I might.* Would depend on what replaces Phantom Army.
*I barely Controll Types at this time.
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I think it would depend a LOT on what they replaced it with. Speaking objectively Illusion isn't actually that great as a control set. It's got a standard hold, a single target confuse, an AoE hold and Spectral Terror. None of those are bad but compared to a lot fo the other control sets it's a bit lacking. In many ways Phantom Army is the major "control" in Illusion using Taunt to control foes.
The problem becomes if you drop Phantom Army what do you give it instead? An AoE confuse along the lines of Seeds of Confusion would seem to be the logical choice (especially if you rearranged the set to bring it in a bit earlier). The lack of any immobilizes isn't as big a deal for Dominators as it is for Controllers but the set still feels lacking in control.
I would say that you'd need to replace PA with a hard control and then also replace one of the stealth powers with a soft control of some kind.
NO. There would be no reason to play it IMHO.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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This, completely. For me, phantom army would be the entire point of illusion on doms. Not because I want to make some ridiculous perma-PA-perma-dom overpowered beast, but simply because it would *finally* allow me to make a dom that can actually get some benefit out of his primary against those STUPID ANNOYING #@(&!(*)($ PToD EBs. I know that they become relatively easy if you ignore your primary and chug purples, it just offends my sensibilities that such a cop-out is necessary in the first place, and illusion would finally allow me to do something about it.
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Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
NO. There would be no reason to play it IMHO.
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@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.
This is what it means to be a tank!
Well there's obviously a difference of opinion between Hawkward and Synapse. The former sees Phantom Army on Dominators to be a problem whilst the latter believes that it would probably be less powerful on Dominators than Controllers (most likely due to the lack of Domination and debuffs to indirectly buff PA's damage output).
I would play it as long as something similar to Phantom Army is included (if it were to be changed) and if Illusion Assault was made.
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No. Just...no.|
Originally Posted by CyWolf
If doms got illusion but phantom army was changed or replace would you still want to play it?
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PA is the meat and potatos of Illusion and the entire reason i would play this set on a dominator. PA + Dom Assault Sets = nearly worry free, wholesale slaughter...which MAY be part of the reason for the hold-up...although i would argue that Plant already has that in spades thanks to SoC, which is FAR more easily perma'd.
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Originally Posted by Smiling_Joe
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From their discussion during the coffee talk, it sounds like this is exactly the hold-up. The idea of a potentially perma-unkillable tank on a damage archetype.
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Originally Posted by RaikenX
PA + Dom Assault Sets = nearly worry free, wholesale slaughter...which MAY be part of the reason for the hold-up...
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@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too
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Which does not surprise me at all.|
Originally Posted by Oathbound
From their discussion during the coffee talk, it sounds like this is exactly the hold-up. The idea of a potentially perma-unkillable tank on a damage archetype.
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During many of the early threads about the idea of proliffing Illusion to dominators, there were almost always nay-sayers that crept in saying that the set would be bad on doms because so few of the powers in the set would benefit from Domination. Of course, there is no denying this.
The problem with that line of thought is a bit of a mix of not "thinking outside the box" and not "seeing the forest for the trees". None of them stopped to think that much of Illusion control HINGES on PA. Sure...Spectral McSpooky-pants is pretty nice...but he doesn't keep stuff off of you NEARLY as well as the phantoms. And ever since the nerf to AoE mass holds of shorter durations and longer recharges...flash doesn't have the impact it once did. And honestly...even if you pair Illusion with a set that has an immoblize or extra hold(s)...Controllers don't benefit much from Containment either. So there blows THAT "no domination benefit" argument out the window too.
In fact...its pretty much BECAUSE of PA that makes Ill/ trollers so nasty. Especially when combined with the right sets like /Rad and /Time. Why? Because while you can't directly buff the damage of the phantoms...you can debuff the badz into little more then mewing kittens while the phantoms hammer away at them with impunity. At perma-PA levels...you've basically got what every mastermind would give his left......ear...for. Unkillable pets that pretty much keep stuff away from him while he sits back, drinks coffee (with enriche creamer), and reaps the rewards.
Sure, a dominator doesn't have all those nice, pretty debuffs (although sleet from the ice epic is dang sweet)...he has an entire secondary devoted to dishing out hurt. Combine that with PA...yeesh. Would probably make a controller blush a pretty pink.
So yeah...would not be surprised in the least if this was the point of contention for a prolif.
....I still want it though.
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Originally Posted by Smiling_Joe
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The only thing I could come up with is to give Phantom Army some kind of HP and long recharge.
Paragon Unleashed Forums
Twitter: @Alpha_Ryvius
Keep the power but increase the recharge for doms. done. The whiners get to keep the power and the devs get to keep the set in check.
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I would not whine I would just choose not to roll one like other sets I am not down with.
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Originally Posted by RevolverMike
Keep the power but increase the recharge for doms. done. The whiners get to keep the power and the devs get to keep the set in check.
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The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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Originally Posted by RevolverMike
Keep the power but increase the recharge for doms. done. The whiners get to keep the power and the devs get to keep the set in check.
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I'd agree with this.
I've never been a huge Illu fan to begin with so...*shrugs*
Kind of glad that devs haven't ported it over to Doms for this reason (perma-PA). Doms are pretty powerful already with perma-dom. Heck my fire/earth perma-dom/hasten toon (and he doesn't even have bonfire
) doesn't fear too much. Throw in indestructible pets...yeah....a bit too OP'd.
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It wouldn't be any more OP on a Dom than it already is on a Controller...it would just leave the Dom with nothing to do. I think that they would have to change Phantom Army a bit...or rework illusion and give doms a different version altogether like what they did with Darkness Affinity.
Controllers have some of the most arguably game breaking power combos in game. An Illusion Dom, would never be anywhere as overpowered as a Plant/Anything controller or a Anything/Dark Affinity controller.
Oh yah.. plus Illusion, Rad, Earth, Mind, etc.... etc..
Controllers basically have quite a number of combos that are AMAZING. Letting Doms have access to illusion will never compare to that. So I hope we get it as a choice some day..
Just my two cents... 
My level 50 Dominators:
Madame Mindbender 50 Mind/Energy
Fly Agaric 50 Plant/Thorn
Nate Nitro 50 Fire/Psi
It'd depend what they replaced it with. Maybe an AOE control power on par with what was removed, so, you know, something better than Flashfire but not as good as Seeds.
I fail to see how Illusion/Anything will be more broken than Illusion/Radiation. Sure, Illusion/Psionic/Ice may rival it but those other two sets can make anything broken. The Phantom Army's powers all result in the damage being partially healed back, so the Dominator's damage output will be decreased because of this, and as the Dominator does mostly single target damage he/she won't be able to mitigate the heal back caused from the Phantom Army going crazy. It would also be very possible to steal aggro from the Army because of the decent damage and minimal debuffs in Assault sets.
Of course, they could change the powers that the Phantom Army use in order to fill a different niche - have them use controls and debuffs that lose their potency after a few seconds rather than high amounts of damage that is healed back.
Honestly I wouldn't have a problem, so long as the theme of control via misdirection remained. I would be adamantly against giving phantom army to doms but bumping its recharge, just because its uptime is already low without crazy +recharge. It is a core pseudo control in a control set with already poor control. If the 'it cannot be up as often' approach would be taken, I would rather they give the power more uptime but make it immune to +recharge. I know the very thought of having an illusion dom with absolutely no possibility for perma-PA is rage inducing to some, but there it is.
Hm. It would be cool if dominators got an invisible pet 'summoner' that, sort of like carrion creepers, spawned huge numbers of phantoms based off of enemy targeting, (rather than summoning vines) but they would be short lived. This would cause continuous bouts of distraction, but as soon as the distracting phantom disappears, the aggro has a chance to go back to the dominator. This makes it more dangerous, (removing the 'invincibility' option) but the higher number of phantoms would also give them better distraction, thus better control.
I have a more interesting question:
Would you play a Dominator Illusion Dom that has phantom Army, but his army:
Can be hurt and killed.
Have Minion level HP.
Have Minion level damage.
They still taunt but are no tanks.
I also would review a couple other powers. Superior Invis and Grant Invisibility to be precise. Many control sets tend to have a team buff/support power like Healing Tree or Smoke (that lowers -tohit.) Illusion dom's closest thing is Grant invisibility but it suppresses the minuscule defense entirely if you are attacked (making it useless as team support power.)
I'd make sure that power gets defense levels more in line with smoke's tohit (5%) and didn't suppress.
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Um..... my apologies, but I sincerely fail to see why that's an interesting question. At that point the power wouldn't be worth taking even if you did roll the character - what would be the point of the power in that case? They'd just die the instant you summoned them into the spawn. That'd honestly be *worse* than an illusion set where they just replaced PA with some sort of alternative control - it'd be like asking if you would like to play a mastermind set that had no boss pet (and was otherwise on par at best with the other sets).
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Originally Posted by Starsman
I have a more interesting question:
Would you play a Dominator Illusion Dom that has phantom Army, but his army: Can be hurt and killed. Have Minion level HP. Have Minion level damage. They still taunt but are no tanks. |
@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.
This is what it means to be a tank!
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Because we would no longer be talking about replacing it, but simply toning it down.|
Originally Posted by Muon_Neutrino
Um..... my apologies, but I sincerely fail to see why that's an interesting question.
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| At that point the power wouldn't be worth taking even if you did roll the character - what would be the point of the power in that case? They'd just die the instant you summoned them into the spawn. That'd honestly be *worse* than an illusion set where they just replaced PA with some sort of alternative control - it'd be like asking if you would like to play a mastermind set that had no boss pet (and was otherwise on par at best with the other sets). |
Lets say the HP is high enough to survive an alpha if they are tossed in the middle of an iddle spawn. Tough enough to perhaps survive for long enough that you can go in and Flash.
Alternatively drop a Spectral Terror and then drop the Army for damage.
The main point is, though: they will no longer be inmortal and nor will they get tanker level HP. They will be buffable, though.
Forgot to say: this version really should have lower recharge time.
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Right. Sorry, guess I was getting a bit too hung up on the specific changes you listed instead of the general idea. I will stand by my statement that giving them minion level HP would make the power almost useless, though.|
Originally Posted by Starsman
Because we would no longer be talking about replacing it, but simply toning it down.
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If they had higher HP, it would depend heavily on exactly how survivable they would turn out to be. For me the entire point of rolling an illusion dom would be to use PA to tank PToD EBs (note - talking about solo, and EBs rather than AVs). If their survivability was strong enough that between the three of them they could tank the EB for the 50 seconds the triangles are up, then I might still play it (especially if they got a recharge reduction in the process). If they couldn't do that, then I wouldn't touch the set. However, if they tweaked PA for doms and left the set in its current state for controllers, I'd scream bloody murder and not touch the set no matter what they did. That would piss me off mightily.
As far as normal spawns go, I think I would be annoyed if PA was reduced to the extent that I would have to layer another control on top of it in order to actually achieve the level of mitigation I wanted. It's already not the best tool to deal with larger numbers of foes, and if they just dropped dead against large spawns and couldn't even hold aggro on the percentage that they currently can, it would represent a pretty serious nerf to the set's regular every-spawn control (which is not something illusion is usually called out as being overpowered at).
Basically, my take on the whole 'is PA overpowered' debate is that you have to not focus just on the edge cases and to recognize both its strengths *and* weaknesses relative to other control powers. People often seem to take it as a given that PA is overpowered, but I think that conclusion isn't necessarily always defensible, and I would like to challenge those who believe that to quantify why and in what areas they believe it to be overpowered.
I think people get way too hung up on PA's invulnerability. PA is not killable, it is true. However, it's not like the baddies can kill the ice slick patch or the volcanic geyser vents either. Against most foes, PA doesn't provide a level of mitigation that's significantly different than that of a more 'traditional' (and just as 'invincible') control - a foe attacking PA isn't any *more* mitigated than one who's attacking one of his allies due to seeds or not attacking at all due to an aoe mez, after all (especially for doms since they're much more likely to be tossing out boss class mezzes than controllers). PA has a relatively long duration and supplies damage, to be true, but it's also a lot more hit-and-miss in terms of actually mitigating all of the foes in a spawn since it only taunts what it actually hits. I will strenuously argue against any conclusion that PA is overpowered in terms of its use against regular spawns of foes. As I said above, if PA becomes killable (and with an overall level of survivability low enough that that happens relatively easily against normal spawns), I believe that would represent an unwarranted nerf in an area where the set is *not* overpowered.
If PA is overpowered, it is only so when used on things like AVs/monsters/etc, and mostly when used by extremely high recharge builds - in other words, the edge cases. Therefore, if it is to be nerfed, I would *extremely* strongly prefer that it be nerfed in a way that actually targets the edge cases instead of the overall use. For example, if tech exists to do this, one possibility that comes to mind would be to render the power immune to recharge buffs (while still allowing it to benefit from enhancements/alpha). This would quite handily prevent it from being used to perma-tank an AV/etc without affecting its use against regular spawns/EBs. (I would personally like this to be accompanied by a reduction in duration/recharge to 50s/200s so that the timing synchs up better with regular spawn-to-spawn play - at that point, the absolute smallest downtime with spiritual core paragon would be ~30s, which is definitely still long enough for an AV to eat you.)
@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.
This is what it means to be a tank!
If Phantom Army has value as a "taunt control" but the damage output is problematic, could they just reduce their damage? Alternatively, have Dominators put out two phantoms instead of three, and call the power Phantom Duo?
Global name: @k26dp
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Originally Posted by Muon_Neutrino
If they had higher HP, it would depend heavily on exactly how survivable they would turn out to be. For me the entire point of rolling an illusion dom would be to use PA to tank PToD EBs (note - talking about solo, and EBs rather than AVs).
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| Basically, my take on the whole 'is PA overpowered' debate is that you have to not focus just on the edge cases and to recognize both its strengths *and* weaknesses relative to other control powers. |
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| People often seem to take it as a given that PA is overpowered, but I think that conclusion isn't necessarily always defensible, and I would like to challenge those who believe that to quantify why and in what areas they believe it to be overpowered. |
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| I think people get way too hung up on PA's invulnerability. PA is not killable, it is true. However, it's not like the baddies can kill the ice slick patch or the volcanic geyser vents either. |
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| I will strenuously argue against any conclusion that PA is overpowered in terms of its use against regular spawns of foes. |
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| If PA is overpowered, it is only so when used on things like AVs/monsters/etc, and mostly when used by extremely high recharge builds - in other words, the edge cases. |
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| Therefore, if it is to be nerfed, I would *extremely* strongly prefer that it be nerfed in a way that actually targets the edge cases instead of the overall use. |
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The reason stated in the chat was precisely "inmortal tanks", not damage.
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Originally Posted by RosaQuartz
If Phantom Army has value as a "taunt control" but the damage output is problematic, could they just reduce their damage? Alternatively, have Dominators put out two phantoms instead of three, and call the power Phantom Duo?
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If doms got illusion but phantom army was changed or replace would you still want to play it?
I asked this since during the coffee talked someone asked about doms getting Ill but phantom army seems to be the problem power for doms to have.
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