A question for veteran Doms...

Never having played a Dominator before, I've come upon an issue I'm not sure I like.

I'll explain...

I created an arc for the AE (the WW2 arc below). In the first mission, the enemies include fairly generic minions, typically one Lt. and an Elite Boss (admittedly, a fairly tough one).

The arc has been played repeatedly by all my characters, of all ATs and all levels, everything from L3 to L43. None have had any real trouble (my Defender was a bit hampered at lower level, but got better as he went up in levels), except the Dominator.

Granted, he's only L6 right now, but as I say, at that level, my Scrapper was sailing through the mission, and all the others were going along pretty well.

My question, as you may have guessed, is whether Dominators ever get the ability to fight the likes of EBs and AVs? I mean, bosses are immune to being held (for the most part), and the Dominator has no other defenses, including low health. Does it get better as he levels up?

If the character is never going to be able to defend himself, I'm pretty sure I'll be making him as something else.

(Oh, he's Fire/Elec, in case that matters.)

I can dice EBs into tiny little bits on my Ice/Ice, and quite often on SFs I hold them too. It's only downscaled EBs that have the Purple Triangles and AVs that I have trouble with.

Bosses aren't immune to Hold either, you simply need to stack 2 holds on them at the same time. At level 6 this is pretty tough due to the low duration and lack of slotting at that level. EBs require 3 staked holds assuming they aren't scaled down AV's. Domination cuts this in half of course.

At high level, if it doesn't have PToD, it's a statue. Period.

You can hold bosses with 1 hold if in domination, 2 - 3 holds while out usually. EB's are generally 4 holds if out of domination and 3 if in I think. In other words, they're pretty easy if you have a pet and any kind of mag stacking capability.

Ice/Ice owns.

Edit: Just realized Kyra basically said the same thing, lol. Ignore me, it's early...

@.MIDAS

BIG BROTHER MIDAS, Ice/Ice Dominator, 1314 Badges
* Any toon you see with Midas in the name is probably me *

Also, with enough infamy certain dom combos can permahold the majority of AVs. Not sure what your budget is like.

Even with the new Domination, if you are not taking on a Boss, EB or AV with Domination running, you should probably think about retreating once you wear him down a bit, and build some back up by wailing on minions. Of course, depending on the AV, taking that much time will likely let him regenerate back to full, wasting your effort. But meh...

PToD cancel out the boost to status effects benefit, but the main thing is you're immune to his status effects. I made the mistake of trying to take on an EB the other day with no Domination, my logic was that I had the damage now, I should at least be able to hold out until I can bring it up. His knockback was so bad I was on the floor in seconds. I came back with Domination, expecting a tough fight, and he was a pushover. You wouldn't think it would make that much difference, just being able to hold my ground and keep moving, but it did.

Depends again on level. At 6 this is true, but with the new damage buff you can kill even an EB outside of domination if you have a strong slotted hold, you just have to remember to reapply your hold as often as possible.

That was true before the changes. The revamp is irrelevant. L2P.

Dom's are real squishy that early in the game, at level 6, you have about what 8 insperation slots?

Honestly, I have never taken on an EB that low with any toon, wouldn't really recommend it, but it's your 15$.

Some advice, pack six purples and two reds. When you fight the EB pop three of the purples and one of the reds and try to hope and pray that is enough to not get hit, you won't be at the softcap but you will be pretty high in def.

The biggest difference between soloing an EB with a dom and a scrapper is that even at low levels, scrappers have better defenses to take on things like that since it is part of their secondary.

First of all, you do encounter EBs that early in the game. Off the top of my head I remember two level 5 contacts in Port Oakes that give EB missions.
And secondly, if you want to defeat anything EBish at that level you need to have powers, especially your holds, slotted and inspis at hand. And even then it is not unlikely to end in failure depending on the kind of EB, your power choices etc.
Dominators are late bloomers, really. Of three dominators all three felt quite weak early in the game, but all three finally came together somewhere in the 20s. In the late game you will probably be laughing at any EB. I know I did. And that was even before the damage boost.
Now that I think about it I remember doing a level 20 Tarikoss SF at one point with me (mind/psi dom) and a friend (dark/something corr) talking a bit too much good-hearted smack on TS which ended with us duoing Infernal in the last mission. He has no PToD at that point in the game and that was enough to turn the fight into a farce. Infernal was confused for the whole time we needed to whittle away his health while the rest of the team was watching and laughing on TS.

Well, that's what I was after, I just wondered if they DID actually bloom. I didn't want to play him for 30 levels to find him as weak as he was at the start.

The irony is that I originally made this character as a Mastermind.

What makes Doms viable is their ability to stack status effects. At level six you should be trying to immobilize bosses (if you can't hold them) and then wear them down with your attacks from your secondary which hopefully have longer range. If facing a boss with long range attacks it helps if you keep moving. No idea if this works against the EB in question since I can't recall ever facing one at that level.

Others have covered all this but I got to say that later on Fire/Elec is one awesome set combo with Imps and VS and Bonfire and the stacking stuns from Flashfire and TS you will be chewing through mobs like they are nothing.

In the lower levels, definitely use inspirations. Instead of going reds & blues, at that level, I'd go 4 purples, a green, and 3 blues. If you can get past the first part of the "punch" (by using purples), then once you have him locked down, you'll have him, so the reds are unecessary. However, without stamina, you'll need the blues... and need the green to heal back in case of a lucky shot.

Is the AV a custom enemy? Is there someone in the surrounding group giving status protection?

Out of the box you should be 2 stacking char perma, and 3 stacking it for like a second and a half. The problem more then likely lies in possibly the fact that your boss has status protection from somewhere, my lowbie doms usually can usually trounce bosses. EBs are problems due to the lack of damage output before pets. Ill play ur arc sometime and see what i can say.