EnjoyTheJourney

Arsenal control has cloaking device, which makes an arsenal controller invisible to most enemies. That allows time in most situations to lay down an AOE control as an alpha, substantially reducing the number of incoming attacks. High defense totals greatly reduce the percentage of incoming attacks that actually get through, and good resistances (for most resistances, at least) significantly reduce the damage received from attacks that make it through. Fade helps with defense totals and resistances, as well as with increasing resistance to defense debuffs, all of which help to reduce incoming damage.

Attached is a build intended to be both team-friendly and to be helpful for solo AV hunting. Never really tried to make an AV hunter before. So, the kinds of benchmarks to hit aren't that clear to me. For all I know the single target damage is way under what it needs to be to be successful and I'd need to either reconsider the build or drop AV hunting from the list of things that build would be intended to do. Will probably consider the control hybrid that immobilizes mobs for hunting at least some AVs, if AV hunting goes on this character's "to do" list. The lone +resist IO in tri-gun should cap its resistances at 90% if City of Data resistance totals for tri-gun are accurate. Spirit ward on the tri-gun and healing should make it very, very tough, especially when it is also boosted by barrier. AOE is not a strength for this build. For soloing will probably aim for +4 and limit the number of mobs to about 5 or 6 per spawn, to better match the upper taunt limit for tri-gun. Single target damage is not high enough to keep AV fights relatively short without a lot of -regen. So, will probably get Longbow core lore pets to get more -regen for a longer period of time than howling twilight can provide. Feedback highly welcomed, especially from those who often solo AVs. PS: This is a candidate final build for Nightshell, who is currently soloing her way through the resistance side of Praetorian story arcs. Nightshell - Controller (Arsenal Control - Darkness Affinity - Psionic Mastery).mbd

Agreed with RQ above. I've run a fair number of blasters and dominators and do a lot of pylon testing for my characters. My dominators frequently have comparable or better single target DPS in pylon tests compared to my blasters with a similar damage type (outside of ice and earth / seismic, which can have much higher DPS for blasters than for dominators). AOE is where blasters shine compared to every other AT in the game (including dominators). Beyond the lack of a nuke, when it comes to AOE the main thing holding back dominators is the target cap of 10 enemies or less for the majority of the AOE powers in their assault sets. Despite these limitations dominators can have pretty good AOE compared to most ATs by pairing a targeted AOE or PbAOE from their assault set with an AOE their epic powerset (epic powerset targeted AOEs and PbAOEs typically have a target cap of 16, which helps to compensate for their longer base recharge times). "Dominators are not DPS" is a stereotype that is out of touch with reality and it should have become extinct quite some time ago.

Players who are very knowledgeable tend to manage just fine with a wide variety of team compositions in all but the hardest content. For example, lots of 3, 4, or 5 player teams have completed a +4x8 ITF in 30 - 40 minutes or less with no defeats or very few defeats, often doing it as a "kill most" along the way. Those team compositions are *very* diverse, not infrequently involving dominators or at times being composed entirely of dominators. Those runs are consistently a lot of fun. On the other hand, if a team leader is calling for particular roles / ATs and it's not a hard mode focus or a badge run, then to me that's also a warning sign of a team that's particularly likely to struggle. I also usually shy away from joining those teams and, when I do join, it quite often turns out that the team does struggle. Sometimes those teams do really well, to be fair. It might be fairly common that a noticeable percentage of highly experienced players shy away from such teams, which ends up somewhat weakening them. But, it may also be that the ability and willingness to flexibly respond to ever-evolving in-game conditions serves teams better than having a less flexible mind set about each teammate's role.

Thread title: Don't understand a dominator Thread title analysis: Thread title implies "I don't understand dominators", but not clearly worded. Somebody reading the thread title will probably be expecting questions from an OP who is looking to learn more about dominators. Summary of OP content: Only a small percentage of dominators do good DPS, they definitely need rebalancing OP content analysis: "I've only seen a small percentage of dominators do good damage" shows absolutely confidence in the truthfulness of one's own observations, just as "they definitely need rebalancing" does for the conclusion. Thus, the OP content provides no evidence of a self-reported lack of understanding of dominators by the OP, despite a lack of understanding being the main takeaway from the thread title. Also, the beginning of the OP suggests dominators may need more DPS. The "needs rebalancing" conclusion seems to hint at broader problems than just DPS, because if that's not true then the OP could just say "dominators need more DPS." Thus, the link between the premise and the conclusion is not made clear. Overall, the thread title and OP content seem incompatible, as if they belong in two completely different kinds of threads. Also, the two key parts of the OP are not really in synch. Recommendation: Re-write the OP to be more clear about what you want to say. Or, start over with a new thread.

I usually prefer team play. But, Argentae's OP has me inspired as well; an arsenal / dark / psi controller looks like it would be a solid and potentially enjoyable solo project. Having a thoughtfully put together build blueprint from Argentea helps, as well. If I make such a character, they would probably start in Praetoria and once done there they'd solo its way through the villain side arcs; for me those are the most consistently interesting arcs to go through and it's been quite a while since I did that. Fade from dark affinity is such a good buff that it's easier to proc out a lot of powers while still having solid defense and resistance values. In the end, flight (hover), speed (hasten), sorcery (arcane bolt, spirit ward for the pet, rune of protection, maybe enflame), and either leadership or teleport powers may make good pool power choices. It's particularly tempting to get the teleport power pool because fold space would be very nice to use together with the patches in arsenal control and dark affinity. Soul absorption loves grouped mobs, as well, so fold space would help for endurance management as well. Edit: Went ahead and made Nightshell (arsenal / dark / psi planned), who started her journey in Praetoria. She is skilled in "industrial magic", which means she activates her magic through fabricated items that she carries with her (ie: her gun). Very capable and also very fun to play so far. Also, really enjoying another run through Praetoria, been too long since the last time.

If you have a pet you can summon on a character, try the following when that character is logged into the game ... 1. Open up the "team" tab on the chat UI. The chat UI is by default in the lower left hand side of the screen and the word "Pets" shows up once open up the Team tab. It works well if not already on a team, not sure how well that works if you are on a team. 2. Click on the word "Pets" that appears after you click on the "team" tab. The "Pets" UI will appear on your screen, scan your screen until you find it. 3. If you'd like the "Pets" UI to disappear, then repeat steps 1 & 2 above.

There's a bit of math further up in this thread that seems to justify this approach. It seems you that the buff lasts somewhat less than five seconds when the proc activates. And, the proc will probably activate close to 2 times per minute (accounting for misfires) if activated manually, versus an average of about 3 activations that randomly happen if in tactics. The value of three randomly occurring activations seems unlikely to outweigh the value of being able to pick better times in which to activate the proc.

My goal was to present information and options. How you want to play is, naturally, totally up to you.

Have teamed with plant / psi doms many times, as a couple of different players that I teamed with often liked their plant / psi doms quite a bit. It's a solid combination, with seeds and creepers limiting incoming damage quite a bit and with drain psyche helping to heal up chip damage from the limited number of attacks that at times got through.

If you run task forces and strike forces fairly regularly, then you'll accumulate a lot of merits. You can exchange merits directly for purple recipes at 100 merits for one purple recipe at a conversion booth. Often that's less efficient than marketeering would be. But, if you'd rather not deal with marketeering and you've got a lot of merits laying around then that's one way of getting purple IOs. You can also purchase winter set IOs with merits. Usually winter sets are a better deal for the merits it takes to buy them because their price on the auction house will tend to be higher most of the time, compared to the cost of purple IOs. There are conversion booths in Talos Island near the train station (across the street from the main entrance to the train station, up against a building) and in RWZ not that far from Lady Grey (just circle around the area she is in and eventually you'll see it). You can also convert merits into hero merits at a conversion booth (hero merits are bought with 50 merits and convert back to 50 merits when redeemed at a conversion booth, thus having no cost in the end). Hero merits can be put into an email that you send to your global account, which can then be taken by any character on that account. That allows you to share merits between characters at the cost of a small amount of time, and nothing else. Thus, it can be worthwhile to check out your older characters that you don't play anymore and see if you've got merits sitting there doing nothing. ATOs often cost about 7 or 8 million inf and unless they are not available at all through the auction house it will virtually always be a substantially better deal to get them through the auction house than to buy them with merits at a conversion booth. On that note, when not in missions or a base try out typing "/ah" (without the quotes) in the in-game chat window and hitting "return." You'll see the interface for the auction house pop up and you can sell things or place bids from there. Also, the first time you complete the market crash trial on a character you always get a purple recipe as a reward. Make certain to have quite a few empty recipe slots before you start one of those because otherwise you can finish up and realize that you couldn't receive a purple recipe because your character was already at their recipe storage limit; it sucks when that happens, as that "one time" reward per character will never be offered again if you miss it the first time. Hopefully this helps.

In the 40s you're starting to see high end mobs, quite a few of which can debuff and mez your blaster in impactful ways. But, you don't yet have access to the higher end IO sets that can help a lot for soloing or incarnates. Thus, level 40+ is a bit of an awkward part of the leveling phase for multiple ATs, especially those that don't have built-in mez protection. After reaching level 50, and especially after getting incarnates slotted, soloing a blaster tends to get easier for a fair range of content. This observation doesn't in any way detract from the good advice of others, of which there is a lot in this thread.

Hopefully this isn't "too much" and I'll leave this thread to others, after this. But, another revision is attached that focuses on improving single target damage for taking on hard targets. That seems like something that could usefully be improved. Dropping maneuvers reduces team buffs. In exchange, endurance management becomes easier and arcane bolt helps to take single target damage to a better place. With poison trap flattening regen for hard targets, with double acid mortars out, and with the tri-gun having damage boosted at least a bit more in this latest build, soloing harder targets becomes easier. No speed records for taking down hard targets would be broken by this build. But, it should at least be possible to solo a wide array of hard targets with this build. One thing to ponder is when to take the latter two powers in the teleport pool and when to take the fighting pool. The attached build opts for fold space earlier. But, if defenses feel a bit too weak then the fighting pool can be taken earlier and the final two teleport powers could be taken at levels 47 and 49. Personally, the teleport powers look like they're more fun and more team-friendly, and so I'd prefer to take them earlier. Either choice would be reasonable, though. With this I'll bow out of this thread. Good luck to the OP, however they decide to move forward. PS: Most (and perhaps all) sleep powers are auto-hit. But, perhaps the rules are a bit different for sleep grenade. If accuracy is needed then, of course, that takes priority over the proc. Professor Hasenpfuss - Controller (Arsenal Control - Traps - Psi Mastery),v2.mbd

A few things aren't clarified in the attached build further up. First, the passive accolades are a good pickup and that brings endurance recovery to slightly over 3 per second, with that extra 10 endurance. Second, a reasonable pickup for this build could be agility core alpha, which brings endurance recovery to 3.4 per second. The build isn't heavily dependent on procs for damage and better power availability helps to offset that anyways for powers that have low enough recharge to have proc damage fall as a result of taking agility. Then defense totals look even better, as well. If there was something to be concerned about for both the original build and the alternative build it would be the lack of a single target attack chain. Didn't want to mess with the original build too much, though, as fitting in the sorcery pool really changes the look and feel of the build. Also, might need to remove the teleport pool to create enough room for sorcery. But, the teleport pool seems like the heart of the original build in some ways and if this is a teaming build then either the original build or the alternative build would still probably be fairly team friendly even without a single target attack chain. Despite the occasional remark on the forums about endurance problems associated with running the fighting pool, it is more usually the case that a relatively low level of endurance reduction in "clicky" powers causes endurance burn to run ahead of endurance recovery. A few tweaks to endurance reduction were made to "clicky" powers in the attached build to help with that. Also swapped in a defense / endurance shield wall IO in weave for the originally present defense shield wall IO. Professor Hasenpfuss - Controller (Arsenal Control - Traps).mbd

Here's more of an aggressive blapping approach. Key differences include higher damage, considerable effort spent on shoring up mez protection to stay more consistently in the fight, somewhat lower ranged defense and slightly lower smash / lethal resistances, but noticeably higher melee and AOE defense totals and roughly comparable for most other resistances (your build's psi resistance is noticeably better, of course). Power boost is close to perma by default, which means boosted defense totals on a more consistent basis, and often power boost ends up being perma or very very close because of force feedback +recharge procs in water burst. Resistance to slows is 50% in this alternative build, compared to 15% in the original build; slow resistance doesn't always matter, but when it does matter it tends to matter a lot. This build has been battle tested in higher end content (not hard mode, to be forthright, but +4x8 KM ITFs, LRSF, MLTF, etc). Damage is pretty good and defeats have not been common. Having a heal built into the single target attack rotation noticeably helps. Another edge for survival was being free to take barrier core T4 with little concern for incoming mezzes in most situations*. * The most common mez is sleep because the mez protection available in this build only leaves room for sleep resistance, and not for reductions to sleep magnitude. But, sleep is also the easiest mez to break in multiple ways and in my experience it is seldom as problematic to be slept as it is to be stunned or held for a substantial period of time. The second most common incoming mez is stacked holds (by default power boost only boosts the hold protection in acrobatics from 2 to 3.57, meaning that if 2 holds land within a short time of each other then that will overcome the limited hold protection provided by acrobatics + power boost. That was not a common occurrence, though, given that positional defenses are in a decent place even without barrier, limiting the number of incoming holds that are likely to land in a short period of time (as long as situational awareness is being exercised, so, for example, you're not trying to solo +4x8 spawns that are loaded with mobs that holds). Having said all this, though, hover-blasting is such a strong defensive approach that your build will probably be even tougher to defeat in most situations than the ground-based build given in this build. Totally up to you, of course, to decide which kind of build you like better. Even this overall approach isn't to your liking, though, hopefully there are some ideas you find helpful somewhere in the build. Summoner of Waves - Blaster (Water Blast - Energy Manipulation - Mu Mastery).mbd

Here's a revised build. The main goals were better defenses, better recharge, and a way to fairly reliably get containment (the immobilize in place of caltrops). Some damage procs were sacrificed along the way. But, more recharge means more availability for some powers that still have damage procs. On the other hand, in this build there is psi nado, which recharges about every 5.5 seconds or thereabouts. It has a +recharge proc IO, it helps to keep mobs in patches on the ground, and it contributes to damage. Caltrops were removed because they work against keeping mobs grouped up, which arsenal control really benefits from having happen. The "knockback to knockdown" IO was put into trip mine to keep mobs on patches, as well. That means enemies don't get knocked out of range of control patches when you bring them in with fold space. And, many teammates will definitely appreciate the presence of the KB to KD IO. The miracle +recovery IO offers a better return than an extra slot in stamina, hence that change. The extra resistance IO in the pet should make him noticeably tougher. It's not a perfect build. But, hopefully you find some interesting and helpful ideas when looking it over. Professor Hasenpfuss - Controller (Arsenal Control - Traps).mbd

One possible build ... Dominator (Plant Control - Psi Assault- Psi Mastery).mbd

Nice video, shows the resilience of the set. Had been considering making an arsenal / dark / psi controller. Could drop the fighting pool and still softcap ranged defense with fade, get good other positionals, have good resists, have mez protection, pick up fold space, take the tri-gun and for the clear majority of content team with zero concern for whether or not a tank or any melee were present. Could easily function as the alpha taker and mob positioning specialist. Tri-gun would taunt hard targets. The main hesitation is that I have a gravity / dark / psi controller with a similar playstyle, albeit with a more fragile pet that doesn't taunt.

Figured you'd be experimenting with it. Totally understandable that if it's quite similar to earth that motivation to go through the same paces wouldn't be that high.

Given that the OP apparently values AV hunting it seems unfortunate that they gave up the taunting tank of a pet in arsenal control in exchange for the more fragile imps in fire control, thereby making AV hunting potentially more challenging. Incidentally, and this is not to put pressure on Frosticus, since arsenal control went live I've been expecting videos by Frosticus featuring arsenal control being used to defeat AVs. AV hunting is something Frosticus seems to enjoy and arsenal control is a set that has a very tough pet with a taunt to make that easier.

Good luck with your build! The force feedback +recharge IO should proc off of the phantasm's attacks that have knocks. IIRC pets don't benefit from recharge enhancements. Not totally sure whether or not the force feedback +recharge proc affects your controller or not, but leaning toward "procs from pet attacks try to affect the pet, not the controller." Thus, the force feedback +recharge IO probably tries to affect the phantasm when it procs, it fails because recharge does not affect pets, and in the end a force feedback +recharge proc slotted into a pet ends up doing nothing.

The listed incarnate picks should work just fine. It's only if you are spamming powers one after another after another that you might run into endurance issues. But, transitioning from spawn to spawn and taking a bit of time here and there to make occasional decisions about what to target with what power and where to place spectral terror should create enough gaps to seldom run into endurance issues. If a problem does arise then you can switch off superior invisibility and use group invisibility instead. I hadn't played this character in a while so she came out for a spin tonight. Brought on a grin, forgot how fun she is to play. Did just fine on a +4x8 KM ITF with a team that seemed to be struggling, as many of the characters were a bit underpowered for what we were doing. With a good kin and with poison providing debuffs we pushed our way through fairly smoothly overall, despite many many defeats -- never had such a workout for poison's ally rez before tonight. This build went to a low end life total a few times when lots of damage was incoming. But, hit points never went to zero, so no defeats for that TF. Edit: Forgot to address the question "Why no phantasm?" It can do a fair amount of knockback, which teams don't always love. It has a tendency to enter melee randomly and then get quickly defeated. Also, this build is meant to remain invisible when entering a new spawn and to provoke no aggro until venomous gas is already at work on the spawn. Phantasm occasionally alerting mobs with a quick ranged attack would undermine that. If a key goal is to solo AVs then there's a much stronger incentive to work to keep phantasm in the build. After reviewing Uun's build, which is interesting and thoughtfully done, it occurred that replacing the ghost widow's embrace psy damage IO in poison trap with the superior will of the controller psy damage proc decreases recharge by a little over one second to slightly less than 17 seconds and also increases average damage by about 32 for each casting of poison trap (ie: to 393). It's a clear "net win" for the build. (Doh, after trying in-game it wouldn't let me slot the superior will of the controller damage proc, despite Mids letting me do that. It appears that the game doesn't allow the controller sets in poison trap)

Attached is a sample build. This build was run through a 4* ITF once and survived quite well, despite predictions of dooooom for taking a melee range controller into the highest hard mode difficulty. It is key to try to keep some particularly dangerous mobs at very close to the edge of the 15 foot radius for venomous gas and to know when to step back from time to time. But, spatial awareness gets better with experience and it is absolutely workable to stay in or very very close to melee range the substantial majority of the time. For ordinary content this build on a team just makes everything melt. Phants having taunt helps to reduce incoming attacks. Also, a big factor in reducing incoming attacks is all the -to hit and the mezzing. Spectral terror inflicts about -22% to hit for mobs at even level (65% of that total for +3 mobs because of purple patch effects). Venomous gas adds about an autohit -14ish% to hit debuff (also subject to purple patch effects). Weaken adds another to -32% to the main target and -16% to enemies in the splash radius (purple patch matters again, of course). With ranged defense already sitting at basically 36% there is more than enough to hit debuffing of enemies to effectively softcap your controller against the kind of positionally based damage that seems particularly likely to be directed at your controller (as long as you are not just standing still and getting wailed on in melee, which is something you'd probably naturally avoid anyways). As one note of caution, even with agility core endurance costs are quite high and endurance usage does need to be monitored. One way to help manage this, if running low or out of endurance becomes a recurring issue, could be to switch off superior invisibility and to cast group invisibility whenever it comes up. Tainted Dreams - Controller (Illusion Control - Poison - Psi Mastery).mbd

Not sure about a guide. I do have a sample build, which is attached. Wouldn't call it perfect, by any means. But, it hopefully provides some ideas that end up being helpful. Dominator (Ice Control - Icy Assault - Ice Mastery).mbd

I could and should have tested that on my own. It would have been easy to do that, as well. I apologize for adding an unnecessary "to do" item to your day.