Plant/Psi or Mind/Fire?

[Dropwing]

Thinking of rolling a Dom and can't choose between Plant/Psi or Mind/Fire. I have strong theme/costumes/names for both but only the time/inclination to play one and only want to buy Very Rare/AT/Winter IOs and enhancement boosters for one build. So I thought I'd ask here and get some opinions. For people who've played either and have experience, what's more fun and also at the top-end if one was inclined to solo end-game content which performs better if even marginally and can handle more overall content (difficulty, AVs, GMs)? 

[Neuro-son]

I cant speak behalf plant/psi but iv heard its one of the best dom combos especially for soloing. Currently thought i am playing a mind/fire and absolutely loving it. Mind control is just amazing in my opinion and amazing for soloing. I was on a MLTF with a team but asked if i can just try something and I just sat there and confused GW and she killed 2 of the other AVs for me. Fire is one of the best dom secondaries for ST damage (Fire is always a good choice) but just depends on if you are bored of fire yet. I have my mind/fire softcapped on ranged defense so its a ranged toon and i think with plant/psi is will be in melee range to get benefits of drain psyche but its your choice! I might just be partial to mind/fire cause im playing it but i might roll a plant/psi or a fire/psi soon.

[oedipus_tex]

These are two wildly different play experiences.

 

Plant/Psi is an in-your-face brawler who can lock down spawn after spawn and, because of Drain Psyche, kind of just not die. Farming is definitely in the wheelhouse for this build.

 

Mind/Fire is probably a ranged character, suitable for Hovering, high single target damage because of Fire, but the long Recharge on Mass Confusion can limit you.

 

 

If I was going to spend money on one of the two it would be the Plant in part because its better positioned to earn the money back and also because adding recharge/defense to a Drain Psyche build improves it so massively, where Mind/Fire could probably get away with a "trust fund build" I wrote about in a guide on this forum.

[Xiddo]

I main a plant/psi/ice but team quite regularly with a mind/fire/ice. As Tex said, they are very different. 

Plant kinda relies on the enemies doing the heavy lifting and regen'ing yourself out of any problems that spring up. Chaos and smash. More AoE than ST but you can defo make-do. If you miss on the seeds cone and vines isn't recharged then you can sometimes get yourself into a hole, but shockwave with dom acts as another control. Dip between melee and ranged, I'm soft on s/l with a fair amount in ranged but cant remember the exact amount off the top of my head.

I always forget how annoying it is when the seeds dont work on the khels in ITF, so I sometimes get a bit of a hiccup there. And the psi-robot-resistance thing has been written about at length. But procs and the ice powers can help there.

Mind has a few more control powers which are useful if something else gets aggroed and things start going pear-shaped, with fire taking them down one-by-one. You'll be able to solo TFs for sure, dont know about the GMs. The Mind/Fire I play with likes to show-off that he can confuse the big crystal in the Eden trial, while I waft seeds and get killed. Feels more at home ranged it seems.

 

Try both, they're very fun.

[troya]

My first foray into Dominators is a plant/psi with permadom. I actually wrote off controls and enjoyed melee and range after a very meh experience with a illusion/ff controller many years ago. I wanted to give Doms a shot for once... and I absolutely LOVE my plant/psi. Drain Psyche is really that good. Seeds of Confusion is really that good. Roots is really that good. Ok, you get the idea.

 

I haven't played Mind/Fire, but I can tell you that plant/psi is enough of a "in your face scrapper" that it satisfied my melee range needs. Not to mention the fact that many of the powers in psi do best when you're in close range.

 

When building, I focused on +recharge and +defense of course. Permadom is great by itself, but you really can really enjoy destroying things when you're at the S/L defense soft cap too.

Edited December 31, 2020 by troya

[Greycat]

I'll just say mind/fire is insanely fun and the first dom (back on live) where I started ratcheting up difficulty really early... like in the single digit levels. (Also has the benefit of two non aggroing confuses and two sleeps - the latter of which can shut down some surprising things.) It can allow some fairly aggressive play.

 

It's just a *lot* of fun.

[Mezmera]

If you only want to make one why not Mind/Energy?  Energy has surpassed Fire in all aspects.  Thanks to the Energy Release mechanic no longer locking you out there's for certain no combo of attacks on a dom that can keep pace with the damage of Total Focus, Power Burst and Snipe.  On top of that you get power boost which amplifies all of your controls and defenses.  I cap every aspect of my defenses on a dom with a power boost ability, not so for one without, so you can play your capped defense dom any which way you please, be it hovering or zerging.  

 

Yes with the nerf to Whirling Hands Psi is back to being better in pbaoe damage but there's other areas you can pull pbaoe damage from.  Plant is strong though yes, the confuse is too good and because they were busy with other things it never got the rebalancing that Mass Confusion received with Mind being a legacy power from the beginning.  

[Hockeytown]

On 12/31/2020 at 11:53 AM, Greycat said:

I'll just say mind/fire is insanely fun and the first dom (back on live) where I started ratcheting up difficulty really early... like in the single digit levels. (Also has the benefit of two non aggroing confuses and two sleeps - the latter of which can shut down some surprising things.) It can allow some fairly aggressive play.

 

It's just a *lot* of fun.

Hi Greycat.  Mind/fire strikes me as it would be fun for my first dom.  Do you have tips around leveling and tactic changes as you gain levels?  Maybe have you posted a build in another thread?

 

Thanks!

[Greycat]

14 minutes ago, Hockeytown said:

Hi Greycat.  Mind/fire strikes me as it would be fun for my first dom.  Do you have tips around leveling and tactic changes as you gain levels?  Maybe have you posted a build in another thread?

 

Thanks!

Honestly... no. I just play them as they come. And I don't do "builds" - not to be selfish or think mine are some uber-special-secret-sauce, I just rarely bother with planning them out and take things as they come. If we could export builds, I suspect people would cringe at some of what I play. 🙂 They work for me, though.

[DreadShinobi]

I played both Plant/Psi and Mind/Fire as mains back on live but did not remake them on homecoming. Plant/Psi I used as a farmer, as carrior creepers let you bypass the aggro cap, but this is less relevant now. Mind/Fire I used for soloing the LRSF, among other things. Fiery Assault is very late blooming, you won't get your bread or your butter until lvl 35/38. Plant and Psi bloom much earlier with Seeds of Confusion and Drain Psyche coming in by lvl 20 and keep getting better as you stack on more global recharge to your build. I recommend Plant Control for any new dominator because seeds of confusion and Roots are so strong and SoC lets you learn just how effective confusion is pretty quickly.

[Hockeytown]

52 minutes ago, Greycat said:

Honestly... no. I just play them as they come. And I don't do "builds" - not to be selfish or think mine are some uber-special-secret-sauce, I just rarely bother with planning them out and take things as they come. If we could export builds, I suspect people would cringe at some of what I play. 🙂 They work for me, though.

OK, No problem.  I tend to take a bunch of damage stuff early and respec, but in this case much of the control stuff too.  The mind damage at least from T1 is not half bad.

44 minutes ago, DreadShinobi said:

I played both Plant/Psi and Mind/Fire as mains back on live but did not remake them on homecoming. Plant/Psi I used as a farmer, as carrior creepers let you bypass the aggro cap, but this is less relevant now. Mind/Fire I used for soloing the LRSF, among other things. Fiery Assault is very late blooming, you won't get your bread or your butter until lvl 35/38. Plant and Psi bloom much earlier with Seeds of Confusion and Drain Psyche coming in by lvl 20 and keep getting better as you stack on more global recharge to your build. I recommend Plant Control for any new dominator because seeds of confusion and Roots are so strong and SoC lets you learn just how effective confusion is pretty quickly.

Thank you for the heads up.  I'll try getting on some teams for a while.

[Coyote]

On 12/31/2020 at 1:33 PM, Mezmera said:

If you only want to make one why not Mind/Energy?  Energy has surpassed Fire in all aspects.  Thanks to the Energy Release mechanic no longer locking you out there's for certain no combo of attacks on a dom that can keep pace with the damage of Total Focus, Power Burst and Snipe.  On top of that you get power boost which amplifies all of your controls and defenses.  I cap every aspect of my defenses on a dom with a power boost ability, not so for one without, so you can play your capped defense dom any which way you please, be it hovering or zerging.  

 

Yes with the nerf to Whirling Hands Psi is back to being better in pbaoe damage but there's other areas you can pull pbaoe damage from.  Plant is strong though yes, the confuse is too good and because they were busy with other things it never got the rebalancing that Mass Confusion received with Mind being a legacy power from the beginning.  

 

I agree with Mezmera that Energy is clearly better than Fire as a secondary.

 

That said, Fire is a range-oriented secondary, and so is Mind, and they work very well as a ranged HoverDom (HooverDom? HooverDam? 😛 ). I certainly wouldn't consider /Fire on any close-range Dominator. But with Mind's ranged ability, playing all at range is a nice option if you take Fire, while Energy forces you to go into melee to use it well.

[oedipus_tex]

One nice thing about Energy paired with Mind is the Power Up effect multiplying the duration of Mass Confusion and Total Domination. On most other control sets the extra duration isn't that impacftul (altho it is for the secondary effects in Dark and Electric though).

 

Mind Control though has a lot riding on enemies hit by Mass Confusion never waking up, especially when solo. If they do, you have few clean ways to shut them down again because Mass Confusion has 4 times the recharge of powers like Seeds and 2.6 times the recharge of Flashfire/Wormhole/Stalagmites. Terrify and Mass Hypnosis can somewhat help with this but neither is a very reliable power when you start facing huge packs (though they are quite good in certain kinds of careful play).

 

Aside from amazing single target DPA for a Dominator, Fiery also gets Consume, which amounts to a free blue bar refill every 50 seconds or so on a permadom build. That, paired with the end bar refill from Domination, is enough to keep your bar full at all times and turn to a Destiny power like Barrier or Rebirth and/or extra slots in Health/Stamina that other Assault sets may be pushed to take in order to cover their endurance holes. 

Edited January 23, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[Frosticus]

Keep in mind that fiery embrace is up more than it is down on a perma dom build and it is a long lasting buff allowing multiple rounds of attacks to get out.

It averages out to over +50% damage over time, which is significant for such a low (self) buffing AT. It also helps doms deliver meaningful aoe damage by boosting fireball and rain of fire.

 

/nrg is in a great spot, but I'd still take /fire for single target destruction if for no other reason than not having to be in melee range stuck using a 2.7 second long attack to unlock my damage boost. /fire can hit FE, blaze and have the damage from blazing bolt landing at roughly the same time that /nrg is landing its first TF. Maybe it will catch up, maybe it won't. Both are great sets for dealing out good damage. 

[JnEricsonx]

Split the difference and go Plant/Fire.   I have seen those doms FARM.  Kind of incredible.