Help with Dominator Secondary...

I have a Plant / Energy Dominator that I have been thinking of re-rolling. It was a Dominator I made when Issue 6 first launched. Back then, my focus was on Power Boost because I had thought of Dominator's more as controllers rather then damage dealers. Jumping forward, now that I see the end game (Incarnates) and control is kind of useless in them and damage is king.

So I have been thinking of rerolling for a better secondary. Fire seems like the best choice but I wanted to get opinions.

1) Are there any secondaries where I can deal a LOT of AOE damage while maintaining good single target DPS? I know Psi can deal a lot of AOE damage but its single target is bad? (Also I remember Psi before the adjustments... when it was an AOE monster with a huge AOE)

2) Is there anyway to get a lot of AOE power from the ancillary/patrol pools? If so, I suppose I could stick with my current setup.

3) What Doms can fight mostly at range?

Pretty much my goal is to have a Dom that can go into a +8 swarm, toss out Carrion Creepers/Seeds of Confusion, and AOE down the spawn and wipe out the bosses with good single target DPS.

1) Dom secondaries seem to follow a formula consistenty, at least for aoes: 1 pbaoe, 1 cone. /Earth may be a special case where the pbaoe is a dmg aura, and has a targeted aoe rather than a cone. /Energy, as I'm sure you know, doesn't have the cone or any ranged aoe. Psi used to be king of aoe, but psi shockwave was "normalized" and isn't the monster it used to be. So, the answer for damage, like for basically any powerset in this game, is probably /Fire. Since you seem to want to stay at range, that rules out Combustion, and your fire aoe is Fire Breath. There's also Embrace of Fire, which boosts Fire attacks and leads us to...

2) Rain of Fire and Fireball from Fire Mastery pool. There's not much more to say to answer this question.

3) Any dom can play from range. Some will be more effective in melee (Ice/, Fire/, /Earth for example) but you can always choose to not focus on the melee powers in those sets.

/Thorns has the most available AoE and all the AoE dovetails together very well but it's not stay at range AoE.

That said a Plant/Fire/Fire dom is very awesome. I'd have to agree with the above.

From testing many secondaries from the 1-50 range, and spending a good chunk of time playing and seeing others play it, I say /Thorns Assault to be the best secondary for AoE-liciousness. Lots of AoE, and good ones at that, for you to choose from. It also makes for a very neat costume.

99% of the builds I see of /Fire assault are ST oriented dmg and ranged.

Plant/Thorns is a fantastic combination and the most thematic.

Now, here is another option, if you do not feel like going plant assault, then what other secondary is good for AoE and ST dmg, go dark assault. Dark assault has Nightfall and engulfing darkness, you have to jump in and out to make the best use of both, and practice will make you better, but it's good.


Really, no other secondary beats /Thorns assault for AoE goodness.

Wow so Psi really got gutted then? Aside from Drain Psyche, whats the point of it anymore?

For secondaries, Psy has very good solid damage and good AoE...but it is far more a DPS set, as it tends to have lots of medium damage attacks that you use in turn than big attacks that pack a wallop. It should be noted that psy scream now does even more damage than psy shockwave, so it's an integral part of /psy's AoE. As mentioned /psy has great -rehcarge debuffs, but also has a great number of other side effects: the PbAoE stuns, it has a 100% KB to get thing out of your face, it has an immobilize in one of its best ranged attacks that will also take the dominator +damage proc.

Playing 'pure' range on any dominator will leave you in trouble as far as a pure min/maxer perspective as your biggest, best damage will always happen close.

Most ancillaries/patron pools give only one ranged AoE attack, fire being the only one with two. With gobs of +racharge, you can use rain of fire/fireball with your cone (most secondaries have a cone) for ranged damage, but that's with lots of expensive IO's. my fire/fiery/fire dominator went this direction and simply melts through all enemies, but he does get close for things as well.

Purely ranged, as mentioned, you'll have difficulty. /Dark will skip using its very good PbAoE often, as well as it's heavy-hitting tier 9 melee. Fire is a favorite as it skips its one melee and its PBAoe, (people dislike the DoT nature of the PbAoE at times) but still gets blase at range and consume is needed less often. Psy, with its buffed Psy Scream/Mental blast does better at range than before actually, but still needs some crowd diving for saturated Drain Psyche. Thorns has the most 'ranged' AoE, but misses its good pbAoE and its cones are both medium rather than full long range. Icy and earth are both better closer, as they have their heavier damage centered there. Electric has decent range, but not very good AoE.

I say go with /devices.

Earth/Devices Dom could be the new hotness.

Should the snipe changes survive in their current proposal (22% to hit = quick snipe), I think psi assault will be able to build a fairly good ranged attack chain with Mental Blast, Subdue, and Psionic Lance.

I also have a question about Carrion Creepers, I know it summons an invisible psuedo pet which makes the vines. To spawn the most vines, your character *cannot* be at range but must be in melee correct?