Phantasm Sucks

[Wavicle]

13 hours ago, battlewraith said:

 

I suspect for both myself and the OP, this is a QOL issue. The pet is annoying to use and causes problems. You are insisting that this is a balance issue, out of what appears to be a dogma that any change must be a balance issue that involves a consideration of the balancing between different sets. I don’t agree with your framework, and I think the onus is on you too establish that a more reasonably behaved Phantasm will somehow significantly improve the set as a whole with regards to how people are doing with controllers in general. I think that would only be the case if the developers intended to pet to die a lot and be unmanageable.

 

The developers intend you to use Controls (and Support powers if you're a Controller) to protect your pet.

 

Any improvement OF ANY KIND to the Phantasm will result in it doing more damage, either because it hits more guys, or because it lives longer.

The set is already one of the very top damage dealers among Control sets. It is also pretty good at Control and Debuff as well.

 

Therefore, aside from general pet AI improvements which should apply to ALL or MOST Control set pets, no improvement is called for.

However, you are wrong. The onus is not on me. The onus is on YOU to back up your positive claim that Illusion has an issue that will be addressed by improving the Phantasm.

Edited March 6 by Wavicle

[Rudra]

34 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

general pet AI improvements which should apply to ALL or MOST Control set pets, 

All pets including MMs please.

[battlewraith]

5 hours ago, Wavicle said:

 

The developers intend you to use Controls (and Support powers if you're a Controller) to protect your pet.

 

Any improvement OF ANY KIND to the Phantasm will result in it doing more damage, either because it hits more guys, or because it lives longer.

The set is already one of the very top damage dealers among Control sets. It is also pretty good at Control and Debuff as well.

 

Therefore, aside from general pet AI improvements which should apply to ALL or MOST Control set pets, no improvement is called for.

However, you are wrong. The onus is not on me. The onus is on YOU to back up your positive claim that Illusion has an issue that will be addressed by improving the Phantasm.

I understand your opinions. They are bad, for reasons I've already explained. But you keep popping back up and regurgitating them.

1. "the developers intend..."  Which developers? Something like the illusion set goes back to 2004, at which point it behaved differently than it does now. And the game didn't have sets, incarnates, etc. This is you stating what you want by speaking on behalf of the development cycle of the game. The gist of it is this--coh gives you different boxes of tools to mix and match to suit your personal playstyle. That is the core strength of the game. The point of this thread is that one particular tool is poorly coded and should be adjusted. Your counter is to look at the balancing of the set as a whole and assume that it is being played a certain way.  Build diversity and options are more important than your assumptions.

 

2. "Any improvement OF ANY KIND". This is obviously false, they could improve the aesthetics of the thing for example. Make it customizable. And again you seem to be assuming that the suicidal nature of the phantasm is intentional. It's meant to die so that its dps is balanced with respect to the set as a whole. This is a post hoc rationalization that could be baselessly applied to any poorly implemented power.

 

3. "However, you are wrong. The onus is not on me. The onus is on YOU to back up your positive claim that Illusion has an issue that will be addressed by improving the Phantasm."

 

Try to listen. I am not making a positive claim that illusion has an issue. That is YOUR framing of the issue. Your dogmatic insistence that the issue be filtered through your assumptions.

I'm just concerned with the behavior of the pet and whether is fun to use or not. I think the dps increase about which you're complaining, assuming it materialized, would be negligible. Laughable.

[arcane]

19 hours ago, Riverdusk said:

 

I'm not one to usually pull out this old card, but this is the literal definition of straw man.  Such a perfect example of one that I'm actually impressed.  No one is asking for giving illusion the game's "best AoE damage", not even close.   Good one though.

 

Giving phantasm say explosive blast instead of energy torrent as someone suggested (and with the usual nerf in recharge/damage of a ranged AoE compared to a cone) isn't going to rocket him to the status of AoE annihilator.  You could even keep the target cap the same, 10,  like a sentinel.    More likely it'd be almost a wash, but make him a bit more well behaved and hopefully be an easy fix to his AI.   

 

Another maybe easy way would actually be to just extend his version of energy torrent's range a bit, even bumping it from 40 to 50 might be enough to fix it from running into melee so often.  To balance, reduce its arc a bit.  

 

But if the devs can fix his AI in other ways instead, I'm all for it.   Seems everyone at least agrees on that point, so that's good.  Just hope it is doable some day.

 

 

You misunderstood my post.

[Wavicle]

10 hours ago, battlewraith said:

I understand your opinions. They are bad, for reasons I've already explained. But you keep popping back up and regurgitating them.

1. "the developers intend..."  Which developers? Something like the illusion set goes back to 2004, at which point it behaved differently than it does now. And the game didn't have sets, incarnates, etc. This is you stating what you want by speaking on behalf of the development cycle of the game. The gist of it is this--coh gives you different boxes of tools to mix and match to suit your personal playstyle. That is the core strength of the game. The point of this thread is that one particular tool is poorly coded and should be adjusted. Your counter is to look at the balancing of the set as a whole and assume that it is being played a certain way.  Build diversity and options are more important than your assumptions.

 

2. "Any improvement OF ANY KIND". This is obviously false, they could improve the aesthetics of the thing for example. Make it customizable. And again you seem to be assuming that the suicidal nature of the phantasm is intentional. It's meant to die so that its dps is balanced with respect to the set as a whole. This is a post hoc rationalization that could be baselessly applied to any poorly implemented power.

 

3. "However, you are wrong. The onus is not on me. The onus is on YOU to back up your positive claim that Illusion has an issue that will be addressed by improving the Phantasm."

 

Try to listen. I am not making a positive claim that illusion has an issue. That is YOUR framing of the issue. Your dogmatic insistence that the issue be filtered through your assumptions.

I'm just concerned with the behavior of the pet and whether is fun to use or not. I think the dps increase about which you're complaining, assuming it materialized, would be negligible. Laughable.

1. If you're incapable of recognizing that the design of Control sets is "use your powers to protect your pet" then we should definitely not continue to discuss this.

 

2. Suggesting that cosmetic changes are germaine to the discussion is ridiculous.

 

3. Yes you ARE making such a claim. It's in the TITLE of the thread!

[battlewraith]

3 hours ago, Wavicle said:

1. If you're incapable of recognizing that the design of Control sets is "use your powers to protect your pet" then we should definitely not continue to discuss this.

 

2. Suggesting that cosmetic changes are germaine to the discussion is ridiculous.

 

3. Yes you ARE making such a claim. It's in the TITLE of the thread!

1. You don't have to use the pets. You don't have to use the buffs. If you disagree, play the way you want. Don't push your expectations on to other people.

2. You said ANY changes would be a buff. Yeah it was ridiculous, but you said it lol so I responded.

3. LOL NO. Can you read? The title of the thread is "phantasm sucks". It's not "the illusion set has an issue that will be addressed by improving the Phantasm" and all the unnecessary baggage you are bringing to the discussion. In terms of the function of the set, I think the requested change would be marginal in terms of performance. The main thing is that it would be less annoying to use and more justifiable as a power pick, as opposed to some other pet or procable dmg power. 

[Hitback]

14 hours ago, battlewraith said:

1. You don't have to use the pets. You don't have to use the buffs. If you disagree, play the way you want. Don't push your expectations on to other people.

So don't use the phantasm and you never have to deal with its faulty AI?

 

On 3/6/2025 at 3:29 PM, battlewraith said:

I understand your opinions. They are bad, for reasons I've already explained. But you keep popping back up and regurgitating them.

You are in a public forum, not writing in your diary. People having their own opinions, oftentimes in disagreement to your own, is the whole point, especially in this particular subforum.

 

Also, what you fail to grasp in these last 5 or so pages is that the same poster can both hold their own opinion and recognise that the devs have historically expessed a different view. Saying the second part doesn't take away anything from the discussion, in fact for some, me included. it helps to put things into context.

 

Someone saying you are beating a dead horse is also not them telling you to stop, either. You can keep beating it, and they can keep pointing it out.

[battlewraith]

Lol how many socks are in this thread? By all means, keep complaining about complaining.

[Fusaokek]

On 2/9/2025 at 10:56 AM, arcane said:

Problem with this thread is twofold:

 

(1) Illusion Control as a whole is easily one of the best powersets in the game, and it could easily be considered to be in “Should not be buffed under any circumstances” territory as a result.

 

(2) The sub-issue of Knockback has obviously been dealt with over and over on this forum, and, until the developers signal a major shift in their thinking, we have already established that “Slot a Sudden Acceleration Proc” is the appropriate way to address any player’s aversion to Knockback.
 

That being said, it sounds like there is room for improvements to the Phantasm’s AI, which I would certainly support.

I never asked for the Illusion set to be buffed. I simply asked that the phantasm AI be corrected either by changing its behavior so that it no longer

[Fusaokek]

Just now, Fusaokek said:

I never asked for the Illusion set to be buffed. I simply asked that the phantasm AI be corrected either by changing its behavior so that it no longer runs into the mob or buff the pet in terms of defense so that if it does phantasm doesn't die easily. Also, another suggested power blast instead of the other Knock Back. I rather liked the suggestion. For some reason others in this thread to my suggestion to fix the AI and maybe add one more power to phantasm (it only has 2 whereas most pets cycle through 3 ?) so that it has the same number of powers that other pets cycle through. Yes, I threw out fire rain as an alternative power but again it was just a spit ball shot in the dark as a way to improve its effectiveness.  I'd be happy if they just changed it so that it stayed to the back and fired off blast. 

 

[Fusaokek]

On 3/6/2025 at 3:44 PM, Wavicle said:

1. If you're incapable of recognizing that the design of Control sets is "use your powers to protect your pet" then we should definitely not continue to discuss this.

 

2. Suggesting that cosmetic changes are germaine to the discussion is ridiculous.

 

3. Yes you ARE making such a claim. It's in the TITLE of the thread!

The problem is that it's hard to use your powers to "protect" the pet when due to its extreme fragile nature the moment it runs into a mob it's almost insta killed. Phantasm has all the blaster characteristics of being a glass cannon blaster but no appropriate AI to compensate for this. more often than not the pet will run in behind PA which I use as my tanks and die. This by the way is with my Illusion rad. I have an extremely difficult time keeping it alive with a heal due to that or it running off and engaging in melee range elsewhere I can't see. It's even worse with my Illusion force field. Let me tell you, Force Field doesn't do shit to protect phantasm or help keep it from dying. In fact enemies tear through the shields, I place around the pet like its nothing.   This is the ONLY pet I have this problem with. With my Dark Dark controller not only do I have no problems keeping the wolf alive, the AI seems able to allow me to execute my play style of sending in (in this case) my shadow army as DPS tanks with the wolf in the back doing damage.  I even have a much easier time keeping the fire monkeys  alive  than I do phantasm despite the fact they are melee glass cannons.  

[Wavicle]

10 minutes ago, Fusaokek said:

The problem is that it's hard to use your powers to "protect" the pet when due to its extreme fragile nature the moment it runs into a mob it's almost insta killed

 

This is not the case if you, again, use your powers to protect it. If the mobs are Mezzed, or even just Debuffed with Spectral Terror, Phantasm will not instantly die.