Mezmera

I tried out the new Dark Mastery pool for dommies. Pros: I love the versatility of the shield. Tar Patch and Darkest Night are both nice powers. This pool seems more like a support pool which is a decent option. Cons: Soul Consumption at a 10 min recharge is not effective to have in the least I'd pass on this power and with it being a supposed keystone power you have to invest 2 powers to get I would like to get more use out of. If I'm looking to get good aoe damage and endurance fixes there's better pools. I'm also none too pleased about the area of effect of dommie Soul Drain going from 15 to 10. Seems unnecessary to me but there must be reasons...

Okay I spec'd into this and dropped Burnout for it. Plus I also spec'd out of the Soul pool to give the new Dark dom pool a lookover. Here's my assessment: I loaded in a new Council map in PI at +4/8. These buggers are not your grandad's Council no more so kudos to that. I lead in with either Total Domination or Mass Confusion then go to town with Total Focus and my blasts. I had to stop to realize I didn't have much in way of aoe damage anymore going from my Soul pool to Dark which has more debuffing but hardly much in way of damage. I found myself relying still on the tried and true Terrify and my ST controls for the harder targets when my aoe control wore off if I didn't want to use my other hard aoe control, which with how much harder these Council were I just used both Total Dom and Mass Confuse in a mob anyways. Using these tactics I would try to use the new TK as effectively as I could. That it didn't stop any incoming damage didn't make this an optimal go to control for incoming aggro and that it pushes things away from me when I want to run in to hit some targets is also counterintuitive on a Dominator. That it clumps them better is a neat little feature but out of clearing the whole map I'd say it came in handy twice. If there was a mob dispersed far apart from one another I would first pop a big defense shield so I could try to withstand attacks as I have them TK'd and trying to sweep them all into a clump. Once I had them clumped to how I liked it I would just Mass Confuse or Total Dominate them and turn TK off so I could then run in and hit them with that new Soul Consumption (which I'll talk about in the ancillary pool). I also had the same issue with my clump of targets getting TK'd up into the air and then when I turned it off so I could get at them they just all dispersed every which way. I do like the anti-tp part of this and the clumping of targets which your teammates would find more useful if they hadn't already nuked them into oblivion to begin with. My ultimate assessment is that this is a quirky power replacing its limited use for another. That all it does for Mind Control is try to clump a group better for your main powers to be more effective at the cost of having to survive all of those attacks I found I'd rather just use Mind's other main powers. Being somewhat helpful on 2 mobs out of about 15 I could not see myself respecing into this and dropping Burnout or anything else I already primarily use to fight. In the same way that Mass Hypnosis now has that auto hit control but little in the way of effective powers in a fight I find the new TK to be the same. That it doesn't also allow to do damage seems to be a missed opportunity especially for the Controller AT.

Okay from the female side of the costume spectrum I'll give my take. This is all fabulous! There's lots to like here but I'll give some of my favorites. The new clockwork glove is real neat for hand blaster types. Both the half helmet options are fantastic. The Sybil robes are a no brainer and that you can still lots of things with armor pieces its quite good, safe to say there'll be a lot of armored Sybils running around. The snake skin capes are real beautiful! I love the clockwork backpacks. Also the weapon holsters for bows and pistols is quite nice, I understand there may be clipping at times but really looks good. Finally the Paragon Protector pattern I love that we are getting this.

Oh yeah didn't get to see all of the details yet. Power recharges make a difference yeah. I wouldn't mind a higher recharge like the ones you'd find in Soul Mastery but 10 mins seems quite high. There's a sweet spot you can work around for longer recharging powers but I can't see 10 mins being all that effective other than a once in a while burst of proc detonating.

The 4 other powers in that set look great then there's also this one for a cheap way to proc a ff.

Yes I saw it. I typically run with Soul on my dommies to fill in my lack of aoe on /Nrg. With the nerf to Sleet there's no clear cut go-to for doms which is good anyways since that pool is a trap, there's lots of good ones for doms. This new one looks quite top tier.

Yes this is the thing I was looking forward to the most. "Okay we got all this other stuff but can we push this thing live for these robes, we can fix whatever else after." I will say that duck in the bowl is cute though.

Yeah on my /Dark I go with Primal (think this is its name) Epic. Energy Transfer rounds out the lacking ST damage real nice and Life Drain alleviates some of the danger of the damage done to yourself. Energy Transfer has the highest dpa of all dom ST attacks, which is likely factoring some of the self damage, accounting for that even with its animation the dpa has to be just below Blaze and Power Burst.

Didn't even know shields didn't show in stances. My best accessory completes the look. We need a redo!

Superior Invisibility is better stealth than Stealth with pretty close defense numbers and a little bit more endurance cost. It's a desirable pick to have in your primary set since it gives you access to a defense power to slot a lotg. Most doms would go with Stealth as one of their pool picks but this lets you make an easy choice of Combat Jumping instead with a nonexistent endurance cost and another good defense power.

Illusion is quite a strong set. I'd take everything but the t1 immob and the t9 pet (he's tissue paper and I found I'm better served with the Fortunata pet since I'm already in the Soul pool). As far as a dom that mixes it up in melee yeah the heal in Rad is quaint but highly unreliable like you say. If you're needing to rely on a gimmick heal of your own from a dom in 4* content you're already dead. I'd either go all out with the best dps set for meleeing doms like nrg or if you really want a heal go dark. For epic pools doms get access to so many good ones, I personally like Soul to fill in my Nrg's low aoe and utility.

I'd have to agree on SR being the easiest out of the box to kit and use effectively. Invuln would be stronger but you have to tinker with it through IOs and such. As far as assaults I'd give Street Justice a look, it does good damage and its pbaoe being larger now gives it decent aoe potential with high ST damage. That t9 attack you can slot a winter entomb absorb proc into it that'll always fire for an absorb shield of 450+ (which is basically a heal). StJ is also pretty fun and fluid and quite nasty looking. My old StJ/SR stalker played quite fun.

Yes I was speaking in generality seeing how you are new to the AT. You do get Build Up on /elec which comes with a good deal of +tohitt....

If there's any good sleeps in the game it is Static Field. Lead with that into mobs then pick out whomever you want to eliminate. Can also pop domination once that generator is summoned then confuse it since you should be able to hit it now having 25% more tohitt...

If you find yourself missing lots I'd have a look at what all Domination does for you. You can right click and look at the details of what powers are all doing for you. If you'd have right clicked and looked at Domination you would see that for the first 15s of you hitting the Domination button you get 25% tohitt which will make sure you hit everything you're aiming for. You could have laid out some aoe controls while focusing on the force fields since you should have everyone under control while you eliminate their buff. Not to mention before even engaging in the fight you would target control the ones you know that spawn those buffs in the first place. And some of those buffs you can confuse into being your buff, so much for the need for inspirs.

Yeah don't play this AT like a mindless brute. Learn how to leverage your controls and stack the mag on the bosses fast so you get them held and can keep them that way. Moonsheep was giving you some helpful 'hey try it different than what u are used to'. There's a lot going on under the hood but you have to pause to consider how your powers are helping you and what you can do best to maximize your potential. Most dom assaults come with a powerboosting type of buildup. It gives you a bit of a damage boost but it also makes your controls last a great deal longer, it doesn't increase the required mag to instantly hold bosses and such, that's what being in domination is doing for you. I would consider being able to hold a boss for double the length of time of just a normal hold to be quite great, it'll allow you that much more time to wail on your target unopposed. Knowing what does what and how some of those power selections can benefit you is quite key. You don't need an endgame dom build for it to be very effective. Save your domination for the big fight you know is coming like was said. I don't know what all controls you have but confuses are great and so are holds. Getting good on a dom will make you so much better at the rest of the game.

Dom smash!

Nope cant slot sets into Rest. Health and Stamina are where you can put some passive procs and I like Celerity Stealth in Sprint so I can be sneaky when I want.

Hi Flea, the larger the team the higher chunks of domination you get for each attack/control you do. There's lots of ways to get into domination before you start your playtime. First if you're full villain you get access to that power which lets you click it to get you a full domination bar but few people stay full villain so this is the least convenient way to go about it. Most people have the pbaoe attack from their secondary which you don't need a target for so you can spam that to get into domination, if you're solo it will take quite a bit. Then my favorite way to build domination is if you have a snipe if you keep interrupting it the system counts it as an attack, doing this is real draining so I just pop Gaes when I load in my doms and build dom this way its super fast. I built a real distaste to die by playing a dom so I build all of my characters to have great survivability by habit. Death does happen and if you're on a team of 8 playing it'll typically take 8-10 attacks once you rez to build up domination again which you will still have to wait for it to be recharged.

Yeah this dom will sap your endurance even with that permadom refill. One of my favorite epic pools for dommies is Soul. I'd look to that set there's a lot of utility and aoe damage. The pbaoe attacks have good synergy with the pbaoe hold in Illusion plus they do real good damage of their own. To augment my endurance issues for when I'm running hot zerging I like to have Dark Consumption for when I'm far between domination recycle. It's a nice full endurance refill if it hits just 2 of the 10 targets and contributes some minor damage of its own. Plus due to the longer recharge of it any procs you put in it are sure fire on 9 of 10 targets and I also have the gladiator -res proc since it'll hit all targets as well. So, with this you can contribute nice aoe dmg in terms of proccing, real reliable -resistance and you have another way to fix endurance issues. Real neat power to have up your sleeve. Then being in Soul you also have access to Soul Drain which is a fantastic power giving you good pbaoe damage and a 100% boost to all damage along with 35% tohitt. There's also Dark Obliteration which is another fantastic aoe power. Last you get access to a great armor. On my Nrg I skip Whirling Hands since it's meh in comparison to all of those Soul attacks and I focus on the strong ST attacks. Bone Smasher is a great starter attack and sneakily does some good debuffing to help your controls. Then Total Focus, Snipe and Power Burst are just beastly attacks. For Power Up I just leave it one slotted. As far as Illusion goes I skip the t1 Immob and the t9 pet since he's tough as tissue paper, I sub in the Seer pet from Soul in his place. For my defenses I build a lot of sets but I also go with Unleash Potential since you get a power boosting ability that greatly enhances the defense you get from it. When it's down I have the Barrier Incarnate to sub in if need be to maintain high defenses. Nrg is my favorite assault on doms though it does have a more get in melee and mix it up feel. My Illusion/Nrg is probably my strongest dom I've got, lots of fun.

I have a Sonic/Pain corruptor named Marcy Darcy. She hasn't been generic'd since my homage wears a bra.

I do use Glue Arrow but I use it more in conjunction when I go to camp inside my EMP bubble by planting the Glue and Oil Arrows at my feet in the bubble to burn critters real fast. The arrows all seem to have good synergy with one another which I find it hard to skip most any of the arrows when you total the whole set out. The good thing about TA powers is that it allows for some slot skimping on sets whereas the power themselves is what makes TA powerful when you're playing it. I do like me some Poison Gas Arrow. On most ATs it does -40% damage half unresistable. If you look at it from a different perspective how isn't that at the very least the same as a buffer set giving resistance to damage shields. Even better though is that it's one power to resist all damage types and it isn't encumbered by a resistance hard cap. Where most buffers are capping you at 75% so some of their shielding is useless your Gas Arrow still is highly effective. Of all the arrows I could see skipping Glue Arrow or Net Arrow. Although Glue is a nice strategic use of some aoe battlefield control and Net does some -resistance which is nice for boss fights but it can be hard to get into rotation. Everything else for me is a must.

EMP Arrow is phenomenal. It's a very nice large area buff for you and your teammates giving high mez resistance, some resistance to damage and resistance to endurance drains. Then there's the debuff it does which is wild. You get a mag 4 hold on all targets which there's a debuff in there that lowers targets resistances to holds so that makes this hold and Ice Arrow's hold much more potent. The hold applies to all targets, only the additional damage portion applies to electrical targets. EMP Arrow also nets you -1000% regen along with several other reverse power boosting effects. This arrow is very fancy. All you have to do is make sure its enhanced well for recharge so that it travels well and you can maximize the debuffing.

I have a Mind/Dark, Mind/Rad, Mind/Sonic, Mind/Nrg. On live I also had a Mind/Fire, Mind/Elec. My Mind/Nrg as Nrg currently is on HC is far and away my favorite iteration. With Mind/Dark and /Fire as the alternatives I'd play if not for Nrg.

I've played all sorts of dommies and when Symphony came out I gave it a thorough test. All of those cone controls make you want to play it from range. Almost all of dom assaults have a mix of powers be it melee or pbaoe along with some ranged attacks that encourage you to play it in various ways. Alas I did not find Symphony to be a good powerset for doms to use where it feels more suited to the Controller AT. If you play Symphony on doms you'll want to target assaults with better ranged styles which would be something like Fire. Psi is a good assault but its pbaoe oriented and yes the damage oomph isn't quite like something you'll find in some of the other assaults. Symphony and Psi is a counterintuitive pairing imo. I'd honestly avoid Symph on doms.