Muon_Neutrino

The reason most don't recommend energy is that the damage is considerably subpar compared to any other dom secondary. It has no AoE damage to speak of (lolwhirlinghands, as most say), and the single target damage is lackluster due to long animations on the two best attacks, power burst and total focus. It doesn't matter how much damage total focus does in a single shot (and it is a lot, I'll grant you) if the animation is so long that you could use two other attacks for more total damage in the time it takes to animate. The stun and knock effects in the powers do make for some nice additional mitigation (which I feel is underrated by many), and power boost *is* a useful power, but it's still not really enough to make up for the lackluster damage. As things currently stand, electricity does everything energy does, except better. It has build up, it has a worthwhile AoE (only 1, yes, but that's one more than energy has), and the melee attacks hit like a freakin truck. The only thing energy has that it doesn't is power boost, but if you want power boost, go /icy and, again, get better damage than energy.

Now, that is all presuming that the set is left unchanged. We don't know what castle might do to it, but it is known that he is at least thinking about making some changes, which may improve the set considerably. Depending on what he does, many of the usual objections to the set may no longer apply. For now, though, realize that you would be sacrificing some damage if you choose to go with energy. It's not unplayable, by any means, but it *is* worse off.

Honestly, the only reason I'd make a brute would be if I can't get the powersets I want on a scrapper (such as my recently rolled stone melee/fire armor brute). I just don't like having to deal with fury - I'd rather start out doing good damage instead of having to build up to it, but mostly I just like to play at my own pace, rather than one the game sets for me. I like to be able to stop and rest, if needed, or wait for a power to recharge, or look over the next group of enemies, or just open my salvage/recipe screen and look at what I've picked up without feeling like I'm gimping myself. I'm having fun with my brute anyway, mostly because stone melee (especially the brute version) is just orgasmically smash-tastic, but it's in spite of the fury mechanic, not because of it.

Yep. If the O's in your diagram represent the mobs, they will all be knocked away from *you*, even the ones in front. As far as I understand, it's because, no matter where the blast hits, the *source* of the power is you, as far as the game engine is concerned. Thus, the knockback goes away from you.

You can see the alternate behavior only on powers which summon a pseudopet to do the knockback; for example, bonfire from fire control or the blaster epic. That summons an invisible static pseudopet which does knockback, and since the pet is the source of the knockback power in that case, mobs get knocked away from the center of the flame patch. But as long as it's a normal power, the KB will be away from you, not from the point of impact.

Transference, like transfusion, summons its restoring aura around the enemy you hit. You target a enemy, activate the power, and it rolls to hit. If it hits the (singular) enemy you target, it summons its 'targetted aoe' end restoring aura around the enemy. (Therefore, if your teammates want the healing/end, they should get in close) The only effect of the power that is AoE is the aura it summons; it does not hit more than one enemy.

AR/dev is a relatively common pairing, mostly due to the thematic match. It is, depending on who you ask, either one of the strongest or weakest solo blasters. Assault rifle lacks aim and a 3rd single target attack, and devices lacks build up and any single-target damage, so the straight up 'solo' damage is lacking. On the other hand, webnade, caltrops, and ignite *do* go together well, and devices has a variety of tricks for *easier*, albiet not faster, soloing. Basically, /devices makes for slow but safe soloing. Honestly, I wouldn't pair AR with devices, though. Aside from the ignite synergy, in my opinion arch/dev is a better combo and also goes well, conceptually.

If you really want an all-ranged blaster (you are correct in your realization that the blaster, in general, is not an all-ranged fighter), the best choices for secondaries in my opinion are devices and ice, with some consideration given to /mental and /energy. Devices has caltrops, webnade, and stealth to facilitate ranged fighting, and ice has shiver and ice patch. Of the two, my preference is /ice, mostly because it has build up. Ice patch serves the same melee denial purpose as caltrops, and shiver is just godly. Mental doesn't have as many tools to *enable* ranged fighting, it just has a ranged cone and single target knockback. Energy has boost range and a ST knockback. I don't think either is as good for a pure ranged fighter as /ice is, though.

For primaries, you probably want something along the lines of fire or archery, or perhaps psi, ice or energy. If you're staying at range, your primary has to carry the entire load of doing damage. Thus, you want a primary that is up to the task. Fire is the stereotypical 'all damage, all the time' primary, and thus would be a good choice. Archery has good, long ranged single target attacks, and a spectacular pseudo-nuke. Psi, ice, and energy have useful effects for a ranged fighter - psi with long range and knocks in tornado and tk blast, ice with movement slows and holds, and energy with knocks in every power.

As far as specific combos go, the ones that jump out at me immediately are fire/ice, ice/mental, and arch/dev. Fire/ice has the best ranged damage primary, and pairs it with a very good ranged support secondary. Use shiver and ice patch to stop enemies from closing to melee and slow their attacks, and wipe them out with fire's high damage ranged attacks. Ice/mental has slightly less ranged damage, but two ranged holds for great solo mitigation. Psi scream adds to ice's otherwise weaker AoE (and combos well with frost breath for massive slowing), and TK thrust is great for getting problem foes out of your face. Probably a safer soloer than fire/ice, but not as strong against crowds. Arch/dev is probably the safest soloer of the bunch, with dev's tricks combined with arch's long-range death, but will be slower than either of the other two, and not as useful on teams. Another possibility could be ice/energy - boost range lets you hold and blast stuff from the next county over, and power boost will make the holds last much longer, and ice's movement slows much stronger. Power thrust to knock away anything that gets too close, and it could work.

Whatever you choose, probably the best way to make sure you get a functional character is to download mid's planner, and post a proposed build on the forums for critique. We can give you advice on which powers to take/skip, and how to slot them.

Depends on how tight your build is. The power pool assault and tactics are identical to the assault and leadership powers you get from your set, except with a higher end cost. The power pool maneuvers power is weaker than yours, with a higher end cost, but every bit of defence brings you closer to the soft cap. Generally, most consider it overkill to get the power pool tactics, but many often take power pool maneuvers and assault. If you've got room in your build, they can be useful.

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Post Deleted by Moderator_08

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Actually, last month an Ice/ice dom became my first level 50 character. I still pull her out frequently, too, because she's still fun to play. I also have a mind/elec up and coming, who is a *blast* to play. I only anticipate both of them getting even more fun with the new changes. In fact, doms seem to be the exception to my altitis, and I can't wait for going rogue so I can play one heroside as well. Nice of you to assume, though. Pro tip: extrapolating based on very limited data is an extremely risky endeavor.

And I'm on the dominator forums for the same reason you claim to be: because I love the AT and am interested in any potential changes upcoming to it. I may not post as often as the forum regulars, but that has nothing to do with my level of interest in dominators.

The domination changes are a straight up buff. Every single dom will be doing slightly above permadom levels of damage, 100% of the time. The only people to whom this can be considered a nerf are those who amassed the very large amount of recharge needed to not only perma domination, but cause it to overlap for significant periods of time - and even then, the decrease in their damage is very small for any reasonable levels of recharge. The only people who are nerfed in any significant way are those who run around with enough pocket kins to get perma double stacked dom, or even triple stacked dom, who are so massively powerful anyway that I don't think they have any basis to complain.

There has been some speculation that psychic shockwave, the capstone power for psi assault and a massively broken power, may be nerfed during these changes as well - and castle seems to have hinted that it will be. Since psi shockwave's brokenness is widely seen as making up for the otherwise lackluster psi assault set, everyone has assumed (and castle has agreed) that any nerf to psi shockwave would have to be accompanied by a buff to the rest of the set.

There are some posters with legitimate concerns about the second change - mostly that it may change the focus of psi assault from a PBAoE focused set to a ST focused one. Most have agreed, though, that this is a change a long time coming. Personally, I don't care very much either way. However, the damage modifier change isn't ambiguous. Whatever changes may be upcoming to individual sets, the main domination change is in no way anything but a buff.

Yes. For that reason, I personally don't like to slot it. The extra resistance debuff is good, but I prefer to know consistently if the enemies will aggro or not - since you can't know for *sure* that it won't aggro, you can't really take advantage of the 80% of the time it doesn't, since of course it'll choose to roll that 20% at the worst possible time. It's a personal preference thing, though - if the extra debuff seems worth it to you, go for it - it certainly *is* useful. Just be aware of the tradeoff.

Some people don't like the decrease in DPA that came with the rebalancing. Personally, I like the look of the new animation, and I think it's rather silly how worked up people got over the whole change. Balancing happens.

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Very good post, though I would add that the aggro aura for Shield Defense is about as strong as Willpower's, but the extra AoE damage from Shield Charge helps the Shielder maintain aggro.

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It originally was that way, but that seems to have changed at some point in here. City of data now lists it as a 16.875 second mag 4 taunt instead of the 1.25 second mag 3 taunt it used to be, and that seems to be backed up by both the in-game numbers (shows '400% taunt' instead of willpower's 300%) and my anecdotal experience - shielders sure seem to be holding aggro a lot more easily than most WPs I come across.

Well, in no particular order:

Fire armor: Resistance reduces incoming damage (hopefully) to the point where the strong self-heal can keep up with it. Very strong against fire damage, weak against cold, psi, and knockback. A good damage aura and fiery embrace (a variety of build up) make this an offense-heavy set, but the resistance numbers are not huge, and the set lacks a traditional tier 9 'godmode' power, instead having a self-rez in rise of the phoenix. Has an endurance recovery tool in consume. Overall, a set which accepts slightly weaker survivability in trade for offense.

Ice armor: 'Typed' defense causes most attacks with a smashing, lethal, energy, or negative component to miss. Very strong cold resistance, but very weak against fire and psi. Has a strong self-heal on a long timer (hoarfrost) and two aggro auras. One of them slows and debuffs the damage of nearby enemies, the other simply deals damage to them. The tier 9 is a 'phase' type power that renders you immobile and invincible for a short period, while quickly recovering your health and endurance. Has a strong endurance recovery tool in energy absorption which also boosts your defense when used. A strong survivability set which layers some healing and debuffs on top of its defense, and is known for being the undisputed king of aggro gathering thanks to its dual auras.

Dark armor: Another resistance set with a extremely strong self-heal, dark armor is strong against negative energy and psi, has protection from fear and endurance drain, but is weak to energy and knockback. Has a self stealth and two auras which deal out status effects to nearby enemies instead of fire's damage tools. Much stronger defensively than fire, but not the same offense. Extremely end heavy set, with a lot of toggles and an absurdly strong but absurdly expensive self-heal. Also has a self-res for a tier 9. Overall, somewhat of a 'finesse' set - managing the end costs and timing the heal can make the difference between a squishy tank and one with god-like survivability.

Invul: Middle of the road set, with a combination of defense and resistance. Extremely strong against smashing and lethal damage, somewhat weaker against energy/negative/fire/cold, no protection at all against psi. Has a strong self-heal on a long timer (dull pain), and a strong god-mode with a nasty crash at the end. Likes to be surrounded by enemies to fuel its invincibility power -- the more nearby foes, the higher the defense. Can actually be *safer* in a big crowd than when only fighting a few enemies. A decently strong set overall, its specialty is in dealing with smashing and lethal damage.

Shield defense: The new kid on the block, shield combines smaller amounts of defense, resistance, and maximum HP boosting into a well-rounded, but not extremely strong, defensive package. No resistance against psi damage, but the defense and hp boosting can help there, and shields has very comprehensive mez protection. Strong offensive abilities - shield charge is a potent AoE attack with strong mitigation, and against all odds boosts your damage to nearly unheard-of levels for a tanker - if you're surrounded. Has a medium strength tier 9 with a soft crash. Also has the quirk of having two powers that key off of nearby teammates - one that grants you defense, and one that grants them defense. Neither are very strong, however. Somewhat weaker defensively overall, but a very strong offensive set, at least as good as fire and probably better.

Willpower: Very well-rounded overall survivability set. Combines some resistance, defense, and maximum HP boosting with very strong regeneration. Very strong against psi damage and has good mez protection, but somewhat weaker to 'spike' damage that could defeat you before your regeneration can kick in. A bit like invincibility in that the regeneration gets stronger the more foes are nearby - the safest place can often be right in the middle of the crowd. Has quick recovery - effectively stamina - available early, and has a tier 9 very similar to shield's. The aggro aura is very weak, however - enemies can easily be distracted from a willpower user. Overall, a very strong survivability set against everything but alpha strikes, but can have trouble holding aggro.

Stone armor: The undisputed king of pure toughness, stone is actually a somewhat weaker and end-heavy set before 32, with a lot of toggles which provide a mix of defense and resistance to most damage types along with a bit of regeneration. Has an armor which provides psi defense, unlike some sets. The tier 9, however, totally changes the set - it is a toggle which provides massive amounts of defense and resistance to everything but psi, but greatly slows your movement and attack rates, as well as lowering your damage. Combined with your mez protection, which also slows you down, you won't be moving very fast. The best tanker at pure survivability, at least after 32, but very low offense and mobility.

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I'm wondering, does the global acc bonus's affect his acc?

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Depending on exactly how the set bonuses are handled internally by the game engine, he *may* inherit your global accuracy bonuses, but if he does, it'll only be for a few seconds after you cast him. In other words, no, he won't. That's why he'll need some accuracy enhancement.

Looking at your build, you certainly are tight on slots if I'm understanding correctly which set bonuses you're going for. At this point, seeing the specifics of your build, what I'd do is just switch out the dark watcher's despair chance for recharge slow in fluffy for the accuracy. The proc itself isn't *that* powerful, and the 2% damage set bonus is probably the one you can most afford to sacrifice. And you really do want to get at least that one acc in there.

That looks good, but fluffy still needs some accuracy. His twilight grasp, petrifying gaze, and tenebrous tentacles all need a tohit check. I would seriously suggest scaring up a 6th slot from somewhere and putting a generic accuracy IO in there. It's just one slot, but it'll improve his abilities quite a bit.

Well, twilight grasp just needs to be slotted for some acc at bare minimum, some heal, end, and recharge on top of that if you have spare slots. If you're going for 3, I would try to get as many cheap pieces of the new accurate healing sets as you can, and try to frankenslot it for maybe 40-60% acc, and as much heal/end/recharge as you can fit in. It's a power which could make good use of more slots, if you can spare them, but it should be functional with three.

Darkest night with 5 dark watcher's is fine - in fact, you can probably strip it down to 4 if you need the spare slot. Dark servant, on the other hand, needs more -- a lot of his powers have to-hit checks, and neither you nor him have any way to debuff defense. Thus, he needs at *least* one SO's worth of acc, and preferably more. The other annoyance (when it comes to frankenslotting, anyway) is that the powers which need acc are diverse in nature, and to boost each power's acc would require a set IO of the appropriate type -- for example, an accurate tohit debuff IO with an accuracy component wouldn't boost the accuracy of his petrifying gaze power since it doesn't take those sets, and an accurate healing IO wouldn't boost the accuracy of anything besides his twilight grasp. For that reason, for his accuracy needs I just like to give him 2 generic accuracy IOs, since those apply to all of his powers. 2 acc IOs plus 4 dark watcher's is fine, but he will need at least one of those accuracies.

Finally, fearsome stare... I kid you not, this is the best power in the set. 6 slots, absolutely no question. A gigantic cone fear with a long duration, quick recharge, and decent size tohit debuff, this power wants as many enhancements as you can give it. If you're slotting for set bonuses, the glimpse of the abyss set has decent bonuses and might be cheap. Personally, though, I would frankenslot this power to try and maximize both the fear and -tohit aspects of it. Try to get 50-65% acc and recharge, and as much fear and -tohit as you can fit in. Other aspects are secondary - the endurance cost is already low, and the cone already has huge range. Just get those 4 aspects slotted up.

How about, instead of there being a threshold where you become fatigued, simply allow endurance totals to become negative, and apply the 'fatigued' debuff whenever the current endurance total is less than 0? Cap this 'endurance debt' at -10 or -20 or something, visually represent it by a short red endurance bar overlaid over the (empty) normal bar which grows as you spend more endurance and shrinks as you recover closer to being positive, and allow end to recover at the normal rate but enforce the penalty until endurance becomes positive again. This has the same overall effect, but avoids the 'my end bar is now effectively smaller' perceptual issue (because you still have the same 100 end to play with before you hit the fatigued state).

(If you can't tell, I really like this idea)

Eh, no. If I can play a heroside dom, brute, or corruptor.... Well let's just say my controller, tanker, and blaster alts are shaking in their boots.

Doms, especially, with what castle seems to be thinking about for buffs.

Well, I've only got one cat character, but here she is. I just have to add the disclaimer: I take no credit for the name, that was the idea of someone from these forums. I'm just the person who felt compelled to run with the idea! Naturally, she's an illusion/sonic with superior invisibility and the teleport pool.

Schrodinger's Catgirl - Being a physics student is tough!
Schrodinger's Catgirl - In the lab!

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But the thing is that it's sacrificing damage. Its AoE damage will always be bad, and having only two melee attacks and Power Boost instead of Build Up means it will never match Electricity Assault.

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Well, I *was* suggesting boosting the damage as well. I would hope to leave it in the state that you're sacrificing *AoE* damage, but not ST damage. And honestly, comparing it to /elec isn't really fair - elec is such a massive outlier that it can't really be matched. In comparison to the rest, I'm not sure that it'd come off *that* bad in ST damage. Moving bonesmasher and power blast to the blaster versions would be required, of course.

And remember, how much DPS do you lose by spamming your single target hold? I think the effect of being able to control a target without interrupting your attacks, while hard to quantify, would be at least noticeable.

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By choosing Energy Assault you are sacrificing damage for extra control, which only makes sense if your primary is not enough to assure your survival. But for a good Dominator player it is, so Energy becomes the set for the bad Dominator player.

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As to this, I would say: "Yes, but..." The primary is usually enough, it is true, and if you can't keep yourself alive using it, you probably *aren't* that good at playing a dom. But if you don't have to lean on the primary so much, if you can let the secondary take a bit of the work of keeping you alive, you can go faster, because you don't have to take as much time out of attacking, or spend as much extra endurance, in order to stay alive. It would, at least in my vision, be sort of the mirror counterpart of /elec - superior single target damage, not solely through powerful attacks (though powerful enough) but through letting you attack more. It wouldn't match /elec, of course, but it'd be a lot better than it is currently.

I guess what I'm saying is that "letting the secondary do some of the work for the primary" does *not* necessarily mean that you *need* the secondary to do the work of the primary - but you're letting it help, in order to do that work more easily.

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Perhaps having such a set is appropriate and I just have to learn to live with the fact that it's not for me.

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I do think it is appropriate, actually. At the moment, I just think that /energy sacrifices *too* much damage for too *little* control. Up the damage, up the control, and I think it'd be good.

As for the exact changes I'd do.... Bonesmasher and power blast to the blaster versions. Give power push scale 1.32 damage. Cut power burst's animation time some. Give Bonesmasher and Total Focus a chance for knockdown. Add a guaranteed mag 1 stun to power push for stacking. Tweak some of the percentages for the chances to KB/stun on the other powers, maybe.

That'd help a lot, I think. Basically, relieve somewhat most of the worst DPA problems, make power push a combo attack/mitigation power (again the theme of not sacrificing attack time for mitigation), and up the soft control so that you'd be able to keep 1 target continuously out of the fight.

Honestly, I'm not sure why the idea of soft/auxiliary control as a secondary effect is considered so useless. I mean, granted that in its current incarnation /energy doesn't really grant a *useful* enough amount of said control, but the idea itself isn't *bad*.

At the early levels, doms are notoriously control-light. You usually don't have anything really effective beyond your ST hold for a good while, and even when you do get them the staple AoE controls are usually pretty bad before you can really slot them out. And while the single target hold does have an accuracy bonus to alleviate *that* particular low level problem, it's duration and recharge are both pretty bad at low levels. Having some semi-reliable knocks and stuns in your attacks would practically double the number of mobs you could keep out of the fight at low levels, if you could rely on the mob you're beating on to be on his rear and/or stunned most of the time.

And even at higher levels, soft control could still be useful. I soloed my ice/ice through most of the 40s, and one thing I noted over and over is that there's an annoying dynamic that comes into play just going spawn-to-spawn solo - a standard solo spawn is hard to justify using an AoE control on, and if you do, it's not going to be up for the next spawn. However, even at high levels, my hold still has almost a 7 second cycle (BoI and its 2 second activation time.... grr), so it'll take about 15 seconds to lock down the spawn with that. I usually would hold one, bounce a second with air sup, hit him some, hold the third, and finish off the second, relying on AA and air sup to keep the two I hadn't held from hitting me too much. In other words, I used soft controls to mitigate damage until I could get everything under harder control.

If /energy didn't have such an anemic combination of soft control and damage, I could see doing the same thing with that set. Hold the first, bounce the second with power push, beat on the third a couple times and inconvenience him a bit with a knock or stun, hold the second, and kill the third, hopefully keeping him out of the fight the whole time. As it stands, though, lol power push in terms of being an attack, and the soft control/damage on the other attacks isn't much to write home about either.

The thing about folding controls into the attacks is it fits into the whole 'overloaded attack chains' problem doms have. If the enemy we'd be hitting anyway is effectively taken out of the fight by soft controls built into the attacks, that's one less enemy we need to worry about taking the time to apply an actual control to. On a team, for example, there's often a priority boss/etc to toss the first few holds on, but the dom themselves won't necessarily be engaging the same target. If we can knock out of the fight a minion or lieut that the area controls missed without using the single target hold on them, so much the better.

I do agree that in its current incarnation, /energy kinda sucks. The soft controls it has aren't reliable enough, and it has damage problems. But I don't think that increasing the soft control will make it "the set for people who suck at playing doms". I honestly think it'd add an interesting dimension by making it the dom set that allows you to take stuff out of the fight by simply attacking it, as long as the damage wasn't so anemic.

What I'd do is swap power blast and bonesmasher for the higher damage/recharge blaster versions, give power push the damage of a 6s recharge blast, and improve the knock/stun soft control to the point where, if you're continually beating on one target, it'll stay out of the fight. At that point, I think the set would actually be pretty decent. You could do some DPA tweaking on power burst, too, if you like.

Well, if/when I ever get my MA character up to about 30, I plan on blowing all of her tickets on 30-34 bronzes. Wasn't planning on writing them down, but I might as well. With my altitis, though, that might be a few months from now.

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Plant/storm is a good combo, and possesses *very* good synergy between the two sets.

Basically, as far as staple powers go, take everything from storm except o2 boost and thunderclap, and then entangle, strangler, roots, seeds, carrion creepers, and fly trap from plant. Season to taste with a travel power, stamina, and fill out any remaining gaps with any extra powers from plant or storm that look good (I took o2 and vines) or pool powers.

Your staple trick is using steamy mist to get in position and then confusing a whole pack at once with seeds. Let them herd themselves up a bit (stick immobs/holds on a boss or something during that time) and then drop freezing rain and spam roots on the pack. Roots prevents freezing rain from knocking them down, thus they get the full benefit of the resistance and defense debuffs to kill each other faster. Slot roots for maxed out damage - it does twice as much as 'normal' AoE immobs, for the same recharge and less end, and is thus actually a good AoE attack. Once seeds has clumped them and FR has debuffed their resistance, spamming roots will actually drop stuff pretty quickly. Add lightning storm and/or tornado to the mix once you get high enough (roots prevents them from knocking stuff around as well, which turns tornado into a buzzsaw) and packs drop even faster.

Despite the persistent rumors, you don't actually lose much of any XP for confusing mobs, as long as you don't let them kill each other completely by themselves. The XP is divided up so that, as long as you do a decent amount of damage, you get most of the xp - if you do 50% of the damage to a mob and the other 50% is done by a confused foe, you get 80% of the XP, for example. Given that letting mobs do 50% of the work for you *doubles* your killspeed, this works out to a net *gain* of 40% more XP over time. Don't let teams give you a hard time for using confuse powers.

Plant handles large groups amazingly well because of this trick, and most secondaries have something to support it in doing so. But normally plant has a bit of a hole against single tough targets. You can try and stack holds on them like any other troller set, but it doesn't have any special way to deal with them. This is where storm comes in - tornado and lightning storm are both quite good against tough bosses/EBs, especially since they will do their thing even if you are running around, hiding, or mezzed. If a boss isn't resistant to knockback, tornado, LS, and FR can keep him flopping around the entire time. If he is resistant (or you or fly trap use an immob on him) tornado will grind him into dust. Hurricane also provides you with a personal shield with its repel and -tohit, and you can also use it offensively to do 'drive-by' debuffing or to shove the boss into a corner and keep him there. Also, consider taking air superiority, whether you take fly as a travel power or not. Air superiority is a very good choice to round out your single target attack chain (entangle+airsup is practically a chain by itself; slot entangle as an attack since it's already got tons of duration), and provides more single-target mitigation. Later on, consider the earth epic - seismic smash does mondo gobs of damage and is also a *magnitude 4 hold*, which will get bosses in a single hit.

The other question about plant/storm is what do you do when seeds is either ineffective or recharging. While it has a quick recharge and should be up for every spawn, sometimes you'll need to lock down two at once - an ambush comes in, or a teammate accidentally aggroes another, or something - and some enemies are resistant to confuse. In general, the best tools available to mitigate damage minus seeds are freezing rain, hurricane, vines, and (in a panic situation) using tornado to throw everything all over the place while you run. Notice that two of these rely on knockback/down - be sparing with your immobilizes in these situations.

One of the big skills in using a plant/storm properly is managing knockback. Know which of your powers can cause knockback/knockup/knockdown - gale, freezing rain, hurricane (hurricane has both knockback and repel, which are different effects), tornado, lightning storm, carrion creepers, and air sup, if you take it. Know how you can *stop* knockback effects - your immobilizes prevent knock for 15 (entangle) or 12 (roots) seconds after each application. Creepers and fly trap also cast immobilizes with this property. Knockback is sometimes good, sometimes not. You will learn from experience when those times are, and when to use knock powers and when to abstain. For example, if you want to use air sup to juggle a boss until you can hold him, don't use entangle first. Do strangler->airsup (boss falls down)->entangle->strangler (boss is probably held before he even gets to his feet again).

Also, notice that plant has trouble dealing with flyers - both immobilizes do have -fly, but cannot be cast on enemies who are not on the ground (??? - this is a strange design choice indeed, and nobody is quite sure why they did it this way). However, notice that snow storm has -fly - this is why you take it. Use snow storm to drop flyers out of the sky, and once they hit the ground your immobs can keep them there.

In general, this represents a common trend - a number of your power choices don't support your central trick. You don't want to use hurricane or snow storm on confused foes, for example - they already pose no threat, and it would decrease the speed at which they kill each other. These power choices instead *complement* your main trick, giving you tools that can be used to plug holes your trick doesn't cover. This is something that I feel a lot of plant controllers miss - they see snow storm's slow or hurricane's -tohit, think "I don't want that - it'd interfere with my confuses", and fail to see the wider applications of such a power. These powers will stay in your back pocket a lot of the time, but when you need to pull them out, they will be very useful.

Soloing, plant is best at killing large spawns. Thus, it tends to perform very well at street sweeping, and less so (but still acceptably) in missions. On teams, though, plant is a very good contributor against the large mission spawns they generate. If you're looking to solo a plant controller, I would suggest giving hazard zones a look.

Good luck with your plant/storm. It's got great conceptual synergy, and I feel it's one of the better controller combos and certainly makes for a strong and fun character.

*Jumps in line, spreads out the blanket, unpacks the picnic basket* Is there an outlet anywhere around here where I can plug in this stereo?

One minor issue that's been bugging me for a while: at the power quantification screen where you pick which AT you want info on, you can click only on the small text link beneath each picture. It seems counter-intuitive to me that, with the huge size of the AT logos compared to the text links below them, that you cannot click on the large AT logo graphic to go to that AT's page. It would make a lot more sense to me if the logo was also a clickable link to the appropriate AT's section. Just a minor interface tweak, but it's something that's been niggling at me for a while.

That is indeed a crab build with pool maneuvers and assault, and you had to sacrifice aim and a patron AoE to do it. Between build up and a 4th AoE, most huntsman builds I see actually have more AoE than that one. And the huntsman build is still competitive in team contribution given surveillance and WAWG. And as I mentioned before, the global recharge necessary to perma spiderlings is not trivial to acquire nowadays.

Like I said, if you try and squeeze the leadership pool powers into a crab build, you've got to sacrifice something.

(As a personal pet peeve, can we not post builds with the huge long section of set bonuses broken down by individual set? It doesn't really add much, and it's annoying to have to scroll past that huge useless chunk of text.)