Plant/rad dealing damage?

My plant/rad is level 20 now. I've been turning up the number of heroes I'm equivalent to to get bigger spawns to confuse. The only issue is, when solo, where does my damage come from so I get exp for the kills? I can spam aoe root, but the damage isn't terribly high. I grabbed a bunch of single target attack options to help with soloing, but those aren't good enough for that because half the mobs are dead before I get to attack them.

Is this something that's simply going to be pretty low until creepers/flytrap/app's? Soloing definitely isn't bad right now, but it just seems like some of the potential of an aoe confuse as such a low level is going to waste because I can't deal the damage to claim a good chunk of the exp.

A lot of the damage actually does come from roots. It might not be obvious just from looking at it, but roots actually does twice as much damage as a 'normal' AoE immob. At 60% of the damage of stuff like strangler, entangle, and air superiority, it's actually deceptively good - keep in mind that it's got a massive 30 foot radius and only an 8 second recharge. Until you get the rest of your damage in creepers, flytrap, and your APP AoE, spamming roots is where it's at.

A few things to keep in mind. First, you're still on DOs at 20. Once you can slot SOs at 22, roots will become a significantly better source of damage (you do want to six slot it and give it plenty of damage slotting). Second, the damage/XP ratio for damage dealt by confused mobs is on a curve. Even if you only do 50% of the damage, you still get 80% of the XP. Roots might not kill fast enough to overwhelm the mob's contribution, but it should still do enough to net you the lion's share of the XP. Finally, a good followup to seeds is to hit the spawn with enervating field before you start spamming roots. The resistance debuff will help you kill them faster with roots, while the accompanying damage debuff will prevent the resistance debuff from increasing the rate at which they kill each other. If you're not doing this already, give it a try.

Plant actually kills an entire spawn better than a single target, especially at that level.

Keep the difficulty level low, but keep the number of heroes high.........and turn bosses off.

It's pretty much seeds, debuffs, roots. Over and over as fast as you can. The spawn should go down reasonably quick, and you'll be doing plenty of damage to get your XP.

Oh things are dying plenty fast, it just seems like I don't get much of the exp because I'm not doing enough damage. Root isn't fully slotted yet though and I don't have SO's or Enervating field yet (I don't grab it pre-stamina because of end issues). Once I have those I imagine I'll be able to do a lot more of the damage to get good exp from confuse.

Don't get too caught up in experience per kill. Seeds will speed up your kill rate—sorry, arrest rate, just be sure to use your best auctioneer's voice when reading them their rights—which should result in better experience per <insert unit of time here> if that's important to you.

Back before newspaper missions when it was possible to outlevel contacts, one could make an argument for maximizing experience per kill. But with scanner missions, Ouroborous, and even getting experience while exemplared, it's not like you can run out of missions even if you tried really hard. And, of course, the mission bonus doesn't care how you finished, it's always full experience. So experience per kill is meaningless.

If roots slotted as an attack doesn't seem like it provides the damage to get enough experience over time for you—and personally with the sheer safety you should be soloing at I wouldn't bee too critical—you could entertain the idea of damage procs; you have access to a number of powers that can take them.

I'm not looking at exp per kill, honestly I don't even know what a good number is there anyway. I was more looking at "I just killed 20 minions/lt's and my exp bar barely moved", where several large pulls later, it felt like I should have gained a little more than I did. It's probably because I'm 1 level from SO's and paying too close attention to my level since it's such a jump in efficiency. :P