Machariel

I think probably an Arachnos Huntsman. They bring a lot of buffs and debuffs and decent damage and they do all of it without even trying - just turn on leadership toggles, put venom grenade in your attack rotation, and you're good to go.

Blazing Bolt fortunately works just like any other snipe, and is an excellent power. However, because Fiery Assault's build up power doesn't give +tohit, you don't get as much of the bonus damage from having up to 22% tohit 🙂

Titan Weapons Titan Weapons War Mace

I think it's best on stalkers, provided you basically ignore the combo mechanics and go Ablating -> Sweeping -> Ablating -> Assassin's Blades. The only combo you really want is the Sweep combo (Build Up -> Assassin's -> Ablating), which is fine because you get to use every time your Build Up recharges, which is constantly because you're a stalker with the stalker ATOs. If you're not feeling a stalker I'd say put in on a scrapper and pair it with /bio because /bio is OP 😂

Dart Burst is really good when you're leveling up between level 6 and level 12, when you get Spin. 😂 It's pretty bad and the patron AoEs are really great, although you need to take another power from the patron pool first.

For reference I looked into the numbers - Strangler with 6 damage procs (including 2 purple procs) is 187 dpa which is indeed quite good, although, pretty much any power hits like a truck if you stuff it full of damage procs. Note that it only does that at level 50+ since it requires the purple procs to do so. With the 4 procs you can slot into it on the way up to 50 (since the OP is slow-leveling the character) (gladiator's javelin, neuronic shutdown, ghost widow's embrace, gladiator's net) it does 110 dpa which also isn't bad. From what I remember leveling dominators you really want to slot for accuracy/recharge/duration, and not slotting for hold duration will make it harder to hold bosses that have some mez protection since it will be more difficult to stack holds. As some numbers to compare, flares is about 90 DPA and fire blast is about 175 dpa (with both powers enhanced for 100% damage). So overall... it depends 😂 i can see good arguments either way and as you say it depends on what sets you have and your playstyle.

I think damage procs are not really necessary in strangler and roots for dominators. When leveling you definitely want recharge slotted in it which is kind of a nombo with procs and once you're at high level and tricked out you won't be using your ST hold nearly as often (it's still a core power but mostly to keep bosses locked down after you've mopped up all of their buddies). In any case Flares does more DPA than strangler even with 2 damage procs in it. Ditto Roots, as an AoE immobilize its generally not something you'll be spamming on cooldown. For my money I just 4 slot basilisk's gaze in strangler and vines and call it a day. Carrion Creepers should definitely be stuffed with damage procs as much as possible although again when leveling up the old fashioned way you probably want to slot it for recharge first, and then procs. As you get more set bonuses and global rech you can swap some (in fact nearly all) of the recharge enhancements with more damage procs. I don't see any additional way to emphasize the 'nature' element. You could go /ice I guess (plants need rain?) and /ice is extremely strong (hello sleet). maybe leviathan mastery would be up your alley as well? General things to keep in mind: 1) Plant Control has 5 powers that can be argued to be "skippable": Entangle (ST immob), spore burst (AoE sleep), Spirit Tree (+regen beacon), Vines (AoE hold), and fly trap (pet), in roughly that order from most skippable to least skippable. 2) Seeds of Confusion is a strong contender for "best power in the game." Carrion Creepers is up there too. 3) Note that your 3-4 best attacks (Blazing Bolt, Blaze, and Fire Ball / Rain of Fire if you go fire mastery) all become available between levels 35 and 38. Fire Breath is a pretty bad attack but it's one of your only AoEs for quite a while. 4) Dominators are late bloomers in every sense of the word. 5) Anything with plant control and permadom will wind up being a very strong character, so it's hard to go too too wrong 🙂

Kinetic melee is a great choice for low level tough content. You get your main ST chain in your first 4 powers. Long fights help you get the most out of Bursts 100% crit from hide. You can skip placate, focused burst, and concentrated strike. I love dual blades but waiting until lvl26 for sweeping strike is kind of rough for low level stuff.

Nobody could have predicted that, 7 years after the end of the game, we would finally get Clown Summoning after all. o7 Best timeline.

I still use Ouro for a few things because for some zones the Ouro teleport is in a much more convenient location than where the base teleport drops you (Talos is my go-to example since Ouro drops you on the hill next to the train station whereas the base teleporter drops you like on the moon or something). Plus i can save a tiiiny fraction of time going through Ouro since I don't have to move at all in the base >_> also Ouro is a chill place to hang out. I always find myself missing the ouro portal when I don't have it. Go Ouro!!

KM absolutely slaps on a stalker. The two big selling points are first that Kinetic Melee's Assassin's strike is the fastest in the game at 0.67 seconds, and that Burst is a guaranteed crit from Hide, so there's two ways that KM is stronger on a stalker compared to other ATs. You also get a complete attack chain very early as your T1+T2+T3+AS is all you need for single target. Concentrated Strike is unfortunately pretty bad for sustained DPS so unless you're fighting things that die in 2-3 hits anyway it brings you down a lot. Focused Burst is a decent ranged attack as well if you want the ability to play from range and supplement your patron pool powers, but like CS you'd take it for utility/fun/concept and not for its damage.

Plant/Psi/Ice is probably the most powerful overall Dominator build. Seeds (use the purple proc) and Carrion Creepers (with 5 damage procs) are just ludicrously powerful and make absolute mincemeat out of mobs. Procced out creepers can take out whole spawns of +4/x8 in pretty reasonable time almost all by itself, which sounds like an exaggeration but I swear is true. Meanwhile /Psi gets you Drain Psyche which gives you the two tools to deal with AVs that Dominators generally lack: sustain and debuff. Ice Mastery gets you Sleet which is a super strong res debuff that can also take an additional 2 -res procs and some more AoE in Ice Storm. Personally, I don't spend much time soloing AVs and my initial character concept - 11 years ago - was plant/fire/fire, before I really knew about IOs and DPA and all that good stuff. I'm happy to hold a torch for plant/fire/fire which is an absolute f-ing monster on its own as you have the ridiculous AoE and control of Plant and the nutty single target damage of Fiery Assault, thanks to Blaze and Blazing Bolt. Compared to Plant/Psi/Ice it will chew through regular bosses and maybe EBs faster but the build kind of hits a wall against AVs. My build is below. It's probably not quite optimal since I should really be taking Fire Blast, and Fire Breath is not a great power, but I kind of like incinerate and it's literally the only place where I can slot Hecatomb. (I don't know how great the pet is, since I skipped it for concept reasons)

Boy howdy that seems like an awful lot of assumptions.

I highly recommend using only the single slot in it - your slots will be put to better use in powers that help keep you from dying in the first place 🙂

This strikes me as being as good an explanation as any. I wonder how many people at NCsoft right now were even there back in 2012.

I've been playing a Dual Blades / Energy / Mu and a Kinetic Melee / Energy / Mu with almost identical slotting (Synthblades/Synthwaves on Excelsior) and they're both at about the same Incarnate levels. Both of them have pretty good AoE as stalkers go. Burst is a decent attack with a very small 8' radius, which isn't great, but if the team needs AoE from a stalker then mobs are probably getting really tight and you can really leverage that 100% crit chance from hide (unique among Stalker AoE attacks). I think Dual Blades is probably better though as your main attach chain includes a decent AoE (Sweeping Strike) and you get to use the Sweep combo every time your Build Up ATO goes off. If you need more AoE then you also have access to Thousand Cuts, although I wound up respeccing out of it. I believe both sets are near the higher end of ST dps too. Dual Blades gets to leverage 2 -res procs in its attack chain and Kinetic Melee has a nutty fast Assassin's Strike and 3 fast attacks to use (and build focus with) in between ASes.

It keeps its boost or attunement, and you can definitely use it in a respec or email it to yourself and use it on a different character (I've done it several times). I believe you can mail it to a different account if you're so inclined as I don't believe any enhancements are account-locked, but I haven't confirmed that myself.

I would like to amend my previous comments on Concentrated Strike. While it is fun sometimes to deliberately chain build ups together to power up for a big burst, and once in a while it's useful to have an attack with big alpha, it definitely has no place in a sustained attack chain. The key thing I was missing is that on top of the no crits, you could be building stacks of assassin's focus faster and having a chance to crit (and having 3 more chances to recharge build up), and a big part of KM (and I guess stalkers generally) is really hitting that AS as fast as possible. Since ditching it for Quick Strike I've definitely been slamming that crit AS button a lot faster. So now I would recommend that if you take the power at all it should probably be used to hold set bonuses.

Dominators are, in general, late bloomers. You have a lot of powers and they all need to be pretty heavily slotted to be effective so leveling up in the early game can be challenging. as you'll have to frequently reapply your control powers in order to keep yourself safe while you DPS things down. Additionally many of Dominators best attacks and abilities are late in their secondary pools or in their (very excellent) ancillary/patron power options. Dominators shine with IOs and permadom, which generally lets them apply one or two big control powers to the entire mob and then go to town with their excellent single target damage. Many doms wind up with excellent AoE as well.

I think he meant specifically the long-animation version of the attack.

I think you should probably take a travel power and if you don't have a good in-character explanation for it, just say that when you're using it it's like the narrator is doing some exposition. . . .

It's amazing to me that anybody could possibly say with a straight face, "when I called you stupid, it was a statement of fact, but I understand why you felt insulted - you were too stupid to understand the difference" and NOT expect anybody to feel insulted. 🤔😅

Even with all the streamlining tools that we have today, I still don't enjoy levels 1 to 25 very much overall, even when exemplared down from 50. So I'm extremely glad that it's now thoroughly optional if I so choose, and I'm making more characters and seeing much more of the game's content - at all levels - because it's now so easy for me to roll up a character to level 50, kit them out with a full set of IOs, and then I feel like I can almost grab a new character for whatever I want to do. I'm sure I'd feel differently if I had started playing the game from the very beginning, but I didn't, and back on live (as a college student) I only ever had 2 or 3 characters in as many years that I really felt like I got to play. Now I have a solid dozen in six months and I'm a Real Adult (TM). So while I wouldn't go out and say that early CoH "sucked" I will say that if I were forced to go back to those times I probably wouldn't play at all. YMMV. But of course the fact that we are playing at all is still totally remarkable. ❤️

I'd definitely suggest going for a controller with a close-range based support set - anything that focuses on PBAoEs or just something that works well in melee, like /kinetics or /time. Some control primaries work very well in melee as well like, say, electric control. A melee focused dominator might be in your style as well. they get enough melee attacks to feel like a melee character and you can make them pretty sturdy and lean hard on the primary powerset for active mitigation.

I'd say the only reason you'd want villains in a fight scattered would be if/when you're taking them on one at a time. So this would be things like. . . soloing tough content at low levels, I guess. Or if you're a character without very much AoE, like a Martial Arts Stalker, it's probably not worth the time to worry about them getting clumped up since you can't use the situation anyway. This is pretty much how I remember playing Goldside - tons of tough enemies that are scattered evenly around large maps. 😕 😅