Mind Control

[Peacemoon]

Telekinesis is not perfect, but if we were going to tweak control sets to improve slightly off powers, I'd be more inclined to start with Ice Control? There have been some good suggestions for Telekinesis in this thread, but talk about touching Mass Hypnosis makes me feel uncomfortable. Lets just stick to Telekinesis and maybe reducing the cooldown on Mass Confusion.

 

Heck if any power warranted an 'immobalise', both in terms of balance and thematically, then telekinesis is surely it!

[SaddestGhost]

40 minutes ago, Chirikiti said:

Mind weak? wow...not.even. close. I specialize in Dominators and Mind is awesome. As is. Out of the box. How anyone can find it weak even at 6th level running kalinda or Mongoose is beyond me. 

Mesmerize is great right off with no slots. Best hold in the game. Mass Hypnosis is a great no damage emergency and facilitator. Confuse is just awesome. Seriously mass hypnosis is great as is, adding subtracting anything from it would be terrible idea. 

 

Seriously you can solo the leveling content on the hardest difficulty with SOs with a mind dom.

 

Don't touch Mind Control, it's perfect as is and awesome out of the gate. Seriously people need to stop fooking with power sets, especially when they can't play them well (yeah I said it)

 

 

Vet Level 1204 Mind/Psi Dominator- Solo'er of all GMs, AVs, Trials, TFs: (4 outstanding from those but the point stands)

With three mind controllers (Mind/Rad, Mind/Emp, and Mind/Kin) and two mind doms (Mind/Fire and Mind/Energy), all leveled by playing through the content, I'm going to dismiss your notion that people that don't see the flaws in Mind don't know what they're doing.  In fact, I'll go a step further and say this.  Until I had played all the other control sets (each taken to 50 with a controller, leveling through content no matter how sluggish), I used to argue for how good Mind was.  When Mind control is being discussed, it seems like its defenders fall back on the "You don't know how to play it" argument.

 

That being said,  I'll concede that Mind starts out very strong and on a Dom it is arguably much better.  However, Mind Controllers start to lose their lead in the mid-game as other sets are building their recharge and adequately enhancing their every spawn control.  By the end game, Mind Controllers are lagging, though the have a few niche tricks that are nice (Confuse in the TPN, TK in MoM, layering controls on Rularuu, circumventing the positional defense of Hami's Mitos, sleeping AVs in MLTF).  I'd argue that Mind's problems aren't even entirely inherent to the set; some of it stems from the changing landscape of the game.  Before the proliferation of inventions having a tool for every spawn, even if it was a soft control, was a strong advantage.  But now other sets can build their short charge, AoE controls to be up nearly every spawn.  Pressing closer to the present, control has much less value in an environment where so many can softcap S/L/E or drop their nukes without the vulnerability that comes with a crash.  When I started the game back around Issue 6 or so, Mind was generally considered a leader of the pack, but things have changed and Mind has not.

 

It's time for an update.

[Blackfeather]

It'd definitely be nice if there were more opportunities to make the Sleep status effect useful. That being said, it's a status effect that's predicated on the team not doing enough damage to handle everything at once. To be fair, the same could be said of all status effect powers (best mez is dead and all that), but Sleep gets hit the worst by it.

[Greycat]

On 3/30/2020 at 7:28 PM, Replacement said:

I'm sure it won't be helpful, but I'd like to try to come at this without personal attacks or assumptions.  So let's get objective:

Would you say a Sleep effect is half as effective as a Disorient? (Mass Hypnosis has half the recharge as Flashfire/Stalagmites)
Would you say a Sleep effect is half as effective as continual knockdown? (Mass Hypnosis has a duration between 0 and 22 seconds while Ice Slick has a 30 second duration and keeps reapplying.  MH also has, again, half the recharge of Ice Slick)

 

I can sleep *for days* things that I cannot knock down or lift. (Or things that will just run through Ice or Earthquake.)

My AOE sleep keeps things in place until the team can get to them (AOE happy as people are these days) versus having them wander around ignoring a tanker's taunt until a disorient wears off. And yes, both keep those mobs from attacking.

 

And as far as effectiveness, that sleep is handy from early to late game. From shutting down Ruin mages in Posi (shuts off the dispersion bubble making the entire mob easier to hit) through shutting down armors (many of which have a sleep hole - yes, an attack will wake them, but will have a better chance to hit and/or do more damage) all the way to end game (LRSF/MLSF being a classic example - one application to keep the AVs slept so the team can deal with them one at a time.)

 

You might call it situational, but there are a *lot* of situations from low to high level where it helps, and people ignore that because "oh, they woke up."

 

As for a pulse... eh. Electric makes sense to have it, as it has the whole Electric "I'm also trying to drain your END/-recovery" thing going on, so a single pulse wouldn't really fit there.

 

Edit: Since it was brought up, on live I'd run *all* the control sets to 50. Yes, I'm familiar with them all. Earth and Ice are also faves of mine. Yes, I'm still creating more here. I still stand by my comment earlier of my "range" when I choose what I want for control sets. (And yes, still feel that for someone who wants a *controller,* Illusion is horrible for direct control - two invisibilities, to start with, on top of its pet dependence - yet people love it. *shrug* )

Edited April 1, 2020 by Greycat

[MTeague]

Sleeps and Immobs are two types of control that EB's and AV's aren't immune to.

If you want to put more effects into Mezmerize and Mass Hyp, I won't entirely object. 

 

But DON'T leave a Mind Controller with NO WAY to park something that needs parking, Purple Triangles or not. 

And soloing, I'm quite happy using the Non-Aggroing Sleep nature of Mass Hyp to bypass mob that I dont' want to deal with. 

 

And as Greycat says, shutting down various armors is very handy as well.  And an Immob ain't gonna do that, nor is a stun.

 

If you can add something in without taking something away, I"m willing to talk turkey.

But don't hamstring powers I rely on in the name of making them better.

 

There's a bunch of Control Sets and no one who rolls a mind controller is going into it blind, you can see what hte powers are as you create your character.  If sleeps were a major deal breaker for someone they just wouldn't pick the set.  And I'm fine with that.  I'd rather have some actual variation among control sets, even if some are pronounced better than others, than have everything overly homogenized.  

[Blackfeather]

10 minutes ago, Greycat said:

And yes, still feel that for someone who wants a *controller,* Illusion is horrible for direct control - two invisibilities, to start with, on top of its pet dependence - yet people love it. *shrug*

If I had to guess, a lot of people choose Controller primaries based on their damage potential (for some reason). Looking at the stats, the most played are Fire, Illusion, Gravity and Plant Controllers.

[Blackfeather]

10 minutes ago, MTeague said:

Sleeps and Immobs are two types of control that EB's and AV's aren't immune to.

If you want to put more effects into Mezmerize and Mass Hyp, I won't entirely object. 

 

But DON'T leave a Mind Controller with NO WAY to park something that needs parking, Purple Triangles or not. 

And soloing, I'm quite happy using the Non-Aggroing Sleep nature of Mass Hyp to bypass mob that I dont' want to deal with. 

 

And as Greycat says, shutting down various armors is very handy as well.  And an Immob ain't gonna do that, nor is a stun.

 

If you can add something in without taking something away, I"m willing to talk turkey.

But don't hamstring powers I rely on in the name of making them better.

 

There's a bunch of Control Sets and no one who rolls a mind controller is going into it blind, you can see what hte powers are as you create your character.  If sleeps were a major deal breaker for someone they just wouldn't pick the set.  And I'm fine with that.  I'd rather have some actual variation among control sets, even if some are pronounced better than others, than have everything overly homogenized.  

Redlynne and I have made two different Mind Control adjustment threads with separate focuses. We both did our best to keep the powerset's identity, while providing some additions to the set.

[Chirikiti]

Doesn't need Immobs slows or stuns. Immobs don't really shut things down, doesn't need stuns it has holds confuse and sleeps. AOE no matter if you're experienced YOU can be the aoe. 

 

Sleep paired with an immob so when damaged and wake still an effect?- plenty of tools for one to use to make such happen

 

 

 

I stand by my 'understand how to play it' comment...the very fact that people seem to need or lament the lack of said stuns/immobs and can't find all the great ways to use a sleep illustrates it. Seem to want to play it like any other set. It doesn't. Just like my fire/energy dom doesn't play anything like my mind/*. You can see it in the way people manipulate and use the purple-triangle EB/AV defense- they don't. Or stick to fighting one boss/eb (and not even holding it) when there's other stuff they could be doing in addition to that (on a team of 2 mind doms and a something troller, why are there 6 war walkers running around during the apex steps mish? I can lock down (hold) 4 of em myself, 6 if I confuse the other 2 for example). Seems like people want it to play it, and for it to be like everything else that they understand, without taking the set and maximizing it's utility which I still contend is awesome out of the box. 

 

In general I think the power sets of the game should not be messed with entirely. Going to end up with a death by a thousand-cuts.

 

 

 

[SaddestGhost]

I understand what you're saying, but I think you're definitely missing part of it.  Even if the user understands Mind well enough, it requires the team to understand what the Mind user is doing and why.  For instance, (and this is a personal peeve of mine) when you confuse Ruin Mages in the Posi task force, you're not only negating their Earthquake and Dispersion Field you're turning it against them.  As long as they're confused that Earthquake is working for you.  The moment the scrapper or whoever decides they're going to kill the guy with purple bubbles around his head, we're back to flopping on the ground and wiffing our attacks due to the persistent nature of some pets.  With Mass Hypnosis there are also good tactical uses, but they are even more fragile.  Part of the solution to that might be making it more evident that mobs are asleep, i.e. the idea they should lie down, but I suspect it would do little. 

[NEW DAWN]

On ‎4‎/‎1‎/‎2020 at 10:39 PM, Chirikiti said:

Mind weak? wow...not.even. close. I specialize in Dominators and Mind is awesome. As is. Out of the box. How anyone can find it weak even at 6th level running kalinda or Mongoose is beyond me. 

Mesmerize is great right off with no slots. Best hold in the game. Mass Hypnosis is a great no damage emergency and facilitator. Confuse is just awesome. Seriously mass hypnosis is great as is, adding subtracting anything from it would be terrible idea. 

 

Seriously you can solo the leveling content on the hardest difficulty with SOs with a mind dom.

 

Don't touch Mind Control, it's perfect as is and awesome out of the gate. Seriously people need to stop fooking with power sets, especially when they can't play them well (yeah I said it)

 

 

Vet Level 1204 Mind/Psi Dominator- Solo'er of all GMs, AVs, Trials, TFs: (4 outstanding from those but the point stands)

I didn't do Controllers or Dominators as much as some people but when I did I will confirm this , this and more this.

[roleki]

On 3/30/2020 at 5:36 PM, Bossk_Hogg said:

No, they really arent. How often do you actually encounter dispersion bubble that having an otherwise nigh useless form of CC is worthwhile? Great, you can solo pull AV's. Boy, that justifies the set being weak in 99.9999% of every other encounter!

 

Given that other sets get stuns on a 90 second cooldown, while Mind has no equivalent, is just sad. It's been a weak set since day one, but the gimp power brigade loves their ugly darlings, so rush out every time people try to make it not crap.

 

Mass Confusion should be on a 120 second recharge, with TK's cost significantly reduced. 

Eh.  I solo a Mind/Poison and have no trouble mowing through anything my other controllers attempt.   Sure, its effectiveness is hampered on teams, but every controller's effectiveness suffers in that scenario.  

[Chirikiti]

I also disagree that it's effectiveness is hampered on a team...some of it's stuff maybe, overall effectiveness? Nope

[Chirikiti]

On 4/2/2020 at 2:12 PM, SaddestGhost said:

I understand what you're saying, but I think you're definitely missing part of it.  Even if the user understands Mind well enough, it requires the team to understand what the Mind user is doing and why.  For instance, (and this is a personal peeve of mine) when you confuse Ruin Mages in the Posi task force, you're not only negating their Earthquake and Dispersion Field you're turning it against them.  As long as they're confused that Earthquake is working for you.  The moment the scrapper or whoever decides they're going to kill the guy with purple bubbles around his head, we're back to flopping on the ground and wiffing our attacks due to the persistent nature of some pets.  With Mass Hypnosis there are also good tactical uses, but they are even more fragile.  Part of the solution to that might be making it more evident that mobs are asleep, i.e. the idea they should lie down, but I suspect it would do little. 

See here I can get on board not with the sleep maybe it's so obvious that they are, but the purple doohickies indicating a confused could be more apparent. I've always said Mind's powers are subtle (and the hold animation is overridden by other people's hold graphics like Ice O_o). That being said, all it takes is for people to be somewhat observant and/or team with such a few times to get the gist.

I mean I'm on teams alllll the freakin' time and the ruin mage scenario (whatever NPC) rarely happens or is of minor annoyance at best. Not worth changing anything over except maybe make the confuse graphic a little more apparent (not too much)

 

[Spectre7878]

I enjoy mind control. The sleep powers feel right on this set. I would not want to see that changed. Telekinesis on the other hand should be fixed. Either get rid of the repel and lower the endurance cost or make it like mass levitate from the Psionic melee set. That’s what I would do. 

[Galaxy Brain]

Its nice that the big threats can be locked down, but do teams really notice when they're all soft capped and gonna kill the baddie in 1 minute with no threat to them anyways?

[Blackfeather]

17 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Its nice that the big threats can be locked down, but do teams really notice when they're all soft capped and gonna kill the baddie in 1 minute with no threat to them anyways?

To be fair the same could be said of all roles save for damage at that point, really. That's less of a knock against crowd control and more against the game system itself.