Almighty Magic

I don't usually post but for the 2 weeks I was dipping my toes back into the game. I have not played consistently in 4 months or so. I missed all the updates and all that, so I spent the last few weeks reading and then hopped on the test server to get the skills unrusted/derustified/COH CLR? Anyway was trying out the new changes and for the first time I tried out Trick Arrow....Never made one and the changes seemed interesting enough. Its pretty solid/all around performer......not too fast nor painfully slow. Safe but no where near invincible. Plant I heard was rough to use in the Hard Mode ITF due to the resists, but even on my Plant Dom I learned to play without using confuse so it was not that bad for me personally. I thought at first I would take this toon live, but I am on the fence about it. I like the flow but I am leaning towards getting away from Plant for a while. Here are some test runs I did once I got the hang/flow of the sets together. Did few things to show off it's diversity.... (Apologies for the crappy video quality I used a free program and didn't think to change the settings). 3 star unyielding ITF +4 4x8 - Just a brief few mobs in the early part (also apologies for cutting that short my son needed something so I had to bail out the mission mid boss fight). I found confuse can work in small doses so I hit it a few times to get a cheap heal from the enemy. I have done more of the level in other tests but its a slog solo, and its not like I can actually finish it so I bail to make changes or test other toons. Lots of deaths when the enemies ignore my slows and slow patch....or the hyper accurate squids come out....but to be expected. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NygVXl0Re8c Road Tunnel Farm +4 4x8 - Needed to see what arrow could do when swarmed/farming. I could only do 2 mobs at once with safety. My Dom can do 3+ mobs at once so its just ok for farming. Not slowest nor the fastest.....I didn't finish the farm since it was just testing....the vid is just a snippet not the full farm. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu21qqdBEWM Trapdoor run +4 4x8- Could not get a sub 5.00 run to save my life. Just not enough quick charging AOE. I would have to get rid of Earth to get a better time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rgHiX63SVM But if anyone is on the fence about using Plant/Trick Arrow for high level stuff don't be, its a very solid and versatile combo. Plant can do anything and TA has a large tool kit. I didn't really save any of the builds because I was changing stuff on the fly (incarnates/IO's etc). The build is nothing fantastic by itself I change things for my playstyle and techniques. I focused on procs/35 def ranged/300+ regen. The only build I kept was an earlier attempt using Water Spout (which did well). Plant Trick Arrow Attempt 1.mxd

Honestly roots has more of a clear speed effect than Rain does. Not that Rain doesn't do its thing but roots spammed with the orb pet will clear mobs super fast along with everything else.

Before I retired my Dom 4:55 trapdoor run. Did not do a recorded pylon and I don't remember what my pylon time was. It wasn't elite I do remember that.

Finalized my build on the test server, got a feel for the playstyle now and ready to take it live. New time is 4:22 secs

Well Creepers have a mind of their own and kinda stop attacking randomly which can skew the farm times. I circumvent that happening by standing in the middle of the mob as long/often as I can. I find that keeps the vines out more consistently than if your standing outside the pile of bodies. Not easy to do on a lot of builds but if you can handle it you will notice the difference.

Well more Creepers is not great really. With multiple Creepers going together it mixes a bit of each persons Creepers together to make one. This is often problematic cause if your playing on teams if someone has lesser slotting in Creepers than you do, it will be very noticeable that your Creepers are not doing what your used to seeing it do.....if that makes sense. The best pairing for a Plant Dom in a farm scenario is (in order of personal importance/experience) Sonic/Cold toons or Fire Control Doms or Trollers. They mix will with Creepers and amplify the damage and kill speed better than say a kin working with you would. The one cool thing you can do to make multiple Creepers work is to have the other Plant person start Creepers about 10 to 15 feet from you (meteor farm) and create a massive kill zone that will aggro the world. But again if the Creeper slotting is less than optimal then it won't be very successful. I forgot to mention if multiple users DO have optimal slotting then you can get a higher burst damage from Creeper than normal.

(in best Nicolas Cage voice) That's high praise....

Yeah I think I average 4.33 to 4.60 I have only hit inside the 20's 3 times in I don't know how many runs.

Go to menu - then options - then on the windows tab scroll down till you see "powers"...you will see an option called "power recharge indicators" you select that. You can choose where the numbers appear (top/middle/bottom).

Rad Rad Tanker I am making soon....Not done with my build testing yet so its still on the Test Server. 4:28 but I can do better I think.

Here is my Plant Dom....I get 5:06 to 5:30 pretty consistently but I do dip into the low 4:50s if I don't miss too much. This run is my best at 4:55. I think I can improve it a bit with some tweaks/practice.

Here is a quick vid of some average farming and a paper mish in Grandville. I wanted to show a continuous run so sorry for the travel and load screens. I don't play with sound so none of the pew pew for those who enjoy that sort of thing. One the missions I also did a few mobs without creepers just to show what that looks like. As of a month or so ago I swapped from fire to mu to better deal with the 801 missions so I have to eat more candy in farms than I am used to. I have been farming squishes since live so I tend to use more of a skill based approach than just strong builds.

Yeah with my Dom I go more for the active killing. I only confuse 1 of the 3 mobs I and creepers pull. I throw creepers then I zip around the map aggroing mobs and bringing them back to creepers. Once they get gathered I aoe hold, stand in the middle of the scrum and start blasting, then rinse and repeat until done.

Speaking for me and my setup I kill faster than the confuse will work. I also try to use the aoe hold instead of confuse when its up. I don't really crunch the numbers regarding inf per run, but I mostly farm harder farms for challenge purposes not so much inf making. But with how I play and my build the idea is to kill before seeds takes away too much xp.

Yeah Creepers is a huge advantage in farms. Without using Creepers I average about 5 mins per run on an asteroid farm. With Creepers it gets to about 3:45 to 4 mins a run.