Matters of the Mind: A powers change proposal
By
EmperorSteele,
Posted on: 2009-05-29 14:54 in Controllers
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SoC is plant's "up every fight" power...like Wormhole or flashfire or ice slick, etc. MC is definitely not mind control's up every fight power...it has terrify (and both mind and plant have sleeps.) I really don't see any reason why seeds of confusion and mass confusion need to be at all comparable, because they play completely different roles in their respective sets.
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This is not a good reason to argue for the imbalance between SoC and MC.
Powers need to be balanced against and objective standard, and what Castle has been doing so far (balancing animation time and recharge) is consistent with this idea.
It would be like saying, a Street Fighting scrapper primary has an attack at level 8 that did the same damage as Eagle's Claw, but had the recharge and endurance cost of thunder kick. However, it is balanced because that attack is most often used in the Street-Fighting attack chain.
Secondly, there is also some confusion about cause and effect here. Something that has a quick recharge is "up for every fight"... SoC is Plant's "up for every fight" because it is a good control that has a short recharge. (For mind, terrify) You can't use the fact that SoC " is an "up for every fight" to then justify it having a short recharge.
That said, I don't think mind suffers from having a long recharge on MC, and I find MC easier to use than SOC, and stackable with confuse. I consider SOC better as a crowd control power even though I find problems dealing with boss-heavy spawns. Plant and Mind do play differently. But these differences don't justify the vast disparity in the two powers' recharge and acc; similar powers should be balanced similarly.
BTW, I play both plant and mind controller...I'm playing the plant controller more these days than the mind controller.
"Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty." -- Plato
Playing Gods (51106) - Heroic Lvl 5-20
What Rough Beast (255143) - Villainous Lvl 40-50
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Solo spawns, mass hypnosis is just fine.
Say you have the standard 3 enemy spawn.
MH....Dominate one (containment damage....enemy now held).....Hypnotize the next (containment damage....enemy still slept)........Dominate the next (containment damage....enemy now held).....Levitate the first (containtment damage.....enemy still held from earlier)....Dominate the second (containment damage...enemy held)....... (well you get it)
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This is how I approached things. MH, then rotate the ST powers. Duration on all of them is pretty long (I have my MH at ~45s with a 25s recharge...Mesmerize is at about 100s dur), so keeping everyone locked down really isn't all that hard.
Agreed on the minimal usefulness of TD. It became an emergency power for me.
Haven't used TK.
Mass Confusion - could probably use a buff. Maybe cut it's recharge. I like the power*, but compared to Singy on my Grav...I think I prefer having Singy up all the time.
* I like the power, but often I'm not sure what else I should be doing while the power is out. Mass Hyp doesn't mix - why sleep guys who could be damaging each other? Plus the sleeps just get broken anyway. Terrify? Again, cuts down on the self attacks. Same goes for locking down with Dominate/TD. On a Dominator where you have secondary attacks you could be using, different story.
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Is Mind really that bad off? I have limited experience with it, but whenever I've teamed with a Mind Controller, I've always felt really, really safe. Mind just seems to offer so many powers that are consistently useful for keeping stuff from shooting back.
Pets can be useful solo, but on large teams I find them much less so. I often find myself wishing I had "just one more control" I could throw at the crowd. Instead I often have a dim witted pet that runs off and pulls aggro, dies, and gets me killed instantly. 
I also think the problem might be less that Mind lacks Containment, and more that Containment itself becomes overpowered at high levels. I'm going to be murdered for saying this, but I've long thought that Containment should only apply to single-target attacks and not AoEs. Which would be rough on us, but the fact that we regularly outdamage Defenders, who have a Blast set as a Secondary, has long puzzled me.
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Is Mind really that bad off? I have limited experience with it, but whenever I've teamed with a Mind Controller, I've always felt really, really safe. Mind just seems to offer so many powers that are consistently useful for keeping stuff from shooting back.
Pets can be useful solo, but on large teams I find them much less so. I often find myself wishing I had "just one more control" I could throw at the crowd. Instead I often have a dim witted pet that runs off and pulls aggro, dies, and gets me killed instantly.
I also think the problem might be less that Mind lacks Containment, and more that Containment itself becomes overpowered at high levels. I'm going to be murdered for saying this, but I've long thought that Containment should only apply to single-target attacks and not AoEs. Which would be rough on us, but the fact that we regularly outdamage Defenders, who have a Blast set as a Secondary, has long puzzled me.
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Did you play a controller pre-Containment? A man build with brawl only outdamaged controllers pre Containment. We gave up a lot control wise for containment (in a round about sort of way), but it did allow for controllers as a whole to be viable soloers. Not the fastest but at least possible.
@Mental Maden @Maden Mental
"....you are now tackle free for life."-ShoNuff
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Did you play a controller pre-Containment? A man build with brawl only outdamaged controllers pre Containment. We gave up a lot control wise for containment (in a round about sort of way), but it did allow for controllers as a whole to be viable soloers. Not the fastest but at least possible.
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I didn't. But it doesn't matter because Fire/Kinetics has already left the port, so it's doubtful it would ever be changed now anyway.
Fire/Kins were powerful pre Containment. My point was if you want to nerf containment, then controllers (non- Ill/rad, fire/kin, etc) would be relegated to the "must have team" types that they used to be.
Imagine a pre Containment Ice/FF. 
@Mental Maden @Maden Mental
"....you are now tackle free for life."-ShoNuff
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Fire/Kins were powerful pre Containment. My point was if you want to nerf containment, then controllers (non- Ill/rad, fire/kin, etc) would be relegated to the "must have team" types that they used to be.
Imagine a pre Containment Ice/FF.
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Heh. I have a friend who had one of these. Teamed with him with my Emp/Psi...
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Fire/Kins were powerful pre Containment. My point was if you want to nerf containment, then controllers (non- Ill/rad, fire/kin, etc) would be relegated to the "must have team" types that they used to be.
Imagine a pre Containment Ice/FF.
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Again it's probably moot because I think changes to Containment are unlikely. However I wasn't suggesting a return to pre-containment levels. My only 50 is Ice/Thermal and doesn't have any AoE attacks except Frostbite. He is able to solo decently just mitigating the damage with controls and relying on the single target blasts and the pet. He's not the most amazing solo character ever, but then I didn't pick Ice or Thermal (or Force Field) under the illusion that I'd be a fantastic solo character.
And I would be the last person that advocates that all sets must be able to solo like a scrapper. I'm one of the few old timey Control board regulars that still believes trollers are meant to be on teams and function best in groups. But trust me, we don't have a few things now that we at least had pre containment (like faster recharging and longers mezzing aoe holds and multiple pets...and we'll never get those back) and a reduction in containment would cripple controllers.
@Mental Maden @Maden Mental
"....you are now tackle free for life."-ShoNuff
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SoC is plant's "up every fight" power...like Wormhole or flashfire or ice slick, etc. MC is definitely not mind control's up every fight power...it has terrify (and both mind and plant have sleeps.) I really don't see any reason why seeds of confusion and mass confusion need to be at all comparable, because they play completely different roles in their respective sets.
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This is not a good reason to argue for the imbalance between SoC and MC.
Powers need to be balanced against and objective standard, and what Castle has been doing so far (balancing animation time and recharge) is consistent with this idea.
It would be like saying, a Street Fighting scrapper primary has an attack at level 8 that did the same damage as Eagle's Claw, but had the recharge and endurance cost of thunder kick. However, it is balanced because that attack is most often used in the Street-Fighting attack chain.
Secondly, there is also some confusion about cause and effect here. Something that has a quick recharge is "up for every fight"... SoC is Plant's "up for every fight" because it is a good control that has a short recharge. (For mind, terrify) You can't use the fact that SoC " is an "up for every fight" to then justify it having a short recharge.
That said, I don't think mind suffers from having a long recharge on MC, and I find MC easier to use than SOC, and stackable with confuse. I consider SOC better as a crowd control power even though I find problems dealing with boss-heavy spawns. Plant and Mind do play differently. But these differences don't justify the vast disparity in the two powers' recharge and acc; similar powers should be balanced similarly.
BTW, I play both plant and mind controller...I'm playing the plant controller more these days than the mind controller.
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It is clear from looking at the control sets, though, that most do indeed have an "up every fight" AOE control that lasts a while and can serve to at least partially neutralize the spawn during the fight.
I don't think this is accidental and believe the sets were specifically designed with this in mind. So SoC really does seem to play an entirely different role than MC.
You can argue all you want, but do you know what? The current facts support me, as SoC does have a much shorter recharge than MC despite their other obvious similarities. Why is this? Well, because it is plant controls "up every fight" signature control, as I said.
Although you might see some reduction on MC's recharge, it is not going to get as low as SoC. This will not be because it is so uber because it doesn't aggro, but rather because that will be giving Mind Control a little too much "up every fight" control ability. For example, they would never (I think) remove Mass Confusion's aggro-free quality and simultaneously reduce its recharge to that of SoC, as this would make the set overpowered.
I agree that Mind Control does seem a little underpowered now.
"Hi, my name is Ail. I make people sick."
A partial selection from my 50's on Freedom: Ail = Ice/Traps, Luck = Street Justice/Super Reflexes Stalker, Mist = Bane, Pixy = Trick Arrow/Archery, Pure = Gravity/Energy, Smoke = Fire/Fire Dominator
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You can argue all you want, but do you know what? The current facts support me, as SoC
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That does not in any way constitute a proof. There are many powers in this game that currently suffer from grandfather clause inconsistencies back when powers were not balanced to an objective standard; there used to be many people who used that argument to "prove" the old Energy Transfer was balanced because Energy Melee was lackluster in every other way except for ET and Total Focus.
The trend is to tweak recharge, damage, and animation times to balance them to an objective standard. The question is how long it takes for devs to go through the powers...if ever.
If MC and SoC are never rebalanced, it's in no way going to affect my current level of enjoyment playing either set. But that doesn't mean they are balanced either.
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Although you might see some reduction on MC's recharge, it is not going to get as low as SoC.
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Except that I never argued that MC should be identical to SoC in both recharge and accuracy, so I'd appreciate it if you don't make it sound like I were. The two powers are similar, not identical, as have been pointed out many times. The ease of use for an spherical AoE power (compared to cone), and the lack of aggro would make MC overpowered if it were identical to SoC in terms of recharge and acc.
However, they are similar enough that they shouldn't be this unequal in terms of recharge and acc on the side of SoC. MC should get either some reduce in recharge, or an acc buff. What exactly should be done would be up to what the objective balancing standard is, and how much leeway on either side of the equation.
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This will not be because it is so uber because it doesn't aggro, but rather because that will be giving Mind Control a little too much "up every fight" control ability.
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The idea that Mind control has too much "up every fight" controllability compared to Plant Control is over-rated.
Mass hypnosis == Spore burst
Total Dominaton == Vines
Mass confusion << Seeds of Confusion
Terrify -> ?
? <- Carrion Crawlers
I don't think Terrify and Carrion Crawlers can be compared because they are so dissimilar. As for telekinesis, it is a situational power and it only hits about 5 while costing far too much endurance.
What Mind Control is better at compared to Plant Control, is single target control and damage, starting right from lowbie level. On the other hand, Plant Control has a pet and immobs (a pretty good AoE immob too). I find Spirit tree mediocre and don't bother with it.
"Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty." -- Plato
Playing Gods (51106) - Heroic Lvl 5-20
What Rough Beast (255143) - Villainous Lvl 40-50
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Is Mind really that bad off? I have limited experience with it, but whenever I've teamed with a Mind Controller, I've always felt really, really safe. Mind just seems to offer so many powers that are consistently useful for keeping stuff from shooting back.
Pets can be useful solo, but on large teams I find them much less so. I often find myself wishing I had "just one more control" I could throw at the crowd. Instead I often have a dim witted pet that runs off and pulls aggro, dies, and gets me killed instantly.
I also think the problem might be less that Mind lacks Containment, and more that Containment itself becomes overpowered at high levels. I'm going to be murdered for saying this, but I've long thought that Containment should only apply to single-target attacks and not AoEs. Which would be rough on us, but the fact that we regularly outdamage Defenders, who have a Blast set as a Secondary, has long puzzled me.
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Did you play a controller pre-Containment? A man build with brawl only outdamaged controllers pre Containment. We gave up a lot control wise for containment (in a round about sort of way), but it did allow for controllers as a whole to be viable soloers. Not the fastest but at least possible.
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I much preferred the pre-containment/ED days when we were actually a support AT(a damned good support AT) instead of little wannabe blasters.
So many controllers focus on damage now rather than locking down everything so the real damage dealers can let loose. If I wanted a blaster I'd make one.
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Is Mind really that bad off? I have limited experience with it, but whenever I've teamed with a Mind Controller, I've always felt really, really safe. Mind just seems to offer so many powers that are consistently useful for keeping stuff from shooting back.
Pets can be useful solo, but on large teams I find them much less so. I often find myself wishing I had "just one more control" I could throw at the crowd. Instead I often have a dim witted pet that runs off and pulls aggro, dies, and gets me killed instantly.
I also think the problem might be less that Mind lacks Containment, and more that Containment itself becomes overpowered at high levels. I'm going to be murdered for saying this, but I've long thought that Containment should only apply to single-target attacks and not AoEs. Which would be rough on us, but the fact that we regularly outdamage Defenders, who have a Blast set as a Secondary, has long puzzled me.
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Did you play a controller pre-Containment? A man build with brawl only outdamaged controllers pre Containment. We gave up a lot control wise for containment (in a round about sort of way), but it did allow for controllers as a whole to be viable soloers. Not the fastest but at least possible.
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I much preferred the pre-containment/ED days when we were actually a support AT(a damned good support AT) instead of little wannabe blasters.
So many controllers focus on damage now rather than locking down everything so the real damage dealers can let loose. If I wanted a blaster I'd make one.
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I wouldn't argue with you there and strongly agree with many of those points. What I meant though was I doubted if (for arguments sake) containment was removed we'd get all of our pre containment goodies back and that wouldn't be good. But I whole heartedly agree that I appreciate the AT more as a support role.
@Mental Maden @Maden Mental
"....you are now tackle free for life."-ShoNuff
Illu has no solid access to aoe containment either and Phantasm doesn't really make up for that.
Both sets seem to do fine without it.