Generalissimo

Ice Armour/Energy Melee is supposed to be very good (Ice for +perception, self heal, PBAOE slow/-damage, endurance recovery/drain and Hibernate; Energy for very high burst damage). I played an Ice/Ice in the Test Server lvl 40 event and it was great fun and very effective at staying alive so I could see how coupling the survivability of ice/ with the damage of /energy would be an impressive combination.

Btw, from my limited experience with it at high level I'd recommend ice/ice as a fun build for PvP - Ice Patch is a very useful tool at times and the slows from the secondary stack nicely with chilling embrace. The secondary lacks the burst damage of some of the other sets but when your enemy is running away from you at snails pace you have plenty of opportunity to land your hits.

Well done all - I was worried there for a while but we pulled through in the end
I'd like to say thanks to all the PA drop team members (Illusionists and supporting kineticists) for a job well done.

Edited because it read a little weird

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Count me in, I'll be there as close to time as possible.. and I'll be bringing Digi, so Speed Boost available to the PA droppers if required.. just send a tell @Funky or Digital Desire

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Much appreciated We'll make sure we have invis turned off this time to make it easier to boost us

Really excellent video - well worth the wait Brought back lots of great memories of my longest and most enjoyable CoH session ever Great job DBeaver!

Cool What's the run time like?

If I were you I'd drop stealth and maybe laser eye beams to take the presence pool for intimidate. It'd be a lot easier to land a built up head splitter on a bouncing, kiting opponent if they were cowering in fear

In my experience ill/kin is a very soloable build, depending on your power choices. Blind, Spectral Wounds and especially (in my opinion) Deceive are invaluable tools for a soloing illusionist. Add Transfusion for the self heal in melee and you're sorted for 99% of missions.
Back before containment was introduced and before the animation for Deceive was shortened (a great recent change) I soloed my ill/kin about 75% of the time from lvl 10 upwards (I duoed the start of the Hollows and got Frostfire out of the way and also teamed sparodically in Striga and then teamed a lot in PI). I've recently soloed an ill/ff up to 30 and am currently soloing a low level ill/rad on Union so I've had a lot of recent experience with illusion. If I'm facing a group of three minions I tend to deceive one, hold and spectral wound the second and hold or deceive the third, depending on which recharges first or which is more appropriate. Xp loss through Deceive is very slight compared to the safety and speed it adds to soloing.

Impale
Throw Spines
Shurikens
Exploding Shurikens

If I ever cure myself of altitis and actually finish levelling my spines scrapper (sitting at 42 at the moment) that's the kind of ranged attack build he's going with.

Ok, here are some comments, working my way down through the build:

Transfusion is probably overslotted for accuracy. For PvE two accuracy is generally plenty unless you're facing ridiculously purple foes. I'd either slot it 2 acc/2 heal/2 recharge or 2 acc/3 heal/1 recharge.

Deceive is wayyyyy overslotted for general PvE use. Facing a group of 3 minions with just a couple of accuracies on it it'll last long enough for you to keep one enemy deceived while holding and spectral wounding the other two. It doesn't need the added range and it'll only need the added confuse duration if you want to stack it on multiple bosses. If you do want to keep it 6 slotted I'd probably go 2 acc/2 duration/2 recharge for quick stacking. It's probably ok-ish slotting for PvP but I still think the range isn't needed (my end target on my ill/ff is to have deceive slotted 2 acc/2 duration/2 recharge for PvP use).

Siphon Power is again over-slotted for PvE - 2 accuracy is enough and then as many recharge as you want.

Flash really isn't very effective until you can slot it with SO's so I usually push it out until somewhere in the 20's. Granted illusionists don't really bring a lot of control to the table at low levels so that may be why you want it that early.

Siphon Speed - again probably one too many accuracies. I loved this power for stacking the buffs on me and debuffing the bad guys so I 6 slotted it 2 acc/3 recharge/1 slow but it's a matter of taste really. I do like having some recharge in there in case it misses though - it can be a pain waiting for it to come back up. It's up to you to slot it depending on what you want to do with the power

Phantom Army - for a soloing illusionist it really pays to 6 slot this power. 1 acc/ 2 damage/3 recharge will give a good damage boost with affecting the power's availability.

Health - really does not need extra slots on a low hp character. These slots could be moved to Phantom Army as damage.

Spectral Terror - this power's recharge is the same as it's duration and you can only have one out at a time so it doesn't need to be slotted for recharge unless you want to have the flexibility to move it's location mid-fight. It's a fine power with just the base slot slotted with accuracy. Add a fear for flavour and maybe keep a recharge to give you that added flexibility.

Increase Density - this is one of those powers that really depends on what you want to use it for. It's too short a duration to keep the whole team buffed with it so lots of people just use it as a mez breaker with just the base slot. If you want to use it as a resistance buff then by all means 3 slot it - your team mates will benefit a lot against some enemy types.

Blind - this is a power that needs to be picked up as soon as possible. An illusionist without their single target hold until the 30's will not be bringing a whole lot to teams and will really struggle to solo as well. This should be moved up to where deceive is and either deceive or flash delayed until later (my money would be on delaying Flash but I'm a soloer so deceive benefits my illusionists more at low levels). Try to 6 slot this power 2 acc/2 hold/2 recharge.

Phantasm - this pet is perma unless it dies or you exit a mission or move to another zone so it really doesn't need the recharge. I slotted mine 2 acc/3 damage.

Fulcrum Shift - you could probably get away with dropping one of the accuracies - 2 acc/3 recharge is quite effective slotting.

Conserve Power - could probably change the end reduction to a third recharge so it's up more often (I don't think it costs all that much endurance to use).

Temp Invulnerability - you could probably drop one (or two) of the endurance reductions but it's up to you You'll know best by that level if you have endurance problems or not.


So those are my comments. A lot of your slotting choices depend on how you want to use a power. It's a fun combination to play - enjoy

Yup, you get full xp for the damage the Phantom Army and the Phantasm do.

If only he'd tried to escape back into the zone rather than sitting on a drone he'd still be alive today *sniff* Tragic really

Yup, that's still current Illusionists who'll be part of the PA dropping team should read Xanthus's post of Archy's PA dropping guide further down that thread.

Invulnerability is better at taking the alpha strike from a group. Regen is better at everything else (although Unstoppable from Invulnerability does allow for some stretches of very high performance from an Inv scrapper ).

Cool, the more experienced droppers we have the better

I just wanted to add that I'll be happy to help with leading the PA droppers if the raid leaders need it.

I'll be there for PA dropping duties.

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Also, whats the situation with the PA these days?

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Same as at the last couple of raids - unresponsive at range. With a little prep time by the Illusionists to get the positioning right it should be possible to get ample cover.

I guess he's using the web grenades for the -recharge, not the immob.

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A tank is no more important than anyone else. But are capable of allowing other sets through multihit capability at less risk do their jobs to maximum effect. Those tanks that dont are chaos tankers. I believe chaos tanking can work, is actually good fun but isnt the most effective way.

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The idea of opening every fight with a tight herding session while no one else is allowed move from their assigned spot bores me to tears so I guess that makes me a chaos tanker. Generally I'd prefer to adapt my playstyle to fit with a team rather than forcing the team to adapt to "the one true way". For me fun > effectiveness and I'd rather sacrifice some of my effectiveness as a tanker if the result is that the other team members have more fun. A little chaos (not necessarily so much chaos that people die) can go a long way to adding enjoyment to a mission. I imagine for some people mission after mission that consist of a procession of herded and tightly packed enemies would be pretty boring.
Each to their own I suppose.

On the Defender side of things it's not all bad at the low levels. When I was playing my solo FF defender in the Hollows I had a few people wish me luck after they saw my search comment about having no bubbles or buffs and that inviting me to their team would lead to death and debt. One fella wanted me to join the team anyway even though all I'd contribute is low-ish damage

I have a Spines/Inv and it's great fun, although it does run into survivability issues in some large teams. I also have a MA scrapper and I just about prefer MA over Spines - the attacks flow together quite nicely and look pretty darned good too.

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Also I'm going to stop pretending I'm a healer. I can be but only for people who come to melee to get healed, too often by the time I locate a blaster or something with a mob near them it'll just fall down by the time I hit transfusion. It's useless, and I don't have room for the medicine pool.


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Tip: target the blaster on the team list and heal off their target. If they're not targetting the enemy that's killing them in melee that's their own fault and if they're being defeated at range there's nothing you could have done anyway

Only 2 damage in Total Focus but an extra jump in Combat Jumping? Seems a strange use of slots. Also you've managed to add a damage in Hibernate.

With my illusion/kinetics controller I spent a lot of my time on teams focussing on the kinetics side of things. I'd throw out my pets and then spend most of the rest of the time concentrating on my kinetics powers, using my hold and deceive to control the occasional extra tough enemy (Spectral Wounds got a lot of use too of course, and my ancillary pool attacks too once I got that high - gotta make use of the damage boost from Fulcrum). I never encountered the "give me speed boost!" phenomenon though - my controller was the character I teamed most with (I usually solo) and I encountered maybe two people who ever wanted to be kept perma-speed boosted. On most teams I joined I'd ask if anyone wanted speed boost and usually no one would ask for it. I could easily have respecced out of Speed Boost and it wouldn't have impacted my contribution to most teams.

Congrats Aerie!

*bows down to his new overlord*

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is mace bad? it is definitly my fravourite and it fits my costume very nicely lol

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It's not bad - it's just not as high damaging as the other sets (if you're concerned with doing damage). Plus it used to be tougher to play at low levels due to clobber being the third attack available but that's been addressed now with the move of Jawbreaker to the no. 3 spot. If you like it and it fits your concept then you should definitely go with it and not worry about how much damage you're doing compared to other tankers.