Illusion, Slotting, and Exemp'd Content

[Lhanis]

There's plenty of topics about the set out there, but rather than necro a 6 month old post I figured I'd just make something new here.

 

I have this weirdly distinct memory of a friend I used to play with PLing an Ill/Dark for me and taking me through DA's incarnate arc to mess around with it back at the start of Homecoming, but when the mood struck me to give the set another shot (I wasn't a fan of the reliance on PA, iirc) I... couldn't find the alt? I figure I must have deleted it by accident, but I can't find the build either in my folder of folders, so I'm starting from scratch here.

 

I have more than a few trollers and am fairly confident in my building skills, but Illusion is a weird set, and I'm not entirely sure what is worth taking/slotting out, and what isn't. The early levels look... barren, and having two invis toggles mixed in there probably isn't helping.

 

I have a general outline of what I want to do with the build, and I won't be GM hunting with it so slotting doesn't need to be super strict on recharge, but advice on power picks in general would be handy. 

 

On the other hand, I'm also curious about... exemping. How painful is that going to be here, for content where I'm dropped below the threshold for PA, or even in general since any exemping is likely to cost me recharge to make them perma? If I want to, say, take the toon through low end Ouro arcs, am I just better off writing off the set?

 

As always, any and all advice is appreciated!

[Lhanis]

General outline attached below.

Tactics mostly just a placeholder in case acc is low enough to need it, could be swapped to assault if I don't. Either way gives me Veng to mule.

Not generally fond of the 4min cd AoE holds, but it's nice to have a mule for Basilisk.

Invis seems like a moot point, when Shadowfall and a sprint IO will do the same with additional benefits.

Teleport Target is mostly just a nice-to-have rather than something I need, but can be replaced.

Would love to get 5pc Absolute Amazement in HT, slotting permitted, since Ill is light on control options.

Not sure at all what to do with the pets, or even if Terror needs more than a Cloud Senses setup.

 

How exactly do you treat Spectral Wounds and Blind? Is it worth making Blind into a proc attack, or do I want to slot WotC ATO there?
Is Decieve worth more than a one-slot wonder for CC proc?

 

So many questions, ugh.

Controller - Ill Dark wip.mbd

Edited November 25, 2023 by Lhanis

[Riverdusk]

 

Done a lot of illusion controllers and for the pets I've gotten it down pretty standard I always end up doing no matter the secondary:

Phantom Army: 4 ExpReinforcement (A/D, A/D/R, A/R, E/D/R), Soulbound (D/R+5, BU Proc).  Gives you 95%+ damage and recharge and 74% accuracy, and the BU proc procs a ton on the army, sometimes even double stacking

 

Phantasm: 4 ExpReinforcement (A/D, A/D/R, A/R, D/E), Overwhelming force (D/KB to KD), Explosive Strike Proc .  95%+ damage, 74% accuracy, and stops the annoying knockback.

 

And of course the nice extra +recharge from the ExpRef sets.

 

Spectral Wounds I end up doing 5 Apocalypse and a proc.  The enhanced portion of the damage doesn't heal back and you still get 2 procs out of it.

 

Terror is fine with the 4  cloud senses.  Some people put dark watcher there, but if you look at its cloak of fear stats it actually has bad base accuracy so I think it really does need the accuracy.  Some also put procs there, don't think I've ever bothered.  

 

I always 6 slot deceive with the full purple set, set bonuses are just too good.  Deceive I find is really good for when you do exemp down.  After the lower levels it becomes more situational but I still use it often enough (use it on certain mobs like ff gens, sorcs, sappers, etc.)

 

You can go either way with blind really, depends what you feel you need.  I had arcane bolt from sorcery on mine for another attack, so went with control enhancing for blind.

 

I always skip flash on an illusion controller, the aoe holds aren't great on a controller period and flash is literally the worst of them all (both being pbaoe and an over 3 second animation time).   I could see taking it for a mule, but that'd be its only use for me.

 

Another option for HT is to just put the one stun purple in it and +5 it.  Gets you about 66% stun enhance with just one slot.  Or use the stun/recharge +5 and a regular recharge +5, still gets you to 91% recharge and 42% stun with the same 2 slots.

 

 

[Riverdusk]

Also, this is also a powerset that greatly benefits from the supergroup base buff.  +20% recharge for 90 minutes at a time for 3 cheap piece of salvage.  I tend to almost always have it going (store some stacks of the 3 pieces of salvage you need in a salvage rack right next to the buff table makes it very easy and quick).   Illusion controllers and doms live for that recharge and that base buff helps a ton.  If you are rich you can also keep the P2W buff going for another +15%.

 

That and some purple sets and taking into consideration that when exemping you have PA available at level 13 you still have them up a decent amount of time and there isn't much to do under level 13 anyway.

[Uun]

5 hours ago, Lhanis said:

On the other hand, I'm also curious about... exemping. How painful is that going to be here, for content where I'm dropped below the threshold for PA, or even in general since any exemping is likely to cost me recharge to make them perma? If I want to, say, take the toon through low end Ouro arcs, am I just better off writing off the set?

When you exemp you have access to powers taken 5 levels above your combat level. That will give you access to PA down to level 13, which would cover Posi 1 and Karsis. About the only content it wouldn't be available for would be the lvl 5-9 contacts in Atlas, Kings Row and the Hollows.

[Lhanis]

13 hours ago, Riverdusk said:

Also, this is also a powerset that greatly benefits from the supergroup base buff.  +20% recharge for 90 minutes at a time for 3 cheap piece of salvage.  I tend to almost always have it going (store some stacks of the 3 pieces of salvage you need in a salvage rack right next to the buff table makes it very easy and quick).   Illusion controllers and doms live for that recharge and that base buff helps a ton.  If you are rich you can also keep the P2W buff going for another +15%.

 

That and some purple sets and taking into consideration that when exemping you have PA available at level 13 you still have them up a decent amount of time and there isn't much to do under level 13 anyway.

 

Good ideas all around. This is something I frequently forget exists, at least in regards to the SG buffs. 

I didn't realize Phant was heavy on KB, so that's also good to know, as I had originally thought to put OF proc in the army. I'm glad you brought that up.

 

13 hours ago, Uun said:

When you exemp you have access to powers taken 5 levels above your combat level. That will give you access to PA down to level 13, which would cover Posi 1 and Karsis. About the only content it wouldn't be available for would be the lvl 5-9 contacts in Atlas, Kings Row and the Hollows.

 

Yeah that was really my only concern, the low end of Ouro flashbacks. But in the grand scheme of things that's an area no controller ever feels great in, and it's a small enough sliver of content that I really shouldn't be worried about it. Spectral Wounds and Decieve should be more than enough there.

 

My final build has PA down to only a 5 second downtime, which I am largely content with, now that I remember I can just fix that with base buffs and/or destiny. Though in hindsight my immediate reaction was to add Intuition Radial as my alpha (being that Dark usually benefits from it a lot), but the lack of Fearsome Stare in DA and the emphasis on recharge makes me wonder if Agility would be a better option instead to close that gap. 

[Area Man]

If you want a TON of information on Illusion Strategy and slotting, take a look at my old "A Local Guide to the Illusion/Radiation Controller."  Back on the Live forums, it was the most viewed powerset-specific guide.  It is only out of date due to some of the new IO sets which are available on Homecoming, which were not available on the Live servers.  You can find it here:  https://web.archive.org/web/20120905042613/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=141225

It is important to understand how the Illusory Damage in Spectral Wounds works if you want to maximize your damage.  The damage happens, and then heals back after a few seconds UNLESS you defeat the foe before the heal-back.  So, the best strategy is to kill off the minions and the Lts. while letting your PA draw the attention of the bosses and AVs.  To do this, you want a fast attack chain.

What works best is Blind first to set up Containment, then Spectral Wounds (SW), some kind of blast, and another SW.  By then, Blind should have recharged, so you can repeat the Blind-SW-Blast-SW chain over and over.

As for the Blast -- you need something that recharges quickly enough to fit in the attack chain.  In upper levels, only the Hero APP sets have that.  I prefer to avoid Psi Blast since you are already doing Psi Damage, so the better choices are Fire or Ice.  Fire does slightly more damage, so the choice really comes down to whether you want the Defense of Ice Shield, or the resistance of Fire Shield.  For my Ill/Rad, I prefer Fire, but I chose Ice on my Ill/Time and Ill/Storm.  I chose Fire with my Ill/TA, as the fire can also light the Oil Slick.

As for exempting -- I keep the blast from the Sorcery Pool in my build for that reason.  Mostly, I rely upon Invisibility and occasional uses of Deceive to let the team draw aggro before attacking to take out the Minions, then the Lts.  It is also important to have the Team Teleport, as an Illusion Controller is one of the best Stealth characters thanks to Superior Invisibility.  To grab glowies, you can Deceive any foes near the glowie to grab it without drawing aggro.

[vibal]

Just a hat in the ring, but the early levels on illusion are broken good. You have access to superior invis, deceive, and spectral wounds. You have the baseline toolkit at level 10.

[Ringo]

Also Blind has a very short range AoE sleep component to it.  If you can kite two mobs into each other and hit one with Blind there's a good chance the other mob will get hit with Sleep.  Beautiful for that early game aggro management

[vibal]

16 minutes ago, Ringo said:

Also Blind has a very short range AoE sleep component to it.  If you can kite two mobs into each other and hit one with Blind there's a good chance the other mob will get hit with Sleep.  Beautiful for that early game aggro management

 

Agreed. PA isn't the reason illusion is primo for ghosting missions from 1-50. The broken mechanics on PA tend to overshadow how good the rest of the set really is.

[Ringo]

Eh, PA isn't broken IMO.  Illusion is just a control set that trades AoE hard control for damage.  Hard controlling your opponents is generally a preferable state as they can't cast their buffs/debuffs/aoe attacks. 

 

However!  Purple Triangles of Doom push Illusion to the forefront of the controller meta as hard controls are shut down but Taunt is not.  Take away the PToD and the other control sets have many more tools for team play.

 

Illusion is still top tier for solo controllers though, cause, yaknow - damage

[vibal]

19 hours ago, Ringo said:

Eh, PA isn't broken IMO.  Illusion is just a control set that trades AoE hard control for damage.  Hard controlling your opponents is generally a preferable state as they can't cast their buffs/debuffs/aoe attacks. 

 

However!  Purple Triangles of Doom push Illusion to the forefront of the controller meta as hard controls are shut down but Taunt is not.  Take away the PToD and the other control sets have many more tools for team play.

 

Illusion is still top tier for solo controllers though, cause, yaknow - damage

 

The original dev team flat out stated that PA wouldn't exist if it was released after launch. This was also why it wasn't proliferated to dominators (which turned out to be unfounded as debuffs are why PA smokes the show). Dark is pretty clearly what illusion would've been if the later dev team had built it and haunt feels every bit the stepchild. PA has unique mechanics that are, pretty frankly, not in line with what controllers (or any AT) do. They're invincible, mobile, do damage, are targetable, immune to CC/debuff, no travel time to initial target, and taunt. Take away any of those and it's probably a fine power. 

 

It's not damage that pushes Illusion. It's safety. Plant and Fire do more damage and have exponentially more hard and soft control and don't solo at the same scale because every mob will be targeting the controller.