What would be the ideal recharge time for AoE Hold powers?

[oedipus_tex]

In the wake of Blast set nukes being set to a base recharge time of 145 seconds, I think it's time to review whether the current recharge time of Controller and Dominator AoE holds could use some review. As it stands, several of the nukes on Blasters seem to duplicate Controller holds, with the bonus of doing huge damage, and being extra accurate:

  - Atomic Blast: mag 3 AoE Hold (12 seconds), base accuracy 105%, 145 second recharge, 250 damage

  - Psychic Wail: mag 3 AoE Stun (12 seconds), base accuracy 115%, 145 second recharge, 250 damage

  - Dreadful Wail: mag 3 AoE Stun (12 seconds), base accuracy 105%,145 second recharge, 250 damage

 

 

Compare this to some of the Controller PBAoEs:

  - Glacier, Cinders: mag 3 hold (15 seconds), 240 second recharge, base accuracy 60%, ZERO damage

 

The only extra thing Controllers get is a 20% chance for an extra Mag 1 on the Hold.

 

Now, I don't begrudge Blasters. It's only 3 sets that have these extreme control capabilities (altho I confess it was enough to cause me to reroll some Controller characters as Blasters/Defenders in light of this).

 

The question is, what is an appropriate Recharge value for Controller and Dominator holds with these factors in mind?

 

I'm tempted to say 145 seconds is a baseline. However, if the powers retain their terrible accuracy, should it be even shorter than that?

 

 

I'll confess I'm far more concerned for Controllers than Dominators. Dominators are a damage AT that can double the magnitude of Hold powers, which significantly increases their value. I'm having trouble seeing the value add for Controllers though. It really feels like a change of some kind would be welcome. After all, Holds don't actually kill enemies.

 

 

 

[Maxzero]

Its a fair question that should be looked at to make a Controller's AoE hold a more compelling choice.

 

To add to your numbers in a hypothetical:

 

With three recharge IOs the availability becomes ~73 secs. Extreme case recharge 145/4 will give you ~36 sec availability. Three hold IOs will approximately double duration to ~30 secs.

 

If we keep in mind some of the old design philosophy, the whole ED revamp (pre IO sets) wanted to move away from "City of Statues". The numbers above show you can almost permahold.

 

Not sure how this effects Doms. I'll provide additional comments in a follow up reply.

 

Doms can already perma CC now. Flashfire with CC/recharge slotting under perma Domination last well over 30 seconds with CD in the 20s. That's at mag 6 as well.

[Maxzero]

 

Well yes. Pretty much all endgame Doms are Perma Dom.

 

But since Doms don't need to worry about Containment (type of CC does not matter) Seeds of Confusion is also another easily perma CC power.

 

To me AoE Hold's statlines are basically relics of the past. Pretty much the only reason to take them is for a 4 slot mule for Gaze of the Basilisk.

 

[Coyote]

I would be totally down with lowering the Recharge of AoE Holds even if it shortens the duration to avoid perma-Holding... powers that shut a spawn down for 15 seconds but do it every spawn are more valuable that 30 seconds every other spawn.

 

120-150 seconds base would be fine, and if it lowers duration to 12 seconds base, I can live with that. We don't get the damage of Nukes, but it sets up Containment.

[subbacultchas]

Even without Domination, there's several controller powers that can perma-mez already: Elec's sleep, Plant's confuse, Earth's AOE hold, and some disorients and fears. So if they intended to move away from perma-mez, they shifted right back toward it with IO sets and Incarantes. What's the point of holds being the singular exception?

[Coyote]

Even without Domination, there's several controller powers that can perma-mez already: Elec's sleep, Plant's confuse, Earth's AOE hold, and some disorients and fears. So if they intended to move away from perma-mez, they shifted right back toward it with IO sets and Incarantes. What's the point of holds being the singular exception?

 

I would stay away from considering Fears and Sleeps as perma-mezzes, since the mobs get to act if attacked... and most Sleeps don't reapply once broken, also.

 

Stuns, especially in a set that can add Immobilizes, Holds, and Confuses, are the relevant "shut down the enemy spawn while killing it" powers.

 

Frankly, I consider Seeds of Confusion an outlier. A better example would be Mass Confusion, and improving AoE Holds to be half its duration and half its Recharge would be a nice improvement.

 

Unfortunately, Confuse powers were balanced back when Confused mobs didn't have their damage quartered with regards to taking XP, so they were considered to be great for mezzing, but balanced by lowering XP gain. Now that you have to do a lot less damage to match up to the Confused mobs, I'm surprised that they have Seeds of Confusion with its current Recharge/Duration ratio.

[nihilii]

Disorients tend to have a recharge of 90s for controllers, so to lump them in with holds on the basis there is one nuke (Atomic Blast) with hold as an effect makes for a shaky comparison.

 

But it's true in this day and age the 240s recharge on holds seems higher than warranted. It's hard to see any problem that would arise from putting them anywhere between 180s and 120s.

[Redlynne]

It's hard to see any problem that would arise from putting them anywhere between 180s and 120s.

 

So ... 150 seconds is our target endpoint ... which is 2m30s for base recharge.

[Maxzero]

It's hard to see any problem that would arise from putting them anywhere between 180s and 120s.

 

So ... 150 seconds is our target endpoint ... which is 2m30s for base recharge.

 

Honestly even 150s still seems kinda lame. That a 2 1/2 minute CD to CC 16x non Boss enemies. Sure with recharge you could get it sub 1 minute mark but eh. Doms get away with it because they can do it at Mag 6 and but rotating CCs can keep pack after pack CCed. Controllers really can't do that.

 

Maybe the Control power sets should have slightly different powers between Doms and Controllers because they utilize the same powers very differently.

[EmperorSteele]

Another thing to consider is that, if you're on a decent team, you'll never be using your AoE hold anyway. Half the group will be dead before your animation finishes. And if you're soloing +8 on a controller, you tend not to have enough AoE damage to take a large group out before the hold wears off. (In my experience, even-con LTs and sometimes a few minions still survive after a rousing round of Total Dom, Terrify, and PsiNado, and that's even with a significant damage boost from a fully-powered Fulcrum Shift)

 

So, yeah, a re-work would be nice. And not that it'd solve all the issues with these powers, but I'd like to see a damage component added to the AoE holds as well. Nothing major, maybe just half the damage of a single-target hold. But given that the best way to control foes is to make them dead, I feel like that'd be a good step in the right direction.

[Maxzero]

Another thing to consider is that, if you're on a decent team, you'll never be using your AoE hold anyway. Half the group will be dead before your animation finishes. And if you're soloing +8 on a controller, you tend not to have enough AoE damage to take a large group out before the hold wears off. (In my experience, even-con LTs and sometimes a few minions still survive after a rousing round of Total Dom, Terrify, and PsiNado, and that's even with a significant damage boost from a fully-powered Fulcrum Shift)

 

So, yeah, a re-work would be nice. And not that it'd solve all the issues with these powers, but I'd like to see a damage component added to the AoE holds as well. Nothing major, maybe just half the damage of a single-target hold. But given that the best way to control foes is to make them dead, I feel like that'd be a good step in the right direction.

 

I thought either some damage, debuff or just Mag 4.  I mean whats the point of AoE hold which almost always has no effect on the most dangerous targets?

[oedipus_tex]

Looking closer at Atomic Blast I did discover you cannot actually slot it for Hold duration (tho maybe you can use Damage/Mezz Hami-Os, Did they change that?)

 

Dreadful Wail and Psychic Wail can be directly slotted for Stun duration. Although Hold and Stun are somewhat different, the effect is strikingly similar given that nukes are likely to also flatten the spawn, where the Controller has to follow it up with attacks.

 

 

Three sets were hit extra hard by the ED change. Mind, Ice, and Gravity. None of these three has a strong, quickly recharging AoE hard mezz to fall back on (well, Gravity sort of does in Wormhole, but the radius is only 15ft). Mind has Mass Confusion which also has a 240 second recharge (why? this one seems to make sense as a 145 second power too, and this would make Mind Control far more attractive as a set.) Ice... haha, poor Ice. :(

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Sir Myshkin]

I'd be willing to bet that, if the live data could've been mined, the amount of players who actually took the AoE T8 holds would be a very low percentage of the overall Controllers created and having reached level 26.

 

They were useless back when we only had SO's, and they're an even more regrettable choice in an IO world where earlier controls like Stuns can be reduced into "perma" status. Heck, Dark Control is the newest of the batch and even that set has two crowd controls that can be brought down to sub-45/s times. Granted the Fear can be temporarily broken, but in the realm of stopping two 16-mob groups, that set kind of has a power-house thing going on. I've shut-down and whittled away a room full of 32+ Council with that set just by cycling between a PBAoE stun, and a Fear cone that I was able to tag nearly the entire space while Haunts, Umbra, an Energy Font, and a Turantula went to town.

 

There's not a counter-argument in the world that would convince me that having an AoE hold on a sub-45/s recharge, in that scenario, would've made me "too powerful." I had access to the T8 Hold, it's in my build because I literally had no other choice to pick, and I still didn't even consider dropping it even once, it's just that useless (to me).

 

[Riverdusk]

Good topic.  They definitely need something.  Even regardless of the nuke buffs, my favorite controller is illusion, which has probably the worst of the worst AoE hold powers in flash.  PBAoE and a horrible animation time on top of its already lackluster effect.  It is a definite skip.  Heck, you don't even need to look at nuke buffs, oftentimes controls/holds in secondary sets are better at controlling than the controller primary aoe hold.  EM Pulse, distortion field, and poison trap I'd throw out as examples.  I'd take any of those over flash, no question.  

[Maxzero]

4 hours ago, Riverdusk said:

Good topic.  They definitely need something.  Even regardless of the nuke buffs, my favorite controller is illusion, which has probably the worst of the worst AoE hold powers in flash.  PBAoE and a horrible animation time on top of its already lackluster effect.  It is a definite skip.  Heck, you don't even need to look at nuke buffs, oftentimes controls/holds in secondary sets are better at controlling than the controller primary aoe hold.  EM Pulse, distortion field, and poison trap I'd throw out as examples.  I'd take any of those over flash, no question.  

 

Literally the only reason to take Flash is as a set mule for 4 slot Gaze of the Basilisk. 1.25% range def and 7.5% recharge for 4 slots is damn good. You could argue almost all AoE Holds fall into this catagory with the only exception being probably Volcanic gasses (seriously good CC power).

Edited July 24, 2019 by Maxzero
Do I need a reason?

[Coyote]

Shadow Field for Dark Control is also good, and it's for the same reason: It's a drop power that Holds, but also puts out a good secondary effect for 45 seconds, and it will affect adds that go into its area.
Generic AoE Holds for Controllers that don't really do anything other than Hold are... not useful.

In most cases. The reason that they're not useful is that to try to make them useful requires 4-6 slots, and even then they remain an every-other-spawn power at best, if not every 3 spawns. Who wants to spend that many slots on a power that's only useful every few spawns, and even then only mezzes the mobs rather than contributing to kill speed? The only builds where I've found AoE Holds to be useful are those that can get SEVERAL of them, and rotate them.. so now they become part of your REGULAR AoE control cycle. The short list of these builds is Mind/Rad and Mind/TA, using Mass Domination, Mass Confuse, and EMP or EMP Arrow to cycle AoE mezzes. That's a very, very limited use set for AoE Holds.

[Deadlymantis]

If I remember correctly, the doubling of aoe hold recharge cool-downs came in a batch of controller re-balancing.  Controllers complained they had few effective means of dealing damage when solo, and the 'city of statues' issue was taking fun out of the general experience.

 

Devs created the containment inherent to give all controllers a boost in damage and doubled the recharge of all aoe hold powers as their solutions.  The aoe change didn't go over well as they were also mucking around with Enhancement Diversification at the time, and ED made the recharge doubling all the worse to swallow.  The damage bone they threw us placated many, but I never liked the doubling.  The one thing you want to do when playing is USE your powers, not wait around for them (halving the duration would have been preferable to doubling the cool-down).

 

As time has gone on, that old solution of double recharge time has not aged well in light of the evolved status of the game (dominators, blaster nukes, IOs, incarnates, etc), so maybe it's time to revisit this issue.

 

Edited July 24, 2019 by Deadlymantis

[subbacultchas]

2 hours ago, Coyote said:

Shadow Field for Dark Control is also good, and it's for the same reason: It's a drop power that Holds, but also puts out a good secondary effect for 45 seconds, and it will affect adds that go into its area.
Generic AoE Holds for Controllers that don't really do anything other than Hold are... not useful.

In most cases. The reason that they're not useful is that to try to make them useful requires 4-6 slots, and even then they remain an every-other-spawn power at best, if not every 3 spawns. Who wants to spend that many slots on a power that's only useful every few spawns, and even then only mezzes the mobs rather than contributing to kill speed? The only builds where I've found AoE Holds to be useful are those that can get SEVERAL of them, and rotate them.. so now they become part of your REGULAR AoE control cycle. The short list of these builds is Mind/Rad and Mind/TA, using Mass Domination, Mass Confuse, and EMP or EMP Arrow to cycle AoE mezzes. That's a very, very limited use set for AoE Holds.

Very true. On my Plant/Dark I do use mine, but honestly it's my secondary or even tertiary group mez. Seeds is my number one, and when soloing I've used a combination of Fault/Howling Twilight probably more than the AOE hold. I keep it around because it's nice when everything else is on cooldown, but those instances are just downright uncommon, especially post-50.

I'm really in favor of seeing changes to what was a looked forward to power back during live, but is now more often skipped.

[Coyote]

It could be possible to add a debuff effect to the AoE Holds that aren't persistent... the problem is that debuffs on 4-minute powers either have to be humongous, or remain very situational.

I can see one way to make AoE Holds interesting: Use them to add Damage variation to the set. Ideas such as:

-Ice's Hold provides -Resist(Ice) to the targets. Something reasonably significant, say -20 to -30%, and for a duration of 40 seconds.
-Mind provides -Resist(Psy) of about 20%, but also adds a Paralyzed effect that increases the damage from Terrify, also for 40 seconds.
-Gravity already provides an Impact effect that benefits the single-target attacks, but make the effect give a large bonus to Crushing Field.
-Plant has a lot of AoE damage already, so I'm not sure if it makes sense to add damage to it, but perhaps it could be combined with either the AoE Sleep or Carrion Creepers (or both) and create a Stunned effect. The effect that combines should last longer than the Hold, otherwise there's no point to it.
-Fire... more damage would be thematic, but like Plant it has the damage already and could use control more. An idea would be to put a "smoking" effect on the targets that has a small chance to combine with Fire Cages or with melee attacks from the Imps to give a short-duration Hold effect from choking.
-Illusion could give -Resist(Psy), or combine with Blind's AoE effect so that the AoE effect does damage.

In all cases, the debuff/effect should be significant, so that it's worth taking the power with the intent to use it for the debuff/effect, otherwise it's just a cute add-on if you were taking it already. It should last long enough to have about a 50% uptime with good Recharge, but not be perma-able... 30 seconds would be the bottom, and 45 the top (to match it to Shadow Field). Effects that are limited (like stacking Flash with Blind) should be quite strong compared to general like -Resist(Ice).

[Maxzero]

41 minutes ago, Coyote said:

It could be possible to add a debuff effect to the AoE Holds that aren't persistent... the problem is that debuffs on 4-minute powers either have to be humongous, or remain very situational.

I can see one way to make AoE Holds interesting: Use them to add Damage variation to the set. Ideas such as:

-Ice's Hold provides -Resist(Ice) to the targets. Something reasonably significant, say -20 to -30%, and for a duration of 40 seconds.
-Mind provides -Resist(Psy) of about 20%, but also adds a Paralyzed effect that increases the damage from Terrify, also for 40 seconds.
-Gravity already provides an Impact effect that benefits the single-target attacks, but make the effect give a large bonus to Crushing Field.
-Plant has a lot of AoE damage already, so I'm not sure if it makes sense to add damage to it, but perhaps it could be combined with either the AoE Sleep or Carrion Creepers (or both) and create a Stunned effect. The effect that combines should last longer than the Hold, otherwise there's no point to it.
-Fire... more damage would be thematic, but like Plant it has the damage already and could use control more. An idea would be to put a "smoking" effect on the targets that has a small chance to combine with Fire Cages or with melee attacks from the Imps to give a short-duration Hold effect from choking.
-Illusion could give -Resist(Psy), or combine with Blind's AoE effect so that the AoE effect does damage.

In all cases, the debuff/effect should be significant, so that it's worth taking the power with the intent to use it for the debuff/effect, otherwise it's just a cute add-on if you were taking it already. It should last long enough to have about a 50% uptime with good Recharge, but not be perma-able... 30 seconds would be the bottom, and 45 the top (to match it to Shadow Field). Effects that are limited (like stacking Flash with Blind) should be quite strong compared to general like -Resist(Ice).

 

Plant could be a -damage debuff.

 

Fire's 'smoking' effect could be a simply -hit or -recharge. It might not sound flashy but its -30 or so it would be very noticable.

Edited July 25, 2019 by Maxzero

[Sir Myshkin]

Been doing experiments with procs, remembered this thread and thought I'd come back and post this:

 

Amusing side note that might possibly be worth testing, but the AoE Holds could be turned into an AoE damage power. If there's a sufficient amount of Global Recharge in a build that can act as the supplementary recharge, and as a consequence the Hold abilities can be six-slotted with a ton of Procs. So I hopped into Mid's and plugged in Fire Control to get to Cinders: dropped the Lockdown +2 Mag Hold proc*, Entomb +Absorb, +Dam Procs (Gladiator, Unbreakable, GW, and Neuronic). Used Kin to get some quick global rech out of Siphon Speed, and turned on Hasten for a total of 130%. With the Absorb Proc giving Recharge enhancement (as a Purple), Cinder's sits at 84/s recharge with a 14/s duration and does 297 damage upon hit. Bonfires can't even do that much over 45/s, I think there's suddenly a nice "Mini Nuke" for Controllers out there we didn't even know existed. I'll probably run off and test this at some point since it sounds rather amusing.

 

 

*this basically ups Cinders to Mag 5 since it will fast stack Mag 3 and Mag 2, which is nice for more resisted targets, doesn't necessarily mean much for most content.

Edited July 26, 2019 by Sir Myshkin
clarification on a sentence

[Maxzero]

1 hour ago, Sir Myshkin said:

Been doing experiments with procs, remembered this thread and thought I'd come back and post this:

 

Amusing side note that might possibly be worth testing, but the AoE Holds could be turned into an AoE damage power. If there's a sufficient amount of Global Recharge in a build that can act as the supplementary recharge, and as a consequence the Hold abilities can be six-slotted with a ton of Procs. So I hopped into Mid's and plugged in Fire Control to get to Cinders: dropped the Lockdown +2 Mag Hold proc*, Entomb +Absorb, +Dam Procs (Gladiator, Unbreakable, GW, and Neuronic). Used Kin to get some quick global rech out of Siphon Speed, and turned on Hasten for a total of 130%. With the Absorb Proc giving Recharge enhancement (as a Purple), Cinder's sits at 84/s recharge with a 14/s duration and does 297 damage upon hit. Bonfires can't even do that much over 45/s, I think there's suddenly a nice "Mini Nuke" for Controllers out there we didn't even know existed. I'll probably run off and test this at some point since it sounds rather amusing.

 

 

*this basically ups Cinders to Mag 5 since it will fast stack Mag 3 and Mag 2, which is nice for more resisted targets, doesn't necessarily mean much for most content.

 

That's actually a decent idea. Even the ST hold can do something similiar. It definately favours Fire with its fast cast times though.

[Coyote]

Just as a note, if you keep the Recharge enhancing to 50%, an AoE Stun will generally max out the Proc% on a 3.5 PPM Proc at 90%. This makes the AoE Stuns do the same damage (per Proc IO) as AoE Holds procced for damage. The only problem is that they generally don't have access to damage Procs, except for Heart of Darkness (which has access to PBAoE sets). But I do have my D-D-Cont planned with 4 damage IOs for Heart of Darkness... after all, it's not like Dark-Dark needs more defensive ability, and a mini-nuke up every spawn with about a 30 second Stun is great.

I'm wondering how effective it might be to also slot up Shadow Field as a mini-nuke, now...
... and whether sticking a couple of damage IOs in Earthquake is worth it.

Edited July 26, 2019 by Coyote

[Sunsette]

Fyi I recommend linking to this topic instead:

Bopper has kept it updated with new information as he gets it and that is the most accurate and clear repository on the PPM formula.

 

As for the reddit thread, it has outdated formula information but a good list of PPMs. One bit of missing information is that Annihilation: Chance for -Res is a -12.5% penalty, it was blank in this thread last I checked. Oh also, Force Feedback does not appear to have an internal cooldown. Think that's it.

 

Hope this was helpful!

Edited July 27, 2019 by Sunsette

[Riverdusk]

On 7/26/2019 at 12:41 AM, Sir Myshkin said:

Been doing experiments with procs, remembered this thread and thought I'd come back and post this:

 

Amusing side note that might possibly be worth testing, but the AoE Holds could be turned into an AoE damage power. If there's a sufficient amount of Global Recharge in a build that can act as the supplementary recharge, and as a consequence the Hold abilities can be six-slotted with a ton of Procs. So I hopped into Mid's and plugged in Fire Control to get to Cinders: dropped the Lockdown +2 Mag Hold proc*, Entomb +Absorb, +Dam Procs (Gladiator, Unbreakable, GW, and Neuronic). Used Kin to get some quick global rech out of Siphon Speed, and turned on Hasten for a total of 130%. With the Absorb Proc giving Recharge enhancement (as a Purple), Cinder's sits at 84/s recharge with a 14/s duration and does 297 damage upon hit. Bonfires can't even do that much over 45/s, I think there's suddenly a nice "Mini Nuke" for Controllers out there we didn't even know existed. I'll probably run off and test this at some point since it sounds rather amusing.

 

 

*this basically ups Cinders to Mag 5 since it will fast stack Mag 3 and Mag 2, which is nice for more resisted targets, doesn't necessarily mean much for most content.

 

You'd need not only a ton of global recharge to pull this off reliably, but a lot of global accuracy bonuses as well.  Not sure even tactics alone would be enough considering the accuracy penalty aoe holds have, unless you are fighting even level stuff.  

 

The accuracy penalty the powers have is something else I think should be done away with regardless.