Master of - A hero's hero

Decided to give my troller a bit of a workout, so did Maria Jenkins arc set to:
+0/x8 bosses on, with AV's.
To make it more challenging I selected:
Zero deaths, no temporary powers, no inspirations.
The only click accolade I have is geas, but I already have Perma PA, so no need to use it at any point.

The arc consists of 13 AV's (that you have to kill), and 4 defeat alls. So set to x8 it makes it important to not just be a specialist at the expense of other strengths.

I got a whack of screens from it, but I'll just post a couple highlights.

quite a mess she left behind

Pretty typical for this toon to pull well over agro cap as each pet can have 16 and so can I.

the hunter becomes the hunted

psst. behind you.

setting it up

Nice job!

I'd roll an illu/cold if I already hadn't played both sets to 50! This thread only confirms my hypothesis of it being a very powerful combination.

Now that's impressive. Congrats.

I had given thought to making an ill/cold myself, just to set apart from the norm, but I didn't think Perma PA would be possible. Now I have something to strive for.

Getting ill/cold to perma pa is basically just a matter of slapping lotgs everywhere you can. Cold doesn't give you much in the way of opportunities for set bonuses.

I have an ill/cold who's stuck for the moment at level 35. One of these days I'll get around to taking him to 50, and then think about spending however much money it takes.

I think the reason cold isn't more popular has a lot to do with how the set is structured. Until you get to the late 20s there isn't much at all to get excited about; stark contrast to rad, which gets it's strongest buffs much earlier. That and the fact that /cold is relatively new.

I want Cold for MMs so bad. Can we say "easy-mode"?

Traps and dark miasma still needed to be ported to trollers both would work wonders with illusion. Congratulations Frost it gives me even more to forward to on my lvl 42 ill/cold and news that you'll be able to spend inf/IOs from one side to another means i can have a good chance of kitting him out too.

This is hilarious. I've recently begun working on an Illusion/Cold toon with this particular intent for her (Soloing the crap outta stuff). Cold is my favorite support set and like Frosti said it synergies really well with Illusion. But my only problem with that toon so far is that the build I have planned so far has 2 powers just as purple set mules, and I'm not really a big fan of that. I need to see if I can get a better mileage out of my toon.

That said, great job there Frosti.

Just tweaked my Ill Rad build and, sure enough, it's possible to have perma hasten, PA, Benumb, sleet and near perma Heat Loss (95.7 seconds to recharge on a 90 second duration). You don't get the Regen whack of Lingering Radiation, but you beat the snot out of the Resistance.

This has probably been answered before, but at what recharge time should PA be considered "perma"? If (somehow) you have enough recharge to cast it before it expires, it'd be wasted, so it seems to me you'd have to wait until the exact point that the last decoy fades before casting the power again, right? Do they start expiring 60s after you cast the power, or are they expired at the 60s mark? If it's the first, then it seems you'd have a second or two of time to recast it, meaning a 61s recharge would be perma, but if its the latter, then you need it at exactly 60s (or less) to be able to cast them as soon as they expire. So which is it?

Local Man addresses that in his guide, I think. 61 is good enough. Actually, the real issue with "perma PA" is that when recast, all PA disappear and are then re-imaged.

What does that mean? I found out the hard way when I "tanked" a STF with my Ill-Rad. Recluse would beat on them for a minute and when I re-cast PA, they dropped and Recluse darted at me or the party. I learned to cast the PA in between Recluse and the rest of us, but it was a brutal lesson to learn.

Recluse vs. Ill Rad (sans PA) = Epic Fail for Ill Rad.

We beat him, but not without some debt...er "awesomeness"...accumlated.

You need it at 60 seconds even. A bit faster rech is nice if you hesitate or get stuck in another animation when they start dropping because they will be up before that happens. That way you can always be sure that they have minimal time losing agro.

When you start taking on really hard targets you learn to cast phantasm at the right time so that his decoy holds agro during the period that PA loses it. You have to time it because Phantasm will rush into melee and die several seconds later. And while his decoy doesn't despawn upon his death it is something that takes a bit of practice. Hopefully it will eventually get sorted out and he will go back to being a ranged pet.

That said, you don't really need perma PA for much including most AV's. You definitely want them up a lot, but even if you had them at like 65-68 seconds you'll still wreck most of them if you are a decent pilot.

Phantom Army has a 60 second recharge, but there is a 3 second period when the three phantoms are summoned, and three seconds at the end when they blink out one by one. Thus, a lot of folks feel that recharge of 63 seconds is good enough, as you can re-cast just as the third Phantom is disappearing.

That's cutting it a bit close for me. I want to be able to cast the new bunch BEFORE the old ones start to disappear, so I want the recharge to be under 60 seconds ideally. That gives me a little bit of "fudge time" for when I might be caught in another animation or didn't pay close enough attention. 61 seconds Recharge is probably good enough, but I prefer it to be under 60.

Frosticus's story about Lord Recluse is very true, but that dude is FAST. The moment PA drop, he immediately starts looking for another target, usually finding YOU unless something else can grab his attention very quickly. I have tried tanking LR on a couple of all-controller Statesman TFs using two Illusion controllers, and we usually die a lot even when we try to alternate PA.

Very impressive.

Would you mind sharing your build? I tried to squeeze the 155% rech, with softcapped sm/leth, most I could muster was around 125%.

I don't sweat the softcapped S/L, since you have the PA and the Phantasm and Decoy. I get my S'L up to about 27% and pop a purple if needed, keeping the emphasis on recharge primarily. I've solo'd the GMs and AVs, including STF Recluse, with the 27% and it works.

Yeah, I soon realized you should have two or more PA to tank Recluse. 1 PA earned me some debt. But, hey, I was able to pull it off and debt goes away.