Crowd Control/Heroic Surge Feedback

[lifestaker]

In all honesty Aandre have you even logged onto lamaland and tested anything out? I ask due to myself and soh never seeing you on there. If you have tested any anything out then good for you.

Personally I just think you are reading the reviews and thinking about how much it makes life hard for you. How much it hurts your special little CC peon. Now being all hurt from your broken use in higher end content already not to mention epic content (where you complain CC is useless.... IRD anyone), you decide to flame on the forums.

Now if you did test things out you would realize that you can still, how did you put it, control the board, but only for a shorter time frame. You now have to use those flaming burst (get something better) heavy picks of puncturing more often rather then running around with a sheild not meant for your class to help you with the amp on your healing scrolls.

How about this you try to take a little feedback without feeling like we personally attacked you.

I guess though with the changes the next update you will not be saying that it is "Our Time"©.

[KKDragonLord]

Borro0, slow down, back up and explain to those of us concerned about CC how you are not trying to destroy what many of us consider our favorite caster playstyle. Note, I'm asking you to explain your position again, so no defensive postures please.

Here is why I am asking: What you are saying sounds very arrogant. I don't know who Darga is, nor do I really care. I want the game to be fun. You don't seem to care about anyone elses opinion of fun but your own. You talk a lot and put other people down consistently. Yes, some deserve it, but you come of as incredibly arrogant (yes, again.) So, please, without being condecending or arrogant, explain how I should be taking your comments. Show me that its not just you being arrogant and self centered.

How about starting another thread for that?

how about we keep the name calling out?

same goes to Bor

we finally have a thread where our concerns on CC are being listened to, how about we use what is in the thread instead of pointing out stuff that came before, and at least try to reach a reasonable consensus?

What if there is a way to change how stuff works without nerfing them?

[redoubt]

Longer lasting CC is more than just Fascinate, or Disco, or Irresitible Dance. It can also be things like Dominate, or Mass Charm, or any number of spells, where the intent is to have a portion of the mobs, kill another portion of the mobs, often when done right ending up with one wounded mob to be taken care of. Is it fast? Nope. Is it always easy to pull off? Not really. Does it generally result in low expenditures of SP to clear parts of quests? Often. Will it make a zergnut happy? Hardly.

Something that is often lost, is that while speed of completion is uberly important to some players, others could care less about completion time, and are more interested in how they handle a quest, not that it took 16.2 minutes vs 60. Different players enjoy different things. Having shortened CC time has almost no affect on power zerging groups since they seldom used CC to beat most quests. Those using other styles of play are the ones who will be hurt.

Exactly.

I don't understand why the zerg nut/dps must be king crowd wants to nerf CC. It doesn't affect them that much anyway. It just screws the people who want to use CC.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

More name calling:

... young lady that left your precious guild over your advances.

Actually you and Soh have been almost obsessed with following my posts. Your charge is completely false and meant only to harass. You and Soh know full well why you cant let it go. We cant talk about the issue... Sorry that you can't stand that I don't cheat at this game and that I'm proud of that fact. Not saying that you do... but someone we both know definitely did. This is the ONLY reason you are booty-hurt, and will say anything for a reaction.

For the record, we have women in our guild and they know full well that "hitting on them" is not allowed. We have NEVER lost anyone to your charge, or anything even similar to your charge. This is an attack that's unfounded, and is getting reported. This has NOTHING to do with this thread.

Now if you want to talk about drama, I believe you two are the true masters of it. A whole thread on you two leaving RG guild over a robe? Is that true? Wait, I DON'T care.

[redoubt]

Let's say we completely ignore that excessively long CC makes the game too easy in some situations, we still end up with the problem that immobilized mobs are not fun. Immobilizing mobs is, but immobilized mobs are not. The best way to imagine that is to picture a game in which you don't take damage; it would be boring. That's because gameplay has to change and be unpredictable to a certain extend in order to be fun. Taking out mobs for 30s is fine, but when you reach the three minute mark, like high level Fascinate, it isn't.
.

My most common groups 1) ranger, bard, Fvs and 2) ranger, sorc, FvS.

In both those groups I'm the ranger. CC is huge for us. I'm a pretty busy camper killing stuff. Immobilized mobs are very important. And not because we are doing a forward retreat. I'd say we zerg less then 5% of quests like that and usually on a section or two. We usually end up killing everything. 90% of the time we get every bonus available.

We take pride in the times we get through a quest and take minimal damage. It means we played well. We've be hurt badly enough to know that it can hurt and can be expensive. Completing a quest with 3 of us on elite is very satisfying.

I've been working on my reincarnate since the 19th of December. I'm only at level 13 now. I'm not in a huge rush and we are running all the quests. I probably don't fit into the dps/zerger ideal. Does that mean my playstyle is irrelevant?

[redoubt]

Spellcasting is grossly overpowered in PnP compared to melee. Nerfing spells was unavoidable, and of course a good decision.

To prevent many CC spells from being lackluster, they got something that could be interprated as a buff to make up for that. Mind you, they might not allow the same of creative thinking out of a problem but they are certainly more powerful in-combat spells. In other words, they act differently than they acted in DDO. Saying that it's "further of a nerf" says nothing about their power level. However, the fact that many CC spells have been considered overpowered and have been nerfed before does harm your argument severely.

Just to name a few, Fascinate, Charm Person and Suggestion all got good in-combat buffs compared to their PnP version.

I challenge you to show me a video supporting the claim you need three whole minute of Fascinate or more than a minute of Flesh to Stone.

That reasoning might be applicable to Suggestion or Charm Person, but not to Fascinate nor Flesh to Stone.

To answer your question, it's acceptable in PnP because there is a DM and because quests cannot be repeated. That's the answer.

In PnP, it's the DM's job to ensure the players are having fun and he can respond to that in real time. Finding a smart way around the encounter is fun. It's like solving a puzzle. If the DM sees a way to let you have fun, he'll let you have fun, adapt and change his plans in a way to ensure the game's still fun.

In DDO, Turbine is the equivalent of the DM but there is no way for them to ensure that you're having a good experience in real time. They can only improve our experience by changing the game. Thing is, if the players are overcoming game mechanics, even if it's by smart play, it impacts their gameplay because it means the quest is not challenging. That's not a problem if they do it once. Finding a smart way around a problem is fun, after all. But, they'll repeat the quests several times and pass to other players. Finding the solution the first time is fun, the the reduced challenge the other times are not. In this case, the fun problem solving is dwarfed by repetition.

That's why.

Using only DPS is not fun.

Sure I can run through ritual sacrifice and just kill it all. But it was a lot more fun charming 30 monsters and dragging them through while they killed everything.

Sure, it was slower then just a dps zerg, but it was fun. Sometimes we'd do it that way, more so if the dps was a little on the low side. Sometimes I'd buff and just help kill. Nice to have options, yes? Or are you just against any playstyle different than your own?

[redoubt]

Is reading comprehension not your thing? I will post this for the 10th time today just for you.

Because, when they are allowed to work unhindered, crowd control spells tend to be overwhelmingly good, Turbine uses immunities and such that tend to make them overwhelmingly bad. The never used, the horribleness, these things are consequences of how incredibly good it is when it does work. If the excesses were toned back, Turbine would be free to create content in which CC was effective, remove those immunities, and generally allow it to flourish in far more situations. However, they cannot do this because there is, for example, absolutely no content in the game that would not be trivialized by allowing mass suggestion to land 40% of the time. For so long as it works the way it does, it simply cannot be allowed to work on anything that is intended to be hard. Therefore, the spell is usually quite bad. If the spell were not an I-win button when it landed, Turbine could let you use it more!

Read the entire paragraph. There is a time when CC was so absurdly dominant in this game that people just spammed otto's dancing sphere through quests because it was -really- good. It was spammed for raids. For this reason, its not remotely useful anymore. If it weren't so stupid when it worked, it could work more often! These things are related! The spells are so powerful that they are huge black and white factors: great or terrible. Toning great down to good allows them to work all the time without being silly.

Actually, my reading comprehension is quite good. We just don't agree with each other on this topic, it would seem.

Now, I will agree, that if Ottos worked on every mob it would be grossly overpowered. Same for any spell of similar durations. I cannot argue against you on that.

If you are saying to reduce durations and eliminate immunites, I have mixed responses. I dislike immunities, but hitting mobs with a 6 second hold doesn't seem very helpful.

[lifestaker]

Ya know Aandre I think you might want to review your sources. That and read my entire post for once rather then pick a line out of it. Report my post for the truth if you want, but this issue we have i think we shall settle in PM's rather then threads. Something you might want to do with all the people you have issues with.

[Favis]

impression is that CC-friendly people don't like reducing duration because they don't see any carrots to offset the sticks. They will spend more mana. They may even lose effective spells, making combat even more uni-dimensional. They feel noticeably un-Epic. The one minor carrot -- air elemental and worg issues -- didn't pan out so well. Preventing some players from rushing through content is not a benefit for everyone; and I think it would be easy for Turbine to do some of the things that most of you have mentioned, such as:
1) Reduce duration, but also scale back immunities;

As I enjoy the TR that Turbin has created I realy intrested in that CC works on all levels
As the duration currently scales with lvl both for buffs and CC. The buffs scaleing is nice as it don't create any balance issue and it's booring to re-cast a buff (just as clickes are booring).
If the duration of CC are shorten I would like it to done in such a way that the duration is not shorter a low lvls.
And I would like less immunities (not more as in HS) and I like it combined with:

4) Reduce duration for everyone, but give a couple specialist PrEs duration buffs.

Give the CC intrested to put +10ap on something that they like

[Cyr]

I keep seeing people bring up fascinate like it's some uber ability that makes everything easy. Yet excluding in epic I have seen the skill used in quests about a dozen times in the past six months. Of all those times, one of those was somewhat useful, the rest it did ~ nothing for us. Hardly OP there. Nor is it being abused or even used much.

Okay now let's talk epic, because that is the only place I do see the skill being used. Is it useful, yup it is. Do we require a bard in parties because of it...heck no. Does it trivialize the content...it most certainly does not. EPIC is still EPIC and it just makes it a little less of a bear...just like bard songs do, haste, and otto's. Most importantly I'm not even hearing people talk about making new bards for epic...they are however talking about killing dex builds for str builds and other such things with some regularity due to epic.

[Borror0]

Borro0, slow down, back up and explain to those of us concerned about CC how you are not trying to destroy what many of us consider our favorite caster playstyle.

I think I pretty much covered it all in post #721. Let me know if you still have more questions.

I've been working on my reincarnate since the 19th of December. I'm only at level 13 now. I'm not in a huge rush and we are running all the quests. I probably don't fit into the dps/zerger ideal. Does that mean my playstyle is irrelevant?

No, it's not irrelevant. However, I don't believe that your playstyle will be affected by a reasonable reduction of Suggestions, Fascinate or Flesh to Stone. At least, not in a way that would make it impossible for you to complete quests nor in ways that would make your CC builds suddenly useless. Yes, it will be a nerf if you use those abilities to retreat forward or to bug mob generator but that's all I think it will affect.

I honestly doubt you really use more than one minute of Fascinate, Suggestions of Flesh to Stone.

I keep seeing people bring up fascinate like it's some uber ability that makes everything easy. Yet excluding in epic I have seen the skill used in quests about a dozen times in the past six months. Of all those times, one of those was somewhat useful, the rest it did ~ nothing for us. Hardly OP there. Nor is it being abused or even used much

That is neither forward retreat nor bugging mob generator. Therefore, it's not the situations in which we believe Fascinate is overpowered.

[KKDragonLord]

I honestly doubt you really use more than one minute of Fascinate, Suggestions of Flesh to Stone. That is neither forward retreat nor bugging mob generator. Therefore, it's not the situations in which we believe Fascinate is overpowered.

This is what i believe to be the problem.

It Should be necessary, the fact that it isn't just means that CC isn't nearly as important as it should be.

You claim to want the same for CC Borr, but your position in this thread shows otherwise.

What we should be discussing is how quests should encourage effective CC, how it should be Needed to complete quests, and how mobs should counter it intelligently instead of arbitrary immunities.

Out of the "immunity box" thinking.

[Emili]

As I enjoy the TR that Turbin has created I realy intrested in that CC works on all levels
As the duration currently scales with lvl both for buffs and CC. The buffs scaleing is nice as it don't create any balance issue and it's booring to re-cast a buff (just as clickes are booring).
If the duration of CC are shorten I would like it to done in such a way that the duration is not shorter a low lvls.
And I would like less immunities (not more as in HS) and I like it combined with:

Give the CC intrested to put +10ap on something that they like

By rights... they should remove immunites - well for most - however Borrow speaks of balance. One thing for sure, we rely less on CC as we enter elite and epic as is now. Quite funny really that the most powerful cc in the game be mid level spells.

Fascinate actually has less if not no value in higher levels - most mob are immune in places like Bastion elite, etc... Still the dps output rips thru mob like butter... question I have here is if Borrow wishes to address this from the point of balance ... it's quite true I can take my bard and fascinate the mob enroute to hound - and the melee rip thru them with time to spare on the fascinate timers - yet those same melee can also rip thru them before the bard puts away the lute and maybe even the red named be gone by then... So then tell me what is off balance in power from this viewpoint - the duration of the fascinate or is it the kotc pushing dual 600+ damage smites plus all the stacking d6's or the berzerker and the 700+ hp crit or the fascinate?

... Oh and for the record... imho the most used and most powerful CC in the entire end-game be not a bloody Fascinate nor any CC spell at all - It be grab the agro and kite.

[Junts]

Actually, my reading comprehension is quite good. We just don't agree with each other on this topic, it would seem.

Now, I will agree, that if Ottos worked on every mob it would be grossly overpowered. Same for any spell of similar durations. I cannot argue against you on that.

If you are saying to reduce durations and eliminate immunites, I have mixed responses. I dislike immunities, but hitting mobs with a 6 second hold doesn't seem very helpful.

You don't need to reduce -every- duration. Man, have you ever seen someone here say hold lasted too long?

Its cool you can do that to ritual, which is a very easy quest. The problem is that, say, lets take a hard quest. Like Sins of Attrition. If Mass suggest landed there, it would be, by far, the best way to do the quest. You would run through it, spam mass suggestion and charm 1/2 of eahc pack and just run on past it. Orthons have pretty bad will saves as a whole. So instead of fighting what are supposed to be very, very difficult melee mobs, you would charm them all for a really long time and not have to ever actually deal with their damage or fight them. If mass suggest worked in there, it would be stupid good.

Because of that, those mobs magically have massive will saves and charm/hold resistance. Imagine for a minute if mass suggestion only lasted, tops, 20-30 seconds. It'd still be good (it might have to last even less, as the only mass charm spell), but there comes a point in shortening its duration where it goes from trivializing the quest to simply good even if it works regularly, which in turn lets them lower the will save and make stuff like hold person actually viable. Right now, its not. Not only is mass hold overly hard to land with a fairly short duration, it is a lot worse of an effect than many aoe spells with identical saves (mass suggest, otto's sphere). If these spells are closer in effectiveness (instead of mass suggestion clearly trumping everything, and otto's clearly trumping when you have to kill the mobs yourself), then the will save can be lowered without the danger of making the quest a joke. As long as one of these spells is so overwhelmingly good, well .. they have to balance it for the most overwhelming of them.

And so hold is worthless. I couldn't tell you the last time I saw anyone, even dedicated cc users, cast a hold spell. Because there are always better alternatives. That's kind of a problem.

[Junts]

By rights... they should remove immunites - well for most - however Borrow speaks of balance. One thing for sure, we rely less on CC as we enter elite and epic as is now. Quite funny really that the most powerful cc in the game be mid level spells.

Fascinate actually has little value in higher levels - most mob are immune in places like Bastion elite, etc... Still the dps output rips thru mob like butter... question I have here is Borrow wishes to address this from the point of balance ... it's quite true I can take a bard and fascinate the mob enroute to hound - and the melee rip thru them with time to spare on the fascinate timers - yet those same melee can also rip thru them before the bard puts away the lute and maybe even the red named be gone by then... So then tell me what is off balance in power from this viewpoint - the three+ minute CC or is it the kotc pushing dual 600+ damage smites plus all the stacking d6's or the berzerker and the 700+ hp crit or the fascinate?

... Oh and for the record... the most used and most powerful CC in the entire end-game be not a Fascinate nor CC spell at all - It be the kite.

The most powerful CC spell on DDO is wall of fire.

Cause it gets you the aggro to kite with.

[gavagai]

Obviously, the ideal is to aim for something in the middle: CC should be always useful and balanced with other playstyle, never overpowered nor underpowered.

[. . .]
For that reason, both nerfs and buffs are required to have a balanced CC playstyle.

Right on! I think your posts on CC balancing are first-class, and I enjoy reading them. But I don't think most of us are really disagreeing about balance. Shorter durations will probably be necessary when Devs put things like immunity-mitigation on the table. But those things aren't on the table at this time. So people are concerned because this looks like an unnecessary nerf. They see "nerf" (and more SP/resource costs, and more uncertainty in spell efficacy, and more NOT FUN inaction during group play) but they don't see "benefit."

The debate on the board is this: are these nerfs being implemented actually required to fix any of the player/content issues MadFloyd mentioned?

It's not obvious that this is necessary. This is why many folks here are violently in disagreement. If Devs want players to kill more and circumvent less, they can obviously make more Butcher's Path style objectives to make players kill x mobs before completion. Or make CC'd opponents DA-active. These aren't "better" than a spell nerf, since players will actually have to kill things. But they are alternatives that would fix the content issues without nerfing certain casters. However, some would rather keep their spells and have content changed, while others think the content change would be much worse than nerfing spells. (I'm in the latter group, but then again I appraised how casters were being treated design-wise and chose not to invest much time in one.)

An analogy: if Devs wanted to increase the Rate of Attack on ranged weapons, they would probably have to tone down Manyshot. They shouldn't nerf Manyshot now, and increase ranged RoA three months later. That looks like bad short-term design for the sake of legitimate long-term balancing. At the very least they should justify nerfing x now by announcing the buff to x in the next update; even better if they nerf and buff at roughly the same time.

If Devs shortened durations and mitigated immunities (or made them temporarily dispellable) I would be among the first to roll a Wizard or Spellsinger, since finally those DC bonuses would really become interesting. But a duration nerf alone is a continued sign that those classes have a shrinking role in the future design of DDO.

p.s. this is a great thread and I only hope we haven't scared MadFloyd off yet.

[bekkar]

Low-level CC is already bordering on useless in groups because of the way level affects duration--it might last too long at 20, but at 4 you'd have to recast a time or two just to get it to last through any significant fight. While the ceiling might indeed be too high, the floor is too low for any blanket nerf to not devastate the lower third of the game.

Stepping back a moment, combat spells in the D&D world fall into a few general categories:
buffs: self-explanatory; haste, displacement
damage: self-explanatory; ice lance, firewall
save-or-die: spells that either one-shot kill or disable the target to the extent that they might as well be dead; finger of death, flesh to stone (live)
save-or-suck: spells that severely impede the target while still leaving them in the battle; solid fog, blindness (if it doesn't allow a save, it will still be in this group, but that is a reason to consider that spell over less reliable spells)

So here's the problem I'm seeing...if sustained damage is not competitive with other DPS, and save-or-die is not supposed to work too often to avoid making DPS irrelevant, and save-or-suck isn't supposed to affect difficult targets to avoid making the fight not fun for the other party members, and save-or-suck is not supposed to have a dramatic effect on the dynamic for average targets...then magic is for making a buffbot. That doesn't sound right at all...

( Oh, and going by these classifications, I can see why Facinate is an issue at higher levels. A group that has been Facinated is often a group that has been defeated for all purposes but the kill exp bonus, making it effectively an AoE save-or-die with very high save DC. I'm a little puzzled that they don't require the Bard to stay within range in order for the effect to continue, actually. Is that some kind of mechanical problem with the game engine? )

[Gornin]

Of course it would be, but my position has never been to do that.

Not only I have asked for them to make CC more effective in this thread - a least a few times - but I have wrote a very long post asking them to do just that a while ago - actually, more than one long post. I had even included this in my list of reasons why I prefer Gwylan's Stand over any end game content since Module 6.0! Many of these posts have been written over a year ago. That's longer than some of you have been playing DDO and longer than most of you have been asking Turbine to make CC viable again.

Of course, that's ignoring the discussions on removing all sorts of immunities or the times I bugged developers about it.

I know you have Borr, my problem is the way you want to about it. I read way more than I post.
Please stop looking at DDO as just another MMO. It is not, it is based on an established rule set, unlike all the others. Your suggestions would be fine for WoW or even LoTRO, but not DDO.

Making CC less effective is not and has never been my goal. Hopefully, the above links are enough to make you guys realize that. However, there is a difference between preventing a spell to be overpowered in a specific situation and wanting to make CC less effective. The former is what I'm aiming for.

As Junts said earlier, certain CC spells act in two different ways depending on the situation:

In some cases, they are barely useful because the monsters have too high saves, SR or are immune to the spell. The rest of the time, those spells are overpowered because they either are ridiculously powerful or enable cheesy/exploitative tactics.

That's doubly problematic. If players cannot use CC spells because the monsters, resistances are too high then it prevents a playstyle from being viable because their BMX skills are a bit redundant. But, if you just take away the immunities, high saves and high SR from players, they gain the ability to summon a horde of celestial super beings at will therefore trivializing content that is supposed to be hard or at least somewhat challenging.

Obviously, the ideal is to aim for something in the middle: CC should be always useful and balanced with other playstyle, never overpowered nor underpowered.

Since that is not how it is right now, changes are needed. Unfortunately, it can't only be buffs. After all, there is a reason that monsters cannot be CC'd so easily right now. In a way, CC spells are both underpowered and overpowered at the same time. They are underpowered because it is so hard to land any of them that the effectiveness is usually negligible but they are also overpowered in that, if allowed to be used freely, they can trivialize any content.

For that reason, both nerfs and buffs are required to have a balanced CC playstyle.

This is the logistic behind Junts' and my posts.

I am not arguing that nothing needs to change. I understand you and Junts. I agree with the overall premise that something needs to be done to balance CC, just not the way you are suggesting. IMO, it lessens our options even more. Lessening durations won't effect power gamers. When I run with PG's or high end content, CC is used to keep the mob still while the party plays [U["Whack-A-Mob"[/U](tm). In PUGs or small groups, CC is a way to control the battle and even add DPS, and when soloing, it is fun to turn their own comrades on the mobs, using less resources and danger to me or small party. Lesser durations then affect small/solo/less than top tier players.

In the case of Fascinate, Flesh to Stone and Suggestion, which are the spells most discussed here, a nerf to the duration won't even affect the spells' effectiveness in normal gameplay because the durations are so excessively long. For example, Fascinate lasts over three minutes by level 20 but there is just no good reason to Fascinate a group of mobs for that long unless it's for forward retreat (is zerging) or to exploit a bug in the mob generator.

So, in this case, nerfing those spells' durations won't even have an effect of the effectiveness of CC unless you want to defend the times where it's overpowered. I know that some people enjoy those overpowered uses, heck Junts and I are among those people, but that's different from saying that allowing those tactics is good for the game. Worse, it might even have a negative effect on you as well because it could possibly mean more and more immunities which you probably would despise as much as us.

The only possible category of people that might be affected by this are those playing small groups. However, dungeon scaling weakens the mobs and those players should play on Normal or Casual rather than Hard and Elite so things should balance out. Additionally powergamers have "leftover duration" when killing mobs so that's another balancing factor.

See earlier response. So why should durations be lessened? It doesn't affect PG playing. This section above that you wrote is why it appears that you think that CC should only be support for DPS, and not a viable tactic to complete a mission.

Again, quest and AI design changes would be more helpful than an across the board nerf to CC durations.

In an earlier post, you seemed to disagree by saying:
I took this comment to mean you needed to full duration on Fascinate or Flesh to Stone, which was something that I had an hard time believing. During all my time as a leader of a casual guild on Tharashk in 2007, I never came across a single situation where I needed the whole duration of Fascinate. Ever. And that was back in 2007, when low levels characters were much less powerful than they are now with PrE's, new spells, etc.

However, you just retracted from that comment in your latest post by saying:
You then go on to explain how it can still be useful, however, in order to make it less costly which is a fine point but is completely different from saying that a part of the explicitly supported playerbase would be unable to play like they used to. The latter would mean that the spell would become to weak under those situations, but that is not the case. It might become weaker but it will still see some use.

Therefore, we can conclude that reducing the duration of those spells will have a beneficial effect on the game.

Ok, first stop cherry picking again. You took it out of context. I said that in small groups/less than optimal groups/solo, it was nice to have that duration, that I earned on that character by leveling them to increase their power, to solve quest objectives, whether it is killing them off slowly, raising a party member or two, or just stopping a Charlie Foxtrot situation from getting worse and get it back under control. You claim that I said I needed the longer durations. No, that is not what I said. I said it was nice to have that option if current situations required it. This portion of your comment still shows that your view of CC should only apply to Whack-A-Mob play style.

If it becomes weaker than it already is, it won't be used. You know that just as well as I. Human nature always picks the best and leaves the rest.

By the way, are you even going to say anything about the timer on respawns that I put out, or are you going to ignore it because it is not what you want? A little give and take on your behalf in this discussion would be refreshing. It may not be a perfect idea, but I think it has merit.

If you feel the part you quoted was condescending, then I apologize. It was not intended to. Perhaps it was the explanation that felt insulting, because it's fairly basic and obvious stuff but you have to realize I unfortunately cannot read minds. I don't know what you know.

I, however, do know that I have had to explain what I consider fairly basic stuff to people on these forums such as why balance matters or why incentives are important to good gameplay so it's only normal for me to assume that a poster might not know what I judge obvious. I meant to be educative, not condescending. If you knew all that, expected you begin your reply with "I know all that but..." or something of the kind.

Fair enough. I don't lecture people on these forums because they aren't my kids or my students, and I believe most have a clue about this game until they say differently. Saves me a lot of typing and hurt feelings.

For those who don't think I know anyhting about top end or epic game play, think again. Just because I don't play enough to have everything in this game, or talk about it all the time on the forums, doesn't mean I don't do top end stuff. I still manage even with my "sub-optimal" toons and equipment. Statements about another game play style or preference also shows how one sided an argument is. That leads to thoughts that "CC durations need to be nerfed since I don't need it to be that long".

[Borror0]

So then tell me what is off balance in power from this viewpoint - the three+ minute CC or is it the kotc pushing dual 600+ damage smites plus all the stacking d6's or the berzerker and the 700+ hp crit or the fascinate?

Of the two options you let me pick from, most certainly the duration of Fascinate. As I stated thorough this thread, I don't believe that immobilizing a mob for three minutes is good gameplay regardless of balance.

The encounter we had to deal with back in Module 8 were quite unpopular, because many felt monsters took too long to kill. Yet, the encounter were much shorter than three minutes. DDO's combat is far too fast-paced for three minutes to be an acceptable duration for a fight. If Turbine made fights last that long, we would start complaining. So, of the two choices, the problem is with Fascinate.

When you said "yet those same melee can also rip thru them before the bard puts away the lute," you hinted at two other problems.

The first one is an imbalance. Avoiding damage is not valued, in DDO, because mobs don't hit hard enough, or because healing is overpowered, or because we have heavy fortification - your choice. The end result is that both tanking and CC are undervalued in DDO and thus less played. Instead, it's just DPS and healing.

The second one is the long induction for Fascinate: it takes so long to cast that it's rarely used.

EDIT: KKDragonLord, I think that addresses your post as well.

[Zenako]

Borror0, not sure how much you checked out the effects out on Lamaland, but the HS aspect was actually in some ways the least of the worries. (I have been out there with high level Cleric, Bard and CC Speced Wizard.) The significantly reduced time between saves for spells (which unfortunately will be going live) is a huge impact. Unless you are also nailing mobs with things like Energy Drain, they break CC very very quickly. Making all but pointless unless your ONLY goal was to immobilze the mob so you could autocrit/kill it quickly. If you were hoping to Dominate them and use forces against themselves, by the time you are casting a third spell, the first one is likely to have saved already, unless you also En Drain them, in which case you are quickly reaching the point of SP expenditure that you might as well just tried to kill them Direct Damage.

Unless you actually use CC in those other manners some have mentioned, (which it does not seem you often do given your posts), the impact is hard to understand. Midlevels go out and Dominate a few trolls to help you kill the other mobs. Works reasonably well when the spell last a few minutes. Works like **** when it lasts 15 seconds and breaks almost before you can bring enemies back to fight. Now you have two piles of mobs, both aggro'd on you.

There are a number of quests, where you have to repeatedly pass back thru a central nexus. The new Demon Den quest springs to mind. Each branch is fairly short. With effective CC durations, you can go down a path, complete the task at the end and return without having to repeat the same battles over and over.

You will also find that the reduced saving throw times trivialize the consequences of getting hit with those same spells. FtS, and you are out in a few seconds, unless you have really bad saves. Most of the time it was because the character rolled a real low save in the first place. So how will the Developers be able to balance the mobs now, whose main fear they instilled was that we might get petrified? Now it is less of a pain than getting hit with a command spell. Instead of possibly minutes of effect, it now becomes at most a few seconds.

It becomes a useless abillity for the mobs, unless it now gets enhanced to become something to fear. So instead of a reasonable DC on those effects, where most players save most of the time, and the rare exception gets hit, will that have to now amp up the FtS DC to a high level and now have players all over the place popping in and out of FtS condition? Will that really be well recieved? I frankly do not think so.