RiverOcean

I've been playing a Merc/TA Hero MM..and some random improvement thoughts have occurred....

- Give Special Ops maneuvers (similar to Thugs).
- Stealth Strike for Special Ops.
- Give the Medic the full Medicine pool, including the self-heal and the ally rez.
- Also, make the medic more prone to range and less melee..

I'm sure most of this has been mentioned before..but there you have it.

Electric is kind of melee centric control for Doms, which is why you see so many Electric/Earth doms running around.

Electric/Psi might work...if you slotted up Psychic Scream and took hasten. Ice might offer something interesting with Chilling Embrace. But that would require going into melee to leverage it.

If you don't want to be in melee..I'd actually suggest fire or thorns. Both of which offer some better ranged choices.

Yes, this can work and the DS attacks are probably one of the best do this with. You didn' t mention secondaries, but I'd say Dark is probably the best choice, if you're skipping a henchmen tier. Plenty of utility and you get a useful pet.

Force Field and Traps offer plenty of defense for you and the Henchies, as well.

So finally got the Ice Mastery pool slotted on my Fire/Psi domie.

It's insanely good. Flash fire, Sleet, Ice Storm, Fire Cages, PSW. Most minions melt in seconds. Lt's and Bosses are tougher but still they are immobilized firmly on top of Sleets debuff. Even on my piss-poor semi-perma build. I can only imagine what a High-end permadom can do.

I'm enjoying it for now, but I'm not holding out hope things will stay like this. It really is too good for words.

Just going to toss in my recommendation for Plant/Fire. Its a Powerset combination that matures very early:

Seeds of confusion, roots, and Fire Breath will provide nice amounts of control and damage at low levels. Six Slot Seeds ASAP and get hasten.

Things only get better with Carrion Creepers as this power can take Alpha Strikes for you. Drop it in the middle of a mob and watch them turn on the vines. Then attack.

That means along with Seeds of Confusion, you have two powers that can deflect aggro and damage away from you. They in effect tank for you.

Grav/Thorns has great synergy. Aim + Wormhole + Thorntrops is a pretty nice combo for soloing. Just hit AIM and plop wormhole the mob on top of the Thorntrops.

Mind/Thorns isn't bad...but the DOT's from thorns have a tendency wake up slept foes. However, this is probably a much safer build early on, due to Mind's potent controls paired with Thorns damage.

These look a little weird at first..but then if you think about it....

Charge Mastery adds a hefty bit of control. I could see it working well with Mercs or Bots.... since both of those primaries have either a AoE knockdown or Stun available. I can Also see charge being pretty nasty with Trick Arrow, Dark, or Traps.

Heat Mastery looks like it will add a good amount of damage to the MM toolbox. MM's do great damage now but imagine all that extra fire damage. This is another set that would go exceptionally well with Trick Arrow, Dark, or Traps.

I was a little wary of these at first, but I think Castle may be experimenting here and giving some Play-style variation to higher level MM's.

Updated Paragon Wiki page by Zombie Man. Contains the complete list of APP/PPP proliferation:

Since the NDA is now lifted. For those that are curious, this is the current state of the Dominator Hero APP's. Link minds is a slightly weaker clone of "Mind Link". The rest of the powers pretty much have controller values. From my very limited testing of both Fire Mastery and Ice Mastery, I was pretty impressed by the utility and survivability they granted. Heroic Dom's are getting access to some substantial buff/debuff tools it this goes live as is.

Gravity/Fire isn't so bad and does pretty ok damage in my opinion. The nice thing about Grav is that the primary is filled with skippable powers, enabling you to grab up damage powers from seconadry more easily.

Gravity/Thorns has a nice synergy with Wormhole + Aim + Thorntrops. Hit Aim, Wormhole a mob, toss them on your Caltrops, fire off the damage powers.

Grav/Stone has surprisingly good synergy between Crushing Field + Earthquake. While Seismic Smash + Gravity Distortion, along with Singularity, will allow your stack holds surprisingly fast. My Grav/Stone can easily hold bosses and slow down EB's. (Can perma hold them help from a team mate, through recharge buffs..or hold stacking).

So right now I'm working on a Merc/TA who I'd like to take hero side when I can. The concepy: my Merc/ MM is the leader of a special forces unit that deals with "supernormal" threats.

Merc/TA has been ok. But the survivability at lvl 23 is terrible. If I can keep things under control it's not so bad. And the "Stun Grenade" craftable temp power helps if things start to go south. The problem it, its very easy to lose control of a situation. And when that happens I don't have the tools to keep the pets alive.

My question is is there a better "natural" pairing with Mercs/ than TA? Since my MM and his troop are not "superhuman" I wanted to go with as natural feel as possible. I've thought about Force Field or Traps as well. Since GR is far away, I have no problem deleting and restarting.

Any suggestions on what works well with Mercs/?