Mezmera

Yeah I tend to aim for Hasten plus 85% or more recharge along with other bonuses like defense. As was already said Mind is quite good especially a perma-dom. I do have a Mind/Rad for PvP purposes only along with Mind/Dark and Grav/Energy. Mind/Dark is my favorite toon but with the new buffs to /Energy I gave it a whirl for old times sake and yeah I'd definitely go with Energy over Radiation.

First off dominators are the AT that benefits so much from an expensive build, more than any other AT I'd argue. So you don't really want to half-ass a build here if you're going to get into it do it right. A rule of thumb as a dominator I will never take more than 6 powers from each of my primary and secondaries. Like Coyote has said you'll want to build up the best attacks like blaze and fire ball and the snipe and you'll want to use the pools to build you in other ways. To give you an idea of what slotting could look like on the control side of things this is my Mind doms build: Mesmerize - 6 slots of Superior Winter Blast (Could be Levitate), I like the sleep function Dominate - 6 slots Superior Ascendancy of the Dominator Confuse - 6 slots Coercive Persuasion Total Domination - 5 slots Purple set w/moderate dmg proc (could even do a 6th slot with another dmg proc to amp up the damage potential of this one) Mass Confusion - 6 slots Malaise Telekinesis - 1 slot end redux (this is a convenience power I hardly use and had extra to fit in build without slots) could be Mass Hypnosis or Levitate w/e Then boost your best attacks in the secondary and use the pools to shore up your recharge, resists and defense.

Ah well the Mu pet is an outsider too. Plus he's not really friendly either he leaves you high and dry after 4 minutes and when he heals you he's not happy about doing it usually scowling as he does, sometimes he'll even wait until you beg him for it. It's more like an old buddy cop movie where you'll tolerate each other until you get the job done then go your separate ways after. Unleash Potential doesn't add to your damage. It gives you 18%-ish defense to all, good recovery and regen bonus for a minute. I get that your RP'ing so yeah fly fly. But I'd find a way to work in tactics into my RP adventures if I were you. For someone whose secondary is Psi I'd think they'd be a little less harsh on their Epic pool cousin but yeah I agree it's fugly.

You could keep Force of Will it's got some nice utility but not in the attacks. I'd drop the attack and take the debuff and slot an Achilles heel proc into it, -33% resist is real noticeable. Unleash Potential is nice as well and you can slot a gambler into that. As for other power pools hasten is a key power to take and the leadership pool for 2 gambler mules and tactics. I'd drop Levitate, Mass Hypnosis and either Total Domination or Terrify along with Combat Jump. Dominators get a fantastic variety to choose from in their epics. If you want a heal I'd recommend Mu Mastery, you get a shield, a godmode and a healing pet that also adds to your damage. Or you could go fire epic and pump out that fire damage. Mind/Fire doms are one of the best dom combos there are in terms of damage along with control. You'll want to focus your damage with your fire attacks while Fiery Embrace is active. Usually you'll want to lead in with one of your AoE controls like Mass Confusion, Terrify or Total Domination and then go to town with your fire balls. I don't play /fire doms but from the looks of it you may have a few too many fire attacks. As soon as Blaze and Blazing Bolt are recharged you want to fire those and with good recharge that'll be often so some of those other fire attacks will go unused.

Couple questions for you to get the most out of your build. Do you really need Levitate and Mass Hypnosis, your control is already going to be good enough. Since you're going Mu why not take the pet? It's a pocket healer and the main reason to go with Mu, slot that with 3 pet purples with the recharge and then 2 Heal IOs and a Recharge IO. Also, snipes hit for real nice damage on doms especially if your tohitt is built up. I'd take Tactics and 6 slot Gaussians. Lastly just a suggestion but the Force of Will pool would fit quite nice with your build instead of the flight pool. The debuff is nice especially with the achilles heel proc, real noticeable damage increase on those tougher targets. You'll get a travel in Mighty Leap. And Unleash Potential is quite a nice buff which you can slot a Gambler into. Looks like you'll have massive resists already so the defense buff from this power would do well for you.

Yeah Mass Hypnosis I had for sentimental reasons once I started playing again in April but aside from a few instances it was just an unnecessary power to have since well built characters like to zerg anyways. So I spec'd out of it and still have Mezmerize should I really need that kind of control to remove a potent enemy from the fight like Mesmerizing Ghost Widow for last. Mass Confuse yes keep and as I've agreed with the OP his Malaise are the way I go since the engagement should be well over before your AoE confuse wears off and there's any chance that the procs will cause any aggro you shouldn't be able to handle. The objective is good bonuses from sets, the minor damage from the proc that'll fire on everyone is a small boon. As for Terrify and Total Domination I was more in the camp of Terrify back when I had Mass Hypnosis mainly due to recharge and damage and soft control. Typically you could get that out twice in a fight with a strong mob but most cases once with all these crashless nuking blasters running around nowadays. I'd usually slot that with a 5 set of Positrons with the proc and the knockdown proc, but due to the low recharge of the power procs fired on a much smaller scale. So what I'm liking is Total Domination 5 slotted with the purple hold set with the moderate damage proc along with another minor damage proc as the 6th. Due to the base recharge of the power both of those procs will fire just about every time on every target in range. Looking at the build from a sheer damage standpoint the AoE confuse with Malaise is set to damage just about as well as terrify for one mob then your Total Domination will do double or more the damage with that setup and typically one or the other of those two controls will be recharged from mob to mob with much better lockdown. Yes you can add Terrify to up the AoE damage potential but really what more need is there when you can just have Soul Drain or Fire Epics and Judgement nukes at your disposal. In the end I say Mass Confuse is a must. Mass Hypnosis hard pass. Terrify or Total Domination is debate-able but the damage potential is clearly skewed towards the proc'd AoE hold that also locks down much harder. And yes as a /fire dom I wouldn't see myself getting as much use out of Mesmerize thanks to the inflexibility of Fiery Embrace so I'd may just 5 set Fortunata's and call it a day on that depending on how tight my slotting is and what my bonuses are looking like.

Never mind I don't want you building your Mind dom like mine to begin with just hoped to offer that ulterior suggestion for the OP so he can see there's very good reason for slotting the Mind aspect of his powers the ways he has, not a fan of that ST hold though. I do think 4 AoE controls is a bit of overkill I like to have 2 AoE's available on rotation, always Mass Confuse and either Total Domination or Terrify.

For those of us not /fire or light on OP secondary attacks Mesmerize is a fine power to use in your chain, as stated it has the dual ability of doing good psi damage as well as pausing your target for you to get in the next attack. Even so at least slotting it with fortunatas is nice in of itself if you're not going to set it into your rotation. As far as Malaise goes it is a low-key nice set to have slotted since it gives both a recharge and ranged defense bonus where it's purple cousin gives a bit more in that field. You can get so much ranged defense and recharge out of having two well slotted confuses and slotting the Ascendancy into your hold and heck even Lockdown into your AoE hold if you like. If your Mass Confuse in domination doesn't last beyond the fight with a tough mob even slotted with SOs well you better find a new team. And in an AV fight its better to have Persuasive in your basic confuse since it's easier to spam and build the mag as you say. I've long since let go of any sentimentality in a Mind build like skipping Mass Hypnosis and making use of perfectly viable powers you have to start off with in doing so finding powers that'll benefit you much better at a low cost to slotting like maybe taking assault or whatever else from the pools.

I'll echo what's being said here. Dominators truly shine once you get slotting and perma domination. The first thing I remade when I came back was a Mind/Dark dom and I found it such a struggle playing regular missions in the early levels until I was able to get SOs. Being low on money and no auction house at the moment the first things I traded in for was the Miracle and Numina +endurance uniques, you'll want to build up your endurance so you can throw out as many AoE controls that you can. The powers you'll want to get at minimum are Mesmerize, Dominate, Confuse, Terrify and Mass Confusion. And get in a groove about using Domination at better times until you can get it perma, you dont want to not use it and let it go to waste but also want to have it for when you'll need it most. Once you get slotting its much more fun and easier to use solo. After you get your engine better situated doms really call for an aggressive playstyle. Stick with it they're late bloomers and boy are they fun when you get a feel for it.

Mesmerize is an adequate enough power as a starting damage attack, I like to make use of this attack so I can pick something else later down the road that'll help me in other ways like vengeance or tough/weave, assault etc., I mean how many attacks do you really need? There's usually a few powerful attacks in your secondary you must take and then the rest are all the same. Mesmerize does moderate psi damage which is helpful on all of those AVs that pop their Godmode. In a /fire secondary yes its a tad less useful since you want to get the most out of your fire attacks with Fiery Embrace being active. But in most instances it's a decent filler attack due to low resists to psi damage plus the fact that it is a sleep so if you want to put some Hero to sleep in an LRSF while you attack the 7 others it's still useful in that regard. I had a Mind/Nrg dom way back in the beginning before there was IOs and the like, I was doing LRSF's mass sleep method before there was a way to make yourself consistent permadom so I know a bit about aggro mitigation. Aside from recharge I build for as much ranged defense that I can get. Confuses benefit from having two sets you can six slot for that. When you're in perma domination what aggro can't you control if you were to bum rush a group? Your mass confusion should confuse every target in range as soon as you use it so what difference does it make that there's a proc in it when that group will stay confused much longer than the time that it'll take you to kill that group? If you are a bit slow in your damage well guess what you most likely have Terrify, Total Domination and or Mass Hypnosis to mitigate the aggro. I try to build my Doms with the mindset that I'll be in an 8 man team steamrolling random mobs but also able to stand toe to toe with the baddest of AVs so I want to have certain controls available always and be able to tank the aggro with all my bonuses and defenses.

I've got a good amount of experience on a Mind dom so I'll speak up on a few things to offer a differing view. The powers I generally take are Mezmerize, Dominate, Confuse, Mass Confusion and an AoE mez control typically Terrify but sometimes Total Domination or the sleep and if I have a spare power to take but I'm low on slots to distribute I'd take TK. I like to 6 slot Mezmerize with Thunderstrikes for the +defense and in case I'll need some psi damage to spam but if you need the recharge which you shouldn't a 5 set of decimations or fortunata works here. Dominate I like to put a 6 set of Superior Ascendancy for the +def and recharge bonuses, this is my main mez I lead with so I'll spam this in my chain to boost my damage with its proc. I differ from my other colleague on the confuses, I like to put the purple set of 6 for the +def and recharge into the single target one since if I'm using that one I don't want to trigger a fight. Then with the Mass Confuse I'm assuming the fight is on so I'm not worried about mitigating a fight so it's more about controlling it so I'll put a 6 set of Malaise with the dmg proc for the +def and recharge. Lastly I'll 5 slot either of my other AoE controls like Total Domination which I can use the purple set still with the moderate dmg proc and you can add the pvp proc as well but I do tend to prefer having Terrify as that other soft control since it recharges much faster, which then yes I'd 5 slot the target AoE set for damage. As for tactics I'll 6 slot that bad boy too with a set of Gaussian's for the +defense whereas the rest of the powers I take in the pool are just gambler mules. I love Mind you can pretty much kit out all of the primary powers for +10 recharge bonuses for +50 recharge and nice defense bonuses out of just your primary and along with the power pools you take having gamblers in those you're almost to the recharge of 85+ I like to aim for and then a bunch of defense on top of that. That pretty much leaves you open for however you want to slot your secondary. Hope this helps!

Just wanted to put in my thanks to the team involved. It looks like they listened to feedback and weren't heavy handed to any AT far as snipes go at least for the ranged squishies. I had been taking a small break but was dreading what my new snipe would look like never thinking I'd be able to get it back to the damage I had. I've even dusted off an old /nrg dom build and gave it a run through, very fun now I'm a kid in a candy shop. A little bummed my /dark dom didn't get anything nice and shiny but at least I get to keep my lovely Moonbeam and I get why all those other dom secondaries got what they did. Seeing how I stopped for a bit for one of the reasons listed I'll add my two cents to the consensus on what people want from the game going forward and I've got to agree with what's listed out. More endgame content like the Apex and Tin Mage task forces but maybe harder with neat mechanics and a good story. I'd love to see what could have gotten fleshed out as far as incarnate trials and task forces and maybe a few more new incarnate powers. More costume options is a must! I get that the signature characters should have their own look but whatever is in the game and easy to port over as far as patterns and textures I'd like to see it. I would like access to some of the signature character accessories like belts, boots, gloves, etc. something for us to build on onto our characters without detracting from the game's characters. And yes since we've gotten underway revamping dom secondaries I'd love a new secondary powerset of whips, it just makes too much sense. If you can find a way and make it uber like TW I think there's a box of brownies with the dev teams name on it. Anyways thanks again for the snipe and dom revamp, no complaints.

I have played many variations of dominators but admittedly I've never had either a dark control nor psi assault dom. The general consensus is that plant is the better of all the main control sets then maybe dark and so on mainly based around a theme you'd like to have. There is good utility in Dark and the standard pet. The best utility is in Mind though, there's just so many variations of control all with their own unique ability and slotting capabilities. Yes you don't get a pet but a mass confuse for every other mob is quite nice in itself, you can have 16 pets instead of just one. My main and favorite character to play is a Mind/Dark. My thoughts on Mind I already laid out but why Dark? Well depending on how you slot the ranged heal it can be quite the power. I have 1500+ hp and life drain tends to heal around 300+ per every few seconds if I want. A 20% heal every few seconds ain't too shabby. Gather Shadows yes is a fantastic power it just makes everything about being a dominator that much better. The pbaoe is nice, bit harder hitting but a smaller area. Also, Moonbeam is a heck of an attack if you get yourself able to make it into an instant snipe which shouldn't be too hard if you go kismet and tactics and your Gather Shadows boosting you above the threshold. The added -tohitt is nice too if you build a bit of defense into your character. Those four powers plus your starter are the ones to grab. Other than that the capabilities of /Dark let you play around with epic pools like Primal Mastery which you can use Energy Transfer which is a scary power to use on a squishy but the heal alleviates that. All in all dominators are great but be prepared to invest most heavily into building a beast of a character, if there's an AT that benefits most from lots of money sunk into it is a permadom.

I agree with this completely. Once I suggested that having accuracy over 100% should grant a scaling chance to Crit... not so much that slotting for excessive Accuracy does more damage than slotting for Damage, but there should be a bonus for getting more Accuracy. However, I don't agree that the method used to make ToHit be very useful should be linked to a specific power and specific values... on Live, the Devs once stated that the number of active accounts that also used the forums were less than 10% of the player base. That is over 90% of the people playing, who didn't get to read forums to find out how to get 22%. The percentage is probably lower on these servers for various reasons, but still, we shouldn't be creating a knowledge gateway, and on one side of it ToHit bonuses are very useful, and on the other, they're not. And the way to pass through the gateway is to visit the forums and look for the topic. I agree that information needed to be more widely available. On the old log in patch notes and issue updates were right there as you logged in so the only reason not to be in the know was to have no curiosity at all about why your game needed to download something before you could log in. All you had to do was read the paragraph above the line you just quoted from me to see that the lack of info widely available I believe to be a big key in this. Here it is again: "Maybe the reason not many knew of insta snipe is that back on live new issue updates were well detailed right there when you log in and the new snipe never made it to a live update. So maybe there could be an easier way to find out about all these big changes made while the game was away. But I believe they wanted to change snipe from the start so no info was widely trumpeted until they got the "fix" in."

Fixed. I imagine that other Doms, especially newbies, are going to be quite happy to find that their Snipe just became usable in combat without them having to research the esoteric tricks of how to build a character to do it. IMO, in game design, any change that weakens top builds while strengthening weak builds, is a good change, at least as long as it doesn't limit choices. Min-maxers are always going to figure out a way to min-max and make their characters effective, while newbies will have underperforming builds, so changes that bring them closer in efficiency while also opening up more builds, are good changes. There are always going to be vocal min-maxers complaining that their tightly-specced build is now no longer so well-designed, but for every one of them, there are probably 10 or more non-vocal casual players who don't frequent the forums, who never had such a tight build and will be happy to see what ends up as a buff for them. Most arguments assume people can't learn things as they play this game. That's what a newbie does, learns things. I didn't even know snipe was like this on my dominator until 50 and playing a blaster. Thanks to aim my curiosity was piqued about the yellow ring around my snipe, all I did was ask in help and there we go new thing to build for for me, and I'm a vet and didn't know right away. A lot of people that play a dominator wouldn't know if they didn't have an aim or build up to get them curious. All doms with a snipe can easily get it with the exception of /fire but don't get me started on them they already have fantastic DPS over most all the others. Maybe the reason not many knew of insta snipe is that back on live new issue updates were well detailed right there when you log in and the new snipe never made it to a live update. So maybe there could be an easier way to find out about all these big changes made while the game was away. But I believe they wanted to change snipe from the start so no info was widely trumpeted until they got the "fix" in. Having tohitt be something very positive to build for ADDS variety to builds, not diminishes them.

Most doms don't want anything to do with this change too I assure you. We're losing 1/3 of our current damage on snipe for a bit shorter recharge which also reduces procs chances of firing, so bad all around. Blasters did get quite the upgrade while the game was gone, there's many primaries and secondaries with some sort of mez control even aoe along with heals and all sorts of other self buffs. I agree it's on its way to City of Blandness. You can have more of our aoe mez controls if we can get some of your self buffs, aim/build up and the nukes.

Not too bad looking. I've not played the fire side of control so not much to add to that side of the equation, looks fine enough with all the other purple sets you have going on. A few questions I'd have for myself when building this. First why not take the Epic Shield in the fire mastery in case some damage gets through? What with all the vet temp travels do you really need more than Super Speed? Leaping pool seems a waste to your build. I've been experimenting with Sorcery it looks pretty nice the 30% resist all damage and a travel to boot. If your going the Invisibility pool all you really need is stealth and super speed and the stealth IO to be purely invisible. I prefer super speed + stealth IO which frees up another pool, BUT you can slot gamblers into that pool so I get it. Gather Shadows, take that as soon as it's available at 16. I would definitely not take midnight grasp over moonbeam. Smite is good put the hecatombs in that and take Moonbeam. You already will have the kismet + tactics running you'll be able to max out your to hit for so much more damage on Moonbeam than you ever will on Midnight Grasp. There's some wasted slotting. Vengeance only needs the Gambler + recharge. Health I put the numina and miracle + recoveries, the regen from health as a dominator is marginal if that. Hasten only needs 2 slots now thanks to the ability to 50+5 your IOs. You can probably slot the Stealth IO into sprint or Super speed so you can turn it on when you want the added stealth. Just a small critique to give you a baseline for reasoning on choices. By all means keep your flavor.

You guys are being argumentative to be argumentative. You're not "forced" into anything, it takes a tad bit more effort to do on a dominator, no one's forcing you to play it. Hasten is just a fantastic pool power to grab and no one's making you take it but you just should plain take it. Leadership is a fantastic pool, always had been even on live. Seeing full leadership teams in action back in the day was dumbfounding. There's not really much mastery you need in IOs other than making the kismet or heck let someone else understand IOs and buy it off the market. You can overslot tactics with all tohit SOs for all I care. Why even have these things available in the game we should just make everything inherent. I thought we had a more intelligent community than this. I mean for years in secret an intelligent group of people understood the functionality of the new snipe hence it was never changed. So if this is something they had for years in private and now that it's public not even a month in it needs dumbed down? Where do you ask maybe it's me that doesn't get it? Coming back I didn't know snipe was like this until 3 weeks in after reaching 50 on my Dom and playing my fresh blaster. All it took was dropping a power I hardly used and moving some slots, all of a sudden I have this fantastic single target attack.

Well you do have to go with Leadership pool, but why wouldn't you? You can get two LotG mules in maneuvers and vengeance which vengeance is a great teaming power. On top of that tactics makes everything you aim at the targets that much more effective since you'll be able to hit with better regularity. On my Mind/Dark dominator I have tactics 6 slotted with top level Gaussian set for the bonuses. Also the kismet in weave, but you could slot that into any defensive power you might have, heck even maneuvers. Nothing wrong with having SOME defense power active to help mitigate incoming damage. So right there I'm ALMOST insta-snipe capable but not quite. BUT your Gather Shadows boosts secondary effects so something like tactics gets boosted for 10 seconds so I can get off two insta snipes in that time. Gather Shadows is only down for like 20-25 seconds before I can get that boost again. Also re-clicking domination gives you a tohit boost for 10 seconds. So as you can see there's plenty of ways to have insta snipe whenever I want it. Teamed with one other person with tactics lets you snipe for days. Most dom secondaries have a Power Boost, Aim, Build Up or Envenom Blades that can all squeeze you above the tohit threshold with regularity. Yes you'll have to go leadership but aside from taking hasten you can still get variety out of the rest of your builds. I have presence pool as my last one for pete's sake. Yes this is dumbing it down for all the dinosaurs not willing to go with tactics like there isn't still variety to be had in your builds. I'm not opposed to the changes since adding tohit back up gets your damage back up which you'll still then want to pick up tactics. This change is a nothing burger for Blasters, Corruptors, Defenders and even /fire doms like they don't already do fantastic damage in comparison to other doms. But Dominators, Stalkers and Scrappers are having their snipes damage nerfed harshly which I do take issue with on my Dominator being that who cares that it recharges slightly faster for such a damage nerf which the recharge change is counter intuitive to the secondary. So on the outside it must look like we're arguing the change for everyone which I'm not. It's the damage nerf to dominators specifically I take issue with since they're lumping this change in with the tohit change.

Purples and all IO's aren't really all that hard to attain compared to how much of a grind it was on live. If there's any AT that screams build it right it's putting the best you can into a dominator. I gun for good enough recharge around +85% from bonuses and as much ranged defense I can pull out on top of that. For /dark I go with 5 slotting Dark Blast with decimations (don't have this power in my attack chain). 2 slots on Gather Shadows, 5 on the pbaoe with the purple set. 6 on Life Drain, 3 touch of nictus with healing and accuracy and 3 from the ranged purple set to max out damage and accuracy. And finally 6 slots on Moonbeam with 5 being the maticores and the last being the purple ranged proc. As for the regular pools you'll be able to get lots of gambler mules from some defense heavy sets. You have to take hasten and you can take Super Speed as your mode of travel then. I love leadership always have, you get maneuvers and vengeance, you can throw a gambler in and call it a day and take tactics to boost your to-hit. Vengeance is just so good in teams. Usually I go with fighting for tough and weave to hold any more uniques I'd like to have like kismet, gamblers and the resist uniques. I have tough and weave 3 slotted at the moment. You could do stealth pool or leaping with Combat Jump. Last pool is up to you I don't even need to go for anything specific so I play around with the sorcery and the presence pools for fun. For the Epic I have ET 5 slotted with the purple set with the proc and I have 6 slots on the armor with full set of gladiator armor. Nor sure your primary but control sets get lots of love from what they're able to put purples into. I try to 6 slot anything that'll get me both recharge and ranged defense. The one ATO set into your ST hold is good and any confuse sets if you can.

Sorry Tater I'm not looking forward to this change, unless they're giving us all a thumper blast with the damage snipe is now which ain't happening. Only /fire's snipe you can't get insta with any real regularity on your own, all other secondaries that have the snipe can adjust and maintain their tohit to frequently be above the threshold, so to me we're just catering to dinosaurs who can't make minor adaptations to have the best of what they can be as it is currently. Feel like they're opening a huge can of worms here. What of all the other deserving underperforming powersets across all the ATs? Or are we going to spend some more time nerfing far more unbalanced power sets? I'd much rather see new Control and Secondaries, new strike forces in the vein of Apex and Tin but harder and maybe fully level shifting you, more incarnate powers and trials to use those powers on. That's what I would be looking forward to had they mentioned getting the ball rolling on some of those things, but we gotta get those snipes nerfed. I do agree though I'm anticipating what the revamp is going to look like on all the secondaries. Just hope they don't break anything.

Didn't mean to come off as slighting or overly embellishing the power set. I'd say it's working as it is intended. The set offers good single target damage which the best you can get would be in /fire but it's up there. The snipe is the standard hard hitter you can get nowadays in most doms secondaries. The AoE power is yes probably by a margin the strongest hitting one of the bunch and like you say it is a smallish area though so if your aim is AoE it's probably found to be better in other sets but the strength of this one lets you compete. Basically in that long winded run down of powers it boils down to Gather Shadows and Life Drain which differentiate the secondary from the others as you can tell. It has above average ST damage and AoE damage but really shines because you can heal while attacking and your primary along with some damage is boosted from Gather Shadows. I'd recommend looking at the Primal Forces Epic, Energy Transfer's damage on a dominator is just incomparable to any other attack you can get and /dark is best suited to make full use of it.

Hi my main and favorite character to play is my Mind/Dark dominator. I play it A LOT and do some extraordinary things with it. Aside from Life Drain and Gather Shadows there's no real reason to play /dark. You'll get better AoE and ST damage elsewhere in the secondaries. BUT it does have some comparably strong powers. Moonbeam for instance is a really strong attack as it is you'll just want to go leadership for tactics and put a kismet into something like weave, cj or hover, this way when you click Gather Shadows it's secondary boost will get you above that +22% to-hit for the instant snipe. The PBAoE is standard, nothing too special about it, it's nice to have when you're surrounded, so take it and at least 5 slot it with the purple set for the recharge bonus. You have to take Dark Blast, it's an okay attack. The negative to-hit is a decent side bonus to your attacks which help with builds including good defenses from IO bonuses. Now on to the bread and butter of why to go /dark. Life Drain is fantastically reliable, 6 slot that with 3 being Touch of Nictus for max healing and 3 being the purple ranged damage set for maxing out it's damage as well. It's an I'm in trouble power lets attack and heal all in one. Then there's Gather Shadows and all its uberness. This power makes your primary so much more effective along with your heal, defenses, tohit, etc. It also give your attacks 30% more damage. These two powers are the backbone of why to go /dark dominator. As for what to take and not I'll give you the bare bones of what to take and leave the rest for you to decide. You need to take Dark Blast, then there's Gather Shadows and the PBAoE attack. You'll also want Moonbeam and Life Drain for your good ST damage and healing. Everything else is pretty much skippable. I don't take the t9 melee attack since it's not great damage and it's tics. When I go into melee I like to have a thumper and no Dominator secondary has a single target attack like Energy Transfer which you can get from the Epic Pools. The drawback of ET is that on a squishy you don't quite have the HP to just keep throwing out ET's with the constant loss of HP but it synergies so well with Life Drain. ET is my main source of damage followed up with Life Drain to heal me back up. In short /dark lets you make some unique choices later on in your epic pools. Gather Shadows and Life Drain are great, Moonbeam is standard, and -tohit is not OP but does have an effect.

I don't have a scrapper but for my stalker I believe they have comparable epic pools. The description for Zapp says it does Superior damage, the description for Moonbeam says Extreme. So I think that's why the difference in damage output. Not sure why they were differentiated in the first place, maybe Mu has some better attacks within that epic pool.

That's a pretty cool synergy idea, (my Ice/Martial uses ET for Single Target damage and Life Drain would definitely help offset its unique cost) though I'm trying to keep things pretty strictly ranged in this case. Also, how do you keep the Snipe in-rotation. Overslotting Tactics? I didn't think it should be possible with /Dark Assault. I have six slotted gaussian in tactics and have kismet +6% tohit in weave. The secondary boost from Gather Shadows boosts tactics to get me above the 97% for insta snipe without gimping your build. With the recharge for perma dom I get off 2 insta snipes within the time Gather wears off, plus re-upping domination gives you tohit boost. That's just on my own, in a team all it takes is one more tactics or watching someone die for veng. I never go wanting for insta snipe when I need it. My dps string goes Dominate with ATO dmg boosting proc, Snipe, ET and Life Drain. Mixing in Gather Shadows that chain is easy to maintain.