PunkRolex

Illusion/Rad is a good jack of all trades controller, but ironically one of the things it's not all that good at is CONTROL. It does do decent damage, but in a random, somewhat haphazard fashion. Knockback from the pets makes melee somewhat unappealing, too.

In my opinion you're going to be best off with Ice as a primary. You have two holds for added control, a strong secondary effect and good single target damage.

In the secondary, I'm discounting the melee-heavy sets because of knockback, which to me narrows the choices to Devices and Mental Manipulation.

Devices has some location-dependent powers that probably aren't going to be much help with Phantom Army. It has its own invisibility power, but Illusion's team invisibility is better anyway. Not much synergy there.

Mental Manipulation has a nice cone AoE to supplement Ice's weakness in that department. It also has a heal/end recovery power AND Psychic Shockwave. MM also has World of Confusion, which might synergize a little bit with the Illusionist's Deceive.

I made a thread about it before I saw this, but "The Land of Oz" is the niftiest arc I've run since I14 launched.

I'm not the author. I don't know the author. I'd just like to say that I ran a really, really well developed and thematic arc tonight called "The Land of Oz" and in my admittedly limited experience, it's an arc that deserves some recognition. I've been playing unrated, published arcs for about the last week and it was really wonderful to finally run across a set of missions with a story and a coherent theme like that.

Also, for what it's worth, the "Oz" books are in the public domain now.

Liberty used to have an awesome, awesome roleplayer named, as I recall, something like "Clockwork Overlord" who may have been the first player villain in the game.

He would post in the Liberty forum - back pre-I1, maybe I1 days, that he would be staging an assault on the players at such and such time in such and such zone, and then he did his level best to herd every single mob in the zone to the hospital, train or some other newbie sensitive area, the whole time warning the zone in broadcast chat and in character about what he was doing.

He staged raids in Bricks, Galaxy City, Kings, Steel Canyon, Perez and the Hollows. Probably Skyway too, but I don't remember that.

He was an Invuln Tank.

What would end up happening was that highbies would show up to slaughter his train of lowbie crushing death. We'd get a chance to show off our nukes and controller pets and so on, and there would be a crowd of newbies watching heroes truly, truly be heroes for them and it was amazing.

I'm sure he wound up banned for griefing but for my money that player added something amazing to the game and I try to make sure he's remembered whenever one of these threads comes up.

These are all ranged baddies. With my Regen Scrapper I'll even herd up three or four groups of them to get a nice mix of mob types and theoretically overlapping buffs.

Granted I'm testing solo but I'm not seeing much buffing, other than Empathy mobs using healing, or the aforementioned Sonics using the big bubble.

Rikti Guardians shield. I was hoping MA mobs would, too.

Sonic Resonance seems to result in mobs that permanently run its big shield. If I coast around on full invisibility I can see that all the mobs I gave that power set to just leave the big bubble on all the time.

I really like the idea of making a custom group that's harder to just steamroll but it doesn't look like it's possible to build that group with MA.

I've been playing around with MA more for my own amusement than any desire to publish a mission, but one thing I have been trying to accomplish is to increase the threat from minions and LTs by giving them buff and debuff sets. To date this has mostly been disappointing; having lots of mobs with FF and Sonic shields does not seem to make them actually use those powers. Dark and Rad debuffs do come into play, but these debuffs never reach the level of crippling against any of my three test characters (BS/Regen Scrapper, Fire/Rad Controller or Fire/Kin Corr).

I realize that at the end of the day a minion is still a minion, but I was really hoping the outcome of a group of buffing bad guys would be a lot more challenging than it seems to be.

I suppose these observations are anecdotal at best. I did not realize I needed to take notes or make exacting statements on performance. Still, I'm very annoyed.

I have direct experience with an Axe/Shield Brute up to level 31, but I've been playing a lot Hero-side with my more typical Defenders, Controllers and Blasters, and almost everyone I regularly team with has made (and in many cases have deleted) Shield scrappers and tanks.

My general observation is that Shield characters, lacking any buffs, just aren't very survivable. Get on a team without a defender, controller or corrupter, but with a shield toon, and that toon will spent a large amount of time at very low levels of health. I've been on teams where am equal level shield tank has asked a Fire Armor scrapper to take alphas. I know at least one veteran player who slotted his shield scrapper for recharge Rest, to make low levels tolerable.

On a large outdoor map with hordes of Council mobs (and therefore hordes of Defense debuffs), I had the opportunity to watch same-level Shields, Willpower and Fire armor scrappers in various aggro-taking situations. Willpower would take the alpha and lose a big chunk of hit points but heal them as the fight progressed. Fire would take an alpha and perhaps the second attack from a spawn before the player hit healing flames. By that point, enough of the mobs would be gone that fire's resists were enough to credibly deal with whatever was left. The shields scrapper would basically either die or spent every moment after that first attack at extremely low health. Granted that there were defense debuffs, but even gulping two purple inspirations didn't seem to be making much difference in his favor.

I've also observed a willpower brute two levels lower than my shield brute having much better defensive capabilities and survivability in almost every scenario where we were teamed; his green bar didn't move as much vs. Rikti, Warriors, Freaks or Arachnos while I spent large amounts of time at 40% or less health. There was literally no situation where my shields were a better proposition than whatever willpower was doing for him. It just didn't happen. If he was getting hurt, I seemed to be getting hurt a lot worse.

I'm not normally all that much of a melee player, but after hearing that shields was also a heavy end user, I chose to slot my attacks for at least 50% end reduction. If I don't run my taunt aura, I'm generally fine. With the aura running, the blue bar goes quickly. In my limited experience with melee toons, this seems to be a facet of every set with a taunt aura. I'm not sure that it's a reason to complain.

However, I do feel that Shields should at least be good at something, and with a substantial amount of play-time with or on Shields characters, I really have yet to see what that something is. Given buffs from a Defender, Controller or Corrupter, Shields is fine (fine, but not GODLY). Given enough Purple insps, or a tray of greens, and it is tolerable. But I really have yet to see any Shields character stand on its own feet without those things and perform as well as even a Fire Armor character.

I dislike PVP so strongly that I deleted a character that accidentally entered a PVP zone. That toon was made unclean.

Liberty Server was home to a really interesting roleplayer who called himself "Cog Warlord" in the days of I1/I2. The Cog Warlord tried very hard, within the restrictions of CoH, to be a real villain, long before CoV came out.
He played using fairly high level Tanker, and in his "Warlord" guise, he'd announce via broadcasts as well as on the Liberty Forum here, that he was going to further the plans of the Clockwork King by leading a charge of mobs to area X in zone Y.

In essence, he created zone events where he'd herd up dozens, maybe hundreds of mobs and lead them back to common player areas like the AP entrance to the Hollows. I can understand why someone might think he was griefing lowbies by doing that, but he DID repeatedly announce his intentions and give plenty of warning of his nefarious plans. The net result was that higher-level players would come out to protect everyone. Given the sheer size of the herds, lots of people had a chance to help and there was a very tangible sense that the bigger toons were protecting the smaller ones. Plus, we got to show off our high level powers.

I'm fairly certain that Cog Warlord eventually got banned for what he was doing, but I will remember him as the first player villain in the game.

The jump pack is worth $10 just so I don't have to go looking for a door to the Fort on #@$@ing Mercy Island any more. Or into the middle section of Cap au Diable.
And it makes Perez Park a lot easier to deal with on the Heroes side.
Not to mention jumping the long wall in Galaxy City or up and over the high overpass on the south end of Skyway or onto the road that runs along the east side of the map there...

All those are just little things that maybe 30 seconds or a minute to the amount of time I'm running around, but how many times have I done all of them?

Huge, huge Quality of Life improvement if you ask me.

I can't imagine building a /Dark Mastermind with the slotting the original poster suggests. The hit debuff in Twilight Grasp is a cherry on top of the utility of the heal. Slotting for it isn't going to make much of a difference. Try 2 Acc, 2 Recharge, 2 heal and maybe your bodyguards will even last a little longer.

Tar Patch needs 3 recharges. Again, the slow effect may be gravy; I'd rather have it available for every fight for the -Resist effect.

Shadowfall's Defense is pretty minimal. I'm not sure it's worth putting slots for Defense enhancements, either. I tried 3x defense and 3x damage resistance and got a lot more utility out of the latter.

You can proably find better things to do with slots that DefBuffs in Maneuvers. Maybe put them each of the pets and give them another slot for an Accuracy enhancement. Supremacy or no, you won't always be fighting yellow mobs.

Shouldn't Gang War have a couple more Recharges?
Why not put a slot of Recharge in the Bruiser instead of Disorient Duration?
Shouldn't Call Thugs have six slots at maximum?

I agree with many of the other posters. Slotting is really goofy on some of these things.

There are an awful lot of people who play City of Heroes/Villains just to beat stuff up. They're Scrappers and Brutes and sometimes Tanks. Blasters, if they don't know better.

The problem with the "beat stuff up" folks is that the don't understand many of the game mechanics in the first place. "Debuff? What?" is a really common thing to hear. I've taken five defenders and three controllers past level 25, and like the guide author, I can tell you that in a pickup group, maybe half your teammates will actually understand what the support classes actually do. That's an immutable law of CoX.

It comes up on the defender and controller boards from time to time, but it really is worthwhile for support players, including Empaths and Thermals, the he4lzor-types, to make binds explaining what your powers DO, once you're on a team. It's just too much to think that every is going to be aware of what the black hairball on all the bad guys' feet is actually doing.

I ran an Empathy Defender to 50. Honestly, it made me completely neurotic from level 1 to about 25. Every point of damage felt like it was my fault, and I literally did have people who would blame me for being damaged. That's what the "R U he4l0r"-people do to support types. At level 26 I finally started taking attacks and being very active in explaining that my powers were more for increasing the blue bar and making sure teammates can hit their target than about healing. It made the game a lot better. For me at least.

Honestly, it takes maybe 24 hours of play to get any AT to level 18. Some people can do 18 levels in 18 hours. I'd guess most people could do that in a week. If there's a powerset you don't understand, go spend a week in its shoes. I end up giving that lecture every single time I see someone say something as stupid as "We need a he4lur" while turning down a Dark Defender. Frankly, comments like that are why I hate to even team with people I don't know.

Longbow aren't terribly difficult for any of my toons, solo or in groups. I've done the climb to 40 twice at this point, so I know how they can be, and they really aren't that tough.

But they are BORING. Same costume and I think even the same height (5th and Council at least vary the height of their uniformed minions). And they're always in the same tech base map. Blah. I don't like the way the spawns seem to come out at all. Give me a level range and a group size and I bet I can tell you exactly what every spawn in a mission will have in it. Egads, get some more unit types in there! How about some "Hero in Training" type minions that use powers instead of guns? How about a melee unit or two?
I can kill them all day long on the highest difficulty setting. They aren't that tough to me. The stacked flamethrowers can be tough and level 40+ spec ops are obnoxious but for the rest all I can say is "Yawn."

Mostly, I think we just need something different to two in between the 14 sequential Longbow arcs that make up the "content" for Nerva-level toons. Mix in some more Freaks. Break out the DE and Rikti (well, more than we get now). Whatever.

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This was very helpful, before reading this I thought I was helping when I used my most powerful AOE as the first attack to weaken the entire mob. Heh!

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I love my blasters, but your most powerful AoE isn't going to drop big groups of even-con mobs fast enough for all of them NOT to at least get a shot or two off at you before a Tank gets into position to draw their aggro.

The script goes something like this:
1. Blaster lets off a fireball to start a fight. Maybe six mobs get wounded.
2. Six mobs return fire at the blaster as Tanks and Scraps run in front of him.
3. Blaster goes yellow (or worse) more or less immediately, and spends the rest of the fight getting attacked by every unengaged mob damaged by even a sliver of his fireball.
4. As a result, healer spends the whole fight using single target heals on a blaster, rather than the tanks and scraps who really need them.

If it makes you feel any better, Controllers with AoE mezzes and roots have the same problem.

Just to add/amplify a few things:

It's a VERY good idea to ask the defenders and controllers coming on your team if they have an abilities that need to be explained to the group. Sometimes it's surprising what other players don't know.

Designate someone to call "Run" and someone else to pick initial targets. Three Blasters sniping three different Tsoo Sorcerors aren't doing your group any favors. Along those lines, make sure your teammates know how to assist others (target a teammate and your powers hit his/her target). I'm regularly shocked when I do a TF and find blasters and support types who don't know about that.

Sometimes a leader is a leader in and out of combat. Sometimes the leader is out-of-combat only. In any case, it's a good idea to have someone calling tactics. Tactics are frequently the difference between a very easy and a very, very hard mission.

Ideas for Discussion:
Use cover for most of your team while pulling vs. general participation in the initial moments of a fight
Lead with Pull vs. Rush vs. AoE Blast/Mez
Having Blasters hold back AoEs, or having blasters lead with them (usually that's dumb but it makes clumps for greens die quickly).
Getting everyone to follow a melee-type (if a tank or scrapper accidently wanders into a fight, he's more likely to survive it)
Staying close for buffs/heals vs. spreading out to protect from AoEs and being surrounded
Combat rezzing or not?
Recall friend when teammates are badly hurt or not?
Are there going to be an (de)buff/heal priorities?

Obviously not all of those things will come up.

It's also important to establish some kind of order WRT to training/selling/visiting contacts. I try to set break times and make them clear: Every second or third mission I give my teammates 10 minutes to do those things. I hate being in a group with a 10 minute break between EACH mission because one guy needs to sell now and another guy needs to train later and someone else...

As a combat leader it's also your responsibility to notice when endurance breaks are needed. This especially important for leaders with END efficient builds! Nothing worse than having the guy in charge dart ahead while the rest of the team staggers behind, running on fumes. Happens WAY too often.