DZKFire

Small tweaks to make MC decent: Add a short duration immobilize to Terrify Reduce CD on Mass Confusion, maybe 120-140s? Slightly relieve the AoE CC accuracy penalty I really want to see them rework Telekinesis to be an ammo style (like burst of speed) skill with 3 charges that does a no damage ranged AoE Mass Levitate, to kind of draw from the KD CC of Earthquake/Ice Slick. It also helps MC's weakness of being useless against ITF (their AOE clear mind does not affect knocks) and also not being completely reliant on Domination - in a way equalizing the power balance with Controllers. All in all though, MC does need help, maybe a lot of it. It lacks any secondary or unique effects, is filled with long cool down skills, the AoE CC skills are slammed with long CD & accuracy penalties (except Mass Hypnosis thanks to the buff). It's opening CCs are lackluster against every other control set besides maybe Ice (Terrify & Mass Hypnosis vs. Stalagmites, Ice Slick, Earthquake, Heart of Darkness, Fearsome Stare and its -toHit debuff, Flashfire, Seeds of Confusion, Wormhole) Mind control becomes *decent* with Perma Dom. It's honestly not that overpowered even with Domination active, and that's taking in the fact that almost every skill from MC benefits from Domination. In the hands of a Controller, it is an anemic power set. I say this too as my two mains are a Mind/Fire Dominator and a Mind/Dark Controller, along with having fully built Mind/Enrg, Mind/Dark Assault, Mind/Psi, Mind/Martial Perma Doms. I sometimes hop on to my Plant/Ice Dominator, Plant/Enrg or Earth/Dark Controller and the power level difference is almost worlds apart.

Why? If the complaint is that PL'd players play badly with zero game knowledge, then I can tell you right now even people who have leveled "normally" still play pretty badly. Coincidentally, I was farming an alt (bc leveling my earth/pain controller the normal way is absolute torture) and let ~5 sitters in. Out of all these sitters, only one was smart enough to be invisible (i.e. SS + Stealth proc), the rest just accepted their fate and died. When a sitter is dead, their x2 from P2W is not active so they leveled incredibly slow with the XP cut in AE.

My suggestions: *Lower the CD of Mass Confusion to 120s, then rebalance the confuse duration. *Make telekinesis actually useful or niche. (Yes i know some people can do "amazing" things with telekinesis, but honestly it's not that amazing. Better and easier to just play storm with hurricane) *Maybe have a combo system where if Terrify hits sleeping foes (Mass Hypnosis), it deals extra psi damage and a guaranteed immobilize. Mass, reliable CC is not a Mind Control thing, it's a Dominator perk. In fact, most of the other sets have staple AoE CC skills that are up after every mob with decent recharge slotting (FlashFire, Stalagmites, Seeds of Confusion, etc...) along with the AoE hold every set has. Confusing and holding AVs isn't a unique thing for Mind anymore either. Dark control has access to a non-alert confuse and char from Fire ties with dominate on animation time as a hold. I didn't want to mention Seeds of Confusion into detail, but it is kind of sad tbh when a Controller with contagious confusion proc (allows them to confuse bosses) outdoes a Perma-Dom's Mass Confusion. It's not the only thing either: Ice controllers & dominators with contagious confusion on Arctic Air can also do similar results.

Dominators are the only AT that can reliably solo 1 shot CC 95% of the game's boss level goes, along with being almost immune to all mez types as well. This actually matters a lot in harder content, where holding a pretty troublesome boss can make the fight much easier or quicker. (Ruin Mages, those crey bubble bosses forgot their name, holding/stunning paragon protectors before they do MoG or Unstoppable, etc...) This along with being the only AT in the game that can hold (or confuse) an AV by themselves given a tailored build.

I like the non projectile style it has TBH. It would be a dream come true if a similar style was ported to Ice, Lightning & Psi blast. Well, at least Psi has TK "Blast" which does not have a projectile but it feels really blast-y still.

Thanks! I've played with x/x/psi a lot on mids, a bit on my second build for Mind/Martial and the extra 2 LotG slots from IW & Link Minds is super convenient, but I almost always end up going x/x/ice. I really like the the psi epic pool and would love to play with it more, if not for gameplay than for theme! Sleet on dominators is just 👌, especially since it makes a knock-lock patch for Mind along with the incredibly strong -res debuff. Hate frozen armor (not a fan of defense epics tbh), but Hibernate is actually really good along with it being a convenient mule for +absorb proc Preventative Medicine. Anyway, off to make time to make more x/x/psi builds !

I'm curious: I haven't played in the beta yet but why do you think Indom Will might be a good choice for Perma-doms ? We have a decent layer of CC protection and counter CCing let's us avoid it further. I've never popped a breakfree insp on my dominator characters post Perma-dom. Psi defense is nice though. I personally love the power due to roleplaying reasons (seriously, you have such high willpower that almost nothing can break you, it's very badass as a concept!), but it mostly serves as a LotG mule that I don't even touch unless it's an ITF @ Romulus or I'm facing psi enemies. The more reason I can put it in my builds, the better :)!

Honestly, I think this would be really cool lol. Personally I hate wings because they look horrible on foot and block my view, but OTOH flying wings are really cool. I've always wanted something like wings pop out when flying and go disappear on foot, but the Costume change macros/bind have a pretty lengthy cooldown

Yeah it's annoying honestly. Almost everything needs to be toned down a lot however it will feel really REALLY awful for a decent chunk of the player base (me included) Coincidentally, there are also decently harsh content but no one plays them. Levels 20-40 have the potential to be incredibly harsh on teams, Praetoria Maps being one of the harshest I've played (and funnest!) It's quite hard fighting something simple as Warriors in Talos at +2, let alone +4 at this level. Villains and the aforementioned Praetorian really have it harsher. Did you know the Mayhem missions (bank missions for villains) feature insanely difficult PPD with psi powers while also being constantly bombarded by Longbow ambushes? And btw, Longbow are certainly not pushovers at high difficulty, same with Arachnos but most people play blue side and already know how difficult they can be when unprepared. Even a lot of the 50+ missions in places like DA can be steamrolly solely because incarnate shifts makes the difficulty lvl invalid. I have seen some mobs completely annihilate incarnate players though, those are always fun imo.

I take them and see them as required for my gameplay, but they are more of a nice-to-fallback on for me. Every build I use has Tough/Weave, if not for the durability then the really good global enhancement mules. 1. They can slot mules, both the defence and the resistance sets have really good global enhancements. 2. They are really nice for unlucky moments. My Mind/Fire/Fire uses Fire Shield + 32.5% ranged defence from sets. I went fire ancillary because the fire "build up" affects it, however I have a 2nd build Mind/Fire/Ice and I'm really liking it (see below) Mind/En/Ice, I have decent defences thanks to Ice Shield (32.5%+ S/L) and focused my sets on resistance, and I have Hibernate for even more panic button - and absorb proc mule! Mind/Martial/Psi, I focused on defence and theme lol. Once again, a nice mix of defence and res thanks to the psi shield and link minds (+ LotG mule!) I am not a fan of the psi-shield honestly, but it's mostly because I hate the visual Plant/Ice/Mace - honestly, this is just overpowered and I haven't played him in a over a year. S/L def capped and PFF as a slight panic button along with MORE LotG mules. The defences are just extra, but mainly Plant/x is just so powerful, and pretty much guarantees steamrolling most content.

In my opinion, a quick and easy "fix" or "buff" for mind control is by slightly lowering the cooldown of Mass Confusion (maybe even hit it with a duration reduction to avoid another SoC fiasco.) The thing with Mind Control and Dominators is that the class just really synergizes with the powers. AoE Mind CCs have HUGE cool downs along with literally everything but levitate being affected by Domination. Most Dominators obviously chase Perma Dom, thereby having high levels of recharge enough to make the massive cooldowns be tolerable and then amplified by Domination. When I'm playing solo on my Mind/Fire (single target oriented, to be precise! No mass slaughtering with AoEs), I can wipe 2 & 1/2 +4/x8 clusters and MC is still struggling to come off cooldown. This is with over Perma hasten level recharge. If it were an actual team, I'd probably be able to use MC 3 times per instance. Juggling with Total Domination and MC still has a massive gap for actual hard CC engages, something that Terrify and Mass Hypnosis can't really fill in for if we consider teams. This is worsened by the fact that most pre-50 (and even some level 50) dominators don't have Perma Dom and the high recharge levels, and at this stage of the game mass CC actually matters since blasters, tankers, brutes, scrappers aren't god tier content breakers yet.

I am still of the opinion for giving Mass Confusion a minor buff, probably a slight recharge buff at the cost of reducing duration. For (reliable) AoE controls: we have total domination and mass confusion, both with extremely long cool downs, shortened durations and an accuracy penalty. The fillers we have are mass hypnosis and terrify, both are kind of unreliable and can be broken by the smallest amount of damage. I am actually a fan of mass hypnosis and I use it all the time to function as a pseudo-interrupt, and with terrify I slot in the immobilize proc (or knockdown proc, whichever chaos I want that day) so it acts a little more reliable as a CC.

I always take it on my mind doms. Very useful for solo content (especially vs difficult mobs and/or the secondary is more single target focused). Mesmerize can 1-Hit lockdown AVs and bosses, so no need to explain why I take it over levitate. I also use it [Mass Hypnosis] a lot even in team settings: After the tank has aggroed and the team has engaged, I use it as a small blanket interrupt. If the team suddenly starts having trouble and people start dying (usually seen in low level TFs) Due to the 5% miss chance clamp (or people with poor accuracy slotting), not all targets will get hit by a stray AoE and there have been times where my "blanket interrupt" turns into a full duration CC because of unlucky rolls from the rest of my teammates.

I only clear mind the blasters to be honest. Maybe the corruptors/controllers if I remember, but blasters get top priority from me. And if there's a lot of blasters, then i usually CM the one that has the most kitted out build or tries to get the most damage. I haven't played my emp in a while though, but it really is fun watching a pro blaster with empathy buffs completely annihilate everything

I don't think supports need help at all. Even if self buffing shields are possible and cut to +1% unenhanceable defense/+2% resistance, that makes a huge difference to the more serious build makers. Many defender builds have the capability to reach both a res cap and soft cap defenses as of right now. All shield buff support sets get the option to load powers with global enhancements already, from LotG muling to Steadfast Protection depending on the type of shield.