Vidszhite

Well, most ATs can't solo AVs. The trick for a Dom is to downgrade them to Elite Bosses and bring lots of purples, greens, and blues. If all else fails, get a Shivan.

ShrikeX figured it out. I remember the post. It was shortly after Domination's recharge got reduced from 300 to 200 seconds; he'd gotten it on a team full of /kins and /rads with SB and AM stacked on him. He noticed the button ready to click before the power wore off, clicked it, and discovered what we called at the time "Double Domination." The Dominator forums were ablaze with speculation. Half of us wondered when the devs were going to nerf it, then Posi came in and said he was surprised that we found it so quickly. It was before inventions, since I remember everyone talking about the idea of self-sustained permadom when set bonuses were revealed.

"You know you play Dominators too much when..."

Before anything else, Dominator Melee attacks have a higher damage modifier, so their base damage is 10% higher, all things being equal. Then, as icing on the cake, they tend to have very high damage scale numbers as well, especially for the level you get them. To put it in perspective, we get our equivalent ranged attacks much, much later than even Defenders do (Defenders get Power Blast at 2, we at 10; Power Burst at 10, we at 38), but we get equivalent melee attacks at the same levels that Scrappers and Brutes would, only ours have better damage numbers than theirs to make up for the fact that we only get one or two of them. They're that good.

At your level, the strongest ranged attack you have is a 2.20 Damage Scale power, Impale. You get this at level 10. Skewer is the first melee attack you have access to. It's a 2.28 Damage Scale power. It has higher damage before even adding modifiers. You get this at level 2. It also has a very quick animation time.

The only reason not to take your melee attacks is build space at level 50, if you're sure you have enough attacks of equivalent power to make up for the loss, and even then I would never advocate skipping more than one.

The reason you're confused about the blapper powers is you're using a Controller mindset. Don't do that. Doms are a dual-nature AT, not a support AT; our DPS isn't nominal like Defenders, it's meant to be used and used often. The melee attacks are good choices because if we're doing our job right, it's safe to use them.

Well, sure, they could come from gadgets, but they're leaning more towards Highly Advanced Technology (Tech Origin) and not Modern Technology + Training (Natural Origin).

You designate a spot on the ground, and it throws a whole bunch of them in the area around that one spot. Like Caltrops.

Yep. No more tricks needed. It takes a lot of guesswork out of the "when to use Domination" question, since if you use it too early you can just get it back right when you need it. Frenzy also has a large global recharge buff that lasts for the duration, so Domination will even recharge faster.

I have mine HO'd out for full Damage and Mez, so it only needs 4 slots, but it does everything I need it to. Its recharge is very short to begin with.

You probably have a free respec. Use it with /respec.


Domination, while active, thrusts the Domination bar to 100%, where it stays until it wears off, so if the button recharges in time, it allows you to click it again. Perma-dom is acquired when you have enough global recharge that Domination recharges before it wears off, and you can self-sustain it with Hasten and IO Set Bonuses.

It's considered a late game goal, but you can get it earlier with dedication. It costs a ton of Infamy to do it with just the market, so you'll want to do Strike Forces and Story Arcs for the Reward Merits.

With Hasten, you need at least 75% total Global Recharge buffs from any source (but you'll want more for a safety net). Without Hasten you need something like 150% Global Recharge from any source.

TK is a very difficult power to use, and only affects 5 targets max. If you PvP a lot, take it; otherwise, it's totally up to you. It's not a take-or-break power unless you have none of the AoE Mezzes.

You have to do a story arc in Ourboros once you hit 50, but yes.

because cats are evil and adorable and the only reason they've survived as a species is that they slot for maximum cuteness.

Confuse a Hero, have them kill the others, kill Hero.

Undeniably good combo, but he asked for range-only, and /Stone is a terrible set for range-only.

Yep, Mind/Energy is a great solo class. Mind Control has a ton of single-target control that's good for soloing and /Energy is a great Single-target set, and it has a good balance of mitigation and damage with its Knockback and Power Boost. The best selling point of Mind/ for soloing is Confuse, which is an aggro-free hard control that you can stack as much as you want on tough enemies without retaliation. You can Confuse an Elite Boss, have him get rid of his entourage, then switch to Holds without ever being attacked.

For a secondary, I'd say /Fire and /Energy are about equal, Fire for damage, Energy for survivability.

If you take the Fire APP or Ice APP and get their rain powers, AoE immobs become much more useful. Same if you take //Energy, since Fire Cages have -KB, which helps keep mobs together when you use Explosive Blast. The main reason AoE Immobs were bad for Doms before was because it didn't help us personally, and now they do. Fire's has always been fairly useful, though, since Flashfire + Fire Cages is essentially an AoE Hold.

Still, the ST Immob works against AVs and bosses no matter what, so it's still useful.

Most people were. At CoV release, everyone hated Doms. We've gotten many buffs since then, and I gotta say, life is good. Our damage is now quite high--not full-Fury'd-out Brute high, but it's around Blaster high.

That's good to hear. Concept is what makes it fun. Controller experience unfortunately might work against you when playing Doms, and I'll explain why at the bottom, but you know what the powers do, so that does help.

I've done franken-slotting and such for a while, I'm only just starting to work towards permadom. Life is good. It's a shame you don't like Mind, it's got a nice bag of tricks.

I'd imagine Dominators are very welcome now (can't say for sure; I just got back from a long break and haven't run any TFs since the revamp). The only part we're not optimal for is the AV fight, but we still contribute to that when the triangles are down, and now we have the damage to fall back on for those times the triangles are up. Multiple dominators can actually get through the triangles, too, so the more the merrier. 4 Blasters with no melee backup would be food for an AV, 4 Doms just laugh at AVs.

When you first played doms, we had Defender ranged damage mods, slightly less than Tanker melee mods. Now, we have a hair below Blaster ranged mods and slightly below Scrapper melee mods. We're awesome.

I noticed you're a Controller player, so I'll tell you what a lot of Controller players don't realize at first, since they see a Control primary and think "Controllers with attacks!" Doms are not much like Controllers, we're a very different animal, more like Blasters with real controls than Controllers with real attacks.

Controllers are all about safety, staying out of the fray and keeping the team safe at any cost. If you try do that as a Dominator, you'll feel second-rate because we don't have debuffs to mitigate things we don't hold; we trade the second layer of mitigation for the power to do actual killing, which needs to be used in order for us to be effective. Controller vets, funnily enough, sometimes have a hard time adjusting to having a real attack chain, when a lot of them wanted to try Doms in the first place because we get a real attack chain.

Dominators are less about safety, and are all about burst control and mitigating only enough to make it safe for us to enter the fight without worry. We've got the highest damage mods of any Villain AT now, and we're neck and neck with the Hero ATs in that regard, so our attacks really matter. Holding minions for us is more or less to mitigate the alpha strike, after that we should concern ourselves with holding mainly the Bosses, Lieuts, and scary things while standing in the fray with the melees, beating things to death with our attacks. Domination is part of that, too: you're guaranteed to hold everything with one application, and you know it'll last long enough, so you can focus entirely on attacking.

Basically, we're more like Blasters with controls than Controllers with attacks. We're a dual-nature offensive support AT, and since we're nearly the best at everything we do, you have to find the right balance. With our new APPs, we even have a good selection of AoEs to pick from, the only thing we lack is a full-on nuke. I think you'll like it.

Drop it into Explosive Blast. I just got it today. It's easier to use.

>Gets home
>Logs into CoH
>Notices "Buy Server Transfer" at the bottom of the page.
>/facepalm