Defenders vs Controller Disparity.

Fire does not have weaker control, Fire actually has pretty good control.

Exactly, this is a problem really. CoV is much more balanced in this respect and also has less Copy/Pasting of powersets. For instance, a Mastermind Dark Miasma has a much smaller radius on its heal. Controllers have no such penalties like that.

I think changing Containment to fall inside of damage buffs would be a great first step. I don't see the point in damage caps when Containment effectively walks straight around it and effectively raises the Controllers damage cap by a huge margain.

If containment did +100% damage, it would still have the same effect yet would also fall inside normal damage caps. You would only feel it as a nerf if you were damage capped, and that is the is the situation where Controllers are too powerful.

Overpowered is probably not the best word, more like oddly powered. Way too much offense which is countered by the lower mitigation (until you team it up with mitigation). Fulcrum Shift's offensive buff, IMO, is too high, on all ATs, with all powersets. Its synergy with higher damage sets makes sense and is not the problem, IMO.

If synergy was bad, Storm/Dark would a major problem.

Well Fulcrum Shift is overpowered no matter what set it is combined with. Its just Ice/Kin and Earth/Kin don't leverage it as much solo as Fire/Kin's do.

In teams however, Fulcrum Shift has the same effect on Scrappers, Blasters and Tankers whether you are a Fire/ or an Ice/

In that sense, it is overpowered in every regard.

Having said that, Kinetics without Fulcrum Shift is not a great set really, so I wouldn't propose making changes.

A more strategic way would be to tackle it through changing containment, an inherent that is fundementally broken and combining it with fulcrum shift almost takes Controller damage into the realms of exploitive. Hot Feet, not Fire Imps is the key.

In fact it would be a significant BUFF to pre-SO damage levels.

Sounds good, but...

Effects becomes next to pointless when you engage AVs, Ebs and Bosses, they are great when fighting minions though. I prefer more damage in secondaries, effects need boosting either way.

Hugs

Stormy

Very good point. Which is why i have been trying to get people to focus on fixing DEFENDER rather than nerfing controllers. It really doesnt matter how much controller is 'balanced' if defenders remain as they are. So, we need to look at defender first and foremost.

I'm not really seeing any way they could turn it into a damage buff without it being possible to benefit from without having interacted with the target enemy.

ie. My mind troller sucks really bad at ptod EB's, I can't control them at all and my damage is sad because I can't control them at all.

If containment provided a damage buff, then I could just pull a minion over and keep sleeping it and apply the damage buff I receive onto the EB.

To me that doesn't really fit with the term "containment" where you benefit from locking down your target.

There are lots of ways to go after containment (or outlier troller builds) in general that doesn't involve a drastic change to how the mechanic functions, but I think we should all just wait to see how Fulcrum plays out post i16 before continuing down this path.

You misunderstood. We mean a +Dam buff for the power when it is used upon a locked-down target, not a +Dam buff to the user for a period of time.

Currently, a power like Blind does 30 damage (enhanceable), +30 damage (enhanceable) if target is locked. If instead it received a +100% damage enhancement to its values if the target is locked down, then we wouldn't have Containment breaking past damage caps.

Granted, I'm not sure if this is possible to code. The way powers have their abilities coded, I'm not sure that a power can self-affect its own values.

Yes, we need to buff Defenders, but you are being naive.

The only way to make Defenders balanced and worthwhile given Controllers current overpowered state is to make make Defenders overpowered as well. Then Blasters are upset and soon, everyone is upset.

"Nerfing" containment is completely justified. Its not even a nerf, it is just a way to stop it from being abused with massive +damage from /Kinetics, it would have no effect on most solo controllers.

Stated much better then I could have, thanks

I don't think it would necessarily be quick because my understanding is containment is coded on to each Controller primary power individually, the containment icon you get as an inherent doesn't actually do anything. This is why some powers such as repulsion bomb and sands of mu don't get any bonus, it isn't a blanket thing.

I don't think the previous poster was being naive, I think he was being realistic. There is NO way the dev's are going to 'balance' defenders by nerfing controllers - whether the nerf is real or just perceived. I mean, look at the hue and cry over the changes to dominators, which in all but a few, corner cases was definitely a buff.

He is also correct to say that nerfing controllers will NOT make more people play defenders, it will just make less people play controllers - if defenders don't get improved and controllers get nerfed folks will probably just move to corruptors in going rogue as they can at least solo decently.

Easy way would be I think (famous last words of course, standard code rant applies)
Make the 'if locked portion' +30 damage (Ignores Enhancements & Buffs)

Bingo, however I see the point of disparity since Controllers have practically made Defenders useless. Used to it wasn't the case, but that was 4+ years ago too.

Afaik this wouldn't be possible, or at the very least it would be very difficult. Damage buffs are global.

There are ways to achieve what you are more or less seeking, but overall it is at least a 50% reduction in containment and I for one don't see that as necessary or warranted.

The only way I'm familar with achieving a per target damage boost is through the critical mechanic. And the critical mechanic always works outside of the damage caps. You can either reduce containment or reduce the damage cap. One way hits all trollers and depending on how it is implemented - across all levels. The other way hits a targeted few outliers and only when they start to stomp all over the game.

I have quite a few controllers and two lvl 50 /kins so I'm not personally keen on either, but if I had to choose one I'd take a bullet on my /kins before I made every troller combination suffer due to what /kin can do.

Um, no. If people are avoiding Defenders due to their low damage, nerfing Controllers would just drive people away from Controllers, and not towards Defenders. Unless you think everyone but Defenders should be nerfed, to coerce people into playing them.

I play Corruptors; I play Controllers; I play Masterminds, all ATs with buff/debuff secondaries. I DON'T play Defenders; they just do too little damage to be any fun. The problem is the weakness of Defenders, and nerfing other ATs will just make them worse; it won't make Defenders better.

Where as I sympathize with this attitude, I don't think an AT which can outdamage Blasters, outlive Tankers and outsupport Defenders is 'balanced'.

Exactly. However, having played a Mind Controller I would like to add that the term 'contained' should be expanded to include ANY type of mez including fear and confuse. This would allow Mind (and Illusion) Controllers to leverage AoE Containment at least a little better.

Interesting. Is there talk about changes to FS that warrants believing it will be changed anytime soon? If this is about to happen, I do hope the entire set will get a look to make it a bitt less "weak defenses for insane offensive rewards". That way I might actually consider playing a Kinetics Defender over a Kinetics Controller.

Not entirely true. There will always be need of support minded ATs and more people would be willing to play Defenders if Controllers wasn't the blatantly obvious better choice. Of course, Going Rogue will bring Corruptors to the mix which could make the popularity of Defenders sink even further despite nerf to Containment. That said, the best approach is dualistic in nature; nerfs and boosts where warranted.

That would achieve a similar goal, but not exactly the same as respecting damage caps.

Right now, a damage-capped Kin does 400% base damage, and 800% with Containment. By removing the enhanceability of Contained damage, this would have the character do 400% base damage, and 500% with Containment.

By contrast, an unslotted power would do 100% base damage, or 200% with Containment, both currently and under this mechanism. So it's basically a method that lowers the effect of damage increases (via enhancement or buffs) upon Containment.

Another though is this: since we have "ignores Enhancements" and "ignores buffs" separately, we COULD have Containment damage ignore buffs but NOT enhancements. So Controllers who don't have damage buffs wouldn't see a change, but those who do, would find that they could only reach 600% base damage instead of 800% (400% on the base damage, and Contained damage increased to about 200% at best via enhancements).

While that would solve the problem of Fire/Kins farming solo, it would also mess up controller values while teamed. (ie: no benefits from assault, AM, someone elses FS, etc.). It would also make using damage inspirations pointless except for boosting base damage.

The solution there might simply to be to make FS not affect the caster (it would still affect pets however). With the exception of Grant Cover though all group buffs affect the caster.

2 other problems with this solution are that it's a serious nerf to non-controller Kin users like Defenders and Corruptors and (IIRC) FS calls a pet that isn't set up to "know" which target it is affecting so that it won't affect it's "caster."

Kinetics already suffer from being a "ally only" set with powers like Increase Density and Speed Boost. Making it's crowning power more of that line would be much too harsh.

AFAIK Fulcrum Shift is like this:

Defender: +50% damage initial target, +25% damage per additional target
Controller/Corrupter: +40% damage intial target, +25% damage per additional target

...virtually no difference and vs. large spawns a Controller or Corrupter is equally able to damage cap the team as a Defender is. Make it into something like:

Defender: +50% damage initial target, +10% damage per additional target
Controller/Corrupter: +40% damage initial target, +8% damage per additional target

...and FS would be very powerful still, but lose some of its overpower in large spawn situations. Solo ability would virtually be unnaffected by such a change.

To compensate the set, Siphon Speed could be made to have an AoE slow compartment. Increase Density could even be made into a lethal/smashing resistance toggle with a slight slow foe effect but no mez protection (similar to Chilling Embrace). Speed Boost could get mez resistance added with longer duration (mez resistance is more logical here than in Increase Density anyway). Such changes would benefit Defenders and Corruptors more than Controllers. It would make the set less of a one trick pony and be more fun to play for Defenders/Corruptors.

I would also look into lowering the damage cap for all ATs slightly.

Ultimately though, this is just pipe dreams (nightmare for Kinetic farmers ). Powers rarely get changed and FS has been allowed to exist in its current grossly overpowered form for far too long. Chances are the devs will continue to neglect balance issues.

It would not be "no benefit", it would be half the benefit. It's not like "base damage" is 1/10 of your damage, it's 1/2 of it. And this is an issue Brutes already have, when they are at full Fury, they don't get as much benefit from team buffs.

Controllers used to get no benefit from buffs, though, in PvP back when Containment damage was unresistable. And this is the problem, if you make Containment constant so it can't be buffed, it also can't be debuffed. So Controllers will do a lot more damage in situations where the team's damage is debuffed. While this might be useful, it seems more like a function Defenders should have, not Controllers. And it wouldn't effect the extra damage dealt to a foe with a -Res debuff anyway.

As much as I hate the Critical mechanism, there really isn't any way to make it work any other way.

Wait, i thought the suggestion was to make Containment damage unaffected by buffs/debuffs? i see nothing wrong with the Controller bonus damage being limited in that manner. After all, they still can buff their regular damage. If it's possible to set containment damage up to ignore buffs/debuffs and still use enhanced values it's hardly that significant of a nerf, but it will reduce the more extreme effects of powers like Fulcrum Shift on performance.

This makes a lot of sense to me. I had heard people advocating a lower controller damage cap, but never understood why it would help. Explained this way, though, you're correct: it would hit the outliers, and have little effect on the sets that are performing more int he middle of the pack.

IIRC, containment was set up originally to help controllers solo, because they had low initial damage. I would say that someone leveraging a damage-capped, containment-boosted hot feet or fireball no longer NEEDS containment to fulfill its original role.

In other words, no nerfs. If people aren't playing Defenders it's unjustifiable to nerf Controllers in some attempt to coerce people into playing Defenders.