Dominating Blow, well.. blows. Lets make it better.

I'm confident that Dominating Blow is the single worst minion skill, ever.

Since the dawn of it's release with version 1, it's been nothing but worthless.

It acts like Heavy Strike that it's slow by default, winds ups in animation (making it even slower), and the minions it creates are a goddamn burden.

Allow me to explain in detail.

The Minions, Both Worthless and The Most Powerful?

The minions that are summoned are actually the strongest of the entire game. Combined with Chaber Cairn and a corrupted empower alone, they gain huge scaling benefits in attack/physical strength that puts skeletons and zombies to shame combined. However, they are one of the most useless and encumbering. The reason is, because the Normal, Magical and Rare soldiers do not spawn, unless YOU kill those enemies yourself. Meaning, if your Normal soldiers kills any of them, you are not credited and cannot summon those soldiers, and no soldiers with the modifiers. Systematically, only the "kill" of Dominating Blow can summon soldiers be it normal, magical or rare; not the soldiers themselves. This makes getting normal, magical and rare soldiers almost impossible if they are to strong, and you cant get your hits in fast enough.

Dominating Blow as a "Strike" Skill?

As of "Combat Update v2", most melee skills now have a wind up before hitting an enemy. Probably one of the stupidest ideas GGG has ever done, we can all agree on. Dominating Blow has succumbed to this disgusting change, and is now even slower then before. An easy fix to this issue, is to make it just like Frost Blades; where it hits immediately & with no wind up. An easy fix, but one that GGG will surely neglect. Which leads to the question...

What can actually save Dominating Blow?

The answer is very simple.
Have it so that the soldiers summoned from Dominating Blow be able to both refresh their duration, and summon soldiers when they kill. That way both the Dominating Blow and your soldiers be credited in the act of summoning, and you'll be able to actually achieve your maximum number of minions; without having to play a constant game of tag against your own soldiers. That is all you need to make this skill function as intended. If GGG wants to keep the wind up animation, fine. But the Soldiers are the KEY problem to it's ultimate suckage and worthlessness. Without soldiers being able to refresh and be able to summon more soldiers as they kill, Dominating Blow is going to stay one of the most useless skills next to Heavy Strike. Which is a shame, since the modifiers and multipliers to the soldiers are off the charts. You should be working WITH your soldiers, not against them!

And there you go. I fixed your issue with this skill, GGG.

I want the fixes on my desk, in my office, by Path of Exile 2.

Or, you will suffer my wrath of me bitching for years on end.

Try me, boo. 8)

Not a bad idea well done

So, generate minions and then afk like a summoner ?
Don't invest anything into melee passives, take a Writhing Jar and GGWP ?

Seems to defeat the purpose of the skill to me ...

The minions base damage should somehow scale with your melee damage

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Fruz wrote:

So, generate minions and then afk like a summoner ?
Don't invest anything into melee passives, take a Writhing Jar and GGWP ?

Seems to defeat the purpose of the skill to me ...

Never said that.

Getting 200% more added damage/multiplier makes dominating blow very powerful as a melee skill itself. However, Writhing Jar is worthless for Dominating Blow; as worms do not have modifiers, nor can you achieve the maximum number of minions since worms cannot be Magical or Rare. Normal monsters = normal soldiers only.

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MasterTBC wrote:

The minions base damage should somehow scale with your melee damage

They do, in a pseudo sense.

Anything you put into a 6 link with Dominating Blow affects you and your soldiers, that is a good enough scale since their base is huge enough already.

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raysuko wrote:

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Fruz wrote:

So, generate minions and then afk like a summoner ?
Don't invest anything into melee passives, take a Writhing Jar and GGWP ?

Seems to defeat the purpose of the skill to me ...

Never said that.

Getting 200% more added damage/multiplier makes dominating blow very powerful as a melee skill itself. However, Writhing Jar is worthless for Dominating Blow; as worms do not have modifiers, nor can you achieve the maximum number of minions since worms cannot be Magical or Rare. Normal monsters = normal soldiers only.

Use wrihing jar twice, get 4 normal buffed minions, let themm kill a normal then a blue pack, proceed, clear the map.
You need would not even need to hit anything else yourself I'm sure ...

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Ya know.. I was a little peeved when I returned to Viperstrike... thought it was shit.. with a build that used to work really well with it..
But really.. it was that the build didn't work with it anymore.
Viperstrike is pretty damn insane actually.. But this isn't about viper strike.. this is about dominating blow.

*Alright. I'll go make a pixelman wearing all grey items and use dominating blow and see if your complaint is valid or not.
Break my own rules about no minions because any minion skill is an op skill.

Even if you claim it is the 'worst one' It still creates minions.
It was so much better when the soldiers left corpses to be devoured by devouring totems.. take out food was a lovely old combo. You could save your food for later. But that was many moons ago.

If they really wanted to 'fix' dominating blow.. they would make it a support gem and call it done. But they did that already, and its called 'phantom', then they made a g'damn aura that is basically dominating blow too..
Dominating blow sure has been around hasn't it!? Must have been Piety's real gift to the Templar.

(Thought heavy strike was garbage too. Now I don't..
Sneaking little feeling dominating blow is going to be just fine)

As I have seen from engineers and 3.9 Sirus fight showcasings, Dominating Blow is not optimal for solo'ing at all. No one can achieve getting their max number of minions to utilize it as intended by GGG; even with Herald of Purity.

Do'able? Sure. But ain't gonna be fun.

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Fruz wrote:

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raysuko wrote:

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Fruz wrote:

So, generate minions and then afk like a summoner ?
Don't invest anything into melee passives, take a Writhing Jar and GGWP ?

Seems to defeat the purpose of the skill to me ...

Never said that.

Getting 200% more added damage/multiplier makes dominating blow very powerful as a melee skill itself. However, Writhing Jar is worthless for Dominating Blow; as worms do not have modifiers, nor can you achieve the maximum number of minions since worms cannot be Magical or Rare. Normal monsters = normal soldiers only.

Use wrihing jar twice, get 4 normal buffed minions, let themm kill a normal then a blue pack, proceed, clear the map.
You need would not even need to hit anything else yourself I'm sure ...

Your talking about map clear, anyone can do that with anything; even with heavy strike.

Talking about functionality, not map clear speed. boo boo ;)

Also lets not forget if your soldiers hit the worms, no soldiers are summoned.

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raysuko wrote:

The reason is, because the Normal, Magical and Rare soldiers do not spawn, unless YOU kill those enemies yourself. Meaning, if your Normal soldiers kills any of them, you are not credited and cannot summon those soldiers, and no soldiers with the modifiers. Systematically, only the "kill" of Dominating Blow can summon soldiers be it normal, magical or rare; not the soldiers themselves. This makes getting normal, magical and rare soldiers almost impossible if they are to strong, and you cant get your hits in fast enough.

Yeah thats not true at all... enemies getting a debuff when u hit them with domblow and the minions will spawn when the enemy dies while the debuff on him is active. It doesnt matter who makes the killing blow... maybe learn how the skill works first.

You by no means have to kill the enemy yourself

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raysuko wrote:

Have it so that the soldiers summoned from Dominating Blow be able to both refresh their duration, and summon soldiers when they kill.

That is exactly what they already do! You just have to hit the enemy 1 second( Base duration of the debuff) before the minions kills it