Volatile Plants rare enemy affix feedback

After the most recent patch, the damage from the volatile plants affix does feel more in line with what it should be. However, I think that is less the issue with the affix, compared to the frequency of the plants growing. You either have chaos orbs chasing you, or plants already sprouting right after you set them off. There’s very little time to engage with any other aspect of your current encounter, it turns that fight into pretty much just a fight against volatile plants, not anything else going on around you as they take precedence.

I think they would work better as an affix if there was a larger window of time between setting off the chaos orbs and new plants sprouting, so you have more time to take advantage of setting them off, especially if you do so early in their spawn.

In my opinion, the chaos crystals weren't a problem.

If you paid attention to the affixes of a rare, and saw they had chaos crystals, you could easily telegraph when and where they would detonate. The crystals dropped at the feet of the rare and would detonate after death. Anyone having an issue with them was either going too fast to pay attention to what they were fighting, or genuinely didn't know what they did.

Volatile plants are the bane of my existence as a melee main.
I'm not at the point where I'm sprinting through packs and rares with no cares at all, so your experience will differ. However, just as OP said. The volatile plants become the fight in my experience. With the rate at which new ones spawn, the tracking, the detonate delay, and the bad proximity registration to detonate, this is the modifier that should have been axed until fixed.

How to fix this to be manageable at all levels?

1. As OP said, increase delay between new sprouts. As it stands, as soon as you clear one wave of volatiles, a new one has already begun sprouting, so if you needed a moment to attack the rare making them, that's too bad, keep running.

2. Remove player tracking. Make the plants static hazards like other elemental hazards, but act on a proximity timer like a landmine. The tracking makes telegraphing impossible, and the projectiles can easily be lost in the screen clutter of a fight.

3. DRASTICALLY reduce damage. No, I'm saying NUKE the damage to the FLOOR. I cannot stress enough how frustrating it is to be on T1 maps with 33%CR, just trying to get on my feet, and one projectile from these encounters instantly kills me through 2k life. If nothing else to to be changed. At the current rate of spawn, player tracking, and detonation. These need to do negligible damage. Not just a little less, a SUBSTANTIAL amount less damage.

Deeply agreed. As a warrior this is one of my most disliked affixes. As y'all said, if you successfully dodge a round of growths, you don't get rewarded with an attack window because the next round is already on the way.

My solution would be

1) Increase the proximity at which they detonate, so you can intentionally trigger them more easily to create an opening right after. Currently you have to let them get right on top of you.

2) Slightly reduce the orbs' movement speed, so they put a timer on your positioning rather than pose a constant and immediate threat to your life

3) Lower the duration they track you before they go off on their own