Everquest 2 - Overview Of The Illusionist Character Class In Everquest 2

2008-08-25

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Make reality confusing.

The Illusionist is a crowd control focused arcane caster limited to good aligned players. They use illusion magic to deceive their foes, controlling their actions and helping to impose order on the chaos of battle. Their specialty are mesmerization spells, which render an enemy incapable of action unless they’re attacked or take damage from some other source. This ability allows the group to take on much larger groups than they would be capable of otherwise, also making it easier for the tank to build threat and the damage dealers to bring on the pain that much faster. It also makes the healer’s job easier. Essentially, Illusionists make everything run more smoothly, and shine particularly in dungeons with multiple pulls.

Illusionists can do some damage, but they are far weaker at it than most other dedicated damage classes. They should only really be casting damage spells when all of their crowd control duties are accounted for - their job is to make the job of the group that much easier, not to try to race an assassin or wizard for most damage done. Illusionists are useful even against single targets, as they can fling their damage over time spells along with their stuns and silences to reduce their effectiveness. They also have a few buffs that they can use on their allies to make them stronger. Be warned: an Illusionist is not an easy class to play. You’ll be switching targets frequently, and need to be able to communicate well with the rest of the party to inform them of what you’re doing.

Illusionists have a pet - a copy of themselves that has some of their spellcasting abilities. Called a replica, these can add to the amount of damage that you do while allowing you to focus on your crowd control duties. The Aspect of Mind buff improves the power pool and arcane resistance for the whole group, which is very useful for most parties. Savante reduces the group’s total power consumption, greatly improving long term efficiency. The average illusionist can expect to have to keep track of two to four mesmerized creatures per fight, making sure that the durations don’t run out. Most of the enchanter’s stuns are quite useful, as they don’t cause any threat. They can be used to buy some time to re-mesmerize more creatures. The best Illusionists are consummate multi-taskers, keeping up a full compliment of mesmerizations while applying their damage over time spells and stuns all without running out of power.

This post is part of the series: Everquest 2 Character Class Guides

A collection of articles detailing the many classes in Everquest 2.