Plant/? What (other than Plant/Storm) would you reccommend?

[Argentae]

Veridicane (Plant/Storm) is the one of the last builds I took to 50 on live and I've deeply enjoyed building her all over again with a LOT more optimization here.  Still having a blast playing and tweaking the build.

 

Part of what really makes it shine is, of course, Seeds. As one of the original a Mind/Kin players, I greatly enjoy the xp and damage buff of confuse, and pairing it and Creepers with /Storm is just... :: Chef's kiss :: 

 

Oh fellow Controller addicts: What else would you suggest?

 

/Dark would be super survivable.
/Kin is tempting, but haven't tried FS with Creepers, so not sure if it would benefit enough from it.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

[Captain Fabulous]

Plant/Nature is a no-brainer.

[Panache]

Plant/TA and Plant/Poison/specifically Stone were both an absolute blast from 1-50 and beyond.

[Onlyasandwich]

Plant is really the whole deal by itself.

 

I vote go dominator! Plant/fiery amazing.

[Frosticus]

really enjoyed plant/poison

[biostem]

I found pain domination to be rather effective, and it offers a bit more soloability, IMO, than empathy.  Electrical affinity can also be extremely effective, but I find it a bit trickier to use, what with having to track your stacks of static and trying to get the most out of the chaining effect.

[Agorazium]

I’m leveling a Plant/Dark right now and it’s insanely good. It will always have value on well-built teams thanks to Tar Patch and Plant’s above-average damage, and it carries weaker teams on its own. There are better options for more damage-oriented builds but I wanted a defensive secondary to balance out the character and on Controllers I think /Dark is the best bet. Thematically it was a little difficult to tie the sets together but I came up with a life-force-manipulation concept that I’m happy with.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Agorazium

[evetsleep]

What will become obvious of threads like this is that plant/ is one of those sets that can literally go with anything.  It comes down to concept and what you like playing.

 

I think I have most secondaries with plant at this point (except sonic) and currently leveling time (another solid secondary).  It's ok so far.  My thinking is the recharge buff will help get creepers out more.

 

I think my favorite combo to date is plant/trick arrow (a true battlefield commander) or plant/poison.  I really like poison but it's hard to find a pairing with it that feels good.  Plant does that for me.

 

 

[honoroit]

controller: 

 

plant / time - faster creepers, def, team buffs recharge

 

plant / kin - a thing. fulcrum works in creepers.

 

plant / elec affinity - its work, not as particular compliment, bit scatter brained.

 

plant / nature - do not be tempted to take spirit tree its regen is way too slow.  it needs to be like a cot oranbega green crystal aura and put ~800% regen base, not 150%. too slow, looks pretty.  nature has nice things.

 

plant is better dominator:

why?

 

- however, it makes a very different, attack focused character. so if you want a control WITH support, disregard. but id take dom olant over a controller trick arrow, as example, as youve dropped the support for more cc, overkill wise, and can assault better than oil slick burns, in totality.

 

- mag 6 seeds, pretty much. you are going to confuse even bosses on a sweep thats quick and regular.

 

- higher base dmg for creepers pet, but that if kin, is offset on controller, albeit with hassle.

 

- thorny is a good combo, see my guide on 2ndary for dominator, the authoritative tier-splain.

Edited July 27, 2023 by honoroit

[SeraphimKensai]

I made a plant/ta shortly after the trick Arrow changes a few years back and since then it's one of my favorite lvl 50s. I took it on a ton last night and it still did great (although no OSA at that level). At upper levels it does a ton of damage. I've had people mistake my plant/ta for a blaster while pugging and accusing me of using cheat codes.

 

I also like plant/dark but for more survivability, that combo becomes pretty tank like.

 

It's hard to pick a bad pairing with plants.

[UltraAlt]

12 hours ago, Argentae said:

Oh fellow Controller addicts: What else would you suggest?

 

Plant/Nature was a goto for me. I think that is the first kind of Plant Controller I made.

I'm not sure if I have made another type of plant controller.

 

I can see how Plant/poison would be a mix, but I doubt I'll make one.

 

 

 

[Without_Pause]

I'm enjoying my Plant/ta. I need to work on and finalize a build for it before I go much further. Back on live, Plant/fire was the first Dom which clicked for me, but it sadly passed far too soon in a Hardcore SG.

[roleki]

On 7/26/2023 at 10:02 PM, Onlyasandwich said:

Plant is really the whole deal by itself.

 

I vote go dominator! Plant/fiery amazing.

 

Plant/Thorns is a riot as well... once it gets rolling, it's damn-near unstoppable.  

 

Sticking with Controllers, though, Plant/Poison and Plant/Rad are both extremely powerful in their own right, and though I haven't run it myself, I am betting Plant/Traps is sneaky good as well.

[Doomguide2005]

Well I think this thread is evidence of how unusual my controller is in game.  She is a Plant/Cold a pairing I rarely hear about or see.  Lots of fun playing to 50 and beyond.

[Argentae]

Thank you all for such great suggestions and commentary. I really appreciate it! 🙂

 

Someday I'm going to have to do Illusion/Dark as well. Never really spent a lot of time with my lowbie Illusion characters. I know Illusion/Rad was always the FotM for A/V soloing.

 

I haven't played Dominator in a long time either. Pyropsius (Fire/Psi) was brokenly OP as a permadom before they nerfed Domination and Psychic Shockwave was massively overpowerd before they nerf/fixed it's doing damage at a single target scale instead of PBAOE. Argent (Mind/Psi) was a lot of fun too. I think that was the only two Doms I took to 50 on live, but I really enjoyed the playstyle. Thanks for suggesting a Plant Dominator, I'm absolutely going to have to do that in the not too distant future.

 

Of the other suggestions, I really like the idea of two (well, more than that, Plant/Traps looks like it could be a lot of fun too, but not sure I would enjoy the looooong activations of Trip Mine and Time Bomb) ideas suggested.

 

Plant/Dark and Plant/TA

 

I've played /Dark a lot, but I never got my /TA very high on live and haven't played it on Homecoming at all.

 

I've been looking at the details of both sets in Mids, and /Storm probably IS the best match in terms of maximizing the effectiveness of Seeds' aoe confusion. You get the lion's share of the xp from defeated confused mobs as long as you do a decent chunk of the damage. Plant does enough with Creepers, Roots, and Ice Storm to clear that threshold easily.  So really, you want the mobs to do as much damage to each other as possible as quickly as possible. 

 

/Dark lacks the self destruction synergy that /Storm has. Freezing Rain makes them hit each other more easily (-Def), and do more damage when they do (-Res) in a single power that's perma with 3 +Rech out of the box.  -30 Def and -30 Res makes the mobs shred each other like rabid weasels.

/Dark on the other hand, has a -15% ToHit/-30% Dmg in Darkest Night, and -30% Res in Tar Patch. The -ToHit means the mobs hit each other less often, and while the -Res means they do more damage the -30 Dmg means they do less to start with. So overall, probably a net negative in terms of how much damage mobs do to each other. Of course that also means better damage mitigation for you, and you get a GREAT pulling tool in the bargain. Pulling into Tar Patch gives you a nice clumping of the mobs, esp if you can do a corner pull, which Darkest Night lends itself to.

Can't remember how procs interact with toggles, would be interesting if you could use procs in Darkest Night.

/Dark provides a lot of survivability, an excellent pet, has 2 built in +Def powers to hold LotG's and pair well with the -ToHit from Darkest Night and Fluffy (Dark Servant), Soul Absorption to eliminate /End issues and provide great +Regen and it has Howling Twilight.

 

A lot of people underestimate Howling Twilight the auto-hit A/V regen neutering mini-nuke that rezzes entire teams as a side hustle. 

It's an auto-hit 25' radius AOE that applies a -500 Regen, a -62.5 Rech, does a little damage, and incidentally provides an AOE ally rez. And it can take 5 dmg procs and a -12.5(?) Res proc. And it sounds so dramatic. It's on a 180 sec cooldown, so it procs VERY well. At about +170 global recharge, that puts HT available every 67 seconds or so. It's like an every spawn to every 2 out of 3 spawns depending. I think? Don't have a good minutes per spawn metric in my head, Veridicane is pretty fast on a spawn of +4 X8 CoT.

 

/Dark is just tough to beat if you do much soloing and hell-on-wheels on a team, it lacks a -Def power, so I often end up with /Leviathan because Water Spout is just hard to pass up. It would a toss up between /Lev, /Ice, or /Soul on a Plant/Dark I think. /Soul would obviously have the upper hand on the /Dark theme.

 

 

 

I like the surgical nature of /TA. Great big bag of tools to control the battle ground itself to shift things in you(r team)'s direction. 

TA has a lot of the same debuff abilities, but broken up more and all click powers. 

I definitely need to roll a /TA at some point, I had a Mind/TA on live that was a CONTROL monster.

 

I think I talked myself into a Plant/Dark... 
When I started typing this post I was going to create both and do a side by side comparison between the two as a chronology.

Now I think I'm going to do a Dionysius themed Plant/Dark, and I'll find another Alt to run with /TA. Maybe Fire/TA so I can stack Smoke and Flash Arrow? Hmmm...

 

 

[Without_Pause]

RE: /ta

 

I hadn't done Symphony yet, I went back and forth with making characters and taking them to level 3 only to switch, but I ended up back at /ta. Why? Symphony plays at range with the cones and /ta loves being at range. Symphony has some soft controls which do damage. /ta offers more control so those softer controls gain more chances at containment. Play it like a Dominator. Slot for damage on the soft controls. I have planned out Dreadful Discord to have a Fire proc and -Res. Enfeebling Lullaby has an Energy proc and a Fire proc. Those procs can light OSA for me so I don't need to grab something like Arcane Bolt. Confounding Chant, Chords of Despair, and EMP Arrow for AoE containment, and then Dreadful Discord, Enfeebling Lullaby and OSA for the AoE damage.

 

I only have a first pass at slotting done. I'm most of the way there with IOs. I just need to look at numbers and go from there. I'm not sure how happy I am with using a damage proc in Flash Arrow in order to get the Def bonus. If I can skip on it, I will. The build itself is level 13.

[Carnifax]

18 minutes ago, Without_Pause said:

/ta loves being at range

TA loves being anywhere to be honest. It just doesn't care. I've a Grav/TA hoverer who just dumps things into a cluster and debuffs the hell out of them from afar and a TA/Elec defender who works at point blank quite happily. The snappy animations TA has help a lot. Makes it seem nice and fluid regardless of what it's paired with. 

 

My vote would be Plant/TA personally. Great set + great set = fun times. Flambé Creepers Patches will be a lot of fun. 

Edited August 3, 2023 by Carnifax

[Without_Pause]

4 minutes ago, Carnifax said:

TA loves being anywhere to be honest. It just doesn't care. I've a Grav/TA hoverer who just dumps things into a cluster and debuffs the hell out of them from afar and a TA/Elec defender who works at point blank quite happily. The snappy animations TA has help a lot. Makes it seem nice and fluid regardless of what it's paired with. 

 

My vote would be Plant/TA personally. Great set + great set = fun times. Flambé Creepers Patches will be a lot of fun. 

Being in melee is trickier for TA though. I have a Fire/time, and I'm still trying to smooth out the experience on that build.

[Argentae]

I think I hit 24 soloing last night on Plant/Dark. 
it’s working pretty well, as expected one of the biggest things I miss at the lower levers is the lack of -Def. That’s starting to get better as I start putting in some catalyzed sets. Have a 5 pack of Posi and a 6 pack of Malaise Illusions as well as a Kismet ToHit.  Running pretty well at +2 X8.
 

Later I expect to feel the lack of Rune of Protection more.

 

I find myself toggling Darkest Night off after I have the spawn self destructing nicely, saved some end and helps them hit each other better.

 

I think I want to do a TA next though, I totally agree on the synergy with Symph, that set it all about the cones, which makes playing at range ideal. 
 

Grav should work well as you can prepare the landing zone for your Wormhole so the spawn really drops into the middle of a VERY bad spot for them. That sounds like a lot of fun. 🙂

 

I probably should still do the Plant/TA next though. 
 

 

[Argentae]

Maybe Plant/TA and go TP pool for Fold Space? Drop them into the patch of doom and then confuse them all. 🙂