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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5188702" data-attributes="member: 82106">What would prevent those from being striker features? Personally I think control has more to do with controlling the BATTLEFIELD than it does controlling the enemy directly. This is why I would classify powers like Storm Pillar and Cloud of Daggers as the most direct possible form of control, they create 'terrain' (admittedly CoD does a weak job of this, but SP is highly effective in this manner, making the target square totally impassible for a round). It is this element of shaping the battlefield which is the true realm of the controller and which is almost entirely exclusive to them. In fact it is largely exclusive to the wizard. The druid can do a fair amount of it, the invoker not much, and the seeker has mostly weaker forms as well. Personally I think this more than anything else is what the designers have never figured out. Things like immobilizing your enemy certainly have a definite control aspect, but they are much closer to debuffing. When you put up a Wall of Fire there's no doubt what sort of effect it is. Notice too there is a good reason why strong control is limited mostly to daily powers (and consequently the wizard is the absolute master of the daily). They are simply so devastatingly powerful that its almost impossible to make encounter or at-will versions. Real control wins battles hands down. Every great military mind in history has recognized the preeminence of shaping the battlefield to your own ends.There are thus a few reasons why controllers don't get a lot of credit. It takes a lot of mental horsepower to make control work for you. You have to have a PLAN. You have to understand your side's strengths and the other sides weaknesses, or at least basic tactical principles, in order for the changes you make to the battlefield to mean any advantage for your forces. Then drop on top of that WotC doesn't particularly grasp this whole fact and you have consequently no general controller class feature and a lot of classes that are only marginally controllers at all. Every controller also necessarily needs a secondary function since the actual exertion of control is not something you usually constantly do on a round-by-round basis, so every controller has a strong secondary function (except wizards, which really are the true hard core controllers).</blockquote>

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