Dominator

Overview

Wielding a potentially counterintuitive array of powers, Dominators are a complex class. You excel at forcing foes to bend to your will. You can lock your enemies to one spot, render them unconscious, or even turn them against their allies. But you do far more than control the battle; you truly dominate by dealing damage while you hold or immobilize those around you. You are a fairly effective solo class though you lack defenses and have no mez protection beyond the use of your Inherent Power. For this reason, you are particularly fearsome when paired up with a corruptor to buff you or a stalker to strike down your dominated targets. When an entire group can take advantage of the foes you've locked down, your controlling powers will really shine.

The Dominator's inherent power is Domination, and mastery of its use is the most common sign of an experienced Dominator and a novice. Each time you attack your enemies you build up Domination; the more people you have in your team, the more Domination you build. Once your Domination bar is full you can unlock this power, increasing your base damage by 75% while effectively doubling the effectiveness of your holds and other control powers. While Domination is active, your longer and more powerful control powers can turn the tides of an otherwise hopeless battle. Furthermore, Domination protects you from controls yourself, and refills your Endurance bar - making it a power that on its own can completely turn the tide of a battle!

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:

• 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:

• Energy Assault
• Fiery Assault
• Icy Assault
• Psionic Assault
• Thorny Assault

Patron Power Pools

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

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 of 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 much-less dangerous minions. As you increase in level, and your holds last for 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 blasts, 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 you an idea for 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 you need it. The mindset claims that it doesn't want to 'waste' Domination. If you go through a full mission with Domination fully charged, and never use it, then you have wasted it. Domination charges relatively fast, now, 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 accessable.

Domination changes fights around; 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 by the game - for example, Bone Smasher (a melee attack with a 60% chance to Disorient a foe) is considered a control power by the game because of its disorient effect! Knowing what attacks benefit the most from Domination can change your attacking once you've used the powerful inherent.

The final note here is that once you start using Domination regularly, and stop treating it as a rare thing that has to be conserved, you will realise that sometimes, you can rebuild Domination before the actual Domination power has recharged. This is a common enough situation, and one of the reasons many 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). The practical upshot is that Hasten is a cornerstone power to many Dominators.

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/ForceField Controller. I am a gravity Dominator with Energy Assault. We started with a Arena fight, which lowered him and myself to lvl6. 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 indefinitly 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 Lietenients Solo, and in most cases, hold Villains solo too, Dominators dont 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, unfortunatly, they lack damage inducing powers.
• Dominators - Do not have extra point of Magnitude, which means stacking of hold powers is necessary, theyre secondary powerset will usually make it possible to kill most enemies without the hold being necessary though, when Domination Kicks in, it does make Dominators Stronger, Durable against status effects, including knockback, and able to hold at 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.

Notes

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

External Links

• Archetypes documentation on official City of Villains site
• Official City of Villains Manual as a PDF file