What are the go to Epics/Patron powers for A Dominator?

[jjolin01]

I'm leveling up a Ice/Psi dominator, and I'm at the point where I can pick up a Epic power set. Reading the forums, people's preferences seem to be all over the place, from Mu, to Mace, Fire, Ice, and Psi. I have looked through them all, and am still having a touch time deciding, though fire and mace do look pretty awesome with the AOE's that would go well with Psionic assault.

 

Is one superior to all the rest, or is it all just preference?

[SeraphimKensai]

Ice mastery is one of the best for a dominator imo. Otherwise fire, mace, psionic, and leviathan are reasonable options as well depending on your overall build needs.

 

[tidge]

Writing only for myself: My Dominators chase PermaDom via set bonuses which require 4, 5, or 6 slots (in addition to LotG pieces), so I don't usually have many slots left-over to dedicate specifically to Epic/Patron pools... so when I leverage them I tend to look for ones with powers that are a good spot to use as Enhancement mules. Psionic Mastery happens to be a good one for that purpose.

[nihilii]

Ice is the best, in large part thanks to Sleet being the real deal. Defender values and same recharge, so it turns you into a Dominator that also debuffs and supercharges your damage output.

Then you get a S/L +def shield (which many players prefer to +res). Hoarfrost, to boost your maxHP. Hibernate for recovery and panic moments.

It's all around an excellent epic... Perhaps even the best epic of all ATs combined? It's also fairly slot efficient, you can leave most of these powers at 1 or 2 slots. Although it is nice to 6-slot Hoarfrost if you can.

Fire and Mace are still decent choices if you like these more. Follow your gut.

[MoonSheep]

it’s pretty much just a choice between ice if you want to be a strong debuffer with defender strength sleet, or soul to have soul drain and become an even better killing machine

[oedipus_tex]

Now that it's feasible to take all 5 powers in the APPs, the Psi APP is especially attractive for Ice Dominators IMO. You get a second source of mezz protection should you get knocked out of Domination mode + huge amounts of Psi Defense, decent Smash/Lethal/Psi resistance, decent baseline +Defense to all element types, and two places to slot Luck of the Gambler, and World of Confusion to stack a second source of Confusion on top of your Arctic Air. Psionic Tornado's -Recharge stacks with the rest of your sources of -Recharge to help you floor enemy Recharge values better. This APP was always good, but now that you can take all five of the powers with any Assault set it's extra juicy.

 

The Ice APP is great for similar reasons. All five powers are excellent and compliment your powerset combo.

Edited February 23, 2023 by oedipus_tex

[tidge]

Everyone who has ever taken World of Confusion: "What in the world was I thinking when I took this power? I must have been confused!"

[oedipus_tex]

2 minutes ago, tidge said:

Everyone who has ever taken World of Confusion: "What in the world was I thinking when I took this power? I must have been confused!"

 

 

On Dominators World of Confusion is a Mag 2 +1 Confuse and actually a decent power. Stacked with Arctic Air it covers for the gaps in Confusion coverage and makes it a lot harder (not impossible though) for enemies to punch you through the effect, especially when Ice Slick is also added to the loadout.

[Luminara]

4 minutes ago, tidge said:

Everyone who has ever taken World of Confusion: "What in the world was I thinking when I took this power? I must have been confused!"

 

No, it's actually decent now that it has a Domination proc.

[nihilii]

32 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

On Dominators World of Confusion is a Mag 2 +1 Confuse and actually a decent power. Stacked with Arctic Air it covers for the gaps in Confusion coverage and makes it a lot harder (not impossible though) for enemies to punch you through the effect, especially when Ice Slick is also added to the loadout.

I once made an Ice/Savage/Psi solely for the purpose of having fun spamming the Savage attacks while Arctic Air + WoC would mez things passively, and this worked better than it had any business to.

Like you say, with the one extra step of using Ice Slick, standard mobs stand little chance. It's a great setup when you just want to enjoy your secondary.

[Hjarki]

Classically, Ice and Mace were strong choices for the defense toggles. After 27/4, S/L/E and S/L/E/R are much less comprehensive defenses for melee-based builds (which virtually all capable Dominators are). Sleet is a nice enough power, but the increasing emphasis on +4 play can diminish its importance.

 

As a result, I argue that for most Dominator builds, your best bet is probably going to be Psi Mastery. It provides you status protection before you get Domination online, two LotG mules, broad-based hit/defense buffs (for the entire team no less) and a Coercive Persuasion mule if you need it. Psionic Tornado is also a solid ranged AE.

 

Primal Forces is a (distant) second. Dominator Assault sets are, for the mot part, clunky. They have excessively long recharges and it's difficult to build functional ST rotations. Energy Transfer can solve the ST rotation (unfortunately, it does nothing for the often more problematic issue of how to slot the ATO proc without crippling your dps).

[Nyghtmaire]

3 hours ago, Hjarki said:

Primal Forces is a (distant) second. Dominator Assault sets are, for the mot part, clunky. They have excessively long recharges and it's difficult to build functional ST rotations. Energy Transfer can solve the ST rotation (unfortunately, it does nothing for the often more problematic issue of how to slot the ATO proc without crippling your dps).

At least for psi assault, Subdue can slot the ATO proc. 

[serxiom]

Psi Mastery is for me the first choice always. Link Minds provides de defense necessary for going Incarnate content. Considering that end game has a ton of psi damage the shield from Psi Mastery is great to have as well. I dont like sets as Ice or BS because are more tricky to compensate due lack of resist shield. However Ice got some interesting tools as the guys described above. 

 

[Hjarki]

3 hours ago, Nyghtmaire said:

At least for psi assault, Subdue can slot the ATO proc. 

This would require you take Subdue. It's not appreciably different damage-wise vs. abilities like Dominate, Char or Chilblain that you have to take anyway - and all of those attacks from primary can slot the ATO.

 

An ability like Thunder Kick that's actually part of an optimized ST rotation and recharges/activates quickly enough to triple stack is the ideal.

[tidge]

It's the radius of World of Confusion (8 feet?) that hasn't jived with my dominator builds. There have been generally a few different things getting in the way of my appreciating it:

• mobs in a spawn will get locked down such that they aren't positioned that an 8' PB radius gets all/most of them
• the duration is pretty short for a confuse
• I'm usually planning followup attacks with AoE (often cones) so the PBAoE aura works against this means of dealing damage
• AFAIK: it could stand to have Accuracy slotted, as well as Endurance reduction slotted... so single-slotting is probably best done with a Malaise's 50+5 piece (which seems like a weird choice, but hey if I want to make it work)... I suppose Dominators could be multi-slotting it for a potential Global Recharge, but I have to believe there are better powers to slot with better sets to get better recharge (i.e. damage sets, or holds) for better returns.

I don't have an issue with squishies having (and always using!) Auras, and World of Confusion isn't the only squishy Aura that I have an issue with... my personal criticism is more like this: When I have a power pick of an aura that targets enemies, and that aura comes late in a build (now slightly less true of secondary T8s and T9s, but still true of Epic/Patrons), it had better not require a lot of slots to make "work" or it should force me to reconsider the power choices/slotting and playstyle for the build at levels before that Aura is available.

 

I want to disclose that I am a tremendous fan of Confuses (Especially AoE, but also Single-Target with %Contagious Confusion), so the IMO mediocre World of Confusion simply doesn't measure up in my eyes.

[Zect]

The go-to is ice. That's not to say that other epics are necessarily bad, but if 1) you can get away with it, 2) need nothing specific from the other epics, and 3) concept is amenable, it's hard to recommend anything but ice.

 

Ice being SL def is not a problem, and page 4 typed defense changes are not a problem for competent builders. Optimized builds can get 40-45% to all non-psi without compromising rech. It does suck against things like high difficulty carnies because it is mathematically impossible to muster any significant amount of psi def from IO sets.

 

Psi was better in the days when softcapping wasn't as easy. 2 lotg mules, mindlink being essentially a 2nd weave, and a home for coercive persuasion (potentially another +5 ranged) were nothing to scoff at in the age before agility core alpha. These days, there is enough def and rech floating around that the appeal is significantly weakened. Still not bad for newbie doms because it makes building very easy.

 

Dark I think is underrated. Even with only 50% uptime, soul drain on top of one of the assault sets that can 3x stack the +dmg proc (say, /dark - midnight grasp) is giggle-inducingly hilarious. Ever wanted to be your personal kin? Note, however, you are unlikely to get a well-saturated soul drain just because of how doms play.

 

I think fire is okay if all your aoe's suck, and primal is okay if your assault set gives you trouble building a good ST chain.

 

The one I'm really intrigued to hear about is mace. Ice has nearly the same toolkit but equivalent or better (SL def shield, -res, aoe and T9 defensive).

Edited February 25, 2023 by Zect

[Mezmera]

Soul Mastery all day!  

 

If you choose an assault that is light on aoe but has great ST damage consolidated into a few bruising powers like Energy Assault you can just take the best powers and then use Soul to fill in your aoe.  Soul might be a little less optimal on more aoe oriented assaults like Psi though.  

 

First you get Soul Drain which nets you 100% damage boost and 30% tohitt boost for 30s every other 30s.  Not only does it do that but it also does good pbaoe damage on its own and procs decent, hell of an attack to supplement into your chain.  Then there's Dark Obliteration which is a nice fast animating and fast recharging target aoe blast that hits 16 targets for decent damage and it feeds some -tohitt.  Powered with the damage boost from Soul Drain Obliteration is Fireball-lite.  

 

Lastly another overlooked power is Dark Consumption.  The recharge is quite high so this thing is set for proc bombing and since you're a dommie building for recharge this attack will recharge well.  Any procs you slot in this will fire on 9 out of 10 targets guaranteed which I have the gladiator -resistance proc which at -20% resistance nets me most of the value of going Ice Mastery for sleet at probably 3x the recharge though, but it'll shine bright on AVs.  Then you can also load all kinds of other damage procs.  Yet another power that supplements more aoe damage for your dom.  It also doubles as an endurance refill if you're far off from reclicking domination.  Bigtime power.

 

To top it all off the epic armor is one of the best doms can get and heck even the Seer pet at boss level does decent damage and can amp up your dps on AV fights.   

 

The 3 aoe attacks are arguably the best ones doms have access to with a few exceptions like Drain Psyche, all packed into one fabulous epic pool.  

Edited February 27, 2023 by Mezmera