To PHB2 Owners: Controllers Compared?

[WhatGravitas]

Basically what the title says - to those people who have their PHB2 already: How do the different controllers line up against each other?

How much "control" does the Druid vs. Invoker vs. Wizard has?

From the books before, I got the impression that arcane classes all have a controller bent (Warlocks and swordmages have it as a subtheme), whereas all divines have some leader-ish abilities. Does that still hold true (i.e. is the wizard the control class with most "control" effects)?

Apart from that, is there more consensus what constitutues "control" (area damage vs. status effects vs. movement effects), as we have more classes to compare against now?

Cheers, LT.

 

[Nymrohd]

I have not been through the druid's power 1 by 1 yet but I did check the invoker. And I get the feeling that it controls the battlefield a lot more than I did with the wizard who mainly blows it up. Sure the wizard probably had some choice per level that does good control and not only damage, but invoker has several. Zones, sustainable conjurations, summons, many effects that punish enemy actions, a strong subrole as a leader and great AoE damage if you go with a wrathfu invoker built. And ofc Tomb of Margrym which is the coolest power in 4E up till now (though the awesome Invoke the Absolute Dark at lvl 29 dailies is a strong contender.)

 

[MerricB]

Basically what the title says - to those people who have their PHB2 already: How do the different controllers line up against each other?

How much "control" does the Druid vs. Invoker vs. Wizard has?

From the books before, I got the impression that arcane classes all have a controller bent (Warlocks and swordmages have it as a subtheme), whereas all divines have some leader-ish abilities. Does that still hold true (i.e. is the wizard the control class with most "control" effects)?

Druid (according to its text) has subthemes in Leader and/or Striker depending on which powers you take.

Druid also has eight at-will powers. There's a bunch of controller powers there: most of them revolve around either moving the target or stopping it moving, but there's a really "reverse defender" attack which penalises them if they don't attack a particular ally of yours...

Investigating the higher level powers, there's a bunch of sliding, slowing, immobilizing, knocking prone and - interestingly - grabbing going on.

Druid really looks like an interesting class.

Cheers!

 

[frankthedm]

Does the Druid ability "fire seed" still auto-kill minions who don't have fire resist?

 

[Nymrohd]

If you are talking about the flame seed at-will, yes it essentially creates a burst 1 zone that autokills minions.

 

[Victim]

Druids don't really seem all that great as controllers, with a large number of single target powers lacking strong conditions. They do have a number of ways to inflict slides though. They also don't really have a useful class feature for control. OTOH, they do have more HP and surges than invokers or wizards, which they'd have to be paying for somewhere.

Invokers tend to have smaller areas than wizards. They do have Summon/Zone things, however, I'm not really sure they're better than comparable wizard effects like Flaming Sphere, Evard's, or Wall of Fire. They also don't have the same sort of lasting lockdown ability (although they do get some save manipulating effects). They do seem to have a leader secondary - especially in paragon paths: one ability adds INT mod to your team's attacks for a round against the targets of your AP action.

 

[gribble]

Based on my experience playing an Invoker (Covenant of Wrath - level 4) alongside a Wizard for two sessions (using the preview material, but I can't see any obvious differences between that and the PHB2 version):

Invoker:
+ had more rider effects on his attacks (bonuses to allies, conditions, etc).
+ only attacked enemies with AoE, rather than creatures (and usually aided allies in his AoE).
+ generally dealt more raw damage.

Wizard:
+ affected larger areas (i.e.: more enemies at once).
+ had a better AC (staff build, higher int, shield utility power).

Differences observed could have been down to optimisation and/or random luck, but overall (given the characters role), the Invoker seemed much better in play than the Wizard.