[Red Reika]

It seems to be obvious for everyone already that the stun's galore is a hard to ignore problem, maybe this could be a good idea to balance things up when it comes down to CC in general, or at least kickstart some thoughts on the matter. I'm sure someone smarter than me can make this whole idea better.

First off, reworking how the CCs are distributed seems to be a good step in the right direction for this issue. With that idea in mind, dividing the types of CC present in the game by tiers could be an interesting take. 

Tier 2 CC being 'soft' ones, such as slows, bleeds, burns. Things that do not prevent the target's movement nor hinder them out of reaction from attackers.
Tier 1 CC being 'hard' ones, such as stuns, roots, and confusion. Things that directly stop or prevent the target's movements and reaction.
Unique CC would be things that are too specific to not fall in other cathegories. DR reduction for instances, or other fun stuff that some hiddens could come up with.

Now this is where the redistribuition of CCs and the actual rework would come into play. With those terms in mind, a good balance would be so that the basic spell trees (Fire, Water, Wind, Armed, etc) would only have access to Tier 2 CC. And most importantly, each tree would only have one CC available within their spells.

The 'hard' or Tier 1 CC such as stuns and roots, would be moved to advanced spell trees (Ice, Metal, Bones), and those wouldn't have T2 CC on their spells. Only having access to T1 ones. And just like the basic spell trees, there would be only a single CC within each specific tree.

The general idea with this is so that people can work their build more based on what type of CC they'd want (besides IC flavor) rather than how many. For instance, a basic mage who wants to have access to slow, would choose Wind (which would have 1 slow only, the Flurry), or someone seeking for a more aggressive type of CC, would go for Fire (With a single CC on it as well, Burn, put somewhere at one of the spells within Fire).

Other than that, it would prevent 'builds' to abuse the heavy use of Stuns, since realistically a common character build would have access to 1 T2 CC, and 1 T1 CC only (One slow and one stun, or one blee and one root, etc) on their hotbar, instead having access to multiple types of stuns that could potentially be used in a chain reaction to the point of abuse. Maybe if someone were to take the extra step, it would be possible to have more CCs if they dipped into other trees as well, but that wouldn't be the norm.

This way, limiting each spell tree to 1 CC, and moving the 'hard' CCs to advanced spell trees, the builds would have more IC flavor than how overpowered they are with Stuns galore, rewarding more your verbing skills and your IC approach to the build, than the number of CCs you have on your bar (Which would be probably just 2).

[Jetniss]

I think this suggestion takes away from unique identities. Games where every tree more or less functions the same and is a style/palette swap of another aren't as interesting.

Majority of hard CC comes from water and related trees though, and majority of soft CC comes from unarmed-- while most trees have at least a slow.

Don't mind water being a CC monster, and removing all their CC means having to give them a ton of damage that'd just offset what the water users signed up for in the first place.

[Red Reika]

That's somewhat the problem we have. It's very hard and I'd say borderline impossible to be too unique and also balanced at the same time. I agree that spell trees need some kind of identity to their playstyle, but I don't think that type of identity should be as meta defining as being heavy on CC.

It's possible to create idendities for the spell trees by making some more based on AoE, others on beams, others on skillshots, etc. Overloading a few trees with CC and others with no so much inevitably creates the current meta we're on, where stuns just overrule everything.

Besides, if we give each spell tree a single CC only, the characters builds would be more aligned to the type of spell that tree offers adjusting to their own taste, such as someone who would rather be more of a beam user, or a close quarters short AoE'er. That, and the builds would be more IC flavored than simply meta flavored, and people would be less concerned about having a practical and 'useful' build, and more about having one that fits their character IC and the lore better, since all the spell trees would have access to the same number of CC's.

But as I said, I hope this to at least bring some discussion to the topic rather than being a hard on idea.

[Jetniss]

I don't think Water is a meta defining tree. Full waters are not hard to beat-- it's when people combine water with other trees specifically to maximize stuns, that's the meta. You'll see them as unarmed waters, or just water tacked onot the end of any tree.

I personally like the identity of water being CC-- and people having to go to it to have CC-chain builds-- IE Meta, are people who tend to become very predictable and fights. And if you can predict them and their CC, you won't struggle against them.

But every tree having 1 CC only just sounds bad to me. It sounds weird and cookie cutterish-- and then trying to over-identify trees in an effort to avoid CC, so there's a "Skill shot tree" and such also doesn't sound super appealing. Each tree gives a good balance of things, of options.

Fire and Earth give a bunch of AoE-styled abilities, Water gives a bunch of CC, and Wind gives close range attacks. Each have varying kinds and amounts of CC and options without some kind of hardset rule to constrain the trees to what is virtually the same blueprint, and... Eh. I'm just going to say I don't like the suggestion and move on. It sounds like you're very anti-CC and haven't figured out how to compete with it yet and want to see big changes so you don't have to deal with it. I've figured my own ways to deal with it and I foresee these kind of changes making things boring and less interesting and an over-correction to some potentially wild problems that will just be solved with consistent balance tweaks.