Controller Role Truth(To The Devs): I'm Not Sure Why This Is So Hard To Understand....

I just read through some of your post on this thread and am surprised you've played a controller for over 2 years. You must be a straight up battery type. That's fine if thats how you want to play. I would like to bring up some points you somehow missed on what I meant when I said CC helps everybody.

If I'm in controller stance and using Pistols(as my example) I enter the room and let the tank grab aggro. He then groups the adds. DPS start to burn I pop my trinket and cast PoT. That's the first CC effect. One add around the tank gets stunned 3 are juggled and now he can do something other than block for a couple seconds. The DPS are able to keep attacking and mix in short weapon combo's without getting countered. The healer is still fine because their off in the distance and the tank has aggro.

Now that PoT is out I use Full Auto for the start of my weapon attack and block break the group. This allows the DPS to continue without getting countered(yay! this is good for team and a control effect, its a push). I follow that with a slip shot and do a juggle, magnum round(another single target juggle) and dump power.

All that is done quickly. I'm giving out power, providing control effects that benefit my team and not in the tanks way at all. This is just an example. In that short time I've single target stunned, AoE juggled, AoE push, Single target juggled, Single target juggled. Providing 5 CC type's without causing immunity and providing power to the team.

You don't understand your role its that simple. You probably cast PoT, tap power dump, tap power dump and think your good because the players your with are carrying you through it. That works for you. That's fine but it is possible to power the team and handle CC duties as a controller without getting in the teams way. That is how the role was designed.

Just so you know, breakouts don't affect aggro. At all. A tank can still taunt an enemy with immunity which can last from 2 - 20 seconds by the way. Immunity only affects a tanks pull. That's not a huge deal but can be irksome for the tank if its happening over and over. Most controllers are smart enough to let the tank group the adds.

It sounds like instead of playing all roles you need to learn how to fully do one.

And some tanks can easily manage all 4 if their loadout is set for it.

You are the one wrong here.

The tank doesn't need you to CC them for him. He should be able to do it himself.

In theory this might work but block breakers aren't quite that effective.

Again, not true. By doing your Full Auto (which is just silly for a controller) you are giving the adds a chance to breakout, making them invulnerable to the tanks control effects.

No, he is doing what he is supposed to do given how the content is designed and the current state of the game. He realizes that CC'ing adds is waste and is doing what's best for the team as opposed to his entertainment.

It's not about aggro. But the immunity you gave the add by him breaking out can be disruptive to the tank. Because you CC'ed a couple of adds, my pull didn't work. So rather than being having those adds pulled and moving on to the next set of adds, I have to pull them again. You are just slowing me down and wasting power that should have gone to the DPSes.

Actually playing all roles help you gain perspective of those roles which allows you to be better. In your case, you are just trying to justify your playstyle not because it's what's best for the team but because it's how you want to play. No, I don't think that controllers should just be batteries. But given the current state of the game, playing that way is how controllers best benefit the team.

One of the problems with the controller role is that controllers are asked to spam instant power. Yeah, literally 1 power.

This is a huge turn off for controllers who feel like they are made into batteries and are not really connected to the content (an issue for healers as well I presume). The most common response to a low vit troll in a raid is "its okay that you're vit is low, only use recharge and we will be fine" which is just messed up. How can a troll have fun if all he does is press instant power for 30 minutes???
Devs should focus on this particular issue.

There are various ideas that could fix the problem.

Increase the instant power cool down. This change would be complimented with a buff to a troll's instant power move. Troll's would have to use instant power wisely rather than spamming it mindlessly. Also, reduce power costs for trolls. Think about how much fun it would be if we could spam more cc moves without using so much power. Since we are the power guys, it just makes sense that we should be able to spam CC. And give trolls useful CC moves and a greater overall dominance boost. Encases are hated by every DPS and Tank. And there's nothing worse to a troll than adds that cannot be stunned.

If this happened then the game would be even less fun for DPSes. It's bad enough that some of the fun is being taken out in GU36 but doing this would kill the game for many players. The fast combat is what makes this game fun for a lot of people and why they choose it over other MMOs.

Personally, I wish they would just us better ways for trollers to give power and/or reduce the power costs for everyone. As for healers, I wish more of their healing moves did decent damage even in healing stance.

The only difference between a backup troller and the main troller is that the backup doesn't get to cast PoT. For the rest they are identical. I tend to clip everything I do with IP and when I depleted 80% of my whole power bar I perform weapon combos to recover. I always keep a 20% power reserve, because you never know when the healer will find himself in urge for power or a cc effect could save from a wipe.

Remove trinket out immunity effect from trash adds and reserve it for bosses/mini bosses: Problem solved

Remove the rts system from trash adds and reserve it for boss/mini bosses/solos and iconic anomalies: Problem solved

A small update on WM for Controllers. Just tested the Handblaster and Bow mastery combo's for our role....and to be honest they are pretty good. Now normally as a controller I would do hold, hold ranged attack move of HB with the charged blast or solar flare...Now I can do the above and follow up with a Explosive shot which does more damage but....the combo takes too long for my liking....

I think for controllers who want to stay ranged and use WM.....The best thing is to master the Handblaster and Bow and utilize the Explosive Shot Mastery and Arrow Fling Mastery combos.

For a Hardlight controller I would recommend looking to master Handblaster and Brawling OR Handblaster, Brawling and Bow as that gives us great options....

So that's why when I ran with a group even though having 1800 vit at cr 100 I wasn't able to give 2 people back power.
Seriously thought I wasn't doing a good job. Keep popping refresh over and over hoping that they would get power.

But I just come back to the game and switch out of dps to controller and sad to hear they made cr needed to restore power.
So its like saying hey you can hack the game and give yourself 1 million vit but without the cr of the rest your screwed.

Yes the game markers don't care about controllers cause no of those jerk offs play as one and if they do they use there god modes or give themselves gear they need. They should have a separate team dedicated to playing they game that can relay problems with anything

This is a silly argument. The mechanics we're created with having controllers and tanks work together. If it we're that much of a problem for a controller to even use weapon combo's because it makes trash "immune" then every offensive thing I do wouldn't have been designed to apply a control affect.

The tank can CC. Just not when blocking. I'm not saying trollers should neglect power duties. I'm saying they can effectively do both functions. The tanks I run with love it when I help with CC. I guess the controllers you guys run with suck. Its all situational as to how much I'll need to do and what I'll do. This helps the entire team. Its not me trying to prove my play style is better its common sense. It's how the role was designed. More importantly than a controller getting to CC is players adapting to each other.

You are wrong here. Arguing that a controllers weapon combo CC is going to keep you from pulling once you've already grouped the adds is redundant. They've been pulled. Aggro has been achieved. Aggro resets aren't an issue with trash. I'm not saying controllers should go willy nilly but immunity is achieved by applying the same control effect type's repeatedly. It's not actually that hard to avoid.

He is not doing what he's supposed to given the state of content. He's doing what some members of the community feel he should be doing and only playing half of his role's duties. As I've said in this thread given the state of content we're in now with teams being over geared the need for CC is lessened and it become's more about burn. That doesn't mean that a controller is not meant to control. If the Dev's take that duty away then I'll concede. But mechanics are in place for a reason.

I have other roles as well and your both right that it does give the player perspective but that doesn't mean anything if the player doesn't ever take the time to fully understand the role or power their using.

PS nothing is wrong with the controller role...


aside from the recharge glitch which doesn't affect me at all when I'm trolling...

Never let players tell you how to play. You get kicked from a crappy group then so be it. That's that PUG life. When you PUG with groups that skipped content and missed tiers altogether, they are misinformed and have developed bad habits. They have no concept of how the controller role should be played correctly. They may have gotten lucky and got in a group when me or dr strangeonline was trolling and became spoiled and didn't realize all the other effects we were using during the raid to keep everyone powered, applying CC to the npc's, and debuffing all at the same time. Now they expect the world every single time they run something. But its not sustainable when everyone dumps their power bar on junk npc's every couple of footsteps and strains the group's resources.

Speak up when you're playing in a group tell the dps's to adjust to the amount of power out from the tic of the lead troller and recharge of the secondary troll. A friend asked me to run AB with them the other day literally right after I just completed it as a league run. It was chaotic compared to the previous run spamming powers, people in the wrong positions getting one shoted it was just horrible from the beginning. So I stepped in and spoke up.

People forget not only is the concept of the controller picking up everyone but it is also the controller's job to call thing out that's happening during an instance. Person down, super charge, block, use your weapon....

Take "CONTROL"

I can fly at level 7

Holy smokes there is nothing worse than a debuff move that encases. And I say this as a controller and dps. Its the most useless debuff type in the game. The devs should just remove all the debuff moves that encase and change them to something that doesn't bloomin encase.

Just brought it up in another thread. How about a Troll power similiar to sorcery which uses AoE heals, except it used AoE Power Out...

A soul well that gave you power. Could be very valuable in a Boss fight.

You're doing it wrong you're suppose to only leave the encasement when someone is being overwhelmed. And if you do use it as a debuff you're suppose to have a PI with another power you drop immediately to bust the encasement and increase the damage. Also you should time this correctly so that you are not encasing after the DPS are about halfway through a rotation and have the encasement block their 4th or 5th hit.

Really? You're gonna use that as an argument? How things were designed is a horrible argument for pretty much anything in this game. If the game is actually played as it intended to, this thread wouldn't even exist.

Again, you keep focusing on aggro. Why? Why are you so focused on aggro when you've been told that this is not the issue being discussed. I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE AGGRO, I KNOW I HAVE IT. What I do care about is physically pulling them to an area to the DPS can deal damage more efficiently. AGAIN, THIS IS NOT ABOUT AGGRO BUT PHYSICALLY POSITIONING ADDS!!!

And yes, he is doing what he is supposed to do. It's fairly obvious that content gets done faster and easier this way. Yes, the mechanics are there for a reason. The mechanics are there because it is how the devs INTENDED the role to be played. However, given how the content is designed, that is not how the role SHOULD be played nor is it how it is ACTUALLY played at the highest level. This is why this thread exists, so that content is designed such that it is optimal for the team for controllers to not just be batteries.

As much as people want to say that content has dictated the way controllers are being played, if you allow people to tell you how to do your job, that's on you. I play controller and have played it for a considerable amount of time to have a good grasp of what to do in certain situations. As with having to add more and more DPS to keep up with getting content done, does having more and more controllers really say much about said controllers adequately doing their jobs? In raids, while I'm playing controller, whether I'm 'main' or 'secondary', I do power regen and CC. (By the way, I don't consider what tanks do 'crowd controlling', more like 'crowd gathering'. )

I think the saying, 'too many cooks spoil the broth,' is a very appropriate saying when it comes to stacking more players in a certain role than intended in group content, except for tanks. Two tanks would be greatly welcomed by me, despite the 'loss' in DPS numbers. I highly doubt this will happen, considering how deeply ingrained these unbalanced groups are in the DCUO community. It would be scary to think how the community will react to any raid content that will demand the 2's raid group schematic.

Yep thank you for the advice, kinda what I used to do waaaay back when using an encasement debuff but I never one anymore. I prefer the Whip Thrash, more dramatic and looks awesome hehe, high risk too but what the heck lol