Controller's Containment: Adding more conditions

[Oneirohero]

The Problem

Controllers often use status effects like Sleep/Hold/Stun..ect which are covered by the condition for containment damage. However they also use a bunch of other effects that certainly impede the victim's ability to act but do not count for containment damage. Two in particular: Fear and Confuse, often both prevent the enemy from attacking you or your allies and in the case of Fear, stops them moving too. One could say that Containment is only for status effects that 'lock down' enemies as the description states, but the effective message and gameplay perception of the inherent is that you get 'bonus damage from enemies under control effects'.

 

The Suggestion

Add Fear and Confuse to the list of applicable status afflictions for Containment to deal bonus damage. There's no reason to not include them as they are still strong statuses when used correctly. To denounce Fear because hitting them breaks the status early would eliminate Sleep as a status (and Fear eventually holds the attacked target after a short while too). And while Confuse doesn't stop the enemy from doing things, they might as well not be because aside from skimming off XP, a confused enemy can only be helpful to your team. In the case of a single confused enemy, they might as well be held.

 

I would say straight up that Knock effects shouldn't count, they're not persistent status effects. Taunt and Placate are tricky, while the two statuses and Confuse definitely do change how an enemy behaves, at least Confuse prevents the enemy from hurting you or your team mates, which neither accomplish (Taunt drives them to hurt you, Placate drives them to hurt your team). For them to have an inclusion into Containment's effect it would have to be something like the below suggestion:

 

Other control effects not currently included in Containment could be counted as a mini-crit grouping of damage bonuses, with Fear/Confuse/Taunt/Placate providing a smaller amount of bonus damage and in the event of an enemy having multiple statuses, takes the higher multiplier. An enemy with confuse could have something like +50% damage, while a Sleeping, Confused enemy would take the normal +100% damage. I still would like Fear and Confuse to be considered +100% damage statuses, but as a compromise, I can deal with it being made with mini-critting status effects so long as Containment can benefit from as many CC effects as plausible.

[SeraphimKensai]

As someone with 3 lvl 50 controllers and 2 on the way, it sounds good.

[biostem]

The problem with including confuse, IMO, is that they are easily permable and don't draw aggro - most other mez effects are barely permable, and they draw aggro.  You'd likely have to adjust the confuse powers to not skew the risk vs reward ratio way off...

[Oneirohero]

13 hours ago, biostem said:

The problem with including confuse, IMO, is that they are easily permable and don't draw aggro - most other mez effects are barely permable, and they draw aggro.  You'd likely have to adjust the confuse powers to not skew the risk vs reward ratio way off...

That is true, Sleep and Confuse often get higher magnitudes and duration than most mez powers. However Controllers often don't get use containment in endgame scenarios because of the amount of mez protection enemies tend to have. AVs in their triangle-up phase and giant monsters might as well disable Containment as an inherent with the amount of bonus damage you can do. Whether or not certain mezzes can be made perma or not is outweighed by the fact that Controllers with containment don't do more damage than other ATs on average and it would be better for Controller QoL if there were the least amount of resistance to achieving their potential DPS as possible. It's hardly zero effort, they still have to successfully mez a target before the damage kicks in, that's one more step than any other AT.

 

As for Risk/Reward, Confuse burns XP off any targets they damage, and can eliminate it entirely if they finish their ally off before you can get to them. No other status punishes your rewards for using it, but it gets used because it's super helpful for solo Controllers and makes dense crowds easier to manage. So with that said, Risk/Reward for confuse is entirely fair as-is, confused enemies are the true kill-stealers here, let's contain them!

 

 

[biostem]

35 minutes ago, Oneirohero said:

That is true, Sleep and Confuse often get higher magnitudes and duration than most mez powers. However Controllers often don't get use containment in endgame scenarios because of the amount of mez protection enemies tend to have. AVs in their triangle-up phase and giant monsters might as well disable Containment as an inherent with the amount of bonus damage you can do. Whether or not certain mezzes can be made perma or not is outweighed by the fact that Controllers with containment don't do more damage than other ATs on average and it would be better for Controller QoL if there were the least amount of resistance to achieving their potential DPS as possible. It's hardly zero effort, they still have to successfully mez a target before the damage kicks in, that's one more step than any other AT.

 

As for Risk/Reward, Confuse burns XP off any targets they damage, and can eliminate it entirely if they finish their ally off before you can get to them. No other status punishes your rewards for using it, but it gets used because it's super helpful for solo Controllers and makes dense crowds easier to manage. So with that said, Risk/Reward for confuse is entirely fair as-is, confused enemies are the true kill-stealers here, let's contain them!

 

 

Well, one solution would be to basically grant controllers containment damage vs otherwise mez-immune enemies.  As for the XP lost vs confused enemies - well since they pose absolutely zero risk to you, and you can basically stay at a safe distance until you've stacked enough magnitude to get the effect to take hold, why should you get anything at all?  Just tag them for a little damage and you should at least get *something*.

[magicjtv]

Remove Containment completely and double all non-pet damage.

 

Containment is needlessly confusing to players new to Controllers. Besides, Controllers already have an inherent capability: Overpower.

[Oneirohero]

3 hours ago, magicjtv said:

Remove Containment completely and double all non-pet damage.

 

Containment is needlessly confusing to players new to Controllers. Besides, Controllers already have an inherent capability: Overpower.

I have to admit, this is much better than my suggestion(s).

 

It's not like there's other ATs that have a purely-luck based Inherent either (Scrapper's Critical hits for example). Overpower is the one thing Controllers get that Dominators do not.

[Galaxy Brain]

4 hours ago, magicjtv said:

Remove Containment completely and double all non-pet damage.

 

Containment is needlessly confusing to players new to Controllers. Besides, Controllers already have an inherent capability: Overpower.

I don't see Containment being confusing...? Introducing my GF to CoH as a newbie to games in general, she was able to pick it up pretty quickly:

 

"Oh, if I hit them with one thing, the next does more damage"

 

The double damage numbers help too

[magicjtv]

16 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I don't see Containment being confusing...? Introducing my GF to CoH as a newbie to games in general, she was able to pick it up pretty quickly:

 

"Oh, if I hit them with one thing, the next does more damage"

 

The double damage numbers help too

If the one thing is a hold or a stun or a sleep (and they don't get woken from the sleep by someone else), but not a fear or a confuse or a knockdown or a repel or an intangible.

 

Right off the bat you have to know all the types of control, you have to know containment exists, and you have to know how containment works with each type of control.  You also need to know things like objects always count as contained and GMs never do. Or you can know none of that and use you powers in a sub-optimal way, or even select powers in a sub-optimal way.

 

Remove Containment, double non-pet damage, and you don't need to know any of those things. It just works.

 

 

Edited October 11, 2019 by magicjtv

[Galaxy Brain]

2 minutes ago, magicjtv said:

Remove Containment, double non-pet damage, and you don't need to know any of those things. It just works.

 

 

Fair point, though that may play into the damage formula and the end cost / recharge may need to go up.