Earth/Dark advice?

[Zemius]

Not used to playing dom/trollers, picked Earth/ Dark for theme purposes. Any advice would be super, what powers to skip, must have, epic/patrons, etc. 

 

Thanks in advance!

[Mezmera]

As far as /dark I can help a bit with that.  You have to take the t1 blast which I have a 5 set of decimations in it even though it's not in my attack chain.  Aside from that I'd take Gather Shadows and slot it with 1-2 50+5 IOs, the pbaoe at 20 with at least a 5 set of the purple set, Life Drain with 3 Touch of Nictus for heal/accuracy and 3 apocalypse for damage/accuracy, finally I'd take Moonbeam and 6 slot with Manticore's and an extra ranged purple dmg proc.  If you don't need to take another control at level 2 the tier 2 punch isn't bad so you could take that one.  

 

For Epics on a dominator Soul Mastery imo is the best, Soul Drain is awesome along with a great shield and a few other useful powers in it.  Soul is a bit more skewed to players that like to get into the thick of the fights.  Although on a /dark dom I always take Primal Mastery, Energy Transfer on a dom is just stupid damage and since you can self heal easy enough you'll want to spam ETs as soon as its recharged.  My attack chain doesn't stray too far from Moonbeam, ET, Life Drain and a control or pbaoe.  

 

Never had an Earth control but I'd imagine you'd want to take the pet along with the hold and a few aoe mezzes.  Good luck!

Edited December 10, 2019 by Mezmera

[Zemius]

7 hours ago, Mezmera said:

As far as /dark I can help a bit with that.  You have to take the t1 blast which I have a 5 set of decimations in it even though it's not in my attack chain.  Aside from that I'd take Gather Shadows and slot it with 1-2 50+5 IOs, the pbaoe at 20 with at least a 5 set of the purple set, Life Drain with 3 Touch of Nictus for heal/accuracy and 3 apocalypse for damage/accuracy, finally I'd take Moonbeam and 6 slot with Manticore's and an extra ranged purple dmg proc.  If you don't need to take another control at level 2 the tier 2 punch isn't bad so you could take that one.  

 

For Epics on a dominator Soul Mastery imo is the best, Soul Drain is awesome along with a great shield and a few other useful powers in it.  Soul is a bit more skewed to players that like to get into the thick of the fights.  Although on a /dark dom I always take Primal Mastery, Energy Transfer on a dom is just stupid damage and since you can self heal easy enough you'll want to spam ETs as soon as its recharged.  My attack chain doesn't stray too far from Moonbeam, ET, Life Drain and a control or pbaoe.  

 

Never had an Earth control but I'd imagine you'd want to take the pet along with the hold and a few aoe mezzes.  Good luck!

Thank you! I was thinking Soul Mastery for character concept, so I am glad you have confirmed it for me.

[Coyote]

Put a Theft of Essence in Life Drain and it should just about solve Endurance problems. Used regularly in an attack chain it returns more Endurance per minute than having a 2nd slotted Endurance power.

 

Slot Earthquake for -ToHit... 4 Dark Watcher's gives nice enhancementing plus a Recharge set bonus. Stacking the -ToHit with Dark Assault's -ToHit helps a lot defensively. It can also take a Force Feedback proc, so you get a Recharge bonus whenever you set it. Assuming you do this (it does require 5-slotting), you should get at least 12% Recharge out of the power over a minute, and about 19% if using it as fast as possible.

 

[Dark Current]

Earth Control comes with gobs of control and most of it is AoE patches and clicks. So mobs will always be locked down and debuffed to oblivion. I'd put a bunch of dmg procs in those powers.

 

With all that control and debuff, you should be able to get right into the thick of fights and start pounding. Sadly, dark is a little light on melee... you don't get a 3rd melee attack until lvl 38. But all your attacks are going to bring -to hit, so you should be pretty safe.

 

I like soul mastery for Dark Obliteration and Soul Drain to help with the melee combat. Combined with your 2 punches and Engulfing Darkness + Gather Shadows and you should be able to mash enemies into paste. Don't forget you also have your earth pet who prefers melee as well and can tank for you.

[Mezmera]

Yeah every power in Soul Mastery is attractive in some way.  I take Soul Drain, the shield, the fortunata pet, and Dark Consumption (solely to shore up any end problems I might have in between domination cycles and unleash potential).  Dark Obliteration looks nice too, just don't have an extra power to take.  

 

I do skip the t9 melee and a few of the earlier blasts.  On the control side I tend not to want to take more than 6 powers, typically 5 will do the trick.  This way I have plenty of room to dabble in the pools to build myself up where I want.