Crowd Control

[Genie]

Crowd Control as a viable defense

I always thought of crowd control as a means of defense, since it will enable you to get out of harms way for a brief period. This is true for the lower levels, where crowd control still works. However at the higher levels, most crowd control attempts never land, is resisted, or can simply be removed immedeatly, destroying the intended effect.

On the other end, the targets complain about being rooted or snared for long periods of time, effectively ruining the fun for them. If you're not one of those who can resist or escape, you are stuck for a long time, and you can be spammed so you remain so.

So this draft is a suggestion of how CC could be altered, so that CC professions, again can use it as a means of defense (not as a means of anoyance), and dont have to ask for more addalldef to counter their weaknesses. It must be possible to land it, it cant have long durations, it cant be instantly spamably removed.

[Genie]

New Crowd Control nano lines

All the existing roots, snares, calms and stuns should be removed from all professions. The developers need to find out the maximum value it's possible to get in the CC nano skills. For this example's sake, lets say that this value is 3000. Then they need to create 4 new crowd control nano lines: root, snare, calm and stun (yes stun gets its own line). The nanos of each line should start with requirements of 5 for the lowest nano, and end with requirements of 3000 for the highest nano. Gaps between each nano can of course vary from line to line. Now we have crowd control nanos all the way to the end game.

Crowd control professions can now get nanos from these 4 lines. This means that they will share nanos instead of getting their own lines. Bureaucrats are the masters of crowd control, and should get access to all nanos in all the lines. Traders will get access to some roots and some calms. Fixers will get access to some roots and some snares. NTs will get access to some roots and some calms. And so on and so forth.

Common to all CC nano lines
All CC nanos will get a fixed duration or a maximum duration that cannot be exceeded. Like before they have a chance to break on attack. In addition they will get something called "Break Points" which sort of counts as the CCs hit points if you will. All items and nanos that reduce duration of or removes CC nanos, will be reworked to remove BPs instead. When BPs reach 0, the CC is broken (removed). Higher level nanos should be easier to land (harder to resist), and have higher BPs, so they are harder to remove.

Root line
All roots should have a duration of 1 minute. The higher roots should be very hard to resist. This is balanced in its short duration, and that high levels get access to a lot of nano resist and CC removal items. All roots can break on attack like before.

Snare line
All snares should have a duration of 3 minutes. Higher snares will have a greater debuff to runspeed. Snares are easier to resist than roots, but are harder to remove, meaning they have about 3 times as many BPs. They should also have a less chance of breaking on attack than roots.

Calm line
All calms should have a duration of 5 minutes. Like before, calms should break on attack. Calms should be even harder to remove than snares, meaning they have more BPs.

Stun line
Stuns should have a maximum duration of 5 seconds.

Disclaimer:
The values used in this draft, is just pulled out of the air, and not scientifically calculated as being the optimal. Ergo, adjustements to said values is implied.

[Genie]

Other suggestions

An attack that deals massive damage, say a single attack that caps, should break any CC running on the target.

You should not be able to override a CC of the same line unless it is of a higher level. This means that if a target is rooted, you cannot re-root him with the same or lower root, until the current one has expired or broken. This will give the target a chance to fire off some CC immunity (if available).

In order to make crowd control effective as a means of defence, the enforcers rage line will need to be reworked, so that a rage will only remove an amount of BPs per use. The top rage will then no longer automatically remove any root/snare nano, it will only reduce the number of BPs per use, just like a free movement stim does.

Every root, snare, calm and stun should come from these new lines. Engie bot snare aura, should be an area snare from the snare line. Various perk stuns, should be stuns from the stun line, etc, etc. This way it will be easier to keep all crowd control together, and if you need to change one, you change all.

[haavarst]

When I finally break trough that dam root and get close to who Im trying to kill - most perks are resisted and regulars land now and then but not nearly enough, before we are rooted again. AS/Sneak don`t exist for keepers while all CC professions have AS or double/triple.

It don`t seem quite unfair, and I can acually see the similarity to strong CC as something like todays rootgrafts. They are hard to resist and dont last a lifetime.
And you ranged professions can keep roting each other, leave melee out of it unless we get some sort of pulling device

[Kinkstaah]

CC is effective enough as it is. If crats had no evades at all, then yeah I suppose it'd be worth asking for.

Though, rooting melee classes and keeping them there is exactly the same as asking for 100% reflect and 50K evades in such an encounter, which is something CC classes tend to forget.

[mr_road]

a few thoughts...

"Higher level nanos should be easier to land (harder to resist), and have higher BPs, so they are harder to remove. "

with respect to this... i think the ease of landing and difficulty in breaking should stay fairly consistent throughout all the levels. i think we should move towards a game where some aspects of game play remain consistent throughout all the levels.


maybe fixers could get only snare's since they are the masters of snares.

maybe snare's could 'stack' where each successive successful land reduces the runspeed of the target further and each successive break could decrease the runspeed reduction (double negative fun!).


i do like the idea of cc nanos not being able to be "refreshed".

as far as CC being a defense, i think it should be a viable defense, it should also be an active defense but also be a defense which is not absolute.

[haavarst]

Eeek stack like Arids Rift towers? thats not even funny

[Genie]

with respect to this... i think the ease of landing and difficulty in breaking should stay fairly consistent throughout all the levels. i think we should move towards a game where some aspects of game play remain consistent throughout all the levels.

The thought behind this part, is that you should get rewarded for the investment in IP and equipment to get higher skills. Also the amount of BP per CC need to increase with level, since the available items that reduce BPs also increase in level.

This means it will be easy to resist and remove a CC from someone who hasnt invested in CC skills, while the opposite is true for those that do. Fixers and agents for example, who arent as likely to invest as much in the skills as a crat, will have weaker roots and snares that are easier to resist and easier to remove.

as far as CC being a defense, i think it should be a viable defense, it should also be an active defense but also be a defense which is not absolute.

I absolutely agree. At lower level PvP today, CC works as an active defense, but it is by no means an absolute defense. You are in no way guaranteed a victory against a melee prof, like some would have you beleive. It just evens out the playing field, so that you can have a fighting chance. Usually if the melee user can close on you, you are dead.

But I also think that the target of CC should be able to counter it, and plan it, just not instantly like the enf does. Thats why I'd like roots to not be overridable, so that they can fire of some root immunity just before the root are removed by stims, nanos, whatever. Add some planning and timing to it.

Melee profession could also get some new perk specials and/or nanos that grant root immunities for a short period of time, with a reasonable lockout time. Something they can either use to close for the kill, or to get away.

[mr_road]

The thought behind this part, is that you should get rewarded for the investment in IP and equipment to get higher skills. Also the amount of BP per CC need to increase with level, since the available items that reduce BPs also increase in level.

This means it will be easy to resist and remove a CC from someone who hasnt invested in CC skills, while the opposite is true for those that do. Fixers and agents for example, who arent as likely to invest as much in the skills as a crat, will have weaker roots and snares that are easier to resist and easier to remove.


I absolutely agree. At lower level PvP today, CC works as an active defense, but it is by no means an absolute defense. You are in no way guaranteed a victory against a melee prof, like some would have you beleive. It just evens out the playing field, so that you can have a fighting chance. Usually if the melee user can close on you, you are dead.

But I also think that the target of CC should be able to counter it, and plan it, just not instantly like the enf does. Thats why I'd like roots to not be overridable, so that they can fire of some root immunity just before the root are removed by stims, nanos, whatever. Add some planning and timing to it.

Melee profession could also get some new perk specials and/or nanos that grant root immunities for a short period of time, with a reasonable lockout time. Something they can either use to close for the kill, or to get away.

i think we are pretty much agreeing.

i got the initial impression that you wanted cc to land easier at higher levels. but of course resistance goes up at higher levels... i just didn't want to see something where cc lands differently (given same investment in landing and resisting skills by each side) as the levels progress. the current way this is done is in the use of the level as a defense skill. these might need to be rebalanced or the method changed.