Fire/Storm vs Plant/Storm what's your suggestions?

Eh, guess you all are right, to me ice still is the best overall(matter of opinion I guess), but I can definately see the benefit of earth on a melee oriented troller.

Totally unrequested update on my Fire/Storm's Incarnate progress.

Unlocked Judgement and now have Tier 3 pyronic (with chance for disorient! Hello Flashfire, Thunder Clap and Fissure. You have a new friend!) The last run I did I unlocked Interface where I will go the Fire Damage route. All those "ticks" of damage from Fire/Storm will be very extra special nasty with a 75% chance of a fire proc.

I'm not really sure why she seemed to get sidelined for Incarnate stuff; she's so much fun to play.

After playing around on mids with both combos it seems that either one I choose is going to be a bit of a challenge. Seems I just don't have enough slots to place, so many powers from both sets could use several slots each. Which leads me to think this might be the best way to go

Instead of trying to build for any certain type of bonuses I'm leading towards trying to frankelslotting most of the powers. With that it seems I'll get the best outcome for the majority of my powers then trying to build for any certain type of bonuses. From all of you that have made these slot hog combos, does this sound like the best and maybe really the only way to go? Even frankenslotting I still feel as though I'm cutting some powers short of enhancment, and unable to use as many procs as I would like.

With the incarnate abilities, maybe that'll be able to help me out a bit, would it be a good idea to cut only 1 certain type of enhancement short on my powers and go that route on my incarnate ability to make up for that?

If anyone has some more helpful info on the best ways to slot for such demanding powers it would be appreciated.

Ho ho ho...

All I can comment on is Fire/Storm and I love it!!

End problems can be cured as already mentioned with Cardiac and some careful +Rec slotting. Cost, however, to make this build truly awesome, is a factor...

I have the Fire epic for more... well... burny fun...

I generally only ever use Hurricane on AV's (or other mobs that are immune to the repel/KB), or on outdoor maps to push the mobs together. Once they are caged, they light up nice and bright and repel easily around.

Cinders, Flashfire & T-Clap for mitigation, FC for movement control, Hurricane & smoke for the to hit debuffs, Freezing rain for flippety floppity fun and -res, and Chance to Hold procs in Char, RoF & Fire Blast for even more choky goodness.

Armour? Who needs it! Anything remotely hostile is either choking, blind, staggering around stunned, falling over, or being tossed around by my lovely pets. The poor BAF prisoners have to run through a world of hurt at my choke point!

I'm just getting started on the Incarnate route with the itrials, and have no clue how ridiculous I will be with Clarion.

Plant might be good though.

-H

No I would not save slots by making up for them with incarnate powers. Especially if you are talking end reduction, etc. On a fire/storm you want to get as much end reduction/+recovery/+end into the build BEFORE you even take cardiac.

I'm sure this has already been covered, but a fire/storm is much more expensive to IO out. In other words, you can count on spending twice the cash on a fire/storm, then on a plant/storm because of the endurance issues. Add to that, the hours spent to chase any accolades that also add to your endurance.

But if you do go fire/storm, I think its worth the cost. Its never boring on a fire/storm, due to those very same reasons. Right now, I'm farming 4/8 mobs just because the rest got too easy. I've lost a little speed (about 15 to 20 seconds per mob), but the extra cash and being back to the wild chaos that's being a fire/storm entails makes it worth the drop in how fast I do the map.

Again, this doesn't mean a plant/storm isn't as much fun or as nasty.

I'm kinda in the same boat. I've got Lavan (Fire/Storm) and Viridicane (Plant/Storm) both at close to the same levels, Lavan is 40 IIRC and Viri is 38. So, I could take either of them the rest of the way. I think I need to respec them both to inherent Fitness builds and play with them to see which I prefer.

IIRC though, Lavan probably has a substantial edge in raw takedown speed with mobs that are confuse resistent, but he lacks the survivability of Viri. Viri can mow them down even faster than Lavan when Confuse is viable, and she's got a few more tricks that improve her ability to survive sudden over aggro situations. I know most folks diss the Spirit Tree, but it's a drop and forget solution that can really help when you get into a situation where you need to fire up Hurricane + Snow Storm to provide some mitigation. And Creepers... Well, it's dang near a panacea. It tanks, it damages, it's an awesome alpha strike that clusters 'em up. Plus Stormy Mist +SS lets you stealth the spawn setup if you kill Twitchy, and Twitchy is certainly better behaved than the Imp/aggro magnets.

Based on my recollections, Fire/Storm was a more aggressive playstyle, but Plant/Storm was more flexible, and when you get right down to it, more fun to play for me.

'Course, it's been awhile, and some of the memories of playing Lavan (Fire/Storm) might well be heavily colored by his insatiable Blue Bar hunger as mentioned frequently above.

:: tosses two coins in hat ::

plant/storm/earth chimming in regarding capped defense. I've decided to go with high defense on that toon, and I don't regret it one bit. I'm at 47% ranged defense, with 44.5% or so on S/L, 35% to energy and negative, with I believe 20% or so to everything else. I managed to still get Hasten to have only 9 seconds of downtime (I think I have about 60% recharge, more or less). Recovery is at 195%. The only thing that really bothers me is the fact that I wasn't able to slot freezing rain more. But the high defense is very nice. I'd never bothered to do that with a toon before, but I like this one so much I figured what the heck. Anyway, while I certainly agree that it's probably not necessary, high defense does cut down on the return fire from "free" mobs. I tried to build her out to be decent for both missions and farming, and so far, I think she's working out pretty well.

BUT, my experience so far in Incarnate trials is that the 47% ranged def (plus all the other +def powers emanating from other players) is still getting cut through like butter by all the mobs. I died twice in a row yesterday from ranged attacks by (admitedly, many many) EC 9's (name check?). I honnestly don't remember the to-hit math enough to understand how it works for purple lv 54 mobs.

As for regular content, it's a huge difference from her previous sucky defense build. I went from faceplanting a Malta tip mish at x4 twice, to zipping through the same tip mission at x8 after my high def respec. For some reason, the only freaking thing that gets through my ranged defense (with an alarming frequency) is Greater Devoured orange and above bosses. And that's without the -def emanator. I swear that freaking boulder of theirs just finds me anyway...

All this to say: I like high defense, and while certainly not necessary, it does make missions easier and stress-free. Also, mezzes hit me a LOT less than before. Getting mezzed is a pain. Now, even when I do get mezzed, I still don't get hit very much while being held, and I can just ride out the hold if I don't have a purple.