Local_Man

Originally Posted by MentalMaden

Local Man, Local Man, Local Man!

Quick! someone needs an earth/rad guide!

Originally Posted by Prime_Nighthawk

I'm starting to think fireball is just as important as fireblast. I'm around 70% recharge from IO sets, and spectral wounds recharge is very fast. With containment and enervating field, fireball allows you to take out a large group of minions fast, which lets your PA concentrate fire on the higher hp targets more quickly. I'd say it's a toss up between the two. Fireblast is better for killing an AV of course.

Of course that's for a solo build.

I'm starting to work on my group focused build, and I'm considering taking hasten/SS/TP friend/TP instead of my normal hover/fly/hasten combo. It's an extra slot, but it lets me assemble a team after stealthing by enemies. I'll be able to get around super quick with SS, and teleporting over obstacles. Not sure if I want to go with group invis or superior.

In a group build, I wouldn't worry about taking a second attack. Consider taking an epic power pool like ice (hibernate and the shield).

Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master

i dont think you could solo an AV with this build because storm has no -regen powers and ill/storm isnt a very high dmg combo (the perma PA would keep the AV off of you, but thats about it)

Originally Posted by Muon_Neutrino

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.

Originally Posted by Robert_B

I don't think I explained myself very well so to make sure that I'm clear.

When I toss Seeds I am tossing RI and LR at the same time... but I find that if the seeds is resisted and my target happens to be the one that doesn't move...

In Honesty I don't know why I am having such issues against the Tsoo, they are orange (the spirits) and red (The Sorc).

Should I toss the Immob first with a RI or two then seeds? The Alpha more often then not can really kill a toon (since it might be 3-4 shots at one time).

Originally Posted by Asha'man

Thanks Local_Man. Your post on another thread about your Ill/TA is what prompted me to ask. My only experience with Ill is paired with /storm but the thought of Ill/TA piqued my curiosity. And seeing as i'm an altoholic, well, I can't resist. I haven't leveled a Trick Arrow toon past lvl 12 so I'm leaning towards pairing something with TA. But not sure what.

Originally Posted by Asha'man

As the title suggests, I'd like to know what your favorite archery based toon is. Is it a true TA/Arch defender? An Arch/* blaster? A */TA controller or a red side archer?

I have an Arch/Elec blaster at 30 or 31 but he doesn't excite me right now. I know if I just devote some time to him I'll hit the RoA goodness but whenever I'm at the selection screen I always end up playing some other toon.

I read on another thread about an Ill/TA controller and it re-raised my archery curiosity. What about Earth/TA? It sounds like it would take 3 years and a day to kill a fly but, is it fun? Is it true that Volcanic Gases can ignite the Oil Slick? That combination sounds like fun to me.


So what's your favorite archery combination? And why?

Originally Posted by Xanerith

Alright well I think I'll put my earth controller on hold for now and probably try either a fire/plant/ill with rad as my secondary, though I am not really sure which one to choose from.

Originally Posted by Torrynt

Baslisks isn't that bad. I can routinely get four of them for about 40 million total after buying the rares and crafting costs.

The purple set will set you back about 120mil or so for the confuse set.

Originally Posted by Torrynt

Would it be nice to allow some more options for procs or other slotting... to be honest I rarely have quicksand as a power past lvl 20 or so.

After you have a character slotted, how much -Def is really needed? There are so few times that I have anything less than a 95% chance to hit, it just doesn't seem worth it for a slow patch. I miss Ice's -Slow when I play an Earth troller.

Originally Posted by hewhorocks

(sorry for the necro post)

I'm looking at the issue from a set bonus perspective. When looking at it from an end-game build each power with limited set choices can really impact what can (and cant) be done in terms of those bonuses.

Quicksand is great out of the box and I might argue there is no need to enhance the slow portion of the power at all.

In high end 50 builds how much of a role is having fewer set options playing in terms of effectiveness for any specific task? This is a question that really may come to the fore with a blaster primary (fotm but still) that has a very popular power without slotting options.

Originally Posted by Erin Go Braugh

I just finished my Perma PA Ill/Rad, using Local Man's guide.

A word of caution - it's expensive. I had a bunch of LoTG 7.5s and piled up a billion for the build. It took about that much with the current market rate. I did find a way to cut about 150 million without a significant loss of power.

That said, the build flows easily and the powers work so well in concert with each other. Drop PA on a mob, AM then Hasten while they grab aggro, drop Specteral Terror, debuff the boss, Deceive the minions and keep a minion ot Lt targeted.

You do not need Perma PA, though. You really don't. My second build is SOs and procs. You can do just fine with that if you go on teams often. In fact, it's a build for TFs.

Originally Posted by Ben_Arizona

Illusion doesn't have fast-recharging AoE containment, but then it also doesn't have fast-recharging AoE damage that would take advantage of it. It has a fine single-target attack sequence, but that sequence does create containment (via Blind).

The same applies for the most part to Mind, which excels at single-target damage. Mind does have Terrify for which containment would be nice, but I wouldn't want to trade off two of Mind's many actually-useful powers for the ST and AoE immob that most sets seem to consider mandatory. The absence of those clunker powers is actually one of the reasons I like Illusion and Mind so much.