Help with a themed build using Fire, Ice and Dark (Dom)

[SenTheFortress]

I'm looking to make a themed build (Dominator), that uses some combination of Dark/Ice/Fire - (In any combination of Assault, Control and Mastery as long as it uses all 3 elements) anyone got a suggestions on what combination to use? Just wondering if this is viable at all. Dark can be subbed for Soul if that ends up as the Mastery element.

 

Dug up a build from IS's dropbox (Dark/Fire/Ice M). How's that look? 

 

I found another variant with (Fire/Ice/Mu M), so I made a quick swap to Soul Mastery to fit my theme (since these two pools have equivalents that will slot the same enhancements). It's probably a little worse than the original, but I'm wondering if it's viable still.

 

If anyone has a build to share, drop it here or any advice would be appreciated. 

Dominator (Darkness Control - Fiery Assault) Ice Mast(1).mbd Dominator (Fire Control - Icy Assault) Soul Mast - Sen edit of ICESPHERE build.mbd

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Fire / ice / dark have a solid source of synergy in how they can each contribute to slowing mobs down. Hot feet + chilling embrace + tar patch means mobs would have a very substantial slow debuff total applied to them. Plus, the damage auras would be made more effective by tar patch. 

To make endurance management more manageable and to boost defenses, unleash potential (force of will) can be taken relatively early. It would be boosted by casting power up in ice assault set shortly before activating unleash potential, for even better recovery and peak defense totals. 

[SenTheFortress]

15 hours ago, EnjoyTheJourney said:

Fire / ice / dark have a solid source of synergy in how they can each contribute to slowing mobs down. Hot feet + chilling embrace + tar patch means mobs would have a very substantial slow debuff total applied to them. Plus, the damage auras would be made more effective by tar patch. 

To make endurance management more manageable and to boost defenses, unleash potential (force of will) can be taken relatively early. It would be boosted by casting power up in ice assault set shortly before activating unleash potential, for even better recovery and peak defense totals. 

 

Interesting, I haven't seen anyone use the Force of Will pool in any Dom builds I've looked at so far. Do you use this tactic yourself? Got something on mids? 

 

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Also, I converted IS's Ice/Dark/Ice into Fire/Dark/Ice, using equivalent powers from the Fire Control pool and using the same set bonuses. How does it look? is it viable? 

 

Once thing that is different, I needed to replace Coercive Persuasion (Artic Air) with Armageddon (Hot Feet) to maintain the recharge bonus, but extra accuracy was gained, so I made a variant that uses less accuracy enhancements, since it's less needed when using Armageddon. See build 2 (skippable, roughly the same thing).

 

Sen's FC - DA - IM - DOM conversion build.mbd Dominator (Ice Control - Dark Assault) ICESPHERE.mbd

Sen's FC - DA - IM - DOM conversion build 2.mbd

Edited July 27 by SenTheFortress
Added builds to show

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Attached is a dark assault build with force of will. To see how unleash potential works with dark assault, do the following:

1. Switch to the "totals" screen
2. Look at defense totals and endurance recovery totals with "unleash potential" and "gather shadows" toggled off
3. Toggle on unleash potential and gather shadows. 
4. Look once again at defense and endurance recovery totals.

Basically, defense and endurance recovery both go way up if you cast gather shadows shortly before casting unleash potential and they remain higher for the duration of unleash potential (1 minute). Unleash potential recharges in less than 2 minutes for dom builds that have permadom. So availability is good enough to help noticeably for surviving periods where there's a higher rate of incoming damage and to also help at better managing endurance. Also, weaken resolve provides a handy spot for an achilles heel -res debuff IO, which helps damage. 

Edit: Unleash potential isn't boosted by all damage enhancing abilities in dominator secondaries. Build up powers and fiery embrace, for example, do not boost unleash potential totals. But, unleash potential can still be helpful even for those builds, depending on how that build is put together. For example, I have unleash potential in my build plan for an ice / savage / dark dom to help out defense and recovery totals, as well as for the chance to insert a -res proc and to get a movement power. 

 

Dominator (Gravity Control - Dark Assault - Leviathan Mastery),v2.mbd

Edited July 27 by EnjoyTheJourney

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Not sure how many notes, if any, you wanted to receive for your builds. 

I looked at build 2 and there's quite a few things to like about it. One surprise was to note that single target damage would be very low because of low damage for key powers and because of times during which all single target powers doing noticeable damage would be recharging, with nothing ready to go. Also, smite does better damage per second of activation time than any other power in dark assault. So, leaving smite at one slot and slotting up midnight grasp instead (which does less damage for the time it takes to activate and is available less often than smite because of higher base recharge) is a puzzling choice. 

A relatively simple way to at least improve that could be ...

1. Put 5 pieces of the hecatomb set (including the damage proc) into midnight grasp (especially all the recharge IOs in that set) and the superior ascendancy of the dominator (SAoD) +damage proc IO into the sixth slot; put the other unused SAoD IO into cinders. 

2. Remove 3 slots from fire cages and 2 slots from life drain. Add those slots to smite.
3. Put the two winter set IOs now in midnight grasp into smite, and then fill the rest of the slots in smite with damage procs. 
4. Put two superior frozen blast IOs into fire cages, fully removing the gravitational anchor set. 

Also, I'm a bit confused to not see the sudden acceleration KB to KD unique IO not in bonfire. Did I miss a change in how bonfire works in a recent patch? If not, then your teammates will be quite glad and grateful if you put a KB to KD IO into bonfire so mobs don't get scattered everywhere when you drop bonfire onto enemies. 

Hopefully this helps.

[Championess]

If Soul Mastery counts as 'dark' then I'd consider that as well.  The pool gives you access to some superior aoe damage, damage boosting, endurance fix and a nice armor.  Typically on a dom I'll look to take the best ST attacks from the secondary and supplement my aoe through Soul.

 

As for Unleash Potential yeah on a dom with a power boosting ability I'll always take it.  I slot mine with 4 Shield Walls (all the recharge ones and the unique) and a lotg.  Powerboosting it allows for 50% more defense from the slotting.  Mine gets me 31% defense to all, real handy to have every few minutes.