Local_Man

In general, Controllers control. Seems obvious, I know, but a lot of people miss the point. With good control, you don't really need much Defense. For the most part, the most important stat to build on is Recharge, to get those controls up as often as possible.

If you are new to controllers, you probably need to focus more on a leveling up build than a final build. Learn what the character can do and your playstyle with it before you worry about a final build.

In general, a Fire/Rad has some powers that are essential, some that are very good to have, and a few that are skippable. Fire control essentials are: Char, Fire Cages, Hot Feet, Flashfire and Fire Imps. Cinders is highly recommended. Smoke, Bonfire and Ring of Fire are skippable -- I like Bonfire, but it is a situational power and many people skip it. Some like Smoke, but I think it is not that great. (I had it, then dropped it.) Most of those powers should be taken as soon as they are available -- Cinders can wait a little bit.

On the Rad side, Radiant Aura(no choice), AM, RI, EF, LR and for a Fire/Rad, Choking Cloud are all essential. EM pulse is recommended. Mutation is a nice Rez, but skippable. Fallout is a very situational power and should be skipped unless you really understand it and want to plan to make use of it.

I like the Psi APP set for Indomitable Will, the armor and Psi Tornado.

I think you have undervalued Invulnerability as a Primary. Take a look at Call Me Awesome's two guides, one for the first 20 levels of an invuln tank, and the other for softcapping an Invuln Tank somewhat inexpensively.

Invulnerability has a mix of high resist (it is easy to cap Smashing/Lethal Resist at 90%) and Defense (you can easily get softcapped Defense with 1 or 2 foes in range of Invincibility). When built properly, an Invuln tank can rival a Granite Tank for survivability -- with none of the downsides. And that build is not nearly as expensive as softcapping other primaries, and the sets are lower level for easy exemping.

There are a few things you can do to increase the cost . . . but the performance will only show small increases. Mainly, you can increase the Regen quite a bit. Put the ranged purple set, Armageddon, in Spectral Wounds -- use the Damage one, and you can free up one slot for Health. Put a Numina's Heal in Health for a lot more Regen. Or a Miracle Health for a little more Recovery and more Regen.

Put the purple Targetted AoE damage set, (Ragnarok?) into Fire Ball. That will free up a 6.25% Recharge slot, so you can replace the set in Spectral Terror with the Malaise set. The damage proc will add a small amount of damage.

Replace one of the Blessing of the Zephyr with the knockback protection proc for more knockback protection. Or you could use the Fly set that gives some Regen.

To do much else would require a significant change, like changing the APP set, and the focus of slotting to get a Softcapped to Smash/Lethal build. I don't know that you really need that.

I did an ITF at +2 on a PUG with my Ill/Rad yesterday. Only died once when there was an over-aggro on a spawn. I think there were about 25 deaths overall, but only one was me. I use the Fire Armor to reduce incoming damage a little. That plus my heal and an occasional Insp keeps me alive most of the time, so I don't feel I need Rise of the Phoenix.

There seems to be something going on over the last several weeks. There have been a lot of outages of the Forums -- more than I recall there ever being before . . . in some cases they seem to be at the same time as other global systems.

I don't currently have access to Mids, so I can't check your bonuses. I generally wait until 50 for my final build, but I know a lot of folks who make Exemp-friendly builds with lower level IOs that will let them keep their bonuses when they exemp.

Strangler: If you mostly solo, then you may want to fit some damage in here. 4 Bas Gaz, then some additional Acc/Dam and Dam/Rech instead of the last two. I have seen some people who mostly solo slot this as a damage power, too.

Seeds: I don't know how fast it is recharging, but it never recharges fast enough. put in a 6th slot with a common Recharge?

Spirit Tree: If you can find a 5th slot for this, a fifth Doctored Wounds will give you another 5% recharge.

Steamy Mist will also take a LotG Recharge -- can you skip Hover?

Carrion Creepers: This power is complex due to the multiple pseudopets. My understanding is that procs only fire when that particular power is used . . . so an Immob proc only works when Creepers uses the Immob power. In general, you will get more damage overall using common Damage IOs, since they will work for all of the various powers. The one exception may be the Slow, since several of the powers have Slow, so the Slow proc works most of the time.

Lightning Storm: If you can fit it in, the Devastation Chance for Hold proc is great in this power. You can 6-frankenslot it with Dam/Rech and Dam/EndRdx/Rech from Thunderstrike and Entropic Chaos, Dam/Rech and Chance for Hold from Devastation. Some nice Regen and Recovery, plus capped Rech and Damage and the hold proc.

Hmmm, would I qualify for this? This is an amazingly generous offer. I would love to "purple out" my warshade, as she is one of my favorites even though she's only been 50 for about 9 months. It took me about 3 years to finally level her up to 50. At this point, she has a mix of various levels of mostly common IOs and a few odd frankenslot pieces here and there.

I'm a long time player, but work keeps me from spending huge amounts of time in game. The most Infl any of my characters has ever had is 650 mil . . . but that was only because the one time I had stepped into a PvP area in about 3 years, I happened to have a PvP recipe drop that sold for 450 mil Inf. I used that Infl to fully IO my Ill/Rad with a perma-PA build . . . but he only has 7 purple enhancements (5 Confuse, 2 pet) -- he got most of the expensive IOs needed for his build through drops, random rolls or merits. I only have one character with more than 200 Mil -- that Ill/Rad who still has about 400 mil, since he only spent about 250 mil to get that perma-PA build. I tend to be a bit on the frugel side, even with fictional money.

That group of purple enhancements you posted as the prize is probably 4 times the number of purple IOs I have on all my characters combined -- and the ones I have are all from the cheap sets (confuse, hold, sleep, immobilize). I know I could earn a lot more through marketeering and farming . . . but I'd rather level up characters and experience new powersets. The times I get in game, my usual group of buddies are already on, and I get about 1.5 to 2 hours to do stuff with them before having to take care of things at home (4 kids).

I have been a long time contributer to the community, mostly on the Controller boards. (My Ill/Rad guide is one of the most popular guides on the forums.) The main reason I don't play my Warshade more is that she really needs a team to shine. Without maximum Recharge, playing solo is just not as good. But on a large team, that tri-former really shines. I use a full set of binds from CitiBinder, the outdated bind creation program. It allows me to easily form-change for mires and the huge variety of options on a warshade. Controlling, tanking and blasting, being the team "spy" with invis (Shadow Cloak + Super Speed) and Shadow Recall, my 'shade can fill whatever need the team has.

My warshade's name is a bit of a pun (like most of my characters). She exists to "shade" the citizens from the dangers around them and the wars suffered in Paragon City, and her name is taken from her powerset . . . "Umbral-La." As you can see from her picture, Lani was a huge fan of "The Dark Watcher" after he saved her from from some CoT once when she was a young girl. When she had the opportunity to join with a Kheldian, Lani jumped at the chance to be a hero to the community like her idol. She has a sister Warshade (on another server) who is only 31 . . . that one was created when a little girl named Sue Sherman decided to merge with a dying nictus named Shee D'Tahka. Together, they became "Sue-Shee." <yes, you may groan now.>

It is a matter of choices. Psi Tornado is OK . . . but I wouldn't build major strategy around it. And I explain in my Ill/Rad guide why I prefer NOT to use the Psi APP set . . . by using a different damage type, you have a better way to handle psi-resistant foes, like Robots. I picked Fire because (a) it is a different, rarely resisted damage type and not resisted by foes who resist Psi, (b) it is the highest damage blast, (c) I really didn't need Imdomidible Will because the PA are taking the aggro so I'm rarely mezzed, (d) Fire Blast and Fire Ball are mostly up-front damage, letting me take advantage of spectral damage, (e) Fire Blast is fast, letting it fit into the Blind-SW-Blast-SW chain perfectly. Ice works, too, with slightly less damage, but the AoE damage attack is DoT.

It somewhat depends on your playstyle. I tend to hang back, staying out of melee and letting PA and Phanty's decoy take the aggro. I only use the AoE damage attack when my PA or a teammate have the aggro of the group. With Invisibility and concentrating on taking out single targets, other foes usually don't notice me, and when they do, Deceive gets them to change their mind. I can blast and control from range with little danger to myself. That is how I play my Ill/Rads and my Ill/TA . . . Ill/Storm is a little more aggressive. Ill/Kin is substantially different, of course, and uses Fisure for his APP attack. Ill/Therm is more active buffing, but the same ranged playstyle should work most of the time.

Of course, that doesn't mean that you need to adapt my playstyle . . .

There used to be separate types of enhancements for Endurance Drain and Endurance Recovery . . . before they were combined as Endurance Modification.

The only way to get knockback protection for most characters was to take Super Jump and then Acrobatics. Fire Tanks and Dark Shield Scrappers were virtually REQUIRED to use the Jumping Pool for travel.

Spectral Terror used to make most of the foes run away in terror -- it was considered to be a really bad power. And each casting of Phantom Army would bring 2-5 Phantoms. Six-Slotting Hasten to make it permanent was common.

Joe Chott created everyone's favorite character builder.

Level 50 characters had nothing to do with the 2-3 Million Influence they had since they had a full set of SO's, so they would give it away to low level characters in maximum amounts of 9,999.

Hami-O's were worth about 1.5 times a standard SO.

Happy B'day, Vixxy!!

The one thing that jumps out is the lack of Spectral Wounds . . . I would never, ever build an Illusion Controller without my main source of damage. I take Blind at 1, SW at 2 and Deceive at 4. You are missing out on one of the main strengths of an Illusion Controller without Spectral Wounds.

Phantom Army: Try 4 Expediant Reinforcement (all but Dam/End and the Resistance proc), plus Dam/Rech and Chance for Build Up from Soulbound. That slotting caps Damage and Recharge with good Accuracy.

Phantasm: get an extra slot in there for an Acc/Dam Hami-O to cap out the damage.

Hasten: The 4th Recharge is wasted.

Power of the Phoenix: That's a lot of slots for a situational power. Unless you have a teammate who likes to sacrifice himself to be a body bomb, you should not have enough deaths to merit that many slots in a power you rarely use.