You will want a primary that gives good control early or one that is pretty melee centric.
Plant and Earth have excellent early control in seeds of confusion and volcanic gasses/quicksand/earthquake.
Ice, Electric, and Fire are all melee centric each having a decent radius toggle aura.
For secondaries most of the sets have 1 or 2 AoEs. The rest of the AoE damage comes in your epic. The notable exception to this is /Thorns that has 2 cones, a non-targeted AoE and a PBAoE.
All that said Plant/Thorn is the combination that was specifically designed for Doms when CoV was first launched. It's still one of the best Doms to start with for a new dom player.
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I would put Electric on the "good early control" list too, really. Conductive Aura and Static Field are both effective with minimal enhancement, with Static Field perma-able by level 13. Jolting chain also has some situational usefulness, though I use it much less on my Elec/Earth Dom than I do my Elec/Rad controller.
Fire/Psy might feel like a late bloomer but it is one of the most tried-and-true builds for farming as well as regular gameplay. It has a measure of defense built right into the secondary (-rech as well as massive +regen and +recovery) and it is very fun. If you want something a little more different, though, you might look into Elec/Psy. You have more options of 'control' with this, though you lack the AoE stun of Fire. While it might not be as popular as Fire/Psy, Elec/Psy is a contender.
Earth/Psy offers a lot of control, and while there is a pet there, he's not exactly a distraction. /Psy has some decent AoE, and Earth as a primary will keep you alive nicely. Hasn't got the damage of Fire, and oddly only minimally benefits from Domination, but the control the rest of the time is quite solid and visually impressive. Quicksand and Earthquake are powerful -def debuffs, making them quite nice for keeping accuracy up against +4 enemies, letting you focus your slotting on recharge and damage.
If you're not that into pets... you've already put mind/energy up there as an option : go with that.
Mind is one of the less expensive sets to stack recharge on (cheap purples for sleep & confuse), and no pets to wrangle. Plus, mind/energy has PB, which lets them do fun things like solo the ITF/LRSF/etc.
Doms are less pet dependent than controllers for damage, but also much squishier (due to lack of debuff/buff), so (especially pre-permadom) pets provide a pretty valuable service as meat shields/alpha eaters when your controls are cycling or miss.
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Im all into the Doms now.. I am thinking about something with Ice and I have NO Mind toon at all either troller or Dom..
The hard things I can do--- The impossible just take a little bit longer.
If numbers are so much more important than a teammate who is fun to play with, forget about the game altogether and go play with a calculator instead. -Claws and Effect-
Im going through a search for yet another alt. I mostly play scrappers, but I really want to try something new. I have a young corruptor, but Im also looking into dominators. My goal is to get something other than a scrapper to level 50.
Im mostly a solo guy, who enjoys a TF when time permits. Right now Earth/Earth & mind/energy seems interesting, but Im looking for advice. I dont have too much influence to spare right now, after sending tons on my scrapper. However, I believe in goal setting, so I dont mind having to work on improving my character. This means I would need something with decent AoE damage in order to farm some.
Furthermore, I really dont want pets; I just cant get into them much. Im not saying I wont try them, but I would like the option of dropping them without gimping the build.
With this all in mind, are dominators a class that would work for me? If so, any advice on selection would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance!