What is the point?

[Ultimo]

10 hours ago, madicen said:

You're clarification did not help any. I think most people understood your position the first time, but like me found it ridiculous. Is your ideal group just 8 Blasters? Many of us, myself included, find Blasters boring AF to play. Self centered all out dps is not everyone's cup of tea, nor is it the ONLY way to play this game.

 

I think you should actually play a Dom or Controller at end game before you try to speak on their role in groups. So far all you've done is explain that you do not understand what these AT bring to the table. 

But that's the point of why I posted.  I wasn't seeing any point, so I asked what the point is, and people have replied.

 

Granted, I'm not at the endgame level, but there's a LOT of game that happens prior to that.  Most of the groups I'm in are a pretty mixed bag.  The class I seem to see most often is Brutes (though I can't quite fathom that either... my Brutes are always rather squishy, but others don't seem to have that problem... a topic for another thread, I think).

 

What I didn't consider is the secondary effects, like the -Tohit on Darkness.  My Controllers are Mind Control, Electric Control and Gravity Control,  Mind Control, I haven't played all that much, so I can't say much there.  Electric Control I played to L22, but found it incredibly tedious and of limited value.  Of course, there's not any significant secondary effect.  Draining Endurance is really of minimal value against NPCs in my experience.  Gravity Control... I"m not sure if there's a secondary effect.  I'll have to look.

[Gulbasaur]

Mind is a good solo set - it's very self-sufficient but in a way that's not as useful on every team. I think something that lets it down is the fact that its most frequent AoE control is Fear, which doesn't trigger critical damage for a reason I will never understand. Mind has a very unique quirk that (I believe) all of the attacks totally skip positional defence, meaning it can perform very well against high defence enemies. As psi defence is quite rare, mind can utterly slice through enemies that others have a hard time even hitting. 

 

Gravity is similar but leans on the "alternative means of control" aspect but is mostly just a damage-focussed set. 

 

Electric... there's something about it that feels lacking but you're right the -end effect is a bit all or nothing. I actually like elec/elec but if you don't enjoy it you don't enjoy it and that's fine. 

Edited November 17, 2020 by Gulbasaur

[Carnifax]

14 hours ago, Ultimo said:

Electric Control I played to L22, but found it incredibly tedious and of limited value

I've tried Elec multiple times and would agree with this. I find it really lacking (my old Elec/NRG domi was changed to Fire/NRG which is much stronger, especially as a perma-dom).

[Riverdusk]

On 11/16/2020 at 3:50 PM, Ultimo said:

But that's the point of why I posted.  I wasn't seeing any point, so I asked what the point is, and people have replied.

 

Granted, I'm not at the endgame level, but there's a LOT of game that happens prior to that.  Most of the groups I'm in are a pretty mixed bag.  The class I seem to see most often is Brutes (though I can't quite fathom that either... my Brutes are always rather squishy, but others don't seem to have that problem... a topic for another thread, I think).

 

What I didn't consider is the secondary effects, like the -Tohit on Darkness.  My Controllers are Mind Control, Electric Control and Gravity Control,  Mind Control, I haven't played all that much, so I can't say much there.  Electric Control I played to L22, but found it incredibly tedious and of limited value.  Of course, there's not any significant secondary effect.  Draining Endurance is really of minimal value against NPCs in my experience.  Gravity Control... I"m not sure if there's a secondary effect.  I'll have to look.

I think perhaps you just need to keep trying different sets.  I think more than most AT's, control sets are more varied in playstyle.  Personally I'm not a big fan of mind, electric, or gravity either.  On the other hand I very much like illusion and plant control.  Fire and earth are also not bad at all. 

 

Plant is probably the earliest blooming (sorry pun) as you can pretty reliably shut down an entire mob with seeds of confusion by level 8 and it is easily up every single spawn with its recharge even with minimal slotting.  Yes, often even bosses (between domination or control crit or (much later) contagious confusion proc).  Plant also does good damage between its double damage roots (compared to other controllers aoe immobilizes) and carrion creepers.  Add a plant controller to a low level team that is struggling and watch things instantly become 10 times easier.

 

Fire and earth can pretty much shut things down by level 26 or 18 with flashfire/bonfire or earthquake/stalagmite.  Most bosses tend to not have any extra knockdown protection.  Fire of course also has very good damage.

 

Illusion is a whole different beast and plays more like a mastermind but with unkillable pets and also good damage.

[Shocktacular]

What I tend to focus on the most with my controllers and dominators is find the most annoying enemy in the mob and mez them (having a targeting macro really helps with this).  Sick of Tsoo Sorcerers teleporting around, making teammates miss and healing enemies? Mezzed! Go to town!  Malta Sappers got you(r end) down? Mezzed!  Die, pesky leeches!  No matter which group you're fighting, there's usually one type of enemy that's worse than the rest (this may vary depending on team composition).  Find that enemy and lock them down!

[Gulbasaur]

22 hours ago, Shocktacular said:

Find that enemy and lock them down!

You'd enjoy a confuse-heavy build.

 

Find that enemy and weaponize them.

[Hover]

Controllers change the gamemode from +4/x8 to helpless punching bag mode. At high levels, controllers have enough holds, knockdowns, stuns, and confuses available to stop anything short of an AV in their tracks within seconds. This goes doubly so for dominators. The piece de resistance, however, are the controller's support abilities. Between the buffs, debuffs, and minions they bring to the table, each controller that is in the party makes the group safer and faster. Now, are speedruns for things like ITF done with a full controller team? No, as far as I know they are done by highly organized teams of 7 blasters and one corruptor. HOWEVER!!! If you are like me and play with pick up groups, especially levelling, your controller will be of more value to the group than your pure dps. The mid-level all-dps party can wipe out a +1 or even +2 mission/taskforce without a sweat, but you need a few support characters to push the difficulty any higher. Two competent controllers and 6 dps treat +4 like +2. In other words, more exp!!1!

Controllers sleep easy at night knowing every party they are on will be steamroll-grade.  Also, Ultimo, you seem to think that controller support powers are terribly weak as they are secondary powersets. It's simply not true. Even with their lower modifiers, they are absolutely worth it. My advice: if you are worried about effectiveness, especially at lower levels, craft your controllers with a sense of purpose. Want low level effectiveness? Pick powersets that have powerful, early AoEs, like seeds of confusion from plant control and time's juncture from temporal manipulation, or the brutal single-target damage (and tiny but frequent aoe knockdwon) of gravity's propel paired with the safety-ensuring shields from ice and forcefield or the damage amplifier that is kinetics. Be the reason your teammates feel super.

 

TL,DR: When I play as dps, I have to hope my team can survive. When I play controller, I know my team will survive.

 

[killerdestiny]

I know I am a little late to the discussion but my Fire control/earth assault dom does damage a tier below a fire/fire blaster or the pre nerf TW scrapper. Not to mention he feels the safest - Perma dom = everyone else in a +4/8x is kinda useless they are a fire blaster/blapper, TW scrappers, or perhaps kin def. Dont need heals when a majority of the mobs are either dead or helpless. 

 

I thought the same thing about dominators or controllers before I tried my current dom. 

[fitzsimmons]

A proc monster build is super fun.  Plant/poison, dark/dark, fire/poison are some of my favorite proc monster trollers.

 

Checkout the proc monster threads for other ideas but I'm sure you can make a proc monster out of most sets.

 

It turns meh into ah-meh-zing.

 

Here's my plant / poison as an example, most likely found in another thread some time ago but just about every attack has procs in it and it still has s/l defense softcapped thanks to the big rock armor boost.  Needs ageless or cardiac but I went with musculuture and ageless.

 

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Regards,

Dave

Edited December 4, 2020 by fitzsimmons

[Saikochoro]

My plant/savage dom is by no means low damage. It is a damage machine. It just also happens to control the battlefields as a by product of going ballistic. 
 

Can’t speak to controllers though as I don’t play them. 

[tidge]

I'll add this to the plus column of 'end game' utility for Controllers and Dominators: Locking down/grabbing aggro makes obtaining certain badges much easier. A single example is getting the Valet badge (either through Market Crash or the Brickstown event). You still need to know what you are doing, but preventing the destruction of the property is much easier with control than it is with DPS. Things like AoE Sleep/Hold and Knockdown patches make it possible to pace the defeats of the enemy groups, whereas the combat ATs tend to over-aggro (and lose it) leading to the eventual property destruction.

Edited December 8, 2020 by tidge
esplling

[Doomguide2005]

On 11/16/2020 at 2:25 AM, Ultimo said:

What I meant was that as a Controller or Dominator, you're not really providing damage, protection or support for the team.

 

Your damage is going to be largely slow to inflict.  Solo, this is how you defeat your foes, slowly but safely.  In groups, though, your damage is trivial, and most enemies are defeated before you do anything significant.

 

Your protection of the team is marginal too.  Sleeps are usually broken right away, and immobilizes don't prevent enemy attacks.  Holds are better, but are either single target on foes that get killed immediately, before the presence of the hold means anything, or have such short duration and long recharge, that they're more or less irrelevant.  Of course, bosses and higher ignore all of that anyway.

 

Your support powers are the most useful, but even then it's only marginally, because they're your secondary, and as such are relatively weak.  Dominators don't even have THAT much, as their secondary is more dps, such as it is.

 

Yes, I find Controllers and Dominators reasonably capable on their own, but I find their ability to contribute meaningfully to teams kind of dubious.

I'd like you to meet 7 controllers who took on the then shiny brand new STF on what I presume were all SO builds (since invention IOs were also shiny brand new).  They proceeded to demolish the final 4 in 195 seconds (3 minute 15 seconds).  Time Force II competition winners, 6 Fire/Rads, 1 Fire/FF and a judge occupying the 8 team spot

 

For support characters it's all about synergy, working together and amplifying their own output.  I've got serious doubts 7 SO only Brute builds would come anywhere near as fast or pain free a takedown as those 7 Controllers accomplished largely because the Brutes comparatively don't make each other significantly stronger.  Support characters on the other hand, each additional character makes each of them much stronger than their individual selves.

Edited December 8, 2020 by Doomguide2005
Correction for team makeup

[JayboH]

Gentle reminder that a year ago dominators got revamped

[Seigmoraig]

On 11/16/2020 at 6:50 PM, Ultimo said:

My Controllers are Mind Control, Electric Control and Gravity Control, 

Those are IMO the most boring sets to play. Gravity isn't bad at all but you really chose the bottom of the barrel to base your opinions on. It's like saying Masterminds are trash tier but you only played Mercs and Ninjas.
Have a try at playing Fire, Earth or Plant.
What secondary you pair with is also important to the fun factor: Darkness, Nature, Electrical and Time are my picks for best secondaries

[Bill Z Bubba]

21 minutes ago, Seigmoraig said:

Masterminds are trash

But that's a true statement.

[Seigmoraig]

33 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

But that's a true statement.

Yes and no. Yes they suck in teams but are really fun to solo with

[Greycat]

What is their point?

 

Same point as any other AT: Playstyle variation. Some people like playing with control. Some people prefer to blast at range. Some people prefer doing support. Some people want to be in melee.

 

No other justification is needed.

[Hyperstrike]

Also, consider that you get FAR more out of stacking Controllers and Doms than you do out of stacking Blasters or Corruptors.

*Points to the legendary Fire/Rad super-team.*
Legendary lock-down.
Massive damage buffs.
Massive Recharge and Endurance buffs, on top of normal things like stacking Defense.

Bring a couple teams of them on a ship raid.
Lock down the drop ship and kill it in short order.

Then spend the entire bowl-phase of the raid at capped Recharge.
Not the Fire/Rads (though them too).  But EVERYONE.

[ClawsandEffect]

On 11/10/2020 at 12:55 AM, Ultimo said:

So, I find myself trying to decide what exactly the point is of these ATs?  Their primaries are of next to no use to groups, and their secondaries are of very limited use.

 

Am I the only one wondering this?

 

Yes, you're the only one wondering that. In this thread at least. 

 

Controllers are one of the best force multipliers in the game.  A well built and played one can turn a mission from nigh impossible to easy mode.  You mentioned your experience with Controllers is with Mind, Electric, and Gravity. You picked 3 sets that are oddballs in the AT and haven't gotten any of them past level 22.  That is going to color your perception of them a bit. 

 

What boggles me though is that you apparently haven't noticed what your Controller teammates have been doing all this time. You've never had a team go from steamrolling to struggling when the Controller left, or you have and didn't understand why it got so much harder. It also seems like you weren't playing on live when the most common farming combo was a Fire/Kinetics Controller. 

 

Keep in mind, all this is coming from someone who really sucks at playing Controllers. I just have enough experience with the game in general I understand how valuable a good one is. 

 

And a well built and played Dominator can and will outdamage your average blaster over time, especially once they hit permadom. They can also lock down targets that a Controller can't when Domination is active, because it doubles the magnitude of your mezzes.   

[Grindingsucks]

Here's the actual answer to your question:  Power creep in the game has made individual characters so strong, that it has largely made teaming and team-based AT roles irrelevant, unless your team self-imposes restrictions on their characters to keep the content challenging.  When a team can blast all the opposition to dust before you've even got off a single hold or immobilize, it certainly DOES seem like there's little for Controllers or Dominators to do (there's more for Dominators, since they can actually dole out some impressive damage, but their controls still feel underutilized).

 

And even if self-limitations are imposed, if you can take a Rad/Devices Blaster and complete an Imperious Task Force solo, with no inspirations, no amplifiers, the enemies buffed and yourself de-buffed (yes, a player has done this), then the level of challenge in the game has clearly not kept pace with the introduction of IO sets, Incarnate powers, and Powerset proliferation.

 

Maybe try to run with groups that play at below level 50 and only use standard IO's, or something.  Then, perhaps, you will feel like your Controller is actually valuable to the team.  Other than that, and apart from the introduction of tougher group content (like the recently introduced Vazhilok/Freakshow missions), I'm not sure what can be done.

 

[Ukase]

On 11/13/2020 at 11:13 AM, Gulbasaur said:

There's also a playstyle thing: controllers, and especially dominators, can solo a hell of a lot more easily than corruptors or defenders. 

Clearly, you're mistaken, or imprecise in this comment. 
There definitely is one thing that you did get right - it's a playstyle thing. Some people enjoy the play of doms and/or controllers more. Which is fine. But to say they solo a hell of a lot easily than a corruptor or a defender? That's only the case if you mean more slowly/safely when you say "hell of a lot more easily". 

[Max Firepower]

Two things to consider, as mentioned:

1) The force multiplier aspect.  When you look at the secondary effects of the Controller powers, consider how that makes a tanker, scrapper, or blaster more effective or safer, then leverage your choices to augment that number for recharge or effect.  Dropping an AoE slow that is close to90% speed reduction is great, but adding in -def or -to hit?  Make your friends (and you...) far less hittable, get hit less frequently, or make your attacks more powerful.  As a controller, you are not bringing a lot of damage to the team until late 20’s or mid 30’s at the earliest, but the debuffs matter.

2) Mind and Ice (sorry, Ice) are not the go-to for Controller team buffs.  Earth is amazing for lockdown, and a secondary like storm or Sonic (Storm is chaotic fun,Sonic is safely melting) augments the debuffage more than Mind.  I played a Mind/FF troller ages ago, and loved it, but it wasn’t necessarily a regular lockdown troller style.  
 

while you might consider a different primary, but also knowing that controllers don’t mature, often until their 30’s, may give some perspective.  Controller is the AT that I most often get stalled somewhere around L22-L27, where the good stuff feels so far away.  Then, I somehow gut through to 32, or 35, and the path onwards is crazy easy/fun/powerful. I have trollers at 50, 50, 50, a 39 (next!), then 28, 25, 23, 22.... YMMV.

[Greycat]

On 12/29/2020 at 1:04 PM, ClawsandEffect said:

What boggles me though is that you apparently haven't noticed what your Controller teammates have been doing all this time. You've never had a team go from steamrolling to struggling when the Controller left, or you have and didn't understand why it got so much harder. It also seems like you weren't playing on live when the most common farming combo was a Fire/Kinetics Controller.

 

... or, hey. Posi 1, with team leaders regularly saying "Take out the controller first!" Not the tank, blaster, or scrapper - that should be an indication, too.

[Ultimo]

It was really more about this kind of thing.

Group 1 meets a spawn of enemies.  The controller controls them all.  They are now all immobilized, but are still attacking.  This doesn't really help the team at all.  The enemies have taken no damage, and are still able to do damage.  OR the controller puts them all to sleep.  Now, the very first attack will wake them up.  Those that aren't awakened are still asleep for about 2 seconds...

 

Group 2 meets a spawn of enemies.  The blaster hits them with an AOE attack, and they're all defeated... or the Tanker taunts them, and they can't attack the rest of the group.  The Defender heals or bubbles or does whatever his powers do, protecting the group.  In either case, the group is being helped, either by having damage done to the enemy or protection provided to the group.

 

It made me wonder why one would bother with the controllers.  I mean, even if you lock down the enemy, you still have to defeat them, so a blaster is preferable.  The lockdown will wear off and with the lengthy cooldown on anything that's not an immobilize, it can't be used again the way a Tanker will be able to taunt, or a Defender will be able to heal or bubble or what have you... so those would be preferable to the controller too.  Moreover, Bosses and higher are immune to the controls, meaning the controller is providing NOTHING against them, except a pittance of damage.

 

Now, some good points have been made in defense of the controllers, but I'm still kind of unconvinced.  I do still enjoy playing my controller... but on his OWN.  I still don't feel like I'm contributing anything of value to groups.

[Omega Force]

Group 1:  Technically you want to wait until the enemy bunch up around the melee fighters before immobilizing them, so they're close enough to fuel their melee auras.  The second point of AOE immob is so the controller does double damage with follow up attacks, and thirdly to prevent runners.  Instead start with sleeps and confuses which don't notify, and can be used to blunt their alpha strike.

 

Group 2:  The controller hits a problematic lieutenant with a ST hold, stun, or confuse to foil the enemy support units like Sky Raider engineers, immunes surgeons, and Malta sappers.  Additionally, the controller can heal or bubble the team/debuff the enemy with their secondary.  Bosses are not immune to controls, you just have to hit them with two of the same.  Dominators can get them in one, but trade off with a lack of team support.

 

Controllers add value to teams similar to masterminds: battlefield control and support; but without pets getting in the way.