Make Ice Control Cooler: A Control Powerset Buff

[WindDemon21]

54 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Side note: should Controller and Dominator versions of control sets be the same to begin with?

No they shouldn't, and in a way already are cause of dom values. In general does are absurd that their holds are at a base less value than controllers, and only more in domination. Making perma dom a complete necessity, otherwise outside of domination mode does are by far the squishiest AT.

 

If anything i would say that doms should have a base mag 4 holds, with the shorter duration, and then domination mode would increase the duration past that of controllers, and dom should grant a recovery bonus with full lasting to hit, not a one time shot of endurance that you can never properly time to use for endurance because you need to use it asap to perma.

Edited December 10, 2020 by WindDemon21

[Blackfeather]

On 12/5/2020 at 9:22 AM, oedipus_tex said:

May be worth noting that Chilling Embrace on Dominators got a buff on Homecoming that's not reflected in Jack Frost (yet). On Doms it's a 15ft radius -Damage and damage aura that won't wake sleeping enemies (nice touch!)  Might make Jack stand out a bit more. 

That does sound quite nice. Jack Frost is already quite solid, but I won't complain about additional damage mitigation.

 

That also being said, I'm pretty sure there's precedence for powers between archetypes that do have slightly different properties despite being named the same. Storm Kick comes to mind.

Edited December 10, 2020 by Blackfeather

[oedipus_tex]

5 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

That does sound quite nice. Jack Frost is already quite solid, but I won't complain about additional damage mitigation.

 

That also being said, I'm pretty sure there's precedence for powers between archetypes that do have slightly different properties despite being named the same. Storm Kick comes to mind.

 

Yes you're right. Especially with pet powers, sometimes there is difference between the version players get and what pets get.

 

In this particular case, players used to get the version Jack Frost has. It's a 10ft radius -Recharge and -RunSpeed aura. It was widely considered one of the worst powers in the game. On Jack at least it costs no endurance and doesn't detoggle on mezz.

 

[Blackfeather]

On 12/5/2020 at 10:40 AM, SeraphimKensai said:

I was just thinking about this post the other day, its been almost a year since I posted that, and still extremely relevant.

Mm...compared to Ranged T9s, AoE Holds are:

• Less accurate
• Doesn't actually damage enemies
• Recharge slower

So what advantages do they have, exactly?

Edited December 11, 2020 by Blackfeather

[Blackfeather]

On 12/6/2020 at 12:51 AM, xl8 said:

The utility is fine, the slotting is not. Also, the taunt would redirect back on troller once timed out, not desirable.

What if the summoned ice formations just had a very high level of threat? It doesn't have to use the Taunt status effect, that was just the first thing that came to mind. The intent here was just to get enemies to 'break free' of these formations if they prematurely woke up by attacking them. This would do the trick too.

On 12/6/2020 at 12:51 AM, xl8 said:

Chance to hold won't take alpha, it wouldn't hit 50%.

Could you elaborate a little further on what you mean by that? The changes made to Shiver were made to take some enemies briefly out of the fight to provide time for Arctic Air do its work, while still being less effective than openers such as Flashfire to preserve Ice Control shtick of "gradual control over time".

[Blackfeather]

On 12/7/2020 at 3:43 AM, oedipus_tex said:

I think the Control sets could use some definitions around how much damage they are "supposed" to do. Most of the sets were not given the attention to DPA that blast, melee, and assault sets were. It would be nice to have a baseline of how much DPA a single target immobilize, single target hold, and AoE immobilize do.

 

Beyond that, there is the question of the "blast" powers some of the Controller sets get. Part of the challenge is the Control sets are shared by Controllers and Dominators. Most Controllers are expected to rely on the Control set for damage, while Dominators have a secondary devoted to damage. However, a conundrum arises. Because of Containment, Controllers actually do more damage with Control powers than Dominators do. In some cases, like Gravity>Lift they actually do better DPA than most of the Assault set powers. Because of Shiver's huge area of effect, much bigger than any Assault power, this is something to watch out for. Controllers would do more damage with it than Dominators; this might be okay but also might be the start of problems.

 

I do think Ice Control needs more damage, but also think that should be part of an overall evaluation of the Control sets. 

I actually think most Control sets are in a pretty good place damage wise at the moment. Personally, only a few of them really have an issue in that regard, with Ice Control being the main one (and to a lesser degree Electric and Earth, but they're much better in the control department, and have some neat proc options). It's why I went the route I did with the introduced changes: providing additional options for damage as opposed to fiddling with the numbers themselves.

 

I'll argue that there's only one actual "blast" power out of all the Control powers: Illusion Control's Spectral Wounds, which Dominators don't even have access to - causing high amounts of damage and nothing else. While there are certainly other Control powers that deal decent damage, they generally come on top of potent soft-control effects: Lift/Propel from Gravity Control both knock enemies around, damaging them while also temporarily taking them out of the fight. Levitate from Mind Control is similar in that regard.

 

The damage I'm envisioning for Shiver is quite minor, per the description of it: in a similar-ish ballpark to the AoE Immobilize powers. Main thing here is to provide more proc options for the power, rather than being damaging in its own right.

[Blackfeather]

On 12/7/2020 at 4:43 PM, oedipus_tex said:

In general I am fine with cones, but in the context of Ice Control they pair poorly. Shiver has always been a power you could mostly ignore because its effects duplicate other effects in the set, so it hasn't been a big issue. I'd be against turning it into an actual attack or anything other than either a single target mezz that happens to have AoE debuff, or else a very light touch mezz. I would be strongly opposed to it becoming a staple power if it remains a cone.

 

Your idea isn't a bad one, I just don't like it for Shiver. If a power like that is needed, Flash Freeze is already an alpha breaker, does damage, and is spherical and is a better power to elevate in importance than Shiver. I could even see it applying to Ice Slick, which currently accepts no sets at all.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that each power in a powerset ought to be worth taking: that Shiver is skippable at the moment is more than enough reason to change it (I also try to help Ice Control in the damage department, and initial lockdown phase, given its limitations there). Said design is heavily reflected in the newer sets, such as Darkness Control or Water Blast - there's a clear opportunity cost in not taking certain powers. Every power has impact.

 

That's what I'm aiming for with the changes with Shiver. Combined with the proposed modifications for Flash Freeze, a player really doesn't have to have both powers, but can choose between them if they so desire, and they still provide differing effects: if they're so inclined, they can pick both, and be all the better for it.

[Blackfeather]

On 12/9/2020 at 9:05 AM, xl8 said:

A somebody already said in this thread, slow has be made redundant by current power levels, plus anything it might be useful on (AVs, itrials) have slow res.

I don't think that invalidates the statement that Ice Control already has something unique to it that other Control powersets do not - frankly, "current power levels" is shorthand for "damage is king", which seems to translate to "do more damage to make a powerset more relevant by whatever means". That's a game balance issue, as opposed to a single powerset issue.

 

While I do think that Ice Control is a relatively low damage set even in comparison to other Control sets, and as such should be adjusted accordingly, I'm generally conservative in regards to going too far in the other direction (e.g. via -Res debuffs), especially given its secondary effect.

On 12/9/2020 at 9:05 AM, xl8 said:

The sets and the aggro directed on to controller.

Would you be opposed to the ice formations summoned by Flash Freeze having a very high Threat level then? A small taunt aura was the simplest idea I had in mind, but there are certainly other ways of achieving the desired effect that I was aiming for (i.e. creating fragile structures that enemies need to waste their attacks on if they prematurely wake up).

[Blackfeather]

On 12/9/2020 at 9:13 AM, WindDemon21 said:

DEFINITELY no combo system. And you FF they could just make the crystal end with a placate too. Don't think so small.

Do you think just creating Ice Formation pets with a high threat level might do the same thing as a taunt (i.e. have enemies "smash" through the structures after prematurely waking up), or could that have some side effects?

[WindDemon21]

14 minutes ago, Blackfeather said:

Do you think just creating Ice Formation pets with a high threat level might do the same thing as a taunt (i.e. have enemies "smash" through the structures after prematurely waking up), or could that have some side effects?

Taunt itself is a whole actual status effect. Threat level is more based on the ai of the enemies. If it's just higher threat, then when it ends they'll target the next highest threat of whoever attacked them. Which would likely not be the ice controller.

[Blackfeather]

On 12/10/2020 at 12:41 AM, oedipus_tex said:

RE: Dark Control, Defenders have a modifier of 1.25 for -ToHit, Controllers have 1.0, Dominators have 0.75.

 

RE: Electric Control: Controllers and Dominators drain endurance equally. It's not easy to make a comparison to Defenders, but Defender Power Sink does drain more endurance than either of those archetypes. That could simply be an outlier though. Endurance Drain modifiers are known to be inconsistently used across archetypes. Blaster and Defender Electric Blast drains the same endurance for example. I've always found that weird.

 

A wild card in this is that Power Boost style effects are somewhat of a staple of Dominator sets. 4 out of 11 sets have a version of it. On live, since we didn't have Martial, Savage or Radiation Assault, it was basically a feature of half the sets. Power Boost has no effect on -Recharge, but does greatly increase -Run Speed, -ToHit, and -Endurance. The ability for Dominators to take a Power Boost in their secondaries is an often overlooked part of the Dominator puzzle. Only one other archetype I can think of (Blaster) gets a Power Boost power in an actual powerset. Several ATs can take it in their APPs of course, but no other archetype quite owns that effect.

Hmmm...well. Darkness Control can be explained away easily enough: even without its secondary effects, it's a versatile powerset, so the -ToHit is more of a bonus. If Electric Control does indeed have the same values, then it'd probably make sense to have Ice Control's secondary effects similarly match.

 

Or at the very least maybe modify Ice Control's -SPD on Dominators while in Domination, though personally I wouldn't go that route - there's already plenty of incentives to achieve perma-Domination.

[Blackfeather]

On 12/10/2020 at 7:19 PM, oedipus_tex said:

It might be worth talking about Power Boost again and an accidental(?) nerf Ice Control got on Dominators on Homecoming.

 

Three Assault sets originally had the true Power Boost power, Ice, Energy, and Earth Assault. Among its features, Power Boost offered 15 seconds of +Defense, +Confuse duration, +Hold duration that comboed nicely with Ice Control. I mentioned that Arctic Air has a lower base Confuse duration on Dominators than Controllers (3 seconds versus 3.7 seconds). However, with Power Boost added, these sets got a base 5.6 second Confuse for its duration, significantly improving the power.

 

When the Homecoming devs updated the Assault sets recently-ish, they eliminated Power Boost in favor of a new power called Power Up. That lowered the duration of the +Confuse STR effect from15 seconds to 10 in exchange for some +Damage %. On most Doms that change didn't significantly change survivability, because they hit Power Up or Power Boost prior to their big mezz. But Ice Control needs the effect constantly running to keep saturating Arctic Air. In addition, they often benefits from the extra +Defense during Power Boost's effect. The loss of 5 seconds may not seem like much, but on an end game build spamming Power Boost every 30 seconds it dropped coverage from 1/2 downtime to 2/3 downtime. 

 

I'm still hoping to convince the devs that those sets really needed that extra 5 seconds of STR effect and it can be restored. The +Damage is nice but the tradeoff was harsh, especially for Ice Control and a few other sets, especially Electric.

If I had to guess, this was probably intentional, in an attempt to help avoid overcentralising towards those powersets with Power Boost in them.

[Blackfeather]

On 12/11/2020 at 4:19 AM, Galaxy Brain said:

Side note: should Controller and Dominator versions of control sets be the same to begin with?

Mmm...I'm going to say "yes" for the most part - personally I don't see any compelling reason to change them. I'd argue that all of the Control powersets are generally competent at locking down the battlefield, even if some of them go about it in a way that doesn't really gel with some more prevalent gameplay styles. Going over the two powersets that seem to be brought up the most here:

• Mind Control while soloing is very potent - it's much easier to not avoid damaging sleeping enemies and so on while doing so
• Gravity Control can easily take a chunk of enemies out of the fight, letting one take out the rest of the group relatively safely - hard to coordinate and not to everyone's taste, but similarly strong

[Galaxy Brain]

7 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

Mmm...I'm going to say "yes" for the most part - personally I don't see any compelling reason to change them. I'd argue that all of the Control powersets are generally competent at locking down the battlefield, even if some of them go about it in a way that doesn't really gel with some more prevalent gameplay styles. Going over the two powersets that seem to be brought up the most here:

• Mind Control while soloing is very potent - it's much easier to not avoid damaging sleeping enemies and so on while doing so
• Gravity Control can easily take a chunk of enemies out of the fight, letting one take out the rest of the group relatively safely - hard to coordinate and not to everyone's taste, but similarly strong

Well, getting into the nitty gritty:

 

Several control powers do NOT benefit at all from Domination, Ice Control being egregious here for example.

 

A set like Gravity is balanced around having attacks... but Assault powers on doms are almost always better than the Grav attacks even with impact!

 

For stuff like that, I feel doms should have a seperate version

[...]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

A set like Gravity is balanced around having attacks... but Assault powers on doms are almost always better than the Grav attacks even with impact!

A notable exception, for example, would be grav/psi. The grav blasts have higher dpa than /psi's ranged blasts. 

 

/psi has some decent melee attacks though. 

[Galaxy Brain]

19 hours ago, Vooded said:

A notable exception, for example, would be grav/psi. The grav blasts have higher dpa than /psi's ranged blasts. 

 

/psi has some decent melee attacks though. 

Thats why its an exception, but even there you could just use the melee attacks too.

[Blackfeather]

On 12/19/2020 at 10:04 AM, WindDemon21 said:

Taunt itself is a whole actual status effect. Threat level is more based on the ai of the enemies. If it's just higher threat, then when it ends they'll target the next highest threat of whoever attacked them. Which would likely not be the ice controller.

Well, that's good to hear - in that case, giving those ice formations a higher threat level could definitely work as well. That being said, even if they did go the Taunt route, I personally wouldn't have too much of an issue with it. By that time, they'll likely be locked down via Arctic Air, so it's no big loss in my book.

[oedipus_tex]

I've recently been diving more into the process for how developers create powers and bin them for the server and client. After diving into that I have a better sense of why certain powers didn't change for years after creation, and also how heroic the efforts of the Homecoming team have been with updating things. It's not an easy thing to just adjust a few variables and test them like it would be in a more modern game. Any edits done involve a lot of forethought and planning, you can't do much live editing or quick building like modern engines do. Some of that just comes down to this being an old MMO with code bases started in the late 90s.

 

The reason I think that's relevant here is how we should probably view the base game and certain things that have remained unchanged seemingly forever. My sense is that the developers just didn't want to test certain changes because its a long process. With CoX as it is now you can be a bit more experimental because you have all these different teams doing different things with the code. For example I recently wrote and tested a version of Defender Energy Blast where I adjusted the knockback chance to follow the percent scalar for Defenders just to see how it felt to have knockback chances be higher on the set (felt awesome, by the way). In doing so I broke a lot of graphics and stuff. Just changing a few variables has some risk associated with it.

 

End point being I think virtually any idea is on the table with where we should take the game. I can see why a commercial game company would be wary of cost/reward ratio with updates. I think the newer volunteer teams have a lot more room to experiment with stuff the OG developers wouldn't have been able to justify.

Edited January 2, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[Crasical]

Let me replace Jack Frost with a Winter Horde snowman.

[Blackfeather]

On 12/31/2020 at 2:41 AM, Galaxy Brain said:

Well, getting into the nitty gritty:

 

Several control powers do NOT benefit at all from Domination, Ice Control being egregious here for example.

 

A set like Gravity is balanced around having attacks... but Assault powers on doms are almost always better than the Grav attacks even with impact!

 

For stuff like that, I feel doms should have a seperate version

 

This is very, very late, but I'm back-ish on this!

 

I personally don't think the lack of Domination-benefiting powers in different Control sets constitutes a reason to make them different to the one that Controllers get. To me, that sounds more like a reason to add Domination to the other powers that lack it (making sure not to overbalance of course - Static Field as a pulsing Mag 6 Sleep would mean constant AV lockdown, I believe).

 

I'd argue that Gravity Control's damage powers constitute a form of soft control in knockup/knockdown - while the damage is certainly nice, I can't exactly say that it is extremely significant, even on a Controller; single target damage especially falls off in usefulness somewhat at the higher levels (unless you're a Stalker that can chunky salsa bosses of course).

 

That being said, if damage is indeed a feature of the powerset, I wouldn't be against having Domination benefit it to some degree - maybe increased knockup magnitude in Lift, or a higher chance to knock down in Propel.

[DougGraves]

Ice control is my second favorite control set after electric, and I primarily play controllers or dominators. 

 

I fundamentally disagree with the OPs assessment.

 

Ice Slick is one of the best ways of avoiding an alpha strike because it can be dropped from around a corner.  The enemy cannot attack you  at all when you place it.  I slot with 1 range to help with this. 

 

Arctic Air suffers from drawing aggro.   Unless there is a tanker or brute taunting, I will draw a lot of attacks that my controller cannot take.  

 

The only change I would make to the powerset would be to have arctic air drew less aggro.

 

 

 

[Blackfeather]

Something that's come to mind recently. It might perhaps be better to change Shiver a little differently. So this:

 

Quote

•  Shiver: Ranged (Cone), Foe -Recharge, -SPD, Foe Hold, Minor DMG(Cold)

  • 50% chance to Hold (Mag 2)

  • Deals minor Cold damage

  • Can now be slotted with Hold and Targeted AoE enhancements

 

Would instead look like this:

 

Quote

•  Shiver: Ranged (Cone), Foe -Recharge, -SPD, Foe Knockdown, Minor DMG(Cold)

  • Inflicts knockdown on enemies

  • Deals minor Cold damage

  • Half of the slow persists for 60 seconds (same as the changes to Blaster's version of this)

  • Can now be slotted with Knockback and Targeted AoE enhancements

 

Text description would change as follows:

 

Quote

You can blast forth a wide cone of chilling air that dramatically Slows the movement and attack rate of nearby foes. The bitter chill deals minor Cold damage and knocks most  enemies caught in the blast down to the floor.

 

This should make Shiver a little more reliable as an opening power, while also being a much shorter lasting hard control effect, I think. Also leans into Ice Control's softer form of locking down enemies.

[Blackfeather]

On 11/13/2020 at 1:18 AM, Coyote said:

Shiver... I like the idea of having it break the Alpha strike. Due to its low recharge, the Hold component also needs to be low in duration. And I don't like the Mag 3 on it... I would prefer how I've seen other powers, with 50% chance for Mag 2, making it mostly an anti-Minion power, but an additional chance for a Mag 1... maybe another 50% chance. This gives it 50% chance against Minions, and 25% against LTs. Otherwise, the concept isn't bad. It could also be run as a Sleep effect, similar in concept to the target freezing in place like Flash Freeze. Either would work, I'd prefer the Hold so it's different from Flash Freeze. Be aware that allowing Hold would give it option for 3-4 damage procs. Maybe this isn't a bad thing, but be aware of it.

 

After some deliberation, I figured that a chance to Hold mightn't have been the best path to take. Instead, I decided on this route:

 

On 11/11/2020 at 11:23 PM, Blackfeather said:

 Shiver: Ranged (Cone), Foe -Recharge, -SPD, Foe Knockdown, Minor DMG(Cold)

• Inflicts knockdown on enemies

• Deals minor Cold damage

• Half of the slow persists for 60 seconds (same as the changes to Blaster's version of this)

• Can now be slotted with Hold and Targeted AoE enhancements

 

Think this might be better? This way, Shiver should reliably occupy enemies for maybe a second or so, but that should still give Arctic Air some time to confuse them in the process. Plus, it also helps to maintain Ice Control's focus on soft control too.

[Blackfeather]

On 11/16/2020 at 12:09 AM, th0ughtGun said:

On that note, not sure I like shiver as a hold... even a chance for hold. (Though I wouldn't entirely rule it out) What about a big -dmg debuff? Much like the aura in ice armor (Chilling Embrace) but maybe more potent. That way if they do alpha you (or your team) it's for significantly less dmg? This would make sense, too. Though if you made the changes to flash freeze and then this you would effectively neuter any alpha strike which may be swinging the pendulum a bit too far?

 

After thinking about it for a while, I eventually decided that a chance to Hold probably wouldn't be all that appealing all things considered. So in the end, I went with making this change instead:

 

Quote

•  Shiver: Ranged (Cone), Foe -Recharge, -SPD, Foe Knockdown, Minor DMG(Cold)

  • Inflicts knockdown on enemies

  • Deals minor Cold damage

  • Half of the slow persists for 60 seconds (same as the changes to Blaster's version of this)

  • Can now be slotted with Knockback and Targeted AoE enhancements

 

Most enemies are susceptible to knockdown, but it also means they're only occupied for about a second or so - a very short amount of time, but hopefully enough to either set up Ice Slick or have Arctic Air affect the group. This should hopefully mesh better with Ice Control's focus on soft control too. Would this be more appealing, do you think?

[Marbing]

On 7/29/2021 at 9:01 PM, Blackfeather said:

 

After thinking about it for a while, I eventually decided that a chance to Hold probably wouldn't be all that appealing all things considered. So in the end, I went with making this change instead:

 

 

Most enemies are susceptible to knockdown, but it also means they're only occupied for about a second or so - a very short amount of time, but hopefully enough to either set up Ice Slick or have Arctic Air affect the group. This should hopefully mesh better with Ice Control's focus on soft control too. Would this be more appealing, do you think?

This could work. Or I was thinking maybe like a super short unenhanceable hold (they shiver for a couple of seconds, just long enough for arctic air to kick in).