Quote:
I would recommend dark assault if you don't have a charcter concept preference for earth. While earth does have insanely good melee, dark assaults melee is pretty good - smite and midnight grasp are both excellent attacks and you can always mix in ranged attacks. Where dark comes off better is in AoE damage - earth has 2 of the worst AoE attacks in the game, long animations and highly resisted damage where the PBAoE in dark is one of the best. |
Originally Posted by Supermax
I have experience with a plant/poison controller, but I've come to realize most of her power comes from plant, not poison. Plant is just amazing, so I've decided to make a plant dom as well.
For secondaries I've narrowed it down to dark or earth. I'm leaning towards dark currently. I understand that dark is mostly ranged while earth is mostly melee. But other than that, what are the pluses/minuses of each combo? How does the ST and AoE damage compare between the two combos? Basically would one have better synergy with plant and be clearly better than the other? |
You also get better support in dark assault, with both a power boost like ability and heal that is also a good attack. Gather shadows has nearly as much mez duration increase as power boost (74% vs 98%) but it also offers a damage boost (34%) with roughly the same uptime, so I consider it a much better power as you can fire off GS, then an AoE mez, then attack to benefit from both boosts. Life drain is not a primary heal but it is a good enough attack to be worth using then you need the extra HP from the heal.
Globals: @Midnight Mystique/@Magik13
Thanks Eric, that makes sense. I thought earth had good AoE. Since it's actually not that good, as you say, that makes the choice a lot easier for me. I'll keep going with my new plant/dark.
Randomly, this is the 2 doms that I have at 50. I agree with everything posted for the pro dark post, but would like to point out a couple of things on the pro earth side of things for the sake of argument.
Earth has a damage aura. The damage isn't spectacular by itself, but it does add up over time. It's contribution should not be ignored, especially if you're packing sleet. Both effects in seismic smash (hold) and fissure (disorient) are effected by domination. The bulk of /dark's secondary effects are not (midnight grasp being the exception, and only an immob). Fissure is mostly just a "Huh, spiffy" bonus. Seismic, on the other hand, can make a significant difference when stacking holds, particularly coupled with the bonus duration from power boost and/or a single hold IO. It's also nice to be able to slap down 2 bosses near instantly.
I will concede that tremor uses the god awful total focus animation, and fissure is only a 10' TAoE (boo!). But with sleet/ice storm/creepers opening earth does not feel starved for AoE in any sense.
I like /Earth for this combo, personally.
Most of the mobs you are facing will be confused and clumped together before you use your secondary so being in melee won't make a difference... much. They will already be taking damage from your Creepers too, so the question with groups you face is how fast can you do damage before they kill each other.
Both get a PB power, so that's nice either way. Keep in mind the PB + Domination + Seeds of Confusion = Everything you hit being having a mag 6 confuse on it for at least a minute. This gives you a kind of race to maximize the damage you do over the damage the confused mobs do in order to give you the best exp/kill you can.
I think the aoe potential in /earth will give you a better Exp/kill ratio than /Dark can due to its more single target nature. Sure, tremor is slowmo damage, but you are safe while doing it due to seeds. Fissure will stun some so it will slow down some of the confuse exp drain (you don't want that to drop too much though). Mud pots radius is small, but everything will be clumping together anyway so that's not as much of an issue. You have a very nice single target damage routine with the hammers and SS for the boss or whatever is the last to fall. And /Earth has a very satisfying and fun smashy feel to it.
/Dark has a nice -tohit on most everything, but this will slow you down quite a bit as your confused mobs wont' be able to hit each other.
I've found I like having a cone to follow up Seeds with, since I've already lined up my seeds cone so I would say Dark, though my dom is Plant/Electric so I couldn't say how much of a loss of damage you'd see from the -to hit.
I've gotten my plant/dark up to 20, and I really like it. Was soloing the big spawns in Boomtown for the last level, and it was totally painless. By far my biggest problem is endurance, or lack thereof.
I decided I like /dark because I like the freedom. If I want, I can blast from range. If I want, I can jump in and fight in melee. With /earth I would need to be in melee all the time, which would limit me in some cases.
Anyway, it's a very fun toon. I just can't believe how good Seeds are.
I have experience with a plant/poison controller, but I've come to realize most of her power comes from plant, not poison. Plant is just amazing, so I've decided to make a plant dom as well.
For secondaries I've narrowed it down to dark or earth. I'm leaning towards dark currently. I understand that dark is mostly ranged while earth is mostly melee. But other than that, what are the pluses/minuses of each combo? How does the ST and AoE damage compare between the two combos? Basically would one have better synergy with plant and be clearly better than the other?