oedipus_tex

I will admit of all the possible Dominator combos out there, Grav/Energy makes me the most intimidated to post about. Calculating attack chain and DPAs isn't something I'm an expert on. For this build I feel like it's needed though. Fingers crossed I can get the numbers right; I reserve the right to be corrected on my math. 🙂 In this combo there are a lot of potential variables and two competing "combo systems" that don't talk to each other, making it hard to guess how much damage any particular power will do in a scenario. I did my best to chart out some likely outcomes in the table below. I assumed that: Lift and Propel generally are used on a target that has the Impact mechanic active on it On Controllers, Containment is generally active On Dominators, Power Burst is generally used in Focus mode, which is achieved most reliably from opening with Total Focus I didn't try to guess the DPA of the Snipe in fast activation mode. Someone probably has this number somewhere but I don't have the headspace this afternoon to figure it out. I believe the cast time in Snipe mode is 1.3. First column raw damage, second column anim time, third column estimated DPA. So, right away we should notice a few things. A Controller with Containment and Impact does about as much DPA with Lift as a Dominator's Total Focus, and more damage than Bone Smasher, Power Push, or Power Blast. Dominators make up some of their ground versus a Controller with Power Burst/Snipe combo. It deals significant damage. However it depends on willingness to be at melee range or your luck with the Energy Focus system proccing off other attacks. Unfortunately, these other attacks have to be Energy Assault attacks, because Energy Assault doesn't talk to Gravity Control and vice versa. For Lift and Propel, which use the Impact system, it's hard to guess how often Impact is really in place. For me it is "most of the time." But on Controllers especially this could vary depending on your secondary set. The other wildcard here is Controllers can usually buff their damage or debuff the enemy. This is much harder for Dominators. A Grav/Energy Dom will at least get +30% damage from Power Up to help out. They can also take Sleet in the Ice APP, admittedly in the Top 10 Most Potentially OP Powers Available to Any Archetype in Their APPs to even this out more. But versus a Kinetics, Trick Arrow, Poison, Storm, or a few other Controller secondaries it's really hard for the Dominator to compete. If you read my posts in the past, you may know that I'm a fan of Dominators but also an advocate for buffing them. This combo highlights the extremes of how narrow the edge Dominators have over Controllers is. There are some advantages for the Dominator: mezz protection built into the class, Mag 6 Stun in Wormhole and Grav Distortion. However those barriers aren't insurmountable for the Controller, and there's little a Dominator can do to match a Controller's ability to act as a force multiplier who magnifies the effectiveness of the whole team. There are some players who are flux with cash. Others for whom concept is king. I respect both perspectives If that's you and you want to spend a lot on this character I'd go for it. On the other hand some players don't have a lot of money to their name. They want to stretch their funds best they can. For those players I'd consider rerolling as Storm, TA, Poison, Kinetics, Cold, or Dark Affinity Controller. The comparable Dominator is perfectly playable, but its mirror Controller buffs whole teams or hits the damage cap while still hurling Total Focus-strength ranged attacks every ~2 seconds. If nothing else, probably skip Propel on the Dominator. I hate that such a cool looking power is so poor on Dominators. But other than its knockdown effect which I suppose isn't nothing, it doesn't measure up.

I think what makes the Plant situation so egregious is that Mind Control once did have similar uptime on its powers. That was nerfed in Issue 5. Then Plant Control showed up in City of Villains with super generous Recharge times. I do think that because Seeds is a cone and it alerts enemies that it should have faster Recharge than Mass Confusion. However, 240 seconds has always been too long a Recharge for Mass Confusion. We now have actual nukes with a 145 recharge for sure Mass Confuse shouldn't take longer to recharge than that.

You only need about +70% Global Recharge if you grab the base invention. You'll have to recharge it once every hour or hour and a half (I forget how long) but its workable. You should probably always use that invention even before you reach perma dom status.

My advice would be different for an end game build versus a "trust fund" build. You can read some advice about the latter below along with some guidelines around what changes when you move to a more expensive end game build.

The main competition for Sentinels isn't Blasters, it's Defenders/Corruptors. The thinking is, if you can build a tank-y medium damage character who can also buff the team, that's a lot better than a tank-y medium damage character who can only self buff. Sentinels have a few neat tricks up their sleeves, but for me justifiably sit at the bottom of the pole for investing in. People should play what they want, but trading away being a power-multiplier class without a lot to show for it is what hurts this class so much, Scrappers/Stalkers/Brutes and even Tankers do a ton more damage and are the true tank-mages of CoX. They may not be multipliers, but at least they have a lot to show for it.

I've never been able to wrap my ahead around what Placate (the status effect, not just the Stalker ability with the same name) actually does. The most I know about it is this: Like a Mezz, it comes in Magnitude (generally Mag 3 or Mag 4) In game instead of saying "Mag 3 Placate" like other mezzes though, it will say stuff like "300% Placate for 7 seconds" I've seen Placate stop mobs from attacking before, and tested it in a variety of AoEs and single target powers. I've seen mobs stop attacking because of it before. But what is it inner logic? Also, do enemies have protection against it? What do the percentages mean?

There's a detail here buried in the history of the game. Originally, the effect we now know as "Terrify" was known as "Afraid." It sent enemies running, like Arctic Air still does. It is also the effect that was originally tied to Fear enhancements. Afraid was a pretty un-useful effect in most powers. So a few issues into the game, Terrify was created. It generally uses the same tables as Afraid. It also uses the same enhancers. Terrify causes enemies to cower in place. When they take damage they have a chance to attack or else run away (like the old Afraid.) Some powers were then updated to use Terrify, and some other powers kept Afraid. Afraid was also added to some powers to push the AI to run for out of certain debilitating effects. A few powers (like the Illusion Control power Spectral Terror) have both Terrify and Afraid. AA just has the old Afraid. In Arctic Air's case the Afraid effect is Mag 3 and, technically, benefits from Power Boost like powers. The same Afraid effect exists in powers like Hot Feet, Burn, and Volcanic Gasses and is generally used to push the AI to try to escape a pulsing effect. The version of Arctic Air Controllers and Dominator's share is actually identical. The Confusion is Scale 2 on both archetypes. That's actually a problem for Dominators. Dominators have a lower mezz scale than Controllers, so outside Domination mode they have lower mezz times than a Controller. In Arctic Air this translates to about 25% lower effectiveness, or in other words significant gaps in coverage. The Afraid effect draws from Fear tables so is also shorter on Dominators than Controllers, as is the -Recharge effect.

I kind of like Traps as is but Time Bomb should probably create some kind of aoe patch effect in the style of Oil Slick or Burn patches so even if the timing is slightly off you don't completely miss out on the damage.

The problem is on my end. Mids corrupted a while back and even uninstalling/reinstalling hasn't fixed it.

I can't open the build but I can comment on a few things I can see. Firstly the Scorpion pool doesn't have a whole lot going for it on Dominators. It would be my last choice. If you want Defense armor, the Ice APP is much more attractive IMO. Other attractive pools are Mu, Soul, Psi, and Leviathan, for various reasons. I also think you've skipped too many important Energy attacks. Without Total Focus and Whirling Hands you will struggle to deliver enough damage. If you were looking for a character who can pull off ranged damage you're probably looking at a /Fire Assault Dom or else a Gravity Controller. Dominators in general do not do well without close range punches. I don't personally think Enflame is a great power on Dominators. I can stand to be proven wrong about this. But for sure I wouldn't take it over bread and butter attacks. Since you'll be a permadom, Rune of Protection is mostly wasted. Overall I'd be veering away from the Sorcery pool unless you're picking it for the thematics. Since flying quickly looks like it's important to you I'd personally take Hover/Fly and drop Mystic Flight, Spirit Ward, Enflame, and RoP and pick up better attacks. Again if you really want to lean into the Sorcery pool I'd think about a Controller, who picks up a lot more benefit from it than Dominators do. I'm not sure how the new travel powers have changed things, but IMO having both Mystic Flight/Flight and Super Speed is redundant. Assault is rarely worth taking in my experience when you have more pressing needs. I'd move Hasten earlier in the build in case you exemplar. I'd take it at level 4 unless you have something better. For sure Hasten before Spirit Ward etc. I've not run the math but I suspect Propel can be dropped. It's another mediocre damage ranged attack and you have plenty of those. But you'll want to look at the DPA of your attacks nd make that decision. If Propel is important to the concept again I'd lean Controller. Propel is kind of a fluff power on Dominators.

I had to go back and look closer. You're right, with a duration of 15 seconds the pet should cast three times. Where I think I got my scheduling wrong is I wrote the "15 second" number in the general write up, but for the time table grabbed the number 10 and not 15 to determine when pets were firing. It turns out all the Geysers don't have the same duration. The first 5 Geysers last 15 seconds, and the final Geyser actually lasts only 10. So the final schedule adding in the missing extra pulse from the first 5 Geyers would be (added the 5 extra tics in bold): 0 sec 6 sec 10 sec 12 sec 16 sec 20 sec 22 sec 26 sec 30 sec 32 sec 36 sec 40 sec 42 sec 46 sec 50 sec 52 sec 56 sec I'll correct the original post with the new info.

I think this is an interesting foundation for a powerset. The obvious balance point vs this set is Dark Control, which also does -ToHit. In general -ToHit tends to be a very useful effect on Control sets, especially on Dominators (because Doms have few other sources of debuff) so the basis for this set is good. I'm not sure if I missed it, but most Control sets have some form of reliable hard control on either 60 or 90 second recharge. Ice, Mind, and Illusion Control are exceptions so it's not a hard rule. I see a couple of power with small chances to mezz with what looks like Shadow Field-style chances. I'd need to see how all these powers layered together functioned before making a call. All of the -ToHit in addition to those effects may be enough to make the set effective. On the other hand, Dark Control has a ton of -ToHit and still has good hard controls. Ray of Light may be more interesting as a toggle. I'll admit I've almost never used Time Manipulation's special mechanic because I don't find it very useful in context. I didn't see a single target Hold. I don't think all Control sets are technically required to have one, but not having one does mean they can't contribute in normal Control-character ways to the one fight control characters are really needed, Hamidon. BTW beware that Dominators tend to get short changed when a set features a lot of pseudo pets (e.g. Electric Control). There are ways around this but the powers have to be explicitly coded to keep this limitation of the system in mind. Interesting ideas. Thanks for posting.

All the Control sets have varied in power over the years but Mind's journey may be the most extreme. It has truly been around the world and back. Mind Control was hit really, really hard by the addition of target caps and the nerfing of AoE controls. When those changes were introduced Plant, Electric, and Dark Control did not exist yet. Looking at those sets in 2021 it's clear whatever metric was in place in Issue 5 when Mind's wings were clipped were reassessed later. Mass Confusion should probably have a recharge around 120-145 seconds given what it does. It's probably also true though that Plant Control should not have a Scale 20 mezz on a 60 second recharge. LOL. I wouldn't want to consider nerfing that though unless Plant was given cushion somewhere else. Maybe its not very useful Sleep power or AoE Hold.

That's basically right altho IIRC Plant, Ice. Earth, and Dark all use an animation that freezes the enemy completely in a very rigid position. That animation is used for most Holds that summon geometry in order to prevent the character model from seeming to break out of the geo effect. Keep in mind there are different types of creature models out there in the game. The effects you describe are what happens to human models, other models may not implement the animation the same way. The model reacts to the bit the power passes to it and animates using its own internal logic. So, against some enemies everyone will seem to have the same Hold animation, but against others it will look different. Another way to think about all this is the power is responsible for animating the mezz particles and the creature model is responsible for playing the mezz animation. The power just tells the creature's model "Anim_LassoStun is active on you." The creature model then examines all the other things active on the creature (am I flying? am I running? am I holding a weapon? etc) and figures out for itself how to draw that combined state. Interestingly even the Hold animations have their own kind of hierarchy, the LassoStun anim tends to win over the other Hold animations, in order to prevent a creature hit by Fossilize from shaking inside the rock geometry when that is followed by an Electric hold, etc. This system is also what prevents mezzed enemies from playing "I just took damage" reactions in combat, the mezz bit overrides the react bit.

While we're on the topic of Fire and Ice here are some interesting artifacts from the files that give some hints about the original design direction of the Control sets. In the visual effect files, Fire Imps are occasionally referred to as "Fire Salamanders." The icons for Fire Control refer to a set called "Fire Trap," which is the original name for Fire Control in early development. "Ice Control" is similarly called "Ice Formation." The Electric Control PBAoE power that drains endurance is referred to as "Stunning Field," a possible reference to the original intent of this power (perhaps a stun version of Arctic Air). No version like that I can remember ever appeared on a public test server, so this is pure speculation. There are a lot of overlaps between the coding between Ice's Arctic Air and Storm Summoning's Steamy Mist that hint that the powers were cloned from each other (most likely Arctic being created from Steamy but again this is speculation). The Fire Control power Char is sometimes referred to as "Soot." There's no internal table for Hold durations. All Hold durations actually pull from the Immobilize table. All of the animations we associate with Holds are called "Stuns" in the animation tables, possibly indicating the concept of "Holds" as a separate concept did not emerge until later in development. You might also be interested in hearing the internal names of some of the mezz animations: Plant, Dark, Ice and Earth's Holds: ANIM_LASSOSTUN Mind Control's Hold: ANIM_SonicStun Fire Control's Hold: ANIM_CHOKESTUN Gravity Control's Hold: ANIM_FloatStun Electric Control's Hold: ANIM_ElectroStun The actual "Stun" mezz effect actually has no power-by-power animation. I assume this is because the enemy walking around would override it anyway. Sleep and Terrify both do have allow the programmer to tell the game which animation to use. Most just use the default Sleep or Terrify effect. The particles associated with any of these powers (e.g. the ZZZ associated with sleeps) pulls from a standard .fx file. Power designers can choose to use different fx files if they want or exclude the fx entirely. These fx are independent of the animation. The fx are normally coded into a field called ConditionalFX and only appear if the creature's mezz protection is exceeded.

Got some free time to look at few more. FIRE CONTROL > HOT FEET This power is a mix of autohit and roll-to-hit. Autohit portions: Slow effect Afraid effect Roll-to-hit portions: Damage Technically, the power itself is flagged as auto-hit with the damage portion coded as an exception (it checks the ToHit roll manually), so I believe this means any procs in this power do not require a ToHit roll either. The pulse rate is every 2 seconds. ICE CONTROL > ARCTIC AIR Arctic is at the same time a very simplistic power and a fairly complex one depending on how far you want to dive. To start out, this power is autohit in the sense it does not perform a ToHit roll. It pulses at a rate of once every 2 seconds. Anything inside the pulse range gets the following effects: -Recharge: Scale 0.5 for 2.25 seconds Slow: Scale 0.65 for 2.25 seconds -1 Max Run Speed for 2.25 seconds -Stealth Radius: Scale -35 for 2.25 seconds -StealthRadiusPlayer: Scale -389 for 2.25 seconds The mezz effects are: 50% Chance for Mag 3 Afraid, Scale 2 30% Chance for Mag 3 Confusion, Scale 2 Each mezz effect is tagged to Replace rather than Stack, so if the durations overlap it still won't Confuse/Afraid a boss. The Afraid effect is often forgotten. It's actually Enhanceable. Using any sort of multiplier power (e.g. Power Boost) extends the duration of enemies will try to run from you. BALANCE CONCERNS: I've brought this up a lot over the years and it may or may not be worth repeating. The mezz effects in this power are Scale 2. Under normal rules for Domination, the duration of the mezz should increase to Scale 3 when the Dominator enters Domination mode. However this does not happen and this power is strictly weaker on Dominators than it is on Controllers. I've long considered fixing this power a key concern for this powerset. POSSIBLE BUGS: The -Stealth component in this power detoggles for 10 seconds after the player interacts with a glowie. The StealthRadiusPlayer deactivates for 10 seconds after you interact with a glowie, attack or are attacked. This may be intentional for some reason but could just be bugs. The -Stealth aspect of this power appears to be a copy-paste from the Storm Summoning power Steamy Mist, with values reversed. In Steamy Mists it makes sense that touching a glowie would reveal you. It doesn't make sense (to me) that touching a glowie would stop you from revealing hidden enemies though.

I just had another look at the endurance drain in Static Field. Turns out I was wrong, the amount is boostable with enhancements. Unfortunately it's a very small amount of drain and only a 50% chance to do it. I'm updating the original write up.

I don't know know your definition of "best," but I found Water/Fire/Fire to be a wrecking ball that is also difficult for enemies to kill between the combined healing from both sets.

IMO you want to build based on context and not just based on what numbers in Mids say. The context of a City of Heroes Blaster is you are likely able to produce good inspiration churn in most situations. That is the goal of most mow-down builds, to become inspiration processing machines. Since Purple inspirations provide a lot of +Defense (12.5%), and we can assume a lot of inspirations are passing through your tray, you can estimate that even a character who isn't softcapped from IOs is soft capped some percent of the time. If you build for around 32.5% Defense, one small purple will cap you. I estimate this makes that character soft capped about 40% of the time although obviously this varies depending on what you decide to fight. If you also have sources of -ToHit somewhere or rotational defense you can stretch this further. On the other hand if your goal is difficult enemies like Archvillains in prolonged fights, you'll want to think about the context of that. If you are the sort of person who arrives at the AV fight with a prepared tray you're probably thinking differently than the person who wants to be soft capped should they accidentally stumble on an AV. Neither of these approaches is technically wrong. When it comes to Resistance, my usual philosophy is to get as much S/L resist is as feasible. If Energy resist is available that is also often useful. Resistance for squishy characters is difficult to cover all the bases. Personally the final mix I go for on most squishy characters is 32.5%-ish Ranged Defense, some amount of S/L Defense, then as much S/L Resist as possible. Energy Resist is useful if it is available, and Fire Resist may be useful if you specifically want to Fire Farm, but neither is something I'd chase with bonuses unless the context of a farm called for it.

I have a long write up of that here: The short version is that Shadow Field summons a pseudo pet with two powers. The first power instantly Holds all enemies. The second power applies an autohit -ToHit and a small to chance to Hold every pulse. You can read the longer post for some discussion of the oddities of the power (e.g. that it is technically the same scale Hold as other AoE Holds but uses the Ones table, so it doesn't increase in power as you level up).

Electric Blast/Energy Aura Sentinel might be a good option here. Sentinel nukes recharge x2 faster than other blast users, and Energy Aura has a Power Sink style power to double down on endurance bar wiping.

I'm gonna try PSI. For these purposes, I'm going to consider Mind Control a Psi set. I don't personally feel Willpower is a Psi set (it seems more likely we'll get a 'real' Psi armor set one day) so I will leave that out. Psionic Assault. Psionic Assault is a Dominator secondary that can truly be called good. Dominators as an archetype normally struggle with both healing and recovery. Drain Psyche covers that ground and allows them to operate on the field in a way you might imagine a very powerful supervillain to act. The set has low damage ranged attacks but makes up for it with pretty good melee attacks. New players rolling a Dominator who choose Psi as their secondary are likely to end up with a very powerful character no matter which primary they choose. It's not all freebies--you still need an expensive build. But at least that build matches up well with what Dominators need (Recharge). Mental Manipulation. Blaster Mental Manipulation shares the key Drain Psyche power with Psionic Assault. The only thing that makes it lower on this list for me is the fact that other Blaster secondaries already offer great survivability. (In fact, they were given that survivability based on observations about how effective Drain Psyche is). The things that made this set great before the Blaster buffs are still there and it is a solid performer. Mind Control (Dominator). I will be the first to tell you I think Mind Control deserves a buff. 240 seconds is too long a recharge on Mass Confusion and the set leans heavily on achieving an end game build so that you can lean on Total Domination to cover its control holes. Still, it can be situationally effective. Psi Melee. This set doesn't offer the best damage. It's not terrible, not great. What it does offer is a single target Confusion power similar to what a Controller would. This power makes this set stand out as special to me. The reason I'll rate this decently is the appeal it may have to players who don't normally play melee characters. If you're normally a Controller or Dom player and want to branch a bit into the melee world, this will be attractive, especially paired with a control-y armor. Psi Blast (Sent/Def/Corr). Psi Blast on these archetypes is a mid-to-low performing set. The -Recharge secondary effect doesn't really come into play in most real life situations. I will give props to Psionic Tornado being very fun to cast. Psi Blast (Blaster). The Blaster version of Psi Blast loses its second AoE power. I really wish I liked this set more because I like the idea of a Psionic Blaster. However I've never been happy playing a Psi Blaster and always find myself wishing I'd built the character somehow differently. Mind Control (Controller). I don't want to spend a whole lot of time ragging on these boards. Mind Control on Controllers is a truly low performing set that could use love. Rather than just neg on it I'd prefer to see this as an opportunity to make something interesting.

A lot of times when I'm trying to build a character based on concept, there are a bunch of possible archetype and powerset configurations to consider. In particular, Fire, Ice, Electric, Dark, Energy, and Psi are used over and over. This got me wondering how people would rank the various elemental varieties of sets. Most of these elements appear in the following configurations: Blast Armor Melee Manipulation Control Assault You can do a write up of just one element or multiple elements if you like. How would you rank each elemental variety? If you need to, you can split the sets by archetype as well. To start us out, I'll go with with ELECTRIC. Personally I'd rank Electric like this: Electric Melee. A popular melee set with good AoE and a powerful teleport-nuke that is both useful and extremely cool looking. I've heard the version on Stalkers is especially attractive although I haven't explored that too much. Only real downside is a lack of tools to leverage the endurance drain secondary effect, but the set generally hits hard enough that it doesn't matter. Electric Armor. A mid-tier Resistance based armor that does the job well enough with few significant failings. One big plus is strong endurance management tools that make it comfortable to play for most of the character's career. Electric Control. An unusual control set that was created late into the OG game. Capable of being a "true" sapper in a way few other builds can achieve. I ranked this lower than Electric Armor for two reasons: On Dominators, Synaptic Overload does not Dominate beyond the first target. This is a strange implementation that exists because of a technicality with pseudo pets; other Dominators don't struggle with this. On Controllers, this set has very very low damage. Electric Manipulation. This Blaster secondary just "is." It's not amazing, it's not terrible, it does its basic job at providing a sustain power and pretty good melee thwacks. Electric Blast. Ah, Electric Blast, launcher of a thousand threads about "Is this the worst blast set?" IMO it's not the worst, although it's also not a standout. Electric Blast has a reasonable chance to crash enemy endurance bars with its nuke and with Short Circuit, which at least makes the endurance drain potentially a factor. What makes it better than the next item on the list is at least it is interesting, and there are conceivable ways to play it strategically. Electric Assault. This may be the weakest of the Dominator Assault sets. Has all the issues of Electric Blast and Manipulation while being lower damage than either and has no tools to crash endurance, making the endurance drain on the attacks meaningless unless Electric Assault is played specifically with Electric Control. On top of this, it's sort of dull. There's no cool teleport + damage like Lightning Rod, no endurance crasher like Power Sink, no close range endurance crasher like Short Circuit. How would you rank other sets and do you agree/disagree with my ranking of Electric?

I've been meaning to test the new Singularity to see if a Grav/Storm Controller can stand on top of Singularity with Hurricane running and get the -ToHit debuff without repelling everything. UPDATE: Tested it, sadly the Repel in Hurricane wins, atho for balance reasons thats probably ok. 🙂 IMO the least "roller coaster" of the Dominator types is Dark Control. That's mainly because unlike most other Dominators it has access to -ToHit which a game changer on an archetype without a lot of access to Defense, Resistance, or Healing that is riding on a binary mezz system, and then as a non-alert Confuse if faced with a situation where this fails. If you happen to play Dark Control on a character with a Power Up style power the amount of -ToHit actually outstrips Controllers by a large margin and some of it (like in Shadow Field) is even autohit. Plant is also very good. The main attraction here is that it is very straightforward. You really don't need to know a ton about how the game mechanics work to play Plant. Cast Seeds of Confusion every time it is up. Proc out Carrion Creepers and make sure it is active at all times. Creepers does absurd damage and out competes the other knockpatch powers like Earthquake/Ice Slick/Bonfire in pretty much every way without you having to really think about it. I'll list Electric Control here too as a "maybe." Electric is a unique playstyle that requires some getting used to. It's a weird donut kind of set that is very easy to start with and pretty strong pushed to its limit but with a weird middle range where it struggles to be as effective as other sets. Certainly if you solo a lot though through easy content its easy to use. Static Field > wait for endurance to drain > beat down works almost too well against small easy groups.

I hear you. I don't want to leave the impression that Mind Control is terrible. It's workable to an extent, it's just that it is so closely comparable to Dark Control. Dominators as an archetype are generally starved of Defense, Resistance, and Healing. A lot of folks will say that Blasters are the "glass cannon" archetype but IMO after the Blaster buffs that title really belongs to Dominators. Blasters technically have lower modifiers, but what they also have is a bottomless endurance pool to run armor toggles at will and the ability to easily fall back to range, luxuries most Dominators don't possess. This discrepancy really shows in battles versus Archvillains, where Dominators really struggle (and, interestingly, Dark and Mind Dominators situationally have fewer issues). Most Dominators basically ride on two strengths: AoE controls and mezz protection via Domination. What makes Dark Control such a good set on Dominators despite having lower -ToHit modifiers than Controllers is that they get -ToHit at all. Covering this gap provides a safety valve on an archetype that has enormous self protection holes. I definitely do not want to leave the impression that Mind Control can't be played to a certain kind of strength. Mind Control on a late game character excels in one particular area, the ability to Mass Confuse difficult enemy groups before starting a fight with them. On the other hand, this is an ability Electric Control has as well (admittedly with some caveats) on a power that recharges x4 faster than Mass Confuse. The actual benefits of this style of power in the mow-them-down meta of this game are more limited than they might be in a game that was based more heavily on, say, a roguelite dungeon crawler like Darkest Dungeon where fights more often brought the team near dying. That sort of content may exist in the AE somewhere. If I can get my Mids to work again I'll see about sharing a build that maximizes its strengths.