Local_Man

OK, are we going to turn this into a "which set is better" argument? The sets are different, with a different focus. Illusion is far better than Plant for single tough targets, but isn't nearly as good at AoE and large groups. Plant is good for mowing down larger low level groups, but isn't very good at handling Bosses and single tough targets.

Illusion doesn't NEED AoE Containment . . . its damage is single-target focused, and it gets almost all of the Containment it needs from Blind. As for Spectral Terror, an AoE fear power is great when you are taking down foes one-by-one with Blind-SW-Blast-SW. The group is all cowering while I pick out single targets to take out quickly with my attack chain. Using an AoE attack is often counter-productive unless they are all focused on PA.

So, I can handle groups without PA in complete safety by using Deceive to take out bosses, Spectral Terror to handle the group and then take them down one-by-one. It is moderately fast because the single target damage is significant if you learn how to leverage the Illusory Damage.

Comparably, Plant takes a while to take out foes, but it does damage to a bunch at a time. My Illusion controllers can take out single foes much faster than my Plant controllers. Plant takes out groups almost as fast as it can take out single foes. But if you try to do it without Seeds, you can expect to take a lot of damage while Roots+Creepers do their DoT.

If you want to compare maxed out characters, I prefer my Perma-PA Ill/Rad to any other character in the game . . . but not for farming.
He can handle missions faster than any of my other characters because he can stealth, distract, confuse and do great single target damage. He was quick to complete the Incarnate arc. He handles Tip missions faster than any other character I have, and handles missions easily that are trouble for other characters.

I'm certainly not suggesting that Plant is a bad set at all. It is a matter of personal taste. I prefer to complete missions quickly rather than mow down large numbers of foes. If I want a "mower," I usually pull out my Fire/Rad but Plant can certainly do it well.

For your Illusion/Radiation, take a look at my Illusion/Radiation guide, linked in my sig. I haven't updated it for I-19 yet (waiting for the update to Mids and some time), but it has several builds depending upon your budget and goals. For I-19, I have added Mutation, Recall Friend and one of several options for the three powers-with-no-slots in the place of the Fitness Pool.

The best place to get answers to questions like this is the City of Data site, which is part of CoHTitan's Red Tomax Guides. Mid's Builder should also have the numbers.

It shows the endurance cost of all three leadership toggles to be 0.195 per HALF second, or 0.390 per second. Compare that to Superior Invis and Enervating Field, both of which are 1.04 per second, and Radiation Infection which is 0.52 per second. With slotting capped EndRdx, you can cut that in half, but at one slot, you are only cutting out about a quarter of the endurance cost. Add them up, and it can use up a lot of endurance.

Illusion has other tricks. Spectral Terror is a perma-AoE control even before any slotting. Deceive lets you take down a group of foes without ever alerting them that you are there. And back before the pet AI was broken, Phanty's Decoy could fill in for PA at times.

Yes, Plant control has other tricks. But it seems to rely very heavily upon Seeds+Roots -- I found myself often having to wait until they recharged to take on the next group. I didn't have to do that with Illusion.

I'm glad that the guide was helpful.

I did a quick respec of my main Ill/Rad to add in Mutation, Recall Friend and Group Invis (with a LotG Recharge). I already had Hover and Combat Jumping. I had Recall Friend in my original build, and I have really missed it, and it only needs the default slot. Recall Friend will allow me to stealth missions better without having to depend on the vet "Assemble Team" power. And it is often a handy power in other situations.

Mutation is a nice Rez power, and it only needs the default slot. That was another power I had always wanted to fit into my build, but just couldn't.

And last, Group Invis is the one I was unsure on -- I considered Rise of the Phoenix (as the only self-rez available to Controllers), Fallout (with only the default slot, it would mainly be used as a debuff), or maybe Assault. However, since I already have 4 power pools even after Fitness inherent (Fly&Hover, Hasten, Combat Jumping, Recall Friend), I would have to take Group Invis as a LotG mule in place of Combat Jumping if I wanted to add Assault -- and there was the endurance drain to consider.

I went with Group Invis for a couple of reasons. I like my powers to have some kind of utility, and with GI I would be able to invis the team. More importantly, I could cast GI at the start of a fight, and then turn off SI to save endurance. Plus, while I already had Perma PA at 206.5% Recharge, a little bit more is nice. With GI slotted with another LotG Recharge, my Recharge is up to 213%.

That was my reasoning. It may be that other considerations are more important for you. Leadership is certainly appealing. With the I-19 changes, I suspect a lot of folks will be adding the Leadership toggles, and stacked Leadership is pretty great.

That last bit is the key point as far as a "respec strategy" goes -- figure out the most expensive and hard-to-get IOs you have that you are NOT going to keep in the build, and remove those first. Leave the easier to get and less expensive ones. That way you can decided if it is worth while to use up another Respec to get the cheaper ones out, or just re-make them (if you need them).

I suspect that as I-19 hits and a lot of folks will be playing their level 50 characters, we may see a drop in prices for the Purple recipes -- especially the less popular sets like sleep, stun, confuse and Hold.

I certainly am not suggesting to avoid Plant control. Heck, I have a Plant/Rad at 50, a Plant/Kin at 44 and a Plant/Storm somewhere in the 30's. They are all fun.

It is simply a trade-off. Superior initial control for less back-up or continual control. Like all sets, Plant has its strenghths and weaknesses . . . otherwise, it wouldn't be challenging.

Sure, that "one trick" is great . . . but if you have just used it before the ambush shows up, you might be in trouble. Or, as has happened to me once or twice, I target a guy in the middle of a big group and hit Seeds just when a lag spike hits . . . and find my character turning around to throw Seeds at the single foe behind me, completely missing the group . . . who just aggroed on me. "Oh, crap! Where's that Vines icon . . . "

That kind of sound like my scrapper, fully dressed in a power armor suit that didn't work but it was stuck on so he couldn't take it off. He is an MA/Regen, named "Irony Man."

Not nearly a bible . . . maybe more like an owner's manual. It is nearly that dry. It is really a compilation of stuff I have seen on these forums over the years, plus the great info at City of Data and Paragon Wiki, and a few of my own insights.

Take a look at my Illusion/Radiation guide . . . it explains it all.

Hasten is a 70% Recharge buff. AM is a 30% Recharge buff. I keep Hasten on auto, and fire off AM whenever it is up (or may hold off between fights, then fire it off just before going into battle). In a fight? definitely run both at the same time. Those give you 100% of the 206% you need for Perma-PA if run together.

"over used"??? I don't think so -- Earth is not nearly the popularity of Fire or Illusion, or probably Plant. "overkill"?? There is no such thing as too much control when you are the only controller on a team of 8 -- an Earth/Rad and 7 damage dealers. The team was able to handle +4 thanks to my Defense Debuffs and controls, some of which are auto-hit.

The only way to keep PA out most of the time is to boost your Recharge. That's hard to do in lower levels unless you have a Kinetics or another Rad on your team. If you are a member of an SG, you can get a Recharge buff from an Empowerment station in a base -- there are three recipes (using salvage) that will buff your Recharge for an hour.

In lower levels, using Deceive a lot will help. Scan the group of foes for targets who will give you the most benefit of the power. You can also take Air Superiority in low levels for a third attack, but it requires you to go into melee -- that tends to make things a little bit more interesting. Then you will have an attack chain of Blind-SW-Air Sup.

Make sure you are effectively using your debuffs, too. That adds some strategy to the lower levels.

Fire has the best damage of any controller . . . but you need to be in melee most of the time to get that damage. The Flashfire+Fire Cages control combo can handle most groups, but generally having a secondary that will either boost your damage (Kinetics) or provide more control or debuffing (Radiation with Choking Cloud, Storm's Freezing Rain, etc) will help Fire be more effective.

Empathy has heals and great team buffs, but can't boost your own damage and has no debuffs or controls. Personally, if I wanted to do a */Empathy character who could do damage, too, I would go Illusion/Empathy first, then maybe Plant/Empathy. Ill/Emp is a good "battlefield healer" who can also do some good single target damage . . . but no AoE Damage. Plant/Emp can do AoE damage, but not much single target damage.

Thanks for the mention of the guide.

To the OP: I agree with Tex that there is no "best," but an Earth/Rad is one of the most flexable team controller builds available. You have three primary ranged AoE controls -- Stalagmites+Stone Cages, Earthquake and Volcanic Gasses. At least one or two of them are up for every group, and it has the flexibility to handle foes of all types. While Earth/TA has more overall "control," it can't heal or buff the team the way that an Earth/Rad can.

Illusion isn't "chaos and damage," it is "distraction and damage." The ONLY knockback in Illusion is from Phantasm, which is pretty easy to limit if you know how to.

Any teams that "hate" confusion are ignorant. They don't understand that Confuse is one of the best control powers in the game . . . and Illusion, Mind, Plant, Ice and Electric all have confusion powers. Illusion's is only single target, while the others have AoE Confusion powers. Confusion powers do not "steal" XP . . . if properly used, you can in fact get extra XP that you don't earn. It might slightly reduce the amount of XP available to earn, but will allow you to earn that XP faster and safer -- and there is always more XP available, so it is not a limited resource.

As for Plant and Electric -- Plant is a good AoE damage control set which is also the best set for early AoE control. By Level 8, you can have Seeds of Confusion and Roots, which can confuse a group and then Immobilize them -- which has the effect of an AoE Hold and is up pretty often. The AoE Immob, Roots, does twice the damage of the AoE Immob from other control sets. Plus you get AoE Damage from Carrion Creepers and the pet, Venus Flytrap (a/k/a Twoey, nicknamed after the plant in "Little Shop of Horrors"). Plant is a bit of a "one-trick pony." It relies heavily upon the combination of Seeds of Confusion+Roots -- it is weak against foes who resist confusion and Immobilize, and not real strong with single target damage. In lower levels especially, once you use Seeds, you have limited AoE control until it recharges. It is arguably the best at AoE damage after Fire Control, and has better control than Fire. Creepers is a really unique power in the set, a kind of pseudopet with an unusual way of working, and the Flytrap Pet is the coolest looking pet for controllers.

Electric Control is an interesting set. It provides very good AoE control with several types of control that were generally viewed as weak . . . Sleep, knockdown and endurance drain. But as used in Electric Control, these become very effective AoE control. It is one of the lowest damage control sets, in the same category as Ice and Earth Control. One of the key powers is the AoE Sleep patch, Static Field. Like Ice and Fire Control, it has an PB AoE aura that makes it appealing to go into and stay in melee -- the Electric version does endurance drain. Because of this, it works really well with Rad's Choking Cloud. Two of the powers, Jolting Chain (knockdown) and Synaptic Overload (confusion), use a chaining mechanism that makes Electric unlike any other control set. The two pets, Gremlins, are kind of disappointing -- they really should do more damage and be a little more durable -- but they look cool. Electric is a good set for team AoE control . . . but a poor set for playing solo.

The one time somebody said that kind of thing to me (in team chat), my response was something like, "If you don't like the way I handle my character, then I'll be happy to quit and you can find somebody else."

The rest of the team told the complainer to shut up and asked me to stay.

I may go for endurance on my Ice/Storm, and probably will go for endurance on my Ice/Rad. Those builds rely much more on high endurance toggles (Arctic Air, and Arctic Air+Choking Cloud), so Endurance is more important than Recharge, especially if they are not fully IO'ed out.

But the vast majority of controllers will do better with the Recharge Alpha Slot.

An Illusion/Radiation Controller fits every one of your factors. It is one of the easiest controllers to solo, and yet is always great on a team. It does good single target damage, which you can improve with the right strategy. It is one of the popular characters for good reason, because it can Blast/Control/Defend/Tank.

Take a look at my Illusion/Radiation guide, linked in my sig.

In that build, he looks like he is using Group Invisibility as a "mule" power to hold a Luck of the Gambler Recharge IO. If you have enough global Recharge from sets and IOs, you can get by without slotting it for Recharge . . . but he's probably mainly using Superior Invis since he shows that he has both.

Group Invis has become far less important, since if you want Invisibility, you can get it with a Stealth IO and a second stealth power (like Super Speed). Most people use Superior Invis over Group Invis, since you don't have to remember to re-cast it. Yes, SI uses a lot more endurance, but with a full IO build, you can get enough Recovery to easily handle the endurance cost of SI.

Just about everything you might want to know about an Illusion/Radiation is available in my Illusion/Radiation guide (link in my sig). The guide includes a sample build for leveling up, and then several builds for the end-game stuff. It has strategy suggestions and information on how the powers work so that you can make your best choices. There are many ways to build an Ill/Rad, and the guide can help you make the choices. (I have not yet updated it in anticipation of I-19. I want to wait until I can use an "authorized" version of Mids for the updated builds.)

If you are trying to maximize Recharge, I recommend 3 Recharge in Hasten until you get a bunch of Global Recharge. Once you have enough Global Recharge, you can cut back to two slots in Hasten. But the key to any Illusionist is to get Phantom Army out as much as possible.

As for Slots in SI vs. GI, both can "get by" with 2 slots (2 EndRdx in SI, or 2 Recharge in GI), but for a Perma-PA build, you may want to 6-slot it for a total of 12.5% Recharge.