Dominating Blow

I am really liking Dominating Blow, although it does have its downsides. Primarily that would be the huge mana cost, it is very hard to sustain repeated use. Lesser downside is just that how useful it is depends largely on what you are fighting. Dominate a zombie - why bother? Dominate one of those machine gun chicks in Lunaris Temple - watch it mow down everything in the area!

Basically I love it for those situations that let me use enemies to completely overpower the rest. The rest of the time I'd rather AoE everything down.

I really like using that skill, but I want to open up a discussion on how balanced it is. As much as a part of me hates to say it, I believe the skill might be over powered as of now. Here is why I believe so. I was able to clear merciless in most part soloing quests thank to that skill. Any place I would go, as long as I am able to kill one mob, I'll most probably be able to clear the whole area. And it as to do with all the utilities that the skill gives, more tanking (Because of enemies having more targets), insanely more damage (No need for big math to understand that the attack from the skill itself added to any damage minions will do can lead to great amount of damage) and the fact that rare monsters can be turned into minions with the party benefiting from any aura the rare had. And yea, then you can top it with an Increased Duration support gem so that minions last relatively long (Almost a minute in my case, which again adds up so much to the whole DPS). So yea, don't get me wrong, I adore using that skill and I don't want to sound like ''OMG THIS IS JUST TOO OP'' kinda guy (Cause I have to agree that its costs balances things out perhaps), just want opinions from some of you guys. Peace.

I want to confirm how the skill and buff/debuff duration works on this. There is two parts to the skill with a duration.

One is how long the monster sticks around once they have been converted. Increased Duration support works on this when connected to Dominating Blow. Increased Skill Effect Duration nodes also help.

There is only 3 of these nodes on the whole tree as far as I know for a total of 45%, to the right of the Duelist start area.

Increased Duration support gem gets to 80% right when leveling gems gets really hard at level 17 and quality is pretty powerful on this one, giving 1% per quality. These seem like they would be additive, so by hitting maps I would have +125% Duration with the skill nodes, up to 145% with quality.

The wiki doesn't even have info to level 17, but it seems like the duration would be 30 seconds and 45 mana cost and with 125-145% duration The converted would last 67.5 to 73.5 seconds.

The other duration is the half second debuff when you hit with the skill, in case the monster will die from other stuff going on. Temporal Chains says that debuffs expire 50% slower, so the window to hit will be twice as long then right? (multiplicative)

We could also extend the duration of this debuff by getting the three nodes on the center far left of the tree for 45% and the 3 nodes in the center of the tree for another 30%.

The nodes would take us to a 0.875s debuff [0.5 * 1.75] and then the debuff would essentially last twice as long (1.75s) because of Temporal Chains?

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For anyone who has used this skill into maps, what minion nodes are you taking? I see some people proposing builds where they will get the minion damage/life but stop before taking +1 Zombie/Skeleton.

Thanks, I tried reading this whole thread but guess I got confused on that part. We need a different terminology for these things which seem like buffs and debuffs but aren't affected by +duration, maybe "hexes" and "boons"? That doesn't sound right either, but "unmodifiable negative status ailment" doesn't sound great.

I am in act 3 Norm now with a witch using this and I seem to do okay at converting monsters solo, but especially without increased duration support, it is way too short of a duration to be useful, but I am getting close to the skill duration nodes.

I guess there is still some synergy with Viper Strike and +Skill Duration with Temporal Chains. My projected build takes me right near all of these special nodes, but planning on stacking triple perma-curses makes the buff/debuff nodes pointless and I am already strapped for points.

There is synergy with +Duration and Firestorm and I am really feeling the need for AOE. I have 11% Firestorm and 14% Shock Nova so going to use one of those. I am going to try just running Skele Totem and not taking any more minion nodes besides Lord of the dead.

I just tried micromanaging Viper Strike/Double Strike and Dominating Blow in a party in Solaris and it was painful to use. Even with the 0.5s "debuff" I felt like I wasn't getting conversions I should have. It is nice that we can no longer target minions, but my teammate was a Heavy Strike marauder (or whatever has knockback), so the monster would get pushed back and I would target the wrong thing or click on the marauder when I need to switch to DB.

I don't think my tree is too messed up yet that I can just retreat to being pure fire mage and then at level 58 I have a 5L Staff with a little fire damage and the right color sockets already for Dominating Blow, Added Fire Damage, Increased Duration, Faster Attacks or Culling Strike plus 1 Blue.

My staff has global crit chance and multiplier, so probably Increased Critical Strikes is best for the low 115% multiplier. Dominating Blow should only be about 116 Mana and I might run Eldritch Battery.

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kolton wrote:

Yes. They sometimes explode to your own attacks (or your minions') if a new attack is made right at the time the monster is dominated.

This is true!!

My zombies are killing my "new" minions ALL the time, this needs to be fixed it is lame and must be a bug!!

Make one BOMB, :-( make a new one BOMB, again and again!!

My minions are under my controle and should not kill each other!!

I put my summoner on pause til they fix this it is just not worth playing like that!

I've been trying out this skill with a 14% Gem on a typical melee build just for the sake of it and extra clear time + survivability. For the sake of the skill itself, there's not much wrong with it. I think the mana cost is scaled to handle the ridiculous power of the skill. The damage isn't bad and you can get free minions for 60+ seconds with a quality gem and Increased Duration support. However, it does suffer from some problems and not all of them have to do with the skill:

1) It seems like the DB minion AI was copied from the Zombie AI with a few exceptions. The problem is that the DB minions are fucking idiots. They can't handle doorways. If you have ranged and melee minions, the ranged minion camps the door and prevents the other minions from going in. That's if they even use the door to begin with. They seem to have higher aggro range though, which is pretty neat.

2) It's not a main attack skill. It's not so much a problem, really. With the mana cost, it feels like it's meant for more of a finishing blow. Then again, with a 2h weapon it doesn't take more than 1-2 hits to kill an enemy.

3) The biggest problem with DB is that it's single target. Unless you run into a small group of enemies, you're probably not going to use it. Against a large group, your primary concern is mowing them down really fast. When you get to the point where you can use it, most of the enemies are dead so the point is kind of lost unless there's another nearby camp.

4) They suck as meatshields.

That's about all I got from my experiences so far. It's neat but since the game is more designed towards AoE skills, its unique property is lost unless you're stupidly overequipped and just feel like screwing around.

As a final point, any targetable enemy except for uniques can be converted. I've been converting totems in Vaal Ruins for maximum lulz.

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casval776 wrote:

4) They suck as meatshields.

Maybe because you took the passive which makes them die when they get to 1/3 health? I have been thinking how cool it is that I don't need to take any summoner passives and still have a train of minions. I'll be damned if I am letting them pop.

They seem to convert to your side exactly how they were, but I am just not sure yet about what monsters get as map mods like fleet or +90% increased whatever elemental damage.

If I know that I am playing a "monsters deal 93% increased damage as fire", can I roll Dominating Blow with Fire Penetration linked and this transfers to the mod they inherit from naturally being in a map?

edit: another question...

I keep feeling like this skill is bugged because I hit stuff and it doesn't convert. If I hit a frozen monster which would shatter from the hit, they are still supposed to convert right?

I have 2.03 APS, so there are two possible explanations I have. With my APS, the debuff should always be on the monster, so any splash damage will end up converting. The only way this shouldn't happen is if I miss or get stunned or frozen, something to stop me from hitting.

This still happens when I have no minions or teammates though. I am thinking it is sort of how the monster will still burn after you convert it. Am I freezing, converting, then it is still frozen briefly and being hit by other monsters?

I know that if I convert a zombie or something and he starts an attack before I convert a target, that attack will complete and can kill, but that isn't what is going on.

I could be running out of mana too, because I am working with a lot reserved, but it still happened, albeit less, when I took off Hatred and there should have been no problem with mana but I still had cold damage on equipment.

Edit: deleted old message, Contaced GGG support instead.

So, the duelist tree change borked my character and I am waiting on seeing how cyclone is to respec, but my character with this skill was doing pretty good.

I concluded that more cold/chance to freeze was definitely messing up my conversions, but since my crit was only like 10% it wasn't that bad.

Mark also confirmed in another thread that monsters do not retain any map mods. As far as I can tell though, blue/rares do always keep any mods they have on themselves.