CircuitBoi

I DEMAND GRAVITY/KINETICS BE BOLDED LIKE THE REST OF THE SETS ARE! THIS DISCRIMINATION AGAINST MY BELOVED COMBO WILL NOT STAND! ENANT SHOULD BE SEVERELY PUNISHIED FOR THIS OVERSIGHT! WHIP HIM WITH A WET NOODLE! OR BETTER YET, NERF MIND CONTROL!

Sorry, I always have to respond to Enant's posts with at least one correction. It's my nature.

Hey States, a quick question....

Does your "no one-shot idea" mean that fire's additional DoT effects are gonna be suppressed or something? Fire causes lingering damage after the attack. If the initial strike does 99%, the player dies after the next bonus tick. That means fire doms, fire blasters, and fire corruptors still have a one-shot.

Other DoTs aren't going to have this "massive frontloaded DoT" issue. But fire is of special note.

Wait. Why am I telling you this?!?! Augh! Must go level all my fire villains immediately!

A darn good guide.

A special note should be added to crushing field. Since Crush and Crushing Field do not have -Knockdown components, they can be used to root mobs on certain effects without breaking persistent knockdown--freezing rain and ice slick are the principle examples. Gravity controllers who know their stuff NEVER break other forms of control when teamed. Toss fire cages on an ice slick and you will get aggro from your own teammates, toss crushing field and you'll get mobs unable to run away in addition to being knocked over constantly. Toss GDF on an ice slick and you just have a more solid hold than before. Wormhole mobs off an ice slick and you deserve the aggro you are going to get.

Of course, this creates a complexity with /storm, a la the tornado power. Crushing field does not root mobs against tornado, so if you're a grav/stormie you are not going to have the wonderful cuisinart of death AoE effect you can get with fire/storm (for example). However, you can wormhole into a corner and follow with tornado to minimize the spread of mobs. I think a lot of controllers skip tornado altogether, and it's almost expected that a grav/storm will skip it. I plan to make it work on Kilopascal, but I'm a masochist.

The problem is exactly reversed for gravity distortion (holds), but the -Knockback of GDF isn't very practical--it's going to lapse very quickly and not be that useful for sticking a mob solid. Of course, you do toss a lot of control out with both a singularity and a gravity controller. Oh, for the old days when you could have four of those pets out! I have gleeful memories of teleport foe and three hungry singularities. But the new rule is better.

Gravity is a complicated control set. If you know it well, it is awesome. If you're not honestly familiar with the little wrinkles of this nifty set, you can experience some problems. I consider it the hardest controller to play, because there is not a lot of "fire and forget" going on and geometry can play a big role.

TORNADO! Great "oh crap" power, chaos is a legitimate form of control, in fact some sets rely heavily upon it. It's got a solid disorient component. The knockback is extreme and there's a lot of potential to aggro extra groups. If your team is AoE heavy, then don't use tornado lightly (it will ruin a lot of the AoE from your blasters/defenders/corruptors). Best to use it in an enclosed space if you can, tornado will naturally push guys into a corner and become a solid hold. But more importantly....

Consider tornado plus fire cages, with an occasional ring of fire when a mob doesn't stick and the tornado chases it. Now THAT'S pretty impressive--no knockdown, but lots of disorients and damage. Works with all controller AoE immobilizes except gravity, by the way. Works with gravity holds instead (don't ask me why, but this is the same reason you can crushing field on top of an ice slick or in a freezing rain). You have to reapply fire cages regularly, so put an end redux on it (and no damage slotting for FC, that's a waste. End rdx, 1 rchg, and accuracy are the slotting). This works well to set up containment for hotfeet as well, and you can always flashfire to catch the mobs that tornado didn't mez.

Tornado is also a great boss-killer move. If all you're looking at is a boss or two, try it. The tornado will take care of one of the bosses all on its own. It can do respectable damage if it pins something, and tends to get a mob into a corner eventually.

Oh, don't use it outside. Unless you're using the immobilize sticking or like running things down.

Slacker, where are those numbers?

Three on crushing field. Zero on GDF and wormhole.

Lord, I hope not.

Tabletop gaming got cancelled tonite. So I'm likely to be around. Expect a PM, Pilc.

lol

Uh, thanks for the kind words?

Heh heh, sorry Ras. I'm still in "apologist" mode for my rage-splurge from the end of last month. Politics in America have been slowly driving me further and further away from sanity, with misinformation, empty rhetoric, and bile spread across the country so far and so deep we might never get ourselves out. At least I vented on here instead of blowing up local baptist churches.

I'm not quite sure what the quote means, myself. Does it mean Pickle is out of patience but if you wait a while it will be back? Isn't that just asking other people to have patience? Or does it mean Pickle can only be patient for brief moments and everyone just has to accept any violence and bile that comes their way, and is an apology for bad behavior? Or is it just an off-hand comment on the AoE nerf and actually has nothing to do with Pickle's temperament?

Either way, I still think Cuppa's comment is one of the best. If you don't want the flames, don't aggro. Or whatever it was. But I expect I've been relegated to the a$$ki$$er camp and therefore my opinion isn't to be valued.

Indeed. Nice post, Goat!

I think the point I've been trying to make has been demonstrated. The new wormhole is fine. You get out of it what you put into it. It's just training yourself to use a new tool. All in all, both are fine for me. I think my teammates prefer the new one though. Especially since they get to see it in action now. "Was that wormhole? Neat!"

They are upset because the precision of moving a single mob, i.e. a stationary pet, is gone. That's all. As a puller, one mob or three mobs doesn't really make that much of a difference since we'll already have GDF.

We can still move these stationary pets, it's just sloppier.

Hmm. Wormhole seems to gather, but not the same way as team TP. Mobs get shuffled, but they don't seem to bounce off one another. Then they knock back away from you. Strange enough, lots of times they would appear in a line.

It could be pretty swank to combine it with a mind controller with TK.

Hmmm. Much concern. I should play CB some and take a look. Here are some thoughts and hypotheses though.

1. I know that when I use team teleport, a phenomenon I call "gathering" occurs. Everything I team teleport attempts to reappear in the same location, and everyone bumps against each other before the hover drops to find their own space. One boon of singularity is that those pets aren't affected by gathering, because they don't bump against anything. Singularities always show up exactly where you port to.

2. Does wormhole suffer from gathering? Or does it pull the group of mobs to your destination point and keep the same distances and directions that the mobs had from your target when they initially reappear? I don't remember seeing gathering working on mobs with wormhole. But I wasn't exactly looking for it. Right now, I'm assuming wormhole does not gather. I will test this tonight or tomorrow.

3. My observation on wormhole knockback has been this: When a mob gets ported, it suffers knockback from the direction of the controller. This is why you see those arcs on knockback--If you teleport a line of mobs to yourself in such a way that the line is perpendicular to you, then each of the lines from controller to mob are at a different angle. The result is you kick the mobs back in an arc. But I think the controller is the center (origin) of the arc-circle, not the destination point of the wormhole. Otherwise, things would shunt in all directions. If it was knockback from the origin point, things would typically be knocked back towards the controller. Both those are not what we've observed, so I think knockback originates from the direction of the controller, just like what would happen if you simultaneously hit each mob with a force bolt.

4. Power effects are reduced against higher con mobs, effectiveness, durations, and accuracies. The only ones that aren't are those that merely have a chance to occur, like the disorient on punch. I have absolutely no idea why the group of grey jaegers did not scatter unless they had been rooted by the player's AoE hold. Keep in mind that a lot of our powers have -knockback components. Perhaps Jaegers have knockback resistance? Were there any non-jaegers in that group? My assumptions are that those mobs had -knockback for the first test. Keep in mind that the knockback resistance granted by grav powers to mobs will cancel before the holds do if you have slotted any hold enhancements at all. Doubt this? GD a mob and wormhole him into a singularity. GD another mob, count to 20, and wormhole him into a singularity. The second should fly immediately. The first should be rooted.

5. All of these concerns are mitigated by the use of terrain. Corners are still useful here. Knockbacks into the wall in such a way that the line is perpendicular to you should minimize knockback for the targeted mob, but the other mobs should bounce along the wall and will scatter. The best use for a group should still be TP to corner. Because the push-range is so much longer than the pull range, you can pretty much always find a corner to use as long as you aren't on an outdoor park map. Oh, and keep in mind that you can port things to a location outside of your LOS so the mobs can't shoot you as easily.

I'll take a serious look at it tonight.

A couple of important points: mobs with combat jumping can't be used to verify these tests well, since they can control/affect their air movement. An example includes carnie strongmen. Has anyone determined if there is a cap on how powerful a mob wormhole can move? I don't remember there being a cap on it. Also, while you can queue wormhole up while out of range, you can move forward to your target and wormhole will automatically start once you are in range.

Several things seem to contribute to knockback distance. The most obvious (and also the most proven) is level difference. Higher-con mobs scatter less because they're less affected by the knockback.

The other thing I noticed a while back, which probably is NOT true but warrants some investigation, is that knockback might be related to the distance you try to move the mob, or perhaps the distance you try to put the mob from yourself. Not totally sure here. Knockback always sends the mobs in a line away from you, unless the mob has a jump power and can manipulate the movement. This one I'm not sure of, and I need to check on it.

But yeah, if you use it to port some reds, they won't move far.

That portion of the discussion was when we were asking for the stars, right? Asking for the absolute best possible fix, in our minds. Which is still "gravity well in place of DS, wormhole single target, increase damage on propel, reduce animation times across the board." Well, that's my take for ideal, you might differ.

Back then, we were looking for a way to keep wormhole and improve our AoE. Instead the devs dropped the AoE wormhole on us, something we didn't anticipate. I don't think anyone suggested the fix we got.

We did get a bump to propel. Singularities got a speed bump and a resistance bump. The reduced duration is actually a boon to Dimension Shift, giving enough time to heal up and get buffed but not dragging the game into complete "wait for it" tedium, or short enough to actually have applications in combat if you are careful and smart. And the new wormhole has its own set of possible applications, admittedly sloppy control but so are all the other sets secondary AoE controls.

Basically, that list is pretty old, and doesn't take into account the changes that happened.

Grant Invisibility does seem to buff singies correctly on test with the build I tried it out with a month ago. I was using it to stealth myself and my pets into position for some serious squishy-killing.

As much as these people keep talking about the old wormhole and how much they love it, it never really was a precision tool. It's pull range is significantly shorter than teleport foe. As a send-away click, it wass potent. But you really don't have any idea where to just sent the mob, which isn't really precision. It's always had knockback associated, which has always made it hard to position a mob without first holding it (granting it -knockback which is our set's principle secondary power, along with -fly). So it's always been practice to use the environment when you use wormhole, to port things to corners. This doesn't change with the new wormhole--you just port a group to the corner instead. And now, the disorient duration is significantly better. The funny thing is that I remember gravity's detractors often saying on the boards that wormhole was almost as unplayable and situational as dimension shift, and now they say they can't live without it.

Again, I repeat myself. Gravity controllers are attractive, intelligent players in general and will find a way to make whatever they give us work. Our principle concern was the AoE control gap. The new wormhole gives us a little more AoE control, but it's a little more chaotic than most the other sets. It's a good fix for the interim while the devs work on the tenth powers for sets.

Not all powers in all sets are good matches for all playstyles. Sorry that the change doesn't mesh with so many of your builds, but that's hardly a reason to scrap the fix and try again.

The issue at hand was addressing the gravity set control gap on AoEs. The modification of wormhole does this in two ways. First, it provides a disorient which you can extend, perhaps covering the gap so that problem goes away. Second, it can send a group out of range, creating another method to reduce the control gap, although it is much sloppier than most of the controls gravity is used to.

Sloppy control powers are all over the other sets, you know. AoE disorients are sloppy. AoE Knockdown is sloppy. AoE sleeps are sloppy. Aoe confuses are sloppy. Sure, they can couple their sloppy secondary control with a root in most cases. We are still experimenting with the best way to accomplish this, but we'll figure it out.

So, in response, I don't much care that you guys miss the single-target version of wormhole. If you want that ability, you can take teleport foe. The change does what we asked for--help to close the control gap. I'm fairly happy with it all.

Well obviously the devs consider our ideas. We talked for months about the control gap and the need for a second AoE mezzer that wasn't dimension shift. In the test notes, where they initially talked about wormhole, they specifically said it was changed to give us an additional AoE. They responded to our concerns directly, even if they didn't give us exactly what we were begging for (which was a gathering AoE hold, like a drawing TK). I for one assume they have their reasons. Not hard to imagine, either--another hold in grav would increase our single-target mag building ability yet again. We'd be chain-holding AVs.

If your suggestions do not at least address the control gap, then your suggestions are an attempt to keep us gimped. Not that I mind really--I enjoy the set as it stands on live, and I enjoy the set as it stands on test. At least I know I went on there and tried it out. The new wormhole does lose some functionality--functionality that you can retain by taking teleport foe and by accepting that sometimes you have to send a mob away with a beacon. But it gives us another AoE mez type than just hold, immobilize, and untouchable.

Not if you already took teleportation for recall friend (pet transport) and use teleport as your travel power. Heck, my build on live has team teleport for perfect singularity placement.

I think you need to re-evaluate tactics, Mont. With a couple of walls you're going to be able to do a lot with that wormhole. And the disorient duration will cover your control gap much better than before, when you had NO option for a secondary AoE hold.

The only thing you lost was the single-target pusher. This will make DE more complicated for us, sure. You know, other control sets had this issue from the get-go. And you'll still be able to use wormhole to that effect if you are careful or don't mind losing a mob or two with it. No real loss there.

If you want a single-target puller, you can pick up TP Foe. It's way improved compared to what it was a year ago. PvP seems to work better with TP Foe, since it has a significant range advantage on the pull.

I think you need to give this stuff a shot.

I'm sorry they had to modify dimension shift down a little bit. But it will still be a perfectly satisfactory "oh crud" button, and will provide supplemental control for the savvy. A little lost time on that power isn't a killer. And perhaps now you'll be encouraged to slot it up more.

Groovy, Arin. I think that's a patch enough for our control gap at this point. What do the rest of you think? It's not sexy, and not as easy to use as the other set's versions (the ghetto-holds), but they're not as cool as we are anyway, don't have a foe mover, and certainly don't have our ability to build magnitude and affect control without clicking buttons. I'm starting to feel reasonably loved. At the very least, I'm starting to feel like I've not been ignored!

I'm stoked. New tanker tactic: get a team of 6 disorient-users. Wormhole the tanker to you while everyone else queues their disorient, assisting on you! Instant toggledrop! Then again, 6 on 1 you could just hold the guy instead.

Still, I'm stoked! Everyone remember 15 seconds from disorient to hold, though. One SO disorient duration minimum to cover the suppression gap.