I need some advice for my Dominator

[Willdaberry]

I made a illusion control/fire  dominator and im struggling to stay alive so im thinking i might be doing something wrong, I know my phantom army is not the same as a  controller but my phantasm seems okay atleast. im just kinda confused, any advice or guide id much appreciate =) I don't wanna give up on this dominator I made.

[tidge]

In my experience, Dominators are the most "living-on-a-knife's-edge" of all the ATs.

 

What level is the Dominator?

[Without_Pause]

You need to put your build in Mid's and then post it on the Dom forum.

 

https://midsreborn.com/

 

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/21-dominator/

[Ukase]

While I do think posting a build in the specific AT sub-forum is a better way to get more specific advice, for now, let's assume you don't even have mids and don't even know what it is. 

I don't enjoy playing a dom, mainly because building domination is easier on a team, and sometimes, teaming isn't a good thing for me, because I will often have to tab out without notice, at least during the day. 

But, one thing I do know is there is more than one way to build and play a dominator! The problem is we aren't clear on where you are as a player. We don't know your budget. We don't know what level you are or what content is giving you difficulties. All of it? some of it? 

In any event, just as a rule of thumb, even though perma-dom is great to have, one doesn't NEED it to be a good dominator. Often, on a team, you'll get the recharge buffs you need to get there. 
So, when any of my characters are dying more often than I think they should, (like once or twice per map) the first thing I think of is "what's causing this?" 

a. afk, phone ringing, something distracting me?  If so, don't sweat it. 
b. Getting mezzed, then killed. If so, bring break frees, and/or consider trying to earn the Sheer Willpower accolade, something that will break the mez and protect you for 30 seconds or so. 

c. just getting hit too hard, too much before I can kill them. If so, look at the mission difficulty. Is it +4? Reduce it to +2 and try again. Is it +0? Then we need to consider taking the on more endurance hogs like the fight pool, and get tough and weave. If we have those, and a patron armor and are still getting clobbered - at that point, it might be time to consider learning about mids, how to get and install it, and in game, you type /buildsave and your build is then saved and can be uploaded into mids and shared on the dominator sub-forum, where players with much more experience with the dom can chime in. 

 

[Greycat]

Yeah... build aside, it's actually kind of hard to answer "Am I doing something wrong" without knowing what you're doing. It could be build, it could be unfamiliarity with the AT or powerset, it could be "no, don't run +4X8 at level 10," it could be what you're currently fighting (for instance, psy blast vs robots = not a fun time) - it's just hard to say.

[jprewitt73]

Illusion also just doesn't have great area control. You'll piss off a lot of baddies, but won't be able to control them as well as other Dominators. So you may just be making a few too many enemies mad at you than you can handle. 

 

[WuTang]

Dying while solo or on teams?

 

Are you a hover-dom? Or are you playing the field? 

 

I just built an Ill/Fire/Psi dom, my first, so I'm not experienced enough with them to give the level of advice some other folks can.

 

BUT.... Some general advice

 

Defenses: Mine is a hover-dom. She has 45% range defense. This is the soft cap for general play, hard cap I believe is 48%, which is easily obtainable while on a team, if you are already at the soft cap. This means that the bare minimum of attacks will actually hit you, so long as you stay at range, greater than 25ft+, so that you are also out of AOE range.

 

Resistances: Lowers the amount of damage you receive on any hit by type. My Dom's smashing and lethal (S/L) is at ~75%, max for Doms. The rest, well they aren't that high. S/L damage types are the most common in-game and thus maxing them out tends to help survival. So, at 75%, if I am successfully hit with an attack for 100 damage it will only take 25 HP from my precious bar of life.

 

Damage!: Some Vets don't care about either of those because they have a playstyle that needs not those little pesky, trivial survival gimmicks, cause an "arrested" bad guy does no damage. Killing first is a great survival tactic.

 

My experience thus far with my Dom and mobs. I drop Spectral Terror right in the middle of them, then hit them with Gleam, then target boss(es) with Spectral Wall, then start wailing on them. So far, I haven't died... I kill bosses first then work my way down to the minions.

 

Edit:

 

Also, my build skipped all melee abilities.

Also also, WELCOME!

 

-WT

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 22 by WuTang

[Willdaberry]

sorry for so little info, but i think i figured out my play style with my dominator, im using my spectral terror to lock down the battlefield along with blind and my phantasm who also clones himself, im doing pretty well and am doing so much damage i kinda shock myself sometimes =)

[Frosticus]

Confuse one, hold another, blast the one that's free. Set level relative to you so that you aren't missing often.

Increase spawn size as you develop aoe control/damage. Don't hesitate to move back if an uncontrolled enemy is getting close.

Proactive inspiration use (def/res) is usually more efficient than reactive healing. 

[Maelwys]

On 10/21/2024 at 6:42 PM, WuTang said:

Defenses: Mine is a hover-dom. She has 45% range defense. This is the soft cap for general play, hard cap I believe is 48%, which is easily obtainable while on a team, if you are already at the soft cap. 

 

The Defense Hardcap is different for different ATs. For Dominators it's 175% as long as you're over level 20.

 

That said, in practice what you actually want to do here is to floor the ToHit chances of your enemies... and that's where the "softcap" idea comes in as a minimum spot to aim for which you can reach via Defense buffs and/or ToHit debuffs. 45% effective defense (regular content) and 58.75% effective defense (incarnate and Hard mode content) is the value in question - any excess you possess over and above that number will only matter whenever your foes are +ToHit buffed or you are -Defense debuffed. 

 

Note that there are some enemies that inflict -defence debuffs with every attack they make... and once you start facing them, unless you possess a decent chunk of excess defense (or a good deal of Defence Debuff Resistance) you'll very likely encounter Cascade Defense Failure (getting hit once causes you to be debuffed... which causes you to get hit more often... which debuffs you even more...). Thankfully most of the really dangerous ones are melee attacks - RANGED attacks that Debuff defence are few and far between, so a softcapped Ranged Dominator build is perfectly viable.