So you want to be a Dominator in Trion’s Rift: Planes of Telara. Good for you! Every good group will need one. However, every bad group will thwart you. The Dominator is a VERY group dependent soul that requires constant communication and teamwork to reach its peak performance!
What does a dominator do in a party? Well simple, they make everything easier on everyone else! Whether you’re turning adds on a bad pull into squirrels so your tank only has to deal with one elite banging on him, or you’re throwing silences on the other PvP teams healers your primary function is saving everyone’s hide via crowd control.
So now that you’re hyped about what a dominator can do, lets move on to your abilities themselves. Starting at level 0 you get YOUR MOST IMPORTANT SPELL IN THE WHOLE TREE: Transmogrify. This spell, like the EQ1 Enchanter’s Mesmerize or the Vanguard Psionicists’ Time Trick, turns your target into a squirrel rendering them completely harmless making a tough pull, easy and turning boss fights with 2 giants into 2 back to back single fights or rendering the other groups cleric unable to heal mua ha ha ha ha…. until that guy whose not paying attention in your party does a single point of damage to them then all hell breaks loose. Yes folks, the greatest weakness of the dominator is a group who don’t know what you can do. Explain that when there is an add DO NOT DOT IT, DO NOT OFF TANK just ignore it and let the dominator squirrel away your problems.
Once you get used to using Transmogrify and your group gets used to not turning it into a waste of mana, you can start going a little crazy with some neat tricks with it. Here are some situations where you may not think of using it.
2 Elite mobs are standing guard next to a door. Pulling one will inevitably pull the other. So, what do you do to make sure everything goes as planned? Let your tank get ready with a taunt, Squirrel one guy and have the tank taunt the “add” as it runs at you, this way (unlike having the tank pull 2 mobs and having the squirrel at everyone’s feet) gives you the safety of not accidentally AoEing it and when your spell wears off a chance to root/knockback/snare or re-squirrel it before it even gets to swing!
Here’s another: In a duel with ANYONE? Drop transmogrify, wait until the time left on the buff is the cast time of your hardest hitting spell, nuke him and if you have your talents in the right spot (Clinging Form, Controlled Opportunity, Swift Control), not only will that nuke deal 50% more damage but your cooldown on transmogrify will be down and your cast speed increased for 50% so BLAMMO re-squirrel and repeat. If all is going as planned they shouldn’t’ get a chance to do ANYTHING and so long as your trans lands they get enough time for an instant cast spell once every 30 seconds….
Now lets move on to your next bread and butter spells: Arresting Presence and Priests Lambent. These are why people grab you for PvP groups and caster mob boss battles.
Arresting Presence is a long duration silence aura. At 100 charge its a 10 second (ish) silence. In Warfronts, give your team a heads up and get a healer to target you. Drop that and run right into their zerg-pile. 90% of the time they get confused and can’t figure out where the silence is and all their mages can’t nuke and all their clerics can’t heal (or in rift the opposite sometimes occurs).
Then there’s Priests Lambent. This spell KILLS healers. Here, let me show you: “Debuffs the enemy causing any healing or beneficial abilities they attempt to use to have a 60% chance of silence them for 3 seconds” and it ONLY HAS A 20 SECOND COOLDOWN AND LASTS 15 SECONDS! This spell is almost ALWAYS active so long as you remember to drop it. If you are about to try and focus fire down a healer, this spell is mana from heaven.For example, see a rogue jumping an enemy cleric off to your side? Stop what you’re doing drop that on the cleric. See a cleric heal someone you’re fighting? Stop what your doing…. you get the picture. this spell is great, be sure to take it, be sure to use it.
Dominators have a very hard time keeping their mana bar up, Transmogrify and Priests Lambent cost a LOT of mana and to keep your charge up for arresting presence you need to spam neural prod (best charge builder out of any class btw, instant cast instant refresh 10 charge) which gets costly. Thankfully, at 8 points in, we get Mana Wrench. Sure it’s channeled but it gives a lot of mana back, deals a fair amount of damage and gets rid of a fair amount of mana from another mage, good but not great… until 15 points into the tree “IMPROVED MANA WRENCH!: Increases the damage of your mana wrench by 3% and the mana returned and drained per second by 10% per rank” What does this mean? Maxed ranks in it (3) and you can drain about half of an enemies mana bar in the 6 second channel while doing massive damage to mages! Oh oh oh! Know what else we get 15 points in? The same thing only better! Transference: ‘drains up to 50 charge and 141 mana, or 50 energy, from the enemy and deals death damage based on the amount drained. Reduces the enemies mana and energy regeration to 0 for 5 seconds. ” Wait what was that last part? “REDUCES THEIR MANA REGEN TO ZERO FOR FIVE SECONDS!” Guess what we can do now? Drop mana wrench then this and pow we’re back to full they’re a hurting unit with 0 mana and 0 mana regen.. life doesn’t get better then that!
Oh I forgot to mention the raid boss killer known as Accelerated Decay that we get at 12 points in! This thing is instant cast with a 10 second cooldown and lasts for 30 seconds. Every time the target does anything, their melee and spell casting speed goes down by 5% to a cap of 5 stacks, neat tid-bit the 30 sercond cooldown (at least at time of beta 4) refreshes with each stack… so each attack up to 5) Recast it at 5 stacks and it stays ramped up. One instant cast every 30 seconds and you’re pretty much negating a quarter of an entire raid boss’s damage. Useful no? Bet your guilds healers will love that! Not to mention the tank!
Starting to get a feel for what a dominator can do? How much utility they bring to the table? You haven’t seen the half of it!
Void Shroud: 1.5 second cast 10 second cooldown. Reduces all healing the target recieves by 30% for 10 seconds. Bam your kill target for your groups assist train suddenly has no hope of being healed through the damage!
Storm shackle: A great root that not only doesn’t break on damage but gives them the choice of 10 seconds of no moving or 3 seconds of root and then a VERY painful AoE nuke/snare (or 3 aoes after talent points in microburst)
Overpowering Will: Recurring mez! Yeah it renders someone useless for 8 seconds or until they take damage but when they take damage and you’re in 20 meters it RE CASTS on them every 2 seconds but consumes charge. Holy balls!
Deaths Edict: Big nuke.3 second stun then REALLY painful slow for 10 seconds.
and our 31 Point ability Chastise: This spell is really brutal. “Curses the enemy for 20 seconds inflicting a penalty on them each time they perform an action, placing a stacking debuff on them reducing their damage and healing for 6 seconds by 10% per stack max TEN STACKS (yes thats 100% reduction) this spell can only be used on players. Not quite a raid boss killer due to that last line but damn is it ever useful!
The list goes on.. and on… and on… SO MUCH UTILITY, IT LEAKS OUT OF OUR VERY PORES! Instead of going through every single spell we get (and they’re ALL useful) Lets move on to what OTHER soul you should use with dominator as lets face it, this is Rift and you get to pick 3 classes no guide would be complete without at least a “Hey look at these souls they’re good too!” so without any further ado… THE LIST (sorted in order of…. whatever I feel like!)
STORMCALLER:
Remember awhile ago I mentioned Dominators mana problems? Well, if you’re not fighting a caster they get BAD and they get there FAST. That’s where Stormcaller comes in, they do take a bit of points to get up but that’s what our extra soul points are for . You will want to have 12 points set aside for Stormcaller. Namely, you want to snag Recharge and then the 2 points that make it better. This grants you even more utility by being able to pump mana into your entire group and you can do it reliably.
The Stormcaller DOES bring other goodies to our tray though, We get a decent AoE for helping clear out trash pulls when squirreling a mob is just a time sink. We get an AOE SNARE that with 5 points in Arctic chill (on the way to recharge) Snares the targets in 7 meters of the target for 75% of their speed for 10 seconds. That’s a pretty brutal snare considering most snares are 50% this spell makes them look like they’re crawling. And a second single target snare for the same 75% for 10 seconds.
ARCHON:
You already are a utility powerhouse. Why not throw in the best buffs experience has to buy! at only 15 points into the tree you get access to a spell that drops the targets armor by a fair amount, an awesome raid wide Endurance buff, an awesome raid wide armor buff, Another snare (that speeds you up) and a charge draining ability that reduces the targets damage by 10%. Sound familiar?:
and then there is…
THE ELEMENTALIST:
This gives you access to a fairly decent increase in DPS, a pet so you can off tank a second mob while waiting on the CD from your mez (your pet will stop fighting a mez’d target unlike a player so its PERFECT) and at 6 points in a great Charge-> Mana converter for in-between fights. 75% of a bar of charge will usually give you full mana. For a PvP build going 15 points up to max out Tempest (+50% crit damage) and Charged (+10% crit chance on Lightning strike) and Biting cold (5% spell crit boost) You get a really nice set up for Spiking a target.
Remember above when I mentioned the 1v1 Trick with mez and a hard hitting nuke, Lightning strike fits this perfectly, in a duel its easy with a Dom/Ele/SC build to Mez the target then line up a Lighning bolt at +50% damage from Controlled Opportunity (form dom) then +25% chance to crit (5 from Biting cold 10 from charged, 10 from High voltage) +50% crit DAMAGE and spike somone for about 500 or so then instant mez them again. It does have a 10 second cooldown but in a duel your mez will keep em down for 15 seconds which is just long enough to Rinse/Repeat.
Well those are my $0.02 and my very first guide. I know its not much but… well I didn’t charge you anything for it so enjoy it or go away.
