oedipus_tex

IMO /Dark, /Psi, or /Sonic are all excellent secondaries for Ice Control. Dark and Psi are the "tankier" versions, /Sonic brings useful -Resist.

On Dominators World of Confusion is a Mag 2 +1 Confuse and actually a decent power. Stacked with Arctic Air it covers for the gaps in Confusion coverage and makes it a lot harder (not impossible though) for enemies to punch you through the effect, especially when Ice Slick is also added to the loadout.

Now that it's feasible to take all 5 powers in the APPs, the Psi APP is especially attractive for Ice Dominators IMO. You get a second source of mezz protection should you get knocked out of Domination mode + huge amounts of Psi Defense, decent Smash/Lethal/Psi resistance, decent baseline +Defense to all element types, and two places to slot Luck of the Gambler, and World of Confusion to stack a second source of Confusion on top of your Arctic Air. Psionic Tornado's -Recharge stacks with the rest of your sources of -Recharge to help you floor enemy Recharge values better. This APP was always good, but now that you can take all five of the powers with any Assault set it's extra juicy. The Ice APP is great for similar reasons. All five powers are excellent and compliment your powerset combo.

Personally if I were trying for this I'd look at a secondary set like Dark Affinity, for the -ToHit and -Damage layered with heals and some +defense and +resistance. IMO a lot of people sleep on Dark's (and also Storm's and Cold's) defensive stealth aura power. These powers are actually as good, possibly better in some ways, than the Sonic and Force Field big bubble powers, due to their huge radius, which the pet will under most circumstances never leave. Dark Affinity's toggle power also got a huge buff now that getting mezzed only temporarily suppresses it. The pet will sometimes die, but as long as it doesn't go down in less than ~70 seconds you can just resummon it. Dark's buffs should keep it running more or less maintenance free unless you run into an AV, at which point except for the Illusion invulnerable pet most pets are no longer very useful anyway.

Dark Control is a really solid set you can pair with almost anything, but there are a couple of stand out features that might drive your decision. Main thing to know is that Dark's -ToHit effect is greatly increased by Power Boost effects. Power Boost is extra effective in + - ToHit (and + - Defense) powers because the boost applies to all stats equally, where enhancements for ToHit and Defense are much more limited in effect. That means any time you can pair a -ToHit set like Dark with a Power Boost effect you squeeze more value out of it than may be initially apparent. Sets that have a Power Boost style effect are Energy, Dark, Icy, Earth, and the new Sonic. In addition to these options, there are a few other sets that I think do particularly well: Savage was mentioned above and is just an overall fun and satisfying set, with some reasonably useful tools for managing heals/recovery Fire Assault has excellent single target damage, can be played mostly at range, and has fewer struggles with endurance than other sets Psi Assault, if you invest a lot of recharge IOs, covers both endurance and hp/sec due to its Drain Psyche power, which in combo with Dark's -ToHit makes you very difficult for enemies to kill

Cognitive is reasonably effective paired with Arctic Air, but not so much that other options aren't viable. I recommend going the route that does the higher damage versus the route that does the higher Confuse for the most balanced results.

I do both. Once I come up with a concept I like, I tend to roll it as a few different versions of itself. A few of my concepts have been 4 or 5 different archetypes. Sometimes I settle on a specific, set combo, and sometimes I float between the different concepts. There's no cost to rename a toon if you decide to switch around later.

The main thing you should consider when dealing with Symphony Control characters is making sure you slot the stun cone power as an attack. You'll want Accuracy, Stun, Damage, and Recharge in this power. It is the most important power in the set, being your most significant source of reliable control, comboed with dealing excellent AoE damage that can otherwise be hard to come by on a Dominator. The rest of the set is up to you. I'd take the Hold power for sure, then whatever controls you feel you want. The Terrify and Sleep cones are fine, especially since the Sleep one is autohit.

Fire/Nature is a similar beast in a lot of ways and also worth checking out.

Put me in the camp of folks who sees this as a "While you *can* do it, it's usually not ideal to" issue. If you're determined to go this route, using base buffs and Ageless Destiny can reduce the amount of global recharge you need to hit for permadom. The base buff is +20% recharge, Ageless adds a variable amount, mentally I think of it as being around an additional +20% recharge or so, but it will vary depending on how often you hit the button. Ageless also provides endurance so is useful for that reason. That said, I consider skipping Hasten an offbrand decision. Unusual builds are part of the charm of this game, so feel free to explore that route if you want. However, I also tend to feel Dominators benefit a lot from +Defense, in some ways more than other classes, because they have so little to protect them when their controls fail. Part of the reason Hasten is so popular is because it covers so much ground in a single slot, which leaves you the opportunity to use your other slots for defense and procs. Dominators who find themselves able to skip Ageless and go for Destiny Barrier are also in my experience a lot more likely to rise to the top of the pack.

Since you are so new, I don't what to overwhelm you with a complete build. I've provided a "training build" below that will hopefully highlight some key things I'd personally chase if I were making this character. The main synergy between Force Field and Illusion is plenty of places to slot Luck of the Gambler +Recharge IOs. These cost about 6 million each. Each will grant you +7.5% global recharge for each one you slot. You can slot up to five of these in your build. Force Field will provide you some personal Defense, but no healing or Resistance. You can help cover some of this by grabbing IOs to place in Health and Stamina. These will also help with Endurance costs. You're probably going to want at least one Resistance power, both for the Resistance itself, but also so you can slot Steadfast Protection and Gladiator's Armor +3% Defense procs. For your epic power pool, if you're playing Force Field, I usually recommend the Primal Pool, for Power Boost. Power Boost will double the strength of your shields when you cast them, making your contribution to the team twice as good as normal. It's a must take for me as a Force Fielder. You can choose between Group or Superior Invisibility. I'd personally take Group Invisibility to boost your teammate's Defense that little bit extra. I believe you can also Power Boost this, but it's not a lot of Defense. It will make them invisible until attacked, though. You have plenty of power slots left over. You can take any of the powers you want from what's available or in pools. I left these blank so you could see the stuff that I'd flag as typical of this type of build more easily. The build: For a build that's a bit further along, here's a mid-way build where we've gotten Ranged defense to the soft cap, and the recharge on Phantom Army down to just a 6 second or so gap. There's a proc in Energy Torrent that provides +recharge when you hit a lot of enemies that brings this down a bit more if you're spamming that power a lot. Again, neither of these builds are meant to imply you don't slot your other stuff, they're just showing the key powers and how you could structure your approach.

Oh yeah, there's that. Fold Space specifically prevents them from being teleported again for a time after it hits them.

The only situation I can think of that will prevent a teleport is if the enemy is experiencing a knockback. You cannot teleport enemies mid-kb. One upshot of this if you happen to slot Stupefy: Chance for Knockback in Wormhole, the knock will cancel the teleport. If you're sure that the enemies aren't being knocked back before the WH cast it would be helpful if you could make a video so we could see what's happening. Wormhole should teleport the same things that Fold Space does.

Yeah that Absorb proc in Health is really nice. One of the best things about it is the sliding scale where it is more likely to trigger if you are low on HP. Sometimes it firing is my signal that I'm about to drop dead, so even if the proc itself isn't lifesaving, the on-screen alert it triggers can be useful.

Overall I think the set is likely to do well on either AT. IMO the main advantage on a Dominator is the damage from the opening Stun can be applied without worrying about Containment. A Controller will only be doing the full damage against enemies they can Sleep or Immobilize first, which likely means no Containment damage on Boss level enemies. The set having high damage in a few of its powers is useful for lifting the normally-low-damage Controller a bit, but that extra damage is also useful on a Dom, because in this case (unlike Gravity) the powers delivering the damage are controls you'd be casting anyway, not blasts that mimic Assault set powers. A Symphony Dominator thus can open with a high damage AoE Stun and follow that up with meaty attacks, like the Dom's very high damage snipe. On a Dominator I would probably take the Sleep, Fear, Stun, and both Hold powers. The Confusion power is somewhat optional on Dominator. It's too bad it's not available until level 6. If I had a choice between it and the Hold power it's hard to say which one I'd take. The Hold is useful for Hamidon, so you'd want it for that, plus is casts faster. But the control itself also doesn't last as long. If I had the option, I can see myself skipping the Hold and taking the Confusion on Dominators, and using the Confusion power as my main mid-fight boss disabler. Overall, it's hard for me to say where this set ranks compared to other sets because a lot of that depends on how you plan to use it. Although Symphony has superficial resemblances to Dark and Mind Control, IMO the set closest to it in utility is Fire Control. Like Fire Control, you're trading away some of your control utility for extra damage. The delivery mechanism is a bit different (IMO safer on Symphony than on Fire) and Symphony doesn't have the fast casting ST controls of either Fire or Mind. But its damage potential is high. If absolutely forced to vote I'd put Symphony somewhere in the A tier on both Controller and Dominator, more or less where I'd put Fire Control. We'll have to wait for videos to see how it performs in practice.