Snowzone

I have a Gravity/Energy Dominator. With Impact it's a very good single target character, though it is a bit boring until you get Singularity. Also, Wormhole is amazing - it allows you to place mobs where you want them to go and if it misses anyone then they're not aggro'd. It's the perfect pulling tool. I frankenslotted mine with Stun/Range and Accuracy/Recharge, then put +5 boosters on each. Its range is now 111ft. Pretty impressive really. Dimension Shift is useful if things get too much and you want to run away - very useful solo. It also has some use in teams because it applies a mag 10 immobilise - perfect for teams heavy in melee users, particularly if someone is using Burn.

Energy Assault is pretty nondescript though. If you know Energy Blast and Energy Melee then you know what to expect.

I always thought that free players have access to /reply.

I didn't team with you much on Defiant, but best of luck for the future.

Depending on how old the costumes are, the face and face with masks categories were merged together. So any old, masked costume would show up as invalid and the head would change.

I'd support this. Blueside really needs new 30-40 content.

I love Fissure. It makes me want to play my Earth/Earth Dominator who is stuck at level 20. Shame that he and my Plant/Thorns are shelved until Earth Mastery and Nature Mastery are given to Doms.

The odd thing with Ice Control is that it offers less control than it should do. If you look at the other Ice-themed sets you will find that they are among the most controlling in their categories - Ice Melee has Ice Patch, Freezing Touch and Frozen Aura; Ice Armour has the ultra-soft control in Chilling Embrace; Ice Blast has Freeze Ray and Bitter Freeze Ray; Ice Manipulation has Chilblain, Chilling Embrace, Ice Patch, Shiver, Freezing Touch and Frozen Aura; and finally, Cold Domination has Sleet.

The only other control Ice Control has that other ATs can't get in some way, including Ancillary pools, is Arctic Air. Everything else can get the knockdown, the sleep, the hold, the huge slow/recharge debuff and the immobilise.

From a damage perspective, Ice Control beats Earth Control simply because of animation speed and Jack Frost. However, it is still dismal when compared to other Control sets, such as Gravity, Illusion, Mind, Fire, Plant and even Dark. However, Ice sets don't tend to be the king of damage anyway - this is because they are supposedly more to do with control and debuff. Looking at the other low damage control sets, Earth Control and Electric Control, the difference in control and debuff should be quite apparent.

So, this brings me on to the debuff present in Control sets. Ice Control gets a lot of -Recharge and -Speed. The former is only useful after a mob has used up all their attacks, meaning they can still fire off their often deadly alpha strike. Ice Slick is supposed to get around this, but if you do not have a corner to cast it around then you will end up taking part of the alpha strike regardless. -Speed, on the other hand, only proves useful when you get into melee range to make use of Arctic Air. Indeed, Arctic Air almost floors their speed. Shiver is much the same, however it completely floors Recharge.

Then what? Two powers have done all the debuff that the set does. Once you're in melee range using Arctic Air then the only thing you can do is spam Block of Ice and reapply Ice Slick - unless you're using the immobilise powers, then the whole -Speed debuff has been rendered obsolete.

Compare the debuffs found in Ice Control to other Control sets, particularly the less damaging sets, and you will find that they are quite lacking:

Darkness Control: -To Hit
Earth Control: -Defence, -Speed, -To Hit
Electric Control: -End
Fire Control: -Perception, -To Hit, -Speed, overall more damage
Gravity Control: -Speed, Ally Intangible
Illusion Control: More damage
Mind Control: More control
Plant Control: More damage

So it seems that Ice Control is trading off damage and control for the large amounts of -Recharge and -Speed it can put out, specifically through Arctic Air and Shiver. Earth Control, which has more useful debuffs, does significantly more control, at the expense of a negligible decrease in damage. Electric Control does what Ice Control is currently trying to do - layering soft control - a lot better than Ice can.

What can be done? It's extremely unlikely that any extra control will be added, particularly enhanceable control, so it can either get the Gravity Control treatment - more damage and better usability - or it can get more varied debuffs. Those musings have already been done to death, however.

To me, it is unacceptable that a Control set can be so poor without some sort of trade-off for damage or debuff. And I like Ice Control.

Ctrl+F "Conductive Aura". Zero results...

You should probably think about not skipping the whole reason behind being Electric Control. It's not as if it costs any endurance to run or many slots to make decent either.

Other than that:

1) Stick the Dominator ATO set in the AoE Immob.
2) Drop Aid Self - Drain Psyche is a lot better.
3) Drop Psionic Lance unless you're planning ahead for the Snipe changes. Still questionable though.
4) Psychic Shockwave is woefully underslotted. As is Telekinetic Thrust - it's your only source of non-psionic damage to deal with endgame threats.
5) Why Assault and Tactics? Dominators get low buff numbers so they're a bit pointless if you're using them as a crutch to get away with awful slotting on some powers.
6) The only purples you'll ever need for Dominators are Control ones. The damage ones just aren't worth the extra cost when Perma-Dom (and even Perma-Hasten) is so easy to get these days.
7) Go Agility Core. It'll help with Recharge and your Endurance sapping powers.
8) Where is your single target hold? It may be slow but it'll save your life. Do not bother with the single target immobilise, they're only good for Controllers - you have a whole secondary devoted to damage.

Bonfire. It is now deliciously broken. So much so that is renders all other control powers in Fire Control obsolete.

I would like to add some retrospective thoughts from the most recent Twitch TV about the questions asked about Dominator sets and the answers given (paraphrased).

One question was along the lines of asking if there were any new sets coming out for Dominators in the near future. Positron responded, after some thought, that there was "nothing original" coming because Dominators are so left-field and are difficult to build for. From the "nothing original" statement, it can be inferred that Illusion Control is going to be proliferated to Dominators at some point in the future, alternatively a looser connotation could be that sets like Water Control could happen because, technically, they are no longer original concepts to the game.

A second question was asked - whether sets such as Staff Fighting or Water Blast would ever be proliferated to Dominators as Assault sets. Positron's answer was interesting - he said that there were some cool things coming up for Assault sets. This should make the stance on Control sets quite clear when put aside the response to the previous question - Control sets are difficult to create, most likely because they have to be balanced around Melee, Ranged, Buff and Debuff sets. This would most likely explain the current disappointing trend of non-Control sets becoming more controlling than before.

They were also asked about whether Autumnal Control and Autumnal Assault (those sets that caused quite a commotion a while ago) would be staying as NPC exclusives. Positron responded by saying that Nature Affinity is the player equivalent. Quite peculiar really consider the Autumnal sets were all about fire and ice whilst Nature Affinity lacks those elements completely. However, the only thing worse, to me, than Dominators not getting anything new would be the AT getting the Autumnal sets.

Ahhh I didn't actually check for sub-options. I just looked at the main list because the hooks didn't pique enough interest to check out properly. I will keep that in mind the next time I log onto Beta. Thanks!

I thought there was a claw hand too.

Ice Control is pretty bad and thoroughly outshined by Earth Control in nearly everything it can do.

1) Chilblain vs Stone Prison - Chilblain is faster at activating.
2) Block of Ice vs Fossilise - Block of Ice is, again, faster at activating.
3) Frostbite vs Stone Cages - Stone Cages wins because it can be stacked with Stalagmites to create a pseudo-hold.
4) Flash Freeze vs Salt Crystals - Salt Crystals is better, despite being a PBAoE sleep, simply because it activates over twice as fast and doesn't have to delay the sleep for meaningless damage.
5) Ice Slick vs Earthquake - Earthquake is better because it debuffs to-hit and defence rather than speed.
6) Shiver vs Quicksand - Shiver's area coverage is huge compared to Quicksand's. However, Quicksand does do a nice -25% defence debuff. This, along with Quicksand being able to be placed around corners for mitigation, makes it the superior power.
7) Glacier vs Volcanic Gasses - Volcanic Gasses is the best AoE hold in the game so it wins by default.
8) Jack Frost vs Animated Stone - This deserves its own miniature breakdown.

a) Jack's Ice Sword vs Stone Fist - Stone Fist wins because it can stun. Damage-wise they're both easily resisted, but at least stunning is useful.
b) Jack's Ice Bolt vs Hurl Boulder - Whilst Hurl Boulder does do a lot of damage it is very slow, especially when compared to the speed of Ice blasts. Jack's Ice Bolt wins.
c) Jack's Freezing Touch vs Seismic Smash - The damage is around the same, one is DoT the other is up-front. Freezing Touch's hold lasts quite a bit longer and doesn't rely on RNG. Freezing Touch wins.
d) Jack's Greater Ice Sword vs Seismic Smash - Jack's attack does more damage but it doesn't hold. Can also fire Seismic Smash off twice before you can with Jack's attack, increasing DPS. A draw.
e) Resistance vs Resistances - Jack is still pretty fragile, even with the buffs. The Animated Stone is pretty resistant to all damage and is excellent when given resistance buffs. Animated Stone's Resistance wins.

Going by the number of wins will make it a draw. However, survivability is crucial meaning Animated Stone comes on top.
9) Arctic Air vs Stalagmites - Two incomparable powers. Both are really good. A draw.

So, that is 7-3 to Earth Control. Poor Ice Control needs some love.

I'm not going to go into huge detail about this, but if Electric Blast is awful then that means Electricity Assault is too. It misses out on a number of things that are standard to Assault sets, such as a Utility/Survivability power (e.g. Drain Psyche, Chilling Embrace, etc), a PBAoE (e.g. Engulfing Darkness, Tremor, etc), and a Tier 3 blast (e.g. Blaze, Power Burst, etc). The lack of these things hurts the set quite considerably.

I'm not actually seeing enemies stand up. They just fall down constantly without being able to move or attack unless they're flying. I don't recall Earthquake being that broken.

I could take on two or three x8 mobs at once and have them all be stuck in an endless loop of knockdown.

Earthquake has an 7% chance of knockdown, Ice Slick has an 8% chance. This is 100% chance of knockdown. The enemies don't even stand up, they just fall down again from the fallen position. Continuously.

I play on Defiant. I will be Defiant until the end.

Bonfire is a 100% chance knockback power in a huge radius, probably 60ft. The proc simply changes that to knockdown. The enemies are knocked down continuously without being able to even stand up.

I'm sorry, but it's just cheap.

I just got the kb to kd proc and slotted it into Bonfire... Wow... It needs to be nerfed somehow. I've gone from x2 to x8 with no challenge because it's pretty much a perma-hold. Only level 36 too.

This may come as a surprise to some people, but those four roles aren't exactly the most moral. I seriously doubt con artists care whether they offend people or not just as long as they get the job done.

Stop complaining that you're being forced into playing something immoral - villains have to pretend to be heroes in normal content so why can't heroes pretend to be villains in something which is obviously not that serious.