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Official Description: "As a Dominator, you control a devistating 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."
Primary: Control
Secondary: Assault
Hit Points: Low
Damage: Medium
Icon: Radiating Energy with Lightning Bolt - Although the Dominator is similar to the Controller, it has the ability to attack directly.
Inherent:
Domination - Nothing delights a Dominator more than inflicting pain. Each time a Dominator attacks, his sadistic nature grows. When your Domination bar is over 90%, you can activate this power to unleash his true potential. Your control powers will last 50 percent longer and will more easily Dominate powerful opponents. Additionally, you will fully recharge your Endurance, and increase the damage to all your attacks. Critical Control
The Dominator has the following Power Sets to choose from:
Although the Dominator has very strong attacks, its damage is really only moderate. It can neither deal melee damage like a Brute, nor ranged damage like a Blaster. With its control powers, it may seem like a strange sort of Controller. The hero type it is most like is the Blaster build referred to as a "Blapper", which uses holds and stuns to close to melee range. This makes it a very specialized Archetype, with a limited strategy (and one some may not find too attractive) but there are still variations on the basic concept. As usual, this link will take you to a page on "subarchetypes", which detail some of these variations.
Tips for playing the Dominator:
While solo:
Although the Dominator plays technically like the "Blapper" subtype, in fact its lower damage means it is much slower than a Blaster than dealing damage at range. The Dominator's damage is not that bad, in fact, its melee damage can be quite extreme. A Dominator cannot buff or debuff, heal, or do any of the other things that Corruptors and Controllers use to compensate for their lower damage, however. This means that if a Dominator takes damage, it has very little capability to recover from that damage.
Fortunately, while a Dominator has less damage mitigation than a Corruptor or Controller, it has more damage than a Controller, and more control than a Corruptor. This is what makes it closer to the Blaster in concept. Like the Blaster, it is concerned with locking down its enemies, mitigating damage by preventing them from firing back. And unlike the Blaster, it has enough Control powers to be able to do that over long periods of time.
While a Blaster usually has to avoid melee at all costs, however, a Dominator usually HAS to engage in melee in order to utilize all of his attacks. Without drawing on all available attacks, ranged and melee, the Dominator usually cannot solo. Thus, the Dominator must, eventually, close to melee range. The only way to safely do this is to hold the foe first, so obviously the Dominator's strategy is to use ranged attacks to "soften up" the targets, work into a good position where a foe can be singled out, hold him, and move in for the kill.
The Endurance cost of the Dominator's holds and attacks is typically too high to allow more than three or four enemies to be taken on at once. Should the Dominator run out of Endurance, he can no longer attack, and can no longer hold, making it very likely that a foe will get into melee. Given a choice between holds and attacks, the Dominator should use holds first, so he can survive until his Endurance has a chance to recover.
Some of the Dominator's more exotic powers can be used to aid in this strategy. The Confuse power, for instance, in Mind Control, can be used to turn an enemy into an ally fighting at your side, when you close into melee. Pets, for other Dominators, can be used for the same purpose, once you get to high enough level. Slows can be used to separate targets from each other, and even powers in the Pool like Teleport Foe could be used.
The Dominator is about patience. Each foe you attack, however long it takes, is one step closer to Domination. Domination is not as important as it once was (it used to be the Dom's main source of damage) but it still helps overcome most of the Dom's weaknesses. The Dominator's holds become more powerful and last longer, and Domination refills the End bar, helping to deal with the Dom's high End costs. Finally, Domination will protect you from any holds or other control powers your foes have, making it very useful against Bosses.
Domination should probably be saved for Bosses if there are any in a mission, but it should be used often enough to be of overall benefit. You don't want to use it too sparingly and make missions too hard for you. Once Domination is going, you can usually hold down an entire group of foes, and easily go from one group to another without stopping. Your strategy doesn't really change when you have Domination, but you are that much more effective at what you are normally good at, and can push your luck that much further.
To help build Domination, try to choose lots of attacks with quick recharge times. It can sometimes help to Brawl with a weak foe, alternating Brawl with another fast recharging attack, wearing down the foe slowly so you can build up Domination. It can be a real pain to be facing a Boss and not have Domination built up, or even worse get defeated by him, leaving yourself with an empty Domination bar, and no chance of defeating him. In such a case, you might want to find more enemies to "play with".
While on a team:
According to the devs, the role of the Dominator in a group is two-fold: He is responsible for crowd control, like the Controller, and he is also a damage dealer. A Dominator can't deal the damage of a Blaster, but he can come close, and while the Corruptor specializes with AoE attacks, the Dominator can deal a lot of single target damage. This makes him an effective Boss killer, with a Brute on the team to keep aggro off of him.
It can be difficult to build up Domination while in a group, so look for opportunities to lock down or damage as many foes as possible. You may have to waste some Endurance, but that should not be as big an issue if you are on a team. Be careful of drawing too much aggro, but if you can attack without overwhelming yourself, do.
You must also be somewhat reactive in the defense of your teammates. If you cannot permanently hold foes, and cannot heal or buff your allies, you will have to watch out for danger and use your holds when your allies are in trouble. Single target, fast recharge holds and stuns/sleeps are, again, the best choice. Don't be afraid to improvise, put a foe to sleep, even if someone's going to attack him, or confuse him if your holds have not recharged.
While it may be tempting to concentrate on your role as a damage dealer, since you do not have Buff/Debuffs to bring to a team as Controllers do, in fact you are, with a few exceptions, limited to SINGLE TARGET attacks. This limitation is very important in teams, and may be the key to building Domination. The Corruptors will have the AoE attacks to blast away the Minions, while the Brutes and Stalkers will be taking on the Bosses. While you can take on Bosses as well, you are well suited for taking on mezzers or other foes that have special attacks that bypass your meleers' defenses.
You are also perfectly positioned to deal with any runners, or attackers that evade the Brutes and Henchmen, and come after the Corruptors and Masterminds. You're the best equipped to deal with such an attack, you can hold down the target, and then build up Domination by wailing on him. Don't be afraid to defend your role, and let your teammates know that a target is yours. You should be careful not to let yourself get carried away, though, and be pulled too far from the group to be able to defend them with your holds. Use your ranged attacks to deal with runners, and stick to the middle ground between the Brutes and the Corruptors. Once you have cleaned up the rest of the group, then you can move in to finish off any Bosses that are left.
Although your holds are much more powerful in Domination (and you are immune to holds and other mezzes) you should not really be worrying about conserving it. You can build Domination more easily on a team, which should help it come up faster, so you can have it up more often. Just use it whenever you can, and get used to the rhythm of when it is up and when it is down, so you know when you can rely on its protection.
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