UberGuy

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New doms will be really awesome on teams. They might even be somewhat close to equal to a corruptor's value on a team. Not actually CERTAIN about that, but it's mildly possible.

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In raw number crunching, it's not likely, though it does depend somewhat on what powersets the Corr has.

The biggest difference a Corr brings to things that helps them outshine nearly anyone else's contribution is that they actually multiply the effectiveness of the rest of the team. If a Corr joins a team of 7 other ATs and boosts, say, their DPS by 20%, that's like adding the DPS of 1.4 additional characters' to the team. That's above and beyond any direct, non-multliplying benefit the Corr brings from their own attacks, and not counting that they might be able to multiply those as well.

A Dom's primary unique capability is wide-area lockdown. It's a very potent ability and I think nearly any team will notice some difference with it in play against non-AV-style foes. It's not the only way a team that charges around headlong can get improved survival, though.

Note that I don't build characters or teams on the basis of the above observation. In my experience, unless you're dealing with what I'll call a "performance bigot", most teams are willing to accept a character if they feel it brings something strong to a team. With good controls and now much more respectable damage outside of Domination, I think Doms will have wider team appeal, mostly just on the damage increase.

We shall see.

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We know who doms have to appeal to to become popular and it isn't people that have already ran the AT up to 50 several times, nor is it people with extensive knowledge of IO'ing out the various kinks of a build.

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FWIW, I have one Dom, and he's level 30. He's been level 30 for about two years.

As the changes stand on test, he's a lot more likely to hit 50 before the sun goes out now, even though he was /Psi, and arguably a far better min/max before these changes.

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Others have already said it a bit, but outside of /energy the t1 blast should probably be 4 sec and the t2 8 sec.

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I've tentatively agreed with the people saying that, for the sake of improving the low-level "feel".

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If you're willing to accept defeats until you get a long run of luck, then it's quite doable. But otherwise I think the Night Widow is just a bit too squishy in the presence of one-shot capable AVs such as BABs or Hro'Dtohz to make the AT a good AV killer.

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For what it's worth, the detailed retellings of AV defeats on the Scrapper forums typically involve multiple defeats before success. Certainly that risk is higher with lower base HP.

My own finding was that, with Aid Self, something between one half and two thirds of the AVs I fought primarily used attacks that dealt single-blow damage I could mostly recover from unless they hit be twice in very rapid succession. Having scaling DR was a big boon against these AVs.

There were other AVs, though, who could consistently hammer me such that the one-shot code was all that saved me, or at least drive me deep into the red. Aid Self can't get you back from this very fast, so you're left in a position where the next hit will probably kill you, since the one-shot code only kicks in at or very near to full health. This was a big part of why I had so much trouble with BaB - he had three or four attacks like this, at least.

My Widow has about 45% more HP than baseline now. I don't know how much I had when I fought the AVs in the screnshots linked, but I know it wasn't that much. Probably more like +10% or less.

There's nothing in the info on Red Tomax's site that suggests it has a restriction like that, but however RT gets his info, it's always possible that some aspects of an effect/power might not display, or that he might have incomplete info on them.

It's the first I'd heard of that possible behavior, though.

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1) Team XP division is borked. This has been very clear to me for a long time and is the core of basically every PL scheme.

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I'm curious. Do you mean the actual formulaic division, or the regime by which it is determined who should get XP? (In this game, it essentially assumes everyone gets an equal share no matter what, and fudges from there to account for other factors.) If it's the latter, I'm not sure how wise the devs would be to attack this problem, as it definitely has significant implications for the casual nature of the game.

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Characters progress beyond the point where PvE combat is even slightly challenging. Increased reward rates have been exposed by providing opportunities for harder combat where none existed before, allowing more powerful characters to earn rewards faster instead of everyone being "flattened" to an arbitrary limit governed by existing PvE spawn rules. This is the balance issue I'm not sure should be fixed; re-flattening the game makes it less interesting IMHO.

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This, I believe, is extremely fundamental to the entire brouhaha with the MA. Even before Inventions, it was possible for certain builds to exceed the baseline challenge afforded by playing the game "normally" (non-padded missions of dev-assigned spawns). With inventions, it became possible (note the emphasis) for nearly any character to exceed this challenge.

The primary limiter on our reward rates was not any limitation on our own capabilities, but instead limitations on the availability of foes in quantities who we could defeat at our fullest potential speed.

Turning around and adding to this situation a tool whereby players with such capabilities could now actually create challenges worthy of those capabilities was asking for ... what happened. Throw in some folks finding honest-to-goodness loopholes and you had a recipe for PL extraordinaire.

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I may have to burn my "Junior Ebil Marketeer" card, because I just don't understand WHY you'd want to deliberately burn Inf. I understand why the DEVS would want to, just not why a PLAYER would want to.

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Said player would only want to if they thought the reasons the devs wanted to were worth contributing to.

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I think it's because the Dominator changes will require a change of playstyle for many people. Old habits die hard, and Dominators have played roughly the same since they were released. I especially feel for the /Psi users not just because PSW got nerfed badly but because the entire feel and "optimal" way to play the set got totally changed.

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Oh, I can empathize for sure.

Something similar happened to Scrapper Claws. It went from a premier ST-damage set to a decent one with really fracking good AoEs. Kind of hard to complain about on one hand, but totally not what everyone was looking for, either.

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I don't agree with this because the primary attacks fill in the chain. I've had no problems either with a brand new, exemplared or high level dom in having something to do.

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Yes, but again, that costs more endurance to do. You deal more damage doing it, so your overall DPS is certainly higher, as we've said. But at pre-stamina levels you have a choice between waiting for Assault set attacks to recharge (roughly producing the same DPS & EPS you get on live) or supplementing the chain with attacks from your primary, which boosts your DPS and EPS.

If you manage this properly, you're going to break even between a lowbie on live using Domination and one on test without it. The only potential problem is that anecdotal evidence suggests that a lot of players aren't going to manage it that way. They're going to run around killing stuff faster than the live character and then complain that their blue bar is empty. We saw this with Night Widows when they were released.

I'm not saying the devs have to design around that, but I think it's very much worth mentioning, especially because opinions form so early for a lot of players.

I'm one of those people who can grunt through almost anything for a character who's kick-butt later on, so it's not going to bother me if they don't address this.

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If you are cool with standing around doing nothing all the power too you. From my experience, most players aside for /empaths aren't (especially on an "assault" designed AT).

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It's true, people will do that for sure. It's one reason I agreed in the main feedback thread with the assessment that they might want to review the tier 1 and 2 attacks and make them faster recharging with less damage and endurance cost. I think something between what they were and are now would be a better idea, not because it will actually perform better (except for overkills), but because it will "feel" better subjectively to people playing lowbie Doms. That's a key time when people form opinions of whether they think they'll enjoy playing something.

I'm a little torn, though, because (especially for the attacks with fast activations) big hitter attacks are what you want to build attack chains with. Having some of these attacks like this is a boon to the high-performance build.

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I'm starting realize, this revamp may actually make permadom more needed accross the board then it currently is. Going perma solves two big issues now, endurance troubles and the new increased recharge times.

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It's only "needed" if you define what you need as having a constant attack chain available and fueled, even though in doing so you will be dealing more (single-target) damage than you were before, including Domination.

This is a happy problem.

It's also exactly how other ATs achieve their peak performance. Not with permadom, of course, but with builds that strive for high recharge so they can optimize their DPS attack chains for maximum output. A Dominator who does this happens to get the added bonus of always-on mez protection and a periodic endurance refill.

Meanwhile, everyone else who wasn't a permadom gets to dish permadom DPS full time (not counting the +rech, just the damage per attack).

Maybe I've missed out on some niche playstyle that Dominators found previously, but to me this makes Doms simultaneously more practical at low levels / casual builds while opening up their high-end build capabilities (again, primarily for single-target damage - AoE capabilities didn't really benefit here).

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Or they resort to using the hold/immob from their primary, which is generally not very end efficient even assuming they slotted it for damage.

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See, I always used my mezzes as attacks on my Mind/Psi. I never had an adequate attack chain from Psi assault. I still don't, but that means that, overkill aside, I pretty much broke even.

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This game is 5 years old. I seriously doubt they're going to redesign how mezzing works at this point.

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They tackled that project for pvp.

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Yeah, but they likely consider a viable PvP system important for subscription retention/growth. (Let's not get into whether they hit the target here - I'm just saying they have a bottom-line motive there). I have a hard time imagining that they classify a problem affecting two ATs against some occasional foes in quite the same way.

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I'm a little concerned about the increased recharge and end costs on many of the powers. Much of what I read in the other thread boils down to "My attack chain is still fine and I don't really have a problem with my blue bar - but this is an IO/permadom build."

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FWIW, I tested it on a pure SO-built, level 30 Mind/Psi, and had no end problems taking on +2 and +3 spawns of Longbow on the turret-laden bridge to Aigencourt in Nerva. The heaviest min/maxing present on this character is that he has Stamina and Hasten.

In general, the only reason you'll run out of end faster using the [edit] single-target* [/edit] attacks with the new stats is actually by killing stuff faster. The DPE didn't drop on most attacks (on several it improved) - and that's comparing the DPE to having Domination up on live. If you're burning end faster, that means your dishing damage faster. You may not be able to sustain that, but that means that at least the single-target DPS top-end for Doms is actually higher than it used to be if you build for it.

Assuming the same DPS rates, the only place you might really be burning more end is in overkill, using the now bigger attacks (with their increased end costs) to finish off a foe that less damage would suffice for. That's probably not an ingnorable effect if you currently have an "endurance casual" build.

* You'll spend more end using your AoEs now on several sets.

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In terms of damage, corrupters can bolster the team with buffs/debuffs, SoAs have their Leadership powers, Brutes can deal out more damage and take a hit, and Masterminds with their 6 walking meatshields as well as their own buffs and debuffs. Every single one brings damage plus something else to the table, meaning they are more useful. Which, again, leads me to suggest the way mezzing works in this game needs to be looked at.

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This game is 5 years old. I seriously doubt they're going to redesign how mezzing works at this point.

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On many builds, once you can survive them and have enough damage output, it's just a button-mashing exercise. The kind that might not appeal to that many people. It takes a certain kind of crazy to hit the same three keys over and over for 20 minutes. At least SOME builds are more interactive than that.

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This is where I'm at with my Night Widow. Whether I succeed or not at most AVs I tried really just comes down to how the RNG plays out. Do they hit me 2-3 times in quick succession? If no, I'm probably golden. If yes, I'm coming back from the Hospital to pretty much start over (depending on where the mish is at and how big the map is).

Basically, I knew I could eventually beat anything my effective DPS was reasonable against if I tried enough, because eventually I'd get the right streak of rolls in my favor. After I won a few times, that damped my enthusiasm for the whole thing, at least on such a build.

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I thought you lost any unused Enhancements when you respec. Are you saying that you keep IO's that you don't use? Because I actually have a few in there that I slotted when he first started that I would give to other toons when I respec to re-do his build.

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You can keep 10 that you put in your enhancement tray.

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For the record, that's really rough on your neck if you hit the money just wrong.

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Your will/insurance benificiaries will appreciate it, though.

Good luck. I think you're going to find that the "one thing" that you'll have to change is going to be either the time taken to get to 50 or whether it's done in the MA or not.

Nice work!

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Reminds me of the good ol' days stacking robots on the PI docks.

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Once, playing my BS/Inv Scrapper, I pulled so many Jaegers of them around a crate and used Headsplitter on them all, the resulting explosion and screenshake was so loud and disruptive that for a moment, I wasn't sure what had happened. I seriously thought that the Fire/Fire Blaster who was on my team had used Inferno, but she hadn't; it was all the exploding bots.

I also nearly died from the damage they deal when they explode.

Some passers-by actually applauded in /local.

Yep.

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i've seen videos of petless MM's soloing AV's, so it is possible

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Yeah I saw one solo Statesman in RV without pets even in the build

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Were they /Traps using the pre-nerf PGT behavior? If not, I'm really curious.

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To be more precise: it was an issue with Gauntlet in tankers (and to a lesser degree all targeted aoe attacks with very small radius.) True single target attacks never had the "impossible to hit moving targets" issue.

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Single-target attacks had a different issue. You couldn't get them to activate reliably. You could queue an attack and chase after a running opponent, and it was significantly unlikely that the attack would actually activate unless you ran past the opponent, rubbing shoulders with it the whole time.

This problem significantly predated the problem with cones/AoEs.

My very first character in pre-release was a Katana Scrapper, and I really hated this.

Variations on this suggestion:
[*] Gratuitous display of charity: Tie the animation to trade window transactions involving money transfers where you get nothing back. Put a checkbox on the trade interface allowing a visible display for this event. Trades under 100k throw coins, from 100k-1M throw coins and bills, and 1M+ thow bills in increasing density with the log10 scale of the money transferred.[*] Lowbie lottery, personal edition: Effectively, this requires a new power. You get a popup letting you enter how much money to throw. When you sumbmit the value you perform the animations suggested upthread. The value you entered is deducted from cash on hand and given to a random ally within 20'. (Doubtless the devs would restrict this to same-faction allies.) If no eligable targets are in range, the inf is not deducted. In fairness, this should include a Fortune-Teller-style acceptance prompt for the recipient, for people who don't want handouts.[*] Scrooge McCyborg: You self destruct, but leave a cloud of bills along with the usual smoke and carbon scoring.

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A show of hands. How many are glad that green glow from the bank mish temp power was removed. I can't remember if it was for the +regen or the +hp one.

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I don't mind the green glow if I get to plan for it. That was the problem with the bank temp - no one (sane) is going to make a costume with an eye to a temp power.