EnjoyTheJourney

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.

Poison trap is one of the more proccable powers in the poison set. I generally put a bit accuracy into the power and five procs, as listed below: superior entomb - Acc / Hold / End superior entomb - Rech / chance for absorb proc ghost widow's embrace - chance for psi damage proc fury of the gladiator - chance for -20% res proc armageddon - chance for fire damage proc unbreakable constraint - chance for smashing damage proc ... for a mini-nuke doing 324-ish damage that's available about every 22 - 25 seconds, depending on global recharge. It's a pretty good opener in combat because it has a quick animation, the absorb shield helps for absorbing the incoming alpha strike, and the hold effect slows down the incoming follow-up retaliation from mobs. Edit: To cite sources, IIRC the guide to poisons by Frosticus outlines how and why to proc up poison trap.

Great job at making an exceptionally tough blaster. Truly a well thought through build. One challenge that can't be directly solved is that defenses can be substantially reduced after one or two hits from enemies that debuff defense. Those panic buttons are particularly great to have because they will probably be needed from time to time. And, a blaster won't be doing any damage while cocooned inside a PFF or when using phase shift. So, on paper a blaster using this build will probably do more damage. In practice, when there's a fair amount of heat on a blaster following this build their contributions to damage can come to a complete stop for a while. How much more damage will the blaster build do, though? And is it really tougher? Some food for thought ... The build given above clears 306 single target DPS against pylons. 306 DPS is not the ceiling for the build. Rather, it's just what my so-so execution can bring about. A very leisurely and very safe trapdoor run takes about 8 minutes with this build. The build can absolutely do that faster in the hands of others. I'm certain of this because I've watched videos of those who are good at trapdoor runs and it is clear that I am truly not at all good at trapdoor runs. As another test for the build twice it took about 30 minutes to solo the first two missions of the ITF at +4x8, without defeats and without using any inspirations. The first mission went badly both times because I struggled quite a bit to get the camera angle right (not unusual for me), and so it took over 10 minutes for the first mission both times. That is not a quick time to solo the first mission, as about 6 minutes is a better benchmark to meet than 10+ minutes. Still, a test of performance that many builds would fail to complete at all can be done in a reasonable time frame even when driven by somebody whose execution is a long way from "top notch." Defeats became very rare at any level of content after the build came together. It's the build. It's not the driver. As a final note, the build above drains mobs of a lot of endurance whenever the nuke is cast. Which happens often. It is a frequent occurrence to see most and sometimes all not-yet-defeated mobs with zero endurance a handful of seconds after engaging them, with this build. No T9 for the ITF elite bosses, no elude for paragon protectors, and so on. That can be done entirely from range, which is good for safety. Plus, vulnerability is a foe debuff that is available to all sentinels and it has a noticeable effect on how quickly hard targets are defeated. These are noteworthy contributions to a team that a blaster can typically only partially match.

For the OP, if keeping an electric blaster alive is challenging, then consider an electric / super reflexes sentinel. Take the absorb / mez protection power instead of practiced brawler, cap those positional defenses, and put almost everything else into recharge and damage. Build as a hover-blaster for even better survivability, if you'd like. Those who say their electric blaster would out-survive an electric blast sentinel may not have run an electric / SR sentinel before. If they ran one with a good build then they'd probably quickly change their mind about the "blaster vs sentinel" survivability comparison. Edit: Attached are files that can be use to look over a build that I was following for my electric / SR / electric sentinel. There are better builds for pure speed runs and a dedicated 4* character would probably have a noticeably different build (or not be a sentinel at all, in truth). But, it's a kind of "generalist" build in that it works at least reasonably well when exemp'd to a Posi 1 up to 4* runs and for basically everything in between. Having a template for a build is probably better than having no template. Wizard of Lightning - Sentinel (Electrical Blast - Super Reflexes - Electrical Mastery),v2.mbd Wizard of Flames.pdf

A question that comes to mind is "if flashfire isn't taken, then with what would you replace it?" You can take flashfire and still have a good attack chain, good utility powers, and good defenses. Flashfire holds useful IO sets, in addition to offering close to a perma-stun even against higher level mobs once permadom has been gained. And, there will be times when the controls you're using other than flashfire can't affect the large number of mobs flowing into a battle. Also, flashfire can even be used as a one-slot or two-slot wonder if you have enough global accuracy boosts in a build and it will still fulfill its main function, even if for a shorter duration.

I take volcanic gasses. It's a good mule for +recharge sets like Basilisks. It's also quite effective in busy screens because, even though it doesn't benefit from domination, it sometimes double stacks on bosses and holds them anyways. It's a lot like earthquake in the sense that sometimes mobs will be able to hit something through it. But, like earthquake, it tends to noticeably slow down the rate of incoming attacks. It's also a very good "fire and forget" power when you've got multiple spawns in an area and you can't clear out the area for a fair while. A small amount of animation time leads to holds being applied to mobs for a long time. Also, when there are lots of spawns about it allows for controls to be applied to a larger total number of mobs than could be done if you didn't take it.

Plant control has a cone as its key control power. Fortunately it has a longer base range and a wider angle than most cones and you can often pair it with the intuition radial alpha incarnate to make the range even better. You can also use the coercive persuasion set in it and the proc can lead to more mobs than 16 being confused with a single casting. Plus, creepers distract mobs and absorb some aggro. So, despite relying on a cone for it's most important control skill plant control is still an effective and fairly easy to use control set. It's a great choice for doms for general adventuring, in most situations. Thorny assault is not my personal favorite assault set. It relies heavily on short range and fairly narrow cones for AOE. Damage cones are typically harder to use than other types of AOEs and they tend to miss more mobs, in practice, especially when their range is short and they have a narrow focus. If you didn't have a great experience with the cones from symphony control then it's possible you'll have a similar experience with thorny assault to what I've had. Great on paper, harder to get the set to perform close to the ceiling of its potential. Plant / fire, incidentally, is very effective. You can take flame mastery to further leverage the +damage power in fiery assault. If you like ranged attacks then fiery assault does far more damage than thorny assault. My own Plant / fire dom is a druid of the forest, nature-based theme. He is very effective, capable of soloing content in the final mission of a +4x8 ITF at a similar speed to what the other seven players can do when competing for clear time directly with them, at least for most teams (ie: my dom clears one tower, the rest of the team the other, my dom clears one side of the map that leads to Rom while the rest of the team clears the other side). That's not something any other dom I've run can do. But, seeds with coercive confusion and extra range in them, creepers when proc'd up, and fiery assault are strong enough to do that.

For the OP, SomeGuy is a frequent poster in the scrapper forum, with a lot of posts in the very long "Pylon testing" thread. He has a link in his Sig that shows up in all of his posts to a spreadsheet tracking pylon defeat times and the calculated DPS from those efforts. Dominators are not listed often in that file. But, then again not many people seem to be doing much in the way of pylon tests for them. Fire assault comes up a lot for the highest DPS dom builds, which is not surprising because fire assault does have very strong single target damage. The 375 DPS total given earlier for a fire / psy / ice build shows up about in the middle of the pack for the close to 500 pylon tests listed. That doesn't mean 375 DPS is average for all builds, though; that spreadsheet is loaded with very high damage builds being run by players who are typically excellent at executing single target attack chains (I am not in that category, for the record, as most of my pylon defeats are pretty shambolic in their execution). Also, some of those particularly high DPS builds are boosted by amplifiers or use of an assault hybrid, which the fire / psi / ice build is not. It's just wrong to call psi assault a low damage assault set. Flat wrong. Full stop.

It's fair to say that psi assault is not the most damaging dom assault set. It's wrong to call it a low damage assault set. As pointed out by others, assault sets should be evaluated for what they allow a character to do, and not be eyeballing DPS numbers that were generated in a way that's detached from a larger build. Check out the fourth build that's given on the following webpage ... It's a fire / psi / ice dom that did 375 DPS in a pylon test. Multiple other such tests were ballpark with those numbers, as well, with similar or comparable builds. 375 DPS is quite good, even if its not the highest total possible across all dom builds and all ATs. Psi assault has a few things going for it that make it hit harder than you'd believe just by eyeballing peak DPS numbers for other assault sets. 1. Drain psyche reduces the need for slotting or incarnate choices that help with managing endurance. Thus, a fire dom running hot feet full time can still comfortably pick a damage alpha, which increases both AOE and single target by *both* the amount of damage hot feet does and more damage beyond that from having a damage alpha, as well as having a proc'd up hold with a short animation time available to further boost single target damage. There is no downtime for those bonuses to damage and there is never a need to devote animation time to activating a powerup skill. As a sidenote, I can't remember that last time somebody factored in the animation time or downtime for aim or a power up skill when calculating DPS. Doing that doesn't give an accurate picture of in-game DPS. 2. Even after reductions from AV resistances and purple patch effects the regen debuff from drain psyche noticeably reduces regen for hard targets. That affects pylon times, which some might see as artificial. But, it also affects actual in-game defeat times for mobs that live long enough to be affected by drain psyche, and so it's a relevant factor in-game. 3. The single target skills can be combined with a single strongly damaging skill in a primary to form a smooth single target attack chain. Even if subdue is used as part of the attack chain because of the choice of a low damage primary the effects of subdue's low DPA are ameliorated by its ability to slot in the +damage unique IO from a dom IO set.