Confusing Controller

[Dahle]

I'm looking at options for a fun confuse controller.  Elec of course has an amazing Chaining confuse and Plant/ has Seeds.  But I am wondering really if anyone has stacked Arctic Air on World of Confusion.  Not even sure what secondary I'd pull with it, maybe /Dark for some hilarity. Of course I'm not sure I could play such a toon seriously, but I really am wondering if the confusion effects are strong enough.

Thanks

[oedipus_tex]

I have tried Arctic Air with World of Confusion. It's sadly fairly lackluster.

 

IMO Arctic Air could do with a bit of a buff. It's a very risky power that tends to get detoggled easily. Ice Control is frankly in a bit of a bad state right now. The premier knockdown patch is Bonfire with a kb to kd proc (longer duration, faster recharge and can take Force Feedback procs.)

[Guffnat]

I tried stacking Artic Air and World of Confusion and didn't really feel satisfied. The range of World of Confusion is smaller than Arctic Air and the confuse of AA is too short.

While I really love Elec control the chain confuse can be pointless on fast clearing teams. The jumping animation is quite longish and often the whole group is already arrested before all of the jumps happened.

I think Plant right now would be your best bet. You get the power early, it has a fairly low cooldown and imho outperforms the other confuse abilities. If only they would lower the cooldown of Mass Confusion then Mind Control with two confuse spells would probably be your best bet.

 

[Dahle]

I went on Justin last night and tried it out.  I was very disappointed, and felt let down.  So that's the end of trying to do that.  Thanks yall

[TivoManiac]

If you are on Excelsior you can run with me on my Illusion/Storm. It's my favorite character to play.

[TivoManiac]

Also for anyone with a confuse power. Don't overlook the Coercive Persuasion purple set and the contagious confusion IO. On the Illusion Controller the single target confuse recharges fast and if you slot contagious confusion on it that will hit about 33% of the time.

[Coyote]

Also for anyone with a confuse power. Don't overlook the Coercive Persuasion purple set and the contagious confusion IO. On the Illusion Controller the single target confuse recharges fast and if you slot contagious confusion on it that will hit about 33% of the time.

 

While it's a shame to waste the Recharge enhancing from it, and the End enhancing is weak, the Coercive Persuasion proc works great in both Arctic Air and World of Confusion. Since it has a flat strength (mag * duration), it benefits weak strength powers like AA and WoC more than powers that already have a strong Confuse effect.

[Sailboat]

So far I am liking the soft control from Arctic Air paired with Time Manipulation's Temporal Junction PBAoE instead of World of Confusion.  Both powers have the same radius.  Both slow, AA has a flee effect and -recharge, TJ has -to hit and -damage.  Enemies not confused often run back and forth uselessly in the radius; confused foes miss a lot and do less damage when they do hit.  So even though the confuse is unreliable and short-lived, you still get a ton of mitigation from it but lose somewhat LESS exp due to enemies killing each other.  It can be dangerous to move into a group with Arctic Air and wait for its effects to kick in, but Time's Juncture helps protect you a lot. 

 

This pairing is extremely hard on endurance but the net effect is both funny and useful.

[Chuckers]

I don't know about Artic Air, but I just re-specced OUT of World of Confusion. Thought it would be great.. I don't think I saw one mob get confused.

[EmperorSteele]

World of Confusion is TerriBad! I think maybe it has a misplaced decimal or something, because 1 damage every 6 seconds, as well as a low chance for a mag 2 confuse that lasts literally 1.5 seconds in that same time period, just makes it the worst power in the game, especially for the end cost (which TBF also seems pretty low). You can't perma confuse any foes, you can't do any damage... the only saving grace is that it can function as either a set mule or a proc-gun, but with the way procs work on HC (as compared to when the game was live), you're still lucky if you can take down any threats in a reasonable amount of time.

 

For the record, I went on Justin and proc'd it out, and wandered around Crey's Folly messing with foes that were -10 or so to me. I managed to kill minions okay, but even with the contagious Confusion proc, I still rarely saw foes get confused too often, and I feel like if I were trying this against even-conning foes (or higher), I'd get killed pretty quickly.

[Clave Dark 5]

Also for anyone with a confuse power. Don't overlook the Coercive Persuasion purple set and the contagious confusion IO. On the Illusion Controller the single target confuse recharges fast and if you slot contagious confusion on it that will hit about 33% of the time.

Waaait a second... how does that work exactly?  Am I understanding this right, it spreasds confusion from the original target to other foes?  It spreads from the original target to foes close to them?  Do we know the range of spreading, the number of affected targets possible, etc?

[Coyote]

World of Confusion is TerriBad! I think maybe it has a misplaced decimal or something, because 1 damage every 6 seconds, as well as a low chance for a mag 2 confuse that lasts literally 1.5 seconds in that same time period, just makes it the worst power in the game, especially for the end cost (which TBF also seems pretty low). You can't perma confuse any foes, you can't do any damage...

 

Why would you expect it to perma-confuse foes and do noticeable damage also?

1) A Tanker's Lightning Field does about 20 damage every 2 seconds, so 10 DPS or so fully slotted. This does about 5 DPS in a smaller radius, so it's clearly not as strong as a true damage aura. But it's a mez aura that does damage, not a damage aura, so this seems reasonable to me. Mud Pots does ab bit more than 2x the damage, for about 4x the End cost.

2) Slotted, it's duration is about 2.6 seconds on a 4 second tic (guaranteed Mag 2 Mez with small chance for Mag 3). That's about 50% damage mitigation from minions, and a bit from Lts. Not that terrible for a single control power, and stacked with Arctic Air it will Confuse a Boss about 25% of the time.

 

Statistically, the power seems quite fine. The problems are twofold:

1) small radius. Increase it to 10 or 12 like Oppressive Gloom, and it's fine

2) player perception that a Confuse power should shut down spawns like Seeds of Confusion. I think that the other Confuse powers in the game are overpowered, based on an old duration vs recharge formula that was more applicable when Confused foes took a higher share of the Experience from a defeated foe. But compared to other mezzing powers, it's not bad... half as strong in damage mitigation as Oppressive Gloom, but does damage also... it's easier to stack Stuns, which is why OG is considered a good power, but you're still getting a good amount of melee-range mitigation from a single toggle power.

 

Expand its radius by 50%, increase the End cost by 50%, and the power looks fine compared to other mez toggles. Consider the End cost of Arctic Air and Choking Cloud, for example... sure, they have a stronger effect, but they also cost 4x as much, or more, Endurance to run.

[EmperorSteele]

Why would I want a power to have a noticeable effect and do good damage? Because that's what dang near everything ELSE in the game does! And if it doesn't do one, then it does the other REALLY well!

 

As-is, it's completely useless. The problem is how enemy AI responds to changing threats. You go into a group of foes with this, and they'll all attack you. One or two might get confused for a moment, look at another enemy, but before they can decide to fire, the confuse wears off, they turn back around and shoot you anyway. Congratulations, you avoided getting shot by one dude for one second while his friends were beating on you.

 

Here's how it should work, in my opinion: Any foes in range are hit with a Mag 1 Confuse that lasts as long as the bubble stays up. That takes care of most minions. Every 6 seconds, 20% chance for +1 mag confuse which lasts for 3 seconds (so Overpower, basically). Lets you stack other confuse effects reliably. Also deals psionic DoT. No chance, just does it (assuming it succeeds on a ToHit check, of course!). Make it equivalent to 10 damage every "tic" (which is like 6 seconds iirc) at level 50, so it can be enhanced to about 20 damage. And yeah, increase the endurance use a little to compensate.

 

I know that sounds like a lot, but bear with me a second here. Do you know where you're posting right now? The CONTROLLER boards. Do you know where we get WoC from? Our EPIC pool.

 

EPIC!

 

There is not a single thing about this power, as is, that comes anywhere close to that definition. Even if we toss that aside with the fact that our "Ancillary" powers are simply supposed to give us tools that we don't otherwise have access to (Like survival tools and direct/AoE damage), it STILL doesn't fit because it doesn't do a dang thing we can't already do (and much better)! It doesn't do noticeable damage, it doesn't protect us, it's the weakest and shortest confuse effect in the game, and I can't think of a good reason to take this over Psi-Nado or any other power in the pool. And it's the FIFTH choice, it's supposed to be the BEST power! But it's literally the worst! It should be BETTER than similar powers that already exist in a Controller's repertoire in SOME way.