sp00n

No, not another thread about toHit gear and Instructor or Fearlina. :P


Rather, it's about bosses that cast mind control and the action that the mind controlled players then perform (like Lucifron, Skeram or Hakkar). As a rogue, I have noticed a very unintelligent behaviour when being mind controlled. Back in the days when I still had Cold Blood, it was activated, but there was never used an ability which actually benefited from it. So I am running around with my actived (almost) guaranteed crit, and beating up people with autoattack, or even more better, shooting with my elite gun skills randomly at someone.
I think I remember that sometimes I even use gouge!

With my warrior alt, there is one thing that is actually very well implemented, that is the usage of intimidating shout. Wether it may be annoying or not for the players affected by it, I think it is a quite intelligent usage during mind control. Makes the encouter a bit more difficult and also requires the warriors to think ahead a little bit and burn their cooldown before there is the possibility that they are mind controlled.
On the other hand, yesterday on Hakkar I was with 1h + shield and mind controlled, and I saw he was casting SLAM. Slam with a 2.0 speed one handed weapon. Great idea. <_<

Now I do not know about other classes, besides mages with their standard blizzard or locks with rain of fire. I think I even noticed paladins casting their protection bubble on mobs when they are controlled (similar to the Nefarian paladin class call), but I cannot remember where on when that has been.

Yet in the end such mind controlls are rather a "dumb" mechanic. It just seems like +size, +damage and -brain.

Now, with the release of buring crusade and the associated raise of players hitpoints, I could see a possibility of a more complex and thus more "intelligent" usage of mind control. So far, using abilities like backstab, frostbold, mortal strike etc. would have caused a too high damage to the targeted players, and thus ending in a likely death of that person. But if a mage for example is suddenly running around with 7000 hp, one or two backstabs won't matter that much anymore (assuming that there is no additional bonus damage when mind controlled).
I could even think of a scenario where one boss mind controls let's say around 15-20 players, then teleports and watches the show where the players beat up themselves (insert evil laughter here). The remaining, non controlled players could either have to keep alive the arena mass event, or if not able to heal, do something to end this chaos, like annoying the boss so much by telling bad jokes that he returns to his normal attacks, whatever.

However, I would like to see a more intelligent application of mind control. Actually using abilities that are not totally moron, maybe even something like pseudo PvP. Of course that would need the implementation of an actual AI to the game. ;)

 

Xtee

I believe that the length of the cooldown helps determine the use of the ability. A warrior when out of rage while MC'd many times, rather then get more rage by hitting sombody will just shoot his gun. Tomorrow I will run some tests with a slow 2h and a fast gun and see if it uses the weapon over the gun. As an orc warrior I see my racial, last stand, 30m cool down, and my fear all get blown as easy as possible which happen to be my largest cooldowns.

 

henaki

Mindcontrol will pretty much prioritize cooldowns above anything else, I love seeing myself Vanish, Blind then Kick but never Backstab or Sinister Strike.

Gur - Level 64 Undead Warlock on Hellfire

 

enshula

I got mindcontrolled by skeram while divine shielded last week, i used it before the MC rather than the game using it. The druid i killed was not very impressed.

 

Rane

Wait until you do Shadow Labs in Auchindoun, where the second boss mindcontrols everyone and sets you against each other. Pile on the healer guys!

Great fun the first time, gets annoying the next 5 or 6 times tho :/

 

sp00n

Wow, they really did that?

 

Feer

It's definitely cooldown based priority.

Speccing lightwell makes you basically immune to NPC mind control because first thing AI will do is to drop lightwell, giving people plenty of time to sheep you :)

 

Pono

Yeah, nothing that amuses me more than burning NS and then starfire spamming. (Cooldown burning seems to be erratic--mobs will almost always burn NS but never War Stomp, Hurricane or Tranquility, and of course it's not really smart enough to use Swiftmend.) Or, when I was a mage, burning PoM and arcane missiles-spamming.

I'll still never forget the time we did dead Strat and our tank got possessed by Baroness. He shot the other mage to death.

 

Mazz

He ^^

Best one I've seen was the AI popping both my Adrenaline Rush and Blade Flurry... then proceeded to bow random ppl in the raid.

 

• Cluey

There were quite a few druids who have been possesed by the Baroness in Stratholme and teleported themselves to Moonglade.

I think that is quite possibly the funniest and most frustrating things to happen in the game, thankfully I only read about it and it never happened to me.

 

• Chicken

The only thing I know is that if I get MCed it usually follows the exact same AI that all healer mobs do. That is, it makes me cast all kinds of offensive spells when the mob is on high health, but when it drops below 50% it starts making me spam heals on it. Or in the case of Skeram if him and all his clones are on low health, I instead end up spamming Prayer of Healing.

Has at times caused quite a few "wtf why is Skeram's health going up?" comments if the sheeping was slow.

And I can agree on the cooldown blowing part of MC, I usually immediately have Inner Focus and Psychic Scream used.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

sp00n

Now that is a neat one. :teachdance:

 

Rane

I'll one-up that. We're running up to Prophet Skeram, and the first one he mindcontrols is a rogue, who promptly blows AR and BF and takes me down in one 6k Bladeflurry hit. Fun start of the fight, I can tell you!

 

Omentuva

Most MC abilities indeed blow your cooldowns. For me, this usually meant that I got a cold snap used, and as a mage when MC'ed, I'm not exactly complaining. Then again, as Fire, and without any high cooldowns, I've been known to 1-shot healers...

 

Farstrider

If that is true, as it sounds a bit like an urban myth, it is simply hilarious. I actually did, laugh out loud.

John O'Groats to Lands End 2009 for Leukaemia Research

 

Herde

Apparently being MC'ed gives you extra talent points, because I have been able to do a pom flamestrike (without being specced for pom) when mc'ed on skeram, with hilarious results.

 

Grubsnik

Well, like it's been mentioned by the devs before, just killing players is no challenge at all.

I'm fairly sure they could buff up the MC-brains at a whim, but they won't simply because it would make those encounters much harder.

 

• Chicken

One of the effects of Skeram's MC is that all your spells become instant.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Juli

http://thottbot.com/?sp=785

Name
True Fulfillment

Buff Description
Charmed.
Damage increased by 300%.
Spells cast instantly.
All resistances increased by 50.
Movement speed increased by 40%.

To add something to the discussion, regardless of whether they add better mind control AI to encounters in the future, they really should remove the use of a few more abilities. I know they removed things like mage teleport etc (which used to be useable by the AI in beta). It just doesn't seem right that youre forced to tell your orcish protection tank to dps because hakkar decides to use blood fury which results in a hilarious 25 sec mortal strike on a 2min cooldown. It's not a big deal once you're overgeared, but for someone appropriately geared for that level of dungeon, its a bit overboard. Intimidating shout was really annoying as a warrior, but I suppose it adds the level of difficulty and chaos that mind control is intended to.

E:FB

 

sp00n

This is with the current HP/damage ratio, but with BC we gain quite some more HP, so this could be a viable option then.

 

RK

As a shaman it pretty much always blows NS first, then usually either chain lightning on a nearby target or healing wave on the mob depending. I can't recall offhand it ever dropping a totem, and we don't have many cooldown abilities otherwise.

 

Kasonic

Average Mage Mind Control Sequence:

Cold Snap
Fire Blast
Ice Armor
Blizzard
Autoattack for a while
Ice Armor Again

I don't think I've ever been MCed where the AI didn't instantaneously use Cold Snap if it was up. Annoying to say the least.

Whereas most warriors tend to immediately Intimidating Shout then start plowing a cloth. Meh.

 

Lank

I was once mind controlled on the Gnome boss on that Island near Theramore (for the scepter quests)

8000 normal hit, 15000 bloodthirst, etc..

..... I broke out of sheep somehow.......


Best fun ever, killing about 10-15 of my guildies :D

 

• Cluey

I came across it on the druid forum as the druid was not happy, others also said it had happened to them.
One of the replies was from Caydium(CM) she said she would bring it to the programers attention and it got fixed.
I meant to include this in the post but apparently my brain has melted and I'm not so cluey anymore ;)
This was quite a while ago too, I can't remember when as I am bad at that sort of thing :(

 

drowsy

Do mind controlled players select random targets, or do they have a typical aggro table? Our rogues and warriors very frequently go after healers, and fade gets rid of them. On the other hand, the druids occasionally faerie fire the MT at skeram, which would not support that unless it happened to be shared boss aggro.