how good is plant/poison?

I have a lot of experience with most other control and buff/debuff sets, but none with these two. I've seen plant get praised for years, and even saw people say that it's the best control set in the game. Why is that? Just from the AoE confuse, from extra damage, or what?

And what about poison? I know the main debuff powers used to be ST, but at some point were made into small AoE's. How effective do those AoE's turn out? Is the small radius really detrimental?

And lastly, how good is the synergy between the two sets? Would I be happy with plant/poison? The other option is plant/cold, but cold matures so late, I would really prefer poison, unless it's just clearly inferior.

I started a Plant/Poison Controller back in November, posted the build and got exactly zero responses. I designed my character to have an entire attack chain of Holds (five of them). Plant/Poison is very clicky and has a bewildering array of powers for any situation, which might be good or bad depending on what you like to play.

There was another build thread in December that generated a few responses and some build ideas.

Plant/ is a great control set, but it's definitly not the "best" at everything. It's a top tier damage set; most criticism paint the set as a "one trick pony". I personally think its a "two trick pony" and does them well.(AoE Confuse and AoE damage)

/Poison is better than it was but the tiny 8' splash debuffs don't fix the set in my eyes. I think the set needs another look to bring it up to par with it's peers. I vote for /Cold unless you are going for a theme. If /Cold doesn't float your boat I would recommend Plant/Storm as well.

I don't see any particular synergies between the two but I may be missing something. I'm currently playing an Elec/Poison and had a Thugs/Poison.

If you or your team relies on the damage enemies inflict on eachother from confuse, in this day and age of incarnates and ridiculous power, there is a problem. Seeds is the best AoE dmg mitigation control in the game though, that's undeniable. Faster than AoE stuns and has a longer duration than them.

Thanks guys. I ended up making a plant/poison this weekend and have gotten it to about level 20. Love it so far. Having the reliable -res so early is a really big deal. And Seeds really is great.