Blackfeather

I think @The Philotic Knight might like to have a word or two about this. 😏

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. 😏

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! 😄

On another note, I noticed you talking about Controllers in this thread here, @Mystic_Cross - while it's only somewhat related, I think this proposal might interest you; I discuss the other 'critical strike' aspect of Controllers in their Overpower mechanic, and how it might be improved to help them lock down bigger targets. Would be glad for you to give it a read, along with any of your thoughts on it!

What do you think about this idea, @DougGraves? It sounds like this would be something you'd be more familiar with.

Correct - status effects are potent, and it's why Overwhelming Overpower works the way it does. A group of Controllers will of course be able to lock down an AV with little to no trouble: exceeding the Mag 50 protection is fairly trivial in those situations. However, there is this critical cut-off point, where there aren't enough of them, and their status effects are essentially 'wasted'. This is what is meant by the status effect system being binary - either Held or not Held. Either Stunned or not Stunned, and so on. Overwhelming Overpower intends to breach this gap: a single Controller now has the chance to lock down stronger opponents, even without enough magnitude available to stack up to that level. They can't match a Dominator's consistent sheer strength, but with this proposal, they can occasionally burst past it. That being said, it does sound like your proposal mirrors similar ones brought up, such as by @FoulVileTerror and @skoryy - they mentioned ideas about a resolve meter, resulting in different effects given a certain threshold. Which does sound interesting!

Admittedly, I'm not quite sure about what this proposal is meant to do, at least via the way that it's currently being described - aren't Controllers (and other archetypes for that matter) already able to debuff AVs/GMs? They're just fairly resisted. The proposal at hand is meant to provide Controllers with the potential to lock down stronger enemies, but not 100% of the time. Currently a Controller on their own can't really breach the protection levels that AVs/GMs possess (outside of the Purple Triangles of course), and needs multiple other sources of controls to do so. It attempts to breach this gap somewhat - each Controller with Overwhelming Overpower also carries a chance to lock them down. If you're proposing that enemies become more vulnerable to debuffs while they're controlled...hrm. While that certainly sounds potent, I do think that it'd be a little too potent - debuffs are already hefty force multipliers, and removing those resistances might make for trivial fights - the Purple Patch was designed to stop lower level characters from taking down much higher ones after all, and I do believe that part of this came from just how potent debuffs are against them when not reduced accordingly.

First off (and I apologise for being nitpicky): terminology. There are two factors when looking at status effects. The first is Protection. That's the total amount of magnitude that a character or NPC can withstand before succumbing to a status effect. The second is Resistance to status effects, which causes them to wear off faster. With that out of the way... I'm not really sure whether the statement "controls are binary" is really up to disagreement (*waves at @ABlueThingy for confirmation on this*). Yes, status effects can be resisted, which do affect the duration of them, along with the Purple Patch, which does the same. However, they still fall under 'working' or 'not working' - there isn't an in between like how some are suggesting. Correct - to my knowledge, Archvillains and Giant Monsters have less protection against Immobilises and Sleeps than other status effects. Were you hoping for this lack of protection to be conferred to other status effects, or for them to also be protected against? Having a read through the description, it sounds a little bit like a global magnitude system - instead of each status effect contributing to break down a separate magnitude protection score, each one works to wear off a single point of protection, with the added caveat that magnitude can continuously build and not wear off over time. Would that be a correct summation? Otherwise, it might be something like that Resolve meter that @FoulVileTerror mentioned, but I'm not sure.

Oh! Apologies Vanden, I didn't see that edit of yours until now. Basically, to explain the table, the results are cumulative - currently, Overpower has a 1 in 5 chance of occurring with every use of a status effect power, in other words, a 20% chance of happening. So with Overwhelming Overpower, the chance for Overpower remains the same: 20%. However, the new system also has a chance of inflicting more than an additional +1 magnitude. This is what the Chance per Overpower section is supposed to represent. So in this new system, 50% of the time, Overpower functions as it does before - with a +1 that holds down a boss. However, on other occasions, it may instead be a +4, or a +54, or even rarer, +100. 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! +54 = affect an Archvillain 20% 4% = 4 in 100 uses Overpower!! +100 = affect a Giant Monster 5% 1% = 1 in 100 uses Overpower!!! Hope this clears things up! If you have any further questions about the table, please let me know.

I should probably ping @DougGraves about this suggestion as well - I noticed you talking about Controllers in this thread that you created, so I imagine you've got a fair amount of experience under your belt as well. My suggestion aims to enable even a single Controller to lock down stronger enemies, if not all the time. Any thoughts/opinions/critiques on Overwhelming Overpower? Would be glad to hear them!

Glad to hear the proposal itself sounds solid! That being said, it sounds like it'd be a good idea to start a separate thread of your own about these potential issues, along with highlighting your personal feelings about them and so on. The General Discussion or Controller subforums might be a good place to put such a post. An issue with the underlying system sounds like it's worth discussion about, along with any potential solutions and changes that might need to come about as a result of this. If it's indeed something about the game itself, I'm sure there'll be a good deal of people interested in talking about it!

Admittedly, I'm not entirely sold on this - it does take effort to reach perma-Domination, and that effort isn't trivial (though one more versed with Dominators such as @oedipus_tex, feel free to chime in about this). Something else to consider is that not all Dominators will be building to make their inherent perma. As such, higher Overpower chances will likely reduce the relative value of Domination itself. It's why I'd prefer using building stacks vs. outright increasing those chances: at least this way, the Controller needs to slot their powers accordingly to make them work a bit more effectively, same as Dominators. Additionally, while it's true that Dominators do provide a means of damage in their secondary on a team, Controllers are force multipliers in their own right, contributing to damage indirectly via buffs and debuffs, in many cases on levels exponentially higher than any one team member. A well aimed -Res debuff, Forge, or Fulcrum Shift does far more than a lone Dominator can. I figure that given that they both have a primary with controls, they ought to be similarly proficient with them, but with enough differences between how they go about being better. Hence Overwhelming Overpower's more chance based nature compared to Domination's super mode. Hmm...if your definition of "fixing" Controllers is to make them "needed" per your previous post, then personally I don't think any change to them is really going to cut it. No archetype is really essential to playing the game, and I think it'd be a detriment to it if that were the case. If instead your issue with the archetype is that "things die too quickly for status effects to be useful" then no matter how strong a Controller's status effects are, they won't really address the issue you have with them - a more holistic look at how the game works would be of better use: asking questions as to why that's the case, and figuring out those root causes. After that, it's a matter of discussing that with others to see if they feel similarly. My main pet peeve with Controllers is that they can't really lock down stronger enemies on their own - in groups with them, it's a given, but the binary nature of status effects means that there's this very wide threshold of "works" and "doesn't work". And that's where Overwhelming Overpower comes in: to help breach that gap somewhat.

The overall concept does sound interesting - though I do wonder if it's possible to implement something similar using the current system in place. Maybe something like this? (Current Magnitude Inflicted / Enemy Magnitude Protection) * 100 = additional chance to Overpower So for instance, let's say that a Controller has inflicted a Mag 3 Hold against an Archvillain - plugging this into the formula would give us an additional 6% chance on top of the 20% chance that Overpower has of occurring ((3 / 50) * 100 = 6). Only slight problem might be against things such as GMs, which have higher levels of protection...but then again, they're also designed to be fought in groups, so it makes sense.

I'm not really familiar with resolve and whatnot - think you can chime in here about all this, @FoulVileTerror? Sounds like this'd be a bit more up your alley.

Admittedly, I never quite considered Controllers or Dominators as having issues with locking down groups of enemies - granted, it'd be nice to get the base recharge time of AoE Holds to go down to something like, say, 180 seconds, but it's not too much of an issue for me, given the vast array of tools in their arsenal. Additionally, I've heard rumours about balance passes for Blasters - I wouldn't be surprised if that recharge was upped for those AoE Hold powers, because honestly that's way too low. Hmm...I'll admit, having reduced recharge time on a Controller's powers does sound nice, but I'm not sure if it addresses the main issue that I personally have with the archetype: namely, the inability to lock down tougher targets like AVs/GMs on their own, causing half of their powerset to basically be irrelevant against them. Even if their powers recharged faster, it doesn't really make handling mobs any easier - I can do that just fine, in my experience. Overwhelming Overpower is intended to help resolve situations where an enemy's magnitude far exceeds a Controller's powers. That being said, I do like that suggestion of building stacks by seeing how many enemies a Controller currently has locked down. Per my original post, I proposed a potential way of increasing the chance of an Overpower alongside the core proposal. An increase of 5% or 10% per enemy locked down might be interesting, though it sounds a little bit difficult to juggle in some scenarios - not all AVs/GMs are fought with a posse.

So to clarify, you'd propose Overpower to work the same way as before, but instead of just adding +1 to a status effect inducing power, it doubles it instead? That sounds like an always-on, somewhat unreliable version of Domination, admittedly. I'm not entirely sold - the main reason I went this route with Overwhelming Overpower was to allow Controllers to lock down larger targets, albeit at a less reliable pace than Dominators can.

Did you take a look at the Potential Further Ideas section of the original post? There, I discussed a rough proposal about ways to increase the Controller's chance to Overpower. I'll copy it over now: I'd be interested in getting your opinion on this mechanic, along with any critiques/suggestions you might have about it! Another thing that's also important to keep in mind is that Dominators don't have perma-Domination out of the box. It takes a good amount of work and levels to get them there, with lots of recharge bonuses, and sometimes sacrifice in other aspects. I imagine @oedipus_tex would agree with this, given their love of Dominators. By upping the chance to Overpower out of the box, I think that might potentially step on the Dominator's toes. My intention with keeping the chance to Overpower the same as before was to help differentiate the archetypes to some degree. Dominators eventually build up to be more powerful and reliable, while Controllers are more variable. Also something to keep in mind is that by keeping the chance to Overpower the same, the Controller has another direct incentive to actually slot their status effect powers somewhat: they want to make their Overwhelming Overpower last, and to help encourage it to happen more often, they can slot the power for more recharge, thus 'rolling the dice' more often. The stance that I'm coming from with the introduction of this mechanic is that I don't really think Controllers are 'broken' in the first place - they're generally an enjoyable archetype for me to play, but it'd be nice if they could actually do something with their control powers while facing stronger enemies. Well, that's the thing - I think that kind of pulls Controllers and Dominators in an entirely different direction. There are very few abilities in CoH that are actually unresistable. The one that comes to mind is the -ToHit component of Flash Arrow, and that only deals something like 5%. If debuffs being less useful at higher notoriety levels is indeed a problem, then that's something that's overarching, and shouldn't be used to justify granting only Controllers/Dominators this - that'd be a separate suggestion entirely: to change how the purple patch/AV resistance works, or making a portion of debuffs across the board unresistable. As for the binary system, I figure that it's something that won't be changing any time soon - the least intrusive way to work with this in my mind is to create a gradient of one's own, which is where taking advantage of the places where it isn't binary. In this case, that's Overpower, and thus the reason why I decided to go the route of tweaking it. A control power that works 100% of the time 20% of the time effectively circumvents this whole binary issue, you know?

I did propose a means of improving the chances a little in my original post, if in a slightly roundabout way - though likewise, I'm not the most certain about how the numbers should be. Basically, it'd up the chance of Overpower occurring depending on some condition. Additionally, I did some napkin math in this post about the odds of Overwhelming Overpower as a little scenario sort of thing - helps to better visualise the chances of it all and so on, I find! There's also a nice one that I made to compare against a Dominator here. Might help to figure out what numbers would be best!

I'm not sure if this is an entirely accurate analogy to what I'm proposing. Both Dominators and Controllers have control powers as their primary. In other words, they're going to be generally better at it than those with it as their secondary (none of which exist at the moment), similar to how Tankers have higher numbers for their armour powers compared to Brutes or Scrappers. My intention with Overwhelming Overpower definitely wasn't to make Controllers overshadow Dominators - the way I see it, Domination supplies Dominators with oodles of magnitude and duration, to the point where one alone has the potential to lock tougher enemies down to quite the reliable degree. In other words, they have potent controls, backed up with damage. I wanted to provide Controllers with similar potency in their primary, but tried to be cognisant of how Dominators control enemies, and to avoid stepping on their toes. This is part of the reason why Overwhelming Overpower works on a chance basis - per my original post, I wanted to have Dominators come out on top when it comes to consistent and strong lockdown potential, to help differentiate the two. Controller 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.

Hmm...personally speaking, I'm of the notion that the support powersets are generally fine when looking at them as a whole - certainly, there are some that could use some love (waves at @The Philotic Knight's Force Field thread), but they're usually always bringing something to the table, be it additional defense, further damage, picking up allies when they take too much aggro, and so on. At least from how I see it, this is less the case with control powersets depending on the kinds of enemies they face. Those with high levels of protection tend to circumvent the need for such powers as a result. The archetypes with support powersets in them at least in my view do have ways to make up for their relative lack of solo ability - they're generally helping the rest of their team flourish. Certainly, a lot of them can solo, and do so very well, but they'll generally be better suited for teams (many exceptions with specific power choices due to how diverse support powersets are). Dark Miasma for instance lend themselves quite well solo, their survivability aided by controls and ToHit debuffs. That being said, this is discussion is probably worth an entire thread in of itself. I definitely wanted to avoid the permanent application of these status effects against tougher foes - it was why I decided to make this proposal chance based in the first place, building on the Overpower mechanic as it currently stands. I also talked about two potential additions to Overwhelming Overpower in my original post as well, one that had a more variable magnitude bonus, along with ways to increase the chance of an Overpower. Kind of like building crits on a Stalker, or something along those lines. Additionally, I ran through some napkin math numbers on the likelihood of at least one Overwhelming Overpower triggering a little while back - what do you think of the current frequency? I'm...of mixed minds about this. Similarly to my response to Zen's post, I kind of view the control aspect of control powers to be their main draw, with the secondary effects that come with it as an extra sort of thing, you know? At the moment for instance, Darkness Control does provide -ToHit in a lot of their powers. I figure that the Controller's secondary already works in that role for the most part, especially with some powersets moreso than others. Additionally, I figured that Overwhelming Overpower being chance based helped to create a 'gradient' of its own - Controllers this way can't lock down big bads unless multiple of them are on a team, but now when they're alone, they can still do so on occasion. That being said, if you're looking at something less of a 'binary', what do you think of @FoulVileTerror's suggestion here?

I definitely agree - control is indeed a very binary affair: one's either affected by it, or they're not. I wanted to give Controllers the chance to lock down AVs/GMs, as I figure that in larger groups of them, they can lock them down anyhow by stacking enough...but that cutoff point means that any control before then (outside of purple triangles) is essentially 'wasted'. I wanted to simulate that sliding scale of effectiveness found in the way AVs/GMs resist other things - debuffs, damage, and so on - by making it fairly unlikely for a single Controller on their own to have their powers work on them, but still include a chance there: impossible to lock down all of the time (like in a scenario with a whole team of Controllers say), but they can at least keep using their Holds knowing that they may have an effect. I wrote up a post a little while back about the likelihood of an Overwhelming Overpower going off; perhaps the odds could do with some adjusting? It's an interesting thought! The way I see how different control powers currently are is that they tend to already have secondary effects attached to them - they just come bundled in with the power itself rather than something inherent with the status effect. For instance, Earth Control has its defense debuffs, and Electric Control has its recovery debuffs. That being said, I am not entirely certain that this would be a path that I'd personally go towards: I like Controllers because of their ability to lock down the battlefield primarily, with their secondary of buffs/debuffs backing them up, you know? So I wanted to keep the control aspect of their powers front and centre, even against tougher opponents, while also ensuring that they didn't trivialise fights in the process. As opposed to providing additional debuff effects, which their secondary already helps with. It's that balance that I'm attempting to achieve, which is why I went the route that I did. That might be a neat idea, depending on exactly what said soft control effects end up being!

Additionally, I quite liked your posts on balance and the like from this thread, specifically this, @zenblack - as such, I'd definitely be interested in hearing your thoughts on this change if you've the time and it's something you're interested in, since it's a fairly large one for Controllers! I tried to aim for a happy medium between "let their primary do some work against AVs/EBs outside of whenever they 'let' them (i.e. Purple Triangles)" and "avoid trivialising big bads and statue-ing them permanently in place". Do you think this proposal attempting to provide this went too far? Too little? Something else entirely? Would be glad to hear your thoughts!

Personally, between Force Bubble and Personal Force Field, I prefer having Personal Force Field - in my experience, Force Bubble is far more situational. Having an instant immunity power (effectively immune anyway) is more valuable to me than a keep-away field. I'd rather a very situational T9 than a very situational T1, which would be mandatory on support secondaries.

I'm not really sure about this. You're getting Personal Force Field at level one - at the lower levels, the pace of the game tends to be much slower. Incarnates are a non-factor, as are nukes, ancillary armour powers for squishies, etc. Having a way of basically mitigating all damage on the fly sounds much more useful back at those lower levels than at the higher ones where you can easily build for survivability/have a proper attack chain/lock down groups of enemies.

@Tacheyon may I interest you in something tangentially related to this in a potential Controller Inherent buff proposal? Always happy to get some feedback/critique from people most familiar with the archetype!