How do I play dom?

So, early guides said Mental Blast was awful, but later comments suggest it may have gotten fixed. Any suggestions? I'm a bit unsure of what to be doing. (Level 15 and counting.)

Edit: 17 now, and about to start actually slotting enhancements and such. Any suggestions for a reasonably viable build? All I ask is that it include hover for my kismet proc. (I'd rather have hover than CJ on this character). Apart from that, I've been pretty happy with all the mind control powers prior to telekinesis (which I don't have yet), and the various psionic assault powers have been usable, at least.

I figure I'll use my fauxspec (second build) to correct any newbie mistakes I've made. Right now, my powers are:

mesmerize
levitate
dominate
confuse
mass hypnosis
psionic dart
mind probe
mental blast
psychic scream
hover

Spent quite a bit of time teamed, had fun, felt like I was useful -- if the three toughest things in a spawn are attacking the spawn, that makes our lives easier.

Mental Blast is fine. The biggest problem it had was lowish damage for a longish animation. After boosting the damage 64% that's no longer really an issue.

As a note, any guide written before I15 (June '09) is going to be completely worthless for dominator secondaries because of sweeping changes to every set except Electric Assault.

Your current build is fine. Of remaining powers, I'd say the must-haves are Terrify (which will be your every-spawn mass soft control but should probably be slotted as an attack), Mass Confusion, Drain Psyche, and Psychic Shockwave. Everything else is at least okay.

I never skip AoE holds, but some people do. I personally wouldn't bother with Subdue--too late and too similar to Mental Blast--but if you plan to seriously pursue permadom, then you should have enough recharge to use it and Mental Blast and drop Psionic Dart off your tray. Ordinarily this would be an excellent way to murder your endurance, but you will also have enough recharge to keep Drain Psyche up most of the time.

Telekinesis is a very powerful but very expensive, very fiddly tool with a ridiculous learning curve. Until you have mastered it, it is mostly an excellent way to piss off teammates and/or cause wipes. In six years I have seen it used well...I think three times. Somewhere there is a well-written guide on the mechanics and tactics of Telekinesis, but personally it is not worth the trouble.

I'm far from a Dom expert, but something I read in a long forgotten thread transformed my mid-teens plants/thorns from a frustrating wuss into a fun toon.

You've got a bunch of melee attacks, but you don't have the lovely defence/resists/regen that melee toons use to keep themselves alive. If you wade into crowds you won't last long.

Instead of passive survival powers, you have ACTIVE survival powers. If every critter in the crowd is confused or held or asleep, you're as safe as a granite tank.

I run superspeed so it's easy to position myself for surprise attacks. First attack is always seeds of confusion, it's the core of the set. If anything wasn't confused, hit them with the ST hold. Now you're safe, switch to attack mode and hit them hard, you want the mobs down before confuse wears off.

6-slot seeds of confusion ASAP. Frankenslot for acc/rech/confuse, those recipes are dirt cheap.

6-slot the ST hold, it's your plan B. (There is no plan C). Frankenslot for acc/rech/hold with lovely cheap recipes.

I'm only in the mid 30's now, quite frankly most nights I only have enough mental energy to play a brute... Duh... But the basic playstyle hasn't changed much. Priority one is preventing incoming attacks, but once I'm safe I now have more attacks to pick from.

I 5 slot Seeds with The Contagious Confusion or whatever it's called. Cheap purple sets make me smile .

When Going Rogue came out my first praetorian was built as an Electric/electric dominator because I wanted to prove to myself after 6 years I _could_ play a dominator. I played around with a lot of dom combinations, but I came back to my electric/electric because it just seemed more intuitive to me. I am also madly in love with static field.

My question is how does permadom work? How is it activated? I know you need a lot of recharge, but whenever my domination expires the dom bar falls back to nothing. Is it possible to build domination while using domination? There I said it. 78 months of experience and I admit I don't know how one of the successful villain ATs works, (cries).

As I understand it: If you have enough global recharge that dom comes up again before it ends, the bar is magically full. It only drops when dom ends. So if it comes back to fully recharged before the previous one expires, you can reactivate it for another 90 seconds.

Let's see. It's 200 seconds, we want recharge under 90, so 200/(1+x) = 90, so 200 = 90 + 90x, 110 = 90x, 11=9x, 1.222..., so 123% global recharge, probably plus a little for the activation time, so about 140% global recharge. At that point, you're sure looking like you might want to shoot for perma-hasten as well. As it happens, perma-hasten only requires about 110% global recharge. That seems really low, but:

1. You can 3-slot hasten, getting you about 95% recharge.
2. While hasten is up, you're getting a 70% recharge buff.

That gives you 165% already, you need about 275% total, so... 110% or so.

So if you have 110% global recharge, and take hasten, you now easily have permadom.

Ah, I think I see now. You fake out the domination power. The bar remains full while the power itself recharges and you hit Domination again before it has a chance to drop. I wonder who figured that one out.

A couple of minor quibbles...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wonderslug As a note, any guide written before I15 (June '09) is going to be completely worthless for dominator secondaries because of sweeping changes to every set except Electric Assault.

Electric Assault got reduced damage (and endurance and recharge) on the melee attacks; the one that had the fewest changes was Ice Assault iirc: the only change was a larger radius and recharge for Ice Sword Circle.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wonderslug Telekinesis is a very powerful but very expensive, very fiddly tool with a ridiculous learning curve. Until you have mastered it, it is mostly an excellent way to piss off teammates and/or cause wipes. In six years I have seen it used well...I think three times.

I never found it very hard to use; I just treated it as I do Hurricane: toggle it on when you need something either moved or less problematic, and turn it off when the target is either dead, you're running low on endurance, or they're where you wanted them to go. Any corner works well, and I've used it to push mobs who fled out of the Sleet + Blizzard patch right back in.

Of course, I've since deleted the character that had it, and my Mind/Energy can use her secondary to push mobs where she wants them. It's not an every-fight sort of power, but I wouldn't say it's really all that hard to use.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

This is my goal build of my Electric/Electric Dominator. I am trying for max recharge. I am not sure the ramifications of spiritual alpha slotting on domination, but I seriously believe I will go to the musculature to make up for any damage shortcomings.


Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.91
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

TesIa Teen: Level 50 Natural Dominator
Primary Power Set: Electric Control
Secondary Power Set: Electricity Assault
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Concealment
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Psionic Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Tesla Cage -- BasGaze-Acc/Hold(A), BasGaze-Acc/Rchg(3), BasGaze-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(9), BasGaze-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(13)
Level 1: Charged Bolts -- Entrpc-Heal%(A), Entrpc-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Entrpc-Acc/Dmg(5), Entrpc-Dmg/Rchg(5), Entrpc-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(46)
Level 2: Chain Fences -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(7), Efficacy-EndMod/EndRdx(7)
Level 4: Lightning Bolt -- Entrpc-Heal%(A), Entrpc-Dmg/EndRdx(9), Entrpc-Acc/Dmg(11), Entrpc-Dmg/Rchg(11), Entrpc-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(46)
Level 6: Jolting Chain -- Acc-I(A)
Level 8: Conductive Aura -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(13), EndMod-I(15), EndMod-I(15), EndMod-I(17), Heal-I(17)
Level 10: Super Jump -- Jump-I(A)
Level 12: Havoc Punch -- C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg(A), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(19), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(19), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(21), C'ngImp-Dmg/Rchg(21)
Level 14: Static Field -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(23), EndMod-I(23), EndMod-I(25), P'ngTtl-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow(25)
Level 16: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(27), RechRdx-I(27)
Level 18: Paralyzing Blast -- BasGaze-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(A), BasGaze-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(29), BasGaze-Acc/Rchg(29), BasGaze-Acc/Hold(31)
Level 20: Build Up -- AdjTgt-EndRdx/Rchg(A), AdjTgt-ToHit/Rchg(31), AdjTgt-ToHit/EndRdx/Rchg(31), AdjTgt-Rchg(45), AdjTgt-ToHit/EndRdx(45)
Level 22: Charged Brawl -- C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg(A), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx(33), C'ngImp-Dmg/Rchg(33), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(43)
Level 24: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 26: Synaptic Overload -- Bfdlng-Acc/EndRdx(A), Bfdlng-Acc/Conf/Rchg(34), Bfdlng-EndRdx/Conf(34), Bfdlng-Acc/Rchg(34), Bfdlng-Conf/Rng(48)
Level 28: Static Discharge -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(36), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(36), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(36), Posi-Dmg/Rng(46)
Level 30: Grant Invisibility -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 32: Gremlins -- ExRmnt-Dmg/EndRdx(A), EndMod-I(37), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg(37), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(37), ExRmnt-Acc/Rchg(39)
Level 35: Thunder Strike -- Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(A), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(39), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(40), Oblit-Dmg(48)
Level 38: Voltaic Sentinel -- Acc-I(A), ExRmnt-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(40), ExRmnt-Dmg/EndRdx(40), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg(42), ExRmnt-Acc/Rchg(42), EndRdx-I(42)
Level 41: Link Minds -- S'dpty-Def/Rchg(A), Ksmt-Def/Rchg(43), Krma-Def/Rchg(43), LkGmblr-Rchg+(45)
Level 44: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 47: Tactics -- AdjTgt-ToHit(A), AdjTgt-ToHit/Rchg(48), AdjTgt-ToHit/EndRdx/Rchg(50), AdjTgt-EndRdx/Rchg(50), AdjTgt-ToHit/EndRdx(50)
Level 49: Stealth -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Dmg-I(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Rest -- RechRdx(A)
Level 1: Domination
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A)

I am putting this build in this post as an exercise in seeing how to permadom a more popular domination primary. I didn't mean to threadjack.

Actually, that's super handy, because I was just trying to figure out how to get that much global recharge.

The global recharge bonuses I know of are a few sets with 5%, 6.25%, or 7.5%. Rule of 5 says I can have:

5 * 7.5% set bonus
5 * 7.5% LotG bonus
5 * 6.25% set bonus
5 * 5% set bonus

... and that's 130%. But that's a LOT of very expensive bonuses to have. Are there other global recharge bonuses I'm missing? For that matter, most of the +recharge set bonuses are 5-piece, so that's 80 enhancements at least partially dicated by set bonuses (5 for each of the 15 set bonuses, plus 1 for each of the 5 lotg).

With Plant, Elec and Ice you can get 3, 10% global recharge bonuses from the cheaper purple sets of Confusion, Sleep, and Immob. The Grav Anchor Proc in your AoE immob turns it into a ghetto AoE hold.

The build I posted has ~110% recharge bonus. I tried intentionally to build without purples. It's expensive enough but not totally out of sight. Seebs, with the A-merits, you can get a Lotg about every 4 days on one character. If you run 5 A-merit tips on 2 characters, 10 total tip missions a day, that isn't unreasonable. Then, you can have 2 LotG every 4 days or so.

Interesting reading here. Any advice or builds for an Earth/Earth dom?

These early levels are soloing hell.

When I was teaching myself, reacquainting to dom play. I found solo play easier than team play in Praetoria where my EC/elec dom started. Certainly at level 10, say, you don't have the controls to handle the aggro of an 8-man team by yourself. With a tank, other dom or controller, life is easier. With 7 blasters or scrappers, you have a tough road.

In solo play, I tried to break it down group by group. Two groups aggroed usually means run for the door or out of aggro range. Toss an immobilize over your shoulder as you go.

In a single group situation, you usually have one hard guy, and two minions although some minions like the rocket launchers can be hell. This is the part I think most other doms wouldn't do. I throw out my best AoE whether it's a sleep or immobilize or confuse, and then back up. (An Aoe confuse is good in groups, but most other lowbie AoEs are not the first tool out of the box in team play.) At level 10 you won't usually mezz them all. Break line of sight from immobilized guys, so they can't shoot you, and then dogpile your assault powers on the first guy that you missed. Sometimes, two come, then you pull away from your first mezzed guy, round the corner behind the computer beside the box, you get the idea, HOLD one of the two. Dogpile the remaining guy. This process can be repeated as mezz powers duration expire.

If the hard guys is one of the ones you don't mezz right off, doesn't matter, hold mezz #2 and/or #3, stack your hard mezz again on Mr. Toughie, then dogpile first whoever can move then at least whoever is shooting. Held/confused tough guys don't hurt you. If it takes two holds to get him, keep reapplying and finish his lowbie buddies. You do NOT want to run in have your first hold with not enough mag on the Destroyer tough guy allow the toughie to get his best first melee shot on you.

Especially in praetoria, sometimes you will see a lone guy and think. Hey I can blast this guy in a hurry and move on. It's usually a trap, especially with ghouls. What my point is, if you don't want to use a ranged AoE on a lone target, only one, then use a ranged single shot in case you have ghoulies on the ceiling.

Holding the mobile attacking guy running into melee with you has a special advantage for EC doms since you can tap into his end with your conductive aura while finishing up his pals.

Since you are the earth dom, I would think you would do this same process, then when you determine who you are going to wail on, drop the quicksand at his feet. Quicksand won't mitigate the first strike from your foes, but it does help with how quickly you finish the task.

Good luck!

On mind/, it's easy because you have more than one hard control -- sleep one, hold another. Or confuse one, hold another, and sleep a third but recognize the sleep will drop when the confused one attacks.

In general, with controllers or doms, I favor holding the toughest target I can hold ASAP, and then I have one less thing to deal with. On small groups, that's usually enough. Dom makes it a lot easier to burn through the other guys.

Just remember to refresh controls.

And if you have a confuse, well. Remember that you can choose to fight at most one thing if it really comes down to it, because you can always just keep confusing them until only one is left.