Ill/Emp (among others).

Cheers Lads & Lass's! I currently have 2 Controllers @ lvl 50. My fav... a Ill/Ice/Ice and my new lvl 50 a Ill/TM/Ice. I just cant seem to shy away from the Illusion primary.

So how is Ill/Empathy? It seems rather interesting. And for that matter what other secondary's pair really, really well w/Ill.

Ive learned tons of info from this forum and I rarely post. So I wanted to take a moment to thank the guys and gals for the 411. Local Man's guides where/are particularly helpful as where a host of others. Enjoy the Holidays!

Honestly I think Ill/Anything is good. You've already done two great secondaries in /Time and /Cold I love both of mine. Ill/Rad is the classic powerhouse and original killer of AVs. Honestly I think you can't go wrong with an Illusion secondary. I have thermal/cold/and /Time all at 50+ and it's all I have to stop from rolling another.

I've heard great things about Ill/TA. Ill/Emp doesn't interest me only because I personally prefer more of a debuff (or even balanced buff/debuff) set with my trollers.

Ill/Emp makes a great behind the scenes sort of character. Illusion's control is sort of peaky: it's amazing when PA is up, and kind of less than outstanding when PA is not up. So I run mine with Superior Invis on all the time, keep the team buffed and healed with the emp side, try to keep from drawing aggro most of the time (concentrate on two targets, one getting Deceive and the other Blind and Spectral Wounds until defeated), and save the day as needed with PA. It's kind of soloable at 32 because you can buff the hell out of the Phantasm, but a bit painful before that, especially if half your slots are in the buffs and heals. I think of mine as an empath first, and use illusion powers reactively.

Ill/Storm is far more active. There's enough control just in storm to almost count as a control set, and adding Illusion to it fills in some holes. I have aggro most of the time, but they're too busy dealing with my powersets to get to me. You can always run on low throttle, just running Freezing Rain from the storm side, keeping chaos to a minimum, and break out the fun storm tools when things start to get hairy. Solos pretty well at the point you have FR and PA, because stuff kind of melts. I'm on the offensive almost all the time on this one. Hurricane's debuff helps a lot here. You have to be willing to embrace the chaos, and if someone else goes immob-happy, you can run into trouble when everything just stands there and shoots you instead of flying around the room like it's supposed to.

Illusion gives you much more options to protect the team than just heals and def, and being the only aggroless controller primary makes up for Empathy's inability to build for defense. It also has the advantage of being very easy to play, unlike emp which requires quick reflexes and an attentive eye, so your effectiveness does not deteriorate so much under high-pressure situations. Buildwise, since both sets need high recharge and illusion does fine without defense, you're free to focus only on recharge (My ill/emp could fort 7 people at once... yes, that's the entire team except me) and don't have to deal with many of the challenges that come with designing mixed rech/def builds.

That said, the combo on its own is not particularly strong. Emp as a surgical buff set doesn't contribute as much in leagues of 16-24 players, and has the problem that it does almost nothing to increase team offensive power. Be prepared for a long slog if you get on a low-damage team, and an overwhelming sense of helplessness when you need to kill the Avatar with 30 seconds left on the clock.

The best illusion builds are probably (in no particular order):

Ill/Rad - Illusion to tank the AVs, debuffs for everything else; easy perma-PA, plenty of panic buttons and fringe benefits e.g. immunity to end drain
Ill/Cold - Illusion makes up for Cold's lack of mitigation, both sets depend heavily on recharge; one of the best hard target killers
Ill/Time - Illusion to tank the AVs, softcapped defense and debuffs for everything else; Time's controls bolster illusion which doesn't get much of them; easy perma-PA

I'd second Local Man's list and add that I play an Illusion/Sonic controller and even with it being near the bottom of his list of synergies I still rarely have issues overcoming any threat I encounter and that's with only T4 Spiritual and T3 Reactive. If I add in judement and lore powers I'm basically unstoppable. Really Illusion has a hard time being bad with anything.

Thanks all! Hey Local Man, I'd love to see your build on the Illusion/Trick Arrow combo. I'd sure appreciate it. I have zero experience with TA and your build from mids would give me a great starting point. Many thanks! I think I might give this one a go. =)

Wow tyvm Local Man! This really helps. Seeing I have zero xp on TA. In your opinion based on this build what steps would you take to make this perma Phantom Army. Also as side note I do love to team, but lately I have been doing tips and solo type stuff.

And lastly, if time and money (and patience) were spent on the Ill/TA build would this combo be good against hard targets? Many thanks!

This was my final ill/emp build. Perma-PA and fortitude perma on 7 characters, roughly half of which is powerboosted. The build had a few nagging issues I was never able to solve (such as not being able to cap hitchance vs. +3 enemies on Flash, since I had no room for tactics. Eventually the character got rerolled as Ill/time, which is a more powerful secondary than emp and fits her concept better - don't you love it when minmaxing and concept go hand in hand?

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Thanks
I thought about rerolling too, but I like my toon way too much.

Ill/Thermal is little heard of but IMO among the best iTrial support characters you could have, if played to its strengths as support. I was scanning the lists of powerset combos recently and noticed it's one of the only combos that could provide consistent support for Keyes (powerful heals), UG (anti-confusion for 7 players when stacked with Tactics)*, MOM (heals for Aurora and a rezz), and TPN (shields/heals for the TVs), while still providing big bursts of -Regen. The team-wide Resist shields are just gravy. Thermal is also one of the few support sets I trust to be able to keep its Lore pets alive, which has a big impact on DPS if selected right.

Technically you could put any primary with Therm for similar effect, although Illusion is never a bad choice.

*EDIT: Was wrong about the Mag of UG Confusion. It's 20, and the mag of Tactics + Thaw is around 15, and Thaw doesn't stack, so unfortunately it's a no-go there.