Dark Control: Possess Vs Mind Control: Confuse
By
Airhammer,
Posted on: 2012-03-07 01:32 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
Aside from the reason of it looking and sounding awesome.
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The reason for this might be due to trying to 'possess' their target instead of confusing it. Such an attack is more complex an action to actually take control of a person's mind than it is to befuddle them with confusion. That's how I look at it. BTW, I'm loving Dark Control with Dark Assault.
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Originally Posted by Xilibrius
I know its only a minor difference but was there any reason given on why Possess is 2.33s activation to Confuses 2.00s with no difference in how the power operates?
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Current active characters: Dragon Maiden (50+3 Brute SS/WP/PM), Black Widow Maiden (50+1 Night Widow), Catayclasmic Ariel (50 lvl Defender - Kin/DP), Quantumshock (50 lvl Elect/Energy/Energy), American's Defender (38 lvl Tanker - SD/Mace), Spider-Maiden (15 lvl Corruptor - RB/PD) & Siren Shrike (15 lvl Defender - Sonic/Sonic). My entire stable.
lets be honest, yes possess has a longer activation time, but is much cooler looking, and unlike confuse, it is obvious which mobs are confused, not a bad thing when you have a lot going on
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I find the opposite, that the obviously confused mob stands out as a target that everyone wants to kill first. I wish it would give them invisibility too |
Originally Posted by Tocharon
e, it is obvious which mobs are confused, not a bad thing when you have a lot going on
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Because it looks so awesome it simply can't activate faster!
Well... Thats probably not the reason but heres my guesses.
1) Its balanced relative to the other powers in dark control, not mind control.
2)An oversight. It happens.
3) It is in fact because of the animation, I can live with a power like confuse taking a third of second longer to activate for the sake of having that power effect especially since it generates no aggro.
D: Toss me a hai @DarkNat My Fify glory: Renzer Dark/Dark Corr., Renzro Dark/Dark Def., Amartasu Dark/Dark Scrap.Less important ones: Fire/Fire Blaster,Ice/Ice Blaster,Ele/Ele Brute, Mind/Storm Troll,Fire/Kin Corr.,Bots/FF MM., DB/Regen Scrap.
I'm happy it has a longer animation time. It means it doesn't completely invalidate a Mind dom who is trying to perma-confuse an AV. Dark shouldn't outperform all the old sets; the to-hit debuffing should be tasty enough.
Figured it was balanced around Dark Control as a whole and not Mind Control's own confuse. Well that and it's a different animation.
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
I was pretty shocked to find out that Possess had a longer cast time compared to MC and Ill confuses. Especially because they went through the trouble to balance the cast time of Confuse and Deceive before (Deceive used to have a longer cast time).
I just assumed that the devs can only remember that activation time matters for a week or so at a time before they go back to thinking it's irrelevant.
Honestly I don't see it as an issue. Char animates twice as fast as Fossilize, even faster compared to Tesla Cage. Stone Prison is very slow compared to most other single target immobilizes. Lift animates almost a full second faster than Levitate.
Animation time really isn't that much of a balance concern (for the Devs, players are less forgiving) unless the power has an extremely long one (3+ seconds), and when the game was first made it wasn't taken into consideration at all. (Just look at Gravity Control, almost all of it's powers had animations over 3seconds in length.)
@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too
Why does Dark control have the fastest activating single target immobilize? (tied with ice and plant)
Why does Dark control have the fastest activating single target hold? (tied with illusion)
Why does Dark control have the fastest activating aoe stun? (Fire's is also pbaoe and takes .6 seconds longer to activate)
Culex's resistance guide
Not sure where you get your numbers.
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Using Arcanatime:|
Originally Posted by Pitho
Why does Dark control have the fastest activating single target immobilize? (tied with ice and plant)
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Fire: 1.32
Ice: 1.32
Dark: 1.452
Plant: 1.452
Ice and Plant are not tied, and Dark is slower than Fire and ice.
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| Why does Dark control have the fastest activating single target hold? (tied with illusion) |
Fire: 1.32
Mind: 1.32
Dark: 1.848
Ill: 1.848
Fire and Mind are significantly faster.
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| Why does Dark control have the fastest activating aoe stun? (Fire's is also pbaoe and takes .6 seconds longer to activate) |
Oh, huh, derp. Guess I was looking across city of data too fast while missioning and didn't look close enough.
My controller experiences are Electric control and Earth control, which do have longer act times on the hold and immob.
Although, Gravity has an AoE stun as well. A bit of an odd one (with teleport) and it comes late, but it's an aoe stun.
Culex's resistance guide
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This.|
Originally Posted by seebs
I just assumed that the devs can only remember that activation time matters for a week or so at a time before they go back to thinking it's irrelevant.
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They keep forgetting (or not caring) that animation times matter to balance unless it becomes a serious performance concern.
Which I agree with for the most part. Cool animations trump trivial balance inequalities. That said, sometimes it bothers me: Electric Control's hold takes what feels like an ice age to animate, and doesn't even look that good.
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If forum signatures weren't a waste of screen space, I'd turn 'em on and quote this in mine.
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Originally Posted by seebs
I just assumed that the devs can only remember that activation time matters for a week or so at a time before they go back to thinking it's irrelevant.
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I assume this. Dark Control seems to just be filled with awesome
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Originally Posted by BrandX
Figured it was balanced around Dark Control as a whole and not Mind Control's own confuse.
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even with a slightly longer animation time that shouldnt stop a dark control dom from perma confusing an AV, my mind dom with 210% rech can easily stack almost mag 100 confuse and you only need mag 56 (50 to surpass PTOD, 6 to surpass the AV rank protection)
that and if you went dark assault you also get power boost clone which effectively doubles your confuse duration for a few stacks (prolly less useful with AVs but it helps)
Im still mind boggled that there is a post that is concerned about 3 tens of a second..
The hard things I can do--- The impossible just take a little bit longer.
If numbers are so much more important than a teammate who is fun to play with, forget about the game altogether and go play with a calculator instead. -Claws and Effect-
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Originally Posted by seebs
I just assumed that the devs can only remember that activation time matters for a week or so at a time before they go back to thinking it's irrelevant.
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Well, they did just recently reduce the animation time of the PBAoE stun in Dark and Propel in Gravity.
Unrelated to the above quote, IMO animation time is not relevant to control sets in the same way it is to damage sets. It's generally true that the developers don't directly balance off of animation time, but it's also true that Control sets can't be compared side-by-side like blast sets can. There isn't a universal "control to animation time" principal. Long animation times on some powers are just a tax you pay on some sets for the privilege of access to the other unique powers the set contains.
"Animation time" is a bit misleading anyway. While I have no numbers to back it up, I suspect Stalagmites has an earlier "activation time" than Flashfire despite having fairly close "animation times". But there is more to it than even that: Stalagmites also requires you to be on the ground. Both powers are faster than Wormhole and are 5ft wider with no knockback, but neither teleports or is (now) non-aggro. Dark's stun is close range but faster and longer lasting.
As it happens though, I personally think Mind Control has a LOT more to complain about being outperformed by Dark Control than the reverse. I also remain convinced that if Fire or Plant Control showed up today, people would hone in on Bonfire, Spores, and Smoke and claim the sets were the worst in the entire game.
The slower animation time is a bummer, true, but I think a more significant difference is that Possess checks against def(negative) rather than def(psionic). In PvE, I'd consider that an improvement.
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I used to joke that the #1 priority mob for a controller hold was the xp robbing confused mob. Same goes with blaster, scrapper, stalker, brute etc.|
Originally Posted by Mr_Kingkillaha
I find the opposite, that the obviously confused mob stands out as a target that everyone wants to kill first. I wish it would give them invisibility too
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Apparently that also holds true with the RAD toggles too. Once I noticed a scrapper would hit the target because they said they knew it would give off bigger damage numbers.
Ever notice when you do an area sleep the first power to hit them is fireball?
H: Blaster 50, Defender 50, Tank 50, Scrapper 50, Controller 50, PB 50, WS 50
V: Brute 50, Corruptor 50, MM 50, Dominator 50, Stalker 50, AW 50, AS 50
Top 4: Controller, Brute, Scrapper, Corruptor
Bottom 4: (Peacebringer) way below everything else, Mastermind, Dominator, Blaster
CoH in WQHD
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My god... yes. So much yes.
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Originally Posted by newchemicals
Ever notice when you do an area sleep the first power to hit them is fireball? |
Rain of Fire, actually.
[Though the moment that kills me (literally) is in TPN with an Ice Dom with enemies bouncing all over on Ice Slick and Sleet all around me and some Earth Controller starts spamming immobilizes and nothing else from range! I swear some people are really just out to kill their teammates.]
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Originally Posted by newchemicals
Ever notice when you do an area sleep the first power to hit them is fireball?
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Originally Posted by ketch
My god... yes. So much yes.
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*cough*
I know its only a minor difference but was there any reason given on why Possess is 2.33s activation to Confuses 2.00s with no difference in how the power operates?