Hello, I don't play Dominators

[Spaghetti Betty]

And I'm a little upset with myself that this is the 1 AT that I just can't get a toon up off the ground with. So, I'm reaching out for some recommendations on a Dom that can help me love the AT.

 

Here are points about me and what I'm looking for:

-Wanting to level organically from 1 to 50 so I can better understand how to play the AT.

-I mostly solo.

-I play primarily melee ATs. I'm not afraid to jump straight into the fire but have the most experience herding and LoS pulling.

-Not looking for a DPS god, just something with a lot of cool buttons.

-Money is not an issue.

 

And also some general questions about the levelling experience:

-How should I be using Domination? Sparingly? Does the AT completely depend upon it or is that just a perception?

-Is 1-20 just gonna be a slog? (This could just be me, but my past attempts never make it past this threshold.)

-Order of priority in combat? Should I be controlling or blasting more? I know this has something to do with how Domination works.

 

So, if anyone versed in the AT could help me out, I'd greatly appreciate it. A simple powerset combo recommendation and what you find fun about it is more than enough. I don't want anyone to feel hard pressed about trying to craft out the perfect build in Mids or anything, but if you have a favorite you'd like to share, I'd definitely give it a look-see.

 

Thanks again.

[...]

Use domination often. Don't wait. Otherwise you're going to not use it often enough. 

 

Control first then damage second. 

 

Doms fall flat solo against hard targets, ie AVs, because controls are mostly useless.

 

So if solo is your game, either /fire or /dark are great options, for the dps and the heal respectively. 

 

Primaries: can't go wrong with Plant. Earth and dark are also very strong.  I personally like fire a lot, but some feel it is too squishy. 

[TygerDarkstorm]

I'm not a dom expert, by any means, but I've picked up a few things from hanging around here. Doms are awesome if you can get into their playstyle, once you get in the groove, I feel like they become fun, but I know not every AT is for everyone.

 

I think what messes most people up, including myself before visiting the forums to educate myself, is that they think they need to spam their controls. We're not controllers, we have a whole secondary dedicated to bringing pain. Our controls are there to set up the battlefield so that we may do so.

 

Definitely use Domination whenever it's available. There is a guide floating about here about how to achieve near perma-dom early-ish and without a ton of money or something like that (I admittedly haven't used it yet). Or if you decide to break away from being solo, some of the most fun I've had on my doms is being paired up with someone who has a powerset like ElecAff that will boost your recharge rate. I was nearly permadom running a Posi 1 at low levels one time that just made the experience so much better.

 

1-20 is kind of a slog on almost any AT, imo, though doms aren't punished the way MM's are by hitting severe difficulties in that area, I don't think.* 

*I tend to team/run TF's, I have not yet soloed one through those levels, though am planning to with my dark/dark dom.

 

I definitely think Plant is your best bet for getting into the AT. It has lots of fun tools at its disposal, but most importantly, you get Seeds of Confusion at like level 8, which can just change how you play/level. Plant pairs very nicely with pretty much any secondary, though I believe shines with /fire, /savage, and /psi.

 

I personally don't recommend Fire Control, at least to start off, because it is so damn end hungry and has very few mitigation tools for wanting/needing to be in melee to keep hot feet running. I even paired it with /savage, which gives an end discount, and I still end up sucking air or having to turn hot feet off. 

 

I know Ice/ is generally considered pretty weak on doms, but my ice/ice/ice dom is probably one of my most fun doms.

 

Earth/ and Dark/ are also both great sets on doms that get lots of fun tools.

[Braddack]

Welcome to the wonderfull World of Dominators.

 

For solo Play you cant go wrong with Plants, Seeds at lvl 8 just makes it too easy 😄

 

if you like being close and have much action consider Earth Assault. Its an wonderfull meele centered Set with alot of Oomp.

 

Remember youre not an contoller, your Controlls are there for you to make enemys helpeless before you realy go to town on em with your attacks.

[oedipus_tex]

Hello and welcome. 

 

Like the other archetypes, there are a lot of types of Dominators. Some are going to be more newbie friendly than others. Some are very strange configurations that are unique to themselves. 

 

 

IMO an ideal starter primary for a newbie is Dark Control. Dark Control will give you -ToHit to pad the times when your Domination is down, and has generous recharge times on its Fear cone that will never lead to you starting a fight without a power ready. It also has a non-alerting single target confuse for easytown fights versus Elite Bosses. If Dark doesn't work conceptually, Earth or Plant Control are other good starters.

 

Good starter secondaries are Fire, Dark, or possibly Savage. If you're okay with spending a lot of money and like the mechanism of Drain Psyche, Psi Assault is also a good option. All four of these sets offer some form of hit point and or endurance management that will make easing into the class easier.
 

 

RE: When to click Domination. At lower levels I would just wait til a moment when your blue bar is close to empty. Click it for a refill. Once/if you hit permadom levels of recharge just click it each time it recharges to continue its benefits.

[Spaghetti Betty]

Thanks for the replies, everyone. After considering what you've all said, I'm gonna start 3 Dominators and see which one I end up liking the best...

 

Plant/Earth, something tells me this is is gonna take off as soon as I can slot some FF procs.

Dark/Fire, landed on this since it sounds like smooth sailing for the most part.

Grav/Psi, this is the curveball I'm throwing myself. Mostly just 2 sets I know next to nothing about. Is Propel necessary here?

 

I'll be checking in periodically when I make any meaningful progress or have any more questions.

[Harakh]

35 minutes ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

Grav/Psi, this is the curveball I'm throwing myself. Mostly just 2 sets I know next to nothing about. Is Propel necessary here?

 

 

Been playing around with a Grav/Psi. Drain Psyche really compliments Gravity control. Singularity using Knockback to knockdown will pull mobs tightly in so you can get a good drain. My Dom easily gets ~110 HP/sec. 

 

I use the Dominator Fiery Orb proc in the AoE immobilize, the orbs will draw aggro off you.

Dimension Shift can be extremely useful solo. If the enemy count becomes too much to handle cast it on top of your self (assuming youre standing in melee range of your current targets). This will allow you to Knockout some baddies while all other mobs outside of the maximum target limit can't hit you for 20 seconds.

 

Can also use to shield damage by jumping out of combat and casting on top of yourself or casting on mobs outside of melee range.

 

This combo also took on a couple 53 AV's solo.

 

A most recent favorite Dom combo. Very fun.

 

No propel is not needed. Lift works great.

[PainX]

you dont need propel the reason it is often taken is that it does more DPA then psi blasts the only good ranged in psi is the snipe and yes by god take lift that one i would say is absolutely required propel is just if you want a third ranged since the other psi attacks are actualy lower DPA then the tier 1 except ofc the snipe which is well a normal snipe

[Uun]

I've got 4 lvl 50 doms (Earth/Earth, Plant/Martial, Dark/Dark and Mind/Psi). As others have said, Earth, Plant and Dark are all great. If you like melee, Earth Assault is fantastic. Earth/Earth is probably the one I have most fun with.

[Six-Six]

Doms are one of my favourite ATs (other than Blasters, MMs and Spiders). I like how you get a nice mix of range, melee, and ccs in one package. I also like how it comes with virtually no inherent armour. (Widows/Forts are kinda like Doms with extra armour.) what it lacks in armour, you make up for in preemptive strikes. you don't need defences if your enemies are held or under some status ailment and can't attack you. The thing with Doms is I feel they have TOO many good powers, and you won't be able to pick them all if you're planning to dip into epics and tertiary pool. So I tend to choose my primaries wisely, and pretty much take almost all the secondaries.

My current favourite doms are Elec/Elec, Earth/Earth, Fire/Martial and Mind/Savage. I tried Ice/Ice and Fire/Fire but they didn't really float my goat. I've also got a Dark/Martial that quite fun; and I just rolled a Dark/Dark. I have yet to try plants and thorns as soon as I come up with a concept.

 

The only thing I don't like about doms is that some low-level powers tend to consume a tonne of endurance especially the level they're available. I just tend to postpone picking up such powers until I get my recovery sorted out. As for Domination, I just put it on auto so I don't have to think about it.

[Mezmera]

My favorite assaults are Fire, Energy and Dark they pair well with just about all control sets. 

 

Although I don't play Fire I appreciate how strong it is for doms to have a nice ranged blast set like Fire when most assaults are a mix of powers you want to use in melee.  Energy is great with the revamp and fits my style very much.  Dark is great as well and has great utility with the heal and Gather Shadows.  Other assaults are good in their own right but pair well with certain controls and feel underwhelming on others.  Psi assault is good for all of that pbaoe damage plus that regen boosting but it feels much stronger on something that already feeds good damage from your control like Plant or Fire for instance.  Some assaults I don't like too much because it feels like there's too many good attacks when it'd be better to have 4-6 great powers you must take and the rest you're free to skip.

 

As far as controls there's all kinds of good ones, most do something unique to their set.  Dark for instance is a lot better for single target engagements which you can grind into an AV real well.  Plant is the bar if you want to start with the best I'd make one of those.  Mind is great on doms thanks to all of the control boosting you can achieve through Domination and power boosting which goes well with all of that aoe control.  

 

If money is no object I'd get the dom to lvl 30 and build it for perma to see how you like it, plus it gets you well practiced to pay attention to reclicking Domination.  Another thing I'd say would be to experiment with the pool powers and Epic pools.  You'll want a lot of pools that give you defense powers which some really benefit from a power boosting ability your assault may have.  The epic pools I think are the best on Doms, there's lots of diverse power choices to round out your dom.  

 

Take into mind that doms are late bloomers, you're control until around lvl 30 and then you start getting your best attacks and the additional slotting starts to pay out.  

 

Hope you have fun!

Edited June 18, 2022 by Mezmera

[Voltak]

For starter doms, especially grinding, I recommend dominators with single target possess or confuse. 
To that end, Mind is a phenomenal starter dom, and so is dark. 

Mind has an advantage when leveling, the sleep and the confuse and the hold are all early. 
You can control a pack of 3, play with the 4th enemy, and so on. 

Easily the safest to level with from 1 - 20 because all 3 of those powers are early and recharge is good enough for every encounter. 

You sleep enemies fight the others at your pace.  Confuse, hold, you got it. Mind has additional dmg to compliment the assault. 

I would hold off on plant until you have enough money to get that recharge way way way low with IOs in the build. 

Dark can confuse, fear, and has early pets to get you going. 

 

[oedipus_tex]

IMO the safest early Dominator is Electric Control. Sleep patch the enemies, run in and kill them. Or wait til their endurance is gone, then kill them.  

 

At higher levels it still works, but falls off a lot in efficiency. IMO nothing beats Electric Dominators solo prior to level 20 or so, though.

 

Maybe worth mentioning, the sleep from Static Fields stacks, both with itself and from multiple fields. You'll want to get in the habit of dropping the power everywhere.

 

Shame it doesn't Dominate in some way, though.

[PainX]

allways been partial to seeds of confusion at low level and while it dominates i rarely use that at 20 tbh since you are often gasping for end on domi

Edited June 19, 2022 by PainX

[Neogumbercules]

I have two favorite primaries. Fire and Plant. Fire because Bonfire with the KB2KD proc is amazing. Under domination, FlashFire is a big stun, and hot feet adds lots of damage.

 

Plant because Seeds of Confusion is flat out the best AoE control in the game. It has a huge arc, fast recharge, and under domination it'll one-shot control anything short of an AV. Also, Carrion Creepers are awesome and can take a lot of procs. They add a lot of damage.

 

[Spaghetti Betty]

Lots of great insight in this thread. I really do appreciate it.

 

Just wanted to give a quick update for those interested in the journey. I haven't had as much time as I would like to invest in this project, but I did manage to find time to level my three Dominators to 10. Just so I could get a taste for their playstyle.

 

The Dark/Fire was by far the smoothest ride. No real danger. Getting the cone immob and Fire Breath early meant hanging around corners and watching my HP never really drop. I guess the one thing I have a question about is if Combustion will be worth picking up? As I was saying before, I don't mind mixing it up in melee if the damage is worth it, and Combustion seems like a good proc bomb. Just want more opinions on that.

 

Grav/Psi was the next one I put some time into. Leveling process was really interesting as I skipped the T1 immob for Lift, and only had the single target hold for CC until lvl 8. This one was definitely the most glass but did a truckload of damage for such a low lvl. I think this is the toon I'm most interested in at the moment just because I don't have a lot of knowledge about the 2 sets, so if anyone could just throw me some general slotting advice, that would be really helpful. I do understand that slotting up Drain Psyche for healing essentially makes you unkillable.

 

Last but not least was the Plant/Earth. I know it's only 1-10 but man, this guy was clearing mobs really fast. Between Seeds, Tremor, and Roots I was already clearing mishes set to x8. And it seems like it's only gonna go uphill from here. I can translate some of my knowledge from Stone Melee to Earth Assault, but what I really wanna know is what can I skip? Just seems like every pick in Earth is pretty solid.

 

As always, any feedback is greatly appreciated.

[Errants]

Slot DP for Recharge first, then Accuracy and Healing. It'll take a lot to get it close to perma, though. (I'm at 280% in it and at 32 seconds.)

Totally worth it. I am running Dark/Psi with it, though, so also abusing -ToHit for additional resiliency.

[oedipus_tex]

6 hours ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

I guess the one thing I have a question about is if Combustion will be worth picking up? 

 

 

It's not.

[Uun]

13 hours ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

Last but not least was the Plant/Earth. I know it's only 1-10 but man, this guy was clearing mobs really fast. Between Seeds, Tremor, and Roots I was already clearing mishes set to x8. And it seems like it's only gonna go uphill from here. I can translate some of my knowledge from Stone Melee to Earth Assault, but what I really wanna know is what can I skip? Just seems like every pick in Earth is pretty solid.

You're right, /Earth is very solid. I skipped Mud Pots on mine. Luckily, a lot of Plant is skippable. I would skip Entangle, Spore Burst, Spirit Tree and possible Vines.

[Hjarki]

52 minutes ago, Uun said:

You're right, /Earth is very solid. I skipped Mud Pots on mine. Luckily, a lot of Plant is skippable. I would skip Entangle, Spore Burst, Spirit Tree and possible Vines.

I never skip Spore Burst.

 

If you're just churning through +0 content with a team, Spore Burst is indeed useless. The sleep will get broken in an eyeblink as your group unloads on everything. Even if you're solo'ing at that level, your own Carrion Creepers will break it.

 

As you move the difficulty slider up, Spore Burst becomes essential. If you're planning a Relentless run, you absolutely want it because it's the one reliable way to shut down an entire room. The combination of ignoring AV special protection and auto-hit means that you can reduce every fight to a single mob fight with near-certainty - and that single mob fight can occur precisely the way you want it to occur.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Another hand in the air here for choosing spore burst. 

 

Auto-hit powers that neutralize up to 16 mobs are helpful, as Hjarki is indicating. Also, you can put the Sandman sleep set heal proc into spore burst. It can be a one-slot 15% heal whenever it's available or you can put more slots into it to get some recharge and more sleep duration. 

[Spaghetti Betty]

3 hours ago, Uun said:

You're right, /Earth is very solid. I skipped Mud Pots on mine. Luckily, a lot of Plant is skippable. I would skip Entangle, Spore Burst, Spirit Tree and possible Vines.

Skipping Vines? What's the reasoning behind that? AoE Hold just not necessary at higher lvls?

[Rejolt]

10 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

 

It's not.

It has a wide yield but a loooooong animation time. Anything that hits a big area does poor damage. It may get looked at but don't count on it soon. I know my all fire dom used it as a proc mule because I had no other Melee AoE attacks (Hot feet counts as one but being a toggle doesn't proc as well as a click attack).

Edited June 24, 2022 by Rejolt

[Uun]

10 minutes ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

Skipping Vines? What's the reasoning behind that? AoE Hold just not necessary at higher lvls?

The AoE holds are fine, but with a base recharge of 4 minutes they're situational. Best case they're only up every 90 seconds or so. If the build is tight I'll skip it.

[Uun]

2 hours ago, Hjarki said:

I never skip Spore Burst.

 

If you're just churning through +0 content with a team, Spore Burst is indeed useless. The sleep will get broken in an eyeblink as your group unloads on everything. Even if you're solo'ing at that level, your own Carrion Creepers will break it.

 

As you move the difficulty slider up, Spore Burst becomes essential. If you're planning a Relentless run, you absolutely want it because it's the one reliable way to shut down an entire room. The combination of ignoring AV special protection and auto-hit means that you can reduce every fight to a single mob fight with near-certainty - and that single mob fight can occur precisely the way you want it to occur.

I understand the use. I take the AoE sleep on Mind and Trick Arrow, but I don't feel it's needed on Plant. Even at +4, Seeds with permadom shuts down an entire room (other than AVs) and is up every 15-20 seconds.