EnjoyTheJourney

Everybody has their own preferences. Traps won't appeal to everybody. I like it quite a bit, though, and I don't find it to be slow. I like toe-bombing in the middle of enemy spawns with poison trap, trip mine, and acid mortar. If nothing else is ready then I'll drop a triage beacon, which has the panacea +regen / recovery IO in it to give allies get a nice buff when fighting that particular spawn. Toe-bombing is a pretty narrow focus as something to enjoy about a set and that preference may not be shared by a high percentage of players. But, when I'm playing my necro / traps MM I find that he is frequently the first to arrive at new spawns and that one kind of trap power or another has already been dropped by the time teammates start arriving. For necro / traps having life drain helps a lot for eating alpha after alpha when diving headfirst into one enemy spawn after another. Not too sure about how well merc / traps could follow that playstyle. Probably by making some build adjustments merc / traps could also be made to work well for a toe-bombing, alpha-absorbing playstyle. FWIW, and in case the OP or others might enjoy a similar playstyle.

Arsenal doesn't have strong AOE. But, it has good DPA for trip mine and you can get a second AOE in a mastery. Drop the armageddon set into trip mine, with the fire damage proc, and put the -20% res PvP IO into the sixth slot. Put the annihilation -12.5% res in ignite, and for good measure put the achilles heel 20% -res into weaken resolve when taking force of will pool powers. Use power up in arsenal assault before using unleash potential for a strong boost to defense totals and endurance recovery. Then you have better survivability and a good amount of -res with which to buff the damage from phantom army. You could get the same -res total with ice assault as for arsenal assault. But, frost breath has really low DPA and a very long animation. So, it's a less efficient way of employing the annihilation -res proc. Plus, frost breath is a cone that uses up valuable time in battle by getting you to move around to line it up, instead of just unleashing PbAOEs and targeted AOEs while you stand in the middle of things. Also, the -20% res melee AOE PvP IO can go in ice sword circle, just as it can go in trip mine. But, ice sword circle has a slower animation and lower DPA than trip mine. Between these two assault sets arsenal can do noticeably better damage overall, while doing just as much to make phantom army shine. Looking briefly at ice assault, the best powers in the set are the power boost clone (power up) and chilling embrace. The debuffs and damage aura in chilling embrace are quite noticeable in their effects. Power up has a fairly modest--but still noticeable--damage boost and some really good buffs when its active. The rest of the ice assault set lags most other sets in the damage offered and the debuffs for those other powers are, as you noted, not that impactful. Also, the two AOEs other than chilling embrace have long animation times that deliver below average damage per second of activation; even adding in the damage aura in chilling embrace other assault sets tend to have better AOE damage. Personally, I'd agree that the debuffs in ice assault, even with chilling embrace doing good work on that front, don't justify the low damage done by the set.

I modified the build I posted earlier. The new build is below and hopefully it proves helpful. I didn't notice earlier that trip mine for arsenal assault natively has knockdown, not knockback. So, the sudden acceleration IO wasn't doing anything useful. Moving that slot to boxing and getting a couple of winter IOs into boxing allowed for removing winter IOs from ignite while keeping resistance to incoming movement and recharge debuffs at 50% (which I find tends to be a functional level of slow resistance). That allowed for another proc in ignite and for slightly better endurance reduction. Efficiency D-Synch IOs are not unreasonably priced. But, if boosting it 3 levels is too expensive then just putting in one unboosted efficiency D-Synch IO would work well. Trip mine in arsenal assault is quite close to foot stomp in how it functions, except the knockdown percentage chance is lower for trip mine (50% for trip mine vs 80% for tanker foot stomp) and trip mine will not trigger until an enemy is close by. If you like foot stomp or other "hit the ground" PbAOEs then you would probably like trip mine. Finally, consider taking a few minutes to review to hit chances for different powers and how much damage per second of power activation time offered by each of the different powers in this build. Toggle on each attack power when reviewing its damage so proc damage is included in the calculations, then turn off those toggles to avoid generating confusing information. So, for example, toggle on lift to see its total average damage, then toggle it off to avoid warping calculations for global recharge that would mislead you about how quickly powers recharge. Also, look at attack powers with power up toggled on and off. Exact numbers aren't needed, "eyeball estimates" would work just fine. There's a functional and smooth single target attack chain here, as well, and that helps for taking down hard targets (basically, use lift as a gap filler after using two of the other single target powers). This isn't the highest damage build that can be put together for an arsenal assault character. But, damage isn't at all bad, either. It might help to have some kind of benchmark, imperfect though this build this, when considering how much damage you can have or would like to have for your own build. On that note, propel is a fun power and if you're taking it because it's fun then there's nothing wrong with that. But, if effectiveness is your goal then it is probably helpful to note that propel does quite a bit less damage per second of activation time than lift, elbow strike, ignite, and sniper rifle, which are all the single target attack powers your build would ever need. Even if you don't like the build overall, there may be things you find useful to either copy or modify. Good luck, once again, however you decide to move forward. Dominator (Gravity Control - Arsenal Assault - Fire Mastery).mbd

Traps is not as quick-moving as a number of other choices. So, in really fast moving teams your MM probably won't contribute as much as other characters, in case that's the kind of thing that might bring you regrets. Also, sometimes force field generator will be destroyed by incoming damage, which can be inconvenient. Still, all secondaries have their weaknesses. Traps is still a really solid choice for a secondary.

Taking healing powers in the medicine pool has a way of reinforcing the need for using healing powers in the medicine pool. This happens because if you take it and give it slots then your dom's controls, defenses, and/or damage will suffer. That choice leads to more incoming damage--because of weakened defenses, controls, and/or damage--which creates the need to spend more time using medicine pool healing powers. Any time spent using medicine pool healing powers isn't being used to take enemies out of the fight, which just exacerbates the problems caused by taking the medicine pool in the first place. One option mentioned earlier that would be a good replacement for the medicine pool would be the force of will pool and unleash potential. It can be up over 1/3 of the time and the buffs to defense and endurance recovery are game-changing, especially when supported by power up in arsenal assault. High "peak sustainability" when that's needed does a lot for dom survivability and unleash potential provides that, especially when power boost of one form or another is also available. Edit: A few years ago I had a brief phase in which I tried incorporating medicine pool powers into dom builds. It just made them less effective at what they were supposed to be good at--and also squishier--for reasons outlined above. When I took a deeper look at my builds in that time frame I realized that I was consistently building doms that had decent control capabilities, but that had low overall damage, and especially low single target damage. Also, defenses could have been improved noticeably just by more efficient slotting. Aggro management also needed work. Once revisions were made to how I built and played my doms survival became much less of an issue. As with other ATs, doms are strongest when built to lean into what they're best at, instead of trying to make them into a kind of omni-AT that does a little of most things (or everything) not particularly well.

Combat jumping offers several helpful benefits. First, your character can bunny hop around a battlefield quicker and easier. Landing exactly where you want is also helpful. Quicker movement and better movement control are tactically very helpful, as well as being a nice quality of life feature. That combat jumping can serve as a mule for a LoTG global recharge / defense IO also makes taking it appealing. Once in a while the immobilize protection comes in handy. Also, the boost to defense is not to be underestimated in its value, especially when added together with other defense bonuses. Finally, the endurance cost per second is very low (0.07 endurance per second), which helps to make managing endurance a bit easier. That said, if you need hover and fly for thematic reasons, then that's a solid reason to skip combat jumping if your build is tight.

I've also been pondering a gravity / arsenal build. It's got some nice synergy not only with wormhole and trip mine, but also with wormhole and ignite, with singularity and trip mine / ignite, and with lift, immediately followed by trip mine. Included is one possible build that should solo just fine in a pretty wide range of content (probably not the best AV hunter, though, as there are better builds for that). It should also function well in teams. Totally agree with Frosticus that power boosted unleash potential is a great way to improve sustainability in tougher fights. Toggle both of those powers on in the attached build to see how much defense totals improve, as well as endurance recovery. Hopefully you have a blast with a gravity / arsenal dom however you decide to build them, in the end. Dominator (Gravity Control - Arsenal Assault - Fire Mastery).mbd

If you put a stealth IO into sprint (celerity: stealth, for example) you can often drop right into the center of a mob and either get arctic air to activate and/or fire off glacier to open up a battle. You can also drop ice slick while in the middle of a mob. A stealth IO is probably the simplest way of opening up battles on an ice dom because a brief delay before mobs notice you is all you typically need to minimize the incoming alpha. Pair that up a celerity: stealth IO with a celerity: endurance IO to make endurance a bit more manageable, if you'd like. Another option is either combat teleport or to try out ice control / savage assault. The teleport in savage assault is really good and very frequently available, in practice.

These days you can choose to take either the T1 or the T2 from your secondary at level 1 across all ATs and for all secondary powersets. So, instead of dark blast you can choose smite at level 1 for a dark assault dominator. Smite has noticeably better damage per second of activation time, especially with damage procs. So, these days a fair percentage of players prefer to skip dark blast and take smite instead.

Forgot to mention another use-case for quicksand. With a reasonably attainable amount of global recharge quicksand can recharge in about 10 seconds. It's possible to double, triple, or even quadruple stack it in an area, with a 16 target maximum for each casting. That allows for 32-64 mobs to be affected by quicksand in a given area. When ambushes are flowing into an area and/or mobs are being herded or teleported into an area quicksand is one of the most endurance-friendly and effective ways to keep mobs grouped up for AOEs and limited in their ability to attack teammates. Only a handful of other skills offer the ability to scale the number of mobs affected as well as quicksand. A key limiting factor for using quicksand is the long casting time because you can use 1-3 other skills in the same amount of time it takes to cast quicksand once. The long casting time is arguably a good thing, as otherwise quicksand would be a prime candidate for a hefty nerf.

Stalagmites, earthquake, and volcanic gasses are more than adequate for AOE control at lower levels. Also, mobs don't usually stack really high levels of defense in earlier levels. So, the autohit defense debuff in quicksand doesn't help that much in the sub-50 game. Thus, I only take quicksand in the late 40s. But, I always take it for an earth control character. At level 50 the game changes. Quicksand is particularly strong when used against level 50+ enemies that are most dangerous in melee, such as Cimerorans. I'll often drop quicksand before anything else for those kinds of mobs because it makes them pretty much unable to swarm any teammate unless they choose to stand still for quite a while. Quicksand is also great for making it noticeably harder for AVs to run all over, especially when paired with other movement-inhibiting powers; for example, quicksand + earthquake when fighting Rom in the last ITF mission is a very strong pairing of controls. Quicksand is also great when clearing towers after defeating Rom, with teammate defeats tending to go right down to zero after it's been laid down. How it helps for getting mobs to group up has been mentioned by others, as well, and that's another reason to drop it right at the beginning of at least some fights in late-game. That quicksand provides a high level of utility without needing any added slots makes it a particularly efficient build choice. For a team oriented build quicksand has a useful role that it can play, at least in 50+ content. But, if somebody wants to solo AVs, then there's probably not as strong of a case for incorporating it into a build.

Attached is a necro / traps build to consider. It's built to survive toe-bombing big spawns and most AVs with poison trap and trip mine, and to do so quite safely once T4 barrier and T4 support hybrid are in place. That may or may not be appealing to you. But, hopefully there are some interesting ideas here to consider nonetheless. As some general thoughts, traps really loves recharge to have its toys available more often. Also, the panacea proc in triage beacon apparently provides health and endurance to both the mastermind and all allies (including pets and teammates). Trapped in Twilight - Mastermind (Necromancy - Traps - Soul Mastery).mbd

If you'd like to blap from time to time, which your OP mentions, then you probably would find softcapped smash / lethal defense quite helpful. Then a key question to consider is how much more effort you'd like to make on building up either positional or typed defense totals. Having a fair amount of ranged defense helps to limit the number of mezzes and really nasty debuffs that are likely to reach your blaster and to make taking ranged alphas from large spawns much easier. Alternatively, you might want to work on boosting energy / negative energy / fire / cold defense totals to try to bring about a broadly similar end result to boosting ranged defense. Or, you could decide to live with lower defense totals outside of smash / lethal and do the best you can to max out damage and recharge instead. There aren't any a priori wrong choices here. It's just a matter of how you want to play.

Hopefully an experienced third party will come along and take a look at both builds. It's not that there's nothing good about your build. But, another experienced builder will probably shed more light on a bunch of things to consider. Some notes about differences between builds ... 1. There is no* 4 points of knockback protection in your build versus 7 points in the build provided. (*I originally missed the 4 points in super jump, my apologies) 2. There is another mez protection power (rune) that also boosts resists when that's needed in the latter build. 3. Your added global recharge is actually 100% less than what is stated by Mids. 4. Your damage is substantially overestimated. Two toggles should be switched off because the associated buffs will usually not be active (aim, aimed shot). 5. Decimation build up in aimed shot will seldom go off. Also, swapping the sets put into aimed shot and blazing arrow would probably be helpful. 6. Quickform should probably be toggled on so you know how much damage ranged shot will be doing while in combat. 7. The steadfast protection defense / resist unique would contribute more in body armor than the Aegis psi resist unique. 8. Explosive arrow has a default amount of knockback that can frustrate teammates. Putting a knockback-to-knockdown IO in it (either the sudden acceleration or overwhelming force unique IOs) would make mobs fall over instead of knocking them back in different directions. There is more feedback that could be offered. One question I have is the extent to which you see having softcapped smash / lethal defense as being helpful. Some probably overrate its value and it's certainly not even close to being a kind of defense-related "I win" button. Still, it's possible that you're underrating its value if you see your build as light years better. If you'd really prefer the pool powers you have, then naturally there will be ways to make that work.

Here's a candidate build ... Hopefully you thoroughly enjoy the build, however you decide to proceed. PS: Burst of speed is an AOE and it is a waaaayyyy better pick for this kind of build than dragon's tail, in my experience. Also, you can operate at range for safety, or switch to melee for maximum damage. Blaster - (Archery - Martial Combat - Mace Mastery).mbd

I found JJ's build intriguing and wondered if it could be tweaked in some ways. What's below isn't definitively better or worse, overall, but it may (or may not) be more to the OP's liking overall. Or, perhaps the OP can find ideas in each build that they end up using. Tis all up to the OP, of course. The build below is more expensive overall than JJ's build. That may matter a lot. Or not so much, not sure of how much inf the OP has. The build below offers more single target damage, probably better overall survivability, and quicker access to status protection by taking rune of protection earlier. The ability to teleport others in JJ's build gets replaced by a self teleport in mystic flight; that is a loss of utility because the build below can't easily teleport teammates anymore (and can't teleport enemies at all). On the other hand, sometimes being able to self teleport is very helpful. Losing rain of fire in the build below means less AOE damage when first engaging with many mobs. On the other hand, more global recharge in the build below means having fireball and inferno available for use more often. Losing evasive maneuvers means more problems with immobilizes when rune of protection is down. But, having 7 points of knockback protection in the build below means spending less time spinning in place while hovering, after getting hit with knocks. Endurance costs per second are down overall in the build below. But, endurance recovery is better in JJ's build. Good luck to the OP, however they decide to build. Wizard Specified Defender (Cold Domination - Fire Blast - Mace Mastery),v2.mbd

Here is a sample build. It may understandably attract concern from those who prefer better defenses and may also not be chosen by those who prefer to build for high damage and to rely on controls for survival instead of defenses. But, hopefully there's some things you can pull from it that end up being helpful. Regarding AOEs, this build has 3 of them and they work well together. For example, you can begin combat by using spot prey, then use feral charge (an AOE) from maximum distance away from mobs, and then use vicious slash. At that point rending flurry's AOE radius grows from 8 feet to 15 feet because 3 blood frenzy charges from a maximum range feral charge and 2 blood frenzy charges from vicious slash generates 5 blood frenzy stacks. Next, use rending flurry and then cast fireball. That's a decent amount of AOE damage. Feral charge works very well as part of the single target attack chain because it animates quickly and because its DPA is pretty good for an AOE. It also allows for nearly seamless transitions from one part of a battlefield to another, reducing time that would otherwise be spent doing no damage when jumping or running to the next target to attack. Vigor alpha holds the build together with a mixture of endurance reduction and accuracy, allowing for the use of more procs in skills. You could drop melt armor, take tactics, and remove some procs if relying on incarnates to have a workable amount of accuracy isn't for you when fighting higher level mobs. Dominator (Earth Control - Savage Assault - Fire Mastery).mbd

Poison characters can benefit a lot from having fold space, wormhole, and/or singularity in their powers list. All of these powers help you to move mobs into melee range of your poisoner, which helps survivability once venomous gas has been taken and slotted up. Fold space is probably more than enough in many situations, allowing you to bring ranged attackers that never seem to group up into "bear hug" range with your poisoner. Using corners and other terrain features to group mobs up can also be quite helpful, especially when soloing. Bringing mobs into melee range with your usually fragile corruptor, controller, or defender can quite understandably feel uncomfortable at first; it tends to take a while until you gain enough experience with the set for that feeling of discomfort to change to a grin. 😁

In general, dominators tend to have a harder time keeping pet alive than controllers, as controllers have access to a secondary that can often help their pets survive better. Also, controllers have a stronger incentive to take their pets because they're a substantial source of extra damage for an AT that doesn't have a damage secondary or primary. That said, Frosticus has found ways to keep certain pets alive and to build AV-hunting dominators around the ability to do that. You can still find a fair percentage of dominators that take pets, though. Most who post regularly here would agree that there are multiple reasonable ways to build a dominator. There are some who post fairly frequently who prefer to rely primarily on controls for safety, rather than defenses. It's a viable playstyle. But, having good defenses is also viable without necessarily giving up having good damage. Also, a fiery assault dominator tends to do very well operating at range and there's nothing wrong with making that choice. If you're concerned about damage and you'd like to operate at range, then you may want to consider taking fire mastery instead of psi mastery and hover-blasting. Fire breath and fireball (from fire mastery) make a nice 1-2 punch, especially supported with fiery embrace. Melt armor is a good debuff and a self rez is never a bad thing (more fire mastery stuff), depending on how you'd like to put together your build. Hover blasting also allows you to focus mostly on ranged defense and resistances, which lessens the degree to which you may be tempted to sacrifice defenses to get good damage. Below is a sample build, in case you're interested. Barrier core Tier 4 adds a minimum of 5% to all defense and resistance totals while active, plus superior invisibility adds a persistent 2%-ish to all defense totals even when attacking. So, the ranged defense total you end up with in-game will be higher than what shows on Mids. Dominator (Illusion Control - Fiery Assault - Fire Mastery),v2.mbd

I don't have an arsenal / poison build handy. But, here's an endgame arsenal / dark / psi build that can hopefully provide some helpful ideas. If you'd like a budget version, then some substitutions can be made for multiple sets. Good luck with your arsenal control character, whichever path you ultimately choose. Edit: It's been a while since I looked at this build. After learning a bit more about arsenal control I'd probably swap out enflame and instead take psionic tornado, with five armageddon IOs in it (not the knockdown proc, though) and a force feedback +recharge IO in the sixth and final slot. That would make it easier to keep mobs to having been damaged every 15 seconds or less, which helps for keeping mobs confused with smoke canister. Nightshell - Controller (Arsenal Control - Darkness Affinity - Psionic Mastery),v2.mbd Nightshell - Controller (Arsenal Control - Darkness Affinity - Psionic Mastery),v2.pdf

Glad to hear you found the build appealing. I forgot to tweak the IOs in subdue. You can increase the damage a bit more, get a hit point buff from the apocalypse set, and noticeably improve endurance management by slotting it as follows: Apocalype - Damage / EndRed Apocalype - Acc / Damage / Recharge Apocalype - % chance of negative energy damage Gladiator's Javelin - % toxic damage Trap of the Hunter - % lethal damage Superior Ascendancy of the Dominator - % damage buff You'll still have 97.83% accuracy against +3 mobs with this slotting, even with no to hit buffs from external sources or from the Gaussian build up proc.

Here's an alternative build that you may find interesting, even if in the end you decide to go in another direction. Some key changes ... 1. Noticeably more damage. 2. A little less global recharge. Still comfortably permadom, though, and with a good amount of slow resist to better protect global recharge from debuffs. 3. More resistances. Hits will still hurt, but a bit less so than earlier. See further down for ways to increase resistances on a temporary basis. 4. The empty slot in tactics would contain the Gaussian build up proc. On teams it should activate about 3 times per minute, which means about 1/4 of the time there's a good to hit and damage buff active. 5. No knockback IOs. You cut down on "Freem" knockdowns with those IOs, but most of those will be screened out by your smash / lethal defense. You don't really need them. 6. The superior ascendancy of the dominator damage proc has been placed in subdue. If it's being used regularly in the single target rotation then you can get multiple stacks of that proc active at one time. That should help damage for all powers being used. Endurance management is still going to be fine the clear majority of the time, except when drain psyche fails to hit. Haven't really resolved that with the attached build, but maybe it won't happen often enough to be concerned about. Your build seems most focused on fighting from range. And there are benefits from doing that. Still, to get more damage out of your build and to leverage the survivability granted by seeds, creepers, and drain psyche, it is absolutely fine to fight in melee. Plus, with this build you can take the barrier core T4 destiny, which boosts defenses further and provides strong "peak survivability" when your dom is receiving a lot of aggro from mobs that hit hard. Also, consider taking melee core hybrid for better mez protection, better resistances when the heat is on your dom, and better regen. Hopefully you get some ideas from this that you end up liking. Good luck with your dom, however you decide to move forward. Psylantt - Dominator (Plant Control - Psionic Assault - Ice Mastery).mbd

It's probably best to begin with a question about budget. The absence of winter sets, Hami-Os, and D-Synchs, the limited presence of purple sets, and the limited use of damage procs suggests that you'll want to be careful about how much you spend on your dominator. If that's wrong, then please let us know and your build can change a lot. Also, knowing your plans for incarnates (if you've made choices, that is) would be helpful. Even as is, though, this is a carefully thought out build that should be quite effective in-game. There's a lot to like about it. Key powers are supported with a lot of slots and reasonable IO set choices. Softcap smash / lethal defense helps to screen out quite a bit of damage. Ranged defense isn't capped. But, it is still noticeably higher than the floor and it will also be helpful. You're well over the global recharge floor for permadom, which helps in a number of ways. Hoarfrost is well slotted and should have very good uptime, which noticeably helps survivability. As a "technical" suggestion, consider switching off "domination" in Mids when evaluating your dominator builds because when it is engaged a temporary "to hit" buff that is only applied for about 15 seconds about every 90 seconds is also engaged; that makes it very hard to see the true likelihood of hitting mobs for the clear majority of the time domination is active. Also, hold down the "shift" key and press the "+" key 5 times while hovering your mouse button over an IO that you'd like to boost to +5. After you've boosted an IO to +5 click on that IO with the mouse to put it into your build with a +5 boost. The main limitations of your build would seem to be fourfold: 1. Endurance drain is quite close to recovery on a "per second" basis, by default. Thus, if drain psyche misses, which it sometimes will, then endurance can become a problem quite soon. 2. Resistances are all quite low. When hits get through they will hurt. 3. Slow resistance seems to not be present in the build. Most of the time this won't matter, especially with such high global recharge. But, when it does matter, it will tend to matter a lot. 4. Damage could be higher. Initial thoughts that might differ quite a bit from (reasonable, definitely worthy of consideration) feedback that you might get from others. PS: I can't copy the data chunk into Mids and make that work. You can try dragging and dropping the Mids file itself into one of your posts. That would probably be easier to work with than a data chunk.

If you'd rather not share your build, then that is (of course) totally up to you. But, if you are OK with sharing it then hopefully you won't mind posting it in a response to this thread. You can get more build-specific help that way. Also, for those who frequent this forum it's always welcome to see a thoughtfully put together dominator build plan.

Psi assault is a very reasonable pick for an assault set. Drain psyche is one of the main jewels of the set. It's a strong debuff against harder targets. It makes endurance management much easier. It handles incoming chip damage quite well. Also, unless it was recently changed and City of Data is now incorrect, psy shockwave is the only assault set PbAOE that hits up to 16 targets, instead of the default maximum of 10 targets*. Psy shockwave applies a default 20 second duration, 50% recharge debuff to mobs that it hits; even with purple patch effects in play that still noticeably slows down incoming damage from a wide swathe of enemies. In the end, psy shockwave makes handling crowds easier. As well, the melee single target attacks hit hard, as does the snipe. Procs and telekinetic thrust offer some diversification from psychic damage, which helps when fighting mobs that heavily resist psy damage. * Other than thunderstrike, but it has quite low damage for the AOE component