PvP RPG Class Design

[Hoofhurr]

CC takes the place of active blocking which has never been implemented well in a mmo game. People object to CC because they don't like losing control of their characters for such extended periods of time that they might die in the process. This is much the same as being one shotted.

You prompted me to ask myself, "What if being stunned or feared or charmed caused a 'stance-change' (as per wow warrior) that opened up an entirely new set of skills/spells for you to use?"

Let's say you get stunned and it's a 10 second stun. Maybe this puts you into a defensive stance allowing you to build up a combination of reflective abilities, super-regens, or various defensive abilities so that by the end of the stun you could start the fight. Maybe you get stunned for 10 seconds but 3 seconds into the stun you can shadowstep right next to the player who stunned you. In this way stuns would always have some disincentive for the person doing the stunning and it would give the CCed player some options to direct the combat a certain way. This would complicated combat but has some merit I think.

An idea for a class might be someone who is really good at breaking CC and has a slew of abilities geared for that role. What you are really asking is can we reinvent the damage/heal/cc/defense quadraped that is the foundation of all mmog classes and add something really innovative. I'll have to brainstorm a little.