EnjoyTheJourney

Where was the intimacy coordinator when that animation was playing on screen?

In case you perceive mind control as equivalent to a psionic control set, then mind control / fiery assault is (also) a solid pairing for a dominator. Mind control has been a strong control set for dominators for a long time and it has been noticeably buffed by the recent adaptive recharge change.

I've tried both dark control and dark assault on multiple characters and neither of them ever really clicked for me no matter what other sets I paired up with them. That's a personal preference, though, and I couldn't say what's fun for you and what's not. Like Uun, I couldn't speak to what's good for PvP or not. If the "worth building" question is focused on mechanics, then both sets are very good at what they do. Dark control, in particular, is one of the strongest and most versatile control sets for dominators. The single target confuse lets your dominator punch well above their weight class, which Voltak used a lot to solo harder content. Fearsome stare is enough on its own to clear entire missions with a high degree of safety and when paired with the AOE immobilize it allows you to go a bit light on defenses and still floor mob to hit chances against your dominator in many situations. Heart of darkness, shadow field, and shadowy binds offer similar levels of control to their comparable powers in other dominator sets. All the -to hit tends to be quite noticeable in how it protects a dark control dominator and their teammates, at least in most situations. The T9 pet does reasonable damage and also contributes to controlling mobs, should you choose to take it. Dark assault does reasonable to higher end single target damage, depending on slotting. With a quick-recharging heal in life drain and a noticeable amount of -to hit debuffs it also provides superior survivability. The immobilize in midnight grasp adds another layer of control to whatever other controls are present and it stacks naturally as a part of using your single target attack chain. Gather shadows acts as both a (moderate) damage boost and a "power boost" when its active, which beefs up defense totals whenever it is active. The main limitation of dark assault is that the PbAOE is middling for damage and the AOE cone has good range, but only a 20 degree spread, which is narrow. Dominators are generally not the best at AOE damage anyways, though, so that doesn't put dark assault noticeably behind most other dominator assault sets. The main synergy from playing both sets together comes from the stacking -to hit, which increases survivability in most situations. The immobilize in midnight grasp is quite a nice bonus for control, though, as it reduces the odds that enemies successfully run away before being defeated.

Singy's reverse repel and its ability to keep mobs off their feet are two of its best features. Even without the teleport pool, Singy can be pulled into spawns by moving to the other side of them. With enemies very close together and having a not-so-great time dealing with Singy's knocks usually a team makes short work of them. So, when teaming, shortly after Singy has been pulled (or teleported) into a mob it's usually a great time to wormhole another spawn to drop on top of their friends, where Singy is already hanging out. When soloing, as well, dumping mobs onto Singy with wormhole is a time-honored way to put Singy to good use. Finally, (re)summoning Singy into spawns as an alpha strike can be an effective way to start fights, as long as Singy is ready for resummoning and your grav troller has a stealth IO in sprint, for example. If keeping Singy alive is a challenge, then the two +10% resistance pet IOs can be slotted into Singy, along with 3 other expedient reinforcement IOs and a sudden acceleration KB to KD unique IO. Singy will still need to be resummoned from time to time after mobs defeat it. But, all that damage wasn't directed at your troller or teammates and the occasional resummoning is a minor inconvenience given the added utility Singy brings when its unusual talents are put to good use. PS: Aggressively using Singy this way works really well even in Cimerora against +4x8 spawns gathered together in large numbers, which is one of the more difficult environments in which to do that because of all the EBs and -def buffs that are about. Just monitor Singy's health and do the occasional resummon as needed. Singy's presence will absolutely help the team clear those scrums quicker.

I've tried both overwhelming force and sudden acceleration KB to KD IOs in the same build for the same gravity controller. The effect of singularity on mobs was easier to predict and more controlled with the sudden acceleration KB to KD IO in it than with the overwhelming force KB to KD IO. The difference between them was very noticeable. It costs about 100,000 to 150,000 inf to buy an unslotter. The two unique KB to KD IOs aren't cheap. But, they're not anywhere near the high end for their cost either. If a bit of spare inf is laying around it's probably good to try both of them out if you're unsure which you'd prefer.

Regarding wormhole, repositioning most of a large, loosely packed spawn on itself can be useful because mobs end up being packed closer together and many are stunned. Often another power choice would be better in those situations. But, sometimes the stun and repositioning ends up being worth the long casting time even if you're not dumping one spawn's members upon another spawn. Also, one reason for dumping another spawn onto one the group is currently fighting is that a fair number of sets these days have location-based debuffs and controls for mobs and leveraging what's already on the ground by bringing in more mobs often increases clear speed. I usually put in the purple stun set upon reaching level 50. I also put in the sudden acceleration KB to KD unique IO to make mobs move around less after they're teleported. YMMV on that slotting, of course. Unless there's been a recent change, putting the overwhelming force (OF) "knockback to knockdown" (KB to KD) unique IO in singularity doesn't reliably make its repel / knocks team friendly, but putting the sudden acceleration (SA) KB to KD unique IO does make singularity's repel / knocks team friendly. By that I mean that singularity with the OF KB-to-KD unique IO in it will sometimes fling mobs around, while singularity with the SA KB-to-KD IO in it consistently makes mobs just fall over, and doesn't fling them around. The reverse repel effects seems to work the same way with either of the unique KB to KD IOs slotted into singularity.

Another approach to blaster building and playstyle is to pick whether you'd like to be mostly in melee, near melee, or far away. Then pick powers and slot for success when fighting where you're planning to fight. Then be consistent with your plans, only shifting where you fight if that is needed for survival reasons. Movement costs time, which adds up if you're moving a lot. A lot of perspective changes as you shift between places increases cognitive load and will increase errors in reading what's happening. Also, if you have a smooth and well constructed ranged attack chain then you may not increase damage much, if at all, if you sacrifice multiple ranged attacks to joust and pull off a single hard hitting melee attack. Basically, if you don't need to move around a lot, then it's very often better to not do that. On a similar note, there is value in hover blasting in one place, whether that place be in melee, near melee, or far away from melee. Cognitive load is reduced, which tends to make decision making better. Also, a fully ranged blaster who consistently maintains their range from a fight can see how a fight is evolving better than one in melee, better than one who is moving all over the battlefield. A fully ranged blaster can do a better job of picking out priority targets and figuring out where in a battle to apply their AOEs and mezzes to maximize their effect. They may give up some DPS by not making a lot of use of hard hitting melee attacks. But, in exchange they can switch targets quicker (on average) with ranged attacks than with melee attacks and they can put their DPS to better use through better target selection. Personally, I like building blasters to be in melee 90% of the time, or more. You get fulcrum shift as a matter of course, which usually greatly improves damage, without needing to stop attacking to move in and get it. You get any other AOE buffs aimed at the tank without thinking about it or spending time moving into and out of melee range. I sometimes joust when leveling. But, once endgame has arrived I'd much rather just stay in a consistent place in battles and focus on dishing out damage. If being in melee on the ground gets too dangerous then I'll usually hover just above the fight and stay in melee range that way; there is always a sweet spot above mobs in which you can melee those on the ground, but they can't use their melee attacks against you as you hover above them. If I don't have the ability to hover slightly above the fray on a blaster, and it's too dangerous to be in the thick of melee, then I'll shift to the edges of a melee scrum and fight there. I give up on having a better picture of how larger battles are unfolding by by consistently being in or near melee, though, so there is a tradeoff. I just happen to enjoy fighting in melee range more, so I stick with it. That said, I would agree with a lot of what Nemu is suggesting. For example, using line of sight is inarguably a good idea and it's a really effective way to reduce incoming damage. Also, when soloing, jousting can be a useful tool to confuse enemy AI, which will help to reduce incoming damage. That can be worthwhile even when the time lost to moving while jousting leads to any DPS increase being quite minimal.

Good point and I'm a bit surprised to have forgotten that. The -res proc average uptime per target and the average number of targets affected won't be twice as high with 2 mortars out. But, average uptime per target and average number of targets affected are both damage multipliers that directly affect each other, boosting damage higher than either would entirely on their own, and they both increase with the number of mortars out: basically, two different damage multipliers that multiply each other will tend to get larger together. So, a -res proc in mortar should in most cases deliver noticeably better results with multiple copies out. Multiple copies being a thing noticeably changes the math, making including an achilles -res proc probably a very good use of a single slot.

It's not the end of the world either way, of course. But, hopefully pet controls proliferate from controllers to dominators at some point. Even better would be if players can choose the default stance for their T9 pets. Some may prefer their pets always default to aggressive, some may prefer defensive. There's a cost in development and testing time for any change and that needs to be weighed against what else can be done instead. But, in terms of game balance there doesn't seem to be any harm in offering both controllers and dominators a choice about the default stance of their T9 pets.

A hover-blasting sentinel could do very well with that content. A few combos that seem likely to be capable include water / super reflexes, beam / bio, and fire / bio. Defense debuffs aren't as frequent and threatening when hovering for most content, including Cims. Nukes and other AOEs would tend to quickly defeat trash mobs. That leaves a war of attrition taking place between bosses / EBs and the sentinel of choice. All of these combos above have access to a functional amount of healing / absorb that recharges in a fairly short time and with good builds they'd probably be up to the task.

Thank you. Do you know if that 30% chance gets calculated once every 10 seconds for all mobs at once, each mob individually, or at most for one mob no matter how many mobs mortar hits? If calculations are made for all mobs at once or each mob individually, then the -res proc may still be worth slotting because it's a multiplier for team damage, working out to roughly 3% to 6% more damage on average at the cost of just a single slot, at least compared to situations in which there is no other achilles heel -res proc working.

Does the achilles' heel proc not work in mortar?

I'm not sure about "better", as your build is really solid. But, here's another take on a possible grav / traps build. The main differences are noticeably better single target damage, roughly comparable AOE damage from replacing trip mine and psi nado with enflame, lower defenses^, earlier availability of mez protection and a resistance boost by taking rune of protection at level 20, and more global recharge. ^ But, if you take barrier T4 you'll have a baseline +5% to defense totals or higher as long as it is active. And, you can have it permanently active. Also, seeker drones will debuff enemy to hit and they make a good alpha taker or mid-fight enemy debuffer. So, enemy to hit chances are in practice generally lower than the raw numbers suggest here. Also, inspirations can help and, with the (mostly) solid resistances this build offers, you're likely to find that the lower defense totals for this build are still solid enough and they will tend to have little effect on how well fights go for your controller. One change to consider trying out, which you can do inexpensively with unslotters bought on the AH or purchased at a vending station, would be to re-slot singularity to match the build below. Singularity's effect on mobs will be more predictable, which teammates would probably really like in case you want to team with this character. Also, the extra resistance IO should help singularity to take more incoming damage before needing to be resummoned. Best of luck with your controller, however you decide to move forward. Edit: Changed the attached file and image to reflect changes made in the order in which powers are being taken for my own gravity / traps / psi controller. My thanks to the OP for helping me come up with a character concept I'm likely to enjoy. Gravitic Clockwork - Controller (Gravity Control - Traps - Psy mastery).mbd

Illusion / TA / psi can solo a very large amount of content. I'd personally not want to solo 8-player spawns with ill/TA/psi because that could be a bit tedious. It could be done, though. Phants take aggro and do good damage, when well slotted. Spectral terror is a workhorse as an AOE control that noticeably debuffs enemy to hit. Stack flash arrow together with spectral terror to make enemies much less likely to hit your controller or teammates. With strong global recharge oil slick arrow is up a lot, plus there are good proc opportunities with TA; be sure to heavily proc the single target hold in TA (ice arrow). As well, EMP arrow offers 500% -regen with decent uptime, with good global recharge, which helps for taking down GMs and AVs. The damage resistance and mez protection provided by EMP arrow are also really helpful for soloing, particularly for targets that mez and that hit hard. Psi mastery provides a mez protection clickie as of level 35, which is a convenient and accessible way to deal with incoming mezzes (together with rune of protection from the sorcery pool, easily accessible as early as level 20). Finally, take enflame from the sorcery pool to enhance both single target and AOE damage.

Was that caused by the first levitate being cast? 😇

FWIW, Ston used Hemo as part of the single target attack chain he posted about for the melee damage testing that he did. He provided the builds used for testing, as well. Here's the link, with the attack chain used for pylon testing listed for each stalker primary given in the stalker pylon testing table ... IIRC Ston stated that he couldn't guarantee all the attack chains he used for testing are optimal, just that they were the best that he found. So, perhaps there are better put together attack chains for savage stalkers. Or not. What's here may still a useful data point, though, even if it's not optimal.

One thought to consider is what you'd like to have your dominator be able to do (and not do). The "don't bother with more than minimal defenses" build approach works best if your dom operates frequently at range, focuses mostly on single target damage, and has vengeance. Then you take less aggro and you have a defense-boosting response if your teammates start to fall and your dom might next on "hit list" for mobs. Inspirations can be a great shorter term fallback for this kind of build. Moonsheep's thorough coverage of the role each of these play is a kind of "textbook" about how to successfully build and play that kind of dom. Another approach is to try to build more survivability, or at least more peak survivability options, so you don't need to lean as hard into inspirations and into having your teammates there as targets for aggro. I favor this approach because I want my doms to take a fair amount of aggro and live through it. To me taking a lot of aggro is a team friendly thing to do and I build my doms so they can do it with (usually) minimal or no inspiration use (at least for most regular content, starred content is of course a different ballgame). So, for example, on an Apex TF I'll usually down a couple of medium orange inspirations, maybe also a purple if my dom has less than the incarnate defense cap, and then go into melee with the pylons when underground. Sometimes that can be a dicy move and some green inspirations get used. But, usually they're not needed. When there are dozens of mobs in a big cluster in an ITF I'll usually have my doms right in the middle of it all and on the ground, getting fulcrum shift without needing to move into position first to receive it, getting as a matter of course while fighting. Face-tanking EBs and AVs, or at least staying near melee range, will often be preferred because if my dom can take getting a lot of attention from an EB/AV and survive then that means less attacks directed at teammates. It's a lot of fun to run a dom this way, in my experience. This approach does have its limits. If a dom I'm running is in the middle of a lot of Cims and defense starts to dip below softcap, then I'd better fix that quickly or my dom will rapidly faceplant. Also, for example, I haven't yet built a dom that can survive being the primary focus of attention for an extended period of time when fighting in melee with an enraged Bobcat at the end of the Tin Mage TF. That's true for a lot of ATs, though, and there isn't any shame in having limits. Finally, in the quest to incorporate good damage, have superior survivability (or at least peak survivability), have permadom, and have a good set of controls, in my experience it's very difficult to avoid having hasten in the build. However, having domination drop doesn't matter very much if you have, say, melee core hybrid T4, as you just engage that if you have mez troubles and rapidly get domination back up on teams by spamming quick-activating powers. If you have a decent amount of baseline defense then you can often just take one purple inspiration and rebuild domination quite quickly without getting mezzed along the way, keeping some form of mez protection in reserve for another time. The sheer willpower accolade can even further reduce the risks associated with having domination temporarily drop. Hasten is such an efficient build choice, so powerful for the investment it takes, that I'd never consider dropping it to have what amounts to a minor QOL benefit. To each their own, though, and it's a great thing that there are quite a few different build approaches that can work well for a dominator. Good luck to the OP, however they decide to move forward.

Telekinesis assistance for breath of fire, which is a fairly narrow cone, can help to at least partially compensate for potentially getting fewer fulcrum shift buffs because of operating at range; bunching up mobs tends to be a really team friendly thing to do as well.

Once you have enough attacks and you don't have a lot of slots left over even if you took more attacks, then how to use any "extra" power picks still available becomes an open question and there isn't always a clearly best answer. It often comes down to what functionality you'd like to boost further, or perhaps a general preference that spans many kinds of builds. I like mass hypnosis for the ability to shut down incoming overaggro, the ability to shut down alpha ahead of using telekinesis to bunch mobs up, and for occasional (aggro-free!) usage on hard targets that have a sleep hole in their mez protection. In the build further up there's just 1 extra slot beyond the base slot for added flexibility to handle mobs up to a fair distance away. So, the cost is not that high for the utility provided.

Not sure how many notes, if any, you wanted to receive for your builds. I looked at build 2 and there's quite a few things to like about it. One surprise was to note that single target damage would be very low because of low damage for key powers and because of times during which all single target powers doing noticeable damage would be recharging, with nothing ready to go. Also, smite does better damage per second of activation time than any other power in dark assault. So, leaving smite at one slot and slotting up midnight grasp instead (which does less damage for the time it takes to activate and is available less often than smite because of higher base recharge) is a puzzling choice. A relatively simple way to at least improve that could be ... 1. Put 5 pieces of the hecatomb set (including the damage proc) into midnight grasp (especially all the recharge IOs in that set) and the superior ascendancy of the dominator (SAoD) +damage proc IO into the sixth slot; put the other unused SAoD IO into cinders. 2. Remove 3 slots from fire cages and 2 slots from life drain. Add those slots to smite. 3. Put the two winter set IOs now in midnight grasp into smite, and then fill the rest of the slots in smite with damage procs. 4. Put two superior frozen blast IOs into fire cages, fully removing the gravitational anchor set. Also, I'm a bit confused to not see the sudden acceleration KB to KD unique IO not in bonfire. Did I miss a change in how bonfire works in a recent patch? If not, then your teammates will be quite glad and grateful if you put a KB to KD IO into bonfire so mobs don't get scattered everywhere when you drop bonfire onto enemies. Hopefully this helps.

Attached is a dark assault build with force of will. To see how unleash potential works with dark assault, do the following: 1. Switch to the "totals" screen 2. Look at defense totals and endurance recovery totals with "unleash potential" and "gather shadows" toggled off 3. Toggle on unleash potential and gather shadows. 4. Look once again at defense and endurance recovery totals. Basically, defense and endurance recovery both go way up if you cast gather shadows shortly before casting unleash potential and they remain higher for the duration of unleash potential (1 minute). Unleash potential recharges in less than 2 minutes for dom builds that have permadom. So availability is good enough to help noticeably for surviving periods where there's a higher rate of incoming damage and to also help at better managing endurance. Also, weaken resolve provides a handy spot for an achilles heel -res debuff IO, which helps damage. Edit: Unleash potential isn't boosted by all damage enhancing abilities in dominator secondaries. Build up powers and fiery embrace, for example, do not boost unleash potential totals. But, unleash potential can still be helpful even for those builds, depending on how that build is put together. For example, I have unleash potential in my build plan for an ice / savage / dark dom to help out defense and recovery totals, as well as for the chance to insert a -res proc and to get a movement power. Dominator (Gravity Control - Dark Assault - Leviathan Mastery),v2.mbd

Below is a candidate build that aims to put the AOE controls of mind to good use and to have reasonably good damage. Fire mastery was selected because it seems both thematic and effective for a mind / fire dom, given how embrace of fire will boost fireball. Having 3 good AOEs should give an effective AOE cycle and single target damage should be reasonable. You can put more emphasis on ranged defense by reconfiguring some sets, if you'd like. But, having unleash potential available does help to make incoming damage spikes easier to weather already. And, being at range tends to make you less of a target anyways. Good luck with your mind / fire dom, however you decide to move forward. Dominator (Mind Control - Fiery Assault - Fire Mastery).mbd

Fire / ice / dark have a solid source of synergy in how they can each contribute to slowing mobs down. Hot feet + chilling embrace + tar patch means mobs would have a very substantial slow debuff total applied to them. Plus, the damage auras would be made more effective by tar patch. To make endurance management more manageable and to boost defenses, unleash potential (force of will) can be taken relatively early. It would be boosted by casting power up in ice assault set shortly before activating unleash potential, for even better recovery and peak defense totals.

Some ideas consider ... 1. Consider adding in power up to your build. Drop a level 50 recharge IO into the open slot for power up at level 47+. 2. You can drop haunt to get power up, as haunt contributes little damage to your build. 3. You can get a set with +10% recharge into heart of darkness to (more than) compensate for losing 6.25% recharge by dropping haunt. 4. Reduce slots in stone spears to 3, use thunderstrike or superior winter's bite in stone spears instead. 5. Put the apocalypse damage proc into dark grasp, replacing one of the lesser psionic damage damage proc IOs. 5. Put some more accuracy into dark grasp to get to at least 95% to hit against +3 mobs. Take out the current D-synch to make room for something with accuracy. 6. Switch off the toggles on the right hand side of the tremor and fissure powers to avoid getting confused about how much global recharge your dom has. 7. Consider putting 4 pieces from the unbreakable guard set into tough or sharkskin, with the +7.5% life unique IO being one of those pieces. 8. When doing "7" above, be sure to keep the +3% defense IOs from the steadfast protection and gladiator's armor sets in your build. 9. Replace the soul allegiance: damage IO with the soul allegiance: build up proc IO. 10. Put the preventive medicine: absorb proc IO into hibernate 11. Put the panacea: +hit points / endurance IO into health. Add a second slot to health and put in the miracle +recovery IO. 12. Several earth assault powers only work when your dom is on the ground. So, instead of taking hover and fly, take combat jumping and super leap instead. 13. Put a luck of the gambler +7.5% global recharge IO into combat jumping. 14. Put two extra slots into combat jumping. In those slots put the reactive defenses 3% scaling resistance unique IO and the unbreakable guard +5% resistance unique IO. 15. Put the Winter's Gift set unique +20% resistance to slow IO into super jump. 16. Look at the current recharge time for seismic smash and heavy mallet. With the +recharge force feedback IOs switched off you'll realize that the usual recharge time for seismic smash is fairly close to 8 seconds, while heavy mallet is under 5 seconds. Balance the recharge on those two skills better and improve overall damage by flipping the hecatomb set into seismic smash and the procs into heavy mallet. Also, drop the damage/recharge IO from hecatomb and replace it with the hecatomb negative damage proc. 17. Although not important right away, as you earn inf at level 50 consider boosting at least the level 50 recharge IOs and all of the IOs that reduce endurance expenditures. You have an interesting take on how to put together a single target damage chain. There's merit to your approach, which involves essentially dumping stone mallet because it's a terrible "damage per second of activation time" power no matter what you do and proccing up dark grasp to replace stone mallet. If you struggle with endurance, and it is possible with earth assault, consider adding in the force of will pool (replace the stealth pool), taking unleash potential and slotting it with a +7.5% recharge luck of the gambler IO and two level 50 recharge IOs. Best of luck with your dom, however you decide to move forward.

I recalled this being mentioned in the "Clear Speed Leaderboard" thread for which Koopak is the original poster. Below is a link to page 4 of that thread; envenomed blades are discussed there ... (Based on your testing, though, maybe there's been some changes in the interim or perhaps the original finding was somehow incorrect)