Carbineer Archive
Thread: Crowd Control Discussion
"To achieve this, I foresee specials that delay attacks, push enemies back, stop movement, lower damage, increase attack time, knock down, posture change, etc." Ashala
I like these ideas.
Message Edited by Avr on 02-06-2004 11:24 AM
Crowd Control
*Dizy - makes players and npcs fall over if their posture changes, so if they get knocked down they cant get back up untill its gone.(make dizy have a duration of 10 seconds, in its current state its unfair)
*Stun - time delay to attacks and target takes more damage.
*Intimidated - decresed defences, target deals less damage.
*Blind - Increses targets chance to miss attacks.
*Delays -stops target from proforming an action for a set amount of time (warcry / panic shot they should add a visual indicater on this one)
*Disabled (New) - Like wire mesh traps, makes target unable to move for a set duration
*Knockdowns - Knocks the target down.
*Posture Changes - Changes targets posture slowing their attack.
*Bleads - DOT on target pool.
Crowd Control is the ability to set debufs on an enemygroup to keep them delayed, knocked down, lowered in posture and bleading to swing the battle in the favior of the carbineer and his group. This would mean that the carbineer when using debuff specials should do low-med damage a little more then pistols best specials. They should have access to specials doing med-high damage but not ones that add debuffs.
In a group at war I picture the melee guys running to the crowd, the comandos running in behind for their aoe burnage, with pistoleers backing them up sniping the health of the targets. Behind the Pistoleers is the Carbineers and BHs. The carbineers would mainlly be using AOE attacks and debuffsto help their group win. Rifle man would be behind the Carbineers snipeing out the doctors, medics, cms, and other fools low on mind.
SOE has EQ to look to for Crowd Control ideas; at least for a base line anyhow.
In EQ there are Enchanters; they are the masters of Crowd Control. Key abilities an enchanter has:
- Root - This keeps a target(s) in place until a timer wears off or the spell was resisted
- Debuff - Lowered various stats of the target
- Charm - Take command over a target for a brief time
- Mesmerize - effectively takes the target(s) out of combat until a timer expired or they were entered into combat by a player
- Illusion - Make the caster or party members look like another race/species
- Clarity - Increased the mana regeneration of party members
- Slow - Decreased the targets attack speed
- Haste - Increased party members attack speed
- Lull - Agro reducer on target(s)
- Damage - Medium direct damage spells and some Damage over Time spells
Now obviously SWG is not Fantasy based but there are some of the above list which could work in SWG. Our damage in my opinion is already on the medium scale and with Bleeds we have DoTs. Some of our specials already have debuffs attached to them. Charm , Illusion, Buffs(Clarity and Haste) are definitely not going to work as that would be encroaching into other professions and doesn't seem to fit well with the carbine class anyhow. Lull would be similar to /maskscent or /camoflage so there is not much need there since it is covered by getting scout/ranger.
So we are left with Slow, Root, Mez type abilities that could introduced top the class. If Root type effect is implemented any player getting within combat range of the target can be engaged. If Mez type effect is implemented if the Mob is entered into combat with a player it is free to defend itself(Bleeds would apply. the moment it does damage the Mez would be broken.) Currently, I personally see no need to add a Slow type effect. Perhaps in the future or someone else can think of a better reason than I have come up with to add such an effect. With these things in mind I propose the following:
- Fix ChargeShot1 so not to be Spammable. I am guilty of spamming it sometime in my hunt parties to save someone or to keep 1 mob busy while they group tends to the others. In this manner it is used as crowd control even though spammed.
- Fix ChargeShot2 to be what is it supposed to be Area Effect Knockdown. Impose the normal KD timers on it.
- Remove the ScatterShot1 and replace it witha Single target, medium/low damage special that Roots or Mezs a target for a given time.*
- Remove the ScatterShot2 and replace it withaAE target, medium/low damage special that Roots or Mezs a multiple targets for a given time.*
- Add WarningShot2 like another poster suggested. This would be an AE WarningShot1 available in the master box.
- Make CripplingShot target action pool only and or fix LegShot3 We have too many random pool shots as it is.
- Make the FullAuto line of specials induce only one type of State; I propose Blind since WildShot does Stun
- Add a state effect to the BurstShot line of specials(Intimidate maybe)
- Remove Posture change on ActionShot2
- Remove AE effect on ActionShot2
- Reorganize Carbineer specials so the most effective and/or most damaging shots are inthe Master boxes for each branch and in the Carbineer Master box.
So with these changes a battle could flow like this.
- Multiple Creatures are pulled back to the party
- Carbineer opens up with ChargeShot1/2 to KD the mob.
- Follows up with Root/Mez shot.
- If Step 3 was successful the party can engage the non-Rootes/Mezzed mob. Else carbineer repeats step 3.
- Carbineer can begin using debuff specials on the parties engaged target
- Periodically, carbineer must refresh root/mez on mobs until party is finished with current target. Each refresh has a chance to break said Root/Mez. Obviously some mobs would be harder to keep in this state than others.
- Party selects next mob to engage after dispatching the first one and repeat from step 4 until all mobs or the party is dead.
So in effect Carbineer is still powerful and having a carbineer in a group could make things too easy to kill; the difference is there is some work involved besides just spamming KD over and over. And it would be like it was/is in EQ if you got a GOOD carbineer in your group you can do wonders. It all depends on the playing skill of the person behind the character. Just because someone is a Master doesn't mean they can play their profession. I am sure most will agree to that.
in terms of definition of how the carbineer class should work I feel this post says it perfectly, I don't think I've seen a post that so clearly and accuratly defines the role of carbineer.. if you sent just one post to the dev's it should be this one.
I emplore the comunitity rep to fly this post from the highest flag. you can basically rewrite the whole class special structure and bonuses purely on the clarity of this post.
/applaud
Kaffis wrote:
The key to a crowd control in this game has to be either precluding movement (or perhaps merely their control over their movement?) or delaying their actions.
In other words, I'd consider anything that delays their action, knocks them down, forces to kneeling, makes them run away, knocks them back, or perhaps even a confusion that would randomly reassign their movement keys (and mouselook axes, probably) each time they become confused -- any of those would be great crowd control skills.
The other key to crowd control is, the crowd controller needs to be able to perform them continuously, or nearly continuously, at the expense of doing appreciable damage (shots in the 5-50 range), and at the expense of using any other moves. If I devote my entire contribution to the group to controlling one or more targets (single target should be very reasonable with the HAM cost so a carbineer can trade his contribution to the group for his target's on his own -- take both players out of the equation; while AoE multitarget control should be such that a carbineer needs medical support to keep it up for prolonged periods of time), I need to be able to have a good chance of keeping them controlled.
Finally, state defenses should work such that, particularly on AoE versions, a target has a chance of breaking the effect or not being effected, in direct proportion to their defensive skills. This goes for PvE as well -- MOBs intended to pose difficult group encounters should resist crowd control effects frequently enough to require several (2-3) players dedicated to the low damage control moves.