Nature feedback

I played yesterday a freshly 50 Plant/NA Troller and wanted to share some feedback on the set for those who would like to play it.

As a disclaimer: I didnt play the toon before 50, I used my /FA Brute to powerlevel him on my brother's account. I had to farm some tickets/prestige anyways so it was an occasion. I know I will be bashed all over the place to not go to the standart xp procedure but I really dont wanna enter this argument. I wanted to have an overall feeling of NA at 50 and the thread is just for power feedback.


The build I used was standart Plant control minus Vines and took ALL the NA powers. Pools were tough/weave, maneuvre, cbt jumping, hasten, no travel. Earth as epic pool (Fissure/Armor/Embrace).
I build for:
1- Recharge (nearly perma overgrowth)
2- S/L to cap (not incarnate cap)
3- hitpoints/regen/healing



Powers:
- Corrosive Enzimes:
This power isnt really great. The -res portion is always nice to have but numbers arent amazing for a ST debuff. The -dmg is pretty worthless since onely a small portion will affect big targets, again, if it was AoE it could have been good. It also doesnt take any IO sets.
Now you have to take it on a non defender but I wish I could skip.


- Regrowth:
If you have to compare to other AoE heals Regrowth doesnt really shine. Even with x5 Bloom. Tho you still have to take it a pretty much cast it on cooldown to keep Blooms on you teamates. Even if the power itself is not amazing its on of the bricks of NA's wall of team regeneration.


- Wild Growth:
Wild Growth can be perma "quite" fast.
I tend to consider +res is generally more usefull because more rare on a team than +def. A lot of people are also def caped, or nearly but have a wide margin before hitting resistance cap.
As for regen 100% itself isnt that good. But its "another 100%" so it contribute to NA's goal. Clearly not skippable.


- Spore Cloud:
Probably the best power in the set. Its basically Darkest Night with -regen. Very very good power.


- Lifegiving Spore:
I would love to say that this power contribute to the whole team regeneration thing and that the endurance isnt meaningless. But seriously, this power is crap.
It tics every 3 seconds for a ridiculous amound of health and endurance. Even if it was teamwide, huge range and passive it would still be skippable but ground targeted toggle? Seriously.
Its kina sad tho, it looks pretty...


- Wild Bastion:
So this is some kind of "oh ****" team heal. I'm not calling it "oh ****" because it has a good effect but just because it has a long recharge... The absorb is fine the HoT is kina weak. Half the recharge would make it a reliable team heal but 240s base recharge is just too long for the impact it has.


- Rebirth:
At first I was existed because I hate rezes. I thought it was great design to have a power that rezes dead allies but actually works as a buff/heal on living targets. Sadly the effect on living target is complete junk for a single target heal and hardly worth casting.
So hey, its a rez, some people like rezes.


- Entangling Aura:
HUGE endo cost (but NA doesnt care about endurance) for very short duration, low magnitude, small radius AoE hold. It "tics" decently fast and the effect is quite noticable on non-protected minions when you sit in the middle of a pack.
I dont really see the point of the power in the global design of NA set, since (more on that later) it kind of forces you to be far behind your teamates. If I wanted NA on a Fire or Ice Controller I would probably love this power but for anything else its very skippable.


- Overgrowth:
Overgrowth can be perma (should be imo because you WANT to rely on the endurance reduction). Its a good power. Now it also has downsides.
1- The damage part is always good to take. 66% damage its really something important.
2- The endurance reduction is very large. It means Perma Overgrowth NA hero (and everyone in the team!) completely ignores the blue bar. BUT when you will reach PermaOvergrowth; most of the players you will play with already have sustainable builds.
In a level 50 fully IOd team, endurance is probably the least wanted value.
Now it is true that endurance problems are very important at lower levels. But Overgrowth will only be up half of the time before you build heavily for global recharge, its nothing compared to whan SB/Transferance or Conduit of Pain can do.

Oh wait, you grow a ******* FOREST when you cast it!





Synergy with Plant Control:
Besides obvious concept reasons and because Carion Creepers+Lifegiving Spores looks like my granfather's garden, the synergy with Plant isnt very good.
The key power in Plant is Seeds of Confusion and require to stand quite close to the packs in order to cover the maximum surface. The key power in NA (not the best power, the cornerstone) is Regrowth and requires to stand behind your teamates in order to affect most of them. Now if you only have melees in you team its pretty much the same positionning, but most of the time you dont. And most of the time happends most of the time.

I would say the best synergy point is having Spirit Tree. With all regens and tree my toon was over 700% regen at all times NOT counting HoT effects.

If I had to chose the best controller primary to pair with NA I would probably for an recharge heavy raged control set like Illusion or Earth. For solo Fire Contorl would be good with Entangling Aura and NA's rather good toughness.




Overall feeling:
The first point is the way you dont really feel like you are affecting the team at all. All your heals are over time, many are just regen. Overall its a lot of health but you dont have this savior of the day feeling like when you are playing an Empath or a Pain Dominator. You just keep rolling the regens and the HoTs and its very hard to see how much you do for your team.

The second point is toughness. With Tough, Weave, Wild Growth, Rock Armor and Perma Earth Embrace you really feel... tanky. Caped S/L defense, 40% res S/L/Tox and around 20% in all others, +157%hp and over 700% regen +buttload of HoT: quite good for squishy.
And thats without any incarnate powers.

If I ever roll (for real, not junk AE PL) another /NA Troller I would probably go for Earth/NA/Stone with Resilient Core, Clarion Core, Melee Core and be a tough **** control machine!

My thoughts:

The character I leveled was a Necro/Nature MM, with about 15 levels from AE and the rest from actual content. I'm only just starting incarnating them, but as a leveling character and a teaming character, Nature is proving to be great for me.

I'm finding that the heals make quite the difference, even as HOTs. The absorb on Wild Bastion is a nice buffer for both people taking alphas and squishy teammate/pets who hold get attention from some errant mobs. The cone on Regrowth is large and great for hosing your team down with health.

I know a lot of people don't like Lifegiving Spores, but for me it's pretty much the defining power of the set. A well-placed HOT field can make a lot of difference in any fight where you're actually fighting and not just steamrolling. I have several regular teammates who have fallen in love with the endurance it gives. Sure if you have a high recovery build or a kin it's not as useful, but for people leveling up it's a great addition to their battle longevity.

Additionally, Spores takes both the Performance Shifter and Panacea procs, and can proc on anyone in the field for a good chunk of endurance or another small heal. I love this. Panacea proc is too expensive, but I'm finding it was a worthwhile purchase anyways.

I personally thought the set was going to be junk, then ended up liking it a lot. This was intended to be a throwaway "whatever, I'll try it" character, and it's quickly becoming one of my favorites. I like it a lot more than my emp, the heals feel a lot meatier and more active.

Just where I stand, though.

Well Pref Shifter proc is cheapish, Panacea is not. I mean, I'm rich! Well rich enough not to care about throwing 1bill in a toon just to test the set. But buying Panacea proc just for leveling knowing any endurance issue for my team are gone whenever I get perma Overgrowth... I mean even 2x4 Basilic Gaze, 3x LotG and Doctored Would x5 everywhere you can throw it put Overgrowth at like 80sec recharge. And thats about 500M top and give SO much more overall than Panacea.

Now of course you get Spores at 18 and Overgrowth at 38... and you can sell Panacea later on.

Yeah, fair enough. I managed to get a deal on the Panacea at around level 26 and it was still more expensive that I would have liked. So I'm certainly not going to fault you.


I guess to sum it up, I like spores and I like nature, but I certainly understand that you found it less useful than I did. Such is life. These things happen.

I personally found Regrowth to be amazing. Wild Growth and Bastion are also amazing and should be used almost constantly (situation depending). Absorb (hello you get 50% of your Max HP), Regen, Healing, Res, and ToHit work a lot of wonders.

The only change to the set I'd make is Enzymes to AoE/splash.

By the way I think as a solo MM you can have a better idea of the impact of NA healing and overall increasing of team survival than on a controller in an 8man team. I mean, if I strike Seeds, stuff wont hit back anyways and I am widely not the only factor of team survival.

Just a couple of quick things:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nightchill_EU Powers: - Corrosive Enzimes: This power isnt really great. The -res portion is always nice to have but numbers arent amazing for a ST debuff. The -dmg is pretty worthless since onely a small portion will affect big targets, again, if it was AoE it could have been good. It also doesnt take any IO sets. Now you have to take it on a non defender but I wish I could skip.

What do you mean by "big targets"? If you mean AVs, they don't inherently resist damage debuffs. Damage debuffs in general aren't affected by 'rank', only by level (but everything is affected by level). The only thing that resists damage debuffs is damage resistance, but it's still based on damage type. So damage debuffs are really only ever terrible on targets who have high resistance to a damage type that they also fight with (like Infernal, who resists Fire and fights with Fire attacks).

Quote:

- Lifegiving Spore: I would love to say that this power contribute to the whole team regeneration thing and that the endurance isnt meaningless. But seriously, this power is crap. It tics every 3 seconds for a ridiculous amound of health and endurance. Even if it was teamwide, huge range and passive it would still be skippable but ground targeted toggle? Seriously. Its kina sad tho, it looks pretty...

I believe it actually ticks every 4 seconds.

Quote:

- Wild Bastion: So this is some kind of "oh ****" team heal. I'm not calling it "oh ****" because it has a good effect but just because it has a long recharge... The absorb is fine the HoT is kina weak. Half the recharge would make it a reliable team heal but 240s base recharge is just too long for the impact it has.

Unless a lot has changed, I believe Wild Bastion is a pretty powerful heal. Just over 400 HP unslotted on a level 50 Defender in an AoE. That's about 60% of the Heal of Defender Absorb Pain, but in an AoE. I assume the idea with Wild Bastion is... you put Absorb on allies to protect their health bar while it slowly fills from the Heal over Time.

Quote:

At first I was existed because I hate rezes. I thought it was great design to have a power that rezes dead allies but actually works as a buff/heal on living targets. Sadly the effect on living target is complete junk for a single target heal and hardly worth casting. So hey, its a rez, some people like rezes.

The Heal over Time on living allies is the same strength as Empathy's Absorb Pain. It's a lengthy recharge for just an ally heal, but the recharge is balanced for it being a rez (which I think all recharge in 180 seconds).

The set IS a lot of Heal over Times, rather than upfront heals but this is also a set with +Resist(All), +Absorb, and a -ToHit/-Damage toggle.

Edit: Oh, and only one power even needs an ally. That's gotta be worth something, right?

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

Yep. Like my controller has 49.37% or something absorb, so people roll around with 1.5x HP basically and are healed it there weren't at cap already. The UI is also highly misleading as it currently doesn't display absorb as you would think it would.

I have no problem with the way you leveld but I think by PLing you missed out of some of the benefits of some of those powers you rated. Let's face facts the reason Empathy is no longer in great demand is because at higher levels the need for a "healer" lessens and the need for a buff/debuffer increases dramatically.

I currently have 2 characters with NA. My WB/NA corruptor hit level 25 last night doing POSI and my PLant/NA Controller is at level 20. At lower levels Lifegiving Spores has prover very valuable on numerous occasions. When my corruptor did th Penny Yin TF between my LS and a Plant/NA Trollers not a single team mate died on the task force until the final batttle in the reactor room... (SIGH I wish people would learn to clear the room before clicking the computers and spawning that huge ambush and YES that's exactly when and why we died) Even then only three of us, me included. went down and we recovered quickly and finished the TF. On POSI LS along with the other heals proved invaluable ... when no one dies and I don;t use a single inspiration to get through anything dealing with Vahzilok I am impressed.

Soloing with the coorruptor I will lay down a LS patch and just stya inside it allowing it to heal me while I fight. Seemed to work pretty well I turned 20 level doing the Midnighter Arc solo and didn't die once .. I was having so littloe trouble and som much fun bashing them I didnt even leave the two missions with COT until the maps were cleared.


The thing with LS is it never stops. Every 3 seconds it heals and when you have more than one person with it you can overlap them and double the effect. My playing partner and I are both leveling Plant/NAs and did an experiment outside Atlas Park"s city hall. We both layed out our patched and stood inside. Every 3 seconds we saw green numbers flashing 12 12, 14 14 , 12 12 , 14 14 ... that's 26 HP of healing every 3 seconds on characters at level 20. Consider the amount of damage anything at that level, short of an Av, can do and we don't take much damage. Primarily we find TFs or teams to join but we duoed the Midnighter arc and had absolutely no difficulty against a map filled with Lost Bosses. I currently have exactly 1 healing enhancer slotted along with an end reducer so I will be curious to see how those numbers improve with 2 or 3 heals and at much higher levels. Will it ever be able to allow players on a MOM trial to stand in the pink rings and not die? I SERIOUSLY doubt it but a couple of them layed down in one spot at 50 level could make an AV battle a lot less painful for some squishies.

While not being a nature runner myself, I am very glad to have NA toon on my team. During missions and trials last night I was witness to the AMAZING healing power of this set.

Please keep running these toons they are a GREAT addition to the COX world.

I think that one of the big misconceptions about this set is the mitigation factor.

On a Defender:
Just considering wild growth and spore cloud (unslotted) you get -dam of 28.13%, -tohit of 18.75% and resist (to all) of 15%.
This is the equivalent of having (if I've done the math right) 38.91% resistance to everything and 18.75% defense against even levels. That's huge to have by tier 4.
Add in Corrosive Enzymes and against a single target you have an effective 65.47% resistance to incomming damage.

An example was 4 of us NA chars on a Posi run last night and the EB was hitting us for 3 pts of damage.

This is why LS looks like it's not giving much of a heal yet if you actually play the set it seems to provide most of the healing you need.
Adding in regrowth and bastion and you have huge heals and an absorb due to the mitigation factor being added in.

This is what makes it remarkably different than Empathy, IMO.

I think I was misunderstood on the comparison with empathy. I didnt said Empathy was better, I said that due to the way NA works, through regens and HoT, the feelling of team contribution is lower.

It is too bad that Wild Bastion's effects don't stick around for the duration of the buff. It'd make my mastermind look much more thematic.