Bierfuiz

As an honourable marketeer I'd like to thank you anonymous:



My advice for next time: Bid for LotG first and then on the purples .

... but it isn't me:

One of the best things about /Psi (imho), you don't really need Stamina. By lvl20 you are close to SOs anyway to give Drain Psyche enough recharge to bridge the gap. In higher lvls it will get easier anyway. My Plant/Psi made it to 50 mostly with regular SOs/IOs, more or less no sets.

With the recent changes to /Psi the road to 38 won't be as painful as before. The step to 38 won't be as magnifcient either, though . Psychic Scream now does more damage as Shockwave and depending on the position of the enemy you'll hit more as Shockwave radius is rather small now.

Here's a quick guide:

Entangle: Meh, most of the time Roots is better. See below for use of roots.

Strangler: Take it, you basic work horse for holds.

Roots: Take that too. It goes very well with Seeds. Use Seeds first, critters usually clump up when confused. Use Roots to make them stay clumped/avoid knockback powers. Use your AoEs to whittle them down.

Spore Burst: It's a sleep, so its use is situational. When you have to use it, it can be a life saver. Typical usage is to keep that 3rd group of critters quiet that you just agroed until the first two are under control or defeated. It's good mule for recharge slotting too.

Seeds: Best power in Plant/. With high recharge (close to perma dom) it will be up every fight. Combine it with Domination and you enter easy mode.

Spirit Tree: Meh. It's stationary and its buff is rather mediocre (imho). Took it for a while but does not suit the fast pace of most groups these days.

Vines: Group hold. Not high prio. Nice set options in higher lvls. Mostly used it to stack hold against nasty bosses.

Carrion Creepers: A beauty. Lovely to behold and extremely useful, especially in the lower levels. Place them to take the alpha of mean groups. Adds a bit to overall damage too. Suits the plant theme so well.

Fly Trap: Decent pet. I'd say you could probably skip it if you have a tight built. I like my Planty so I kept it all those lvls. Some nice slotting options too.

Psionic Dart: You gotta take it anyway. Combine with Brawl for fast Dom building.

Mind Probe: Nice melee damage. Use it to take down the big guys.

Telekinetic Thrust: Knockback can be put to good use defensively, especially in the lower lvls when your control options are limited.

Mental Blast: Used to suck big time, haven't tried it since the recent changes. Seems like a decent alternative to Mind Probe if you want to go ranged. I prefer close encounters. EDIT: Just checked on test, seems very similar to Subdue now, minus the immob.

Psychic Scream: Very nice cone damage. Narrow cone but very long range. With the recent changes: Take it, love it.

Drain Psyche: Best power in /Psi for me. Slotted up you won't need Stamina and you'll feel like a Regen scrapper. Also good against AV with its massive -regen.

Subdue: Nice ranged attack plus immob. Damage is slightly lower than Mind Probe but wicked range and immob.

Psionic Lance: I'm no fan of snipes. If you are, take it. Damage is good now and range truly evil.

Psychic Shockwave: Only a shadow of its past self. But that was massively out of balance compared to the rest of the set. Now it's slightly lower in damage than Scream. Still a very nice power.

Pool powers:
Speed is a must imho. Doms benefit greatly from recharge, Hasten comes in handy. Super Speed can be a pain but jet packs are cheap...

Fitness not required with Drain Psyche. You might want to take it for 20 - 40 or so if you run a end-heavy build. Won't need it in the higher lvls.

Flight I had for most of my leveling. Had to swap it out in my tight lvl50 build.

Leaping has Combat Jump for a nice def bonus (see below) and Super Jump I need not praise more.

Presence: Meh. You are a Dom, pool mez is for whimps.

Medicince: Had Aid Self for quite a while. Really helped in the lower lvls when there is no healer around (used to run with a Brute most of the time).

Teleport: Yet another travel power. Not much synergy to be found here.

I used to run a damage resi build lvls 40 - 50 but switched to a massive def build (40 - 45% def against most common stuff) and it increased survivability to a huge degree! So I use Fighting, Concealment and Leadership to stack def on top of Scorpion Shield for s/l/e and set boni for ranged def. Personal Force Field is a more potent panic button than any other epic power imho. Power Surge is nice but I found myself using it rather sparingly. I don't like crashes either. So these days I love Mace much better than Mu. Though decent resistance is probably cheaper to get than high def if you are on a low budget.

EDIT: Damage numbers are (based on PS damage):
Mind Probe 162%
Telekinetic Thrust 115%
Mental Blast 122%
Subdue 122%
Psionic Lance 266%
Psychic Scream 108%
Psychic Shockwave 100%

Hehe, wasn't me but I do that all the time. Place a few low bids on (relatively) high-turnover purples and score them at 50% market value . Though once I had a bid of 1.5 bil on a LotG and was soooo close to hitting the button.

Hint: When placing anything higher than 10 mil I always triple-check if there are enuff zeros...

I like /Psi on my Plant, if only because of Drain Psyche. Lets me avoid Stamina which is a Good Thing™ in my book.

I'm at 118.75% global recharge. But I sacrificed some to get close to the def cap which really adds to your survivability. And triple stacking dom doesn't give so much benefits any more. I did a build on Mids that came close to 160% but then you are in the zone of gimp.

Are there any benchmarks? What is 'better'? I can reach 1000+ critters/hour on my plant/psi (one purple every 1 1/2 hours - yay!). Bosses take longer though, so the rate drops significantly. I like doing some farming in between, when I don't have much time for longer missions or sfs, or my friends aren't online. Would be nice to know how others fare.

(Toon pretty much maxed out at 188% recharge and 40 - 45 defense)

I'd do perma-dom for the status protection alone.

Combine that with extremely high recharge, double hold power and constant end recharge.

My plant/psi went from very playable to über with perma-dom. With the confusion from seeds, three AoEs, creepers and Audrey I can do 1000+ critters per hour solo (+0/8 no bosses). I can do +4/8 maps with bosses without any fear of faceplanting. Though it takes a wee while to grind those bosses down.

My normal partner is kin/fire. Add speed boost and fulcrum and it all becomes a mad world of utter carnage.

Same here. MM power did nothing at all. With only 4 villains on the SF, no way to beat Reichsman through his super-regen phase...

Same here. Tried several times but even after several hours no toon has showed up on test...

After several hours of play I get regular crashes now. CoX process sits around 1.4 GB at that point. Starts out with 1.0 GB.

System is XP64, RAM is 8 GB.

(I wish CoX was available as 64bit app too and would cache all that stuff in RAM to save load times, upper limit of 4 GB would be ok for me, or just make it an option in settings ;-))

[ QUOTE ]
This doesnt go here probably but here is my 2 cents.
I have alvl 35ish plant psi dom. And I cant die enough to get the first debt badge.
At the same time, I dont deal enough dmg to kill just about anything in a reasonable amount of time.
Teams like me for my creepers.. which is cool. But IF I wanted to solo... Its like

*watching paint dry*


[/ QUOTE ]

Uh, my plant/psi was a killing machine after around 25. My brute-playing friend was complaining that he had nothing to do most of the time. With seeds, creepers and at 32 flytrap I can wade through +2 mobs for 4+ teams...solo. Throw in DPy and you can run the rampage non-stop.

PToDs and PvP suck though. The new dom changes won't change much about that alas...

Slot machine doesn't give me its 2nd story arc (the one with the pet freak). Any idea on how to get it?

Another spoiler:

There's a spot on the eye's upper lid where you can attack it without being hit. And the respawning coralax won't be able to touch you too. Using jingle jets our whole group was able to stay there safely as you can't just stand there but will slide down. Hover for teh win.

But one day I'll do the SF with another toon without using the blind spots...

"Enemy AI will now be more aware of dangerous areas, such as a Burn patch, and will do their best to avoid them."

-> Respec out of Burn with your free respec. I will do so. And Weave too. More cool powers for me - yay! Although having two mostly useless powers in your primary really sucks...

Burn as it stands now on Test is useless when soloing. In teams I rarely use it anyways in I4 because of the (significantly smaller) scatter effect and because my SG mates usually do way more quick damage than me.

With I5 there will be 3 out of 9 mostly useless powers in my primary. Temperature protection is a joke because of the current numbers of Fire & Plasma Shield. RotP I deny to use as I don't want any debt powered abilities. Just doesn't fit into my idea of a tanker. Might get it at 49 for the nice animation. And now I can add Burn to the list. On I5 it's only useful in team settings with a good hold. Add the reduced damage and much longer recharge and it's not even worth the hassle.

I'll rather use FE + FSC + Comb instead. Together with our Controller's Fulcrum Shift I easily reach damage cap, all are AoE and have a taunt component as well. Add Scorch and GFS for Boss damage and you are set.

So with I5 I will get rid of Burn and Weave, slot Tough instead and get more offense with Combustion. At lvl44 that is enuff offense to solo mission if I have to. With our Kin troller plus FE I deal some wicked AoE damage at damage cap. The lowered duration for FE is a slight nuisance but it will still help quite nicely with the alpha strike.

Bottom line is: My tanker will only be slightly less effective in I5. Due to the AoE target limit herds will be smaller but with the increase in XP lvl speed should be pretty much the same for me. But I find it rather distracting that instead of focussing on my primary abilities I have to dive deeply into power pools instead. I don't really want Boxing or Tough or Acrobatics. I'd rather have some fire based powers that achieve similar effects.