What's the deal with Controllers at 50?

[Jokaste]

Title. I was really enjoying my Ill/FF Controller while leveling but I just hit 50 and I feel absolutely useless. Was in a MLTF and even the 48 Brute was doing more than I was. I have like no damage and I can't CC any of the AVs, which seem to be the only thing that was giving anyone any degree of trouble. We were mostly Scrappers and Brutes and they would just wade right through groups of enemies without taking any damage at all. If any enemy even glanced at me I had to immediately use Personal Force Field or I would just get destroyed in 3 hits. Eventually all I was doing was sitting in invis and using Deceive but for some reason they even started attacking me after that. The only time I felt like I was contributing was with Phantom Army, Phantasm would get summoned and immediately 1-2 shot and Spectral Terror wasn't really worth using since nothing was ever in danger of killing anyone but me anyways.

 

I was thinking about making a new Controller, pref Mind to get away from pets.

[StarseedWarrior]

As far as I know ff is not doing so hot right now maybe its different on controllers but if your going to pick illusion you need synergy like radiation to debuff enemies so it can indirectly buff phantom army for more dps.

[Sovera]

Though I was shouted down when I said it it's still my opinion that controllers are completely obsolete in the game as it stands now. Even as we level I don't feel it matters if we are there or not. We can be all proud of ourselves by locking a pack down and the team is killing it without a problem, but then go AFK and come back to see the team kept on going and had no problem in our absence. We do not add damage and our control is hardly needed.

 

We may *feel* we are useful, but in fact we are a lot of flash and little substance.

 

At 50 it just gets worse when people start slotting up for real. So what I do is work towards buffing and damage. We may not be *needed*, but we can speed things up to it takes less time. Taking less time is always appreciated. We work damage in so that we can help some, because, again, speed things up.

 

Playing a corruptor or even a mastermind is more useful than a controller, in my opinion. A MM in particular can set their pets on aggressive on a pack along with the team, do damage, and just focus on their secondary to do some locking up or add buffs/debuffs. A corruptor will do this but with even more damage and no need to re-summon things.

 

Me, for the heck of it and because I like the imps, I'm playing a fire/kin. Notice how it works with what I said. I'm buffing the party so they mow down faster, and with containment and pets and hotfeet I'm adding damage. And, yeah, I guess, I can do a bit of CC for the heck of it, but as you've noticed no one really cares about it. Even half slotted teams will mow down a TF.

 

Now that said you picked an unfortunate combo. FF is weak nowadays. You could have gone for Cold and achieve just a smidgen less defense in your shields but also add a brutal -regen on AVS which *would* help the team defeat an AV faster, and a nice combo of CC and -res to help kill faster with Sleet. Nothing in FF is really helping PA either though neither will Cold.

 

Time is a good baby since you buff your party, debuff the enemies to take more damage, has a heal you can spam and keep everyone topped off, and important, helps you boost your own defenses so you are not squishy (you can reach the defense softcap with it). Squishy is just a bad idea.

 

There are those here (because we are in the Controllers sub-forum, and those who are here do so because they love their characters) who will say that no, Controllers are useful, but, eh, I say join a group, help them kill a few packs, then say you need to pick up the phone and watch them. Does their HP dip? Does anyone die? Is their progress slowed?

[Sulhythal]

Want to know a secret?

 

On a good team, no individual player is "needed".  what Sovera has said applies to everyone.  All any one player ever does is speed things up.

If a team - relies- on any one player to steamroll things then it is not really a well balanced team for the content/difficulty.

 

Some players believe that a tank is - required-- for a team.  Others that a defender with specific power sets are.  They're wrong, carrying ideas from other games that don't quite fit here.

 

Now, OP, as others have said you are using a control light primary with a purely defensive secondary.  You might well have been the reason the rest of the team was untouchable, pushed their defenses just far enough to the cap.  You might not have, they might have all had billion dollar IO builds.  With FF it's hard to tell sometimes. 

[oedipus_tex]

Both Force Field and Illusion are extremely passive sets. Let me take that back... Force Field is an extremely passive set because its actionable powers are weak.

 

Force Field is the set I always pray I will pick up when forming radio teams from levels 1-50. Force Field can transform any team into an unstoppable wall.

 

But then in the late game, much of the team has figured out its defense strategy. Force Field falls off rapidly in that scenario.

 

All of that said:

 

Force Field is still one of the best sets to bring to iTrials. It has AoE mezz protection and a huge defense buff for the team. Controllers can take Power Boost and out perform Defender shields.

 

Force Field (or Sonic or Traps) makes or breaks a Rikti Raid. Without at least one FF character all the mezz being thrown around can wreck the team.

 

So its not all bad. But yes FF has a very specific niche.

 

FWIW in the late stages of the live game, an attempt was made to make FF better. It didn't really succeed tho IMO. There is still, for some reason, a belief that low damage knockback powers like Force Bolt are useful ("you can control bosses" the saying goes.) A revised FF would include:

 

- Some kind of absorb mechanic (absorb was added in i24 and therefor never seen on live)

- Legit damage in Force Bolt to justify casting it. it should be a tier 1.5 or 2 attack

- Legit damage or lower cast time for Repulsion Bomb or make the stun reliable

 

 

In the past I've also suggested that Force Bolt could apply reverse mezz protection (-2 to Confuse, Hold, Immobilize and Stun protection). "Stripping mezz protection" if you will. This would be totally unique to FF.

 

[Tremalion]

I'm going to echo what Sulhy said, because it's really important and a lot of people need to take it to heart: any one person is not VITAL to the group's success, and that is as it should be.

 

I was in a group on my blaster the other day and the team got real nervous when our tank left. They were worried that all is poor Squishies would start dying without a meat sgield.. I said we'd be fine and started taking point by just annihilating the next three spawns with overwhelming alpha strikes. They got into it and within minutes we were racing through missions again.

 

Now, does that mean the tank didn't contribute or wasn't valuable? No, she was great. Does it mean thanks more broadly are useless? No. Does it mean blasters are overpowered? Ha, no. What it does mean is that with very few exceptions, good play outweighs Archetype every time.

 

Play whatever you want to play. If you do it well and work with your teammates, your team will thrive and your contribution will be both valued and valuable. Anybody who says "(insert AT here) is bad/useless/obsolete" is doin' it wrong.

[Coyote]

To continue off Tremalion and Sulhythal... the only times when specific characters are NEEDED, is when the team needs their DEFENSIVE abilities. However, at level 50, enough characters have their defenses figured out strongly enough that they can provide defense for the team, and so any other defensive character on the team is not necessary or especially useful.

 

Offense is always useful, thus a low-damage AT like Controllers, and an especially low-AoE-damage version like Ill/FF, who brings almost no offense, will not be able to feel useful by bringing offense to the team. And if defense is not needed, then that character is not helping the team much.

 

That applies to all defense-focused builds at level 50. Teams are strong enough defensively, that bringing a defense focus is not especially useful, and lacking good offensive ability hurts. It's not purely a Controller issue, though it applies to them more than to anyone else since they have some of the lowest-AoE damage builds in the game.

 

There is no real solution, but it's because you're bringing a fork to a soup dish. Controller have a Primary that is mainly Defense with a secondary effect of Damage, and a Secondary that is mostly Defense with some -Res or +Dam (but only for some sets)... it fits, that a Defense/Defense character feels useless in an end game where the team usually has enough Defense. If you get into smaller teams who are still running missions at x8, your defense will feel more useful. You have to fit the character to the type of gameplay... a strongly defensive-oriented character like Ill/FF should be on a smaller team fighting tougher foes, since then the team will have use for the extra defensive abilities.

[Greentea]

Sorry, I didn't bother to read other posts than the OP.

 

Force Field is all about buffing. I think there's only two damage abilities from Force Field, they're pretty much resisted due to common damage type (Smashing).

 

Illusion is a bit tricky to those who rarely plays Controller. Illusion have 5 (6 if you count the Phantasm clone) pets. Only 3 pets do decent dps, the Phantom Army. Phantasm uses the KB ability often, it's gonna take a while to defeat its enemy. Spectral Terror deals no damage unless you invest the dmg proc into it.

 

Illusion technically have two AoE holds; Blind and Flash. I don't know about others, but I hardly rely on Blind to AoE them. Flash is another AoE ability but, you'll want high accuracy and recharge to use it. The fear from Spectral Terror isn't useful, the enemies often run away or retaliate.

 

Spectral Wounds and Blind are your ST offensive abilities. Phantom Army requires a lot of global recharge to make it perma.

 

I do liked my Ill/FF, I had one on Live a long time ago. I will never roll it again though. ;P

[Zep]

Every AT and Every specific powerset has it's strengths and shortcomings.

 

Some controller builds are more damage heavy then others. Fire/Storm or Fire/Kin for example.

 

Something to keep in mind, even if you were not doing much damage keeping pets out, dropping them on a boss/AV for example will take up hits that would have hurt a PC. Even if the pets are not being individually targeted they are taking up spots on the AOE being put down against the group. Couple that with FF and you are just not seeing how much damage you prevented.

 

Ran a Synapse yesterday on my Fire/Storm -- my main abilities were Flash Fire, Fire Cages, Freezing Rain, and Snow Storm on groups. I used Char and Ring of Fire on a lot of single targets. My damage output was likely the lowest on the team, lower even then the Defenders.

 

Was pretty funny when I could tell one of the Blasters couldnt figure out why Bosses he was fighting would just stand there and twitch from time to time.

 

Was I useful? I think so but I dont think too many in the group noticed.

 

OP - I have a question for you, after this experience and knowledge gained - what (if anything) can/will you change on your build/play style to adapt and increase your effectiveness? Can you use this to learn and grow? (Or is that too real world :)

 

 

[AngriestGhost]

Title. I was really enjoying my Ill/FF Controller while leveling but I just hit 50 and I feel absolutely useless. Was in a MLTF and even the 48 Brute was doing more than I was. I have like no damage and I can't CC any of the AVs, which seem to be the only thing that was giving anyone any degree of trouble.

 

A bit of a warning here, you'll have to temper your expectations on locking down AVs.  It's often hard to see, but AVs have special mez protection represented by purple triangles that rotate around them (often called PToD, or Purple Triangles of Doom).  This gives AVs mag 50 protection to most mezzes (except immobilize and sleep) for about 2/3 of the time.  For a solo controller stacking that much mag can be difficult and activation time plays an important part in how much you can stack.

 

On the plus side, Phantom Army is essentially your control for AVs.  As long as the AV is swinging at an enemy they can't damage, they aren't targeting squishy teammates.

 

We were mostly Scrappers and Brutes and they would just wade right through groups of enemies without taking any damage at all. If any enemy even glanced at me I had to immediately use Personal Force Field or I would just get destroyed in 3 hits. Eventually all I was doing was sitting in invis and using Deceive but for some reason they even started attacking me after that. The only time I felt like I was contributing was with Phantom Army, Phantasm would get summoned and immediately 1-2 shot and Spectral Terror wasn't really worth using since nothing was ever in danger of killing anyone but me anyways.

 

I was thinking about making a new Controller, pref Mind to get away from pets.

 

As other's have noted, the team composition here wasn't in your favor.  Brutes and Scrappers build for survivability and have their own mez protection.  FF is much more suited to buffing ranged ATs that lack both of those things. 

[Scarlet Shocker]

I've played a LOT of controllers to 50 (and even deleted a few) as well as other ATs. I do notice that some are less effective at the point of turning 50, but regain that and more once slotted and built right. It's very rare that I have a toon built the way I want it as I ding 50 (read: Never) so usually a good couple of hours in Mids/Pine, then a critique on the forums, then a few missions collecting the stuffs I need to make it go right and then look out world.

 

I think that one thing you've not taken into account is that a full team of anything can make each individual seem a bit superfluous, so not surprising you're not quite ready but the beauty of this game is trying to do things differently. I've had a lot of fun doing duos and trios of major TFs, which make it much more challenging, and that's when you see your worth really shine.

 

I'm not going to shout down Sovera but I do disagree with their point. I think s/he has drawn the wrong conclusion to a perceived problem. Any 8 man team of any ATs pretty well can stomp any content lower than incarnates.

 

Here's a really important question that only you can answer: Are you enjoying playing your character?

[JusticeBowler]

The only time I felt like I was contributing was with Phantom Army, Phantasm would get summoned and immediately 1-2 shot and Spectral Terror wasn't really worth using since nothing was ever in danger of killing anyone but me anyways.

 

Over the weekend I was playing my Tank. When I tank, I tanky tank. I take it as a short of challenge to keep the group moving, stay ahead of the nutter scrappers and brutes, and generally pace all the mob sets as well as I can. But I had a couple of teams where I wasn't needed.

 

On one the leader was a brute who could easily take the alphas, especially with the quality defenders on the team. He was faster than me, did way more damage than me (I don't do damage as a rule) and because he had the star folks often took his lead over mine. A couple of times we split into two teams which was actually rather fun, but in the end I just felt extra. It happens to everyone.

 

The other team had two exceptional controllers that could lock everything down so fast I hardly took an alpha and if I did, that was the only contribution I made to that mob spawn. Still. I was there to catch something if it fell through... or so I told myself. It happens to everyone.

 

8 people on a team, no one is essential, or should be.  Everything is about play style, mobs-on-tap, and how all the builds stack up against those two.

 

Sometimes you just have to relax and let go.

[Maldroth]

Back on live I used to play Grav/FF and after the ED nerf Force Field really took a hit. Back then I could cap defenses so I felt like I really made an impact to teams by existing. This was also when it didn't take 4 minutes for your AoE hold to recharge. Both nerfs hit super hard for that build. I had a few powers in each set that were kinda mediocre at best or extremely situational that they weren't worth taking over pool powers that made their value all the time.

 

Now playing to 50 again with the Invention and Incarnate systems I'd say I don't feel the AoE Hold recharge as badly as I did. Wormhole had also gotten a buff so I have two different AoE Mez powers that help me deal with problem mobs in packs. Containment has certainly helped with my ability to do damage compared to when the game launched. When grouping I focus on locking down bosses or other mobs that have nasty side effects. I'm looking at you Sappers. When I group I have to change up my role from damage dealing to key control and team support. Depending on your support set that means healing at critical times, debuffing AVs to make the rest of the team take them down faster, and buffing the team to make them faster/better at what they do. I play Grav/Time and my feeling of being useful is night and day over my experience live. Last night I was on an 8 man team and we crushed some TFs in under 15 min each. Could they have done the TFs without me? Absolutely. Did I make them faster at it and improved some bad situations. Completely.

 

Force Field's problem is that it does two things kinda well but they aren't as needed compared to other sets. Defense (which is good but at the level it offers other sets frankly now do it better), and Knockback which not all teams appreciate and is highly situational to be useful. Sonic is built the same way but wonder if it has the same problems as Resistance seems to feel more impactful and they have a bit more in the debuff department. Force Field needs to be revisited with the lessons we learned from later Support sets on making a more rounded experience but keep the theme of Fields in play.

[Guffnat]

The devs should add an absorb mechanic to FF just like in Spirit Ward from Sorcery.

[egoprovince]

The only time I felt like I was contributing was with Phantom Army, Phantasm would get summoned and immediately 1-2 shot and Spectral Terror wasn't really worth using since nothing was ever in danger of killing anyone but me anyways.

 

Over the weekend I was playing my Tank. When I tank, I tanky tank. I take it as a short of challenge to keep the group moving, stay ahead of the nutter scrappers and brutes, and generally pace all the mob sets as well as I can. But I had a couple of teams where I wasn't needed.

 

On one the leader was a brute who could easily take the alphas, especially with the quality defenders on the team. He was faster than me, did way more damage than me (I don't do damage as a rule) and because he had the star folks often took his lead over mine. A couple of times we split into two teams which was actually rather fun, but in the end I just felt extra. It happens to everyone.

 

The other team had two exceptional controllers that could lock everything down so fast I hardly took an alpha and if I did, that was the only contribution I made to that mob spawn. Still. I was there to catch something if it fell through... or so I told myself. It happens to everyone.

 

8 people on a team, no one is essential, or should be.  Everything is about play style, mobs-on-tap, and how all the builds stack up against those two.

 

Sometimes you just have to relax and let go.

 

Ran Sara Moore TF over the weekend with a friend of mine who typically plays tank.  I'm used to being overlooked in a large team, PeaceBringer damage isn't as amazing as a top-tier blaster and in the chaos it's hard to know who's doing what.  But my friend was feeling useless over Kinetic Speed-boosted Scrappers burning through packs quickly.

 

In the right team you'll feel outclassed or unneeded.  When the synergies line up and the team is racing at Mach 2 down the hallways utterly smashing the whole pack before racing off to the next it's almost impossible to know if you're doing your job properly.  City of Heroes isn't a game where you need X tool for Y job every time.  It's a game where all builds are viable and everyone brings something to the team.  I main a Peacebringer and I'm familiar with feeling useless.  My attacks all provide -def and when all is said and done it's hard to know if it matters.  It does.  It's just not as obvious as Earth Control holds or Kinetic Siphon Speed.

[oedipus_tex]

Believe it or not, Force Field actually used to be worse. Repulsion Bomb used to not be an attack, instead it was castable at a teammate and it would cause enemies to fly back away from them. The early devs thought they had designed a game where knockback was a meaningful and valuable control power. The thing is, it can be, but not really with the way FF was designed. Repulsion Bomb was one of the least taken powers in the game, which resulted in it being changed to its now marginally more useful state. But it still has the excruciating 3.3 second animation time.

 

Force Field as a whole has long been a one trick pony. On the plus side, its pretty good at that trick. On the negative side, the trick isn't all that desirable at high levels (although I won't go so far as to call it useless).

 

Some ideas from the past for Force Field include:

 

- Having Force Bolt and Repulsion Bomb strip Stun and Hold protection (like reverse Clear Mind)

- Chance for Force Bolt to apply an Unresistable knockback in addition to normal KB (so that it can occasionally effect AVs and players with high kb protect)

- Finer control over the size of Force Bubble

 

 

 

 

 

[Without_Pause]

FF is the easiest to make a team steamroll. It is the least useful for a team which can already steamroll. In the land of IOs and Incarnates, FF loses out big time.

[HoundsTooth]

Though I was shouted down when I said it it's still my opinion that controllers are completely obsolete in the game as it stands now. Even as we level I don't feel it matters if we are there or not. We can be all proud of ourselves by locking a pack down and the team is killing it without a problem, but then go AFK and come back to see the team kept on going and had no problem in our absence. We do not add damage and our control is hardly needed.

 

I agree with you. Let them shout us out.

 

It seems to that the focus of the game has moved to clearing +4/x8 mobs as quickly as possible. Relatively few people want to take on intentionally challenging content. I am not sure why this is. Unfortunately, controllers are very useful in the difficult content that doesn't get much attention.

 

The solution, for me at least, is to build controllers for as much damage as possible. I don't feel useless on my Plant/Storm because I help clear mobs with AoE damage from my pets (Flytrap, Creepers, Tornado, Lightening Storm), as well as confuse enemies and debuff their defense and resistance. I don't lock down mobs entirely;  I mitigate enemy damage while contributing a good bit of my own.

 

The days have passed when a low-damage-high-control Controller is useful. Things are dieing too quickly for an Earth/FF to shine. Don't fight the trend. Join it and build an offensive controller.

[Scientist]

Back on live I used to play Grav/FF and after the ED nerf Force Field really took a hit.

[snip]

Force Field's problem is that it does two things kinda well but they aren't as needed compared to other sets. Defense (which is good but at the level it offers other sets frankly now do it better), and Knockback which not all teams appreciate and is highly situational to be useful. Sonic is built the same way but wonder if it has the same problems as Resistance seems to feel more impactful and they have a bit more in the debuff department.

 

I also had a Grav/FF on live, based on my favorite character from a rpg I was in, one of the first two characters I made in I1, and I always struggled to find a use for him at 50 that other characters couldn't do better.  As has been discussed here, the big problem is that only a smallish subset of teams at 50 really need more Defense (in the general sense, including things like controls), whereas most can use more Offense.  Many controller secondaries provide some of each, including Sonic, which is a pretty good -resist debuffer for tough AVs, FF totally lacks any Offense multiplier.  And my rad/rad defender arguably had more control "up time" than the controller, since they didn't nerf EMP as much as the generic controller AoE holds, on TOP of Offense multipliers. 

 

I remade my Grav/FF as a Grav/Time this time around, which also fit the concept from my rpg character, and even at 12th level it is a more interesting character to play and I see more potential.  The only reason I'd consider a FF character these days if if I wanted to do a lot of low level team content with the character, say I loved the Posi TFs or the Hollows and wanted to run them a lot.  The other option is a MM, so you have good offense addition from pets, but I would find FF a bit boring on a MM.

[Without_Pause]

Though I was shouted down when I said it it's still my opinion that controllers are completely obsolete in the game as it stands now. Even as we level I don't feel it matters if we are there or not. We can be all proud of ourselves by locking a pack down and the team is killing it without a problem, but then go AFK and come back to see the team kept on going and had no problem in our absence. We do not add damage and our control is hardly needed.

 

I agree with you. Let them shout us out.

 

It seems to that the focus of the game has moved to clearing +4/x8 mobs as quickly as possible. Relatively few people want to take on intentionally challenging content. I am not sure why this is. Unfortunately, controllers are very useful in the difficult content that doesn't get much attention.

 

The solution, for me at least, is to build controllers for as much damage as possible. I don't feel useless on my Plant/Storm because I help clear mobs with AoE damage from my pets (Flytrap, Creepers, Tornado, Lightening Storm), as well as confuse enemies and debuff their defense and resistance. I don't lock down mobs entirely;  I mitigate enemy damage while contributing a good bit of my own.

 

The days have passed when a low-damage-high-control Controller is useful. Things are dieing too quickly for an Earth/FF to shine. Don't fight the trend. Join it and build an offensive controller.

 

I was on a small team last night. I have a feeling a lot of leveling post DFB's will be that way as well unless you are doing TFs. I think the days of one sided builds are done in terms of being useful. Sadly, I recently made an Ice/rad controller as I always wanted one back on live. I don't think controllers are useless on teams. There is still annoying content, ie Tsoo, CoT, etc. I just think you can get a lot more use out of builds which have a bit of diversity to them.  See also me thinking why tanks are going to be to harder to come by as brutes on smaller teams can work perfectly fine. Been itching to do a Fire/rad, and I might just reroll the Ice/rad into it. Granted, I already have an Ill/rad so that's partly why I keep holding off.

 

FYI, I have soloed a lot since coming back. Most normal teams I have been on don't get filled. The team last night was three people until we looked for some support. We were scrapper, blaster, and tank to start. A controller would have been useful there. We added a defender. Hell, if I get the chance to team with a friend, my default is grabbing a controller as he seems to love sentinels.

[oedipus_tex]

Well one thing that stands out about the revived game is that Blasters, Corruptors and even Defenders deal significantly more damage than before due to crashless nukes. This has moved the bar tremendously in terms of the need to hold whole packs of mobs. It's also funny that Controller AoE holds are on a 4 minute recharge schedule while NUKES are on 145 second recharge schedule. I know the original reason the wait for AoE holds was created but it might be time to revisit that.

[Erydanus]

What I'd like to see is our Epic damage un-nerfed. When containment was added, the damage in the powers from our Epics wasn't cut in half, so containment doubled it. Around i18 or so I think it was the devs arbitrarily decided it was now too much and cut all epic pool attack damage in HALF. So if you feel a 50 controller is doing lower damage than you thought you remembered, that might be part of it.

[Maldroth]

Back on live I used to play Grav/FF and after the ED nerf Force Field really took a hit.

[snip]

Force Field's problem is that it does two things kinda well but they aren't as needed compared to other sets. Defense (which is good but at the level it offers other sets frankly now do it better), and Knockback which not all teams appreciate and is highly situational to be useful. Sonic is built the same way but wonder if it has the same problems as Resistance seems to feel more impactful and they have a bit more in the debuff department.

 

I also had a Grav/FF on live, based on my favorite character from a rpg I was in, one of the first two characters I made in I1, and I always struggled to find a use for him at 50 that other characters couldn't do better.  As has been discussed here, the big problem is that only a smallish subset of teams at 50 really need more Defense (in the general sense, including things like controls), whereas most can use more Offense.  Many controller secondaries provide some of each, including Sonic, which is a pretty good -resist debuffer for tough AVs, FF totally lacks any Offense multiplier.  And my rad/rad defender arguably had more control "up time" than the controller, since they didn't nerf EMP as much as the generic controller AoE holds, on TOP of Offense multipliers. 

 

I remade my Grav/FF as a Grav/Time this time around, which also fit the concept from my rpg character, and even at 12th level it is a more interesting character to play and I see more potential.  The only reason I'd consider a FF character these days if if I wanted to do a lot of low level team content with the character, say I loved the Posi TFs or the Hollows and wanted to run them a lot.  The other option is a MM, so you have good offense addition from pets, but I would find FF a bit boring on a MM.

 

Exactly the same experience for me. I'm Grav/Time and playing Solo I am faster and can take on more and in a group my tactics have to shift but when I do I lock down nasty targets and keep the teams moving fast and strip AVs of some of their potency. My only wish now is that Dimension Shift could be replaced with something more useful. I wonder how many take and use it.

[Primantis]

 

 

It seems to that the focus of the game has moved to clearing +4/x8 mobs as quickly as possible.

 

 

This does seem to be how things evolved. It is especially profound in the 40-50s.

 

On your average 45+ team you'll have a few incarnates spamming Judgement. Defenders/Blasters/Corruptors are going to be nuking every 2-3 groups and Elec/Shield Brutes and Scrappers are all over. Annihilating every other spawn with their mini-nukes.

 

Leading to mobs dying very fast. To the point where sometimes my Defender doesn't even have time to lay down Tar Patch unless I race ahead.

 

 

Because of this I feel like I have the most fun in the late 20s and mid/high 30s. The team still feels like a team, we are strong on our own at this point, but still generally have holes in our capabilities so we rely on one another. End-game tends to be a bunch of Heroes who can probably solo x8 maps anyways, teaming up with others and wiping the floor with the mobs. Which has its own merits don't get me wrong. But the teamwork aspect seem to be downplayed a lot at that point.

[egoprovince]

 

 

It seems to that the focus of the game has moved to clearing +4/x8 mobs as quickly as possible.

 

 

This does seem to be how things evolved. It is especially profound in the 40-50s.

 

On your average 45+ team you'll have a few incarnates spamming Judgement. Defenders/Blasters/Corruptors are going to be nuking every 2-3 groups and Elec/Shield Brutes and Scrappers are all over. Annihilating every other spawn with their mini-nukes.

 

Leading to mobs dying very fast. To the point where sometimes my Defender doesn't even have time to lay down Tar Patch unless I race ahead.

 

 

Because of this I feel like I have the most fun in the late 20s and mid/high 30s. The team still feels like a team, we are strong on our own at this point, but still generally have holes in our capabilities so we rely on one another. End-game tends to be a bunch of Heroes who can probably solo x8 maps anyways, teaming up with others and wiping the floor with the mobs. Which has its own merits don't get me wrong. But the teamwork aspect seem to be downplayed a lot at that point.

 

I feel the low and mid levels are more interesting because we don't have our late-game super powers, or our slots.  Doing the Moonfire TF on occasion has shown me how my power has grown as a Peacebringer from where I had a build but no IO's to now I have many IO's and their sets and I'm tougher because I have power and I know what to and not-to do.  I still do the non-45+ TF's because they -are- still interesting and I'm able to see everyone's contribution, even my own.  I still get incarnate drops from the lower TF's so I haven't found a reason to not do them.

 

Incarnate powers certainly open a door making your character so much more powerful.  Heck, -you- the Controller could be Judgement-bolting everything every two minutes much like me, the PB.  What I find is that Controller are still recognizable for their powers.  I can't see the effects with all the noise, but I can see how that thug isn't moving or that Boss isn't looking me in the eye.  How a Quantum will go running towards someone else when they're supposed to be single-minded hunting me down.  Your powers are working, the job is getting done it's just that there is so much flash and aoe damage that it's hard to see it.  The difference I find in Controller vs no Controller is the lack of focus, you dictate how far the battlefield can expand because of runners or overpull.  I was on an ITF that failed because we lacked control to debuff anything, Romulus was impossible to kill because we lacked a lot of what a Defender and Controller bring to the team in support powers.