Focused Feedback: Dominator Illusion Control

[The Curator]

Dominator Proliferation: Illusion Control

• New primary for Dominators. This version of the set does not get access to Spectral Wounds nor Group Invisibility. Instead, it has new powers called Spectral Wall and Gleam. Also, Dominator's version of Phantom Army has its pets not taunt, but rather have attacks utilizing mez and soft control effects.

You can manipulate light and sound to manifest all sorts of Illusions, aiding your allies as well as deceiving your foes.

 

Powers:

•   Blind  Ranged (Targeted AoE), DMG(Psionic), Foe Hold/Sleep

  • Painfully Blinds a single targeted foe so severely that they are rendered helpless. Blind is so bright that additional foes may also be blinded, though they will not take any damage, and attacking them will free them from the effects.

•   Spectral Wall  Ranged, DoT (Psionic), Foe Immobilize, -ToHit
  • Creates an illusionary wall of specters that prevents enemies from moving. As the foe is surrounded, they take psionic damage over time.
•   Deceive  Ranged, Foe Confuse
  • You can Deceive an enemy into believing their friends are not who they appear to be. If successful, the enemy will ignore you and attack their own allies. If you Deceive someone before they have noticed you, your presence will continue to be masked. You will not receive any Experience Points for foes defeated by a Deceived enemy.
•   Spectral Terror  Summon Terror: Ranged Fear, -ToHit
  • You can create an illusion of unspeakable Terror. The manifestation is so horrible that it caused most foes to tremble helplessly in terror. The Spectral Terror may also Terrify individual foes, causing them to run away in panic.
•   Superior Invisibility  Toggle: Self Stealth, +DEF(All)

  • You can bend light around yourself to become completely Invisible. While this power is active, you are all but impossible to detect, and have an extremely high Defense bonus to all attacks. Superior Invisibility is the only toggle invisibility power that allows you to attack while it is active, although you will lose some of your defense bonus if you do so.

•   Gleam  Ranged (Targeted AoE), DMG(Psionic), Foe Disorient

  • Multiple flashing lights go off around enemies, disorienting and damaging them. Gleam deals minimal Psionic damage, and can Disorient all affected targets for a good while.

•   Phantom Army  Summon Decoys: Ranged DMG(Psionic)

  • You can fabricate 3 Phantom heroes around a targeted foe. These Phantoms are not real, and are indestructible. Though they deal damage, it is illusory and will heal if the victim survives long enough. Phantoms are short lived and cannot be buffed or healed.

•   Flash  PBAoE, Foe Hold
  • Generates a brilliant flash of light around you that blinds nearby foes. Flashed foes are rendered helpless and unable to defend themselves.
•   Phantasm  Summon Phantasm: Ranged, DMG(Smash/Energy/Psionic)

  • You can construct a powerful entity composed of pure light. Although made of light, the Phantasm is tangible and has powerful Energy attacks. The Phantasm can also fly and summon duplicates of itself. The duplicates are intangible, and cannot be harmed. The duplicates' attacks deal illusory damage similar to that dealt by Spectral Wounds. Only the original Phantasm can be healed and buffed. Type ''/release_pets'' in the chat window to release all your pets.

[Metatheory]

Holy moly!

[Vanden]

2 things: The knockback in Phantasm has always been very annoying, since you have no control over it. Now this ported version has knockback in the Decoy Phantasm, too, instead of a taunt. I'm begging you, reduce this to knockdown. Reducing the knockback to knockdown in Mercs is a godsend, so please, do the same for Phantasm.

 

Second, and far more trivial: Phantom Army has no taunt in this version of the power set. The different power icon is a nice touch, but I think a different name is warranted, too. How about Phantom Attackers? That way it's still "PA."

[Riverdusk]

Haven't tested myself yet, but per city of data and the in game data PA Power Bolt and hurl are only .6 knockback and hydro blast is .67 so they should already be knockdown.  Hopefully that's how they actually are.  Not seeing any other knockbacks.

[Vanden]

7 minutes ago, Riverdusk said:

Haven't tested myself yet, but per city of data and the in game data PA Power Bolt and hurl are only .6 knockback and hydro blast is .67 so they should already be knockdown.  Hopefully that's how they actually are.  Not seeing any other knockbacks.

 

That's Phantom Army, not Phantasm. Phantasm has knockback on both of its attacks, and the Decoy Phantasm for Dominators also has knockback on both of its attacks, too.

[Riverdusk]

2 minutes ago, Vanden said:

 

That's Phantom Army, not Phantasm. Phantasm has knockback on both of its attacks, and the Decoy Phantasm for Dominators also has knockback on both of its attacks, too.

 

My bad, misread which one you meant.   Didn't even realize the decoy phantasms even had a taunt, thought that was only army.  Learned something new.

 

Agree that would be nice to be changed, especially if the kb to kd IO doesn't also affect them, then it'd be an absolute must.

[LastHumanSoldier]

45 minutes ago, Vanden said:

 

That's Phantom Army, not Phantasm. Phantasm has knockback on both of its attacks, and the Decoy Phantasm for Dominators also has knockback on both of its attacks, too.

I think I can live with this. 

On live i already slot a KB to KD in my Phantasm. And It affects the Decoy too.
I just tested the DOM version. Work the same.

I don't see the issue.

EDIT:  Actually, the Decoy is randomly Knocking back.....  I think its when the Phantasm dies?

Nevermind. I used Auto enhance and it overwrote my Sudden Acceleration KB to KD.

 

Edited October 4, 2022 by LastHumanSoldier

[Riverdusk]

12 minutes ago, LastHumanSoldier said:

I think I can live with this. 

On live i already slot a KB to KD in my Phantasm. And It affects the Decoy too.
I just tested the DOM version. Work the same.

I don't see the issue.

EDIT:  Actually, the Decoy is randomly Knocking back.....  I think its when the Phantasm dies?

Nevermind. I used Auto enhance and it overwrote my Sudden Acceleration KB to KD.

 

 

Thanks for testing and confirming that.

[LastHumanSoldier]

I cannot wait to play this set on live. This combined with the ability to chose between the T1/T2 Secondary power is making me extremely excited.
 

[Captain Powerhouse]

1 hour ago, Riverdusk said:

Agree that would be nice to be changed, especially if the kb to kd IO doesn't also affect them, then it'd be an absolute must.

 

It should affect them.

[LastHumanSoldier]

45 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

 

It should affect them.

Tested. It does.

 

[Lazarillo]

Just for laughs, I made an Illusion/Dark Dominator and ran it through Positron part 1.  Figured it'd be a decent test of low-level performance, and also let me see if doppelgangers were doing anything janky for the new set.

 

In the case of the latter: I actually didn't see the Simulacra use a single Illusion power.  Part of this may be the "binary" nature of control.  If I went too easy on it, I ended up two-shot by its Dark Assault powers.  But even when I could kinda keep the balance, it was sticking to ink-shooting and Smite, near as I could tell.  That said, the balance was still a little tricky because when I pulled out Phantom Army...

 

Well, Phantom Army is nice.  It seems quite potent, and the controls do an excellent job in place of the taunts.  Sending them in while I stayed Invisible generally meant alphas got eaten nicely, and pulling them out even when I got a little overwhelmed in an ambush, they started peeling the aggro off.  It was a decent spike of damage, too, despite the auto-enhancers not actually putting anything onto them.  Single-targets, the constant stun and KD spam really kept the Simulacra occupied, especially.  I did pull aggro off Doc Buzzsaw, though. Sets get thrown into the mix and these guys get perma, they're gonna be damned good against anything short of an AV, but they remain decently balanced by the lack of uptime with normal enhancements, IMO.

 

Also, Gleam is pretty. 

[ScarySai]

Illusion's going to be my main dom, did not miss the PA taunt as much as I thought I would.

 

I would like to have spectral wall's FX on gleam or flash as an alt anim, or something. It's very pretty, but I am never taking spectral wall, there is pretty much no reason to. Honestly, it might as well be spectral wounds if it doesn't become an AoE. 

 

My main dillemma will simply be choosing the best secondary for this thing.

[Riverdusk]

I like Spectral wall and would take it because I like to be able to assure sticking an AV in place so they aren't running all over, which they will likely do without phantom army taunting them.  Of course some dom secondaries also have an immobilize, so for those I could see skipping it.  I also know some don't mind or seem to have an issue with the running, but it drives me crazy.  

 

Agree with you that it looks cool, but pretty specific, it's a lot of skulls.  I'd actually like to see an alternate animation for Wall.

 

Using dark color version seems to tone it down okay though.  On a lot of powers the "dark" version doesn't really tone it down, so was happy to see it kinda worked out okay for this one, to me anyway.

Edited October 5, 2022 by Riverdusk

[LastHumanSoldier]

4 minutes ago, Riverdusk said:

Agree with you that it looks cool, but pretty specific, it's a lot of skulls.  I'd actually like to see an alternate animation for Wall.

Can I second this?

The Skulls are VERY concept limiting. I don't mind it as it is as I plan on skipping this power on my illusion dom. 
But an alternate animation similar to Gleem or Flash would be welcomed.

(I am sure there are people with the exact opposite opinion! 😛)

[Frosticus]

Gives up AV dominance for pretty stellar group control with a big aoe stun that has good cast time.

But could still do most AV's safely with domination confuses if desired.

 

Haven't tried it yet, but I've been waiting as long as I can remember for illusion dominators. 

A lot of fun combinations

[Xiddo]

Haven’t tested yet but just from a read:

 

Superior Invisibility is the only toggle invisibility power that allows you to attack while it is active, although you will lose some of your defense bonus if you do so.

 

as we don’t strictly speaking have any toggle invisibility powers, since the pool was changed, bar Sup Invis on doms/trolls, is it worth changing the info text on both?

[Mezmera]

This is such a beastly powerset.  The pets do great on their own and the control is just right where it doesn't take you out of positioning if you don't want to.  If you're in melee and getting surrounded you can drop one of the aoe controls and watch as your pets devour the enemies alongside with you.   It pairs well with melee style doms, real fluid.  

 

This thing is about to cause some strife between me and my main.

[Xiddo]

Someone wake up @oedipus_tex, get them a strong black coffee, a calculator and a notepad: STAT.

[Dispari]

12 hours ago, Vanden said:

Second, and far more trivial: Phantom Army has no taunt in this version of the power set. The different power icon is a nice touch, but I think a different name is warranted, too. How about Phantom Attackers? That way it's still "PA."

Phantom Assault maybe?

[blue4333]

Overall the set feels good to play, especially with various options to shut down a mob. Gleam feels fast to use and effective in domination. Spectral Terror is a nice 30% -tohit when slotted.

 

While Phantom Army feels a bit less safe without Taunt, it still can be used to absorb mobs alpha strikes. The damage is pretty good for a Dominator Primary, might be comparable to a mini-ST focused Plant Control Carrior Creeper.

 

Phantasm feels less durable than the Controller version due to the lack of buff/debuff powers.

 

 

This is just spitballing and wishlisting but could Superior Invisiblity be swapped out for another soft control? Like an AOE immobilize or something. Or would that be too strong for the set?

 

 

[MIGHTYMOUSE1981]

Okurrrrrrrrr!!! I LIKE 

[Greycat]

21 hours ago, Vanden said:

2 things: The knockback in Phantasm has always been very annoying, since you have no control over it. Now this ported version has knockback in the Decoy Phantasm, too, instead of a taunt. I'm begging you, reduce this to knockdown. Reducing the knockback to knockdown in Mercs is a godsend, so please, do the same for Phantasm.

 

 

I'll second this.

 

I tend to be a proponent of knockback. I think it's underrated, and mostly has a bad rep by people not bothering to learn how to use it (or not thinking before they do.)

 

The one place I *will* put KB-KD IOs (well, two, bonfire's just insanely good with this) are pets, because the AI proves it's far more A than I and obviously *doesn't* use knockback well. I'd be fine with *every* pet that does KB having it dropped down to KD - not *player* powers, just pets.

[TygerDarkstorm]

3 hours ago, blue4333 said:

This is just spitballing and wishlisting but could Superior Invisiblity be swapped out for another soft control? Like an AOE immobilize or something. Or would that be too strong for the set?

This is honestly what I was hoping the single target immob they added was going to be (AoE immob instead of single target). I don't mind keeping the stealth because it has its uses. Though I understand potentially why we didn't get an AoE immob since I do see forumites frequently mention how it gets lower-level/new players killed and messes with clumping mobs around the tank.

[Dispari]

Have to say currently my favorite thing about this set is Gleam. Adding a targeted AoE stun to the set bumps it up a notch and the FX on the power are awesome.