Mezzosoprano

Out of curiosity, how much inf/xp/tickets per hour do these builds earn?

I can manage a hair over 500k inf/min in AE with my Plant/Storm controller, but I don't know how that stacks up vs. the builds discussed here.

My Plant/Storm does not have capped S/L (haven't bothered to do my respec yet), but does have perma-hasten through ridiculous amounts of global recharge.

Fighting Neuron's robots at +3/x8 in AE, herostats indicated my influence earnings were ~500k/minute -> 30M/hour. On the other hand, I don't know what a 'good' earning rate is for a Fire/Kin or a SS/Fire Brute.

Running the demon farm at +1/x8, I earn much less in raw inf (15 - 18 M/hour), but the increased kill speed nets greater chances for purple drops per hour.

Of course, YMMV.

I've slotted my Plant/Storm with ridiculous amounts of global recharge, and also added many procs -- one in roots, four in FR, three in creepers, and the FF +recharge IO in fissure. In my tests soloing large spawns, Hero Stats showed 40% of my total damage comes from the procs.

My 5850 on Vista x64 with 10.10 gets serious graphic corruption opening the Ouroboros contact/mission list. I guess I'll try updating to 10.12 or rolling back to 10.9.

IIRC the -RES proc will actually stack, since the 'caster' is the Freezing Rain patch, not your character.

The above is only correct if no one on the team slots +DMG enhancers.

Let's look at it another way. Team of 7 (excluding our debuffing defender) does D base damage, no one runs assault, everyone slots 3 SOs of damage (essentially +100%), and no debuffs are available.

Without the defender:
Total damage = (1 + 1) * D = 2D

Adding the defender, with base damage d, assault, and -30% RES:
Total damage = (1 + 1 + 0.188) * (D + d) * (1.3) = 2.84D + 2.84d

Adding the defender has added 0.84D + 2.84d damage. Even if the defender's personal damage (d) is insignificant, the defender has boosted the team's overall damage from 2D to 2.84D, a 42% increase in total damage.

Adding a blaster, with base damage 2d:
Total damage = (1 + 1) * (D + 2d) = 2D + 4d

Even if the blaster has 2x the base damage of the defender, adding that blaster only adds more damage if 0.84D + 2.84d < 4d or 2d > 1.45D. That is, only if the blaster's base damage is roughly one and a half times more than the entire rest of the team, combined.

This is why defenders are considers force multipliers.

If everyone on both teams runs assault, the damage totals are:

Defender: (1 + 1 + 0.888) * (D + d) * (1.3) = 3.75D + 3.75d
Blaster: (1 + 1 + 0.8) * (D + 2d) = 2.8D + 5.6d

The team with the blaster will only do more damage if the blaster's base damage is slightly greater than the base damage of the rest of the team.

Except, however, for the fact that -RES multiplies total damage (and cannot be boosted by enhancements).

Team A has +80% DMG from stacked assault. A power at the ED cap now does (1 + 1 + 0.8) x (1) = 2.8x base damage.

Team B has no assault and -30% RES from debuffs. A power at the ED cap now does (2) x (1.3) = 2.6x base damage. (Nearly as much total damage as having everyone run assault.)

Fortunately, a defender with -RES and assault adds even more total damage.

Team C has +88.75% DMG (defender assault is 18.75%) and -30% RES from debuffs. A power at the ED cap now does (1 + 1 + 0.8875) x (1.3) = 3.75x base damage.

And, of course, all defender teams are silly:

Team D has +150% DMG and -30% at least double-stacked. Unslotted powers now do (2.5) x (1.6) = 4x base damage.

Doh! I usually remember to turn that one off when looking at builds. :-)

As you noted, Plant/Storm is an amazingly fun combo for plowing through large spawns. I don't know the average inf/hour rate of the ever-popular Fire/Kin, but I just ran several tests with my Plant/Storm for my own analysis.

PI Demons @ +2/x6: ~15M influence/hour from enemy defeats
Custom AE @ +2/x6: ~17M - 20M influence/hour from enemy defeats

What amazed me in my HeroStats data was the amount of damage done by my pets and by damage proc IOs....

Controller ~98 DPS
- Roots ~35 DPS
- Fissure ~37 DPS
- Other ~2 DPS
- 2 Procs (in roots) ~24 DPS

Pets ~141 DPS
- Bite (Fly Trap) ~2 DPS
- Fling Thorns (Fly Trap) ~3 DPS
- Thorny Darts (Fly Trap) ~7 DPS
- Entangle (Fly Trap & CC?) ~43 DPS
- Creeper Vine (CC) ~4 DPS
- Vine Smash (CC) ~4 DPS
- Vine Thorns (CC) ~7 DPS
- Procs (3 in FR, 3 in CC) ~71 DPS

Overall, damage procs accounted for almost 40% of my total damage -- zoiks!

Amber's build looks to have enough global recharge for perma-hasten. With hasten running, Mid's reports 192% recharge -- reducing the recharge on FR to 20.5 seconds and on Creepers to 96 seconds.

While the recharge on FR is good, I'd also advocate for more. Replacing the -Def and the HO with common recharge IOs gets FR to a 16.5s recharge.

In my build I slotted CC with three damage/recharge set IOs and the slow, immobilize, and kb damage procs. I've always assumed that all three of these procs had a chance of firing for every vine smash -- I'll be very disappointed if I'm wrong.

IIRC, the procs get two chances to hit each enemy in the aoe every time you use FR -- one at the cast time, another ten seconds later. Ideally, you'd like to cram three damage, three recharge, and four procs into FR -- alas, not enough slots. Three damage procs in FR should on average do ~86 damage (further increased by the -res of FR) to each baddie in the area of effect. (The two sets of three proc rolls should have a distribution of hits 0:26%, 1:39%, 2:25%, 3:8%, 4:2%, 5&6: <1%, and each hit would do 71.8 damage at level 50, ignoring resistances.)

With slots at a premium, I think the AH proc is a fantastic option in FR.

I don't use Creepers as much solo -- the patch tends not to keep up with me -- but I use it as an alpha whenever it is available. The various pets and subpowers spawned by the creeper patch all benefit from basic damage slotting, and can also trigger the procs. Of course, CC is the other power I'd love to have ten slots in -- 3 damage, 3 recharge, and 4 20% chance damage procs. I believe frankenslotting is the best option, but YMMV....

BG is definitely a trade-off -- 7.5% global recharge with only 4 slots, but lesser enhancement values in the hold itself. For me, the choice was easy, as I use Seeds as my primary control, my every-spawn opener. Vines and Spore Burst are much more "Oops, I bit off more than I can chew...." powers. (Of course, Spore Burst is not so great in recovering a pear-shaped situation, as I usually have creepers, tornado, and/or LS throwing damage everywhere.)

Good luck with your Plant/Storm! Mine was my most fun (and fastest) trip to 50, and the first character I've ever played regularly after hitting 50.

Don't the Brute and Scrapper versions of SC summon the same pseudopet? (And do the same amount of base damage?) Or is the info on City of Data out-of-date/incorrect?