Epic Archetype fan seeking Dominator advice

[Gulbasaur]

I loved my peacebringer on live and I love my fortuna now, however they have ruined me for other archetypes. They all seem weirdly limited after my "too many good powers to choose from" Epic Archetype days. 

 

Defenders, corruptors and controllers have variety. Tankers are secretly a control archetype so they keep me happy (dark/dark is secretly a controller). Stalkers have the crit rate minigame to keep me busy, at least (you can engineer three crits in a row quite easily).

 

Blasters? Blah-sters more like. Masterminds? Fine, but I don't like pets. Brutes and scrappers? Discount tanks and easy mode stalkers. Sentinels? Corruptors without the bag of tricks.

 

That leaves me with dominators... should I? Dare I?

 

I'm looking for something with melee, controls and some ranged damage. I want it all, baby. Thematically linked powers sets preferred (e.g. dark/dark, fire/fire). I'd rather avoid mind/psi because I've played both sets to death on other archetypes. 

 

What would you recommend? Help a fortunado out.

[...]

Of the thematically linked sets, I think dark/dark, earth/earth and plant/thorn are likely your best bets. None are power-gamer meta, but all would be great.

 

Fire/fire is another contender, but would be relatively more squishy compared to other options.

 

Elec/elec would let you play the endurance drain minigame very well. Especially if you take Mu powerpool.

 

Of these, earth/earth would probably be my favorite. Strong control with very satisfying hits. 

[Greycat]

While not thematically linked (though, really, you can come up with any rationale,) I *love* my mind/fire. Though if you've played a lot of mind and want to get away from it... On live, I think I was level 3 when I started cranking the difficulty up. 🙂 Plant/thorn was also fun, though I know some people don't like the spiky look. You could always do fire/ice or ice/fire, too...

[Gulbasaur]

Thanks @Greycat and @Vooded

 

Regarding the "meta"... honestly, this game's high difficulty stuff is such a chaotic swirl of mismatched power that I'm not worried about it too much. 

 

Mind is a set I've just played to death. It's good. It's very good solo and due to the poor synergy with Containment (which skips over crits on fear for some reason) it's probably better on a Dominator. Between my /psi defender on live, my mind/ controller on here and my fortunata (which pulls from both) I've just done it before. Also, purely for the reasons of pettiness: the mind and psi animation styles don't match at all and that always annoyed me. Maybe Mind/Shurikens/Psi... That's thematic enough for me. The lack of a natural-ish choice for primaries and ancillaries is a bit annoying. We need a traps or devices equivalent control set.  

 

Plants/thorns seems a bit pet-heavy... am I right to think that?

 

I do like Dark - the secondary effect makes it very solo-friendly. Likewise Ice, from what I gather. Fire has the added bonus that Fiery Orb is fiery, so it wouldn't be a thematic issue. 

 

What would you say is the most melee-friendly secondary is?

[...]

2 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

Plants/thorns seems a bit pet-heavy... am I right to think that?

 

I do like Dark - the secondary effect makes it very solo-friendly. Likewise Ice, from what I gather. Fire has the added bonus that Fiery Orb is fiery, so it wouldn't be a thematic issue. 

 

What would you say is the most melee-friendly secondary is?

Well plant has the fly trap + creepers. Creepers are awesome though. They don't "feel" like a pet. I wouldn't say plant feels like a pet heavy set. It's all about Seeds of Confusion. Hit seeds, then go to town blowing things up. If your fly trap and creepers are alive/nearby, great. If not, you probably won't notice.

 

The Fiery Orb sucks. I suggest avoiding that set altogether. Or maybe split it up for bonuses. I generally don't use that set.

 

Earth is probably the most melee friendly. Many hard hitting, satisfying melee attacks, including an extreme damage hold. Early access to its melee PBAoE. Melee dmg aura. No cone - instead has a short range TAoE (small area, but usable in melee range).

 

 

[Gulbasaur]

34 minutes ago, Vooded said:

Earth is probably the most melee friendly. Many hard hitting, satisfying melee attacks, including an extreme damage hold. Early access to its melee PBAoE. Melee dmg aura. No cone - instead has a short range TAoE (small area, but usable in melee range).

 

Hmm. I like the sound of that. The crystals design/skin for the effects looks interesting. 

 

Worth knowing about the sets. The ATOs are so variable in goodness. 

[Gulbasaur]

As the conclusion you were all waiting for, I went for Elec/Elec with Mu later down the line. The smooth animations were the clincher. Thanks!

[capricorpse]

i've been playing a gravity/earth dom that I love.  The gravity feels really aligned with the earth assault, lots of heavy-impact power animations that are pretty satisfying, and a lot of knockup which I find to be an underrated mitigation tactic.  For concept, it's just two aspects of manipulating magnetic and gravity fields.  I went with Propel instead of Hurl for the Impact mechanic, but other than that it seems like there's a lot less redundancy than many Assault sets have with Gravity Control.  Plus, using Stone SPears on an enemy right after Lifting them is great, the crystal spikes manifest in the air and wind up in some really cool sculptural forms. 

 

If gravity isn't your thing, Earth Control is a great set and I've done an earth/earth/mace dominator into high levels.  but i personally love gravity control and I especially love being able to see through the bulk of the FX animations I'm creating.  Earth can get very cluttered especially on larger targets.  Crystal FX can lessen this a bit, but there's still a lot of geometry being summoned.  Another option could be Plant/Earth, as part of a general power-over-earth character.  Plant has a lot of neat tricks.

 

also - i totally know what you mean about the mind control and psionic blast/assault animations being so different!  I work as an effects animator and this always jumped out at me.  there's no overlap in particles, color, or fx style.  I'd love to somehow get a second set of psychic blasts styled after Dominate/Mesmerize, but somehow longer and narrower?  could be cool. 

[BrandX]

On 11/3/2020 at 3:30 PM, Greycat said:

While not thematically linked (though, really, you can come up with any rationale,) I *love* my mind/fire. Though if you've played a lot of mind and want to get away from it... On live, I think I was level 3 when I started cranking the difficulty up. 🙂 Plant/thorn was also fun, though I know some people don't like the spiky look. You could always do fire/ice or ice/fire, too...

 

Mind is Telekinesis and Telepathy powers, and Fire is just Pyrokinesis, which can be a subset of telekinesis (telekinetically agitating the molecules in the air to create fire or some such), so I'd say they link thematically quite well.  Go for a Cold Epic for it all!

[oedipus_tex]

Sounds like you're looking for Plant/Savage if you consider "Nature" a consistent theme.

Edited November 9, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Gulbasaur]

12 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

Sounds like you're looking for Plant/Savage if you consider "Nature" a consistent theme.

I played elec/elec for a bit then swapped onto Mind/Martial because "sixties British spy television series" was the theme I settled on... it makes sense to me. 

 

I like plants/whatever on paper, but in practice I think it's just a bit ugly. It's all about the #aesthetic. 

[Meknomancer]

Earth/Earth is probably your best bet if you want the same primary/secondary for theme and like playing in melee. Elec is still one of my fav primaries its just tons of fun just seems to take forever to kill stuff but all the end drain means playing up close isn't a problem. I tried a few plant combos and ended up finding plant/dark to be the one i enjoyed most and its very easy to find a theme for it. Ice was a pain after 5 respecs and still not being happy with any of the builds so if you wanted a project...ice/ice. Fire/fire is about what you'd expect not all that different from a fire/?/fire controller lockdown and pew pew. Mind is pretty much unkillable regardless of secondary but i find it very dull to play. I haven't gotten round to a dark primary but i see a lot of players out there enjoying it, i ended up running a dark/dark troller instead as i already had elec/dark and plant/dark. Plant/savage was the first domi i made i think i played it for about 4 days, plant makes everything super easy-too easy yet i still go back to the plant/dark over savage. From your initial post you said you wanted melee and nothing in domi secondaries hits like earth its just a case of finding the primary you want to run with it. I ended up running elec/earth/mace, good for tanking high end content like lrsf if needed. 

[Obsidian_Farmer]

I say embrace the ugly and go plant/earth!  My Plant/Earth/Ice Dom is the closest thing I have to a main character and it's ridiculously fun.  Plant's got the easy set up with SoC then you can just wade in, lock down what you need to, and smash stuff.  I've played pretty much everything over the years and none of my characters ever felt as savage and strong as this one with the creepers slashing around and the big hammers and stomps from Earth. The right keybinds make it so you can just go through your active abilities and your time sensitive stuff like hasten, domination, and creepers fire on their own so you don't really have to juggle anything but the enemies.

[Six-Six]

I think you have to get past the awesomeness of epic ATs (cough... spiders...) and just focus on the fun aspect of various animations. Yes, the VEATs are hard to top with a butt-load of really good powers and a tonne of armour to boot. But, widows are just claws stalkers, forts are just mind/psi, SoA are mace or Ass Rifle, and crabs are... MMs(?). Meanwhile PBs and WSs are pretty much energy, rad, dark. That leaves a whole lot of other powers with distinct animations (ice, fire, elec, DP, Beam, etc..). 

In the grand scheme of things, you will only end up with so many power choices by the time you're 50. so even if EATs have a large variety to choose from, you will still pretty much be at par with the other ATs. I suppose the thing you'd be missing is the choice of powers so you can create a toon that plays your way.

I'm in the same boat. I love my Spiders to death, and beyond them, I can't imagine playing another AT. My SoAs are pure bane (mace), huntsman (AR+nades), and a tankermind Crab; then I have a pure night widow (claws) and a hybrid widow fort (claws+psi). But here I am with a bajillion alts that are not spiders. What I've found is that I like mixing melee and range with a touch of control (holds/immob). And some ATs can still give me that, especially with a wide range of Epic Pools to choose from. I'm now partial to Blasters and Doms which fit the bill. They're not as tough as VEATs in the armour department, but they hit harder or provide more control.  Then there are the Corrs and Fenders. These two offer powers that benefit the team which runs circles around the VEAT's double leadership buffs. 

Incidentally, I love the fire blast animation, Rad eye beams, earth grumbling shakes, Total Focus' look-at-my-pompoms-look-at-my-pompoms-look-at-mBAM!!!, and DP/AR/Beam shots.

[VV]

On 11/4/2020 at 4:32 AM, Gulbasaur said:

What would you say is the most melee-friendly secondary is?

Savage, hands down (pun intended). I have a melee-only Dark/Savage that is a beast. 

[Coyote]

4 hours ago, VV said:

Savage, hands down (pun intended). I have a melee-only Dark/Savage that is a beast. 

 

Savage is really good in melee, and works very well with Dark, but.... Earth Assault has a very good argument that it can lay the hammer down (pun intended) in melee better than Savage.

[chadius]

Elec gets 2 melee attacks early and is fun to solo with at low levels. AoEs arrive a little late though (28 and 35 is the PBAoE, bleh) but at least you can add 2 Force Feedback procs to help Domination come back sooner. Which is nice if you're crazy like me and trying to skip Hasten.