Elec/Ice/Cold Alpha Slot

Alphonse von Locke, my Elec/Ice Dom, is already at level 36, and I anticipate him being in his 40s by the end of the week. It's time for me to start thinking about what Alpha to pick for him, and the only one I can think to eliminate is Cardiac.

My plan for his build, if I can make it work, is to:
1. Make him permadom
2. Softcap Smashing/Lethal damage (He's in melee too much to focus on ranged defense, and with Frozen Armor it would be easier to softcap Smashing/Lethal than melee defense, which gives cover against many attacks at all ranges).
3. Increase his Damage/Endurance drain (far distant third)

Spiritual will reduce his recharge time, making it easier to go Permadom.

Neural increases his defense, which will bring me closer to that softcap.

Musculature will boost damage and endurance drain, which would be helpful, but is a distant priority.

If I had Mids, I'd make a build to try and figure this out, but I don't because Mac users can't use Mids.

My question to you mighty number wizards is this: If you were willing to spend infinity dollars, would all three goals be possible to meet without gimping my control, and if so which Alpha would add the most to the build?

Wow! This build is pretty much exactly what I was thinking about, though I was maybe considering Hoarfrost instead of Hibernation simply because I like to keep my toons moving (I haven't looked at the numbers for Hoarfrost to see if it's worth taking). I think this is certainly doable. Thanks!

Also, thanks for posting the text build rather than a data chunk. :P

No problemo!

Personally I went for Hibernate because it is a guaranteed heal/end replenisher if you need it. Also it is nice to hide in incase your mezes don't work or need a second to recharge. Personally I love hoarfrost, but the heal can be replaced by hibernate, and the absolutely extreme amount of recharge needed to keep it permanent annoys me. Also you get less use out of the +hp portion with the more +hp accumulated (I think that build is at 1350ish).

My dom is five bars of experience to level 39. Leveling teams seem like they've been scarce these days. Anyway, I plan on hitting the grindstone hard later on tonight and hopefully climb up to level 41 before bed. I've got 3 Basilisk's Gazes already purchased. Looking at the price tags of some of those IOs made me realize that this is going to be an expensive build. I think I'll just focus on making domination permanent for the moment and work in the defense afterwards. According to my calculations, I'll be spending billions on it.

Hrmm maybe my plant/fire dom should take the musclature route instead of spiritual.

DESPAIR! I only managed to get my Dom to lv 41 and the servers are already down for the addition of Issue 20! I swear, teaming was as dry as a bone on Virtue server. I only managed three TFs since I dedicated myself to grinding him to 50. >_<

Since I'm still leveling, I went ahead and grabbed Sleet first at level 41. It made for a mean addition to his existing powers, and keeps enemies bouncing around while Synaptic Overload is recharging, allowing me more precious time to stay safe while in melee range and attack/sap them while they're helpless.

I have a love/hate relationship with knock back in this game, but never more than when playing my Elec/Ice dom. It would be more accurate to say that I have a love/hate relationship with OTHER PEOPLE'S KNOCK BACK. Mine works just fine, but theirs messes up my careful plans. :P

For future reference to others who consider this build, the biggest drawback it has is the high endurance cost of Ice's ranged attacks. I highly recommend slotting them early for endurance. They fire off far faster than even the melee attacks in the set, and certainly quicker than most other ranged blasts, but their endurance cost really eats through the blue bar. I'm hoping that going for Permadom status will help ease my problems there.

A lot of it is just looking for crafted enhancements that are selling for a lot fairly frequently on the AH, then buying the recipe (which is usually cheaper), crafting that enhancement, and then selling it. You can also just run AE repeatedly for a lot of cheap tickets and buy your recipes/salvage that way. I'm a really bad farmer, but my Fire/Kin can usually crank out 1000+ tickets with about 20-25 minutes of work.

Currently shooting for the Permadom over the defense cap. I'm 47 merits from adding in the second LotG: Recharge, and I have another character who is 97 away. The build is working VERY well. I dropped out Tactics to get Fly, however.

The Tier1 Musculature Alpha is finished, and it's upped my damage considerably.

I keep hearing this and that about musculature. Some say it ups your dmg by a significant amount others say it's equivalent to a small red inspiration due to diminishing returns. Could someone clear this up for me I'm ready to pull my hair out lol.

It's not easy to simplify how the musculature works for damage because of the unique way that dominators build for perma-dom.

Take a power like havoc-punch. I have it five slotted with crushing impact for the recharge bonus. It's Mid's damage increase is ~95%. The common and uncommon musculature slotting won't boost the damage that much, but it is noticeable.

Now if you have a power like Tesla Cage, my Elec/elec/cold dom has only four basilisk gazes in that for the the recharge bonus to get to permadom. There are NO slots for damage, yet this power in itself will do a modest ~60 points of damage, on a tight recharge. Each and every point of musculature boost will improve the damage from Tesla Cage. The boost to the pets, gremlins and voltaic sentinel, isn't bad either.

Did I just read correctly?...Musculature affects pet damage?, does this hold true for psuedo pets like carrion creepers?, or Maybe Phantom Army for trollers?

My Elec/Ice/Cold Dominator is currently at Tier 2 Musculature and two Taskforces away from being Tier 3. I also have Ionic Judgment, Reactive Integration, the Supporting Seer Lore, and the Regeneration Rebirth Destiny at Tier 3. Diamagnetic Integration is at Tier 2, lacking only a rare to become Tier 3.

IO-wise, he's at 73.75% Global Recharge. That's "barely there" Permadom country. His S/L Defense is around, oh 28% at the moment because I was really focusing on the Recharge.

Reactive Integration along with all that recharge has made him into a Dominator with surprisingly crazy AoE damage. Sleet and Ice Storm, along with heavily spammed Electric Cages (Which I currently have 5-slotted with Gravitational Anchors), really make strong use of the 75% chance to activate Reactive's DoT, but the fast animating and recharging attacks from Icy Assault also deal improved damage. Unfortunately, it makes Static Field take a back seat unless I'm spamming powers to sap endurance, but the high recharge on Synaptic Charge and Jolting Chain (Yes, I still use Jolting Chain at level 50) keep enemies off their feet or attacking each other.

For teams that already have high damage (Teaming with a bunch of blasters, /kin corrupters, and SS Brutes) and would steamroll anyway, I swap Reactive out for Diamagnetic and step back into a more supporting role. After all, this toon can REALLY drain endurance, and the -ToHit debuff is quite nice for when enemies actually have enough endurance to throw out a couple of attacks.

There are two features of jolting chain that I never get tired of: the end decrease in chain form can drain a lot of foes combined with the Gremlin's jolting chain, if you took those. The second thing is the knockdown. It's just yummy, but I started on a storm defender so I might be biased.