Overwhelming Overpower: A Controller Inherent Buff - Control AVs and GMs!

[Blackfeather]

The Current Situation

 

Controllers are one of my favourite archetypes - capable of changing the course of a battle with a single well aimed power, and aiding their allies while debilitating their foes, it makes for a character that prefers to facilitate victory, rather than getting their hands dirty in the middle of a fight.

 

However, while they can easily disable weaker enemies with their numerous abilities, much of their arsenal is rendered ineffective against stronger foes, which have inherent levels of protection against status effects. That is to say: the raison d'être of a Controller's entire Primary power set (i.e. disabling or otherwise hindering the enemy) becomes an accessory to their other abilities while facing Archvillains and Giant Monsters.

 

No other category of powers invalidates themselves against stronger enemies to this wide of a margin - buffs and debuffs work, as do powers that deal damage. While they function at a diminished rate, they still do something. In comparison, status effects are binary: they either affect the enemy or they don't, and in the case of Archvillains and Giant Monsters...they usually don't.

 

While it is true that it is possible to stack enough status effects to overcome this inherent protection that these stronger foes have, one Controller alone is very unlikely to be able to do this - why else would Archvillains have a cycling period of higher/lower status effect immunity?

 

As it stands, Dominators are the better choice for actually locking down stronger enemies due to their inherent: the doubled strength of their control powers mean that they're much more capable of exceeding the status effect protections that such enemies possess.

 

The Proposed Change

 

Controllers actually have an inherent ability that lets them bypass the protections of some enemies to a degree. This comes in the form of 20% chance of increasing the magnitude of a status effect inflicting power by 1 (denoted by the word Overpower on use). Since most status effects have a magnitude of 3, this lets them occasionally affect Boss ranked enemies in a single hit. However, this does little to nothing for higher ranking enemies, which have much higher levels of protection.

 

This proposal (which I'm calling Overwhelming Overpower) attempts to change this, giving the Overpower mechanic the chance to grant higher levels of magnitude than just 1. As a result, Controllers now have the chance to affect higher ranking enemies with just a single use of a status effect inducing ability. While this makes them less reliable than a Dominator, they can potentially reach far greater heights. As the table below shows, Overpower can now actually, well, overpower enemies, regardless of their rank.

 

Additional Magnitude	Chance per Overpower	Chance per Power Usage	Floating Text
+1 = affect a Boss	50%	10% = 10 in 100 uses	Overpower
+4 = affect an Elite Boss	25%	5% = 5 in 100 uses	Overpower!
+54 = affect an Archvillain	20%	4% = 4 in 100 uses	Overpower!!
+100 = affect a Giant Monster	5%	1% = 1 in 100 uses	Overpower!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was partially inspired by the idea of saving throws in D&D. Naturally, higher level enemies tend to be more resistant to effects, but there was still the chance that a bad roll of the die could leave them affected. As seen in the table above, Archvillains now have a 25% chance of being overwhelmed by a status effect inducing ability, if it is Overpowered. In other words, rolling a natural 1 on a d20 (20% chance of Overpower, then 25% chance of a +54 or higher Magnitude boost).

 

I also added in a section that allowed Elite Bosses to be instantly affected as well, since they have somewhat higher protection levels than Bosses do - it also serves as a way of giving Controllers some additional magnitude to play with against Archvillains/Giant Monsters to some degree, making it a little bit easier to overwhelm them.

 

I figure that these numbers strike a fair balance between making control powers completely godlike and essentially useless - with enough attempts, a Controller can now lock down powerful enemies, even if they can't build enough stacks to brute force their way through an enemy's protection. However, people more versed in numbers than I am, please feel free to correct me, or suggest changes to these chances.

 

Potential Further Ideas

 

Smoother Overpower Magnitude Curve

One idea I've been toying with is the idea of having Overpower's magnitude be more variable. Instead of a flat chance for specific magnitudes, perhaps using a logarithmic scale with higher/lower magnitudes might be more potent. My main concern here is that this might be a bit too powerful, depending on exactly how this scale might look.

 

Extremely high values would occur at approximately the same rate as before, but it'd also provide the opportunity for status effect magnitudes to stack a little better (e.g. a chance of having a Mag 40 Hold, followed by a few regular Mag 3 ones, just enough to Hold an AV).

 

This could further boost the Controller's ability to lock down Archvillains and Giant Monsters, even if they don't exactly hit the right threshold the first time around, by stacking additional status effect points to just reach the limit. Were I more versed in maths, I'd draw up a graph of the likelihood of a specific magnitude on an Overpower under this model...but sadly I am not.

 

+Chance to Overpower

Another idea that's come to mind is letting the actual chance for the Overpower effect occur more frequently depending on a stacking bonus, similar to how Stalkers can build higher chances for critical hits. Potential ideas for 'stacks' (of let's say 5%) could be:

• Stacking percentage based on how many status effects on an enemy are applied (even if they aren't affecting them)
  • E.g. Controller attempts to Hold + Sleep + Confuse an AV, chance to Overpower is now 20% + (5% + 5% + 5%) = 35% chance
• Stacking percentage based on how many recent control powers have been used (time pending)
• Stacking percentage based on previous controls that weren't an Overpower (increase chance if it hasn't happened lately)
  • E.g. Controller's previous two controls were regular ones, chance to Overpower is now 20% + (5% + 5%) = 30% chance
• Increased chance based on amount of magnitude left until it exceeds protection
  • (Current Magnitude Inflicted / Enemy Magnitude Protection) * 100 = additional chance to Overpower
  • E.g. Controller Holds AV for Mag 3, resulting in a 26% chance to Overpower
    • (3 / 50) * 100 = 6% additional chance

 

Overpowering Overkill

Two points that have been brought up a few times in this thread:

• Controllers are a little bit slow at actually clearing out enemies in regular play
• Overwhelming Overpower does little against weaker enemies (Lieutenants and below)

 

As such, this additional proposal aims to address these two points in the following manner:

• An Overpower or above will instantly defeat Underling ranked enemies and below
  • 20% chance for instant defeat on power use
• An Overpower! or above will instantly defeat Minion ranked enemies and below
  • 10% chance for instant defeat on power use
• An Overpower!! or above will instantly defeat Lieutenant/Sniper ranked enemies and below
  • 5% chance for instant defeat on power use
• An Overpower!!! will instantly defeat Boss ranked enemies and below
  • 1% chance for instant defeat on power use

 

This is flavoured as the Controller's higher magnitude powers fully overwhelming weaker enemies, and thus leading to their subsequent defeat. As such, the proposal might work well together with the previous suggestion of dynamically increasing the chance of an Overpower occurring.

 

Conclusion

 

With this proposal, Controllers should now be able to better lock down higher ranking enemies, rather than rely on their secondary abilities to help a team when facing them. Rather than building stacks of status effect points that will likely do little, or needing other team members to help them, a Controller can now know that their attempts in locking down that AV all have the chance to become something greater: an Overwhelming Overpower!

 

Feedback as always is welcome - is this something that you might like to see? Any changes that you'd like to this proposal? Looking forward to any responses that come my way!

 

History

 

Initially, here was what the likelihood of Overwhelming Overpower looked like - after some discussion, I figured that it was a bit too low:

 

Spoiler

Additional Magnitude	Chance per Overpower	Chance per Power Usage	Floating Text
+1 = affect a Boss	50%	10% = 1 in 100 uses	Overpower
+4 = affect an Elite Boss	45%	9% = 9 in 100 uses	Overpower!
+54 = affect an Archvillain	4%	0.8% = 1 in 125 uses	Overpower!!
+100 = affect a Giant Monster	1%	0.2% = 1 in 500 uses	Overpower!!!

 

A 1 in 100 chance of affecting an AV with a single Hold is a bit too little to be noticed, most likely.

 

Edited November 1, 2020 by Blackfeather
Added new idea: Overpowering Overkill

[FoulVileTerror]

Would there be any special consideration in situations when Controllers are teamed up together?  Would the mechanic continue to function exactly the same way, or would there be any kind of diminished values when multiple Controllers are able to lay out Control from multiple sources?

[Blackfeather]

That's an interesting question, and it's only one that I just started to think about recently. If I get any of my arithmetic wrong, please point it out!

 

On a team of, let's say, 8 Controllers, all using their Hold power, they'd have an 8% chance of triggering a Mag 50 hold. In the current system, a single Controller on average does about a 3.2 Magnitude Hold (factoring in the 20% chance of Overpower). Multiplying that by 8, we get a cumulative 25.6 Magnitude Hold - another application of which would be sufficient to Hold an AV.

 

With Overwhelming Overpower, there'd only be a 16% chance of actually triggering an AV level Hold, (bad math! Props to @HelenCarnate for catching it.) there would be 16 separate instances of a 1% chance of actually triggering an AV level Hold - a 14.85% chance of it going off at least once, given two applications by all 8 Controllers, before they'd overwhelm the AV by sheer numbers in the first place, no Overpower!! Hold required.

 

Essentially, I figure that the amount of lockdown brought by multiple Controllers already provides enough power to hold down AVs/GMs without too much of an issue - but one or two Controllers alone can't do the same, and due to the binary nature of how status effects work, it leaves their primary somewhat shafted. So adding in that potential chance of breaking through those protections helps in that regard.

 

Conversely, additional magnitude past those protection limits is in effect 'wasted' - as such, I'm not sure if adding restrictions to this mechanic on teams with multiple Controllers is necessary...but I could be overlooking some potential scenarios!

Edited September 16, 2020 by Blackfeather
Fixed up some bad math!

[Vanden]

This seems completely useless. A 1-in-125 chance of it happening on an AV? You can already hold an AV 1/3rd-1/4th of the time while the triangles are down, but this feature you could run an entire LRSF without experiencing it once.

 

Edit: And a 1-in-10 chance of it happening on a Boss, even though a regular Overpower already holds a boss? What's the point of that?

Edited September 15, 2020 by Vanden

[MTeague]

As much as I loooooove Controllers, I sort of get the bind the devs are in with them. 

 

If we're too good it's City of Statues, and every big ticket encounter is trivialized.

But as it stands now, as you say, the Controller is largely unable to reliable Control the most dangerous foes who you probably need controlled the most. 

 

And it's... dicey... if you're a solo Mind/ controller when you get to anything with purple triangles.

Yea, you can defeat the AV.... maybe.... with mass amounts of Reds, Purples, and by propping up a Shivan with your secondary.  

 

More likely than not you just have to team. And that's not necessarily the worst of all possible answers.  Teaming shouldn't be completely anathema. 

But I can't say I don't get jealous of some of my other alts when I'm dealing with Envoy of Shadow, etc.

 

[Outrider_01]

Controllers have 2 jobs, control and a support set

 

Dominators have 2 jobs, control and DPS.

 

Group wise, controllers are stronger with the buffs and debuffs...why hold an AV to beat it down when you can still beat it down with debuffs and debuffs?  Sure, triangles exist...but once they are down that HP bar grinds down fast in a group.  Dominators don't bring much more than a controller, DPS is spread out among the group and a dominator is just better at holding things while the rest of the group blitzes the AV down with controller buffs/debuffs.

 

 

[Darkneblade]

Honestly just having to shutdown AV's/GM's HP regeneration when mezzed would be improvement. But I take what I can get.

As it is AV's/GM's have high resist to debuffs which secondary doesn't do anything remarkable.

Now imagine AV's/GM's have high resist to damage, I'm sure there will be outrages.

As it is we are minority so I don't expect much.

 

Edited September 15, 2020 by Darkneblade

[ABlueThingy]

I dunno, I think every attempt to balance control based characters on the control axis is going to fall short because COH still has binary controls.  You're held or you're not and being held is a massive benefit.

 

We've been discussing this kind of issue since back on the old black/orange forums.  I still stand by the idea that *from the start* this game needed a third bar beyond HP/End.  Some kind of morale bar where enemies were incapacitated/arrested/surrendered on depletion.  If Iceman freezes an entire group of thugs solid... that's it, they're out.  Just as much Batman spin kicking the whole room.

 

But all the proposals for this kind of system tend to be rather dramatic and big and outside the traditional scope of updates to an existing game.  I just don't see much else really fixing the issue.  Controls are binary.  The only way to fix that is to make them a gradient somehow, IMO

[MTeague]

12 minutes ago, ABlueThingy said:

I dunno, I think every attempt to balance control based characters on the control axis is going to fall short because COH still has binary controls.  You're held or you're not and being held is a massive benefit.

 

We've been discussing this kind of issue since back on the old black/orange forums.  I still stand by the idea that *from the start* this game needed a third bar beyond HP/End.  Some kind of morale bar where enemies were incapacitated/arrested/surrendered on depletion.  If Iceman freezes an entire group of thugs solid... that's it, they're out.  Just as much Batman spin kicking the whole room.

 

But all the proposals for this kind of system tend to be rather dramatic and big and outside the traditional scope of updates to an existing game.  I just don't see much else really fixing the issue.  Controls are binary.  The only way to fix that is to make them a gradient somehow, IMO

Maybe the same way Immobs can apply a -Movement debuff against things that are too strong to be Immob'd, some kind of -Recharge against things that have Hold/Stun/Confuse/Fear applied, but the mez protection is too strong for the control to "Stick".  The -Recharge reflecting a "partial" Hold, where the foe can still attack, but sluggishly?  or in the case of Confuse/Fear has to spend extra time mentally focusing themselves before they attack?

 

EDIT:  and no application of the -Recharge if the control takes full effect.   If it really IS held, then the hold is enough.

Edited September 15, 2020 by MTeague

[ABlueThingy]

1 minute ago, MTeague said:

Maybe the same way Immobs can apply a -Movement debuff against things that are too strong to be Immob'd, some kind of -Recharge against things that have Hold/Stun/Confuse/Fear applied, but the mez protection is too strong for the control to "Stick".  The -Recharge reflecting a "partial" Hold, where the foe can still attack, but sluggishly?  or in the case of Confuse/Fear has to spend extra time mentally focusing themselves before they attack?

If you could re-wire it so the AI would refuse to use their "Biggest" powers if they had more then a combined mag 10 hold/sleep, or a mag 15 stun/confuse or a mag 20 immob/fear?  Maybe lose more powers the higher it goes?  Have a little "Disabled!" pop up  If you felt like rewriting all the AI it's hypothetically doable

 

 

[MTeague]

3 minutes ago, ABlueThingy said:

If you could re-wire it so the AI would refuse to use their "Biggest" powers if they had more then a combined mag 10 hold/sleep, or a mag 15 stun/confuse or a mag 20 immob/fear?  Maybe lose more powers the higher it goes?  Have a little "Disabled!" pop up  If you felt like rewriting all the AI it's hypothetically doable

 

 

I'd absolutely prefer this method.  I do think the -Recharge scheme is likely easier to code, but .... I do see where -Recharge will reduce damage over the course of a fight, but still allow for lots of unpleasant incoming burstiness if the EB/AV/GM has several attacks come off cooldown all at once. 

 

On the other other hand, I can also see problems if an EB/AV/GM doesn't *have* any smaller attacks, only the Big Whammies.

Might require recoding them to have smaller attacks to fall back upon.  And hopefully it wouldn't break them the way MM Pets AI used to get screwed up.

[FoulVileTerror]

Something like https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/22314-if-you-could-radically-overhaul-1-thing/?tab=comments#comment-259972 @ABlueThingy?

It's been on my list of things to get around to drafting up a Design Document for when I find the time.

 

  . . . finding time has not been easy, lately.

[Blackfeather]

3 hours ago, Vanden said:

This seems completely useless. A 1 in 125 chance of it happening on an AV? You can already hold an AV 1/3rd-1/4th of the time while the triangles are down, but this feature you could run an entire LRSF without experiencing it once.

1 in 100 actually, including the chance for a Mag 100 effect. The idea behind Overwhelming Overpower is to provide a slim chance for a Controller to be able to affect higher ranking enemies, even if they don't have enough powers to stack to the required threshold.

 

Per my post, I wanted to strike the balance between "actually able to affect stronger enemies" and "up 100% of the time for every fight". Given the fact that the Controller already has a chance based mechanism built right into it, it made sense to build on top of that.

 

However, if you do think the numbers as they are a little slim, what do you think might be better odds, without them being...overly overwhelming? 🤣

 

Alternately, perhaps the logarithmic Overwhelming Overpower idea I put forth might be of interest to you? So there could be a variable sliding scale of Overpower magnitudes, from an additional 1 all the way to 100, the lower magnitudes being more likely than the higher ones, but providing an overall increase in a Controller's ability to lock down beefier targets.

[Blackfeather]

@Vanden I made a revised Overwhelming Overpower table - what do you think of these odds compared to the initial proposal? Are they too potent?

 

Additional Magnitude	Chance per Overpower	Chance per Power Usage	Floating Text
+1 = affect a Boss	50%	10% = 10 in 100 uses	Overpower
+4 = affect an Elite Boss	30%	6% = 6 in 100 uses	Overpower!
+54 = affect an Archvillain	15%	3% = 3 in 100 uses	Overpower!!
+100 = affect a Giant Monster	5%	1% = 1 in 100 uses	Overpower!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In other words, a 1 in 25 chance of affecting an AV with a single use of the Controller's Hold/Stun/etc. (with a 1 in 100 chance of affecting a Giant Monster).

 

EDIT: take a look at the new table from the initial post - Controllers now have a 1 in 20 chance of affecting AVs with a single use of their power.

Edited September 16, 2020 by Blackfeather
Increased Overpower!! magnitude to include scaled-down-AVs.

[HelenCarnate]

Nevermind, more maths to do.

Edited September 16, 2020 by HelenCarnate

[Blackfeather]

2 minutes ago, HelenCarnate said:

Yes your math is wrong.  They would still only each have 1% chance since each one would be a different roll.  However the more attempts the better the odds that you will eventually hit. 

Whoops! You're right about that, my mistake. Though that does mean I can probably safely up the likelihood of inflicting a higher magnitude Overpower without too much of a worry. What do you think of the revised table I put forth?

Edited September 16, 2020 by Blackfeather

[HelenCarnate]

18 minutes ago, Blackfeather said:

Whoops! You're right about that, my mistake. Though that does mean I can probably safely up the likelihood of inflicting a higher magnitude Overpower without too much of a worry. What do you think of the revised table I put forth?

It is not off by a terrible amount.  Basically figure out the odds of you failing and invert that.  So missing 3 times in a row at a 1% chance to hit means 99x99x99/100x100x100 which is 970,299/1,000,000.  This means that the other 29,701/1,000,000 times you are successful at some point out of those 3 rolls. So instead of 3% you are looking at 2.97%.  That doesn't seem like much but as you keep going the gap spreads a little bit more to be around 7.73% with 8 chances. 

Edited September 16, 2020 by HelenCarnate

[Blackfeather]

8 minutes ago, HelenCarnate said:

It is not off by a terrible amount.  Basically figure out the odds of you failing and invert that.  So missing 3 times in a row at a 1% chance to hit means 99x99x99/100x100x100 which is 970,299/1,000,000.  This means that the other 29,701/1,000,000 times you are successful at some point out of those 3 rolls. So instead of 3% you are looking at 2.97%.  That doesn't seem like much but as you keep going the gap spreads a little bit more to be around 7.22% with 8 chances. 

I see! So in the example I put forth, with 8 Controllers attempting to Hold an AV twice, the likelihood of none of them being an AV level hold would go something like:

 

99^16 divided by 100^16, which results in...85.15%? Which I think results in a 14.85% chance of getting an AV level hold up. Hopefully I didn't mess anything up this time around!

Edited September 16, 2020 by Blackfeather

[HelenCarnate]

Bingo so roughly 14.85% chance that sometime during that 16 try attempt, you will have at least 1 success.  Woops, fixed my earlier error.  Should be about 7.73% with 8 tries.

Edited September 16, 2020 by HelenCarnate

[Blackfeather]

2 hours ago, HelenCarnate said:

Bingo so roughly 14.85% chance that sometime during that 16 try attempt, you will have at least 1 success. 

Well! In that case I can definitely up these chances. Alright! So, using that new table from before...

 

Additional Magnitude	Chance per Overpower	Chance per Power Usage	Floating Text
+1 = affect a Boss	50%	10% = 10 in 100 uses	Overpower
+4 = affect an Elite Boss	30%	6% = 6 in 100 uses	Overpower!
+54 = affect an Archvillain	15%	3% = 3 in 100 uses	Overpower!!
+100 = affect a Giant Monster	5%	1% = 1 in 100 uses	Overpower!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

With that 8 Controller scenario again, given they attempt a Hold twice, with a 1 in 25 chance of locking down an AV, the odds of having it never occur would be...

 

24^9 divided by 25^9, which results in 69.25%, for a 30.75% chance of an AV level Overpower going off. I can probably safely up the likelihood again...maybe actually have AVs susceptible to a Hold on a nat 20 roll? In which case the table will now be:

 

Additional Magnitude	Chance per Overpower	Chance per Power Usage	Floating Text
+1 = affect a Boss	50%	10% = 10 in 100 uses	Overpower
+4 = affect an Elite Boss	25%	5% = 5 in 100 uses	Overpower!
+54 = affect an Archvillain	20%	4% = 4 in 100 uses	Overpower!!
+100 = affect a Giant Monster	5%	1% = 1 in 100 uses	Overpower!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Which'd be something like 19^9 divided by 20^9, which results in 63%, for a 37% chance for an AV level Overpower going off. That sounds fairly decent!

Edited September 16, 2020 by Blackfeather
Increased Overpower!! magnitude to include scaled-down-AVs.

[Vanden]

Even with those numbers, it's not likely to go off more than once an AV fight, if that. It just seems less useful overall than the purple triangles dropping.

 

59 minutes ago, Blackfeather said:

With that 8 Controller scenario again, given they attempt a Hold twice, with a 1 in 25 chance of locking down an AV, the odds of having it never occur would be...

 

24^9 divided by 25^9, which results in 69.25%, for a 30.75% chance of an AV level Overpower going off.

Great, but with Controller ST holds it's trivially easy with minimal enhancement to stack them 3 times for mag 9 Hold. With only 6 controllers, that's mag 54, which means AV held 100% of the time. And that's with no Overpowers. With maximum enhancement one Controller can stack up as many as 10 stacks on one even-level target at 50.

Edited September 16, 2020 by Vanden

[Blackfeather]

4 hours ago, Vanden said:

Even with those numbers, it's not likely to go off more than once an AV fight, if that. It just seems less useful overall than the purple triangles dropping.

 

Great, but with Controller ST holds (20s it's trivially easy with minimal enhancement to stack them 3 times for mag 9 Hold. With only 6 controllers, that's mag 54, which means AV held 100% of the time. And that's with no Overpowers. With maximum enhancement one Controller can stack up as many as 10 stacks on one even-level target at 50.

Yup! I talked about this mechanic with @FoulVileTerror to explain why I didn't think it needed scaling with larger groups - status effects are a binary affair, so this tweak to the mechanic is mostly to benefit a Controller on their own, or in a group as the sole CCer.

 

In a group with multiple Controllers, Overwhelming Overpower isn't necessary; you're basically guaranteed to lock things down. But on the flipside, without enough, you're basically guaranteed not to be able to do so, either against an Archvillain with their special protection up, or a Giant Monster. That 'binary critical mass' is what I'm attempting to mitigate the need of, by providing this additional chance.

 

I'm definitely not interested in replacing the purple triangles - just supplementing it in the scenarios where the binary nature of controls means that they end up not working on the enemies most worth trying to lock down.

Edited September 16, 2020 by Blackfeather

[Blackfeather]

17 hours ago, ABlueThingy said:

I dunno, I think every attempt to balance control based characters on the control axis is going to fall short because COH still has binary controls.  You're held or you're not and being held is a massive benefit.

 

We've been discussing this kind of issue since back on the old black/orange forums.  I still stand by the idea that *from the start* this game needed a third bar beyond HP/End.  Some kind of morale bar where enemies were incapacitated/arrested/surrendered on depletion.  If Iceman freezes an entire group of thugs solid... that's it, they're out.  Just as much Batman spin kicking the whole room.

 

But all the proposals for this kind of system tend to be rather dramatic and big and outside the traditional scope of updates to an existing game.  I just don't see much else really fixing the issue.  Controls are binary.  The only way to fix that is to make them a gradient somehow, IMO

Initially, I also wondered whether or not the nature of status effects in CoH meant that they'd need an overhaul to help them be a bit less binary. However, I kind of came to the conclusion that such effort would probably be a lot of work, with the potential for a lot of unexpected side effects.

 

To compete with the binary nature of magnitude, I figured that introducing a chance based element to how likely a status effect would be to work on different kinds of enemies would help even things out.

 

Happily enough, the Overpower mechanic, with its additional magnitude is essentially this; a stand-in for saving throw dice for enemies...so long as it has different potential magnitude strengths. This results in us creating a gradient with the current system: one based on chance.

 

Perhaps some mechanic to temporarily increase the likelihood of Overpower occurring might do some good, accompanying the tweaks I proposed in the original post, similar to how Scrappers have the Critical Strikes ATO to boost the chance of landing a critical (except inherent to the Controller rather than as something to slot).

 

Maybe a scaling percentage chance to Overpower depending on how many status effects an enemy is currently inflicted with, even if they're not actually affected? E.g. 3% for a Hold, Immobilize, Sleep, leading to an additional 9% chance to Overpower.

Edited September 16, 2020 by Blackfeather

[Galaxy Brain]

14 hours ago, Vanden said:

With only 6 controllers

How often is this realistically happening, lets be honest. 

 

No, seriously. 

 

Power groups designed to take down a particular AV or such shouldnt be a consideration as that can always be done for any specific content and is too much of a headache to consider outside of exploitative scenarios like a certain AT or Powerset having a weird bug or something. We can currently lock down AVs with a full team of controllers or doms, so the ability to do so even if briefly with less than 8 shouldn't be a concern though it is still unrealistic to assume "oh everyone is just gonna roll in with X amount of Y thing every time". It simply doesn't happen.

Edited September 16, 2020 by Galaxy Brain

[Blackfeather]

16 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

How often is this realistically happening, lets be honest. 

 

No, seriously. 

 

Power groups designed to take down a particular AV or such shouldnt be a consideration as that can always be done for any specific content and is too much of a headache to consider outside of exploitative scenarios like a certain AT or Powerset having a weird bug or something. We can currently lock down AVs with a full team of controllers or doms, so the ability to do so even if briefly with less than 8 shouldn't be a concern though it is still unrealistic to assume "oh everyone is just gonna roll in with X amount of Y thing every time". Ot simply doesn't happen.

I definitely looked at tweaking the Overpower mechanic with the assumption that there'd be only one or two Controllers on a team - basically giving them a chance to lock down stronger enemies even without sufficient magnitude that, say, an entire team of CCers would provide. It won't be a consistent lockdown of course, but I did want to think up a way of allowing even one Controller to let their status effects work to some degree against enemies with high protection levels.