Illusion/dark build

[Warshades]

Looking to finalize a build for my illusion/dark controller. The goal is to be good for general/all content but with a focus on perma hasten/PA and ability to solo AVs/GMs/TFs and such as well. While I do know that mace mastery and poison ray are the best options for AV/GM clear speed, I don't feel like scorpion shield is really useful given how easy it is to soft cap positional defenses so I went with leviathan mastery as a compromise since water spout will help with mob clearing and can also slot an achilles proc. I put a recharge IO in hibernate but if anyone knows which procs will still be useful and activate even while not using hibernate, I'd like to switch it out (iirc preventive medicine can definitely activate even without the power being used?). I could also just skip hibernate entirely and take vengeance especially for when I'm teaming.

 

Also looking for input on incarnate choices. I went with spiritual core alpha but I'm also considering agility core/radial, the defense boost from it would allow me to switch some sets that I picked for reaching soft cap positional defenses towards other bonuses. Lore pet is the big one that I'm unsure on. My primary source of -regen is from howling twilight and spamming twilight grasp. I could go for Longbow which has an additional large -regen attack or go for something that perhaps deals more damage or has more -res debuffs. Destiny slot will be ageless to fix any endurance issues and firmly be at perma PA even with the recast time. Interface I'm also unsure on and would like to pick the one that would most increase AV/GM solo clear speed.

 

I'd appreciate any advise and suggestions.

Controller (Illusion Control - Darkness Affinity)2.mbd

[Wimbochismo]

Couple things before I throw bullet points at you. I'm not sure Water Spout is doing too much for you. I suppose if you want an aoe attack it will work well enough, you just have a general focus on AV's and Water Spout also does an annoying fear etc.

 

Slotting recharge directly in powers lowers their proc chances, this includes Spiritual Core Alpha which acts like slotted recharge. I would go for something like Musculature.

 

I think your overall focus on some defensive sets are slightly misplaced. With close to perma PA and the addition of Darkest Night, you shouldn't be getting hit too often. Dark Servant is also providing meaningful support. If anything you could even re-jiggle some things for more recharge.

 

Here are some ways you could tighten up your slotting without changing things too much:

• Weave and Maneuvers are overslotted. You can drop 1-2 slots of Shield Wall, those particular bonuses aren't super needed here.
• Dark Servant's hold isn't amazing even if it's stacking with your own. Everything it does has -tohit though. A 4 slotted Cloud Senses and maybe something like a +5 heal IO to boost his aoe heal could be beneficial.
• Twilight Grasp should be slotted more like a heal. While it does -tohit, it's not great. Slotting the power for recharge also really reduces chances on the dmg proc. My favorite slotting for it is 5 piece Panacea and 1 +5 accuracy.
• For Blind, the Superior Will of the Controller dmg proc also reduces recharge. Even with it being another purple, this will reduce overall proc chances in the power. If mid's numbers are close to correct, switching it for the Gladiator's Javelin proc will increase DPA by 143 to 190.
• Panacea proc in Health is more valuable than the Miracle +rec.
• You're correct that Prev Med absorb proc doesn't need to go in a toggle. Hibernate is a good mule for it.

If you make these changes, you should have some slots leftover.

• Switch the Reactive Defenses unique from Fade to Weave.
• Add 2 slots to Fade and give it 1 LotG and 5 Red Fortune.

This should now have you at perma Hasten with minimal changes to your build. If you'd like, you could also pick up Arcane Bolt as another attack. It would lower your defense slightly, but this would require:

• Drop Combat Jumping for Vengeance as a LotG mule.
• Drop Hibernate for Arcane Bolt.
• Drop 1 slot from Dark Servant (from the +5 heal I mentioned above). A slot from Tough. Any leftover slots from Weave or Maneuvers.
• Put 5 slots into Arcane Bolt for Apocalypse set.

This should put you at 117/120s for Hasten and at 62.5 for PA.

 

Outside of that I have minimal advice for soloing AV's. I would only suggest testing if the -regen from Twilight Grasp is significant enough to spam it over another attack or something, though.

[Warshades]

I really appreciate all those points, I will try the changes in mids and see where it's at. Didn't really think a single recharge from WotC would have such an impact on proc chances, but I do see the difference that mid's is showing with the change. I do have a habit of building anything like it's a tank so I always try to boost survival even when I strictly don't need it since PA does have aggro. The shield walls were for eng/neg resistance and the gladiator's net was to bring the AoE def up to 45% along with the recharge. I had slotted twilight with clouded for the recharge boost, but you're absolutely correct that 5 panacea and an accuracy IO is better and provides more recharge from panacea.

 

A few questions, any particular reason to put the panacea proc in health when I can include it in twilight grasp as part of the 5 piece set instead of the endurance/rech? The only 2 powers that this build truly spams against a single target is TG (I may focus spamming TG more when the -regen from howling expires since there's a 15 second downtime) and Blind. Regarding arcane bolt, if I'm going for an additional attack is there any particular reason to use arcane bolt over spectral wounds? SW has a higher base accuracy, lower animation time, and even accounting for the heal back (which doesn't increase even when slotting for damage if mid's is correct) deals more damage than arcane bolt.

 

Also, don't know how useful the pet would be, but since I am so heavily invested in recharge, I could go for summon coralax. Even with it not being fully perma (only 10 seconds away), seems like it could still help deal damage a good bit when soloing AVs/GMs and hopefully stay alive long enough between heals and shadow fall/fade.

 

The build below is taking into account the changes you made but I diverted some slots from fade to 4 slot coralax. Another thing I haven't really considered much, but how annoying is the knockback from Phantasm? I figure he doesn't deal all that much damage and I can always just not summon him if I'm fighting mob spawns, but was tempted to put a sudden acceleration proc in him. If the coralax pet isn't worth going for (it does have a long cast time), then I can just do the 5 red fortunes in fade and maybe add an extra gladiator javelin proc for SW with those slots. I can also potentially take out the 4th Unbreakable Guard slots in tough and shark skin to 6 slot fade. While I tend to stay close to AVs/GMs so that TG heals the pets when they do get hit, they don't actually target me with melee attacks.

 

Edit: Speaking of pets, the Mu summon guardian pet has EM Pulse which deals -regen and also has a quick animation summon time of 1.17 seconds. Not sure if it's worth the change.

 

Controller (Illusion Control - Darkness Affinity)4.mbd

Edited October 11 by Warshades

[Wimbochismo]

19 hours ago, Warshades said:

I really appreciate all those points, I will try the changes in mids and see where it's at. Didn't really think a single recharge from WotC would have such an impact on proc chances, but I do see the difference that mid's is showing with the change. I do have a habit of building anything like it's a tank so I always try to boost survival even when I strictly don't need it since PA does have aggro. The shield walls were for eng/neg resistance and the gladiator's net was to bring the AoE def up to 45% along with the recharge. I had slotted twilight with clouded for the recharge boost, but you're absolutely correct that 5 panacea and an accuracy IO is better and provides more recharge from panacea.

 

A few questions, any particular reason to put the panacea proc in health when I can include it in twilight grasp as part of the 5 piece set instead of the endurance/rech? The only 2 powers that this build truly spams against a single target is TG (I may focus spamming TG more when the -regen from howling expires since there's a 15 second downtime) and Blind. Regarding arcane bolt, if I'm going for an additional attack is there any particular reason to use arcane bolt over spectral wounds? SW has a higher base accuracy, lower animation time, and even accounting for the heal back (which doesn't increase even when slotting for damage if mid's is correct) deals more damage than arcane bolt.

 

Also, don't know how useful the pet would be, but since I am so heavily invested in recharge, I could go for summon coralax. Even with it not being fully perma (only 10 seconds away), seems like it could still help deal damage a good bit when soloing AVs/GMs and hopefully stay alive long enough between heals and shadow fall/fade.

 

The build below is taking into account the changes you made but I diverted some slots from fade to 4 slot coralax. Another thing I haven't really considered much, but how annoying is the knockback from Phantasm? I figure he doesn't deal all that much damage and I can always just not summon him if I'm fighting mob spawns, but was tempted to put a sudden acceleration proc in him. If the coralax pet isn't worth going for (it does have a long cast time), then I can just do the 5 red fortunes in fade and maybe add an extra gladiator javelin proc for SW with those slots. I can also potentially take out the 4th Unbreakable Guard slots in tough and shark skin to 6 slot fade. While I tend to stay close to AVs/GMs so that TG heals the pets when they do get hit, they don't actually target me with melee attacks.

 

Edit: Speaking of pets, the Mu summon guardian pet has EM Pulse which deals -regen and also has a quick animation summon time of 1.17 seconds. Not sure if it's worth the change.

 

Controller (Illusion Control - Darkness Affinity)4.mbd 47.47 kB · 0 downloads

 

The Arcane Bolt was actually a typo. I meant Spectral Wounds and you're correct that it's a stronger power. Just had a different powerset on the brain at the time lol.

 

Panacea and the other "usual" Health procs should really always go in a toggle or auto like Health. Even if you're spamming TG, if you have to stop using it for other powers, you're still getting health+end procs at all times. I have no idea what the exact numbers are, but I think the end procs in Panacea are giving around the same/better end as the +rec Miracle over time.

 

If you want a slightly more hands-off approach and some passive dps, the Patron Pets are pretty decent. Like you say, your buffs will cover all your pets nicely. Mu could be nice with the Guardian and Ball Lightning is pretty strong. As other alternatives, Dark Mastery has Murky Cloud with no s/l res but you have some from Tough and Fade. There's also another single target attack in Dark Blast for a full attack chain, a cone, and Soul Consumption does -maxhp but I've never tested how good it is vs AV's.

 

Phantasm honestly normally dies too much on any of my characters that take it for any knockback to be annoying. It might live longer for you, in which case I just abhor knockback in groups. But vs an AV I don't think knockback is an issue. 

 

I'm also pretty sure the Degen Interface is one of the strongest for AV's.

 

I think the build you've got together is pretty solid! From here I think it's down to fine tuning which you've already begun to look at.

[Warshades]

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Soul Consumption does -maxhp but I've never tested how good it is vs AV's.

 

I feel like the base recharge is way to long to justify going for it, at that point I'd rather have the continuous DPS from the additional pet. I'll have to look into exact damage numbers on them as well as the amount of -regen and duration on the Mu pet, but I'm thinking that might be the way to go. Quick cast time doesn't take away from the attack chain and any additional -regen would be a massive help.

 

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I have no idea what the exact numbers are, but I think the end procs in Panacea are giving around the same/better end as the +rec Miracle over time.

 

Thank you for the comparison, I never really researched the amounts that the procs gave and how they compared.

 

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But vs an AV I don't think knockback is an issue.

 

Again, very true and saves me a slot to put towards better things.

 

Quote

I'm also pretty sure the Degen Interface is one of the strongest for AV's.

 

Thanks, will definitely grab Degen interface then.

 

Quote

The Arcane Bolt was actually a typo. I meant Spectral Wounds and you're correct that it's a stronger power. Just had a different powerset on the brain at the time lol.

 

All good, I've done that before myself. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything specifically about arcane bolt that would make it a better pick.

 

One last question if you know anything about it; I've not used Water Spout from leviathan mastery before, but mid's is displaying some really high damage values for it. Is it counting the damage from a maximum amount of possible targets that WS can hit or how does it work? I'm assuming the radius on it would be really small, but that would still work out well against AVs if it can deal that much damage from one cast to a single target. I'm pretty much down to picking between Leviathan or Mu for the patron and will definitely go for the extra patron pet.

 

Thanks once again for helping fine tune the build!

[Wimbochismo]

49 minutes ago, Warshades said:

One last question if you know anything about it; I've not used Water Spout from leviathan mastery before, but mid's is displaying some really high damage values for it. Is it counting the damage from a maximum amount of possible targets that WS can hit or how does it work? I'm assuming the radius on it would be really small, but that would still work out well against AVs if it can deal that much damage from one cast to a single target. I'm pretty much down to picking between Leviathan or Mu for the patron and will definitely go for the extra patron pet.

 

You can't completely trust mids number's. Pretty sure it's doing a strange non-relevant calculation. When cursored over it's showing 61x11.35 over 30s which is absurd unless the target/pet doesn't move. City of data is another resource we check but it's showing 4.448 dmg every .5s etc.

 

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=villain_pets.water_spout.water_spout&at=minion_pets

 

You'll have decent-ish chances of that Achille's Heel proc going off on an AV/single target at 3.5ppm even in a pseudopet. I don't think it will do nearly as much dmg for aoe as the tooltip indicates, though. YMMV. Again, testing is needed for the nitty gritty in this instance. 

 

 

[Warshades]

 

Quote

You can't completely trust mids number's. Pretty sure it's doing a strange non-relevant calculation. When cursored over it's showing 61x11.35 over 30s which is absurd unless the target/pet doesn't move. City of data is another resource we check but it's showing 4.448 dmg every .5s etc.

 

Mid's is definitely looking off. I went in and switched to second build just to try water spout. Used it in PI against even level Nemesis Warhulk boss and it was doing 5 damage per tick (this is without any buffs/set bonuses/slotting/etc). Using tar patch increased the tick damage to 6. For some reason mid's is doubling the number of hits it counts and as you said, hovering over it only shows 1x61 count instead of 2. The total maximum hit count of 61 seems to be relatively accurate from what I could tell. I had PA army up just to keep aggro off of me, but by the time Water Spout ended, the boss still had about 80% of it's HP bar full. Not a terrible attack, especially as you can cast it and let it do it's thing, but also nowhere near as good as mid's was showing it to be (fun water spout visual effect though). With the slotted ragnarok set and counting at 11 damage per tick x 61 ticks, it would do 671 damage if it's focused on a single target. I don't even know what magical calculation mids was doing because doing the manual math of 11x61 + 4x61 doesn't add up to anywhere near the 1777 it was showing, closer to only half that which the power wouldn't be doing anyway.

 

I'll probably end up taking this to the test server and just comparing when I get more time. Regarding the Mu Guardian pet, it looks like it summons it's own pet and that pet has the EM pulse attack (-1000% regen for 15 second duration). Has a listed 50 minute recharge, but it looks like the summoned pet only lasts for 45 seconds. Again, will have to test to see if it will resummon it or not. Leaning a lot more towards /Mu mastery now from the patron options.

 

Also taking a second look at /dark mastery as well. If mid's is to be believed, hecatomb slotted Midnight's Grasp would do ~305 damage on a 9 second recharge (jumps to 369 if I add an extra dmg proc). In the time it takes water spout to recharge, I could use MG at least 4-5 times (1200-1500+ damage). Dark Blast didn't make as much sense since Spectral Wounds would take up the apocalypse set. Also considering a decimation build up proc if I can find the slot for it, but may just have to stick in Blind since without any recharge enhancement, it should have the highest chance of triggering decimation. Soul consumption appears to decrease max HP by 4% for 60 seconds with a 4.5 minute cooldown, but another easy power to 5 slot with Panacea and 1 acc IO for more recharge bonuses.

 

Build with dark mastery below. I think I'll just have to test them out on the test server to get to a final decision on what to go with. Mu and dark mastery actually look like the front runners now. Not sure how much I'll miss the lack of a good AoE skill with /dark. Also at the same time, I won't be setting any records using something like Ball of Lightning as my one true AoE attack when it has a base damage of 31.

Controller (Illusion Control - Darkness Affinity)5.mbd

[Wimbochismo]

12 hours ago, Warshades said:

 

 

Mid's is definitely looking off. I went in and switched to second build just to try water spout. Used it in PI against even level Nemesis Warhulk boss and it was doing 5 damage per tick (this is without any buffs/set bonuses/slotting/etc). Using tar patch increased the tick damage to 6. For some reason mid's is doubling the number of hits it counts and as you said, hovering over it only shows 1x61 count instead of 2. The total maximum hit count of 61 seems to be relatively accurate from what I could tell. I had PA army up just to keep aggro off of me, but by the time Water Spout ended, the boss still had about 80% of it's HP bar full. Not a terrible attack, especially as you can cast it and let it do it's thing, but also nowhere near as good as mid's was showing it to be (fun water spout visual effect though). With the slotted ragnarok set and counting at 11 damage per tick x 61 ticks, it would do 671 damage if it's focused on a single target. I don't even know what magical calculation mids was doing because doing the manual math of 11x61 + 4x61 doesn't add up to anywhere near the 1777 it was showing, closer to only half that which the power wouldn't be doing anyway.

 

I'll probably end up taking this to the test server and just comparing when I get more time. Regarding the Mu Guardian pet, it looks like it summons it's own pet and that pet has the EM pulse attack (-1000% regen for 15 second duration). Has a listed 50 minute recharge, but it looks like the summoned pet only lasts for 45 seconds. Again, will have to test to see if it will resummon it or not. Leaning a lot more towards /Mu mastery now from the patron options.

 

Also taking a second look at /dark mastery as well. If mid's is to be believed, hecatomb slotted Midnight's Grasp would do ~305 damage on a 9 second recharge (jumps to 369 if I add an extra dmg proc). In the time it takes water spout to recharge, I could use MG at least 4-5 times (1200-1500+ damage). Dark Blast didn't make as much sense since Spectral Wounds would take up the apocalypse set. Also considering a decimation build up proc if I can find the slot for it, but may just have to stick in Blind since without any recharge enhancement, it should have the highest chance of triggering decimation. Soul consumption appears to decrease max HP by 4% for 60 seconds with a 4.5 minute cooldown, but another easy power to 5 slot with Panacea and 1 acc IO for more recharge bonuses.

 

Build with dark mastery below. I think I'll just have to test them out on the test server to get to a final decision on what to go with. Mu and dark mastery actually look like the front runners now. Not sure how much I'll miss the lack of a good AoE skill with /dark. Also at the same time, I won't be setting any records using something like Ball of Lightning as my one true AoE attack when it has a base damage of 31.

Controller (Illusion Control - Darkness Affinity)5.mbd 46.08 kB · 1 download

 

Nice! That's also a very solid build you've put together for Dark Mastery. It looks like Soul Consumption also does 60% -regen which could stack up nicely with your other sources.

 

Those findings for Water Spout seem spot on. Unfortunately Illusion doesn't have a great source of easy aoe control to double dip for Containment. That's what usually makes Ball Lightning a solid aoe attack.

 

Decimation is only a 1ppm, unless it's in super long recharge power you may get more mileage out of a dmg proc in a 9s recharging power. Gotta test that one.

[Warshades]

So from some very quick testing that I was able to do today, turns out the patron pets truly are really bad and not worth using (only tried Mu pet today). Dark mastery was faster by several seconds. The immobilize from midnight grasp actually sometimes helped trigger containment and increase the damage I was doing against AVs (also helped on a few occasions to stop the AV from running away as health dropped low). I may try changing the ToD proc to a mez/dmg HO to see if I can more consistently keep immobilize up as it already has a long base duration.

 

I don't know how much soul consumption was really contributing, I would only ever get to use it once per fight because of the long recharge and against +4 AVs, the fights would last anywhere between 2-4 minutes depending on if it was an easy or hard target. The fact that it can also miss on such a long recharge doesn't make it feel very impactful to justify 6 slotting and I didn't see a significant difference in the one fight where I didn't use it compared to the ones that I did, but may need to test this more. More -regen is always nice, but the -60% isn't much of a difference compared to the -50% from TG and almost nothing compared to the -500% from howling. I was also using the longbow lore pets during my tests which may have also contributed to seeing less of an impact from soul consumption.

 

There's no real better alternative pick since I already have a consistent attack chain cycling between blind, SW, MG, and TG and am also capped on 10% recharge bonuses so no real point going for umbral torrent for a ragnarok set. If soul consumption isn't making a consistent impact, I'll likely just leave it with 1 slotted acc IO and distribute the slots elsewhere for set bonuses/procs. I may give some of the other resist armor epics a try when I get more time just to see if there's a significant difference that consistently makes /dark better, but I suspect that the immobilize from MG will really give it an edge both for the bonus containment damage and preventing AVs from running as health gets low.

I do appreciate all your help and the ideas you've bounced around for me, it's been fun using illusion/dark and will definitely make a nice impact on any team I bring it to. I'll see about posting the final version that I settle on when I get more time to play around on the test server and in case anyone else finds this thread and wants to use it.

[Wimbochismo]

6 hours ago, Warshades said:

So from some very quick testing that I was able to do today, turns out the patron pets truly are really bad and not worth using (only tried Mu pet today). Dark mastery was faster by several seconds. The immobilize from midnight grasp actually sometimes helped trigger containment and increase the damage I was doing against AVs (also helped on a few occasions to stop the AV from running away as health dropped low). I may try changing the ToD proc to a mez/dmg HO to see if I can more consistently keep immobilize up as it already has a long base duration.

 

I don't know how much soul consumption was really contributing, I would only ever get to use it once per fight because of the long recharge and against +4 AVs, the fights would last anywhere between 2-4 minutes depending on if it was an easy or hard target. The fact that it can also miss on such a long recharge doesn't make it feel very impactful to justify 6 slotting and I didn't see a significant difference in the one fight where I didn't use it compared to the ones that I did, but may need to test this more. More -regen is always nice, but the -60% isn't much of a difference compared to the -50% from TG and almost nothing compared to the -500% from howling. I was also using the longbow lore pets during my tests which may have also contributed to seeing less of an impact from soul consumption.

 

There's no real better alternative pick since I already have a consistent attack chain cycling between blind, SW, MG, and TG and am also capped on 10% recharge bonuses so no real point going for umbral torrent for a ragnarok set. If soul consumption isn't making a consistent impact, I'll likely just leave it with 1 slotted acc IO and distribute the slots elsewhere for set bonuses/procs. I may give some of the other resist armor epics a try when I get more time just to see if there's a significant difference that consistently makes /dark better, but I suspect that the immobilize from MG will really give it an edge both for the bonus containment damage and preventing AVs from running as health gets low.

I do appreciate all your help and the ideas you've bounced around for me, it's been fun using illusion/dark and will definitely make a nice impact on any team I bring it to. I'll see about posting the final version that I settle on when I get more time to play around on the test server and in case anyone else finds this thread and wants to use it.

 

No problem! Thanks for posting some of your findings. I'm usually better at theory and don't test everything 100% if someone else has posted sufficient evidence. This kind of data is very valuable.

 

I usually only go for the Patron pets if I already have a full attack chain. Mainly for the passive dps and easy 4 slot recharge. I can imagine they might not be providing as much value in this type of environment.

 

If your fights are lasting 2-4 mins, with current slotting Soul Consumption recharges in 274s which is 4.5 mins. Yea, I'd just go with 1 acc since you're only getting 1 application per fight anyway.

 

I'm not 100% what mag you have to overcome for immob since it isn't debuffed by AV's purple patch. If this wasn't Illusion and was a set with the tier 1 Immobilize (mag 4) or aoe (mag 3), that + Midnight Grasp (mag 3) would probably be amazing for setting up perma containment on AV's. With MG alone you'd have to extend that duration and maybe even boost the recharge to hit it more often. It's maxxed for dmg and with current bonuses its 8.5s recharge 40s duration. Gravitational Anchor immob/rech will get it to 7.87/48. Or a flat 50+5 immob will get it to 54s duration.

[Without_Pause]

On 10/12/2024 at 3:41 PM, Wimbochismo said:

Unfortunately Illusion doesn't have a great source of easy aoe control to double dip for Containment. That's what usually makes Ball Lightning a solid aoe attack.

That's the beauty of /Dark. Fluffy fills that in for you. 

[Wimbochismo]

2 minutes ago, Without_Pause said:

That's the beauty of /Dark. Fluffy fills that in for you. 

 

Oh, nice! Missed that it has a cone immobilize. I don't deep dive Fluffy too often, gives a few more options.

 

Ironically I don't even have /Dark on a Controller yet. This thread is giving me inspiration for another alt. I need to farm more $$ for all the alt builds I keep making. 😭

[Warshades]

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I'm not 100% what mag you have to overcome for immob since it isn't debuffed by AV's purple patch.

 

So apparently, I require Dark Servant to be able to immobilize AVs. Tried several times without any pets up to immobilize Requiem AV by spamming MG whenever it was up and the tentacles never appeared. Once I summoned fluffy and he used Tenebrous Tentacles, the immobilize kicked in. I'm able to get 4 stacks of MG up with a damage/mez +3 HO as the 6th slot (10.5 second total animation + recharge time with 50 second immobilize duration). So at minimum it looked like I need more than mag 12 and mag 15 appeared to be enough to trigger immobilize when fluffy chips in.

 

Now the interesting part is when I went in for a second test and summoned PA, Phantasm, and Fluffy, it took only one use of MG to induce immobilization. I reset for a 3rd test summoning only fluffy and once again, only 1 use of MG was enough to immobilize when stacked with tenebrous tentacles (tested by dispelling fluffy right after and hiding behind corner to make sure it wasn't a visual glitch). Not exactly sure if it's a total amount of magnitude related deal, if fluffy is applying a higher magnitude immobilize than what is listed, or if it simply needs more than 1 sources of immobilize to take effect. Have no real explanation with this weird outcome. I tested a 4th time against a different AV, Black Scorpion, and the result was the same. 1 use of MG stacked with fluffy resulted in immobilizing the AV. Using 4 stacks of MG did nothing. Hold from blind worked in the same manner. When stacked with petrifying gaze from fluffy, boss was held in one hit from blind.

 

These tests were done with lvl 50 AVs since I wasn't summoning PA to take aggro, but that still shouldn't have produced these results. I tested one more time against a 54 Requiem and it may have required 2 stacks of MG and/or Blind along with fluffy to immobilize or hold the AV (was hard to tell if it was because fluffy missed or not), but still a lot easier than it should have been. Worth adding that the 54 AV would break out of the immobilize and hold faster than the lvl 50. This also kind of explains my initial tests more since the immobilize was likely only triggering when it was being stacked with the immobilize from fluffy.

 

So long story short, boosting immobilize duration is likely irrelevant for this build as it entirely depends on contribution from fluffy. I suddenly love that none damaging fuzzball a lot more!

[Psyonico]

11 hours ago, Warshades said:

minimum it looked like I need more than mag 12 and mag 15 appeared to be enough to trigger immobilize when fluffy chips in.

I feel like most AVs only need mag 4 or 5 immobile, so I'm wondering if MG is replacing the effect rather than stacking with itself.

[Warshades]

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I feel like most AVs only need mag 4 or 5 immobile, so I'm wondering if MG is replacing the effect rather than stacking with itself.

 

That would actually make sense if that's the case.

[Jacke]

13 hours ago, Psyonico said:

I feel like most AVs only need mag 4 or 5 immobile, so I'm wondering if MG is replacing the effect rather than stacking with itself.

 

Controller's Dark Mastery's Midnight Grasp's Immobilize is flagged to Stack.  But its Immob stock duration is just under the stock Recharge, so it'll be hard to get significant stacking.  It'll need a lot of Enhancement for both Immob duration and Recharge Reduction.  And get a miss and the stacking is gone.

 

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=epic.controller_dark_mastery.gather_shadows&at=controller

 

 

Edited October 16 by Jacke

[Warshades]

This is the final build that I settled on in case anyone else building an illusion/dark stumbles on this thread and finds it useful. Once again, thank you everyone for the input and advice, I do appreciate it! This version felt very sturdy and MG did provide a nice single target attack chain along with Blind and SW. I do feel that keeping aoe/range defense at soft cap is worthwhile. Because this build is often in melee range during AV/GM fights to use MG, aoe attacks are the most likely to land since PA will maintain aggro for any single target melee/range attacks.

 

Definitely best to use Longbow lore pets for the additional source of -regen in fights. While the build is more than capable of clearing AVs and GMs without them, they would significantly speed up the fights when available. PA is perma with ageless, but there is a small gap without it (not a massive issue since you are soft capped, have an additional source of -tohit and -dmg in DN, and have a great heal in TG). Definitely endurance heavy in fights so if you do exemplar down, you may want to bring some blues or temp powers to help with recovery. No issues with mobs present because of Soul Absorption, but it doesn't help much with only a single target.

 

Did a final quick test on test server and had no issues bringing down one of Lusca's tentacles. Although it would take a while to clear all of them and then Lusca, this build can absolutely do so.

Controller (Illusion Control - Darkness Affinity)6.mbd