Illusion and...

[Lazarillo]

So back in the day, one of the very first characters I created (in fact, the first of many alts to possess the name of my global handle) was an Illusion/Empathy Controller.  He was a fair amount of fun, and I want to try Illusion again, but I'm not sure that I necessarily want to pair it with Empathy again.  I'm trying to work through some ideas from a few different secondaries and decide.  The three biggest things I'm looking for are:

-I feel like I need to be able to get Phantom Army permanent (if not early on, because a build's gotta get pretty twinky for that). 

-While I enjoy teams, I enjoy just as much playing at my own pace and doing story arcs...something I feel like I haven't done enough of since the game came back.

-I want to do some badging with this character, and thus, having some healing ready for that particular chain would be nice.

 

With those in mind, I'm still considering, and would welcome some extra feedback on are:

 

Darkness:

Positives - Light in the primary/Dark in the secondary feels like a cool yin-yang-ish sorta concept.  Fade and Soul Absorption will also benefit from my efforts to make Phantom Army permanent.

Negatives - Nothing in the set itself assists with Recharge.  Can do healing, but requires accuracy checking.  Primary and Secondary both have Stealth powers that are mutually exclusive.

 

Empathy:

Positives - Well, I know it can work.  The powers are fairly potent, if considered somewhat underpowered to a lot of more "modern" support sets.  Strong heals that can be uses without limitations.

Negatives - No self-Recharge buff to help with Phantom Army.  Similarly, long duration auras that can't be kept up without downtime.  My previous experience had me finding it "okay", but it didn't blow me out of the water or anything.

 

Kinetics:

Positives - Plenty of damage buffs for when I take things solo, and Recharge buffs for keeping Phantom Army up.  Plus, who on a team doesn't love some Kinetic support?

Negatives - Both heals and self Recharge buffs require hitting enemies.  Particularly frustrating on that second part since I'm trying to keep the buffs up as much as possible.

 

Pain Domination:

Positives - Like Empathy, but a little more friendly for when I'm soloing.  Easy to keep buffs/debuffs going when I've got the Recharge I need for Phantom Army.  Kinda feels conceptually-appropriate with Illusion.

Negatives - No self-Recharge buff.  Kind of a late-blooming set.

 

Radiation Emission:

Positives - Ill/Rad is considered OP for a reason.  Has healing and self-Recharge buffing in addition to all the other goodies.

Negatives - I don't feel like they conceptually match up very well and don't want to play a set just to be strong.

 

Time Manipulation:

Positives - Self-Recharge buff.  Gets into the thick of it in melee, which I like and synergizes nicely with Flash.

Negatives - The main I've been playing on, badging on, and even Incarnate-ing on is already a Time/ Defender.  I need some variety!

[soulerflare]

If you take the "radiation causes hallucinations" approach Ill/Rad is suddenly very thematically accurate! That's how I spun my Ill/Rad. Named him Blurred Vision. He's a beast.

[Greentea]

Ill/Rad is overrated. Seriously, there's so many Ill/Rad left, right, and center.

 

I absolutely love Ill/Time. I had one on Live, it was so much fun, but since you don't want do Time again, I recommend Dark. Think of Chaos theme, then you're good to go!

[Lazarillo]

If you take the "radiation causes hallucinations" approach Ill/Rad is suddenly very thematically accurate! That's how I spun my Ill/Rad. Named him Blurred Vision. He's a beast.

I mean, I'm sure it's workable, but it still feels to me like powers over concept to me, still (compared to Dark which has the aforementioned Yin-Yang thing going on, or Pain or Time, which both are particularly perception-y already).  Still, it's an idea, for sure.

 

I absolutely love Ill/Time. I had one on Live, it was so much fun, but since you don't want do Time again, I recommend Dark. Think of Chaos theme, then you're good to go!

If I were to do Dark, what's your take on Superior Invisibility vs. Shadow Fall + Stealth IO or the like?

[Greentea]

I absolutely love Ill/Time. I had one on Live, it was so much fun, but since you don't want do Time again, I recommend Dark. Think of Chaos theme, then you're good to go!

If I were to do Dark, what's your take on Superior Invisibility vs. Shadow Fall + Stealth IO or the like?

 

 

Up to you, really. Are you planning to solo? Then take Superior Invisibility. Teaming? Then Shadow Fall. For me personally, I prefer Shadow Fall over Superior Invisibility, SI will lose defense bonuses when discovered. Shadow Fall don't lose any defense bonuses when discovered, but that's not all, it also provides some resistances. I suppose you could take both for LOTG "proc" IOs.

 

I personally never slot or had any experience with Stealth IOs, I can't help you there, sorry.

[DSorrow]

I'm having a blast with my Ill/Cold if that's worth anything, works pretty nice as a concept too as hypothermia causes hallucinations. Also it's arguably more powerful than Ill/Rad even if it takes some more inf / planning to get perma PA.

[Lazarillo]

Up to you, really. Are you planning to solo? Then take Superior Invisibility. Teaming? Then Shadow Fall. For me personally, I prefer Shadow Fall over Superior Invisibility, SI will lose defense bonuses when discovered. Shadow Fall don't lose any defense bonuses when discovered, but that's not all, it also provides some resistances. I suppose you could take both for LOTG "proc" IOs.

Yeah, I was leaning towards Shadow Fall (if I go Dark, still not totally sure) even solo for a lot of the reasons you mentioned.  It should be just as invisible as Superior Invisibility with a Stealth IO or Super Speed also running, if I recall correctly, but I was curious if I was missing something, other than just using SI for +Recharge set bonuses or something.

 

I'm having a blast with my Ill/Cold if that's worth anything, works pretty nice as a concept too as hypothermia causes hallucinations. Also it's arguably more powerful than Ill/Rad even if it takes some more inf / planning to get perma PA.

I hadn't considered /Cold too much just because it doesn't have a Heal at all and I'd been sorta steering away from it and Thermal both 'cause they felt too "elemental".  Amusingly, I could see the concept working pretty well in the other direction; if I focused on the solo-ish powers, the "cold" could also be a matter of controlling perception of temperature.

[Greentea]

 

I'm having a blast with my Ill/Cold if that's worth anything, works pretty nice as a concept too as hypothermia causes hallucinations. Also it's arguably more powerful than Ill/Rad even if it takes some more inf / planning to get perma PA.

I hadn't considered /Cold too much just because it doesn't have a Heal at all and I'd been sorta steering away from it and Thermal both 'cause they felt too "elemental".  Amusingly, I could see the concept working pretty well in the other direction; if I focused on the solo-ish powers, the "cold" could also be a matter of controlling perception of temperature.

 

Don't /Cold have minimal fx?

[DSorrow]

Don't /Cold have minimal fx?

 

It does, and most teammates will appreciate you using it.

 

I hadn't considered /Cold too much just because it doesn't have a Heal at all and I'd been sorta steering away from it and Thermal both 'cause they felt too "elemental".  Amusingly, I could see the concept working pretty well in the other direction; if I focused on the solo-ish powers, the "cold" could also be a matter of controlling perception of temperature.

 

Healing is pretty much the worst form of support in CoX. Stack buffs all day and you never need a heal. Between the ice shields, -ToHit from Spectral Terror, slows/-def/-res from Cold and aggro management by PA, your team will be very safe.

[Greentea]

I hadn't considered /Cold too much just because it doesn't have a Heal at all and I'd been sorta steering away from it and Thermal both 'cause they felt too "elemental".  Amusingly, I could see the concept working pretty well in the other direction; if I focused on the solo-ish powers, the "cold" could also be a matter of controlling perception of temperature.

 

Healing is pretty much the worst form of support in CoX. Stack buffs all day and you never need a heal. Between the ice shields, -ToHit from Spectral Terror, slows/-def/-res from Cold and aggro management by PA, your team will be very safe.

 

Sounds like a winner!

[Lazarillo]

Don't /Cold have minimal fx?

It does, and most teammates will appreciate you using it.

It's more that, like, I can sorta justify something like Heat Loss or Benumb as "they feel cold, thus they are affected like they really were".  Even Sleet could operate in a similar fashion to Spectral Wounds.  But I'm not sure that that works for ice shields, minimal FX or not.

 

Healing is pretty much the worst form of support in CoX. Stack buffs all day and you never need a heal. Between the ice shields, -ToHit from Spectral Terror, slows/-def/-res from Cold and aggro management by PA, your team will be very safe.

I mean, granted, but I want a heal more for (probably rather slowly, granted, if things go right) plinking away at that set of Badges.  That pressing need for a Badge is honestly the biggest dealbreaker for Cold.  Otherwise, as noted, there's a fair amount of synergy.

[Zepp]

I personally love my Ill/SS controller, all the chaos. The character is a very strong Tulpa and her illusory pets are Tulpas that she can manifest. As a Tulpa, she has a strong connection to nature that allows her to control the weather. She is a beast and can either round-up enemies for a team or create complete chaos for solo.

 

In regards to SI, you only lose half your defenses and you get to keep the threat reduction and huge range which allows you to solo a mob while not triggering the mob directly next to her/him...

[Ringo]

I 50d an ill/ff on live and now an ill/traps on homecoming.  ill/traps is a ton of fun, I'd suggest giving it a look

[Lazarillo]

So between this post and some feedback also over on Reddit, I think I've narrowed down my favorite options to Dark or Rad.  Dark is gonna require some heavy Purpling if I want my always-accessible Phantoms, and Rad's gonna be pretty End heavy (plus I still need to come up with a concept I'd like for it), so neither is still without its drawbacks, but I think my best bet now is to do some playtesting, so I appreciate the feedback that got me here!

[Greentea]

I'm really excited to try out Ill/Traps but I can't think of a concept. ;(

 

Maybe I should go /Cold instead. :/

[Lazarillo]

I'm really excited to try out Ill/Traps but I can't think of a concept. ;(

One of the signature hero types in the game pulls off Illusion by rigging areas with holoprojectors, IIRC.  Maybe just an expansion of the number of devices at your disposal?

[Ringo]

That's exactly what I went with - Kid Lightning reverse engineered all of her tech from others to stock her arsenal

[Chuckers]

I had an 50 Ill/Kin on live and rebuilt her on Rebirth. She's 50 now. I love her. She's a monster. One acc in the buffs/heal and I rarely miss.

 

My main issue with kin is the heal is mob centric and siphon power is caster centric. I love teaming with her, but if I need a heal, I have to get close to the mob and if I want to buff the melee, I have to be close to the mob. (However, after all this time playing with her, I JUST learned that I don't have to be near the mob to buff the melee with Fulcrum Shift.)

 

When I am soloing, the heal being mob centric helps heal my Phantasm without having to be close to him.

 

I like to confuse a minion and then siphon power from him at a distance, giving my Phantasm and Army a boost before the fight begins.