TygerDarkstorm

Yes, I have noticed this--I noted it a bit in my first feedback post I believe and I'll reiterate here after playing with it again last night that I don't think Spore Burst feels very sticky. If it goes live as is, I'd probably considered still skipping it in my build (at least on my plant/marine controller). Both Elec Control and Arsenal's sleep patches feel better. I agree with this--why are you testing a control set against mobs that are notoriously control resistant? This seems like you're setting the changes up for failure. I played Plant on a controller against Council and Tuatha and while the defeating is slower and I do think Plant can use a damage buff, Plant does not feel nearly as horrible as folks are trying to make out, especially when they're testing against mobs control doesn't work on anyway. The new plant plays fine, it was fun, and I like that there's some options for power picks for build variety. Also, devs, Spirit Tree needs better taunt or this power basically remains a solid skip. At no point in my testing has this thing managed to keep mobs from attacking me, even before I've launched any offensive against them (e.g., I dropped it to break the alpha and just walking closer to the mobs turned their attention to me over the tree, let alone if I'm starting to layer controls on them.

Some thoughts from jumping up to level 30 before I go to bed: Getting Creepers and Fly Trap definitely made a huge difference and sped up the killing process. I thought the Fly Trap felt useful in terms of damage contribution--when it's engaged with the mobs, I kill things quite a bit faster than without it. I'm not sure if Fly Trap's AI needs to be adjusted? It frequently followed me into the middle of mobs instead of staying at range. I'm not sure if that's because as Marine I'm jumping into melee or if it's the AI not keeping it at range until combat is over. I've never proc'd out creepers, so I can't comment to that change for them--I thought when they were out they felt similar to live. I didn't find much use for spirit tree--I actually do think there's some build flexibility with the new plant. I could probably comfortably drop spirit and either seeds or spore burst. Killing things is slower, but not awful by any means once you finally get your full kit. While I do kind of wish the duration of seeds was a tad longer, I don't hate these changes as much after playing with them more and I was honestly having fun on my plant/marine troller.

Don't be dumb like me kids; take Roots. I don't even really know why I skipped it, but don't be like me. That made a huge difference in being able to take out a spawn and puts my Plant troller a lot closer to my Elec controller at the same level. It still seems a tad slow against even level mobs (I still think my Elec is killing faster), but definitely not as slog-like. So, for other testing feedback: I like the new adaptive recharge for Seeds--it feels much better to play with, especially when you're running at smaller team sizes like I tend to do with solo. I also kind of like that you don't have to rely on Seeds as the crutch of the entire Plant Control set. I still think Spirit Tree needs work--the regen part seems fine; my health does pretty well when near it in the middle of a mob, however, this thing is not able to keep aggro from me whatsoever; I have yet to see the mobs be more interested in it than myself, and perhaps this is because I don't use it to take an alpha strike. I will bump this character up again so I can test Creepers now that they're not bugged.

Yep, respeccing into it now since I realized skipping it was a mistake.

I used a combination of the below powers; this was before build 2 though, so I do need to test with the build 2 changes, I've just been short on time. Since I logged in the Plant/Marine for this screenshot, I'll go ahead and toy with it some more. Everything is just auto-slotted with common IOs. To be clear: My Plant/Marine can mostly contain things safely and take them out, it just felt like it was quite a bit more time consuming than it would be on live for even level mobs. It felt like playing my live Arsenal/Marine controller--he doesn't kill things quickly, but he does it in utter safety. Edit: Sorry, it's also worth mentioning both controllers were being played at +0/x2 and the only thing that slowed the Elec down was the +1 mobs in my mission. Off to play with the Plant/Marine again. Edit: Still noticeably slower, though I suspect skipping roots isn't helping, so I'll respec into that.

After testing an Elec/Sonic controller at level 20, Plant at this level feels reeeeeeaaaallly sluggish. I thought it might be the critter changes, but my Elec controller, while defeating slower, doesn't feel nearly as drastic as the Plant/Marine I was testing. Please consider giving plant some sort of damage boost or something. Electric Control feels great to play on Beta, while Plant decidedly does not. Keep in mind that leveling is still the majority of this game, that many, if not most, players are like myself and running SO and common IO builds. Plant at level 20 gameplay in current beta feels like playing Electric before the beta buffs.

I desire to retract this a tad-I rolled an elec/sonic controller to test the new elec control changes and while things do take a bit longer to defeat, it's not nearly as slog feeling as on plant. Elec feels pretty great right now.

I'm still testing, but I just wanted to drop a quick comment based on the little bit of testing I've done so far: I rolled an Elec/Sonic Troller and boosted it to level 10. Early game for Elec Control feels so much better so far! I wanted to start my testing at a lower level since my experience with elec control has been that it has a bit of a painful early game. The jolting chain buff is noticeable at this level and putting quite the punch in baddies. The end drain seems like it's working fast too and even at 10 and not slotted for sapping, I'm able to neuter enemies pretty effectively. I love the new visual upgrade to jolting chain as well--it feels very satisfying. As of right now, playing Elec against the newly buffed critters doesn't feel as bad as on the plant/marine troller I'm testing; we'll see how it goes as I bump this one in levels. Thank you for making it so elec's early game doesn't feel so awful anymore.

I am going to miss a good chunk of June--it's summer, school's out, and my parents are in town and want to do things with my daughter and I next weekend, and the 21st and 28th we're doing Girl Scout camps. The themes look great though and I'm bummed I missed today and will miss a bunch of others. Thank you for the hard work you put into coming up with the themes and keeping this running, Frau. ❤️

That's good to know! So many people seem to like it, I assume that either I am not using/understanding it correctly, or perhaps I was missing something with it.

On a level 20 plant/marine troller with basic IOs in beta, yes, I felt like just trying to take down even level groups was a slog. The changes made might not be noticeable on every AT, but tankers and some trollers/doms are feeling it. At the moment, it's noticeably slower than on live, but I haven't been able to extensively test.

This is kind of how I feel about the Page 2 changes to critter health regen--why are we making things more of a slog? Because of the sect of people who are blowing through +4/x8 solo? This change hurts players like myself who play as @Captain Fabulous mentions: with SO's and common IO's and sub-optimized builds. CoH isn't a for profit game anymore and making mobs more of a slog to defeat for those of us average players may cause some of us to leave the game, especially if we have limited time to play anyway. It's one of the reasons I do try my best to be a part of beta testing because I see so many people jump into beta threads and comment based on their transferred over IO'd to the gills level 50 character and it's like, okay, but how does this perform while leveling? While not twinked? I haven't been able to beta test much this time around because my real life has been a bit consuming, but I appreciate anyone who says, hey, don't forget about the average players in these discussions and not just the geared out OP folks.

I had a last minute change of plans come up for tomorrow, so I will be unable to make it.

Thank you for this. I look forward to testing the set again with these changes and hoping it doesn't feel as sloggish as it did before.

Exactly, no feedback thread for this change and rolling it out at the same time as sweeping AT changes is not good. I truly don't think all of the plant changes are *horrible*; the new vines change is actually pretty cool. However, when combined with the mob changes, it leaves Plant feeling a bit anemic when testing right now and it's hard to know how to report on that. And I do agree with others that the Seeds changes went too far. I haven't tested Carrion Creepers yet, but the devs have acknowledged those are bugged right now and it may be better to wait until they patch Creepers before testing them in their current state. I think if these changes were made with how the mobs act currently on live, Plant would not feel as bad as it does right now, but as it stands, are the plant changes bad or are the mob changes overtuned? Making the game more of a slog because it was "too easy" is not the way to go, imo. Not all of us play twinked out characters or geared to the gills 50's, and these changes hurt those players (of which I am one).

Likely. I suspect, as I've seen others mention, high damage AT's that already have little trouble killing things likely won't notice much of a change, but others that have slower rates of killing will. I find this mob change introduced at the same time as sweeping AT changes is poor timing and makes it hard to know how to report the changes--e.g., are the tanker changes actually bad or do the mob changes need tuning and the tanker changes are mostly fine?

Piggybacking on this--frankly I think introducing the changes to mob regen at the same time as doing massive AT changes is poorly done. It's now hard to know in testing if the Plant changes are utterly horrible due to the plant changes, or if they're mostly fine but it's the mob changes that are the issue. For those who didn't see, here are the mob changes that are affecting kill speed, so this has to be kept in mind when testing, along with the actual changes made to plant: Critters Only: All -regen debufs (not flagged to be irresistible) should now be resisted by magnitude, not duration Reduced the magnitude of many (not all) low recharge -regen debuffs with magnitudes greater than -100% All critters now regenerate health 5% of their health every 12 seconds (does not include GMs or AVs)

Keep in mind that changes were also made to mobs that increased their regen, which is contributing to the slower feel of killing arresting mobs.

I was; I still didn't feel like it made a huge difference.

I'm not sure if everyone dooming and glooming these changes have actually tested them on beta yet or not. I didn't think all the changes felt horrible as of level 20 (I will try to do more testing at higher levels later). However, there are noticeable differences and I am unsure if they're all good. We all knew Seeds was going to take a hit at some point as it was wildly overtuned for where it's at in the tiers, but I do agree that it got over-nerfed. Duration and target caps reduced feels terrible in leveling play as an average (e.g., not twinked, not exemping, just basics skills player). While you can layer this with Spore Burst for layered mez/control, that technique doesn't feel so great either as Spore Burst is also left feeling like a shortish duration. I like the idea behind the changes to Spirit Tree, however, it's taunting power sucks. Doing a Council mish at +0/x2 and while the regen did noticeably help keep me alive, the tree taunted maybe 1 of the 12 or so opponents I tested it on. This made me have to rely far more on Vines to keep me safe. The Vines changes are fantastic, however. This power was reliably holding groups and dealing damage and even reholding enemies who broke free of the hold. I did feel like it took a long time to kill the mobs though, which felt weird when plant is usually known for damage--taking almost as long as my arsenal controller to arrest mobs doesn't feel good, especially when my plant controller can't control the groups as effectively as my arsenal controller can. I do hope the devs rethink the scale to which they've nerfed plant control--I accept that Seeds needed a change, but something is feeling a little overdone. I will probably still play plant, but I do plan to do more testing as some of these changes are not feeling as good.

So far testing on a level 20 plant/marine controller, I still feel as if spore burst is skippable. I'm sure the sleep is stickier compared to before, but I still feel as if the mobs are waking up pretty quickly and I'm relying far more on Tide Pool and Vines to help with mob mitigation.

As of right now, I'm also not feeling like I'm noticing much of a difference.

Does a plague doctor costume work? If not, I'll tweak my toon's costume. I will be there on Botanical Pathogen - Plant/Poison Controller.

I feel like that fits.

I just checked on my Dark Armor tank, the option is there, but not in the individual powers. You can see it on the drop down from the top where you choose if you want original, color tinted, soul noir, etc.