I'm considering re-rolling but I want advice!

I have a Spines/Regen character that I've had since 2004. He was the 3rd character I ever made. I have one little problem, though: I hate him.

I just wanted a plantlike hero character. Every build I can come up with either in-game or in Mids turn out to be rather ineffective/unfun, or prohibitively expensive. He's almost lvl 32, and I keep feeling like I should give his T9 primary a shot before nuking him...but I never play him.

I love his name, concept, and backstory. I'm looking at making a Plant/Earth Dominator (2XEP Weekend seems like a good time), and I want to know if these sets synergize into maximum fun. I'm mostly soliciting the Plant/Earth Doms here, but any advice is warmly welcome.

Thanks!

It's hard to offer much without knowing why you don't like the character, or why any builds you come up with for it seem unfun. Without that any suggestions will be a shot in the dark.

As to Plant/Earth Dominators, the two sets don't synergize particularly well, but they don't work against each other either, so if that's the combo you want to roll I'd say go for it. Out of curiosity why is Plant/Thorns not up for consideration? It seems like the thematic pick.

The reason I say I don't think Plant/Earth works together all that great are twofold. First is that after using Plant's main group control, Seeds of Confusion, you usually want to follow up with AoE damage, which isn't /Earth's strong suit. Second is that /Earth is one of three Dominator secondaries that gets Power Boost, which does very little for Plant. Seeds has a long enough duration that there is no need for Power Boost.

Following up with what Supernumiphone said, it's important to know what you think is 'fun'. And it would also help to know what you mean by 'ineffective'. If you mean you can't stand freely in a mob with your mission set to +4/x8, well, that's something.

If you can't even do your own missions at base difficulty, that's something too.

plant/storm is sorta planty, and I was grouped with a spines/wp named "gorse" who really looked like a gorse bush.

Well, if it was button pushing/babysitting you don't like, then Willpower is regen without the button pushing.

But, I don't think any dom would make you happy if you don't like micromanaging what your character is doing. Doms and trollers are both wet toilet paper squishy, and require the constant use of controls to keep you up. And Plant doesn't really have any passive controls that give you much defense at all.

If you're fine with melee, spines/wp seems like a better choice.

If you don't want to go with a Plant/Thorn dominator, then I'd say give a Plant/Storm controller a try.

It's very synergistic and VERY powerful feeling, so long as you don't mind a lot of "Mass Chaos Control"

I have a character where I made two versions back before we could swap sides: Plant/Storm controller and Plant/Ice dominator. the character is a tree spirit. I also have a spines/nin stalker who bought a super-power kit from devouring earth limited and became a plant-monster ninja. And I have an Earth/thorn dominator.

I can say that spines/thorns really sucks compared to any other attack set I've tried. Sure it has a few ranged options. But the actual AoE is not that impressive (compared to claws for instance which does a better job using nothing more than Spin), the attack speed (animation times) are horrid, and it does too much lethal and not enough toxic. I can't really recommend that you try another spines or thorns character based on my experience with them. the earth/thorn dom I would delete completely except earth/ is so much fun all by itself. I pretty much pretend that character doesn't have a secondary.

Plant, on the other hand, is a spectacular set with many fun abilities. It is powerful when slotted cheaply, and it benefits from dumping lots of cash into it too. I can confirm that both versions are fun, but I like doms far more than controllers and storm has a few too many powers that are hard to control (tornado, hurricane) or are throw always (gale, O2 Boost). I doubt I'll ever make another stormie of any AT having this one is more than enough. It's cool and powerful, but not my bag of tea just like your issues with regen it requires too much babysitting (stand here everything gets messed up, stand there it works ok. Use this power only after applying -kb, use this one before, blah blah blah, way too much hassle, I want click-kill-done and that's not storm).

Try a plant dominator. Go either /fire /elec or /psi for your secondary to get good AoE attacks. /Psi also has drain psyche which is awesome to overcome your squishiness. I really love my plant/ice and it has a solid elemental feel to it, plus you can color the attacks to look like earth crystals if you want. At epic go either /fire /ice or /leviathan. /Soul has some great clickies but they are just what you don't want in the form of click to gain endurance etc.

If you go plant/elec/leviathan you can really have a ton of summons leaving you free to do your thing. Flytrap, Creepers, Voltaic Sentinel, WaterSpout and Coralax out all at once drawing aggro off you and upping your damage at low/no end cost. then you cause confusion and have awesome holds, immobilize and AoE attacks (plus plant's aoe immobilize is the highest damage out there). /Elec has some solid hard-hitting AoE's and leviathan has a cone -res to up your damage against whole spawns (I also slot achiles heel in my flytrap since it has two attacks one of them being a cone that use it).

That's my recommendation anyway.

Thanks everyone, with special mention to Gavin (that's a great post). If nothing else, I now feel brave enough to delete a lvl 31 character...the highest I've ever deleted. You guys gave me direction, which is exactly what I had hoped for!

I think practically any concept can work thanks to power customization, so I might just go with Ice or Electricity on a Dominator. I think I'll post an update after the weekend so you all know what I tried out.

My vote would be Plant/storm. Seriously, it's that fun. You just end up throwing so much crap at a mob it just can't comprehend it all. Seeds, Creepers, Tornado, Lightning Storm, and epic attacks. You can even go Plant/storm/ice for just a mass of DoT damage inflicted upon a confused mob.

Another vote for Plant/Storm here. Mine is one of my few 50s and is my favorite Controller yet... not only is Plant awesome but it has a ton of -KB so you can really cut loose with the Storm powers without scattering things. Of course you can also just leave off the -KB and toss stuff around too if you need the extra mitigation... though since 90% of the enemies are going to be shooting each other instead of you you seldom will.

Lol! Whoops, slept on hot feet :P. Only secondary Damage aura, you could take both were you so inclined.

Other than power boost though, what's the argument for lack of synergy w/Earth Assault? Not trying to be fecetious, I honestly don't see a lack. Plant has 1 cone which can be used while closing distance >shrug<. Doesn't seem like a deal breaker.

To the OP: Likely no dom is the cruise control toon you're looking for. You will rely on a scad of powers to be effective. The effect can be massive if you play it right, that's the tradeoff.

Plant/Storm is good. Another possibility is to make a Plant/Fire (a strong combo) and choose green colored Dark Fire custom colors. It looks more like you are throwing something solid than fire.

Quote:

Originally Posted by prev1 Other than power boost though, what's the argument for lack of synergy w/Earth Assault? Not trying to be fecetious, I honestly don't see a lack. Plant has 1 cone which can be used while closing distance >shrug<. Doesn't seem like a deal breaker.

There is no "deal breaker"; the problem is that there isn't any "deal maker" either. The two sets don't do anything in particular for each other, but they don't particularly work against each other either. The combo works fine anyway though, since both are strong sets.

I'm leveling a Plant/Kin right now and it is THE most fun character I have ever played. I'm floored at how much fun I'm having, and Kinetics makes all that fun even crazier. Carrion Creepers is seriously one of the coolest powers I've ever used. I loooooove the character. So... if you haven't decided yet, my vote is Plant/Kin.

Wild Streak - Lv. 50(+3) Beast Mastery/Sonic Resonance Mastermind, Amnesty - Lv. 50 Staff Fighting/Dark Armor Stalker

Here's my update:

Didn't re-roll yet (but I'm very sure I want to). Helped my girlfriend really skyrocket her Plant/Storm for double XP. Holy moly, you guys are right. She just got Lightning Storm, and I am amazed at the stuff she can accomplish. Most missions I felt nearly useless.

For the record, it's not exactly the clickiness that bugs me about this character. It's being a Scrapper with a ridiculously clicky secondary, and a boring primary. One of my favorite current projects is a Blapper, and I haven't seen anything else that has to click more than he.

I love all the feedback in here guys. I really appreciate it!

On Plant/Storm The damage is nice, but for me the knock highly limits it. Tornado can chuck enemies out of a single immobilize and the holds have no -kb. I found that trying to control the knock was more effort than I wanted. Not that it doesn't work, but it is more effort than I want to put in.

That's why I voted for the dominator. But I have both and play both.

Pair a Plant/Storm with Earth Epic, and you have a very Impressive (and Angry) Nature Spirit.
It really is Fun!

And... Embrace the KB! It Loves you! Love it too! Let it be part of you!

I love my Plant/thorns Dom. Seriously. She really does some cool things.