Mind Control/Mass Confusion recharge needs a buff

[Kaballah]

On 7/1/2021 at 11:58 AM, Onlyasandwich said:

I feel like one of the biggest issues here is that Telekinesis is so wonky and underpowered. 

 

I would say that this power used to be the set's "signature" power back when it could do crazy things, and it is still a really unique tool. If TK were buffed in some way to make it more powerful/reliable/sustainable, the downsides of Mass Confusion would be less of an issue.

 

At that point, I would lump MC into the overall issue of "long cooldown aoe controls that have sort of silly high recharge compared to other powers."

 

if it did a pull instead of a repel it would be way more usable. same for several repel-based powers tbh.

[Onlyasandwich]

31 minutes ago, Kaballah said:

pull

Great point! That would be really neat. I imagine there are some out there who like using it in its current form, so I'm not sure how important keeping the spirit of the cottage rule alive here would be.

 

 

[oedipus_tex]

Making Telekinesis the "every spawn" hard control does have some merit. The 60 second recharge is right in line with Seeds of Confusion. Telekinesis in no way currently compares to that class of power though.

 

I would gladly trade the autohit portion of it for raising the target cap to 16, raising the radius and including an Accuracy roll on the Hold portion. Would have to do something with the Repel though. Reverse-Repel in the style of the Gravity pet isn't a bad idea. 

 

The other nice thing about TK rolling for Accuracy is then you could actually slot it with sets. It currently doesn't accept any, because neither Hold nor Accuracy have any meaning for this power.

Edited July 3, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[SwitchFade]

Seeds is very overturned, in need of a detune.

 

Mass confusion is quite potent. Mind has both MC and TD, which can be alternated. TK needs attention.

[oedipus_tex]

5 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

Seeds is very overturned, in need of a detune.

 

Mass confusion is quite potent. Mind has both MC and TD, which can be alternated. TK needs attention.

 

 

Not to push back too hard, but every set has a version of Total Domination, it's a standard low-accuracy 240 second AoE Hold. The fact that folks are saying they need to rotate between it and Mass Confusion points to the problem IMO. No other set has to rotate between its core controls and its AoE Hold. Those AoE Holds are so poor a lot of other set users skip them entirely until they IO for the endgame, because the Accuracy is too nerfed to hit anything with it before accumulating Global Accuracy from set bonuses. 

Edited July 3, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[Mezmera]

1 hour ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

 

Not to push back too hard, but every set has a version of Total Domination, it's a standard low-accuracy 240 second AoE Hold. The fact that folks are saying they need to rotate between it and Mass Confusion points to the problem IMO. No other set has to rotate between its core controls and its AoE Hold. Those AoE Holds are so poor a lot of other set users skip them entirely until they IO for the endgame, because the Accuracy is too nerfed to hit anything with it before accumulating Global Accuracy from set bonuses. 

 

There's few control sets that have so much control oozing from any angle like Mind Control. 

 

Plant is overtuned and is the bar by which every other control set is measured, mainly because it was a late introduced control set that didn't get the balance pass after while that the legacy sets received.  Seeds of Confusion is way too good for not being the t9 power.  The creeper vines each holding their own aggro is real strong as well.  

 

Take the currently broken Bonfire away from Fire and it's not an all too great set.  That exploit needs attention.  But then some of the other powers in the set would need a tuning up once Bonfire is dealt with.  

 

Pretty much all other control sets have that one hard aoe hold yes but then they have a bunch of soft control filler that are partially resisted like stuns and knockdown.  Mind Control can alternate for permanent hard control, plus then has filler soft control like Mass Hypnosis and Terrify.  

 

As a whole though control sets need balance passes.  Most need brought up, some a bit of slight re-tuning and then plant should be coming down a smidge.  

Edited July 3, 2021 by Mezmera

[oedipus_tex]

1 hour ago, Mezmera said:

 

There's few control sets that have so much control oozing from any angle like Mind Control. 

 

Plant is overtuned and is the bar by which every other control set is measured, mainly because it was a late introduced control set that didn't get the balance pass after while that the legacy sets received.  Seeds of Confusion is way too good for not being the t9 power.  The creeper vines each holding their own aggro is real strong as well.  

 

Take the currently broken Bonfire away from Fire and it's not an all too great set.  That exploit needs attention.  But then some of the other powers in the set would need a tuning up once Bonfire is dealt with.  

 

Pretty much all other control sets have that one hard aoe hold yes but then they have a bunch of soft control filler that are partially resisted like stuns and knockdown.  Mind Control can alternate for permanent hard control, plus then has filler soft control like Mass Hypnosis and Terrify.  

 

As a whole though control sets need balance passes.  Most need brought up, some a bit of slight re-tuning and then plant should be coming down a smidge.  

 

 

IMO  the set closest to Mind Control isn't actually Plant, it's Dark Control. Compared to Mind, Dark Control has:

• An always-up Fear cone similar to Terrify that provides significant -ToHit
• A PBAoE Stun with 90 Recharge, 8 Scale Stun, the same schedule as Flashfire/Wormhole/Stalagmites
• An AoE Hold with Scale 8 Hold (with pet tables though) with a 45 second -ToHit effect 

 

I would take any of the powers in Dark over Mind's version. Mass Confusion is the only thing really going for Mind. I don't think correcting its recharge schedule would lead to an overpowered Mind Control, it would mainly lead to less standing around.

 

At 120 recharge, it would be available about twice as often as it is now, so basically function the same, but you would be able to use Total Domination as your fallback power (or your source of Containment... oh wow this set struggles on Controllers) instead of having to toggle back and forth.

 

Edited July 3, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[Mezmera]

8 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

 

IMO  the set closest to Mind Control isn't actually Plant, it's Dark Control. Compared to Mind, Dark Control has:

• An always-up Fear cone similar to Terrify that provides significant -ToHit
• A PBAoE Stun with 90 Recharge, 8 Scale Stun, the same schedule as Flashfire/Wormhole/Stalagmites
• An AoE Hold with Scale 8 Hold (with pet tables though) with a 45 second -ToHit effect 

 

I would take any of the powers in Dark over Mind's version. Mass Confusion is the only thing really going for Mind. I don't think correcting its recharge schedule would lead to an overpowered Mind Control, it would mainly lead to less standing around.

 

At 120 recharge, it would be available about twice as often as it is now, so basically function the same, but you would be able to use Total Domination as your fallback power (or your source of Containment... oh wow this set struggles on Controllers) instead of having to toggle back and forth.

 

 

Dark is also one of those newer power sets so do keep that in mind.  To me Dark seemed like a more damage oriented set with some control and lots of soft control, it feels naked.  

 

The -tohitt on powers is nice.  But with the instant and total lockdown of Total Domination those baddies won't be shooting anything at you anyways.  I also hate target location powers in control sets, they're clunky to use, plus hold procs I suspect don't work quite as well in that one.  Yes it may be a stronger hold so on Controllers it's noticeable but on Dom's it's meh.  

 

Terrify is a massive cone, this is one of the soft controls I just threw in there but Dark has this great of a power?  Or because it's "always-up" it doesn't have quite the oomph as Terrify so you need to get caught spamming this to measure up?

 

Stuns, knockdowns and fear are soft control, they don't always reliably control every target in it's path like what you can do with Mass Confusion and then Total Domination.  

Edited July 3, 2021 by Mezmera

[oedipus_tex]

12 hours ago, Mezmera said:

 

Dark is also one of those newer power sets so do keep that in mind.  To me Dark seemed like a more damage oriented set with some control and lots of soft control, it feels naked.  

 

The -tohitt on powers is nice.  But with the instant and total lockdown of Total Domination those baddies won't be shooting anything at you anyways.  I also hate target location powers in control sets, they're clunky to use, plus hold procs I suspect don't work quite as well in that one.  Yes it may be a stronger hold so on Controllers it's noticeable but on Dom's it's meh.  

 

Terrify is a massive cone, this is one of the soft controls I just threw in there but Dark has this great of a power?  Or because it's "always-up" it doesn't have quite the oomph as Terrify so you need to get caught spamming this to measure up?

 

Stuns, knockdowns and fear are soft control, they don't always reliably control every target in it's path like what you can do with Mass Confusion and then Total Domination.  

 

 

Well I will agree with you that when it is actually available Mass Confusion is a decent power. Its downfall is its ratio to its recharge, which we can see when we compare it to uptime ratio of other powers.

• Flashfire: scale 8 / 90 recharge  (8.8% uptime ratio)
• Seeds of Confusion: scale 20 / 60 recharge (33% uptime ratio)
• Mass Confusion: scale 20 / 240 recharge (8.3% uptime ratio)

 

Beyond Seeds being an outllier here, what we can also see is that Mass Confusion has lower uptime ratio than the 90-second-Stun series of powers. Scaled properly for its Recharge, and assuming Confusion powers are supposed to last about 60% longer than other mezzes, Mass Confusion should be a Scale 32 Confuse. That high of a Scale is probably not useful in the overall, so it makes more sense to lower its Recharge. 120 Recharge it would put it almost exactly where it needs to be. If the developers think it's too good, reducing the Confuse to Scale to 15 would still be pretty decent spot to land in.

 

 

RE: Fearsome Stare vs Terrify, 
Terrify is allegedly a blast power. But it doesn't set Containment, so unless you are getting that from somewhere, it does damage roughly on par with one of the weaker AoE Immobilizes. 

 

DPAs in Arcanatime;

• Terrify: 30.59 / 2.24 = 13.65 (with Containment: 27.3)
• Chain Fences: 9.18 / 1.32 = 6.9 (with Containment: 13.08)

 

If you've ever played a Mind Controller and felt like you were plinking at enemies this is basically why. You'd be better off spamming a random Immobilize than trying to kill anything with Terrify. When I used to play Mind Controllers I would use Power Boosted Total Domination for this, but it was a lot of work for the results it provided.

 

Beyond this, the damage done by Terrify causes enemies you've already Fear'ed to shoot at you or run. Fearsome Stare does not do this. The only thing Terrify allegedly has over Fearsome Stare is the cone width, but I can't say I've ever struggled to hit things with Fearsome. Fearsome is a power I can hurl into any group and not worry too much about dying as a result. I can't say that about Terrify. Especially on Controllers. If Mass Confusion were up more often I could use Terrify to prompt enemies into shooting each other, but as it currently is it often needs to be fired into a spawn.

[PainX]

dunno the elec aoe confuse is also 60s CD and does not cause agro as far as i can tell i think mind needs some love 240s is a lifetime and the bread and butter looks to be terrify and from having played dark fear just sucks imo great if you are an MM not a great controller power

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 6/28/2021 at 11:01 PM, Kaballah said:

Just inexplicable that the recharge for Mass Confusion is four times the recharge for Seeds of Confusion.  Seeds is just plain enormously better in every way. 

You could not possibly be more correct. It is a game breaking problem that Seeds doesn’t have a significantly longer recharge.

[Psyonico]

1 hour ago, PainX said:

dunno the elec aoe confuse is also 60s CD and does not cause agro as far as i can tell i think mind needs some love 240s is a lifetime and the bread and butter looks to be terrify and from having played dark fear just sucks imo great if you are an MM not a great controller power

Electric's is a chain, meaning if things move once you start casting, the chain can break.  it also takes a while for the chain to get to every enemy if you have more than 2-3 guys that its chaining to.

[PainX]

56 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

Electric's is a chain, meaning if things move once you start casting, the chain can break.  it also takes a while for the chain to get to every enemy if you have more than 2-3 guys that its chaining to.

not sure if that is different then missing a cone tbh as a chain i wonder how it would work with the proc my understanding is chains have a high proc chance hmm gotta make an elec soon to test it out

[oedipus_tex]

Electric's confusion power has some idiosyncracies that I think justify its 60 recharge. Most notably, no matter how good your Accuracy is, there is 1 in 20 chance for the power to fail that can't be removed. The failure happens often enough to really put pressure on you.

 

Synaptic on Dominators is also IMO broken. It doesn't Dominate anything past the first target. This screws Electric Dominators, and not just because of it not mezzing bosses. Domination mode extends the duration of controls on minions and lieutenants by 50%. That doesn't happen with Synaptic. Seeds meanwhile not only mezzes bosses, it mezzes minions and lieutenants for an eternity.

 

The same thing happens to Arctic Air, the most cursed of the AoE Confuse powers on Dominators. Arctic Air on Dominators is paradoxically worse than it is on Controllers, even on permadoms, because Dominators have subpar mezz tables compared to Controllers and only make up for that with Domination's extended Scale. Arctic Air not being able to enter Domination mode leaves gaps in the Confuse durations that make Ice Control Dominators less effective than they "should" be. It translates into Ice Dominators having big gaps in coverage another set wouldn't experience.

Edited July 6, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[Kaballah]

11 hours ago, PainX said:

not sure if that is different then missing a cone tbh as a chain i wonder how it would work with the proc my understanding is chains have a high proc chance hmm gotta make an elec soon to test it out

the chain takes around 1.5 seconds for each jump, and unless you are just going to wait 15+ seconds for it to land on every target, a cone or AOE are enormously better.

[Kaballah]

9 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

Electric's confusion power has some idiosyncracies that I think justify its 60 recharge. Most notably, no matter how good your Accuracy is, there is 1 in 20 chance for the power to fail that can't be removed. The failure happens often enough to really put pressure on you.

 

if anything this power should have an even shorter recharge, in a fast team it is essentially a 1-target confuse with a very long recharge.

[oedipus_tex]

4 hours ago, Kaballah said:

 

if anything this power should have an even shorter recharge, in a fast team it is essentially a 1-target confuse with a very long recharge.

 

 

I personally think it's a bit better than that. I do like the power. On Controllers its pretty fantastic and does what it's supposed to do. I think 60 seconds is the "right" value for this power. I just wish they'd fix it on Dominators. 

 

The current values in Domination mode and the correct values should be:

• Current value: 22.35 sec Confusion (Scale 15)
• Correct value should be: 33.5 sec (Scale 22.5) 

 

On top of not being able to Confuse bosses other than the first target, Electric Dominators are missing out on 50% of the Confusion time than they should be getting on minions and lieutenants. Depending on the level of the enemy being fought, after enhancements, Electric Dominators are losing 20 - 40 seconds of mezz time, which is why it feels like enemies break out of this control so much faster than other mezzes.

 

On Controllers the chain power does currently have a 20% chance to Overpower enemies so for sure Dominators should get their Domination. As it stands currently Controllers have a better chance to mezz bosses with this power than Dominators do. If we want to get technical, Controllers also lose out on some duration in the chains (it should be about 25% longer). That could be fixed by using the Homecoming tech that correctly applies archetype modifiers to pseudopets. 

Edited July 7, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[Kaballah]

Jumps take way, way too long to happen in any sort of team situation, I just don't find it terribly useful compared to a 1-target confuse with an eventual cooldown of under 3 seconds. Especially with the purple confuse set's contagious confusion piece. Jump time should be drastically reduced, or jumps should fork and each go to two targets to get it more in line with having a 60 second base cooldown. 3 jumps = 15 eventual targets:

 

 

would be totally fine for me if this excluded the contagious confuse piece's effect, who cares it's a good power at that point.

 

Edited July 8, 2021 by Kaballah

[Spectre7878]

Here's what I'd do with Mind: 

t1: Mesmerize - leave as is

t2: Dominate - leave as is

t3: Confuse -leave as is

t4: Levitate - leave as is

t5: Mass Hypnosis - lower the recharge and endurance so it can be used often. 

t6: Telekinesis - leave as is but no knock back, lower endurance cost and recharge time. Boom it’s like and immobilized.  Or Change to Mass Levitate (targeted AoE knock up damage.

t7: Total Domination - Leave as is

t8: Terrify - would be nice to have them go back into fear after being attacked. 

t9: Mass Confusion - mind does not have a pet. I think I am ok with that. That being said. There is a few things that could go here. Make this power like world of confusion only. Lower endurance use, confusion only mag 3, larger radius. Or. Just lower the recharge to 2 minutes and call it a day. 

[EmperorSteele]

Uhm, TK has repel, not KB. It'd just be a toggle hold, then. Which I guess isn't awful. Was that where you were going with that? But yeah, I'd also like to see Mass Levitate... though my existing builds are already pretty tight, not sure if I'd be able to spare the 5 or 6 slots I'd want in that power!

 

Also, terrorized foes DO stay afraid. It's a part of the effect that it temporarily breaks when they're hit, allowing them to run or take a potshot, but then they return to quaking in fear. Unless this got changed and I never noticed?

 

Also, why would you want to make Mass Comedy worse by making it anything like World of Confusion?

[Argentae]

On TK, I think they should just raise the target cap again. The end cost is hideous, but it used to be balanced by the need for PLAYER skill for TK to be effective. In the great ED pass (IIRC) they nuked it's target cap without providing any other change. I used to be a huge proponent of TK, but not being able to room/hall sweep with it without losing control of the wrong mob all the time... :: shaking head :: TK was fine as it was. Specialist tool, and amazing in the right hands. 

Mind Control is the overkill control set, it's got built-in end issues from the lack of pets/pseudo pets you do it all yourself compared to the balance of EVERY other set. The lack of reasonable containment setting options in the primary also put it at a fundamental disadvantage in taking advantage of Containment. If you keep to small spawns when soloing, or spend a lot of time on teams, Mind/ is a control king. Dance puppets... Dance to my bidding.

 

Dark is better in most ways, and pairs unbelievably well with /Dark. 

 

Mind is amazing on teams that want to prevent Adds and juggle masterclass AOE control.   

 

My perspective is based in my original Main (Argentae) is Mind/Kin. and I soloed a lot and loved teaming and soloing from I-2 on.

My last big project character and current Main is ShadowFallen Dark/Dark. She can do most of what Arg can, and soloed large spawns from fairly early on. The -ToHit soft control scales amazingly for anything PvE except GM/AV. Eat's EB's for lunch, but I haven't tried an A/V yet as she's too much fun to take and fight Nazis with. 🙂 

 

Boy I have missed this game. 🙂

Once I finish with my Fire/Storm/Ice (Ice epic doesn't get enough respect) I think I may need to pull Argentae TNG off the lvl 25 shelf and see how she plays as an incarnate. Using Terrify to set containment via (Interface?) would be fun. And adding proc damage to Mass Hyp maybe? Don't know, I think Dark's damage capabilities may have spoiled me. 😛

Edited August 14, 2021 by Argentae