Magentrix

Crushing Field is one of Grav's hidden treasures. I have mine slotted with 5 Positron's Blast and the impeded swiftness smashing damage proc, and unlike every other AOE immob, you don't prevent knockdown, so it's fantastic synergy with powers like ice slick and earthquake.

Propel, on the other hand, is a complete albatross on a Dominator. While the damage and guaranteed knockdown may sound great on paper, the hugely long animation and short range make for a very, VERY poor choice on a AT that's already struggling with too many active powers. Honestly, take Mud Pots instead, you'll thank me. You'll wormhole everyone into a corner, mash crushing field to keep them from wandering off, stick holds on the tougher mobs while you whittle down the minions with your attacks, with mud pots ticking away on the whole mob.

I also think you're heavily overinvesting in Patrol powers. These powers are generally terrible. Grab Dark Embrace for the Smashing/Lethal resistance and maybe the pet for when you need some extra help over what your bubble brings to the party, but the cooldowns on Drain Soul and Consumption are WAY too long for their effects.

I'm NOT a fan of the fighting pool for Doms, unless you're going for a Ranged-capped IO build that you plan to use to fight Elite Bosses/AVs. Your defenses are in your controls and your damage. Use them right and no one will get a swing on you.

I'm hoping to bring my Blue-side buddies to the Red Side, but I may have to compromise and go blue. Personally, I know my dom is going to wreck stuff just as savagely as she does now. Grav/Energy, the much maligned combo, actually makes for a fiendish combination of damage plus hard and soft controls, and the bubble is the best AI-controlled pet in the game, bar none.

Yes, some of the mezz-resistant mobs used to really cheese me off back in the day, but at 50, I can slap down anything boss-sized or under, with just one exception: Carnie Illusionists. The rampage is coming, rest assured.

My Grav/NRG dom does better single target damage than a corrupter by far, but lags in AOE. But don't let that decide you on one or the other. Damage isn't everything. Make sure the playstyle appeals to you.

Oh, there's no question that much of the time it won't get run. My attitude is that it's a better hold power that I can cram Unbreakable Constraint into for the 5 piece 10% recharge bonus, plus get some hilarous proc scrubbing by dropping in the Ghost Widow Proc in, in addition to the Smashing proc from UC, when I do have it up.

More group friendly, less expensive and better at delivering stuff you really need. Accuracy is super-easy to get from set bonuses and regular IO content. You'll get tons of it without really trying.

A bit off topic, I know, but I also have a DP/Rad corrupter I'm starting, and I'm wondering what people's opinions are regarding Choking Cloud vs. EM Pulse. I know Choking Cloud is lower Mag and has no secondary effects, but the recharge on EM Pulse is insane, even in a high-recharge build like this one. The extra 1 magnitude and secondary benefits don't seem worthwhile to me over the chance to have this toggle running all the time, with a pair of damage procs in it.

Thoughts?

Best stupid power set trick remains Power Boost + Vengeance. Granted, you need a teammate to fold to pull it off, however you are a demigod when they do.

5 slotting your single target hold? I can't really see the sense in shorting the single strongest control power in your arsenal.

All secondary effects, to the best of my knowledge.

I'm just pleased I can mess with the color of my powers now. I may have to make a celebratory character who can shoot green flame. GREEN FLAME!!!

Earth + Hover = Bad. You must be standing to use Stalagmites, and it's your staple AOE mezz.

Ail's basically correct. Since MMs kind of bring a whole team to the party, and you'll be taking two of them with you, you don't NEED to go with any particular build. Go with what suits you image-wise.

Honestly, just get off your high horse with sets. Melee sets are overpriced, but there are perfectly reasonable ranged damage sets available by level 30-35, when you should be looking at giving up SOs and buying inventions anyway.

I love the imagery of plant/fire. Make yourself look like a bear and call yourself Anti-Smokey. Your battle cry can be 'Only I can create Forest Fires!!'

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Playing Blasters and Scrappers has taught me one thing - if you hit what you hold, you just wasted the endurance you used to cast that hold. There's no point in holding something for 10 seconds if you kill it in 2.

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At no point did I recommend holding a target then killing it. The issue is that the targets you're holding still need to be killed at some point.

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I honestly can't imagine how it's even possible to keep a spawn of, say, five minions and one lieutenant (I seem to see a LOT of these for some reason) permanently incapacitated such that they cannot respond.

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You're not trying to hold everyone forever. You use your AOE control (in the case of gravity, wormhole), to buy you enough time to whittle down your enemies' numbers to the point where you can casually hold what's left with your single target hold.

With your putative 5 minions and a lieutenant, I'll use wormhole to port them all next to me, immobilize the lot of them to keep them from wandering too much (and get a couple procs from the stuff I've got slotted in my Crushing Field), then proceed to use the next 25+ seconds to rip apart minions. About halfway through that time period I'll start mixing in my single target hold, so as to get the minions I know will be left under control by the time wormhole breaks.

By the time I've finished off the surviors and reached the next group of enemies, wormhole should have recharged.

Now if you're not slotting and using wormhole, and trying to avoid using your hold because it's 'not efficient', I can see how you'd get the impression that it's hard to manage a spawn of 6 guys.

I'd definitely recommend a dominator over a corrupter for a trio such as you describe.

MMs already bring a good amount of group buff and debuff ability to the table with their secondary sets. They perform well against most enemies. What they really don't deal with well are enemies with effective AOE attacks, and that's where a strong control primary can really synergize your team. Your dark teammate can also take Petrifying Gaze to stack magnitude with your single target hold, which, with the right build, can allow you to hold Elite Bosses.

As for which powersets to pick, my only advice is to pick a primary that can operate well with hover. With two MMs on the board, the ground is going to very, VERY cluttered. Being able to float above that chaos and dispense control will make your life much easier. With that notion in mind, I'd probably recommend gravity control first, since your pet can join you in the air, and stay out of the way of your zombie-gangster cohorts. Mind would also be a solid pick, if you'd prefer to dispense with a summoned pet altogether.

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The tier 1's still aren't worth slotting

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Absolute bunk. Slot and use your tier 1 blast. Anyone who says it's not worth using has poor math skills.

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ractically speaking, it's a function of recharge and duration

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Not really, no. The only thing that counts in real gameplay is reaching mag 4+. Everything else is just safety margin, unless you're talking about PVP (and I never am, PVP is a joke).

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As Dominator holds are both seriously inefficient in terms of damage per endurance and endurance per activation, filling up an attack chain with too many of them as a source for damage has the effect of butting out attacks that, overall, do more damage and cost less endurance.

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In practice, however, you ARE going to throw that Single Target hold, and you're going to throw it a lot. You're going to stack holds on bosses to build magnitude, and you're going to hold lieutenants and minions to stop them attacking you. You're going to hold enemies that have avoided your wormhole. And in almost every case, the lifespan of your target is going to to be far shorter than the base duration of your hold. And if you slot that hold for damage, you get a half of your basic blast free with every application of your hold. Or you can slot duration and have a hold that last far longer than the lifespan of the target, in 80% of cases.

I love my Dom. I play it alot, and I've tried it both ways. And slotting for damage just works better for me. YMMV.

I have to agree on Jibi on Total Focus. It's a fun power and I took it, but I find myself using it mainly as a follower to Wormhole to stun bosses.

Which is why I'm so gung-ho on slotting everything for damage as a dominator. It's not that Minmin's approach is wrongheaded or anything like it, slotting your single target hold for duration is a good, conservative choice. However, slotting it primarily for damage and recharge pays great dividends.

Stacking magnitude is primarily about recharge, not duration. Two applications of your hold will handle anything in the game except EBs/AVs. With my Dom's slotting, I can maintain mag 12 holds on a single target. With full slotting for duration, you'll get that up to mag 18, but an AV with PTODs up is over mag 50, so really, ask yourself, what's the extra duration getting you?

I also find that slotting your STH for damage changes how you use it. When it's slotted for hold duration, you use it sparingly, trying to eke out as little control as you can get away with so you can use your more damaging and efficient blasts. Once I made my STH damage respectable, I used that sucker all the time! It's part of my attack chain, and I find I want to use it every time it's up. When your hold IS your damage, controlling the enemy and killing the enemy become the same thing, and THAT is what being a dominator is all about.

Single target, I'll be mind/nrg takes the crown. AoE, yeah, it's Fire/Psi, still.

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Not only do melee attacks often have a higher damage scale than ranged ones, the dom's melee multiplier is higher than their range.

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True, but the delta in damage per activation drops off sharply when you're blowing seconds moving between mobs. In the time it takes you to move to a minion and dispatch him with bone smasher, you can power bolt and power blast for equivalent damage. Don't get mesmerized by size of the orange numbers, it's only their sum that counts.

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The other issue is that, without melee attacks many sets have trouble building a complete attack chain, at least not without large amounts of global recharge.

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The LAST thing any dom needs to worry about is a lack of things to do with an attack chain. The whole reason the Dom buffs were so glorious was that in addition to boosting the raw damage output of the AT, the devs increased the DPA of Dom secondaries so you can get more bang in your attack chain.

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Take the melee attacks.

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At no point do I suggest that a dom NOT take their melee attacks, just understand that moving 'in and out of melee' is not necessarily optimal behavior. Take your melee attacks, but use them intelligently. Crossing the room to swat a minion with Skewer is a waste of time. Moving into melee against uncontrolled targets is begging for a trip in the meatwagon.

Doms need hasten, ESPECIALLY if you're taking the high road on Sets. Yes, it speeds end consumption, but it also speeds stacking magnitude, a critical function of dominator play. Honestly, spending endurance to make your opponents die is what you DO as a villain. Spending it faster just means your enemies die faster.

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Doms require a very unique "blapper" type of playstyle. You'll constantly be moving in and out of melee range.

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I don't know that I'd agree with that. Time moving in and out of melee is time when you could be simply standing and firing more ranged attacks. The times when you should be using your melee attacks is when your target is a boss or bigger. The rest of the time, stand off and burn, you'll drop your targets faster. The numbers may be smaller, but the results are better, and you spend the fight in more safety.

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I'm not a fan of the immobilizes, they set up containment for controllers, but in general they don't do that much for doms.

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Again, allow me to present a counter-argument. 5 pieces of Positron's Blast, plus the Trap of the Hunter proc give you two procs, a nice chunk of global recharge and a quick recharging attack with a huge area and a 16 target limit. Solo, aggro is a non-issue, you've got it anyway. Grouped, wait for someone else to draw the alpha, and apply your controls to anyone who's unengaged. Immobilizes are great in groups. Immobilized mobs don't get loose and splat your squishies. They stand helplessly and melt in burn patches. And Plant's AOE immob actually has respectable damage output in its own right, independent of procs.

I'd bring a couple Fortunata Widows for the team buffs.