Can any class compare to Illusionist?

[avangel]

Druid and Hunter seem to be the ones closest in power to Illusionist to me, but Illusionist just seems overpowered. With the later-game perks to strip enemies of immunity to weakness/frailty, mass-effect weakness/frailty cards, tons of AOE control, and huge pride values, I just can't get any other class to dish out even close to the same damage/control/defense that Illusion can.

Not to mention AOE entangle/stun/etc... I've seriously wiped out 6 groups in a row using the same card before.

Druid can almost do as well, but without the same class of defensive cards as illusionist has, just one unlucky round can end your run. If you can avoid being extremely unlucky, it does almost as well, but it just doesn't have quite the same murderous KILL EVERYTHING RITE NAO nuclear power as illusionist.

Hunter is solid. Love me some hunter.

But every other class I try is just squish-squish-dead near endgame. Am I doing something wrong, or am I just failing at harder-to-play classes because I played the 3 OP classes first?

[cadfan17]

Not all classes and races are completely equal. The most OP late game builds are ones with the following:

1. A perk to bypass Vulnerability immunity.
2. A high level spell that applies lots of chaotic vulnerable. Not multicast, chaotic.
3. A high level spell that does chaotic damage to as many targets as possible. Again, chaotic, not multicast.

You can get that with

1. Witches. Witches might be the most powerful because they can synergy multicast spells with chaotic vulnerable, and because they can use “mentor” to teach their best cards to a familiar or an effectively permanent summon. Then every round they can just do their best combo, no matter what they draw. They are so good at this that they don’t even need the perk to bypass vulnerable, because they can bring multiple specialized power cards and customize the combo each round.

2. Telekinetic wraiths.

3. Angels.

There are probably more but that’s what I remember.

[avangel]

cadfan17, yeah I get the chaotic part, but with Illusionist it doesn't matter that much. All damage is pride by the end of game, so ley line affinities have no impact on what you're doing, and you can burn down a 1000hp + enemy in a single turn without the chaotic stacking of vulnerability. Since the illusionist's most-useful pride card constantly does vulnerability->spawn pride card-> spawn vuln card -> spawn pride card, you can just cast that until you're out of AP, and with that card doing 400+ damage at end game, and hitting everything (pride isn't multicast, it just hits all enemies), you really don't need to cast it much.

No synergy is needed, and as an illusionist you're pretty much at 65% concealment with 100+ armor every turn anyway. Illusionist is STUPID OP. Witch is great at killing big, single targets, but can't hold a candle to illusionist defense. Illusionist doesn't care about ley lines, immunity, time of day/night, synergy or anything else. It's simply a super-tank that is also a super AOE damage dealer.

[[ER] Raven]

Whether the Illusionist is the strongest or strong or worthless is probably subjective.

I can think of several stronger combinations you could go with. From knights, conjurers, acolytes, pirates, druids to philosophers and mystics.

Pretty much a couple of hundred combinations can reach OP status near the Endgame as long as you play to their strength.

Then again every decent combination can complete Chosen around level 14-16 by at least completing Deimos Chasm.

The beauty of it, imo, is to beat the mode with exactly what you wanted to play. And figuring out the how is the fun part. Pride build is certainly fun.

Out of curiosity. Which game mode we are talking about and which Endgame?

I'd be happy to hear that the Pride build is good enough ie. for Scorched Earth / Jorunfjord Endgame.

But thinking on it sounds unlikely. At least on its own.

[avangel]

Raven, just to check, I loaded up the illusionist for scorched earth and blew through Deimos Chasm in like 30 seconds (more like 5 minutes, but it was fast with no prep beyond having beaten collector. I left all unassigned LP unassigned too.)

[avangel]

Chosen mode makes the build fall apart a bit. You're still not in any danger since all your multicast CC keeps the mobs from ever attacking, but it does take longer to build weakness on everything to the point that Pride can kill them.

That said, Collector, Pariah, Scorched Earth and Chosen Deimos Chasm all beaten in pretty quick succession with the same build--no changes to deck at all. I'll try the "hardmode" endgame later.

I stand by my point that Illusionist is the most-OP of all classes.

[Zeel Ara]

It's why I only play game modes with high minimum deck numbers. Almost all of the "too strong" builds drop down to just "Strong", while most of the rest stay as good as they were before. And it gives a lot more room for player expression, since you can't make it unerringly optimal anyway.

I can say that on the game modes I play, Illusionist is not at all the strongest build I've found. One of the many amazing things about the game is that you can make it exactly as challenging as you want, and you can do it in ways that do not punish all decks equally hard.

Right now I'm running Pariah with the schorched earth modifier, minimum deck size +20, and max four copies of cards. The significantly increased variance in draws makes it impossible to rely exclusively on guaranteed board-obliterating combos.

EDIT: As an added note, I absolutely adore the scorched earth modifier as an alternative to the doom clock. It's such a great idea.

[avangel]

Ratley, as you may have noticed, my illusionist deck was played against scorched earth. The deck size is +20, and the deck works great even with the draw variance. My point is that no monsters EVER get to make an attack or take any action against this deck, while I whittle them down with weaken to ~power 50 so in order to kill them with pride.

Again, I beat the game on CHOSEN with this deck, without ever taking a hit, with near max AP. I'm not exaggerating when I say this build is BROKEN.

[Zeel Ara]

My bad, I thought scorched earth didn't have a deck size modifier. Only ever been doing custom, so I clearly got some of them mixed up. I'm very impressed you could make it work with +20. I should take another look at it.

That said, what you describe can also be pulled off easily with freeze or bewitch. There are plenty of builds that will absolutely demolish endgame once you get them rolling. Whether or not something overkills with 500% or 800% seems largely irrelevant.

[avangel]

Ratley, my deck size is 65 just so that's set straight. The main CC engine of my deck consists of the following Illusionist cards:

Bewilderment: MC4, Bewitch 2, Vuln 22
Fireworks: MC5, Vuln 21, Stun 1, Dispel Conceal
Ethereal Vortex: MC6, vuln 18, 25 true damage, delayed freeze
Obscure Reality: MC5, Bewitch 1, Vuln 19
Silence: Stun 2, Freeze 2, Entangle 5
Hysteria: 13-26 dark to 2, Delayed Freeze
Downward Spiral: MC4, Greed 16, Weaken 26, Bewitch 1

As you can see, Illusionist gets literally EVERY CC method just within the Illusion cards. Add on top of that the perks to make Vulnerability and Weaken ignore immunity, and you suddenly have a huge group of bosses doing 1-1 damage and taking 150+ damage per hit. This deck doesn't require a brain to play, you just drag the cards out and watch everything die horribly. The ONLY way to screw it up is to accidentally break your control.

Even if you do break control, I have 8 cards in the deck that hand out max or near-max concealment, AND 4 of those increase all the attack resists by +7 per card. The other half give huge retribution buffs.

Some classes get freeze, some get stun, some get bewitch, but no one gets EVERYTHING like an illusionist. Illusionist single-target spells also tend to do damage from EVERY element type at once, or true damage. A few do dark or mystic, but they tend to have additional effects that make them worth using.

Illusionist gets all the good and none of the bad quite frankly.

[[ER] Raven]

Quick succession probably implies *putting* the character there, and not *starting* the character there? That is a totally different thing.

My question was more where you build this character, as in how many PP and LP they could access. How a character develop and what potential they can reach is affected by where they start.

Did you started in Chosen mode? Or ascended the character there from Conquest for example? Ok I see you started in Collector, which is about the same thing. And as easy to build anything to a killing machine. Try starting in Scorched Earth.

Other important parameter is what level were they? Deimos is for level 14-16 characters.

20 if a build is mediocre. But if you are let's say 32 with all the perks, sure, any build can steamroll there unscathed. Most builds can do it anyway. So that's not proof that the Illusionist is the strongest.

Did you try the Endgame in Jorunfjord?

All these are important parameters when determining a builds strength.

That said, I'll totally agree with Ratley. Illusionist for me is ok, but hardly one if the strong combos or most broken characters I tried. Not saying they aren't good.

But, If your signature combo is weaken, vulnerable & pride, you can get there in many more ways than the illusionist. ie. other classes and species can access Illusions and boost pride too. Some better than others.

Finally Pride is not the most reliable combo you can have. Befriend for example could work similarly and get rid a weakened enemy in a single casting. Other effects can kill enemies as easily and they won't scratch you.

I could argue that the Bard and the Swashbuckler are superior to Illusionist. Or even Nomad/Duelist. But that's beyond the point. You can break everyone eventually.

What matters is if all you enjoy is to play as the Illusionist. Then by all means no one can compare to them. Otherwise everyone can and can become as strong and way stronger in many many cases.

[avangel]

Raven, I see! So you balanced the game around the available LP and PP. This deck starts to work around level 8 with the proper start on illusionist. It gets better if you spend PP to get the +2 to MC for Illusionist, but the deck itself doesn't require very much at all to get rolling.

Also you are right. the Illusionist class isn't broken, it's the actual Illusion school that's broken. The Illusionist class just gets the extra MC for Illusion. My apologies for not being clear on that.

I have played a lot of other classes/combos/etc..., I've just never seen anything that was consistently as good as the Illusionist, or that could rock the entire game at level 8. I'm sure a level 32 swashbuckler could kick the crap out of a level 8 illusionist. It just seemed wrong for a level 8 illusionist to roll through Deimos on collector.

[[ER] Raven]

Swashbuckler is consistently good from level 1 in Chosen, so is Alchemist, Bard, Polymath, Inventor, Druid, Marshal, Knight Errant, and about 20+ more combinations I tried there so far.

Intimidate, Seduction, Leadership, Diplomacy, Invention, Alchemy can all be as good as Illusions, arguably better.

You can actually play whatever you like and be successful. But need to adjust your playstyle to what you play.

So the hard part is starting and finding what makes them kick as a character. Once you do you can pretty much complete Deimos Chasm with anyone. Jorunfjord not so much.

The hardest vanilla mode is Scorched Earth and the hardest Endgame is in Jorunfjord. So combine them together. That is hardly the hardest mode you can make.

But it's a good test though, to start an Illusionist build there and attempt Jorunfjord by level 20.

See if you complete it before level 20, then it's a pretty good build. That still doesn't mean it's the best ;)

[avangel]

Thanks Raven. It's refreshing to see a game balanced like AD&D 2nd Edition. I.E. no balancing.

You've made a great game, and I love it, so please don't take any of my feedback as a negative. My only complaint was that Illusion gets EVERYTHING CC, plus true damage, plus massive MC, plus greed, plus envy, plus dark, plus every element, plus .... You know? Illusionist does everything that everyone else can.

Once I saw how OP it was at low levels compared to say... a dryad druid or an angel knight, I thought the class would slow down. It just never did.

I guess I'll play the game for another 300 or so hours and see where my brain is at then.

[[ER] Raven]

I don't take it as negative. My idea of balance is well-known: everyone is unique, have their own strengths and weaknesses and can't be equal in terms of power.

So, the Illusionist being stronger than the x archetype or weaker, or more complex to play. etc. wouldn't be much of a problem as is what makes them different and probably my reason from picking them both eventually.

But the feeling that the Illusionist didn't had any weaknesses and bloomed way too fast or that they had everything, that is something that I don't want.

Perhaps the problem lies with some of this cards, or some specific perks.

In any case it's a good enough reason for me to have a second look in them and the cards you've been using and tweak them accordingly. ;)

[Devin]

Meanwhile I'm just sitting here as a shadow mage casting irresistible stuns all day.