Plant control... controller or dominator? And pair with what?

[queequeg77]

Hey all, I've teamed with a few Plant/ folks over the last couple weeks, and they seem like a ton of chaotic fun. Once there was a plant troller and dom... the seeds and creepers were glorious.

 

So I've got a name reserved and a concept... but I don't know which AT, and what secondary to pair with it.

 

This will be exclusively for teaming/task forces, and built for leveling - I don't like to power level, and I generally stop at 50, so incarnates/purples will likely not ever be a factor.

 

My initial feeling is Plant/Rad controller... but I'm no expert. Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

[Ringo]

My main is a Plant/Storm controller and if you like controlled chaos and high (for a controller) damage you can't go wrong with that combo

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Just a bit of a plug for incarnate play ...

 

Delving into incarnates opens up a lot of new options for character growth and for fun content that you typically can't experience without exploring incarnates. It also allows for a longer journey with a character if you really like that character. 

Not totally sure which would be a better choice if you want to truncate the experience to pre-incarnates only. Controller might work better, especially if everything is being done on a budget. 

If you'd like to explore incarnates, then a dom could be both highly effective and a lot of fun. 

[queequeg77]

The problem for me is after leveling a character to 50, I'm usually kind of done with them. I've got 12 or so 50's, and I've only taken two of them all the way to T4 across the board... and I only play one of those regularly.

 

Thanks for the tip on Plant/Storm... I've heard good things before.

 

Any thoughts on what might lend itself well to exclusively teaming on task forces?

[Parabola]

Plant is very strong and it lends itself to the two archetypes in different ways.

 

For controllers it offers huge amounts of effective aoe damage that they don't normally get. Confuse, contained double damage roots and of course procced out creepers combine to do very respectable damage. Ideally you want a secondary that works with this, buffing recharge to cycle creepers more quickly and debuffing defence and resistance to make confuse even more deadly.

 

Rad is a good secondary, the only slight niggle being that the debuff toggles pair something that helps confuse with something that hinders it. This isn't a huge issue though. Storm as mentioned is another good pairing, as is time. Traps and trick arrow are also decent pairings, I kind of enjoy the thematic mix of plant and tech too.

 

Dominators enjoy having the extra aoe damage early on as this is something they tend to lack. They also like the fact that plant doesn't need to take too many powers freeing up room for secondary picks. I suspect plant is the easiest dom to level and the most exemp friendly because of these. In terms of secondary pairings it wants much the same things so thorns (huge defence debuffs) and sonic (res debuffs) are fairly natural fits. As doms are less reliant on confuse to carry their damage (once they mature at least) really anything will work though. I am currently levelling a plant/psi and psi offers nothing in particular to plant but the combination is still enormously strong.

 

A side note for plant on either archetype is I've found it useful to have some form of stealth or -perception. Seeds is obviously your lynchpin control and being a cone it ideally wants to be carefully lined up to ensure maximum coverage. I've also been experimenting with using full stealth to drag the creeper patch into spawns, the downside of this is that as soon as it alerts them you attract aggro so you can't use it to tank in that way. Many spawns are quite spread out and my hope was that I could use creepers to pull them in a bit before firing off seeds but results have been mixed. Nothing beats toggle corner pulling if you have access to that.

[FlammeFatale]

1 hour ago, Parabola said:

Ideally you want a secondary that works with this, buffing recharge to cycle creepers more quickly and debuffing defence and resistance to make confuse even more deadly.

 

Rad is a good secondary, the only slight niggle being that the debuff toggles pair something that helps confuse with something that hinders it. This isn't a huge issue though. Storm as mentioned is another good pairing, as is time. Traps and trick arrow are also decent pairings, I kind of enjoy the thematic mix of plant and tech too.

 

Poison is great too. It provides a ton of debuffs. And it is somewhat thematic.

 

[SeraphimKensai]

For controllers I play plant/trick arrow, plant/nature, and plant/storm.

 

For domis I play plant/earth, plant/thorn, and plant/psy.

 

Over the years I've come to the conclusion there is no bad pairing with plant.

[Ringo]

7 hours ago, queequeg77 said:

The problem for me is after leveling a character to 50, I'm usually kind of done with them. I've got 12 or so 50's, and I've only taken two of them all the way to T4 across the board... and I only play one of those regularly.

 

Thanks for the tip on Plant/Storm... I've heard good things before.

 

Any thoughts on what might lend itself well to exclusively teaming on task forces?

For teaming:

As a Dom, having PermaDom giving you high magnitude Seeds of Confusion is your biggest team-wide contribution - it increases kill speed and team safety.  So you're going to want a high recharge build.  Secondaries with good places to slot the Force Feedback +Recharge proc can help with that.  Energy, Earth, and Electric are good places to start.

 

As a controller your teammates benefit most from Buffs and Debuffs and almost any secondary will do that with the exception of Storm which is mostly a damage dealing set and isn't necessarily a strong team force-multiplier build.  However some debuffs (-Dmg, -ToHit) reduce the effectiveness of Seeds of Confusion.  This means Dark, Rad, Nature, Time, and Poison are, while great debuff sets and absolutely workable, are perhaps less ideal when paired with Plants.  That leaves the top debuff sets for Plant as Trick Arrow and Traps.  HOWEVER, because Seeds of Confusion and Creepers benefit from high recharge builds, your secondaries that mix Buffs with long recharge Debuffs are going to pair *very* well with Plants.  Sets like Cold, Thermal, and Pain will make great use of slotting for extra global recharge.

[Riverdusk]

12 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

 

 

Over the years I've come to the conclusion there is no bad pairing with plant.

 

Pretty much this.  I think the main advantage of doms version is just that I can still easily control (confuse) nemesis when I'm on my dom.  Pesky nemesis are confuse resistant but dominated seeds overcomes it.   Advantage for controller of course is the usual great buffs and debuffs and oftentimes more survivability in other ways beyond control.

 

OP mentioned plant/rad and for that one for example I'd lean on choking cloud as my backup control for the confuse resistant mobs.  Luckily confuse resistant things are very rare and few.  

[Hardboiled Hero]

What about a plant/sonic dom that sings to the plants in order to make them grow?  I looked at plant/sonic con too, but that looked like it may be too control heavy without much damage?  I dunno, as I don't have too much experience on either AT.

[queequeg77]

Thanks for all of the feedback. So many great suggestions... maybe too many, so I finally just decided to make one of each and run with it.

Controller: Plant/Rad - DDT

Dom: Plant/Earth - Institutionalized

Maybe we'll run into each other on Everlasting!