I've noticed there aren't many Dom guides going up lately. So here is my shot at one for the post i10 environment.
Gravity and energy have always been a favourite pairing for dominators. Thematically its a fun blend, & the synergy between the sets has always been pretty sharp. As a Grav/energy you'll bring several things to teams which smart teammates will thank you for. With Domination and Power Boost in your holsters you have control capabilities beyond almost any other build in the game. You also have a truly unique power in Wormhole, which has a vast suite of uses. Gravity lacks "soft control" (disorients/sleep/confuse) until level 26, but energy partly makes up for it by having a lot of such effects built into its powers.
Your tactics may vary but with huge melee strikes and the ability to bring the mobs to you grav/energy has inbuilt advantages for those who like to get up close & personal. Keeping multiple mobs controlled while simultaneously attacking them means you're going to be very dynamic in play, & grav/energy suits a dynamic style well.
[u]Invention Origin[u] (IO) enhancements have recently provided some great options for Dominators. Part of the point of these things is to enable individual configuration, but my suggestion is that as a Dom, you focus on chasing two particular set bonuses. These are:
1. Global rechargethis is kind of a no-brainer. You want your domination back as soon as you can get it, & your strongest powers are also your longest to recharge.
2. Accuracythis is an excellent choice for Doms as well, because both your primary and your secondary power sets benefit from it. And it doesn't take any great effort to build a global accuracy bonus that's equivalent to an extra SO accuracy in every power. The value for Doms of doing this can't be overstated.
And now, the powers!
[u]Gravity control[u]
Crush: this is your single target immobilise. It can aid damage in the early game, but as you go you'll have better damage & control options. If you want an immobilise (& they can be handy, make no mistake) you're better off waiting for the AOE which is available in a few levels time. One thing in its favour is that it doesn't really need any extra slots - an acc enhance in the default slot will be enough.
Lift: your other opening choice, & a better option for most builds. It negates aggro by flinging its target into the air and slamming them down. You have precious seconds to spank them while they're trying to get up, and many energy powers have knockback to keep them down longer. It's also an endurance-friendly way to dispatch foes who have a sliver of health left. Like crush, this requires few if any slots: an accuracy enhance in its default slot is generally enough.
Gravity distortion: this is your single target hold & the power you will use more than any other. Take this at level two and get it six slotted asap. The hold set bonuses are not really worth worrying about so you can just focus on getting the best numbers for this power.
The "triple enhancements" (or triples) are your key here: there are four hold sets which each have an Acc/Hold/Recharge recipe. If you can get three or four of those slotted in here it's quite possible to get the acc, hold and recharge for this power all above 90% even without global bonuses. This power has no acc penalty so you don't need to get the acc that high, but it never hurts, particularly if you fight a lot of purples. Start by slotting all the triples you can get (two of them are from common sets & are not that hard to find) & then fill in the gaps. Once you have your Acc bonus above 90%, just put in generic hold & recharge enhancers.
Propel: Trollers love this one, or ought to: it does nice enough damage, which they double with containment. We don't get containment however, and there are better options for damage in our secondary. The animation for this is a tad too longoften your target will already be dead before it hits. Which is a shame, because it has the most fun visuals of any power in the gamewho doesn't want to rain forklifts & pool tables on their foes? I love this power, but it's strictly for fun if you're a Dom.
Crushing Field: This is your AOE immobilise. It should be thought of as half of a combo rather than an independently operating control power. As an opening move, it will get you faceplanted faster than you can say "alpha strike", but as a follow up to wormhole it really shines. Victims of wormhole tend to stagger about like frat boys on a bender, which can be annoying if you or others on your team want to use AOE attacks on them. But this sticks them in place, and anyone successfully teleported by a wormhole is automatically stunned, so you'll generate no aggro in doing it.
Another thing about this power: it got a lot better post-i9. It has the huge advantage of being able to take enhancements from several different IO classes. One way to slot this is to give it four slots & put in Trap of the Hunter enhancements. Get the accuracy-adding ones, & also the damage procif you spam it on foes it can help offset energy's lack of AOE damage. Four Trap of the Hunters also gives you the largest global accuracy bonus of any set9%, which is like a free training enhancement in every control & attack power you have. If you're flush for cash, you can even put more "chance for damage" procs in herethe ones from Impeded Swiftness & Positron's Blast will also fit in this power.
Dimension Shift: This is a situational "panic button" type power which will mean that for a short while bad guys can't attackor be attacked. Using this on teams is dicey as teammates don't tend to agree on when a "panic button" is needed & some will fault you for using it. You don't need this power, but it's not horrible & can be more flexible than its given credit for. One way to use it is to deliberately avoid slotting accuracies (or cast it while flying) so that it misses some of the time, meaning you & your team are fighting a reduced number of bad guys.
Gravity Distortion Field: Your AOE hold. Out of the box, this power stinks. It has jack and squat for duration, a big accuracy penalty and takes several minutes to recharge. But you need it: gravity just doesn't have much soft control, so you need to max your "hard control" as much as you can. Luckily, energy gives you a great tool for that in the form of Power Boost. And the same triples that made Gravity distortion powerful will make this into a beastparticularly when you throw in Domination. This will really benefit from 3-4 triple enhancers, but if you're patient you won't have to pay ludicrous sums to get them. Round your triples off with an acc/rech and a generic IO hold for maximum effectiveness.
Wormhole: this is ityour payoff for 26 levels without effective soft control. Wormhole is a brilliant power which combines the effects of AOE stun with teleport foe, and works on entire spawns. It doesn't require line of sight, so you can lurk behind a wall & use it: it will stun a spawn & bring it to your position for pummelling before they even know you're there. In street hunts, you can teleport spawns high into the air, or you can drop one spawn into the middle of another & watch them fight it out. You can even teleport Longbow flyers inside hotdog stands for your personal amusement (they can't ever get out). And in PvP it's deservedly infamous.
If this power had any problem, it was that you really wanted to enhance four things: accuracy, range, recharge and stun duration (the range might not seem like a big deal, but it can make a difference when you want to fire this off without being seen). Previously, you could only really enhance three of those four, but with IOs you can do all of 'em, & very cheaply because it uses sets that aren't in much demand.
I have three stun/ranges and three acc/rech in this power currently. Doing this gives you excellent performance, costs next to nothing and provides global bonuses to recovery and regeneration. You could slot the "triples" with great effect as well, but I would pass on the procs for this power.
Singularity: he's your pet. You'll want him at 32, obviously. He's a control-heavy pet who spams your foes with high-damage variants of lift, gravity distortion and crush. He also has a permanent repelling field, which gives him some tactical uses. If you're fighting a very tough spawn he can be placed the doorway bouncing foes back so you can you hide behind a wall and port them over in dribs and drabs. If you wormhole a mob into the corner you can also use him to hold them there, helplessly bouncing between him & the wall. He can't be healed, but he has high regeneration & can be moved with recall friend if you want to position him.
I slot him with an acc IO, an acc/dam IO from one of the pet sets, a damage IO and two hold IOs. You can adjust to suit, but don't stress too much on getting the special pet IOs for this guy. There's better uses for your infamy.
[u]Energy assault[u]
Energy assault is great set which is particularly defined by two of its powers. It has a tremendous melee attack which tends to bias energy builds towards close-in action (though as with all dom sets, you get a lot of flexibility). It also has the infamous Power Boost.
When you're slotting your attacks with IOs from a single set, you should aim to get all the accuracy-boosting ones first & the rest later. Each power will want a total accuracy boost of 50% or more, with damage above 95%. Five or six IO slots will do this easily & can also give you handy (but less essential) buffs to recharge and endurance. Some might say 50% accuracy bonus is not enough, but remember that an extra global accuracy bonus of 20-30% is built right in if you take the right IO sets.
Power Bolt is your starting attack. If you go for a close-in build it will be your only long ranged attack and your only option in instances where you want to "snipe" at a mob for whatever reason. It can knockback foes from time to time, but not very often.
It's worth slotting, but not at the expense of your control powers or the other, stronger attack powers that you'll get later. If you decide to slot it seriously, Thunderstrike is a good option: four of them slotted here will give you a global accuracy bonus of 7%.
Bone Smasher is a great melee attack. It does high damage with a chance to disorient. It's generally taken at level 4 when the options are otherwise a bit lame.
This works great when five slotted with Crushing Impact recipes: the attack itself gets plenty of accuracy & damage, & you also score nice global bonuses to both accuracy and recharge. Doing this is expensive, but not so expensive that selling a single rare magic salvage won't cover it. If you can't afford Crushing Impact immediately just cram in acc/dam recipes from the cheap sets & gradually replace them with Crushing Impact as the cash rolls in.
Power Push: This is basically a reliable knockback combined with a small amount of damage. You honestly have better control and damage options elsewhere, though this is a fun power visually if you have nothing better to get at some point in your build.
Push only needs one or two acc enhancers: the damage is not worth slotting.
Power Blast: this is a stronger version of Power Bolt. It's a ranged attack with good damage & a chance of knockback. If you want to build a ranged-based build or one which is flexible about where it fights, you'll probably want this.
Blast needs about five slots to be really effectiveonce again, you can use Thunderstrikes in here to get the global accuracy boost.
Power Boost: this is a set defining power, and one that controllers would give their back teeth to get. You can take it at lvl 16, & should do so at that point or soon after. It doesn't last very long, so slot it with three recharge reducers for maximum use. This buffs everything you do that's not direct damage by 149%(!). On its own it's like a mini-Domination that makes your holds & other controls last much longer. Combined with Domination, it's devastating. It also has side benefits you don't get from Domination, like more effective heals & faster flight speed. You'll constantly find more uses for this as you go.
Whirling Hands: This is your only AOE attack. It generally gets a harsh rap, & probably justifiably so. Statistically, it's not great compared with some of the other AOEs, & the chance-of-disorient tends not to be as useful as it sounds. Having said that, if you take wormhole you should probably take this. Packing a bunch of helpless bad guys into a corner & then not being able to AOE strike them is just vaguely unsatisfying. And the combination with wormhole makes this power stronger than its raw numbers might suggest.
If you take it, it should get 4 or 5 IO's. One advantage to this power is that PBAOE IO's are cheap & you dont need to confine yourself to any particular set because the set bonuses are not worth worrying about (the Scirocco set has a global accuracy bonus, but it's paltry). So just bargain hunt for cheap accuracy/damage IOs & chuck 'em in.
Total Focus: Now we're cooking. This is the second set-defining power for energy assault. It does a staggering amount of damage to a single target, and throws in a strong disorient effect on its victim for spice. Even Doms who like to stay out of melee will have times where they want to perform a coup-de-gras on someone. Take this, love it, have its babies.
I suggest slotting this with five or six Crushing Impact enhancements. Crushing Impact will give you excellent boosts for this power, and global buffs to accuracy & recharge for spice.
Sniper Blast: If you want a sniper power, here it is. This is a pretty generic example of its kind. You probably don't need it with wormhole, & it doesnt suit the dynamic style of Doms particularly well.
This does have a nice IO option, thoughthe Calibrated Accuracy set, which grants global bonuses to accuracy & recharge if you can afford five slots for it.
Power Burst: This is short-ranged attack, but it has a 60% knockback chance & does sizeable damageabout as much as Bone Crusher. It's also awesome looking. To take it or not is a slightly tricker choice than it might seem. Energy Assault offers four high-damage single target attacks: Total Focus, Bone Crusher, Power Blast, and this. With the recharge reduction offered by IOs you only really need three of those, & if you take all four you're going to struggle for slots. Your choice of which one to leave out will be informed by your wider choice about whether you want to be a close-in-melee type build or a stay-at-distance type. If you want serious long range firepower, take Power Blast & remove this or one of the melee attacks. Otherwise, take this. I had Blast to start with, but swapped it for this when I got to level 38.
Burst will want 5 or 6 slots from a ranged damage IO. Once again, Thunderstrike is a good choice for its global accuracy boost.
With two sets of Thunderstrikes, plus two Crushing Impacts, plus a Trap of the Hunter we have a total global accuracy boost of about 30%, with around 10% added to global recharge. This should be plenty, but of course you can increase it in any number of ways if you're willing to spend big.
[u]Pool powers[u]
Doms tend to need a high number of slots in their primary and secondaries relative to other archetypes. So you're not going to be able to invest all that much in the pools, which is kind of a shame since all the travel pools offer handy benefits for Doms.
Fitness: Unfortunately, you'll need Stamina. For the pre-Stamina powers you're better off getting swift if you have hover/fly, otherwise, take hurdle.
Speed: Hasten has huge benefits (since we have our God-mode on a recharge timer)
and should probably be taken no matter what. And once you have that, superspeed is only one extra choice. The inherent stealth in superspeed is handy if you want your pet to take the alpha strike instead of you.
Flight: Hover with two or three flight speed slots gives you knockback protection & great flexibility with your positioning, which is always handy for a dynamic toon like a Dom. Fly is also the safest travel power you can get.
Teleportation: This pool never needs to be slotted, & recall friend is nice if you want to position your pet to best use its repelling ability. This pool is a perfectly good alternative to Speed and Flight, although I personally prefer those pools for a Dom.
Leaping: Superjump is fun & the bit of extra defence from combat jumping never hurts. I personally prefer other travel pools, but there's nothing wrong with this either.
Concealment: stealth is sometimes useful for diverting alpha strikes to your pet. But you can do the same with a stealth-adding enhancement, & the rest of this pool is not really worthwhile for a Dom.
Leadership: Doms get low boosts from this pool, & with endurance-heavy powers in the main powersets it's tough to afford toggles. However, as a Grav/energy you will be able to trigger powerboosted vengeance, which is a thing of beauty. This pool could be an alternative to patron powers in the late game.
Medicine: Healing helps Doms, since we're squishies who also happen to want to play fast and hard. As a grav/energy you get special benefit from this pool because Power Boost hugely buffs Aid Self, meaning you can nearly fully heal even if your Aid Self is unslotted. Aid Other is similarly buffable, but bear in mind that it won't work on your pet. This pool is a good choice but certainly not essential.
Presence: Nothing to see here if you're a Dom.
[u]Patron Powers[u]
If you plan to take Patron powers, I recommend grabbing the AOE from your chosen set to use on wormholed spawns. If you want more control options the Mu set has a PBAOE endurance drain which you can buff with Power Boost to totally drain minions around you. But on the whole, just pick stuff that looks cool. You don't need any of it but Patron powers are very pretty to watch.
And that, as they say, is that.
Teh enb
