Holds vs other controls (Is Sleep better than Knockback)

[Troo]

Randomly started to think about the control hierarchy.

 

It might look something like this quick example or something totally different:

 

Defeated > Hold > Disorient (Stun) > Confuse > Fear > Immobilize > Sleep > Knock Up > Knockback > Slow

 

Added:

Taunt

Placate / Misdirect

wife-aggro.. wait what?!

Phased

 

Maybe multiple targets have a different order than a single target.

Sleep better than Knockback?

Is Confuse better or more valuable than Stun?

Is a Held target sometimes more valuable than a Defeated one? (a debuff anchor)

 

Edited October 27, 2020 by Troo

[Luminara]

Slow is a debuff.  KB and KU being controls is debatable (hence the term "soft control").

 

Are you asking for opinions on how controls rank against one another, or imagining an entirely new control system in which stacking controls doesn't increase magnitude, but turns them into "better" controls (i've been thinking about that for over ten years)?

 

 

[KC4800]

A stun + slow is almost as good as a hold. 

[Gulbasaur]

51 minutes ago, Troo said:

Is Confuse better or more valuable than Stun?

Yes, and I'll fight you (or make your friends fight you) if you say otherwise.

 

A lot of confuse's value comes from knowing who and what to use it on - support enemies are solid gold because they start buffing you, and if you stack it on enemies with hard or soft control it becomes very powerful.

 

The real fun is anything with pets. Longbow wardens can be a real pain, but not when they're being punted into a corner by their own singularity.

Edited October 26, 2020 by Gulbasaur

[Troo]

2 minutes ago, Gulbasaur said:

support enemies are solid gold because they start buffing you

Wait wait hold on. Just hold on.

Are you saying by confusing a nemesis support target we could get Vengeance?

[KC4800]

Confuse is also valuable because it stacks so easy with other controls. 

[KC4800]

1 minute ago, Troo said:

Wait wait hold on. Just hold on.

Are you saying by confusing a nemesis support target we could get Vengeance?

Nemmies are confuse resistant silly.

[DougGraves]

Sleep is great solo if you are not an AoE character.  It has a long duration making an aoe sleep better than an aoe hold.  But in teams it is generally only useful for stopping adds. 

 

However, a repeatedly applying sleep like in electric control is great even on teams.  It will work on bosses when hold doesn't.  It has a long duration for the field that does the reapplying - so you get more held time out of it than an aoe hold.  Also, you can drop the aoe sleep from around a corner.  So you can prevent almost the entire alpha with it.  The hold effect is better than the sleep effect, but the aoe sleep power is better than the aoe hold power.

Edited October 26, 2020 by DougGraves

[Troo]

38 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Are you asking for opinions on how controls rank against one another, or imagining an entirely new control system in which stacking controls doesn't increase magnitude, but turns them into "better" controls (i've been thinking about that for over ten years)?

Interesting. Please elaborate.

 

12 minutes ago, KC4800 said:

Nemmies are confuse resistant silly.

Drats!

 

Edited October 26, 2020 by Troo

[Gulbasaur]

17 minutes ago, KC4800 said:

Nemmies are confuse resistant silly

You can overwhelm it. It can be done!

[Luminara]

10 minutes ago, Troo said:

Interesting. Please elaborate.

 

Control is binary.  It's limited because of that, which has led to its over-use in critters.  If control were the result of stacking lesser controls, or debuffs, though... stacked Slows would become Immobilizes, for example.  Sleeps could stack to Stuns, and Stuns stack to Holds.  There are a lot of variations which could be explored, reducing the binary effects of control from critters while still allowing them to enhance the difficulty.  Controllers and dominators would retain full control options, to differentiate them from defenders and corruptors while also allowing them to be more powerful than critters (because that's the point of a super-power MMORPG, isn't it?).

 

By making control less binary, it becomes more flexible, and the players' approach to dealing with it becomes more flexible as well.  Critters could be threatening without being either bullet sponges or insta-mez jerks.

[Troo]

2 minutes ago, Luminara said:

stacked Slows would become Immobilizes, for example.  Sleeps could stack to Stuns, and Stuns stack to Holds.

I think I'll double down with: Yes, interesting.

[ForeverLaxx]

As far as your listed hierarchy goes, I'd put KnockUp around the Fear level of control as they do very similar things, particularly if you have a spammable KnockUp like Air Superiority. Normally these are limited to a single foe, but you can juggle enemies from full to dead and they'll only get maybe 2 attacks off in retaliation. I'd put Knockback in the same boat, but it loses points due to its reliance on positioning and map layout if you don't use the KB -> KD IO.

[Mitchell]

Confuse is so good it allows me, with my eyes closed (literally), to solo a packed room at level 8 using only brawl to attack. That's because confuse draws no agro. Try that with any other power. Combined with all the other points Gulbasaur mentioned and I will take confuse over hold every time.

 

 

 

Edited October 26, 2020 by Mitchell

[Yuro]

Taunt should probably be in there as a control somewhere.

[Yomo Kimyata]

For solo play I'd say:  Defeated > Confused > Held > Slept > Stunned > Feared (with To Hit Debuff) > Feared (w/o THD) > Knocked Up > Immobilized > Slowed.  Knocked Back is situational.

 

For teamed play I'd say:  Defeated > About to be Defeated.

[Nafsmar]

I see Knockback getting knocked about (pun intended) a lot here in this thread. Yeah sure holding a foe is cool and watching a foe beat up his own buddy is a neat parlor trick. Sleeping people? seriously? My wife does that everytime she starts telling a story. Prob why we don't get many re-invites. But seriously what looks cooler: watching a bad guy walk in a circle dazed or getting shot across the room. When Spider-man web swings into a baddie and smashes him to the wall or when Superman punches the Bejeesus outta someone and sends him flying THRU that wall ya just gotta admit it looks damn cool. Now I know this thread is about what is the better way to keep the baddies under control but if they are all asleep/stunned/feared none of them can go back to their gang leader( after getting released from jail) and talk about the awesomeness that is you. 

 

Criminal Attorney to client that was not Knockbacked and defeated: "How did you end up in jail this time?"

Bad guy (who was slept,stunned,confused etc) "I don't know I was chillin minding my own business with a few buddies just ya know out for a lark and suddenly I'm in jail."

 

Criminal Attorney to client: "What the hell happen to you? What did you go thru a wall?"

Bad guy who did indeed go thru a wall and got defeated: "So what if I did you gonna rep me or not?"

 

Knockback the lesser control I think not.

Seriously its way cool.

[drdread]

There is one status effect missing in the conversation: placate.

 

[EmmySky]

I am confused because I only consider a foe adequately held if he is defeated.  All other holds/mez pale in comparison.

 

😁

Edited October 26, 2020 by EmmySky

[Ironblade]

4 hours ago, Troo said:

Is a Held target sometimes more valuable than a Defeated one? (a debuff anchor)

Anchored debuffs no longer go away when the target dies.  They remain targeted on the corpse and continue to affect the enemies nearby.  You have to turn them off manually or move out of range and it will turn off.  The exception would be enemies that immediately disappear on defeat, like CoT spectres.

 

As for your control hierarchy, it's hard to place Sleep because it's very situational.  When you are soloing, or teaming with someone who is familiar with your character, it's very powerful because it typically has a long duration compared to the other powers.  When you're on a PUG team of AoE, it's virtually useless.

 

I personally don't like Confuse because it makes the enemies steal my XP.

[Greycat]

I don't know that I'd rank them. They're all situational.

 

For instance, I can Sleep the patrons/heroes in MLTF/LRSF in one hit. I can't do that with a hold. They ignore my KB. Sleep will also shut down a Dispersion field, and even if the enemy is immediately woken up by an attack, they don't put that out right away again - making it easier to defeat everything else (and not have it mez resistant.) People get so hung up on "but it's broken by damage" and ignore the other things it does.

 

KB can help position, which a hold won't do (... well, telekenesis, but hold's just part of that power.)

 

Confuse is more useful than others when faced with a buffer/debuffer - sometimes.

 

Knocked up will take an enemy off the field for a few months, and may lead to some awkward questions, especially if the enemy is male and winds up in that state. (Let's not get into robots and ghosts.)

Edited October 27, 2020 by Greycat

[Luminara]

12 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

I personally don't like Confuse because it makes the enemies steal my XP.

 

*steals @Ironblade's exes and peas*

 

*munch munch*

[Luminara]

8 minutes ago, Greycat said:

Knocked up will take an enemy off the field for a few months, and may lead to some awkward questions, especially if the enemy is male and winds up in that state. (Let's not get into robots and ghosts.)

 

How are you going to impose Knocked Up on robots and ghosts if you don't get into them?

[Machariel]

Discounting 'defeated', I would rank them roughly like this:

 

Confused > Held > Stunned > Immobilized > Slept > Phased > Placated.

 

Based on the following:

Confused: Enemy poses no threat to you and helps you defeat other enemies faster.  Possible con: confused enemies can run away (though they often clump up on their own as well)

Held: Enemy poses no threat to you and is held immobile.

Stunned: Enemy poses no threat to you, but can move around a little.  Basically held.

Immobilized: Enemy can still attack normally with ranged attacks or if you are in melee range.  But, immobilizing enemies and then just walking away is an effective way of 'controlling' enemies provided you're not interested in defeating them.  Also in many situations (say, the enemies are mostly melee and you have a high ranged defense), simply immobilizing them is a potent control on its own.  But unlike every other control on this list, Immobilize doesn't let you just walk past enemies by itself.

Slept: Held, until they take damage.  If you're trying to get mobs to leave you alone and not interested in defeating them (for whatever reason), and if you're alone, just as good as a hold.  But this is rare.  However, AVs don't resist this mez very well so it has a niche application.

Phased: Even more situational than sleep.  Can be used to deactivate towers on the MLTF.

Placated: Basically a sleep without the immobilize, and they can still attack your friends.  Not much of a control power.

 

I think of knockback/knockup as being (barring powers like Ice Slick / Bonfire) very short duration holds. 

 

With the exception of confuse, generally speaking control powers don't help teams kill faster and can even slow down a team if used sloppily (the infamous 'AoE Immob Spammer') and IMO have kind of a weird interaction with the rest of the game.  What I mean in that having both a dominator and a tank on the team can be redundant - when every mob is confused there's little point in trying to get aggro and vice versa.  It'd be nice to see more situations in the game where control powers and, mitigation in general were more useful at high levels. 

Edited October 27, 2020 by Machariel

[ZekeStenzland]

Confuse > Hold, in my opinion. Confuse not only gets the mobs not attacking you, it gets them buffing you and attacking each other. While total xp drops, xp/sec skyrockets thanks to the extra damage. 
 

Confusing nemesis doesn’t get you free vengeance when they die any more than confusing ghouls gets you free heals when they die. All temp effects are removed when a mob dies — including the confuse effect. By the time the death heal goes off the ghoul is no longer confused. 
 

I’m guessing this is also why confused freakshow that die, never self-rez confused.