Controllers Need Not Apply?

[Timeshadow]

Hey gang, 

 

So, I was leveling the other day when a message came across LFG. Someone was recruiting for an ITF and said they didn't want any Doms or Trollers because those ATs "mess up massive pulls."

 

In all my years playing CoH, I've never heard of someone not wanting CC on a team. IMO, it makes dealing with big pulls easier, not harder. But I wanted to get y'all's opinion. Do you think CC toons are an issue when going for big pulls? Do they make any significant difference either way? 

[MoonSheep]

many people who play controllers and doms think it’s mandatory to spam their AoE immob everytime its recharged rather than thinking about whether an immob would actually improve things, so i can see why some would be hesitant

[PeregrineFalcon]

My main is a Tank and I used to lead a lot of PuGs. I developed a rule, many years ago, that I never invite a Controller or Dominator to a team unless I know the player personally.

 

Specifically because they will often lock down the enemies with their AoE Immob before I can get control of the group. Then the enemies will shoot at the Controller because I don't have all the aggro yet, and the Controller dies. Said Controller will start spamming the chat window with all kinds of unhelpful statements about how it's my fault that they died. And it's usually while I'm typing my response to explain to them why they should let me get aggro before they use their AoE Immob that they quit the team, never even having seen my response in chat.

 

So yeah. I don't invite Controllers or Dominators that I don't personally know to my team anymore.

[Ghost]

Person forming the team gets to decide the team makeup.

 

Yes it can suck, but it’s understandable.

I rarely ever play my troller, but when I do, I try my damndest to wait until the tank/brute has pulled everything into a nice little cluster before holding them in place.

It can be annoying on a melee toon to have to run around a room killing groups of one that have been held.

[DoctorDitko]

There are perfectly cromulent controllers with no AOE immobilize.

There are many who have it and use it judicially.

 

Then, there are those who give the rest of us a bad name.

But the human brain loves shortcuts, so...

 

I suggest you start your own ITF, and declare "No asshats."

[Doomguide2005]

Heh,  it's called Shout of Command and this means a great deal of the time an AoE mez does just about  nothing mez wise to the majority of Cimerorans.  Not sure if they can use it,  like several player powers (such as Practiced Brawler now work) and can be used while mezzed or not?  Regardless the same basic issue is patience, let them clump up first!  Then let loose with the AoEs.  Or go look for trouble elsewhere, it's a big big map.

[Doc Spectre]

To be fair some tanks don’t seem to know that there is an aggro cap either.

[brass_eagle]

I will endorse the AoE immob theory here.

 

However, I will also put forth, that they will draw a lot of aggro without adding much on an ITF. 

 

The ITF was designed to be specifically punishing to control types.... for whatever reason. Just  a blanket protection. See the Centurion "Break Free" roar that indiscriminately neutralizes control of any kind.

[WumpusRat]

Forming ITF, no tankers, no brutes, no scrappers, no stalkers, no dominators, no controllers, no defenders, no corruptors, no blasters, no masterminds, no sentinels.

Good players only.

[mechahamham]

4 hours ago, Timeshadow said:

So, I was leveling the other day when a message came across LFG. Someone was recruiting for an ITF and said they didn't want any Doms or Trollers because those ATs "mess up massive pulls."

 

I've heard this same person recruiting and got pretty much the same response when I asked them about this seemingly bizarre requirement. They were also excluding masterminds when I saw them.

 

First and foremost, the person who builds the team calls the shots. You can't get around that. However, the behavior they show is pretty awful.

 

They 're:

• assuming that everyone who plays the 'prohibited' ATs is a bad player
• assuming that everyone who plays 'acceptable' ATs is a good player
• recruiting in a public space, yet discriminating against a good number of those in that space. I assume they're doing this when they can't get enough people in their private channel to join.
• doing the recruiting in a way that seemingly purposefully goes out of its way to make people feel excluded

 

Unless you're 4 for 4 in agreement with that, you DON'T want to be on that team, even if you're one of the 'acceptable' ATs. If they discriminate against people like that in a public space, they're probably going to blame the public invitees for problems before taking the blame themselves. (And if you are in agreement... *Yikes*.)

 

It would be so easy to say something like, 'Hey, we're doing challenge runs. Melee only ITFs. If you're a melee and would like to do this challenge run with us, send us a tell.' (In fact, I know of a group that does just that on Excel, often with far more challenging restrictions.) But they're not. They're not wanting challenge and they're being discriminatory on purpose.

 

My advice is to /ignore this brand of person when you see them. You *don't* want to be on their leagues or teams, even if it seems like they want you to join. Happily, they're in the vanishing minority. Everyone else who does 'Challenge' TF runs makes the point of saying if they're going to have a closed run, limited to their private channel, or if they're going to accept new folks and teach them the ropes. The aforementioned group I know of does just that.

Edited November 4 by mechahamham

[Ukase]

33 minutes ago, WumpusRat said:

Forming ITF, no tankers, no brutes, no scrappers, no stalkers, no dominators, no controllers, no defenders, no corruptors, no blasters, no masterminds, no sentinels.

Good players only.

I'll bring my new warshade! 

[DoctorDitko]

35 minutes ago, WumpusRat said:

Forming ITF, no tankers, no brutes, no scrappers, no stalkers, no dominators, no controllers, no defenders, no corruptors, no blasters, no masterminds, no sentinels.

Good players only.

So, only really good Kheldians?

Good luck!

 

[Lunar Ronin]

11 minutes ago, DoctorDitko said:

So, only really good Kheldians?

Good luck!

 

 

Don't forget VEATs!

[srmalloy]

4 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

many people who play controllers and doms think it’s mandatory to spam their AoE immob everytime its recharged rather than thinking about whether an immob would actually improve things...

Exactly this. It was something that seemed obvious to me way back in the early months on Live, way back before Controllers got Containment, and would choke off pretty hard solo around level 12 up until they got their pets at 32 -- you let the tank herd up the mobs so you get a nice, tight cluster of targets, and only then slap down the immobilize to keep them from running around and making it hard for the tank and DPS teammates to AoE them down. Immobilizing an entire spawn while it's spread out across an area twice the diameter of your blasters' AoEs doesn't help the group.

[srmalloy]

36 minutes ago, mechahamham said:

recruiting in a public space, yet discriminating against a good number of those in that space.

One place I see this regularly -- and accepted -- is in the "there is a known way to beat this content, so this is the One True Way™ way to beat this content, and there is no other way" solicitations. A prime example is the "Critical: Must have Tier 4 Barrier" in solicitations for increased-difficulty Aeon TFs; I'm reminded of the joke about the mathematician, engineer, and physicist each putting out a fire -- everyone seems to fall into the mathematician role. Breaking out of the mold is how we got the two different styles of Hami raid -- the one in the Hive, where you clear one or more waves of mitos before finishing Hamidon, and the Hamikaze style in the Abyss, where you go directly in and spank Hamidon hard and fast. A bunch of people had to be willing to fail to find out if the other method would work, and they did.

[Techwright]

I play a lot of doms and controllers.  I play a few tanks and brutes, too.  I love them all.  It all boils down to communication, something PUGs just don't do much of anymore, besides greetings and team transport notifications and thank yous.

 

Team dynamics have changed, too.  Originally, it was understood tanks would herd, so I observed controllers holding off until the tank had either run around a corner to a point where the controller was waiting to lock it down, or the tank just hoovered them all to it and it was clear from the crowd that this was the moment to lock it down.  But that was folks coming into the game from the old tank-heal-dps trinity concept elsewhere.  Now everyone and everything feels run-and-gun.   Again, communication is the answer.  If the tank has a plan beyond run-and-gun, tell the controller/dominator, don't isolate them.  Frankly, I'd LOVE for the tank to tell me the gameplan when I'm playing a controller.  It would mean my holds and immobilizations will have more bite due to the target density the tank creates.  Teamwork is a beautiful thing.  

[vibal]

Players like that debuff fun around them aggressively anyhow. Being stuck in an I3 mindset 20 years later. Better that they put themselves out there and make themselves easy to avoid.

[Kaika]

Not at all defending someone for doing this, but there is SOME validity to the exclusion

 

• Controls in general tend to be very weak in high end 50/incarnate play, it very common for enemies to pose no threat to teams so stopping them from attacking doesn't really accomplish much
• A very bad controller/Dom can make things take longer then a empty slot of the team just due to keeping things apart, even when using hard controls like holds or stuns.
• Most sets come with uncontrollable pets which can cause further chaos
• Controllers tend to be very low damage, and Doms just get outclasses by other DPS.

HOWEVER this practice is still.... REALLY stupid because

 

• Player >>>>>> AT ALWAYS even if they aren't meta a good controller/Dom is an absolute force to be reckoned with
• Support is the strongest thing in this game, even if the control effect is useless, Controllers are still a fully fledged support with access to stuff like Cold and Kinetics, which just amplify group effectiveness to the god damn moon
• This is more of a observation but, Dominator players, particularly at 50, tend to be absolutely crazy at the game, Dom is not a easy AT and almost requires a high end IO build to feel complete, less experienced players tend to bounce off doms due to how hard they can be early on.
• While Controllers/Doms generally are lower damage that isn't ALWAYS the case at all. Doms in particular can get some pretty crazy damage output with some builds. A good dom will wipe the floor with a mediocre scrapper or blaster damage wise.
• While a bad controller or dom is very noticeable ANY bad player can slow things down significantly. Many sets have KB, tanks/brute/scraps can spread out groups by taunting things away, support in general can also spread things out. This isn't something exclusive to control sets, ANYONE can make things take longer if they play poorly.
• You could always just.... ask them to not immob until enemies are gathered, you know.... use your words

I think the worst part of all of this is that

• None of this really matters since the enemies in ITF are very resistant to control

What we have here is a wonderful example of the Dunning Kruger effect. Where people with a bit of knowledge about a subject overestimates their competency and knowledge. This person knows that "control is bad" because it isn't meta, so they think they are being smart by not bringing any. Since they think that they likely extend that to the idea that "Control players are bad because they choose a bad AT" and hence feel justified in not including them. While the reality is that they are probably shooting their team in the foot by not allowing them. At least that's my read

 

There are definitely valid reasons to go for specific team comps, or not want to bring a specific AT but IMO thats only in REALLY extreme cases like 4* Speed runs or specific challenge set ups, and even then in those situations you're probably only bringing very specific set ups anyways

Edited November 4 by Kaika

[arcane]

Sometimes I discriminate against Masterminds it’s not a big deal..

[Tacheyon]

7 minutes ago, arcane said:

Sometimes I discriminate against Masterminds it’s not a big deal..

 

Sometimes I discriminate against everyone BUT Masterminds.  It's not a big deal.

 

Well maybe to my GFX card.  

[Riverdusk]

8 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

many people who play controllers and doms think it’s mandatory to spam their AoE immob everytime its recharged rather than thinking about whether an immob would actually improve things, so i can see why some would be hesitant

 

Honestly I usually only see that on low level controllers.  Probably at least part of it being that at low levels they don't have many powers, especially aoe powers, so they just want to push one of the few buttons they have.  They also of course might be less experienced at the AT at that point.

 

See it a lot less once higher levels are reached. 

 

Typically on my doms I don't even take the aoe immobilize.  Except for maybe plant it is terrible damage, doms don't need it for containment, and they also have better aoe power choices.  I take the single target immobilize maybe just to stop AV's from running around.

 

As to the original broadcaster, I usually 1 star the person when I hear broadcasts like that (unless there is a good reason like for the AT specific badge or starred content or similar).  If they are that picky and obviously unwilling to take a few seconds to communicate playstyle to their team, especially on something run of the mill like an ITF, I'd rather avoid them anyway, no matter what AT I'm playing.   The most laughable is when I hear people get picky about what they want on their radio mission teams (rare but have heard it).

 

A good part of the time when I saw a picky leader and I use to join anyway, they'd end up being some of the worst and most disorganized teams.   Learned it usually wasn't worth it anyway.

 

Edit: Oh, and one of my favorite controllers and doms is illusion anyway.  Not exactly known for their aoe immobilizes 🙃  But that's what happens when you make blanket assumptions about an entire AT and how they work and how they are played.

Edited November 4 by Riverdusk

[Lunar Ronin]

Someone saying "No Controllers, Dominators, nor Masterminds" for a regular Imperious TF is free to do so of course, but all it really does is display to the shard at large his or her ignorance of how the game actually works to the point that he or she thinks that non-advanced mode speed run content is so difficult that it requires a meta.  That person is to be pitied, and then one starred.

 

In other words, Controller, Dominator, and Mastermind players dodged a bullet by being excluded in not having to play with the person.

[BlackSpectre]

I don't discriminate against any AT. I learned long ago that a team of all defenders can absolutely decimate enemies. Same for controllers. Same for any AT. So all are welcome. Sometimes on rare occasions when I'm doing a trial or TF on the highest difficulty settings I will ask for a specific power set.... that's about it.

 

PUGs are PUGs. Random. Player quality is variable, and that's the most important thing. And to be honest, a few good players can carry the rest of the team.

Edited November 4 by BlackSpectre
typo

[kelika2]

23 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

Someone saying "No Controllers, Dominators, nor Masterminds" for a regular Imperious TF is free to do so of course, but all it really does is display to the shard at large his or her ignorance of how the game actually works to the point that he or she thinks that non-advanced mode speed run content is so difficult that it requires a meta.  That person is to be pitied, and then one starred.

 

In other words, Controller, Dominator, and Mastermind players dodged a bullet by being excluded in not having to play with the person.

you now remember commanding shout that pretty much eliminates most cc

[ZacKing]

Given the latest meta of Fold Space overuse, I can totally see people not wanting CC on a team.