Riverdusk

I'm actually surprised by how many didn't seem to know pet attacks benefited. Don't really even need to dig into combat logs as the most common interface choices have pretty obvious graphic effects on enemies when they trigger. But I guess you have to actually play a pet class (and probably solo at that), to notice and know for sure it is the pet doing it.

Also, this is also a powerset that greatly benefits from the supergroup base buff. +20% recharge for 90 minutes at a time for 3 cheap piece of salvage. I tend to almost always have it going (store some stacks of the 3 pieces of salvage you need in a salvage rack right next to the buff table makes it very easy and quick). Illusion controllers and doms live for that recharge and that base buff helps a ton. If you are rich you can also keep the P2W buff going for another +15%. That and some purple sets and taking into consideration that when exemping you have PA available at level 13 you still have them up a decent amount of time and there isn't much to do under level 13 anyway.

Done a lot of illusion controllers and for the pets I've gotten it down pretty standard I always end up doing no matter the secondary: Phantom Army: 4 ExpReinforcement (A/D, A/D/R, A/R, E/D/R), Soulbound (D/R+5, BU Proc). Gives you 95%+ damage and recharge and 74% accuracy, and the BU proc procs a ton on the army, sometimes even double stacking Phantasm: 4 ExpReinforcement (A/D, A/D/R, A/R, D/E), Overwhelming force (D/KB to KD), Explosive Strike Proc . 95%+ damage, 74% accuracy, and stops the annoying knockback. And of course the nice extra +recharge from the ExpRef sets. Spectral Wounds I end up doing 5 Apocalypse and a proc. The enhanced portion of the damage doesn't heal back and you still get 2 procs out of it. Terror is fine with the 4 cloud senses. Some people put dark watcher there, but if you look at its cloak of fear stats it actually has bad base accuracy so I think it really does need the accuracy. Some also put procs there, don't think I've ever bothered. I always 6 slot deceive with the full purple set, set bonuses are just too good. Deceive I find is really good for when you do exemp down. After the lower levels it becomes more situational but I still use it often enough (use it on certain mobs like ff gens, sorcs, sappers, etc.) You can go either way with blind really, depends what you feel you need. I had arcane bolt from sorcery on mine for another attack, so went with control enhancing for blind. I always skip flash on an illusion controller, the aoe holds aren't great on a controller period and flash is literally the worst of them all (both being pbaoe and an over 3 second animation time). I could see taking it for a mule, but that'd be its only use for me. Another option for HT is to just put the one stun purple in it and +5 it. Gets you about 66% stun enhance with just one slot. Or use the stun/recharge +5 and a regular recharge +5, still gets you to 91% recharge and 42% stun with the same 2 slots.

I assume you've long ago already found some options to try, but going to put my 2 cents in anyway. Bots are definitely a good option as others have mentioned. However, another option that I've recently started and I'm finding good for general play and also pretty good at taking down tougher stuff is a beam rifle sentinel. Damage is good now with the sent revamp and it is very survivable. It also does open up early. Beam specifically as you mentioned AV hunting (something I also enjoy) because it gets decent -regen (-225% worth) as early as level 6, earlier that even most of the debuff sets. People often say "just use envenomed daggers", but I don't like to have to depend on them, and secondly you can still use daggers to add even more -regen, so I still find it a plus to just have some as part of your powerset directly. Probably the biggest downside are the sound effects (more pew pew and less buzzing sounds would have been better), but I can look past that. There are other sets with sounds that bother me much more. And if you are really desperate there are sound mods.

Yeah, thanks for letting me know /showtime exists, sounds pretty cool. I was happy when they added /citytime as well. Not to highjack, but /playtime would be also be a nice one (assuming they haven't already snuck it in as well). Something that shows how long you've played the current character so that I don't have to seek out an NPC to click on who's name starts with an M to get the info. I get curious sometimes as to how long it takes to reach certain goals on each character, and obviously the info already exists. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Civilian_NPCs

Radiation infection is another classic power to use them in. Tohit debuff, defense debuff, and endurance reduction all in one.

Trying to guess at motives here, but I guess the goal was to encourage taking the swap ammo power more? I didn't know that was even a concern. How many people actually skipped it? IMO the better way to have gone, assuming that was the goal, was to just slightly upgrade standard ammo somehow if you take the swap ammo power. Standard now becomes "armor piercing" or something. Considering you are sticking with all lethal, it could have used a slight upgrade to keep up with the other types anyway. Instead it is made even more inferior and you are even more encouraged to abandon it entirely now. Agree that it is unfortunate to see.

Thanks for the advice, but ironically the best way I did find to deal with them on my beast/cold was to actually get closer to them. Close enough that my arctic fog power was giving them at least some extra energy resistance to help them deal with it. They'd still take a bit of a beating, (depending on difficulty level), but still the most efficient in the end. Faster than trying the slow and unreliable knockback of a nem staff. It too often misses or too easy to mistime when to call the pets back being either too late or leaving too much hp on the thing. It'd then end up taking multiple hits with the staff or other things to finish it off which slowed me down immensely. Was just as fast to resummon at that point. Also, that only works solo, teams are much too chaotic to try and time something like that with melee pets. So, on that character I'd found myself running closer to them. 😁 But trying at the same time to not get too close (their rez is 25 ft. fog is 40 ft).

Definitely agreed. Funny thing is there are also missions that are the opposite. They say kill all, but aren't. I know of at least one anyway that I've run enough times that I recognize it and go, "Oh, its that one where I can actually just stealth and click the glowies despite what it says."

The one that I notice the most are the super stunners when they rez. They were murder on my beast/cold MM especially. All the doggies being melee so tough to get them away from it, high defense based that was worthless against it, and no heal to help recover from it. Pretty brutal.

Personally glad it doesn't. Wouldn't exactly be thrilled with every team I join having 7 leprechauns running around.

Hmm, I thought I remember it being pretty well received overall. But I could be misremembering that instead.

This explains why my latest dark melee scrapper had a lot more annoying runners than I remember from using it previously. The touch of fear change. A power you can now spam very easily and has 5 tics of damage very quickly. Thanks for that info so I know I wasn't just misremembering.

I know one of the big suggestions in the past was to change confront to basically what they ended up making combat teleport. Guess they still could and have it be target based and keep its single target taunt as part of it. Could rename it "charge" or "rush" or something. I'd still be all for that as I'd still like an improvement to a power that every scrapper has available and almost no scrapper takes (power statistics they published once bore that out as confront being one of the least chosen powers in the game).

Last time commanding MM pets came up in help channel for me I saw several MM's respond, "I just never leave bodyguard mode ever". So yes, many seem to just let them do whatever. If that works for them I wasn't going to say anything, but I can't imagine not at least sometimes directing them. I guess not leaving bodyguard mode does still leave the use of "goto" and "stay" commands, but somehow I doubt they use those either from how they were talking. Anyway, for DFB badge runs though honestly I'll usually just dismiss the pets for that "no AoE's" part as I don't want to accidently do anything to mess it up or get blamed for it even if I didn't mess it up, and it tends to make my teammates feel better.

Was confused by this until I looked at your guide again and I see the discrepancy. Your guide is saying it checks for the hold every 5 seconds, City of Data says its "activate period" is 2 seconds. My understanding from City of Data is that "activate period" is how often a power "tics". So, unless I'm misunderstanding something that'd be a big difference and I agree it wouldn't be as good if it only checks every 5 seconds instead of 2. Although I still think I'd find it more useful than flash. Will try to test and confirm how often it checks when I get a chance. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=controller_buff.radiation_emission.choking_cloud&at=controller Oh, your guide also states you wouldn't want phantasm around while running choking cloud because of his knockback knocks things out of the cloud. That of course is something that has changed since the 'old days' as I always stick an overwhelming force kb to kd IO in phantasm now a days. Edit and update: I didn't use a stopwatch or anything, but a quick test and just from doing a simple watching of the combat log it seems like it checks pretty close to every 2 seconds to me. At least I'll get the "you hold <x> with your choking cloud" messages every 2 seconds or so over and over again for the same mobs. Maybe they changed the tic time from what it was before and improved it.

A lockdown chance for hold proc isn't bad on it and actually seems to proc more often than the hold in the power itself. Although that could somewhat be because it is more visible with the proc's tesla cage hold fx, so I just notice it more.

At that difficulty level you could probably make due with brawl alone all the way to 50 (Supposedly some crazy people have actually done that just to prove it could be done). Or a "power pool" hero that only uses power pool attacks is a definite option. Have fun with your fire/fire sent though.

For dev time on something like this I'd rather see some more clean up on the actual in-game numbers given. Things like that all the corruptor "Avg. Damage" and such numbers listed include scourge, which I have to always halve the numbers in my head to get the real base damage and DPA, and I know that is a rough way to do it that doesn't always work out. Probably some people like to see the "potential" damage listed though when scourge does kick in, so maybe it is just me. I'd make the argument though in that case that controller's attack averages and DPA would make more sense to show containment damage included as I find that happens much more consistently than scourge does for corruptor's. Worse is probably how many melee attack average damage numbers and such include things like "fiery embrace" in their damage numbers that aren't relevant to most people. So, I have to subtract that out to once again get the real actual base damage and get out the calculator to figure out the actual DPA. Often fiery embrace is included on some powers, but not others, so not even consistent (scrapper katana Sting of the Wasp vs. Gambler's cut a perfect example). That does prove to me though that it is 'fixable' as some include it and some don't in the averages at top even though it is listed in the breakdown for both. But I know most people just use and trust Mid's now a days for everything like that, so likely very low priority for most people I imagine.

You forgot the LoTG. Travel power + stealth + LoTG mule all in one. Infiltration has become my go to on the majority of my characters as it does so much for one power pick.

Always loved your guides back in the day Area Man, but have to disagree with you on choking cloud. Love the power myself. It holds things generally very easily and quickly in my experience. I also find it actually much more useful and effective than flash (imo horrible power with its horrible animation time that I rarely ever take on an illusion controller). I think flash might be the worst AoE click hold power of any controller with it being both melee and considering its animation time. In the 3 seconds that flash takes to cast choking cloud usually does its thing in about the same time period (as it tics every 2 seconds) with zero animation time, and continues to work again and again as opposed to once every minute or two. I also personally tend toward an AoE attack power in the epic pools to give illusion some AoE capability. Choking cloud is one of the few fairly reliable always available ways to set up AoE containment on an illusion controller. Cast spectral terror and phantom army to make it safe (or much safer anyway), run in, wait a couple of seconds, and then let loose for some nice contained AoE damage on the majority of a mob with a fireball, or ball lightning, or fissure, psi tornado, etc. All of which tend to do pretty poor damage if you don't have things contained. I also like that it can act as its own sort of almost automatic "melee defense". Even if I am trying to stay out of melee, if things do get too close they tend to fairly quickly get held without me having to do a thing, instead of them trying to bop me over the head while I try to quickly switch targets to hold/confuse them or even worse if a bunch of things suddenly rush me. To each their own though of course and their own playstyle. Maybe a good 'hover blast' strategy or if you are only soloing small groups or have the right teammates to help protect you and do all the AoE for you all would potentially make it less useful.

Hah, good name. Should work well imo. Maybe not the most "ideal" as nature is more about buffing and healing, which of course don't affect the phantom army. Entangling aura should be a highlight though as it provides nice extra hard control and helps set up aoe containment that illusion can struggle with.

Hopefully the illusion/storm worked out for you. It is powerful for sure. Only issue I had with the combo and the testing I did with it is that storm's built in fear effects were enough to sometimes overcome phantom army's taunting. For those saying /time doesn't have good -res ability, don't forget to slot an Achille's heel proc into slowed response. Should be almost guaranteed to proc (haven't run the exact proc chance numbers so feel free to tell me if I'm mistaken there) and turns it into a -42.5% res debuff for at least a short while, and a short while is often all that is needed now a days.

See this mistaken belief all the time. You probably figured it out already by now, but no, phantom army doesn't do knockback. Phantasm alone does, and why I always stick an overwhelming force IO in him. The new dom version of illusion I think does have some knockdown (looks like at low enough mag to usually be knockdown and not knockback from peeking at CoD), as the pets work completely differently for them. For controller though, I don't find illusion chaotic at all.

PSA for anyone that loves Necro MM but finds them obnoxiously noisy like I do, especially with the new changes I found they got even noisier in combat. Can find info on how to quiet the zoning upgrade sound earlier in the thread. Some new ones that bugged me though: For their constant siphon life sound (although I left the healing sound part of it which I find is plenty): /powers dclifedrain2 For the soul extraction ghost screaming attacks and for the constant low bass humming sound from the summoned specters: /enemies ghostblast daemon_loop As usual a caution that this can affect other sounds or other characters (like your own siphon life and the one from dark melee/dark blast). Will also probably make fighting certain ghosts in Croatoa more quiet. Personally I'd consider that another plus, but didn't actually test yet.