Any /Plant insights?

[senseichen]

I can't get any good data on /Plants, and I don't see much discussion of it here.  What are people's opinions?  Any gems?  Any duds?

 

An early ST Hold in the secondary looks promising, and make me really curious about Ice/Plant.  I'm committed to AR/ as my primary currently, though, for pun purposes.

 

While I'm here, do all the Blaster secondaries cause AR/ to have to re-draw their weapon if they use a secondary power?  Is the re-draw slowing down DPS?

[Novacat]

I can't say much about plants - I didn't like how it looked visually and never again touched it.

 

When you go to power customization (the one for the colors), you can set weapon based powers (so all your AR attacks for example) to "No Redraw". So basically when you select to make a power colored the way you want it you'll see something like "Light, Dark, Light No Redraw, Dark No Redraw".

 

A note: Arachnos soldiers in their FIRST costume slot don't seem to be able to do that - but their other costumes'll work fine.

[senseichen]

Thanks. No Redraw send to help. Does AR damage really drop off without that setting? It seems really weird that they'd put something so performance dependent in customization options.  I wish the secondaries didn't put your weapon away, like the Natural origin throwing star power. But this is a reasonable second best. 

 

/Plant seems good so far, I'm up to 20 now. I agree that the animations aren't great. I really wish we could disable all the thorns busting out of your skin stuff. (Except maybe for Skewer? I haven't taken it, but sounds like it makes sense as you turning your hand into a giant thorn.) As an old school blaster, it's got a lot of stuff that I wouldn't expect in a blaster secondary. ST Hold+Damage is great.  Wilderness Fortress is a double strength Stamina, plus a significant Absorb pulse. 

Although it sounds like /Devices is going to be crazy good now with some extra free recharge and web grenade buffs. So maybe the blaster secondaries have just been power creeping for a while now.

 

[Tater Todd]

It looks like a solid set and a weird combo of Plant Control and Thorny Assault.  I would probably use it if I was into Blapping.  Thorn Burst and Ripper make me nervous on a Blaster but if paired well and played right it probably could be very nasty!  Actually looking at it again you get access to a Mag 3 AOE Hold....that's huge.  Looks like with the right pairing and Procs /Plant for Blaster can be deadly and it would make you a unique and rare fighter.  You will be play like a Blaster/Controller/Dominator/Scrapper haha.  After this you should try out Thorny Assault on a Dominator or Spines on a Scrapper to see if you like it.