Ringo

Traps has a Debuff in Seeker Drones and powers Like Poison Trap and Caltrops that contribute to overall defense/not getting attacked. FF has Dampening Field now which has a good -tohit debuff, but may not be as effective at keeping minions alive and attacking. Personally on my Bots/FF I think I'd want the extra damage but I'd have to test it out

That's a really good question!

Power Boost - Cast Power Boost then cast or recast your bubbles. Those bubbles will be boosted until they fade. If you recast over the boosted bubbles without Power Boost you will replace the boosted bubbles with normal ones. Also Buttercup and Blossom. Bubbles. On IOs - getting the +def and +res unique pet IOs is important

My thoughts from that thread: " How it plays: Seeds->Roots->Freezing Rain->Tornado->Lightning Storm->Roots->Strangler Alternate Roots and Strangler on anything not Confused (Bosses and higher usually) and throw down parts of your original chain when they recharge if the mobs haven't melted. This combo generally eliminates minions/lts with ease, but struggles to really pour it on for hard targets. Tornado and Lightning Storm are your big hitters, but both Roots and Freezing Rain have -res procs (that will stack with each other) so don't forget to reapply. Lightning Storm, Roots, and Freezing Rain all benefit greatly from Procs, while I find that Tornado gets the most out of actually slotting damage. You *can* slot a KB/KD Proc in Lightning Storm, but basically if anything isn't already Rooted, you don't want it to close the distance with you anyway, so KB is hardly a problem. Spore Burst is an autohit (and I didn't want to slot it, but it was necessary) that can buy you some time, but you have to position the sleeping group away from your pets. Vines will also buy you time, but less of it, and on a longer recharge. Handy for stacking Holds though. Gale and Hurricane are excellent damage mitigation. Gale doesn't have the accuracy slotted to be a true lockdown power, but with a 50ft range and 80 degree cone, you're going to knock enough mobs on their butt to help. Hurricane gives that sweet -range and -30% Tohit debuff that combos with your sub-par melee defense to rise above the normal defensive Softcap. Ranged and AoE attackers within the Debuff will be having an even worse time. I believe the debuff range is slightly bigger than the hurricane animation? Don't quote me on that. Hurricane's Repel is also great as it can herd baddies into a corner for your tank or Tornado. Both the debuff and repel work together to help you create safe zones for your ranged teammates. Any mobs attempting to get through you to the blaster will have their tohit debuffed and their range shortened - meaning they will have to close the distance to even fire, which will then hit them with the repel and make them repeat the process. KB/KD resistant foes will ignore the repel, but then your ranged buddies just need to make sure that any melee attacks are still standing in your hurricane when they start swinging. Hug the Hurricane! Love the Hurricane! Of course, the Hurricane eats all your endurance - which is why you need Power Sink (and some choice Incarnate picks). Of all the Epic pools, Mu's Power Sink has 1) the quickest recharge and 2) No Accuracy Check. Between Power Sink and Lightning Storm you could potential sap your targets, but what you really want is to fill up your blue bar - and this will do that for you. Eat early, Eat often Seeds of Confusion is the bedrock on which the Plant/Storm is built. So it needs to be said - against Confuse resistant foes, all your normal plans go out the window. Gale, Hurricane, and Spore Burst suddenly become keys to survival, and you'll actually need to pay attention to killing the minions/lts instead of just assuming they're gonna melt. Be Wary of Longbow!"

This thread is from 2019, but if the builds will load there's a bunch of em. The last two posts are my updates in 2022. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/2352-plantstorm-controlled-chaos/page/2/

Eh, even in that thread Beasts drop from 2nd best to 4th just by adding IOs to the MM Primary build, to say nothing of leveraging the MM secondary or the player's playstyle. Beasts aren't unplayable by any means, but they can feel frustrating. Honestly, my Ninjas/Cold is from 2019 and was specifically built to try to build up the paper-thin Ninja defenses. If I were to make a new Beasts MM /Cold might be my goto once again

I have a Ninjas/Cold at 50 and a Beast/Kin at 41. Personally I have had more fun with the Ninjas overall and have found Beast rather lacking. Part of this is that /Kin is not a very forgiving set when it comes to keeping pets alive. Even with an entirely melee group whose targets you can direct, Transfusion isn't a replacement for Defenses or Resistances. Plus while Fortify Pack does give your pets Defenses, and /Kin doesn't need to worry much about the lost damage, you still need to build up stacks of Pack Mentality to actually use Fortify Pack and that can be frustrating if a fight is already forcing you to resummon. /Pain has World of Pain which will give your pets some extra toughness and better direct heals than /Kin, so it's not a bad choice (I really like /Pain), but in my experience I would rather have it with Ninjas than Beasts

How has this set pairing been treating you, @Onlyasandwich? For the heal problem, I would probably take Spirit Ward and slap it on the Bruiser hopefully letting him keep aggro while you resummon your T1s. I'd keep the Lts in permanent Bodyguard mode and then just treat the T1s as a kamikaze squad to eat alpha strikes and such. That's pretty much how the Arsonist AI behaves already, so no reason not to just get used to resummoning all 3. The end cost of constant rebubbling and upgrading might mean you need to spare some slots for EndRedux though...

Much appreciated!

By my count, players have access to 6 powers that apply -recovery to their foes: Thermal Radiation: Heat Loss Poison: Poison Trap Psionic Assault: Drain Psyche Mental Manipulation: Drain Psyche Electric Blast: Short Circuit Electric Blast: Thunderous Blast Everything else in the player arsenal only drains endurance. Am I missing any? Out of these, Heat Loss is the only one that is strictly Single Target and also Unehancable for endurance modification. Given that if you are looking for a playstyle that annihilates enemy blue bars and -recovery is the only way to keep those blue bars empty, which ATs and powersets would you want to achieve this with?

So I have a question about this build - is Heat Loss worth taking? In your build it's up every 100s. Do you find the -res and/or the team End gain to be useful often? I was just running around on an old Ninja/Cold MM and noticed his build didn't have Heat Loss and wondered if past me had incorrectly written the T9 off

Martial has a repositioning teleport in Burst of Speed which allows you to jump in and out when you need. If you set up a couple binds, one for Burst of Speed to target and then Burst of speed backwards 30ft you'll automatically line up your cones

What is the niche or playstyle that you get with a Bane? I know there's versatility with the mix of melee/ranged, cloaked crits, and the leadership toggles - but what can you do with a Bane these days that isn't replicated by Ninjitsu/Ninja Training on other ATs?

Mind doms are great

What's your typical gameplay so far? Do the immobilizes help?

Ice/Electric gets you the name THUNDERSNOW which I feel is a big selling point Grav/Dark gets you DARK HOLE ...which is potentially less of a selling point, I'll admit

Looking at City of Data it seems Gang War summons 9 thugs 100% of the time and then has varying percentage chances to summon up to an additional 4 thugs. So Necro is tied with Thugs+bad Rng, 4 behind Thugs+perfect Rng, and left in the dust by Thugs+Burnout Still, not bad for Necro, and I really love the masses of undead from the changes

You have 6 ghosts and 3 specters out. I'm not sure that's more than Gang War summons? If it is then it's a question of whether Burnout would get you more ghosts versus Burnout giving double Gang War to a Thugs mm

Eh, PA isn't broken IMO. Illusion is just a control set that trades AoE hard control for damage. Hard controlling your opponents is generally a preferable state as they can't cast their buffs/debuffs/aoe attacks. However! Purple Triangles of Doom push Illusion to the forefront of the controller meta as hard controls are shut down but Taunt is not. Take away the PToD and the other control sets have many more tools for team play. Illusion is still top tier for solo controllers though, cause, yaknow - damage

Also Blind has a very short range AoE sleep component to it. If you can kite two mobs into each other and hit one with Blind there's a good chance the other mob will get hit with Sleep. Beautiful for that early game aggro management

Yeah usually getting the armors up and realizing that all my Oh Shit buttons are on cooldown because I frantically clicked them all before I died is the moment when I die again. But hitting Barrier (or Howling Twilight if applicable) while screaming WITNESS ME is a true highlight in my gameplay

It Was Burning When I Got Here

But Self Rez into Barrier to rez the rest of the team is always such a thrill Don't need a healer! IAMTHEHYPE

I also enjoyed my Psi/Shield Scrapper

-recovery debuff as targets have panic attacks and hyperventilate Call it Overwhelming Anxiety