Dominating Blow

Is DB skill working correctly ? It looks and feels as if the char is hitting in slow motion.... Even with claw, with 1.55 attacks / sec on tooltip, it hits like 1 attack every 3 seconds.

For reference, I usually play DB as main with Holy Relic and have tried Absolution as main this league with HoP. The secondary minions are mostly there to proc feeding frenzy and I fill the rest of my sockets with utility spells and a mix of auras.

Suggestion 4 (“Ramp”): Add X-Y% chance to summon a minion on hitting an enemy based on its rarity (normal 10%, magic 15%, rare 20%, unique 30-40%). With this change, you will not have to rely on killing white mobs to start ramping up your offence, especially in cases where white monster hp can be very high (expeditions and deep delve) or when there is a lack of white monsters nearby (magic and rare mobs). Against bosses, I feel like a higher chance is required to ramp back up in cases where you have to dodge attacks frequently (Maven), wait out immunity phases (Shaper and Elder), or chase the boss (Sirus).

For full context, see this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/pji5cc/skill_comparison_and_feedback_absolution/

Dom blow is a skill that forces you to be in melee range of bosses. Its one of the most "pure" melee skills in the whole game. You need to be constantly in the boss face to generate enough minions to deal damage.

The nerf to weapon range and the loss of fortify (dom blow does not enough damage to proc it) makes the skill feel a lot worse now.

Theirs no way a dom blow build can or will path to the new weapon range nodes. If you do that you will deal not enough damage.

The fortify loss is something I seriously cant wrap my head around. Why is it ok that a slam skill build that has near full screen clear can have fortify but a skill that forces you to stand basicaly inside bosses does not?

"

Zerber wrote:

Dom blow is a skill that forces you to be in melee range of bosses. Its one of the most "pure" melee skills in the whole game. You need to be constantly in the boss face to generate enough minions to deal damage.

The nerf to weapon range and the loss of fortify (dom blow does not enough damage to proc it) makes the skill feel a lot worse now.

Theirs no way a dom blow build can or will path to the new weapon range nodes. If you do that you will deal not enough damage.

The fortify loss is something I seriously cant wrap my head around. Why is it ok that a slam skill build that has near full screen clear can have fortify but a skill that forces you to stand basicaly inside bosses does not?

Tried Dom Blow for the first time ever this league. It's not in a good state.

1. No right click drive option in the contorls (think Frenzy barb in D2).
2. No realistic option of getting melee strike range nodes (maybe +3-4, by sacrifing a LOT).

These 2 options alone kills the skill completly for me and I will never wanna try this skill again, until at least point 1 is fixed (which will probably automatically sort out point 2). Which leads to the third point, which just kills it completely for the rest of the player base (and put the nail in the coffin for me):

3. Even with Necromancer (plenty of minion damage (think around +220%), Resolute Technic (never miss), The Scourge claws ("bis weapon") at level 70 doing T1-T4 maps AND one Fortify wheel (with +40% Fortification) AND mastery point (all hit fortify). My average stacks while hitting and 50%-ing packs (very small packs due to point 2) were under 5 fortify for most of the map.

Edit: To check out the character, just select my: Madam_Dom (died to what I'm assuming was a Nightmare related bug, no monsters on screen, then death, no clue).

It would be nice if Dominating blow had this same line of text that is on Herald of Purity:

"

refresh the duration and life of an existing one instead if you have the maximum number of them

Then this skill would work really good with behead support. You could keep your minions alive instead of replacing them.

"

MangoDrank wrote:

For reference, I usually play DB as main with Holy Relic and have tried Absolution as main this league with HoP. The secondary minions are mostly there to proc feeding frenzy and I fill the rest of my sockets with utility spells and a mix of auras.

Suggestion 4 (“Ramp”): Add X-Y% chance to summon a minion on hitting an enemy based on its rarity (normal 10%, magic 15%, rare 20%, unique 30-40%). With this change, you will not have to rely on killing white mobs to start ramping up your offence, especially in cases where white monster hp can be very high (expeditions and deep delve) or when there is a lack of white monsters nearby (magic and rare mobs). Against bosses, I feel like a higher chance is required to ramp back up in cases where you have to dodge attacks frequently (Maven), wait out immunity phases (Shaper and Elder), or chase the boss (Sirus).

For full context, see this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/pji5cc/skill_comparison_and_feedback_absolution/

I completely agree with this. Especially in Archnemesis league, where the main league content (not the expansion content) is building up very bulky rare monsters. While there is an initial entourage of lesser monsters that can be used to summon your sentinels, they are not usually sufficient material to kill a juiced up Archnemesis mob. Meanwhile I usually use Absolution on a 4-link to clear those exact same Archnemesis mobs.

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/tobsecret/characters
Character is ARCHN_MUSTFINISHMYPAPER, a lvl 78 Guardian which is in yellow maps on a 4-link Dominating Blow and a 4-link Absolution.
General mapping is no problem at all, but Archnemesis, and Harvest are posing a problem for any approach based on Dominating Blow, which makes me feel like I can never drop Absolution, despite me generally preferring the Dominating Blow gameplay (yes I enjoy hitting Bosses at melee range).

The above post also did mention bumping up the probability for raising a normal sentinal upon hitting a unique enemy.
My character has an attack rate of 1.91 attacks/s. With increased minion duration stats, my Sentinels have a duration of 32.8 s. Let's bravely assume that I can manage to hit a unique enemy 20 s out of those 32.8 s.
To get at least 9 Sentinel summon triggers in that time means I have a 63.5% chance to trigger (binomial cumulative probability of at least 9 successes in 20*1.91 ~= 38 trials with a base chance of 0.25 on each trial). This is not reliable enough I fear. If I had an attack rate of 2.3 then I'd land at 84.7% chance for keeping up 9 Sentinels reliably.
Note that this is certainly not a realistic assumption for most boss fights to begin with, not to mention the fact that the significant ramp time means bosses with invulnerability phases are incredibly hard to deal with.

As others have mentioned, melee strike range would certainly benefit the skill as well. I often feel like I tagged a bunch of enemies only to then not have them summon a sentinel despite having been spamming Dom Blow. This may be because I am actually hitting air. When I first noticed this, I disabled the "never move while attacking" option for Dom Blow and that seems to have helped but it also means a single missclick leads to my character running where it is not supposed to.

Dear GGG,

i am not a man of many words.

Please make the sentinels a little bit more tanky and 5% chance to spawn a normal sentinel on hit agains rare monsters for every arch nemesis mod.

Thanks GGG we love you but please love dominating blow!

Hello there!

I'm playing a dominating blow guardian, lvl 91 at the moment. I really like the new vaal version of the skill, ascended sentinels are a bit slow but they hit really hard.

About DB in general, I think in the current state of the game the chance to summon a sentinel is way to low, even with multistrike support. For example a pinnacle boss or Maven's invitation encounter is so frustrating. I have to mention the new stronger rares and essence monsters that are so strong these days. Even a more defense focused build cannot stay there and hit those monsters without getting killed pretty fast.

I think the active summoner playstyle is great with this skill, but the chance to summon should be at least 50% or even a 100% with a second cooldown maybe. Or a buff that will increase the chance to summon with every hit.

Like many ppl said, I think the DB is need to be buffed for the ramp-up time.

After Sirus and the Echoes of the atlas, there are many single target bosses came up.
In these fights, we can only have 3~6 second to hit properly and this result 3-5 sentinels of dominance spawned (if lucky) to see the next phase.

Gravebind, Cast on melee kill won't work. Withering jar too.

It is hard to find reasons to invest so much in this skill and build since it's weakness of Uber bossing (including uber pinnacle ones)
What's the point if minions don't spawned properly.



So here are my suggestions.


1. Dominating blow can spawn a minion when you hit a rare or a unique monster.

2. Summon 3 sentinels of dominance (instead of 1) when you hit a unique monster.

3. New helmet enchant
- When you hit a unique monster, sentinel of dominance (% chance) to ascend to a rare sentinel with a random aura effect

4. minion base melee weapon (new scepter and kite shield)



Btw, I do really like the Vaal domination. The skill and the MTX effect. everything so satisfied.
I hope more ppl can play this great skill.

Tried Dominating Blow again in Crucible league to test out Vaal Domination and pushed my Guardian build farther than I have ever done before.

BUILD SUMMARY:

- Lv 30 Dominating blow with focus on dealing purely physical damage (+2 levels from awakened support gems and +7 levels from gear).

- 3 support minions from Lv 27 Raise Spectre: Carnage Chieftain, Host Chieftain, Demon Harpy.

- Lv 27 Animated Guardian equipped with Kingmaker, Garb of the Ephemeral, Mask of the Stitched Demon, Windscream, and Ceaseless Feast (corrupted to apply Vulnerability on hit) .

- Lv 24 Summon Holy Relic for life regen and to count as the 5th ally required for Onslaught from Radiant Crusade.

- Offensive Auras: Pride, Haste, Precision, War Banner.

- Defensive Auras: Determination, Discipline, Vitality, Purity of Elements (to cap minion elemental resistance and ailment immunity).

- About 7 million DPS minimum with 13 normal sentinels summoned (a lot more when you add the magic, rare, and ascended sentinels).

Character Name: DominatedMango
POB: https://pobb.in/5JRvn29EC_M0

FEEDBACK:

- Content with high monster density like mapping, delve, and simulacrums feel even better in terms of clear speed thanks to the new ascended sentinels slapping so hard (very satisfying indeed).

- Can pretty much clear all content, but I would not take it to Uber Pinnacle Bosses since its even harder to stay close and hit them to summon all of your sentinels between phases and/or attacks.

- Fighting very strong rare monsters in maps will still feel very annoying and not worth it if you don't have enough DPS and/or minion survivability.

- I'm going to miss all the attack and movement speed from Radiant Crusade and Unwavering Crusade ascendancy passives when they rework Guardian in 3.22. Hopefully the new minions we are getting in their place can make up for that (I still think this upcoming rework is really bad for Guardian in general).

- There really isn't an ideal weapon type to craft for Dominating Blow unlike other minion skill gems that can be cast using a convoking wand. (It's either use Scourge Terror Claw so that you have a little more personal DPS or craft a Gemini claw to not worry about mana recovery)

SUGGESTION:

- The main thing Dominating Blow needs is a % chance to summon sentinels when hitting a RARE enemy and at least 50% chance when hitting a UNIQUE enemy (mainly pinnacle bosses). Please just give me this and I'll be happy.