Whatever happened to crowd control?

I was just coming to reiterate this, thanks for bringing it up.

This thread is not about the way DPS behave, it is about optimal gameplay due to game design.

She's right. Well thought out, well articulated and spot on.

You will NOT see an green 'SOE' comment on here and if it is it WILL NOT be by a a developer but a simple TY from Mepps or a mod ensuring that they listen. End of line.

Personally, I took it a step farther: I respecced out of Recharge. If PoT isn't enough for them then they can suck eggs.

Might go back, depends on how it goes with healers and tanks and their power. But I am done being a spigot for self-entitled DPS.

Yeah I'm basically arguing with you on this point, not against. CCs in good groups are just luxuries, CCs in bad groups can help make or break it. Although I've maybe only once run into the problems that you've listed when I was low cr and not considered OP for running that content. (experiences I had at CR slightly higher than the minimum allowed for content)I normally played as a dps, and my first focus is always shield bots, and I make sure they're dead before they can switch shields to themselves. I had no problem killing 3 spiders before they even crossed the mid section. That would leave 2 dpses to deal with the remaining 3 spiders. Stunning eye drones or neuroomacs....I assume you mean the ones that drain my power or has the aura stun for those I always let someone else take to the face so I could knock the eye out or range from a distance. Also I never ran these instances with leagues, they were always pugs and queues at the time. So I believe we can agree about the typical quality of players I ended up being grouped with.

CC like pulling/knocking up/stunning enemies can easily be accomplished by a good tank. So what controllers are really left with are debuffs (that are very situational) and power giving. Trollers need to be given something more other than more vit to be a stronger and better battery.

Every time I spec to troller I can only tolerate it for a day or two. Although I do like making sure everyone has constant power, I never see the role as useful other than to be a battery. I can decide to throw out defense debuffs, but it wouldn't matter because the dpses will just kill enemies at almost the same rate and I would need to reapply and reapply debuffs for new mobs. It's very power wasteful.

Solutions: would be to make powers cost less in controller role, or instant power should heal more(while costing the same amount of power it does now) with a longer cool down so controllers spend less time spamming instant power and more time doing w/e they want to. Otherwise the role itself will never be looked at as something other than a power battery, with the occasional tasks for special situations.

You must have huge man balls! Mad respect to you!

Controllers were so fun to play in CoX. I still believe that CoX had the best formulas when it came to CC. I wish there was at least a fraction of the CC that CoX had.

Funny how they come out with a great crowd control powertype and yet there is no purpose for it. But its true the only real raids in the game that needed crowd control was Prime(pull down healing bots) Fos2(pull assasins off bridge) Kandaq(when the game first came out to stun water keepers) Inner Batcave( stun healing obots on 2nd boss). The introduction of T5 content really just took away crowd control from controllers and it is sad. Controller is the least played role in the game simply because many people find it boring going in a raid and just being a battery. If they just increase the healing power potency of pot and defib and increase the required strategy in raids this game will do better. Can you think of a raid that requires strategy other than Fos2, Paradox, Nexus because everything else is pretty much raid group goes in and kill everything. The game community sees controllers as simply just batteries, nothing more. The damage chart is dps>healers(depending on if tank has core strength and has better stats)>tanks>controllers. People were excited for the new content but disappointed in how it changed the gameplay and roles of the game.

Wow...

That's ignorant. That's like me as a DPS saying "I respeced out of all powers. If weapon attacks aren't enough for 7 players who depend on my contribution, then they can suck eggs."

Or as a healer "I respeced out of all instant healing moves. If HoT isn't enough, then the group can suck eggs."

Remind me to put you on ignore and kick you if we group up.

Please put me on ignore, I definitely don't want to be grouped with you.

This is counter-productive in T5 content. As Tess mentioned, T5 content was made for high DPS. The longer the fight lasts, the more enrages you have to deal with still end up burdening the team and it is also a wipe because the only option you have is to retreat (in Paradox). Having 2 tanks also doesn't help (maybe with ads) with the enrage timers, no one, not even a tank can survive 20k,30k,50k,100k damage these bosses dish out when they enrage.

I agree with Tess, more strategy should go into T5 content other than kill everything as fast as possible, but that is not the dps fault. If bosses enrage they finger pointing immediately starts at the dps and the kicking fest happens. Until T5 mechanics are changed, the content is made for high dps.

I don't actually "refuse", it's more of a statement. Refusing to provide power over time, or instant power, hurts the rest of the team. Just emphasizing that I did agree with Tess.

The troll class IMO needs a MAJOR revamp.

The Elder Scrolls Online, Tom Clancy's The Division, and God only knows how many other MMOs have moved in this direction.

Agree with all the above but this:

LOL maybe so but there sure are others who actually do this. Not just in their heads.

In that part I was talking about solo content, not alerts or raids. Try running Sons of Trigon stuff in DPS gear - you are able to CC the adds. So long as your Dom meets the barest minimum requirement, it is CR that determines the duration of the stun, not dominance.

As for 100 base POT - again, I am talking about a controller specced for controlling simply wearing DPS gear. They would have the skill point innates and iconic bonus, as well as the Vita that T5+ gear now has on it. When I switch out everything except my rings, in DPS gear my pot tick is 144. That's 50 less than T5 trollers, though less than CR87+.

Your home turf mods for solo content are of course useful, but I wasn't talking about generic things available to everyone, I was talking about controller specific powers. Even with those tactics, it is still far, far easier to run controller role-dps gear for solo content than it is to run controller role-controller gear, which was the point of the section above. Because you can run those tactics as well as dps gear and have both.

When Nexus and Paradox first came out I was very excited because I thought it was Two Tanks content. But then they put in the 5 minute enrage timers, making bringing 2 tanks a liability, replacing them with a damage. Bad...

The focus on dps is just soooo overdone. I would love to see other roles be able to be part of the puzzle to finish boss fights. A true challenge would be for the trollers to do things that properly use their powers, liking having to assist the tank in controlling things or something.

A little confused here. The OP’s post is about the controller role, playing “optimally,” and doing more CC. But her definition of optimally means that the team’s goal is to finish the raid in the fastest time possible (aside from no deaths/wipes/etc). The obvious way to finish a raid quickly is to only run with more dps and/or DPS that burn strictly, or mostly, with power attacks. That means controllers are going to have to pump out power no matter what the developers do with raids, and eventually becoming overgeared isn’t going to help, just to finish a raid “optimally.”

So it seems like 2 things are wanted that are not currently possible, or realistic, unless something was done to the role and mechanics of the controller and possibly the others. I just want it to be understood that, along with being overgeared of course, it’s this kind of optimal playstyle, that is a choice, that is resulting in CC being “useless” for some groups. Despite the fact that it is done by default.

So by her definition and focus of the topic, I don’t understand why there are some post talking about an entirely different approach if this thread about completing the content quick as hell while at the same time giving controllers more things to do. I mean in the end, it’s always going to be you need more power to burn or more dps. Almost all of the poster’s proposals are either already in game and eventually ignored, can be done by a tank, or second tank, will eventually lead to NPC’s being completely destroyed by DPS, or won’t be put in at all because the developers would have to literally go back and redesign a role in the game which takes a lot of time, money, resources and focus. I’m looking at it from a realistic perspective. A POV that I believe the developers would see it. Quick and simple fixes only.

I honestly don’t think the understanding and mentioning of the immunity and aggro issue, controller shields, damage stuns, controlling in general or CR affecting stun duration (which isn’t true. CR is a stat. Depending the type of instance NPCs will break out early, late or not at all), were well thought out. Being in various types of groups and having the understanding I do for example, tells me that that role is still useful and you can still perform various tasks now with some teams. So it’s not that mass CCing is extinct for those who believe that. For obvious reasons you can’t perform them in an optimal group and that is what’s going to apply with new content eventually. Unless you make it so only defense debuffed targets can take damage or take 100% of the DPS’ damage. That’s just one idea I can think of but obviously small things like that will P.O. DPS only players.

I’d like to say I think it’s a very interesting thread but the truth is to play this poster’s version of “optimally” and continue to do other things with the controller role as it is now isn’t possible, because of the game mechanics itself that limits controllers to being able to sustain power out to DPS and healers, AND continuously do other tasks. I just think it may turn into one of those just an imagination threads as oppose to something that could be done realistically.

I will say I agree with those who target the T5 raids. They were poorly designed for controllers in regards to pulling or advancing on an objective. However, a weak tank still benefits from controllers CCing (holding block obviously reduces damage in and NO CC immunites do not always cause aggro resets except encasements). I do think future raids should have objectives for controllers or the team as a whole for delaying a flood or mob with objects. Even pulling objects like rocks or boulders by controllers. Especially if they decide to go 1 easy raid and 1 harder raid. The tough but interesting objective should definitely go in the harder raid.

I’d really like to read ideas focused on the OP’s post. Not posts about I give power when I want, but ideas on how to do be useful (not just controlling NPCs which is done anyway simply by casting a debuff, pot or weapon use) while playing her way (tap tap power tap tap power etc).

Accepting the fact that Developers are not likely to change anything on a massive scale in the controller and damage role mechanics (aside from cooldowns), because it takes too much time and resources, and that posting realistic ideas will definitely convince the developers of a way to make the changes possible without sacrificing a lot of money and time. I’m sure they want to hear simple and easy solutions. I know Larry Liberty(exec prod), reads the forums and tends to go by what the majority of players support. I base this on video interviews of the past few months with the SoT DLC.

If we can’t do that by accepting what we were essentially “born with” as controllers then we have to accept that playing “optimally” is a choice that has consequences and after all this time it was always a decision to enjoy content at a slow, medium or rapid pace.

Just got my mental troll up to 30 and enjoy the cc part more than the power part but obviously cant escape it lol. The thing i wished for when i played was for the pot to be on one tree and the power dump on the other and pump the stats up on them so you can chose to use 1 or the other instead of both!! But as prime pointed out the enemies would have to change and maybe some of the moves!!

I think the point of the post here is that there is a role entitled Controller that insinuates we should be doing some sort of control on the enemies in content vs this Controller role the playerbase has created. Let's go to the character creation thing, here's what it says about roles:

Gadgets - Control: Dictate the course of battle with ingenious mechanical weapons and tools.
Light - Control: As a deputy of the corps, use the power of Will or Fear to create hard light constructs and control or punish enemies.
Mental - Control: Assault and control others, either by psychic power or the sheer force of your will.
Quantum - Control: Bend time and space to gain control over your enemies.

Not a single place in this game does the game tell you to provide power to your teammates. Never. No controllers know about power over time or instant power dumps until they read the forums or someone rips them a new one in an instance. Why is that? I don't believe this idea of controllers being a "power battery" or "blue bar healer" was intended at the game's launch. In fact, I find both of those terms offensive. Telling a controller that they shouldn't use their weapon or any powers apart from p0t and their instant dump makes people not want to play the role at all. Sure, we also turn cogs and pick people up because we do have nifty shields that let us do that. But, still, that feels like it shouldn't be all there is to our role.

Before Home Turf came out, two roles could attack without getting a reduction in damage: damage and controllers. Hmm...why is that? Why was it expected back then for the scoreboard to have DPS, controllers, and then healers/tank? Once upon a time using our weapons as well as our powers for CC was beneficial. Now, even if we mod for precision, those two ranged taps we're doing between instant dumps has no chance of putting us anywhere near that 4th slot on the damage board. And no, it's not that I care about doing damage. Damage is damage as long as the instance finishes. The fact of the matter is, we get hounded and hounded in game and on the forums if we're not using the instant dump the millisecond it's off cooldown.

Last rantfest before I end this bookish reply. The devs, whether intentionally or not, are every bit as responsible as the playerbase for ruining the controller role. As Tesseract was saying, this game has turned into a glorification of the DPS role. If you don't think so, think back to when HT dailies came out. Could you complete those, or the interior missions, in a support role? Yes, but you better pack some serious soders and be prepared to kite and take your time. As soon as I had DPS gear, though, I could burn through them. Same with SoT. I tried running them between raids in my troll gear and it just takes forever. Put on some DPS gear, and it's so much easier, especially if I go into DPS stance. That's not even to mention the feats. If you look into your feat list, how many feats are speed feats? More than anything else, that depends on DPSers. It's those feats that made people start calling for single tanks and single healers and single controllers. Nexus doesn't have a speed feat, but those enrage timers are pretty much the same thing. Get it done in under this amount of time or else....

TL;DR: I agree with the OP. Something needs to change to make this role enjoyable again. The game has gone way too much toward the DPS/Speedfeat end of the spectrum so that the only people that can really do what they want in this game are the DPS (no offense intended toward DPSers in general, not your design). Stop making instances all about speed and more about tactics (other than avoiding one shots) so that all roles have to be on their toes and teams need to work together.