Controllers are being left out

ianthewizard2012

The description text of dungeons in the queue panel is saying that Group Requirement is "1 Tank, 1 Header, 3 DPS". As we can see, "Controller" (or similar text) isn't being mentioned.

If those contents weren't implemented in a way that controllers can find their roles inside, please consider looking into the content design; if the "Tank" can also be "Controller" (or similar text), please consider altering the text a bit.

Please make controllers feel they are part of the game.

greywynd

What is a controller to you? Primarily it is the CW, which is primarily a DPS class.

Tank controller? Sounds like a tank.

ianthewizard2012

greywynd said:

What is a controller to you? Primarily it is the CW, which is primarily a DPS class.

Tank controller? Sounds like a tank.

Controllers control the battlefield primarily by disabling enemies, repositioning enemies, and altering the terrain. They do contribute in damage, but that's not their primary job.

Control Wizard, as its name suggests, primarily focuses on controlling enemies and is not by nature a DPS class. More details about CW on the wiki. There are different wizards who focus on DPS, but they are not Control Wizard.

greywynd

Except that control has been rendered mostly useless, so, yes, the CW is a DPS class.

pitshade

The evolution of a generic DPS role is one of the things that has led to the 4 support meta and shuts so many players out of 'optimized' groups.

However, one thing to note is that what makes control not needed in most parties is that we overgear the trash mobs so badly. Bosses get tougher with each new release, but level 73 trash mobs aren't really tougher in Tomb than they are in Castle Never, so long as people adjusted their Resistance Ignored. When the group clears a pack of mobs in seconds, there is no need to control them. They hit so hard that squishy DPS will get 1 shot so there isn't a set up time to cast CC powers. Might as well just burn them down.

The bosses of course never have meaningful adds that need to be managed, again moving everything to the 1 DPS for all roles. If you only have 1 real target, 1 DPS can handle it. We went from Add Overkill in the early days of the game to the extreme opposite and neither is optimal for encouraging balanced groups.

Unknown

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ianthewizard2012

greywynd said:

Except that control has been rendered mostly useless, so, yes, the CW is a DPS class.

Regarding the current status of the usefulness of control in the game, I can't say you are wrong because that seems to be the consensus of the majority. Imo, it's one of the top issues currently in the game and deserves attention.

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pitshade said:

The evolution of a generic DPS role is one of the things that has led to the 4 support meta and shuts so many players out of 'optimized' groups.

However, one thing to note is that what makes control not needed in most parties is that we overgear the trash mobs so badly. Bosses get tougher with each new release, but level 73 trash mobs aren't really tougher in Tomb than they are in Castle Never, so long as people adjusted their Resistance Ignored. When the group clears a pack of mobs in seconds, there is no need to control them. They hit so hard that squishy DPS will get 1 shot so there isn't a set up time to cast CC powers. Might as well just burn them down.

The bosses of course never have meaningful adds that need to be managed, again moving everything to the 1 DPS for all roles. If you only have 1 real target, 1 DPS can handle it. We went from Add Overkill in the early days of the game to the extreme opposite and neither is optimal for encouraging balanced groups.

Largely agreed. Some adjustments to trash mobs or adds could be a way to make control useful again and thus encourages balanced groups.

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macjae said:

ianthewizard2012 said:

greywynd said:

What is a controller to you? Primarily it is the CW, which is primarily a DPS class.

Tank controller? Sounds like a tank.

Controllers control the battlefield primarily by disabling enemies, repositioning enemies, and altering the terrain. They do contribute in damage, but that's not their primary job.

Control Wizard, as its name suggests, primarily focuses on controlling enemies and is not by nature a DPS class. More details about CW on the wiki. There are different wizards who focus on DPS, but they are not Control Wizard.

http://dnd4.wikia.com/wiki/Controller

A character with the Controller role primarily handles crowds by creating hazardous terrain and repositioning enemies, or spreading conditions and damage over multiple enemies.

One of the parts of the controller role in 4th Edition D&D was always area damage. Strikers were supposed to excel at single-target damage, but not multi-target damage.

Okay. So it looks like we somehow are having many Controller classes in the game. We need some Defender, Striker, and Leader classes to balance the class diversity.

greywynd

Defender: tank
Striker: DPS
Leader: buffer

ianthewizard2012

greywynd said:

Defender: tank
Striker: DPS
Leader: buffer

I was making an irony. And accurately speaking, Striker does single-target DPS; Leader is healer and buffer/debuffer.

greywynd

I don't think of my healer as a leader. Leaders lead and he tends to hide in the back healing.

ianthewizard2012

greywynd said:

I don't think of my healer as a leader. Leaders lead and he tends to hide in the back healing.

The word "Leader" can be confusing when you see it at the first time. I was confused, too. It's just a word used to name a role that inspires and heals allies, and does not literally mean "group leader". More info here.

armadeonx

I think the devs need to seriously consider a full re-write for the Control Wizard and reclassify them as either straight Wizards or Sorcerers.

ianthewizard2012

armadeonx said:

I think the devs need to seriously consider a full re-write for the Control Wizard and reclassify them as either straight Wizards or Sorcerers.

Yes!!! This!!! Can't agree more!!! Control Wizard needs to be re-wrote and becomes two classes: Control Wizard and a DPS-focused wizard (or introduce sorcerer).

rannxeroxx

greywynd said:

I don't think of my healer as a leader. Leaders lead and he tends to hide in the back healing.

Not sure if you ever served in the military but the "leader" is seldom in the front.

rannxeroxx

I have said it in other threads, the game has devolved into a pure DPS hack-a-fest after LV 60. Before then you can see the role of each class and what it is suppose to do but afterwards its just dump as much damage as possible. Almost all bosses are immune to almost any control and mobs melt in seconds.

ianthewizard2012

rannxeroxx said:

I have said it in other threads, the game has devolved into a pure DPS hack-a-fest after LV 60. Before then you can see the role of each class and what it is suppose to do but afterwards its just dump as much damage as possible. Almost all bosses are immune to almost any control and mobs melt in seconds.

That's being true, sadly.

But RPG/MMORPG players around the world don't all have the same preference. Some enjoy being healers/buffers/debuffers, some enjoy being front-line warriors, some enjoy being ranged supporters, and some enjoy being glass cannons. So imo, providing more more types of contents and classes can attract more RPG/MMORPG players to play the game.

greywynd

rannxeroxx said:

Not sure if you ever served in the military but the "leader" is seldom in the front.

Depends on when in history you are talking about.

rannxeroxx

greywynd said:

rannxeroxx said:

Not sure if you ever served in the military but the "leader" is seldom in the front.

Depends on when in history you are talking about.

Alexander, Hannibal, Cromwell, Napoleon, Washington, Rommel, etc. The reason they gains so much was because they lived long enough to achieve it. You don't do that by being fodder. Ignore the movies.

preechr

greywynd said:

What is a controller to you? Primarily it is the CW, which is primarily a DPS class.

Tank controller? Sounds like a tank.

Trapper comes to mind, and TR stuns, dazes and disables seems an awful lot like Control

GFs have MANY control abilities and feats as well

Just because the newer Devs and Power Creep have made CC irrelevant or even a bad decision does not take away from the OP's point that CC should be a viable choice

rannxeroxx

How about the ability to polymorph an enemy into a chicken like what happens in the Master of the Hunt or IG? Or charm to make and enemy fight for you? Frankly the CW is unimaginative. Heck, I would love to play a necromancer and raise dead and turn the enemy against themselves.

c1k4ml3kc3

pitshade said:

The evolution of a generic DPS role is one of the things that has led to the 4 support meta and shuts so many players out of 'optimized' groups.

However, one thing to note is that what makes control not needed in most parties is that we overgear the trash mobs so badly.

No, no, no. The Control IS needed and it comes in the ways of using the game mechanic to your own advantage. Luring the boss. Kiting the boss. Enemies etc. It's all part of the "Control" in the general, broad sense. Each class has some form of a controlling option be it to push or pull the mobs around (Come and Get it by the GWF for instance is a great skill). By default it's necessary.

However, there is the gear for a class and there's a whole paragon tree dedicated to a "controlling" option primarily by the Control Wizards. The problem is that the Elite mobs are mitigating any controlling option by a longshot, thus rendering the CC useless to use. And this class is completely and utterly skipped despite being called "Control Wizard".

Just because people ADAPTED to a situation like that one doesn't mean that they appreciate it.

There's really no other way to put it, but the Control is broken completely since MOD6. Why should anyone skip fixing that? When I started playing the Wizard there was never this huge "DPS" necessity. It was the party synergy. Everyone had their role perfectly up to the MOD3. And since MOD6 each new mod just prolongs the issues of the MOD6 with super-tough bosses and dungeons where you can't go to without a tank and a healer. Now, if you had some controlling options you might do it, albeit it's a risky situation, without the tank or a healer. And this would prove that someone's a good and skillful player who needs no babysitting OP/DC combo.

The "One tank, one Heal, three DPS" looks like it was written in a rush when the new content came along only to give people some idea how things are done, it's not necessary to run in such a composition to begin with. Unfortunately the content remained like so and like so it's fitting. This is wholly unfortunate.

This was done for the people to think and be more open to a class variety, but people are never going to look into the variety for as long as they can do something faster, better and overall swifter to that of playing as a variety. This is now how the original game was done.

On a paper it looks good, the game premise looks good, but it's far from the truth since people will always go the easy way to get the most in the shortest amount of time possible.

And this leaves many people locked out of the content without venturing forward with a tank and a healer. And that sucks.

Now, that leads to talking about the flaws of the game design and for some time it does feel like there's no real conceivable base to which everything applies to a letter. It feels messy. This leads to broken things which on top of that get broken. And when people get accustomed to broken class or some broken stuff and go like "OMG you play that class, gimme a break" or similar, they come and say "You know what, that's ok, now we have enough dps after a year to beat that dungeon so what's new, give us new content" and the majority of people like that are not helping to fix the the broken stuff.

So, to sum it up, my whole point is that developers shouldn't oversee something simply because the content is "beatable" with a broken class. There's still no real synergy and it's getting way too oversaturated and thus overshadowing the reall monster under the bed which is the Controlling option and the whole "DPS/NONDPS" fiasco.

I'm all up for the CC options, but if that's too much to ask then a decent damage increase would also do a trick and everyone would call it a day.

hustin1

There are only a couple of places where my CC-build CW can really shine: Stronghold Marauders and Tiamat. In Marauders she can lock down the region at the treasure cache and use Arcane Singularity to either keep anyone from escaping with loot or bunch up enemies that are coming from multiple directions. In Tiamat, she can similarly use AS to bunch up attackers during the cleric phase before freezing them solid for dps to deal with. For added satisfaction, I can then nuke the frozen mass of enemies with the Token of Chromatic Storm.

Outside of those two areas, though, she's not all that useful in group content. Her ability to freeze-on-demand makes content in places like Chult a lot easier, though lack of dps means that it takes quite a while to dispatch the new mobcicles. And she absolutely has to get assistance in House of the Crocodile to deal with the boss fight.

An interesting drawback about the CC CW has to do with choosing your effectiveness: to have Arcane Singularity be effective in tough content like Marauders and Tiamat (where enemies have thick HP bars and Heroic Encounter levels of control resistance), you need a lot of control strength. A LOT. A WHOLE LOT. (Her control bonus tops out at 118% at the moment). The downside of this is that it means that you can't use it in normal open-world content, because normal enemies don't have enough control resistance. This might sound like a good thing, but it isn't: with normal enemies, the singularity in AS pulls so hard that it's more like a gravity-assist maneuver, the kind that NASA might use to slingshot a probe past Jupiter to gain delta-V:

ianthewizard2012

rannxeroxx said:

How about the ability to polymorph an enemy into a chicken like what happens in the Master of the Hunt or IG? Or charm to make and enemy fight for you? Frankly the CW is unimaginative. Heck, I would love to play a necromancer and raise dead and turn the enemy against themselves.

Charming enemies sounds fine to me if we would have corresponding contents in which it could be useful.

As for transimutation or necromancy spells, not that Control Wizard should not use them, but I would suggest introducing transmutation-focused wizard and necromancy-focused wizard classes to implement those spells instead.

strathkin

I certainly AGREE with the author on this topic. While I admit many consider Wizard's a DPS class their control powers have really been neglected for quite some time. Wizard's can be one of the most squishy classes of them all and while they are capable of doing good damage they still don't compete with Great Weapon's Fighters or Warlocks. Still it doesn't mean their Damage isn't or can't be quite respectable in the DPS arena but just like a Warlock can have the choice to Heal - Wizard's should see control abilities improved a little bit and less impacted by other classes control abilities.

I mean my Wizard is an Sun Elf which offers a Control Race benefit (perhaps nothing great) but she also has a Valindra's Set and a Will-O-Wisp companion and those both improve Control / Control Resistence by 10-15% each. Still your far more likely to see 90% of Wizard's not even use the Valindra Set anymore because control has been neglected for far too long in my opinion; many may have one item in set but most forego the SET bonus trying to focus on DPS.

Which I suppose is their right as any class can be build to maximize damage; but Control is an important aspect for Wizard's or at least it once was... which is why their called Control Wizard's not just Wizards.

c1k4ml3kc3

I agree. Elite monsters mitigate far too much of the controlling power, thus rendering it useless completely.

Unknown

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kangkeok

Just a suggestion. They could make control works without making tank useless by introducing Difficulty check (DC). Mob get controled only when player DC is a success. Else nothing happen if it fail. So either they get controled or they do not. This wont make every mob in the dungeon get controled when an aoe control power is used leave a few wandering mob free from control for the tank to do their job. Also the higher level mob or their elites will have higher saves. That mean higher DC is needed to control them. New enchantment or gear with DC stat need to be introduced. The higher the dc stat he higher chance monster get CCed and it only affect powers with control effect. Class path which focus on controls also get feats that boost DC stat. That will define controllers from other path of their class. There should be soft cap on this stat too so that no matter how high it goes, there always be 2 out 10 mob that wont not get controlled so tank at higher level still has their job to do.

ianthewizard2012

kangkeok said:

Just a suggestion. They could make control works without making tank useless by introducing Difficulty check (DC). Mob get controled only when player DC is a success. Else nothing happen if it fail. So either they get controled or they do not. This wont make every mob in the dungeon get controled when an aoe control power is used leave a few wandering mob free from control for the tank to do their job. Also the higher level mob or their elites will have higher saves. That mean higher DC is needed to control them. New enchantment or gear with DC stat need to be introduced. The higher the dc stat he higher chance monster get CCed and it only affect powers with control effect. Class path which focus on controls also get feats that boost DC stat. That will define controllers from other path of their class. There should be soft cap on this stat too so that no matter how high it goes, there always be 2 out 10 mob that wont not get controlled so tank at higher level still has their job to do.

Thank you! I really like this idea. It would make control works more like how it does in D&D. So once a mob is controlled, it gets a chance to reroll its saving throw every 6 seconds or so, and a successful saving throw ends the control effect. The idea could solve the situation and also preserves tank's role in the game.

greywynd

rannxeroxx said:

How about the ability to polymorph an enemy into a chicken like what happens in the Master of the Hunt or IG? Or charm to make and enemy fight for you? Frankly the CW is unimaginative. Heck, I would love to play a necromancer and raise dead and turn the enemy against themselves.

Raising the dead is inherently evil. That is one of the reasons we fight the Thayans.

mentinmindmaker

Currently the game has 3 types characters: Tanks, buffers and dps.

CW MoF spec is at best a mediocre debuffer, and CW dps spec isn't even on the same dps page as GWF/HR/probably revamped SW.

So basically the CW is fairly useless at the moment.

CW had is big days back in mod 1-5, when relative mob damage was so high that freezing mattered, and it had real value to knockback mobs into the void. Then things got nerfed and nerfed and nerfed.

That is to some extent the case of all controllers on mmorpg's. Abilities that takes mobs out of the fight are generally very hard to balance around. Either the controllers are so powerful and useful that you MUST have them to survive a fight, making non-controller groups not an option. Or they are so weak and useless they are a wasted group spot. Or you can do well without a controller, but having a controller in group will completely trivialize most content. To find something in the middle is very hard.

Today freezing trash is a nice convenience, but does to a very small extent contribute to the groups results.

To have a role in todays game the CW really need more damage.

ianthewizard2012

mentinmindmaker said:

To have a role in todays game the CW really need more damage.

So to make a start on solving the situation of "CW really need more damage", some polishes/changes might be needed in the content of "todays game". A solution could be implementing Difficulty Check (DC) to change how mobs get controlled, as a fellow member suggested above. Or separating control-focused and DPS-focused wizards into two classes, which would make the issue of "balance" much simpler and easier to handle, imo. I'm not against the concept of DPS-focused wizard at all, and would definitely create one when it is implemented.