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Along with testing my Earth/Fire Dom, I want to roll a new lowbie on test.

Any have a good recommendation for a testing lowbie dom? I'm thinking either */psi or /energy.

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I agree, either of those would be good. Both of those sets now have good attack chains much sooner than they did before. /energy would probably be easier to use, though, since its KB power is ranged.

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Just tested the changes on my Mind/Energy.

Overall changes: Feels great! I like the changes very much so far. Endurance is a bit of an issue, but not that much. Harder to get Domination up before running out of END now. Much harder, in fact. The only reason I bring this up is because it is now needed for END recharge. Mobs die much, much quicker, however.

Power Bolt: Feels about the same, but that is a good thing. It was one of my favorites pre-patch, and it remains a good power. Worth slotting IMO.

Bone Smasher: Feels about the same, if not slightly better. Quite powerful.

Power Push: Superior to Levitate as an attack now. It's much faster, VERY ACCURATE, and has a partial energy component. It now contributes to a ranged attack chain. Has the power of old Power Blast with the speed of Power Bolt.

Power Blast: Feels much stronger, about on par with old Bone Smasher.

Whirling Hands: Damage is still crap. Range is now very nice, however. If you take Soul Drain, it's worth considering. Combine with Soul Drain and it's possible to 2-shot +2 minions with WH -> Total Focus.

Total Focus: MUCH stronger. Takes off 2/3 of a +2 minion's HP.

Sniper Blast: I kept forgetting I had this. Never though of using it during a fight except for novelty. Damage is great, but that was true before the buff. It's still too cumbersome.

Power Burst: Feels about the same.

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Power Push: Increased this power’s damage scale from .4 to 1.64.

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Holy [censored].

Energy was popular when everyone thought it was good and its attacks were mega detogglers in PvP. Everyone realized it actually sucked when Arcanaville crunched the numbers.

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That's one of the reasons that energy assault is often paired with gravity.

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So basically it's only useful when you pair it with a crappy primary?

It's really not, though. Pairing them both doesn't make the sets synergize, it just takes the worst of both sets and amplifies them. Even though Grav has damage and Energy has control, both of them suck at it, so all you're left with is a gimpy Dominator that is universally bad at everything.

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Without the running afoul of the cottage rule, fixing */energy assault is difficult. It's quite a bit of fail. But here goes:

1) [u] Bone Smasher[u] - Replace melee AT version with Blaster version

2.6 DS, 14 sec. recharge

[u]Justification[u] - An early boom for the baby Dom.

2)[u] Power Blast[u] - Replace Dom 6 sec version with Blaster/Defender 8 sec version with larger 1.64 DS

[u]Justification[u] - At level 10, the Dom probably has at least one control and power bolt for filler damage, so the increased recharge is worth the increased damage.

3) [u]Power Push[u] - Increase DS to 2.4; increase recharge to 16 sec.

[u]Justification[u]: KB on a set that gets a lot of damage from melee better be worth using.

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I like all of these. Might have to nerf PP's Accuracy to make that balanced, though, but that'd be a welcome change if it was going to become our version of TK Blast.

When I lose, I just say "gg"...unless they trash talk me first, unfortunately. Not to sound sanctimonious, but I wish more people would just say "gg" and walk along like it doesn't matter, because it really doesn't at the end of the day.

I will get off my [censored] and update soon. It's not going to have the replays like I wanted, but those break every new patch anyway.

lol, the picture in the loader makes him look like Dr. Hobo.

rofl

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Any Tanker that can hold aggro is good as long as he's got buffs to back him up. A team without buffs is where you'll want a Stone tank. In an optimal team with multiple buffers I can't see why you'd need one.

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Then this needs to be added to the guide. So far the way it reads if you're not a Stone or Invul Tank, your tank isn't welcome.

So defender types aren't discriminated against but Stone or Invul Tanks onry? Wonderful.

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I've found since the GCN (Great Controller Nerf) of i5 that aoe holds are not worth the slots. I've been doing them with 4. 2 acc, 2 hold duration. The duration in general sucks so bad and the recharge sucks so bad why waste the slots when other more useful powers can be slotted up instead? The set IO's are pretty sad too for aoe holds. :/

That being said, Great Guide Scrapulous!

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Even Dominator AoE holds start to become decent when you have 6 slots. Then again we have Domination and access to Power Boost.

He's comparing AoE holds, not ST holds. AoE Holds deal no damage.

And in fact, the six IOs came out worse than 3HOs/3SOs in all cases of Acc/Control/Recharge.

There is no HO for recharge, so there is no reason to use Six HOs for AoE holds.

ROFL.

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As someone who has a 50 dk/dk, when is the next Hami raid on Test? I'm fairly itching to get me some Howling Slick.



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That's even funnier if you say it like a hillbilly.

I got quoted by a redname. o_o

Even better, I got quoted by _Castle_. o_O

My life is now complete.

lol. Guess they weren't kidding about wanting to make more powersets useful in the new hami. They better not nerf this, that's freakin genius.

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To-hit set bonuses - This one is going to be sneaky. I don't think it's the best PvE option, but I'm a little concerned at how much to-hit there is out there. Defense is basically screwed in PvP, even more so than it has been before I think.


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Where are the tohit buffs? I only see one in the paragonwiki info, which is the unique in Kismet.

+accuracy can cause issues, but +tohit is considerably worse for defense in pvp, I think.

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There are a lot of to-hit set bonuses. The uncommon high level melee damage set for instance has to-hit. I think you can get around 20% to-hit without much trouble.

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That's more tohit than most of the defense sets fully slotted...

Normally I have no sympathy for defense in PvP, but that's broken. People who cried doom over I9's tohit bonuses will have been 110% right if that goes live.

I have hope that if the STF has this much positive feedback, they will fix the LRSF as they did Hami. May just be high hopes but I'm liking the outlook so far.

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Make that good Mez protection.

I've been stunned and detoggled out of Unyielding+Unstoppable plus 4 breakfrees by the new Hami. Just insane mez power, it is.

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Well each yellow has two attacks they can fire off quickly that stun, as does Hami, and I think the blues have a second attack other than their fear/slow one that stuns as well, all doing between mag 6 and 9 or so. So that mag 50+ mez protection can easily be broken

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Riddle me this: if the yellows have a range of 600, and can punch through mez shields like nothing, and their weakness is melee attacks...how do the melees get close enough to exploit the weakness? Stalkers?

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Serps - I like the idea of chaining animations - I don't think the animation system is coded that way unfortunately that let's such things happen...it's a pity, but those are the sacrifices we make for an online game (though really, an IK and animation blending system wouldn't be any more of an issue in an online game - and it would simplify a lot of the problems the animators have had before).

I think we'd probably get a choice of animation + choice of particle effect, from any currently in game. So maybe the MoG animation plus lightning rod particle effect could work or katana headsplitter + energy torrent. That's probably the best combination of simplicity and flexibility.

I really don't like the idea of having more than one signature power - you don't have more than one signature do you? To me, the whole point of a signature power is to be distinct and unique, and having more than one lessens that specialness.

I do like the idea of gaining more points after level 50 though - if we restrict a player to only one signature power then the player's signature move becomes a good measure of their "epicness" - and I'd go so far as to let them gain 10 or more points...that's a lot of playing.

If the game keeps tracks of the order the effects are added in (ie. in the same way it tracks the order of powers), then it should be possible to "exemplar" the signature moves (but not any graphical effects) down if a player exemps. This also has the very handy extra ability of auto-limiting powers in PvP - just set Recluse's Victory to auto-cap to 50 (which has no noticable effect on normal gameplay) and no matter how many points a player gains past 50, they won't be able to become unbalanced in PvP.

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The only problem here is it creates a sort of pickle for those of us with more than one signature power in mind.

And let's not forget each signature power has a recharge akin to Accolade clicks. Pretty sure if you stuck max recharge in it, it'd still be on a crazy 750 second recharge.

Since this means we may yet see signature powers, I'm going to contribute an idea: since we only get one point per level, that means the points stop at level 50 and so far it looks like we'll only get one signature power. I don't like the sound of that too much, but it IS a balancing factor. I still feel we could convert that exp you'd normally get at 50 into something you can actually use.

How about something along the lines of FFXI's Merit Point system. Once you get to 50, the experience you gain gets turned into Power Points, and once you have earned enough power points (enough that you could have dinged level 50 a second time) you can choose to either unlock another signature power with one "point", or another single point that you can use towards further increasing the power of your current signature ability.

Of course, we'd need to set a limit on how far you can enhance them. A maximum of 20 points sounds reasonable, the first 17 being the ones you gained from 33-50.

I believe that would be balanced because you only gain one point per level, making acquiring a second signature power a long and tedious process--you'd have to ding 50 twenty-three times if you want two maxed out signature powers. And of course there is no powerleveling involved, because how do you powerlevel a 50? A 50 can leech all he wants but there is really no way to PL someone who is already 50.

Let's get more discussion going. They STICKIED this thread, let's keep those creative juices flowing! We may see this yet!

One thing I would like to know, am I right in thinking this, that if you use a pet summon power with a special bonus-granting IO in it and the power does not summon any pets because they are already out, does the bonus still activate?

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Ill bet Castle is wishing he had never said anything on this post at all.

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Not at all!

Samurai: It was a player, not an NPC. I know, since I was playing him! He is a Spines/Regen scrapper.

The power: What you are seeing is actually a graphics bug created by the demo-record/playback process we use to take screenshots.

And now you know!

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Hah. Who called that?