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You can't slap any sense into him. Some people just don't have any.


Next time, leave him to fight his own guy. Go help the rogue.


When he ask/complains about it. Just simple say that the rogue needs help or he going down. So he can either help the rogue or you will. If he helps the rogue by using his encounter powers great. Tell him if the at-will is not enough help so your still going to have to leave him and go help the rogue.

Placement and movement are a wonderful thing. We used to have a wizard who did not like casting his spells and was always saving them and hiding in the back. (3.5E) We let him. After a few encounters were nobody stayed back to protect him he learned he need to come forward with the group and cast his spells. If he the player only cares about saving his power and himself then you don't need to worry about him. He will take care of his own guy.  

Talking never works with some of players. You have to show them there is value in being part of the group. You show them that I'm going to spend my resources to save you then you better do the same. If I come to your aid then I expect you to do what ever it takes to save me and the rest of the group. Or your on your own. 


So since he did not want to spend his power to help the group the group does not need to spend its powers on him.    

Yeah, this is one of those times when an in-character solution is completely appropriate.  At some point out of combat the invoker needs to be taken aside, preferably by the fighter who was defending him, and told that everyone needs to be able to depend on him (the invoker) to protect them.  The fighter had his back, so when the invoker stopped doing his own job to do the fighter's job it showed faithlessness in his friend's ability to keep him alive, and created a need for the fighter to do the invoker's job, which he doesn't have the power to do.

Warn him that the next time he neglects his own duties and defends himself at all costs, the defenders are going to read that as a greenlight to go defend other combatants, and then be as good as your words.  Whether he gets the hint and starts doing controller work or the bad guys chase him around, he's keeping some kind of heat off the party, and if he's determined to waste his abilities keeping only himself alive, the rest of the group needs to let him manage that on his own.

If one member of the herd is off to the side, exposed and isolated, the pack descends upon it. That sort of predatory behavior is instinctive for a reason - it's good strategy.  It sounds like you can count on the DM to respond to the invoker focusing on his own immediate survival by focusing on the invoker, and that's also appropriate. 

He can complain all he wants that the DM is picking on his character, but the DM is totally justified in doing so, because the invoker gave the villains an opportunity and clear incentive to pick on him.  When you get right down to it, it's the invoker's responsibility to keep the villains from being able to focus fire in the first place.  That's what a controller does, so if the controller isn't doing it, the DM is sort of obliged to exploit that opening.

There's a fine line between playing your character on your own terms and hijacking gameplay.  This doesn't read all that differently to me than the player who rolled up a cleric making the other players beg him for healing spells or their characters convert to his god, or the rogue picking his teammates' pockets and telling them they have to put up with it because he's roleplaying a kleptomaniac.  There's a metagame reason these people are expected not to abandon this person's character, so he's got a metagame responsibility to meet some sort of performance threshhold, to earn his keep, so to speak.  If he wants to play a cowardly character, there are character builds that will let him do that narratively while meeting the performance expectations of the group mechanically.

A controller's area of expertise, an invoker's reason for existing is to interfere with the villains' mobility, accuracy and target availability.  If he's not doing that, why should anyone be expected to fight alongside him?  Yes, it's his prerogative to use his standard actions to bonk people with his staff if he so chooses; it's also his burden to deal with everyone responding to that with frustration and disappointment because it's the least helpful thing he could do in a (make believe) life-or-death situation.  The other characters in this story are laying their lives on the line to defend him, and he's refusing to stick his neck out for them at all.  It's narratively appropriate for them to abandon him, or at least to be really angry about it.

Yes, the DM has the right to expect him to break out his encounter powers too.  Building and running good, challenging encounters becomes a lot harder when there's a character in the equation whose level of performance can't be predicted.  Again, there's a balance between letting players do whatever they want with no limits and letting them do whatever they want with no repercussions.  We don't have the whole story, so of course the DM could've been out of line in the way he addressed the problem, but it is a problem that he should be able to talk about with his players.