Trying again at dominators.

Im a person who switches AT when i wanna try something new. Dominators I had left as a lost cause because I may have tackled the wrong sets for people new at them. So i'm asking, what are good sets to begin and start off with?

On the control side: Plant, Earth, and Mind all spring to mind. They all offer good AoE control. Plant, in particular, I find to be a very straight forward, easy to use, and front loaded set.

On the assault side: Fire and Psionic Assault spring to mind. Fire works pretty well at range, which allows people uncomfortable with moving a low hp AT into melee a bit of comfort room. Psionic Assault offers some decent AoE, but an excellent survival/recovery tool in the form of Drain Psyche.

If you have not played a Dominator since the rebalance, you should give even the sets you tried previously another look. They do a lot more damage now, even outside of Domination. You may find that combos you had problems with before are a lot easier now.

The one exception is Psi Assault, which was formerly the most popular Secondary. It had a lot of AoE power with PSW, and that has been nerfed, with a greater emphasis on the single target attacks. If you are used to being a rolling AoE damage dealer, it may take a while to adjust to the new Dominator as a single target Blapper. Psionic Assault, as mentioned, is still good for Drain Psyche, and still has an AoE emphasis.

Earth Assault can also be interesting for its melee emphasis. It was introduced quite recently. Also, I can't remember when Domination got mez protection added to its effects, but you might have played a Dom prior to that, and will find it a big help.

I'd recommend either plant or earth primary, and any of the secondaries.

But do be sure to take the melee powers. Trust your combo of control and high damage to keep you safe in melee without defenses. It's a weird AT, but I love my doms.

ok from what I can say Earth seems to be the best beginner primary. Now what secondary compliments that especially?

Also to those saying psi and mind, I tried a mind/Psi a month ago and failed at it terribly.

Well, Fiery Assault works fairly well with Earth Control. Earth has very good lockdown from range, but is a little light on damage. Fire gives you great ranged damage, and is still good in melee once the spawn's safely locked down. Earth and Thorns would also be good secondaries - Earth for a bit of KD for extra mitigation (not that you'll need it), and Thorns for the AoE damage to go with your AoE controls.

Plant, Earth and Mind...All three sets can get down right nasty...and if you add procs...oh boy..

Plant/Psi/Fire. Just hit 50 with mine and got her mostly IO'd. Still missing a significant chunk of my recharge, but still enough to be in perma-dom range (and it literally runs out about 1 second after it recharges.)

It's pretty much the most broken thing I've ever played. Seeds, Roots, Scream, Shockwave, Fireball, RoF. Holy crap. Might wanna give that a try!

My personal suggestions for a starting out Dom are Plant, Mind, or Earth for Primary. For secondary I would go with Fire, Energy, or possibly Psi (I honestly don't care for Psi Assault that much myself but that's more of a personal preference than a comment on the set's viability).

My first 50 was a Plant/Fire. I recently switched him to the Fire Mastery ancillary pool and...oh my. AoE damage galore. I also have a mid-30's earth/fire (insanely good combo) and a mind/fire (the controls aren't quite as AoE damage friendly while soloing, but still very strong). I recently started leveling a mind/energy and I'm loving it. Energy's single target focus works very well with mind control.

Two sets I would absolutely stay the hell away from on a beginner Dom: fire control and gravity control. Both are relatively weak in the actual control department. I've had several SG mates give up on Doms because they chose one of those two sets as their first one. In my opinion a starting out Dom player needs a good solid control set to get used to the AT's play style before tackling one of the weaker control sets.

By the sound of this an Earth/Fire Dominator is what I should go with. Also with what Steel_Shaman said, I should stay away from Fire primary. I was actually thinking of doing that soon after the earth cause those imps look awsome.

It really depends on how you choose to play dominators. I used to hate them, as i played them at range, like a controller, and didnt quite understand why they had melee powers.

Then someone pointed out that Dominators play like Blappers with control powers, and it all clicked for me. You mez the mob, then proceed to blast/smash/burn its face into the ground. With domination up, you can one shot hold bosses, and then proceed to burn your end bar turning them into mush.

Doesn't quite matter what powersets you pick, as long as you understand the basic play styles of dominators.

Earth/Ice
Earth/Fire
Earth/Psi
Earth/Earth

All three are pretty decent. Earth/ is one of the most control heavy and damage-light primaries so you want a hard secondary. That gives fire the edge. /Psi is your safest secondary. Ice I've found is a good middle of the road: decently fast attacks, hits hard. /earth is the most melee heavy set, hits very hard.

I have no experience with /elect yet.

I'd stay away from thorns. I have an earth/thorn and while fun it is a bit slow-blooming. Thorn is also slow on the attack side. May not be the best option for you, but it is cool for your second or third domi later on. =)

When CoV first came out, I tried all the ranged/control sets to give them a fair shake. I could not get into dominators. Stalkers would AS spawns that were held, corruptors would focus on immobilized mezzed targets. I got frustrated and threw in the towel.

When Going Rogue debuted, I wanted to give dominators another try just to prove to myself I could learn how to play them. I started at least 4 electric control dominators, thinking I would find the best secondary.

My first was EC/electric assault and I thought my EC/fire assault would be an improvement. EC/electric, to me, was the clear winner. I could group. I could solo. I didn't build for stamina and found with conductive aura and static field that I didn't need it. The progression of powers that opened with EC seemed more natural in progression of complexity to me also. I quickly discovered even at low levels, Tesla cage was as damaging as most single target ranged electric assault attacks.

Static Field is a signature power available to EC dominators which is like NOTHING before. It's a 'patch' that sleeps and re-applies sleeps to foes. Oh, it also transfers recovery and regeneration to allies within the 'patch' as well.

I haven't tried all the suggested Dominator primaries, and since nobody mentioned Ice, I guess it was a loser set to try with my very first dominator. In my opinion, returning to the dominator AT was an easy move on Electric Control. I don't know how it performs number crunching-wise to other dominators that like to perform at +4/X8, but I like my EC/electric just fine.

I'm pretty much the opposite of Beowulf in terms of set up, but I don't have a numeric keyboard on the laptop so the buttons aren't lined up in the same way (I can see why 7-9 are his single target attacks on it). The first few buttons are my most widely used single target attacks (with 1 always being the single target hold). Typically 1-5 will be single target attacks & the hold (hold, ranges and melee in that order), 5-6 AOE/PBAOE and then 7-9 my quicker recharging AOE mezzes.

0 I usually reserve for either Dominate or Power Boost (with alt-0 being Dominate if that is the case). alt-9 is my AOE Hold, alt-8 my Pet Summon. The rest of the alt tray holds whatever is left, attacks from 1 onwards and travel, hasten and toggles typically in the middle of it.

Typically in combat this means I'll be starting with 7 or 8 to launch the AOE mez (or alt-0 alt-9 for a Dominated AOE Hold) then flicking between 1-5 for attacks (which really depends on what I'm playing and how the team is made up).

My Fort follows the same sort of set-up, 1-4 are ranged blasts with the Hold at 1, 5-8 ranged AOEs, 9 is Psi Shockwave and 0 is Mind Link. Alt 0 is the aoe confuse, alt 9 the aoe hold and then counting down come the toggles she runs.