Following in the Black Weaver's Footsteps:
A Guide to Gravity/Energy Dominators v1.1
by Captain Spud

Introduction

When I started writing this guide, it was just a Gravity Dominator guide. However, as I wrote it, I came to a couple realizations. First of all, all controller sets are just about identical. Sure, they have different secondary effects, and different signature powers, but they're all pretty much the same in operation. Thus, it was a very boring and redundant guide to write. Secondly, my experiences with the Gravity set are so hopelessly intertwined with the Energy Assault secondary that I had trouble figuring out where one stopped and the other started. In the end, the guide is actually more slanted toward the secondary set than the primary, so if you're reading this as a Grav/something, you'll find the information less useful than as a something/Energy.

In the end, though, I do heartily recommend that if you're building a new Dominator and can't decide on the sets, that you do take Grav/Energy, as it's a build with a lot of synergy and general advantages.

• Most Dominators complain about their low damage output. That is because these Dominators did not select the completely unbalanced nerf-bait that is Energy Assault. Energy Melee has easily twice the damage output of any other Assault set, due almost entirely to the enormous Energy Melee attacks. Slot properly and you can out-damage some Brutes. It's a good thing.
• Power Boost. Why they ever made this a Blaster power is beyond me, because this power EXISTS to be used by Controllers and Dominators. Double-and-a-half duration on my group hold? Yes, please.
• The rampant stun effects in the secondary, combined with the existing stun effects in Wormhole, give you en entire other area of control beyond the usual Controller fare of holds and knockdown.

Version History

05/11/2006: Fixed errors in Domination definition (I misunderstood how it worked) and other areas. Changed some power descriptions. Added extra notes to various sections.

01/09/2006: Initial build.

Glossary

Control: Commonly referred to as a Mez (for Mesmerize); I find the term Control to be more appropriate. General term for any effect that hinders an opponent. Controls include Fear, Hold, Sleep, Stun, and Immobilize.

Domination: This is an inherent power in all Dominators. The orange bar under your Endurance meter measures your current Domination charge. It increases every time you fire off an attack. The Domination meter will run out slowly if it is charged and you stop controlling for several minutes; however, this run-out is VERY slow, and one can often travel between missions and only lose 1/4 of the bar. Once the bar is full (this takes anywhere between two and ten minutes, depending on how much controlling you're doing), the Domination power in your tray "lights up" and can be activated. Activating Domination has four effects:

1. Your Endurance bar is fully refilled.
2. The Magnitude of all of your control effects is doubled for one minute.
3. The Duration of all of your control effects is doubled for one minute.
4. The Damage of all of your attacks is significantly increased for one minute.

Domination cannot be slotted.

Magnitude (Mag): The effectiveness of a control effect. The system works basically like this: Minions are 1, Lieutenants are 2, Bosses are 3, Elite Bosses are 4 or 5, AVs are about 6 or 7. Those numbers are the total Mag stack you need to add up to to stun/hold/whatever that enemy. Most holds, for example, are Mag 2. That means they'll lock a Minion or LT in one hit, but will require two hits to hold a Boss or a low end Elite Boss. Those numbers for rank resistance are only the base; some enemies, such as Lost psionics and any enemies running Unyielding or a similar power, will require extra hits to affect them.

Primary Power Set: Gravity Control

Most controller primaries follow basically the same pattern—single immob, damage move, single hold, group immob, [signature], group hold, extra AoE control, pet. Gravity is no different.

Crush – Level 1
Ranged DoT (minor), Immobilize (100% chance, mag 2)

This is your basic single-target immobilize. It does a little bit of damage, but nothing to get excited about. I picked this up initially, but respecced it out at 24 in favor of Lift. If nothing else, it’s decent in the early levels for charging up your Domination meter.

Suggested Slotting: 1 Accuracy, maybe an Immobilize duration if you want to splurge.

Lift – Level 1
Ranged DoT (minor), Knockup

Lift is your other choice at level 1, and it’s not much better than Crush. It picks the opponent up and tosses them into the air, doing a bit more damage than Crush. I prefer this one over Crush, as it sort of acts as a five-second Hold; the opponent can’t run, and can’t beat you up while they’re in the air. Right now I use it in my attack cycle to finish off enemies with a sliver of health left. It’s not a great power, but it’s the better of two bad options.

Suggested Slotting: 1 Accuracy, and if you’re going to use it as a finisher, 1 Damage

Gravity Distortion – Level 2
Ranged DoT (minor), Hold (100% chance, mag 2)

GD is your single-target Hold. Properly slotted, it can keep three minions suspended at once; this is your main crowd control power. It’s also handy for taking particularly irritating enemies out of the equation, like Longbow Nullifiers and Mu Strikers.

Suggested Slotting: 2 Accuracy, 3 Hold Duration, 1 Recharge

Propel – Level 6
Ranged (high smash), Knockback

Ehh. Controllers needed this power for damage dealing, but Dominators have plenty of better, cheaper alternatives in their secondaries. Though if you just want the power to throw desks and propane tanks around purely for fun, it’s not half bad. :)

Suggested Slotting: Some combination of accuracy, damage, and recharge.

Crushing Field – Level 8
Ranged DoT (AoE, minor), Immobilize (100% chance, mag 2)

My joke after playing with this power for a few levels was that Crushing Field was created to fill in for Dominators’ glaring lack of an AoE taunt. Because very often, that’s all you get out of this power—a ton of aggro, resulting in death. However, CF isn’t entirely worthless. It combos well with Wormhole, as I’ll discuss later. Pick it up at some point before level 26 when there’s nothing else to grab.

Suggested Slotting: 1 Accuracy, 1 Immobilize Duration

Dimension Shift – Level 12
Ranged (AoE) , Intangible (100% chance, mag 2)

Grab this one if you really have no other interesting options, as it does occasionally have some uses. Basically, Dimension Shift phases out a really large area of enemies for about 30 seconds, giving your team a chance to heal and rezz. Toss an Intangibility Duration enhancement into it and, due to either a glitch or some poor naming, it’ll increase the magnitude of the phase high enough to affect even an ArchVillain, which can be really useful for times when your team gets whomped by AV alpha strikes and needs a break to recover. But, and I’m not kidding here, do NOT use this power regularly. It is an absolute last-ditch measure, and using it at the wrong time is about the fastest way to get kicked off a team that I can think of. I took this power at level 49 to help with the Recluse strike force-- using this power you can keep the majority of the AVs phased while the group concentrates on a couple at a time.

Suggested Slotting: 1 Intangibility Duration

Gravity Distortion Field – Level 18
Ranged (AoE), Hold (100% chance, mag 2)

There really isn’t that much to say about GDF-- it’s just a really awesome power. Target the guy in the middle of a group and activate it, and your team gets enough time for each team member to kill one guy. Use a Power Boost beforehand, and that goes up to two defeats each before the enemies can move. Power Boost AND Domination, and you’ve basically got a free wipe on a spawn of any size.

Suggested Slotting: 2 Accuracy, 2 Hold Duration, 2 Recharge

Wormhole – Level 26
Ranged (AoE), Teleport Foe, Stun (100% chance, mag 2)

Mwahaha, this power should be illegal, it’s so much fun. Target the middle guy in a big group. Point the targeting cursor into a corner. The entire mob gets chucked into that corner, explodes outward, and everybody’s stunned for a few seconds. Good times. Check out the Tactics section below for a fun maneuver involving Wormhole.

Suggested Slotting: 3 Accuracy, 2 Stun Duration, 1 Recharge

Singularity (aka Zippy) – Level 32
Summon Singularity

I’ll be honest… I wasn’t that thrilled with Zippy at first. I wanted a pet to help me with damage, as I had the crowd control aspects of my character pretty well set. Then Zippy comes along, and he’s a nearly-invincible ball of… something… who spams on Crush, Grav Distortion, and Lift (your three worst damage attacks, YAY!) while repelling enemies who approach him. So in other words, he’s a floating ball of control… not what I was looking for.

I came to realize, though, that in a way Zippy DOES help your damage output, because he takes over for some of your control duties and lets you concentrate more on laying the smack down on your enemies. Fully slotted, Zippy can lock down two to four opponents at a time without breaking a sweat, usually leaving you the freedom to pick and choose your targets, taking down the biggest enemy threats while he distracts the bulk of the mob. He’s also handy when you need to go into all-out control mode, helping you lock down larger numbers of minions and providing the in-between holds to maintain a lock on an AV or an Elite Boss. All in all, Zippy is an incredibly useful assistant. Grab him and slot him up as soon as you can.

Suggested Slotting: 2 Accuracy, 3 Hold Duration, 1 Damage (that one’s optional, you might get better mileage out of a third accuracy)

Secondary Power Set: Energy Assault

The Energy Assault set is a really excellent offensive set, featuring some solid ranged attacks from the Energy Blast set and a couple absolutely superb melees from the Energy Melee set.

Energy Bolt – Level 1
Ranged (minor energy), Knockback

This power is pretty weak, but you have to take it. Slot it up and just use it as another part of your attack cycle, or ignore it and use the other, more damaging powers. Up to you.

Suggested Slotting: 2 Accuracy, 3 Damage

Bone Smasher – Level 2
Melee (high energy), Stun (30% chance, mag 2)

Yummy. This is a really solid melee from the Energy Melee tank set, doing a good chunk of damage and occasionally causing a minion or LT stun. Good as a damage power and as a setup to stun bosses, as the power always adds mag stacking even if its own stun didn’t trigger.

Suggested Slotting: 2 Accuracy, 3 Damage, maybe a Stun Duration or a Recharge.

Energy Blast – Level 4
Ranged (moderate energy), Knockback

A bigger Energy Bolt. Take it, slot it up. Not much more to say about it, really.

Suggested Slotting: 2 Accuracy, 3 Damage

Power Boost – Level 10
250% secondary effectiveness (10 seconds)

Power Boost is a very interesting power. It’s a former member of the Energy Manipulation blaster secondary set, and as a blaster power, it was fairly useless. What it does is give a 250% boost to everything you do except damage—heals, control durations, travel power speed (not actually 250% on that one), and anything else you can think of, for 10 seconds. So while an energy blaster’s secondary effects might not benefit much from it, a controller or Dominator gets a HUGE boost to his primary controls. It’s basically a controller version of Aim and Build Up.

There are a lot of good uses for your Power Boost. I tend to save it for GDF and Wormhole to keep a large spawn incapacitated for an extended period. If you dip into the medicine pool, Heal Other while in Power Boost will often be enough for a full heal on a teammate. It also combines with Domination, so if you’re really in a jam, those two together combined with GDF can lock down a spawn for long enough to butcher the entire group. The ten second duration is long enough to fire off about three different controls, the first and last of which can be your single-target hold.

All in all, Power Boost is one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal. Get it early, use it often.

Suggested Slotting: 3 Recharge

Power Push – Level 16
Ranged (minor, energy), Knockback

This power is fairly useless. It repels one opponent very far away from you, which is fairly counterintuitive since you’ll be spending the bulk of your time wading through enemies to use your powerful melees.

Suggested Slotting: 2 Accuracy, any number of Knockback.

Whirling Hands – Level 20
Melee AoE (moderate energy), Stun (30% chance, mag 2)

This is a very handy power—basically just a weaker Bone Smasher in a circle around you. You can pick it up either as an area attack for dealing with swarms, or as a third AoE control—hit a mob of six guys, and you’ll get two stuns. Better, as they say, than a kick in the teeth. I picked it up in the late 30s because I wanted an AoE power to smush crowds I'd shoved in the corner with Wormhole. The damage isn't great, but it's enough to soften up a crowd.

Suggested Slotting:
Damage Cycle: 2 Accuracy, 3 Damage, 1 Recharge
AoE Control: 2 Accuracy, 3 Stun Duration, 1 Recharge

Total Focus – Level 28
Melee (superior energy), Stun (100% chance, mag 2)

I heart Total Focus. Not only does it do inordinate amounts of damage to your target (often enough to one-shot a blue minion), it has a guaranteed mag 2 stun. Hit it with Bone Smasher, Whirling Hands, or Wormhole first, and you can even stun a boss. This ends up being your primary damage dealer once you pick it up, so slot it quickly.

One caveat: The animation time for Total Focus is really long, so try to hit full-health targets when you’re teaming, or else your teammates are likely to take the opponent out while you’re still arcing through the air.

Suggested Slotting: 2 Accuracy, 2 Damage, 1 Stun Duration, 1 Recharge

Snipe – Level 35
Ranged (extreme energy), Knockback

You don’t need this as a pulling power because you have Wormhole. If you think you’ll use it to kill single held enemies, go right ahead, but it’s largely skippable if you want something else at 35.

Suggested Slotting: 2 Accuracy, 3 Damage, maybe a Recharge if you want.

Energy Burst – Level 38
Ranged (high energy), Knockback

The range on this attack is so short that it’s basically a melee. It does roughly the same damage as Bone Smasher (though with a less interesting secondary effect), so if nothing else, it’s a solid addition to your basic attack cycle.

Suggested Slotting: 2 Accuracy, 3 Damage, 1 Recharge

Pool Powers

Here’s a rundown of the various pools, concentrating on the reasons most people take them.

Fitness: Stamina is a personal choice. If I use Total Focus a lot, I’m always running dry. If I don’t use it at all, I’m hovering at full endurance. It’s the only power that has any major endurance usage, so if you can live without it, you can probably live without Stamina. If you do take it, don't be in any rush to slot it; I took it at 20 and didn't add a second slot until level 29, and my endurance was in great shape.

Speed: I took Hasten because I was taking Super Speed anyway and Flurry is useless. All in all, I find Hasten to be a big help when you need to dish out a lot of damage quickly. It’s not essential like many believe it to be, but it’s definitely helpful if you decide to take it.

Medicine: The Medicine heals are nuts with Power Boost. I haven’t found the room for them yet, but I do hope to take them eventually.

Leaping: Combat Jumping and Acrobatics aren’t really necessary, as getting mezzed isn’t that harmful to you, thanks to your lack of toggles.

Flight: I took Hover on my way to Fly, but I never really use it, as I’m usually in the middle of my enemies using my melees. Take it if you’re doing a ranged build, but otherwise, it’s skippable.

Leadership: Ehh. Take it if you like, but I’ve never considered this pool to be all that useful.

Concealment: Ditto.

Teleportation: Another personal choice. You already have TP Foe On Crack, so if the remaining powers are useful to you, grab the pool. Otherwise… ehh.

Fighting: This might be a good pool if you’re doing a melee build. Extra attacks, and some minor shields to keep you alive while you’re wading through your enemies. This is all just theory though, I haven’t tested it.

Patron Pools: I took Ghost Widow because she fit my concept better than the others. Her Consume power is awesome (especially with Power Boost), her shield is pretty decent, and the Fortunata pet is really handy. The AoE blast is terrible. I haven't tested the other Patrons, so I can't comment on their powers.

Build Overview

Your powers are always going to include Gravity Distortion, Gravity Distortion Field, Wormhole, Singularity, and Power Boost. They’re all excellent powers and there’s really no reason NOT to take them as soon as you can unless you have thematic reasons. The other Gravity powers range from situational to useless, so take the ones you think you’ll have fun with.

For the secondary set, there are two and a half rough builds you can go far:

Melee Build: Your attack cycle consists of Bone Smasher, Whirling Hands, Total Focus, Energy Burst, and possibly a pool melee. You just run into your opponents and start kicking their teeth in. Teammates, Zippy, and your own holds will keep you safe enough that you won’t get whomped constantly.

Ranged Build: Your attack cycle consists of Energy Bolts, Energy Blast, Energy Burst, Lift, and Snipe. You’ll also want to pick up Crushing Field to keep enemies away. This is a very “safe” build, good for teaming with squishy-heavy groups, though it’ll solo more slowly without the melee attacks.

Combo Build: Your attack cycle consists of Bolts, Blast, Burst, Bone Crusher, and Total Focus. Use the melees as your main source of damage, and the ranged powers as finishers and to hit distant foes. You can also switch out to a ranged-focused attack pattern if the group composition calls for it. This is the way my character runs, and I find it to be a very effective build.

My Build

Here's how I built the Black Weaver, my grav/energy Dominator. The slotting column is for any pool powers or anywhere I diverged from my above suggestions

One thing you'll notice about that build is that I had enough space for TWO travel powers, and the generally-considered-to-be-useless Dimension Shift. Essentially what this should tell you is that the number of absolute must-have powers in Grav/Energy is relatively low, which gives you more room to explore pools and pure-fun powers.

Tactics

Hold Priority: It's important to know where and when to use your single-target hold. As a general rule of thumb, your best targets are lieutenants-- you can neutralize them in one hit, and with the right slotting, you can keep three of them locked down at once.

Stun > Hold : You have two holds: GD and GDF. Wormhole, Bone Smasher, Whirling Hands, and Total Focus all cause stun. For this reason, if you're the only Dominator on a team facing an AV, you're going to have more luck mezzing it with stuns than holds, as you can pile more of them on in a shorter time. As an added bonus, all but one of your stun powers does really nice damage, so you're contributing to the whittling down of AV health as well.

Domination: Domination is the best panic button in the game. Half your team is dead, the rest are in orange health, what do you do? Personally, I pop an accuracy Inspiration, activate Domination, and hit Gravity Distortion Field. Every enemy nearby is going to hang uselessly in the air for a good minute, giving you time to bash their faces in with your enhanced damage. I have never seen a hopeless combat situation utterly inverted as quickly as I have seen Domination do it. Once you hit that little grey button and start spamming holds, your team is safe.

The Wormhole Shunt: Train Wreck taught me this fun technique for using Wormhole. You can do this to pull a smaller chunk of a huge, dense room to pick it apart piece by piece, or just a general maneuver in combat for neutralizing an enemy group.

1. Target the middle guy in a group
2. Find a corner. Any corner will do, though the tighter it is, the better.
3. Hide behind something. Wormhole needs LoS to the target spot, but not to the affected mobs. If you don’t hide, you risk getting shot between activating the power and it actually going off, which is often enough to put you in the red or even kill you.
4. Dump the mob in the corner.
5. While the power is in the process of activating, hit Crushing Field to immobilize everything that goes through the Wormhole.

The end result of this maneuver is a giant pile of enemies all bunched in a corner, unable to move around or defend themselves, and packed so tightly that even the smallest AoEs and cones from your teammates will hit every one of them. It’s not just fun, it’s also one of the safest ways I know of to break up a dense room and take it down piece by piece.

And that's about all I have to say about that.

Acknowledgements

Train Wreck: I find it ironic that TW was able to give me so much great advice on the Grav build because TW hates his Grav controller. :D I also kinda stole his guide format. ;)

The Rogues' Gallery: Vagey-Poo, Jamie, Flim, and everybody else, for helping Weaver burn through the levels. This guide wouldn't be done for a couple more months without them. :)

The Imperium: For not noticing that I RULE that place. Mwahahaha.

If you have any suggestions to improve this guide or if you've spotted an error, you can e-mail me to let me know.