Weekly Discussion 70: T9's Part 2

[Patti]

Can mass confuse maybe have a chance to permanently confuse an enemy who then also follows you until you're done the mission, prioritizing for a leftenent or boss?

[Solarverse]

21 hours ago, Tyrannical said:

Remove Telekinesis from Mind Control

Make Mass Confusion a T8

Make Penny Yin's 'Psionic Nexus' pet the new T9

 

... I didn't put a lot of thought into this.

I would not want to lose TK. It's extremely useful when used correctly...and that power is so iconic that it would be a damn shame if they removed it.

[FoulVileTerror]

I always found Telekinesis and Levitate to be really out of place thematically in Mind Control.   I rather feel a Psychokinetic Control Set would be an ideal Set to have those two particular Powers, and that Mind Control could focus entirely on effects that wholly inside the minds of your targets.  Like . . . where's  the Stun?  Mind Control could totally have used a Single Target Stun.

But, ship has sailed and all that, so . . . yeah.  I guess @Patti's idea works and respects the Cottage Rule?  Just give Mass Confusion some kind of permanent Pet aspect to it, and that should help dramatically.

[Hew]

4 hours ago, Greycat said:

"Nobody used them?" Not sure when this was. I think I've always seen blasters with nukes. 

 

 

 

Blaster t9 nukes were tied end crashes and other fun. The crash and burn associated with blaster t9 nukes was eventually removed, paving the way for them to, you know, be used.

 

Use of a power (nuke) once every 6 minutes that is also tied to an end crash, limiting my ability to play till the crash burns out? No thanks.

 

[Greycat]

3 minutes ago, Hew said:

 

Blaster t9 nukes were tied end crashes and other fun. The crash and burn associated with blaster t9 nukes was eventually removed, paving the way for them to, you know, be used.

 

Use of a power (nuke) once every 6 minutes that is also tied to an end crash, limiting my ability to play till the crash burns out? No thanks.

I saw them used frequently prior to that, as well. All it took was a blue to keep going. Didn't take much.

(First 50 was an elec/elec blaster in I3, and I did watch other blasters I was with. The crash didn't seem to deter too many people.)

[Alchemystic]

4 hours ago, Patti said:

Can mass confuse maybe have a chance to permanently confuse an enemy who then also follows you until you're done the mission, prioritizing for a leftenent or boss?

Going off this, maybe a power that is a kinda confuse power, that simply turns one targeted NPC into an ally that can be healed and buffed, and can't be hurt by allies.

[kiramon]

I'm fine with them leaving mass confuse as is -- but perhaps they could add a buff to it to make the mobs do more damage (that Seeds does NOT get). Like +300% damage or something, cap them out. 

 

 

[Zepp]

While I find the idea of converting an enemy into a pet (confuse on steroids, so to speak), there are several issues with it.

1. long-timer + miss = POed player base.
2. would you be able to control bosses with one hit? Otherwise you couldn't stack with current recharge. 
3. is it even possible with the code as it is?

It is probably better to leave things as is and adjust the recharge time and xp "penalty" from confuse. Reducing it to zero would still make confuse risky because if you do not get a single hit you get zero xp, whereas a Troller with a pet that does all the damage would get full xp for a pet kill...

[FoulVileTerror]

It's at least possible to solve your first two issues no problem, Zepp; proof's in the pudding of Blind.  The Power would be a single-target, which also happens to provide an AoE based on the target hit.  Make that Single Target portion Autohit, and the rest based off of Accuracy.  On top of that, the Autohit Target would have a magnitude suitable in turning a Boss in to said Pet.

Where the challenge/question lies in is turning that Autohit target actually in to a Pet.  Dopple code might be handy in getting it to work, with the target that gets Autohit actually instantly vanishing with no XP reward, and being replaced with a Dopple that mimics their appearance.  The problem then becomes the Powers of the Dopple . . . 

Another option is to see about jury rigging some kind of code which straight-up spawns a friendly version of the target.

Finally, and perhaps ideally, if the target can have their faction/alignment flag toggled to the player's side.  We know that targets can switch from enemy to neutral/friendly (or vice-versa) with mission scripts, so the code is there . . . it's just a question of can it be piggybacked in to a Power.

 

BUT . . . that -does- make me realize another potential issue:  What if you cast this Power on a target who is meant to be used for a scripted dialogue or mission parameter.  That could be more disastrous.  Like, say you're doing the mission where you have to interrogate the D.U.S.T. Squad Leader in First Ward . . . but you just turned that Leader in to your Pet.  That would likely lock you out of the mission and force you to reset it.

 

 . . . dang.  Looks like this idea might need to be shelved after all . . . phooey.

[Zepp]

It could also open the door for griefing.

 

Let's say player A is Fake Nemesis hunting in Peregrine, and has a FN down to one HP, player B swoops in and hits Mass Confuse. Player A now loses the XP and the kill for the badge.
It's not a huge grief and player B would likely not even notice that they had annoyed player A, but player A may get super POed that such a mechanic exists...

[Monos King]

34 minutes ago, FoulVileTerror said:

 

 . . . dang.  Looks like this idea might need to be shelved after all . . . phooey.

It just means it couldn't be allowed to be permanent, or would need to be a toggle. That's an excellent observation though.

[Eldyem]

2 hours ago, kiramon said:

I'm fine with them leaving mass confuse as is -- but perhaps they could add a buff to it to make the mobs do more damage (that Seeds does NOT get). Like +300% damage or something, cap them out.

I like this idea, but I do think it has sort of a negative feedback loop with the possibility of enemies resisting the confuse. What about just giving it a strong -Res effect for mostly the same general effect, but no possibility of creating an uberboss that one shots me?

 

I'm personally not the biggest fan of a permanently converted pet because, truth be told, I'd just convert a support (Sappers or Force Mages or whatever) 9/10 times and that's really not that fun all things considered. I also think a major issue of slotting a pet into Mind Control is that Mind, especially solo, largely wants to avoid situations where they're accidentally hitting the wrong things, at least from my perception.

[Golden Azrael]

On 9/30/2020 at 12:33 AM, Piecemeal said:

Hey.

 

Jack Frost needs some love.

 

Just sayin'.

Jack Frost was the single reason I stopped playing my Ice/Rad controller back on live.

 

I rolled an Ice/Ice Blastoller instead and got some damage done.

 

Azrael.

[tidge]

While I *like* Mass Confuse (and its Fortunata equivalent Aura of Confusion) I feel like the power fits much better with the Fortunata power set because of what else a Fortunata can be doing while waiting for the power to recharge. I grok that this T9 is the 'nuke' of Mind Control, but with the long inherent recharge time it feels rather underwhelming.

 

I haven't seen much discussion on Secondary T9s. It looks like there may be some skipable powers in some powers but I haven't played sets like Pain/Empathy to be sure. Any comments?

[kiramon]

25 minutes ago, tidge said:

While I *like* Mass Confuse (and its Fortunata equivalent Aura of Confusion) I feel like the power fits much better with the Fortunata power set because of what else a Fortunata can be doing while waiting for the power to recharge. I grok that this T9 is the 'nuke' of Mind Control, but with the long inherent recharge time it feels rather underwhelming.

 

I haven't seen much discussion on Secondary T9s. It looks like there may be some skipable powers in some powers but I haven't played sets like Pain/Empathy to be sure. Any comments?

Since the controllers are /Defenders, I didn't think to discuss any of those. 

 

As for the assault sets, they're all pretty similar/etc in 'what they do' -- but Voltaic Sentinel sounds better on paper than as an actual T9; Rad I think is the only other one that could use some real lovin'. 

[Zepp]

2 hours ago, tidge said:

I grok that this T9 is the 'nuke' of Mind Control, but with the long inherent recharge time it feels rather underwhelming.

Blaster T9s, 60s-170s recharge times - Trollers 240s... Changing Mass Confusion to a 60s recharge would not be out of line with current mechanics. And considering that all control and buff/debuff powersets are recharge nerfed compared to other powersets, it is not unreasonable to ask for the small adjustment of moving Mass Confusion to a more reasonable recharge of 60s.

[Patti]

And all the area holds too!

[Alchemystic]

If we're talking T9s for Dominators and that counts Assault powersets, then I'd like to see all T9s function as AoEs similar to Explosive Shuriken and Fissure.

[Vanden]

On 9/29/2020 at 7:36 PM, Piecemeal said:

I find Mass Confusion to be fine, because its range works better for safety. Until you uberslot Seeds, it can be a risky click.

I have 4 slots of Malaise’s Illusions in my Seeds on my Plant Controller (one of which is just the damage proc), and if I didn’t refuse to use it in most situations due to it being too good I’m pretty sure I would never, ever die. Seeds is stupid powerful and the downsides it has compared to Mass Confusion are absolutely trivial.

[Vanden]

On 9/30/2020 at 7:29 AM, kiramon said:

Fly Trap - More useful than some others

Fly Trap is great. -Def in every attack so your powers hit more and it takes the Achilles’ Heel proc well, and a mag 4 AoE immobilize that makes it easy to get Containment Damage in an AoE. Plus, passive 180% +Regen means even on secondaries without heals it’s good at staying alive.

Edited October 1, 2020 by Vanden

[GM Miss]

I saw someone mention mass confuse working on a person and making them sort of become your temp pet for a while, that sounds awesome. 

[Lost Deep]

The thing about mass confuse (and confuse in general) that you have to remember is that enemies defeated by confusion (one way or another) do not give EXP. While confuse abilities are still very useful, this means that using them still risks you getting less EXP. I don't really care about this, but some people or teams will and do. I'm not sure what the easy fix is, since if it's changed to counting toward EXP then people will use it and then hang back to soak, something that the current setup does admittedly prevent.

[Gulbasaur]

17 minutes ago, Lost Deep said:

While confuse abilities are still very useful, this means that using them still risks you getting less EXP

I remember back in the day it was shown that it gives you more XP overall by speeding up combat significantly. It's also the best hard-carry control effect if you're dragging level 2s into incarnate missions because that's maniacal overconfidence is the real endgame.

 

I do like Mass Confusion as a power, but the cooldown makes it somewhat problematic. There's also that the current meta makes control effects less valuable. What I'd really like to see is some anti-facetanking measures like enemies with strong, stackable debuff auras that give mezzes more value - like the Hamidon buds that you have to hold, but, like, everywhere.

Edited October 2, 2020 by Gulbasaur

[Jaguaratron]

Dominator/electrical assault/voltaic sentinel is a bad joke of a t9 ability, it should either live for 5 minutes or cost nothing to summon.

Edited October 2, 2020 by Jaguaratron

[GM Vayek]

2 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

I remember back in the day it was shown that it gives you more XP overall by speeding up combat significantly. It's also the best hard-carry control effect if you're dragging level 2s into incarnate missions because that's maniacal overconfidence is the real endgame.

I don't remember that, but it would make sense. Your clear times would improve as the confused enemies are helping you kill things. I do wonder if the reduced exp is similar to that when using lore pets. Since it does follow the same logic - you aren't actually the one doing the killing. And if that is true, I also wonder if the same exp debuff holds true for regular pets (not mastermind pets). I'll have to do some testing on this for sure!

 

 

2 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

I do like Mass Confusion as a power, but the cooldown makes it somewhat problematic. 

Personally, I prefer Seeds of Confusion. And putting in the Coercive Persuasion proc to help things along is amazingly helpful.