I Get It Now

[VV]

Long-time fan of Controllers. Controller is one of my 2 mains. Controller was my first 50. I've always said that Controller is one of my favorite ATs (I might have control issues). And, I always argued with people who claimed controllers are slow killers. I'm like, no way, mine rips through stuff. But, now I realized why I mistakenly believed that. When I say I love Controllers, I actually meant, I love A Controller. My Grav/Storm. After reading much in these forums, I now realize it is one of the top damage combos in the AT, so my experience is skewed. I did not choose it because of that, I just liked the powers and the combo.

 

So, I recently started a Plant/Kin. It's like 30-ish now and I get it. I mean, it's great. Lots of nice buffs, debuffs, and controls. Fun animations and special effects.  Nice and safe for soloing. Great on a team. But, holy cow, it takes foreeeeeeeeeeever to kill anything. If I can manage a few stacks of Siphon Power, it speeds up the kill-rate to medium-slow, but that takes a bit to build up, and can be tough to maintain. It is great fun to play, and I don't plan on retiring it, but thank goodness I made it on the server with the all-plant SG, so I'll have plenty of teammates.

 

I learned my lesson, now. I will never gloat about Controller kill-speed again!

 

On the other hand, I am only a few levels from Fulcrum Shift, so we'll see if I change my mind again.

 

Edited December 23, 2019 by VV

[Tahliah]

Heh, so true, @VV!  Plants are slow killers solo, even with Flytrap, Creepers, and Fulcrum Shift, when compared to some other controllers.  My ill/kin crushes mobs solo and is a blast to play either solo or on teams.  I typically only team on plant trolls because they are so much slower, but they are fun for stuff like Halloween or opening presents solo.

 

All that said, once you get your plant troll up to 50 and get him or her slotted out, you'll find a big difference in damage (depending on how you build).  I love to duo my 50 plant troll and she solos well, too, though that's not my first choice on her (I love to solo my main, a blaster, so I may be spoiled in terms of dps). 

 

And all that said, I'm so thrilled that you rolled yours on Excelsior and will be joining our plant troll team festivities!!  Yay!

[oedipus_tex]

Kinetics is annoying in that the critical power, Fulcrum Shift, doesn't come til level 38. What a game changer it is though. You could probably delete all of Kinetics (okay that's an exaggeration, but you get the idea) and just have Fulcrum Shift and Kinetics would still be a top set.

 

/Kinetics Controllers really hit their stride tho in the mid 40s. Once Fulcrum is IOed and you have an AoE attack of some kind, as well as potentially an extra pet from the Villain APPs (great on a Kin character) you'll chew through enemies like a lawnmower. Sorry, Plant jokes.

[Leogunner]

Have you invested in damage procs?

[VV]

2 hours ago, Leogunner said:

Have you invested in damage procs?

I haven't yet. I usually don't bother slotting procs until 50.

[Coyote]

Well, that would be why you're thinking that they do little damage.

I'm playing an Earth/Cold and it has solid damage, only because of procs... 3 in the Hold, 3 in Infrigidate, and mobs actually die at reasonable speeds for what's a truly low-damage combination.

/Kin especially should invest in procs no later than 38, since Fulcrum Shift will take care of base damage slotting.

[Shadowfane]

5 damage procs and a recharge io in creepers.

 

Your kill speed against groups will go up significantly.

[Frosticus]

fulcrum, seeds, transference, creepers, aoe immob, creepers and siphonspeed/ir to move quickly to the next spawn.

 

then you want fissure. 

 

everything changes once you can focus almost entirely on offense. 

[MTeague]

Are you refusing to use Seeds of Confusion or something?  taht would greatly boost your kill speed and overall XP per time, eve if your XP per kill dipped a small %.

[VV]

On 12/31/2019 at 8:36 PM, MTeague said:

Are you refusing to use Seeds of Confusion or something?  taht would greatly boost your kill speed and overall XP per time, eve if your XP per kill dipped a small %.

Even with that, the kill-speed is still significantly slower than my grav/storm.

[Frosticus]

37 minutes ago, VV said:

Even with that, the kill-speed is still significantly slower than my grav/storm.

vs a single tough target? sure

but vs trash mobs it shouldnt be. plant/kin/stone is a legit s/l farmer. It can clear trash mobs at a very respectable rate. 

[Riverdusk]

Exactly, plant I find can be slow against tough single targets, but it wipes out hordes of minions super fast once you get all of its powers.  Gravity is the opposite with little AoE damage.  Having storm as secondary kind of helps both of their cases.  Storm is pretty great and I wonder how much that is affecting your experience.

 

You truly want slow try a poor ice controller, but at least the mobs are slow too. 😁

[oedipus_tex]

The lowest damage set is Earth. It's a solid control set, but its two single target powers each take almost 2 seconds to cast. At least Ice's Chillblain casts in 1.17 seconds. On top of that, Earth has no access to Confusion to help up the numbers, which at least Ice intermittently has.

 

Earth does make up for it somewhat with a super solid pet, though.

 

[VV]

On 1/2/2020 at 10:44 PM, Riverdusk said:

Having storm as secondary kind of helps both of their cases.  Storm is pretty great and I wonder how much that is affecting your experience.

Oh, hugely, and I freely admit that. Debuffs and damage FTW

[Razia]

I have no idea what you guys are talking about. I have a 50 Ill/Dark (perma PA, Musculature, Assault, 215% global recharge) and a 50 Plant/Dark (Musculature, Assault, 216% global recharge). My Ill will never be as fast as my plant who can run almost anything at /x8, this would take forever on my Ill who is able to solo AVs and GMs but running quick at x8? No way.

 

My plant kills on a reasonable speed, especially when I compare her to some of my melee toons. You guys do slot Carrion Creepers and AoE immob for damage, do you?

[Shadowfane]

My 50 is a plant/fire/flame dom, so I am now forever spoiled when it comes to plant, because fire assault with it is just hilarious- plant and fireball/rain of fire/judgement for AoE, blaze and blazing bolt for single target - it's brutal.

 

Had to go cardiac for alpha though, the endurance issues were... extensive 😛

[oedipus_tex]

Plant is a set that was originally designed for Dominators and only later provided to Controllers, so its damage focus may come from that.

 

I actually suspect that the damage in Roots is a bug. It does exactly double damage of all other AoE immobilizes. It's like when the Plant Control Dominator set was created, someone grabbed the value for a Controller immobilize and used the value with Containment (x2 damage). Then when they ported it to Controllers, they added Containment back on top of that. Working against this theory is the fact that Plant's double damage comes from 2 different damage types (Smashing and Lethal) so I could just be wrong. It's just weird that only one of the immobilizes deals exactly double damage. Fire Control deals less damage with its immobilize than Plant despite 'extra damage' being Fire's "thing." 

Edited January 12, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Tamorand]

Let me say that Plant / Storm kills just as fast as your Grav / Storm
And Illusion / Storm
And Fire / Storm

And... anything / Storm

@Maxzero made an Ill / Storm build for the pylon thread that pushed past 700 DPS.
Perhaps you might just need to stick with Storm  (I'm a little biased...  )

 

Controller - Plant - Storm Rgd_Psy Def Softcapped

 

Spoiler

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1562&c=718&a=1436&f=HEX&dc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

 

Edited January 16, 2020 by Tamorand