Master of - A hero's hero

Me? I don't have a high level Illusion/Cold. I have Ill/Rad, Ill/Storm and Ill/TA at 50, but no Ill/Cold. If you want to see my Illusion/Radiation build, take a look at my Ill/Rad guide, linked in my sig. Near the end of the thread, I posted my current Perma-PA build.

This bug has been driving me nuts. I managed to take on a few of the weaker GM's will my ill/kin prior to its introduction. Phantasm's decoy was a nice filler for PA's recast time, but with Phantasm's suicidal tendencies these days it's difficult to get him to cast it sometimes.

will also have to try to perma PA on my ill/sonic and see if it can build up enough -res to be able to solo AVs or GMs without any -regen

edit: forgot to mention that that plant/rad build runs at 188.5% global recharge, and only has 3 LotGs in it, so without AM (30%) and adding 2 more LotGs (15%) over 170% is acheivable for non rad builds which will only be just off perma hasten (1 or 2 sec down time)

You might want to confirm this on live. My build has them recharging in 59.955 seconds. The third one despawns 0.26 seconds before the power begins activating.

If you have enough recharge to force the despawn then you just have the 1.13 seconds that it normally takes from despawn to the first one being out.

63 second recharge will give you a bit over 4 seconds of downtime.

You require 302% recharge to have perma PA, but they will always have 1.13 seconds of not being active and even longer before they grab agro again as they need to cast an attack and have it hit.. I currently have 1.39 seconds of inactivity. I can tell a tiny difference from when I had 303.6% rech behind them, but in practice it doesn't seem to matter.


I'll be posting an ill/cold guide one of these days with a bunch of different builds that I've used. 155% rech (before hasten and slotting) + softcapped is not possible. Pushing s/l above 40% is unwarranted because Arctic Fog will be fixed one of these days.

You have no heal on a /cold so getting your def up high is a good idea if you want to do some really crazy things with the toon. That said, I took out just about every AV/GM with like 5% def including no insp/temps lvl 53 versions of the freedom phalanx. It wasn't until I started taking on multiple AV's at the same time that defense became important. It's nice for running x8 content as well as you will pull agro of your own.

I have little doubt you will clear the wolves map faster than me. I'm not slow at it, but...it took a long time. I'm not sure if plant could kill some of the AV's, just too low st damage. Or it would take forever and a day to kill ones like Seige/Dominatrix/Diabolique.

Zero deaths wasn't easy. At least not with inspirations shut off too. It took me 3 attempts and while I wasn't desperately wanting hibernate to come up sooner, it did get a fair amount of use on some of the missions where they attack with things I'm not well protected against. The first time Neuron killed me due to stupidity. There was three x8 spawns in the one room and phantasm agro'd the AV and promptly died. I watched it happen and knew he was going to transfer it on to me. PA was currently occupied with the other spawns and he two shot me. I knew I should have fallen back. The second time Malaise killed me as I attacked a member of his spawn that was bordering another and I thought was part of the original. He slept, then held, then killed me while PA dealt with the original spawn. That second one hurt as it was really far in to the arc.
AV's yes. GM's no. Tough to tackle the endurance issues though.
For clarity when I talk about global rech I exclude hasten/slotting. So just IO bonuses. The build I'm using right now has 135%, so 300.3% in PA w/ slotting and hasten.

Sorry but you are mistaken Frosticus. Local is right. The Phantom Army do not begin despawning until the 60 seconds timer expires.

I just ran a few test on live using Herostats to make sure there haven't been any stealth changes. So essentially PA lasts ~63 seconds even though the 60 duration timer starts as soon as the power is activated. Even with sub 60 recharge a recast of PA causes the old spawn to disappear leaving a perceived gap as the new army zones in an grabs aggro.

There was a very long thread about this some time back that proved you can have perma PA by breaking 63 second recharge.

I doubt its an error. This was brought up when IOs were introduced. There was a very lengthy discussion on this (which I am still searching for in the archive).

There is nothing wrong with the duration of the power or the animation. Each member of the Phantom Army exists for only 60 seconds. So the duration is correct. However they are materialized into existence (or imagination ) at roughly one second staggered intervals. It takes them roughly one second to dematerialize as well.

What I observed while running Herostats is that the 60 second duration timer starts upon power activation. During the first 3.3 seconds the Phantom Army materializes one at a time (roughly one every second). At this point 56.6 seconds remain on the duration. At exactly 60 seconds the first summons begins to disappears with an additional member vanishing roughly every second after that.

Now when PA is overlapped with enough recharge (sub 60 seconds) all members of the first army despawn at once. It takes about a second for the first phantom of the new summons to appear.

Regardless, the bottom line is that you only need PA at 63 seconds recharge to effectively make it perma. Even with overlapping recharge you will still have the same gap as if you were at 63 seconds (if the power is toggled and placed before its charged). Arcana time (server ticks) will increase the gap if the power is not activated before its charged.

Local_man (I think it was you) dropped a great tip on how to deal with the gap. Re-summon Phantasm. With the right timing he will respawn his decoy. This is one of the best way besides phasing to deal with the gap. Just be careful, the decoys taunt/threat isn't as strong as PA's from my observations.

Enjoy your exploit.

There are several ways to deal with it. One of them is to re-cast Phanty about 10 seconds before PA despawn, as the first thing Phanty does is cast his Decoy. Another is to use a hiding place out of line of sight. Cast PA near the target while the Target can't see you. Sometimes you can get away with being behind the Target . . . by the time he finds you, a fresh trio of PA will have already gotten his attention. (It helps if you don't fire off an attack just as PA are despawning.)

As for the duration of PA . . . frankly, I haven't tested it. I was just repeating the "general wisdom" that has been repeated on the boards for a long time. I have never had less than 206% Recharge on my Perma PA build, so I haven't tested whether a lower amount is OK.

I was about to get up to get a drink, but instead drank upon the fountain of tears flowing down your face. It was refreshing and delicious. I hope you cry your eyes out again in the near future.

I found a great AV to practice Phantasm casting and to clearly identify PA durations against was Synapse. He can run clear across a map in about 1 sec and attempt to one shot you with thunderstrike or electric flurry, so there is no confusion about when agro shifts on to you and hiding behind a box is of very limited use against him.

Most targets you just put an obstacle between you and cast PA in the line of their path over to you. PA will almost always grab agro before they reach you. Not with synapse though heh.

I largely agree and it is why I run normal content at x8. Like any of the uber power combos/builds available in the game you need to go far beyond what a normal toon would view as difficult. PA isn't very good at holding more than a few baddies attention so x8 ensures I see plenty of action. I also picked hero's hero arc for the specific reason that many of the mobs deal non-s/l damage and many of the mobs mez. @x8 you will have to deal with that yourself at some point.

My new version of the build has 40% ranged def and perma IW, but gave up all aoe damage. So while it would make the difficulties presented much more surmountable I doubt the new build could actually clear the wolves map within the time limit. I have little doubt that you could take a toon of this power (same goes for bots/traps, dm/sheilds, crazy WP builds, etc) and roll your face on the keyboard and emerge victorious in many situations. It's why people with those builds do things like solo ITF's and such.

Anyway, 2 AV's is fairly easy unless they are very difficult AV's. Like taking out Statemsan+Honoree with no insp/temps/accolades was quite difficult and took a number of deaths before successfully pulling it off from start to finish. It required just about every trick I've learned about Illusion and Cold and movement. But on the other hand BaB's+Positron was quite easy and noname AV's in pairs like Citadel+Manticore present no real challenge at all.

3 AV's at once is difficult to nearly impossible depending on how hard they are. Like Chimera+Bobcat+Battle Maiden was fairly trivial for the most part, but BaB's+Positron+Statemsman or Honoree+The Dragon+ Hro Drohtz is extremely difficult. The Freedom Phalanx combo I haven't cracked yet without insp, but I did manage to crack the Rikti combo with no insp/temps/accos with my psy mastery build.

Actually the hardest thing about the Freedom Phalanx triple combo I'm working on right now is that you can't use them in a normal spawn. So you have to agro each on on to you and drag it to the next one and then agro that one on to you and so forth. So you have to withstand 3 very dangerous AV's long enough to gather them up and then have PA pull them off of you. Comparatively the Rikti Trio isn't really any less dangerous, but you engage them with PA so you don't need to worry about agro shifting to you until you have gotten the fight set up. Just that difference alone is huge.

I have an Illusion and feel that plonking some pets who will keep aggro well on an AV and getting on with the job at hand is pretty trivial. x8 setting missions is a different kettle of fish but I wasn't referring to that. I'd like to think that anyone can read the details of a power, test a few ideas and within a day go about playing an Illusion well, versus AVs given the right build. Personal survivability versus a AV isn't exactly a worry compared to playing other sets as pets take aggro. With them taking aggro you don't have to worry as much as other sets about what the AVs are capable of.

Well, then I misread "I'd pretty much think that if you gave anyone the same character with the right build they'd be doing entire arcs and AVs undefeated in no time". That an av needs nearly no skill with the right build, here we share the opinion, but this sentence above implicates the whole road through a story arc, which is 95% fights vs groups and 5% AVs. An AV inside a spawn of x8 needs some skill (or experience) because you have to kill the whole spawn, avoiding AOEs early on inside one minute. (ok, you could confuse the AV to kill his henchmen). And like Frosticus said, he failed two times to complete the arc without a defeat, and that is with experience and a right build.
I don´t say it´s the same as going with an emp/elec into the battle, but saying it´s nothing notable is simply false.
I think you share my opinion but the harshness of your words could not be left alone

One thing left: I share your hope reagrding the ability to read, but as I stated above, my playtime says some different things.

PA gives you a leg up in the same sense that Fulcrum Shift gives you a leg up in dealing aoe damage.

I wouldn't presume that you could hand just anyone a fire/kin and have them cranking out ~400k/min. I would however conclude that it is a safe bet that most people could take a fire/kin and farm better with it than they could with a grav/ta.

I chose to do a master's run with insp off of a hero's hero for a specific reason. Primarily to show off the strength of the build. The AV's in the arc aren't there to highlight the ease of survivability (that was the x8 setting). They are there to show the offensive capability of the toon.
Chopping down Seige in 9 min against his 75% psy res and 50% res to my other damage (the toon deals largely psy). Diabolique and her constant phasing on top of 30% psy res. Mother mayhem and Mailaise each with 50% psy res. You need overwhelming offense to kill such things quickly.

I have little doubt that other people could do the same with the toon some likely better and some likely worse. I'm not making the claim of being an amazing player based on my ability to defeat AI. Though I am very comfortable with the build and I don't think there are many players that could pick it up and achieve similar feats in a short period of time. But given enough time I'm sure most could be just as proficient if they so desired.

But if your premise is that most anyone could just jump into the drivers seat and do as well I'll disagree. I have toons that are much easier to play than this one and I don't believe that is true of those ones either. If however your premise is that most anyone could jump into the build and achieve roughly the bare minimum of what the toon is capable of then I would agree. In the case of a perma PA toon the bare minimum is that you can survive indefinitely against a single target.

I think there are plenty of players out there that could achieve a no insp masters run of this arc. However, I don't think there are many toons.

We are, and have been since the dawn of time.