Illusory Allies and Personae

[Snowang]

<p>Ok so i raid and grp all the time and very rarely solo and im having a hard time in finding the point in Allies, its too dangerous to use on raids and grps and solo well its pretty pants then too. Also dont see the point in blink much either. Does anyone actually know they purpose of allies and when its best to be used???</p><p>An other thing dont u get really peed off when our personae uses 3 conc slots so we cant use it a lot when raiding, i mean the necro and conj pets are both a lot more powerful than ours yet they only take one - part of been an illus is our personae and sometimes it feels we cant get the max out of been an illus because of the stupid conc sloot crap <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Hehehe rant over and if anyone has any suggestions about alllies let me know lol</p>

[Sector11]

Ummmm........ yeah. Our personae costs 3 concentration slots because our class is not designed to be a "pet required" class, as conjurors and necromancers are.  I only use the personae when I'm soloing - otherwise, the concentration slots are put to better use with haste & synergism when raiding or grouping. It's called a tradeoff. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> As for Illusory Allies, I've found it to be useful in very rare situations on raids when the tank has dropped and the healers need a few extra seconds to get him standing again. It doesn't happen very often, though - and I'll agree that it's a very dangerous spell outside of that scenario, as is Phase. I keep those spells on bars <u>without</u> hotkeys assigned, so I don't accidentally hit them. Blink is good when I've drawn aggro for whatever reason, and I need to drop my hate enough to let the off-tank pull the mob off of me easily.

[Iseabeil]

<p>Illusory allies are good when ye wanna show off for someone that aint seen it, as it does look sort funny with a whole extra party. Other then that I never touch it myself.</p><p>Personae is mainly a tool for illusionists to solo, I played illusionist back when EQ2 launched, and solo then was as a chanter was painfully slow and boring, and atleast on my server it was extremely difficult to get a group as a chanter. The various changes to combat in general and the addition of personae has made it much better, but its not meant as group or raid utility even tho it can be used as such.</p>

[s]

<p>I use Spellshield more than Illusory Allies, nuff said.</p><p>It isn't good for anything. Any epic mob whacks through it and kills me before it's even remotely close to expiring. Blink is nice when you get aggro, fast cast etc so pretty nice. Our pet as said was added for soloing purposes. You can still use it on raids but prepare for some scout aggro :p</p>

[Orass]

Soloing purpuses for the pet only? unless you are in a melee group on a raid giving out haste mage pet is the way to go, with a trouby my pet alone does over 400dps. 3x synergism does not add enough dps to account for not using the pet. plus if you have a troub your pet benefits from his group buffs. normally on a raid my conc slot buffs are: 3 - pet 1 - synergism(myself) 1 - haste

[Chay]

Like everything else its situational. Personae is great solo or in certain small groups. I use to use it when doing instances but that didn't last long. Thought I consider Allies, Blink, Intellectual Barrier, and Phase to be in need of fine tuning. Allies while a nice idea is poorly executed. I imagine it might work in some situation but I've not seen it. Blink works a little better and I've used it at times to buy to to recover from my own stupidity. Intellectual Barrier has saved a healer a couple time but I'd trade it for some good old fashion chain stunning (like we did in EQ). Phase... bleh. Again it can buy time but can also make things a lot worse.

[Historios]

I'll use allies occasionally when soloing, usually if I'm fighting big groups of mobs (like the scarabs in Poets or something) and AE'ing the group, I'll drop the allies when I pull too much aggro so I can back out and finish off the group with more AE's, but thats about it.  Phase I occasionally use on raids for specific mobs, like tacticians armor for instance, when he takes off after a healer I just phase him so the brig or swash that's tanking can get aggro back, but again, very rare usage.

[Controlor]

Really only times i have used illusory allies is when someone wanted to see it for fun..... thats more of a fun spell then an acutal USEFUL spell. Not commenting on personea cause its been said over and over. I HAVE found a USE for phase in raid situations but you have to be REALLY careful on using it. When fighting a named mob i am norm targeting the mob as its my normal thing to do. On the rare chance that an over zelous scout pulls agro i norm wait a sec to make sure the tank doesnt get the agro back instantly. If the tank cant i pop phase because its fast cast and it basically drops the scout to the bottom of the agro. After which teh mob instantly goes to whoever was 2nd on agro list WHICH would be the tank. This helps keep the scout alive. WARNING WARNING WARNING be CAREFUL when you do that. There is a chance you phase with a tank getting agro and that can leave to a whipe. Make sure that the tank is unable to get agro back or if the MT dies and the secondary tank cant get the agro it can possibly help. other than that i rarely use that spell also.

[shantu20]

<p>I normally cut my grp buffs for xtra single buffs, and testing pet vs buffs for the last week, doesnt help when its not m1.</p><p>power buff is to small and resists dont mean alot many times, on non named and sometimes not even nameds.</p><p>Our int in int/wis dont stack with wizzys maybe not other mages also, so i cut it when i am in a grp with wizzy.</p><p> Also never uses allies, but have the rare thing with doing Phase just got to be careful you dont do it on MT.</p><p>Ive only recently been thinking about dps because that wasnt the thing i rolled a illu for, but its all EQ2 is about these days, who can do the most dps...</p>

[Ardnahoy]

<p>I use my personae only when soloing or travelling around Norrath. In groups or in raids, I drop the pet for group buffs.</p><p>I use Blink a lot - soloing, grouped, and in raids. When soloing with a pet, I use it almost every pull if the encounter has multiple mobs. Versus single mobs, I use Phase instead. When grouped or when raiding, I can usually go all out DPS without a problem, but sometimes, especially with multi-mob encounters, I'll draw agro and will need to blink my way out of it.</p><p>I like that blink only removes <i>my</i> agro from the mob's hate list. So it can be used almost at will. The only problem with Blink is that there is a possibility of being ported to a spot where you get stuck in the geometry (which has happened to me on occasion), and there is a slight chance that you will get ported into the range of adds (although I've been very lucky to never have had this happen to me).</p><p>Phase screws up the hate list so I try not to use it while raiding. I sometimes use it in groups, but it is very situational. One place I use it a lot is in Nizara when the MT dies and I have the mobs mezzed while we recover. I often use it while soloing to make sure my pet will get agro when I send it to attack a mob that I've kept mezzed for a while, or versus a single mob so my pet can regain agro.</p><p>I never use illusiory allies. It has never once done anything remotely useful for me. It is nothing more than a fluff spell as far as I'm concerned.</p><p>I have tried to find a use for Daydream, but it just doesn't seem to do anything. I tried it several times on a raid when I was in a caster group to see if it would keep some of the casters alive a little bit longer, but it only seemed to anger the raid mobs instead. I tried it once while soloing but it didn't do anything. The only time I saw it do anything was when I casted it on a roamer while my group was killing a named. The roamer briefly became non-agro (the red border around its name went away).</p>

[Controlor]

Daydream is also a situational spell primarily used in soloing altho it is sometimes helpful in groups. It has no effect on epics (as that is the description of the spell). Basically to my understanding is that if your in combat and you see a roamer coming befor they agro you cast that on them. They will then have a reduction in agro radius to the similar degree that the EQ1 chanter agro range lowering spell works (cant remember the name which is bad on my part). BUT you must be in combat, and have a symbol. Again VERY situational decent while soloing if you are worried about a wandering add thats all. Since you must be in combat it wont effect agro radius of mobs who are close to that encounter and would normally add naturally (and this cause you body pull and pray you live OR you pet pull and run the other groups agro off).

[AziBam]

<cite>Controlor wrote:</cite><blockquote>Daydream is also a situational spell primarily used in soloing altho it is sometimes helpful in groups. It has no effect on epics (as that is the description of the spell). Basically to my understanding is that if your in combat and you see a roamer coming befor they agro you cast that on them. They will then have a reduction in agro radius to the similar degree that the EQ1 chanter agro range lowering spell works (cant remember the name which is bad on my part). BUT you must be in combat, and have a symbol. Again VERY situational decent while soloing if you are worried about a wandering add thats all. Since you must be in combat it wont effect agro radius of mobs who are close to that encounter and would normally add naturally (and this cause you body pull and pray you live OR you pet pull and run the other groups agro off). </blockquote>The requirement of being in combat only applies for the threat reduction portion.  I use this spell like a templar or inquisitor uses soothe. An example would be if we are trying to just get down to the forge at the bottom of SoS.  We have no reason to slog through all the green and blue mobs on the way so we invis as much as possible and use Daydream (or soothe) on mobs that see invis so we can sneak past them without pulling aggro.  It can also be used the way you described to keep a roamer from adding during combat as long as they don't path right on top of you.  Beware that it can be resisted and it might cause the target encounter (and maybe social aggro around it) to aggro.  I've had resists bounce harmlessly but also had them cause several encounters to jump us at once.  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />