AshWind

Hi all, looking for some friendly input on which of my doms I should finish the journey to 50 with. I am striving towards getting a 50 in each archtype and struggling with the dom archtype a bit. Maybe the problem is how I am playing them and what I want them to do, I picture them as a true all arounder toon that can open with controls and then go all ranged or or all melee (with high enough recharge) and also mix the two depending on my whim. So can doms do this?

Basically which of the following will have the highest end game performance capabilities? Also is it worth pursuing electric assualt? I had it in my mind with build up in electric assualt and a permadom build this would actually be one of the top end sets, is this correct?


Earth Sucks is my Gravity/Earth at 40 (Earth doesn't suck its a play on an old physics joke, and its not funny enough to bother explaining outside of my character info sheet ). He is my highest and was kind of an impulse build (never done either set before), I like him for the cool animations but the playstyle feels clunky and all smashing damage in earth really...sucks. The damage in the 40s feels real subpar.

First Rule is my Gravity/Energy at 18. Again cool animations but it feels like too many ranged single target attacks, so a lot of what makes both sets fun gets wasted.

Shock and Ashes is my Fire/Electric at 36. My first try at /electric and I thought it would be awesome but the lack of a decent ranged attack chain kind of bothers me.

Blowing Your Mind is Mind/Electric at 12. Basically I still have this vision of electric assualt being awesome but needing another couple of ranged damage attacks to make it perfect. My high level gravity feels like a let down in the damage area so I was thinking Mind/Electric might be the perfect match but I dont want to push him up to the 40s to find he is sub standard at end game .

So will any of these doms please me end game the way I adore my fire/cold corruptor or my scrappers or am I going to feel let down?

Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated...even if you just want to bump your comment count .

I propose Mind/Earth is a better fit simply because Mind's single target controls do so much damage. Add in lift, with hurl boulder and stone spears (hands down my favorite graphic in the game with the new color tints) and you have a viable ranged attack chain. Earth is actually quite a bit of fun too with the hammers and the high mag hold in its most damaging melee attack.

Energy looks sweet and the knockback can be useful, but I am not sure it is the best fit for mind. Just my 2 cents.

I have to say WORMHOLE, you just dont see it often enough to respect how great it is. It could be the best control power in the game (hello teleporting/stunned mobs from behind a corner to the location of your choice). Also whoever thought to teleport an entire spawn over your PUG on the first fight after joining while emote/singing "It's raining men!" Made me laugh so hard I might have peed my pants, I made one just so I can do that and I still get a kick out of it .


I also like Touch of Fear, used to get a lot of respect but you dont hear much about it nowadays with the high defense late games build making it redundant, but for leveling wow this power is insanely awesome.

Sorry I phrased that very poorly between the parenthesis and my run on sentence it didnt come out how I intended it to sound. I meant to say there are only three spots you can buff the single target damage on dark those being dark blast, gloom, and life drain.

I know gloom is already pretty awesome and it would probably be silly to add more damage to it but it appears to be one of three single target damage powers in the set that would increase the overall single target damage. The devs also seem to have this weird thing about balancing powers among tiers heavens forbid there was too much variety in a video game. So dark blast seems unlikely to be changed which just leaves life drain. Or a change to another power in the set, which is why I wanted to mention my hatred of the snipe in a round about way of setting up that that power could also be altered.

Just a quick quiz but does anyone else work in nightfall in their single target chains like I do? I know it isnt endurance efficient but a lot of time it seems like the only way I can take down a boss.

Dark needs some single target love somewhere it is just agonizing trying to play the set on hard targets and you cant get their hitpoints into scourge range quickly enough to avoid face planting. The obvious spot would be life drain so I can see it getting a damage boost. The other spots are dark blast (which would rock but throw the tier I out of wack with other tier I's, come on Dev's do this, the rules were meant to be broken!), gloom or get rid of the stupid snipe (personal bias, I cant stand the hideous 4 second animation) for a useful blast.

The electric blast argument is flawed they get a hold with relatively high magnitude and we get dark pit (hahahaha throw that at a boss and see what happens) and some tohitdebuffs that really dont begin to become useful without heavy IO slotting.

Another thing that kind of bugs me about dark blast all the cones are on different sizes and angles, boy is that frustrating during game play. I hate being asked why I am rubber banding so much. I then get to explain that since the cones are all screwed up I have to play this way...you know I am going to rename my toon the rubber band man.

The set is fun to play and different than the other blast sets which is part of the allure for me but it needs a little stream lining. Nothing to exotic but a couple little bumps to make it smoother to play would do wonders.

1. More single target damage
2. Fix the cones to match or at least be closer in dimensions
3. Higher tohitdebuffs on blasts (this may break it at high levels with IO's so not sure about this one)

I have a level 40 dark/storm corruptor and it is a blast to play. I tend to agree that they are pretty even between defender and corruptor with the 30% solo damage buff. Long time corruptor player here and just started a little rad/sonic defender side project I am really enjoying, that 30% damage buff solo is a Devsend (In the interest of disclosure and where my play experience is generally coming from).

I think with typical play they are pretty even but the corruptors inherent scourge begins to shine when you take on harder single targets or larger groups of mobs. The harder single targets is obvious: the more time in the scourge range for dark blast to work the better, although it is a major chore getting them into scourge range without tornado and lighting storm so there is a little growing pain on this toon. The big thing that makes a dark/storm corruptor shine for me is all the aoe goodness. I was pleasantly suprised with the amount of aoe damage I can put out with nightfall and teneberous tentacles. When you are hitting a group of 8 to 15 mobs all of a sudden you start to see a lot more scourges ticking off. Just my impression but in large mob situations even with the superior debuffs I dont think the defender will be able to contribute as much aoe damage as the corruptor will. I am sure you could quantify this with numbers but that sounds like work and I dont play video games to work . Somewhat a playstyle bias here but soloing against 3 even level mobs is just boring if my toon cant handle 6 mobs at plus 1 I dont feel like a super hero and lose interest real fast.

Having said all that with the 30% buff to defenders if you are in your mid 20's I just cant see it being worth your time to reroll as a corruptor. Also I have no experience with high level defenders but with the higher numbers of defense in Steamy Mist and Manuevers there is a real argument to be made for high level play strongly favoring the defender once IO's are factored in. My college english teacher would be proud, both sides of the arguement and I didnt take a stand either way...I should go into politics .

In my humble opinion if you want maximum aoe damage on a corruptor then there are the following 4 combos (But I flat out love the fire graphics so I am horribly biased):


Fire/kin-does the most damage, no real mitigation so you will die alot, Speed boost is awesome but on a ridiculously short timer so you will get pestered for it continuosly (I have given up on kins because of this actually). In my opinion kin shines for farming, and teams with great damage mitigation (a good tank, controller or dominator) without one of those three you will die more often than I am comfortable with. I also dont like the one dimensional feel of this toon, it feels like a self buffing blaster, but that is again my personal preference.

Fire/cold-great damage and great mitigation, the buffs are much more manageable too (I think the shields are on 4min timers?), also the shield buffs take some real nice IO's for sweet set bonuses. The big thing fire/cold does is mitigate damage with sleet, heatloss, snowstorm, benumb. You have pretty great controls for a corruptor and 3 of those are aoe soft controls. If you have played a controller and know how to use soft controls you will love this gameplay style. I also think when you can stick shields on everyone and a hitpoint buff on your tank and one other toon continously you are bringing as much to high level teams as /kin. This might be the best choice if you want to do alot of high end task forces and I have heard it holds up well in pvp if you go mace mastery.

Fire/storm-should give similar performance to fire/cold with fewer buffs and more pets, so I would say fire/storm more solo friendly and perhaps better for zone pvp (but havent pvp'ed in months so cant really commit to this).

Fire/dark-awesome from the get go but with slightly lower top end play to the above three combos, if you are new this is a good way to start and get a feel for corruptors.

It's probably too late to make the suggestion (it just occurred to me darn it) but I wanted to lobby for Thunderclap in Electric control with higher mag. Even better would be a teleporting thunderclap similar to shield charge but with control and no damage.

I just love that animation and hate to see it wasted on a power that is essentially useless due to the low magnitude of the control.

You know what would be neat in Electric Control...Thunderclap with a higher mag stun. It would look great in electric and fit thematically. You know what would be even better, a teleporting thunderclap like shield charge but only with control no damage.

How cool a combo would that be thunderclap, aoe immobilize, and lighting field. I would play the set just for that.

On the thought of sleeps in sets, if they do put a sleep in the set they couldnt put a pbaoe aura similar to hotfeet (lighting field) could they? I mean that and an aoe immobilize would neuter the value of the sleep. That is part of my complaint about Ice, you give the set all these great soft controls, some nice pbaoe controls and then cram a sleep in that is countered by almost every power in the set. It just doesn't make sense.

I hope the set is similar to fire and ice with the ability to get in close and stay close to the mobs effectively (yes I plan on making an ele/ele dom but still).

Several posts in this thread have already explained why Shield is the best scrapper secondary (PvE) and it isn't because of shield charge. It's because of Against All Odds the damage boost to our entire primary CONTINUOUSLY is too big an advantage for any other secondary to overcome. People also get too hung up on being able to cap the defenses. Yes you can but that is late game and with a huge investment of IO's it is fairly squishy the majority of the game.

I can see why Shield Charge does stir up so much animosity it is effectively a Blaster Nuke on a faster recharge than all the blaster's tier9s (except RoA and FA) which is somewhat silly. Shield charge is a novel power which makes the set feel different. So I would go one of two ways with its readjustment:

1) Increase the recharge dramatically to match blaster nukes (Boring but easy fix).
2) Cut the damage dramatically (1/10th current levels) and REDUCE recharge to 1min.

I like option 2 as it keeps the novelty of the power, the fun animation and provides player controlled mitigation in the secondary.

Maybe this has been 29 pages of extremely clever disinformation to keep the Devs from looking at AAO, but I doubt it. Shield Charge is not the problem inbalancing the armor secondaries but it is unbalanced compared to comparable powers across all the archtypes.

It is a fun combo, I have one at 39 at the moment. It is a rare combo but in my opinion you need to be a veteran player to get the most out of it. It's best attacks are all melee and Gravity is light on aoe control till late game so knowing when its time to get in there and melee and when to stay at range are critical.

The best thing is the incredible animations, propel, stone spears, hurl boulder in particular stand out (I highly recommend the lava animations for /earth assualt with a light/dark color complimentary color scheme). Some good synergy is the immobilizes in gravity still allows the knockdown/knockup that /earth assualt provides for additional control. With a decent ranged attack chain early, great melee and your controls it solo's fairly easily.


Now for the bad things, poor aoe control until wormhole shows up. You have to spam your single target hold and levitate/stone spear combo for control (it gets tiring but is effective). Once you get wormhole it is fun but fickle control. Being able to stun/teleport a group is a lot more fun that it sounds and if you practice you can stick them in corners or walls to negate the knockback. Sounds perfect right? For some reason you end up eating an alpha strike from the mobs if they have LOS to you, you can wormhole from around corners but it has short range so its not always possible. The other big problem is that all your damage is smashing which is highly resisted from 35 on, so your damage goes in the tank. Still good to great single target melee damage but your ranged attack chain and aoe damage just fell off a cliff (it is fairly dramatic change in damage and cannot be emphasized enough). Your ranged attack chain is good but it has long animations in hurl boulder/propel so you probably should pick just one (I couldn't I love both animations too much) and you will still end up dying more than a few times because of the long animations. So if you have any min/maxer tendencies this probably isnt the toon for you.

The only problem with /earth assualt is it has poor ranged damage so it pairs best with a primary with a ranged attack damage in it (Gravity/Mind/Immobilize proced up). I think ice/earth assault might show the best synergy. All in all it is a fun change of pace toon with some incredible animations.

[EDIT]
You know what forget all the negatives I just mentioned, I just logged in to this toon after playing alts for two weeks. And he is just too much fun, epic animations. Seriously go make one now it is worth it. No, I can wait. Are you still reading this???? Make one now, you wont regret it.

Fire would be a good combo too, forgot about it but your ranged attack chain will be nonexistent unless you can afford to load up your immobilize with procs (Gravity and Ice let you slip in the extra slow damage procs which is nice). You get your stun much earlier and with the new power colors it looks good too. I still think Ice would work best.

I had just gone gravity as I had never played the set out of the teens before and was curious what singularity was like. It has been a pleasant suprise. It is in no way an uber combo but it is different and very versatile.

Let me pitch to you why I like Gravity:
1)Full ranged attack chain by 10. Long animations but so sexy, between propel, hurl boulder and stone spears. Just flat out wow.
2)Awesome melee damage. I can't swear to it, but I picture a permadom with fighting could have a full melee attack chain boxing/smallmallet/bigmallet/sesmic smash (can't remember name of mallet attacks darn it).
3)AOE control comes late but is close to fire with some neat tricks you can pull with wormhole. I like to teleport low level minions over my groups in low zones while singing "It's raining men" in chat. In fact I am going to do this to the Cap black market as soon as I post this. The neat thing is with powerboost you can stun teleport a group from around corners and out of sight.
4)Ranged AOE hold, not pbaoe which is a real underated benefit. With powerboost in secondary you can slot for maximum recharge with SO's till later on too.
5)Singularity is great control, but so/so damage. With him, your single target hold, and seismec smash you can lock down bosses fast.

Now for the negatives:
All smashing damage is sucktastic and no matter how good the animations look they are long. Did I say long, I meant LOOOOOOONG. You will die more than once while hurl boulder and propel are activating. Don't get me started on how you always eat the alpha after you activate wormhole, that makes no sense and borderline makes the power unusable in the wrong situation. Add knockback to wormhole and if your fighting in open maps you will be hated by teams and loathed by brutes (I highly suggest practicing sticking them into walls and corners).

Gravity is just a quirky set, that blooms late and even then not as good as some other sets. I will say that it seems perfect to match with earth assualt, in that earth assualt gets a noticeable lack of ranged attacks unlike other dominator secondaries. With Gravity offering Lift/Propel it gives you a full ranged attack chain early on. BIG DISCLAIMER: If you are not a veteran player who knows how aggro works and how to use controls well this toon will be a debt magnet. Your best attacks are all melee and of course you have no shields.

I am excited by this toons ceiling because of this, I am dreaming of permadom/tough/weave/patronshield and IO bonuses. Can you picture that? A melee toon with ranged attacks and aoe controls. A true inbetweener blending of classes type toon. Probably a pipe dream but a fun one at this point.

Just to bring it full circle this is why I think mind would be an all right pairing with earth assualt, but I see more synergy with ice and gravity. The ranged damage and being psy is a good compliment, my only knock against it is the soft aoe control is not very good combo if you pick up the aoe attacks (which are relatively weak but fun to use in teams). Which is why Ice would be perfect, with artic air/shiver/ice slick you can get in close to use your melee attacks and aoe attacks more effectively.

Earth Assualt is very smashy if you like melee you will love Earth (it seems to be mostly pirated stone melee anyways).

Might I suggest a different primary? Mind is great and will work good but there are two other primaries that show good synergy with Earth assualt in particular. Gravity and Ice show the best synergy. Ice because with artic air/shiver/iceslick you can get up close and unleash you melee attacks. Ice would be my top pick to pair with Earth Assualt. My current toon is Gravity/Earth and he is a blast to play. Gravity is good because the immobilizes still allow for knockdown/knockup which Earth is jammed full of.

My grav/earth is a blast to play fun animations, fun powers and you leave a trail of rocks and propel waste everywhere. If you have any leaning towards a min/max dominator I would look elsewhere, but if you want a different playstyle/versatile toon Ice/Earth or Grav/Earth might be for you.

I agree about the secondaries being too passive, I wish there were more that allowed player skill to come into play to make them stronger or better.

I have to agree with most of the posts so far, fire armor, dark armor or regen are the most active secondaries. Unfortunately with fire and dark it is toggle management for endurance issues and praying your heal comes back faster because your resist based secondary is getting hit alot and hard. They are fun and the low endurance cost of claws makes the endurance management easier. If you are new or this is your first melee toon in game I think claws/fire might be a safe and fun ride up.

All that said claws/regen would be a hoot to play, regen is just non stop gogogo. With multiple heals and a god mode you can have by level 28, and then the sweetness of MOG it is an action packed thrill ride. The only problem is how do you IO it? The set just begs for maximum recharge (and recharge bonusese are generally expensive), but once you achieve permanent dull pain where do you go?

Your ceiling for this toon at level 50 is probably the lowest of all the secondaries on the pve side of the game. Simply because in pve defense is king, and you just can't mount an appreciable amount of defense. I am afraid with the new pvp changes to damage based off of animations basically destroys claws effectiveness in pvp as well too. I have a claws/nin stalker (this was a fun toon as well) but the new pvp basically ruined this toon and with it any interest I had in pvp.

Spines/Dark is a blast to play but it blooms late and costs a pretty penny to get all the IO help it needs, not really an issue if you have a 50 or play the market at all. It takes some discipline to level it up.

It cannot be stressed enough spines plays very differently than all the other scrapper secondaries, you are an aoe monster with adequate but subpar single target damage. Dark perhaps more than any other scrapper secondary feeds into this and makes you a minion killer.

I would also argue on teams /dark gains more from team buffs than any other secondary. You have a wide ranging blanket of protection in resistance/defense/mez/heals so any buff tends to benefit you more than most. On teams with almost any kind of buffage you will kill spawns so fast the blasters and tanks will feel useless.

Specifically with a kinetic speed boosting you, your a god, it solves your endurance issues and speeds up Dark Regen letting you tank for teams, but this takes timing and playing right on the edge of life or death. Which makes it really fun.

I am a big fan of spines/dark for the simple fact that the mez auras give you a mitigation tool fire simply lacks, but it is probably a push between spines/dark and spines/fire.

Having said that you specified you wanted to farm bosses, I dont think spines is the way to go in that particular case. I thing you would want a set with the highest possible single target dps. Beyond that farming bosses with /dark or /fire sounds painful. I think I would go for a secondary with capped defense and work in aid self for farming bosses.

I have just recently been playing my spines/invulnerable again for the first time in a couple years. He seems a lot tougher than I remember after the changes to invulnerability, not really sure what has changed.

If you are dead set on farming bosses with spines, I might consider spines/invulnerable the combo feels tougher than my spines/dark in long sustained fights. Funny thing is with my spines/dark the fights just dont last as long before everything is usually dead. It just seems more efficient to make a spines/dark or spines/fire and mow down massive spawns of lts and minions. You might be able to build a spines/dark with a real high melee defense number that would be pretty darn tough toon, but I shudder to think what the IO cost would be.

It should take off as soon as you get one of the mez toggles, either Oppressive Gloom (my choice and recomendation) or Cloak of Fear. If you didnt pick up OG at 28 this might be why you are down on /dark. It is a huge, change in playstyle. Basically you still eat the alpha, but after that half the spawn does the sorority girl shuffle. The only thing that would make your toon perfect would be the strongest heal in the game to recover from the alpha...wait a minute, JACKPOT!!!!!

Some other things that help quite a bit, load up on recovery IO's, and try to work in tough. Make sure you slot the heck out of dark regen, that needs to be frankenslotted ASAP, it has horrific endurance cost and the recharge isnt great.

I think we need a little more clarification on what you want to do with your brute. Are you just enjoying the game, trying out the AT, planning on farming, is there any particular primary you dont like based on looks?

Any brute works, its like scrappers in that regard any combination works and lets you solo and team effectively. Some things to keep in mind, fury is a big part of playing your brute effectively so understanding this mechanic is critical to enjoying and getting the most out of your brute.

Next what do you want out of your secondary, healing, resistance, endurance recovery, defense? At the top end of the game when you can cap defense, defense based builds become very strong, frankly overpowered, but it is a long road to get there and they suffer early and dont blossom without some spendy IO's.

SS/FA is a bit of a FoTM build but its popular for a reason. Easy fury building chain, decent single target, a ranged attack, great aoe, a great heal, some endurance management. It just feels...SMASH as well.

I like /dark and /electric with SS but you might want to wait on these if you dont have much melee toon experience in the game. Dark is a toggle/endurance nightmare without expensive IO's but can do amazing things, and electric has great endurance management and neat toys but no heal.

Whatever you pick just remember your new motto in life is...SMASH!!!!

Spines anything.

DM/SD is good, but if your all ready up there at 50 why not try loading out your claws/inv more. Some people do some crazy things with claws. I enjoy my DM/SD but the aoe is frankly dissapointing, on teams I feel like a third wheel.

Not sure what the max DPS attainable with claws is, I am sure BillZ or Werner could help you out.

Inv has been doing some crazy things lately in the AE mishes. Maybe post your build?

I am not sure I can see a defense capped Dark, that would require some huge sacrifices and be insanely expensive.

Quick Def #'s off top of my head: CoD 8(I think), CJ 2ish, Two Uniques 6(3ea), Tough 5, Set of Gaussian (2.5). Thats what 21.5...I take it back with one of the swords you might be able to cap defense and have decent recharge.

You know what about capping smash/lethal on a spines/dark, does the positional defense stack with typed?

Werner your getting me all fired up, there might be some nice opportunities in /dark after all with enough IO's. Any chance you think we could make the heal work better in pvp with IO's?

If you put it with the right primary and load it up with IO's its ok otherwise it just doesnt bring enough to the table.

In my humble opinion it only works with spines and even then it takes a large IO investment before it becomes truly powerful. Claws and the swords can work with dark but they would be stronger with almost any other secondary which is a telling point. Spines/dark is not a beginner build either and the journey up can be agonizing at points but once you get into the 30s the combo becomes amazing. It used to be truly unique in this aspect but now I suspect a spines/fire is just as good with more room in the build.

Dark Aura just does not do anything any other secondary could do better. The only unique thing is the control auras and they counteract one another so picking both tends to be a waste. You dont even want to know how bad your tier 9 is, I mean really I waited 38 levels for this? I mean it may just be the worst power in the game.

Another reason I think you don't see a lot of DA's running around is it is horrible in pvp. I know not everyone likes pvp, I haven't even done it since I13. But I really think its in the back of everyones minds when they are leveling up a toon and taking the time to load it up with IO's that it would be at least nice to be competent in pvp.

Ok I read the whole thing and I still need a map drawn for me, so how does it work in Spectral Terror? Do I just get the one psy damage from the fear proc or do I get it every 10 seconds that spectral terror is out?

Also, I am not sure I can but I think their is a hold/psy damage proc I was tempted to throw in choking cloud. Would this mean this damage proc had a chance of going off every 2 seconds?