Eldyem

The HP ones, sure, but I absolutely notice the Atlas Medallion every time I grab it on every character. Portal Jockey feels really good on specific builds, like Storm Summoning MMs. On the actual topic, Synapse is by far my least favorite thing to do in the game that I actually regularly do. I enjoy the other main TFs and end up doing it just for the badge more than the HP but I always hate the whole hour or so it takes.

I'm going to highlight this - any set that has a mechanic that replaces crits is probably going to feel bad unless that mechanic is just very, very strong. Hitting a crit feels good. This goes double for a "crit" that can potentially do nothing because the associated power isn't recharging to begin with or is very close to being back up. It doesn't help that Power Siphon often feels worse than Build Up in practice because you can't really Power Siphon > Burst the way you might want to. Another issue is that Repulsing Torrent has anti-synergy with the only other form of AoE in the set. There's a lot of interesting pieces that don't really work well together.

Am I missing some context here? Every Control set has multiple forms of AoE lockdown. AoE sleeps aren't even unique to Mind Control. Holds and Stuns completely stop enemies from attacking, Confuses stop them from attacking you, and Fears slow down how often enemies attack considerably. In fact, Sleep is one of the least effective forms of AoE lockdown.

I don't actually have strong feelings about them; I think trying to do content as efficiently as possible with the tools you have (including random PUG members) is an enjoyable experience, but I'm also not particularly invested in completely skipping content such as running to Clamor in the Yin TF. I personally feel more "super" when I'm smashing through hordes of enemies mindlessly. In particular, TFs like Synapse just stop being fun if they're run at anything less than breakneck speed because its essentially the same content over and over for an hour. That being said, I'm more likely to join anything advertised as a "speedy" version just because having one person who decides that 7 other people are "playing wrong" by not fully clearing out an outdoor map, or by starting a mission when they're spending 10 minutes updating their bio, or by using team teleporter (all three things that have happened to groups I'm in) just kills the vibe. I just do not want Synapse to take 3 hours. I would personally love if we had more AVs or GMs (or even just EBs with better stats) that could "slow down" regular missions, but, so long as the strongest thing on 90% of given maps is a regular boss who is functionally identical to that other regular boss standing 10 feet away from him, I just don't see a reason to slow down my personal gameplay. I think this is a strength of Drowning in Blood, Mortimar Kal, and Summer Blockbuster content-design wise.

This might not necessarily be addressing the question as asked, but I think it gets impacted a little when a particular AT gets a "better" version of a formerly AT-exclusive powerset. Scrapper Ninjutsu just feels stronger than Stalker's version (to me), and Mastermind's Poison has the decent, but ultimately sort of unfortunate Noxious Gas that pales in comparison to how good Venomous Gas is. The source getting the worse version of a powerset does feel like it negatively impacts AT identity in a bad way.

Is any role really needed at end game? I'm not turning down anyone in the first place, but why would I care that someone is playing a Time Manipulation/Thermal Radiation/Dark Misama/Radiation Emission/Pain Domination/Trick Arrow/Traps/Cold Domination/Poison character if we're at the level where we're just steam rolling? I feel like I'm missing the correlation here.

I'm actually fine with this nerf for Defenders, as I do I feel this set was massively overperforming within its niche of AV melting within groups. I know nerfs are unpopular but there just really isn't another blast set with debuffs as good as this, nor do I think its physically possible to put sets like Fire Blast or Archery on Defenders on par without a complete re-imagining of the sets, so I'm fine with it. But the T1 and T2 sharing a debuff feels very bad on three out of the four ATs who get this set, and it doesn't feel good on the one that doesn't care as much.

I really don't think either of those groups are the ones negatively impacted by this. Most +4/x8 builds can solo much higher than +4/x8 and I doubt they're going to be impacted at all, because +4/x8 was never the cap for what they can do. It's the players who build character for RP and theme, players who are -ok- at absolute best at building, but who like to push to +2/x5 or whatever who are going to be upset by this, because they're going to have to turn down their difficulty (I would imagine these are the players most resistant to do so, as well) and - and this is the most important part - are the most likely to be impacted by joining a +4/x8 group where they're suddenly doing worse than they did before. These are the people I largely play with, and I am overwhelmingly aware that these players, for the most part, do not use the forums, and I think these players make up a much larger portion of the userbase than many people realize.

But that doesn't really address why Sentinels seem to be coming up short on every metric. If everyone can step on everyone else's toes, why does it feel like Sents still aren't managing to quite cut it?

Plant Control was Issue 6. That was 2005. Seven years before the game got shut down. I don't think that being capable of soloing everything with a secondary that is notably very good at soloing AVs is a fair comparison. I'm sure there are Controller secondaries that can solo the majority of the content Mind/Psi could.

I'm going to agree that there's a huge disparity between Seeds and Mass Confuse, but I honestly don't think making Mass Confuse into Seeds 2 fixes my core issues with Mind Control, which is that it gives up a lot of useful utility and damage by having no immobilizes plus a third-tier hold, and replaces them with powers of questionable utility, but not such questionable utility that anyone is considering throwing them out and starting over (not that we would). Mesmerize is a clunkier way to apply ST containment. Levitate animates slower than Lift, which makes it substantially worse as a damage-dealing power (I know it doesn't have defense tags, but honestly that's another issue if you mess around in AE). Terrify's fear is just less useful (not useless) without an immob. Telekinises is a cool power with a massive learning curve and almost no situation where it's worth the effort to actually learn. How do we fix these issues? I would personally address these issues before I touch Mass Confusion, a power that's not bad but compares unfavorably to a power that is honestly incredibly busted. And a part of that is because Mind Control would still compare unfavorably to a lot of other control sets even if MC was 60 seconds. EDIT because I gave no actual suggestions: A personal pie-in-the-sky approach to fixing Mind Control, in my opinion, might be adding -status resistance to the various powers as a sort of "wearing down" your enemies. One of Mind's niches is having a lot of Holds to throw out to attempt to permahold an AV in specific circumstances; why not lean into that? It would only really help the Holds and solo players, but Mind Control doesn't feel any weaker than any other low-damage control set in 99% of group play anyways.

To be fair, I have one of those shake weight-esque flashlights and this is genuinely what it feels like to use it in real life.

I like this as an idea, I just think there's a more active and less all-or-nothing way to do it. At the risk of making too out there of a reference, the DS RPG series Etrian Odyssey divides "Binds" into Head, Arm, and Leg; attacks are linked to a specific body part, and to stop ALL attacks you have to bind all three body parts (and I believe a small handful of bosses can fight back anyway, but without their best attacks). This is just one way to do it, of course, but I think that the CoH approach ends up creating a situation where big fights have to be relatively uninteractive for a controllers because mezzes are just too strong and too long for big fights; there's more than just "mez" and "no mez" when designing a game. I get what you're saying, but I think there's plenty of ways to make it so that even relatively short mezzes end up providing more value than just shooting something, while also acknowledging that that approach to MMO design literally did not exist when CoH was made. I will also say, I've always felt that a fully mezzed enemy - with mezzes as long as CoH currently has - should, logically, just end up arrested since they can't fight back. Obviously that'd make for an overpowered mez class, but I think the rationale is worthwhile to sort of break down what (I feel, at least) is "wrong" with CoH mez. (I also want to be clear I really enjoy CoH's Control classes - I just think they're not something any modern MMO dev would even implement again because they're a nightmare for game balance).

I'm going to push back against this a little; quite a few modern MMOs have introduced moments where a player *needs* to stun/silence a boss as part of a mechanical interaction. I think the problem is that CoH's take on controls/combat and team building just doesn't mesh well with MMOs finding a "control" role - which, to be fair, took almost a decade after CoH invested hard in its own take on control. It's also common for other MMO bosses to build up immunities to specific forms of mez as they get used repeatedly. I think the biggest issue with CoH's approach to control in terms of balancing is that controls are VERY long relative to any other MMO and that there's not really any sort of "building" resistance to mez that makes it less "permahold or nothing" in terms of approach. The other problem is that this is a very "build into" type of mez which just doesn't mesh with the way the rest of the game is designed. The only enemies that aren't dying quickly are the ones with the resistance to the effect. There's a massive disconnect there that makes it work better versus players than enemies almost always.

My understanding of their original concept was the opposite of this - they were "meant" to add other origins to your existing one (with your existing origin being the source of your primary and secondary).