I had way to much fun with my controllers. I also had pretty much every combination out there.
From my Illusion/Kinetics, Fire/Rad, Gravity/Time, and Dark/Dark. There were so many good times and I miss them!

I loved my trollers (Graff) gravity/force fields, earth/rad,(Grey cold) ice/storm,(Miss) mind/force fields,(Arcs) fire/rad, (Xarior) illusion/trick arrow,(Bad seed) dark/nature and (Spet) electric/kinetics

Spending most of my time redside, I came late to trollers (I was a squishy player at heart I guess), but was glad I did! I had only two that got anywhere, one an Illusion/Rad, the other an Emp/Fire. One made it to 50, the other to something like 47th and both were a lot of fun to annoy foes with (especially the Ill/Rad with crazy levels of recharge).

Sir Giles wrote:

Controllers were my favorite AT for sure. I had many of them on Infinity.
Fiery Transfer (fire/kin), Deceptive Construct (Illusion/Rad), Tundral Drift (Earth/Cold), Mass Point (Gravity/Time), Darkened Exhaustion (Time/Rad), Aphotic Authority (Dark/Dark), and Mantle Rising (Earth/Thermal) are the ones that I remember the most.@Sir Giles

Finally, another Infinity player, lol.

Though with that, I have to admit my favorite controller actually was on Triumph, my "cabin in the woods" server. Radium Dial, earth/rad. His damage output wasn't the best, but man, could he lock down spawns.

Big fan of controllers here.

I like the idea that participation points come from simply participating. You're not punished for not fully understanding how to min/max your build, or for gimping yourself for roleplay, and level progression for a close-knit team would be consistent regardless of competence (keeping them together). In which case metrics for the impact of mezzing would only matter to testers and balancers internal to the system.

I liked the way they balanced Confuse in CoH. It was my favorite power from a roleplay point of view, but it was also effective.

I would love to see an Earth based control set.....

Oh jeez.. I miss my Gravity/Kinetics so much.. A juiced up Singularity, not having to take a travel power.. Making people upset with me in Recluse's Victory with three stacks of Siphon Speed.. Man, those were the days.. Not to mention being able to run into the middle of a mob and nothing being able to do anything except just sit there and take it..

Kind of depressing when you think about it.. Those builds may never again grace our screens, but we can at least hope something better will be around the corner with this.. I want to wormhole some things again!.. Mob of things into drones! Nothing is safe from the wormhole!

I loved my grav/kin, Lagrange Point, and ice/storm, Cryo Havoc.
I had others, but those were two of my earliest 50s that I continued to log in with right up to the end.

Used to love trollers especially my ill/rad and my chaos controller(earth/storm). Back in the days I was a recruiter and used to get someone +4 my level and run their missions on invincible, then build the rest of the team with 5 or 6 trollers (at least 2 rads and 2 kins, preferably with fire and ill)with a blaster to bat cleanup against +6ish mobs (for everyone but 1 person). Believe it or not there was a time when people weren't sure u could successfullycomplete a mission without a tank, but with everything debuffed down to its socks, held, slowed and then us buffed, healed, on that kinetic crack and fulcrum shifted into total overdrive, the xp (and then eventually tickets) fell like rain! It was sick! Its just amazing it took me 2 YEARS of playing before I even tried one! (Played on/off for 6). I eventually got sick of recruiting teams and would usually just get in where I fit in where invited or solo/duo farm with my ill/rad and a friend. Was pure mayhem and lotta fun.

p.s. I think petwise we had available usually like 24 pets!

My main, Redlynne, was an MA/SR/Soul Mastery Scrapper. From day one of playing City of Heroes, I was a Scrapper at heart, and Scrapperlock was THE DRUG! Here's a picture of her in her Issue 2 costume (before the invention of Pants and Sneakers!) fighting Fifth Columnists who were NINE FEET TALL compared to my 5 foot nuthin'! Yes, I was playing on a 640x480 screen back in those days ...

[img]http://srv.fotopages.com/images/2/7/9/6/3/3336972.cmp[/img]

My second hero though, was [url=http://srv.fotopages.com/images/3/4/1/9/6/6169143.cmp]Ms Givings[/url] ... a Mind/Kinetics Controller. She was made pre-Containment, when Controllers took MINUTES to defeat a single Minion. Conversely, there were no limits on Max Targets for Telekinesis, so situations like THIS ONE in Terra Volta could happen ...

[img]http://srv.fotopages.com/images/6/7/8/8/6/5768876.cmp[/img]

Later, I created (as a joke, obviously) ... Topheavy Gs ... a Gravity/Time Controller. This was my first "run the boobs slider all the way to max" character. Gave her long white hair and a purple and white color scheme in Mini Vest, Pants and Sneakers look that was broadly similar to Ms Givings', in part because it just worked so well. I gave her a bio that frequently got me compliments from random strangers ...

Quote:

SAVE IT. I've heard all the jokes, and after all this time the odds that yours will be original is approaching nil.

Let's put it this way. How many girls do you know who had to invent gravity control technology as a defense against the onset of puberty? Right, didn't think so.

To my surprise, as a "Scrapper at heart" sort of player, I hadn't expected to LIKE playing as a Controller as much as I did, but once I started using Mind Control, and [i]especially[/i] once I started using Mesmerize, Dominate, Confuse, Mass Hypnosis, etc. etc. ... boy was I hooked! It almost got to be a point of pride for me that I could go through an entire mission and defeat all the Foes who spawned within it without drawing aggro onto myself [i]even once[/i] as a soloist. Where everyone else complained in chat channels about being unable to take down Trap Door or solo their way through the Incarnate Arc to get their first Incarnate Slot ... Ms Givings just mind controlled her way to victory, solo, through patience, perseverence, and a WHOLE LOT of Confusion!

To this day, I still prefer to think of the Tier 9 Power in the Mind Control Powerset as ... Mass Comedy. The first time I used it on a group of Banished Pantheon in Dark Astoria, just as a test run at Level 32 ... I couldn't stop laughing at the results for over an hour! Storm Shamans would spawn Lightning Storms ... that would [b]ZOT![/b] the Storm Shaman! Death Shamans would summon Zombies ... and attack the zombies they had just summoned! It was just hilarious to me to watch these mobs tear themselves apart while I got to play spectator.

And then there was her Battlecry, heard often enough on Hamidon Raids on Virtue:

Quote:

Trust your Ms Givings!

Sailboat wrote:

I never understood the bizarre comment a dev made in favor of making controls less effective..."it's no fun fighting statues."

Clearly said by a Dev who should have been allowed NOWHERE [b]NEAR[/b] Controllers at any time, ever. It's a bit like having a Dev say about a damage dealing class like Blasters or Scrappers... "it's no fun standing on a pile of corpses."

To which the obvious Player response is, "You're DISQUALIFIED to be a Dev!"

My main, my first 50, and the toon I loved the most was definitely my ill/rad controller Raederle (that's her as my avatar).

My favorite Controller was, well, me. Fire/Rad Controller, Infinity Server.

Sailboat wrote:

I never understood the bizarre comment a dev made in favor of making controls less effective..."it's no fun fighting statues."

To revisit this comment, and I want to preference this by saying I [i]loved[/i] my Tanks and attended many Tanker Tuesdays, I never understood why "neutralizing an enemy by making him attack something he cannot harm" (an effectively indestructible Tanker) was supposed to be morally superior to "neutralizing an enemy by making him fall down/stand still/attack his ally."

*chuckle*

I had a really hard time getting into controllers- Archimedes' Lever (Grav/Kin), the 'troller I made on my main server of Guardian, just didn't really do it for me, despite the fact that I loved the name, loved how he ended up looking, liked most of the powers... but it just didn't 'click' for me. I'm a blaster player by nature, and the damage felt pathetically slow to me.

Then I made Skein to RP with friends over on Protector. Plant/Storm. And it was love at hideously overpowered first sight. By the time I got him to 50, I was leaving my settings to more or less permanently spawn for groups of 8 while I soloed, and even then, typically the only time I went down was if I accidentally aggroed a fourth 8-man spawn, and even then, there usually wasn't a lot left of them.

Good times.

Thunder-Puncher wrote:

Fireheart wrote:
After Tanks, I had more Controllers than any other AT. Mind Control was a favorite, but also Gravity. Such Fun!

Seconded...,
- ...and while I wasn't an avid fan of Tanks...besides an Illusion Controller, a Mind Controller Was THE -BOMB-! You didn't need 'pets' with that Power Set because almost everything, in essence, was a 'pet' to the Mind Controller with Confuse...and while there are some who would say, '...b-b-but, Confuse reduced experience gain!' All I got to say to that is when you have a mob that's no longer attacking you, but the opposition instead -AND- providing buffs to your team if they're using some sort of AOE ability...-THAT- is the premier definition of 'Control'. My reaction to those who dislike Confuse is the same as those who dislike Knockback...
- ...cry me a river. ^_^

Ya, I had 5 lvl50 tanks as well, loved em too, lotta fun. Also re ill/rad & mind trollers, the sick thing is on my ill/rad I had contagious confusion slotted which had 33% hit rate (seemed higher cuz Deceive had like a 2 sec rech) so I would often get the benefits of being a mind troller and watching the whole room turn on itself, SO much fun! The beauty of it for me was I could confuse/debuff def & res on the mobs in one group getting mowed down by my PA, fire attacks and of course their own enhanced damage & tohit then debuff acc/tohit on the ones that aggro'd me and my mortal decoy! Really sped up the process and made it a lot safer to farm seeing as I played til issue 19 (i.e. pre "godmode") .

As yet another game succumbs to the desire to make it [b]*ALL*[/b] about an unchallenged "Pew Pew!" Factor. Sad really.

Pyromancer wrote:

Absolutely I will be rolling a Controller... err Commander :D. Originally a 50++ Mutant Fire(/Rad) Controller here. I loved when power spectrum was introduced, changed all that sickly green radiation into brilliant orange.

Yep as soon as we could customize our powers in CoH I did the exact same thing with my Fire/Rad. I recolored both powersets to the same non-default redish-orange to make the all the Radiation powers look as "fire-oriented" as the Fire powers.

When CoT launches I'm actually considering re-rolling my old Fire/Rad Controller into a new Fire Control/Fire Blast Commander (Executor). This would naturally trade the buff/debuff of Rad for more direct DPS so this character would play more like a "pocket Blaster" than a traditional Controller. I figure out of all the original CoH Controller powersets Fire was easily one of the highest DPS generators to begin with and my Fire/Rad (with her Fire Mastery Ancillary) was already probably as close to a Blaster damage-wise as a Controller could get. Losing the Rad buff/debuff would make soloing AVs harder but a Fire/Fire Executor would be an absolute crowd-clearing powerhouse.

I guess learning how Mezz is going to be handled in CoT will determine just how important having more DPS will be.

I'm sort of in the same boat. Waiting anxiously on word for how CC will work in this game. If it is the same or similar to COH no doubt I will be trying to remake my main just the way he was or as close as possible. If they decide to go for a faster more "actiony" CC system then ehh... will probably just go with a superhero flame thrower type concept. I can't talk about this anymore, it's making me want to play COH and it hurts.

Tinkhard wrote:

Controllers were tied as my favorite AT to play, I absolutely loved feeling truly powerful over swarms of enemies, it appealed to the control freak in me :P
Vitamin-X (Plant/Rad)
Lady Kindle (Fire/Kin)
Luna Dusk (Dark/Dark)

Oh yeeeaah, any AT with control capabilities was right up my alley too. The only thing that irked me was when enemies were too powerful to hold down. Drove me nuts pretty early on up until I spammed Propel with recharge enhancements to keep sending them flying.

Dztblk wrote:

I have always loved having a [color=red]troller[/color] from the moment I played CoH. I'm a 5 year vet. My favorite was ice/ice. I can't remember the actual name of the sets. Love it! Someone mentioned something about low defense and low healing. Not with an all ice [color=red]troller[/color]...and arctic air! OMG an end hog, but so missed. Enemies would be snared so hard and the amount of confusion you could generate made it all the sweeter.

[url=http://i.imgur.com/vQVDwBw.jpg]'TROLLERS UNITE![/url]

If I recall correctly, and my memory is horrible and sadly there are things about CoX that I didn't even realize I forgot until someone around here mentions them, most holds were stackable if your recharge was up to it. I do recall stacking Char on Boss/EB/AVs - and I think I remember that it stacked on top of Cinders as well as teammates holds. Getting flashbacks of my TF AV cycle...

My main was illusion/storm/psi, and he could do everything, from stealthing objectives, to defeating armies, to off-healing, to tanking Recluse. Sure, he started out slowly, but once everything in sight was confused, knocked down, or cowering in fear, there was no stopping him.

I also enjoyed my plant/storm and grav/rad.

Here's hoping this game will permit strong enough mezzes so that Commanders are viable.

All I can say after playing different MMOs since the shutdown is 2 SECONDS IS NOT A PROPER HOLD!!!

Seriously, looking at my Engineer in Wildstar(don't kill me), his stun is 2.5 seconds long and though this is 'action' combat, I easily lose that time maneuvering and via animation time so am not really getting extra attacks like in CoH. Same goes for the Control Wizard in Neverwinter. And what do I get when I want to upgrade it? The first tier Stun in Wildstar gives me an extra 0.09s. Yes, I had to do a double take on that. Not 1 second, not .5sec and not even .10...just ridiculously lame and who can notice that extra 'time'. This is what I loved about CoH. For most of the game, you actually noticed a difference when you upgraded a power. I'm talking subjectively as in it 'felt' better, not just sit there with a stopwatch so you could confirm "yeah, it's better even though I can't really tell the difference while playing". Things like I can now get in two shots with Propel before my Hold stops or I can reapply before the first one dissipates. But in Wildstar I need to investigate whether abilities like Recursive Matrix is really benefiting me or my bots instead of saying "wow, that really cuts down on incoming damage, no wonder it is on a 30 sec cooldown". Nope, I have to watch health bars closely because there is so little difference battle to battle.

This doesn't even take into account fun powers like Singularity, Wormhole, Carrion Creepers, etc. Did I mention confuse powers?

tldr - I really miss my Grav/Rad controller and my Plant/Fire dominator :(

My ideal is that for non-controller setups 1.5-3s is the hold time.

For Controller hybrid setups the time should be around 2-5seconds

For controller dedicated setups you should see 5-8 seconds

THIS IS ALL OF COURSE BASED ON AN ENEMY WITH NO HOLD RESISTANCE. So many people get attracted to hold times with zero concern with how the holds are resisted. While the interrupt armor mechanic is nuanced in Wildstar the smaller stats like crowd control resistance tend to lose all value. My medic is based on ALL crowd control (best on Evindra if I do say so) and while she's packed full of great movement control mechanics the enemies don't really get a proper mechanic to resist them.

CoH controls lasted more like 20-30 seconds and recharged quickly, so that they could be stacked or laid on multiple targets. The only ones that complained were the PvP victims.

Be Well!
Fireheart

Fireheart wrote:

CoH controls lasted more like 20-30 seconds and recharged quickly, so that they could be stacked or laid on multiple targets. The only ones that complained were the PvP victims.
Be Well!
Fireheart

And of course, anyone who had a defense powerset could just activate whatever power granted them immunity to those effects and have at it.

I'm not averse to a 'degrees of mez' system, except that, when it's Important, I need a way to assure a [b]lock[/b] on the first try... versus Most enemies. Bosses and GMs are allowed to (barely) escape.

Be Well!
Fireheart

I love slow for it's uses in twitch based 2d combat.

It is much less useful outside of those parameters. I gotta say tho.. I'm realling digging my twitch based 2d combat atm.

Yeah, PvP was a different dynamic in CoH. Perma-Holding is fun to do in PvE. Being a victom of Perma-Hold in PvP is not so much fun. An experienced PvPer could mitigate it to some degree by having a high defense and a tray of big break frees, but the casual players did not enjoy the experience. So Controllers had a higher magnitude of hold but would only last for a base of 4 seconds. Yet, smart players were still able to hold unprepared players until the 10 seconds of immunity kicked in. But against cold or psi players you were usually at your -movement or -recharge cap and was good as Mezzed anyway.

Gangrel wrote:

to be honest, being stun locked by NPC's sucks as well...

I'm certain that's so. I can't recall it ever happening to me.

I mean, it probably did happen, once or twice. Most likely, it was Circle or Malta that did it. I just don't recall it being a big deal. Use a Break Free and go to town.

Be Well!
Fireheart

Darth Fez wrote:

In my experience it was the Carnival of Shadows who were most likely to turn a character into a statue. Especially if you had the pleasure of running into more than one Master Illusionist at once.

Ah, there's the issue, then. For some reason, the Carnival was never in the same part of town as I was. Sad clowns.

Be Well!
Fireheart

[b][i]"Wusses ..."[/i][/b]

Try fighting [b]5 [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Rikti_Magus]Rikti Magus[/url][/b] ... solo ... holding their aggro(!) ... solo ... for over a minute ... solo ... while waiting for the cavalry to arrive and deliver the beatdown during a Mothership Raid ... without succumbing to their Mez Stacking.

Now try doing that TWICE IN ONE RAID and getting a ... reputation ... for being Death Defying.

And then doing it AGAIN on a second Mothership Raid on the same night.

[b][i]Rikti Magus are my natural prey.[/i][/b]
{engage Scrapperlock on Rikti Magus!}