slot to maximise that. Same goes for Drain Psyche, but you might want to get some Accuracy in there too or even a Touch of the Nictus: Acc/End/Rech.

• I'm of the opinion that Resusictate is far inferior to either Summon Guardian or Surge of Power.

• Yes, Luck of the Gambler: +Recharge is expensive, but surely by saving merits throughout a Dom's career you can afford to get one by L50 ... it really does make a fair bit of difference. So it's worthwhile including a place to put it; I would recommend fitting in Combat Jumping in place of one of Crush or Crushing Field. That'll give you more slots too.

Hope that helps!

Has anyone got anything good to say about Mud Pots?

On paper it looks like irredeemable trash.

I'll take the contrarian position on Dom snipes. I never used to like them, but I had Psi Lance in my Fire/Psi build for the +recharge set, so I did begin to use it a bit in situations where I really didn't want to get close (mainly AVs with PBAoEs). After the I15 changes, it hit like a truck.

With this in mind I took Zapp on my Mind/Elec in the natural spot as I was levelling up and I ended up being reasonably impressed. It's not part of my regular attack chain, but against tough targets it's excellent and it's also great at applying the "dead" status effect to annoying minion types (sappers etc).

In short: you want it for Sting of the Manticore anyway, so take it and have some fun with the one-shotting.

Day 9 - Level 20 and Stamina
Or not. I'll discuss below.

I don't get a lot of time to play today as my weekends tend to be busy. It's that time of the year, and many of my weekends are spent travelling to various music performances around the greater Brisbane area (and we're not talking about a small place here - this is an area on par with Los Angeles in physical area). My kids play a variety of instruments and each play in a couple of bands (and sometimes fill in for others), and this time of the year is when most of the music competitions and school performances are held.

Anyway, I jump on late and play for about an hour before bed. This is enough to push Capella through to L20 and ... not Stamina. I pick up Heavy Mallet instead. What?! Another attack?! Don't I already have too many!? Well, yes, but I really don't have very many good ones and my Seer Marino arc has basically set my plan for how this character is going to play in the future. Additionally, I'm just not having issues with endurance. It's quite bizarre. I will still pick up Stamina at 22, but right now, a smooth damaging attack chain is more important.

Day 10 - Smash!
I only just dinged L20 last night so I never got an opportunity to try out Heavy Mallet. I'll just explain how that goes ...

Gravity Distortion on target one, Lift on target two, close on target three and HAMMER SMASH then HAMMER SMASH again and then SMASH the ground, laugh maniacally and target three isn't there any more.

You may thing that step four in the attack process is optional, but it's not. It's so not. I'm finally really enjoying Earth Assault and I can't wait for Seismic Smash in a few more levels. Earth Assault is indeed full of SMASH. IMO it really carves out a niche as a melee-heavy mid-maturing single target set with Power Boost. At some point I need to do some number crunching on Earth Assault vs Energy Assault, because I think they're playing in the same kiddie pool with Earth Assault specialising in areas where Energy Assault seems to be stubbornly generalist.

Also, I find that I really only need one damaging ranged attack beyond Stone Spears (and I'm not even totally sure about that; if Hurl Boulder had a less entertaining animation I'd consider dumping it more strongly). Propel is still in the tray, but I never use it. It will be gone in favour of either Crush or Crushing Field at my first respec.

Game-wise I continue soloing and I get through the costume slot and cape missions and then move on to newspaper missions and the Steel Canyon mayhem. All of that has me dinging L21 just before the mayhem. I'm now beginning to have endurance issues, but due to my yellowing DO enhancments, that's entirely to be expected. L22, Stamina and SOs loom close so I'm unconcerned.

Psi is an excellent assault powerset with some good all-round ability and a brilliant utility power in Drain Psyche.

Gravity has a few issues but its main one is the lack of a good every-spawn AoE soft control option until L26. Even then Wormhole has some issues in comparison to the far easier to use soft control options that the other sets get.

Its other main issue is Dimension Shift (although I could make a fairly negative case for Propel as well). Dimension Shift is a power that even its advocates refer to as "situationally ok" and then proceed to describe situations somewhat similar to patting yourself on the head whilst rubbing your stomach. More often it's a good reason to get kicked from your team.

Day 7 - No Server, No Dom
Thursdays are now maintenance day, so tonight's a bust. I get on for about 20 minutes to outfit Capella with L20 DOs and do the Bloody Bay Arachos Liason/Seer Marino runaround.

Day 8 - Striking Out
Tonight I intend to solo. Time to get a feel for Capella as the damage scaling and accuracy bonuses are coming off, and see if this character is going to be in anyway viable. The period from L18-19 is typically where a Dom is weakest for these reasons, and if you can make a go of it here, you can make a go of it anywhere in the game.

So, firstly I do a newspaper and a mayhem to get the badge and the temp power. Then I decide to do the Ashley McKnight Origin of Power missions and the Seer Marino arc which I've always found to be fun. By the end of the evening Capella Rising is not far from L20 and I've pretty much got a better feel for the character.

Here's my thoughts:

Pro: I've never had a Dom better on endurance. I'm not really keeping more than one blue, and outside of Mu in numbers I'm not really ever running out of endurance.

Pro: I've shuffled around my attack chain. Stone Mallet and Stone Spears (yes, I've changed my mind about this) are now the core of the attack chain. The vet powers are now too inaccurate to rely on. Hurl Boulder and Propel are good for picking off runners, but essentially, Stone Mallet is the source of most of my damage. I'd pretty much kill for the equivalent of Ice Sword Circle or Psy Scream at this point, but the frustration is still not enough to revisit Tremor.

Con: My build is poor. In my haste to check out all these wonderful attacks, I now have far too many attacks. More than I can fit into an attack chain even. I'm seriously considering another look at the immobs. They're not much, but an unused attack is a wasted power and I know that I can make the immobs work for me situationally at least.

Pro/Con: Lift is wonderful for the early mez resistant mobs, but I'm actively having to remember which ones I shouldn't use Grav Distortion on because of this. I'm getting used to it.

Con: CoT Spectrals deliver a timely reminder that all my damage is Smashing. In fact, a group of three yellow spectrals calls for a bowel-clench at this point in this Dom's career.

Overall I'm still enjoying the character. The inbuilt challenge factor is fun ("I know it's awful, but I can still do it!") and the animations are seriously cool. I will admit to firing off Hurl Boulder far more than I strictly need too simply because of the grin I get when I do it. I'm even getting used to Stone Mallet and I'm trying to think of a better customisation option to make it look less lame.

Here's Capella Rising with Hurl Boulder in action.

I would say so. There are a few issues here:

1. More recharge is always good for a Dom. Most of your effectiveness comes from slow recharging AoE control powers. Anything that makes these recharge faster is going to be good. IMO, even if I'm not aiming at perma, I put as much +recharge in my builds as I can.

2. A complete endurance refill every 90 seconds? Sign me up!

3. How much do you value a broad spectrum mez protection all the time? Personally, I'm a fan, particularly in the 40s.

Day 6 - Trick or Treat or Powerlevel?
It's the VG event night, but due to timezone issues I'm normally late for these and tonight is no exception. The group finishes the scheduled SF and are looking for some Halloween action. Thinking that I'd best jump on with my badger for this I grab my L50 Plant/Ice Dom and while we're waiting for the big event the group does a zombie invasion. It's been ages since I played my Plant/Ice and I'd forgotten just how much fun this character is. Anyway, with no supernatural incursion happening we switch to Trick or Treat so I switch to Capella.

ToTing in Grandville with the team is fun, but some of the guys have their difficulty way up, so what comes out of the trick doors is purple as often as not. As much as I like to complain about this character, I defy any character in the low teens and only outfitted with DOs to handle groups of purples well. I was of some use to hold and pick off stragglers, but I did get to visit the hospital several times. I was also of considerable use as comedy relief. With Liliaceae on the team, and him knowing full well how I feel about Gravity, there was much mirth pretty much every time I threw out Propel or Hurl Boulder. In fairness, my Hurl Boulder is bright pink, so much of the comedy was justified.

As always when many of the enemies are purples there was a whole lot of xp gained in a very short period of time and the ToTing saw me from L13 through to L18 in under an hour. I canned it there because (a) I was tired and (b) I hadn't done the L15-19 mayhem and I wanted to see what the character's solo performance was like in the upper teens.

With powers, I picked up SuperSpeed at 14, Health at 16 and Gravity Distortion Field at 18. It was either that or Power Boost, and I really don't have much Power to Boost just yet.