Illusion/Ice and Illusion/Arsenal

[Mindrivet]

I designed two characters to use these powersets but haven't really "used" them yet as I am not sure how they will fare.

Ice seems like a no brainer but it does have significantly less -recharge on most attacks over psionics, perhaps I am undervaluing those -10% and -20% speed changes ice attacks give. I do fear that it will end up being less damage than most sets and without the CC to make it worth it.

Arsenal seems great but I worry about the lack of AoE. I have an Assault Rifle blaster that I love of course, but he has access to the grenade, flamethrower, and full auto. Arsenal gets none of these. Perhaps I understimate how AoE doesn't matter for illusion because of mind control and PA?
Also, where is the synergy in this combo? I feel the rifle doesn't bring anything that illusion lacks other than some -Def and moderate damage.

I have never taken an illusion dom to 50 for reference. Its pretty new other than some pet projects I poked around with.

I would love to be wrong about these two! Just newbie eyes at a very complex game.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Arsenal doesn't have strong AOE. But, it has good DPA for trip mine and you can get a second AOE in a mastery. Drop the armageddon set into trip mine, with the fire damage proc, and put the -20% res PvP IO into the sixth slot. Put the annihilation -12.5% res in ignite, and for good measure put the achilles heel 20% -res into weaken resolve when taking force of will pool powers. Use power up in arsenal assault before using unleash potential for a strong boost to defense totals and endurance recovery. Then you have better survivability and a good amount of -res with which to buff the damage from phantom army. 

You could get the same -res total with ice assault as for arsenal assault. But, frost breath has really low DPA and a very long animation. So, it's a less efficient way of employing the annihilation -res proc. Plus, frost breath is a cone that uses up valuable time in battle by getting you to move around to line it up, instead of just unleashing PbAOEs and targeted AOEs while you stand in the middle of things. Also, the -20% res melee AOE PvP IO can go in ice sword circle, just as it can go in trip mine. But, ice sword circle has a slower animation and lower DPA than trip mine. Between these two assault sets arsenal can do noticeably better damage overall, while doing just as much to make phantom army shine. 

 

Looking briefly at ice assault, the best powers in the set are the power boost clone (power up) and chilling embrace. The debuffs and damage aura in chilling embrace are quite noticeable in their effects. Power up has a fairly modest--but still noticeable--damage boost and some really good buffs when its active. The rest of the ice assault set lags most other sets in the damage offered and the debuffs for those other powers are, as you noted, not that impactful. Also, the two AOEs other than chilling embrace have long animation times that deliver below average damage per second of activation; even adding in the damage aura in chilling embrace other assault sets tend to have better AOE damage. Personally, I'd agree that the debuffs in ice assault, even with chilling embrace doing good work on that front, don't justify the low damage done by the set. 

[MoonSheep]

On 2/27/2025 at 5:00 PM, EnjoyTheJourney said:

Looking briefly at ice assault, the best powers in the set are the power boost clone (power up) and chilling embrace. The debuffs and damage aura in chilling embrace are quite noticeable in their effects. Power up has a fairly modest--but still noticeable--damage boost and some really good buffs when its active. The rest of the ice assault set lags most other sets in the damage offered and the debuffs for those other powers are, as you noted, not that impactful. Also, the two AOEs other than chilling embrace have long animation times that deliver below average damage per second of activation; even adding in the damage aura in chilling embrace other assault sets tend to have better AOE damage. Personally, I'd agree that the debuffs in ice assault, even with chilling embrace doing good work on that front, don't justify the low damage done by the set. 

 

i think that's slightly too negative a view on ice assault. ice sword circle's animation is a little slow, but it's 15ft radius is nice and as you say, chilling embrace enhances the damage further. two ticks of chilling embrace + ice sword circle is not too bad a damage output for a 15ft radius AoE attack

 

ice slash and bitter ice blast also have a pretty good damage dealing combination. again, adding in a tick or two from chilling embrace enhances things further

[Frosticus]

Ya icesword circle hits quite hard and rolls procs decently. Trip mine on the other hand does not.

Chilling embrace is actually fantastic and has good synergy with powerup, it will noticably slow enemies.

While it is mixed damage, cold is rarely resisted and it makes a difference.

 

Arsenals main draw is targetting drone and how it allows you to bypass most acc slotting for more procs throughout the build. If you plan to leverage that then it is worth looking at it more closely.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

My previous testing and calculations for ice assault suggested that it does about 15 - 25% less single target DPA than other assault sets against which I compared it. Based on feedback from @MoonSheep and @Frosticus I reviewed a couple of ice dom builds I had put together. I found some better slotting choices for single target attacks were available than I had been making. Changes made raise the DPA enough to make it fairly comparable, with chilling embrace ticks, to other assault sets I like using. I was glad to figure that out, so my thanks to both of you for speaking up. 

 

Regarding AOE, my calculations suggested that chilling embrace + ice sword circle do roughly comparable DPA to trip mine*. I was comparing two broadly similar builds with the same fives pieces from the armageddon set in both of them. The same alpha and interface choices were made for both builds. So, it's a bit surprising to hear that ice sword circle plus chilling embrace ticks were found by someone else to be clearly better. 

 

* There seems to be some funkiness in Mids with the armageddon set's damage proc's fire damage calculations for one or both of these powers. Oddly, the fire proc fire damage was listed as higher for trip mine in Mids. That doesn't make sense because trip mine has a shorter cast time and a shorter base recharge time than ice sword circle. In the end I took the fire damage proc out of both builds to see how 131% added damage (from 4 pieces of the armageddon set) compared. Also, total damage numbers for ISC are higher than TM on a "per use" basis. But, TM tends to recharge faster than ISC because of a base 22 second recharge for ISC versus 20 seconds for TM. 

 

Personally, I find the almost 3 second long animation for ISC to be uncomfortably long. That's probably a YMMV thing. At the end of the day, though, if DPA is a useful metric then ice sword circle doesn't seem to shine above trip mine. 

Edited Friday at 06:45 AM by EnjoyTheJourney

[Mindrivet]

I appreciate the thought you all put into this.