"Arresting"

Ahh. That, I see what you're saying - I can't say I'd see it as a regular worry (outside, say, groups like RO.) The "Call ambushes at life level" (though I can't think of it being too often) I could see being problematic, unless the "arrest timer" is viewed as the same as the life bar (time left/life %) for that situation.

... that said, - "Even if it took 30 minutes, it'd still be safer" (looking at a GM,) - why is that an issue? I mean, I can round up a team and most can take down a GM in much less time than that. PUGGing the other night (maybe a week,) we went through four GMs in maybe 15 minutes (a chunk of that being travel time, and waiting for me to come back from a system lock.) Now, if the alternative option is 30 minutes a piece in complete safety, that would be two hours to do the same. I can't see that as a problem, as - well, it's doing much oc the same as Dr. Mike's "speed for safety" comments. Swapping pure damage for Controllers would still be faster (well, to a point.) Taking advantage of debuffs will still tilt it more in favor of damage and debuffs.

I'll also admit to discounting worries about "teams of controllers" doing anything. Could they do more? Sure. How often (outside of theme teams/nights) do you really see them in the wild? Given how long RO has been out doing things (and not getting ATs or powersets nerfed as a result - Green Machine turning Empaths into "regen blasters," for instance, which was a heck of a lot of fun) I can't see that as being high on the list of worries, or turning into a FOTM team you'll see popping up all over suddenly.

See my Guides and Tutorials

Not control TIMER numbers so much as my proposed control BAR numbers, but here's what I'm looking at:

For your run-of-the-mill minion, I'd have a control bar of 9-12 magnitude's worth of bar. That would be three to four mag 3 holds like Char or Block of Ice and 5-6 mag 2 controls like Thunder Clap or Whirling Mace. I haven't thought about lieutenants and above yet.

Now, keep in mind that the reason to have a bar instead of just invisible magnitude is sort of an extension of an old idea I had to remedy the binary nature of status effects in general. One of the things that has always bugged me about control effects is how strong they are perceived to be (and they are) because in almost no situation do they actually build up with repeated use, meaning you can't "hold him harder." The enemy is either hurt or he's not. My old, original idea was to have holds last longer the higher your mag was, so if you double-stack Tesla Cage, it'll last longer than JUST its duration since last application.

The point with this is to give Controllers a meaningful choice - do I want to hold several enemies at once and Brawl them to death, or do I want to focus on one enemy and hold him multiple times, either defeating him or at least taking him out of the fight for MINUTES?

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Let me give an easy example: Fossilise from Earth Control has a 22 second hold duration and an 8-second recharge time. Even with just minor slotting, you can stack three holds on a minion before he wakes up. Now, suppose that minion had a "hold bar" of 9 that's split up into three sections and decays at 0.135 points per second. That's about 22 seconds before the mag runs out and the enemy wakes up. However, suppose you wait 8 seconds and slap another hold. In 8 seconds, you're down 1.08 mag to 1.92. With the next hold, you're back up to 4.92, only because you are now in the middle section of the hold bar, it now recovers only 0.1 mag per second. 8 more seconds pass and 0nly 0.8 mag has recovered, for a total of 4.12. Another hold down the line, and the enemy is looking at a total mag of 7.12, which is now in the third section of the hold bar, where mag recovers at only 0.5 mag per second. Another 8 seconds down, and the enemy has only recovered another 0.4, for a total of 6.72. Slap one more hold, it hoes to 9.72, which is higher than the mag 9 cutoff line, and the enemy is permanently defeated.

That's more or less how I see it. There are ways to account for lieutenants and minions with different sizes of hold bars, different recovery rates, different hold effects and different cutoff rates, both high and low. For instance, lieutenants could wake up once their buff bar falls under 3 (but it will still register hold up until it reaches 0), and the different holds could apply more or less mag depending on how long or strong they need to be.

I don't know. I just want to see hold effects done such that they are a little less binary and that stacking holds is a viable alternative to spreading holds around.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Oh, I didn't assume you'd never been on a TF. In fact, I actually assumed you had, and were just misrepresenting or misremembering how those TFs you'd been on actually worked.

Even if the Boss limit was as little as one minute, the damage route would almost certainly still be the faster route to defeat. And if you can manage to keep an AV held for five minutes (for instance), without the PToD breaking it out, you deserve the win anyway.

So I really don't see the problem here. I'm already used to debuffing AVs into oblivion (I run several Darks, and a Traps, and frequently group with Sonics and Rads); I don't see holding them as much different.

Bill: Quick, start a thread about vet rewards!