CircuitBoi

Dev test notes say they've increased wormhole's disorient duration. TIME TO TEST!

What makes Dimension Shift dangerous to use is that mobs phase back into synch with their powers well-recharged. They're prone to alpha-strike you, potentially for the second time. If you're going to talk about freezing health and endurance regen, freeze power recharge too. Or you could do what the rest of us do--avoid using the power like the plague.

I will also miss wormhole v1.0 if the change occurs. But you know, we've been making lemonade out of lemons for quite some time. We'll adjust, find great uses for it, and eventually be happy about it.

That being said, it would be really, really cool to get both versions! This would also enable us to stack disorients on bosses to overcome mag resistance when GDF is busy recharging. I'd give up propel or dimension shift for that. Assuming the disorient duration is worth anything. . ..

Regarding the propel idea:

Yeah, sure. This proposal could address the control gap.

But I'd still prefer they increase the disorient duration on test and use the new wormhole from there. Why? It gives us major flair. And it encourages us to continue playing tactically instead of turning gravity into a brute-force set.

Hey, express your opinions! Free country, public board. I was mostly talking about pre-32, although the control gap exists for the entire game for gravity as a primary.

However, what I said and what you quoted is that gravity is more challenging at +1 with more mobs than +2. I didn't say gravity was limited to small groups. But without the secondary AoE mezzer, larger groups are significantly more dangerous to us than other sets. And that is true for all levels of the game, although the definition of "large groups" changes as your level goes up.

But this is all besides the point. The point is that the new wormhole still doesn't seem to cover the control gap as well as any other set can do. I don't really have a problem with this, since we're the premier mag-builders in the game and I enjoy the game regardless.

Uh. Okay. Lemme gather my thoughts here.

First, this was a gravity discussion. How your ice controller could solo pre-pet is relevant, but only as a comparison. A gravity controller who set mission difficulty to +1lvl/+numbers actually just set his difficulty to the highest difficulty for his set (because the numbers make it more dangerous than the extra level of the next setting, even post-pet thru 50). All other controller sets are better at atypically-large mob spawns than gravity.

Second, gravity can solo its missions. Wormhole v2.0 doesn't change that, especially considering that it's the 8th power in the set. It's not going to have much impact on small teams, but I think it might be positive if the team relies upon the grav controller to set the pace and lead the team. The changes in gravity might have impact on making gravity solo more effectively, given the additional damage of propel. I'm not sure, but I've started a fresh grav troller on test to give it a whirl.

Third, the real question here is "do these changes reduce our control gap, enabling us to bring as much to large teams as the other controller classes?"

***CONTROL GAP EXPLAINED HERE, SKIP IF YOU WANT***
The control gap is that time that passes between when GDF (AoE hold) on a group of mobs falls and when it recharges. All other control sets have secondary, combat friendly patches to cover the time between AoE holds. Ice gets a knockdown patch. Fire gets a disorient. Illusion gets invincible tankers. Mind gets several options. Earth gets that evil knockdown power. These powers are almost all universally usable, with the slight tweak that some of them require mobs to be on the ground (which is not that big a deal--any controller can lock a flier to the ground if he needs to).

Gravity had dimension shift before the change. DS is a power that can get you kicked from a team if you use it as control. It's functionality really only applies in PvE as a panic button. Wormhole v1.0 didn't apply as it was single-target.
***CONTROL GAP LECTURE ENDS HERE***

The new wormhole does not really close the gap. The disorient duration is extremely short. Wormhole can still be used to send mobs away, which is a form of control. But it is not a combat-friendly form. The knockback is easy to manipulate how you want it, since we have walls and other such items to work with. But it's going to have a break between AoE mezzes, which could be our death as all controllers rely upon lockdown for defense. It's significantly weaker than the other sets secondary control.

On a positive note, I think we might become very popular with taunting tankers. Grab a group, port them to the tanker, make sure he knows to taunt before the disorient breaks (or a scrapper with an AoE), and you have a legitimate form of crowd control. It sucks that we'll require a tanker to do it, but this could work out really well. Couple gravity with kinetics (heh heh, surprise!) and you have quite the tanker/scrapper buddy.

Uh, if you want to increase your mission difficulty pre-32, more power to you Uni. Personally I do not see how you can take a gravity controller against a pack of 10 red minions and even kill one of them pre-32 before you faceplant.

And I'm not talking about what you can handle anyway. I'm talking what tends to spawn inside a mission. Clumps of three bad guys. Sometimes multiple clumps, sure. Sometimes clumps of 2 bad guys. But typically a spawn happens in groups of three on base heroic. Heck, spawn size is similar on invincible, the mobs are just two levels higher.

Of course not. The original disorient didn't affect the boss anyway, because he had -3 mag like any boss. But he's might get knocked back, which will slow him down. And people who ready a power on him before you pull him will get that shot off before he does. And you're going to do the same with your GDF. Hopefully, by the time he gets up from the corner you put him in you're in mid-cast for GD.

You're not using the disorient duration to cover the gap. You're using wormhole v2.0 to pull the mobs, knock them off their feet, and to get the mobs all placed in a nice corner so nobody could run even if they wanted to. You're following with a hold and then putting attention back to the boss. In fact, have your fire tank stand there and you can just stand around too.

In solo play, you toss your AoE Hold and then start cycling your single-target holds. In the standard mob spawn of 3 bad guys, you can keep the entire group held indefinitely while you plink away at one target with your damage, assuming you devoted some slotting to your primary holds. Certainly you have done this before? The control-gap does not apply to spawns that are small enough to hold with cycled single target holds.

Pulling is more complex than 'grab mob.' Controllers in general don't get a lot of pulling practice. Ask blasters about pulling bosses from the middle of a spawn. It's not the best mob to pick. But now, you can grab the entire spawn, disorient them all with the same click, and follow it with GDF. Lockdown the PP with a single-target hold. Viola. Perfectly safe alphastriking for your small team. V2.0 has utility here, just like I said.

And of course my entire first post was basically a vote against Wormhole v2.0 as it stands--because of the large-team issues. If you prefer v1.0, I'm on your side right now. At least until they punch up the disorient duration. Wormhole v2.0 isn't horrible--we'll be able to work with it in a lot of situations if they don't listen to us. It's at least an attempt to address the problems as the devs understand them. I'll put more trust in their opinions than yours, while I express my opinion for them (not you), at least in this thread.

Kind of silly responding to you, I know. No point in it, since it doesn't really contribute to this discussion. All my first post did was express my opinion on Wormhole v2.0. All yours did was confuse people about your position. Your responses to my second post show your lack of understanding in what I wrote. I reread them both. They're not unclear. Perhaps you should read my posts again before you reply to another one.

Whoa, what about on large teams when all those mobs are running at you? Egads, whatever.

On solo play, you can handle the entire spawn with your controller, even without an AoE. Luckily, you got GDF at level 18 so you're going to be fine.

On small team play, so you just messed up a pull and grabbed the whole room. Work on your pulling. And don't worry, your team can handle the bad pull. Unless you're an incompetent controller. Why did you try to pull a paragon protector with an AoE wormhole? If your strategy was to neutralize him, why didnt you just hold him?

Not a single-target nullifier? You can send a mob far enough away with v1.0 that he's practically cross-map. Did you actually play your gravity controller?

Crazy talk.

Hey! What is this talk of nobody who liked wormhole speaking up 3 months ago? Pardon me! I was there singing the virtues back then.

Let's talk about the change now.

Well, there are three ways to talk about it. Wormhole v2.0 in solo play, Wormhole v2.0 in small group play, and Wormhole v2.0 in large team/trial/tf play. I'll share my opinion on each here and then give my final verdict on what I think should happen.

Solo Play: Okay. Let's be honest boys and girls. We are going to be soloing just fine now, either way. The control-gap doesn't impact solo play that much. It's the constant GDF/GD straggler/cycle GD while trying to get damage in that it was before. We all learned real quick to cycle holds on solo-sized spawns, right? With the change we can grab larger groups of mobs for our pulls. This slows all of us down in exp/hr except high-level kineticists, like me, who should love the change. But it won't impact your gameplay significantly.

Small Team: The addition of this power I think is a positive change for small teams. If you can pick-off a side-group into a corner on a mission for your teammates to decimate (and they start out disoriented? awesome), then this is gonna be nice. Smaller teams, if they are smart, will let you pull everything to them indoors. Again, however, this isn't where we needed the help. But now we do have a way of getting that second group at least somewhat controlled--we get to move them someplace less threatening en masse. I think we'll get good utility out of Wormhole on these teams, but we already had good utility on small teams.

Large Team: This is where it starts to bite. Wormhole v1.0 was a great single-target puller, and we sometimes got good utility out of it in large teams by sending away DE beacons and grabbing stragglers. But an AoE puller is not a good idea, since spawns in large-team missions are quite vast and someone is going to notice one of the mobs you just stole. V2.0 is a tool that we could use to try and close the control-gap. But using it indoors (without the ability to really send something "offmap") with its short disorient duration doesn't cut it. Unless disorient has some sort of magical "aggro-resetting" that I don't know about, at least. I'm expecting it to act something like crushing field--one of the tools that get us killed on large teams. There's no time to reset aggro to another hero. We're gonna take a strike, probably an alpha. So as I see it v2.0 lacks utility in large teams.

I think the duration of the disorient should be on par with fire. Someone else posted that this was too much, that the forced teleport and disorient would be overpowered compared to other set disorient powers. This is a poor argument, though. Wormhole is the 8th power in the gravity set. If we have to wait til then for our 2nd AoE combat-friendly mez, I don't see why it can't be a better power than the ones available to other controllers before we get our AoE hold.

So, my vote. I prefer Wormhole v1.0. But Wormhole v2.0 with a longer disorient duration seems like the way to go to make the set more playable all-around.

Oh, and dimension shift as a single-target is a nice idea that would return the functionality of single-target nullifier that Wormhole v1.0 had. And it looks like I am still not going to take Propel since I have APPs, but it might make the lower-level game better. I'm actually starting a grav from scratch to test that out.

I would love to see Wormhole v2.0 become such a staple power of gravity that people are not shocked when they see it every time I play. I have met many level 50 heroes who had never witnessed v1.0, and that's just sad since it is such a really cool power. I like the idea of gravity controllers being known for moving and disorienting groups of mobs.

I haven't gotten to actually TEST things in the arena yet. Since there was no reliable way to actually get to play in the arena.

But tanks and scraps in the late game have mez protection 15. Is this number changed in PvP? Does 'mez immunity' begin once you are hit with a power or once you are affected by a status effect? If it is how it sounds, you get it after you have been mezzed and the duration ends.

That still makes us the best class at turning off toggles for tanks and scraps. Get yourself set up at range so the melee types are in singie range. Throw your AoE hold (hopefully from a position of safety from the backline blaster/controller/defenders), spam single hold button until the meleer is held and his toggles drop. Observe the pain. Toss transfusion to reduce regen rate.

I know, these PvP matches are gonna get really quick and hairy really quick. That just increases the importance of good controllers--we can slow the battle down.

Why does moving a group matter? Well, if I can clump everyone together I can get better payout for my AoEs, like GDF and FS. Admittedly, the knockback makes this tricky. Will require some practice, maybe even as much strategy as the mind control set requires to use TK effectively. Also, keep in mind that singularities are not the easiest pet to get mobs in aggro range of (they like to sit). This will bring several to you, which will slow down the rate of damage (since they'll spread it around) but give you greater ability to put control on them. And I'm thinking the radius of wormhole is going to make it a good tactical power--I don't think that it will be too big. This will take some serious testing!

Yay! Something to do!

And you guys do know that if you don't like the new wormhole, it is probably our constant call for a secondary AoE mezzer that caused it to get changed. . . . Ready, aim, fire! Ouch! My foot!

There is absolutely no pleasing some people huh? Heh heh.

Okay. Here's my take on the new wormhole. It is an AoE disorient, like a lot of people requested. It's still a teleport foe, but now it's AoE for that too. The knockback is still in place. The AoE looked decent for radius. I was playing with it slotted 1 acc/2 rng/3 rchg. I wasn' testing it against even-cons yet though. I think I'll try it 1 acc/2 rng/2 disorient/1rchg (since I've tried siphon speed, and yes it stacks). It's duration might not be spectacular, but that's why you slot things. As a PvP power, it has a lot of potential. Heck, it has a lot of PvE potential too. We just have to learn how to use it. All in all, I call it a sweet change.

Losing the "send beacons away" tactic (in general) is kind of a bummer. But there's still dimension shift, which should negate the beacon's effects right?

Didn't test out propel--still no room in the build for it. But it seems like it might help out with the lower-level content now before the APPs. Didn't experiment with the crushing field/wormhole synergy. Dimension Shift prevents teleportation as well, so wormhole doesn't directly synergize with that, although you could teleport half a large group one direction and dimension shift the other.

In my opinion, the control-gap shouldn't be completely closed. We're still the best single-target (aka big target/small group) mag-builder in the game, right? But wormhole has definitely reduced the gap for the second half of the game. Gravity will still require a lot of finesse to get to 32, which I am happy about. We're still the hardest control set to play.

I only got to play one match on test last night. I was kind of stoked (and stoned) and so when the other team found us I charged forward and went all crazy. I threw my AoE hold and pissed everyone off. A couple of seconds passed (presumably the team was trying to figure out who did it) and then everyone who wasn't held turned on me and attacked--which is how it should be. I died, but the team I was on wiped the floor with them. So we had one death, they had a group wipe.

The map was one of those indoor lab (Crey-style) maps, which didn't leave a lot of options for gurilla tactics. But it was pretty darn neat.

Were we really this gimped and I just never noticed?

Speed boost reduces target attack rate and increases yours. WHOA. Gotta get that power!

Notice something about intangibility? They reduced the durations and increased the recharge times. But nowhere did they include that anything granted resistance to intangibility as a status effect.

Hey guys, do you know what this means?!?!?!?

ARRRGH!!!! I AM TRAPPED AT WORK!!! MUST PLAY UPDATE 4!!!

[ QUOTE ]
I know I would love a change in a few powers being a grav/kin controller. ATM I only have 4 of our main powers at 44. Crush, GD, GDF, and Sing. thats it. Nothing else really appeals to me as it is low damage or a death trap (crushing field). I would love to see a change in animation times like others have said, and even a rechagre time to GDF. It really bites watching other controllers lay down multiple aoe holds while I sit and wait for my GDF to get back. Give propel more damage would be a starter for me, change dimension shift to something like an ice slick for ice controllers and I would be a happy camper.

[/ QUOTE ]

No wormhole? Dude. That's such a fun power. Makes the DE a piece of cake. Turns auto-turrets into distant helium balloons. And it will be awful fun in PvP.

And we don't know the specifics of Dimension Shift as it relates to the PvP game yet either.

Right now, Gravity is probably the premier magnitude builder in the game. For example, our presence on a Hamidon raid counts as two and a half controllers because of our pets. Nobody locks down small groups of toughies like we do. 5 gravity controllers and you have perma-monster lockdown. Nobody else can say this.

And we have neat tricks, like wormhole. Like dimension shift.

I don't want the devs to take that away from us by changing singularities to non-holders and giving us an AoE disorient! All our set really needs is a touch more damage, probably in Propel (which is the dumbest power ever in my opinion).

The real problem in my mind is that the devs built the game in the opposite direction. Where we would be best in a 3-boss fight, the devs do not have situations like that available for us.

Remember that 2-boss fight in the carnie/rikti storyline? Two named bosses (i think a mentalist and a ringmistress) and a handful of other mobs. There was even another boss a distance behind that was likely to become aggroed. Our AT was best suited to handle that encounter. We were able to lock it all down before damage ensued. For the first time since lvl 32, we actually had a solo mission with an encounter that made us work, but we were able to beat it. I wonder how many scrappers would have died on that baby solo! But I never ran into an encounter like that again.

Point being, if the devs would just increase boss frequency in the high game and not always assume the best thing to do to make the game harder was to increase the number of minions, then our set would blossom.

So that's the problem--spawn design doesn't give us our spotlight. The other problem in my mind is that I'm a crazy person, but I'm sure you figured this out already.

They probably should do both, have the icon and have that line of text. We'll have to wait and see.

Gosh, Posi jumped on this thread quick, didn't he?

I agree with him, btw. If you were actually confused, you'd know it. One second, your teammates were to your left and the bad guys were 20 feet ahead, and suddenly they're all in different places? You'd realize your perceptions were messed up, or that everyone had suddenly been relocated.

Happy third tray. My CoH experience will be complete. Until they bump the level cap up to 60. Or 70. Or 100. Whoohoo!

The changes were rolled back. They have been for over a day, right? But you know what? I had a bad story to tell about this too.

Does ambush spawn depend on the difficulty level of the hero with the mission, or does it take into account the levels and difficulty of all members of the team? The other night, while I was still on hard-boiled, some blaster asked me for a sidekicking. I accepted, figuring it would speed up my missions. We go through a mission, but it was pretty sloppy. Then I say I'm going to a contact to get another mission for us. So I pop off to FF and go talk to that rikti guy.

And the rikti guy gives me a mission with a surprise ambush, while my sidekick is still in Talos somewhere. You know the mission, defeat so and so, bigwig rikti traditionalist and portal scientist. No big deal, I think. Ambushes aren't exactly complicated. But then I start to notice something. I'm not being ambushed by one group of two or three (like I usually get ambushed by), but instead there were like four groups of three, all spread out all over the place, coming in from different directions.

12 mobs in a clump I can handle. 12 mobs trickling in in twos and threes? Not so much. I guess I shouldn't have moved from the contact to the mission door? Perhaps I should have made the blaster come with me to the contact? Maybe they were all clumped together when they spawned? I dunno. But being surrounded by enemies that like to do ranged damage sucks.

My question is this: does that mission come with a 12 mob ambush all the time, or did I get screwed because my sidekick had his difficulty bar up too high? Another possibility would be that the spawn included a communications officer, but I saw a few drones shooting me from max range, a couple of headmen teleporting in close to the singies, all while guardians buffed and infantry ran amok. And I didn't ever see a portal.

Yeah, I was caught with my pants down. Shame on me. But still, ouch!

Anyone want to comment?

I agree, electric blasters do drain end better. Kineticists are primarily about buffing. And our end drains are aoe end recoveries and heals.

To optimize transference, I would say you will want 2 accuracy, 2 end reducers, 2 end recoveries, and the ability to stand near combat without being turned into pulp (that one can be tricky). Leadership helps here. Maneuvers can get you close enough without too much fear of debt. Tactics lets you drop an accuracy, replacing it with another end recovery I think will fill your bar. Stealth is another way to go.

However, the recharge rate is going to prevent you from using it often enough to keep the mob locked-down via endurance. But the scrappers and tankers are gonna love you, especially once you start throwing FS around.

If you are playing a boss-killer build, then this is worth the slotting. Heck, if you are playing a toggle-heavy build it is worth it too.

2 end drain enhancements in transference will drain a mob practically dry. Follow it with transfusion and your team has full endurance and health, and that mob has no endurance at all.

Kinetics' transference does have a very effective end drain.

And how about being able to abandon a mission after you take it? If we're going to be limited to this arbitrary 3 missions at a time cap while we are straddled with what some consider "unsoloable bosses" and "unbeatable AVs," then at least let us start the mission, decide it's too tough, cancel it, and go pick something else. This way, nobody is stuck with 3 AV missions when they're trying to play the game solo.

All those boss missions will be a lot easier after we cross the contact level line (you know, that space of time when your old contacts are giving your 40th and 41st level character 39th level missions?). These numbers are just a recently (over a month ago) observed example, but this is how I beat the Envoy storyline solo. Perhaps that was a bug? If it was, I sure appreciated it.

This idea I really like. . . . Soloists could take 3 solo-mission contacts. Strict teamers could take 3 team-mission contacts. And people like me could take 1 team and 2 solo contacts. The soloists would not get to see a lot of content if they don't team. The teamers could take teams on their solo missions and have them scale appropriately. AVs could only appear on team contact missions. Blah blah blah.

However, it is an awful lot of content to re-examine, codify, strike out specific parts, add new pieces, and create.