Make Controllers and Dominators relevant to endgames and challenge content

[12twelveletter]

I've noticed after running fully built trollers and doms that they are most useful at mid to late levels and their usefulness quickly drops off by the endgame, and are completely useless for challenge content and most incarnate content. Crowd control skills are resisted by a lot of itrial or level shifted enemies unless you're actively stacking hold mags. They are completely useless on 4 star challenge content at which point you are a net drag on the team. I'm not asking for trollers and doms to get a damage buff or be a solo class but I am suggesting they get some kind of buff to their CC to keep them relevant and useful for endgame and challenge content. 

[honoroit]

ive tried too, devoted incarnates to the control increasing things, taken the cone ice judgement, optimized build for control. its not the characters, its the meta - and the game, yltimately being about you damage them to death to make them stop. otherwise its delay, and 'we aint got all day'

 

effective most is defender sets in controller, and synmeegy from a primary (dark/dark works).

 

but its mainly that secondary providing value to killers on team, and debuffs from the primary contributing.... but youd be better with a corruptor...

 

or a defender.  ive been embracing cc and change mechanics from defender more recently.  

 

poison/rad, its helpful against hards, it makes team members feel strong, you get to punch holes and mark targets effectively.

 

same why they want cold dom. def for team (t4 barrier required!!!11!), debuff for monster. 

 

its better than direct cc.

 

an exception is grav, which allows herd, zone based banish without pissing off too many folks, and that with a grav/kin may be my next controller attempt.

 

or i could just nature sonic def.

 

sorry i ramble, we cc, we slow down groups right now. go fire/kin, plant/kin, grav/kin.

 

single digit numbers wont cut it aside. we cannot pull our weight.

 

[Psyonico]

I feel like I was just reading a similar thread in this very forum only yesterday.

 

The problem being if you put in content that requires control, you basically gatekeep that you need a certain team composition.  See the LGTF for the perfect example.

[Rudra]

2 hours ago, Psyonico said:

I feel like I was just reading a similar thread in this very forum only yesterday.

 

The problem being if you put in content that requires control, you basically gatekeep that you need a certain team composition.  See the LGTF for the perfect example.

8 entries down from this one.

[FupDup]

I think a first easy step for this would be to just tone down the mezz protection/resists of the high-end enemies a bit rather than creating artificial "must-have" scenarios. 

[TheZag]

Maybe if mez resist got separated from mez protection could make control abilities feel more useful.  Currently mez does nothing if its magnitude is less than the targets protection.  Stacking mez effects against powerful targets is nearly pointless because their mez resistance reduces the duration even when the mez effect didnt break through the protection.  Trying to stack a mez effect 2 or more times and having the duration be almost nothing when it finally sticks is mostly useless when you could be doing damage instead.

 

If mez abilities lasted their full duration when the target didnt get mezzed and only suffered reduced duration when the effect actually lands could make it a bit easier to land a mez on a powerful target.  Values would need adjustment and the game engine might not even be able to process combat this way.

 

An alternate version could be lowering enemy mez protection across almost the entire endgame,  making it easier to land that first mez.  Landing a mez effect on a target would increase their mez protection and mez resistance to further effects.   After getting mezzed a few times,  their protection and resiatance would make them essentially immune to further mez until sufficient time has elapsed for the protection and resistance to expire.

 

Either version might make controllers and doms feel more useful.  In the end,  its very difficult to make mez useful without making it overpowered.  There are possibilities but i wouldnt think that the devs are planning to mess with mez after this many years of it being 'ok'.

 

[Bionic_Flea]

The problem with most mez in this game is that it is binary; the critter is either a mezzed piñata or it completely ignored the mez due to resistance. 

 

What if mezzes did something else to critters that weren't fully mezzed?  Something like slow and -recharge or removing the critter's abilities to use attacks until all it had left is brawl before being fully mezzed.

Edited May 30, 2023 by Bionic_Flea

[SupaFreak]

Controllers and Dominators are currently my 2nd favorite AT playstyle in the game, but I personally feel I do fine with them on end-game content.  It's just my role becomes more apparent in certain situations, so I partially agree and partially disagree.

 

All 4 of my control ATs (and quite a few control types I've teamed with) can survive the alpha and control plenty on TFs like Apex/Tin Mage, Incarnate Trials, and up to about a 2-star challenge ITF.  I'm sure the tankers/brutes on the team wonder what their role on the team is when typical squishies can excel and hold their own during those times of the TF/Trial.

But then it comes down to the few instances where some of us are out of our league and need that tank/brute to compensate for our lack of ability to control.  So, we have to lean on our non-control powers a bit more and take a bit of a back seat.  Or sometimes our ability to Control isn't even wanted - like when I had 2-3 on a team chewing me out for (Plant) controlling Battle Maiden on Apex.  I simply co-operated and shifted my attention to keep the swords occupied and gave my teammates the occasional heals.

Granted, there's the few rare epic Control builds I've seen that make me feel like a novice, but generally speaking anytime there's 2-3 solid built control types on a team I'm on... they can run the show when they work in unison.
 

I just can't think off the top of my head where 1 of my 4 fully incarnated control ATs feel they didn't contribute on at least a moderate level on end-game content... but that's simply my experience.

[12twelveletter]

7 hours ago, Psyonico said:

I feel like I was just reading a similar thread in this very forum only yesterday.

 

The problem being if you put in content that requires control, you basically gatekeep that you need a certain team composition.  See the LGTF for the perfect example.

My fault for not being specific enough. I do not mean that crowd control be "required" for anything. Only that crowd control actually hit and be useful against purple and level shifted enemies. 

Edited May 29, 2023 by 12twelveletter

[@Ghost]

4 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

The problem with most mez in this game is that it is binary, the critter is either a mezzed piñata or it completely ignored the mez due to resistance.

 

This has been my hangup for a long time, too. Plus, there's so much overlap - stun and hold both functionally remove all threat for the full duration, and confuse is an even better version. Fear and slows I think wind up being the most 'balanced' CC from a designer's perspective since they still let the enemies interact and remain threatening.

 

To the thread topic, something like a modified GW2-style break bar might be interesting. On strong enemies, GW2 has a separate 'health bar' that only decreases when disabling effects are applied, and when it hits 0, the enemy is stunned and takes more damage for a period of time. It adds an interesting layer to combat and gives value to all CC effects.

 

A CoH version might only be on Hard Mode enemies, and reduce the enemy's mez protection when it's broken to make them susceptible to regular levels of CC.

[biostem]

So propose something, OP - what is your suggested "fix"?

 

One possible idea would be to add a sliding scale of debuffs, that get greater and greater, until the enemy is held completely.  That way, even if not held, the enemy is still functioning to a lower degree than before.  the only problem with that, though, is it then cheapens those dedicated power that apply the various debuffs.  Another idea would be to simply buff the magnitude, duration, or both, of the mez effects for both controllers and dominators while in Incarnate/hardmode content, (but that comes with its own issues).

[Communistpenguin]

Why not just strip all mobs of mez protections, and simply give them % of mez resistance. So if you hit a boss with a minion level hold, it does hold the boss, but only for like 1/10 of a second or whatever, but hit him with a boss level hold and he would be held the entire duration. I mean, we already have mez resistance in the game, and we already have resistances scaling with level. Seems like a straight forward solution to me.

[honoroit]

give us back TK for a start.

 

you could put damage up a good bit, generally, for 50+ content.

 

particularly for the aoe immobs.

 

give the atos some damage.

 

cash in mez duration to a dot or snap burst as a core archetype auto power.

 

however, you might end up just neutering the cc element away.

 

problem is, its not fun fighting statues for other players, so theres a balance, and its relatively good as we are.

 

its just terrible damage, and limited in dps focused meta.

[Akisan]

2 hours ago, Communistpenguin said:

Why not just strip all mobs of mez protections, and simply give them % of mez resistance. So if you hit a boss with a minion level hold, it does hold the boss, but only for like 1/10 of a second or whatever, but hit him with a boss level hold and he would be held the entire duration. I mean, we already have mez resistance in the game, and we already have resistances scaling with level. Seems like a straight forward solution to me.

 

That's how mezzes work in PvP, IIRC.  Really not a fan of that system, as layered holds don't stack duration.  I mean, yeah, we can rotate through and coordinate our holds, but that can get to be a headache (especially if they keep *any* protection on top of this, like bosses' needing 4 mag to be held)

 

2 hours ago, biostem said:

One possible idea would be to add a sliding scale of debuffs, that get greater and greater, until the enemy is held completely.  That way, even if not held, the enemy is still functioning to a lower degree than before.  the only problem with that, though, is it then cheapens those dedicated power that apply the various debuffs.

 

This, and @Bionic_Flea's suggestion could work well - even a little bit of control locks out (and/or severely dampens the recharge and/or boosts the end cost of) high-level powers, with additional controls locking down more and more powers.  It'd be super tricky to code a debuff that only affects certain powers, but it'd be a nice twist on effects that don't quite overcome critter protections.

[Saiyajinzoningen]

I find Dominators far more useful endgame than controllers but do agree the game mode is mostly DPS more DPS and side of DPS. That being said there are ways to make CC more beneficial that already exist in game. For example.

 

Blaster secondaries have a power called Shinobi, shinobi allows blasters to crit from stealth.

This means its possible for other AT's to crit besides stalkers and scrappers.

In olden times held/slept foes crit'd far more often than not. Lets bring that back. But make it for all teammates.

yeah, yeah power creep this power creep that.

Lets face facts if we want the CC AT's to be more viable its either buff them in some way or nerf others.

Nobody wants a nerf. So lets make the CC AT's more attractive indirectly. The crit chance doesn't have to be high 10-15% is more than enough.

 

Another option is give foes toggles. Toggles for Def, Toggles for Resist. Toggles make foes tougher. unless u bring a CC.

CC removes toggles making enemies easier to defeat.

 

 

[honoroit]

id love a toggle which amounts to stance for control sets, like ffxiv had for healers some time ago.

 

off: normal.

on: 1/5 cc durations (example), dmg boost based on replaced control effect.

 

end up: slighly sub sentinel (?) dps, control effects become more brief interrupts.  stuff like mass hypnosis gonna aggro folk as now damage. 

 

itd still work at ludicrous recharge for mag stacking a regular boss, but youd be looking at a 6-7s stack window and only 2-3s without sustained application falloff. (assuming youve a cc duration of like 28s and the mob has a drop of status resist) - but youd be doing a lot more damage.

 

cast times:

its why mind control for me 9/10 times on dom (skip levitate get the sleep).  

 

groups move fast, and we need snappy cc bursts, the very occasional add handle, the soft cc (sleep) alpha helper for the melee running into the bext so they open unharmed in its center. 

 

take gleam, it should be 0.7s cast imo. reduction in cast times for cc would help the ATs feel quick, even if theyre only snapping a mob before its decimation.  spot lockdown needs to be as fast as you see it and react, or as close to this as possible.  example: eq2 illusionist instants.

 

but we shouldnt have visions of a mmo gaming model of yesteryore where complex raid encounters or group content require mob exclusion.  a lot of the time... mob kb scatter plus a hard locker of a kb reducing immob hinder the group and complicate its removal, theyre immob in the wrong spot.

 

so ya... a toggle for 'make me dpsey and ill trade 80% cc durations'

 

things like power boost would end up boosting damage like a build up in the tradeoff described. horray!

 

Edited May 30, 2023 by honoroit