EnjoyTheJourney

Adding to the good information provided by Voltak, when it comes to completing hard content Frosticus has done quite well with an earth / psi / psi dominator. The pet is very sturdy, Frosticus supports it well with IOs and skills, and the built-in taunt that animate stone has makes hard content much more doable. That dominator has taken down a fair number of AVs while soloing. You can find relevant threads in this forum by Frosticus and others to learn more, if you'd like. For hard mode play quicksand is really good with an auto-hit, hefty defense debuff and a substantial slow movement debuff as well. For the upcoming LGTF hard mode TF perhaps animate stone will be a good pet to bring along because he is immune to psychic damage. It's also possible that the earth control pet will just get one-shot repeatedly by rikti chief soldiers, just as many players are likely to see happen to their characters. Ice / psi / psi is another powerset combination that players posting in this forum have indicated they use to solo AVs. Not sure how difficult the AVs downed tend to be and I can't recall any specific builds being posted. But, it's being mentioned in case you'd like to explore forum posts and try to piece together some information on how that has been done.

Thank you for the opportunity to earn some inf and to have a bit of a friendly competition in the month of February.

I'm quite pleased with what was available, it fits this character quite well. Thanks again for the help.

This seems good enough. And, being a real costume it should function just fine. Thank you for taking the time to put it together.

Thank you! This character ends up bringing together powers connected to illusion, dark energy, and fire through a poorly administered scientific experiment that went badly wrong. Her powers are a kind of mixture of different carnival of shadows members (master illusionist, dark ring mistress, and seneschal) for ... reasons I haven't worked out yet. Carnie lore pets fit this concept best, at the end of the day.

One useful change from a while back was to allow the lowest level human blasts to be useable in different forms. Another helpful change would be to let certain effects of forms become global, instead of only specific to one form. Possible examples ... 1. When you choose dwarf form you get mez protection in all forms. Yes, this means mez protection being constant, just as for VEATs, after attaining dwarf form. It doesn't close the power gap between HEATs and VEATs, not even close. But, it would make it easier and more fun to play a HEAT. 2. Add a small-to-moderate amount of across-all-forms debuff resistances once dwarf form has been selected. Resistance to slows and recovery debuffs would really help VEATs. 3. Slightly improve the melee attack modifiers for human form once dwarf form has been taken. Add one dwarf single target melee attack to the human attack chain. 4. The better single target blast from the nova form becomes available in human form. 5. Slightly improve the damage modifiers for human ranged attacks after taking the nova form. Given how strong an optimized peacebringer single target attack chain can be, care would probably need to be taken to keep whatever changes are being made from becoming completely off-the-chain.

I have a new dominator who combines illusions, dark magic, and fire. Those are three things that are covered well by master illusionists, dark mistresses, and seneschals. Since illusion is her primary a master illusionist costume would be pretty much perfect, especially because master illusionist phants would be really cool to be putting onto the battlefield. If something close to that can't be done then a dark mistress costume would be fine instead. Not sure how close I can come with a costume to either of these. Don't know much about aether particles, either. Looking for guidance from those who are particularly knowledgeable and experienced with the finer details of costume creation for a bit of help. Thank you in advance for any insights provided.

My illusion / dark / fire dom is filling out incarnates and lore is the next choice to make. Lore is often Carnie core in hard mode for all that psy damage, which is understandable. Not sure whether the Banished pantheon does sleet or not, or if their -res is specifically for cold damage. Longbow for all the -regen is good as well, though, depending on team composition. With the Lady Grey TF being added to the hard mode TF set, perhaps the better pets to choose will change. Or not, not sure. Any advice offered would be much appreciated and thank you in advance.

Maybe if you string several together in quick succession. Even then, probably no. My electric sentinel is SR, and not bio or another secondary that directly increases damage. But, the nuke is up about every 21 seconds and it does 904 damage when charge up (ie: aim) is activated first and the gaussian build up proc activates. That's not including any possible extra damage from the shocked mechanic. Since charge up is saved specifically to support the nuke and the gaussian build up proc has a 95% chance of activating, it's a good bet that 904 damage or more is what it will do. Ball lightning (cast time 1.07 seconds) and electrifying fences (1.17 seconds) are usually cast right after the nuke. With charge up and the gaussian proc still activated they do 281 and 262 damage each. The "X" factor is that both of these follow-up AOEs usually benefit from the shocked mechanic because the nuke drains a lot of end from mobs. But, I don't yet understand how much that increases damage. Thus, a single cycle of AOEs does about 1400 damage, plus whatever the shocked mechanic adds on top of that. This cycle can be repeated about every 21 seconds.

Each primary considered has its strong points. Earth is a very reasonable pick for the reasons you give. I particularly like quicksand on the ITF because it slows down everything by quite a bit, making it easier to react when something nasty is making a beeline toward a character. Plant surely does rock for the hard mode ITF. I already have a plant / fire / fire dom intended for hard mode play, though (although incarnates still have a ways to go to be revised for hard mode play). I'd get tired of plant if it's all I played. I've never tried out an illusion dom, as well, and wanted to give it a go. For illusion, the phants are good for taking hard alphas and will sometimes confuse hostless. Also, deceive can be stacked on whatever. My initial plan is to stack it on surgeons and get them working for us. Fortitude from the enemy is still fortitude, after all. I'll try to figure out other ways to make the most of illusion as I get more experience playing it as a dom in the ITF. For secondaries, I like the dark single target attack chain and find the PbAOE to be quicker and easier to use than the PbAOE in other sets. Life drain also heals up chip damage and even the occasional medium hit quite well, which in my experience can be problems in hard mode play. It's unfortunate that it's one of the more resisted sets, but I'll see how it goes. I like the single target skills for thorns quite a bit. But, I've never enjoyed the AOE. If the revisions being made to the set make the AOE more fun to use, then I'd be likely to give it a go at some point.

I have no doubt that WitchofDread is telling the truth and that you are as well. There's probably one or more good things to learn from taking a look at WitchofDread's build. That's likely true for your dom's build, as well. Builds are the product of time and effort, though, and whether or not to share them is 100% up the one making a build. Of course.

If you don't mind sharing, how are you building to get pylon times down to about 95 seconds? That's about 535 DPS, which is very good. I'm taking about 178ish seconds to defeat a pylon on an ill / dark / fire dom, which works out to about 343-ish DPS. Melt armor doesn't compare favorably to sleet. But, that alone can't explain the performance difference. There are probably other choices you're making that are also impactful on single target damage that I've not made. If you'd rather keep that private, then that is of course entirely up to you.

Below is a potential build template for an illusion / poison / psi controller. She's quite sturdy, at least for a controller, and phants love all the enemy debuffs that poison offers. The build focuses quite a bit on global recharge to keep phants out as much as possible and to drop the proc'd up poison trap as often as possible. I didn't take phantasm to make knockback easier to manage. YMMV for these and other build choices. Edit: Temporary damage basically means that you want to focus fire on mobs until they're down because defeating an enemy makes temporary damage done to them permanent. That may oversimplify at least a little. But, it's a helpful idea to keep in mind. Also, spectral terror is a really good AOE control power in most situations. Even when the fear effect doesn't work the -to hit debuff it puts on enemies will usually still help. I tend to take group invisibility because buffing teammates when possible and giving them invisibility tends to help team performance. If you're building for global recharge then group invisibility can be perma and it can serve as an adequate replacement in most situations for superior invisibility. So, I usually skip superior invisibility. Others take superior invisibility and skip group invisibility. Others take both. Any of these choices can make good sense according to what content you tend to run and what you'd like to do with your illusion controller. Tainted Dreams - Controller (Illusion Control - Poison - Psi Mastery).mbd

I've settled on trying out illusion as the primary, at least as a first attempt. After the nudge to give more consideration to dark assault, I put together an illusion / dark / fire build. Making a few tweaks to power picks and slotting led to about 343 DPS in a pylon test, while keeping a fairly defense oriented set of selections for incarnates. I also did another pylon test for an illusion / rad / fire and got 375 DPS total. The rad assault build relies on frequent achilles heel -res proc activations to get damage as high as it does. In contrast, the dark assault build gets damage boosts by frequently activating the superior ascendancy of the dominator +damage proc (slotted into midnight grasp). Since -res procs can boost pylon damage a little more than they often do in-game, and the heal from life drain (dark) is more reliable than from radiation siphon (rad), I'll try out an illusion / dark / fire build and see how it goes. In case somebody wants to look over the illusion / dark / fire build that was tested, it's attached. PS: Thank you all for the input. Dominator (Illusion Control - Dark Assault - Fire Mastery)Domper,SelfRez,MeltArmor.mbd

I'm hoping to find that I can drop the miracle or numina procs and still have endurance in a good place. If I can, then I'll put an extra slot into boxing and then put two superior blistering cold IOs into boxing. Then I'd feel comfortable replacing the superior blistering cold IOs in contaminated strike with a generic damage IO (boosted to +5) and a D-synch efficiency IO (boosted to +3). That puts contaminated strike at 400 DPS without any further buffs. Since the achilles heel 20% -res proc will be activated a high percentage of the time it will do fairly close to 480 DPS without fusion activated. With fusion activated and the gaussian build up proc activated contaminated strike would do 469 damage, which is close to 565 DPS. When the achilles heel proc is also activated that works out to fairly close to 670-ish DPS. That level of damage isn't consistently available. But, it's good burst damage when it happens and even when everything isn't at its peak damage is still very good. Contaminated strike recharges in just under 3 seconds, so it has good availability. Procs do very good things for rad assault's single target damage.

Getting back to ice control, has somebody used it often in hard mode content and how did that go? As a bit of information that may be relevant, I have an earth / ice / fire dominator who has participated in many hard mode runs. She's a bit too light on damage, overall, and I'm looking to replace her with another dom that does more damage and still (like her) survives well in hard mode content. But, chilling embrace seems to help more than it causes problems because the movement slowdown and recharge debuff it inflicts on mobs have made it easier to spot and react to mobs that are trying to target her. My initial hypothesis is that arctic air from ice control would function similarly to chilling embrace in that it probably helps more than it causes problems. Perhaps I'm wrong, though.

The skepticism about rad assault single target damage and the value of healing in hard mode content has been noted. Still, with fairly shambolic execution the illusion / rad build given further up, with a couple of minor tweaks, got 369 DPS on a pylon test. It can probably do at least 10-20% better with better execution, even with multiple choices that could have leaned toward more damage instead leaning toward better defenses. Phants help the DPS test results, as does melt armor. But, rad assault procs up well. Single target damage is not a problem for rad assault. If you're going to play a dom in melee range and you can put healing together with strong single target damage then that's probably a win, even in hard mode content.

I'll ponder more about ice control. It's a primary that doesn't usually need many powers taken to function well, which is helpful. Plus, the tools it brings can work very well for a melee-focused dominator. I don't have any experience using ice control in hard mode ITFs. Does it perform well there?

Thank you all for the input. It is appreciated. Across a number of test server builds radiation siphon has kept health topped up quite well for pylon fights and in trapdoor runs. With a recharge of about 4.4 seconds for radiation siphon and lots of opportunities to activate the contaminated condition it seems to activate fairly often. I haven't formally measured the number of activations. But, it seems like there are usually at least several activations of the healing factor for radiation siphon per minute. A key drawback for the savage assault heal is that it's available about every 50+ seconds (or thereabouts) and unavailable otherwise. Fairly frequent and smaller heals are probably better for 2* and 4* content because they will generally keep health topped up better against chip damage than a larger, but more intermittent heal. This is probably true because the more time a character spends in melee range in a "hard mode" run with less than full health on a lower health AT, the more frequently they seem likely to end up faceplanting. Life drain is clearly a better and more reliable heal than radiation siphon. But, a key drawback with dark assault is that it's a bit challenging to take less than 6 or 7 powers from that set if you'd like a well rounded single target attack chain, the PbAOE, gather shadows, and life drain. In contrast, radioactive assault only needs 5 or 6 powers to provide similar tools. For a tight build radioactive assault has a noticeable edge in that regard. Also, radioactive assault seems to offer better proc opportunities than dark assault, which makes it a bit easier to do good damage.

Those who keep trying to direct you to "clicky" armor sets mean well. But, frankly, SR will function just fine for soloing the clear majority of content and it will be easier on your hands. Also, as was pointed out earlier cascading defense failure is what drivers of *other* armor sets worry about. SR tanks typically do not need to be concerned about that. To make an SR tank even tankier, focus on getting to the positional defense caps (melee, ranged, AOE) and then on life bonuses, regeneration bonuses, and resistances. Also, in case you didn't yet know, SR tanks have passive resistances that rise as health dips lower. So, consider getting some extra resistances in place by getting the fighting pool and by getting IO set bonuses. Those resistances you add will stack with the passive resistances that rise as health dips lower to make it harder and harder, as health dips lower and lower, for the small fraction of incoming attacks that actually hit your tank to overcome your SR tank's rate of health regeneration. There are sample builds available to help with the planning process. One potential drawback to SR tanking is that endurance can be challenging to manage. So, a secondary set that can help for managing endurance is likely to be a strong choice. A secondary that also offers some healing makes your tank that much stronger, in the end. Another noteworthy challenge for SR tanks is that there are small selection of foes that have large enough "to hit" bonuses that they can pretty much ignore your SR tank's defenses. Devouring earth, some Rularuu, Nemesis spawns with vengeance active, and a limited number of others come to mind. For those encounters chewing on orange "resistance" inspirations and focusing on taking down spawns as soon as possible tends to help a lot.

I'll add some sample builds for consideration into this post. Will edit to add more builds later. The gravity build has noticeably less control capabilities than builds for the other primaries under consideration. But, damage is particularly good for the gravity build and wormhole is potentially helpful. Not sure whether the intangible power in gravity has a good role to play in the clear majority of situations. Perhaps it can help if we need to temporarily block a chokepoint, a bit of time and space to rez teammates, or for some other niche situations. The attached "plant primary" build should also do absolutely fine in regular content. The attached "ice primary" build should have slightly increased damage from the secondary because of more recharge in fusion and an extra damage proc in X-Ray Vision. Also, occasional +damage procs from the dominator set put into arctic air should boost secondary damage a bit more. But, ice control doesn't have indestructible damaging pets like illusion control and it won't mess up enemy AI as well as seeds and creepers from plant control do. The case for ice control ultimately rests on how well arctic air tends to function in hard mode content, which I don't know at the current time. Dominator (Gravity Control - Radioactive Assault - Fire Mastery)Domper,SelfRez,HeatMetal.mbd Dominator (Plant Control - Radioactive Assault - Fire Mastery)Domper,SelfRez,HeatMetal.mbd Dominator (Ice Control - Radioactive Assault - Fire Mastery)Domper,SelfRez,HeatMetal.mbd

I'd like to come up with a domper (melee range dom) build that's fun to play and also versatile enough to be comfortable in all regular content and that would also function well in all melee 4* ITFs. The secondary and mastery are already picked (radioactive assault and fire mastery). A heal is highly desirable for all melee 4* ITFs because there's typically nobody on the team playing a support character. And, radioactive assault has a heal that activates fairly often, even though it's not as reliable or hefty as the heal in savage assault. Fire mastery is desirable for fireball, heat metal, and the self rez. For all melee ITFs being able to self rez can be very helpful and bringing resistance debuffs to such a team is quite desirable. All builds will also include the leadership powers maneuvers and tactics, and probably vengeance as well. One candidate build I've already put together is attached. It's an illusion / radioactive / fire domper. Having invulnerable pets along can confuse hostless and also add to DPS, even though they don't taunt. Other candidate primaries include plant, gravity, and electricity. The reasoning behind taking plant seems clear (creepers, seeds). Gravity may seem like an odd candidate, at first glance. But, being able to move a group of mobs wherever you'd like with wormhole about every 25 seconds or so can really help the team out. Also, lift procs out to do high damage. Plus, lift has such high knockup magnitude that it should (hopefully, admittedly not sure) overcome the built-in knock resistance that mobs have in 4* ITFs. The case for electricity has to do with endurance drain limiting incoming damage and hampering EBs from using T9s. For regular content the attached "illusion primary" build seems like it should be quite capable. Spectral terror has a native -15% to hit and the fear effects if causes are usually quite effective at limiting incoming attacks. Spectral terror can help to at least partially mitigate the challenge of getting by with the fairly low defense totals for the attached build. Thoughts and suggestions are highly welcome. Thank you in advance. Dominator (Illusion Control - Radioactive Assault - Fire Mastery)Domper,SelfRez,HeatMetal.mbd

Ice / earth was a lot of fun. In exchange for using arctic air and enjoying the smashiness of earth you pretty much need to say a permanent goodbye to your endurance bar. But, it can be worth it. At least one other has extolled the virtues of thorny assault, which functions in a broadly similar way to radioactive assault.

Ice / ice / ice is perhaps the most iconic pairing and it's functionally quite effective. It can be built squishy, but it can also be built to be fairly tough. If you do a browser search for "ice / ice / ice" in the following thread ... you'll find a build and some data and notes on how the provided build performed in a bit of benchmark testing. I played that build for a while on the live servers and after getting incarnates moderately built up (plus with passive and clicky accolades, but no amps or temps used) it did consistently well as a tank replacement for teams when handling AVs and EBs in +4x8 ITFs and other content (not Recluse in the MLTF, of course). The sheer amount of movement debuffs made it particularly effective at keeping sprinters like Rom in the ITF and Director 11 in Tin Mage moving so slowly that they were easier to fight. The intensity of recharge debuffs inflicted on mobs also helped to keep teammates safer. Edit: I'm also including a more recent build that I've only played a bit on the test server. It's an expensive build. Endurance isn't quite handled well yet, either; endurance concerns clearly lowered DPS and it was still at 298 DPS despite needing to pause attacks sometimes to avoid detoggling. If higher damage is important to you and you'd like to try out an ice / ice / ice dominator then the more recent build may ultimately be preferable for you, even though you'd need to make some of your own tweaks to get it closer to its potential performance ceiling. Ice / psi / psi is another iconic pairing that is quite effective because of decent damage and lots of soft control. There are multiple other good assault set pairings, as well. Dominator (Ice Control - Icy Assault - Ice Mastery).mbd

Below are results for both a pylon run and an office mission run, another kind of run, and a few ideas to consider are also offered ... Run types: pylon defeat, office mission run, ITF challenge Archetype: dominator Primary powerset: plant Secondary powerset: fiery assault Mastery / Patron: fire mastery Time in seconds: 241 (4:01, 287 DPS), 373 (6:13), failed first ITF challenge run, then 23:58 Hybrid: Melee core hybrid Other incarnates: Cardiac core alpha, Barrier core destiny, Degen core interface, Pyronic core judgment used only for ITF challenge, no use of lore for any run - Barrier and hybrid used freely for pylon defeat and ITF challenge, barrier used once at the start for the office mission, hybrid never activated for office run, passive effects only Notes: No use of inspirations, temp powers, clicky accolades, or amplifiers for any runs. Also, no way this build was operating at its ceiling in my hands. Made lots of mistakes picking the order of attacks to use for pylon defeat, was hovering through the office mission and taking my time lining up the cone for seeds. First time running the office mission, as well. Also, one runner with a sliver of life that I didn't notice was a floor down from the final office mission floor and about 25 seconds was added to the time to find and defeat him. The ITF challenge is something I've done fairly often, and so the second run wasn't quite as filled with errors. The office mission is a breath of fresh air after many Trapdoor runs. It's just more fun to run. One opinion only, of course, FWIW. The ITF challenge was failed the first time after I put my dominator too close to the ground in a big crowd of Cimerorans and a defeat ensued shortly after that. That was a bit of a brain fart. The second run went better. The first mission took about 14 minutes, which is pretty slow for the first mission. Hovering makes setting the camera right challenging in cave sections that have low ceilings, which contributed to making mission 1 slower. Repeated use of seeds wore down crowds, though. In contrast, the second mission had the best map (one long cave with no backtracking needed). Also, it was possible to use seeds, creepers, and spirit tree to keep aggro manageable and to focus fire down each shadow cyst along the way to the end of the mission. Build: Attached file Ideas for timing and reporting ... When to start timing: Timing started when casting seeds for the office mission. Fly trap was already out at the start of the pylon run and the office mission since having the T9 pet out is pretty common at the start of a mission for dominators and controllers (obviously MMs as well). Creepers were not out when starting any of the runs, as that seems like an "in combat" cast. Perhaps the "pet" details aren't really needed for reporting purposes. But, probably the use of controls should be a good time to start timing the office mission, along with when damage is done to mobs, especially for seeds or other confusion powers because of how they affect mob AI. What to report: The mastery chosen can have a noticeable effect on clear times, particular for dominators. Ice mastery would have sped up the pylon run and the office run, but might have made it a bit harder to meet the "no defeats" condition for the ITF challenge, for example. It's just a request for one extra bit of information for those scanning posts and trying to compare the same primary and secondary combinations. Also, it could be useful (and standard) to have incarnates indicated in the build supplied with the post. The incarnate choices made for this build might surprise some, for example, and it helps for understanding performance differences across runs. The ITF challenge can, perhaps, be viewed as an add-on optional run to report about for those who want to take on a harder challenge. There are a fair number of players I know (myself included) who sometimes solo the first two missions of the ITF at +4x8, bosses appear, no inspirations, no temp powers, no amplifiers, no clicky accolades, and no defeats allowed as a measuring stick for their builds. For most builds it is not an easy run. But, all ATs have completed Master of ITF runs solo and so the first two missions are doable for all ATs, for a fair cross-section of endgame builds. Also, if the mission objectives can be cleared while meeting the conditions in something less than a very long period of time then you've got a really solid build on your hands, capable of taking on a lot of content. FWIW, I started timing the ITF challenge as my dominator started moving inside the first mission doorway. Druid of the Forest - Dominator (Plant Control - Fiery Assault -Fire Mastery).mbd