Blackfeather
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Posts posted by Blackfeather
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22 minutes ago, Zepp said:
I was thinking about this, and ways to make it less random. My thought was that with stackable controls this is less of an issue (so if you get a secondary with hold, fear, or disorient that you can use to stack). I also note that all control sets are designed around a set of controls (with the exception of Illusion, which is completely dependent on aggro management tools - but those don't count towards containment damage, grumble, grumble). Therefore, by moving towards stacking without requiring the same type of control might be useful.
My thought was that if it was possible to add a 30s -1mag resistance to all controls, then you could use your entire toolkit to wear down an AV/GM to the point where you could keep it semi-contained without being overpowered. Kinda like how an Illusion/Storm troller can keep some GMs semi-contained through KDs.
Coincidentally, I mentioned something about that in the original post! Any of them tickle your fancy?
Quote+Chance to Overpower
Another idea that's come to mind is letting the actual chance for the Overpower effect occur more frequently depending on a stacking bonus, similar to how Stalkers can build higher chances for critical hits. Potential ideas for 'stacks' (of let's say 5%) could be:
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Stacking percentage based on how many status effects on an enemy are applied (even if they aren't affecting them)
- E.g. Controller attempts to Hold + Sleep + Confuse an AV, chance to Overpower is now 20% + (5% + 5% + 5%) = 35% chance
- Stacking percentage based on how many recent control powers have been used (time pending)
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Stacking percentage based on previous controls that weren't an Overpower (increase chance if it hasn't happened lately)
- E.g. Controller's previous two controls were regular ones, chance to Overpower is now 20% + (5% + 5%) = 30% chance
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Increased chance based on amount of magnitude left until it exceeds protection
- (Current Magnitude Inflicted / Enemy Magnitude Protection) * 100 = additional chance to Overpower
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E.g. Controller Holds AV for Mag 3, resulting in a 26% chance to Overpower
- (3 / 50) * 100 = 6% additional chance
I think there was also a mention of a "wearing down magnitude resistance" a little while back from @FoulVileTerror in this post. Is that close to what you're describing?
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Stacking percentage based on how many status effects on an enemy are applied (even if they aren't affecting them)
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I should probably ping @Sovera about this proposal too - I've seen you around the forums talking about the role of a Controller at the higher levels. While that's definitely worth an entire discussion in of itself, in the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts/critiques on this! I think being able to lock down stronger targets would do a fair amount for the archetype.
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Just now, Mezmera said:
Well it's quite obvious just based on the design of each AT and how they "mirror" each other that: Brutes are the opposite to Tanks, Stalkers to Scrappers, and Corruptors to Defenders.
That leaves Controllers and Blasters to choose their dance partners from Masterminds and Dominators. They can say whatever wishy washy altruistic intent of the AT's left how they should "mirror" each other. But Blasters sure don't play like Masterminds that's for sure and Dominator's sure seem to so....
Well, that's the thing. We've already talked about how the archetypes ended up gameplay wise - nobody's refuting that. What we're talking about was how they were originally envisioned, even if they didn't work out that way.
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4 hours ago, Mezmera said:
This game is all about math and mechanics. It doesn't take Sherlock levels of deduction to discern closely resembling AT's. But you can role play however you like.
Sure, some archetypes may play more similarly to each other than others. But I don't really see how that detracts from the whole "how things were originally envisioned" vs. "how it actually turned out" thing. "Villainous counterpart" != "plays similarly to the other", which seems to be the line of reasoning that you're putting forth.
I think there's been a bit of a misunderstanding here? @Bill Z Bubba and I have been talking about the original design intent of the Redside archetypes, and how each one works as a thematic villainous/selfish mirror of the Blueside ones, but have both acknowledged that in practice, the villainous archetypes end up playing in different ways.
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4 minutes ago, Mezmera said:
You should reread what I said. How can these conclusions be made when Stalkers/Scrappers are near identical, so just to be different we're gonna call them blasters when they share not one thing in their builds but for maybe Total Focus...?
Brutes and Tanks are near identical too and always have been, especially more so now with the damage upgrade to Tanks.
That leaves Masterminds who have a buff/debuff secondary (kind of like a controller) and Dominators who share a lot of assaults with Blasters where in place of nukes you get hard aoe control. The nuke is pretty much insta-kill all and a perma-dom with the aoe hold is insta-hold all. Controllers don't control the battlefield like a Dominator, they're more Mastermind-ish in nature.
As said previously: look at them less from a mechanical perspective, and more from an overarching villainous/heroic counterpart perspective. Theme wise, it checks out, even if in practice it doesn't work that way.
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1 minute ago, Mezmera said:
So an Illusion/Kinetics controller is different to a Thug/Kinetics Mastermind how? In no way does a Mastermind control the aggro like a Tank with a taunt does. They passively control some aggro and buff the group just like a controller does.
Tanks and Brutes are almost identical in their builds with Brutes capping stuff slightly lower than a tank. Harder to cap a Brute than a Tank but Brutes far exceed Tanks in damage so people used them as the comparison for their advocating for the damage increase.
There's no way you can equate a Stalker with a whole defensive set to a Blaster. Stalkers are the better ST damage dealers to the Scrappers, like everything else is the same between the two aside from AS and Hide.
Defenders equaling Corruptors everyone gets.
That leaves Dominators and Blasters at the dance party with no partner who are like F it lets partner up see how it goes.
As said previously, in practice, it doesn't quite work out that way, but the thematic intent behind the archetypes is pretty clear when seen from a broader perspective. Designed in one way, used another: it happens.
Masterminds were originally envisioned as the type of character that stayed back and lets their minions do the dirty work for them - no leaping into the fray for them; what are they, Tankers, willing to get hurt for the sake of others?
Brutes are basically Scrappers up to eleven - charge into a fight, and even better, get angrier/stronger as time goes on for doing that.
I see Stalkers as inverse Blasters: instead of taking down the small fry first and then attacking the tougher targets, you delete the tougher targets first, and then clean up. Stealth and finesse as compared to explosive power.
Controllers not only lock down the battlefield, but help their team members in the process - a Dominator has no need for that, and thus supplements their controls with some offence.
And of course, Defenders/Corruptors are fairly clear cut.
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1 minute ago, Mezmera said:
Well doms are more cousins to blasters than to controllers by default of having available in their assault about all of the best attacks a blaster gets in their kit aside from the nukes.
Yeah Tanks are the cheesecake characters on this game and everyone has one. They're an easy to build unkillable bag of hp that should be keeping the team upright. Some just wanted to damage like a Brute so they got to have their cake and eat it too.
If you look at the design of Hero to Villain it pretty much goes:
Tank = Brute
Scrapper = Stalker
Defender = Corruptor
Controller = Mastermind
Blaster = Dominator
Peacebringer = Sentinel (gimped version) 😜
I'm pretty sure the intent was more something like:
- Tanker <take hits : get others to take hits> Mastermind
- Scrapper <filling similar niches, but more aggressively> Brute
- Blaster <all over the place damage : focused, tactical damage> Stalker
- Controller <lock down group, support : lock down group, attack> Dominator
- Defender <support, deal damage : deal damage, support> Corruptor
Of course, in practice, I'm not so sure it worked out that way. But at least theme wise, I can see it.
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On 10/5/2020 at 3:44 AM, FoulVileTerror said:
So, I just went in-game and mucked about with some enemies hitting me with Control Powers while watching the Status Effect Protection Combat Attributes. Damn. Okay. Seems that the level of granularity needed for my latest suggestion doesn't really exist in the mechanics right now.
I wonder . . . is there a way to code the game to allow for applying a Control Magnitude equal to 1/2 of the Target's current total Protection Magnitude? If we could pull that off, that could be an effective way to add something meaningful without being potentially overpowered.
While I'm not sure about how things work behind the scenes, an alteration to the Overwhelming Overpower table could get things pretty close to this, I think:
Additional Magnitude
Chance per Overpower Chance per Power Usage Floating Text +1 = affect a Boss 50% 10% = 10 in 100 uses Overpower +4 = affect an Elite Boss 25% 5% = 5 in 100 uses Overpower! +25 = two-shot an Archvillain 20% 4% = 4 in 100 uses Overpower!! +54 = affect an Archvillain 5% 1% = 1 in 100 uses Overpower!!! That could get the Controller halfway there, and in very rare instances, one-shot an AV. GMs aren't outright affected, but then again, they're meant to be handled in groups anyway, so it's no big deal. It also provides the Controller with the potential to stack enough magnitude to lock down an AV with a few lesser Overpowers on their side too, depending on how the cards end up falling.
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1 minute ago, CaptainLupis said:
I don't see how it would make controllers necessary, teams without them do just fine at taking out hard enemies as it is, and unless those enemies are getting buffed this wouldn't change that.
With regards the second point bolded, I'll be honest, I don't want tough enemies to be perma held, or even for longish periods of time, as the fights then just become boring. Which is why I prefer an idea where there is a tangible effect that helps the player/team but still allows the enemy to do... something. For example if you knock a nuke out of their rotation they can still use the next power that is off cooldown, but it would be as if they had used it, so the cooldown timer starts and they need to wait for it to recharge again, essentially doubling the amount of time between nukes. Or if you, for example, were able to knock Marauder's unstoppable, or Siege's heal out (or a bloody paragon protector's MoG, although with luck those should already be held) that would make taking them down much more straightforward, but it's not as if they can't be defeated without those things happening.
But as I said I don't play the ATs enough to know if things like that would actually make them more useful/desireable to play, or team with. I think it would, but don't really know.
Ah, let me clarify what I meant by that. Basically, being able to disable the powers of AVs/GMs sounds like either something that's:
- Very useful - a must have depending on the kinds of powers it disables
- Not useful - essentially little to no impact on a fight
Depending on how that sort of thing is implemented, it sounds like it'd be hard to strike the balance between those two things to reach "nice to have territory" in other words.
As for playing in City of Statues: what do you think of the chances that are currently presented in the links I provided previously? I definitely didn't want AVs/GMs to be perma-held with this current system: my main focus was to let Controllers use their primaries against them to some effect. In other words, partially controlling them (I figure that in groups, they can already perma-lock them anyhow).
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1 minute ago, oedipus_tex said:
The issue with an Accuracy penalty is that it only really penalizes un-IOed builds. Global Accuracy bonuses tends to make these powers reliable. So, giving the holds decent Accuracy would mostly just make the powers better before slotting.
Not actually proposing this, but more wondering why AoE Holds have an accuracy penalty and nuke powers don't:
- Takes a long time to recharge
- Designed to clear out smaller enemies
- Better pray if you end up missing
They're basically the same thing.
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15 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:
I think it's worth bringing up that when Dominators were created, nukes were terrible, so not getting one as actually a plus, it meant you got a slot for a more useful power. Now however nukes are clearing mobs so fast that it makes some of the Dominator controls seem silly. Their AoE Hold has a 240 second recharge. Most nukes recharge in 145 seconds. If you're on a team with 2 Blasters, 1 Defender and 1 Corruptor there will be 4 nukes in rotation. Plus whatever Judgments are going off. No wonder it feels like controls are so much less relevant now. 🙂
Something I do find odd: why are nukes so much more accurate compared to AoE Holds? They serve basically the same purpose: clear out trash mobs.
And on a different tangent...I wonder how bad nukes would end up being if they had the same accuracy penalty as AoE Holds currently do. 😈
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On 10/4/2020 at 8:07 PM, CaptainLupis said:
I haven't read through the entire thread, but I did read the first page and it sounds interesting. But I'll be honest, I don't play controllers enough to say how much of an impact it would really have in real world play. I suspect in most teams the AV would be dead before you actually got a chance to hold it, but I could be way off. I do have a few controllers, but only a couple at 50 and they rarely get played. My favourite was my Illusion/storm back on live, so that wasn't even dependant on mezzes. Dominators I just can't get on with at all. All of which boils down to my input is not worth a whole lot I'm afraid.
I've previously talked about the likelihood of Overwhelming Overpower landing over here in the post I made to @Noyjitat here. The important part is as follows:
QuoteController vs. Dominator: AV Edition
To compare, let me run through a hypothetical example between a Dominator with perma-Domination and a Controller with Overwhelming Overpower against an AV. With a Magnitude 6 Hold, a Dominator would need 9 uses of their power to lock the AV down (6 * 9 = 54) - once they have done so, they are permanently held so long as the Dominator keeps this up, no ifs or buts.
In comparison, with 9 applications of their Hold power, the likelihood of this Controller to have triggered an Overpower strong enough to hold an AV is 37% (19/20 ^ 9 gives us a 63% chance of no such Overpower occurring). Additionally, even if they manage to do so, the chance of doing so again in the duration while the AV is still held is slim - there is less staying power in their abilities.
In other words, the Dominator given time, is certain to lock down even the strongest foes and keep them that way. The Controller has the potential to lock down stronger enemies, sometimes faster or slower, but never permanently.
What do you think of those numbers provided? Are they too low? Too high? Would be glad to hear your thoughts on them!
And that's quite alright - any feedback is quite welcome, even from those not all that familiar with Controllers or Dominators!
On 10/4/2020 at 8:07 PM, CaptainLupis said:I quite liked the other idea I think someone posted of stacking enough mag to disable their biggest hitting powers. Following on from that having a control that hits, but doesn't affect the AV/GM diretly, could knock a random power out of its rotation? That sounds like it would be useful. It might actually be OP though if a lot of controls are being spammed so would probably have to be a % chance of it doing it. With, admittedly absolutely no reasoning behind it, around 20 to 33% sounds about right. Or perhaps have the chance based upon the mag of the control and the duration of the power somehow? I'd also make it an ability only available to trollers and doms, not to just anyone that has an epic hold.
This is definitely an interesting thought - that being said, I do have some questions about that kind of mechanic in practice:
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By locking this to specific archetypes, could this potentially cause Controllers/Dominators to be seen as 'necessary' to bring in specific fights?
- I enjoy how CoH allows for any team composition to work on the fly
- It feels like an either/or thing, with disabling certain powers being either too powerful (stopping a team wipe, say), or without much impact (not potent enough to matter), you know?
I wanted to boost the level of control that Controllers have up to the level of Dominators with the introduction of Overwhelming Overpower, but with a different spin: capable of locking down powerful enemies, but less reliably so.
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By locking this to specific archetypes, could this potentially cause Controllers/Dominators to be seen as 'necessary' to bring in specific fights?
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On 10/4/2020 at 2:31 PM, Mystic_Cross said:
*Edited for clarity* You'll be hitting the +1-4 range most often (by design), which would be *virtually* no difference than current, especially vs an AV and would be just as underpowered as current. Occasionally you may get a +54 or +100 mag but it will be random enough that it will be as likely to land on a minion at the start of a mission as the AV at the end (unless you're doing missions full of nothing but AV/GMs). Further, the longer an AV lasts, the greater the chance to get that super-mag during the fight, and also a greater chance to get a "streak" during the fight. This is all before buffing our chances to land a super-mag with each control we use. Add that buffing, along with the super-mags and it substantially increases the overall ability to become over-powered. In that scenario, once the AV is held the first time, they will become a statue for the remainder because the super-mag is enough to overcome the Purple Patch and you will be constantly buffing your %chance through using controls while they're held.
Apologies for the late response - had some things that needed doing on my end!
Just breaking this down a little, since there's a few things here, I think:
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I view the current Overpower mechanic as working as intended against regular mobs - bosses can occasionally be locked down in the first hit, but not reliably so
- As such, I scale this mechanic upwards to the point of affecting AVs/GMs, but at lower chances
- The likelihood of Overwhelming Overpower working against AVs/GMs is higher due to the fact that they have a high enough health pool/resistance to not be mowed down in the first place - that's intentional, and is meant to be the equivalent of a Dominator stacking their more powerful controls to lock them down over time
- If you'd like, I'd be quite happy to try and run the numbers for any specific scenarios about the likelihood of an Overwhelming Overpower triggering - currently, I'm of the view that it currently strikes a nice middle ground
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I assume you're referring to the +Chance to Overpower suggestion in your last part? I haven't yet fleshed out how it'd exactly workmyself: that was more in response to users talking about this mechanic's lack of reliability
- To clarify, the chance table remains the same, only the likelihood of an Overpower goes up (i.e. the 20% chance of it increasing)
- Additionally, what did you think about the suggestion about having a Smoother Overpower Magnitude Curve? Depending on its implementation, perhaps this might address your qualms about the level of variability involved with its current implementation?
On 10/4/2020 at 2:31 PM, Mystic_Cross said:I'm of the mind that Controllers should have at least equal, if not slightly superior controls to (perma) Dominators. Controllers can get the damage of their Primary up to near Dom levels, but they will never deal more damage, even with buffs, because Dominators have both a higher base and more ways to deal damage... and can still be buffed externally. Controllers have to "work" to get near the same damage output as Doms, why shouldn't Doms need to "work" (aka get permadom) to get to the Control level of Controllers? Controllers get buff/debuff, Doms get mez protection and self-buffs (BuildUp, PowerUp etc). Doms trade their survivability for more damage, Controllers have to trade both their damage AND their control for... what exactly? being a "force multiplier"? The damage loss is understandable for that reason, but not both IMHO.
Personally speaking, perma-Dominators deserve the level of power that they have, and I see them as the be-all-and-end-all of "powerful, consistent lockdown", so I wanted the Controller to strike the balance between non-perma and perma-Dominators myself. I didn't want Controllers to overshadow them, which is something that I say here in my response to @Noyjitat. They do, after all, both have control powers as their primary.
That being said, I also wanted to make sure that the Controller was rewarded in some way for slotting up their control powers - that's where the chance based mechanics of Overwhelming Overpower come in:
- By slotting them up for recharge, they get more rolls of the dice = more chances that Overwhelming Overpower activates
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By slotting them for duration, their rolls may be potentially safer (I can bring up the odds of one happening again while an AV is controlled on request!)
- Alternately, it could interact in some way with the +Chance to Overpower suggestion, such as building chance with magnitude stacks
Damage is all well and good, but I don't really see it as that much of a priority, especially for Controllers, which are more team focused (which may or may not include upping damage in different ways).
Whether that balance is struck, well...that's what this discussion is about! 😄
On 10/4/2020 at 2:31 PM, Mystic_Cross said:Yes, it could directly scale by having a %chance for a much higher mag like that. If we figure a 20% chance is equal to one in five casts, and 5 casts from a Permadom would equal (m6*5=mag30) then a 20% chance for a Mag-15 Overpower would more or less equal that over time (m15+(m3*5)=mag30). More often than not this alone would probably make us equal, but it could potentially still leave us at half their strength some of the time, or at double their strength others, depending on RNG. In essence, it would leave us no better than we currently are, at minimum, and far superior to a permadom at max.
Whoops - I made a bit of a math gaffe here, apologies. Assuming 5 control powers, with one hit of Overpower, a Controller would have a total magnitude of 16 altogether (3 x 4 + 4 = 12 + 4 = 16). A perma-Dominator with 5 control powers has a magnitude of 30 (6 x 5). If we wanted to directly scale that, any power with Overpower would then have a magnitude of 18 (30 - 12).
Personally, this direct scaling isn't something I'm the biggest fan of: Overwhelming Overpower was created directly in response to Controllers finding their primary kind of shafted in AV/GM fights - I wanted to keep their controls potent, but unreliable, especially as the sole status-effect inflictor of the team (with the assumption that multiple sources of lockdown = the big bad is locked down anyway and for longer periods regardless of this mechanic).
On 10/4/2020 at 2:31 PM, Mystic_Cross said:I personally think it would be a bit more viable, and balanced, to increase the Controllers base magnitude by +1, giving them an initially stronger base control value in comparison to Doms. After that, we could then use Overpower to "shore up" the remaining difference between "just" Dom and "perma" Dom using a much smaller (and more controllable) modifier. Doing it this way would close the gap between the highest and lowest performance metrics in the first example, while substantially increasing the reliability of ending up with a comparable +Mag. Now we could use the 20% chance for a +6 mag Overpower you stated above (instead of that huge +15 mag), and come out with (m6 + (m4*5)= m26). This puts a Controller at Mag 26 vs a Permadoms Mag 30 with 5 casts, on average. There will still be dips and spikes, which could be as low as mag 20 (no overpowers, but still an improvement vs the current low of mag 15) and as high as mag 32 with a very rare possibility of hitting mag 38. This would put us on nearly equal footing with Doms in relation to being able to punch through an AVs hold protection.
This could be tweaked further by offering a buff/debuff per teammate to the +%chance/-mag. Personally, I'd add a +15% duration and +20% Overpower-chance buff per teammate along with a subsequent -1 mag reduction per teammate (all capping at 3 allies max). Ultimately this would equate to an 80% chance for mag 7 hold (base mag 4 + mag 3 overpower) and a 45% control duration buff, on a team of 4 or more players. In this scenario, we'd be capable of +1 mag more than a permadom, per hold, but only 80% of the time... and we'd have a slightly better control duration to compensate that difference.
All together I believe this would make a Controller nearly as reliably powerful as a permadom Dominator on average. It would also be much easier to implement than a completely custom solution since we already have all the necessary in-game powers with these functions to do so. For the most part I think it would only entail changing some values to accomplish.
Funnily enough, I view the increasing the magnitude of controls to 4 for Controllers as too powerful! Dominators are only able to reliably one-shot bosses due to the work they put into keeping their mechanic permanent - I wanted to keep the lack of reliability as something tied to the Controller's inherent: with how it currently functions.
It does seem like we've got some different views on how powerful controls ought to be: I see perma-Dominators as the last word in consistent, powerful lockdown (to my knowledge, perma-Doms can indeed lock down AVs currently - I wanted to bring Controllers up to that level, but didn't want to take away with what other things the Dominator could do, such as consistently Hold bosses).
On 10/4/2020 at 2:31 PM, Mystic_Cross said:I think you more or less succeeded in shifting the balance between those two things, but overshot the marks a bit too far and landed in the realms of 'too powerful, too unreliable' and 'too weak, too reliable'. I may have to go back and take a 2nd (or 3rd) look though. Charts and tables were never my strong suite. 😄
Take a look through the links I posted - and feel free to ask about the reliability of Overwhelming Overpower in any scenarios that you'd like! I think I've gotten my head around calculating them now.
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I view the current Overpower mechanic as working as intended against regular mobs - bosses can occasionally be locked down in the first hit, but not reliably so
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On 9/22/2020 at 11:32 AM, Replacement said:
First off, overall take: I like the idea of the OP, but I feel like it could actually go further. Up the %s some, but I realize I have not stopped to think through the repercussions of multi-controller effects.
That said, I find myself wondering if Protection can be debuffed. I think this would be tricky since, iirc, that's what mez already is (example: if an enemy has 3 points of Hold Protection and I hit them with a Mag 3 hold, that's actually a -3 debuff to their Hold protection. Presumably, some separate aspect of the engine is watching for players to register any Protections of 0 or lower to apply status effects to).
But, if it could be done, I think it would simply be neat if Overpower was changed to a global proc that made attacks also add a long duration -1 protection.
EDIT: I guess an easier take on my thought there is simply changing Overpower's additional +1 mags to be much longer duration. Right now, it's about half the primary mez duration, but I think double would be better. That's a 44 second-ish Hold. yes, that's scary. No, I do not think that's an issue at Mag 1.Or was this closer to what you were envisioning, @FoulVileTerror?
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8 hours ago, FoulVileTerror said:
Another alternative just came to mind.
Since Controllers are a Support Archetype, perhaps we're going about this the wrong way. Rather than a chance to increase their own Magnitude, what if Controllers were given a chance to floor the target's Control Protection? Open the door for -any- Controls from the rest of the team to get through to the Target. That might be more in line with the Controller's themes and intended design parameters.
ie: The Dominator is selfish, getting the higher Mag for themself.
The Controller is selfless, giving what is effectively higher Mag for the whole team.
That does sound interesting (though I'm somewhat of the stance that Controllers provide support via their support secondary, with locking down enemies as their main priority) - could you elaborate further on this though? It sounds a little difficult to envision, but I'm seeing it as reducing an enemy's magnitude protection. Effectively, control powers kind of do that at the moment, since each use of a status effect builds up to break that down.
I assume the difference here is that it'd apply to all status effects?
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@CaptainLupis noticed you talking about control powers...perhaps this potential proposal might interest you? Would be glad to hear your thoughts on it!
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1 hour ago, MTeague said:
Largely true. However, it's noteworthy that under the current rules, the Lockdown, Chance of +2 Mag Hold is a virtually guaranteed proc in an AE Hold.
Now the AE hold is simply not going to be up every spawn. Even with really good +Recharge. There's limits.
And it's still not going to be enough for an EB / AV.
But it does make for a nice opener against a regular bosspack.
And certain control sets can do Hold - Sleep - Hold, and the sleep will park a boss for long enough to get that second single target Hold off.
If Confuse / Decieve is on the table, I believe most single target Confuses are non-aggroing.
Soloing, My Mind/Kin will
- AE Hold (if it's up), Fulcrum Shift, followed by Terror / Psychic Toranado to tag all foes with damage
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- AE Sleep, Confuse boss, Confuse Boss, Fulcrum Shift, Terror, Psychic Toranado,
- Then
- standard single target lockdowns and Crosspunch
Indeed - I use the Lockdown proc myself in some cases, such as my Illusionist's Flash. That being said, I generally avoid using the AoE Hold as an opener, and more as a panic button for when things are going south, preferring to use the rest of the Controller's arsenal in other situations (i.e. powers with more constant uptime). As a result, it's definitely quite optional in most of my builds. The short +2 magnitude helps a good amount to provide a moment's pause to think a little, retreat or push the advantage, etc.
I believe Confuse powers also have a similar benefit in the Coercive Persuasion proc, even better than Lockdown in some ways, since it spreads confusion around in a group. Definitely fun with characters with an AoE confuse power such as Plant, Electric, or Mind Controllers.
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18 minutes ago, FoulVileTerror said:
I can't remember if it was Cipher, Number Six, or someone else, but they had said that the spaghetti (in their opinion) was no where near as bad as people made it out to be, and that many complex changes just needed someone to roll up their sleeves and dive in (paraphrasing, and welcome to corrections if I got it wrong).
Since they're volunteers, work is going to be limited. That suggests the best return of time and work invested would be small, compound changes that would gently take steps toward a target outcome, while also simultaneously being "feature complete" enough to stand on their own should development cease for an indefinite period of time.
I do like this post from Number Six about code changes:
They've got a follow up post in the next page about this, but to paraphrase, while the difficulty of implementing something is certainly to be considered, it's just a single facet of discussion when it comes to proposals and so on. Which is all we can do as players, I suppose! 😄
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5 minutes ago, EmmySky said:
My go to test for my fresh 50s is to have them slotted with common IOs and solo Posi 1. This lets me see what they need out of set bonuses and incarnates. Posi 1 can be solo'd on any AT, any powerset combo, but the most difficult for me was my time/psy defender...simply because the shadow doppelganger was a beast...so hard to beat! (Had to get the taser from p2w to knock her down and keep her down)
I like solo, I like small teams, I like large teams. What i dont like is people not reading chat and screwing up the ambushes so we all die. That makes me sad.
Clamour's Freakshow ambush in Penelope Yin's task force can be quite the surprise for the unprepared.
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Should probably ping @Wavicle about this post as well, given this comment. You might like this proposal! Or not, in which case, critiques are definitely welcome as well. 😄
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Hey @Coyote - might have something up your alley, having looked at this post of yours. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this proposal of mine; while it focuses on Controllers, it also discusses the use of status effects against stronger enemies and so on. Any thoughts/feedback/critique on it would be much welcome!
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4 hours ago, Hops said:
At least you get a semi cool inherit power while you team. Defenders pretty much get nothing. I don't play this game to solo.
I think @The Philotic Knight might like to have a word or two about this. 😏
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On 10/2/2020 at 7:16 AM, Luminara said:
Wait! Wait, wait... wait. Hold it. Back the truck up.
Males have nipples AND exclusive skin-showing costume parts?
There's really only one possible explanation.
The developers moonlighted as exotic dancers and used their outfits as models for the game.
I don't know about anyone else, but I feel betrayed. And itchy, but that's probably the poison ivy rash.
It's a nice upside that comes at the cost of Males having less hairstyles, and changing semi-revealing patterns to make them not show any skin at all. Looking at you, Blast.
...until the HC team gets to allowing costumes to be all the colours of the colour wheel. 😏
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On 10/1/2020 at 6:30 PM, Mystic_Cross said:
I've read through the entire thread and I don't necessarily dislike the idea. In fact I think it's fairly interesting, if not a bit overly complicated. Still, I have to say... this one sentence stands out to me as being both the most obvious, and easiest solution to implement.
You could tweak your formula here to come out with very similar performance to Doms while maintaining a completely different and unique way of getting there, and still be at least equally able to hold AVs/GMs. It could also be substantively easier to implement without all of the variable %chances. Unless the overall end goal is to make Controllers able to occasionally one-shot hold AVs and GMs? Frankly, that would be overpowered at times no matter how low the %chances are. You would still run into streaks and streak-breakers making you often useless, and sometimes OP. Possibly game-breaking OP.
Edit to add: I’m not 100% sure, but there may also be a lower limit for %chance similar to procs, or even hit chance... which may not allow anything below 5%. There are no %chances to trigger below that value in the game that I’m aware of. If so, it would make the entire idea unworkable without changing those values.
Thanks for writing up a response!
One thing I've found quite interesting is the fact that there's a lot of different stances on how powerful this proposal is - I do believe @Vanden found this to be kind of underpowered for instance. Similarly the lack of reliability was something that @MTeague had some issues with, to my recollection. @BitCook was also in this camp, I think.
On the other hand, @Noyjitat and @zenblack did voice their concerns about this proposed mechanic; status effects are indeed potent and quite binary, even with this variable chance included with it. It'd be nice if there were somebody around who could figure out the whole 'on average' level of control that Overwhelming Overpower might provide to better gauge its power.
The thing about Dominators is that with Domination on, they have strong, reliable controls; they generally are able to one-shot lock down most things - a Controller is unable to do that no matter how they build themselves. I figured that 'unreliable, but potentially powerful' status effects could be a niche that this archetype could fit into without stepping on the Dominator's toes.
As such, I'm not quite sure how Overwhelming Overpower can directly scale against Dominators in magnitude. Domination has the ability to reliably double the efficacy of all status effect powers - Overpower will always only have a 20% chance of dealing +1 magnitude. Even if its magnitude were to increase to match it, that still leaves Domination as the better choice due to it being able to consistently lock down stronger enemies.
So basically that small one-shot chance I figured was an equalising factor for Controllers to be able to do that kind of thing in some rare instances: they don't have enough magnitude to reliably stack it. Upping its magnitude across the board was something that I considered, but then I thought about how high it ought to be to exactly match a Dominator. A 20% chance of a Mag 6 status effect? That's something a perma-Dom can do 100% of the time. Multiply that by 5 to compensate? That's a Mag 30 status effect.
The scaling magnitude of Overwhelming Overpower came from the desire to strike that balance between a spectrum of 'too powerful, too reliable' and 'too weak, too unreliable'. Of course, actually figuring out whether that's the case is one of the more difficult parts, as the discussion about this is proving! 😄
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Overwhelming Overpower: A Controller Inherent Buff - Control AVs and GMs!
in Suggestions & Feedback
Posted
Hey there! Thanks for writing up a response - don't you worry about that, I knew about your stance on crowd control and the like already, and I thought it'd be an interesting view to bring to the table. While I think Controllers are generally in a decent spot myself, and just think it'd be nice to be able to actually affect AVs/GMs, I can understand some of these qualms. It sounds like they boil down to something along the lines of "enemies are defeated too quickly for crowd control to matter", which I've heard from another user in this thread. I do wonder about your thoughts on @BitCook's post, since they seem to have a similar stance on it:
Similarly, I'd love to hear your thoughts on @Sovera's stance about the more systemic changes that I have trouble visualising? Do you think those would be helpful for Controllers?
Would love to hear your thoughts on it, especially since you seem a bit more versed in the whole game balance thing than I am. 😄