I don't think it's bad design - it's just that the gameplay has changed so much that it's difficult to see why you would want Trolls CCing. The original idea of Controllers dealing with messy adds that won't behave themselves was a core part of gameplay for a long time, because there was a time when if a Tank over-Pulled they were DEAD. It's interesting watching old videos of e.g. Inner Sanctum where THREE Healers can't keep the Tank up after a bad Pull. That kind of threat doesn't exist in standard content anymore, so we generally don't need a wingman putting the brakes on a dogpile. Troll CC looks like an anachronism now, but that doesn't make it bad design . As a (probably contentious) aside, I think that possibly the current strength of Healing, and the weakness of Adds goes a long way to removing the need for Troll CC - with the consequence that it seems to be seen as an irritating by-product of Trolls in the group now, rather than a necessity. Nerf Healing, buff Adds, and the dynamic changes.
Firstly, that may very well be the case; after all I've experienced I believe you are an exception, and likely a rare one at that. Whether it's pugs, friends, league mates, new or longtime Controllers; almost doesn't matter... the vast majority keep messing with my CC, and relentlessly so. Most have no choice as all their debuffs bring with them all sorts of unnecessary immunity donations, but even the Quantum ones I've played with rather spam their godforsaken Singularity than go with Time Shift & Warp Barrage. Friends at least I can simply ask to switch powers as they know I can handle it, while 9 out of 10 pug trolls couldn't give even half a turd about any such request. Fair points all around, I'll take them. Though for these handful of cases among who knows how many more than that, I fail to see the balance between effective teamwork vs one sabotages the other - again, I don't blame the players, but the game for this conundrum; which brings me back to my second initial suggestion. Having the choice would at least allow all those instances where nobody needs Controller CC to go far smoother than they do now while still keeping plenty of options available for the cases where it's needed. But I think we both know at this point in development such fundamental changes/reverts are less likely than relatively little tweaks like my second suggestion. Just a CHOICE is all I ask for, so at the very least I could start to get picky for my own good; and if ever they decide to change the core of crowd control to anything you would like, I wouldn't mind it in the slightest. If however they would ever go with my absolute bias version, I would love that too of course, because I'd rather have one in 10? 20? 50? fights be significantly harder but have all the other fights be smoother. So. Much. Smoother.
Well, in my opinion, if the tank's aggro range and duration were stronger and lasted longer, there would be no need to worry about controllers CC's. How much CC does a tank need? It shouldn't be as much as a Controller needs it. Most, if not all CC powers that a controller has for this game does damage. Very, very limiting as far as CC usefulness. In my opinion, controllers should have access to "non damage CC powers", which would be more helpful to a tank or in situations where going invisible isn't a good option. For example, a "non damage sleep" usually puts an enemy to sleep for a duration of time, and if that controller's stats are strong enough, they will sleep through getting hit a few times. When they wake up, they will only attack whomever is in front of them, not the one who cast that sleep on them (unless the caster is in line of sight). So, if a tank is pulling adds, the controller could put them to sleep (while behind the mob, of course) in rotation and the aggro would still be on the tank, not the controller. I have always felt that the controller powers in this game should allow the player to have some form of "control" over any situation at hand. But, then again, it would slow down the "run and gun" aspect of this game a little bit, too.
Stats have had no affect on CC duration since Stat Revamp. You either meet the "Suggested Dominance" of the Instance and are able to CC adds, or you have less and are unable to CC adds. Being in Tank Role makes every superpower apply Taunt. While a mob is Taunted, the Tank that applied the Taunt will be at the top of that mob's Hate Table for 12s. When those 12s are up, or the mob does a scripted reset of it's Hate Table, the Tank will be at the bottom. Dominance has absolutely no effect on aggro. You can be in Tank Role with 0 Dominance and Taunts will work the same, but you won't be able to CC adds.
That honestly doesn't even make sense. Tanks most definitely need the CC for - from the top of my head - three major reasons: 1) Keep the adds bunched up for the rest of the group to burn them efficiently. 2) Keep them juggled to not take more damage than necessary. 3) Keep them juggled so they won't charge the group, as there's a bunch of adds that have some scripted "Screw you Tank, I'm going over there"-type of attacks. Apex Predator chargers or Parademon Maniacs or Nightmare Desaad come to mind. Or others that will relentlessly pursue some objective that completely ignores aggro, like the Atlanteans going for the assembled golems in that one Atlantis raid. Or adds like the Probetec Peacemakers, the Dominators in NU that'll disable someone in the group. Or some healing or shielding adds that can cause major headaches. Or some Sniper-type of adds that'll devastate a groupmate when they can. All these, and maybe more that I didn't think of, can cause a lot of issues... unless they're kept juggled well to not even get the chance to execute their mischief. The question is: The handful of encounters where it's of genuine advantage aside, what do Controllers truly need the CC for these days? ~~~ Meanwhile the Controllers here will insist on some long dead concepts, it genuinely baffles me why nobody at least considers my second initial suggestion. Isn't having a choice better than none? What's the issue with it? Let go of the CC already, it's clearly a hindrance in most circumstances. Advocate for some expansion of your current functions, that's debuffs, buffs and power healing, to make that more engaging at least. Giving Controllers and by extension the Tank a choice whether to CC or not has so much more potential than the current state of things. They could still help out with it all if there's a truly bad tank. Heck, I've been there too when I still had a Controller, and can't deny the fun of it. But why insist on torturing decent Tanks and sometimes by extension Healers? I mean I took me about 2 or so years to really grasp my main role, the basic power mechanics are simple enough, but getting to understand the whole control and immunity concept just takes forever if you don't know any better and Controllers constantly making you second guess without you knowing WHAT makes you second guess. Not claiming I'm otherwise a genius, on the contrary, I learn through lots of repetition and behavioural tweaks. What of all the other budding tanks that don't have the friends, leagues or even just passion or patience to get there? LFG is so full of "need tank for this" "need tank for that" - and I wholeheartedly place a bit of the blame on Controllers, and it's not even their fault (in most cases)! That makes it so much more frustrating. I don't understand it and the current inputs leave me dissatisfied.
The problem isn't the need to stun, but are stuck with the ability to stun...most supercharge generating powers do stun in troll role. I can only speak for quantum(which I haven't played in over two years) and currently munitions in reference to troll powers. Munitions also has chain gun and rocket barrage (defense and heal debuffs), which both have long animations that do not stun...however, those long animatons removes the synergy of weapon combos (that prec needs for buff) and recharge(reload).
So your fix is to just make CC a tank thing? Got it. Because as your idea suggests, it just makes all controllers not able to stun, but can debuff, power heal, and buff. Easy peasy, right? I suppose, at this point, controllers are buffers, not controllers anyways. Content design is to blame for this. Years of design that is made in a way to never really need a controller to... crowd control. Some to the extent, it's better and safer for the tank to do it so the instance doesn't wipe. I'll be honest, at this point, I don't care. Maybe they should distribute the controller role between tank and heal and re-class the 5 powers.
I know, and this is a fair point, that's why I keep bemoaning most controllers not even having a choice in the matter in an effort to be as diplomatic as I can be, despite harboring a burning hatred for this situation. Yet some people act like the solution is some convoluted fine-tuning of how immunities are being handled or that a few edge cases justify making everything else a degree more miserable for another role.
Correct, CC for controllers worked in the past because we had hardstuns. What is the point of controllers now having unique CC like mental's ghosting if they just breakout in 2 seconds? The game could return CC to controllers but I feel it's just easier to make that a tank duties because the game is steering Controllers now towards buffing and battle builds where they will not be properly focused on correct CC's.
I really hate how they fffdd this up with the revamp years ago. There are feats that require a troll to hard stun ads, but can’t do that anymore. Here’s just an idea… Tanks: Keep the pull cc as normal as you kinda need to pull ads towards you and all that. Trolls: Have powers do something else rather than the cc stuff, like applying a debuff means an automatic cc effect is applied, well, make it so it doesn’t stun them but has the enemy stop briefly. If you flak cannon them they end up on fire, so now they stop and scratch themselves until it wears off. Or Get rid of immunity’s all together because we are paying ppl and we demand it!!! Or Tanks have their cc pulls as a normal mode but trolls can have a hard mode where it’s an actual hard stun. You use a specific power (as it was before) and tanks can’t do poop about it. And also get rid of immunities. Trolls are there to place a banana peel under the ads while tanks gather them up. Since when in real life would someone get an immunity to a pull, makes no sense.
The meta afaik is buff trolling. As far as I do this myself, I wear dps gear so I don’t have to worry about ‘immunity’ issues as I let the tank do that stuff. I’m just there to provide: pot, buffs, debuffs, damage, and in alerts anti-roleless-debuff of -12% damage. I miss the days of distortion wave and freezing every mf’r in the room. Bahahahaha!
This is akin to what I suggested earlier - reducing the duration of Immunity from Troll CCs (or just Immunity in general). I feel that it's not that it's there that's the problem so much as it's overly-persistent to the point of being dangerous - if you *want* a Troll CCing Adds, it's either for a particular mechanical purpose, or else it's a virtual certainty that the Tank doesn't then want to just leave them sitting there. Either way, extended Immunity ***** up both plans.
I was going to suggest that what if tanks weren't the ones required to CC the adds? What if that was actually the Controller's job? To me it would bring the roles more together for their purposes so everyone can really feel useful. Tanks "tank" the damage of the enemies, gets their attention (not CC, just Aggro) to keep them from other members of the team, while fortifying themselves to stay alive from all the heavy hits. Controllers can be required to weaken and "control" the enemies, stunning in a "juggling" way and weakening them to give the tank breathing room while increasing damage they would take from DPS. Healers as usual keep the group alive and can further help the tank if things get heated. DPS does the real damage to get things killed. The reason a solution like this would not be liked, and why I know I can't truly suggest it is because stunning adds is fun. Tanks love the juggling they do to keep themselves alive. I personally love stunning adds to keep them from attacking the team etc. Either solution to remove CC from tanks or controllers wouldn't be fun at all. Tanks to me always felt pretty overpowered being allowed to heal themselves as well as stun, and sometimes do damage as well. In many scenarios they can almost do it all.. Why is it that way? It makes no sense for a single role to be capable of doing everything that every other role is meant to do. It's just how the game is though. With this being said, I kind of stopped playing this game altogether and I'm more glad for that seeing as being a controller is actually just annoying more players. I loved the role, loved feeling useful sometimes when I can shield the group, do buffs/debuffs, and Stun when needed. I see that the stunning which is almost forced onto every debuff annoyingly is just annoying many players. I'd rather not stick around and continue to annoy them just from playing.
Why not redu how ads attacks us. Tanks pop a power and the ads go directly to them, no pulls needed. Then trolls have the ability to freeze enemies along with moving them somewhere else if need be. This way tanks can get the hate and trolls can get the stuns. And of course get rid of immunity.
That's exactly how tank aggro works currently. A tank can pop any super power within range and the adds will run to them. A tank doesn't need a pull to taunt an enemy.
That is the point of tank CC though. You can have a CC rotation, when done properly the adds don't attack you and don't attack the group. They will be in a endless cycle of knockdown and stunned. A rage tank could CC an entire group of adds and not even need to hit another power because it would never take damage from the adds. There is no tank class that can just "survive" while taking that much damage. You can't kyte either because you would be dragging adds everywhere and having the dps chase them. If it was left to the controllers a) they are focused more on buffing and be a battle role and b) if they didn't properly stun the adds the tank would just die which as a tank you shouldn't have to leave your survivability up to not only the healer but the controller too.
While we're expressing opinions, let's throw one in from the opposite perspective. Instead of effectively saying to suck it up, buttercup, what if some things were rolled back. Swap the perma-juggle capability to controllers and undo the hard stun removal. If hard stuns are too much, I still think rotating CC-types would be a way to allow players to mitigate some of the breakout immunities. If folks are worried about survivability being up to a controller, because I get it, "good controllers" is quite the debate - why are tanks' native powerset mechanics so weak anymore? Shield piercing makes ice reliant on healers; I see just as many rage tanks run shield loadouts as I do those going into the rage mechanic; AoE fields are like a magnet to Brick so earth often doesn't have the dual options depending on fights. Tank's powerset mechanics should be a better mitigator than - what if I make a stack of chronometric emitters? I've watched this controller role be bounced around for years. It's not part of the traditional healer/tank/damage trio. It's for stunning and controlling the flow of the fight with debuffs (why I chose the role). It's a blue bar healer. It's to mitigate add mechanics. It's to mitigate boss mechanics with debuffs. It's there to buff (watching people spend entire fights in their inventory makes me want to leave the role). I just want the dev team to make up their mind and be transparent about it. And if you can't figure out how to have it be its own separate role...I vote for HL to be a tank power.
Which is why I recently said screw it....I already have two separate troll armories set up similarly to DPS. One for single target, and then another for adds. My troll armory for ads is made up of DPS gear as a hybrid battle troll..There are no hits on my health, as I spec health for buffing..it adds damage stat, and loses about 5k in Vit(a little over 81K v. 86k), which doesn't make a huge difference in power output....It lowers my dom well under the requirement to stun....Tanks want total control of ad CC....have at it. However, if I have to run that setup which is preferred, because I refuse to add a 7th artifact specific to my troll side on top of already a long list of community requirements (Would be adding a 12th counting DPS arts)..The tank assumes total and sole responsibility of keeping the ads stunned and away from the group.
