Illusion/Time the Swiss Army Knife of CoX

[BitCook]

I enjoy playing characters who can do a little bit of everything.  I've made dozens of 50s and kitted them out.  But perhaps the most versatile one I have come across was my Illusion/Time.  It seems to have an answer to nearly everything I've thrown at it.

On a scale of 1/10, here is how I rate this combination and build:
Boss Killing: 7/10 - You have decent ST damage, but not amazing.  It's very safe and you'll likely never die to a boss.
Trash Clearing: 4/10 - Probably the weakest aspect of this set.  It does not do AOE well.  Yes, you can damage a lot of things and your recharge makes it pretty fast to clear mobs, but overall, it's just kind of slow at this.  However, everyone and their brother seems to focus on this, so if you join any team, you're golden.
AV Stomping: 8/10 - It may not be the best AV clearer... but I've pretty much done them all and not had much in the way of problems while solo.  On teams it's just as good.  Only gets dinged since it is not as fast as some of the best.
Mission Running: 9/10 - One of the best mission runners I have ever played.  Both for teams and also for solo.  The only downside is when you get the dreaded kill all and are playing on x8.  You can do it, it'll just take longer than some other mission runners.
Task Forces: 8/10 - Great on Task Forces, the only thing holding you back at all is the weak AOE.  At early levels you are a support tank, at later levels you can pretty much fill any role.
Solo Friendly: 9/10 - This is a toon where you can pretty much do it all.  AVs?  No problem.  Missions?  Task Forces?  Yep.  The only thing I have not really tried is solo GMs, which I think would be doable.  I just haven't wanted to take the time to try.
Team Friendly: 9/10 - The toon provides AMAZING buffs for the team.  You can tank and shut down EVERY mob you come across.  You provide good -Res.

The Build:

 

Build Notes:
* With Powerboost, you get another +13% to all defenses, making you capped to everything for defense... with the addition of having a massive -33% to hit BEFORE power boost and over -50% to hit when you have hit Powerboost.

* You majorly buff your team.
-> +35% to all defensive positions
-> +50% recharge
-> +25.5% to hit
-> +30% Recovery (for 1/3 of the time)
-> +Stealth for the whole team

* Additionally, you can give two people on the team (or your pet) 
-> +25% damage
-> +30% MORE recharge for a total of +80% recharge.

* Reliably stack -42.5% resistance and either -20% Defense to -40% Defense (Power Boost)

* Every mob you have the ability to shut them down with Time's Juncture, Distortion Field, and Spectral Terror.  With those three things, you can lead into any mob and sit there while they are slowed and debuffed and your team destroys them.  If you are solo it gives you a chance to deceive who you want and pick them off one by one.

 

* Single Target hold capable of holding a boss 90% of the time in one cast.  Since it has a hold proc, you are likely to get MAG 5 over 90% of the time.  Now, that only sticks for 8 seconds at even cons, but it's more than enough time to stack a second if you need it.

* Complete stealth ability to get through missions really fast.  Teleport friend to bring the team when you get to where you want.

* A survivable Illusion pet.  Phantasm is great when it gets Power Boosted Farsight, Chrono Shift and Temporal Selection.  I find that he lives through just about everything and does just fine damage.

* Off healing.  While you are not a primary healer, you absolutely have the recharge to become a passable off healer.  With Chrono Shift firing off every 85 seconds and a heal up every 4.5 seconds you can do a decent job of keeping people on their feet.

* Tanking.  You have Perma PA.  This means that you can solo just about everything and act as a tank for you group.  If your debuffs and defense aren't enough, PA will be.  I have soloed every AV with this character with no issues.

* Confuse for utility.  Confuse is amazing, even if I don't use it all the time, when solo, it becomes an extra pet for extra damage.

* Massive Recharge with no endurance issues.  Between the Recovery of Chrono Shift and Conserve Power being available 65% of the time, you don't have to worry about endurance or need to consider incarnate abilities to fix that issue.  Cast what you want, when you want it.

 

How to play and have fun!
Positron: Always challenging depending on what level the TF is started at.  At 10, you only have a few abilities.  At 15 it's better giving you access to Distortion Field.  Spend most of your time moving into mobs like a tank, using the debuff of Time's Juncture and the combined slow with Distortion Field to keep you safe.  Mobs will not target you through Superior Invisibility until they are debuffed and neutered.

Synapse: You get the remainder of your core abilities.  Being able to Distortion Field and Spectral Terror each mob while having them under the effects of Time's Juncture will make your team invincible.  The proc damage in DF is nice for a little faster clear.  PA is not perma, but you have it up quite a lot.

Yin: You should now have perma-pa, or very close too it depending on what you used for enhancements.

All the rest:  You come into your own at 39 when you get both Power Boost and Energy Torrent.  That gives you fully capped defenses and boosts to special when you need it.  It gives you a spamable AOE that is procced out for damage.  While you don't have easy containment, you can use Flash or Blind to get a few people for extra damage.  The workhorse of Terror, Field and Time's Juncture is still staple.

At 50, you should be able to solo any +4/8 content you want.  Things just do not hit you, even if they are not targeting decoy's or PA's.  I routinely duo with friends and they go from being fragile blasters to tanky damage dealers because of the buffs and debuffs this character throws around.

 

Alternative Builds and Thoughts:
If you want more recharge, add in the Basilisk's set into Distortion Field.  I like the procs there because it does do a decent amount when you toss it on a full mob.  

Energy font.  Most people don't like it... but it's a near lock when casting Distortion field.  Having a little damage and some stun is just another layer of mitigation.  Swap in another proc to be more offensive or even use a 5 slot purple hold set there for even more recharge.

Move Temporal Selection to 10.  Temporal selection is a great power and being able to use it on allies is amazing.  I've grown to like it far more than I thought I would.  When solo, cast it on your PA to make him far more dangerous.

Replace the build up proc in spectral wounds with a standard damage proc.  None of them are going to proc well in that power, but you do cast it a lot, so even a poor proccing power is going to give you something.  Still you can argue that slot is better served in Distortion field or adding a third blessing of the Zephyr into Hover to make it faster.

Controller - (Illusion Control - Time Affinity) r2.mbd

Edited September 5, 2023 by BitCook

[Zect]

This build is pretty decent. It has all the essentials, a procced-out blind, a good amount of rech and all key powers taken. It even takes temporal selection - how thoughtful! There are some efficiencies to be found, some things are a matter of opinion (I think energy font is trash unless you have another stun to stack with it) and I would personally slot chrono shift for heal (it's a massive heal, the endurance part only lasts 30s) but at a glance nothing jumps out to me as questionable. There aren't a whole lot of different ways to build time, but it's nice to see something that's competently constructed.

 

Here are some things for you to consider.

 

Firstly, think about group invis over supe invis. There aren't a whole lot of situations in pve where supe makes a noticeable difference - I think you can still sneak into the bunker in keyes with it, and it does give very slightly more unsupressed def, otherwise I struggle to recall any examples. Taking group invis over supe invis saves a lot of end over its duration and being able to stealth teammates has a variety of uses.

 

Secondly, try the purple build up proc in PA, if you can spare a slot. Yes, it works on them. You can't buff PA, but the PA's can buff themselves.

 

Thirdly, consider a procbombed energy torrent. Try something like, 4 damage procs, ragnarok D and D/E (boosted +5). Illusion troller aoe is never going to be very good, but a 300 damage aoe attack is always nice to have. You can make up the lost rech with another set of basilisks in distortion field, and the def allows you to pull a slot of botz which lets you get your beloved energy font proc back in it, too; I would even argue you don't need botzs as the whole point of being ill/ is not to have to get hit.

 

Finally, while time doesn't have the HPS of the heavyweight healing sets like kin, dark, elecaff etc, its heal does provide slow resistance. Power boost also boosts heal. You can power boost + temporal healing or even power boost + chronoshift for a significant burst of healing, a technique emps will be familiar with.

[Without_Pause]

3 hours ago, Zect said:

Firstly, think about group invis over supe invis. There aren't a whole lot of situations in pve where supe makes a noticeable difference - I think you can still sneak into the bunker in keyes with it, and it does give very slightly more unsupressed def, otherwise I struggle to recall any examples. Taking group invis over supe invis saves a lot of end over its duration and being able to stealth teammates has a variety of uses.

They took both.

 

I feel like a number of Time builds slot for End in CS, but I went 5-slot Panacea on two of mine. Def numbers on yours are stupid high, and I ran into the same issue with my Time/rad Defender. Mine were high enough on my Fire/time Controller to peel back some and go for other things. I have a Ill/dark and my only issue is clear speed if I want to deal with larger mobs. I even saw how much it bogs down at x5. But yeah, an Ill/time to going to be insanely good. I started to replay my Ill/dark and instantly though it might outright fire my desire to play certain other builds.

 

You could see about switching out the ATO from Spectral Terror and slotting that with Could Senses. Recharge comes in at a 4-slot set bonus and there is the damage proc so you won't really lose out on having enough recharge when moving things around. You add in damage and there is no real issue with duration loss considering its default duration and your recharge on it. 

[smnolimits42]

Makes me want to make a Dumbledore Homage

[BitCook]

Always appreciate advice.  I'm very happy with the build and have done most of the content in CoX with it, some solo, some on teams.  I never really seem to lack the things I need so I'm fairly content with slotting.  Yeah, the energy font isn't amazing, but I enjoy having it out there and while another damage proc might be better there have been a few outlier cases where it's really helped.

Endurance on this build is not an issue.  With Conserve Power up like 3/4 of the time and CS covering some other time, I never worry about the blue bar.

As for the invisibilities, I want both for the defense, the superior stealth, and being able to give more defense to my team.  This character happily tanks for groups of blasters and bunches up mobs for quick and efficient disposal.  If the blasters go AWOL, you are able to clear, not fast, but you can clear ANY content.  +4/8 any mob groups with perfect safety.  If I were flipping a slot, it would be to take out the energy font and put in the purple build up.  I may test it out and see how it plays.

I did think about cloud senses, but I do enjoy the ATO bonuses.  Might test that as well at some point.  As for high DEF, yes... that's the beauty of time.  With the recharge I have, there is always something to do and if you lapse PA for a short bit, it's not an issue.  When I'm grinding down AVs, I never worry about that issue.

Energy Torrent proc bombed is nice, I did have a build with that at one point, but switched to have two reliable procs and set bonuses along with 100% damage.  I think that mostly boils down to preference.  But damage is not really an issue.  You crank out a lot.

As for Temporal Selection... LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT.  Solo, it goes on Phantasm, giving you another decent Energy Torrent and adding some punch to the pet.  On teams, find the blaster and give two of them some amazing boosts.  Damage and Recharge.  It might be the best one slot power you could take as it has an impact both on teams and soloing and noticeably increases clear speeds in both cases.

Edited September 12, 2023 by BitCook

[Uun]

19 hours ago, BitCook said:

I did think about cloud senses, but I do enjoy the ATO bonuses.  Might test that as well at some point. 

Spectral Terror has 2 powers, Cloak of Fear (a 20-foot radius PBAoE aura with a mag 3 fear and a 15% -tohit) and Terrify (a ST ranged mag 3 fear with an unenhanceable 15% -tohit). The fear from the aura will refresh as long as the foe stays in the radius and the base duration of the ST fear is 25 seconds (note, the ST fear stacks and can fear bosses when it does). As a result, I don't think there's much reason to enhance the fear duration and I slot Cloud Senses to enhance the -tohit on both my Illusion/Time and Illusion/Poison. (I slot the ATO in Blind and forego the proc damage.) I don't need this as often with /Time, but standing under Spectral Terror creates a safety zone if PA has dropped or you're taking aggro from a mob that's ignoring them.