Mind Control vs Electric Control

How will psw not do more damage than isc with the higher targetcap?

I have both a mind/elec and and elec/elec dominator.

Certainly, the mind dom locks things down better and I think does more damage.

I love the end drain with the elec/elec, only that its a bit lack luster against EBs and AVs. Perhaps if 3+ elec doms were draining an EB/AV together it would be effective.

Still, with all that said, I've found the elec dom really fun. Certainly it has more than enough control to solo and play well in teams. Indeed, I think elec is just more fun than mind. So to each his/her own.

I've been having this problem too, I've got both and around the same lvl, but only one in my sig.

I just don't know which one to use... It's the AoE confuse that's really stopping me, it's also between plant too.

Mass Confusion

Seeds of Confusion

Synaptic Overload

So hard to choose!

Seeds and Synaptic Overload are definitely better AoE confuses because they are up every spawn. However, never overlook the power of having Mass Confusion and a single-target Confuse, all of which don't cause agro.

That's not really an answer, but I generally prefer Mind's ability to spot confuse every 2.5 seconds as well as drop a confuse bomb. However, for pure AoE mayhem Seeds and SO are just so much better.

I totally understand your difficulty if that's the hang up.

Several days later and I have two chars with identical costumes and similar names and still no decision made as to which to keep. The mind/elec seems to lock down a lot harder than the elec/elec, but I do like the flashier elec graphics and the theme. Mind just has so many hard single controls it feels a lot stronger. And it does give you access to more damage types. Indecision is killing me.

Myself, I find elec/ much more fun than mind/, but I'm a bigger fan of soft control than hard control. I think it's because ice/ was my first character I got to 50 and absolutely loved how arctic air and ice slick mitigated damage. It just feels a lot more fun/exciting to me when I know there's a chance that I can face plant at anytime (usually don't) in the middle of the spawn than to have everything locked down. I never could get past 30ish w/ plant because it bored me to tears, but that's because of how good it is.

For soloing, I actually consider elec/ to be better than mind/ unless you're just doing x1 players. I was doing x3 w/ bosses on elec/energy pretty well up until I got my pets, then had to turn off bosses but upped it to x4 (could probably do more, but whirling hands and sands of mu are the only aoes I have). Also, you can actually confuse bosses fairly often w/ synaptic overload w/o having domination up. I don't think I've ever confused a boss w/o dom by targeting it, but hitting something else often lets me confuse 1 and sometimes (rarely) 2. I assume it uses up all of the "confuse chains" in the spawn and if it hits a boss twice they are confused. Not really sure how/why it works sometimes, just know it does. Granted, mind/ can confuse a boss much more reliably.

The only thing I really don't like is how synaptic overload will show the confused "bubbles" on the target whether they are or not. Really annoying to use it while in domination only to have the boss(es) destroy you because you didn't pay attention that they didn't move after being "confused" (looking at you arachnos lol).

Anyway, whether others agree or not, for SO/"budget" builds elec/ seems much stronger to me than my mind/ did. After you start getting some sets though, mind can turn into a beast. On elec/ you're probably not gonna notice a huge difference in effectiveness. If you plan to putting a lot of money into the build, I might would suggest mind/, but otherwise elec/ is great imo.

I'm sure my opinion varies quite a bit from most peoples though, so whether you agree or disagree is fine. You probably see a lot fewer ppl like me that prefer stuff to have at least some chance of taking me out than to have it all locked down. Btw, I'm actually a pretty good Dom player whether this post makes me sound like I suck or not lol......and sorry for typing so much.

Some observations from my elec/elec dom at 34

Gremlins are great solo at 0/2 (probably should move up to 0/3 now) cause its getting too easy. They do seem to be pretty fragile in a large team though.

The confuse is great but its fiddly. Its hard to pick the right mob in the middle that will make sure as many mobs as possible get confused. But its up every 20-30 seconds with my build so thats the great part. If you have domination up be sure to pick a boss as the starting point because the first target gets the domination bonus, but others dont. On a fast moving team this power is pretty useless, unless you have dom up and always target the boss with it. So it almost becomes a single target confuse on a team.

Jolting chain with the devestation hold proc is pretty nice to spam. Dont count on the hold, its just a bonus. Jolting chain is a good power to spam when in a large group, but the soft control of this power is pretty weak because the critters get up pretty fast and start shooting relative to the cast time. Spamming this power means you dont have time to do much else.

The AOE sleep serves 3 purposes: Put one up on the close second spawn if you only want to deal with the agro of the first mob. Put one at the feet of the melee (or you if solo) to help with endurance recovery, and help reduce damage. Put one at the back of the group if you are expecting an ambush. A great solo power, and enough extra stuff to help make it a great team power also.

Sapping... If the fights are lasting more than a few seconds. The sapping power really helps reduce the amount of damage the team will be getting. I dont see the need to go after this aggressively in your slotting, because it seems to just stack up all by itself.

ranged AOE hold - didnt pick this one up, the recharge is just too long to use every spawn and my oh crap power is the AOE sleep so... no real need for this.

I dont know about mind, but compared to fire I think electric comes up short. Flashfire is such a good power that gets even better when under domination, thats hard to beat. Imps seem better than gremlins only because 3>2. And everything else doesnt matter much after that.

If I could change electric control it would be to speed it up:
speed up the jumping of the first confuse so its as quick as jolting chains. The second jump can stay at the slower rate to help spread it around once they have bunched up some.
The cast time on jolting chains is way to long for what it does. This should be a quick shot power to knock em down. I would make it a 1.07 second cast not a 2.07 second one.
The cast time on the single target hold is also 1 second slower than fire's char. Why? Blasters got all thier tier 1 and 2 powers set the same can't we also for holds?

I've heard conflicting reports that Domination does and doesn't increase the knockdown in Electric Control to Knockback - is this the case, or not? It seems an important distinction...

Oh, I've just never played a Dom to a high enough level with major knockdown - and knockdown is my absolute favorite ability in the game. Using it fills me with a kind of childlike glee, but knockback is bad and pisses off teams, so I needed to know before I roll an Elec/Stone: AoE knockdown, this is thy name.