Remove Containment from Controllers

[Blackfeather]

...and increase the Controller's damage scales to compensate.

 

For people unfamiliar with the term, Containment is one of two inherent powers that Controllers have at their disposal, which lets them double the damage of some of their abilities against enemies that are Held, Immobilized, Slept, or Disoriented (the other gives them a chance to increase the magnitude of some of their status effect abilities by 1).

 

This, however, leads to a couple of issues:

• Containment benefits some Control powersets more than others. Immobilises are generally the best way to capitalise on the double damage that Containment provides, and not all powersets have these (i.e. Mind and Illusion Control).
• Containment does nothing for enemies that are protected against status effects. To my knowledge, this is even tacitly acknowledged in-game - Controllers have this power automatically trigger against some incarnate AVs due to this protection (otherwise it'd never really go off).
• Containment doesn't double the damage of every power. Patch/pseudopet effects (e.g. Ice Slick and Enflame) are unaffected by Containment.

 

As such, this is where my proposal comes in - removing Containment from Controllers should allow for an improvement in damage across the board, rather than boosting up some power sets more than others. As a bonus, it'd also mean not needing to pick any specific power just to trigger Containment, allowing for additional build flexibility.

 

Thank you all for giving this a read! Hope it provides good food for thought.

 

EDIT: Per my second post, I saw a lot of interesting comments in the new Issue 27, Page 7 Arsenal Control powerset feedback thread. A lot of them were talking about a lack of consistently setting up Containment for Controllers due to lacking an AoE Immobilize - I think that's another good point towards considering getting rid of the mechanic in the first place; it constrains the development team's design of Control powersets.

Edited January 20 by Blackfeather

[Rudra]

You do realize your suggestion will still deal with Mind Control and Illusion Control the same way Containment does except without the chance for increased magnitude of effect?

[Saiyajinzoningen]

8 hours ago, Rudra said:

You do realize your suggestion will still deal with Mind Control and Illusion Control the same way Containment does except without the chance for increased magnitude of effect?

hello, me has the stoopidz

can you explain please?

sorry

[UltraAlt]

9 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

Hope it provides good food for thought.

 

No food for thought at all.

I am against this big time.

 

From what I can see, you are coming at this from an end-game gamer's only point-of-view .... and probably from a solo player's point-of-view.

You can easily clear that up if I'm wrong.

 

Regardless, I'm against your suggestion.

 

[Rudra]

3 hours ago, Saiyajinzoningen said:

12 hours ago, Rudra said:

You do realize your suggestion will still deal with Mind Control and Illusion Control the same way Containment does except without the chance for increased magnitude of effect?

hello, me has the stoopidz

can you explain please?

sorry

The OP wants Containment removed and Controller damage buffed because it does not affect the damage output of several Mind Control and Illusion Control powers. Those powers are intended to not do damage, so increasing the damage of Controller powers for the sake of removing Containment means those powers will still see no increase in damage because they are not supposed to do damage. However, since Containment would have been removed, they would also no longer have the chance to trigger at the increased magnitude of effect either.

[Saiyajinzoningen]

58 minutes ago, Rudra said:

The OP wants Containment removed and Controller damage buffed because it does not affect the damage output of several Mind Control and Illusion Control powers. Those powers are intended to not do damage, so increasing the damage of Controller powers for the sake of removing Containment means those powers will still see no increase in damage because they are not supposed to do damage. However, since Containment would have been removed, they would also no longer have the chance to trigger at the increased magnitude of effect either.

o i c

thank you for clarifying.

 

@Blackfeather how about as an alternative something like defenders get:

a 10% passive buff to damage when not on a team?

 

way too much of a powercreep to just buff their damage outright

considering the bag of tricks they come with

 

tbh I'd much rather see controllers get some more mez resistance than dmg

[Luminara]

15 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

...and increase the Controller's damage scales to compensate.

 

For reference, blaster Ranged_Damage is 1.125.  They're not going to buff controllers to 1.1 Ranged_Damage (0.55 currently), and anything less would be a nerf.  If you want blaster damage, play a blaster.

[biostem]

15 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

Containment benefits some Control powersets more than others. Immobilises are generally the best way to capitalise on the double damage that Containment provides, and not all powersets have these (i.e. Mind and Illusion Control).

That's kind of the point, though - some powers deal more direct damage, (so therefore don't need the setup required to trigger containment in the first place).

 

15 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

Containment does nothing for enemies that are protected against status effects. To my knowledge, this is even tacitly acknowledged in-game - Controllers have this power automatically trigger against some incarnate AVs due to this protection (otherwise it'd never really go off).

Even AVs, IIRC, have a hole to immobilizes.  Yes, a few sets lack an immob, but that is also generally compensated for via some other aspect of said power set.

 

15 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

Containment doesn't double the damage of every power. Patch/pseudopet effects (e.g. Ice Slick and Enflame) are unaffected by Containment.

This is a sort of "meta-issue", in that some powers deal damage via a "pseudo-pet", so there really wouldn't be a way to have them trigger containment.  I suppose they could try to give said pseudo-pet its own form of containment, but that may cause more problems than it solves...

 

TBH, what I'd like to see is to have containment provide some bonus if an enemy is simply impacted by the debuffing effects of the controller's primary powers, instead of only when they are fully under the effects of a controlling power...

[kelika2]

Do it too much and why even dominator AT

Leave it as it is and your only option is a Fire/Trick troller for damage

 

Few complained about tanker damage since their buff, and they are just supposta tank according to old MMO/RPG mentalities

[PeregrineFalcon]

Your suggestion will result in Controllers being less able to control, but being more like Blaster or Dominators. You clearly don't like Controllers, go play a Blaster or Dominator.

 

Don't make a Controller and then complain "I don't do enough damage." If you want to do damage play a Scrapper or Blaster. If you want to Control stuff then play a Controller.

[Blackfeather]

Thanks for all the comments! It might take a little bit of work to go through each one of them, but it's great to see so many responses, it's much appreciated. Before I properly respond to them, I'll add another thing that I did find pretty interesting just recently, namely the comments found in the new Arsenal Control powerset feedback thread:

 

 

A lot of the comments here were talking about a lack of consistently setting up Containment for Controllers due to lacking an AoE Immobilize - I think that's another good point towards considering getting rid of the mechanic in the first place; it constrains the development team's design of Control powersets. I'll add it in the top comment so that isn't missed!

[Cheli]

Whooole lot of people being honestly kind of rude and combative to a simple suggestion in here.

 

Controllers don't need blaster-level damage scalars to compensate for the loss, they could just have slightly-more-consistent damage overall. Control sets being weaker, stronger, or design being hamstrung by the presence/absence or magnitude of the set's immo powers, since immo is one of the only consistent ways to set up containment damage, is definitely a design problem that could use addressing. Every other AT has an inherent that enhances core functionality regardless of powerset choice. Having some powersets that flat-out can't set up containment is like a scrapper having a powerset that can't crit.

 

I don't necessarily agree that changing it is a burning concern or that the AT is underpowered for it, but "that's not the way the GAME IS, go play a blaster grr rahh" is a pretty immature way to respond.

[PeregrineFalcon]

16 minutes ago, Cheli said:

Whooole lot of people being honestly kind of rude and combative to a simple suggestion in here.

Welcome to the suggestions forum, where your idea will be subject to a trial by fire. I can get you a tissue if you need one.

 

 A post by a moderator in this forum specifically says that we are allowed to disagree with suggestions.

 

Feel free to report my post if you disagree.

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Cheli said:

Whooole lot of people being honestly kind of rude and combative to a simple suggestion in here.

 

It's surprising, isn't it, that people respond poorly when someone suggests taking things away from other players because they don't fit that player's expectations or preferences.  It's as if we have some irrational aversion to the removal of a signature element of play from an established archetype.  Or worse, that we're simply being belligerent over the idea of archetypes being homogenized by excising what differentiates them from one another.

 

Shocking.  Simply shocking.

[Cheli]

3 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Welcome to the suggestions forum, where your idea will be subject to a trial by fire. I can get you a tissue if you need one.

 

 A post by a moderator in this forum specifically says that we are allowed to disagree with suggestions.

 

Feel free to report my post if you disagree.

Disagreeing in a constructive manner, with an argument other than "that's not how it is right now, grrrr how could you even" is probably what they were aiming for. 

 

Like I said, I don't necessarily agree with the solution proposed, I think it could be something more interesting and in-line with an AT focused on CC, but an AT where powersets cannot consistently take advantage of an inherent *is* a potential design issue that creates degenerative play/power design. And there's nothing wrong with mentioning that or proposing a change. Again, there's no scrapper primary that can't crit, or crits for less than other sets. There's no corruptor primary with a lower scourge curve. 

[Rudra]

23 minutes ago, Cheli said:

Disagreeing in a constructive manner, with an argument other than "that's not how it is right now, grrrr how could you even" is probably what they were aiming for. 

 

Like I said, I don't necessarily agree with the solution proposed, I think it could be something more interesting and in-line with an AT focused on CC, but an AT where powersets cannot consistently take advantage of an inherent *is* a potential design issue that creates degenerative play/power design. And there's nothing wrong with mentioning that or proposing a change. Again, there's no scrapper primary that can't crit, or crits for less than other sets. There's no corruptor primary with a lower scourge curve. 

Have you seen the Cosmic Balance inherent for Peacebringers? It does nothing with any of the Peacebringer's powers. Use any primary power you want. It will not trigger it. Use any secondary, same deal. (It works with teams only.) So yes, there are inherents players may not be able to consistently take advantage of. Depends on how you play.

[PeregrineFalcon]

29 minutes ago, Cheli said:

Disagreeing in a constructive manner, with an argument other than "that's not how it is right now, grrrr how could you even" is probably what they were aiming for.

You clearly didn't read a lot of the posts in this thread. A lot of people, including myself, made posts that very constructively and specifically outlined why the OP was a bad idea.

 

Getting offended on behalf of the OP, and telling people what they are and aren't allowed to post, isn't going to help you get a Junior Forum Moderator badge. Like I said earlier, feel free to report my post if you disagree.

[Cheli]

17 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

You clearly didn't read a lot of the posts in this thread. A lot of people, including myself, made posts that very constructively and specifically outlined why the OP was a bad idea.

 

Getting offended on behalf of the OP, and telling people what they are and aren't allowed to post, isn't going to help you get a Junior Forum Moderator badge. Like I said earlier, feel free to report my post if you disagree.

 

Quote

Your suggestion will result in Controllers being less able to control, but being more like Blaster or Dominators. You clearly don't like Controllers, go play a Blaster or Dominator.

 

Don't make a Controller and then complain "I don't do enough damage." If you want to do damage play a Scrapper or Blaster. If you want to Control stuff then play a Controller.

 

This was the extent of your "constructive" criticism. It does nothing to actually address anything OP suggested about the specific mechanical weakness and inconsistency of the inherent, his specific idea, or offer any alternative idea other than the "go play another AT" thought-terminating cliche. The point you offer doesn't even make sense; if the AT was only about "control" the inherent wouldn't have the containment x2 damage bonus anyway, and there wouldn't be some sets that can do nearly as much damage as a "damage-focused" AT by taking advantage of it. Nothing about altering the damage scalars takes away that many powers are mezzes, or that the inherent also provides a bonus to mez magnitude. The suggestion seems motivated not by "play a blaster NNNRRGGG" but by a desire to bridge the gap between powersets created by the inherent and alleviate some of the problems developers might face in implementing new powersets because of the inconsistency immo powers introduce to how useful or useless containment is.

 

More than anything I'm floored by the tone of this forum, and the constant barrage of fairly weakly-argued posts and very, very combative attitudse evinced by the same handful of people everytime anyone makes a suggestion the game is not mechanically perfect the way it is right now. It makes me curious if this forum actually exists for suggestions, or for the toxic, visceral satisfaction a few people get out of very loudly shouting down other peoples' ideas. 

 

If feeling uncomfortable about that cycle makes me a "junior forum moderator", I'm not really feeling too guilty about it.

 

Quote

Have you seen the Cosmic Balance inherent for Peacebringers? It does nothing with any of the Peacebringer's powers. Use any primary power you want. It will not trigger it. Use any secondary, same deal. (It works with teams only.) So yes, there are inherents players may not be able to consistently take advantage of. Depends on how you play.

Thank you for making an actual point. Tbh, I feel like the original devs had an idea for kheldians/VEATs about powersets and then when it came to an inherent that would provide a bonus to characters that could be played in as many different ways as the powersets they designed, just kinda blanked and threw in whatever they could come up with. I think the weakness of those inherents is also something that could be addressed (though VEATs at least do get something out of their inherent) for consistency reasons, but kheldians are such a mixed-bag of disaster design-wise that's a whole other bag of marbles. 

 

I don't think powersets should necessarily benefit across-the-board equally from their AT's inherent - but I think the inconsistency with which containment applies is a bit of an outlier. I also think the inherent could actually be focused more on enhancing "control" if the x2 containment thing was changed and another 'half' of the inherent was added, one that maybe synergized more with their support-focused secondary sets. (I don't have a ton of ideas; like I said, I think changing containment is low-priority, but this is the suggestions forum after all, so if people want to propose ideas it's way more interesting to discuss potential changes than to shriek like banshees about them.)

[UltraAlt]

On 1/19/2024 at 12:22 AM, Blackfeather said:

As such, this is where my proposal comes in - removing Containment from Controllers should allow for an improvement in damage across the board, rather than boosting up some power sets more than others. As a bonus, it'd also mean not needing to pick any specific power just to trigger Containment, allowing for additional build flexibility.

 

On 1/19/2024 at 9:45 AM, UltraAlt said:

From what I can see, you are coming at this from an end-game gamer's only point-of-view .... and probably from a solo player's point-of-view.

You can easily clear that up if I'm wrong.

 

Apparently, I'm not wrong.

 

The DEVs, hopefully, look at the game from a leveling perspective and don't focus on how sets work on endgame-play alone or adversely changing the characteristics of an archetype simply to increase an aspect of archetype that is more to the benefit of solo-play.

 

Containment possibilities happen all the time when teaming. Other people set it up for you.

I really like the mechanic of Containment and find nothing wrong with how it behaves.

 

If you don't like Containment, you don't have to play a controller.

If you want more damage, go with a Dominator.

The different archetypes require different modes of game play for a reason.

Removing Containment and simply replacing with default extra damage takes away part of the archetype's flavor.

[EmperorSteele]

I mean, doing more damage in situations where I wouldn't be getting Containment sounds nice... but then again, seeing TWO orange numbers pop up over a baddie's head makes my brain make the happy juice. So, I'm torn.

[GuyFawkesMaskGuy]

Alright, I'll ask the the what, to me, is the much more obvious solution to round this out (having just been browsing the Controller sets and considering my options regarding containment).

Isn't the more optimal choice here simply to include slows and/or some other hinders in the effects Containment applies against?

To my mind, it still checks all the boxes?

1. It is still conditional, and meaningfully different from Dominators capabilities.
2. It either allows it to be conditionally effective at top tiers as well as through levelling or the existing compensations would still apply for Incarnate AVs
3. It properly balances out the value of the inherent across Controller powersets that more crowd control options beyond the specifics currently listed (i.e. Holds, Sleeps, Disorients and Immobilizes specifically; Stuns and Slows I always thought were curiously absent in the description)
4. It's readily understandable and supports multiple playstyles with that understanding without it automatically invalidating the 'Control' motif and, being conditional, doesn't just make Controllers "Blaster Plus!"

More than willing to accept I'm missing something here as I get re-acclimated into CoH.  It does seem to me that control powers do not draw on this inherent consistently enough (the disparities seem pretty significant in a quick review) but I'd not want to lose either the flavour or opportunity for team based capitalizations on how it works now.  I'd rather just expand the list of control-based qualifiers.

This is assuming it _is_ an item that would benefit from an improvement, of course.  I think a bit more range would be appealing, but I'm not going to claim to be the expert on the implications there.

 

[Luminara]

8 hours ago, GuyFawkesMaskGuy said:

Isn't the more optimal choice here simply to include slows and/or some other hinders in the effects Containment applies against?

 

It's not that simple.  Containment isn't just bonus damage, it's a roadmap to the archetype as it was intended to be played.  The inherent rewards players for being controllers by incentivizing use of their primary powers.  Mez : reward.  As appealing as the idea of setting up Containment with Glue Arrow or Gale may be, it wouldn't be guiding the player into the archetype's designed play style, it would be teaching them to be, or rewarding them for being, less efficient defenders.  It would also skew the archetype's overall balance by increasing their progression speed.

 

Furthermore, the suggestion that some sets were unfairly overlooked or disregarded when Containment was created, specifically Illusion Control and Mind Control, is erroneous.  In point of fact, when Cryptic created Containment, fully half of the notion behind it was to smooth out the play experience between sets.  Illusion Control and Mind Control were well ahead of the others at that time.  Phantom Army permitted Ill/* players to essentially ignore their status effects and focus entirely on damage.  Confuse and Mass Confusion gave Mind/* players significantly faster kill speed and XP over time.  Only Fire/* came close, and that was only due to their ability to summon up to a dozen Fire Imps.  Every other primary was lagging sorely behind.  By adding a damage bonus to Containment, Cryptic brought the underperforming sets up to par without overpowering the sets which were already on solid footing (and compensated for the nerf to pet summoning which limited Fire/* to 3 Imps).

 

That said, Fear should enable Containment.  I suspect that the only reason it doesn't is because Fear worked differently back then, forcing enemies to run away (thus, not be "contained").  When Fear was changed to make enemies cower in place and attack if attacked, it became functionally comparable to Immobilize.  As it currently works, its effectiveness is somewhere between Immobilize and Hold, which does qualify it for Containment.

 

But that wouldn't actually do much for Illusion Control or Mind Control, nor would removing Containment and replacing it with a straight damage buff because both of those sets lean heavily into mechanics which don't interact with Containment or require the player to leverage it.  PA doesn't deal 2x damage to Contained foes.  Neither do Confused critters.  And those powers shouldn't be buffed because they're already strong sources of both damage mitigation and damage output.  So whatever problem there is to be resolved, it has to be addressed more granularly than archetype-wide changes.

[GuyFawkesMaskGuy]

 

3 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

It's not that simple. 
(Followed by some excellent context on the system's historical intent and imperatives.)

Actually, I was an Illusion controller main way back when so I'm familiar with the era you're referring too.

I'd still argue that Slow (and as you say, Fear) would make sense in the same vein as Slows are also, as you outline, controlling the fight (if with less exacting precision as fully disabling movement/attacks).   Fear, for the reasons you suggest, also seems like it should apply and I would also agree that Confuse is plenty powerful as it is.

In current form I'd actually think Illusion Control is even _better_ at damage than it used to be given how depending it is on Blind as a staple tool, and has several Sleeps and Holds accordingly. 

I think I'd still be comfortable with Slows and Fears in the mix, but I think the added context you've offered here does give the right counter case to consider.  I'm not sure I agree with that treading on Defender turf but I do see the concern you're calling out, in all fairness.