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.

I also think a lot of people post on the boards are theoretical builds, not what they likely are running in the real game. I've posted probably 100s more builds than I have actually completed. The build is the destination, and most characters never actually get there. I have over 1000 characters at this point, with one I would consider to have a "complete" build, about 10 who are mostly complete, 20 who are partial, and the others who are in a grab bag of various states. If you're ever curious about how to do this with a Dominator specifically I wrote a guide a few years ago:

This is excellently stated. One of the best things about City of Heroes and why I think it retains a fervent playerbase 20 years later is you can explore outlandish builds if you want to. Or not. The payoff is there if you want to explore it. But you don't have to. It's a fine line of balance I haven't found in any other game. Is it perfect? No, it's messy, but messy in a really great way. So IO. Or don't. Or fall somewhere in the middle. They all basically work.

Are you sure Wormhole didn't just miss? It should be able to teleport anything Fold Space can. Both powers roll Accuracy. A minor advantage Wormhole has over Fold Space is it ignores line of sight. Line of sight is required for Fold Space.

I am fine with Fold Space mainly because Gravity Controllers can also take Fold Space for more port action. The two powers do somewhat different things, one ports a group from point A to point B, the other TPs everything to the caster's feet. Fixing the teleport mag in Wormhole has come up a few times. IIRC as of last we got word, its something the team may be interested in, but it's not an easy fix. The risk IIRC is players being able to teleport things that will break the game if TPed.

Fire/Fire and Dark/Dark are the two that stick out to me as especially strong. If I had to comment on the others: Plant/Thorns is fine. Thematic, pretty cool looking. There are probably better combos for Plant but Thorny is elevated by being paired with such a strong primary. Ice/Icey has some minor synergy. Very heavy on the endurance bar. Icey is a pretty vanilla set without a lot going on, so I think Ice Control is better served with a secondary that brings some added survivability. Gravity doesn't have a natural pairing, but I suppose Energy can do. This is a combo I don't particularly favor at all. Like all things, someone can probably make it work, and there could be a player for who this is the favorite combo, but it's not mine, due to competing combo mechanics in each set. If you assume Radiation is the pair with Gravity, things are a little better. Mind/Psi is another one that is "fine." They are a little awkward played together but it's not a wreck. Elec/Elec are two sets with minor synergy. Personally I think Electric Control really requires a secondary with Power Boost (Dark, Icey, Earth, or Energy) or at a minimum some kind of sustainability (Psi, maybe Savage or Rad). Electric Assault is one of my least personal favorite sets in the game, so that colors my perception. Earth/Earth is a favorite for some people. Earth Assault has limited ranged options and can take some getting used to, but it does have pretty good AoE and some heavy hitters, along with Power Up to extend mezz times. If I was forced to pair each set off with its best pairings: Plant: Psi, Savage, Fire, Dark, or Rad Dark: Psi, Savage, Fire, Dark, or Rad Fire: Fire or Psi (still fine with Dark, Rad, Savage) Ice: Dark, Fire, or Psi Gravity: Dark, Psi, or Fire Mind: Fire, Savage, or Dark Electric: Psi or Dark Earth: Psi, Savage, Fire, Dark, or Rad Martial, Icey, Electric, Thorny, and Energy don't appear on my list because I consider them generally a step down from the other sets. Keep in mind the actual differential between the sets isn't so huge you can't still play the less optimal ones tho. My biggest beef with a few of them is they are so baseline they don't have that much to hold my interest. That list is pretty arbitrary and what you may notice from it is several sets show up again and again. Like all things in this game of course, if you find you love something else, play that.

I'd personally vote for Dual Pistols. On this combo Aim is going to be less useful to you than it normally would after you start regularly capping your +Damage %. You want alternative mechanisms and procs. Dual Pistols is there for you on both fronts.

I started playing Doms around the time Going Rogue came out. At the time, I was playing Controllers a lot. I didn't like red side content very much so I didn't start playing Dominators too often til you could switch sides. At the time, Doms were in a bit of a heyday. Blasters and Defenders were yet to receive their significant buffs. Dominators could get mezz protection where few other squishies could. It was a good place to be, but of course change is the nature of this game. If I'm being honest I now view Doms a bit less favorably than when I started. They're still fun, but I think of a lot of them are like less popular builds in a game like Diablo, technically able to run dungeons in interesting ways, but often difficult to play relative to other classes. I've been running hard mode ITFs recently, and in that content I think a lot of the Dominator's weaknesses hit stress points: low HP, very little mitigation outside of controls, often needing to close distance to do damage, and usually no armor or debuff resistance built in. I don't think I'll be bringing most of my Dominators on those future runs, because the main fail points of that type of content tend to be areas Dominators don't really contribute that much too. That said, I did enjoy playing the new Ice Control at a 2 star challenge level. And I do have an awful lot of Dominators, for the same reason I enjoy playing offbeat builds in Diablo and Torchlight and so on. They can be an interesting and strange class to play.

Trick Arrow is a very fun set that pairs well with any primary, but there are a few that IMO stand out as especially strong synergies. Trick Arrow/Dark Blast benefits because Dark Blast is normally not very strong on attacks. Proccing out TA's powers, plus Oil Slick Arrow helps cover this gap. The heal in Dark covers for TA not having a self heal. These two powersets together can also stack absurd -ToHit on enemies. The immobilize cone attack Dark Blast has can keep enemies trapped inside the radius of lit oil slicks. Trick Arrow/Water is similar to /Dark Blast, but without the -ToHit debuff. The big plusses in Water are lots of AoE damage, and the ability to stay at range for all attacks including the nuke. Also, improbably, Water can light oil slicks. Like a few sets mentioned below, Water can use Glue Arrow to keep enemies inside its DoT patch power. Trick Arrow/Electric Blast both benefit from a Power Boost strategy. Power Boosted Flash Arrow destroys enemy ToHit, Power Boosted nukes destroy enemy blue bars. Together this combo is really scary. Once again, TA covers some of the damage holes in Electric. The Hold in Electric stacks with Ice Arrow. Trick Arrow/Ice can stack holds eerily quickly, more or less instantly holding a boss while retaining good damage. Ice is entirely ranged, which plays well with a TA Hover strategy. The run speed debuff in Glue Arrow can help keep enemies from running out of your rain powers. Trick Arrow/Fire play well together just because Fire is such a good damage set. Fire can obviously also light slicks and is helped by keeping stuff inside Rain of Fire. Trick Arrow/Beam Rifle is a master debuffer. Beam Rifle provides some single target -Resistance a power with -150% Regen, which can be useful since -Regen is trickier for TA to achieve than some other debuff sets. Trick Arrow/Sonic is even more of a resistance stripper than Beam Rifle. This set recently went through some changes and I dont have all the details. Classically though, this is the teammate who strips enemy resistance.

I'm very familiar with Electric Blast and with Time Manipulation, but the time has come to roll an Elec/Time Defender or Corruptor and I am trapped in indecision. The Defender obviously has much better buffs and debuffs, and a +30% Damage bonus when solo. The Corruptor has lower buffs but I am unsure how much that really matters. It has Scourge to help power teams through difficult AV fights. +Recharge isn't affected by archetype, only -Resist, +Defense, Slow Run Speed and a few other things. -Regen would be the same on both ATs, but there isn't a whole lot of that in Time to begin with. The Defender is forced to take the T1 Blast. The Corruptor is forced to take Time Crawl. If it is feasible to skip either of these that would be a big bonus, because the build is going to be tight. The plan for either build is probably to take Soul Mastery in order to use Power Boost for Farsight and boosted endurance drains. But I could be open to other alternatives. What are your thoughts?

I would probably avoid Cold specifically for this combo, altho the reasons may be a bit too meta for your liking. I said in the post above that I don't think the Sleep or Terrify cone are critical on Dominators. On Controllers I think they are a lot more so, especially the Sleep. In order to get big damage out of the Stun, you want to establish Containment first, which means opening with a power that does Sleep, Stun or Hold. Symphony has three options, the cone Immob, cone Sleep, and AoE Hold. The Hold isn't a cone, it's a ranged AoE like Mind Control's Total Domination, and a great option, but it's not often available. That means using either the Sleep or Immobilize first. The Sleep is the safer option since we're talking about an opening shot on uncontrolled mobs. Cold Domination offers great debuffs through it's Sleet power. But, Sleet breaks Sleep. 😞 So a Symphony/Cold finds itself unable to debuff Resistance without waking mobs it just slept. In contrast, something like Symphony/Trick Arrow can Sleep > Debuff (since it does no damage) > Stun and rack up huge damage on the opening shot. If you decide this is too meta and you don't care about it, Cold Domination is of course fine. I used to main a Mind/Cold a long time ago and the Containment/Sleep/Sleet conundrum is part of my DNA now. 🙂 You can still make it work, just be aware other sets may offer an easier play experience.