Priestly Crowd Control

You, the priest, have three crowd control spells. Yes, that’s right, three. You have mind control (MC), shackle, and Psychic Scream (PS). Yes, I know I’m going to get arguments about that third. I’m saving it for last in this discussion.

You first pick up MC at level 30. It only works on humanoids. It takes 3 seconds to cast. It lasts UP TO (sneaky warning) one minute, and the mind controlled target moves and attacks 25% slower than normal. That much (except the sneaky warning comment) comes from the tooltip. But there is more to consider.

The things you can do with MC are severely restricted. You can move — and you had best be aware that the further from you the target gets moved, the more likely it is to break the control. And you can basic-attack something (right click). Some PVE mobs will have some spell and other special capabilities enabled. Movement games have been restricted a bit — there are a lot of places you used to be able to walk your target off the cliff and listen for the splat that don’t happen any more. Mobs break the spell at the fall-off point, or survive the fall regardless of distance. Players… in many places, do the same. One last comment – while you’re controlling a target, YOU cannot do anything as it’s a channeling spell. If you’re hit the channel isn’t interrupted, it’s just… accelerated.

All that noted, I highly recommend you practice MC. Consider this technique for fun and giggles: MC the healer of a double-pull team and start beating on the ‘tank’. Odds are the tank will kill the healer for you leaving you a half (or worse) damaged tank. Now if you need the ‘glory’ of the kill, break the MC just before the healer dies and finish it off your own self – just use something fast so it doesn’t self-heal and frustrate you.

In my experience, MC of a mob one or two levels above me always lasts at least 30 seconds. Beyond that, it’s a gamble. But that’s 30 seconds, which is almost as good as a sap. And the mob almost makes up for your dps as well, with the bonus that it’s not you taking the damage.

Shackle undead is the other ‘standard’ CC. As the title says, it works only on (non-player) undead. At rank one (level 20) it lasts for a whopping 30 seconds, increasing eventually to 50. It takes a second and a half to cast. All that said, there are two things which make this something you MUST practice. First, it can be constantly renewed (like Sheep), even if it’s not yet done. Second, while shackled the mob can do NOTHING.

There are undead mobs who can make your party’s run miserable. This is your solution. But if you’re restricting it to party play you’re missing a big bet. If your DPS is good enough to kill one of the undead in 30 seconds (50 at higher levels) then you just made a group quest a lot easier – maybe even soloable.

Finally, Psychic Scream. For 8 seconds your target (and all the others in the area that are affected) are out of combat — the basic purpose of crowd control. Now all the problems still matter — cooldown pretty well restricts this to once per battle, you have to worry about the runners gathering adds, it’s “only” 8 seconds which might break earlier, and so forth. That said… 8 seconds is a long time. And (bonus) unlike most other crowd control the fear does not increase your threat. And it’s not broken by damage from other players. Used wisely, it is an excellent crowd control tool that will keep the size of what you’re fighting manageable.

~ by Kirk on August 1, 2007.