Yes. It is a solid and very fun troller set.
I ripped up hazard zones levelling mine to 37 so far.
Not seeing a guide at all. Anyone have one? Or can point me in the right direction?
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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.
@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.
This is what it means to be a tank!
A couple of things...
When you've got the spawn locked down with Roots, be sure to go through and slap Entangles/Strangler on any lieutenants and bosses for extra damage (it stacks with the Roots damage)
Seeds of Confusion has a good, long confuse time - once you get to Single Origin enhancements, 2 Recharge and 1 Confusion duration should be more than enough to keep it up permanently on every spawn (though there's still the problem of adds, of course, and misses) - it takes 3 Recharge and 2 Confuse to do it with only Dual Origins, if you can spare the slots.
Gale tends to be overlooked, but it's oh-so-useful for getting critters you missed with Roots out of range for a little while. It, combined with Snow Storm, will prevent many deaths by Headman Swordsmen. At least it did for me. 
One slot of Accuracy, perhaps even two or three way later on, if you've slots to spare, will be good - no real need to slot for Knockback and slotting it for damage is, well, laughable (as far as I can tell, you can generally get it to the point where a Gale's worth one tick of Roots at the same level).
EDIT: Oh yeah, almost forgot: you will *hate* the Vahzilok. Their corpses resist Roots and almost never get caught in it. I seem to be able to catch 'em at a decent rate with Entangle, though, and they can be Confused. Still easy, even knowing as I do, to be caught by surprise by the Cadavers & Abominations (especially Embalmed 
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EDIT: Oh yeah, almost forgot: you will *hate* the Vahzilok. Their corpses resist Roots and almost never get caught in it. I seem to be able to catch 'em at a decent rate with Entangle, though, and they can be Confused. Still easy, even knowing as I do, to be caught by surprise by the Cadavers & Abominations (especially Embalmed ...
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Hence the reason to go Plant/FF (well, one of the reasons anyway). Personal Force Field makes a great travel power, even inside missions.
That combo is just seriously sick, and is a perversion of gameplay mechanics. - Excelsio
The Infernal Challenge
Building a WarTroller
Troller Damage
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EDIT: Oh yeah, almost forgot: you will *hate* the Vahzilok. Their corpses resist Roots and almost never get caught in it. I seem to be able to catch 'em at a decent rate with Entangle, though, and they can be Confused. Still easy, even knowing as I do, to be caught by surprise by the Cadavers & Abominations (especially Embalmed ...
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Hence the reason to go Plant/FF (well, one of the reasons anyway). Personal Force Field makes a great travel power, even inside missions.
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I would still go with Plant/Storm. Being able to travel inside missions is easily achievable with pool powers, it is not a good reason to choose a more support oriented set unless that is what you are going for.
I took fire/rad/fire all the way to 50. Was my first lvl 50 hero. Very easy solo in hazard zones or anywhere really.
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I am a casual solo player, have to go afk a lot and don't like to inconvenience other players.
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If you can commit to the keyboard for 5 to 10 minutes at a time, a pick-up radio or newspaper team is OK for frequent afkers. Missions aren't long, and it's acceptable to be afk outside missions for extended periods of time (as long as you're not the team leader.)
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Looking for a an at/set that can solo from 1 to 50. Was wondering which sets work well for solo play. I'm currently looking at plant/storm, any one have experience with that combo as a solo player?
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Storm Summoning in combination with any AT or other powerset is a strong soloer. You get off to a weak start, as Gale is hard to use and provides rather incomplete defense, and Snow Storm depends on enemies being close together and costs a lot of endurance. Freezing Rain is where Storm begins to pick up steam.
(EDIT: Personal Force Field is nice for stealthing through missions, but Storm has Steamy Mist to accomplish the same thing.)
I'm gonna second Fire/Rad as very functional. It's a little endurance hungry, but very versatile and rather powerful, even at lower levels. Sparing use of the rad toggles keeps endurance from dropping too fast while drastically increasing your safety(they're also great if you do get around to teaming), and hot feet/fire cages/char swapped around locks down small solo mobs and gets them dead fairly quick.
so in other words it sounds like it's a good choice for me later on, but not starting out? Where exactly is the fun in that? I guess it's to reward those who stick it out. I had a similar experience in Lord of the Rings online, with a differrent scenario. In that game, the Minstrel class is the healer, and back when I was unemployed, I could play for hours on end. However, in that game, you basically are on your own until the endgame content, and the misntrel was not (and still is not imho) effective at soloing.
I'm not adverse to soloing, I just hate flaking on folks out of necessity. There's also the school of thought that for soloing I should be looking at a scrapper...how do you guys feel about that, controller vs. other ATs for soloing?
Thanks for the replies so far, btw.
You might want to consider plant/TA instead of /storm for casual soloing. Trick arrow has the following advantages:
1) Entangling arrow gives you a cheap way to get containment and will ground fliers so your plant powers will work on them. Snow storm will also ground fliers this but its kinda overkill for the typical group size in solo missions and you don't get containment out of it.
2) Ice arrow will stack with strangler to hold bosses, nothing in storm will do this.
3) While not as good a debuff as freezing rain, Acid Arrow is up a lot more often and costs a lot less end to use so you don't feel like you are wasting it on smaller groups. Freezing rain, while an awesome debuff, is up at most every 30 seconds (without lots of global recharge) and is almost overkill for less then 4-5 enemies.
4) The debuffs in storm, while very nice, reduce the damage done by confused mobs - FR knocks them down, hurricane drops thier accuracy to nothing and snow storm slows them. In a group this isn't a big deal as groups usually defeat mobs fast enough on their own, solo you are relying on the confused mobs to help you defeat their fellows.
5) EMP Arrow + Oil Slick Arrow+Vines gives you lots of good control choices to alternate - a reasonable amount of recharge in each and you can have a hard (emp/vines) or medium (oil slick) control up every fight.
Globals: @Midnight Mystique/@Magik13
I have a plant/storm troller and she's one of my favorite toons. Lvl 37 at the moment and she's very good on teams, and solos very easily. With freezing rain, strangler, entangle (yes, I have both of those at this point), roots, creepers, Lucy (Giant Fly Trap), and tornado, even critters resistant to confuse melt quickly. It's a little more difficult with critters resistant to immobs, but that's a general 'troller problem, not just for plant/ or /storm.
People complain about Fly Trap being squishy, but I haven't had any problem with it. Solo, she rarely dies and I hardly ever even have to heal her (with O2 boost) other than to just top her off after a fight. On teams she'll die more often, but even then, it's only usually in those fights where the team is struggling. She does hang back at range a lot, but usually she will run into melee on her own after several ranged shots.
And I'm not a min/max'er. I try to make strong viable builds, but I don't go crazy over it.
<-- I'm a [u]Monkey's uncle[u]!!
If you are casual soloer (don't want to spend a lot of time playing) then you should try controllerish blaster or defender. Ice or sonic blasters, Dark miasma defenders. If you want to play a controller there are other combos that give you a nice start from lowbie levels. Illusions is good from level one with spectral wounds, for example.
Plant/storm can be nice to solo later on but you're not going to start out at the point when you fly trap, tornado, or lightning storm. Maybe after 30-40 levels you get there. Some people think it's worth it. Others may find it pointless.
"Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty." -- Plato
Playing Gods (51106) - Heroic Lvl 5-20
What Rough Beast (255143) - Villainous Lvl 40-50
Plant/Storm is excellent solo from lvl 8 and just gets better from there. You don't need lightning storm to be awesome (but you are more awesome when you have it)
Things to consider with plant. The AE root from plant is twice as powerful damage-wise as every other AE immob. The drawback to this added damage is that it won't attach itself to fliers that are more than 2 feet off the ground. Hence the reason for snowstorm, even if you only toggle it on for a few seconds to ground everyone for the AE immob.
With containment, you're pumping out decent AE damage with just roots. Add to that the fact that plant/storm is probably the most visually appealing set in the game with lots of "hey, look how cool my controller's powers look" kind of effect.
But other than AE confuse (which is uber, don't get me wrong), the set seems to rely on at least achieving 35 for tornado for some really great soloing.
Also to the above poster who says that freezing rain won't allow confuse to do its thing because mobs are flopping, I say the opposite. Freezing Rain allows confuse to do even more than any other set, because you're also going to be damaging them with Roots+containment damage, which also prevents the flopping. So they're left attacking each other with reduced defense and resistance, while the rain and your roots tick away damage to maximize your exp gain.
I'd advocate for Grav/TA. Great soloer with fantastic (for controllers) single target damage. Using Propel, Lift, Grab Distortion and the Immbolize gives you a great attack chain by level 8. You'll find additional damage with Oil Slick and your pet Singularity.
When there is no room left in Hell, the Dead shall walk the earth.
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Also to the above poster who says that freezing rain won't allow confuse to do its thing because mobs are flopping, I say the opposite. Freezing Rain allows confuse to do even more than any other set, because you're also going to be damaging them with Roots+containment damage, which also prevents the flopping. So they're left attacking each other with reduced defense and resistance, while the rain and your roots tick away damage to maximize your exp gain.
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That is a good point about freezing rain - i forgot that roots countered the knockdown. My primary objection to freezing rain is that it costs so much and is hard enough to get up frequently that you can't always use it every spawn (or don't want to use it for just a couple of mobs) where acid arrow can be used every spawn even if it had less overall debuff and requires a lot less slotting than FR. I think FR is an awesome power but so far I have found that my plant/TA gets far more use solo out of acid arrow then my plant/storm has out of FR. Neither is very high level yet (26 for plant/TA, 24 plant/storm) so at higher levels with more tools to play with I expect the /storm will be just as fun - but the ride up to the mid 20's was much smoother solo for the /TA.
Globals: @Midnight Mystique/@Magik13
Illusion gets solotastic at level 18 (Phantom Army). But before that you're not really worth much unless you take Deceive (which drops your XP). Flash is unreliable (long, long recharge), and Spectral Wounds and Blind are only decent for damage. But after you get PA, you'll be a very happy soloist.
Sorry, I don't know much about plant.
The same argument for deceive/confuse pretty much holds for seeds of confusion. Plant can definitely solo early on...so can any controller. It's just not something I will recommend for a solo casual player, which the OP says he is.
Every spawn in a solo (heroic) mission is three mobs. Seeds of confusion, mass immobs, freezing rain against small solo spawns is a terribly endurance inefficient manner of doing things. I think gravity is best. As organicide pointed out, a great attack chain by level 8. Illusion, with spectral wounds and air superiority also works, but it's not that fast until Phantom Army is slotted up.
(I could also recommend a dark miasma defender. Dark/Ice or Dark/sonic. They are very controllerish but have reasonable single target damage from low levels. Very smooth ride all the way up to 50. However OP indicated he doesn't like defenders.)
NB: I don't have any high level plant controllers, but I got two lowbie plants (plant/FF, plant/thermal) up to 20. Maybe the influence of the secondary, or I'm an impatient person, but I found the lowbie solo experience to be around the level of ice or earth.
"Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty." -- Plato
Playing Gods (51106) - Heroic Lvl 5-20
What Rough Beast (255143) - Villainous Lvl 40-50
Plant/TA is better for casual solo than plant storm. Plant/TA is a little more endurance friendly and is a little less chaotic allowing you to get more out of seeds of confusion.
As far as standard spawns being wasteful on endurance the easiest thing to do is bump up to tenacious as soon as you have seeds of confusion. Typical spawn then is 1 lieutenant and 4 minions or 2 minions and 2 lieutenants, with the occasional 6 minion spawn, and the occasional 3 lieutenant spawn. As long as you have at least 3 targets the end cost is justafiable. On tenacious that will be all most all of the time. On heroic it will only be about a third of the time.
A controllerish blaster is also a very easy way to roll and may be your best option. Then you can both solo at speed and if time permits you to team you can do that well also. My favorite pairings for that are Sonic/Ice/Fire, Ice/Ice/Ice, and Ice/MM/Force. The Sonic/Ice/Fire can solo safely, easily, and effectively with out taking the speed pool or fitness. Though taking those allow you to do what the blaster is designed to do, kill things quickly.
If the time it takes you to finish a spawn is not a consideration you can also solo quite well and safely with an Arch/Dev/Munitions if you like to play a stealthy character and don't mind the extra time it takes to set up mines and bombs.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
My Mind/Storm is level 24 and I've soloed pretty much all the content available to him.
I think controllers are very powerful solo, but you have to slot your "attacks" for damage - you can't slot them for hold duration etc and expect them to hurt. (although I have squeezed 1 hold duration into dominate)
With my 3 hit combo slotted for killing, (that is dominate, mesmerize and levitate) and mass hypnosis to setup containment, I can take out most spawns without trouble. If I can't, I can always abuse confuse to use them to my advantage.
So can controllers solo well? In my opinion, yes they can.
However on large teams you are more useful in maximizing your control powers. On small teams however I find my solo build is better, and actually helps speed things up as I am throwing out decent damage myself.
If you want to solo a controller I would suggest the following to get past the lower levels (pre SO's):
1) General slotting advice - first thing to do is to make sure you cap your accuracy or at the very least hit the streak breaker softcap (90% accuracy), then slot up for damage in all your single target controls. Until you cap damage you won't really save anything by slotting recharge/end reduction. If you can actually cap damage (or at least get to 80%+, where the ED code kicks in) then you can start slotting end reduction/recharge or hold/sleep/immob duration as needed.
2) If you have access to Yin's market in faultline (requries you have at least one character that has done the penelepe yin arc and a way to transfer enhancments between characters and/or friends that can buy them for you) then select the natural or mutant origin so you can start slotting damage SO's at L10. Capping damage is the fastest way to get past the teens.
3) Pick up a good pool attack power - air superiority, boxing, kick or jump kick are all good and will take advantage of containment. This will improve your burst single target damage which many control sets lack. The exception to this is mind - levitate is basically the same power as AS but it is ranged and does more damage, so take it instead. On sets other than mind the pool attack powers will allow you to skip your single target immobilizes (or pick them up but not slot them - just use them as controlls) - they do roughly the same damage but don't take 9+ seconds to do the damage.
4) If you are really serious about soloing go with either mind, illusion or plant control. Mind is the best solo set pre-32 as it has solid single target damage and the ability to lock down any group of 3 or less mobs pretty much constantly. Illusion is second best as spectral wounds bonus damage lets you kill minions quickly, plant is probably third best although after you get stamina and SO's it is arguably tied with mind as you can do large groups of minions very easily (pre-stamina your AE powers cost so much end it is harder to solo).
Post 32 mind falls off a bit due to not getting a pet but depending on your secondary can be a very solid set. Illusion starts to really pick up at 18 with PA, speeds up when you get PA slotted for max recharge and is a soloing monster when you get Phantasm. Plant starts to get really good when seeds of confusion is up reliably (although its single target kill speed is still kinda slow) and once you have stamina plus full SO's just gets better and better.
The other sets (fire/ice/earth) can be soloed but pre-32 are pretty slow, with fire being the fastest as you can slot up hotfeet and fire cages and go hunt in hazard zones reasonably effectively.
Globals: @Midnight Mystique/@Magik13
I (mostly) soloed my fire/kin/ice to 50 and had a blast doing so. I don't think I could have without really paying attention to slotting, though. Post hot feet until imps literally flew by, then post imps I still felt like I was accomplishing at a steady pace, and as long as I wasn't too stupid rarely got in over my head. Kinetics is a great great set that really benefits a solo player.. you have a nice self heal, endurance recharge and damage bonus when you want it.
I have a mid-level Ill/ff that has also mostly soloed to 25 well but requires quite a bit of patience. So much so that I really dislike playing on teams when I've chosen to since the pace of fighting is so different. That being said if I needed to walk away or my attention went elsewhere I can pop a personal force field and be a-ok when I came back.
My first hero to 50 was a Ill/rad and is very fun and very soloable and easily able to contribute quickly to a team with with PA, Spectral Terror, EF, RI, and RA. Sprikle with Fire APP or PSI APP for fun.
Champion.
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We just coded it on a simple X-currentDate formula, so it nerfs itself automatically. -Babs on Accuracy Nerfs
Over 3 years, 1 - 50, whole lotta alt's, still having fun.
I just resubscribed to CoH, and rather than roll another scraper that I'll probably drop in the 20s or a defender even sooner, thought I'd try a controller. Provided they fit my playstyle.
I am a casual solo player, have to go afk a lot and don't like to inconvenience other players. Looking for a an at/set that can solo from 1 to 50. Was wondering which sets work well for solo play. I'm currently looking at plant/storm, any one have experience with that combo as a solo player?