Can someone help me find a Dominator that I like?

I really like the idea behind Dominators, but I just cannot seem to find one that I like. The closest 50 that I could relate is a Ill/Rad Controller which is pretty big shoes to fill.

With that being said, I have made a couple of Dominators that I've gotten into the 30's but lost interest. They were:

Plant/Energy -- Well, truthfully I haven't really played this character since the Domination changes where it boosted damage. Glancing at it now, seems they REALLY boosted the damage of the attacks, in fact Total Focus has a 22 second recharge use to be 20...

Mind/Psi -- I miss the pets in this one. Also I think what killed it is how little damage I do. I didn't realize that /Psi is such small damage...

Grav/Psi -- Pretty much the same reasoning as above.

My problem mostly stems from a lack of information I think (Ie If I had known Psionic was such small damage I'd have never made one)

So here is what I am looking for if someone is willing to help:

1) What exactly does power boost boost besides the controls? I know it effects heals (Aid Self) but what other powers? Def Powers? Resistance? At level 50 its a 97% boost so that means it double the effectiveness approximately? Does it effect Carrion Creepers? I am mostly just curious what it effects that Dominators get access to? (Stamina? Health? Etc)

2) Would anyone care to summarize the pets in the various primaries? IE, Fire Imps are known to do the most damage, how significant is it to the number 2 damage pet? (Whatever that may be) How survival is the pet (Meaning any of the pets) in the late game? IE, I'd make a choice on a more survivable pet over damage if the damage pet is usually a corpse.

3) What about summarizing the various control of the primaries?

4) Finally, could someone summarize the various secondaries? Basically, overall damage with a range / melee mix, damage with going pure range, and damage with melee.

I had looked at ice as I was thinking of going solely range but then I noticed how small the numbers are on the range attacks...

Anyways, I know this is a lot but we have a very helpful community so I thank you in advance.

Edit: Also could you include thoughts on the AOE capability?

1) What exactly does power boost boost besides the controls? I know it effects heals (Aid Self) but what other powers? Def Powers? Resistance? At level 50 its a 97% boost so that means it double the effectiveness approximately? Does it effect Carrion Creepers? I am mostly just curious what it effects that Dominators get access to? (Stamina? Health? Etc)

There is quite a few posts of what power boost does. Basically, any stat with a resist in it..will not be touched. Like a resist toggle. All you mez type effects except KB will be boosted, healing, defence from things like cj, the hold prot in acco, slows, end drains. -to hit in say..earth quake, -def in the same. Think that is about it.

2) Would anyone care to summarize the pets in the various primaries? IE, Fire Imps are known to do the most damage, how significant is it to the number 2 damage pet? (Whatever that may be) How survival is the pet (Meaning any of the pets) in the late game? IE, I'd make a choice on a more survivable pet over damage if the damage pet is usually a corpse.

Imps are great damage, also fairly survivable..cause theres 3. They can be very insane though. Gremlins are pretty nice..they have a chaining kb that helps. But also have a damage aura that gets them dead. Singy is awesome for more control, and can protect you very well. Jack..I hear can be pretty good, with extra slows. Stoney is a very good tank, and his attacks have a taunt. And when slotted with the +res procs, he can almost cap his resists. Flytrap is nice with some aoes and def debuffs.

3) What about summarizing the various control of the primaries?
Um...not really a simple question. They all share the basic stuff (apart from mind). ST hold, st immob, aoe immob, aoe hold, aoe stun/sleep/confuse. The sets usually have a secondary effect to them.
Fire - dot damage
Grav - movement and jump slows
Ice - movement and rech slows
Elec - end drain
Earth - def debuffs
Mind - general awesomeness
Plant - um...you get a bush?

4) Finally, could someone summarize the various secondaries? Basically, overall damage with a range / melee mix, damage with going pure range, and damage with melee.

Again..not a simple question. They all have teh secondary effetcs (to the secondary powers..sec squared!)
Elec - end drain + a pet. Good st damage, ok aoe. Mix of melee and range
Energy - kb and stuns, great st damage, maybe a bit slow, average aoe. Mix of melee and range
Fire - damage, damage, and more damage. end recovery power, great damage, decent aoe. Mix of melee and range
Ice - slows. And..crap damage. Totally crap. I find anyway. Did have a great aoe..not so much now. Mix of melee and range. Slot brawl instead.
Psi - rech debuffs and some utility. Good aoe, was great. Late coming. Mix of melee and range
Earth - kb and stuns. Good damage, end heavy, only 2 ranged blasts. Lot of melee
Throny - def debuff and tox dot. Great mix of cones, aoes and st damage. And..spikey!

Hope that helps

How does mind solo LRSF? Does it need a certain secondary?

How much damage do creepers do? What about with procs?

How do pets hold out in incarnate trials? Dead fast?

Finally, I see you are saying Psionic is good damage now, I have 2 psionics and they still seem low. Also when comparing the attacks to the other secondaries they are low. Am I missing something? Yes I took the melee...

Thanks sent from my IPHONE.

1. Power Boost increases the DURATIONS of Stuns, Sleeps, Confuses, Terrorizes (Fear powers), Immobilizes, and Holds. It boosts run and flight speeds, to hit buffs, endurance drains, heals, and defense buffs.

Power boost is available in the earth, energy, and ice secondaries. So, except for endurance drains in the electric primary most of what power boost will do for you is boost your controls since doms lack the other attributes that power boost improves. This can be a boon since Dominators have significantly shorter control durations than a controller.

Not all Dom primaries are equal and some Dom primaries are more equal than others. To utilize power boost to best effect you want a primary power set that has lots of controls (esp AoE controls) and fewer pet and pseudo pet powers. Top contenders in the category are Mind and Plant least utility comes with Grav, Fire, and Ice.

2. For Pets, High damage means low survivability. So with the exception of Plant I would rank the pets as Fire, Elec, Ice, Earth, Grav and you can turn the order around to get survivability.

There are 3 caveats with the above:

first in high end content your pets do not last long, even the ones that are high on survivability. You will probably be disappointed in them, late game (with the possible exception of Singy).

Second is that pets that use AoEs do not survive long at all. Plant is the worst offender here with Gremlins being next. The plant pet is especially bad since there is only 1 pet, it tends to open with it's AoE immob (injudicious use of AoE immobs is one of the most common causes of new dom player defeats), and so it draws alot of aggro early in the fight and frequently dies in the Alpha. The plant pet is about as tough as Jack Frost but will need recasting far more often.

Third is that with any power set that has an AoE confuse the entire spawn becomes your pet. Mind tops the list here since it has an AoE confuse AND a single target confuse, Plant and Elec are potentially tied for second since plant's confuse affects the spawn faster and is available much earlier in the career though Elec's has a longer range.

3. Mind has arguably the best control since it has many AoE control powers AND a single target version of each (excepting fear) to stack outside of domination and low durations outside of domination means more AoEs give you more layers of control.

Plant is the primary that was actually designed for Dominators. All the rest of the primaries are ported controller primaries and have varying weaknesses (except for Mind) due to having been designed for controllers.

Earth is a very good dominator primary and has many soft and hard control options as well as some debuffs.

Elec is also a strong contender and has multiple control options. Conductive Aura is one of the set's key powers but is a melee power.

Grav, Fire and Ice are all fairly poor dominator primaries in regard to control. Ice and Fire are meant to be played in melee range.

Ice features only one AoE hard control and it is a PBAoE power. Most of Ice's controls are PBAoE or are ranged soft controls.

Fire has 2 AoE hard controls, a stun and a hold. The hold is a PBAoE, the stun is ranged. Out side of domination and in the early levels you'll use both the stun and then the hold to eliminate a spawn leaving you either waiting for an AoE control to recharge or going pull/single target which is annoying for a power set that is supposed to be AoE centric and in melee most of the time.

Grav suffers from having weak choices for control coupled with having 3 of it's first 4 power choices being single target damage powers. These powers are largely unneeded since your secondary powers are mainly damage powers. Dimension shift is an intangible power that is mostly useful for a controller to remove a boss from the fight while the controller deals with minions and lieutenants. When the dominator has domination up a single target control is better since it will one shot control a boss and you can still do damage to it.

I would not recommend any of the last 3 sets to a beginning dom player and would only recommend grav to an experienced dom player that potentially enjoys self inflicted pain.

4. Unfortunately during the revamp most of the dom secondaries got "vanilla-ized" and they are fairly similar except for secondary effects. A few things to note:

Doms are (poorly) designed to be in melee and at range. Doms have a higher damage modifier on their melee attacks than on their ranged attacks. (This is bad for a reason I'll explain in a bit.) Most Assault sets have a cone power and a PBAoE power for AoE damage. These 2 types of power in an assault set do not play well together. If you are mainly in melee you'll get little use out of the cone power since their arcs are not wide. If you play mainly at range you may never use the PBAoE power.

Thorny has the largest number of PBAoE and cone powers. Most of them have long animations which isn't a huge problem if you have long lasting AoE controls like Mind, Plant, Elec and Earth.

The rest are about what you would expect. Fire does extra damage as it's secondary effect (except for flares, what's up with that?).

Elec does end drain, Energy does knock back and chance to stun, Ice does slow and -rech, psi does -rech, earth hits hard in melee range and has lots of KD or KU.

The only other thing to note is that Icy has the fastest animating powers of the assault sets. It also burns more endurance because of that but that isn't a problem if.......

You are a perma dom. The performance of a perma dom is magnitudes above that of a non-perma dom. You have increased control magntude, increased control duration, perma(ish) mez protection, a full bar of endurance every 90 seconds (or faster) and you benefit EVEN MORE from having a secondary with power boost in it.

Primary power sets that have lots of controls in them (especially long duration ranged AoE controls) like Mind, Plant, Earth, and Elec really get a huge boost from perma. The other power sets get a decent boost but (and here is the problem I mentioned above) the sets that are designed to play in melee will have you suffering the alpha attack before your controls kick in. You really need to build with some defense set bonuses in mind and few defense sets give recharge bonuses as well making Perma hard AND expensive to achieve and likely not worth the effort for someone who isn't a dedicated dom player.

I will say this if you stick with a dom long enough to perma one you'll love it as perma eliminates most of the frustrating or annoying things about playing the low level dom. Perma means that you can play at range and skip the PBAoE and not really miss it because your cone attack will be back up quickly.

One last thing to mention about Mind, Plant, and Elec. They are the easiest primaries to perma since there are so many varying types of control. All 3 sets have an AoE sleep and an AoE confuse which can slot the purple sets that are the easiest and cheapest to get making perma a reality much sooner in your career.

To answer your AoE damage concerns, the easiest remedy is to take Fire as your APP. Fireball and Rain of Fire make up any short comings that you may have in your secondary power set.

With all of the above things in mind I would recommend a Mind/Ice/Fire as a good choice for a long time player but newish dom player to start out with. Strong single target controls to begin with means the low levels go by fairly quickly and without too much pain. As you level you add in AoE controls and AoE damage speeding up the process. When you have your tier 9 control slotted up you become a power house when domination is up, especially with power boost to compliment it. When Domination is down Power Boost helps you get over the rough spots. When you get to be a perma Dom you go from being a mez protected, AoE mez slinging power house, part time to being a power house full time.

Add in Alpha Nerve Total Radial Revamp or Nerve Radial Paragon and you become a minor deity having further boosted your hold and confuse durations.

All in all the most satisfying Dom I have ever played.

Ultimus try out a Plant/Fire Dom buddy. They are not only fun but deadly and during the end game they can hold their own on Lams and bafs.

Mind/Fire is king.

Fire/Icy - PB+Flashfire+Fire Cages, Chilling Embrace+Hot Feet, Imps+Ice Attacks. It's tasty. And I don't even have mine IO'd/Perma-Dom yet.

Interesting, Confuse works through Purple Triangles? I know Sleep does...

My hands down favorite dom of all time has been ice/fire/ice. So ice slick doesn't benefit from domination... that doesn't mean it isn't an amazing power. Low levels can be rough, but a high end build works very very well. Most high end builds do but I love the way ice *can* be made much better. I always throw out ice slick, sleet, ice storm and by that point everything is so busy flopping around it's okay to jump right into the mob letting arctic air do its thing. Glacier is a rock solid power at this point too and is up every other mob. Ice shield and IO's push some good defense numbers for surviving. Once everything is locked down and debuffed fire makes it easy to finish off what's left.


This combo excels more on teams and is good for DPS and some soft controls against AV's. Sleet's huge -res -def dubuff helps any dominator set out but fits thematically with ice/fire and makes /fire do that much more damage. Sleet and ice storm also add a little extra to the slows that ice already has. Solo is pretty easy too but I prefer fighting fewer enemies that are higher level. The sleep is nice for solo play too and a cheap purple set mule. Jack frost is okay, but I feel like ice control should get two of him because on his own he isn't nearly as great as the other control pets imo. The AoE damage potential between combustion, fire breath, sleet, ice storm, and the judgement power are pretty good. Not the best but not bad by far.


Anyways... it's a fun thematic set in which ice control is complimented very well by fiery assaults damage and ice mastery's tools. It's very flashy too.. Glacier is my favorite power ever because everyone on the team knows when you completely lockdown a mob.


So overall sure there are probably better combos on paper but ice/fire was a blast to take to 50 and is my main pvp/pve character.

In the past I've informally broken the primary control sets down into 3 rough categories, as follows:

Elemental Damage - Fire, Plant
Elemental Debuff - Earth, Ice, Electric
Psionic - Mind (and Illusion, but that's Controller-only)

Gravity is halfway between debuff and damage and not particularly great at either.

Anyway, the EDam sets are very straight forward, not particularly flexible, and contribute direct damage. The EDebuff sets are low damage on their own, contain high debuffs, are somewhat flexible, and in some cases are very dependent on strategy (less so with Earth versus the other two). All of the Elemental sets are very in-your-face with the enemies. The Psionic sets rely a lot on setting up the fight to your advantage ahead of time and/or getting the drop discretely.

Wow Arcanaville's post makes me think differently now... Few other questions.

1) If confuse is that powerful, why even need to permahold an AV? You could perma confuse the Av even when solo and just beat him down since a confused opponent wont hit you.

2) I know its speculation on our parrs, but why haven't Doms gotten Illusion? Is it numerically imbalanced? (Arcanaville?) Would it be OP on Doms?

To me it's much more a question of how you want to play than what the different sets do.

Do you want to play in melee? elec/, ice/ and fire/ primaries do a good job there. If you'd rather play more of a ranged, blaster-y kind of dominator, earth/, mind/ and to a slightly lesser extent plant/ are what you want.

In the secondaries, earth, thorns, elec and energy make their living in melee range. Fire is the most ranged-heavy, and psi and ice are mixed.

As with most other ATs, fire will pump out the most raw damage. Mind/fire is great for reasons discussed; plant/fire seems pretty great too, and my earth/fire/fire is a terror at killing large groups.

People seem to like elec/earth and elec/ice a lot, and fire/ also pairs well with the more melee-oriented sets because hot feet is great.

edit: illusion (probably) hasn't been ported to dominators because it's kind of an ill-fitting set for what a dominator does. Only three of it's powers would even be affected by domination, and it lacks a lot of the harder control that dominators rely on for survival in the absence of a buff/debuff secondary.

I'm holding out hope for a dominator light/illusion set whenever the new one comes out, though

First of all, if you think /Psi and /Icy are low damage, I'd say the only secondary for you is going to be /Fire.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ultimus 1) If confuse is that powerful, why even need to permahold an AV? You could perma confuse the Av even when solo and just beat him down since a confused opponent wont hit you.

If you're soloing an AV you need to do enough damage to overcome their regen. Confuse has a long cast time and does no damage in that time. That alone will probably push your DPS below where you need it to overcome their regen. The primaries usually used for soloing AVs have holds with short cast times. I usually see Mind/ and Fire/ used, though others have done it. The holds also do damage.