blazingcoconut

If you have worked with large code bases, it should be pretty clear that singular points of change are both easier and less risky and often very warranted. People often talk about raising the tide raises all boats... that's not true in a system like this. Take the changes to blast sets. Snipes are now both fast and hard hitting and nukes have no crash. Time to Kill Decreases. That fixed a lot of problems for blast sets by giving them better attack rotations and T9s that you actually want to use! That's great... Well... maybe not. It's great if you are playing someone with a blast set. But if you are a Tanker, Controller, Dominator, and to a lesser extent Brute, Defender and Corruptor, your job of protecting people just got a little less relevant. Controls and buffs are needed less because with those tight attack chains, things are dying much faster. After several changes like this, you start to have real issues with the purpose for certain types of powers. Why control anything when you could have picked more damage and just defeated them? Why protect people who already are soft capped to most everything? Why care about aggro when they die so quick that you can't even get it... or watch the blaster jump in the middle of a spawn anyway? Those issues can't be solved by a buff because the Time To Kill affects eveything. So you can give everyone more damage? No... that doesn't really help someone who wanted to play a support/control based character. You can change all mobs so they are harder. Yes, but that's a very large change and as I've tried (and maybe failed) to illustrate, large changes often have unforeseen consequences. So sometimes, it's not being lazy, but being prudent. Pick off a few of the really overperforming sets as a way to lower Time to Kill because it's a change that has less impact globally

You do not speak globally. There are plenty of changes in there that I think are good. There are people in this thread who have thought the changes are good. So they are things that people wanted. In your entire thread you confuse "what I want for my perfect MMO" with what everyone wants. They are not the same, and after reading the list not close for me at least. Again, you speak only for you. There were a couple of generic items that were fine, but I have no issues if they nerf overperforming powers. As it stands the power creep has made entire ATs struggle with their definition. That's a problem that can't be fixed by buffing everything. Because there are some outlier powers and a general reduction in negative ramifications for using things (crashes, etc) as well as the power boon of incarnates and IOs, controls and buff powers are no longer really needed in endgame content. You can't fix that unless you make some of those sets less powerful (or globally boosting enemies with things to combat it which is nearly the same). So certainly give your opinions, but you don't speak for me, and I would guess that you don't speak for a lot of people.

I have to say in most cases I don't enjoy the journey. Level 1-10 isn't a challenge it's a chore. You have limited abilities and the game boils down to using PTW powers to actually play. Level 11-22 is meh. You still don't have enough abilities to make things interesting. You likely have gaps in the things you need to be effective. Level 23-40 Is decent and probably the best CoH experience. Most ATs are balanced for their task in this range. However, I have already planned my final build. Having to spend 12million on a set that I'm not going to use once I hit 50 is annoying since even if I play normal, that's probably only a couple of days at best. Level 41-49 Also decent with more annoying groups. Most people in this range seem to just want to hunt council because people still don't have finalized builds and some endgame groups are far more annoying to play with no better rewards. However, AT imbalance picks up as kill speed increases. Level 50 You can finally make your build. However, because kill speed is through the roof, control and a fair amount of support powers are just pointless. Radiation Infection? You'll barely get it applied before the mob is nuked into oblivion as Incarnates pretty much skew any sense of team dependence out the window. Most mobs you'll get a single -RES out before they are dead. So yeah, the journey is not all that great for me. I'd rather powerlevel to 50, make my build with farmed inf THEN exemp/oboros down to play the stuff I didn't bother with on the way up. So while I respect your want to slowly level up, I'd rather quickly level up and then play the content I want from 1-50. I have a few characters who have done nearly every Oboros mission. Playing a controller from 1-32 can be a really crappy journey. Playing a controller from 1-32 exemped with some bonuses is much better. Other ATs have huge gaps too that are not too fun to deal with. For me it's a superhero game. I want flashy powers and cool stuff to use. It's just more fun to fight people with a full suite of abilities than waiting for one of your 2-3 relevant powers to recycle. But I also RP, so spending a lot of time leveling takes away from the real fun of the game 🙂

No offense but with those restrictions, pick a pair and go for it. You have so many caveats that you'll need to find a pairing that works for you.

Plant is a good contender for strong soloing. Fire, even without Kin is good now that bonfire can be a damaging knockdown field. Teams are fine until your late 40s where you may start wondering about your role in the group.

I've tried poison on a number of characters and my main is Plant/Poison troller. You can do well proc'ing it out. But what others have said is pretty true. It's an adequate set at best but if you are looking for an av killer, then they're pretty good. Weaken and envenom work really well together to keep you safe if you have some recharge to get them stacking. However... Only against one target. Yes there's splash, but it doesn't seem to be great that way and the splash radius is kind of small. Paralytic poison is a decent ST hold which can also be a good ST attack with procs. I like it a little better than most but the advice you are getting here is not wrong. Defender is probably the way to go... Water or dark is a good pairing for their heals in their attacks.

If your goal is to do as much single target damage as possible... Siesmic Smash is as good as it gets for controllers and single target damage. Drop fissure and proc out siesmic smash as it's amazing at boss killing.

Excellent, we're down to name calling. Which of the following is not true? 1) Against AV/Monsters many controls do not work due to the purple triangle mechanic. 2) End game teams kill things at a speed that renders control inefficient against anything but #1 3) Defenders are better buffers and can offer easier to apply damage. 4) Corruptor's have the same buff capabilities with a generally superior level of damage 5) Kill speed is the primary measure of success for many teams at end game. It's not longer can you get through content but how fast If you'd like to address any of those, I'm more than happy to debate. I'm not going to get into an e-peen argument over my skill level as that's irrelevant. I'd like to think I've mentioned that Controllers are my favorite AT despite their short comings in the end game. I've also stated that I pretty much design them to solo now because it's an easier play style and your controls are actually needed to survive unlike pretty much all team based end game content.

The comparison would be if defenders buffs basically stopped working against most content in the end game. At that point, what are they bringing to the table? They're are lousy blaster. In the end game, many controllers end up being second rate defenders. Because their primary controls no longer work, all they have to rely on is their secondary powers. Yes that's an over simplification, yes there are outliers and exceptions. However, the problem still remains, in that the primary ability of the AT no longer truly functions for the 50+ game.

I'm not forgetting it, I'm saying it is a near worthless contribution to any team in the endgame. I have now 10 level 50 controllers of which 6 are fully IOd out. A few of them can handle farms at +4/8 content on their own. So I'd like to think I have a at least a decent handle at playing my favorite AT. At 50, unless you are doing Hami, no one cares about control because things die so fast control is irrelevant. On the content where things don't die immediately, short of Hami, control is usually rendered ineffective by high Mez resists or purple triangles. No, I would not leave a anyone off a team. Most level 50 teams can handle under performing toons. Controllers are not so terrible that your team is fail for taking them. But, the team is worse for doing so. Without control, a defender or corruptor will be better for buffs and debuffs while providing better damage with blast sets. Without control any of the damage dealers will contribute more to clear speed. Controllers do decent damage but they do it over time typically. With nukes and incarnate nukes your damage you could provide is too slow and short of a few combinations worse than other ATs who can do a better job with buffing/debuffing. Solo, controllers are great. Kill speed is irrelevant and safety is important. On small teams doing 8 person content they can shine. On full teams I totally disagree that they serve any purpose that some other AT does not do better, assuming equivalent slotting. There are ways to fix it. Turning containment into something that does a debuff if you've applied a control to a mov regardless if it is controlled or not would be one way. It would put them on par with defenders at least for offering support for a team. But that would make a lot of solo controllers upset. Making end game mobs toggle off defenses from being controlled would help. Making end game mobs debuff the heck out of defense would help a ton. Even adding a bucket of health to mobs slowing kill speed would help. But every idea has impacts to other parts of the game. So I don't want to see a quick change. I would love this Dev team to think about how to make control relevant though. So that when you pick the AT you actually do the role you figured you were going to.

If I have no Brute, I take one. Otherwise if I lack damage, Blaster or Scrapper if I lack support, defender or corrupter if I want buffs/debuffs If I don't know my team comp, then Brute.

The immob is useful, I find often times as the only troller on the team that they do just fine whether I immob them or not. Most of the abilities you are talking about /cold /rad etc... Are better off coming from a defender as you're really talking key secondary powers that make those sets shine, and the immob is about the only thing we really contribute that others can't to better in much of the content. The thing we do, control, started losing value when the devs didn't want controllers making their end game content trivial. They explained this at length with the purple triangle change. Yet here we are... With much of the end game content trivial and controllers have their primary ability either neutered or irrelevant to much of the content still. There are effective pairings. Yes. However, it's not because they bring control to the end game. It's because they bring something else, usually damage or their secondary to the fight. Illusion breaks this with some interesting ways of making control work Controllers aren't terrible. I still love and play them, but they are not in a good place right now for endgame other than a few outliers.

There is some truth in this... However, this was also a design decision where the devs decided that beating up frozen enemies was not fun. So purple triangles came into play and so did Mez resistant mobs. Why that's not fun and having softcapped defense is still baffles me. But that's part of why this bugs me. It's not a balance issue it's a conscious choice to say we don't like the way this AT mitigates damage

I had not. I also hit domination which didn't help. Dark has -to hit which probably was enough mitigation to survive. I was playing plant / storm which did not have much other tools in the way of mitigation. I hadn't yet taken Snow Storm.

I have no issues with missions, like the Skulls arc that have you face an EB which warn you that you should bring a friend. That's cool, all ATs have issues with that mission since the EB is tough. This mission doesn't have that warning and isn't particularly hard for everyone that doesn't rely on holds as their source of mitigation. As I've been going through the levels I do find it kind of amusing how many hold resistant mobs are end bosses as well. Again it would be like if the beginning arc had mobs who had a powerful DEF debuff and a powerful RES debuff combined. That would make the mission hard for melee characters and sentinels. Which, I'd love to see more of, it would help the place of support in the end game. But that's where it belongs, the end game, not the intro arc. (You had a really nice reply, just pulling out this point really for discussion)