Frosticus

If your definition of "close" (your words not mine) paints something like flares and blaze in the same stroke as "close" to doing the same damage then I agree with your statement regarding a psi/mm blaster and a mind/psi dom as being close.

I already gave an order ranking of how a few "mentalists" compare in terms of damage, but to assign a numeric value it would be something like this:
Psi/mm = 10
Fort = 8
Mind/kin =7
kin/psi =5
mind/psi = 3

*no a psi/mm isn't a 10 in relative terms to everything in the game, but it is a 10 for this scale because that is the proper way to use a scale.

In general doms benefited from the revamp and all do more damage than before. /psi however, did not. It is a very low st damage set with mediocre aoe. Mind unfortunately doesn't really help it out either as it is lower damage still and lacks a pet. Confuse while an amazing power takes time directly away from applying damage (unlike a true pet) and very few mobs are as effective as a pet in actual damage dealing due to their 50% hit rate. Unless you confuse a powerful npc, but then you risk serious xp issues due to it killing things before you can apply any damage.

1. Slot it with as much def as you need to hit melee softcap. If you have build room to spare it isn't a bad idea to exceed softcap due to the lack of DDR

2. Pop purples and/or kill them faster

3. The pets are very well behaved and are a great addition. IMO they are a must have power, or else you may as well be playing a NW

4. It's a pretty junky power. If you are ridiculously poor and can't afford to cheaply frankenslot even though it is cheaper than SO's then it can work.

Whoever told you that about widows didn't know what they were talking about. A well built bane can produce about 1.5x as much damage as a well built widow while also boosting the teams damage on par with many defender primaries.

Additionally, while widows and banes are both desirable in teams if you find people wanting a widow more than a bane then they don't' understand game mechanics very well. Venom Grenade alone is pretty much > widow on a team

Enjoy your Bane. They are awesome. I eagerly await the day BAB's figures out how to get rid of redraw cause that is going to make Banes amazingly fun to play.

They don't make it activate faster, just less chance of being interrupted while activating. But honestly if you are being interrupted while activating it you probably aren't in a situation you should be using rest.

Hehe, ya it was a rhetorical question when I asked it as I knew the answer was 'no'. It was a good setup for me to show that similar to fireshields it is very rare to find a situation where SB doesn't provide at least some benefit.

The detection range may not matter to you or me, but it is there and a consideration in the actual balance of the power.
If you up the rech to 90 on seeds the devs will be faced with a very strong argument to turn it into a taoe of which all the powers like icepatch, quake, flashfire, stalages... are. This isnt' the first example of cone powers having faster recharge than taoe powers, it is part of the design principles of the game.

The other half of the equation is the duration, which as already mentioned, confuses are designed to last longer. The devs may have evaluated the relative power of confuse incorrectly, but that isn't a problem that is singular to seeds, but rather would require looking at every confuse power.

In comparison to icepatch the patch has the ability to continually affect new targets without resolving another power application. Basically if you miss them the first time with seeds you have to wait for it to cycle, whereas something can wander onto the icepatch after it has initially been cast and now be affected. Conversely, things can wander off to, but the power is designed to prevent that except under certain special conditions.

Like I said, taoe vs cone. It is what it is. It is fine by me if they want to change seeds into a taoe and up it to 90 sec rech. Such a change will have a minor impact in the early game and actually make the set easier to use in late game.

I think the only easy to address culprit in plant is probably the aoe immob.
Well if BaB's cuts the animation times enough it will revitalize the set quite a bit, but yeah I tend to agree it probably needs more than that. Much faster GD, Propel, and WH would be ok with me though. They could all stand to be basically cut in half.

I'm not so sure that expectation is fully grounded in reality though. Seeds is an amazing power and plant overall is a very good control set.

However, if you look at seeds you have:
60 degree arc
50' range
60 sec recharge
acc 1
15.6 endurance
The duration is debatable, but irrelevant as confuses always last longer than "hard" mezzes, similar to sleeps in that regard

There might be some question as to what power it lines up to against in other sets to which I believe stalagmites/flashfire is probably the best answer. It is basically your goto aoe mez.

Stalagmites:
25' radius taoe
70' range
90 sec recharge
10.4 endurance (but I believe this is a mistake, so we'll just say 15.6 which flashfire uses)
acc 0.8

Ok so what that means is I can hit a enemy that is up to 95' away with stalagmites if they have a friend that is 70' away from me. That is well out of detection range and because it is a taoe it requires next to no skill to use. This is especially important if I decide to use the power in the middle of a fight I just click and everything is affected.

On the other hand, seeds puts you into detection range and I've seen many plant trollers/doms faceplant as a result. The maximum distance an enemy can be from me and be affected is 50' because that is the edge of the cone. That is basically half the range of stalagmites in actual use. The 60 degree arc is nice, but it means mobs need to already be reasonably gathered for it to hit them all. Granted at the very limit of the range it has a slightly wider berth than stalagmites (50ft diameter vs 57.7ft width).

Honestly, if they change seeds so that it is a 70ft range, taoe with 25ft radius and 90 rech, it would sort of be a change for change's sake imo. You'd be trading frequency and risk for much greater ease of use and elimination of risk.

Now if they want to sit down and reevaluate confuses in their entirety that would be a different story. But I'd personally hope they have a huge list of fish to fry before getting to that stage. And if they don't then something is wrong with their prioritization.

You kind of don't though, safety in spades, but damage in /psi assault? not so much.

No not even close to blaster damage. There is only one assault set that can keep pace with blaster damage and arguably only one dom primary as well. It isn't mind or psi assault, both of which are the lowest damage options available. Honestly, if you roll up a mind/psi dom expecting "blaster" damage you are going to be severely disappointed. It s a good toon, but damage is not what mind/psi brings to the table as a strength.

They are basically the same attack. Dom version does like 2 more base damage and costs 8 more endurance. Buildup, defiance and aim (if going psi blast) make the blaster version significantly more powerful though.

They add more fuel to the fire. Demons provide a lot of forcemultiplication through all of the -res. The imps are simply more force to be multiplied.

Having an abundance of aoe's does not equate to being good at aoe. One need merely compare a SS brute to an Elec brute to see that. In the world of controls it is no different as a single strong aoe control like seeds of confusion can more than carry an entire set.

Mass Hyp is junk in an aoe damage scenario. It's great in some situations, but if you plan on tossing out firebreath, combustion, and patron aoe, it serves almost no purpose.
Mass confusion is an amazing power, I think I even indicated that in a previous post. However, if you are relying on it as alpha mitigation on a regular basis you are going to be waiting around a lot. It also has the same duration as seeds, so I'm not sure where you are getting your info from.
Leaving terrify as your "aoe control" if you plan to use aoe damage. It has the issue of allowing mobs to retaliate before even affecting them just like the sleeps that do damage and it also allows a second retaliation when you hit them with damage. And often a third retaliation when you hit them with damage again. Terrify really needs the tohit debuff that fearsome stare has.
Yes dominate is great st control, easily a top 3 st hold power available to doms with char and fossilize. That would fall under what I already said the set excels at though.
Total domination is actually one of the better aoe holds available to doms. Many mind advocates promote alternating mass confusion and total dom to lock down spawns. You need a lot of recharge to make that a very viable strategy though. My mind/kin can almost pull it off thanks to triple stacks siphon speed, hasten and 90% global rech, but most doms struggle with that approach.

Sounds like you are excluding aoe damage from your build, or at least holding off on it compared to the situations other doms create through things like aoe stuns. I've said nothing to disagree with that style of play and how mind/fire excels at it. If you want extreme st control and extreme st damage mind/fire is an excellent choice. If you want to utilize the fact that fire also does the most aoe damage of all the assault sets then mind is not the best choice.
No disagreement because I already said it.

I'm working on an ill/cold these days. Synergy? it will be much more powerful than ill/rad*. That's all I need

*harder to build though.

As opposed to spineburst or throw spines? I think it will always be better in an aoe scenario that spineburst and worse than throw spines if you are going to hit 5 or more with throw spines (assuming you are hitting 5 with ripper).

That makes some steep assumptions though because it is a lot easier to predict hitting multiple targets with burst and throw than it is with ripper. It is pretty close between ripper and throw spines though. If you can hit one more target with TS then it should be prioritized over ripper, which in actual play is pretty easy to do and very common.

Unless you mean as opposed to using a single target attack? That I can't really answer other than to simply state it will depend on whether you want a single target dead quickly or a bunch of the group hurt. I will say that on spines you ideally want to always either be using AS or throw spines when you are going to be hiding/placating. The other single target attacks aren't really worth doubling and TS can hit 10 targets quite easily vs ripper being difficult to hit 3+ with.

I think he means one that you click to use and has a limited duration as well as several charges.

The base buff is really good, but just passively buffs you for... I forget how long, but quite a while.