Frosticus

Low-ish damage compared to fire or plant. Huge control, I find it sails through most encounters that my earth dom struggles on.

Yes, with very few exceptions like -regen, +regen, +recovery and +recharge. For those ones corrs have equal value.

Doms are my favorite for sure.Dominator (Fire Control - Fiery Assault).mbd

WoC is basically a great melee armor that has a very low end cost. With arctic air gets you consistent boss confusion. While 8ft is small a huge amount of enemies will be in your face before arc air affects them unless you play very conservatively, which you probably wouldn't pick poison to do. Mez protection is required to play poison imo, but there are other workable solutions if clarion and/or indom will is off the table. Cycling rune of protection with melee hybrid is decent. As is pay2win amplifier.

Sav has always been my favorite assault set, but it doesn't do anything particularily special that sets it apart from others imo. It's main advantages are: -Untethered/unconditional healing (life drain, siphon, and drain psyche all have hoops to jump thru). With insp disabled you likely need some way of recovering hp. -very endurance efficient damage. Very. But beyond that I've had good results from arse/rad (I just don't like /rad tho) and I've played enough /psi to know it can do great things too.

The build I'm running now Dominator (Arsenal Control - Savage Assault energy.mbd

ITF +4x8 Restrictions in place: No Inspirations, Amplifiers, Temporary Powers, Click Accolades No Lore Pets No Deaths *not for the faint of heart - It took me about 3.5hrs of playing Mission 1: Pretty straightforward. Only two potential failure points. The intersection holding Sybils 4-6 and the Minotaur fight at the end. As long as you don’t trigger the nictus ambush it is a pretty easy mission. Cloaking device means you only have to clear the target spawns as you can stealth between. Mission 2: You are more than welcome to trigger the ambushes. Arsenal doesn’t have any issue clearing them, but it will slow you down on what is already a lengthy mission. I just use the strategy of leaving each one with a sliver and then defeating all 10 in one blitz. Once again cloaking device makes this so much easier (any full invis can work) because the ambushes can’t find you. Just don’t bite off more than you can chew because the build has minimal negative resistance, so don’t leave the nictus unchecked. Mission 3: This is where the wheat starts to separate from the chaff. Up until this point most any dominator has the tools to cope. That changes in mission 3 and it isn’t just because of the AV’s, although that is a major roadblock. The all-minotaur/cyclops group (must be defeated) requires more control/strategy than most builds afford and the frequent ambushes mean you need to rapidly deploy strong aoe controls. Last but not least, the computer’s final wave spawns a full group of boss robots outside of aoe control range. Meaning you either put down multiple aoe controls, or you fall back and try to wrangle them into a clump. In my experience the computer is the achilles heel of this mission. You get lulled by how slowly it dies and then the pack of robots punish you. Both AVs are dangerous. They typically bring friends and you either have the tools to deal with them or you don’t. For most dominator primaries the reality is they don’t have the tools to consistently handle the AVs. Mission 4: I personally find mission 3 to be more challenging, but this one certainly takes a long time. I wont go into a ton of detail regarding strategy because every dom (that makes it this far) will have a different approach. For example my earth dom does better “pausing” the fight by immobing Romy and dealing with each ambush as they come. A single target confuse dom will use that while their lore pets carry them. But my Arsenal dom can handle way bigger ambushes, while also lacking said pause button (could do this strategy with tranq tho). So it is better to drag Romy off and deal with the huge wave of delayed ambushes. The nictus are easy and a snooze fest. Plant tricannon in the middle and slowly whittle them down. *Do you need to separate Romy from the Nictus? Probably not, but you definitely don’t want all of them + ambushes. Edit: yes you will need to separate them. I can't do enough dps, but Tricannon tanks like a champ I dunno, it was my first go at the ITF with arsenal (badge at end) and for the purposes of this challenge you end up playing more conservatively the further you go in the TF (or at least I do) Do yourself a favour and skip part 2, It is ultra boring And there you have it. A +4x8 ITF featuring a dominator that actually fights and is not reliant upon lore pets to defeat hard targets.

Probably neither. Phantom army can't be buffed, so nothing from support is going to affect them* Control won't add enough mag to control things that you weren't already able to control You likely want assault (both branches have applications) Or you want melee core if personal survival is desired. *using assault hybrid prior to summoning pets gives the power to them. That includes PA.

Defender ATOs in shifting tides is perhaps an interesting option as I don't think they can be slotted in any other toggle powers? I only tried it with base ones, but I'll explore it more. Whitecap mirrors the behavior of savage leap and feral charge in that it requires an enemy target to execute the teleport. Those are two of my favorite powers and in the bit I tested, I think whitecap will be too!

A little bit. They changed the way typed def works so that s/l def isn't quite as all inclusive as it once was (although that wouldn't change much in the ITF). Also I think they buffed/fixed the way they use phalanx fighting making romans quite a bit better at dodging when they clump up. The latter can cause you to wiff which means you have to survive that much more. I don't think there is a singular test that is going to give you a blanket answer of whether you can solo well or not, and who determines what is well? That said if you can do a 4x8 ITF you probably won't be squished in most content, although you may not be successful either.

I like leviathan quite a bit. If they changed the cone into a taoe I'd use it often as it'd check so many boxes for me. For arsenal specifically I find you want to keep applying aoe damage pretty consistently to keep smoke canister active. It will suppress without activity after 15 seconds which isn't very long for a mob to go unchecked during the multi-spawn ambushes because so many enemies are swarming. Taoes are just easier (and less risky) to use. Against a normal x8 spawn it is much less of an issue and I'd have no qualms about using an epic cone and/or flock of birds cone. Properly leveraging smoke canister is imo the key to getting this set to perform well.

+3x8 Ice Mistral SF No Insp/amps/temps/click accolades No deaths Arsenal Control seems to have little issue with CoT as it plows through the hordes of Death Mages and Succubi that this TF throws at you. While lots of primaries can handle a x8 spawn it's the ambushes that really show off peak control capability and can very quickly overwhelm. Why is this TF important? Ice Mistral sets you to lvl 40, so that means it is a close as you can get to your full build without having access to incarnate powers and a level shift (both accessible at lvl 45). So you get to showcase what your full build can do before ridiculously OP incarnates skew the picture. The AV ensures that you can't just bring a pure survival based build because he has healing flames and twilight grasp. You need a lot of dps* *you'll see I stalemate him at +3 What about other dominators? Here's my earth/psi, which was only capable of passing this at +1x8 and not for lack of trying! The same spawns that I can stroll through with arsenal at +3x8 were hit and miss for the earth/psi and even +2x8 could quickly go south. Strategy Try to stay out of line of sight. There are way too many enemies once the ambushes start stacking. You have to thin them out quite a bit before it is safe to engage. A regular x8 spawn is no issue. Note /psi app is just because I like it. I'm strongly considering going with /fire in a future version as I think the current build is a bit too defensive. Dominator (Arsenal Control - Savage Assault).mbd

It can, but it usually only really matters if you are trying to solo something and you are right on the cusp of succeeding. For example, on my earth/psi dom I put almost the entire build into making stoney resilient enough to tank +4 AVs. If you can get him to survive barrier cycles you will likely win the encounter. In cases like that even something as small as the -damage debuff from paralytic interface can make the difference. Another example is on my ill/cold where the heavily resisted -rech still makes enough of an impact in slowing down the dull pain cycle of Reichman that I was able to drop him. Without it, the fight may have never resolved. But in a team? it is almost irrelevant (outside of -res) because you'll just be hammering anything hard with your lore and/or multiple destinies in play. You'll have so much cross-buffing and powerhouse debuffers present that whatever minor debuffs you contribute will be a drop in the ocean.

Wasn't loving /rad. Good set, but not particularly fun. Decided to reroll to my personal favorite - /savage It's good. Really good. Still finessing a final build Dominator (Arsenal Control - Savage Assault).mbd Here's a +3x8 Yin No insp/temps/amps/click accolades No deaths I don't think there are a lot of combos in the game that can match this.

Doms secondaries need a sweep because only some powers get domination boosts. Unfortunately impale does not and even spamming it high level stuff gets loose more than you might like.

OP - if you are willing to use insp/lore/start temps etc. the better question is what AVs you can't solo? Most regular lvl 54 AVs will go down easily with those tools in play. Best solo def? My Ta/fire/soul is pretty nuts, but I really enjoy my poison/fire/psi even though it isn't nearly as capable.

96% from sets is more than enough with hasten. +5 those rech IO's if you are just gonna 2 slot it though.

+2x8 Penny Yin TF No insp/amps/temps/click accolades No deaths Pretty easy +2x8 clear of this tf. It only got sketchy at one point where a whole bunch of bosses started to squeeze through my choke point and I stood there waiting to see what would happen. If I'd fallen back to the next choke point sooner it would be super easy. Why is this TF important? Penny Yin is the perfect level range to showcase the strength of your primary and secondary choices because you have access to all t9 powers, but it locks out epics and incarnates, both of which can pretty dramatically alter the outcome. Her radiation attacks remove all "luck" from the fight because you won't dodge her. What’s going on here because I heard arsenal control is really bad? As with many things, people have a personal bias that they develop. Some let that cloud their opinions that they feel compelled to share for whatever reason. In reality Arsenal is having an easier time with this content than my Earth dom and that earth/psi sits at the pinnacle of S tier control. Arsenal control is better than Earth is a lot of situations and worse in some too For reference here is the vid of my earth/psi running this at +1x8 (I consistently failed at +2x8), whereas this was actually pretty “easy” at +2x8 for arsenal. *fwiw I think a better earth/psi build could succeed at +2x8, but I just take my lvl 50 build in. Ok, but you built for this encounter! Nah, this is a lvl 50+ content build, it just exemplars well. If I’d built for this TF I’d have x-ray eyes and electron haze to make it way, way easier. Video is kinda boring and hard to see much combat Ya, at this level my damage output is really low so I have to rely on the aoe confuse to clear the spawns. It is a finicky power (great at times) but a +2 freak tank can nearly 1 shot me in melee, so I have to play carefully. That means leaning into two core strengths of arsenal: A/ choke point control - Both arse and earth are phenomenal if they have a choke point to leverage B/ fighting around corners. This set has a lot of target location powers. You don't need to have line of sight to use them. Strategy Make the ambushes travel through as many patches as possible to soften them up. Use tricannon as a last line of defense. It has a taunt aura, so ideally only a few enemies eventually pass through all the patches which are then taunted by the cannon. Ambushes are different than regular spawns because while they obey certain aspects of aggro rules they stay focused on you even though they far exceed 16 targets. They keep coming after you, so the onslaught is relentless and is part of why typical control strategies fail and persistent patches work really well. Tricannon taunts the AV well enough, so kill her. Just mind she has quite a bit of aoe attacks Do you need chokepoints for Arsenal to do well? Not at all, but if you are facing an ambush of 60+ enemies it is probably required. Pfft this isn't +4x8 so it doesn't count! Give it a whirl with your own dom (or whatever character you like) and see how it goes... Dominator (Arsenal Control - Radioactive Assault).mbd

IMO defense doesn't make a lot of sense for most doms and really cuts into their damage output to achieve it. Even more so for a melee-centric dom because you can't chase r/m/aoe which basically leaves you going after s/l, which only works sometimes.

I don't think there is a large enough community to support so many divisions, so it just becomes drowned out. IMO make 2 divisions. Div 1 - real honest attempt at measuring dps that can be extracted to longer fights where dps actually matters. - no insp/temps/amps/lore (probably sounds familiar) *powers like patron pets are used in good faith. Some buff/debuff sets absolutely can utilize them well in difficult situations. A stalker probably can't keep 3 spiderlings alive tho... *endurance consumption is also assumed in good faith. If you can't last an ageless cycle you are just fooling yourself by failing to factor in that period of 0 dps you'd be doing (fwiw most current div 2 builds fail this check). Div 2 - Hidden or on a separate page. The "fun" division where signature summons, daggers, geas, and whatever else people use to game the encounter are used. I personally have zero interest in what lord Recluse can do, or in watching someone spam daggers, but it is your inf to spend as you see fit and your collection of data to shape.

Dominator (Arsenal Control - Psionic Assault).mbd

I do run agility and ended up over slotting retsu for recharge. Agility might not be needed though given the ffback and if you took ageless (I did not because clarion radial and /nin are great together).

This is what my Stone/nin does. It ends up being super easy with all the ffback going off in fault+tremor. Pop unleash just before the crash and retsu is up again before unleash drops.

I like it a decent amount in PSW on my earth/psi. I typically have 1-2 out with occasionally 3 making an appearance while mowing down full groups. The damage adds up, but it also has a low mag stun which again, stacks with the stun of PSW making it a heck of a control power on top of doing solid damage. I find it only useful for melee centric doms as they take too long to fly over to the group otherwise.

Scrapper /nin is one of my fav def sets, unfortunately the stalker version gives up the +end power that gives so much build freedom with an easy 3 eps boost. If smoke flash put you in hide, or better yet unbreakable hide for like 5 sec (chain crits) you'd tempt me. Stalker nin is one of the only sets that offers basically nothing offensively. Blinding powders confuse is too weak to use offensively (should be 100% mag 2, 50% mag 1) and caltrops damage is too slow (good defensive power though). It offers no endurance management, +rech, or +tohit, all of which promote offense in their own way. And as a strictly defensive set it isn't amazing either.