Illusion Controller needs a little bit more...

[Ukase]

Those of us on live way back when, remember when the phantom army was a key tool in taking down hami - indestructible PA, dropped on Hami repeatedly. 

Then, hami changed. 

I re-made my old controller, formerly known as Imperious Rex BEFORE ITF was on beta. Those Paragon Devs stole my character's name, but I was allowed to keep it. And fair enough, as I stole the name from Sub Mariner's list of expletives he'd yell when he got pissed off. But I digress. 

On Aeon SF, not sure what's doing it - but PA army are taking damage. Yes. That PA army. You know, the one that's supposed to be impervious to damage. 

I remember on a hami on homecoming,  PA took some damage there, too. 
It's been 2 years, but I think the PA takes damage on Magisterium, too, during the Tyrant fight. 
I know the Crystal Titan did some damage to them, too. 

I say this to suggest that something needs to give. Either the description in PA changes, the duration is increased, or they go back to being impervious, or something else in the illusion control set gets a buff to counter this deflation of value in the PA. 

It's the hallmark power of the set. There's literally no other reason to take illusion other than to have the pets that are impervious to harm. Now, suddenly, they can be damaged? That's not right. Nothing should harm the PA. Not Hami, Not the Titan...thematically, the PA are not real - they're illusions. It doesn't make sense for them to take damage. 

[Apparition]

FWIW, both Dark Watcher and Hero 1 in the Dr. Aeon SF can damage or even destroy Phantom Army.  It’s intentional.

[Aurora_Girl]

How dare they make a thing completely unaffected by 99.999877567828% of the game! 

[Ukase]

45 minutes ago, Apparition said:

FWIW, both Dark Watcher and Hero 1 in the Dr. Aeon SF can damage or even destroy Phantom Army.  It’s intentional.

And that's fine. My point is that there seems to be some power slide (as opposed to power creep) for the illusion primary. What's the trade-off? 

 

41 minutes ago, Aurora_Girl said:

How dare they make a thing completely unaffected by 99.999877567828% of the game! 

How many toes did you use to make the calculation? 

[Normal Thomas]

Phantom Army is great where's at. Gonna have to give suggestion a /jranger

[Ukase]

9 minutes ago, Normal Thomas said:

Phantom Army is great where's at. Gonna have to give suggestion a /jranger

I do not know what that means. 
And, good or bad - I've learned it doesn't make any difference what we players think about other player suggestions. The powers that be will read it, and round file it, or think about it, and maybe do something soon, or maybe do something much later. 

[Normal Thomas]

1 minute ago, Ukase said:

I do not know what that means. 
And, good or bad - I've learned it doesn't make any difference what we players think about other player suggestions. The powers that be will read it, and round file it, or think about it, and maybe do something soon, or maybe do something much later. 

/jranger is a comment people will make a suggestions, this is the urban dictionary definition:

Quote

A way to say no to a dumb idea. Commonly used in the MMO City of Heroes forums, mostly in the suggestions and ideas section. This was first used by the poster Memphis_Bill at 10:23 AM on 9/21/07. Based on the poster JRanger who would commonly respond saying only "no" to dumb ideas.

N00b: PB's and Ws's ...blah....Villains dont even have anything...Why not let characters who reach level 50 have the option to begin each new character at lvl 20 , to skip the god awful grind to stamina? Meh??

Pro1: no

Pro2: /Jranger

Now as far as your comment that we don't decide what does and doesn't make it into the game, that is true. It is ultimately up the devs. But I can't imagine an idea to buff an already great power in some very niche scenarios is going to win the developers over. But, as I said, not my call.

[Redletter]

See, I thought this was gonna be a post discussing Illusion as a powerset in general, and I'd agree to it needing a tiny bit of a touch up, if only because I think TWO stealth powers is a bit much and Id much prefer the ability to do something like enter phase? The set is very closely tied to the carnies, and they can enter phase so I think I'd happily trade either the AoE stealth or the personal stealth for this rare but potent utility, or a targeted power that can target enemies or allies that will either put them into phase, or pull them out of it? I think that's worth a thought. There's very few sets that even get to "shift" and the only readily available source of SINGLE target shifting is a P2W power. It feels like it's an ability this set would naturally have but doesn't, which is odd because Gravity DOES get it, and they get it in the form of a MASSIVE AoE that has stuns and roots and all kinds of stuff. People have mixed feelings about that power BECAUSE how massive it is, but I think, for the Illusion 'troller, a simple single target toggle would work very well. You could target an ally in danger and make them TOTALLY invincible to save them, you could target a stalker that accidentally pulled aggro from a tank and let them get back into Hidden, or you could target an enemy (obviously carnies come to mind first) and either pull them back into our reality or send them out of it.

 

Also, I'll be honest, as AMAZING as confuse as a mez is (and Deceive is a NOTABLY powerful version of this mez) I don't think it feels right with the rest of the set. It's likely just me, but I think I'd honestly appreciate an AoE debuff or even Placate (and then make Controller's passive proc the extra damage on Placated foes)? I might be crazy, but like, the whole set is VERY single target focused for a 'troller set, since the idea is your pets will pick up the slack, but it just doesn't feel right, since you're relying on them for SO much in large part to your lack of other tools to help. Like, besides your pets all you get is a single target confuse, two single target damaging attacks, an admittedly stupendous aoe hold, and not one but TWO stealth powers.

 

What I don't think is worth a thought though is a buff to PA just because there's literally less than 10 enemies in the game that can damage them, all of whom you'd meet doing content intended for larger teams.

Edited January 3, 2022 by Redletter
Spelling

[Aurora_Girl]

PA is 100% fine as is. Special enemies affect it, because it makes sense for them to. 

 

The "trade off" is that it takes insane amounts of global recharge to be made permanent, and they don't do much in the way of damage. 

[Solarverse]

4 hours ago, Ukase said:

I do not know what that means. 
And, good or bad - I've learned it doesn't make any difference what we players think about other player suggestions. The powers that be will read it, and round file it, or think about it, and maybe do something soon, or maybe do something much later. 

 

JRanger was nothing more than a low life troll who only lived to belittle and annoy others. Somehow, thanks to Memphis Bill (Thanks a lot @Greycat) the bastard has been immortalized. (At least I think Memphis Bill and Greycat are one and the same...I'll let him confirm or correct me if I am right or wrong.)

[Clave Dark 5]

"jranger" was a forum thing from The Before Times, but I'm pretty sure only as a joke at his expense, if anything.

[Parabola]

Jranger should be banned as snarky nonsense which does nothing to promote forum harmony. On topic I agree that illusion could use a bit of something but I'm not sure PA is where I'd look. A higher uptime way of setting mass containment would be nice.

 

6 hours ago, Redletter said:

target an enemy (obviously carnies come to mind first) and either pull them back into our reality or send them out of it.

This would be delicious. 

[SuggestorK]

7 hours ago, Redletter said:

See, I thought this was gonna be a post discussing Illusion as a powerset in general, and I'd agree to it needing a tiny bit of a touch up, if only because I think TWO stealth powers is a bit much and Id much prefer the ability to do something like enter phase? The set is very closely tied to the carnies, and they can enter phase so I think I'd happily trade either the AoE stealth or the personal stealth for this rare but potent utility, or a targeted power that can target enemies or allies that will either put them into phase, or pull them out of it? I think that's worth a thought. There's very few sets that even get to "shift" and the only readily available source of SINGLE target shifting is a P2W power. It feels like it's an ability this set would naturally have but doesn't, which is odd because Gravity DOES get it, and they get it in the form of a MASSIVE AoE that has stuns and roots and all kinds of stuff. People have mixed feelings about that power BECAUSE how massive it is, but I think, for the Illusion 'troller, a simple single target toggle would work very well. You could target an ally in danger and make them TOTALLY invincible to save them, you could target a stalker that accidentally pulled aggro from a tank and let them get back into Hidden, or you could target an enemy (obviously carnies come to mind first) and either pull them back into our reality or send them out of it.

 

Also, I'll be honest, as AMAZING as confuse as a mez is (and Deceive is a NOTABLY powerful version of this mez) I don't think it feels right with the rest of the set. It's likely just me, but I think I'd honestly appreciate an AoE debuff or even Placate (and then make Controller's passive proc the extra damage on Placated foes)? I might be crazy, but like, the whole set is VERY single target focused for a 'troller set, since the idea is your pets will pick up the slack, but it just doesn't feel right, since you're relying on them for SO much in large part to your lack of other tools to help. Like, besides your pets all you get is a single target confuse, two single target damaging attacks, an admittedly stupendous aoe hold, and not one but TWO stealth powers.

 

What I don't think is worth a thought though is a buff to PA just because there's literally less than 10 enemies in the game that can damage them, all of whom you'd meet doing content intended for larger teams.

Indeed and there is something on Carnies too that should be looked at (i dont dare to say change).

 

But Carnie Illusionists  can use attacks while phase shifted and damage the player, no player based phase shift does allow that, also their Master pets stay up  for a certain time after Master Illusionist is defeated (along with some other pets of other fractions but lets stay with carnies and Illusion here).

 

Im not against that PA can be damaged by some Masterful  Mighty Foes, but certainly their description should state that.

Edited January 3, 2022 by SuggestorK

[Greycat]

7 hours ago, Solarverse said:

 

JRanger was nothing more than a low life troll who only lived to belittle and annoy others. Somehow, thanks to Memphis Bill (Thanks a lot @Greycat) the bastard has been immortalized. (At least I think Memphis Bill and Greycat are one and the same...I'll let him confirm or correct me if I am right or wrong.)

 

6 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

"jranger" was a forum thing from The Before Times, but I'm pretty sure only as a joke at his expense, if anything.

 

Both of these. It was meant to poke at one specific person who was getting a bit ridiculous (yes, even by live forum standards) as a sort of "Do you really want to do this? You're being silly." I did it tongue in cheek, figured maybe the joke would last a week or so and move on.  Instead it's lasted... well, this long - in part because of mod actions on the live boards - and, well, it was poking at someone who'd just leave a post saying "no." So using it to just say "no," um...

 

And yes, I was MB on live.

[arcane]

5 hours ago, Parabola said:

Jranger should be banned as snarky nonsense which does nothing to promote forum harmony.

/jranger

[MHertz]

Illusion control could use something, but this isn’t it.

 

The Confuse should be Mass Confuse, and maybe cause the bad guys to look like copies of your team. The Invisibility should come with an optional pop-up Mass Invisibility button. There could be an Immobilize that does single target damage, drawing on a random Immobilize animation from other sets. The pet summon can scale up in the number and type of pets as you level — first one decoy, then two, then two Decoys and a Spectral Fear, etc. Or maybe we stop trying to shoehorn so many different effects into the set and give Illusion Control a way to choose damage type and secondary effect (spectral wounds, confuse, or fear) like Dual Pistols and Staff get.

 

But “needs to rely more on Phantom Army being an indestructible I Win Button” is probably not a good design direction.

Edited January 3, 2022 by MHertz

[arcane]

Illusion Control is currently in a similar boat as Fiery Aura (minus the involvement of actual bugs with the latter). That is, just about any buff would be totally inappropriate without a full set rebalance, because both sets just about get all the strength anyone should ever be allowed from one power. The idea that Illusion “needs” *anything* is laughable in the current meta.
 

Just as the devs recently commented that they will tone down Burn but only when the rest of the set can get rebalanced to compensate.. well that’s the only way I can see Illusion buffs happening too.

 

 

Edited January 3, 2022 by arcane

[TheZag]

Illusion/kinetics was my main back on live.  I had 5 phantasm that did almost no damage then reslotted to have only 3 phantasm with decent damage.  Phantom army was perma and summoned 2-4 phantoms with 6 slots of recharge and hasten i think.  So it did no damage either.  Then controllers got nerfed to have only 1 t9 pet (that remains until defeated) and phantom army always summoned 3.  After the initial annoyance of being 'nerfed',  we relotted our T9 pet for more damage and accuracy since it didnt need the recharge anymore and overall were close to the same damage output.

 

Now with set bonuses and incarnates, you get all that free recharge and accuracy and damage.  Todays phantom army is crazy strong compared to anything that was possible back in the day.  You literally get all the things for it where you had to pick all of 1 or half of 2 or 1/3 of each before the 'nerf'.  If illusion needs anything its to not have 2 invisibility powers.  But just skip 1 or both and get some extra pool powers.

 

And no mass confusion please,  illusion has enough t9 powers already.

[Wetlands]

I miss raining PA down on Hami.