SaddestGhost

From my understanding, your proposal boils down to "What if a controller could Overpower any mob?" I don't think there's anything in that which would shift the game balance overwhelmingly, particularly in the damage focused environment of the current game. The one thing I would also throw into consideration is the duration of the Overpower effects. Rather than making the chance for Overpower dramatically lower (I feel your original proposal is a bit too low), perhaps it should be shorter lived on harder targets. A mixture of a lower chance and a lower overall duration with the higher magnitude could strike an appealing balance. I'm just tossing out some numbers for illustration: Rank Chance for OP Duration as % of base Additional Magnitude Minion 35% 150% +1 Lieutenant 30% 120% +1 Bosss 25% 100% +1 Elite Boss 10% 50% +6 Archvillian 5% 10% +50 The way I imagine that playing out is that occasionally a controller operating on their own would be able to hold an AV, but for a very brief duration (2-4 seconds). Additionally, this would give Overpower some utility when it hits a minion or lieutenant by extending the duration of the hold. Ideally, you could even tweak the numbers for individual powers with a lower chance on spammable single target holds and a significantly higher chance on AoE controls that are more difficult to stack. In my dream scenario controlling an AV would be less about stacking magnitude and more about cycling through different types of controls. I've always imagined it as the PToD cycling through different periods of protection, but I think there is a better solution somewhat akin to the PVP mechanics as mentioned up thread. If an AV essentially became immune to a hold for some period after one lands, you could then use a stun or confuse. It would require some careful coordination to keep an AV locked down and utilize powers like Flashfire which typically have no use in AV fight now. Of course, there's the issue of triggering those protections unintentionally through powers where they're only a secondary effect. Overall, I think it would be more interesting and dynamic play.

Perhaps it's a bit of jealousy, but every time I see some new tweak to blasters I wish a little more love would reach controllers and doms. I'd gladly take a control set with recycled animations and visual effects if it meant there was a new one to play. Wind Control isn't the lowest hanging fruit there (some kind of gadget/grenade set would probably be lower effort) but I'd certainly love to see it in some incarnation.

Much of the dysergy in Dark is, in my opinion, an intentional decision made by the live devs. Dark's ability to stack handy amounts of -to hit debuff with nearly every ability means it offers a layer of protection beyond its mez alone. I think they wanted to disrupt that inherent synergy a bit to prevent Dark from being the premier control set. Even in doing so they compensated by giving Living Shadows a bit of bonus damage. As it is, it's a very powerful set that does everything well while not being the best in any area. The only thing in Dark that actually needs fixed is Haunt's AI, which tend to do nothing after their initial target is defeated. Of course, it's not alone in control pets that needs an AI tweak. Phantasm can't keep itself out of melee despite not having any melee attacks. As for things that I would be nice extras, I'm all for alternative models for the dog (never been a fan) and it really needs to shut up.

Barrier's defense and resist buffs have the same duration; a huge buff up front that degrades after 10, 30, 60, then 120 seconds.

Energy Font demonstrably does very little. Take it for spin time against some lower rank enemies and spam the AoE immobilize with Energy Font. Watch how many of the enemies are actually stunned. Against a spawn of about 10 Rikti in RWZ, I was spawning about two orbs at a time and they were able to control two minions. Against something -15 to my level I would expect they could keep even those minions locked down, but they can't. The stun was sporadic. Want to see how poor they are for damage? Slot it in Confuse, stand right next to your target and spawn them. They barely nibble at even conning minions. If their purpose isn't control or damage, I guess it could be to take aggro. But spawning on top of the owner before moving in on the mobs is a poor way to go about that. If they spawned at the target, they might actually have a use in Sleep powers by taking a little alpha strike when they wake up mobs.

It will proc one when you cast Singularity, but after letting Sing go to town on some practice dummies for about 3 minutes it didn't proc any.

Mez magnitudes are additive in regards to magnitude. All mobs have some inherent level of mez protection (minions = 1, lieutenants =2, bosses =3, elite bosses = 4, AVs = 3/6 + 50 when purple triangles are up). As long as their mez protection is 0 or greater they can continue to act freely. So take a boss mob, for example, and hit it with Flashfire with a duration of 20 seconds. That reduces its mez protection to 0 for those 20 seconds (assuming even level), so it remains active. If an Energy Orb swoops in during that time and hits it with a mag 2 Stun for 5 seconds, the boss will be stunned for those 5 seconds because its total stun protection is reduced to -2. People have often complained because of the binary nature of this, especially in regards to AVs. If you can reliably stack 50 magnitude hold against an AV it means nothing while the Purple triangles are up. 54 is the magic number in most cases. As for Energy Orb, it's a bit hard to quantify how long its stun lasts. Using the proc in Confuse against a single target and monitoring the target's stun protection with a power analyzer, I've seen the stun last as little as 5 seconds and as much as 10 seconds. Damage wise I can see that even two Energy Orbs sitting on an even con minion are hardly making a dent damage-wise.

My experience just doesn't match up with this even on teams. Minions and Lieutenants are wiped out in the volley of initial AoE. Where control matters is on the bosses that remaining standing. While some sets do benefit less, we see them all near the bottom in numbers for Doms. From the bottom up: Ice, Grav, Electric, Earth. Earth remains near the middle of the pack because its provides extensive control; both Earthquake and Volcanic Gasses can deal with bosses fairly effectively. Grav is a notable exception there but the explanation for its change in position is fairly simple; it trades early control for additional damage which benefits doms very little.

The high recharge is nice on the control side of Dominators; it's also why many controllers chase it as well. However, when you begin to hit heavy diminishing returns on recharge in individual powers, the reason to keep pushing forward is perma-dom. For instance, I've been working on a Grav/energy build. If I drop all of the LotGs out of it, I can lose 37.5% global recharge. That makes a 3 second difference in how often I can cast Wormhole, but it drops me out of perma-dom by 10 seconds plus the time it takes to rebuild the domination bar. Additionally, Assault secondaries don't have many long recharge powers that benefit that much recharge. Shorter recharges just simply hit diminishing returns on recharge faster. It's quite possible to build a solid attack chain without the levels needed for perma-dom. So, it's a nice side effect, but only to a point. There's a reason people span that gap despite the diminishing returns. If you look at the popularity of Mind Control on Doms vs. controllers, I think it points at how valuable that extra magnitude is to control powers. Uncontrolled bosses kill squishies without other defensive options available to them.

You are correct. It is a mag 2 stun, enough to overcome a minion's mez protection on its own. I'm unsure how it behaves in Blind, but I know the sleep in Blind has a very small radius. It's a pretty rare thing to see the sleep itself given how closely packed enemies need to be. As for TK, it can't even be slotted there.

I have multiple issues with the controller ones and you've hit on one of them. Most put them in an AoE immobilize and spam that power. That, of course, isn't an option for Mind and Illusion. Plant and Fire, which already sit near the top of the pack for control sets, have bonus damage in those powers and this incentives their frequent use even more. For others it encourages a game play style that is somewhat detrimental to team play, often locking mobs in scattered formations because they've jumped to utilize those powers before enemies are neatly gathered. I also question why the heck Energy Orb was given a stun. It stacks nicely with Fire (again), Earth, and Dark, but as a mag 1 stun it does very little for other sets. When every set has a hold, why wasn't this the default choice to make it more equitable?

True, they are more damage, but they leave the application of it in your hands. Coming out of Hide, you've got the choice of single target heavy hitter or AoE or which enemy is the one that you really need to defeat. Likewise you'll be choosy with when you fire off your next Build up. The stalker ATOs, I would say, at least loop back into the decisions you're making as you play the AT and that's what makes them so enjoyable. If the controller ATO popped up a buff that told me I had increased mag for a few seconds, I'd most definitely slot it. While also improving the role I play on teams, it encourages me to think about what I'll do next.

Those both sound like solid ideas to me.

Late on Live Gravity received a pass that resulted in changes to Dimension Shift and Wormhole; Wormhole became aggro free and its radius was increased (IIRC), which helped a great deal. On HC the introduction of the kb > kd IO, Wormhole become much, much more orderly; instead of throwing targets randomly near your target, it drops them in a nice pile. Knockback, Teleport, and cage powers like Detention Field and Sonic Cage have variable magnitude which means they are reduced by level differences. (At one point, you could use Hami-Os to alter the magnitude of DF/SC in order to cage an even level elite boss. I'm not sure if that remains unchanged.) At +3 the Teleport is being resisted, reducing it from 4.1 mag to 2.66 mag so it is no longer able to overcome a boss mob's inherent 3.0 protection. I would imagine a fix is as easy as tagging the teleport unresistable, but that relies on things that shouldn't be teleported actually having been given teleport protection rather than some ridiculous amount of teleport resistance.

The proc in that is a chance to hold, not cold damage.