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

[FoulVileTerror]

I just wanted to say, @Blackfeather, that I really appreciate the amount of effort and work you're putting forward in to this.  Even if the Homecoming Dev ultimately don't opt to look in to improving Controllers in a way which calls upon the wealth of conceptual mechanic work you've done here, I do hope it has been as illuminating for them as it has for others.

Keep up the good work!

[Blackfeather]

4 hours ago, Hops said:

At least you get a semi cool inherit power while you team. Defenders pretty much get nothing. I don't play this game to solo.

I think @The Philotic Knight might like to have a word or two about this. 😏

[Blackfeather]

Hey @Coyote - might have something up your alley, having looked at this post of yours. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this proposal of mine; while it focuses on Controllers, it also discusses the use of status effects against stronger enemies and so on. Any thoughts/feedback/critique on it would be much welcome!

[Blackfeather]

Should probably ping @Wavicle about this post as well, given this comment. You might like this proposal! Or not, in which case, critiques are definitely welcome as well. 😄

[MTeague]

7 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

The thing about Dominators is that with Domination on, they have strong, reliable controls; they generally are able to one-shot lock down most things - a Controller is unable to do that no matter how they build themselves.

Largely true.  However, it's noteworthy that under the current rules, the Lockdown, Chance of +2 Mag Hold is a virtually guaranteed proc in an AE Hold.

Now the AE hold is simply not going to be up every spawn. Even with really good +Recharge.  There's limits. 

And it's still not going to be enough for an EB / AV.

 

But it does make for a nice opener against a regular bosspack.

 

And certain control sets can do Hold - Sleep - Hold, and the sleep will park a boss for long enough to get that second single target Hold off.

If Confuse / Decieve is on the table, I believe most single target Confuses are non-aggroing.

 

Soloing, My Mind/Kin will

• AE Hold (if it's up), Fulcrum Shift, followed by Terror / Psychic Toranado to tag all foes with damage 
• OR
• AE Sleep, Confuse boss, Confuse Boss, Fulcrum Shift, Terror, Psychic Toranado, 
• Then
• standard single target lockdowns and Crosspunch

[FoulVileTerror]

Another alternative just came to mind.

Since Controllers are a Support Archetype, perhaps we're going about this the wrong way.  Rather than a chance to increase their own Magnitude, what if Controllers were given a chance to floor the target's Control Protection?  Open the door for -any- Controls from the rest of the team to get through to the Target.  That might be more in line with the Controller's themes and intended design parameters. 

 

ie:  The Dominator is selfish, getting the higher Mag for themself.

The Controller is selfless, giving what is effectively higher Mag for the whole team.

[Blackfeather]

1 hour ago, MTeague said:

Largely true.  However, it's noteworthy that under the current rules, the Lockdown, Chance of +2 Mag Hold is a virtually guaranteed proc in an AE Hold.

Now the AE hold is simply not going to be up every spawn. Even with really good +Recharge.  There's limits. 

And it's still not going to be enough for an EB / AV.

 

But it does make for a nice opener against a regular bosspack.

 

And certain control sets can do Hold - Sleep - Hold, and the sleep will park a boss for long enough to get that second single target Hold off.

If Confuse / Decieve is on the table, I believe most single target Confuses are non-aggroing.

 

Soloing, My Mind/Kin will

• AE Hold (if it's up), Fulcrum Shift, followed by Terror / Psychic Toranado to tag all foes with damage 
• OR
• AE Sleep, Confuse boss, Confuse Boss, Fulcrum Shift, Terror, Psychic Toranado, 
• Then
• standard single target lockdowns and Crosspunch

Indeed - I use the Lockdown proc myself in some cases, such as my Illusionist's Flash. That being said, I generally avoid using the AoE Hold as an opener, and more as a panic button for when things are going south, preferring to use the rest of the Controller's arsenal in other situations (i.e. powers with more constant uptime). As a result, it's definitely quite optional in most of my builds. The short +2 magnitude helps a good amount to provide a moment's pause to think a little, retreat or push the advantage, etc.

 

I believe Confuse powers also have a similar benefit in the Coercive Persuasion proc, even better than Lockdown in some ways, since it spreads confusion around in a group. Definitely fun with characters with an AoE confuse power such as Plant, Electric, or Mind Controllers.

[Blackfeather]

@CaptainLupis noticed you talking about control powers...perhaps this potential proposal might interest you? Would be glad to hear your thoughts on it!

[Blackfeather]

8 hours ago, FoulVileTerror said:

Another alternative just came to mind.

Since Controllers are a Support Archetype, perhaps we're going about this the wrong way.  Rather than a chance to increase their own Magnitude, what if Controllers were given a chance to floor the target's Control Protection?  Open the door for -any- Controls from the rest of the team to get through to the Target.  That might be more in line with the Controller's themes and intended design parameters. 

 

ie:  The Dominator is selfish, getting the higher Mag for themself.

The Controller is selfless, giving what is effectively higher Mag for the whole team.

That does sound interesting (though I'm somewhat of the stance that Controllers provide support via their support secondary, with locking down enemies as their main priority) - could you elaborate further on this though? It sounds a little difficult to envision, but I'm seeing it as reducing an enemy's magnitude protection. Effectively, control powers kind of do that at the moment, since each use of a status effect builds up to break that down.

 

I assume the difference here is that it'd apply to all status effects?

[Blackfeather]

On 9/22/2020 at 11:32 AM, Replacement said:

First off, overall take: I like the idea of the OP, but I feel like it could actually go further.  Up the %s some, but I realize I have not stopped to think through the repercussions of multi-controller effects.

 

That said, I find myself wondering if Protection can be debuffed.  I think this would be tricky since, iirc, that's what mez already is (example: if an enemy has 3 points of Hold Protection and I hit them with a Mag 3 hold, that's actually a -3 debuff to their Hold protection.  Presumably, some separate aspect of the engine is watching for players to register any Protections of 0 or lower to apply status effects to).

 

But, if it could be done, I think it would simply be neat if Overpower was changed to a global proc that made attacks also add a long duration -1 protection.

EDIT: I guess an easier take on my thought there is simply changing Overpower's additional +1 mags to be much longer duration.  Right now, it's about half the primary mez duration, but I think double would be better.  That's a 44 second-ish Hold.  yes, that's scary.  No, I do not think that's an issue at Mag 1.

Or was this closer to what you were envisioning, @FoulVileTerror?

[Mystic_Cross]

23 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

Thanks for writing up a response!

 

One thing I've found quite interesting is the fact that there's a lot of different stances on how powerful this proposal is - I do believe @Vanden found this to be kind of underpowered for instance. Similarly the lack of reliability was something that @MTeague had some issues with, to my recollection. @BitCook was also in this camp, I think.

 

On the other hand, @Noyjitat and @zenblack did voice their concerns about this proposed mechanic; status effects are indeed potent and quite binary, even with this variable chance included with it. It'd be nice if there were somebody around who could figure out the whole 'on average' level of control that Overwhelming Overpower might provide to better gauge its power.

Let me start by saying I think you've done a great job thinking this through and trying to balance the level of power that would be available. It's not my intention to belittle the amount of effort you've put in, or to suggest that it's a poor idea. Quite the contrary. I'm very impressed with the suggestion as a whole, as well as the work you've put into fleshing it out and the effort to solicit feedback for improvement. The two camps you mention here though, I don't think I fit very firmly into either one, but perhaps rather equally in both, because I believe they are both correct... or would be at different times, given to circumstance. Allow me to try and explain what I mean:

 

Currently I think your formula would allow for the mechanic to perform at varying levels ranging from substantively underpowered at times to grossly overpowered at others, and very occasionally striking a balance of the two. Granted, there is no actual math involved in that assumption but I think it could be clearly evident to anyone by comparing with %chance to-hit values that are already in the game and how often we can miss an attack even at a constant +95% to-hit. At times you may never miss an attack for several minutes, and others you can miss several times in a row. More often than not, you will only miss once in a while. Even though some of your values are lower than 5%, it will still have the potential for the same manner of hit streaks and misses, only reversed. The misses become hits and the hits, misses.

 

*Edited for clarity* You'll be hitting the +1-4 range most often (by design), which would be *virtually* no difference than current, especially vs an AV and would be just as underpowered as current. Occasionally you may get a +54 or +100 mag but it will be random enough that it will be as likely to land on a minion at the start of a mission as the AV at the end (unless you're doing missions full of nothing but AV/GMs). Further, the longer an AV lasts, the greater the chance to get that super-mag during the fight, and also a greater chance to get a "streak" during the fight. This is all before buffing our chances to land a super-mag with each control we use. Add that buffing, along with the super-mags and it substantially increases the overall ability to become over-powered. In that scenario, once the AV is held the first time, they will become a statue for the remainder because the super-mag is enough to overcome the Purple Patch and you will be constantly buffing your %chance through using controls while they're held.

 

Quote

The thing about Dominators is that with Domination on, they have strong, reliable controls; they generally are able to one-shot lock down most things - a Controller is unable to do that no matter how they build themselves. I figured that 'unreliable, but potentially powerful' status effects could be a niche that this archetype could fit into without stepping on the Dominator's toes.

 

I'm of the mind that Controllers should have at least equal, if not slightly superior controls to (perma) Dominators. Controllers can get the damage of their Primary up to near Dom levels, but they will never deal more damage, even with buffs, because Dominators have both a higher base and more ways to deal damage... and can still be buffed externally. Controllers have to "work" to get near the same damage output as Doms, why shouldn't Doms need to "work" (aka get permadom) to get to the Control level of Controllers? Controllers get buff/debuff, Doms get mez protection and self-buffs (BuildUp, PowerUp etc). Doms trade their survivability for more damage, Controllers have to trade both their damage AND their control for... what exactly? being a "force multiplier"? The damage loss is understandable for that reason, but not both IMHO.

 

Quote

As such, I'm not quite sure how Overwhelming Overpower can directly scale against Dominators in magnitude. Domination has the ability to reliably double the efficacy of all status effect powers - Overpower will always only have a 20% chance of dealing +1 magnitude. Even if its magnitude were to increase to match it, that still leaves Domination as the better choice due to it being able to consistently lock down stronger enemies.

 

So basically that small one-shot chance I figured was an equalising factor for Controllers to be able to do that kind of thing in some rare instances: they don't have enough magnitude to reliably stack it. Upping its magnitude across the board was something that I considered, but then I thought about how high it ought to be to exactly match a Dominator. A 20% chance of a Mag 6 status effect? That's something a perma-Dom can do 100% of the time. Multiply that by 5 to compensate? That's a Mag 30 status effect.

 

Yes, it could directly scale by having a %chance for a much higher mag like that. If we figure a 20% chance is equal to one in five casts, and 5 casts from a Permadom would equal (m6*5=mag30) then a 20% chance for a Mag-15 Overpower would more or less equal that over time (m15+(m3*5)=mag30). More often than not this alone would probably make us equal, but it could potentially still leave us at half their strength some of the time, or at double their strength others, depending on RNG. In essence, it would leave us no better than we currently are, at minimum, and far superior to a permadom at max. Not really an ideal solution there, I agree. But what if we looked outside of just Overpower for a solution?

 

I personally think it would be a bit more viable, and balanced, to increase the Controllers base magnitude by +1, giving them an initially stronger base control value in comparison to Doms. After that, we could then use Overpower to "shore up" the remaining difference between "just" Dom and "perma" Dom using a much smaller (and more controllable) modifier. Doing it this way would close the gap between the highest and lowest performance metrics in the first example, while substantially increasing the reliability of ending up with a comparable +Mag. Now we could use the 20% chance for a +6 mag Overpower you stated above (instead of that huge +15 mag), and come out with (m6 + (m4*5)= m26). This puts a Controller at Mag 26 vs a Permadoms Mag 30 with 5 casts, on average. There will still be dips and spikes, which could be as low as mag 20 (no overpowers, but still an improvement vs the current low of mag 15) and as high as mag 32 with a very rare possibility of hitting mag 38. This would put us on nearly equal footing with Doms in relation to being able to punch through an AVs hold protection.

 

This could be tweaked further by offering a buff/debuff per teammate to the +%chance/-mag. Personally, I'd add a +15% duration and +20% Overpower-chance buff per teammate along with a subsequent -1 mag reduction per teammate (all capping at 3 allies max). Ultimately this would equate to an 80% chance for mag 7 hold (base mag 4 + mag 3 overpower) and a 45% control duration buff, on a team of 4 or more players. In this scenario, we'd be capable of +1 mag more than a permadom, per hold, but only 80% of the time... and we'd have a slightly better control duration to compensate that difference.

 

All together I believe this would make a Controller nearly as reliably powerful as a permadom Dominator on average. It would also be much easier to implement than a completely custom solution since we already have all the necessary in-game powers with these functions to do so. For the most part I think it would only entail changing some values to accomplish.

 

Quote

The scaling magnitude of Overwhelming Overpower came from the desire to strike that balance between a spectrum of 'too powerful, too reliable' and 'too weak, too unreliable'. Of course, actually figuring out whether that's the case is one of the more difficult parts, as the discussion about this is proving! 😄

 

I think you more or less succeeded in shifting the balance between those two things, but overshot the marks a bit too far and landed in the realms of 'too powerful, too unreliable' and 'too weak, too reliable'. I may have to go back and take a 2nd (or 3rd) look though. Charts and tables were never my strong suite. 😄

 

Edited October 4, 2020 by Mystic_Cross

[CaptainLupis]

13 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

@CaptainLupis noticed you talking about control powers...perhaps this potential proposal might interest you? Would be glad to hear your thoughts on it!

I haven't read through the entire thread, but I did read the first page and it sounds interesting. But I'll be honest, I don't play controllers enough to say how much of an impact it would really have in real world play. I suspect in most teams the AV would be dead before you actually got a chance to hold it, but I could be way off. I do have a few controllers, but only a couple at 50 and they rarely get played. My favourite was my Illusion/storm back on live, so that wasn't even dependant on mezzes. Dominators I just can't get on with at all. All of which boils down to my input is not worth a whole lot I'm afraid.

 

I quite liked the other idea I think someone posted of stacking enough mag to disable their biggest hitting powers. Following on from that having a control that hits, but doesn't affect the AV/GM diretly, could knock a random power out of its rotation? That sounds like it would be useful. It might actually be OP though if a lot of controls are being spammed so would probably have to be a % chance of it doing it. With, admittedly absolutely no reasoning behind it, around 20 to 33% sounds about right. Or perhaps have the chance based upon the mag of the control and the duration of the power somehow? I'd also make it an ability only available to trollers and doms, not to just anyone that has an epic hold.

Edited October 4, 2020 by CaptainLupis

[FoulVileTerror]

So, I just went in-game and mucked about with some enemies hitting me with Control Powers while watching the Status Effect Protection Combat Attributes.  Damn.   Okay.   Seems that the level of granularity needed for my latest suggestion doesn't really exist in the mechanics right now.

 

I wonder . . . is there a way to code the game to allow for applying a Control Magnitude equal to 1/2 of the Target's current total Protection Magnitude?  If we could pull that off, that could be an effective way to add something meaningful without being potentially overpowered.

[Blackfeather]

On 10/4/2020 at 2:31 PM, Mystic_Cross said:

*Edited for clarity* You'll be hitting the +1-4 range most often (by design), which would be *virtually* no difference than current, especially vs an AV and would be just as underpowered as current. Occasionally you may get a +54 or +100 mag but it will be random enough that it will be as likely to land on a minion at the start of a mission as the AV at the end (unless you're doing missions full of nothing but AV/GMs). Further, the longer an AV lasts, the greater the chance to get that super-mag during the fight, and also a greater chance to get a "streak" during the fight. This is all before buffing our chances to land a super-mag with each control we use. Add that buffing, along with the super-mags and it substantially increases the overall ability to become over-powered. In that scenario, once the AV is held the first time, they will become a statue for the remainder because the super-mag is enough to overcome the Purple Patch and you will be constantly buffing your %chance through using controls while they're held.

Apologies for the late response - had some things that needed doing on my end!

 

Just breaking this down a little, since there's a few things here, I think:

• I view the current Overpower mechanic as working as intended against regular mobs - bosses can occasionally be locked down in the first hit, but not reliably so
  • As such, I scale this mechanic upwards to the point of affecting AVs/GMs, but at lower chances
• The likelihood of Overwhelming Overpower working against AVs/GMs is higher due to the fact that they have a high enough health pool/resistance to not be mowed down in the first place - that's intentional, and is meant to be the equivalent of a Dominator stacking their more powerful controls to lock them down over time
  • I brought up a nice comparison equation over in this post, take a look to see how they both stack up!
  • I also talked about the likelihood of an Overwhelming Overpower occurring in 50 seconds here - the duration of the Purple Triangles up phase
• If you'd like, I'd be quite happy to try and run the numbers for any specific scenarios about the likelihood of an Overwhelming Overpower triggering - currently, I'm of the view that it currently strikes a nice middle ground
• I assume you're referring to the +Chance to Overpower suggestion in your last part? I haven't yet fleshed out how it'd exactly workmyself: that was more in response to users talking about this mechanic's lack of reliability
  • To clarify, the chance table remains the same, only the likelihood of an Overpower goes up (i.e. the 20% chance of it increasing)
• Additionally, what did you think about the suggestion about having a Smoother Overpower Magnitude Curve? Depending on its implementation, perhaps this might address your qualms about the level of variability involved with its current implementation?

On 10/4/2020 at 2:31 PM, Mystic_Cross said:

I'm of the mind that Controllers should have at least equal, if not slightly superior controls to (perma) Dominators. Controllers can get the damage of their Primary up to near Dom levels, but they will never deal more damage, even with buffs, because Dominators have both a higher base and more ways to deal damage... and can still be buffed externally. Controllers have to "work" to get near the same damage output as Doms, why shouldn't Doms need to "work" (aka get permadom) to get to the Control level of Controllers? Controllers get buff/debuff, Doms get mez protection and self-buffs (BuildUp, PowerUp etc). Doms trade their survivability for more damage, Controllers have to trade both their damage AND their control for... what exactly? being a "force multiplier"? The damage loss is understandable for that reason, but not both IMHO.

Personally speaking, perma-Dominators deserve the level of power that they have, and I see them as the be-all-and-end-all of "powerful, consistent lockdown", so I wanted the Controller to strike the balance between non-perma and perma-Dominators myself. I didn't want Controllers to overshadow them, which is something that I say here in my response to @Noyjitat. They do, after all, both have control powers as their primary.

 

That being said, I also wanted to make sure that the Controller was rewarded in some way for slotting up their control powers - that's where the chance based mechanics of Overwhelming Overpower come in:

• By slotting them up for recharge, they get more rolls of the dice = more chances that Overwhelming Overpower activates
• By slotting them for duration, their rolls may be potentially safer (I can bring up the odds of one happening again while an AV is controlled on request!)
  • Alternately, it could interact in some way with the +Chance to Overpower suggestion, such as building chance with magnitude stacks

Damage is all well and good, but I don't really see it as that much of a priority, especially for Controllers, which are more team focused (which may or may not include upping damage in different ways).

 

Whether that balance is struck, well...that's what this discussion is about! 😄

On 10/4/2020 at 2:31 PM, Mystic_Cross said:

Yes, it could directly scale by having a %chance for a much higher mag like that. If we figure a 20% chance is equal to one in five casts, and 5 casts from a Permadom would equal (m6*5=mag30) then a 20% chance for a Mag-15 Overpower would more or less equal that over time (m15+(m3*5)=mag30). More often than not this alone would probably make us equal, but it could potentially still leave us at half their strength some of the time, or at double their strength others, depending on RNG. In essence, it would leave us no better than we currently are, at minimum, and far superior to a permadom at max.

Whoops - I made a bit of a math gaffe here, apologies. Assuming 5 control powers, with one hit of Overpower, a Controller would have a total magnitude of 16 altogether (3 x 4 + 4 = 12 + 4 = 16). A perma-Dominator with 5 control powers has a magnitude of 30 (6 x 5). If we wanted to directly scale that, any power with Overpower would then have a magnitude of 18 (30 - 12).

 

Personally, this direct scaling isn't something I'm the biggest fan of: Overwhelming Overpower was created directly in response to Controllers finding their primary kind of shafted in AV/GM fights - I wanted to keep their controls potent, but unreliable, especially as the sole status-effect inflictor of the team (with the assumption that multiple sources of lockdown = the big bad is locked down anyway and for longer periods regardless of this mechanic).

On 10/4/2020 at 2:31 PM, Mystic_Cross said:

I personally think it would be a bit more viable, and balanced, to increase the Controllers base magnitude by +1, giving them an initially stronger base control value in comparison to Doms. After that, we could then use Overpower to "shore up" the remaining difference between "just" Dom and "perma" Dom using a much smaller (and more controllable) modifier. Doing it this way would close the gap between the highest and lowest performance metrics in the first example, while substantially increasing the reliability of ending up with a comparable +Mag. Now we could use the 20% chance for a +6 mag Overpower you stated above (instead of that huge +15 mag), and come out with (m6 + (m4*5)= m26). This puts a Controller at Mag 26 vs a Permadoms Mag 30 with 5 casts, on average. There will still be dips and spikes, which could be as low as mag 20 (no overpowers, but still an improvement vs the current low of mag 15) and as high as mag 32 with a very rare possibility of hitting mag 38. This would put us on nearly equal footing with Doms in relation to being able to punch through an AVs hold protection.

 

This could be tweaked further by offering a buff/debuff per teammate to the +%chance/-mag. Personally, I'd add a +15% duration and +20% Overpower-chance buff per teammate along with a subsequent -1 mag reduction per teammate (all capping at 3 allies max). Ultimately this would equate to an 80% chance for mag 7 hold (base mag 4 + mag 3 overpower) and a 45% control duration buff, on a team of 4 or more players. In this scenario, we'd be capable of +1 mag more than a permadom, per hold, but only 80% of the time... and we'd have a slightly better control duration to compensate that difference.

 

All together I believe this would make a Controller nearly as reliably powerful as a permadom Dominator on average. It would also be much easier to implement than a completely custom solution since we already have all the necessary in-game powers with these functions to do so. For the most part I think it would only entail changing some values to accomplish.

Funnily enough, I view the increasing the magnitude of controls to 4 for Controllers as too powerful! Dominators are only able to reliably one-shot bosses due to the work they put into keeping their mechanic permanent - I wanted to keep the lack of reliability as something tied to the Controller's inherent: with how it currently functions.

 

It does seem like we've got some different views on how powerful controls ought to be: I see perma-Dominators as the last word in consistent, powerful lockdown (to my knowledge, perma-Doms can indeed lock down AVs currently - I wanted to bring Controllers up to that level, but didn't want to take away with what other things the Dominator could do, such as consistently Hold bosses).

On 10/4/2020 at 2:31 PM, Mystic_Cross said:

I think you more or less succeeded in shifting the balance between those two things, but overshot the marks a bit too far and landed in the realms of 'too powerful, too unreliable' and 'too weak, too reliable'. I may have to go back and take a 2nd (or 3rd) look though. Charts and tables were never my strong suite. 😄

Take a look through the links I posted - and feel free to ask about the reliability of Overwhelming Overpower in any scenarios that you'd like! I think I've gotten my head around calculating them now.

Edited October 5, 2020 by Blackfeather

[Blackfeather]

On 10/4/2020 at 8:07 PM, CaptainLupis said:

I haven't read through the entire thread, but I did read the first page and it sounds interesting. But I'll be honest, I don't play controllers enough to say how much of an impact it would really have in real world play. I suspect in most teams the AV would be dead before you actually got a chance to hold it, but I could be way off. I do have a few controllers, but only a couple at 50 and they rarely get played. My favourite was my Illusion/storm back on live, so that wasn't even dependant on mezzes. Dominators I just can't get on with at all. All of which boils down to my input is not worth a whole lot I'm afraid.

I've previously talked about the likelihood of Overwhelming Overpower landing over here in the post I made to @Noyjitat here. The important part is as follows:

Quote

Controller vs. Dominator: AV Edition

To compare, let me run through a hypothetical example between a Dominator with perma-Domination and a Controller with Overwhelming Overpower against an AV. With a Magnitude 6 Hold, a Dominator would need 9 uses of their power to lock the AV down (6 * 9 = 54) - once they have done so, they are permanently held so long as the Dominator keeps this up, no ifs or buts.

 

In comparison, with 9 applications of their Hold power, the likelihood of this Controller to have triggered an Overpower strong enough to hold an AV is 37% (19/20 ^ 9 gives us a 63% chance of no such Overpower occurring). Additionally, even if they manage to do so, the chance of doing so again in the duration while the AV is still held is slim - there is less staying power in their abilities.

 

In other words, the Dominator given time, is certain to lock down even the strongest foes and keep them that way. The Controller has the potential to lock down stronger enemies, sometimes faster or slower, but never permanently.

What do you think of those numbers provided? Are they too low? Too high? Would be glad to hear your thoughts on them!

 

And that's quite alright - any feedback is quite welcome, even from those not all that familiar with Controllers or Dominators!

On 10/4/2020 at 8:07 PM, CaptainLupis said:

I quite liked the other idea I think someone posted of stacking enough mag to disable their biggest hitting powers. Following on from that having a control that hits, but doesn't affect the AV/GM diretly, could knock a random power out of its rotation? That sounds like it would be useful. It might actually be OP though if a lot of controls are being spammed so would probably have to be a % chance of it doing it. With, admittedly absolutely no reasoning behind it, around 20 to 33% sounds about right. Or perhaps have the chance based upon the mag of the control and the duration of the power somehow? I'd also make it an ability only available to trollers and doms, not to just anyone that has an epic hold.

This is definitely an interesting thought - that being said, I do have some questions about that kind of mechanic in practice:

• By locking this to specific archetypes, could this potentially cause Controllers/Dominators to be seen as 'necessary' to bring in specific fights?
  • I enjoy how CoH allows for any team composition to work on the fly
• It feels like an either/or thing, with disabling certain powers being either too powerful (stopping a team wipe, say), or without much impact (not potent enough to matter), you know?

I wanted to boost the level of control that Controllers have up to the level of Dominators with the introduction of Overwhelming Overpower, but with a different spin: capable of locking down powerful enemies, but less reliably so.

[CaptainLupis]

2 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

I've previously talked about the likelihood of Overwhelming Overpower landing over here in the post I made to @Noyjitat here. The important part is as follows:

What do you think of those numbers provided? Are they too low? Too high? Would be glad to hear your thoughts on them!

 

And that's quite alright - any feedback is quite welcome, even from those not all that familiar with Controllers or Dominators!

This is definitely an interesting thought - that being said, I do have some questions about that kind of mechanic in practice:

• By locking this to specific archetypes, could this potentially cause Controllers/Dominators to be seen as 'necessary' to bring in specific fights?
  • I enjoy how CoH allows for any team composition to work on the fly
• It feels like an either/or thing, with disabling certain powers being either too powerful (stopping a team wipe, say), or without much impact (not potent enough to matter), you know?

I wanted to boost the level of control that Controllers have up to the level of Dominators with the introduction of Overwhelming Overpower, but with a different spin: capable of locking down powerful enemies, but less reliably so.

I don't see how it would make controllers necessary, teams without them do just fine at taking out hard enemies as it is, and unless those enemies are getting buffed this wouldn't change that.

 

With regards the second point bolded, I'll be honest, I don't want tough enemies to be perma held, or even for longish periods of time, as the fights then just become boring. Which is why I prefer an idea where there is a tangible effect that helps the player/team but still allows the enemy to do... something. For example if you knock a nuke out of their rotation they can still use the next power that is off cooldown, but it would be as if they had used it, so the cooldown timer starts and they need to wait for it to recharge again, essentially doubling the amount of time between nukes. Or if you, for example, were able to knock Marauder's unstoppable, or Siege's heal out (or a bloody paragon protector's MoG, although with luck those should already be held) that would make taking them down much more straightforward, but it's not as if they can't be defeated without those things happening.

 

But as I said I don't play the ATs enough to know if things like that would actually make them more useful/desireable to play, or team with. I think it would, but don't really know.

[Blackfeather]

1 minute ago, CaptainLupis said:

I don't see how it would make controllers necessary, teams without them do just fine at taking out hard enemies as it is, and unless those enemies are getting buffed this wouldn't change that.

 

With regards the second point bolded, I'll be honest, I don't want tough enemies to be perma held, or even for longish periods of time, as the fights then just become boring. Which is why I prefer an idea where there is a tangible effect that helps the player/team but still allows the enemy to do... something. For example if you knock a nuke out of their rotation they can still use the next power that is off cooldown, but it would be as if they had used it, so the cooldown timer starts and they need to wait for it to recharge again, essentially doubling the amount of time between nukes. Or if you, for example, were able to knock Marauder's unstoppable, or Siege's heal out (or a bloody paragon protector's MoG, although with luck those should already be held) that would make taking them down much more straightforward, but it's not as if they can't be defeated without those things happening.

 

But as I said I don't play the ATs enough to know if things like that would actually make them more useful/desireable to play, or team with. I think it would, but don't really know.

Ah, let me clarify what I meant by that. Basically, being able to disable the powers of AVs/GMs sounds like either something that's:

• Very useful - a must have depending on the kinds of powers it disables
• Not useful - essentially little to no impact on a fight

Depending on how that sort of thing is implemented, it sounds like it'd be hard to strike the balance between those two things to reach "nice to have territory" in other words.

 

As for playing in City of Statues: what do you think of the chances that are currently presented in the links I provided previously? I definitely didn't want AVs/GMs to be perma-held with this current system: my main focus was to let Controllers use their primaries against them to some effect. In other words, partially controlling them (I figure that in groups, they can already perma-lock them anyhow).

[Blackfeather]

On 10/5/2020 at 3:44 AM, FoulVileTerror said:

So, I just went in-game and mucked about with some enemies hitting me with Control Powers while watching the Status Effect Protection Combat Attributes.  Damn.   Okay.   Seems that the level of granularity needed for my latest suggestion doesn't really exist in the mechanics right now.

 

I wonder . . . is there a way to code the game to allow for applying a Control Magnitude equal to 1/2 of the Target's current total Protection Magnitude?  If we could pull that off, that could be an effective way to add something meaningful without being potentially overpowered.

While I'm not sure about how things work behind the scenes, an alteration to the Overwhelming Overpower table could get things pretty close to this, I think:

 

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!
+25 = two-shot an Archvillain	20%	4% = 4 in 100 uses	Overpower!!
+54 = affect an Archvillain	5%	1% = 1 in 100 uses	Overpower!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That could get the Controller halfway there, and in very rare instances, one-shot an AV. GMs aren't outright affected, but then again, they're meant to be handled in groups anyway, so it's no big deal. It also provides the Controller with the potential to stack enough magnitude to lock down an AV with a few lesser Overpowers on their side too, depending on how the cards end up falling.

Edited October 5, 2020 by Blackfeather

[Blackfeather]

I should probably ping @Sovera about this proposal too - I've seen you around the forums talking about the role of a Controller at the higher levels. While that's definitely worth an entire discussion in of itself, in the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts/critiques on this! I think being able to lock down stronger targets would do a fair amount for the archetype.

[Zepp]

I was thinking about this, and ways to make it less random. My thought was that with stackable controls this is less of an issue (so if you get a secondary with hold, fear, or disorient that you can use to stack). I also note that all control sets are designed around a set of controls (with the exception of Illusion, which is completely dependent on aggro management tools - but those don't count towards containment damage, grumble, grumble). Therefore, by moving towards stacking without requiring the same type of control might be useful.

 

My thought was that if it was possible to add a 30s -1mag resistance to all controls, then you could use your entire toolkit to wear down an AV/GM to the point where you could keep it semi-contained without being overpowered. Kinda like how an Illusion/Storm troller can keep some GMs semi-contained through KDs.

[Blackfeather]

22 minutes ago, Zepp said:

I was thinking about this, and ways to make it less random. My thought was that with stackable controls this is less of an issue (so if you get a secondary with hold, fear, or disorient that you can use to stack). I also note that all control sets are designed around a set of controls (with the exception of Illusion, which is completely dependent on aggro management tools - but those don't count towards containment damage, grumble, grumble). Therefore, by moving towards stacking without requiring the same type of control might be useful.

 

My thought was that if it was possible to add a 30s -1mag resistance to all controls, then you could use your entire toolkit to wear down an AV/GM to the point where you could keep it semi-contained without being overpowered. Kinda like how an Illusion/Storm troller can keep some GMs semi-contained through KDs.

Coincidentally, I mentioned something about that in the original post! Any of them tickle your fancy?

Quote

+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

I think there was also a mention of a "wearing down magnitude resistance" a little while back from @FoulVileTerror in this post. Is that close to what you're describing?

Edited October 6, 2020 by Blackfeather

[Sovera]

3 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

I should probably ping @Sovera about this proposal too - I've seen you around the forums talking about the role of a Controller at the higher levels. While that's definitely worth an entire discussion in of itself, in the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts/critiques on this! I think being able to lock down stronger targets would do a fair amount for the archetype.

I don't really have much to say because I don't play a Controller. But I do play other roles. Nowadays mostly tanks.

 

It is all going to boil down to a few important things:

 

- Most AVs are inconsequential. They don't hit hard and they go down in 30 seconds. Less if Lores are used. So the premise of a solution to help CCing an AV still bears no fruit because they are simply not difficult to handle. Sorry man, I know this is your baby and you put thought into it, but the premise is flawed. Even Reishman in Khan is just one big blob of HP and does not hit hard. Recluse when buffed by the towers is the biggest contender, but can be easily defeated simply by hovering and using taunt or ranged attacks to keep agro (protection against endurance drain is a must though). While leveling TFs are usually done at +1 and AVs can be soloed even without full slots and IO bonuses, and at 50 we have incarnates.

- Most packs of enemies are composed half by minions, then the other half are lieutenants and bosses. Neither lieutenants nor bosses tend to be difficult to deal with, and all the minions die in the first volley of AoE (not even nukes or Judgements). CCing those few lieutenants and bosses tends to bring no particular reward. If an AV is not difficult then it's not an half dead boss VS eight players that slows things any. Because of this even the 'hard' TF such as the ITF where meleers can and do hug the pavement due to the huge defense debuffs (which also mess with resistance based sets) tend to be easily passed by because, again, we kill half the pack of enemies in the first volley. Where it is dangerous is where we do -not- kill half the enemies in the first volley. Unsurprisingly deaths tend to happen at the top of the hill in the first mission and the huge number of enemies that ambush during the climb towards the computer in the third mission. This is where we could say a Controller would come in handy, but lets be honest: CC the enemies or kill them? The same problem applies to Controllers there as it does everywhere else in the game: press a button to stun enemies and then kill them, or press a button and kill them?

 

While your proposal tries to shore the AT the truth is that Controllers are too powerful. In the comics this is a reason why we don't see binary super-heroes. A comic book hero whose power is to mind-control enemies either immediately wins because their opponent is mind controlled, or the enemy is not mind controlled and then the hero is useless because that's their thing.

 

The same works here. A Controller before the nerfs (a long long long long time ago) would keep a full pack of enemies CCed until they died. This neutered the game to a huge degree. So they were nerfed to only CC a group for part of the time and not at every group. This eventually was worked around as IOs and power creep happened. But the rest of the game did not stop in time either and the power creep happened to all.

 

 

I'm going to say what I said in other threads: for a Controller to be important they need to face important enemies.

 

- Those enemies need to survive longer and be dangerous so that an initial AoE volley does not kill half of them. Without those foundations there is no amount of spackling over that will help.

- Once we have a 'every enemy spawns as a boss' then a Controller will be valuable. Once we have 'tanks can only hold agro on five enemies (just a random number) and a pack of enemies is composed of ten enemies'  then extra crowd control will come in handy since boss level enemies will not die in a volley of AoEs and the Blaster who tries to go into melee to unleash their nuke will be turned to paste.

- All factions need to have NPCs that do something that makes it important to shut them down. Vengeance stacking with Nemesis lieutenants is not very fun, but if they had a full set of Leadership powers then each one killed would drop damage, accuracy, and defense from all the others. While this is not particularly a Controller's thing (since a Blaster could blast those) it might work better with the following suggestion that is...

- Controllers being able to bypass T9s in PvE would make them valued. Imagine not having to wait until a Paragon Protector's Moment (hour? 😛 ) of Glory ends? Or a Minotaur/Cyclop's T9? Now lets add more of these speckled through factions and Controllers can shut them down so the team can do with the smacking? What if they are the ones with a full set of Leadership toggles? -And- a T9? Do we want to whittle through the T9ed Minotaur while they are buffing everyone, or whittle through the whole pack as they benefit from... dunno.. a pulsing absorb shield? What if a Controller stunned the T9ed Minotaur while the team were now free to 'arrest' the rest?

 

Edited October 6, 2020 by Sovera

[Blackfeather]

10 hours ago, Sovera said:

- Most AVs are inconsequential. They don't hit hard and they go down in 30 seconds. Less if Lores are used. So the premise of a solution to help CCing an AV still bears no fruit because they are simply not difficult to handle. Sorry man, I know this is your baby and you put thought into it, but the premise is flawed. Even Reishman in Khan is just one big blob of HP and does not hit hard. Recluse when buffed by the towers is the biggest contender, but can be easily defeated simply by hovering and using taunt or ranged attacks to keep agro (protection against endurance drain is a must though). While leveling TFs are usually done at +1 and AVs can be soloed even without full slots and IO bonuses, and at 50 we have incarnates.

- Most packs of enemies are composed half by minions, then the other half are lieutenants and bosses. Neither lieutenants nor bosses tend to be difficult to deal with, and all the minions die in the first volley of AoE (not even nukes or Judgements). CCing those few lieutenants and bosses tends to bring no particular reward. If an AV is not difficult then it's not an half dead boss VS eight players that slows things any. Because of this even the 'hard' TF such as the ITF where meleers can and do hug the pavement due to the huge defense debuffs (which also mess with resistance based sets) tend to be easily passed by because, again, we kill half the pack of enemies in the first volley. Where it is dangerous is where we do -not- kill half the enemies in the first volley. Unsurprisingly deaths tend to happen at the top of the hill in the first mission and the huge number of enemies that ambush during the climb towards the computer in the third mission. This is where we could say a Controller would come in handy, but lets be honest: CC the enemies or kill them? The same problem applies to Controllers there as it does everywhere else in the game: press a button to stun enemies and then kill them, or press a button and kill them?

 

While your proposal tries to shore the AT the truth is that Controllers are too powerful. In the comics this is a reason why we don't see binary super-heroes. A comic book hero whose power is to mind-control enemies either immediately wins because their opponent is mind controlled, or the enemy is not mind controlled and then the hero is useless because that's their thing.

 

The same works here. A Controller before the nerfs (a long long long long time ago) would keep a full pack of enemies CCed until they died. This neutered the game to a huge degree. So they were nerfed to only CC a group for part of the time and not at every group. This eventually was worked around as IOs and power creep happened. But the rest of the game did not stop in time either and the power creep happened to all.

Hey there! Thanks for writing up a response - don't you worry about that, I knew about your stance on crowd control and the like already, and I thought it'd be an interesting view to bring to the table. While I think Controllers are generally in a decent spot myself, and just think it'd be nice to be able to actually affect AVs/GMs, I can understand some of these qualms. It sounds like they boil down to something along the lines of "enemies are defeated too quickly for crowd control to matter", which I've heard from another user in this thread. I do wonder about your thoughts on @BitCook's post, since they seem to have a similar stance on it:

On 9/24/2020 at 3:44 AM, BitCook said:

In that we disagree.  Don't get me wrong.  I love controllers.  My fist character on live was I3-4 and was a controller and I had/have dozens of combinations at 50 both from old live and here.  However, in this environment, and to some degree at the end of live, their purpose on a team has mostly vanished.

This isn't because the mechanics are bad.  It's that they are no longer needed.  Honestly, to most teams, a controller is dead weight even if they were able to one shot hold Bosses/EBs or to a lesser degree AVs.  Toons are too survivable and fights are over too quick for controls to be relevant to the current version of Live.  Sure, they're nice.  Yes, you can occasionally carry a bad team, or have a moment where you just let loose with your arsenal to save the team from an ambush... but the sad thing is that those are memorable because they are no longer all that common.  What I just described, most toons call an average day.  We can remember those incidents where we felt like we contributed because most of the time... we don't.

Now mechanically, are they broken?  Probably not.  Will this change make them better, yes.  Will it make them needed?  No.  Not because it isn't a good idea, but because the fundamental balance of the ATs and game has shifted to make them less needed.

Similarly, I'd love to hear your thoughts on @Sovera's stance about the more systemic changes that I have trouble visualising? Do you think those would be helpful for Controllers?

10 hours ago, Sovera said:

I'm going to say what I said in other threads: for a Controller to be important they need to face important enemies.

 

- Those enemies need to survive longer and be dangerous so that an initial AoE volley does not kill half of them. Without those foundations there is no amount of spackling over that will help.

- Once we have a 'every enemy spawns as a boss' then a Controller will be valuable. Once we have 'tanks can only hold agro on five enemies (just a random number) and a pack of enemies is composed of ten enemies'  then extra crowd control will come in handy since boss level enemies will not die in a volley of AoEs and the Blaster who tries to go into melee to unleash their nuke will be turned to paste.

- All factions need to have NPCs that do something that makes it important to shut them down. Vengeance stacking with Nemesis lieutenants is not very fun, but if they had a full set of Leadership powers then each one killed would drop damage, accuracy, and defense from all the others. While this is not particularly a Controller's thing (since a Blaster could blast those) it might work better with the following suggestion that is...

- Controllers being able to bypass T9s in PvE would make them valued. Imagine not having to wait until a Paragon Protector's Moment (hour? 😛 ) of Glory ends? Or a Minotaur/Cyclop's T9? Now lets add more of these speckled through factions and Controllers can shut them down so the team can do with the smacking? What if they are the ones with a full set of Leadership toggles? -And- a T9? Do we want to whittle through the T9ed Minotaur while they are buffing everyone, or whittle through the whole pack as they benefit from... dunno.. a pulsing absorb shield? What if a Controller stunned the T9ed Minotaur while the team were now free to 'arrest' the rest?

Would love to hear your thoughts on it, especially since you seem a bit more versed in the whole game balance thing than I am. 😄

[Darkneblade]

Maybe for whole city of statues concern we can decrease AV's mez duration while they get damaged?

Like you held enemy for 3 mag held status for 20 seconds.

Blaster A used snipe. There is %X chance to reduce that duration.

With full team since lot of damage is going to that particular AV your mez becomes less duration but potentially with overwhelming overpower idea you can hold them more but with less duration.

[Blackfeather]

7 minutes ago, Darkneblade said:

Maybe for whole city of statues concern we can decrease AV's mez duration while they get damaged?

Like you held enemy for 3 mag held status for 20 seconds.

Blaster A used snipe. There is %X chance to reduce that duration.

With full team since lot of damage is going to that particular AV your mez becomes less duration but potentially with overwhelming overpower idea you can hold them more but with less duration.

I think Champions Online had some sort of mechanic along those lines? Can't say one way or another about how that'd work out in practice, never played that game before.

Quote

There are several types of powers that can disable a character temporarily in Champions Online. Most operate on a system of a "health" and a duration. As damage is dealt to the hold (by various means based on the hold type), its health is reduced, and when it reaches zero, the hold is broken. Most holds will then apply a stacking Hold Resist.