Caimie

While leveling early on, Bonfire can be of some soft control use even with the KD converted, but outside of that it's a skip power that will rarely/never get used after that and a waste to slot. This is my opinion, of course, since Dominators can be strapped for slots and animation lock at the wrong time will have you inspecting the floor.

As someone who also runs an Elec/Earth but with Ice Epic pool, I can confirm it's a fun combo to play. My build is a moderately proc'd out Perma-Dom that exemps fairly well. It does decent on teams (kinda struggles on melee heavy ones, though) and solos very well. I opted out of Mudpots because I didn't want to crutch an Incarnate power because of a lucky streak of Force Feedback procs. I also didn't take Gremlins because they're more of a pain to baby sit than they're worth and they're about as sturdy as Fire Imps or Phantasm.

Intuition Radial Paragon is the go to Alpha for the majority of Dominator builds. It's what I have on all my Dominators after I swapped the 2 I tried Musculature Radial on. It also gives a damage boost, on top of the other stuff Maelwys listed.

Ok, I've noticed a few things, so I took your build and tweaked it. There are some useful Unique IOs missing. First off, it's not going to please everyone and I'll give a brief explanation to some tweaks. Also, everyone builds differently, be it concept, role-play and so on. Assault is a wasted power pick, it's damage boost is pretty pathetic for the end cost. Carrion Creepers is a defining power of Plant/ and can be loaded with Procs. Spore burst isn't all that useful with how Plant/ is set up..there are better Power picks. Quite honestly, I find Force of Will Pool underwhelming and not worth the choice on Dominators. It's proposed benefits aren't that useful and situational at best, but I'll leave that up to you. I swapped it out for Concealment, which can be useful, even with your Stealth IO in Sprint, and it can also mule LotG +recharges. One thing everyone is going to nit-pick is how Combat Jumping is slotted. It's no different than slotting those IOs in Manuvers, a Defense armor and so on. Oh, and the Knockback IO in it helps all around, especially when you exemp down for WST's and such. Is it needed? not really, but I just removed the one you had in the Armor and placed it there. (I have it in all my Doms and it's there just in case) The build attached is your build with my tweaks. It's comparable in stats, has higher Hit Points, fairly exemplar friendly. Slammin' Sammy [Dominator] (Plant Control - Energy Assault).mbd

Old habits are hard to break for some, when it comes to Dominator builds. I'll admit that back on Live my Dominators had the Fighting Pool because the mind-set then was it gave us more survival. Since returning, I've even had people private message me, after looking at one of my Dominator's I.D/info, and ask why I'd gimp myself by not taking Fighting pool...if they only knew the truth. Since I've returned, only a couple of my Dominators have the Fighting pool, but I never toggle on the powers, they're just mules for IO set bonus or Unique IO's. In reality, Tough and Weave provide no more survivability than a thought out build taking advantage of IO set bonuses and using your Mez/Control powers to lock down enemies. My builds tend to focus on getting the +recharge needed for Perma-Dom (as close as possible before Hasten) and set bonuses that give +Hit Points. My mainstay Pool powers are Speed, Leadership and Leaping for Combat Jumping with the 4th depending on what I may need as a possible LotG Global recharge mule. I hated Super Speed on Live, but now using it with Athletic Run & Combat Jumping combo the mobility is actually good and you can just grab the Jump pack from the Start vendor to get to the much higher places. There's also the benefit of being able to slot a Unique stealth IO into CJ to give you fairly decent stealth with SSpeed. I never use Sprint, even if it is a 'free' slot for the Unique Stealth. As far as non-Patron pools, Psionic Mastery and Ice Mastery are my go to pools. Psionic has multiple powers that can mule the LotG Global recharge and that's why I mainly take it. The Ice pool has a toggle heal (Hibernate) that you can slap the Power Transfer or Preventive Medicine Unique into, the shield can mule IO's for Endurance discount (LotG Global recharge and other Unique IOs, also) and Ice storm and Sleet are pretty decent on Doms. Hoarfrost is skippable, but if anything it can mule the Preventative Unique if that one isn't used in Hibernate.

There are many ways to build Dominators, it all comes down to what concept and intended use/ play-style is. Pets aren't mandatory, but they 'can' help and are a decent power to slot in 4 pieces of a set for recharge bonus. There are those that get Fighting or Fighting & Leadership to bolster their survival, but the downside is added strain to to an already Endurance intensive AT when Domination isn't up to replenish it. Your Controls are your best defense and damage resist, imo. Yes, you can crutch Incarnate powers to help, and it is an option if needed. I tend to make my Doms Perma-Dom and fairly exemplar friendly and they do solo fairly well. In that, Dominators are late bloomers (Plant/ is an exception to a point) and can struggle with EB's and AV's. I tend to avoid AV's, but there are those that fight them and tune their builds to do so. I'll include a Mid's EXAMPLE template, of one way I could build it, with your requirement for the Experimentation Pool, and you can see if it helps you with a build. There are some Powers. Epic pool included, that are essentially mules for things like LotG global +recharge (Maneuvers is one, since I never run it), so keep that in mind. I chose sets with the intention of going Perma-Dom and bolstering Hit Points and resistances a bit, to soften some stray attacks that get thru. Template-Dominator (Plant Control - Fire Assault).mbd

I have one that I enjoyed playing, but it's an older build that I should revisit and 'tune' up a bit and it's built towards my play-style. The combo is cone heavy when it comes to a lot of your skills from the power-sets, and less so with aoe stuff, so repositioning will happen fairly often, but single target does fairly well. Since it's built towards how I play and what I do, I can send you it's Mid's build in a message and you can tweak it or use it as a template. It is Perma-Dom and low level content friendly.

The combo is fun to play and can be built multiple ways to suite how you like to play or your concept. I loosely modeled mine after my MA/Invul Scrapper from Live and that's how I played it. I took Leadership instead of Fighting pool, so it's more of a glass cannon type build, and loaded the skills up with Procs, especially those that would take the Force Feedback Proc. It solos well and does good in teams, but can struggle building Domination, at times, on teams that are melee heavy. I didn't take Exploding Shuriken, Phantasm and Shuriken Throw, but took Deceive, Gleam and Flash. Gleam is a great opener and Deceive is very useful if you want to run some solo stuff. It's not Perma-Dom yet and I'm still slotting sets, but it's a blast to play.

I read this thread and it reminded me of the CoV Beta testing and that one of the days I was on there was focused testing going on with some powerset tweeks and Plant/ Doms were in that particular one, so I was on my Plant/Thorns Dom running stuff with people. Castle happened to be there observing for a bit and his comment on Masterminds being the intended Tanks kinda stuck with me is why I mentioned it. He could see the Community making Brutes the tanking AT at release but was reluctant to make too many changes. I'm guessing that the Going Rogue expansion was already in the preliminary planning stages is why. Just my guess, though.

As someone who likes to play Brutes (and Dominators) more so than other ATs and was in the CoV beta test, the perception of Brutes being the CoV 'Tank' was made by the Community after it's launch, but started it's momentum towards the end of Beta when they started allowing more people in. The original intended 'Tank' for CoV was the Mastermind with Brutes filling the off-Tank Scrapper-like role, but that never really panned out, on the Servers I played on at least. Masterminds were few, at least the ones wanting to group, and if you were a Brute and joined a group, they expected you to Tank, no matter your Powersets. I lost count of the times my BA/SR Brute face-planted because of this and before it got fully IO'd out. I'm not going to argue with anyone about buffing this, nerfing that and so on because I've not played since the shut-down and have only been back for 3 months and there's so much that has changed and or been added that I'm not fully up to speed as of yet. I've remade my BA/SR Brute, but it's only lvl 8 because I've been too preoccupied with leveling my Dominators and SJ/Rad Brute, which has decent survival for only being lvl 40 with SO enhancements.

I've just returned to the game and haven't had much of a chance to play around in Mids to see, but back before the shut-down I ran a BA/SR Brute and it was pretty fun but a toggle nightmare and slot hungry. I can't find my notes on the build, since it's been so long, but I know leaping and fighting were 2 of the pools I used. I just don't remember what other pools and incarnate I had on it, sadly. It did have some HO's and at least one purple IO set in it, that I know for sure.