Blackfeather

Oh! My apologies - let me clarify a little bit. The Controller inherent is currently composed of two things: Containment and Overpower. My thread looks at Overpower, and tries to scale it up to higher magnitudes, giving the Controller a small chance to lock down tougher targets (hence Overwhelming Overpower). So essentially, I wanted to get your view on how powerful this might be - I didn't want this inherent to overshadow what Dominators are currently capable of (consistent, powerful controls capable of locking down AVs), since these two archetypes are the most control heavy, and it looks like you've got your fair share of experience on the latter. 😅

Also, hello @Uun! I've seen you talk about Controllers here and there on the forums (such as here), and it seems like you've a fairly wide breadth of knowledge about the archetypes in general. As such, I'd definitely be interested in hearing your thoughts about this addition to the Controller's inherent - do you see it as something useful/overtuned/undertuned? Would love to hear your thoughts on it!

The technical deep dive seems to have some information on the file structure - perhaps just link to that for people?

Shouldn't forget to ping @Tater Todd either - hello there! From what I've seen of you on the forums, it looks like you've got a fair amount of experience under your belt with Dominators and the like. I wanted to design Overwhelming Overpower to help the Controller lock down stronger targets, but didn't want to step on the toes of the Dominator in the process. I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether or not those goals were achieved, given your experience with the archetype (and any feedback you might have about the proposal itself of course)!

Going to ping @Erydanus about this proposed addition to the Controller's inherent - hello! I've noticed you had your fair share of experience with this archetype, so I'd definitely be interested in hearing your views on this suggestion (apologies in advance for the length and tangents in this thread if you do decide to do so!). Additionally, I noticed your post about Containment/Overpower a little while back; it was certainly interesting! Any critiques/views about Overwhelming Overpower? Is it something you'd be interested in seeing? Would love to hear your stance on this!

They certainly do get a lot of mileage out of their inherent...though out of curiosity, how would you change the inherent that Defenders currently have? The Support powersets are quite varied, which is very nice, but it does mean that finding something that provides a benefit across each of them in some way can be a little tough.

While Dominators are indeed the better choice for strong, consistent lockdown, especially if they manage to get their Inherent permanently up, I do think it's important to clarify a few things. Most status effects in the control powersets have a magnitude of 3 - this allows the Controller to lock down both Minions and Lieutenants with a single use of one of their powers due to the protection levels that these enemies have. It's only Boss ranking enemies that generally require a second application to make them stick. Another thing that's important to note: if you're teaming with more durable characters, it's generally good practice to let them take the first hits. Not only does this help reduce the amount of enemy attention gained against more fragile players, but it also helps to group enemies together, perfect for area-of-effect powers such as one's control powers. Frankly, I'm not sold on this reasoning. A Blaster is an offensive juggernaut, and can strike down swathes of enemies with their massive arsenal of firepower. That isn't justification enough to say that they should be resistant to large amounts of damage, just because they're good at dealing it. Instead, they're expected to use their offensive powers to actively mitigate threats in front of them - defeat enemies before they defeat them. Alternately, teaming with more durable characters does wonders for them. Similarly, the Controller has tools in their arsenal to pre-emptively mitigate enemies as well: lock them down before it happens to them. All status effect inducing powers that a Controller has are of magnitude 3 or higher (such as Mesmerize, which has a magnitude of 3.5). As said before, this is sufficient to lock down enemies of rank Lieutenant and below, with another application sufficient to lock down Bosses. A Dominator with perma-Domination has consistent Mag 6 status effect inducing powers - this takes work and a decent grasp of the IO set system to achieve, and allows the Dominator to instantly lock down even Bosses. As such, providing magnitude 6 controls for Controllers out of the box is frankly far too potent, so it's not something that I can get behind. Instantly allowing status effects to work, regardless of rank or protection levels is personally much stronger than my proposal intended to be. What about enemies that aren't supposed to be locked down, such as a Web-infused Lord Recluse? @Mystic_Cross has previously expressed their concern about the volatile power that my proposal might potentially have, and it's certainly something that I've been thinking about - this proposal sounds like said it'd exacerbate said concerns. Additionally: the aggro cap for a single character is 17 enemies. It's impossible for a single character to attract the attention of more enemies than this cap. While I do appreciate your desire to improve Controllers, and am glad that you've found merit in the suggestion that I've put forth, your proposals for improvements ought to stem from a solid foundation of the archetype's current capabilities, along with sound justifications for why they ought to be changed. (Also, I do think @FoulVileTerror may have some thoughts on this, especially considering that the use of multiple Controllers with a change to their inherent like this was one of their initial concerns in the first place with my proposal.)

Oh, and should probably ping @oedipus_tex about the above post as another response to the one you made a little while back about Archvillain fights - I feel like I didn't quite do an adequate job the first time around, so this is a bit of a do-over! 😅

Any thoughts on @oedipus_tex's thread brought up a little while back here?

Hey there! I see @Mystic_Cross has already answered this, but yes, Domination does indeed double the magnitude of status effect inducing powers, along with a host of other things. It's definitely quite the neat inherent ability! As for the second point: I kind of see AVs/GMs (outside of things such as the purposefully overpowered Hamidon/Lord Recluse) as less of a "monumental effort to be conquered" and more of a "capstone enemy flourish", kind of like Big Bads in D&D. True, they may have some powerful abilities and the like, but with enough firepower, even the strongest singular enemy can be brought to their knees quite easily. As such, most of the challenge from such Big Bads generally comes from the fact that they aren't alone, so said firepower can't be concentrated on them. A nice example of this that I like citing is Penelope Yin's task force - the ambushes involved there are a far larger danger than Clamour herself. For the Controller, especially on a team, they can't just content themselves with attempting to plug away at the Big Bad: there's other enemies to deal with that their powers are more effective against. Overwhelming Overpower is basically designed to give Controllers the ability to lock down AVs/GMs instead of having their primary powerset essentially invalidated against them (cycling Purple Triangles of "alright, I suppose I'll let you do this to me" notwithstanding). I see that as kind of jarring, given that there isn't really any other category of powers rendered ineffective to that level. Debuffs work, but are lessened, similar to powers that deal damage. And of course, buffs work just fine.

Obviously while they're two fairly different games, I do like the idea of Bounded Accuracy in D&D 5e. Does serve as an interesting contrast in how one might end up scaling one's power level by level, at the very least. A swarm of enemies, even lower level ones, can still be a sizable threat for even higher level characters - AC does not increase very much, along with saving throws - theoretically at least. Of course, said characters have plenty more ways to deal with them as well in turn, due to their higher level. I do believe you made a post on this sort of thing a little while back here to deal with this sort of high amounts of defence. It's certainly an interesting concept!

Thanks for the response, and hope you find some ideas of interest in it! And that's definitely pretty interesting - while I did address the way status effects work to some degree in the original post, I'm not entirely certain that it's an issue to the extent that they need an entire do-over. At the very least, it's not something I can personally conceive of without factoring in the potential work and side effects it might result in depending on its implementation. There's actually been quite a few posts on addressing the status effect system itself in this thread, such as from @ABlueThingy here, and @FoulVileTerror here. @skoryy also mentioned something about break bars and the like over here. Perhaps some of their thoughts might be of interest to you?

Perhaps this might interest you? It sounds like there's some potential changes being mulled around! Similarly, did anything in my other thread pique your interest about improving the Sleep status effect? That being said, outside of the Sleep status effect, what other qualms do you have about the others, out of curiosity? Stuns/Holds/Confuses/Fears all seem quite potent in their own right to varying degrees. I figure that for Controllers, being able to use them against AV/GMs via Overwhelming Overpower would be plenty enough to give them some utility there, even if they can't be used to perma-lock them down.

Actually, I think Mind Control's Terrify is an exception in that regard - compare it to Illusion Control's Spectral Terror or Darkness Control's Fearsome Stare.

Oddly enough, I see Sleeps vs. Archvillains as one of the few places where they are useful due to their lack of resistance to them - I imagine @oedipus_tex can attest to that against things such as the Ms. Liberty Task Force and whatnot. Coincidentally, I've also created a thread on improving the utility of the Sleep status effect, with a fair amount of different ideas and discussion along with it. And yeah, Overwhelming Overpower was designed with one or two Controllers on the team in mind. There's this tipping point with status effects against stronger enemies, where if you have enough of them, you can basically perma-lock enemies down, but then there's this huge gap in between, you know? Overwhelming Overpower was meant to breach that gap, providing the Controller the ability to lock down stronger opponents, but only some of the time, as a way of bridging that binary to some degree. While I'm not sure how a global magnitude stacking might be implemented, I did think up something pretty similar! Basically, one addition to this proposal was a way to increase the likelihood of the Overpower mechanic to trigger (it's currently a flat 20%), via stacking different status effects, thus raising the chance, even if they don't actually affect an enemy due to their protection: There's definitely a lot of routes to go about this!

Coincidentally, I actually envisioned Overwhelming Overpower as a logical extension of the magnitude system, with a character struggling to use their powers against a stronger foe: a battle of the wills of sorts (e.g. Infinity War's Titan fight where Mantis manages to put Thanos to sleep...the fact that AVs are vulnerable to said status effect notwithstanding), repeatedly attempting to assert their control over the enemy until they manage to give it their all. I wanted to try to aim for those moments of power with this mechanic, to be able to lock down stronger foes, at least for a little while - the Plant Controller finally being able to draw up enough vines to bind the Big Bad, or the Electric Controller tapping deep into their reserves to send an overwhelming surge of energy through their target, and so on. I like status effects due to how potent they potentially can be; they feel powerful in their own right, and more impactful than just debuffs and so on. So I wanted to try and keep to that spirit, while also ensuring that they couldn't be used to permanently tie down stronger opponents...hence the whole chance based nature of Overwhelming Overpower.

While I wouldn't be interested in a totally random archetype, having a 'Random' button for both archetype selection, and primary/secondary selection might be fun.

I believe something along those lines was mentioned a little while back - any thoughts on this implementation? Admittedly, I do kind of see the application of additional debuffs along with the actual status effect of a power to be secondary in purpose to the effect going off (I've talked about this here and here). I figure that the Controller already has their Support secondary to provide any buffs/debuffs they so desire, along with any status effects their primary might already supply. Hence the route I went with this suggestion in the first place: providing a means to lock down AVs/GMs, but not all the time, attempting to balance the whole binary nature of status effects by applying an element of chance to them.

While I'm on the fence about such a system being implemented globally, having that "break meter" would be pretty neat for some Sleep status effect powers, such as Salt Crystals and Flash Freeze! I talked about such changes to the Sleep status effect in an old thread of mine - while I wouldn't want to see this applied to every Sleep power, for the ones that'd make thematic sense for it to take a while to wake up from damage (e.g. trapped in fragile ice or salt), it'd be quite neat.

On the one hand, I do see where you're coming from - a durable character can do a lot to mitigate a fight's difficulty by drawing attention away from more fragile characters. On the other, it does sound like that's something that comes down to game balance. I'm sure the assumption here is that the Tanker can be overwhelmed with sufficient force, and can't draw that many enemies towards them. As such, other team members need to make sure that they're still not being attacked due to the aggro cap and so on - that could come in the form of damage or status effects. Additionally, any thoughts on @Sovera's stance on this whole matter of Controllers as a whole from the previous page? It sounds like it'd be right up your alley.

First off, thanks for your perspective, Ultimo! Hmm...your thoughts on this, @Darkneblade? It does sound like the proposal you put forth might be a bit limiting in that case, especially on teams. And it's true - part of a Controller's defences come from their ability to lock down the battlefield, similar to how a Blaster's defence comes from their offence. Of course, some of them do have support powers that can help them in that regard. I guess the main issue that comes up is that while the latter can still do their thing as usual against tougher opponents, the Controller can't really do that, outside of the opportunities where they're "allowed" (i.e. Purple Triangles). That's what Overwhelming Overpower's attempting to do - provide them with the ability to use their primary against said tougher targets.

Additionally, I think I should ping @blazingcoconut - hello there! I saw your post about Controllers a little while back. There was mention about AVs being difficult to lock down with how things are in it: my proposal attempts to rectify that somewhat. Would love to hear your thoughts on it, along with any critiques you might have! Does it go too far? Too little? Looking forward to any responses you might have! 😄

I'm somewhat reminded of the posts on Warframe's forums from time to time such as this one, and this one (or this Reddit one). Seems to mirror a lot of the different points brought up here, honestly (can pretty much CTRL+F "power fantasy" to see what I mean).

@Ultimo, I noticed you talking about Champions Online a little while back - it sounds like you've some experience in that regard. Given your knowledge about the game, and how this proposal sounds like something quite similar to how control works there, might you have any thoughts on how that might look when applied on AVs/GMs? Would definitely be interested in hearing about it (or sending other people in the know this way)!

I think Champions Online had some sort of mechanic along those lines? Can't say one way or another about how that'd work out in practice, never played that game before.