Plant/Kin Build Help
Welcome to the forums! Controllers are my favorite AT in the game, as different power combos have widely different playstyles and abilities. Plant/Kin is a busy build with a lot of time spent "up close and personal" to the foes -- I found that mine usually used a few powers at range and then ran into melee. Making a build depends a lot on your particular playstyle. Do you play mostly solo or on small teams or large teams? Are they regular friends or just a PUG ("Pick-Up-Group")? Do you have preferences for certain travel powers?
Fortunately, Plant/Kin is a pretty open build with a lot of personal options. The key powers in Plant are Strangler, Roots, Seeds of Confusion, Carrion Creepers and the pet, Venus Fly Trap a/k/a Twoey (nicknamed after the carniverous plant in "Little Shop of Horrors.") Take those as soon as they are available. All of them need 5 or 6 slots eventually. Slot Strangler for Acc, Hold, Rech and damage. Slot Roots for Accuracy (at least 2), max damage and some Recharge and EndRdx if you can. Seeds of Confusion needs Accuracy, Confuse and Recharge (2 of each is good). Creepers and the pet come later.
Other powers are optional and there are varying opinions. I think Vines is a must have. Entangle is good to add single target damage if you mostly solo, but otherwise skippable. Spores is a targetted AoE Sleep, which can be useful solo or on small teams, but is mostly worthless on large, fast moving teams because teammates will immediately wake them up. Spirit Tree adds a lot of Regen, but with the strong heal from Kinetics it's easily skipped.
From Kinetics, you definitely want Transfusion (you have to take it, but you would want it anyway), Siphon Speed, Speed Boost (for teams! if you only play solo, it could be skipped), Transference and Fulcrum Shift. Slot everything other than Speed Boost for Accuracy to start. SB only needs a single EndMod enhancement.
For the optional Kinetics powers, I always take Siphon Power -- some folks say it is skippable once you get Fulcrum Shift but it works better on single targets than FS. Repel is widely considered the most skippable power in the set, but it has its uses as the only strong defensive power in the set -- Repel has actually saved me and let me save the team a few times. Increase Density is a nice teammate buff that has a very short duration but does several things, but skippable solo. IR is a limited duration Super Jump . . . I always skip this because I find it annoying to use as a travel power, but some people like it.
One choice that I found was significant -- I chose Hasten/Super Speed for my travel power, and put a Celerity Stealth IO in Super Speed for full invisibility. You can earn a low level one with 2 Hero Merits. This let me get in just the right position for using Seeds to get the largest groups and helped me avoid faceplanting quite a few times. If you don't want Super Speed, you can get a Stealth IO and combine it with Stealth from the Invisibility Pool.
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Guide Links: Earth/Rad Guide, Illusion/Rad Guide, Electric Control
Everything L_M said above is solid advice. I've played a lot of Kinetics, and the lack of defense/mitigation is the biggest Achilles Heel of the set. On a Mind/Kin (for example) that's not really an issue as Mind/ has so many varied control options that there is no problem with Kinetics being light on the dmg mitigation front.
I've actually been working up a young Plant/Kin though (Photokinthesis is currently about 14.5 or so) so I'd like to underscore the comment about Repel. For a Plant/Kin, it's useful. /Kin lacks the tools to let you survive a corner pull or other method of clumping up a large spawn (I generally play Plant/ characters on on LEAST 4X/+0 and after the build matures on 8X/+1 or +2 to take advantage of their AOE capabilities ), so you will often miss a couple mobs with your initial Seeds of Confusion. Repel gives you two important things:
1. It lets you ignore a melee focused minion or two that keep trying to attack you from behind until you have the main spawn completely under control.
2. It gives you a way to group mobs together by immobing them and then using Repel to bounce outliers into the center.
Repel can be a very useful tool.
On a Plant/Storm (or even on a Plant/Rad to a lesser extent) Spirit Tree is actually VERY useful to shore up your self healing, it makes a great set and forget healing solution to help you survive the dmg that gets through and reduce your downtime after the fight.
/Kin's Transfusion is a LOT more powerful of a heal than /Rad's (and /Storm doesn't have one at all) though, so I'd rate the Spirit Tree as a lot more skippable on Plant/Kin.
Thank you L_M and Arg for the excellent controller advice i needed it. I want to become an expert controller because it seems like a very diverse AT. I have one more question and ill let yall be about yalls way. What about other stuff such as Leadership, Fighting, and Epic pool. What must u pick up for such things.
Thank you L_M and Arg for the excellent controller advice i needed it. I want to become an expert controller because it seems like a very diverse AT. I have one more question and ill let yall be about yalls way. What about other stuff such as Leadership, Fighting, and Epic pool. What must u pick up for such things.
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Let me say that again: YOU DON'T HAVE TO SOFTCAP A CONTROLLER. Controllers control first. Your best strategy on a team is to let the tank run in and grab the aggro, gathering up the foes into a tighter group. Then get in the best position to hit as many as you can and throw Seed of Confusion and Roots. Then use your buffs, then more Roots. You will be chipping away at the health of the foes while your teammates go to town wiping the foes out in nearly complete safety.
Leadership has some benefits. Assault is useful in low levels to increase team damage, but once you get Fulcrum Shift at level 38, you should be able to cap the team's damage much of the time with FS alone. Maneuvers in nice to add some defense to the team, but unless you are building a lot of defense yourself, it won't provide you much benefit. Tactics, on the other hand, is a nice addition for a Plant/Kin. Most of your powers require a ToHit, and it will improve your chances. You don't NEED it, but it is nice to have if you can afford the endurance cost and power picks. I personally am not a big fan of Vengence, even though it is a huge team buff -- but many people love it.
As for APP choices: I went with Earth for several reasons. Fissure is a short-range, fast recharging AoE. Since I am in or near melee most of the time, it works well (but I have to stay on the ground). Seismic Smash is wonderful -- a hard-hitting single target attack that also has a Hold. Seismic + Strangler will easily hold a boss quickly. Plus, Plant control is strong AoE damage over time, but lacks a hard-hitting single target attack, and Seismic fills that hole nicely. The Rock Armor is really, really ugly but provides nice Smash/Lethal Defense -- so if you later decide you want some defense, this armor will give you a huge start. Earth's Embrace is the HP Buff/Heal that you can use when you are NOT near a foe, so that takes care of another problem for Plant/Kin.
Ice is a nice set, also with a Defense-based shield and two ranged AoE attacks. If you want to stay ranged, then Ice is a good choice. Fire is good damage, and offers the only self-rez available to Controllers. Primal's Power Boost could boost the duration of your confuse powers, but is otherwise not that great. Psi has Indomidible Will for mez protection, but this can be replaced by Clarion from the Incarnate powers.
Then there are the PPP powers you can get going Villain . . . but I'm not going to go into all those. I'm pretty happy with the Earth APP.
Some folks with advanced, IO'ed out builds will choose to try to build Defense to the softcap. It is expensive and you may need to give up some useful powers to get there. You may want the Fighting Pool to get there. If you choose to go that route, that's fine. But I would suggest you play your character (not PL it) up to 50 and learn how to control. Controllers are not scrappers or tanks or brutes. They should not be the ones to run into battle first, drawing all the aggro. Once you have learned how to play your Controller as a Controller, then you can decide if you want to build it like a Scrapper with softcapped defenses.
LOCAL MAN! The most famous hero of all. There are more newspaper stories about me than anyone else. "Local Man wins Medal of Honor." "Local Man opens Animal Shelter." "Local Man Charged with..." (Um, forget about that one.)
Guide Links: Earth/Rad Guide, Illusion/Rad Guide, Electric Control
Agreed.
I've never been a fan of the fighting pool on a Controller, building for soft cap on Smashing and Lethal often means quite a few compromises in core powers for the rest of the build.
On a Widow VEAT? Absolutely, they are built to be defense based, but I feel you give up too much of the flavor of the AT, the playstyle and the real synergy of the build by focusing on building a 'Troller for defense. It makes sense for farming builds (which you said you were not looking for), but I really prefer to build for flexibility and to play to the particular strengths of a given build.
Kinetics has a LOT of powers that require an ToHit check, and Leadership's ToHit buff (as opposed to an Acc buff) gets more effective as the mobs level (and/or def) climbs above your own. I'm not a big fan of the end expense for Maneuvers or Assault but Leadership is generally my #1 pick from the pools after Hasten and Superspeed. After those I'll generally pickup combat jumping and/or hover.
Hover works very well with /Kin as you can use Siphon Speed to boost it to flight speeds, and it'll help a LOT with vertical zones and maps like the Oranbega cave complexes with multiple levels. The Good Vs Evil jump jet (available as an account wide power via one booster pack or another IIRC) also boosts hover speeds greatly.
Superspeed is very useful to help you keep up with the team that you boost to "super rabid weasel on a 6-pack of redbull" speeds. and as L_M said, dropping a +stealth IO into SS gives you full invis which can be REALLY useful when lining up to get the most possible members of a spawn with Seeds of Confusion.
I'd post a build of Photokinthesis, but I don't really have one worked up... I know plant and Kinetics well enough now that I'm pretty much just building it as I go. I 6 slotted Roots first, it's your AOE dmg, and Strangler and Transfusion both have extra acc built in. Seeds was next up for extra slots then Stamina and Hasten then I'll start filling in the rest.
I expect Plant/Kin to be a fun build, really looking forward to seeing the effect of FS on Crawlers. ;-)
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I forgot to mention that Leadership also comes in VERY handy when you start to run into night widows... The +percep is one of the few things (like popping a yellow insp if you have it) that helps with their blasted smoke blinding!
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Arg
Ok. i understand where u come from. Controllers are not scrappers. But would it be good to put some IOs in it for bonuses maybe? To get some extra damage etc. I don't mean build it as a scrapper but kinda build it as an ultimate controller.
Ok. i understand where u come from. Controllers are not scrappers. But would it be good to put some IOs in it for bonuses maybe? To get some extra damage etc. I don't mean build it as a scrapper but kinda build it as an ultimate controller.
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Personally, I don't start thinking about IOs until about level 27 or 32, with certain exceptions. For a Plant/Kin, levels 35 and 38 will provide a substantial change in the character, so you may not want to decide on the direction of your build until you have some experience with Transference and Fulcrum Shift. As for early IOs, I would try to get a Steadfast -Knockback in Increase Density as soon as you get the power. I would try to get that Celerity Stealth (it is expensive in lower levels, but you can get it with Hero Merits) to put in Super Speed as soon as you can.
On the other hand, "frankenslotting" (mixing IOs from several sets to get better enhancement) can start early. An Acc/Dam from two sets will provide more enhancement than from a single Accuracy and a single Damage in those same two slots . . . and the IOs won't expire -- but you can replace them with higher level IOs as you choose. So go with Frankenslotting early, and then build for your sets later once you know how you like to play the character.
Once I think about IO sets, I try to decide what bonuses will do me the most good. For Controllers, it is usually Recharge and Recovery. However, a */Kin gets some Recharge from Siphon Speed, and gets a refill of endurance from Transference. Still, I think Recharge adds a lot since you have to rely upon siphoning off of a foe to get that Recharge from Siphon Speed. Global Accuracy bonuses are nice for a */Kinetics and any AoE-focused controller.
Damage bonuses don't provide much bonus once you get Fulcrum Shift. Damage procs can be nice (good in Creepers, for example) to add damage past the damage cap. However, I would not sacrifice effective slotting to fit in procs, especially if you are first learning to play a controller. I suggest spending some time playing the character before worrying about IOs other than the two I mentioned above.
LOCAL MAN! The most famous hero of all. There are more newspaper stories about me than anyone else. "Local Man wins Medal of Honor." "Local Man opens Animal Shelter." "Local Man Charged with..." (Um, forget about that one.)
Guide Links: Earth/Rad Guide, Illusion/Rad Guide, Electric Control
Ok thank you so much
One of my favorite combos that I used to play a lot before altitus. In that, I have discovered a few things:
Putting the two targetted AOE procs and the slow proc in creepers doubles its damage output. (Roughly)
Putting the other procs doesn't help that much as the frequency is less than the Targetted AOE and Slow powers.
Fulcrum seems to only boost damage when the creeper vines (aka the tentacles) are present in carrion creepers. So, the course of action is to creep first and crum later.
Get some stealth (enough so that mobs do not see you so stealth plus stealth IO). It's hilarious to watch the patch catch up to you after passing mobs. Be careful though, the mobs will aggro to you first then the tentacles (in most cases).
Get Roots the AOE immob and spam it.
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Any Plant/kins out there that no how to or have a good build for PvE play not farming. This is my first controller and I dont no what to do. Im used to scrapper. Help would be appreciated.