For the record - Regarding the shift towards damage…this is something I personally am all too familiar with. If you could plot the builds I’ve posted over the months with the X-axis being time, and Y-axis being defence, you would notice a downward trend.
Great example - the very first PB reaper I did opted for Ishtak’s devotion because I was so inexperienced in the crucible!
I didn’t know what was happening, it all seemed like a kaleidoscope of flashing colors and random numbers.
All I could do back then was hold down the LMB, and pray I made it through alive.
It was with the guidance of better players than myself (e.g. fluff, ptir) which gradually allowed me to better understand the game, and slowly let go of the training wheels defence offered.
It took the gameplay experience to a whole new level because now I could actively (to a limited degree) influence/control the enemy - not too dissimilar to sun tzu’s art of war.
In current end game content like SR and Crucible enemies CC presents the most danger and is up to players to be able with their builds to cover multiple soft spots and by their playing abilities to try avoid dangerous damage.
Now people wanting bosses to be prone to CC to see how will affect the play style. You won’t be killing bosses, you’ll cheat them to death. And mind that we’re talking about really few bosses being almost impervious to CC resistances. Heroes like healers, dangerous mobs like Basilisks and such are still prone to CC effects.
Also one of the fastest leveling options is using Olexra flash freeze, which shockingly works even against bosses on normal.
So I don’t think the current CC system by bosses requires complete overhaul!
It’s very odd to me that everyone advocating for CC immune on bosses operates the extremes as if it’s some kind of sophistry competition we practice here. I don’t think many (if anyone) who wants CC to work on bosses wishes to “trivialize” the game. People simply like the mechanic and want the endgameplay to be more diverse since the mechanic is already there.
It would be a hell to balance and cut off any permaCC possibilities on bosses if implemented, especially this late in the game development. But i struggle to see how you can argue that cutting off the major part of gameplay from the endgame is a blessing as an idea when the very appeal and the selling of this game (correct me if i’m wrong) is diverse gameplay with good mechanics. Hell to balance now - yes. Bad idea per se? - I don’t know what game are you playing in that case.
Nobody said it wasn’t, or that there is an issue, but griping about CC against bosses when players can output the amount of damage they do just seems like a rather narrow mindset.
The only people cutting it off are the cutting edge players interested only in pushing clear times. CC a viable tool for clearing endgame content, just not one that contributes to the speed mentality.
I think that CC-ing bosses breaks the balance of ARPGs. But it’s also the most fun thing to do for me. Or second most fun to killing big scarry fat bosses in seconds because you have figured out the right build and grinded all the gear.
In this ARPG, yes. The pro cc guys don’t see how much random cc there is on most attacks that they don’t even know cause it doesn’t work. If it starts to work Crate would have to remove most of them cause 1 hr after the patch nerf threads will start to be posted.
I’m sorry but this again is a twisted argument. Hardest waves in Crucible and 60+ boss rooms contain no “crowd” to control. Currently there is nothing to cut off. If bosses would spawn with some heavy hero support, and by heavy i mean resilient mobs with strong abilities (instead of stacking million of strong debuffs skills in bosses’ kits), it would be a whole another story and CC would be viable in endgame.
As of right now “pushing for clear speed” means survivng. At least for melee. Three latest builds i’ve made are more consistent and dying less in Crucible with more offenisve versions of them. This is absolutely ridiculous but it is what it is. Because if you want to survive in 150-170 you need to basically kill bosses 1 by 1 as fast as possible before you’d be debuffed into oblivion (and bosses be buffed into infinity).
I think that people underestimate how many enemies are vulnerable to cc because they tend to focus only on endgame bosses. Non-boss enemies completely immune to all forms of cc are actually pretty rare. To list some, you have aetherial wisps, some stationary enemies (like aether cluster, aetherial obelisks and plants), ugdenbog golems and cold heroes in the specific case of freeze. The rest, included heroes, are pretty much vulnerable to cc.
Just to clarify. I’m happy if my homebrewed build on my potato laptop is able to clear in ~8 mins without dying too often. I’m not chasing for world records and personally i find it a questionable hobby. I just like to make interesting builds. And a lot of interesting melee builds can’t survive in Crucible if they don’t have enough dps under their belt. There is no winning back with 2 reapers + 2 casters alive if you can’t kill one of them straight away. No kiting. No waiting for buffs to refresh. 4 nems stacked together and living long enough penetrate any defense.
This always have been the philosophy of melee builds- kill before you’re killed.
But lightning AAR Mage Hunter for example, no. Sir Spanksalot made a DPS twist of my build and created killing machine but build became really glassy and extremely skill dependant. For lot of builds damage comes for expense of defense and not vice versa. If you play my posted build you’ll be doing nice time on good clear rate. If you play Spanks variation you’ll die a lot and even time won’t be better cause you need to reposition yourself often.
And now imagine if you had CC available as a defense tool for melee. Occasionally stun or trap the enemy to get away from the chase, or to single out the weaker enemy. A whole new layer to the endgame.
Right now in many situations there is no choice between offense and defense. The endgame funnels the building into dps, not the other way around. People who want to clear fast and people who want to survive and finish the mode have met their goals and have to build basically the same thing.
And a slippery slope where CC can be abused to basically lockdown a specific boss into doing nothing. I understand your point of view, you are just not seeing the consequences of CC being enabled to work on bosses.
maybe make strong cc like freeze, stun, petrify, confuse changes into just slowing or weakening the damage/offensive ability of un-cc-able enemies?
example: you try to stun/freeze/immobilize/petrify/confuse korvaak, but he just got slowed a bit/his damage weakens a bit/his offensive ability is reduced slightly. if you throw a lot of cc into him, it will add up until the slow/weaken/missed attack becomes noticeable and decent enough to be used in end builds, without cc becoming overpowered.
right now, cc is just an amusement skills for clearing mobs with extra style and eyecandy.
arcanist to common mobs: HA! you all can’t touch me! you’ll freeze and die a slow death from my op OFF!
inquisitor with aura of censer build to common mobs: what mobs? those corpses that drops dead when i walk past them? stop pestering me with useless questions. i got over 9000 bosses to farm in sr and cruc.
I already said in previous comment, i can see it would be a nightmare to balance now and i understand the decision to ban CC for bosses. What am i not seeing? Stuff about melee life is just my sore wounds. And CC for bosses would be just one way to heal them. Oh well.
I’d say you’re just not seeing the detriment of their inability to function on bosses.
I’m curious which ones you think aren’t completely immune. While I didn’t sift through the entirety of the boss catalog, both phases of Warden Krieg, Cronley, and Karroz are completely immune to Freeze and Stun with “essentially immune” status for Petrify and Entrapment (98%).
Thankfully, Bolvar has what I would consider “fun” levels of CC resistance. Just enough to make most applications be reduced to sub-second times, but not so much that it’d be unnoticeable.
And here’s the big issue that I have with this.
If THE UBER ENDGAME ELITE wants to CC a boss, it can. But what about everyone else? The only people that can get some microsecond interruptions on boss AI are the ones that don’t need it in the first place? So instead of coming up with unique, isolated solutions to difficult problems, the game becomes “get more stats” (resists, health, etc.) What if instead of needing to overcap your Aether resist by 50% against Ana, you could apply a 0.25s stun via Shadow Strike or Grenado to cut off her Devastation cast? Is giving a higher skill ceiling to those with “poorer” gear collections such a bad idea?
Polymorphing or silencing or otherwise interrupting bosses in WoW has been core for years. The break bar in Guild Wars 2 is a unique spin on the same basic premise (commit resources over time to CC a boss before some party-wipe mechanic). Basically anything can be CC’d in PoE/D3. Why is GD committing to a fault on this antiquated ideology?
I don’t think anyone but the naysayers (coughcough) have mentioned chain-CC’ing enemies in this thread. But chain interrupting? Sure. It’d be pretty RNG-heavy.
I don’t know about you but I just looked at my three most recent builds and none of them have any hard CC whatsoever, other than knockdown, and I give knockdown a bit of a pass because it requires animation work (something standing back up) to make it “look good.”
It´s been a while since I last played WoW, but what are/were the consequences if you don´t/didn´t use it?
Iirc, the boss couldn´t be defeated or was very very hard without this CC. I don´t think this would fit with Grim Dawn…
