Trollls hmmmm (devs let's talk)

All Trolls debuff.

Start with Power Troll: Most people needs power to do their thing more than buffs they can't utilize due to an empty bar, this is especially true in blind ques and even random LFG normal runs.

Less Art requirements; Amulet of Rao is mandatory on every Troll. Parasites Power Harness does not "heal power" it just increases the players total power pool by x% stacking with each debuff, which in turn increases their own passive power regeneration. Scrap of the Soul Cloak provides more SC for Group Shield.

SP in Weapon is up to preference, Fast Movement + Innates and Super Strength (cuz what kind of a Supervillain Superhero can't lift cars to drop on Titanic Trenton Captain Kruel to proc Nth drops?) Max both Power Crits. Put first 100 into Vit, then next 100 into Might&Power, then max Vit ,then dump the rest into Might&Power.

Contrary to what the game tells you, both in sp and Aug screens, Troll's never use Dom Augs (except for very min/max buff trolls who either choose to sacrifice a bit of Vit for an infinismall larger Tetra/Cog buff, due to the higher health stat on Dom vs Vit Augs or just blindly follows ObsidianChill's videos)

Loadout is: 1 of each debuff, be sure to use the Supercharge Generator as 1 of them (unless you're Gadgets, cuz Encasements sucks for both Tank and dps), Group Power Heal, utility/personal Shield/detaunt and Supercharge Shield.

Gameplay is the most interesting in my humble opinion. Your job is to make the run as smooth as possible. Primarily by making sure everyone has power to do their job, keeping stuff debuffed and doing mechs/pickups. Heal debuff's only purpose in 99% of content is to proc Harness and being the SC Generator on Quantum (and maybe Mental, I forget), so I tend to save it to CC stray adds killing the healer. Supercharge Shield has 3 functions, off the top of my head. It can be used as an emergency power heal to the entire group. It's obviously a strong Shield to pickup Tank/Heal as well as gives Tank time to grab waves of adds. And it can act as a wipe-preventing group-wide BLOCK button, giving Heal enough time to heal through Perpetua's Eye Beam.

Buff Troll *requires* Claw of something-hund 160+, since at 80 it makes your Group Weapon Buff (that is also Group Power Heal) which already gives 20% Prec to yourself + 3 group member with the highest power% for 12s also buff Might, Dom and Res by 7%. At 120 you get a 20% Vit buff per affected group member. At 160 it affects the entire group, which both makes it worth the tradeoff and gives you enough Vit from the 120 effect, to keep all but the most hungry of people fed by just PoT.

I disagree that power troll is better. You don’t NEED more arts to buff troll. You can buff troll just fine with just rao, cog, tetra. This gives a very simple way to be a buff troll without sacrificing the group power dump with claw. This way you are buffing both might and prec while also maximizing your debuffs with rao.

These days power management is very easy and simple with very certain powers running lower. However these players also need to to learn to manage their power bars more too.

I think we are in agreement that a Buff Troll is better. I don't know if you'll agree with me that a tac swapping Troll doing everything is best.

My caveat is that it really depends on what you run and who you run with. My experience is that, while yes, power management is very easy these days on a well-built Toon, well-built Toons are the minority in blind ques, early end game and even end game normal content. Most are either Alts or new players or long time casuals who really enjoy having their Aug screen look like a rainbow.

When people are told that Buff Troll is preferred, they go look up how to spec, what Arts to use and what Loadout to use. There is to my knowledge no built-guides on Youtube that assumes anything less than 200 Arts and enough sp to max main stat and dump into secondary. They think their sole purpose is to buff dps with their 80-120 Rao, Claw and Tetra/Cog, completely oblivious to the fact that *they* are the reason the run is failing since the dps don't have the power to kill stuff, the Heal neither having the power nor time to keep them alive due to the inexperienced Tank not having the power to pull adds that are killing the Heal. Or any combination of the aforementioned. End result: Troll goes free from not doing his primary job of ensuring a smooth run, everyone blames the Heal who passes the blame to Tank who may very well decide that maybe Tanking just isn't for him.

And there's the fact that no matter how much power the Troll gives, there will always be a not-insignificant number of Healers, who's entire purpose of existence seems to be to constantly test how fast they can empty their bar, regardless of whether or not there is anything to actually heal.

TLR: Above is my reasoning for telling people to start with Power Troll before transitioning to Buff Troll, either as Armory or keep Harness and Scrap in Inventory to swap and slot if needed. Below is my reasoning for not solely blaming peoples power-issues on them, knowing that newer players (be that to the game or to the powerset/role) will not have my optimised routes to both end game and a well-built Toon.

When I get a new Toon from creation to current Ep, it takes me 3-5 days of 8h per day. 1st of which is doing the story missions, including the 2 optional 2nd missions from the other 2 Mentors, Boosters Tour of Gotham and Metropolis, Races and Exploration Feats as well tier 1 Solos, Duos, Alerts and Raids that pop while I'm finishing Races and Exploration. They arrive at min cr current Ep with the staggering total of 100-120sp, 1-2 Arts 80, Augs 50-200 and at most 2x "fake" Ep Augs 4 (which has been extra loot choice since Doom, not the much needed +% Power that comes at 8). And a random assortment of generator mods AF3-current. Never even 4xPower, 4xCorrect stat, 4xMight (unless I started with 40.1 from a Toon that both has the Plans and spare source marks)

Every power (with the possible exceptions of Earth and Gadgets) both roles struggle with power, once they loose the buffer from Clamp, regardless of LO (that's functional. I have not tried dps'ing with exclusively 100 cost powers )

After playing them for another few days-1 week, they stop having power issues around 100 in Might&Power, 80-120 Arts, 300+ Augs, 2x8+ Ep Augs and 4xCurrent.0 or better Generator Mods.

That thing you want is an artifact perk, more or less.

Controllers should always come in 2nd in damage to DPS, then tanks, then healers last. Unless somebody has been misbehaving with a jackhammer, then it's fair game.


In terms of the whole 'giving power' ********? That needs to go. I'm 100% for that blue bar completely being gutted out from the game entirely and simply having powers function off their cooldowns. I'd refocus the controller role into actually crowd controller with significantly more effectiveness than they do now using active abilities. For example, Hard Light's Entrap. This briefly traps enemies in baseballs. A cage would have been more effective, but because it had to be a combo power, they came up with baseball meets bat, only controllers won't ever use the bat and DPS likely aren't going to have the dominance to trigger the baseball trap, so... yeah...

But anyway... entrap...
Rather than it being a fire and forget power, this would instead be an active ability where the controller is effectively taken out of action as they concentrate their power to keep affected enemies stuck in place (or depending on the power, stunned, slowed, etc). The controller can't move but similarly the mobs they are actively crowd controlling aren't going anywhere. There's multiple ways to build off that concept and can vary from power to power. Maybe you don't fully trap an enemy with one power, but slow them down, but in turn, you can also, slowly, move. Maybe some abilities work off a cooldown and when you smack enemies with a particular power, nearby allies also targeting that enemy then see a prompt that will allow them to follow up with an attack of their own, effectively creating a combo power (something abandoned in alpha but was something they wanted to do) for whatever desired effect. Maybe THAT is what applies, or upkeeps, a debuff. Many ways all that jazz could work. Some other control power could grab an enemy and literally toss them around, Skywalker style. Another mechanic could be the longer an enemy is held or CC'd, the more aggro the controller starts to draw as their channeling starts to turn into a taunt, with the effect being more pronounced the higher rank the enemy is. Enemies held for a certain amount of time maybe start eating DoT.

Would be great, but you'd still have the massive problem of not having role locking in content. This would prevent the devs from effectively making fights built around these kind of functions if the current system cannot and will not be built to depend on players to perform these functions.

I'm also of the mind that precision needs to be removed from the game and there should only be one primary attack stat. As it is, precision is lowest on the aggro draw list. Precision attacks will not pull aggro off an enemy that is being hit by any might attack, and that's something that speed hackers have been using to their advantage. Similarly, the toughness stat needs to be removed from the game and PVP needs to function off defense with PVP specific modifiers to account for the crazy power creep behind gear scaling, thus making PVE and PVP progression one in the same, effectively giving PVP the chance to revitalize. (The rest would have to stem from better PVP content and rewards, even if it means the rewards can count toward PVE as well. IE: at the very least, down x amount of enemy players or assault/defend x objective, get x source marks)


I'd also want to make sure that tanks weapon based CC never conflicts with CC immunity triggered by any other players other than tanks, or the same tank spamming the same CC attack and that most humanoid bosses will not be CC immune to these and will abide by the PVP/melee counter system rules. Same would not apply to tank powers, only weapon CC. That gives added incentive for tanks to get in there and rough enemies up with the OG weapon combos instead of spamming powers exclusively (outside of a lunge cancel to get to a target faster).


Healing I see as being perfectly fine where they are at, as are most DPS roles (outside of a few clumsy, power specific mechanics). Otherwise the only other thing i'd really want to see is a standardized functionality for everybody to be able to slot one supercharge into a standalone function tray, similar to trinkets and consumables, with a standardized input combination to use that supercharge. I have always seen that as a day 1 flaw with the game. The supercharge function should always have been usable as a general 'ultimate' available in such fashion. Whether you slot a damage super, or support role specific or defensive super, the function to have one ready to go regardless of your six power loadout as soon as your bar fills up enough would have done wonders for builds.

Spitballing....

All my opinion:

In regards to Controller Crowd Control

Would it be too much if Controller CC could be made exempt from immunity.

Encasements just need to be made damage amplifiers to targets inside (even if it were just guaranteed criticals) and Pulls need to root the encasements*

- Not sure how that would affect an Enemy pulling and this rooting an Encased player
Might make entomb better for remaining near enemies*

Getting rooted at enemy boss's feet might be fun if mechanic encased and then pulled player!! (An add doing it may be better to move players out of a fight...but give Controller chance to CC the enemies.)


So tank CC would still allow immunity/breakout

Controller CC would not allow immunity unless it is an immune enemy type (obviously there could be some balancing issues....but it would make CC controller presence very noticable)

~Like old skool.Home Turf ... Orbital Tactical Strike lowering boss dominance and the Mental Controller Ghosting Braniac/Meta/Magic.
(Huge smile and grin...)

Edit: Maybe Healing debuff could also lower dominance on enemies...allowing Controller CC immune enemies to be CC'd by controller abilities.

So you want trolls to forever CC enemies. NO! Troll CC is fine just the way it is.

Wait a minute, your first post said 'Trolls were useless.

Today's response

Initial post

Read more about it. I'm talking about debuffs. And yes trolls are useless doesn't mean they should be able to CC enemies forever.

Got it, so 'Trolls are useless, but changing that is unfair.

OMG, leave me alone. How does making troll CC endlessly make trolling better. It's just going to further break the already useless role.

Sure, you can argue that trolls are optional in event and reg content. But in elite content they’re anywhere from extremely advantageous to absolutely necessary and in a good chunk of elite plus content you could argue they’re actually the most important as they handle certain mechanics that will absolutely wipe the group if not correctly executed every single time.

As for debuffs, the defense debuff alone with a 200 Amulet of Rao (which should have 97%-100% uptime) increases all damage (except orbitals) by 17.7%. But then there’s also the heartbreak pet, Death Metal Batman (combat) and Batman Who Laughs’ (support) Toxic Encore. If/when all four of those debuffs are simultaneously active, all damage (except orbitals) is increased by 64.3%. Now the latter three don’t have anywhere near the uptime of the troll powerset debuff. If I felt like it (I don’t) I could do the math to amortize the debuff effect of each on a per second basis. But even without doing that, it’s not hard to get a ballpark idea of just how valuable and advantageous the defense debuffs are.

(credit to OC for doing the stacked defense debuff testing legwork)

Knockdowns are exempt from immunity if followed by another knockdown within three seconds.

This is so true however I'll feel much better if the default troll buffs applied 1/3 of the mitigations when using all of these items mention above. Then in other not to over power the role when all these items are in play thus breaking the role. They should nerf all this other items but increase the default mitigations & buff of trolls done by abilities. What do you think?


Also is it the Heartthrob or Heartbreak pet, I'll like to get 1 of those or both for keepsake. Possibly incorporate it into my builds.

Troll is the most useless role in the game, valid they are useful for giving power but they are more useless then useful.

Doesn't Atomic's Thermochemical Explosion perma-juggle adds forever as-is

That aside I am looking for a different "immunity" profile that does not conflict with the tank.

Crowd Control is the one overlap (aside from damage) and in Elite Content it seems to be that overlap of Crowd Control that can make or break a group.
(Like groups preferring Bird's Blitz from B.O.P. Commlink to apply debuffs without hindering Tank CC.)

If Tank and Controller CC effects had different profiles ..then the immunity from a Tank CC should not also override the Controller CC.

Most of the Tank CC is gathering (Pulls) and then knock-up/down juggle.
The stuns and encasements from a Controller should complement the Tank CC and not combat it.

That is how I feel it should be for Teamwork.

Not necessarily that a Controller just perma-stuns adds (weapon juggle like meteor blast/ solar flame + stickybomb combo allows for pretty consistent Controller juggle without granting adds breakout immunity, but it would be nice to use the actual stun(controller) effects without interfering with a Tank!

Controller stuns could always have lower duration than the powers cooldown...or affected enemy can't be CC'd consecutively from same Controller power.

~Yet a Tank could continue to CC enemy from same power (ie...Atomic Thermonuclear Explosion)

Heartbreak for the extra debuff stacking

& +1 the Controller debuffs should innately get stronger the more debuffs applied.
Like
Defense debuff only normal 10%; Health Debuff 25%; or Damage Debuff 10%
Defense debuff + health or damage debuff ( the 2 debuffs applied each get 1% stronger)
All 3 debuffs applied an additional 2% stronger

So 3 debuffs would be an additional 3% (Defense 13%; Healing 28%; and Damage 13%)
Then Amulet of Rao and other stacking debuffs would scale from there.



Edit*

I would like all 3 debuffs applied to a Boss or CC immune enemy ...to lower their willpower so they can be CC eligible while all 3 debuffs are applied. Even if that means stuns are only half duration from Controllers and Bosses/normally CC immune enemies can breakout of juggles or knockdown and regain immunity. To CC.

Possibly applying the Foot debuff icon when all 3 normal debuffs are applied.

Actually the 2 suggestions you placed are good i.e. Remove CC from trolls (I like this the least) or give troll & tank CC different immunities (this I prefer). Also I don't know about Atomic's Thermochemical Explosion however I don't think it's possible to juggle forever (maybe someone that know should weigh in). It might be the immunity threshold is greater than other CC's but I think it must have a limit cos if it truly doesn't have a limit I think it's to call the devs attention to that to stop that nonsense. That's not how the game is intended to be. Either do the same for every other power set or nerf the damn thing (Atomic's Thermochemical Explosion).

If you look at the chart in OC's video (also in a thread somewhere here but couldn't find it) you'll see that on an individual basis the controller powerset debuff with 200 AoR is still by far the most potent debuff. But because of the way damage, defense and defense debuffs are calculated in this game, when the debuffs stack they are partially multiplicative (proportionate to their ratio) as opposed to purely additive. In other words, the whole of that 64.3% damage increase is much greater than the sum of its parts. To put it in context with your stated preference, if hypothetically they were purely additive, the total damage increase when all four are active
would be 44.1%, of which 17.7% would constitute 40.1% which of course is greater than 1/3.

Also, it doesn't benefit anyone if D.I. were to release allies that are weak, underwhelming, minimally effective, etc. If the ratio of effectiveness between the controller debuff and pet/ally debuffs were significantly more skewed in favor of the controller debuff, then those allies wouldn't be worth using period. They'd be DOA and banished to cohabitate DGAF-land with the Sparring A.I., Omegahedron, Entwined Rings of Azar and Starheart of Isis (yup, I combined the two and they're still azz).

As for it being "broken", you have to remember that the pet/ally debuffs don't have anywhere close to the 95%-100% uptime that the controller debuff has (assuming troll is alive and reasonably competent). So on a per second basis the controller debuff is BY FAAAAAR the most impactful debuff. I ended up doing the conversion math for the Heartbreak and Death Metal Batman and individually (without the multiplicative stacking factor) their debuffs increase Damage Per Second by 1.925% and 1.234% respectively. In contrast, if the troll can keep the controller debuff active 100% of the time, then the controller debuff (with 200 AoR) increases Damage Per Second by 17.7%, WAAAAAAY higher than the other two.

I'd have to do a lot of testing to be able to calculate the Toxic Encore uptime which is needed to calculate the damage increase per second. But you should be able to get the idea by looking at the DPS increase figures above.

Heartthrob - gives 5% health while active in combat (good for tanks, especially if using Everyman Prototype. Does not stack with tank gear trinket)

Heartbreak - Applies all four debuffs. That's right FOUR. What is the fourth one you might ask??? I've been asking the most knowledgable and long tenured DCUO players I know that very same question since I started trolling over five years ago and still haven't gotten an answer that doesn't sound like a total guess.

Technically no. If that were true, the Shadow of Trigon boss fight in Conversion of Unmaking Elite would have been a walk in the park on day 1 and I wouldn't have needed testicle reconstruction surgery every time I tanked Monsters of Metal Elite (talking when each were the current DLC). Adds with very high CC resistance can break out of the Therm-Chem juggle and get immune. But in all practicality, yeah, it's pretty rare.

Yes, rumors of the death of CC resistance in DCUO have been greatly exaggerated.

Do you think the damage on this pets could be more than Mother Box? Since Mother Box max out at item level 66 but the hearts max out at item level 191. For some reason I believe I would already know if they did since I've watched OC's pet/henchmen damage comparisons.

Tiered trinket pet damage is tied to which tier it is and scales up with your CR. Item level doesn’t factor in to damage. All tier 3 flying pets are coded to do identical damage. All Tier 3 ST turrets are coded to do identical damage. All Tier 3 AOE turrets are coded to do identical damage. All tier 2 flying pets are coded to do the same damage, etc, etc, etc. The differences are purely cosmetic with only two exceptions. The pets that aren’t part of the tier system such as like the seasonal pets, limited edition pets (Servo, etc) do significantly less damage but tend to provide other benefits such as the heartthrob and heartbreak benefits we discussed earlier.

There are only two exceptions to the tiered pets doing identical damage (within the same tier). The first is intended and that’s that Survival Mode pets do 10% more damage in Survival Mode. The second exception which is unintended is that flying pets that have beam attacks can potentially do a little more damage but for that to happen both they and the enemy they’re attacking have to have certain positioning in respects to each other. If the beam attack is hitting the enemy at a certain angle it can produce an extra couple ticks of damage but that’s it. Of course there’s absolutely nothing a player can do to intentionally cause or influence that to happen as pets float around wherever and however they want and enemies don’t stand perfectly still either (unless they glitch out.)

It’s a common misconception that the Motherbox does the most damage. It’s damage is identical to all other flying pets within the same tier with only the two exceptions I just mentioned. This misconception comes from when Obsidian Chill did his pet damage testtng and posted the results. Yes, the Motherbox had the highest damage but that is purely because of RNG and the way OC tests. He does three parsers for each pet and averages them for the result. Now, that process is as thorough and accurate as can be done by a person who has a life outside this game and can’t spend hundreds of hours testing stuff which is what would be necessary in order to all but eliminate the RNG factor. But still, OC’s process understandably still has an RNG factor that will slightly skew results. In this case it made the Motherbox appear superior to the others. But if he retested today (or hell, even immediately after testing the last time) the Motherbox could have very well come in 5h or 8th or even last amongst Tier 3 flying pets. Anybody who has spent even a little time parsing on a soarring target knows that their first three parsers can easily be wuite dufferent from their 4th-6th parsers. That’s just how damage RNG works in this game.

And even if one is still convinced the Motherbox is the best, if you look at those results in terms of damage per second and not total damage, the difference between the Motherbox results and the last place tier 3 flying pet results is 408/s or 4,080 in a 10s parser. That’s a drop inside a drop inside a drop in the bucket of the damage a DPS does.

OC even explained the RNG factor in his video and specifically said that they’re only in the order they are due to random RNG. But people are idiots who don’t listen or comprehend basic concepts instead opting to just look at whatever tops the list.

Oh ... I thought that was the point of Thermonuclear Explosion usage vs using Atom Splitter.

Guess I should have tried to see if Infinite CC chain was real before posting, thank you for clarifying.

Heartbreak pet damage by itself is not close to Motherbox, but shows more "Group" damage even in an alert setting.

In a raid or Open world bounty setting: Heartbreak debuff stacking is where it shines.


On my namesake HL Controller I run Heartbreak and Toxic Encore (awaiting x2 Artifact to level up Rao) before supply drop boosted orbitals.
Slight management of targeting adds near low health to prep Toxic Encore on Boss.
(On PS4 if opening damage on full health boss is Light blast it allows Toxic Encore condition for 2nd Light Blast cast.

On my PC HL test account it does not do the same, so I am unsure if that happens on PC. (Gadgets on PC test...Toxic Encore does not prep as initial Boss attack; either)