Plant isn't really a melee set - all the plant powers are either ranged or pseudopets. But given you should have all the non-bosses confused anyway it'll be fine.
As for damage of plant, Entiandromos did some work on the US boards about the highest AoE damage sets. In first (surprising absolutely no one) was Fire/Kin, and in second was Fire/Rad. In IIRC third (may have been fourth, but certainly above Fire/Storm) was Plant/Storm.
And Plant Control control is centred round one absolutely awesome power. Seeds of Confusion - 60 second base recharge, 37.5s base Mag 3 confuse cone in a 60 degree arc with no accuracy penalty. At level 8.
On the other hand, Roots is a real aggro magnet. That's because it does twice the damage of any other troller AoE immobilise (well. 1.8* Fire cages). If the confuse fails (stupid Nemesis) you will be taking masses of aggro and faceplanting a lot (I've pulled aggro both off Stone Tanks running their taunt aura and AoE spamming fire/fire blasters before now).
On the other hand, the synergy between Kin and Plant is low. Yes, it allows you to perma your Carrion Creepers and to speed up your rootspam. But the creeper vines only last 15s so fulcrum shifting into them isn't that rewarding (they love debuffs - hence storm working well with them). And plant has nothing on a PBAoE or that really benefits from being used on a short range. So you have two absolutely superb sets there (Plant and Kin) but the combination is weaker than the sum of the parts.
Hi Paralux,
Thanks for the reply, it all sounds very interesting and full of potential.
In regards to the Creepers how exactly do they work?
Do they function in a similar way to PA - target-able and pulling aggro off of you or do they pull aggro onto you?
Thanks
L50s: Tanks: Cryofission - Ice/EM - Dr Celsius - Fire/Ice - Saint George - SD/SS | Controllers: Psichosis - Ill/Kin - Major Chaos - Ill/Stm | Scrappers - Neutron Crusader - DM/SR
Currently Levelling: Angelic Blade - BS/WP Scrapper | Seeds of Destruction - Plant/Kin Controller
How does Creepers work? That's a complicated one.
When you summon Creepers you summon a Carrion Creeper patch. Directly the patch causes movement slow and is untargetable (pulling aggro onto you). It's only enhancable with slow (any acc and damage enhancements go to waste - we think this is a bug but it may be for balance reasons*). The patch itself also summons two separate pets.
The first is what are actually called Carrion Creepers. Whenever a mob dies actually in the creeper patch then creepers explode from the corpse, damaging and immobilising the still cooling corpse (Freakshow hate this as the damage at this point remains after their self-res I think) and anything within an 8 foot radius of them when they died. So with the low single target but high AoE damage nature of plant, it's even faster to kill multiple densely packed minions or LTs than it is to kill one. This is why when you've got a plant controller on the team the corpses often appear to be wrapped with vines (I think Jaegers look really cute this way - but maybe it's my bitterness about the Nemesis confuse resistance) and there are still numbers ticking after everything is dead.
But after this comes the part most people associate with the creepers - the vines. Each mob standing in the creeper patch gives the patch a 50% chance of summoning a vine every 10 seconds (max 10 mobs being checked). These vines last 15 seconds, are independently targetable (thus drawing aggro, although not a lot because they aren't that high damage), and hurt, slow, and annoy any mobs stupid enough to be in reach or range. Single target per vine - but if the target goes away the vines are free to find another one (meaning the excess damage from what is effectively an AoE attack isn't wasted).
* If I had an account on the test server I'd check whether this included acc and damage in slow sets which I think in theory work. But for all you can slot them, normal acc and damage enhancers don't - neither do most of the sets you can slot.
Hi all,
I'm planning to make a new alt - Plant/Kin.
I'm looking for a high damage alt that can be played in melee to maximize the benefits of /Kin.
So the questions are:
1. Will it offer the damage?
2. Will Plant offer the control to allow me to play in melee?
3. Does the set have good synergy? I know /Kin very well but have minimal experience with Plant/, will the combo work and produce a high damage melee controller or a face planting lemon?
L50s: Tanks: Cryofission - Ice/EM - Dr Celsius - Fire/Ice - Saint George - SD/SS | Controllers: Psichosis - Ill/Kin - Major Chaos - Ill/Stm | Scrappers - Neutron Crusader - DM/SR
Currently Levelling: Angelic Blade - BS/WP Scrapper | Seeds of Destruction - Plant/Kin Controller