Blackfeather

Thanks for all the comments! It might take a little bit of work to go through each one of them, but it's great to see so many responses, it's much appreciated. Before I properly respond to them, I'll add another thing that I did find pretty interesting just recently, namely the comments found in the new Arsenal Control powerset feedback thread: A lot of the comments here were talking about a lack of consistently setting up Containment for Controllers due to lacking an AoE Immobilize - I think that's another good point towards considering getting rid of the mechanic in the first place; it constrains the development team's design of Control powersets. I'll add it in the top comment so that isn't missed!

Hmm...maybe they could become low endurance toggle powers? Like Lifegiving Spores from the Nature Affinity powerset. That'd let their recharge stay low without being able to stack multiples of them at once.

...and increase the Controller's damage scales to compensate. For people unfamiliar with the term, Containment is one of two inherent powers that Controllers have at their disposal, which lets them double the damage of some of their abilities against enemies that are Held, Immobilized, Slept, or Disoriented (the other gives them a chance to increase the magnitude of some of their status effect abilities by 1). This, however, leads to a couple of issues: Containment benefits some Control powersets more than others. Immobilises are generally the best way to capitalise on the double damage that Containment provides, and not all powersets have these (i.e. Mind and Illusion Control). Containment does nothing for enemies that are protected against status effects. To my knowledge, this is even tacitly acknowledged in-game - Controllers have this power automatically trigger against some incarnate AVs due to this protection (otherwise it'd never really go off). Containment doesn't double the damage of every power. Patch/pseudopet effects (e.g. Ice Slick and Enflame) are unaffected by Containment. As such, this is where my proposal comes in - removing Containment from Controllers should allow for an improvement in damage across the board, rather than boosting up some power sets more than others. As a bonus, it'd also mean not needing to pick any specific power just to trigger Containment, allowing for additional build flexibility. Thank you all for giving this a read! Hope it provides good food for thought. EDIT: Per my second post, I saw a lot of interesting comments in the new Issue 27, Page 7 Arsenal Control powerset feedback thread. A lot of them were talking about a lack of consistently setting up Containment for Controllers due to lacking an AoE Immobilize - I think that's another good point towards considering getting rid of the mechanic in the first place; it constrains the development team's design of Control powersets.

Oooh, this looks awesome! I've been finding myself drawn more towards controllers as of late - definitely will have to give this a whirl and see how that goes.

Added some extra details to the original post to include values for Illusion Control's AoE Hold for Dominators as well, now that they're going to be ported over.

The Blast T9s were definitely a useful reference point for me to readjust the AoE Holds - I bumped the recharge of them down to 180s (as opposed to making them lower) mostly because of them. Similarly, accuracy was boosted too (but less so than the nukes). I figured that the potentially longer duration of their status effects/debuffs would help to make up for their longer recharge times somewhat, not to mention their earlier access in comparison. I'll admit I don't know all that much about activation times, but if it means that powers can trigger earlier, that definitely sounds useful to change too!

Hello! Thought you might want to take a look at this proposal - give it a read if you'd like, would be happy to hear your thoughts on it.

Thank you, glad to hear you like the sound of this proposal! While the main focus here was more on making these powers do something against enemies with protection against status effects, it certainly does add to the damage capacity of Controllers (and to a lesser extent, Dominators) to some degree, something that the latter doesn't have very much in the way of.

Hey there, while this suggestion revamps AoE Holds across the board, it does include changes to Gravity Control as a result - think these might be something you'd like? Would recommend taking a look!

Thank you - happy to hear that the proposal's potentially an interesting one on your end!

Glad to hear you do like these changes! Some of the intent here definitely was to try and make them more desirable. There's absolutely plenty of ways to go about adding more effects to Hold effects, though it wasn't really something that I thought about at the time. Perhaps looking at D&D's Paralyzed effect would be a good place to start, which causes targets to take more damage, and is guaranteed to succumb to some kinds of effects (it also makes enemies easier to hit, but since that's already something that Earth Control does, it's probably not the best of ideas to step into its niche). But in lieu of that, each of the AoE Holds do at least have some kind of secondary effect now, meaning they'll both do more than just lock foes in place, while also still doing something even if they're used against enemies with protection against them, since unlike status effects, debuffs will always do at least something (with the exception of the effect given to Vines).

Interesting - does that mean that damage at the fringes will be less than directly in the centre for these powers? Additionally, I imagine Ion Judgement would have its damage decay over each jump in that case?

Hello! Per the explanation over here, the changes introduced to the AoE Holds shouldn't change anything enemy behaviour wise - they already draw aggro: To paraphrase, all AoE Holds are set to notify enemies of their use whether or not they deal damage, which can be seen by looking into CoD (check for the Notify Mobs: Always tag in Total Domination here for instance, but all other AoE Holds have the same behaviour). Similarly, other powers that don't deal damage can indeed notify enemies, such as Seeds of Confusion. Hope this clears some things up!

Thank you! I definitely tried to improve them in a way that didn't infringe on how they currently behaved and so on. Oddly enough, even powers that don't deal damage can notify enemies - Seeds of Confusion is the first one that comes to mind (which is what the Notify Mobs tag indicates in CoD; this can be tested by attempting to use Seeds from stealth and missing, causing foes to attack back), but even others like Salt Crystals, Earth Control's PBAoE Sleep alerts enemies of the user's presence. Mind Control has three exceptions to this, in Confuse, Mass Hypnosis and Mass Confusion, which are specifically flagged not to notify mobs. On the other hand, Total Domination, its AoE Hold, is indeed flagged to always notify mobs. This is the same for every AoE Hold power. Hope this clears some things up! Essentially, the AoE Holds never really had a form of stealth to begin with, even though they don't deal damage.

I never noticed that before, had to check that on CoD. That's definitely an interesting tid-bit! It seems like Superior Blistering Cold is the only one with a Mag 3 Hold attached to it, while Devastation and Lockdown are only Mag 2. However, Lockdown has a 2.5 PPM rate, while the others have 3. Definitely a little strange, but learn something new every day!