sypher_vendetta

Originally Posted by Local_Man

Illusion as a primary works with all of the secondaries. No matter what secondary you choose, I suggest you take a look at my Illusion/Radiaiton guide, as it will give you a lot of information and strategy on using the Illusion primary. But here's a quick run-down:

Illusion is quite a bit different than other control sets. It has only two AoE control powers, its PB AoE hold and a fear-inducing pet. The damage is limited to single target, except the pet has a cone attack that it tends to use on single targets. It has two forms of invisibility and a wonderful no-aggro single target confuse. It has no AoE damage.

The key to Illusion builds is Phantom Army. PA are three unbuffable, invulnerable pets that last 60 seconds and recharge in 240. Illusion has lots of othe great powers, but PA is the key to the set. With about 205% global recharge, you can have PA recharge just as they expire, also known as "Perma-PA." While you can have a very good character without perma-PA, that is generally the goal for the end-game. In any event, you want as much Recharge as you can get.

Additionally, since PA cannot be buffed, you can only improve their performance by using debuffs on the foes. Resistance Debuffs will increase the damage done by PA, while Defense Debuffs will improve PA's accuracy.

The other key thing to understand about Illusion is the unique Spectral Damage, where some of the damage heals back after a few seconds unless you can defeat the foes before the heal-back. This gives Illusion good burst damage but weakens its longer term damage. My guide discusses Spectral Damage and strategies to make good use of it.

Only two secondaries offer a Recharge buff and debuffs to Resistance and Defense: Rad and Time. Kinetics can give you a Recharge buff but no debuffs, while several other secondaries have debuffs but no Recharge buff. For these other sets, it takes a lot more Recharge bonuses from IO sets to get Perma-PA.

Ill/Rad has long been one of the best builds in the game, and was well known as an AV killer even before IOs. It gets 30% Recharge from Accelerate Metabolism. It has debuffs in two toggle powers that make it easy to set and forget when fighting tough targets. Several other things make the secondary appealing -- a self-heal, a Recovery self-buff, an AoE Slow that also has a large -Regen effect, a second (much more powerful) PB AoE Hold and two or three skippable powers that can provide flexibility to your build. My guide goes into more detail.

Ill/Time is pretty comparable. One downside to Ill/Time compared to Ill/Rad is that the Debuffs and the Recharge buff come late in the secondary. But Ill/Time actually has a bigger Recharge buff (50% vs. 30%) and some pretty nice powers overall. And because Time is a fairly new set, Ill/Time is much rarer than Ill/Rad.

After those two, I would say the next best two combos are Ill/Cold and Ill/Dark. Ill/Cold has no Recharge buff and no self-heal. But it has an outstanding Recovery buff and very powerful debuffs -- a well-slotted Ill/Cold is probably the best AV killer in the game. Ill/Dark has lots of great powers including a self-heal, good -Regen, great -ToHit, an extra pet, a patch Slow with -Resistance and a nice Defense buff. Both of these have a stealth Aura that, combined with Super Speed or a Stealth IO, allow you to skip both Invisibility powers in Illusion if you choose.

I would put Ill/Storm pretty close to Ill/Cold and Ill/Dark, except that Ill/Storm tends to be very chaotic by throwing bad guys all over the place unless you limit the use of some of your powers. The last two powers in the set add some nice damage. Ill/Storm also has the stealth aura and lacks both a Recharge buff and a self-heal, but has a great debuff that also adds control, plus some other control powers.

Ill/TA is a different kind of build -- I found it to be far more effective always at range. Send the PA, and then stand back and fire off arrows. Illusion may be the best primary to pair with Trick Arrow if you want to try TA.

Ill/Emp is a popular combo as a great battlefiled healer/buffer. Illusion provides invisibility, confusion and distraction to make it easier to save teammates. Emp really doesn't have much to help Illusion, though. Ill/Nature may be similar, but I haven't really explored the Nature set yet.

Ill/Kin is another popular pairing, but there are some synergy problems. Illusion is a great set. Kinetics is a great set. Together they are good, but Illusion mostly lend itself to a ranged playstyle while Kinetics needs melee. PA can't be buffed, and kinetics specializes in strong buffs. The Recharge buff will help you get PA out more often when you have foes to siphon off of . . . And Phantasm has knockback, which he sometimes uses just when you are lining up a foe to siphon off of, knocking the foe out of range. Still, some people love their Ill/Kins.

Ill/Therm, Ill/Sonic and Ill/FF are fairly rare. Therm and Sonic both have Resistance debuffs but no Recharge. Them has a self-heal, but much of the set is focused on buffs, and PA can't be buffed. Sonic and FF are also a buffing sets -- one advantage is that Sonic and FF have partial mez protection.

I know folks who love Ill/FF even though it has almost no synergy at all -- but it can be really safe . . . just throw out PA and Phanty, then bubble up in Personal Force Field for safety.

If there is a combo that interests you, try it out. But that's my run down on the pairings with Illusion. Ill/Rad is my favorite and has been for a long time, but Ill/Time, Ill/Cold and Ill/Storm are also great combos. I haven't directly tried Ill/Dark yet, as I already have 5 Illusion Controllers at incarnate levels, but I have a Dark/Dark and have played lots of Dark Miasma so I can guess how Ill/Dark probably plays. For anything other than Ill/Rad and Ill/Time, expect a very expensive build if you want Perma-PA.

Originally Posted by StratoNexus

I would take and use both Tentacles and Umbral Torrent, and they both do solid damage. However, Umbral Torrent does KB as well, so it is not for everyone. Come Issue 24, Blackstar will recharge faster and will no longer have a crash, so it will become a staple power as well.


Come Issue 24 and the ability to color the epic powers, I would consider a dark colored Flame Mastery. Wreathed in dark flames is a great look and Rise of the Phoenix is a fabulous power that seems to fit someone being chased by ghost hunters.

Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy

Derp, good thing we have IO's. Pretty sure I can withstand 54x8 maps on my /Ment Blasters. My Arch build is a couple threads down in case you want to take some notes, but all the specs are in this thread already.

Also, when you hit 120 HP/s perma, we can talk.

Derp again on a couple counts here. No. DP is perfect. It's a great power because it's a skill power- In order to leverage it properly, you have to ACTUALLY BE GOOD AT THE GAME, and actually INVEST IN YOUR CHARACTERS! Gasp! God forbid City of Casuals loses its stronghold on the forums! Lrn2play and make a high end /Ment (Don't pair it with a retarded primary like OP did, use your head. That's part of not being a nub) and you'll see what I'm talking about.
I'll help the OP. I know the OP. I've helped him with builds in the past, he has a badass Sylar avatar, and he's a super nice guy. He just happened to make a bad decision by pairing DB with /Ment, and then you put down the wrong selection in the first response, while making way more retarded assessments than just putting down pairing DB/ with /Ment.

Originally Posted by Fulmens

sypher_vendetta said


I didn't bother reading any of the post after this. Or any of the other posts after that one. You're asking me, and dozens of other readers, to put in more work because you wanted to put in less. And then you expect me to show some respect to you for some reason.

The less polite version of this is "I'm not your English teacher. Nobody's paying me to read your crap. So I didn't."

Originally Posted by Rakeeb

So, rather than whine without ammunition I did some math and absolutely amazed myself. With the change to Zapp, assuming Elec / Devices (the other secondaries are just boned now), Electric Blast is honestly better than I'd thought... assuming we can keep the Sentinel on task. As Strato has pointed out above, the little guy has a bad habit of ignoring what you want him to do.

If the Blaster could control its targetting, and it's DPS was raised to a degree (probably 1.5x what it is now - that or allow it to fire more often, re-enable slotting for Recharge Speed to accelerate its little attack), then we might have something.

Let me be very clear, though. Electric Blast is still packing a functionally useless secondary effect. It also has weak in-set AOE; Short Circuit is just bad as an AOE and while Ball Lightning is functional it's nothing special. I'd propose changing Short Circuit entirely to something that matches Jolting Chain in initial design and graphics, but has Short Circuit's functionality with a significant cast time advantage.

An interesting secondary effect replacement might be to allow Electric attacks to build a stack of a debuff called Charged, and a couple of particular attacks (thinking Zapp, Thundering Blast, and maybe Tesla Cage... that's a huge reach tho) will have a chance to "ground" the target, with a little AoE blast effect and minor damage that gets better per stack. But now I'm just coming up with random crap.

Originally Posted by StratoNexus

It looks like corruptor VS can scourge, so it should be very useful against Tyrant (of course, a Fire/Cold corruptor is amazingly potent).

If you have never used VS, it currently is pretty annoying. It has a long cast (3.3s) and only lasts 60 seconds. While it is potent over that time frame and worth it, especially against one hard target, it needs to be monitored because the power will recharge long before the pet dies, but you can only have one at a time out. So you don't just activate when it recharges, but have to pay attention when it drops. Watching my own buff bar for the blinky VS icon and then missing the Air Crackles has happened to me.

The good news is, Hawk mentioned VS is one of the powers they are looking at for possible Electric blast improvements.


I have a Kin/Elec/Mace defender that I love (no VS on this character though), but it is not the type of build for everyone. I have been very disappointed in the Gravitic Interface, which I would have thought to be more effective at aiding me in keeping spawns drained and I have not yet bothered switching to and trying Preemptive (I keep hoping they might make Gravitic useful, since I tier 4d it on two characters, sigh). Ion is the obvious choice for Judgement and Clarion Radial will help increase end drain as well (but then you have that gap in mez protection). Hmmm, Hybrid Support does not grant a buff to end mod like most other +special powers, I wonder if that is on purpose or an oversight. Storm Lore will be helpful with end drain as well and add nicely to AoE damage.

Originally Posted by StratoNexus

Wow. I don't think you are ever going to be happy in this area then. Even melee sets vary by more than that. I am for some buffs to Electric, but I do think being ~20% lower than Fire is fine.


Yeah, but you said Hybrid didn't help Ball Lightning. I never disputed anything about VS and Hybrid interaction and fully support making VS better, including allowing Hybrid to affect it.


I disagree with your timeline and your assessment of how useful the end drain can be (plus the hold in Tesla Cage). I don't think either of us will convince the other, sadly. That said, I like some ideas to improve the secondary effect. Having some of the powers also grant -max endurance looks like it could be very helpful, while still not allowing insta-spawn disabling.

I understand some sets secondaries take hold faster. But not all do. The slows in Ice still allow the full enemy chain before they start helping. Mitigation techniques often take longer to apply than offensive increases, Dark can get some modest debuffing going pretty quick, but can ramp it up even higher with time. It is nice that Beam's secondary effect occurs failry quickly, but that secondary effect cannot negate an entire spawn (yes, yes, death is the ultimate debuff, dead mobs don't shoot back and other boring things that ignore the reality that not everything dies in 12 seconds).


Really? Man if only I had menti... Oh wait.

Originally Posted by Rakeeb

Do not disrespect Strato. We may disagree with him but he's contributed a lot to the community over the years.

Originally Posted by Rakeeb

Strato:

A 20% damage nerf because you bring "support" to a team is far, far too much because first and foremost you are a blaster. The objective of the Blaster, its primary purpose, is to do damage to enemies and defeat them quickly.

Assault Core Embodiment does not influence the Sentinel because it produces a stacking 75% buff on YOU, the character; this does not translate to your pets in the same manner than a Mastermind using the Assault Core Embodiment does not transfer that 75% buff to his pets. In his case, the Mastermind is better off using Support Embodiment, but that would be quite silly for a Blaster to use. It wouldn't affect the VS anyway.

The idea that a Blaster's utility kicks in after ten seconds or so of pounding on a mob is a horrid idea, because solo that means the Blaster is dead. We simply don't last that long solo. In a team, the enemy group tends to be demolished in 10 seconds. Successful Blast sets, such as Fire, Ice, and Beam Rifle, are successful because they don't have a build-up period where their secondary effect takes hold. Beam Rifle, for instance, achieves its supporting function 1-2 seconds into the combat, and will so do so in an AOE manner in ~3 seconds with Penetrating Ray; Disintegration is well and active at that point. Notably, they don't pay a set cost with the design of their secondary effect; it is to their clear advantage in a damage sense to use it right away and maintain it.

Frankly, I think that should drive a discussion on whether or not Electric Blast can continue to be a relevant Blaster set with a secondary effect that takes substantial time to take hold. Removing it entirely from the Archetype is probably beyond the scope of things that can be done at this point, so a Cottage-Rule-breaking fix is probably the only answer.

Originally Posted by Garent

Sypher, are you a native English speaker?

Originally Posted by Rakeeb

It's just like, if you take this Electric blaster on a iTrial, you are getting substantially less mileage out of him than you would an equivalent Fire or Beam Rifle or (soon) Water Blast character. In things like The Really Hard Way runs it'd be nothing but a drain on the team, and that's just not something that I can easily swallow as a player who's interested in maximum performance.

I mean, geez. It's just not a good set. I really want it to be, but I'm restricted by the design of the set itself.

EDIT: Strongly tempted to do a power-by-power evaluation of Electric Blast versus Fire Blast in the new paradigm to really outline the issues. Here's a hint: Electric wouldn't come out on top.

Originally Posted by SteelRat

Sounds like one of those "It's not the destination, it's the journey" situations. I'm running Volkanik on the DA Arcs at the moment and really enjoying the story and its rather sinister flavour. I did wonder last night what I was going to do after I'd finished those given that I'm only 33% through my Lore and Destiny slots. I have a handful of other characters that I'd like to get some Incarnate powers for, but not the end of the world if I don't.

My advice would be the same as it was to all those people complaining about lack of end of level content before we got our end of level content. Enjoy the process of reaching those new heights of awesome, don't focus or stress on getting there. I really enjoy the Incarnate content, and I still really enjoy a small team of level 8s running Frostfire missions in the Hollows. The game is fun; just play it.

Originally Posted by Kisana

This post is in an attempt to clear the air, and explain how I view TRHW badge, I appreciate that there will always be people who disagree and read far more into things than is ever intended and unfortunately there is nothing I can do about that

This is one badge that requires a league not only to commit time, but also to commit either well earned Astrals, or Inf in order to give the whole league the best possible chance.

In addition, the nature of the badge "at the minute" requires certain imo "must not leave home without" powersets. I'm sure this will change as more and more people get used to the mechanics of the trial, and the badge will become far easier to obtain.

On my runs, not everyone has been able to play the toon or the badger they want, and NO-ONE more than me feels regret at asking someone to alt, but when someone does alt for the benefit of the league I make a promise to get them the badge on the next run when they are around.

When I build a league for TRHW I understand that not everyone is gonna be happy, or even get a place and for that I apologise, but I REALLY dont wanna be asking people to spend Astrals/Inf on a run "that I dont think" has either the damage or the debuffs to pull it off.

Potentially 10 Failed TRHW attempts can cost each player close to if not more than 100 Astrals and between 500M and 1bill inf (based on 5 Ultimates per run) and the cost of the Super insps. So yeah EVERY run I attempt goes in as a SERIOUS attempt, cos thats a MASSIVE commitment from every member of the league

On wednesday no-one was running TRHW on Union, and so I asked friends who I knew wouldn't mind spending Astrals (thinking they were gonna be wasted on a fail) to help me out to see how close we could get on a 12 man league EXPERIMENT. I could only get 11 people so I advertised the last spot and filled with the first tell. Yes, the league wasn't full cos 24 is max, but I didnt want to run at max, after all this was an experiment Two more friends who join my trials most nights logged on mid trial so I invited them. I was not "excluding" anyone, this was no different than a SG running a LRSF, or a bunch of mates running a LGTF We completed twice and so now we know its possible on a small league.

I have run 4 successful THRW trials now and on EVERY run I have advertised spaces, so there is a chance for EVERYONE to join, yes it may not be on the toon you want to bring, but I've explained my reasoning and will build your favoured toon into another run.

I understand not everyone likes the way I run trials or agrees with my opinions, and that's ok you don't have to join the trials, or agree with me

There isn't just me leading TRHW runs on Union and as I said many times I respect any leader of trials, cos I know how frustrating they can be to keep everyone together and focussed.

So please guys, lets work to make every run a successful one!

Originally Posted by Canine

Guys please.

It looks like there's already been moderator activity in this thread.

Keep it civil, OK?

It was posted (in a hurry, as you can tell by the currently ugly, quick and dirty screenshot I posted) as a Congratulations to the League that managed it, and as an 'It can be done' encouragement to players on other servers still trying for it.

Congratulations all round to the league that succeeded, and I'm now off to re-edit the screenshot in an attempt to make it less huge <grin>

Originally Posted by Ideon

Be that as it may, it doesn't really excuse your league leader to take it out on our league leader since we specifically waited until your league set off before we started looking for people to come on ours.

But let's not bring this up in a congratulatory thread because I believe Union might be the first to have got this badge... unless another server got it earlier?

Originally Posted by LSK

Dark armor sux Just kidding but the only problem with DA/TW it is going to be an end hog till u start IOing it out, but as said before once that is done it will be a beast. ( I should of gone DA/TW instead of Ice/TW) well it is not to late

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison

I'm in this thread. Do I really need to say what my vote is for?

Dark armor guide is in my sig.