Ill/Rad

Hiya folks,

I'm starting a Ill/Rad troller and heard that they are powerfull soloers, at what level do they start to get tough? Any powers I need to pick up right away?

Thanks!

Ill/rad is indeed a powerful solo character, and is generally accepted to be one of the more powerful controller combos overall. I wouldn't say that it needs to get to any particular level to get 'good' - while of course you will get more powerful over time as you gain new powers and better enhancements, you're pretty good from the get go. Ill has some nice early goodies with the extra attack and confuse, and rad's early blooming bag of tricks can easily carry you until you get the big illusion powers later on.

In terms of which powers to get fast, I would divide them up as:

Powers which must be taken, and as soon as possible:

Blind: nothing mysterious here, it's your single target hold. Its quirk is it has a chance to sleep foes which are effectively touching the foe you target, but the radius is so tiny it never really happens. To pay for this it has a 9 second recharge instead of 8 like most ST holds, but that penalty is minor. Being able to slot sleep sets as well as hold sets could have some interesting possibilities, but mostly it's just your ST hold. Slot accordingly - 2 acc, 2 hold, 2 rech is the default SO slotting.

Spectral wounds: a single target ranged attack with a twist. The way this power works is it does scale 1.64 damage - the damage equivalent of an 8 second recharge attack like power blast - while only having a 6 second recharge. However, after 10 seconds, scale 0.64 of the damage will heal back. But if you kill the foe before 10 seconds are up, you get to keep the extra damage, and either way it is a potent attack that a controller doesn't usually get this early. Slot as a normal attack - 3 dam, 1 acc, end, and rech is pretty standard.

Phantom army: one of the best control powers in the game. Spawns three invincible, taunting decoys that follow you around for 60 seconds, absorb large amounts of attacks, and also beat things up for you. Some of the damage they deal heals back, like spectral wounds, but they still deal a goodly amount (especially once enhanced). On SOs I'd slot 3 recharge, 2 dam, and an acc. One of the nice things about this pairing is that while phantom army's damage can't be increased by buffing them (since they ignore buffs), it can still be increased by debuffing the enemies, which rad is good at. Rad also includes AM to help PA recharge faster.

Spectral terror: your 'other' staple AoE control. It summons an immobile pseudo-pet that casts fear in an aura around itself, while also debuffing their tohit (which stacks with RI). It lasts 45 seconds and recharges in 45 seconds, so it's perma out of the box, and it really needs little slotting. It'll fear an entire group as long as you like, and really all you need to do is put a recharge in the default slot. This is what you use when PA is recharging.

Phantasm: your pet. Flies, shoots things with energy blasts, and summons an invincible taunting decoy of its own. The nice thing is that his decoy can be perma, as long as his AI doesn't spazz out and he casts it on time. He can help take some of the heat off of you with his decoy, and between his flight, decoy, and knockback he rarely dies. 1 acc, 3 damage is plenty enough slotting for him.

Radiation infection and enervating field: the toggle debuffs. RI debuffs defense and tohit, enervating field debuffs damage and resistance. RI makes the early game much easier and safer by allowing easy hits and mitigating far more damage than your controls can at that stage, and enervating field increases your kill speed. Just be careful not to lay them on a foe which will flee, since you can aggro other spawns easily. RI should be slotted 3 tohit debuff, 1 end, and enervating field just needs 1-2 end.

Accelerate metabolism: one of the best buffs in the game. Buffs damage, recharge, movement speed, endurance recovery, and mez/enddrain resistance, and no need to chase after everyone to buff them one at a time - plus it buffs you as well! The recharge is especially welcome since it helps PA come back faster. 3 recharge first thing, and 3 endmod later on if you have the slots.

EM pulse: one of the three best AoE holds in the game (EMP arrow and volcanic gasses are the other two). Compared to standard AoE holds, it has twice the radius, almost twice the duration, a 50% chance for mag 4 instead of 20%, standard accuracy instead of a 20% penalty, and the only downsides are a 5 minute recharge instead of 4 and 15 seconds where you can't recover endurance. 2 acc, 2 hold, and 2 rech and it will serve you well.

Powers which are good and should be taken at some point, but don't necessarily need to be taken instantly:

Deceive: a single target confuse. This can be used in two ways. The first is as an alternative to blind which also has a longer duration - basically, as an extra ST control. You can also try to leverage the confusion aspect - contrary to popular opinion, as long as you don't let confused foes kill each other entirely by themselves, you don't lose much XP. It doesn't need to be taken immediately, but I would still take it pretty early as it is quite helpful before you've got your AoE controls. Standard control slotting works, although you can get away with less because of its very long duration.

Flash: a 'normal' AoE hold. It doesn't have any of the advantages of EM pulse, but it's still useful. Having both flash and EM pulse actually leaves you freer to use both, since you know that if you use one, you still have the other ready for emergencies. Definitely don't take it until you can give it SO grade enhancements and a decent amount of slots, though, cause unenhanced it really is pretty poor.

One of the two invisibility powers: useful for stealthing missions, traveling through high level areas, and just generally sneaking around. For solo I would suggest superior invisibility, as it is less fiddly than group invis, but they both work. Take it when you have room.

Radiant aura: you have to take it, but that's OK, since you'd want it anyway. It's nothing earth shattering, but it is useful to top yourself (or your team) off after a fight. Healing is not the be-all end-all of mitigation in this game, but having the ability is useful. Slot for heal with a bit of endredux and recharge as well.

Lingering radiation: slow and -regen debuff. Mostly used against elite bosses and AVs, it's very useful when you need it, but not really needed most of the time. It's not a toggle, so it needs recharge, and it also needs accuracy.

Powers which might be occasionally useful, but are skippable:

Whichever invisibility power you didn't already take: while having an invis is useful, having two is pretty redundant.

Mutation: the ability to raise an ally is useful, but if you mostly solo it's hard to justify the power slot. Wakies can handle those duties if you do team occasionally.

Fallout: occasionally useful, but like mutation hard to justify if you rarely team.

Choking cloud: this is just relatively mediocre. Low accuracy, low magnitude, high endurance cost, and generally doesn't justify a power pick, especially since it's the only thing in either set that wants you to close to melee. A fire/ or ice/ controller would be able to stack it with their existing auras, but on an ill/, I'd just skip it.

Pool powers:

Two pool powers I would consider taking are air superiority and hasten. Air sup gives you another single target attack, which will greatly speed your solo killing, and it's not like held or confused baddies will be hitting you anyway. Hasten gets both AM and PA back sooner, so while I'm not a member of the 'always take hasten' crowd, it definitely is appealing here.

This would suggest taking either fly or super speed as your travel power, simply to save power slots. Both would work, of course - it's personal preference here.

Aside from these and stamina (which you *definitely* want), I wouldn't suggest taking many pool powers. Ill/rad has a lot of good primary and secondary powers, and things like leadership are of limited utility compared to them.

For ancillaries, I think any of them will work well. You get more attacks to help your soloing, an armor if you want it, and a couple of special abilities. Fire gets end recovery and a self-rez, ice gets an extra AoE and hibernate, primal gets power boost and conserve power, psi gets click mez protection and the useless wold of confusion, and earth gets a beastly melee attack and dull pain. All of them will serve well, I think. One thing to note is that illusion has no easy way to set up AoE containment, so AoE attacks aren't as good as you might think.

[edit: huh, that was my 1,000th post, didn't notice at the time ]

Thanks for the reply, it was quite helpfull, i'm looking forward to leveling my new troller.

Great reply, Also a wonderful source is Local_man's ill/rad guide in the controller FAQs section. Not only does it give a detailed explanation of each of the powers, it gives suggestions on the use of deceive and even has various builds to assist you in leveling up, a very affordable IO build (which was the first one i put together that was awesome) and the infamous Perma PA build. Its totally worth a read.