The Current PUG Meta (aka ramblings of an old man)

[DougGraves]

19 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

And I completely disagree. The value of certain ATs has not been erroded. Certainly not for controllers, dominators, defenders, etc.

 

Your experience just isn't what I've been seeing since COH HC came online.

 

Ask on the controller forums if they are valuable at incarnate levels.  The clear consensus is that they are not.  I do not know if you play a controller at incarnate levels or are just saying what you notice.  Play one.   You will find that whether or not you use any powers in a mission will have negligible effect on how the mission goes.

 

The incarnate game is about doing as much damage as quickly as you can.  Buffs that help with that - especially kinetics - are great.  Controls are not needed.  Debuffs are only needed for -regen for AVs and GMs.  

 

The best team will be all Defenders, Corruptors, or SoA because of the team buffs.  But controllers, dominators, and tankers are only useful in rare content - except for the buffing half of being a controller and they are missing the damage half.

[golstat2003]

Just now, DougGraves said:

 

Ask on the controller forums if they are valuable at incarnate levels.  The clear consensus is that they are not.  I do not know if you play a controller at incarnate levels or are just saying what you notice.  Play one.   You will find that whether or not you use any powers in a mission will have negligible effect on how the mission goes.

 

The incarnate game is about doing as much damage as quickly as you can.  Buffs that help with that - especially kinetics - are great.  Controls are not needed.  Debuffs are only needed for -regen for AVs and GMs.  

 

The best team will be all Defenders, Corruptors, or SoA because of the team buffs.  But controllers, dominators, and tankers are only useful in rare content - except for the buffing half of being a controller and they are missing the damage half.

I play multiple and Doms. I feel very useful. Mixed in with my buffs and debfuffs I feel just fine.  In fact Dominators are my faviorite class with how overpowered I often feel on them.

[quixoteprog]

5 minutes ago, DougGraves said:

 

Ask on the controller forums if they are valuable at incarnate levels.  The clear consensus is that they are not.  I do not know if you play a controller at incarnate levels or are just saying what you notice.  Play one.   You will find that whether or not you use any powers in a mission will have negligible effect on how the mission goes.

 

The incarnate game is about doing as much damage as quickly as you can.  Buffs that help with that - especially kinetics - are great.  Controls are not needed.  Debuffs are only needed for -regen for AVs and GMs.  

 

The best team will be all Defenders, Corruptors, or SoA because of the team buffs.  But controllers, dominators, and tankers are only useful in rare content - except for the buffing half of being a controller and they are missing the damage half.

I play a lot of controller, and I see what you are saying. Controllers don't seem to bring as much to the table as other ATs in endgame content, to summarize (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) And I agree.

 

I think the challenge is, how do you make controllers relevant without making them OP? Control is such a powerful tool that most stuff intended to be a challenge, AVs and such are virtually immune to most of it. Or seem to be to me at least, in my experience.

 

On many controllers (mind/ill for example) If I can confuse any EB/AV ( without the purple triangles ) I can then burn them down at my leisure. Which is why so many of them have the purple triangles. Other hold power are less good but still pretty good. Maybe, instead of having the all or nothing approach where you either make the target helpless or have no effect a hold could have a slowing effect on and AV, or debuff their defense or something. The problem there is that since there are already powers that debuff defense, you dilute the effect of those.

 

The main problem seems to be with the elite types of mobs and the effect of controllers main powers sets. They currently seem to be very much all or nothing and some way of making a more granular effect seems to be needed to allow controller types to really be more worthwhile on endgame stuff.

 

 

 

 

[DougGraves]

1 hour ago, quixoteprog said:

I think the challenge is, how do you make controllers relevant without making them OP? Control is such a powerful tool that most stuff intended to be a challenge, AVs and such are virtually immune to most of it. Or seem to be to me at least, in my experience.

 

I agree.  I think controllers and dominators are already OP.  It is not their lack of power at high levels that makes them irrelevant, it is that control is irrelevant.

 

By level 32, my controllers can lock down one or two spawns.  On a team of 8 with 1 controller, the team takes almost no damage and just goes through missions safely because the enemies cannot fight back.  

[oxmox]

I don't agree with the OP that villain ATs are stronger, but there for sure is a shift away from the balanced teams of old. It's simply because of power creep. IOs and incarnates are super strong and most of today's players are veterans who play better than the average player during live.

 

Even the incarnate trials ostensibly designed for full teams of incarnates are super easy, let alone radios and TFs. When you run 8 man teams in really easy content it removes the need for defense of any kind, making tanks/controllers/support less useful. There isn't anything wrong with the ATs themselves, people just aren't playing content hard enough to need what those classes provide. 

 

Soloing AVs and GMs will make your debuffs shine. Soloing +4/x8 DA missions is no harder than council radios if you've got them locked down.

 

For people who want to run 8 man incarnate teams and still be challenged enough that support feels useful, I don't think the game really has many options. Could try running small Hami raids or iTrials with minimum team sizes I suppose.

 

As for designing lategame content that makes control useful, there are some pretty easy answers that don't involve touching the AV system. Make an enemy group where everything has 4x the normal health and does obscene damage or has strong stacking debuffs like hurricane that shut off when mezzed. I can guarantee nobody will play it, but it would certainly make control very valuable.

[Implementor]

I don't buy this controllers (doms) are not useful in high-end incarn content. I run with someone who plays a Controller and you can definitely tell he's bringing stuff to the table, seriously he destroys and has wicked survival. I only play a Dominator, and I know for sure I'm bringing to the table in every TF/SF/Trial. As for locking down AVs, I do that too.

 

Maybe it's the players playing them that aren't bringing it.

[Rimerat]

For myself personally, the challenge of the game comes in the form of build making and speed running content as fast as possible. I understand that doesn't appeal to everyone, but honestly building a defender who can breeze through dozens of packs unscathed while helping things die exponentially faster or a godly brute that can more or less never die is very fun to me.

 

Beyond speedrunning content and minmaxing, I would suggest trying to play content with fewer players. Honestly, an 8 player team is totally unnecessary most of the time. I play with one other friend and we're able to duo a lot of high-end content, the rest of the team are just warm bodies that may or may not be useful. Sorry if that sounds arrogant, I'm just being honest. I would say capping your team size at 4 so your archetypes are more meaningful would be a wise decision.

 

8 player teams are usually a bit of a steamrolling clustertruck.

[Shazbotacus]

I’m glad I ain’t the only one feeling this way about combat challenge, OP. I hate the idea of running into a DPS race meta.

[ShardWarrior]

On 11/21/2019 at 3:24 PM, DougGraves said:

But controllers, dominators, and tankers are only useful in rare content

You can substitute those with any other AT and still come to the same conclusion.

[Heraclea]

14 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

You can substitute those with any other AT and still come to the same conclusion.

I don't think there is any character class that I have played, or any content, where I haven't wondered whether I really am contributing or have a part to play on any character.  You can be a levelling blaster on a team full of judgment nukes.  You can be a controller on an AV fight.  You can be a scrapper on the BAF escape scene.  You can be a tanker on a team with two brutes and a mastermind.  You can be a brute on the Apex TF.  You can be a mastermind levelling through Sharkhead. 

 

There are one of two things you can do.  You can say 'these things happen' and hope for greener pastures ahead.  Or you can dip into the game's huge pool of content and do something else. 

[srmalloy]

On 11/20/2019 at 4:37 PM, Apparition said:

 

Because outside of things like Master of TFs/SFs, the Lady Grey TF, or Hamidon raids, you don't need one of anything.  Seeing someone forming something state that they need a tank or healer most likely indicates that either the team lead is inexperienced (as EmmySky pointed out), or is just plain bad.

Some of the most fun I've had playing back on live has been the 'themed' ITF runs that Kay organized; the All-Kinetic run was hilarious from start to finish, with pets zipping around like hummingbirds on crack from all the speed boosts, or the All-Mastermind run, where you could hardly move in the press of henchmen, but the withering hail of blasts carved swathes through the mobs. With all of the TFs that I've joined both here and back on live where the AT distribution was all wonky, but we sailed through the opposition, it makes me a little sad to see the LFG chat where someone is soliciting for a generic TF run and asking for AT and powersets in the tell, so they can build a perfectly-tuned team... as if that's going to stop people from doing stupid things in missions.

[Seed22]

On 11/21/2019 at 2:24 PM, DougGraves said:

 

Ask on the controller forums if they are valuable at incarnate levels.  The clear consensus is that they are not.  I do not know if you play a controller at incarnate levels or are just saying what you notice.  Play one.   You will find that whether or not you use any powers in a mission will have negligible effect on how the mission goes.

 

The incarnate game is about doing as much damage as quickly as you can.  Buffs that help with that - especially kinetics - are great.  Controls are not needed.  Debuffs are only needed for -regen for AVs and GMs.  

 

The best team will be all Defenders, Corruptors, or SoA because of the team buffs.  But controllers, dominators, and tankers are only useful in rare content - except for the buffing half of being a controller and they are missing the damage half.

Both my doms are useful at everything. Firex3 murders everything on a team/iTrial setting, same with my Plant/Savage. Perma dom is just icing on the cake. AVs in itrials are mez resistant, but that doesnt make a troller or dom not useful.

[Heraclea]

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

Some of the most fun I've had playing back on live has been the 'themed' ITF runs that Kay organized; the All-Kinetic run was hilarious from start to finish, with pets zipping around like hummingbirds on crack from all the speed boosts, or the All-Mastermind run, where you could hardly move in the press of henchmen, but the withering hail of blasts carved swathes through the mobs. With all of the TFs that I've joined both here and back on live where the AT distribution was all wonky, but we sailed through the opposition, it makes me a little sad to see the LFG chat where someone is soliciting for a generic TF run and asking for AT and powersets in the tell, so they can build a perfectly-tuned team... as if that's going to stop people from doing stupid things in missions.

On Tanker Tuesdays, we regularly organize all-Tanker runs of just about every TF and mission content in the game, as well as Rikti ship raids.  An all Tanker ITF is relaxing and pleasant for everyone.  The only thing IME that ever eluded us on an all tanker run was the Kahn TF. 

[EmmySky]

1 hour ago, Heraclea said:

On Tanker Tuesdays, we regularly organize all-Tanker runs of just about every TF and mission content in the game, as well as Rikti ship raids.  An all Tanker ITF is relaxing and pleasant for everyone.  The only thing IME that ever eluded us on an all tanker run was the Kahn TF. 

Lemme know if y'all ever have Tanker Tuesday on Sunday and on Indom,  I'll bring TankYou, she likes to explore the world but as she is my first tank to 50 I hate being THE tank on a team.

Edited November 24, 2019 by EmmySky

[Myrmidon]

5 hours ago, EmmySky said:

Lemme know if y'all ever have Tanker Tuesday on Sunday and on Indom,  I'll bring TankYou, she likes to explore the world but as she is my first tank to 50 I hate being THE tank on a team.

Sorry, Emmy, there is no Tanker Sunday.😁

[EmmySky]

9 minutes ago, Myrmidon said:

Sorry, Emmy, there is no Tanker Sunday.😁

😥

[Myrmidon]

11 minutes ago, EmmySky said:

😥

I may well be the only Tanker in the game that attended the very first Tanker Tuesday and they still won’t let me bring a Brute, so I get it.😁