How to 'Controller'

TL;DR: Don't be a controller. We are worse than healers in usefulness. We barely impact the gameplay in any way. And we only have the game to thank for pushing that role into raids so we get nice queues otherwise no one would want us.

I might not have been in DCUO since the beginning but the first impression you get of the controller role is being a debuffer, and at the same time a power healer, giving others power per second, and at best a group power heal.

Now, DCUO, for being 10 years old, is awfully undocumented in some aspects, as is the controller role, either that, or the role is awfully balanced and only works in one unsatisfying way.

Guides may push you towards the debuffer aspect, but as i mentioned before, you have to question how much is the defence debuff you give enemies, and how it impacts the party's damage or kill time. The same goes towards the damage and healing debuff, which, to be honest, are present as fragments of the PVP side and are meaningless.

I for one, recommend you going for, what i have to think is the intended and most important aspect of the role (as it is one of the measurements that are shown in the leaderboard summary as 'Power Given'), the power generation for others, although it is the most boring way to play as we only have one on command ability to help others generate power. Not to mention, as everyone always avoids stressing their smooth brains and searches for the most efficient guide to play their characters, we sometimes find people in raids/alerts that barely use powers and so the role gets somewhat wasted.

So we have to focus in aiding our immediate friends, the healers, that veil towards our survival and keep the group happy and healthy. So we are basically the third world citizens of DCUO. Slaving for slaves. Healers tend to misunderstand their class also, as 'Power Per Second' and 'Health Per Second' are badly undertuned and barely impacts our healths and powers so they just spam a lot of powers and barely get breathing room so we get to rescue them and feel happy about our poor choice of roles.

The game offers a switch in your base to change roles and perks on the fly so you can be more useful in duos (or alerts, since the game has a roleless help mechanic and everyone wants everything done quick) or do your solo content faster, but it costs money to get 2, which is how they are supposed to work, because if you switch once you cant switch back if you have only 1.

So all in all dont get surprised if you get kicked for "low damage" or because you get the luck of having 3 efficient DPS that barely waste any power and you get to do nothing but debuff people.

Our Raid experience has to be the worst in the game, we cant compete for damage, and we barely impact the game in any way. So as i mentioned earlier your best bet is to focus on Power Generation to feel atleast some feedback from the gameplay and make you feel useful.
Very few people will notice your effort and your only motivation will be when you meet another (deranged) controller and push him down on the leaderboards, easily dwarfing his 'Power Given' numbers by atleast 10 times.

As a closing statement, even if playing the controller role in your best efforts, you will notice that, comparing ourselves to Healers, that also recover a game's resource, Health, you will see that we will never ever catch up to their numbers, even if our roles do the same mechanic, recovering a resource. This is a weird philosophy, more so with the game's current status and after so many years. We obviously will never give enough power so others can keep spamming, but when focusing on giving power, we can find a nice flow, that allows us, and others play a superpower centric gameplay, but all in all, what is, playing and mantaining a character in an MMO, is not worth in this role. Either that, or just mash buttons mindlessly and hope you dont get kicked, as does every other Controller, letting the 'Power Per Second' do their job while they try to do "damage".