Im a Brute....

I need to start off by saying i've been playing this game for years on end, i know the mechanics, i know the play styles. but i've never been able to make a troller/Dom. I took a dom to lvl 6 in beta and that was the last time I looked at the AT. A friend has been talking up doms latley and I have decided to roll somthing, i was thinking an Earth/Earth. But while I was choosing a secondary I seen that Energy has 6 attacks that are "High+". Is somthing gimped with the set? Why would anyone choose anything else, it seems like the most powerful set?

Thanks in advance.

IMHO Mind/Energy is a very good dom combo. Especially since the changes. Earth, Plant, and Fire also make excellent pairings with Energy as well. That being said /Energy is mostly ST damage and Whirling Hands is still just an "ok" AoE. The dom version has had some buffs, but there are better AoE options out there. Such as Electric, Psi, and Fire. In fact they are my secondaries of choice. I've tried /Energy with other doms and haven't found it as fun..but I like AoE's and cones.

If you like playing Brutes Mind/, Plant/, or Earth/ combined with /Energy may be really good choices for you. /Energy certainly has a "smash" feel to it now.

All right, so im really going into the dark here. I've been looking around and seeing that alot of people are really not liking Earth Assult. So maybe I should go with Energy, I will be primarilty Duoing with another Dom (Yet to be decided on build)

With Domination, does that mean I dont need to take Stamina?

Do I build domination by using secondary attacks or just primary's?

What are Dominators primary role on teams? Melee lockdown or just lockdown?


Thanks in advance Dom board

Thank you all again for the great info, one last question, once "Dom pops" im assuming the icon lights up, will it stay lit up until you choose to use it? Or will it drop/dissapear if you dont use it in time?

Thanks again all.

As far as Dom team roll is concerned, you are dual-purpose. The main reason you will be invited will be by smart folks who hope you can make their life easier by locking down problematic enemies. As such, the first order of business is to know what enemies are a pain and stop them from doing so. This is partly selfish, as they can be a pain for you, too. (Think Tsoo sorcerers, end-sapping mu, sky porters and engineers, malta sappers, and so on.) Your domination button makes you the best controlling archetype in the game. Learn to gauge for big battles...if none are coming, use it freely. Learn the recharge,too, as it come back soon enough that waiting the full mission is counter-productive. You can use it several times with ease.

But don't think you're on a team just for control, you do almost blaster damage. Your damage goes between controls. Lock enemy down, damage/kill it. Lock enemy or mob down, start killing. Control up again? Use it, then kill more. It's simple as that. Both primary and secondary are your 'attack chain.'

Edit: The domination bar goes down FAR slower than fury. You can go a long time doing nothing and you will still have some decent buildup of dom ready. Keep in mind both primary and secondary build it, but the secondary more so.

As others have said, dominators are dual purpose. You should be alternating between primary and secondary as needed, seeing what's needed. Priorities are always changing.

I have a Mind/Eng which turned into a blast with the Energy changes. Energy is now one of the few that can be ranged single target fiend very early in the game.

Well slotted, Mind Control alone can keep you busy in teams, but you need to know if holding the minion is really as useful as blasting it twice and making it dead.

The best thing you can do as a dominator is know what foes you are fighting and what they do. Brutes tend to not care who they smash, unless it's a specific foe (sapper, Vanguard, etc) that can ruin their overall perfect life. Squishies don't have that luxury, so you'll be an asset to any team if you know what is each ATs kryptonite, since you can can hold pretty much anything out there fast.

A good Mind trick: Hold -> Levitate -> Hold on a boss. He should be under soft control long enough to not be a problem till he's hard controlled. (Not sure now if Mind's hold has -KB, if so, then start with Levitate. Still basic concept)

Maybe I missed it, but not sure what Primary you went with. I'd like to know if you already decided.

And to the one who said:

I just want to throw in that /Earth Assault isn't a bad choice at all. It has lots of "Smash" if that's what you're looking for. I do find /Energy Assault to be harder hitting and faster IMHO. Ice/Earth and Earth/Earth may both give you some of what your looking for as well.

You can't go wrong with /Energy it is a very hard hitting secondary.. Also... the side effect of the energy melee is that it also Stuns.. but the stuns are also affected by Domination too (so does power boost + domination).

Go energy and you won't be sorry.. also dominator version of power push is a very high damaging attack. Other versions of this power with corruptors, blasters, defenders, are lower in damage. So keep that in mind too

Eh, I'm not so sure. At this point, I personally think energy is good enough that what he said could actually be literally true - it *is* no longer such a bad secondary that you'll be sorry you rolled it. (Of course that's not what he *meant*, but piffle. I'm being pedantic here. )

More seriously, though, it is pretty decent nowadays. It is certainly still horrible at AoE, but its ST is not bad at all - and it *is* probably best at *ranged* ST damage (at least, at non-permadom recharge levels), if that's a niche you're looking for. And, as much as many have derided it, it *still* provides the best mitigation out of the secondaries, with the *possible* exception of earth, with all its knockdown. And I've never understood why so many have problems with powerboost - if nothing else, it works wonders on the AoE holds, and it's also extremely good for boosting stuns and whatnot.

(And I have to nitpick on the stuns point - if we ignore lolwhirling hands as we should, there are only 2 powers with stuns - and total focus's stun is far from random or tiny duration.)

I agree with you completely, and Seldom as well.

I think where we differ is that my personal preference is consistency of performance as opposed to excelling situationally. I can nearly always use extra damage or +regen/-regen debuff, whereas I tend to have to look hard for a situation where I want to increase the duration of my holds by 60% or so where I can't just use Domination instead.

But I can understand where you might want to do that, particularly if you're actually filling an actual "control niche" in a team, instead of being just another member of whatever PUG is currently running. Due to timezone issues, I find the latter is far more common, and I tend to have to build towards greater self-sufficiency.