Can anyone explain mind control?

Yup. Done it on my Mind Controller. Overpower connects 50% of the time, so usually 2-6 heroes will be slept with one application. With enough recharge you can keep them down for the count.

A+ reply.

Duke, everybody seems to be talking some version of relative merits, but let me make my observation fully clear...

A Mind/* Controller can walk through a mission without taking a single hit of damage. Playing their AoE mezzes and Powerful ST chain, the enemy may never even be Able to aggro the Mind/* Controller and any survivors won't know or remember what happened.

An investigation team will find no scorch marks, no cold spots, no piles of broken rock, no mysterious pool-tables/statues/trashcans, or other strange junk lying around for no reason. In fact, the only answer to 'What the heck Happened here??' will be 'Everyone went crazy and died.' An Experienced investigator might realize, at that point, that a Mind/* Controller must be the answer. Particularly after seeing the bodies of the people who mysteriously smashed their heads against the ground, over and over.

On a Team, the Mind/* Controller harnesses the chaos of battle and turns it against the enemy. Or they work as above, only serving up a smorgasbord of helpless foes for their teammates to brutalize - I mean 'arrest'.

Here's the key... Mind Control is Subtle. Not flashy. A clueless PUG may get through the whole mission and wonder 'What did Captain Brainwash contribute to this team? I didn't see him do Anything.' Yep, and neither did the bad-guys. They never knew what hit them.

But you'll know. You made it happen.

Be Well!
Fireheart

In my experience intermittently sleeping an AV offers no real mitigation if the rest of the team is hitting it.

These advantages are only relevant occasionally. They don't compensate for a fire controller producing more helplessly staggering about enemies than a mind controller does.

We can't compare control sets in a vaccum, but empathy is interesting in that it lets you see how the primary alone performs without any help from the secondary, and from there, infer how it might work with other powersets. When many people praise the performance of their Mind/Kin, Mind/Rad etc., it's really the secondary doing all the heavy lifting. Empathy eliminates that observer bias.

You claim that Mind can leverage other secondaries to greater effect without providing any compelling examples. A solo Mind/Kin would get to maximise FS at their leisure, but this would need to be weighed against the fact that it doesn't work as well in a team, and that modern characters can often be built to maximise FS, with or without aggroless controls. Mind's damage is so poor that it can't exploit the massive damage potential that other kins (Fire/, Plant/, etc.) bring to the table, which I consider a large disadvantage.


Mass Hypnosis doesn't set persistent containment and the need to reapply it constantly means mind controllers suffer an animation and endurance cost penalty. Mind has no aoe immobilize which, as I have mentioned above, not only sets persistent containment but also fires procs and DoT interfaces. It is really very difficult to overstate how much damage this does when the immobilize recharges once every 3 seconds plus change. The above two problems doom Mind control to the bottom of the barrel as regards damage. Some Mind controllers chose not to slot DoT interfaces in order to maintain the aggroless control advantage, which further hurts their damage.

It's worth noting that Illusion has the same problem of no persistent, low-recharge containment setter, but makes up for it by being able to control enemies that control primaries in general do not work against, while maintaining all of Mind's advantages (aggroless control, psi damage - there's even a nonpositional attack in there).

That said, I'll gladly change my opinion (and post here that I did) if someone shows me evidence. Get on your Mind controller and show me how fast you can kill things. I'll hop over to your server to take a look if you agree to come and see how fast my non-Mind controller can kill things. Send me a tell at @Laevateinn


The advantage is not unique, since Illusion also has it (and unlike Mind, Illusion is closer to being a truly aggroless control set, since you can beat on the PA-taunted enemies with impunity).

Between debuffs, self-buffs, and mitigation, modern builds have many ways to negate alpha strikes. In evaluating how much Mind's aggroless control ability is worth, it's worth looking at how other controllers fare without it. Since none of my controllers have any difficulty handling alpha strikes, even from enemies which their controls do not work against, I'm convinced the value is small/nonexistent. It would need to be weighed against the core disadvantage of not wielding enough control power for the amount of damage it does.

You're probably right in that Mind Dominators aren't all that hot either barring the edge case of the LRSF. I do tend to mention the Domintaor comparison because, if for whatever reason I absolutely had to play the powerset, I'd chose to do it on a Dominator - it has fewer issues compared to its peers.


Of course it can. Apart from fun (which is subjective and thus left out of balance discussions, which must focus on the objective), characters are built to complete content. How they accomplish that goal is immaterial because methods don't matter, results do. The faster characters can complete content, the less the risk they take while doing it, the more different types of content they can handle and the wider the range of situations under which they can do it, the better they are.

Since all powersets have their relative merits, one can always concoct some hypothetical situation which plays to the strengths of a particular powerset, and hype up its ability. Discerning players should ask themselves 1) how widely applicable the situation mentioned is, 2) how the character would fare in different situations, 3) whether other characters would fare just as well or better in the same situation, even if they employ different methods.

The OP didn't ask for reasons not to play a Mind Controller, so why are you going on about it?

A simple case of YMMV. What you find irrelevant, I find highly useful for those scenarios and will actively seek them out far more often. Sky Raiders, Trolls, and Destroyers are all groups where I appreciate Mind's ability to circumvent positional defense. Paragon Protectors also come to mind. Also, tightly knit Cimerorans.

I disagree. Empathy carries its own bias as well. It's buffs definitely alter the performance of any set with a pet. More importantly though examining a primary alone provides little insight because it will never be acting on its own.

Ice/kin or Mind/kin? Neither set is stellar for damage, but I prefer Mind/Kin for previously stated reasons. Fire/Emp or Mind/Emp? I'll definitely go with the Mind/Emp; low aggro means I'm safe to buff and heal. Mind is a natural pairing for buff oriented secondaries if your primary goal is a support role.

I'll agree that Mind does lose out when it comes to Interface powers. Without a spammable attack or numerous pets to trigger the procs, it loses not only damage but also the debuffs from those powers. Unfortunately, I think that speaks more to how unbalanced some of the Interface choices are rather than an inherent defect in Mind control. Sadly, with the newest batch of Interface powers, rather than bring Reactive in line, they've added more DoTs.

Obviously, your prime metric is how fast a character can defeat the enemy, a nice objective measurement. However, you're setting aside how much faster your allies can defeat the enemy with your support which is a more difficult metric to measure, especially with the inclusion of how much safety/uptime between defeats coming into play and non-peak performance. The importance placed on spamming the AoE immobilizes for damage also fails to recognize how dangerous this is for a large part of the game until you've built enough recharge for a reliable spawn to spawn control or the defense to survive uncontrolled mobs. Unfortunately, those objectives include investing in the invention system or utilizing epic power pools, which tend to come in effect late in the game. Unfortunately, this is also the point when most of your teammates have achieved their own survivablity via the same means, depreciating the value of control and shifting the preference towards damage. However, the end game is not the full game and an objective analysis will consider performance at all levels. TL;DR version: Your objective analysis is biased towards end game content and non-standard play (playing alone at x8).

More importantly, your dismissal of fun should stand as a warning to anyone who looks toward your advice to take it with a grain of salt. When we return to the OP's question "Why play mind control?" fun is very much a factor and objective analysis of dps and survivability do not address his question fully.

This..is just silly. No doubt your non-mind troller would be a fire kin, fire rad, ill rad, a pairing that is KNOWN to do major damage? And you want to compare that to someones mind troller...just to prove a point you already know, that your troller will kill faster? A lil petty? Especially when it has nothing to do with the original question..

I agree with points people have made here, both for and against and about MC. If it comes down to it, do you want a fun toon, that is also decent, or a great super i-can-killfaster-than-your-troller build, that might not be as much fun?

As an aside, Elec can also perma sleep AVs. Did an rsf with my elec dom and a friends elec troller. Two sleep patches laid at the same time..bam, game over. And safer too. Of course..the slow does make them VERY mad if they happen to wake..

Actually, Illusion has no AoE damage powers, so a persistant AoE Containment power would be wasted until APP levels. Illusion gets its limited AoE damage from having three PA and from Phantasm's cone attack. Illusion really is a single target attack specialist, so it really doesn't suffer from its lack of AoE Immob.

Illusion gets it Containment from Blind, and that's all it really needs (until APP levels, but Flash + a hold from the secondary can cover that).

Contrary to what you claim, I place a strong emphasis on flexibility, versatility and optimizing to face what's actually in the game rather than a solo farm. As far as I'm concerned, the ideal character ought to perform well solo and teamed, on offense and defense, at high levels and low levels, against single hard targets or hordes of weak enemies (and hordes of strong enemies), with capable teams and poor ones, against as many enemy groups in the game as possible. I don't think any character can check all of those boxes but the more it can, the better it is. I issue the quoted challenge only because you claim that Mind has "middling" aoe damage without evidence to back it up.

I don't have a single "prime metric", unlike some controllers who emphasize the support role exclusively, nor do I neglect the effect of support and control. In my first post I listed as one of Mind's most glaring weakness to be the fact that it actually outputs less hard mez than Fire. I also noted that illusion shares the same low-damage weakness that Mind has, however I don't consider it sub-par, since illusion gives control advantages significant enough to counter the weakness. The problem with Mind is one of not enough control for the damage it does, or vice versa. For a control-heavy set, Earth comes a lot more closer to providing enough control for the amount of damage it applies.

None of the examples you cite are so significant as to compensate for Mind's weaknesses. Every powerset has specific enemy groups that are weak to it so I consider this nothing special (for a more balanced perspective, it's worth also looking at how many enemies have psi res/def). You are right that one of Mind's advantages is that it's a remarkably strong low-level set. In the low levels where over-aggro can actually be a problem and a single boss is a pretty tough enemy, being able to juggle bosses with Lev and getting an aggroless early sleep makes it one of the really strong performers pre-30 (which is where IO sets begin to dominate) and especially pre-20 (before most controllers can effectively slot their aoe mezzes). I just don't consider it much of an advantage to be strong in the early game and weak in the lategame, not when the first 20 levels quickly fly by and when late-blooming IO builds nevertheless manage to fare decently when exemplared down.


Nowhere in the quoted text did I "dismiss fun". What I did say is that fun is subjective, and what's fun for me may not be fun for another person. When people ask "should I play powerset X?" I don't consider long stories of what I subjectively consider fun to be a useful contribution. I think it's much more useful to point out how the powersets stand in relation to each other, because most people do try to find a balance between performance and concept/playstyle etc. In the end, whether or not the character will be fun enough to outweigh any mechanical disadvantages is for the individual player to decide.

There's certainly nothing odd with playing weak or sub-par powersets. However, I'd rather people chose to do so as an informed decision rather than on the basis of hyped-up, unrealistic scenarios, or people chest-thumping on behalf of their characters.

In conclusion, nowhere did I dismiss fun, and the fact that you keep twisting the meaning of my posts should stand as a warning to everyone to take your posts with a grain of salt. Unfortunately, most people can't divorce criticism of a powerset from criticism of their characters, which they're heavily emotionally invested in.

That was in response to their claim that mind control's aoe damage ability "certainly isn't top tier, but it is middling" which is factually wrong. I want to see this so-called middling aoe damage for myself.

More broadly, people keep telling me about these mind controllers that supposedly have "good" damage (whether ST or aoe) relative to other primaries, without being able to explain where they are getting it from. I have a suspicion that a lot of these people simply haven't seen a high damage controller at work before, which is why I offered to show them one.

If you compare a high-recharge mind controller to one with no recharge, obviously the mind controller will win out. Comparisons between powersets are only meaningful when both have builds of the same quality and players of the same ability behind them.

The controllers that get aoe immobilizes, with the exception of Ice, all have at least one 90s base recharge hard mez aoe. That's what's keeping them safe even without any defense.

Sure, go ahead and do that. I want to see what a powerful mind controller looks like. Even with more money than the average player will see in their career, I couldn't design one that gave performance close to the big three primaries.

This is baloney.

By your measure no one should play anything that doesn't contribute AoE damage and kill rate. And by that metric, there are whole swaths of available powersets and even whole ATs no one should play.

Bunk.

First, I'll address the issue regarding AoE. I'm quite sure you'll disagree on however. If pets can be considered a portion of a sets AoE potential (and you have already included Illusion's) then Confuse (and Deceive) must be as well as it grants Mind (and Illusion) a virtual pet with every spawn. Confusing a single lieutenant or boss in a spawn undeniably reduces the damage contribution need from the player to defeat the mobs. In fact, confusing a boss is sometimes a poor tactic in regards to xp/time due to the amount of damage they can deal to their allies.

A simple examination of the uptime of hard mezzes may favor Fire, however, Mind offers more soft control and the benefit of aggroless control, something which we obviously value differently. For instance, Mass Hypnosis in my experience is not only a soft control, but an aggro management tool that allows the player to shed aggro from himself while temporarily halting incoming damage, similar to Placate. While you may not view that as a significant advantage, I have utilized it regularly, from disengaging ambushes such as those in the SSA allowing me to focus on the mission complete objectives to shaking off pursuers in the Lambda trial.

In your opinion, they do not compensate for mind's weaknesses.

As to psi resists and defenses, Carnies are the only group that actually has inherent defense to Psi across the board; Rularuu Whisps are unique in their faction for having some. There are factions which have significant resistance to Psi among their mobs, most notably Arachnos with Fortunata and Widows and Malta Titans. However, what is overlooked when this argument comes around is how much more prevalent smashing, lethal, and (to a lesser degree) energy resists are (though rarely as strong), which affects Earth, Gravity, Plant, and Electric. In fact, all of the mention mobs have other resistances in addition to their resistance to mind.

On a side note, the old Praetorian robots also highly resisted psi, but have been largely replaced with Clockwork and Warworks which do not. Unfortunately, this has led to the misconception that all robotic enemies have high psi defense.

In my experience, Arachnos are the worst enemy to fight with a Mind Control because of the combination of psi resist found among their ranks and the mez protection many of them possess.

Again, you don't consider Mind's early advantages worthwhile. However, not long ago, the devs released statistics showing that the vast majority of characters created do not reach level 50. In fact, the DFB trial was created to help accommodate the many that rarely even reach level 20. Having that advantage early in the game is quite significant if it maintains a person's interest in playing later on.

Oh, but you did.... bolded for emphasis.

Apart from fun... in other words, setting fun a part... putting it to the side... our goal is to complete content. Let me ask, if we put fun apart, what purpose is there in completing content? Is it a goal in itself?

You entered this thread with a dismissive tone and claimed to offer a "more objective description" of mind control. It was, perhaps, more objective than ES's enthusiastic description of the set, however, it is skewed by your own preferences and playstyle. The matter of Mind's various advantages and disadvantages is, obviously, up for debate. To present yourself as an objective authority is a charade. While from your perspective, hard numbers may be a reason to play a set for many, and dare I say most, the subjective fun factor is why they play.

That's a nice dig you attempted to get in there, but unfortunately it missed its mark. I thoroughly enjoy Mind for what it is and have used it on several characters; however, my attachment to those characters isn't strong and two are slated for retirement once I've stripped their IO's. Now do you wish to imply that I'm somehow emotionally invested with the set itself?

Quite the contrary. People should play whatever they enjoy, which I've consistently said, but which people chose to ignore, since it suits their purposes more to paint me as a build nazi.

This still doesn't change the fact that there are real differences in the capabilities of ATs and powersets. When powersets underperform, as Mind Control does, it's a balance problem and ought to be pointed out.

This is more significant if you're playing a mind controller with very few ways to neutralize enemies (no defense, no debuffs, no resistance etc.), or if you're at low levels (which I already said). Well-built controllers aren't bothered by trailing enemies or aggroing multiple spawns at once.

That's the problem with Mind Control. It has a lot of little niche advantages that are useful in specific situations, but doesn't bring enough of the stuff that matters in every encounter (control and damage). It's a dish with too much gravy and not enough meat.

A low-level advantage is worthwhile, and I do consider this in favor of powersets that mature early e.g. Rad, versus those that mature late e.g. Kin, Cold, Time. However, this must be weighed against all other advantages and disadvantages that a set brings, against the fact that characters very quickly blow past 1-20, against the existence of exemplar builds designed to dominate low-level content, and against the fact that characters exemplaring down can fare much better than characters levelling up naturally, all of which reduce the importance of performing well at low levels. A more balanced perspective would also take into account the fact that high-level/incarnate content tends to be much more challenging, which is why a lot of minmaxing effort focuses on the 50+ game.

I've already corrected your misinterpretation of what I said in my last post. Again you ignore what I clearly and unambiguously said to focus on a clumsy turn of phrase. Try not to steer the argument away from objective discussion of Mind control's deficiencies and towards character assassination.

That's not my perspective. My perspective is that people should be given accurate information so that they can decide for themselves what they want to play. People trying to downplay weaknesses by saying that Mind has "middling" aoe damage, or hyping up strengths by saying that it can solo the Hamidon or "never take a point of damage" don't constitute this.

Perhaps you need to examine you unambiguous wording as I'm not the only individual to interpret it as such. And again... this discussion of Mind control has been far from objective from the very start. Obviously, there are things to be said for the utility of Mind's controls in both the early and late game, and you've even commented on Mind's early potential. However, the importance that should be placed on early vs. late game or vice versa is obviously a subjective matter and any discussion of a sets value are going to be tinted by that fact.

I have already addressed my statement about Mind's AoE damage by presenting my view that its confuse powers contribute to its damage potential. Admittedly, that is a difficult measure to make as it varies from mob to mob.