More Stats Revamp 1.1

I must say to you, TheDark, that you play this game the way it should be played, and I fully agree on what you say here because I play the game and understand it the way you do. Unfortunately I fear that many (or most) players in here don't get what you are explaining, and that will be the part that will ruin the game - at least for controllers. This makes me kind of sad, cause being a controller is in my opinion the most versatile role you can cater, if you learn the mechanics and play the role correctly.
Playing the controller role has never been easy or right out straight forward, but it shouldn't be either.

Kudos for advocating the controllers role (+1).

BRING BACK AM(ADVANCED MECHANICS) for TROLLS ONLY...

FOR EXAMPLE... QUANTUM.. Being able to use The TIME BOMB AM while dishing out power as well (IN TROLL ROLE!!))
My troll gameplay was sooo fun...

I have several trolls and I love what I am hearing. Couple of things as a non tester I would like to point out tho...

-I dont mind forcing Trolls to continue using PoT powers. In almost every instance your PoT power is actually needed because it sets up a power interaction with debuffs or other moves.

-I would have been cool with longer cooldowns on CC powers if it meant they were stronger and lasted longer. These are not powers you typically spam. You just start a battle with them and then go into offensive mode or power healing mode.

-Something that should be looked at with trolls are encasement powers. These are very cool but very bad for group play. They block hits and scatter enemies. Fix those two issues and make these powers better for group play! Like make these a super hard, long stun that roots targets IN PLACE. Not even tank pulls could move them and damage would not move them either. They might be disruptive to tanks but they would still be incredibly useful. Or if your a smart troll you would wait for the tank to pull then hit them with encasement to lock them in place. Or something else to make them good like enemies who are encased provide power back when they are hit (without blocking hits or being scattered)

-Something else that needs addressed on Trolls while you guys are at it... Give all the other trolls their advanced mechanic combo's while in troll role so they dont suck so bad at dps. Hard Light gets to keep doing combo's as a troll but all other powers get crippled by not being able to run power rotations. Why?? They dont get damage bonus from dps role, they dont have dps stats... so they are still trolls.... There is a just a HUGE disparity between hard light and all other trolls.

-If you move PoT to being a passive ability for trolls, can we get HoT's as a passive ability for healers. Just having a healer in the group will provide HoT to the group? That would be awesome. Maybe troll or healer powers could buff that effect or make it more powerful. Maybe if you used multiple troll/healer abilities they would power interact to make a really powerful passive bonus. That would be great.

-I can see where everyone was coming from with having to dedicate 1/6th of your loadout to a power gen move as a DPS, it totally crapped all over the idea you were going for with freeing up our loadouts and letting us being more creative. However.... most DPS roles have offensive buff powers that you start your rotations with if they have advanced mechanics or even if they dont.... Most DPS have those in their loadouts and will never get rid of them. So why not just tack on the power generation effect to those attack buffs.

I will be honest.... when im rage or munitions or something else I will hit my damage buff to start my rotation but its usually to much of a pain to keep my eye on that powers cooldown once I go into my rotations and im beating on stuff, so I rarely refresh it mid fight. If this had power generation tied to it that would be a big encouragement to use it more often. My whole problem with weapon buffs is that they only last 10-12 seconds which sucks to constanty refresh.(not a damage move either). Maybe bump it to 30 seconds and that could really go over well...

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I have so much fun on my HL hybrid troll, I tried to make my other trolls do the same thing and they just suck so bad without damage rotations. I like playing support roles (as hybrids) but im afraid this troll love still isnt enough to play my non Hard Light characters as trolls. Now if they had access to their AM's while in troll role so they could run their damage rotations that would be awesome. I would happily settle for being in the middle of the scoreboard.

Yes to this exactly. Trolls will still be less than DPS, but they wont be nerfed into the dirt. The only thing playble as troll right now is hard light.

Avair. All i have to say is good job on the upgrade on 1.1 test server. The changes would be almost perfect besides one thing and that is the pot becoming a passive change.

Do no believe those who say they feel restricted as a power battery being a troll, which is false. We always had the option of variety to play different styles as a controller. Its never been the demand or groups that force trollers to be batteries, it is that content doesn't require more then that. I bet all my dollary doos that even if you just removed wm and am bonuses that they gave, they way people will be dpsing(currently live), not only would 2 trolls be encouraged but so would the need for 1 being specialize in power dumper, and the other for cc troll. There is already different variations of what a troller can do, but with ams and wm it clouded so many people minds, that nothing but giving power was all that was needed and gave a false sense of "Oh im just a battery, trolling needs to change mechanic wise". Just because people favor this change doesn't mean its good. I can tell you that that 1 free slot they is not gonna change their gameplay in any shape or form.

This change is nor good or bad, but it is useless especially for what you guys are trying to portray for how content will be in the future. Cooldowns are most likely gonna stay because accelerated mods are already in, but the pot becoming passive is nothing more then another write in the book of defeat of how the game taking away something either unique/playstyle/skill based.

If this is the type of change so "even lil johnny can be a controller, even though he couldn't get past the movement mode tutorial in brainic ship... then I guess

They can't. Right now dps role only has like a 10% damage buff. The weapon buffs give a 33% DPS and prec buff if I remember right but controllers can use those as well and receive the benefits. If controllers get AM damage while dps's don't, they'd be matching if not beating dps's in burn.

Gadget controlling is really the only "unique" trolling because of it's power utility. Also, their robot supercharge is superior to the shields in overall power back.. that's the trade off you get for not having a shield. You can argue a shield would help with pick ups but do to their other abilities a gadget troll can manage pick ups without needing it... also removing the need for an actual PoT ability would grant them more utility on their loadouts... they would be one of the powers not affected by this (other than the argument that the troll roll is being dumbed down).

In another thread on the forums, I posted comments about what I think should be done with the Controller role. It got a warm reception and many likes. I figured I'd rewrite the post out again, this time in the testing forum.

The Future of the Controller Role

I think almost all of the changes to Controlling so far are positive, but I haven't done extensive or meaningful testing to arrive at a solid conclusion. I'm not sure if anything needs reverted yet and I don't think I'll be able to personally decide on that until we know more about what's planned for debuffing.

There's a lot of talk about Crowd Controlling, which is fine, but in my opinion, building Controlling with a focus on Crowd Controlling is a red herring. It won't lead to meaningful changes that make Controlling more enjoyable to play or encourage the community to bring Controllers into content. Note that by this, I'm not suggesting Controllers aren't responsible for CC or Power Return. I'm simply suggesting that making these aspects the focus of why a Controller is important to the group is a lost cause and red herring solution to the Controlling problem.

There's 6 years of content out there now and very little of it actually requires a controller to do crowd control or put major pressure on a group who's troll isn't CCing. Any significant changes which put CCing at the forefront will have to be added to new content, which means that after 8 tiers of content, you suddenly have to start using new skills which you've never been required to use before in order to ensure your group can beat the content.

IMO, the focus should be on potent and scalable debuffs and group buffs that stack when there are exactly 2 controllers in the group (so we don't end up in a 3-3-1-1 situation again but don't dilute the role so much that only 1 Controller is ever needed). The strength of your debuff is determined by how much Dominance you have, which also affects the duration of your stuns.

Doing this would create multiple variants of the Controller role:

- Debuff Specialist: You specialise in Dominance to greatly increase the strength of your debuffs/buffs/stun duration.
- Power Battery: You specialise in Vitalization and Power to increase the amount of power replenished to your group
- Damage Troll: You specialise in Dominance and Precision to increase the strength of your debuffs/buffs/stun duration as well as weapon damage from combos you use in between power activations. Almost on par with a DPS in terms of strength.
- Hybrid/Balanced Troll: You balance your stats 33/33/34% providing even power replenishment, debuffs, buffs and stun duration.

Each brings their own unique dynamic to the group. Specialising in power return makes you less effective at debuffs/buffs but allows the group to use tray-heavy rotations and not worry about power. Specialising in debuffing makes the group stronger overall but isn't that effective at ensure the group remains powered up.

Then of course in the case of raids, you have more options and possibilities. Do you bring 2 debuffers to really weaken the enemies whilst sacrificing power back? Do you bring 2 battery controllers to ensure the group remains fully powered? Do you mix and match? Perhaps a hybrid troll and a debuffer for comfortable power replenishment and that extra edge with debuffing? So many options and strategies, all of which require certain skills and different techniques.

I think this is the ideal approach going forward because it gives the group exactly what it wants: More strength. Greater Healing from buffs to Restoration, greater survivability from buffs to health, defence and dominance, greater damage from boosts to Might and Precision. These buffs combined with less damage from NPCs thanks to a more potent and stackable damage debuff. More damage to NPCs thanks to a more potent and stackable defence debuff. Maybe something for Healing debuff, too, I don't know.

Making the Controller an asset to the strength of the group makes them a welcome role in any situation, whether there are specific mechanics or not. We've all seen what happens when they give us role specific mechanics: We figure them out and 1 Controller can handle them by their self or we simply outclass the content due to gains in stats, taking us back to the original problem of Troll exclusion and nothing for the Controller to do.

THANK YOU. LIKE ON GOD, THANK YOU

Wait.. What are you talking about?

The Gadget Battle Drone is not superior to ANY other Troller 'shields' in overall power back.

- Mental Trolls have Bastion
- Quantum Trolls have Event Horizon
- Hard Light Trolls have Group Shielding
- Munitions Trolls have Active Protection System

ALL of these powers gives just as much power back to the group as the Battle Drone does... PLUS… they provide ‘shields’ for 8 group members, at the same time.

In fact, once deployed... Battle Drones give incremental power back to the team... and you have to WAIT until a Battle Drone is actually destroyed until it actually refills everyones power bar... so you cannot even control the exact timing of WHEN a 'power surge' is dispersed to your teammates.

If your teammates ever need a 'power surge' in a hurry... Battle Drone won't give it to them instantly. (Keyword: instantly)
If your teammates ever need some 'shields' in a hurry to help rescue fallen comrades... Battle Drone won't help at all.
However, every other Troll powerset can provide BOTH. Instantly.

Your missing my point...

- It's not about... what can a Gadget Troll do ALL BY HIMSELF to rescue his fallen teammates?
- It's more about... what can EVERY Troll do to help their TEAMMATES rescue each other?

Answer: They ALL can provide 'group shields'...except Gadgets.

If 3 or 4 people in a raid all get KO'd at the same time.... one Gadget Troll cannot rescue everyone.

However, every other Troll in the game can at least deploy a Supercharge 'group shield'... which gives their teammates (a fighting chance) to 'work together' to rescue fallen allies & continue the battle.

That's the difference.

However, it would be nice if ALL Trollers in the game could 'be equal' in providing that type of help for their teammates. Get it?

That's all I'm saying.

I love this

You can't "control" power disbursement with battle drone but that doesn't mean a good gadget controller can no how to use it make it superior to the shields in terms of power out (in fact most power from the group shields tend to "over fill" and thus you get less total power).

Also if you have 3 or 4 teammates go down in a fight (that was your example, not mine by the way) chances are even with a group shield their is a good chance you might not get all of them up. Detaunts tend to be better than shields for pickups.

Also, I have seen several gadget controllers manage to rescue the team using their power sets without a group shield so hmmm maybe their is some skill involved. Let's not just make the powers reskins of themselves, it's bad enough things seem to be heading slightly in that direction we don't need any suggestions to make it worse.

Oh one last parting comment, with the way things seem to be headed with the current stat role out, group shields will probably be even less necessary in terms of giving power.

Making PoT a passive was the best thing to happen in a LONG time. Allowing players more freedom trolling hasn't been hard in this game in a LONG time no matter what people say yall sitting on close to 1k pot talking about trolling is hard. Throwing PoT over and over is extremely boring now you have a lot more freedom.

Your talking damage, we r just talking mechanics. Being able to run rotations of powers instead of having them completely seperated and no power back mechanics. A troll with crap 4 stats should not have to rely on wep combo's. Hard Light does not. What are your trolls and what do you use for damage?

You realize battle troll has existed for years since this game came out so there's what ~4 years worth of loadouts that didn't involve AM's? There's WM, there's PI's. I'm a gadgets and HL main. I used fear gas pi + intimidation + dart pi from sticky bomb pot when I battled before AM came out and HL has the dazed pi for the same effect.

Correction, battle drone gives small ticks and huge burst tick at the end of it's duration or when the drone is killed. In terms of total power out, it smokes the other controller supercharges on a per use basis on top of being 35% compared to 50%. You having to wait for that huge tick is true, which is why you don't wait til you and the group are at 10% power before you cast it. You cast it at around 30-40% power pool when you know there's going to be a stressful situation coming up that's going to cause power to get lower than a comfortable level so that when it comes you'll have that big tick ready to kick in, and in the meantime, battle drone's small ticks double PoT which make it harder for the group to even get low in the first place. And if you want to talk about group shield supercharges, gadgets's holographic decoy is better than that supercharge for saving a group outside of being in dot's. A boss especially in SM can hit smoeone through a supercharge and still break a revive but if they get detaunted and forced onto a decoy that can soak infinite damage that can't happen. Gadgets has the highest power/sec out of the troll powers and has a free tank. Gadgets is a utility controller power, it's just not convenient for people who need a 1 button saves in every situation power.

And with this statement you have shown everyone that you don't get the controller role at all. Nedless to say more.

All of this is not true. At all.
I've been a Gadget Troll for 5-6 years.

You cannot predict when there will be a stressful situation, far ahead of time.

Because people can get KO'd at ANY time... which puts stress on the Troll at ANY point of the battle.

At best, the only thing you might be able to predict is when certain bosses have a 'scripted attack'... or a final 'death spasm' if they get under 20% health. (Keyword: might)

And btw, Holographic decoy is NOT better than a SC shield.
I use Holographic decoy in my loadout.... ALL THE TIME.

• First of all, it takes a few seconds for NPCs to even 'recognize' the decoy.
• Plus, not all NPCs in the vicinity will be 'detaunted' and attack the decoy... so then you have to try something else...
• And if the 3-4 folks who got KO'd are spread out... the decoy won't help any teammates way on the other side of the room.

When you only have 5 seconds or so to make a rescue... and the hologram needs almost 3 seconds to even get recognized on the battlefield... its not better than a sc shield like Event Horizon, or Active Protection System.

To be honest, the hologram decoy is MOST USEFUL in 4-man Alerts, when you don't have a tank in the group.
Or in small rooms & tight spaces, when all NPCs are 'in close proximity' (because it seems like it works like an AOE when you deploy it).

Why do you want the controller to be a dps? You say they suck damage-wise. You are clearly not aware of that you are playing a controller role. If it is so important to bring damage, then play as a dps. You need to make up your mind whether to be a controller or a dps. The controllers of today on live is actually very good, but could be tweaked a bit here and there, without rewriting the whole controller role.
In my eyes, judging by your comments, you want an effortless dumbed down auto-run version of DCUO.