oedipus_tex

This is a power I'd probably skip on Mind Control, although it does have its uses. Mainly, it's not bad if you need an extra source of Containment like Mind Control does. The main downside to this power is it turns off if you get mezzed. I've been petitioning the devs to make this power and a few others like it not behave this way. It's been this way since live though. On the plus side the power is cool looking and that may be enough.

I think a lot of weight comes down to what mean by "need." I wouldn't say anyone "needs" anything. If we changed the question to "Do Dominators need IOs more than other archetypes do?" I'd say generally yes. You can play most Blasters, Defenders, or melee characters more leisurely, and if you're used to that, Dominators are going to be quite an unpleasant surprise. If you spend casually on a Blaster to bring its Recharge or Defense up you get better bit by bit. You're not building to hit some magic number where playstyle shifts dramatically and then managing your pee breaks around making sure you're there to click every 80 seconds. With Dominators there is this real intensity to getting your Recharge to a manageable level. This is due to mezz protection, a blue bar refill, and the ability to mezz bosses all being rolled into one timer, along with most Dominators relying on long recharge powers to stay in the fight. Scrappers or Stalkers do not need to have a 90 or 120 second power recharged to open a fight safely, they just do it. With Dominators your "armor" is limited by your recharge. The thing about perma-Domination is that whether you get there or not, a lot about Dominators is built around making sure they're not overpowered for the players who get there. You can build a Defender with a Hold in the primary, secondary, and tertiary set. On Dominators you can get a Hold in your primary, the melee-based Hold in the Earth set and no other, and no Hold in your APP. They did this out of fear of what a Dominator stacking Mag 6 Holds could do. But it also means if you are out of Domination mode you are a character with a Mag 3 Hold worse than a Controller andwith much worse support powers; we've established your Recharge is low so stacking it will be dicey. It is what it is.

This is why you want a heal here, not recovery. Its fairly trivial to cap the recovery and also not as useful. The Dominator Regen cap is 2000% (an astounding 86 hp/sec that is also fairly hard to hit with DP alone). Unslotted, Drain Psyche gives you 133% regen per target hit (4.24 HP per target). You'd need to hit 16 targets to cap, and its impossible anyway since the power caps at 10 targets. A more realistic plan is to assume you can reliably hit 4 to 6 targets. If you can do this, and you've slotted for Heal so that the Regen is around 183% per target (7.7 HP each) you'll routinely be receiving 31-46 HP per second (versus 16-25 HP). There will be occasions where you can only hit 3 or 2 or even 1 targets... in these scenarios you still want the power slotted for heal because you want to eke out every bit of healing you can. If you solo a lot and can fit it, Fold Space can help a lot with gathering enemies to vampire your Drain Psyche from. This is also an area where Fire may be at a slight disadvantage versus Mind, Electric, Plant, or Gravity, because each of those has Confuses or Teleports to encourage the enemies to gather.

I'm currently between versions of Mids so I can't open the build, but one thing that stands out to me is the slotting on Drain Psyche. Drain Psyche should usually be slotted in this order of priority: Recharge - you want this power up as much as possible. Heal - you want every point of healing you can get per enemy hit since this is what keeps you standing Accuracy - the power can miss, so this is somewhat important, but less so than Recharge/Heal. You can skimp here potentially if you have a lot of ToHit somewhere in built (see: Combat Teleport). Note this controls your ability to hit enemy AVs to debuff their Regen, so you do want to have a 95% chance to hit in the end, however you get there. You normally should not need to slot Drain Psyche for Recovery. The Dominator Recovery cap is 12.51% / sec, which you will hit if you hit 8 enemies with Drain Psyche. I do encourage you take consider taking the side of the Musculature tree that provides +Damage + EndMod to fill in a little of the unslotted modifier here and reduce the number of enemies you need to hit to around 6 to cap. Even so, you should hardly need hardcapped Recovery to keep your bar full. Even if you "only" get 8 end/sec you're still completely regenerating the endurance bar every 12 seconds. On an end game build I usually I end up with frankenslotting like this:

I'd prefer it in an Assault set to mix things up a bit. Then you could play Fire Control, Electric Control, etc with some version of Phantom Army. The rest of the Assault set would be balanced around you getting PA. It wouldn't need to be the exact same PA Controllers get. Maybe the three pets would be spread among multiple powers and different in other ways.

As Fire/Psi you probably want to max out Alpha: Musculature and if you can get away with it Destiny: Barrier. One option is to consider switching from //Fire to //Leviathan and adding Water Spout and Hibernate to the mix. This may sound weird to say, because you are a Dominator, but many Dominators actually don't have amazing control. Their controls last a while and mezz bosses when Domination is up, sure. But most Control sets are vulnerable to enemies being spread out, and Assault sets are starved for reliable secondary effects or controls, while the APPs mostly focus on blasting (seriously, compare the control in the Assault sets to the Blaster manipulation sets or to the various buff/debuff sets). Water Spout does both good damage and adds some much needed additional controls. I think a lot of people are intimidated by what looks like, on paper, a long downtime. Water Spout though turns out to be up for about 2 out of three spawns. It also just plain feels powerful. Hibernate lets you recoup endurance quickly or evade a fight temporarily while a key power recharges. I can't reiterate enough how effective it is to duck into Hibernate if you get caught waiting on Drain Psyche to recharge and enemies beating on you. There's also the option of the Ice APP, which adds Sleet. Sleet is a very very very good power on Dominators. It's a sort of control with a resist debuff. The Ice APP also has Hibernate. It has a S/L defense armor though instead of resist which I am less a fan of on Dominators. I prefer to take a resist armor and then try to get S/L defense somewhere in the 30s.

Illusion Control seems to me like it may need to be split into Illusion Control (dominator version) and Illusion Assault. Spectral Wounds, Group Invisibility, and Phantom Army go to the Assault set, with the strength of the rest of the attacks balanced around the value of PA. Replace Spectral Terror with a spherical version of Fearsome Stare. Replace Spectral Wounds with a single target immobilize, any will do. Maybe it randomly picks an illusory element from fire, ice, or electric. Replace Phantom Army with whatever dominate-able AoE you think works. There aren't currently any cone shaped Stuns in a control set, that could be a possibility. There are also no PBAoE click Confuses or Sleeps. Having Illusion Control keep Improved Invisibility is fine and within the rules for control sets for Dominators (e.g. Plant has Spirit Tree).

Until recently I had a giant white board in my home office that said: CELESTIAL CONTROL with a list of possible powers and ideas. Alternative names would be Astral Control or Galactic Control. Basically this is a mix of powers of undefined origin you might associate with a demigod, galactic entity, Lovecraftian alien, or anyone whose powers aren't clearly defined. I think it would be a good contrast to the very strongly elemental sets we currently have, and a way to have a second powerset that deals Negative Energy damage (I see it as a mix of Neg Energy + Cold).

Icey can be brutal on the blue bar because of the PBAoE aura but also because of the huge endurance cost of Ice Sword Circle. 20 endurance, as much as Tornado. Since Ice Sword Circle unlocks at level 4 versus most other PBAoEs showing up later, it can obliterate your bar before you have the ability to make its end cost reasonable. And even in the late game is still an expensive power.

Water Spout is not exclusive to Dominators, but since I play Dominators more than other classes I figured I'd post this here. After years of using the power without really understanding its mechanics, I recently did a deep dive and have some results to share. I figured this might help someone else when picking an APP. Main Stats Run speed of the Water Spout: Moves 30% faster than a base NPC Perception radius: +50% larger than normal These stats are identical to the Storm Summoning power Tornado. Powers The Water Spout's powers are clearly derived from Tornado. However, there are modifications. Empty "Water Spout Attack" Power The Water Spout has a power simply called "Attack" that has a one foot range. This attack doesn't seem to actually do anything on its own. It is probably meant to guide the AI to get very close to a target. It recharges in two seconds and has an animation time of 1.17, but a cast time of 0. Aura Water Spout has an aura power that consists of the following sub effects. The aura appears to be autohit in PVE. Radius: 7 feet Max targets: 5 Pulse rate: Twice per second The aura has the following subelements: Linked 4% Chance for Knock Up + Stun This portion of the power has a 4% chance to perform a a knock up effect followed briefly after by a Stun. The knock up is Mag 6 and not affected by level differences. The knock up is applied for 0.3 seconds (meaning you'll often see the enemy being pushed upward again after the initial launch). After a 2.5 second delay there is a Mag 2 Stun that lasts 15 seconds. This Stun cannot stack with itself, but can stack with Stuns from other powers. Domination does not increase the Magnitude of the Stun. Damage This is mostly straight forward. The power deals Scale 0.1 damage twice per second. The damage is autohit, like the rest of the aura. Mids reports this as 246.1 damage at level 50. -Defense This is a straightforward -15% defense (enhanceable) for 8 seconds. Self Destruct Power The Water Spout self destructs after 30 seconds using a attribute called "Silent Kill." No big surprises here, it's just how they implemented the timer.

I think certain secondaries lean toward a Recharge build as well. Psi is one of these. Anything you can do to get the Recharge on Drain Psyche down will significantly increase your capability. Around the point you get to perma dom on Mind/Psi you have recharges in this neighborhood: Mass Confusion: 62 seconds Total Domination: 62 seconds Mass Hypnosis: 13 seconds Drain Psyche: 33 seconds Since Mass Confuse and TD start with unreasonably large recharge times, this Recharge helps you significantly close the gap. Meanwhile Drain Psyche provides boatloads of regen and recovery, plus it robs enemy archvillains of their Regen. Achieving this closes many holes for the /Psi character. You don't have to do this. You may just never get there with the character. I have only about 5 perma dom characters total, the ones I put that investment in. Only one has a complete permadom, S/L/Ran defense build. On the other hand, by the time you get to Vet Level 5 or so you should have at least 20-40 million influence, more if you got lucky with purple drops or ran a bunch of task forces. The money isn't worth anything if you don't spend it. Running one ITF will net you around 3-6 million influence after you sell off the white recipes and auction off any orange drops before you even consider the merits earned. The game is more about the journey than the final build, that is true. But if you really like a character it's helpful to know what that dream destination might look like.

That's fantastic, because I was talking about Hasten and not permadom. Permadom is an avenue that costs influence. Some of my characters aren't permadoms because of the cost of materials or because I'm not that invested in them. That doesn't mean they wouldn't be stronger if I did go for it with them. Influence and merits accumulate and at some point you either let them sit or do something with them. Skipping Hasten on the other hand is in 90% of cases a way to handicap your Dominator. There are specialty builds and there are boutique builds and there are people who just hate the sound effect. That's fine. The way Domination is set up combined with the desirability of damage procs makes Hasten as close to a must have power as anything. If you choose to skip it anyway, that's an option.

This is a roleplaying game, so to an extent you can decide whether to roleplay a character who is stronger or weaker than other characters. Perhaps a character with a lesser handling on their abilities or whatnot. There's also a strategy layer to the game. From a strategic standpoint, Dominators are an archetype that relies on a "Domination" ability that has a long Recharge but that they can't actually slot. Hasten provides global Recharge that brings Domination back up more quickly. There are some specialty builds that skip it. I've rarely seen a Dominator build that wouldn't be significantly improved by taking it even if they don't slot a single IO.

IMO the secondary effect of these powers is best balanced against the control capability of the set and not the damage. What I mean is the -Endurance in Electric Fences is a feature balanced by the value of Static Field and Synaptic Overload more than it is by how much damage it deals. The developers didn't actually mean for Electric Fences to do better damage than Frostbite, it just happened that way. The exception is Fire Control, which does base damage + extra DoT. Fire Control happened to get fast animations mostly by accident. I think they intended it to do a little more damage than Ice Control though, not 50% more.

I do think you should reconsider skipping Hasten. Dominator powers are unfortunately balanced around the assumption players take that power. On Mind/Psi especially you're taking a big hit to skip it. I'd recommend taking it, shift-clicking to make it auto reactivate, and forget about it. If the graphics bother you you can suppress them at the tailor. While you don't have to do this, you're fighting with an arm tied behind your back, sort of like a Mastermind skipping her tier 3 pet. Here is a simple layup you can follow to see some ways to eke out some performance casually. You don't have to do this all at once. It can be your slow burn approach to improving a character you enjoy. Tier 1: Purchase 2 sets of Malaise's Confusion for Confuse and Mass Confusion (avoid the damage proc unless you dont mind it alerting enemies) Purchase 1 set of Call of the Sandman for Mass Hypnosis (proc here is fine) Purchase 1 set of Sting of the Manticore for Psionic Lance Purchase 2 set of Positron's Blast for Psychic Scream and Terrify Purchase 1 set of Obliteration for Psychic Shockwave This alone will get you to +43 Recharge. Tier 2: Purchase Luck of the Gambler and put in Hover, Manuevers, Combat Jumping, or any other +Defense powers Purchase 2 sets of Basilisk's Gaze for Domination and Total Domination If you purchase just 2 LoTGs, you will be at +73 recharge. With the +20 from the base buff, you'll be a permadom. You can adjust for the number of LoTGs you want to take. FYI the build below would also allow for taking Combat Teleport, Teleport Other, and Fold Space. You may or may not want to go that direction, but a Mass Hypnosis >> Fold Space >>Drain Psyche salvo is pretty uber.

It's fine never to go perma-dom. Most people don't hit perma-dom until sometime after level 50 unless they are being financed by another character. Permadom is not particularly cheap. Usually runs 70-100million influence for a basic "trust fund" build. Most of my doms are not made perma until I've decided to sink cash into them. That said, going perma-dom makes significant changes in a Dominator's performance. Some people have alikened it to playing two completely different characters. I also think that hitting perma-dom doesn't make Dominators all that much stronger than other similarly outfitted characters. Prior to permadom the average Dominator is likely to struggle in the role more than most other classes are likely to struggle in theirs. It's hard to build a Scrapper, Blaster or Defender who falls far behind expected performance. Most Dominators just don't have very good controls until the recharge on them is brought significantly down. As a Mind/Psi specifically you also have the opportunity for near-perma Drain Psyche and the transformation that brings. Even if you don't go full perma dom I'd invite you to read my guide on Trust Fund Dominators. You don't have to complete all the steps to go full perma. But anything you can do to bring up your global Recharge is going to make a huge difference. +30% Recharge by itself will open many doors. You only need to hit about 72% Recharge for perma dom if you are okay with hero base powers. And no matter what you decide, as a Dominator you should be using those base boosts regularly.

I think it's known by many players that the OG development team based the damage formulas for attacks on the Recharge of the powers without considering the Animation time. This has led some powers that were intended to do identical damage to each other doing more or less damage based mostly on luck. One place this is very evident is the Control sets. Most Control sets feature a single target Immobilize, a single target Hold, and an AoE immobilize. The raw damage of each of these powers is meant to be identical: Using Dominator numbers, the single target Hold and single target Immobilize were each meant to deal 52.8 damage at level 50 (Note the single target Immobilize recharges in 4 sec versus 😎 The single target Immobilize is meant to deal about 33% as much damage as the single target powers (15.85 damage on a level 50 Dominator) For the sake of making this conversation simpler I am going to focus on Dominator numbers and not Controller. Containment makes it slightly harder to talk about Controller damage output. If you want to extrapolate those numbers though, on balance its fairly safe to assume Dominators and Controllers do about as much damage as each other when you consider that Contained attacks slightly outdamage the Dominator but it takes a click or two to set that up. Here's how the single target powers play out on Dominators in real life: Basically, the fastest animating powers animate in 1.32 seconds, and the slowest in 2.11 or 2.24. The difference is a nearly 30% drop in DPA before considering procs. I realize just posting the DPA of a power on its own isnt easy to comprehend without some context, so here are Defender and Blaster Energy Blast to give a sense of upper and lower bounds. I've also included some averageish Dominator Assault powers for comparison. They may or may not be perfect comparisons but at least may give some sense of scale. Finally, here is a chart of what the DPA of each single target power (except Fire) would be with a different animation time: Putting all this together, it seems to me that the best option is to use 1.32 second animations for all of these powers. That would give all of these powers a 40.0 DPA on either 4 second (a bit worse than a T1 Assault set blast) or 8 second recharge. HOWEVER this decision doesn't take place in a vacuum. With a ~40 DPA single target attack on 4 second recharge, Controllers would outpace some (many? I haven't looked closely enough) Defenders. I'll leave it to hard core number crunchers what the "right" final DPA should be. On the subject of where to get these animations, here are some powers that currently have a 1.32 second anim. Some of these are probably duplicates, I didn't look into them too closely. Fire > Char Mind > Dominate Ice > Chillblain Elec > Electric Fences Icey Assault > Bitter Ice Blast Cold Domination > Ice Shield Fire Control > Cinders Gravity Control >Dimension Shift Plant > Carrion Creepers Next we have the AoE Immobilize. Have you ever played an Ice Control character and felt like you were doing way, way less damage than Fire or Plant? Here's why: Ice Control's AoE deals about half as much DPA as Fire (7 vs 14) and less than half as much as Plant (7 vs 17). You'll notice that Plant has one of the longer animations, but because it deals x2 the base damage of any other immob AoE it still comes in first place. (Why does it deal x2 the damage of any other aoe immob? This is a mystery that has never been solved, but most people assume it's a bug from when the OG devs created Plant Control for Dominators by cloning a Controller set and accidentally included the Containment damage, then doubled it again when proliferating Plant Control to Controllers a few issues later). The animations here range from 1.18 sec to 2.24 sec. I'm less certain what the right move is here. These powers don't fit an easy profile to compare them to. They mostly recharge in 8 seconds with a huge 30ft radius. Few ranged AoE attacks recharge that fast or have such a large radius. Here's their standardized DPA for each animation time if we briefly don't consider the outliers in Fire, Plant, or Dark. For a comparison point, the fairly standard Defender Explosive Blast recharges in 16 seconds and has a DPA around 25, radius 15. Since AoE immobilizes recharge x2 as fast as Explosive Blast I think we may want to be careful here. But you'll note that currently because of Containment Plant Controllers outperform the AoE damage of Energy Blast except for the nuke. I don't have a final answer on the AoE immobilize. My instinct says at a minimum to have Plant use a faster animation but lower its raw damage. It probably should land with a DPA identical to Fire. Ice Control almost certainly needs an animation fast enough to give it a DPA better than 7. The 12 DPA of Electric and Earth is nothing to write home about, but it's still a major improvement.

What I've always disliked about overworld monsters is that they scale so drastically by level. Usually there is a small few blocks of them that are the "right" level for me and everything else either too low or too high. This leads to circling the same small area of the map hunting the same spawn locations over and over. I wish there were at least one or two outdoor zones where all of the enemies used invasion difficulty scaling. I do like the idea of certain enemies dropping certain things, but for me it would be purple recipes I'd be most interested in.

I would agree on this. ES is a disappointing power. (Small correction, the Recharge is 12.) Overall one glaring flaw in Martial Assault is it has these relatively small AoEs like in ES and SK. Granted the AoE damage in ES is minimal but we can still see the intent there. Archetypes like Scrappers can pull enemies into position of these attacks. But a Dominator's opening move is likely to be some kind of Stun, Hold, or patch. Only Plant Control or (sometimes) Mind Control is really in a position to be manipulating stuff into position because of Confusion, or perhaps you could use Wormhole. At least Fold Space exists now.

Thunder Kick is one of the fastest animations available to Dominators at 1.056 secs, while Spinning Kick lasts 1.32 seconds. The resulting DPA is for Thunder Kick is ~86 and for Spinning Kick is ~62. So Thunder Kick deals about 38% more damage for the animation time spent and also Recharges 1 second faster. 62 DPA honestly isn't terrible... but its also barely any better than Explosive Shuriken at ~62. The kicker (LOL) here is Explosive Shuriken locks into a target. There's a possibility with Spinning Kick you don't line up the shot and hit zero targets. If you're good at lining up the shot it's not terrible. Personally I wish the power just dealt better single target DPA.

I guess while we're at it, we might as well mention Spinning Kick as well. In general with Dominators, you can assume their melee attacks deal better damage than their ranged attacks. Only with Spinning Kick you cannot do this. Here is where you get to see crotchety Tex: Spinning Kick belongs to an array of powers I find extremely irritating which consist of tiny cones. In this case, the power is a 9ft llong cone with a 90 degree radius. In theory you can fit multiple enemies in there. In practice lining the shot up reliably is a PITA. You can manipulate enemies into the correct position by backing up, but it's all a bit gimmicky to me. YMMV. It gets worse though. Since Spinning Kick requires no target, you don't even have a guarantee it will hit one enemy. Maybe I'm just bad at aiming. But I'd say in a hectic fight I whiff againt my main target about 20% of the time. The cone is not forgiving, a little to the left or a little to the right and you hit nothing. I think the developers were thinking Martial Assault would be an AoE heavy Assault set. Trick Shot, Caltrops, and Spinning Kick all support that theory. However in practice Spinning Kick is a very low DPA melee attack that forces you to be at close range and still only deals as much damage as Exploding Shuriken. There may be a very skilled player out there who can make SK connect reliably and be worth it. I guess that means there's a "reflex" element to Martial that varies in value based on player agility, Street Fighter style. Again YMMV.

I think it's fair for your build if that is where you want to go. I used to skip TK Thrust for similar reasons, but I also had the problem of taking forever to beat down +4 bosses. After zillion rebuilds I specced into TK Thrust, dropped the two ranged blasts, and the problem is largely resolved. I'm not sure how comfortable you are with your boss clear rate, but for most players in general I advise them to do what I initially did not do and plan for a melee heavy build. Single target melee attacks aren't generally good for +Recharge. You can get +10 Recharge from Hecatomb but there isn't an equivalent to Obliteration, Decimation, or Positron's Blast that adds +5-6.25% Recharge. What single target melee attacks are good for is S/L Defense. That's why the slotting I recommend is x4 Kinetic Combat x1 Overwhelming Force. With OF TK Thrust becomes 100% chance for Knockdown. A variation of the cycle of Snipe> TK Thrust > Mind Probe > Psychic Shockwave > APP Blast is mostly sustainable. Boss enemies and some EBs are on their butts most of the cycle. I rarely/never have to press Psi Dart to fill things in. As a /Psi if most of the pack is dead I'm off and running to the next pack once most of the enemies are dead to get my next refill of Drain Psyche.

Since someone is likely to ask about Envenomed Blades and there isn't a lot of info about it out there, here's what I've been able to find out. Envenomed Blades adds a global proc to your character for 40 seconds that adds Toxic damage to your attacks similar to how incarnate procs work. It uses the following formula to calculate damage: In PVE: Envenomed Blades Damage= ((((.8 * minmax(power.base>rechargetime, 0, 25)) + 1.8) * .2) * @StdResult) / power.base>areafactor Basically what that's saying is the damage is based on a portion of the power's base recharge time (up to 25 seconds), reduced by the "area factor" of the power (so larger AoEs are penalized). In PVP: Envenomed Blades Damage= (((Base Activate Time * 0.70) + (minmax(Base Recharge Time, 0, 20) * 0.04)) + 0.40) * Result The PVP formula basically says this: Element 1: Calculate the Activation Time of the power that called this proc times 0.7 Element 2: Calculate the Base Recharge Time of the power that called this proc (capped at 20 seconds) times 0.04. Add 0.4 to the result Add Element and Element 2 together Multiply that by the damage dealt by the power that called this proc To be honest, I find all of this a bit overwrought. It would seem more straightforward to me for EV to just add a percent of damage to your attack, but that is not what happens. You should also note that Envenomed Blades is specifically coded not to work in toggle powers. So, EV doesn't add damage to Hot Feet. I pasted the JSON code from the temp files below if you want a closer look at what it's doing.

I probably play Dominators more than any other class, but I do think there are a couple of things about Dominators that hold them back: DPA of Control powers. The legacy of the OG devs is animation times all over the map. Mechanics of perma-dom. Maintaining perma Domination is a chore. It's just not that much fun to have to remember to reclick the power. Fragility. Dominators have worse armor options than any class in the game other than Blasters and certain subsets of Corruptors. Virtually no resistance to debuffs. Armor sets provide resistance to -ToHit, -Endurance, -Recharge etc. Ranged characters have to worry less about this. Dominators are melee-ish characters and have to tank much of it head on. No mezz protection outside of Domination. While this is also true of most other squishies, other squishies have, at a minimum, +Defense +Resist Healing or something to assist them. Several Dominator sets get zilch. Samey-Assault sets. Probably more than any other power set type, there is a lack of diversity in how Assault sets play. Unlike the Blast, Melee and Manipulation sets on which they are based, most lack truly interesting powers to set them apart. Icy Assault for example lacks the holds, ice patches, pbaoe sleeps and other things that make Ice Blast, Melee, and Manipulation so interesting. Inconsistent Applicability of the Domination ability. Seeds of Confusion Dominates. Synaptic Overload Dominates the first target only. Arctic Air doesn't Dominate anything. 5 AoE powers in Mind Control Dominate; only two in Electric Control do. Control matters much less than it used to. It's not quite accurate to say every enemy group is blown away in 3 seconds, but I do think its accurate that in the game of today players deal so much damage that any class that can't keep up and can't buff the team is in a weak place. I think Dominators make a great foundation and still enjoy them. I'd like to see more done to them though.

I'm not able to open the build bc my Mids is outdated so I am commenting generically. IMO while Electric Control is probably the best primary for Electric Assault, Electric Control probably pairs better with something other than Electric Assault. Electric Assault has -Endurance in its attacks, but is otherwise a fairly generic set. I would like the developers to revisit this set at some point. On the other hand IMO a truly great (read: terrifying) sapper with a similar feel is Elec/Energy/Elec. That's because Power Up multiplies your Endurance Modification by about x2. This gives you several ticks of around -27% Endurance from with no cast time from Conductive Aura slotted with x2 end mod. Same level mobs (even Elite Bosses) are drained in 8 seconds even if you press nothing else. Of course you aren't pressing nothing else; you have the huge radius of Chain Fences you can hit too, for an additional -27%, and (if you went Mu) Power Sink to crash the endurance of anything adjacent to you. If you're looking for a build that can make the other players on the ITF go "why do all the Cyclopses and boss ambushes on this task force have no endurance?" this is it. There are a few other sets with similar power boost effects: Dark - Adds a self heal with Drain Life and -ToHit which can help you survive. DoTs can screw with Static Field Icy - A very generic set except for its damage aura. Weirdly enough, this damage aura suppress against Sleeping enemies so works well with Static Field. Earth - Not sure how well the damage aura plays with Static Field. There is also Psi Assault. I have a veteran level 100 Elec/Psi Dominator. I consider him my "main." The main draw here is overlap between Drain Psyche, Conductive Aura, and Power Sink. The heal in Drain Psyche really helps you survive with Electric's relatively low hard controls, but it does take longer to drain stuff versus one of the sets above. RE: the APP, every build is different, but IMO Electric Control characters are more often than not best served by the Mu APP.