Chaos_String

Like I said upthread, endurance will be very tight, but you may be just barely OK.

It looks like you've worked out that you will, in fact, be just barely OK.

And that's fine. Speaking from experience though, it's a bit blithe to assume you're going to use Energize for the conserve power functionality the instant it's up every time; often times you'll wish you could hold it for the heal. To a lesser extent this applies to Power Sink as well: your calculations establish the need to go from empty to full endurance every time you hit it, which may be a disincentive for you to go ahead and finish off a scattering group of enemies with a well-placed Throw Spines; instead you'll want to grab the endurance first, even if that means you'll then have to pick them off one by one.

(And enemies are going to do their damnedest to scatter out of your twin damage auras.)

So again, I'm not saying that you won't be OK on endurance. You might be, but it will be just barely OK, without much benefit of leeway on when to use Energize and Power Sink.

I expect that I would feel constrained by what I forsee being a quite delicate balance of endurance management vs. healing vs. mob killing. And I predict that when the time comes, you will feel that constraint too, whatever your calculations may be telling you now. But perhaps I am wrong.

Nevertheless, I personally wouldn't allocate the resources to this build knowing that endurance management might cause me to feel unduly constrained; nor would I invest the resources knowing beforehand that I might feel frustrated at being ponged around by Fake Nemesis or uplevel Council Archons or Rikti Pylons. So I thought I'd raise the issues of endurance and knockback protection. If you think you'll be OK on endurance and knockback, then it's fine; go ahead and build it. It's a strong build with softcapped S/L defense and plenty of recharge for a strong attack chain.

Endurance will be very, very tight in this build, possibly a serious limitation with so little net recovery (even with Energize and the P.Shifter proc it's only 1.88eps). I'm not convinced the single Endmod in the base slot of Power Sink is going to be adequate, but I can't say for sure. You might be just barely OK.

Also you have only 4 points of -KB as I'm sure you know. Depending on what you choose to fight, you could get knocked around some. That's ok I guess, but it seems like yet another limitation on a pretty expensive build.

My goodness, that's astounding. Awesome, awesome job.

I'd be quite interested in setting something up on Justice. I play on Freedom also, but currently don't have a badger on that server.

Grav/Kin was my first 50 in City of Heroes. See my avatar? That's him. And I still play him! Not as often anymore, but he's still my main. "String theorist granted superhuman powers in a particle accelerator accident. Uses applied chaos and string theory to manipulate the fabric of space and time."

Anyway, generally the advice in this thread has been sound. As mentioned above, Gravity is long on single-target control, but short on AoE. But the /kin side of the equation will help boost your AoE control capability. Here's how:

First, you're going to want Siphon Speed. Take it and slot it with 2acc, 2rech. It's very important that it doesn't miss, and that it recharges fairly swiftly. Now, use it every chance you get. The +recharge buff will stack with itself as you apply it several times, and this will make all of your powers (including Siphon Speed) recharge faster.

Next, you're going to want Hasten. Take it and three-slot it with recharge and set it to autofire (control-click the icon in your tray). This will give you a large +recharge buff, too, and again, it will make all your powers (including itself) recharge faster. With stacked Siphon Speed, Hasten will be in the ballpark of "perma," which is to say that the +recharge buff will be on you nearly all the time. Along with the +recharge from a couple Siphon Speeds.

That is a lot of +recharge.

Okay, so you have Hasten on autofire and you're using Siphon Speed every chance you get. Now make sure you have Wormhole and Gravity Distortion Field. Slot each of them with 2 accuracy, 2 recharge, and 2 of either disorient or hold, respectively. With the amount of recharge you have and the recharge slotted in those AoE controls, you will always have a crowd control power ready. Now you have good single-target control AND good AoE control.

Make sure you slot Crush, Lift and Propel for accuracy and damage. Generally this goes without saying, but I saw upthread some talk about three-slotting Lift for knockback. That's.. well, okay, it may be funny to toss something up in the air very high. Fine. Go back to Atlas Park and toss some level 1 Hellions up in the air. Get it out of your system. Then slot Lift for accuracy and damage like a rational person.

Another good idea is to take Hover. Not only will Hover allow you to stay above the melee, which can be valuable, especially if you're using Siphon Speed--it's fast, unsuppressed movement in three dimensions--but also it will allow you to use Wormhole with much greater precision. Generally speaking, the more options you have for mitigating the knockback in Wormhole, the better. Using it at ground level will tend to scatter mobs unless you can throw them against a wall. Sometimes you don't want to throw them at a wall, though, you want to throw them at your Tanker who is already engaged in battle in the middle of the room. So, if you're hovering above the tanker, you can wormhole the mobs straight down to his him and they'll pretty much stay bunched up in his taunt aura, since the knockback will be straight down into the floor.

In any case, whether you take Hover or not (it's thematic though, assuming you can indeed control gravity...), Wormhole is your real bread-and-butter AoE control, at least until Power Boost and +recharge bonuses from IO sets become available, at which point GDF might become your front-line AoE control. So get used to using Wormhole, and learn to use it with PRECISION. Get really good at putting the mobs RIGHT where you want them. Also make a bind for it, something like /bind shift+lbutton "powexecname wormhole" which will allow you to target an enemy, shift-click a location, and wormhole that enemy and those near him to the location you've clicked.

Let's see... what else? Um, about Kin powers. Slot Transfusion 2acc/2heal/2rech. Any time you're fighting an AV spam it whether anybody is hurt or not. It's a stackable -regen debuff and it will really wilt AVs nicely if you spam it as fast as you can. DO NOT SLOT SPEED BOOST WITH RUNSPEED. Or use it to mule Blessings of the Zephyr. If you do this, I swear I will reach through the internet and smite you. Put endmod in the base slot and call it good. Slot Fulcrum Shift with 2acc, 3 rech. You're going to want to use it a lot. Remember that although you get a damage buff from it if you use it at range, you get a BIG damage buff from it if you use it from amongst the bad guys. Same goes for your teammates: they get a damage buff for each foe around them as well as one for being next to you. Learn to use Fulcrum shift to buff your melee buddies and ranged buddies alike. Or learn to use it to cap your own damage (Wormhole 1 group into a second group. GDF both groups, Siphon Speed, zip in real fast, Fulcrum Shift, then zip out and start crushing face with Propel).

All in all, Grav/Kin is a well-rounded troller. Not an especially powerful combo, but still a strong soloist and a big asset to any team. And yeah, it's an awesome thematic pairing. So, have fun with it.

I used to dread using the market because it would often crash.

The new UI doesn't crash my game. It took me a bit to work out how things had changed, and I discovered that some things are clunkier to do while others are easier and more convenient. So I don't see a huge improvement in the interface itself. I do like the fact that things are more consistently organized and categorized, but having to switch between tabs to track a single transaction can be annoying. Bids are persistent but quantities aren't, and I find that rather stupid. Either both should be persistent or neither should be. Or we should have options to toggle each. So I'm lukewarm about the new UI in terms of organization and layout.

But the fact that I can open this UI and jump right in without fear of freezing up or crashing trumps everything else. KNOWING that I couldn't afford to use the market while anything was happening since I'd likely freeze up for 10 minutes or crash entirely was really frustrating. No, it was beyond frustrating, it was infuriating at times. The new UI allows me to pop into the market between missions, while on teams, whatever. And for that I'm thankful.

OK, first of all, FPARN, and second of all, where are people getting this 300dps figure? AFAIK, the fastest pylon times for scrappers have all been below 300dps, and the only alleged 300dps performance in the wild was Shred's DM/SD soloing--IIRC--Shadowhunter. And the 300dps was alleged by Werner, but by his own admission his calculations were more of an estimate since he wasn't really able pinpoint when Shadowhunter used Dull Pain.

Am I wrong about this? Is there a confirmed 300dps performance that I don't know about?

Thanks, Bashful Banshee, for naming my arc the winner of your contest, and for posting screenshots. It's nice to see my clowns in the forums.

I'm glad you held this contest. It was something very short and simple and fun, and that was the motivation I needed to sit down with the architect and publish something. If it had been something much more involved and complex, I wouldn't have had the time or a good enough idea to enter. But I had fun writing this little story and got some nice feedback from you and a couple of my friends who played it. So thank you once again.

But I cannot in good conscience accept first prize in a competition when there was so little competition. I can't help but think that you had hoped to get more for your quarter billion purse, more bank heists to thwart, more custom critters to fight, and more of the sort of drama and excitement that can only come from a heated competition.

I, too, was a little disappointed that more people didn't enter the contest. I was hoping that I'd have more custom mobs to fight, more unforseen twists, and a greater sense of being involved in a community event on Justice.

So I'd like to ask that you hold on to the quarter billion influence, Bashful Banshee, and put it toward future community events here on Justice. I think that perhaps the timing was just a little off on this contest, with i17 dropping and summer not quite being here.

Perhaps later, when the bugs of i17 have been ironed out, and summer rolls around and people have more time to play, and more people reactivate their accounts to participate in Going Rogue, the timing will be better for lots of people to get involved in community events. So please save the quarter billion influence and put it to use promoting something else at a later time.

But once again, I thank you for holding your contest and for playing my arc and for the feedback you gave me. I hope you had fun, as I certainly did. To everyone else who might be checking into this thread, I'll leave my mission up until I have good reason to take it down. So if you want to see the Commedia Sanguinosa, then by all means try to stop that robbery!

Cheers.

Hot damn, that's +1 internetz for me.

Fixed.

Both builds look strong, similar in many ways to my rad/mental pbaoe blapper. I understand going above the cap on S/L defense to account for defense debuffs, but frankly it's overkill the way you guys have done it here. When you kill as fast as a blapper like this can, and you regenerate over 100hp/sec with saturated DP, defense debuffs shouldn't worry you much.

The other thing I want to say is, the lack of Inferno makes me sad. One of the great strengths of a */mental PBAoE blapper is that if you hit enough foes with Drain Psyche, you can nuke, retoggle immediately and just keep spamming attacks. The +recovery in DP is just that powerful if you hit enough targets. I use the feature to devastating effect on a regular basis with Aim+BU > Atomic Blast > (retoggle quick) > Irradiate > PSW > Neutron Bomb, etc. Should be just as powerful with Inferno > PSW > Fire Ball etc.

But other than that, these builds look really good to me. Congratulations on (imo) getting */mental right. I can vouch for PBAoE blapping with softcapped S/L defense, contageous confusion and saturated Drain Psyche. It's just beastly amounts of damage and in most situations plenty of mitigation.