Illusion/Dark or Fire/Dark?

[Xandyr]

Greetings all and thanks for taking time to read this (and hopefully provide some feedback).

  I'm thinking about rolling a new controller,  and have it narrowed down between Illusion/Dark or Fire/Dark. I have plenty of experience with Fire, so i know how it performs. 

 I have limited experience with Illusion. The concept i have either would "fit". My main objective is to contribute as much as possible on a team. However, I would like to go big game hunting (solo AVs/GMs) also.

  I'm kinda leaning towards Illusion for:

1) haven't played much with Illusion before

2) it "looks" like it should do more damage with Phantom Army and Phantasm duplicating itself

3) Group Invis,in theory, shoukd stack well with the -to hit debuffs in Dark (plus easy LotG mule)

4) Deceive seems like it might be a fun power

5) PA might help keep aggro off of myself

 

 So, experts,  which do you think would perform better at bringing down AVs/GMs and being a great addition to teams?

 

Thanks in advance!

[Riverdusk]

Either should be pretty good when combined with dark.  But I'd have to definitely give the edge to illusion for AV/GM fighting.  They resist a lot of those debuffs so having invincible pets that taunt (as PA does) makes things a lot easier.  You don't have to worry about your pets and a lot of your damage going squish.   I'd say illusion does more single target damage, fire probably has the edge in AoE.   You do need a ton of recharge to make illusion really shine though. 

 

PA is also really great at taking alpha on a team.  Personally I like not having to depend on a tank/brute or others to necessarily start things off.  If they are shy I just cast PA into the crowd.  Follow that up with a spectral terror and you are in good shape at defanging a mob, not even counting what /dark can do for you.

 

Group Invis is more about the LoTG mule, it doesn't offer a whole lot of defense.  I do particularly like it on my illusion/traps as it lets me move through things without my FFG and other pets causing aggro.  It has been occasionally useful on a team to let other teammates ghost some TF missions with me.

 

Yes, the confuse is also great (especially once you get the contagious confusion proc in it).  I regularly confuse several things per cast with mine now.  The purple confuse set also has great bonuses. 

[Dahle]

I have a Fire/Dark, it is an AoE Monster and just plows through things, but as soon as something resists my KD in bonfire or gets moving while solo I usually seem to feel a bit afraid.  For a team, you still contribute all the great buffs to the team and you are in Melee more so Soul Absorption is easy to get on yourself.  
My Ill/Dark isn't 50 atm, but it is a monster also with a good team oriented feel to it.  I can solo, though slower and I always feel safe because of PA.  I feel like this is a real team winner though.  You can contribute in so many places with PA tanking some, the Heal, the Endurance recovery, a ton of Def buffs for the whole team. Granted Fire has most of those too, I feel like when I play my Ill/Dark I am a lot more focused on the team then on the enemies because PA is my primary skill.  Plus Spec Terror is amazing. 

 

Just my opinion.

[Coyote]

IMO, Fire/Dark is a much better power build than Ill/Dark. Dark is a very strong defensive secondary, so with even a bit of control from the primary, you're running pretty safely against most content, so you really are looking for damage. Fire does very good damage whether single-target or AoE, while Illusion is only good at single-target damage. So, over most of the gameplay, you'll do far better with Fire/Dark than Illusion/Dark.

 

Now, against AVs, with Fire/Dark you'll have to tank them. However, tanking an AV with /Dark is really not hard at all (especially as an Incarnate with Clarion). I mean, with Illusion it's trivial, but then you're wasting most of Dark's defensive abilities. As Fire/Dark, you can cap Ranged defenses, possibly AoE also or at least get it pretty good, keep the AV out of melee range, and debuff its damage by 100% or so. As well as putting out close to 100 HP/sec of healing. No AV is going to beat the combination of -Damage and Healing except with powers that bypass the -Damage debuffing like Tornado or Lightning Storm (so watch out for Storm AVs... fly/hover to avoid Tornado, and pull the AV away from its Storms once it summons one... which may be hard since generally you want it Immobilized). The only "issue" would be an AV with mezzing or some huge debuffing, and generally that hasn't been a problem since you  can easily carry enough BFs for an AV fight, not to mention Rune of Protection, Iron Will, and Clarion for mez protection. So... you may have an issue with an AV that has some really nasty debuff like a huge -Recovery or something. Even then, they'll miss you most of the time.

 

Overall, I think Ill/Dark is a good combination that is specialized against AVs, but Fire/Dark is one of the best Controller combos that is great against everything including AVs.

[Doc Ranger]

The real question is do you like to play a controller? Because Illusion has no real “control” to speak of. It’s more of a mini MM. 

 

If you like crowd control then Illusion is not it. 

[Doc Ranger]

Haha. I can’t tell you how many Illusion controllers I’ve seen faceplant by trying to take on a couple of big mobs. 
 

Just definitely not on the same level of mob control as an actual control set like...well...any other set 🙂

 

Illusion is fantastic at what it does...crowd control just doesn’t happen to be one of those traits. 

[Coyote]

We specialize in crowd controlling AVs.

Beat that. 😝