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Problem unresolved! Half the servers just went down.

To avoid losing attachments, I attempted to claim several recipes that I had e-mailed myself only to have several vanish into limbo. Filed a petition. Time to wait and see.

There's certainly a case to be made for powers like PotP, Fallout, and Vengeance; the latter two are worthy of more consideration, in my opinion. However, there are two things to consider against them.

One is that you have a primary and secondary dedicated to protecting your allies. Death may happen, but a controller should greatly reduce the frequency of it and the need for such powers. The second is that /thermal leans towards a very tight build. The debuffs are a must and its buffs are all very appealing for any team. The powers I place on the bottom rung are the heals and its rez. Unfortunately, you're locked into taking one of heals. That leaves two powers for the cutting room floor.

All Nemesis have some confusion protection so you have to stack at least two SoC (or score an overpower) in order to confuse them. As Seeds are Plant's primary control you can imagine why it can become difficult. However, you can play it smart and still making things much easier. For example, open with Creepers from around a corner or forgo your immobilize so that the knockdown of Freezing Rain mitigates some of the damage. You can even leverage Tornado in some situations to keep the enemy off their feet.

Some combinations like plant/emp, which offers little mitigation from its secondary, take a sharp blow from losing the utility of Seeds.

Thermal is a jack-of-all-trades. Some buffs, some debuffs, some heals. None of it's powers are bad. Power of the Phoenix is the only one I'd think of skipping outright, in fact, and that's only due to the the ability to combine inspirations or pick up a rez from day jobs. Unfortunately, a lot of good powers makes it a tough set to pair with a control primary because you have to become very selective as to what to take.

As others build for personal defense, they will probably find your buffs more and more useful. Once a character has hit the soft-cap (45% defense, anymore is essentially ignored until you face +5 mobs) resistance buffs will do more for their surviability than defense buffs. You'll also be able to heal the damage when a lucky streak breaks through the defense.

One other thing to note is that Thermal gets a bad rap for its buffs being very intrusive on your costume. Forcefields, Sonic Shields, and even Ice can be played down to allow a character's costume to show through. I've seen many people ask to be skipped on thermal shield based on appearance alone.

I really hate to see Health and Stamina slotted the way you had them. A great deal of the enhancement value is lost on enhancing aspects the powers don't use. You could easily use the slots from Health to get a better recharge value in Ice Blast while transforming it into a useful power.

Here's your build, Great, with a few minor changes that yield slightly better recharge, recovery, and end usage. You'll also note better lethal/smashing and AoE defense. The only aspect that has decreased is regeneration by about 1 hp/sec. It's still a very endurance intensive build. However, I think it makes more efficient use of slots and you'll find your holds more effective, perhaps alleviating the need for so much defense.

Oh, and I recommend taking Superspeed with the stealth proc. With such high defense you may find it useful to stealth into the center of a mob and fire off your AoE hold.

I've got a plant/ff/ice that I softcapped to ranged with high AoE defense. (Before the BotZ change, it was capped to both positions.) I eventually found myself building for recovery bonuses because running Dispersion Bubble, Combat Jumping, and Weave really burns through endurance. With good AoE damage, the ability to keep enemies at range, and good positional defense it soloes pretty well.

Okay, I've played around a bit more and here's what I'm seeing with SI and GI. My statement before about stealth and defense surpressing was incorrect. Here's what I've observed with ingame numbers.

In both cases, defense surppress to half of its value when attacked.
The stealth in neither power is surpressing when attacked. (Note that there are two values for stealth in SI on Red Tomax's guide. Both values should surpress when you click a glowie. One of them remains even when attacked.)
The reduced threat level of SI surpresses when attacked, but the same effect in GI does not.

That reduction in threat level is really interesting and something I'll have to play with a bit more.

Because Superior Invisibility allows you to attack, heal, buff, etc. while Invisibility from the power pools hits you with the status Only Affecting Self. You can't affect enemies or teammates.

I disagree with Wind's take on Creepers. In my experience, the damage from Creepers is extremely noticeable. I eschew set bonuses to use Hami-O's and proc's for the most damage out of CC. Because of the nature of Creepers, you need to slot in a manner that carries damage enhancement and proc's to the sub-pets. Hami-O's will affect all portions so they're a good resource. If you slot an AoE set it will only affect the AoE portion of the power.

Check Weatherby Goode's guide for the skinny on how it all works.

If I may ask, where does your trouble with Plant originate? I find my plant/storm to be a very versatile character even when facing Nemesis, the bane of plant controllers. I find /storm covers nicely for plant's lack of single target damage. That's something that /rad won't be able to do. However, you will find more safety with /rad's -tohit and -damage debuffs.

In terms of speed, I imagine they're fairly similar since both offer nice -recharge, -resist, -def and -tohit. Solo, /storm helps out against lieutenants and bosses though. Of course, /rad offers -regen for AV's. In terms of debuffs, the operate in different ways but with generally the same result. If you're having trouble with plant/storm, it may have a bit to do with your approach. If you change to plant/rad you might find the same problems persisting.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=217534

There was a recent discussion of this issue in the thread above.

I don't think the server is instable, it's just doing it for attention.

I think I attribute my former dislike of doms to two things, the amount ot personal protection compared to a controller and the factions faced redside.

The first I think is fairly obvious. Controllers have a primary and secondary dedicated to defending the team. Even though many powers are ally oriented, they gain additional controls and protections with powers such as Choking Cloud, Hurricane, or Dispersion Bubble. While Doms (built for recharge) will eventually surpass the amount of control a controller provides, their initially shorter mez durations and the longish recharge of Domination made them feel less effective. When control fails, many Controllers can fall back on their secondary for safety.

The second hurdle for me enjoying doms was the prevalence of mez protection in enemy mobs. In particular, I'm thinking of Arachnos. Lieutenants and bosses have some annoying protections. Fortunata Seers, despite lieutenant rank, have better than boss level protection to holds, sleeps, stuns, and immobs. Bane Spider Scouts are immune to confusion. Night Widows have better than boss level protections across the board. Wolf Spider Huntsmen have twice the mez protection of a normal boss. Compound these varying levels of protection with the generally similar appearance across ranks, their own mezzes, and some very annoying tricks (Web Grenade and Smoke Grenade) and you have a very irritating faction to fight. One that is largely unavoidable from level 1 to 50. Then sprinkle in the mobs that are avoided blue-side such as Nemesis, with a dash of Longbow that features bosses with high level confuse protection and the ability to grant it to there teammates as well. In short, the deck is stacked against control red-side.

I recall when COV first launched I wanted to try a plant dom as plant was the only control set not available blue side. I didn't make it very far before the frustration of poor control (one part shorter mez durations outside of Domination, one part unexpected enemy mez protections) and the ups and downs of Domination turned me away. When plant control hit blueside, I rolled one up right away and found my experience far different than what I had faced in the Isles. My next foray into Dominators was with a Mind/Energy after the Dom revamp. I found I liked it a bit more, but one of the strengths of Mind blue-side, the aggro free control of confusion, was greatly hampered on red. After a few more attempts, and educating myself about enemy mez protections, I've finally settled into a Plant/Psi dom currently in the early 40's.

To me, it seems while doms potentially have greater control than controllers the devs went out of their way to counter-balance this red-side across the board. The trouble is that this balance isn't needed in early levels. The occasional periods of high control are offset by having neither a full array of controls or full attack chain of damaging attacks. When doms come to blue-side, their initial 20 or so levels are bound to be much less difficult. I can only see people becoming more interested in the AT when some of its growing pains become easier to avoid.

I'm with the OP. I have received multiple tells from the same individuals even after politely declining them or informing them that I am not the leader. "Oh sorry, I didn't recoginize the name." If your memory span is that bad I fear for your other cognitive abilities. In cases that I have allowed them to join (because we were not full) it is generally a very low level character requesting to join a high level team.

There are a multitude of other ways to find a team. I find this to be the most annoying and least constructive.

I think we'll see an increase in Doms. As Thirty-Seven pointed out, some folks just avoid them because of their side alliance; I was one of them. Level 35 couldn't come fast enough so I could leave the Rogue Isles. I have plans for many more doms after GR hits.

There's nothing wrong with looking at performance at 50. Or looking at performance at 20, for that matter. As Adeon said, it matters dependent on what you want to do with that character. I have a few characters that generally remain 40+ because that's when they hit the level of performance that I desired. Others bloom much earlier and see a lot of exemplaring.

That said, there is one thing that I think has skewered people's inclination toward high-end builds, and that is the drying up of the mid-level recipe pool. I have builds that reach levels of peak performance at level 50 (perma-hasten, soft-capped defenses, etc.) that I would love to perform better at lower levels. It's markedly more difficult to obtain the recipes required to do so though. If I could acquire most recipes in the range of 30-40 then I think that I very well would.