Help for Illusions Poison

[stonebrute]

Returning to the game after some years usually play Melee, Im trying a illusions poison troller, any build, help or advice would be awesome.

Sorry if this has been posted heaps i could really find much.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Attached is a sample build. 

This build was run through a 4* ITF once and survived quite well, despite predictions of dooooom for taking a melee range controller into the highest hard mode difficulty. It is key to try to keep some particularly dangerous mobs at very close to the edge of the 15 foot radius for venomous gas and to know when to step back from time to time. But, spatial awareness gets better with experience and it is absolutely workable to stay in or very very close to melee range the substantial majority of the time.

For ordinary content this build on a team just makes everything melt. 

Phants having taunt helps to reduce incoming attacks. Also, a big factor in reducing incoming attacks is all the -to hit and the mezzing. Spectral terror inflicts about -22% to hit for mobs at even level (65% of that total for +3 mobs because of purple patch effects). Venomous gas adds about an autohit -14ish% to hit debuff (also subject to purple patch effects). Weaken adds another to -32% to the main target and -16% to enemies in the splash radius (purple patch matters again, of course). With ranged defense already sitting at basically 36% there is more than enough to hit debuffing of enemies to effectively softcap your controller against the kind of positionally based damage that seems particularly likely to be directed at your controller (as long as you are not just standing still and getting wailed on in melee, which is something you'd probably naturally avoid anyways).  

As one note of caution, even with agility core endurance costs are quite high and endurance usage does need to be monitored. One way to help manage this, if running low or out of endurance becomes a recurring issue, could be to switch off superior invisibility and to cast group invisibility whenever it comes up. 

 

 

 

Tainted Dreams - Controller (Illusion Control - Poison - Psi Mastery).mbd

Edited April 25 by EnjoyTheJourney

[stonebrute]

Cheers ill check it out, you dont use the Phantasam?

 

With the endurance issure should i be going for Ageless & Cardiac Incarnates?

[EnjoyTheJourney]

The listed incarnate picks should work just fine. It's only if you are spamming powers one after another after another that you might run into endurance issues. But, transitioning from spawn to spawn and taking a bit of time here and there to make occasional decisions about what to target with what power and where to place spectral terror should create enough gaps to seldom run into endurance issues. If a problem does arise then you can switch off superior invisibility and use group invisibility instead. 

I hadn't played this character in a while so she came out for a spin tonight. Brought on a grin, forgot how fun she is to play. Did just fine on a +4x8 KM ITF with a team that seemed to be struggling, as many of the characters were a bit underpowered for what we were doing. With a good kin and with poison providing debuffs we pushed our way through fairly smoothly overall, despite many many defeats -- never had such a workout for poison's ally rez before tonight. This build went to a low end life total a few times when lots of damage was incoming. But, hit points never went to zero, so no defeats for that TF. 

Edit: Forgot to address the question "Why no phantasm?" It can do a fair amount of knockback, which teams don't always love. It has a tendency to enter melee randomly and then get quickly defeated. Also, this build is meant to remain invisible when entering a new spawn and to provoke no aggro until venomous gas is already at work on the spawn. Phantasm occasionally alerting mobs with a quick ranged attack would undermine that. If a key goal is to solo AVs then there's a much stronger incentive to work to keep phantasm in the build. 

After reviewing Uun's build, which is interesting and thoughtfully done, it occurred that replacing the ghost widow's embrace psy damage IO in poison trap with the superior will of the controller psy damage proc decreases recharge by a little over one second to slightly less than 17 seconds and also increases average damage by about 32 for each casting of poison trap (ie: to 393). It's a clear "net win" for the build. (Doh, after trying in-game it wouldn't let me slot the superior will of the controller damage proc, despite Mids letting me do that. It appears that the game doesn't allow the controller sets in poison trap)

Edited April 25 by EnjoyTheJourney

[Uun]

Here's my Illusion/Poison. I don't generally run hard modes, but I can solo AVs with this. I usually run with Intuition Alpha, which is a few seconds short of perma-PA. I swap to Spiritual Alpha for perma-PA at the expense of damage and debuff values. This build dates from before the changes to power availability levels, so would be a bit different if done today.

Uunseen - Controller (Illusion Control).mbd

[stonebrute]

Cheers for the advice guys. I'll run a couple of cheap budget builds just to get familiar then try these out. Does force feed back work in phantasm on the cast of the move or on the actual attacks from the phantasam?

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Good luck with your build!

The force feedback +recharge IO should proc off of the phantasm's attacks that have knocks. IIRC pets don't benefit from recharge enhancements. Not totally sure whether or not the force feedback +recharge proc affects your controller or not, but leaning toward "procs from pet attacks try to affect the pet, not the controller." Thus, the force feedback +recharge IO probably tries to affect the phantasm when it procs, it fails because recharge does not affect pets, and in the end a force feedback +recharge proc slotted into a pet ends up doing nothing.