Suggestions for a Fun Dominator Combo

Typically I'm more of a melee toon player, but was wanting to try something different that I haven't played much before and decided that I wanted to try out a dominator.

Can anyone give me suggestions for a good, fun, but effective power set combination for the AT? Thinking either Dark Control or Gravity Control as the primary and would like to avoid Fire Assault and Thorny Assault as a secondary if possible since I have other characters with similar powers.

Between Dark and Grav while avoiding Fire and Thorns, I would suggest a Dark/Psi Dom.

i'm messing with a fire/earth dom right now. pretty darn fun and powerful. fire is not the best control set but it done dish out some nice damage.

My dominator actually started my squishy spree as it feels very rewarding to see it all come together.

Anyway, for whatever it's worth my personal philosophy is to play the stronger control sets on a dominator and damage on a controller. I also solo mostly and try for large spawns as soon as possible.

Leading into

Dark Control over Gravity as most of gravities damage is more useful on a controller in my eyes.

Psi/Dark - Good aoe, nice survivability. Psi probably has a better survivability tool in drain. Darks -to hit stacks well with dark. Psi is a much longer climb to aoe but probably comes out ahead in that regard.

My baby dark/dark is still learning how not to get flattened by large spawns compared to his elec/psi brother but the pairing is popular enough I'm sure you can get a dom vet to chime in on it.


Edit: Since you usually play melee thinking only in terms of that I might revise something I said. Gravity/Earth or Grav/Energy should feel very smashy and melee a lot. That way you have a melee'ing dom. I'd probably choose elec or earth control instead but I'm an elec/earth fan and haven't ever heard much good about grav.

Even with the tweaks Grav isn't all that good.

For a first time Dom the best primary is the one and only that was actually designed for Doms - Plant.

The strong primaries for Doms are: Plant, Mind, Earth, Elec, and Dark.

If you like melee range SMASH! Earth Assault is the way to go. Earth Assault has lots of KD as secondary effects, because of that it combines "best" with a primary that has no -knock in it's AoE Immob, that would be Elec (and grav, but grav is a pretty weak primary and has -knock in it's AoE hold instead).

If you like the strong control aspect of the dom primary then you want a secondary that has a "power boost" type power in it. That would be Energy, Earth, Ice, and Dark.

The 2 primaries that get maximum utility (ie: boosts the largest number of primary powers) from power boost are Mind and Dark.

I levelled a Mind/Dark Dom to 50 over DXP weekend - having loads of fun with it, and highly recommend it for those like me who don't like pet powers, (well, unless you consider confused mobs attacking each other while you rain down destruction on them all as 'pets', Muhahahaha...) but enjoy locking down your enemies and mercilessly draining the life from their quivering bodies.

I'm still sanding the edges off of her build, but once I'm finished, I'll try and remember to post it (though since I'm going for Perma-Hasten with liberal use of purples, don't expect it to be cheap, hehe)

I started rolling a Dark Control/Psionic Assault Dominator over the weekend. So far she seems fun. Now playing around with MIDS to get a build I like. Never really got too far into a dominator build before and I'm thinking I need more slots. LOL.

Generally I don't fully Set IO out a toon, usually stick with common IOs and as I get them, or if I end up REALLY liking the character I'll start putting in set IOs.

So far thinking to take combat jumping, hasten, super speed, and burnout as pool powers. Then going with Psionic Mastery for the epic and taking Link Minds, Mind Over Body, and World of Confusion to boost up defenses and resistances some. Like I said though, its a work in progress.

Anyone have an suggestions on a decent fun build? I would like her to hold her own soloing as well as be good for teams. Not the best of all, but useful and first and foremost, FUN! As I said before, generally I don't fully IO out toons with set IOs and stick to the common IOs. Lately I've been more of a casual player so I don't have a ton of extra inf laying around, nor the desire to spend playing time working the markets or whatever to build the inf up to make the latest uber build. Maybe some frankenslotting options with some cheaper set IOs is open.

Also any suggestions on powers that I should skip or what the key powers are for the set?

My preferred primaries are Plant, Fire and Dark. Well, Plant is my Fav, but Fire is nice, and Dark isn't bad, and it's new. For Secondaries I would suggest /Fire or /Dark. The new Dark Assault is very nice. The cone kinda sucks, but Smite, Gloom, and MG are very nice single target, the PBAE is quite good, and it's got a heal in Life Drain, and LD dps isn't terrible. That plus Midnight Grasp will take the ATO proc, and that is very good.

Ok, just reread your comment about IOs. In that case I would say Plant/Dark is my main suggestion. Seeds and Carrion creepers are very nice, even without an IOed out build. Dark Assault has plenty of good attacks, and it's AE is one of the better ones. Though you can't really put together a good range attack chain, so if you want that, then I would suggest Plant/Fire.

One comment about the Epic pools. Obviously you can do what you want, but the Fire and Ice pools are very very good for Dominators. Fire just has a ton of damage, and Ice gets a great debuff in Sleet and some extra damage from Ice Storm.