New Dom

Want to build a Dominator and give it an honest try (this time) i really like energy assault and was looking for suggestions on a primary that would fit it. i played Ice/nrg breifly basically wondering if anything else might be better for a melee minded Dom. thanks in advance for any suggestions.

The best primary powerset to pair /energy (or most anything else) depends on your preferred playstyle.

Most Dominator powersets are fairly light on the AoE damage, but /Energy is probably the most single-target focused of the bunch. /Energy also provides significant soft-control in the form of copious knockback effects. It's great for soloing, somewhat less great on large teams (where AoEs typically become more valuable, and knockback often becomes more annoying). As such, I'd try to build to those strengths.

If you wanted to solo extensively, I would recommend going with Mind Control without any hesitation. The sleeps let you lock down as many enemies as need be for a very long time (sleep and confuse powers generally last much longer than holds and stuns) while you crush them one by one with your heavy hitting attacks. Heck, I just watched a friend's mind/energy dom wreck +4 longbow wardens without any help, and he was only level 27. For extra laughs, he didn't even have Dominate (his main hold).

Ice and Fire are the most specifically melee-minded control sets, with Arctic Air and Hotfeet. For a somewhat offbeat approach to Dominating, Ice would work great. Ice offers tons of slows and knockdown, but a lot less hard control than most control sets; /Energy adds even more soft control to the mix. Ice also offers an AoE sleep for soloists, but it's a less useful one than Mind offers. Fire is a more traditional control set, with the main emphasis on slapping foes with hard controls and ripping them apart.

Very helpful thank you very much.

It should also be noted mind/nrg probably the highest-powered control combo in the game. Mind control has huge amounts of control options, and /NRg has power boost to make them stronger with a good handful of stuns. Add in domination to boost duration/mag of all those, and you have a very safe dominator.

Mind/Nrg for safety, Fire/Nrg for damage.

Fire being comparatively light on control isn't a big deal as /Nrg has so much.

I might as well point out that /Elec has some solid melee attacks and can do very well in PvP. My Mind/Elec's build isn't even finished, but it does extremely well.