Dominance Rework

So everyone has heard that Fl4k’s Master capstone lurks somewhere between subpar and useless(depending on how much you like mind controlling enemies and your build) and is in serious need of a buff/usability tweaks.

Most suggestions are either, make it ranged or replace it with something that gives you multiple pets, and this addresses both along with some other issues I have with it.

For starters, it makes no sense. How exactly does slapping a person with a spiderant bone make them forget their past alliances(some being zelots bent on killing all heratics of their god)? Why does it wear off? How is it doing damage to them? None of these are important as they can be chalked up to “gameplay”, but I perfer it when things make sense.

The next issue is the fact that there is zero synergy with any of Fl4k’s skill trees, let alone the one it is located in. Its currently a terrible capstone for that reason alone.

And finally, as enemies scale higher, they do less and less damage in comparison to their health, so its use as an extra DPS boost is limited.

So here is what I would change:

Melee Override Skill. FL4K establishes dominance over an enemy, turning it into an ~ally~ pet for a short time. If the enemy is a Beast, the duration is doubled.
While under the effects of Domiance, the enemy gains the benefits of Gamma burst, and all pet related skills. Additionally, they constantly lose health until they die or the effect ends. Only one enemy can be dominated at a time. An enemy can only be dominated once.

Appearance wise, it would look and act exactly like Gamma Burst, but instead of teleporting the pet it would center on an enemy and buff them while turning them onto your side. This should fix enemy vs enemy damage being not that decent, as you can get +300% pet damage, and add a 75% radiation damage to them, it not being easily applicable due to Fl4k not being able to be in melee range without Red Fang or Fade Away, and the lack of synergy with anything else in Fl4k’s kit. Also, it would reuse already existing assets, so thats less work on the devs part.

This would also buff the usability of Fl4k’s new class mod, as Dominated enemies would be able to proc it, and the Domnated enemies from the Class mod woyld also benefit from the changes.

From there, all that would need to happen is making dominated enemies more aggressive and pets actually scale with Mayhem level, and Flak the Beastmaster would actually be viable as a beastmaster.

Not really.

Mayhem 4 enemies have 10x the health but deal the same damage as M0 enemies. So you would need to buff the Dominated target’s damage by 10 to make it meaningful for M4. 300 * 1.75 comes out to 5.25. You’ll decimate M3 but only be doing half the damage you need to be effective in M4.

Enemies on M4 have about 300k health on the low end. We have maybe 15k health. Enemies need to do 20x the damage they do to us to hurt each other. Gamma and pet damage would only give 5.25x damage.

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So a dominated enemy would also become gamma bursted when you use gamma burst or is that effect on by default?

1.make it ranged like you mentioned(have fl4k throw a shock collar or something)
2. Give fl4k a buff based on the enemy he dominates
*robot = crit dmg,accuracy
*human=elemental damage,fire rate
*beast= copy his pet bonus
3.meleeing them will prematurely end it

As someone (the only one?) who loves Dominate as is, the Face Puncher can place Dominations at range.

Also, I don’t think of it so much as, “this guy will go on a killing spree on my behalf” as it is, “this is a guraranteed kill for that guy with <25% of his health bar left, and all his buddies are off my back for a minute”.

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Holy ■■■■ someone actually likes Dominance.

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These are the maths more people need to see lol

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I’m actually terrible at math lol. Borderlands is the most practice I get, and it shows.

I have tried a dominate/facepuncher/white elephant combo, hoping for some kind of suicide bomber kinda deal. It was thoroughly underwhelming for the amount of gear dedicated to a mechanic that worked better as an action skill in previous installments. However if dominate naturally included agro pull and or a taunt it would work out a lot better. Really i would rather see it replaced completely with game mechanics that actually work, taunts or singularity effects that activate on your pet, even a simple movment speed or armor bar kind of boost. That said, dominate needs something else to support its use at all, how about a grenade that drops from a dominted enemy boost from a com or sonething.