Trick Arrow

[ajm603]

Hello Controller community!  I have been wanting to play a */Trick Arrow controller since I came back to the game, but I haven't determined the primary to match with it.  Which primaries have the best symmetry with the trick arrow powerset? 

[Doomguide2005]

     I don't know about best but Ill/TA is a ton of fun and all those potent debuffs work wonderfully with the unbuffable Phantom Army for boosting their damage.

[Psyonico]

I'll second illusion/Trick Arrow.  Probably one of my favorite controller combinations.

[Area Man]

I would say also that Illusion is probably the best Primary to pair with Trick Arrow, although Trick Arrow is not the best secondary to pair with Illusion.

 

Why? Mainly because Trick Arrow really benefits from Phantom Army -- You start a fight by sending out Phantom Army, and they draw all the aggro, allowing you to stand back and fire off all of your Debuff and Control Arrows without drawing any aggro.  Plus, Phantom Army cannot be buffed, so the only way to make them better is debuffing the foes -- which happens to be a strength of TA.

TA works best as a ranged set, and Illusion is all ranged except Flash, the PB AoE Hold.  The Stealth in Illusion helps you avoid aggro until a teammate gets the aggro, letting you stand at range to fire your arrows.

Plus, Illusion is low on overall control, while TA adds a single target hold (Ice Arrow), a single target Immob, a ranged AoE Slow, a ranged AoE Hold, AND some AoE damage (which Illusion lacks).  Your goal should be to get enough Recharge in your build to get Perma-PA in your end-game build.

I'd suggest getting Archane Bolt (AB), the Sorcery single target attack, while leveling up, so you can have an attack of Blind, Spectral Wounds (SW), AB, SW.  AB does Energy Damage, so it can light your Oil Slick later on.  When I got the APP powers, I chose Fire Blast and Fireball, specifically to light Oil Slick.  Fire Blast is much faster than AB, so you can have a good and quick attack chain of Blind-SW-Fire Blast-SW.

Edited June 28 by Area Man

[mistagoat]

I just hit 50 on a Arsenal/TA and it was a blast to level! Master of the patch! It has so many tools to play with that you always something meaningful to toss at the mob even on very fast moving teams.  I used this build from Onlyasandwich and just de-purpled it for leveling. Eventually I made some small changes like adding the TP pool so I could stealth tp into the mob and then tp the super taunty & tanky Tri-gun right to the center of the mob to get everything grouped up nicely for my myriad patches. Very fun and very effective!

 

  Controller (Arsenal Control - Trick Arrow) (5).mbd