Newly out of retirement general troller questions

[A3G1S]

Hey all,

I mained an Illusion / Empathy troller (to lvl 50 and end game content) on vanilla and played several toons through retail.  I am super excited to play CoX again and have a few questions that I have yet to find answers to in this forum.  

 

I just started back a few days ago (made a few characters) and would like to re-roll my old main but would like to have a secondary that is a bit more solo-friendly.  Ill/time interests me and I rolled one but am really struggling at only lvl 11.  

 

So here are my general troller questions:

1. Is time as good as I hope it will be when paired with Ill?

2. Are fire imps capped at 3? (I remember when they made the big nerf on retail and that killed my interest in fire....before that you could have a ton of them out and buffed with kin)

3. Am I in for a rough and lengthy grind if I go this route?

Unrelated: 4. I feel gimped with no influence starting over from scratch again...is there a reasonably-quick way to farm enough influence for enhs with a new character beyond the typical leveling/mission game play?

Thanks to everyone in advance, I am super happy to find this playable version again and plan to spend a ridiculous amount of time patrolling Paragon like old times!

[Coyote]

Time is very strong, but defense-oriented. Since you ran an Empath, I assume that a secondary that doesn't do much for offense is fine with you, and Time will help get perma-PA more easily.

 

All Controller pet summons are permanent now, but also not stackable, so Imps are always 3, Gremlins are always 2, and others are always 1.

 

Illusion Controllers solo fine... their damage is on the low side over all ATs but good for Controllers, but on the other hand they have no problem with any mobs whatsoever. Between a Confuse power and PA, tough double-boss end spawns are a joke. The only thing they don't do well is clear-all missions when set to a large player count (which is why I run +4/x4 rather than /x8).

 

4: Influence is pretty easy to get... you can buy crafted IOs (not set IOs) and use them until the mid-20s. All it takes is one orange salvage drop to fund a lot of crafted IOs, and it's very rare to hit level 15 and not have had one fall. Just sell salvage, craft any recipes that you get, and use Enhancement Converters to convert low-value IOs that you craft into high-value IOs. Converters are obtained by trading in Merits that you gain from running story arcs (or TFs), or you can just buy them once you have a bit of money, and after that the selling of the IOs will fund new Converters as needed. Set IOs can be expensive, but you can wait until 30 or so to look for them, and by then you should have gained easily 20-30 recipes. After converting them to "valuable" IOs (anything that sells for 2 million+), you should have easily over 50 million even after the cost of Converters and fees, and that will fund a decent build at 30. After that, doing the same plan should fund you to 50, where you may stall out for a bit (as the final build may end up quite expensive). But you can still have a solid build at that point, and as you level up through Veteran levels you can start upgrading sets to purples and such.

 

[A3G1S]

Hey thanks a ton for the reply and the financial advice lol.  I started to fizzle in retail around the time of bases and the whole crafting system so while I did understand it at one point, I only vaguely remember pieces of it.

My thought process with using Time with Ill is to compliment it in a productive way....Emp did little of that.  I know of the classic rad combo and the storm efficiency but was looking for something that might add significantly to ill's damage in a non-intuitive kind of way.  I guess ultimately I'm looking for validation that this will be an efficient and synergistic combo.

(Edit) ... I also am mostly interested in a secondary set that is not one of the originals i.e. dark/kin etc.  I'm tossing around the idea of traps but not excited about being hamstrung in fast moving groups.

Edited September 3, 2020 by A3G1S

[Olly]

Ill/time is nice, especially with the Experimentation pool if you can fit it in.  I rank it a slight tier lower than Ill/rad and Ill/traps which are solo beasts. You won't have trouble soloing regular content, and unless you're hardcore you won't miss much. 

 

To add to the financial advice: on Homecoming, all enhancements on AH are "pooled". That is, if you sell a lvl 30 enh, and there is a buyer for a level 50 enh, your enh in AH will be converted and sold as a level 50 enh to that buyer. So you can make decent money crafting recipes and selling lower-level enhs for level 50 prices.

 

The grind depends on how long you think "grindy" is, and whether you start hero or villain side.  You can pug the DFA/DFB trials and run the positron 1 & 2 task forces to start. That's about 1-3 game hours. Then move on to all the TF's, which average ~ 1 hr each.  That should take you pretty close to 40-ish quite quickly; and that is an "average" leveling experience.  Homecoming is fairly generous with the XP and leveling options. 

Edited September 3, 2020 by Olly

[A3G1S]

2 hours ago, Olly said:

Ill/time is nice, especially with the Experimentation pool if you can fit it in.  I rank it a slight tier lower than Ill/rad and Ill/traps which are solo beasts. You won't have trouble soloing regular content, and unless you're hardcore you won't miss much. 

 

To add to the financial advice: on Homecoming, all enhancements on AH are "pooled". That is, if you sell a lvl 30 enh, and there is a buyer for a level 50 enh, your enh in AH will be converted and sold as a level 50 enh to that buyer. So you can make decent money crafting recipes and selling lower-level enhs for level 50 prices.

 

The grind depends on how long you think "grindy" is, and whether you start hero or villain side.  You can pug the DFA/DFB trials and run the positron 1 & 2 task forces to start. That's about 1-3 game hours. Then move on to all the TF's, which average ~ 1 hr each.  That should take you pretty close to 40-ish quite quickly; and that is an "average" leveling experience.  Homecoming is fairly generous with the XP and leveling options. 

Interesting about the ah thx.....

[ghotistix]

go with ill/poison. the debuffs from poison will make the PA do more damage. 🙂

[A3G1S]

9 hours ago, ghotistix said:

go with ill/poison. the debuffs from poison will make the PA do more damage. 🙂

Is it a pretty drastic difference? I hear about the proccing of Time and that sounds like it can put up some decent numbers 🤷‍♂️

[Riverdusk]

Time also has a -resistance debuff that helps out PA damage (which you can proc for even more -res), just that it comes late.  Best thing about ill/time combo is the big +recharge it gets (although also late).  Makes getting perma phantom army eventually trivial to get compared to most other combos.   Between that and the extra +tohit it also gives you, you don't have to find as much recharge or slot as much accuracy to do very well.  That frees slots to put in more procs as a way to increase your damage.  It's a good combo.

 

Early on for a set as recharge hungry as illusion I strongly suggest at least grabbing the +20% recharge buff you can get from a supergroup buff table (and I don't believe you have to even belong to a SG to use their buff table).  For 3 pieces of relatively cheap salvage you can get 1.5 hours worth of +20% recharge at a time.  I also suggest the +15% recharge temp buff you can get from the P2W vendor for up to 8 hours at a time (for a total of +35% global recharge you can have starting even at level 1), but the P2W one starts to get a bit pricey as you level, so might be out of reach for a 1st time character unless you do some more serious marketering.

[EmperorSteele]

I run an Ill/Time, and it's a beast. Just solo'd the LGTF with her last night in about an hour and a half. I mean, I didn't use any insanely high difficulty setting, I think it was just +0/x4, but still, it was cake.

With /Time, you get an Extra Hold, a +Def power, a +Recharge power, and you have an ability which lowers enemies' ToHit and another that debuffs Def/Res. It's a true Jack of All Trades, and it works with Illu REALLY well, both by shoring up its weaknesses (Adds more hard and soft control, and gives you more recharge) as well as playing to Illu's strengths (weakens foes to let PA kill them easier).

Once you have both Blind and Time Stop, you can load one or both up with damage procs, and essentially turn your controls into Blaster-level attacks. Mind you, the procs won't all always go off, and proc-loading means not enhancing the power (so the holds will only last like 8 seconds and take a while to recharge and use a lot of Endurance), but the ability to one-shot minions is a worthwhile price to pay, IMO. Any Controller Primary can do this with their main Hold, but Time gives you a second one, as well as an extra power (Distortion Field) to load a Hold set into so you're not missing out on Set bonuses.

But yeah, either way, it's a great combo, but it matures late, and it can do wonderful things once set up correctly!

[A3G1S]

2 hours ago, EmperorSteele said:

I run an Ill/Time, and it's a beast. Just solo'd the LGTF with her last night in about an hour and a half. I mean, I didn't use any insanely high difficulty setting, I think it was just +0/x4, but still, it was cake.

With /Time, you get an Extra Hold, a +Def power, a +Recharge power, and you have an ability which lowers enemies' ToHit and another that debuffs Def/Res. It's a true Jack of All Trades, and it works with Illu REALLY well, both by shoring up its weaknesses (Adds more hard and soft control, and gives you more recharge) as well as playing to Illu's strengths (weakens foes to let PA kill them easier).

Once you have both Blind and Time Stop, you can load one or both up with damage procs, and essentially turn your controls into Blaster-level attacks. Mind you, the procs won't all always go off, and proc-loading means not enhancing the power (so the holds will only last like 8 seconds and take a while to recharge and use a lot of Endurance), but the ability to one-shot minions is a worthwhile price to pay, IMO. Any Controller Primary can do this with their main Hold, but Time gives you a second one, as well as an extra power (Distortion Field) to load a Hold set into so you're not missing out on Set bonuses.

But yeah, either way, it's a great combo, but it matures late, and it can do wonderful things once set up correctly!

This was exactly what I was looking for thanks a ton....it was also how I suspected it would work out...looks like I'll be putting in the work with this combo!

 

Edit: I am a bit confused though about the proccing needing to be on holds that aren't enhanced....like at all? I don't understand that mechanic....

 Edit again:  I just read through the PPM dissertation (sarcasm) forum post and think I have a mildly better understanding.  To my knowledge in a Barney-style breakdown: +recharge enhs may or may not affect the proc rate depending on what the base % is but other enhancements for those powers should be ok?

Edited September 4, 2020 by A3G1S
Added info

[Parabola]

The short version of proc mechanics is that it is a function of the recharge of the power, its area of effect (if aoe) and its activation time. Activation time isn't a huge factor and you can't change the aoe size (adding range to cones doesn't affect the equation), but you do have a great deal of influence over recharge. If you are going to use procs in a power ideally you won't add any recharge enhancement to it (and this includes recharge enhancement from the alpha slot). You can have as much global recharge as you like (hasten, set bonuses, destiny slot) as this also doesn't affect proc chances. All other slotting in a power such as accuracy, damage and end reduction don't affect the proc chances either.

 

My advice would be downloading mids reborn (from the tools section of the forum). The proc rate calculation it uses is mostly accurate now so you can see the effect different slottings has on the average damage output of a power.

[EmperorSteele]

What I meant by "not able to enhance the power" is that you only get a maximum of 6 slots per power (which you're well aware), and that there are like 5 or 6 separate damage procs you can put into your Hold powers. So, yeah, you can fill all your slots with procs, but then the power won't be very good besides. You'll have to shore that up with set bonuses or other abilities that give +acc and +recharge (Set bonuses do not affect your proc chance, only enhancement does).

[Coyote]

20 hours ago, A3G1S said:

To my knowledge in a Barney-style breakdown: +recharge enhs may or may not affect the proc rate depending on what the base % is but other enhancements for those powers should be ok?

 

Correct.

As EmperorSteele pointed out, it's hard to slot a Hold power with damage procs and add anything else, much less worry about Recharge.

However, Time's Hold doesn't do damage, so it doesn't have access to as many damage procs. 4 from the Hold set, and that leaves you with two slots for Accuracy/Hold which is decent.

Blind could take as many as 6 procs, but if you're putting the purple Hold IO into Time's hold power, then you only have 5 procs available. That leaves you with one slot... you could treat it fully as a damage power and slot an Acc/Dam, or between set bonuses and its base Accuracy bonus, go with a Damage/Mez Hami-O.

In any case, with two Holds, you don't need to worry too much about slotting them for Hold. You have those two plus Deceive, that allows you to take care of two Bosses pretty easily: one gets double-Held and the other gets Deceive stacked upon it. Then, with the -ToHit from Spectral Terror and Time's Juncture, the lesser mobs aren't going to do much to you even on the rare occasions when they do hit.

 

Basically, slot for damage primarily with damage procs, follow up with damage slotting, and only stick Hold enhancement where you can't put anything else, because you have so much single-target control already that you really don't need it, while damage is always useful.

[A3G1S]

4 hours ago, Coyote said:

 

Correct.

As EmperorSteele pointed out, it's hard to slot a Hold power with damage procs and add anything else, much less worry about Recharge.

However, Time's Hold doesn't do damage, so it doesn't have access to as many damage procs. 4 from the Hold set, and that leaves you with two slots for Accuracy/Hold which is decent.

Blind could take as many as 6 procs, but if you're putting the purple Hold IO into Time's hold power, then you only have 5 procs available. That leaves you with one slot... you could treat it fully as a damage power and slot an Acc/Dam, or between set bonuses and its base Accuracy bonus, go with a Damage/Mez Hami-O.

In any case, with two Holds, you don't need to worry too much about slotting them for Hold. You have those two plus Deceive, that allows you to take care of two Bosses pretty easily: one gets double-Held and the other gets Deceive stacked upon it. Then, with the -ToHit from Spectral Terror and Time's Juncture, the lesser mobs aren't going to do much to you even on the rare occasions when they do hit.

 

Basically, slot for damage primarily with damage procs, follow up with damage slotting, and only stick Hold enhancement where you can't put anything else, because you have so much single-target control already that you really don't need it, while damage is always useful.

Perfect thanks!