Ill/Cold vs Ill/Rad - The Best Giant Killer

[Ketchupchips]

Which is better at dealing damage? Which is better at taking out AVs? I'm not sold in either direction yet as I've heard opinions for both sides. I started Ill/Cold, but leveling feels a bit slow and boring starting out right now. I'd like to hear some more opinions on this debate to help make up my mind. Thank you!

[Coyote]

Ill/Storm for damage and killing non-AV targets.

Ill/Cold for killing AV targets due to better -Res and -Regen, which matter more on hard targets.

Note that Ill/Storm will actually kill "light" AVs faster, as the damage from Tornado/LS has a greater effect than the -Regen... but usually it's the hard AVs with good resistances that you need to build for. Some AVs have 40% or higher resists to everything, and /Cold can handle those better because Resists don't help against -Regen.

 

But /Cold will definitely be slower to level up, as -Regen is not generally useful for mob killing in regular missions.

[Krazie Ivan]

 

[Olly]

How do you get around Ill/Cold not having a heal? Medicine pool power is so meh and Controller Epics don't have one.  Pack a ton of green insps? The other thing that frustrated me with controllers is the lack of a -fly power for Ill/Cold or Ill/Rad. Granted, there's only 1 or 2 AV's this is a problem for, but still...

 

[Without_Pause]

15 hours ago, Olly said:

How do you get around Ill/Cold not having a heal? 

 

Earth's Embrace from Stone Mastery. I would carry greens and you can get a Heal/Regen from Incarates.

[Uun]

I would add Ill/Poison to the list. 

[Doomguide2005]

On 4/22/2020 at 6:38 PM, Olly said:

How do you get around Ill/Cold not having a heal? Medicine pool power is so meh and Controller Epics don't have one.  Pack a ton of green insps? The other thing that frustrated me with controllers is the lack of a -fly power for Ill/Cold or Ill/Rad. Granted, there's only 1 or 2 AV's this is a problem for, but still...

 

Illusion/'anything' you get around lack of heal (or needing to use it) primarily by Perma PA ... the pets get the aggro.  Stay clear of AoE's including cones with making sure to be out of the line fire for stuff aimed at pets.  Defense is always useful as well for instances of ambush type adds.

[Hjarki]

On 4/22/2020 at 9:32 AM, Coyote said:

Ill/Storm for damage and killing non-AV targets.

Ill/Cold for killing AV targets due to better -Res and -Regen, which matter more on hard targets.

Note that Ill/Storm will actually kill "light" AVs faster, as the damage from Tornado/LS has a greater effect than the -Regen... but usually it's the hard AVs with good resistances that you need to build for. Some AVs have 40% or higher resists to everything, and /Cold can handle those better because Resists don't help against -Regen.

 

But /Cold will definitely be slower to level up, as -Regen is not generally useful for mob killing in regular missions.

AV have 85% (at even level) resist vs. regeneration, so the actual -regen is 75%. This can be roughly translated into 75 dps.

 

Tornado will usually deal in the neighborhood of 1000 damage per Tornado, normally useable every 15 sec or so with a duration of 30 sec. This means you're dealing about 133 dps. With 40% resists, this would be reduced to 80 dps - which would then be bumped back up to 128 dps with stacked Freezing Rain.

 

Then, of course, you have the Lightning Storms on top of that.

 

The larger issue is that, all things being equal, where Storm is getting -60% resist debuffing, Cold would be getting -84% resist debuffing. I can't recall where I left my pet dps spreadsheet, but let's assume Phantom Army is dishing out 400 dps. That would be almost 100 dps from Heat Loss that Storm isn't getting (making it more significant than Benumb).

 

Unfortunately, all things are not equal. Storm and Cold are very similar sets, but Force Feedback procs give Storm a massive advantage in recharge. While Cold is desperately trying to scrape together enough recharge from IO sets and even Incarnates, Storm has a fairly easy time hitting perma-PA. Moreover, Storm damage scales with recharge while the damage advantages Cold has do not - if you're running at the recharge cap, you'll be running with 2.5 active Tornados and 3 active Lightning Storms. In contrast, Cold at the recharge cap is still only getting a flat -24% resist debuff advantage and that 75 dps from -regen.

 

It's certainly possible to create a scenario where the player's damage is reduced so far that they're barely able to damage the target at all so slowing down the regen is the only option left. But you're going to have a fairly narrow window between "Cold can do it but Storm cannot" and "Cold can't do it either" because anything that is able to shut down Tornado/Lightning Storm that hard will normally also shut down the rest of Ill/* damage long before the Tornado/Lightning Storm start failing.

 

Even then, you can get Envenomed Dagger for reasonably cheap but replicating Tornado/Lightning Storm damage is difficult to impossible with temporary powers.

 

With that in mind, I think the real problem with this sort of approach to Illusion is that you're depending stacked target AE -resist fields. These are useless against fliers and of limited use against targets who move out of the field. Storm compounds this problem by Tornado actively fearing targets out of the field - and a surprising number of AV are subject to this fear while they wouldn't be subject to conventional status effects.

 

Truthfully, when asked the question "is Ill/Cold or Ill/Storm better?", my answer would be "they're both worse than Ill/TA and Ill/Traps". While the sets are a bit clunky in many respects, they have the critical feature Illusion lacks: an Immobilize. Containment will automatically double your base attack damage, taking it to near- Blaster or Scrapper levels. Being able to knock AV's out of the sky and lock them in place also eliminates all those fights that simply aren't winnable for Ill/Storm or Ill/Cold.

[Frosticus]

For this task assuming no insp/temps/lore

ill/cold has a much higher ceiling than ill/rad.

it is faster and safer.

 

ill/rad is definitely easier to level and exemps down much better.

 

Some other comments vs ill/cold:

ill/storm is faster in some situations, slower in others. Almost always slower vs GM's. Never safer.

ill/traps is slower in most situations, but almost always safer.

ill/ta is not faster or safer

 

comments regarding illusion and containment:

meh, it is a tiny portion of overall damage for illusion builds. the time spent attaining containment via mag 3 immobs is more or less offset by time spent not attacking. This is more prevalent vs 53/54 AV's as the duration of the immob is cut drastically. No point trying to immob GM's.