EnjoyTheJourney

It may be worth mentioning that it tends to be helpful to have some amount of recharge / movement debuff resistance somewhere in the build (ie: slow resist, which usually reduces incoming debuffs to both recharge and movement). As a potentially reasonable benchmark, 50% slow resist seems to be noticeably effective at protecting against having permadom fail due to recharge debuffs, while also not costing a lot in terms of slots, defenses, or global recharge. The kind of content run and the usual level of enemies relative to a player's characters can significantly influence preferences for cold / recharge debuff resistance. Some may feel that it is unnecessary to bother with slow debuff resistance, while others want noticeably more to 50% slow debuff resistance. Typical sources of slow / movement debuff resistance include Winter sets (usually only 2 or 3 IOs from a winter IO set are needed in a single power to boost resistance against incoming recharge / movement debuffs), the unique slow resist IO in the Winter's Gift universal travel IO set, and some endurance modification sets.

Doh! I never knew that and I obviously misread your post. My apologies. I went ahead and hid the earlier post. It didn't contribute to the thread, after re-reading your earlier post.

There are (of course) multiple reasonable choices for a build. Hopefully what's attached here provides a helpful beginning point. Dominator (Mind Control - Radioactive Assault - Psi Mastery),Vigor alpha,v2.mbd Dominator (Mind - Rad - Psi).pdf

Below are a few "not immediately obvious" things about /energy that might help to strengthen your blaster's build if you decide to choose /energy as your blaster's secondary. Energize makes it extremely difficult to run your blaster out of endurance unless recovery has been substantially debuffed. It offers very good stun protection of -8.3 mag. Consider slotting energize with either 5 panacea IOs or all 6 preventive medicine IOs for a noticeable heal and regen boost whenever you cast it. Your blaster can shrug off chip damage with energize well slotted with heal IOs. Also, remember to be proactive casting energize because if mezzed your blaster cannot cast energize until mez wears off. It is very easy to perma energize, which makes it noticeably easier to keep it always active. Power boost is worth hitting before energize, when you can, because power boost enhances the heal and regen gained from casting energize. So, set the icons for those two powers next to each other in a power tray. Perma power boost when you can because it has another very helpful buff that's described further down. It helps to take energize together with combat jumping and acrobatics. Combat jumping offers -8.3 immobilize protection, which is quite good. Acrobatics provides -9 mag knock protection and -2 mag hold protection. Hold protection of -2 mag doesn't protect against many holds used by mobs. But, when power boost is active the hold protection of acrobatics climbs to -3.57 mag protection, which means you'd like power boost to be as close to perma as you can get it. You can still have multiple holds on your blaster and end up held. But, good defense totals can reduce the frequency of that scenario by quite a bit. Then you only have sleep and confusion to figure out how to manage for mezzes that interfere with your ability to control your blaster. The blaster unique IO that offers resistance to mez is a good choice for further help with protection against mezzes. A couple of break frees in your inspiration tray can serve as your "fall back" for those occasions when mez breaks through anyways. Finally, the clickies in /energy are fairly easy to maintain because you can click them as you transition between groups. Boost range will only sometimes be relevant once combat has been joined. So, you can often forget about boost range while battles are in progress.

Was hoping somebody else would post earlier to learn more about the answers to the questions you're posing; understanding the procs you're wondering about and how to put them to their best use, in particular, is still very much a work in progress for me. The illusion primary would probably put the soulbound proc to its best use with three phants fighting a high percentage of the time. Not sure, for dark control, whether the soulbound proc is better in the wolf or in haunt. Stony in earth control or Jack in ice control are the obvious targets for their respective control sets. The imps in fire control can put the soulbound proc to very good use given that there are three of them and they attack fairly fast. So, as long as they're staying alive well the soulbound proc would be great in them. If the imps prove fragile, then of course the soul bound proc won't help much. When it is proccing, and especially when it stacks with itself, which it can when slotted into a skill that provides multiple pets at once, such as illusion's phants, the soulbound proc noticeably increases damage. The fiery orb proc can go well in roots or fire cages, for example, as long as you cast it often; you'll want multiple fiery orbs out to notice a difference in AOE damage and to serve as aggro magnets. IIRC a control effect needs to activate for it to cast, and so just as for the AotD +damage proc the fiery orb proc works best in powers that reliably activate control effects. The AotD proc works best in powers that will proc it often, but without the +recharge substantially lowering damage for the power in question. Stacking the AotD +damage proc 2-4 times is a good target, which means single target attacks with noticeably slow recharge may not be the best choice for the AotD proc, in general. A plant / psi / psi build is attached with a sample of how AotD might be slotted into a power (subdue) that IIRC has an 80% chance of inflicting a mag 3 immobilize on mobs (so, frequent control effect activation, even if not 100%). As slotted subdue should trigger the AotD +damage proc about 52% of the time that subdue is cast. So, with a recharge time of 2.84 seconds it can be spammed and the AotD damage proc can stack about 1-3 times, perhaps(?) settling in at fairly close to an average of about 1.5 stacks at a time. A reasonable alternative for the AotD proc is to slot the whole AotD set into a slower recharging control power for the set bonuses and just treat the proc like a bit of bonus damage. So, for example, the entire AotD set can be slotted into stalagmites for earth control, providing an occasional, single stack of the +damage proc and otherwise just providing good set bonuses. Dominator (Plant Control - Psi Assault- Psi Mastery).mbd

Did you try fearsome stare as an opener? Slotted for -to hit it'll inflict about -17ish% to hit, which IIRC gets cut to close to 8% to hit against +3 mobs. Also, mobs will tend to stand still and shake until you attack them. It has a range of 70 feet, fires in a 45 degree angle, can affect up to 16 targets at once, despite being a cone. It's an effective opener even against large spawns that are fairly dispersed in where they're standing. Also, shadow field inflicts -15% to hit and functions a lot like volcanic gasses. You can reasonably slot it for hold and/or for -to hit. It's good to drop that down a shaft that has a spawn at the bottom before heading down. Your experience with the pets was similar to mine. I couldn't keep them alive against pylons. FWIW it seems like you have ice control really well figured out for how to get it to perform near its ceiling for control capabilities. You may be in a similar place with me regarding dark, by which I mean you're still learning how to get it to perform near its ceiling. Creative use of the confuse power is probably part of getting there and that may be part of where I'm currently falling short in how I put dark control to use. Edit: Forgot that the OP mentioned speed runs as being a particularly fun challenge. If speed running is highly desired then it might be hard to do better than plant / fiery / fire. Most spawns--and even most AVs--get erased so fast in speed runs. Having seeds for those relatively few instances when near-instant spawn deletion can't happen would help and having creepers splitting aggro and multiplying the number of tentacles as enemies drop in droves near creepers would help the team. Single target damage for fiery assault is top tier among dom secondaries and it can all be delivered from the same place as seeds (ie: from range). Both fireball and rain of fire from flame mastery have 16 target caps for even more AOE destruction, for those occasions when that would help. Heat metal can further buff team damage when hard targets are on the screen.

Those are good benchmark totals, especially for your first attempt at putting together your dom. One factor that helps pylon times (and AV / GM fights) for psi assault characters is that the -regen for drain psyche is so high that it noticeably impacts regen for AVs and GMs even with AV resists and purple patch effects in play. With the assault set and mastery as chosen, any of the primaries you're considering can go well. The best choice probably has a lot to do with the kind of content you'd like to run. If you're joining PUGs and not trying to run extreme content then plant would provide the smoothest ride. You can solo most things quite well with plant as the primary and you'd speed up teams as well. You can exemp down very well with plant because seeds is available so early, as well. I ran a fire / psi / ice dom for quite a while and found it very capable. I leaned defensive with incarnates (barrier core T4, melee core hybrid, all the passive accolades and all the relevant clicky accolades) and found that dom could reliably facetank Rom and most other AVs in +4x8 runs. He did have difficulty in extreme runs when trying to facetank Rom (+4x8, extra damage for enemies, no inspirations, no temp powers, ...). But, that's not surprising. He was effective in shortman runs for ITFs (ie: 3-5 players) because he could tank EBs and the AVs well and damage was very good. A dom duo I tried for the Tin Mage TF didn't go as hoped because of the endless ambushes and Director 11's penchant for endless running. We ended up abandoning that run. So, the build does have its limitations. Edit: Perhaps it's good to mention that fire / psi / ice wouldn't be the best choice if soloing AVs was important to you. That dom could facetank AVs while on teams, given that other teammates would be helping out in various ways. Earth / psi / ice would also be very capable. Very strong on controls, of course, with earth as the primary. Also, if you take animated stone you can keep him alive easier than other pets because he is naturally tough, plus he has a taunt. If you'd like to more fully explore how Stony can be kept alive then posts by Frosticus are a good resource. Dark is a really good survival set and the confuse opens up new options for the kinds of content you can solo (see Voltak's post and videos for more about that, if you'd like). It couldn't be considered a bad choice. It's more a matter of if you like the feel of the set. I don't understand it very well and have always struggled to get it to perform near its ceiling. So, I'm not the best for providing advice about how to do that.

The OP's summary of things learned seems accurate overall. A few thoughts to consider ... Energy assault doesn't have particularly good AOE damage. But, just like for multiple other ATs it offers very strong single target damage. Also, fiery assault doesn't need a lot of procs to produce top tier single target damage, which allows for slotting to focus more on set bonuses. That can be a good thing. The +damage unique IO has the potential to boost damage, especially when put into a power that recharges often enough to have 2-3 stacks most of the time. But, sometimes it's not the best choice. Set combinations that don't incorporate the +damage unique IO can usually still do very good damage, especially when procc'd out. And, the +recharge attached to the +damage IO can mess with proc rates for the power in which is slotted. So, if trying to min-max then it can be useful to compare "with the +damage proc" and "without the +damage proc" slotting in the single target damage chain to see which works better. Also, regarding mechanics, the percentage chance of a control being enacted by a power seems to be important when choosing in which power to put the unique +damage IO from the ascendancy of the dominator set. So, for example, IIRC the AOEs atom smasher and psy shockwave have a 20% chance of stunning when cast. Also, IIRC when the unique +damage ascendancy IO is put into those powers the game engine will only check to see whether or not to trigger the +damage IO when the stun activates. If that's true then procs won't be a frequent occurrence in powers that have a smaller chance of activating a control when they're used. One set of combinations I've never really explored, but that has good potential for teaming, would be to pair sonic assault with primaries and perhaps masteries that offer AOE confusion powers and perhaps defense debuffs. The -15% mob resistance aura for sonic assault has a 15 foot radius and is a noticeable boon for teams when a sonic dom is fighting in melee range. The -resist aura in sonic assault will be even stronger when that dom is confusing enemies, and even stronger still when confused enemies also have their defenses debuffed. Since sonic assault has a "power up" style power that boosts defenses and other things, as well as damage, which means it can support very high defenses the same way as dark assault, energy assault, ice assault, and earth assault. A few example powerset combinations could be ... earth control (debuffs defense) / sonic assault (debuffs resistances) / psi mastery (confuses mobs in melee range) plant control (confuses) / sonic assault / fire mastery (heat metal for tough fights, plus up to 2 good AOEs) gravity control (wormhole mobs into range of the -resistance debuff) / sonic assault / psi mastery (confuses mobs in melee range) There seems to be at least some overlap between the OP's most liked sets and the combinations here. These could be worth exploring because they might meet a lot of the benchmarks outlined earlier and they'd be great on teams.

Following up, you could put together any primary you like with any secondary you like and come up with an effective build. Not totally sure what would "tip the scales" toward one build or another for you. So, I'll add in a handful of Mids files, give some brief commentary on each build, and perhaps something will catch your attention. Or not, all good either way and good luck to you however you decide to move forward. On a related note, Frosticus has some interesting builds for earth / psi doms. Voltak has some interesting builds for dark / dark. Mezmera has some interesting builds for energy assault, with different primaries. All of these builds are thoughtfully put together and mechanically very effective. Also, perma hasten doesn't seem to help doms as much as it does for at least some controller builds. Perhaps I'm wrong, though, and one or more others will post awesome perma-hasten dom builds. I'll be taking notes for my own doms if one or more of those appears. Earth / ice / fire dom ... My personal favorite these days. Defenses are higher end for a dom. Very strong for AOE controls and also bring solid debuffs to a team with substantial amounts of slow, -recharge, -defense, and -resistances, plus a bit of -damage in chilling embrace. Very good build for leading PUG teams in most content. But, not a great choice for soloing a broad spectrum of AVs, in case that's important. Regarding numbers, does about 260 single target DPS in pylon testing and can safely clear a trapdoor run (not fast, but still quite safe). AOE damage is reasonable, with two "regular" AOEs and a damage aura also chipping in more AOE damage (about 12 DPS from the damage aura). Reasonable damage overall, even if not the most damaging dom build out there. To check out the defense totals toggle on "power up" and "unleash potential" and consider that you'll want to cast "power up" before "unleash potential" when you can. With barrier running most of the time and melee core hybrid running quite a bit, this is a sturdy dom. Add in a few clicky accolades like "Geas of the Kind Ones", etc, and this build has high end "peak survivability" when needed. Edit: It may be worth mentioning that this build has done well in several 2* and 4* ITF runs. Despite spending the substantial majority of time fighting in melee, defeats have always been below average for the team as a whole and 2 defeats is the highest defeat total for any single * content run so far. Teammate quality is a VERY big part of why defeats have not been common and luck is also relevant. But, the build itself is partially responsible because high "peak survivability" options are so helpful in * content. Heat metal earns its keep on these kinds of runs by noticeably boosting team damage in hard fights, although controls and debuffs other than those provided in heat metal are also impactful. Ice / psi / psi dom ... This is a bit of an unusual build. It really messes with mob AI because of three different confusion sources (2 auras and a proc). So, it's hard to assess how well the build survives just by looking at it "on paper." Having tried this kind of build my sense is that it is highly survivable in the clear majority of content. Through the use of procs single target damage is in a good place. To get good AOE out of this kind of build enflame will need to be placed well. But, you may already be very familiar with how to get the most out of enflame and even if you're not then it's a skill that can be acquired through experience, if you like the build. Gravity / radioactive / psi dom ... This build has much better damage and has noticeably quicker animations than many may initially expect. It can clear 300 DPS against pylons without breaking a sweat. The heal in rad assault is still useful even without devastating blow. World of confusion helps when using wormhole because you can drop mobs on your dom and then confuse them, with contagious confusion procs helping this out quite a bit. The -defense in rad assault helps to make world of confusion more impactful. Also, world of confusion complements the two direct damage AOEs in the build (enflame and atom smasher) and brings AOE for the build to a good place. Celtic Sorceress, Danu O'Donnell - Dominator (Earth Control - Icy Assault- Fire Mastery),v2.mbd Dominator (Gravity Control - Radioactive Assault - Psi Mastery),Vigor alpha.mbd Dominator (Ice Control - Psi Assault - Psi Mastery).mbd

Here's a thread that has a great deal of reading, but also quite a bit of helpful information about the kinds of performance benchmarks you've been thinking about.

Give it some time for the build planning phase. It tends to not be a minor change to switch to vigor because it opens up several-to-many slotting options that would previously have been dysfunctional, but that tend to make the build stronger when vigor has been chosen. It takes time to see what newly functional options are available and to weigh each of those possible choices.

Also consider vigor radial alpha incarnate. It enhances healing, endurance reduction, accuracy, confuse duration, sleep duration, and fear duration. Needing minimal or no accuracy slotting opens up new options for damage procs. Vigor may also allow the removal of slots from some powers with no loss of functionality, which can allow for more slots in other powers.

Three possibilities come to mind. 1. If global recharge is somewhat low, then once in a while hasten will be down just a tad too long during a domination cycle and domination will drop. IIRC domination totals in the 140s can sometimes see that happen. Also, if force feedback +recharge procs are important for keeping domination cycles going because of a lower end global recharge total then a bad run of luck with those +recharge procs can lead to domination dropping. 2. Recharge debuffs from mobs can be pretty hefty. If they're stacked then a global recharge total that would usually support permadom can end up being debuffed to the point that domination fails. 3. A combination of 1 and 2 above can lead to domination being dropped.

Here are some city of data entries that seem relevant, although I'm having trouble interpreting them ... (FWIW searched for "domination" in the search bar, then selected different "domination" entries from the search results, then selected "domination" once again to see the data) https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=inherent.inherent.domination&at=dominator https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=inherent.inherent.domination_rage&at=dominator The amount of "rage" gained with each attack (or control) used scales with the number of players in the team, it would seem. Not seeing that in the City of Data entries examined, though.

If you'd really like to keep the imps then you can drop flash and take imps instead. You'd probably then want at least one more slot in imps to put in the build up proc, at that point. But, that can be organized.

The files attached to this post offer another take on that kind of build. Most of the defense offered by stealth gets suppressed while not stealthed (ie: after attacking, for example). So, to compare the builds you'll need to not count all but about 2% of the defense bonus from stealth, IIRC. Some drawbacks for the build you've put together will be relying on force feedback procs to keep domination going (120% global recharge without force feedback procs from bonfire), recharge on the key drain psyche skill is probably lower than would be desirable (especially with such a high endurance burn rate), overall defense totals are probably toward the lower end (that can be compensated for in some ways, but not necessarily always), and damage could be noticeably higher. The attached build doesn't fully resolve the challenges mentioned above. In particular, defenses are fairly similar overall for the build attached below. Taking barrier core destiny and melee core hybrid incarnate would probably be helpful for making either build more survivable. The attached build does offer good damage and it has enough recharge to support permadom without needing any force feedback procs. Drain psyche recharges in about 35 seconds for the build attached below, in the absence of force feedback +recharge procs, while for the build in the OP drain psyche recharges in about 45 seconds, in the absence of force feedback +recharge procs. Fire Psi Fire Dom.pdf Dominator (Fire Control - Psi Assault - Fire Mastery),Vigor alpha.mbd

Here's another build for a plant / psi / psi dominator. This one lightens defenses a bit, provides a bit more global recharge, and provides another AOE by swapping out world of confusion and replacing it with enflame. Dominator (Plant Control - Psi Assault- Psi Mastery).mbd Plant Psi Psi Dom,v2.pdf

Here's a sample build that can provide a hopefully helpful template ... Plant Psi Psi Dom.pdf Dominator (Plant Control - Psi Assault- Psi Mastery).mbd

Dr_Snokle gives a lot of good advice. Drain Psyche will have your dom in melee frequently anyways. Plus, drain psyche tends to help wave away any chip damage received. It's only big hits or multiple hard hits in rapid succession to be concerned about, at that point. Between creepers taking some aggro and seeds those cases won't be too numerous. To make being in melee consistently a bit easier, consider taking the barrier core destiny incarnate and the melee core hybrid incarnate. It gives your dom noticeably higher "peak survivability" on demand. To reduce end drain and to further improve survivability, put four pieces from the unbreakable guard set into tough and mind over body. That will beef up both melee defense and smash / lethal resistances quite a bit, as well as offer some good set IO bonuses. You can take some slots from roots, which really only needs 2-3 slots, to help toward getting more slots into your dom's resistance powers. If you do want to six-slot link minds then put in the reactive defenses set for a bit more recharge and to save a slot that you would otherwise use for the unique scaling resistance IO from that set.

Not sure what analysis led to the conclusion that mental blast is a better power than mind probe. When comparing those powers, consider the following ... Mental blast: cast time 1.67 seconds, base damage 102.6, DPA = 61.4 Mind probe: cast time 1.17 seconds, base damage 91.2, DPA = 91.2 / 1.17 = 78.0 Mind probe does roughly 25% more damage per second of animation time (DPA) than mental blast. Mind probe also accepts more damage procs than mental blast, which gives mind probe an even higher ceiling for DPA than the initial 25% advantage would suggest. You'd be doing well to get noticeably and consistently more than 200 DPA with mental blast with procs and without build up, aim, or external damage buffs. In comparison, you can proc out mind probe and get noticeably over 300 DPA with just an incarnate alpha that offers damage (and no other damage buffs). That's about a 50%+ increase in DPA for mind probe, when compared with mental blast.

What others are trying to say is that blasters aren't necessarily glass cannons. Which is true. IIRC there's at least one really good guide to being a blaster somewhere in this forum. It covers how to make a blaster do better damage and how to get them to survive better as well. I've forgotten the author's name. But, somebody will probably come along and provide that fairly soon.

Ageless radial brings resistance to defense debuffs up so high that SR becomes noticeably tankier against incoming defense debuffs from pretty close to everything. That reduces the frequency with which rebirth would be doing anything useful for your sentinel, as well as making teammates more sturdy against all kinds of incoming debuffs. The recharge buff from ageless radial is also quite helpful. Agreed with Without_Pause that the need for rebirth would be low.

FWIW, synaptic overload would probably do more for your build than the gremlins. For controllers the gremlins may be more appealing because their secondary may help them to stay alive and/or to do more damage. Plus, electric controllers tend to have low damage, by default, and they can really benefit from extra damage from pets. For a dom, though, in challenging content the gremlins will probably tend to quickly die. Even though synaptic overload is probably rightly deemed the least powerful AOE confuse power in the game it is still an AOE confuse power and those can really turn the tide of a battle. Perhaps I'm wrong, though. There's no harm in trying out the gremlins in your preferred content to see how they do. You can keep the idea of swapping in synaptic overload for gremlins as a future possibility if the gremlins prove disappointing. Good luck with your dom, however you decide to move forward.

A few other thoughts ... 1. Consider swapping out one of the other hecatomb IOs (not the dmg / end one, though) and replacing it with the damage proc. With accuracy being so high acc / rech is probably the best one to swap out. 2. Consider replacing the IOs in tesla cage and paralyzing blast with 4 basilisk hold IOs. You'll net 15% more recharge and 2.5% more ranged defense, in exchange for losing out on the bonuses the sets you've put in there provide. 3. Totally agreed with Wimbochismo that Sting of the Manticore is a good replacement for the IO set in blazing bolt. Get the Manticore damage proc and consider putting a gladiator's javelin: chance for toxic damage proc into the sixth slot. 4. The reactive defenses: scaling resistances IO is worth slotting if you can squeeze out an extra slot somehow. 5. It's probably good to keep paralyzing blast. With multiple slow animating control powers and no assistance with control from the assault set it's probably good to have at least one control power that will affect many mobs at the same time. 6. If you're having trouble with survivability then consider dropping ageless destiny and replace with barrier core destiny. Plus, if survivability is a concern then consider trying out melee core hybrid incarnate boosts because it boosts survivability noticeably in tough fights. Melee core hybrid can also provide mez protection while rebuilding dom, in case dom drops for some reason. 7. If you put one more slot into embrace of fire then dropping in one more recharge IO will shorten the recharge time for that power by several seconds. It takes uptime from roughly 50% of the time to 60% of the time. (Edit: Gave incorrect info here earlier. It's a difference of a few percentage points in damage. But, it's a few extra percentage points and sometimes that helps).

Not sure if the budget constraint you're mentioning is workable or not, given your goal. But, even with an unlimited budget there's probably a fairly narrow range of builds that can be robust enough to lead a team across a wide variety of content. The key constraint to meet is to have mez protection. You can't rely on teammates to always have it if you're playing in PUGs. And, without mez protection trying to take alphas would probably be an exercise in frustration management for a large amount of content. If leading teams while fighting at level 44 or lower is desirable, then clarion won't be enough mez protection, on its own. There seems to be 2 basic build paths that can provide reasonably good mez protection for a blaster for level 44 and below. One build path involves taking the martial combat blaster secondary, while the other build path involves taking the energy manipulation blaster secondary. Inner will is the key mez protection power to take from martial combat, while energize is the key mez protection power to take from energy manipulation. Martial combat and inner will are best complemented by rune of protection because even with good recharge inner will has some downtime during which it will be unavailable. Break free inspirations will still be needed from time to time, such as when both rune and inner will are recharging and unavailable. Energy manipulation and energize are best complemented by combat jumping, acrobatics, and power boost. Then mez protection lines up as follows ... energize - solid stun protection combat jumping - solid immobilize protection acrobatics - solid knock protection, -2 to hold mag power boost - while active, boosts hold protection from acrobatics to -3.57 mag. Can be made perma or very close to perma. In the end, this second build pathway leaves a "sleep" hole in mez protection that will need to be managed in other ways. Also, hold protection is limited to one mag 3 hold at a time, as long as power boost is active. Either of these build pathways allows for clarion to be skipped in favor of a T4 barrier destiny, which helps defense so much more than clarion. The need for clarion really falls if melee core hybrid incarnate is taken, as well.