I agree with Rayvne2 100%. There's been several times when a group wiped then added me and it ended up being a much easier kill. Course my illusionist is only level 26, so not sure higher up. I also can solo the named in BB (except for the spider), which I know several other classes can't do. I love my illusionist most tho cause I feel like I have to think during combat and have different tools to deploy to manage things. (mez, pet targetting, stun/debuff, stifle/power drain). As a healer I just gotta think about who to target for heals and whether I can throw a damage spell in there now and then. As a tank I just focus on aggro management and damage. As a DPS, just about doing damage. It just seems more a class where you are rewarded for staying on your toes.
Yes, I like my illusionist for the control he has. I started him 9 months ago before any of the updates to the class, and while I wasnt high level then, I liked him more back then compared to now. For the LU13 it was a bonus to get the pet and such, but truthfully I rarly used him and chose to keep playing my illusionist controlling the encounter more and using my dots and damage spells to defeat the encounters. After LU16 I HAD to change my stratigies because what I was doing before that wouldn't work for most encounters, and I really didn't like it as much. Maybe I wasn't high enough to know the classes that well, but I didn't like having to use a pet to kill the encounter as much as I liked the control that we used to have. I'm not really fond of pets though. Truthfully its a lot easier to sit back and let the pet do the fighting than it was to control the fights before, but I can get boring sitting back sometimes. Currently I like my Illusionist, but I really don't love the class like I thought I would when I chose it.
So far, so good. I am enjoying my illusionist. Took some getting used to especially with the changes but I was "young" enough where it wasn't all that hard. Not sure how I'll feel in later levels (just in the 20s now) but having lots of fun.
Of all my alt's, my illusionist is the most fun to play. She's also the most boring to play. It all depends on the group I'm in. Raids, as has been said multiple times, make you feel totally useless. Likewise, in a good (safe) xp group you are holding them up more than helping them. They would be better off adding another dps or another healer. On the other hand, when you're trying to take down a tough named or really pushing the limits of what the group can do illusionists rock. Let me tell you a story. When I was ~lvl 46, we were killing the terrantula's in sinking sands. It was a good group and rather than play it safe and pull to the top of the dune, we were just mowing them down at the bottom, counting on taking them down and clearing an area fast enough that they wouldn't repop on us. The occasional adds or re-pops I would mezz until we finished killing the one we were on. We were really into a groove and doing well when we got an add. No problem, mezzed it. A second or two later another re-popped nearby and I got that one too. Then the ranger backed up a little too far and we ended up with a 3rd add. Ok, now I'm juggling mezz's to keep all 3 locked down while the rest of the group finished off the one we were on. Boom - Siphon pops right on top of me. I hit my subjugation buff and managed to mezz her too, but she had knocked my health down into the red. I switched back and re-mezzed the other ones, we killed the first one we pulled, then opted to yell and retreat. We then came back, killed Siphon, and resumed slaughtering spiders. When you get into situations like that and manage to pull it off, it makes playing an illusionist all worthwhile. Of course, the other side of the coin is the reason why the top ten characters with the most deaths are all illusionists...
as im about to go to bed and too tired to read all the responces, i oppologise but will give a simple answer: I love my illusionist, but would rather he was a bot so i could play something more reliably fun, and still have him there.
Love the class. But SoE has demonstrated confusion regarding what to do with us, and it is frustrating. I mean, mana flow is nerfed daily.
Love it! And I dont think our raid ability is that bad. Sure ALL of our utility spells are borked when it comes to raids and 60% of our spells dont work, but our DPS is still where it should be at T3 (I get around 300+ DPS consistently pre-KoS) and our Power Regen is most welcome as well as our group buffs. Our INT Buffs and power saving spells meant i was always in a mage DPS group in a raid.
yeh its a major detremental factor to the enjoyment of my illusionist... but we're not the only class that seems to have no direction
I very much enjoy playing my illusionist and it's even more so being a dark elven one (which is a fairly rare combo.) Raiding so far has been fine for me but I won't complain with a few more abilities, heheh.
My illusionist is a god at soloing. All I ever do with him is farm named heroics and gobble up master chests. He's level 33 now and just soloed a blue ^^^ named mob that killed my level 40 Shadowknight when she tried to solo it (and my SK is a great soloer). We rock in regular EXP groups, but you don't really ever need to group. EQ2 isn't designed such that mez is particularly important in a group setting, but it sure makes soloing A LOT easier. This is not to say that we are the best soloers. I can only take on named ^^^ heroics if they don't have a zillion hitpoints since our DPS sucks compared to other mages. I also have to stick to killing mobs whose race falls under the categories that we get to pick Master II class spells from (skeleton/gnoll/orc/ghost/etc.) I die a lot to mobs before I find a way to beat them, but the reward of soloing master chests is worth the exp debt. With a little creativity, illusionists are very powerful. You have to use your brain and a little strategy to get the most out of an illusionist. This freedom and variance is what makes the illusionist my favorite class to play. If you want to mindlessly hack and slash, you'd be better off playing a berzerker.
... i wish named dropped master in T7, masters now only drop randomly from regular mobs, never seen one from a none epic named. named do drop legendary, but its all easily farmed, and its not always going to drop. not compared to candy land like RoV and RE. even raid geared with all adept3's and a few masters, soloing aint as easy as it used to be. i've practically shelved my illusionist, as i rarely have a tank or pseudo tank to adventure with. so unless there are spaces in guild groups, i dont play him. focus on experiencing the new content with my SK, enjoying the server descoveries on quests along the way. i do miss the old days though... :'(
