Dominus
Dominus, High Templar is the final boss of Act 3, located in The Upper Sceptre of God, on the very roof. Upon defeating him, Lady Dialla appears to congratulate the player and a portal opens to the next difficulty.
Abilities
| Skill | Effect | Damage | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| N. | C. | M. | ||
Strategy
The Dominus encounter is possibly the toughest and most complicated encounter before Maps, and in every difficulty it is of capital importance to have capped resistances, most importantly Lightning resistance. Instant-healing (seething/bubbling) life potions, resistance flasks and granite/jade flasks are extremely helpful during this fight. There are various stages to this encounter, each of which has different mechanics and strategies. If you are playing on a hardcore league, it is advisable to bring portal scrolls to this fight to replenish your potions during the fight, and to allow a quick escape should that be necessary.
Minibosses
Initially, Dominus himself will not fight. Instead, he will send three unique Legionnaires to fight for him - a spark-totem casting mage, a cold-damage dealing cyclone warrior, and a warrior who appears to use a fire-based attack similar to Lightning Strike. During this period, regular legionnaires will also enter the fray alongside the uniques, until all three uniques are dealt with.
This phase should not be too difficult if the player isolates the uniques from each other and deals with them one by one. None of the uniques is particularly formidable on their own.
After these three bosses are defeated, the next three minibosses will enter the arena - three unique miscreations similar to the ones found in the Lunaris Temple. Regular miscreations will spawn alongside them. The uniques are: a unique Tentacle Miscreation, a unique Whipping Miscreation and a unique miscreation using Reave.
Combined, these three uniques might pose a threat, but again, isolating them and dealing with them one by one should allow the player to complete this phase with minimal risk.
The First Phase - Human Dominus
After all minibosses have been defeated, Dominus will descend to the arena and fight alongside the miscreations from the previous phase which will continue spawning until the very end of the fight. If the miscreations annoy you, you can lure Dominus to a relatively quiet spot on the roof and deal with him there, though he will still move around a bit, possibly causing you to attract some of the miscreations anyway. He has both a sizable life pool and a comparatively small energy shield. He has various attacks, each of which is quite dangerous in its own right and can be anticipated through various things Dominus says before using them. The attacks are:
- An area-of-effect Lightning-based spell dealing very heavy damage. To counter this spell, either run away or make sure you have good lightning resistance and a decent life/ES pool. A Topaz flask, preferably with the "of Grounding" suffix, is immensely helpful against this attack.
- A rapid-firing attack which appears to be evadable/blockable, but is still very dangerous. This can be dodged without too much difficulty by walking perpendicular to its line of fire.
- A cold-damage dealing Searing Bond-like cluster of totems which deal damage over time. These do not deal a lot of damage and are easy to avoid.
- A flicker strike-like attack which Dominus uses to move around the arena.
The Second Phase - Dominus Ascendant
Once Dominus has lost all his life on the first phase, he will move to the center of the arena and turn into a bloodred insect-like being called Dominus, Ascendant. During this phase, he will have no energy shield left, but still a sizable life pool. It is important to stay close to him during this phase due to the nature of his attacks during this phase:
- A melee attack dealing sizable, but not incredibly high damage which appears to be hybrid physical/fire. You will probably have to tank this.
- A rain of blood in the entire arena except for a bubble around Dominus himself. You will want to stay inside the bubble or risk losing a lot of HP very rapidly. This is the most dangerous attack during the second phase and it is not advisable to risk getting caught up in it, so stay close to him at all times during this phase.