Dominator

Overview

As a Dominator, you control a devastating combination of control and assault powers. A Dominator can freeze foes in place, render them unconscious, or cause them to flee in terror. Dominators can also smite their foes with a selection of single-target melee and ranged attacks, albeit not with the same power as a Corruptor. However, each time a Dominator attacks, he comes closer to unleashing his true sadistic power of Domination. With so much emphasis on diverse offensive powers, Dominators lack in defenses and work best with teammates who can provide protection.

Faction: Villain

The Dominator's power sets are:

Primary: Control
Secondary: Assault

The Dominator has low Hit Points and medium Damage.

Power Sets

Primary Power Sets

A Dominator's primary power sets are designed for controlling enemies. They are:

• Earth Control (Issue 12)
• Fire Control
• Gravity Control
• Ice Control
• Mind Control
• Plant Control

Secondary Power Sets

A Dominator's secondary power sets are designed for assault. They are:

• Electricity Assault (Issue 12)
• Energy Assault
• Fiery Assault
• Icy Assault
• Psionic Assault
• Thorny Assault

Patron Power Pools

• Leviathan Mastery
• Mace Mastery
• Mu Mastery
• Soul Mastery

Inherent Power

• Domination

Strategies

The Dominator as an Archetype is counterintuitive to play, difficult to master, and relies on mechanics and techniques that are not obvious to many styles of player. Furthermore, the Dominator has a legacy of being underpowered, and suffers in the early game slightly as the game becomes more difficult, often leading to them being considered a 'weak class'. While not as obviously powerful as the other Archetypes in City of Villains, strategic and tactical play can make a significant difference to the play experience.

Active Defense

The Dominator doesn't have any ways of protecting itself in its sets, and it gains a very small boost from most Pool Powers designed to improve Defense or Resistance; in practice, this means that the Dominator feels very vulnerable, and many Dominator players take this to mean they should play like a Blaster, or perhaps a Controller. This strategy can work in the early game, but it neglects some of the best powers in the Dominator's secondary, and generally makes for slow play. The Dominator's ranged damage isn't as good as its melee damage, and its controls are not as long-lasting outside of Domination.

What the Dominator player needs to consider to make the most of the early game is the idea of an Active Defense. The principle is simple; a Held opponent cannot hurt you. If you are fighting a group of three opponents, say, a Lieutenant and two Minions, by holding the Lieutenant, you have effectively reduced the amount of damage you will take by more than a third. At first, you won't be able to maintain more than one Hold at a time on an opponent, but provided you apply your Hold to the Lieutenant whenever it becomes available, it should be unable to fight you at all, while you engage the less dangerous minions. As you increase in level and your Holds last longer and you gain more and different controls, the number of opponents you can keep from attacking you increases. This means you can handle bigger groups, which means you can earn more experience, and faster.

Learning and adopting this principle is the first step towards a surviving Dominator. If you play like a Controller or a Blaster, using your controls to keep an opponent at bay while you whittle away at their health with ranged attacks, you will level slowly and be in trouble when you finally miss an opponent.

Building And Using Domination

A good bit of advice for beginning Dominators is to set Domination as their auto-power. In the early game, this will give one an idea of how rapidly this powerful inherent builds. Too many Dominators see Domination as rare, something that has to be conserved and saved or it won't be available when they need it. The mindset claims that it doesn't want to 'waste' Domination. If one goes through a full mission with Domination fully charged and never uses it, then they have wasted it. Domination charges relatively fast and degrades slowly. It's very easy to take a break to rest, even go away from the game for a moment or two, and still have Domination accessible.

Domination often changes the course of a battle; it gives the Dominator a full bar of Endurance, it breaks them free from status effects, it significantly increases their damage, and it multiplies the effect of their control powers. Sometimes, what counts as a control power can be a little oddly defined — Energy Assault's Bone Smasher, for example, is considered a control power because of a 60% chance for Disorient. Knowing what attacks benefit the most from Domination can alter one's attack style greatly.

The final note here is that once you start using Domination regularly and stop treating it as a rare thing that must be conserved, you will realize that sometimes you can rebuild Domination before the actual Domination power has recharged. This is a common enough situation, and one of the reasons some Dominators invest in Hasten. Hasten does three things for the Dominator — it allows Domination to recharge faster (by shortening its recharge time), it allows Domination to be built faster (by letting you make more attacks in a short amount of time), and it allows Domination to be used more effectively (by allowing you to make more attacks under the influence of Domination).

Double-Fire Domination

Domination's effects last 90 seconds. Activating it doesn't drain the Domination bar until after those 90 seconds end. The base recharge time for activating Domination is only 200 seconds. With enough recharge time reducers — typically [Hasten] combined with multiple instances of Speed Boost and/or Accelerate Metabolism — it is possible to activate Domination a second time off the original bar.

Dominators vs. Controllers

This article might be bit controversial, but I recently had several duels with my friend who chose an Ice/Force Field Controller. I am a Gravity Dominator with Energy Assault. We started with a Arena fight, which lowered him and myself to Level 6. I found that his attacks did little to no damage, his Hold powers did Hold me often, but he lacked a secondary power with which to do damage to his Held victim. I on the other-hand was able to survive longer, almost indefinitely at 90% health and above, and charge my Domination bar, fire it off, and then my Holds Held him more often than his Held me. Controllers get an extra point of Magnitude, which means they can Hold bosses and Lieutenants solo, and in most cases, hold Villains solo too. Dominators don't get this extra point, and as such, stacking of Holds is necessary, unless we have Domination charged.

• Controllers: Extra point of Magnitude, means can Hold Dominators more often; unfortunately, they lack damage inducing powers.
• Dominators: Do not have extra point of Magnitude, which means stacking of Hold powers is necessary; their secondary Powerset will usually make it possible to kill most enemies without the Hold being necessary. When Domination kicks in, it does make Dominators stronger, durable against status effects, including Knockback, and able to Hold at the same level as, if not above, that of a Controller.
• Outcome: While Controllers do have powers for buffing and debuffing, they lack damage inducing powers, and in a one-on-one fight with a Dominator, it is unlikely a Controller would be able to bring a Dominator to his knees.

Information on controlling enemies in pvp

A few more details on dominators:

I don't know when or if this changed but at this point Controller holds and Dominator holds (without domination) are now the same magnitude. When affecting a player target both archtypes have magnitude 4 holds, when affecting non-player targets, the holds are "mag" 3.

Section 1: how domination works in pvp:

Possibly the best way to play a dominator in pvp successfully is to know your enemies hold/mez resistance powers and how they work when affected by your holds.

Probably the toughest archtypes to mez/hold are coincidentally the archtypes that can kill a dominator or controller the fastest:scrappers, stalkers, tankers, and brutes...reading the following unfortunatly will not change this for you. However, it may help you understand how your holds will affect them when you fight them.

Domination effectively makes hold magnitude double; the original hold plus a second instance of the hold will be cast on every target. There is no icon or animation for the second instance of the hold, even according to the target affected by the hold/mez.

The second instance of the hold has a much shorter duration than the original hold.

In a pvp setting, the SECOND instance of the hold, is non-resistable, meaning no matter what strength of hold/mez resistance the target has, they will be held.

Note: the first domination hold to a player target that has a toggle mez resist power seems to only "untoggle" the mez resistance power. The second hold cast on a player target of this type will hold the target.

If the affected target has a "click" mez resistance power, meaning that it is a power that is clicked once and has a set duration, such as unstoppable, practiced brawler, Indomidable will etc., the target will be held or mezzed during the duration of the non-resistable portion of the dominator hold. After this portion of the hold has worn off, if the magnitude of holds becomes lower than the targets current hold resistance, the target will no longer be held.

Section 2: Mez resistance...toggle vs click

Certain scrappers and stalkers have a "click" power that gives them resistance to control powers. Since any toggle powers deactivate while held or mezzed, powers such as these have one clear advantage over "toggle" mez resistance powers.

The benefit is that if the player is held while running a click mez resistance the player will only be held/mezzed during the duration of time that the dominator's combined hold magnitude is above the magnitude of resistance provided by the click power. Once the magnitude of holds affecting the target is lower than their mez resistance the target will not be held and will be able to continue fighting while remaining at the same level of mez resistance. A target with a "toggle" mez resistance, on the other hand, would stay held for much longer, as his mez resistance turns off when he is held. Also, if and when the target breaks the hold, they will have mag 0 mez protection, meaning 1 hold of any magnitude will successfully hold them.

Knowing what certain defense powerset auras and animations look like can help you identify what you're up against. And knowing your enemy is always a good tactic in any fight situation.

A foe with "click" mez resistance will be easier to hold/mez, but will break free more often and sooner than a foe with toggle mez resistance. any fight. This would seem to make click mez resistance powers a clear winner against controlling archtypes, but those sneaky developers, they always throw us curveballs;

Section 3: Tier-9 powers

The kicker is that powersets with "click" mez resistances if they have access to a tier 9 "god mode" power such as elude or kuji-in retsu, will not get additional mez resistance from their tier 9 power.

Most powersets with toggle mez resistance that has access to a tier 9 power recieves a very powerful mez resistance bonus from their tier 9 power: which is always a click power. see what i'm getting at?

All of the following powers give a three minute magnitude 17.3 mez resistance: Unstoppable, Power surge, and Strength of Will. The only acception to this rule is energy aura, which has toggle mez resistance and a tier 9, but the tier 9 does not grant extra mez resistance.

The obvious drawback to this is a tier 9 has a very long recharge time, and cannot be permanent. The click mez resistances usually recharge before their duration is expired, making it possible to recieve the benefit full time.

Probably the easiest enemies to mez/hold are those which do not have a tier 9 "god mode," such as dark armor and fire armor, respectively. Both powersets only have one toggle mez resistance power of a mag 10.4.

The most fun to mess with is the almighty stone armor tank or brute. With two very strong toggle mez resistance powers the people that play stone armor (myself included) are not used to being able to be held/mezzed. The fun part is when a dominator with domination ready, or a well built controller comes along and manages to untoggle both granite armor and rooted, they no longer have a prayer of surviving. The two toggle powers generally take too long to recharge to turn on again before the dominator or controller has defeated you.

Controllers can do this as well. A controller very much can stack over mag 27.7 on a single target, it just takes a bit more patience and know-how than it does on a dominator. (Hey, a dominator can't have radiation debuffs no matter how good they are. So don't feel too bad if it takes forever/you can't do it before you kill the target/get killed)

Part 4: You can't hold a player forever

Note: I'm not sure what the numbers are here, if someone does feel free to edit this.

There is a cap on how long you can keep a player target held or mezzed. I'm not sure what amount of time or how this is even calculated. But I do know for sure that player targets will break from being held, slept or disoriented periodically regardless of how many holds/mezzes are stacked. This is to prevent greifing, and to make it so dominators and controllers don't become an automatic win against archtypes with no mez resistance.

The good news is that the holds will stay stacked on the target, and when the forced break from being mezzed is over, the target will become mezzed again.

Notes

• You can currently trigger Domination while under status effects; this works like a Break Free inspiration. While Domination is active, you have some level of resistance to all status effects. Prior to 8-1-06, Domination didn't work this way.

External Links

• Summary and Analysis of Dominator Powersets
• Archetypes documentation on official City of Villains site
• Official City of Villains Manual as a PDF file