Plant/Dark?

[sercrowfoot]

I had an idea for a toon, an evil fairy type guy, and was thinking about Plant/Dark troller. How well would this combo perform, especially in teams? And does anyone have a build they can share that I can go off of? Just so i know which powers I should take/leave and how many enh each power should have? I quit just after Villains came out so im still trying to relearn a lot.

[Zumberge]

Plant/Dark is kind of synergistic, insofar as Plant makes it a little safer to get close to enemies and Dark has a bunch of PBAoE skills, so you can kind of move in with the rest of the team, but it's not like Elec/Kin which can go "oops, no Endurance" to things.  That said, they're both good sets regardless with a lot of good powers, but you can easily skip Spirit Tree and Black Hole, respectively.

 

With regards to Plant Control:

• Spore Burst might be a sleep, sure, but it's an AoE mez at level 6.  If you're not just doing Death From Belows to get up to 22 as fast as possible and are doing missions on a team you can go, "hey guys, I can sleep mobs, so just be careful with AoEs" and people will listen.  Makes early stuff a lot easier and later on it's an acceptable panic button.
  
• Get Seeds of Confusion at level 8.  Six-slot it for 2 Accuracy, 2 Recharge, and 2 Confuse.  It'll be up for pretty much every mob and have them tripping balls for a full minute or so.  Once you hit 50 you put in a Coercive Persuasion set and ASCEND TO GODHOOD.
  
• Carrion Creepers is kind of weird in how it works but all you need to know is that you'll have vines popping out of the ground around you when things die for two minutes after you use it.  That is to say, the effect follows you.  It's good for some additional immobilization and slow and knockdown and damage and generally just distracting people and making a big mess of things.
  

Darkness Affinity I have less experience with, but here goes:

• Tar Patch is really good.  Slow, -30% resistance to everything, and it doesn't deal damage so it won't wake up sleeping enemies.  Three recharge reductions to get it down to 45ish seconds and you're done.  Combine with Seeds and Creepers for maximum bullying.
  
• You know how some Defenders and Masterminds use Howling Twilight as an AoE control because it has a massive disorient on it?  I think they might have toned it down a bunch when they made Darkness Affinity so you don't have yet another mez, I'm not sure; someone else might need to chime in on that. _{(As if I don't expect people to already because of how full of bullshit I normally am.)}
  
• The defense bonuses on Shadow Fall and Fade look kind of modest, but they do stack, so combined with Darkest Night's -ToHit you're giving people a pretty good amount of survivability.
  

[Redlynne]

You know ... if you went Plant/TA you could name your Controller a multi-level pun ... Carpet Nocked 'Em ... instead of the slightly less punny Plant/Dark option of ...

 

 

... where you SEED the Night.

[subbacultchas]

Plant/Dark is kind of synergistic, insofar as Plant makes it a little safer to get close to enemies and Dark has a bunch of PBAoE skills, so you can kind of move in with the rest of the team, but it's not like Elec/Kin which can go "oops, no Endurance" to things.  That said, they're both good sets regardless with a lot of good powers, but you can easily skip Spirit Tree and Black Hole, respectively.

 

With regards to Plant Control:

• Spore Burst might be a sleep, sure, but it's an AoE mez at level 6.  If you're not just doing Death From Belows to get up to 22 as fast as possible and are doing missions on a team you can go, "hey guys, I can sleep mobs, so just be careful with AoEs" and people will listen.  Makes early stuff a lot easier and later on it's an acceptable panic button.
  
• Get Seeds of Confusion at level 8.  Six-slot it for 2 Accuracy, 2 Recharge, and 2 Confuse.  It'll be up for pretty much every mob and have them tripping balls for a full minute or so.  Once you hit 50 you put in a Coercive Persuasion set and ASCEND TO GODHOOD.
  
• Carrion Creepers is kind of weird in how it works but all you need to know is that you'll have vines popping out of the ground around you when things die for two minutes after you use it.  That is to say, the effect follows you.  It's good for some additional immobilization and slow and knockdown and damage and generally just distracting people and making a big mess of things.
  

Darkness Affinity I have less experience with, but here goes:

• Tar Patch is really good.  Slow, -30% resistance to everything, and it doesn't deal damage so it won't wake up sleeping enemies.  Three recharge reductions to get it down to 45ish seconds and you're done.  Combine with Seeds and Creepers for maximum bullying.
  
• You know how some Defenders and Masterminds use Howling Twilight as an AoE control because it has a massive disorient on it?  I think they might have toned it down a bunch when they made Darkness Affinity so you don't have yet another mez, I'm not sure; someone else might need to chime in on that. _{(As if I don't expect people to already because of how full of bullshit I normally am.)}
  
• The defense bonuses on Shadow Fall and Fade look kind of modest, but they do stack, so combined with Darkest Night's -ToHit you're giving people a pretty good amount of survivability.
  

All good stuff here. I have a couple suggestions though.

 

Three slotting Tar Patch is fine, but at 50+ just two slots with lvl 53-54 recharge IO's is sufficient. Same for Darkest Night, two level 53-54 +tohit debuff IOs will do you fine at 50+.

 

I'm going to chime in on Howling Twilight definitely. People do use it that way, I would not recommend slotting for that. I've mostly seen it used as an AV -regen killer, so toward that I slot it with recharge and a single acc usually. I think it's fine to use as a mez in normal content, but I'd save it for rez/debuff in harder content.

 

Shadowfall and Fade are fantastic. Both provide defense and resistance, and Fade provides something like 14-15% defense to all when slotted right. The combination of the two can net you around 20% defense to all, and 20% resistance or more to most. Darkness Affinity is an easy set to softcap defenses with, and have a very nice amount of resistance to combine with it.

 

Do not skip the regen/recovery power you get. It's easily one of the better powers in the darkness set and will keep you in endurance and health by itself quite often. It does require you to be in melee range, but with this setup you should have no problems operating there.

 

[Erydanus]

Howling Twilight is auto hit so don't worry about slotting for accuracy. (You shouldn't even be able to put an accuracy in it, subbacultchas!) Just stick 2 recharge in it, and if you like to use it for its stun (perhaps to stack magnitude with another stun) then maybe 1 stun IO because the stun duration's about 15 seconds out of the box.  Don't even think about using a stun set in it, just use a couple beefy generic IOs. On my D/D I do use it to stack magnitude along with Heart of Darkness but for Plant I think it's fine as a backup quickie stun that can't affect bosses. Just think of it as something that stops minions from attacking long enough for you to cast your sleep or seeds of confusion while debuffing the regen of the targets. [Let me stress this: area effect auto-hit -500% regen]

 

Dark Affinity is a good overall set and the only skippable power is Black Hole. Slotting is really straight forward for most powers. The only question is how many slots do you want to allocate to each power since it's in your secondary. For instance Twilight Grasp is a reasonable heal and it also has some -tohit and -regen AND -damage in it. Do you want to max it out as a healing power or do you just want to skimp and do 3 slots and have it for spamming for the -regen and -damage? Obviously 33%+ accuracy in any case, but the amount of recharge, end reduction, and heal is up to you. Or you could use a set, it's gonna be fine whether you slot it 1 acc, 1 end, 1 rech, 3 heal SOs or something else.

 

Tar Patch - 2 recharge at 50, maybe 3 while leveling, done. Maybe a damage proc from the slow set if you've got a spare slot.

Darkest night - 2 -tohit, 2 end reduction, or you could do a -tohit set

 

Shadow Fall is a tricky one. It has good defense but it also has good resistance to dark/energy/psi.  My honest rec here is to frankenslot this thing within an inch of its life to try to max the enhancement for both. It's a higher cost power 0.52 end/sec so I do usually slot for some end reduction but Soul Absorption makes this set "What are endurance concerns?" at some point. If you want to go plain at 50 I'd do 2 def, 2 resist, 2 end. But again my actual rec is to take a defense set and get the defense, defense/endurance, and defense/endurance/recharge pieces from it. Then get the same 3 pieces (but resist) from a resistance set.  You'll end up with 52% Defense, 52% Resistance, 92% Endurance Reduction, and 42% Recharge time (all values rounded up; recharge of course only useful if you get detoggled from an end crash or death, both unlikely). This at least gets you a couple set bonuses. 

 

Fade, easy, shove as much defense and recharge as your budget allows in

 

I'm still evaluating how Soul Absorption should be slotted (lots of recharge at least!)

 

Dark Servant is another one that is really a matter of taste. It has several different powers, and it needs to be resummoned when it expires or if it dies sooner. Look here: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Darkness_Affinity#Dark_Servant

[subbacultchas]

I had completely forgotten it was autohit! I'm going to have to replace the two cheap set IOs I have been using with just recharges. Thanks for the catch man!

 

RE: Fade/Shadowfall I usually frankenslot these things for both aspects too, and I think with Fade I six slot while Shadow is usually five or so. Shadowfall gets a couple of unique IOs, and the other 3-4 are defense/resistance mixed. Fade and Soul absorption I keep loaded with as much recharge as I can before the ED cap. My priorities for each is recharge>defense>resistance for Fade, and recharge>regen>recover for Soul Absorption. But you should easily be able to hit 90s in at least two of those, and fairly high on the third with frankenslotting.

 

YMMV of course, I'm running Elec/Dark controller so I have have some recovery from that and instead focus more on the regen in Soul Absorption.

[Rocketmandb]

Shadow Fall is a tricky one. It has good defense but it also has good resistance to dark/energy/psi.  <snip>

 

Fade, easy, shove as much defense and recharge as your budget allows in

 

I'm still evaluating how Soul Absorption should be slotted (lots of recharge at least!)

 

 

I Frankenslot all of the above powers. Shadowfall gives nice D and solid resistance, and Fade also has really good resistance (better, even). Between the two of them, you get 15% base to Smashing, Lethal, Energy, and 30% to Negative and Psi. That's pretty darned good. So I max out on Fade with a mix of Def/Rech, Def, Resist and Res/Rech.

 

Soul Absorption gives pretty darned good regen. My understanding is that it's 100% + like 18% per enemy hit by it (base). Mids is showing a 5-hit cast giving you about +385% when slotted for ~100% health.

[Dr Causality]

The defense bonuses on Shadow Fall and Fade look kind of modest, but they do stack, so combined with Darkest Night's -ToHit you're giving people a pretty good amount of survivability.

 

Just wanted to chime in that the Def bonuses from Shadow Fall and Fade are certainly not modest if you properly build for them.  Here are some numbers to give you an idea of what you can do with /Dark Affinity and Incarnate Alpha either Agility or Nerve for +20% Def and since Fade is a click Power you can use Powerboost from Primal Forces Epic Pool.

 

Max DR slotted but with no Incarnate or Powerboost

  6%      Shadow Fall = 6.5%

  4%      Controller Maneuvers

16%      Fade

 

Max DR slotted with Incarnate Nerve or Agility and Powerboosted Fade

  6.5%      Shadow Fall = 6.5%

  4.5%      Controller Maneuvers

27.72%    Fade with 122.9% Powerboost from the Patron Pool

----------------------------------------------------

= 38.72% perma pbaoe +Def for your entire team, pets etc.

 

That extra 6% from Shadowfall is a big deal.  It means if you put the two +5% Def pet IO's in Fly Trap, so both Fly Trap and Dark Servant get +10% Def which with your Def buffs soft caps them. 

 

Powerboost is doing most of the work here. Even with the 13% over DR you don't actually get much from +20% Def increase from Incarnate Alpha, but it let's you save slots, so you can optimally slot both Shadowfall and Fade for Resistance plus all the procs you want, while still keeping your Def slotting at DR.  Agility Radial Paragon seems like the better option since you get Endurance, and Recharge, versus Nerve.  The 22% Rech over DR helps a lot since you need a lot of recharge to make Fade perma with it's 210s rech and just 60s duration. 

 

 

[subbacultchas]

Made one Saturday morning, she's at 35 right now. I love it, but I knew I would since I've played Plant really heavily over the years, and recently had a couple /Dark controllers.

 

I don't have too many suggestions to make, most Plant or /Dark guides will cover most of the bases. But I will say it's the first character I'm thinking of taking Spirit Tree on, where usually I skip it. With Soul Absorption's already ridiculous +regen for self and team, it may be worth it.

[Dr Causality]

I don't have too many suggestions to make, most Plant or /Dark guides will cover most of the bases. But I will say it's the first character I'm thinking of taking Spirit Tree on, where usually I skip it. With Soul Absorption's already ridiculous +regen for self and team, it may be worth it.

 

If nothing it makes a great mule slot for the Preventative Medicine Chance for +Absorb proc.  But yeah the +Regen potential from a full Soul Absorption Stacked with Spirit is impressive, like a lightweight pbaoe DrainPsyche.

[HoundsTooth]

The defense bonuses on Shadow Fall and Fade look kind of modest, but they do stack, so combined with Darkest Night's -ToHit you're giving people a pretty good amount of survivability.

 

Just wanted to chime in that the Def bonuses from Shadow Fall and Fade are certainly not modest if you properly build for them.  Here are some numbers to give you an idea of what you can do with /Dark Affinity and Incarnate Alpha either Agility or Nerve for +20% Def and since Fade is a click Power you can use Powerboost from Primal Forces Epic Pool.

 

Max DR slotted but with no Incarnate or Powerboost

  6%      Shadow Fall = 6.5%

  4%      Controller Maneuvers

16%      Fade

 

Max DR slotted with Incarnate Nerve or Agility and Powerboosted Fade

  6.5%      Shadow Fall = 6.5%

  4.5%      Controller Maneuvers

27.72%    Fade with 122.9% Powerboost from the Patron Pool

----------------------------------------------------

= 38.72% perma pbaoe +Def for your entire team, pets etc.

 

This was really helpful for my Fire/Dark controller. Powerboost pumped my defense up enough that I didn't need Weave. This saved me three power choices (Kick, Tough, Weave) and a few slots.

 

Powerboost + Fade with Maneuvers, Shadowfall, Combat Jumping, and a +3% defense IO puts me right at the defense cap for everything. Maybe a touch below but the ToHit debuff from /Dark makes up for that.

[Force Redux]

I've been leveling a Plant/Dark myself, lots of tools at hand, great team support, capable soloer, lots of fun!

 

Where would be the best place for the Preventative Medicine Chance for +Absorb proc? Twilight Grasp? Spirit Tree? Soul Absorption?

[tjknight]

Non scientific opinion. I have a lvl 34 Plant/Dark Controller. It's probably one of safest & tankiest controller builds I've ever played.  I have't played that toon in a bit, cuz Homecoming feeds my alt-itis.  But it's not something I think the OP will regret rolling. Good on teams, great solo, decent damage. Really nothing to complain about. 

[sercrowfoot]

So I reached lvl 35 (this is definitely my favorite build so far!) and I just got the option for Epic Powers. Does anyone have a suggestion on what to take as well as any advice on how to slot them? I dont remember making it this far as a kid lol

[Force Redux]

12 hours ago, sercrowfoot said:

So I reached lvl 35 (this is definitely my favorite build so far!) and I just got the option for Epic Powers. Does anyone have a suggestion on what to take as well as any advice on how to slot them? I dont remember making it this far as a kid lol

I went Primal for power boost.

[subbacultchas]

15 hours ago, sercrowfoot said:

So I reached lvl 35 (this is definitely my favorite build so far!) and I just got the option for Epic Powers. Does anyone have a suggestion on what to take as well as any advice on how to slot them? I dont remember making it this far as a kid lol

I went Earth Mastery for a couple of reasons. Fault is a damned fine power with quicker recharge than most epic AOEs, a 50% mez component plus knockdown, and slots FF +recharge which it procs constantly. Seismic smash is amazing single target damage with a hold, which can help with holding bosses if procs in strangler don't hit. And Earth's Embrace is quite good on its own, but really shines in a set with a lot of +regen, which this one has (more hp = more hp/sec regen).  I did not take the armor because I'd already soft-capped positional.

I almost went Primal as Redux did for Power Boost, but instead went with the the line Clarion Destiny that applies it, and stuck with Earth.

Edited July 25, 2019 by subbacultchas

[subbacultchas]

I really toyed with the idea of Fire Mastery too, which I had taken on my Elec/Dark. You can still retain soft-capped defenses easily, and can have most of your resistances in the 40-75% range as well with that route. But I think earth fits the playstyle a bit better. Ice is pretty if you really want to stack more damage, and Soul can provide a decent AOE and a nice self-buff with Soul Drain.

[Ophidian]

I decided to try a new combo out rather than remake old characters from Live again when I first started playing here, and the first thing I made was a Plants/Dark because, well, I have a hard time not playing Dark.  I wasn't sure about it while leveling, but it seemed okay.  I spent most of that time playing more with the Dark side than the Plants side.  Now that I am 50 and starting to get my build in place, I am finding that I quite like the combo as a whole

 

As for what Epic to go for, I unlocked the Patron Pools so I could grab Scorpion Shield

[Mercurias]

I’ve played both sets, but not together.

 

On the whole, it isn’t a bad combo. Neither set does loads for the other, but both are strong individually, and together you have some strong versatility as well as two pets that increase your control.

 

As I recall, I slotted Roots until it turned into my main attack with procs. Seeds of Confusion, Tar Patch, and Roots along will do plenty of damage and control.

[subbacultchas]

13 hours ago, Mercurias said:

As I recall, I slotted Roots until it turned into my main attack with procs. Seeds of Confusion, Tar Patch, and Roots along will do plenty of damage and control.

Yep. Right now I have roots with 2 dmg/mez hamis, a couple of acc/dmg/rechg/end ios, and the -res and energy font procs. It's a pretty beastly power compared to other control types, and will serve you well until you get a better aoe damage power, and even after.