Warp_Factor

I'd really, really like to see a reasonably detailed explanation for the wormhole change, as opposed to changing other less popular grav powers, similar to the explanations for the most recent round of changes. Devs?

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If anyone is going on the TS tomorrow & wants to play around with WH in some situations, please send me a PM here, I'll come along. If you can show me/sell me on this, I'd be happy to look at it. Besides, a whole team of nothing but Gravs would be pretty sweet.

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I've got Warp Factor copied over to test just after dinging 40, without having trained up yet. So if I can actually get the SOs, I can train her, put the slots in wormhole and try it out. Last I heard though, wormhole was bugged so that enhancements didn't add to the disorient duration. I've yet to get an answer from anyone as to whether this is fixed, the devs haven't mentioned it at all.

1) Yes, grav does get a second AoE control at 12. And you're right. I hate it, you hate it, any effective team will hate it, the vast majority of grav controllers hate it. Since everyone hates it, why on earth should we treat it as an advantage of the set? It sucks.

2) I disagree about wormhole not being strictly inferior to those other powers. What we lose in activation time (taking into account time spent making sure we have the ground under the mob targeted rather than some point in space behind it) and in not getting the power until a much higher level than other control sets, plus the loss of the original, much more useful wormhole, IMO far offsets what miniscule situational advantage we get in placing groups of mobs.

3) You're right, we do have an advantage in that our AoE hold is ranged (not a cone, but that makes it even better). That definitely doesn't suck. It also doesn't make up entirely for what other sets get, IMO; sure, illusion controllers may not want to run into PBAoE range, but I'd sure like to be able to drop a horde of pets to do my beatdowns for me.

You've admitted in previous posts that the new wormhole isn't as good as other sets' secondary AoEs, that dimension shift sucks, and referred to the new wormhole as "better than nothing". I can't fathom why you continue to stick up for it rather than asking for something else such as dimension shift to be changed.

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it is nearly as good as Stalagmites and Flashfires (the knockback thing drops it a tier below those). It is a secondary control method, not as good as a hold (it has drawbacks a hold doesn't have). It helps fill the gaps between GDF recharges. It is not another GDF. If it goes live as is, it is better than the nothing we had before (well we had Dimension Shift, but really), and we can work around the drawbacks.

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Exactly. This is not a time we should be telling the devs "We consider it acceptable for the second highest power in the gravity control set to be inferior to similar powers much earlier in other sets, many of which have other strengths over grav as well". Regardless of our disagreements about how good the new wormhole is (and I agree that testing it's unenhanced duration isn't a very good way to measure it's actual usability in real play), it simply is not acceptable for us to get such a halfassed power at such a high level with no benefit in return, when sets like fire that already have a massive damage advantage over us also have superior secondary control much earlier.

I'd rather see them leave wormhole and change dimension shift. Granted, there are those who like it, but there are a whole lot more who like wormhole more. And a new AoE control power would accomplish much of what people use dimension shift for, without it's deficiencies.

It's really beginning to trouble me that this thread doesn't have a single dev response, while the regen thread has well over 10 now. Not that I don't want the regens to get feedback as well, but it'd be nice if we at least got some kind of update or feedback from the devs.

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The fact that you can do both doesn't seem like a strength to you? You whine becuase you have an option?
If the team is barely handling what you are facing, disorienting a group of adds and sending them down a hallway, over the railing downstairs, or way up in the air over there gives some extra time beyond the disorient. If your group is ready to kill the next group of mobs, making them disoriented in about the same place just makes the fight safer (like Flashfire and Stalagmites).

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OK, so the teleportation offers an enormously situational and still minor benefit, while costing us precious time whenever we want to use the power without making life even more difficult for our teammates than they were already going to be. I can see where you're coming from, but IMO that's a bad tradeoff.

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Flashfire has the about the same drawbacks as wormhole, insofar as disorient causes scatter.

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Disorient +knockback + dodgy teleportation targeting cause a lot more scatter than just disorient alone. More scatter, and much more violent and sudden scatter.

Sorry, but the "benefits" you're seeing in the new wormhole all seem to me to be extremely situational and subject to limitations that other power sets simply don't have to deal with. I'd be OK with that if the payoff were such that it was worth it, but it just isn't.

All that said, I (perhaps obviously) agree with you that an ice slick-style power would be a much better option for gravity.

Given the power of AE control, and the fact that gravity recieves nothing in return to compensate it for the lack of AE control, I really can't imagine how it is anyone doesn't think this is a problem for the set. You could argue whether or not it's truly "gimped" since it is still playable and functional, but it's clearly below par compared to other controller primaries. I just don't see what it is that grav gets in return for it's disadvantages.

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Bottom line is the new Wormhole stinks. I'm glad the devs are trying to come up with creative ways to help Gravity, but this isn't the solution. Sometimes that just happens, something that looks like a good idea just doesn't work out. I hope the devs are looking at the feedback they're being provided with and realise that perhaps it's time to go back to the drawing board. There's been some excellent suggestions in this thread for other powers that could be adjusted instead of Wormhole to try to address the control gap, my favorite still being the idea of a Disorient effect added to Propel that radiates from the impact point. Regardless, I'd rather wait another issue for the devs to go back and come up with something else than have Wormhole changed for the worse.

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What she said.

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about the suggestion to use wormhole as a disorient power, by selecting the destination the same as its start, placing the mob exacly where it was. If you use it for that, whats the point in having the option of selecting the destination, you may as well just call the power gravity sickness.

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Also, bear in mind that just because you have a mob targeted does not mean you'll necessarily have the point on the ground where the mob is standing targeted. You more likely have some point behind the mob targeted, and that's where it'll go when it ports (not that it'll stay there or anything, of course). To target a mob, then target the point on the ground where the mob is currently standing, not only defeats the purpose of the teleport effect (which is starting to look more and more like a liability instead of a useful effect), it also eats up valuable time in a game whose combat is very fast paced. The time you spend making sure you don't send the mob out of melee range of your scrappers or tankers (time another controller with another power wouldn't need to spend) could be the difference between a teammate being knocked out or not. We need to be able to cast our powers reasonably quickly in combat, and dithering around making sure our targeting is right doesn't do that.

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You can drop the mob in between the crates/railroad cars/in the dumpster/that corner near the lunchroom at the end of many warhouse missions in order to limit the spread.

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I shouldn't have to go to the trouble of dropping the mobs in between objects that may or may not be there when I need them just to bring this power up to par with other controller primaries.

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You can send them far away, where they will stagger for a bit if you need more time and your group is in trouble. You can also just disorient them where they are so they can be killed with less risk. ller primaries.

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And if I were an ice controller I could just ice slick them. If I were a fire controller I could just flashfire them and not worry about whether I'd targetted the exit point correctly to keep them from winding up out of range of my teams' melees. If I were an illusion controller, I could drop PA and draw some mob aggro onto the pets. Getting some dev attention is a fine thing, but we shouldn't be settling for second rate "improvements" that remove the utility of our existing powers. We should be asking for real improvements that bring us up to par with the other existing controller primary sets.

Maybe I need to play with the new power more on test, but I still see a great deal of room for the targetting to become imprecise during an actual gaming situation. And it won't take much to get this power off target and screw up melee targeting.

As for porting stuff into burn patches and invincibility auras, most tanks I know are competent enough to get mobs into their burn patches and invincibility auras without me tossing mobs all over the place to "help" them.

The idea appears to be that we can use it as an AoE disorient. Which is true, with the longer duration.... but the teleport and the knockback are both severe liabilities (God, I can't believe I just said the teleport on wormhole is a liability) and the existing weakness of disorient (the fact that it tends to scatter mobs) exacerbates all that scattering even further.

Note BTW that I almost never mess around with herding teams, and I still think this power sucks.

Hahahah, the first big combo with new wormhole: wormhole and dimension shift. Perfect for those times when you really, really want to get out of this team and never have these people bother you to team with them again.

Something just occurred to me today, and I'm kicking myself for not having thought of it before. You know how a lot of melees don't like us knocking stuff back? Imagine how they're going to react in actual live play when we grab a whole bunch of mobs and port them to another location, even a very close one, in order to utilize our "new AoE control power". Melees are going to hate wormhole users if this goes live.

Given that, I think I'm officially sold on the new wormhole being a bad idea.

Anyone tried wormhole since the new test patch? Any idea whether disorient enhancements are affecting the duration now?

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Remove either lift or propel. Whichever you remove replace it with Fold Space. Change the other into either an area knock up ala ice slick, or into an area disorient.

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OK, I can grasp the idea of wanting to remove propel. I'd rather see it be made into a good power, but removing it in favor of another better power makes a certain amount of sense. But remove lift? For fold space? You have got to be joking. Lift is a great power, I use it very regularly and the last thing I need is a lame power like a group recall friend. I'd be furious if this happened.

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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!

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I'm cautiously optimistic. It still comes very, very late in the gravity set compared to other sets' secondary AE control powers, but it's certainly better than what we have to work with now. And as much as I've slagged it, I am curious as to how the shorter duration on dimension shift might make the power less frustrating to teammates.

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Well what if it was an AoE lift but they stayed in the air like a floating in the air for a while completely unable to attack but they take no damage from it kind of like ices glacer an aoe hold with no damage from it.

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That does sound cool visually, but like the disorient/immobilize combo that basically amounts to giving us a second AE hold. And I very strongly doubt the devs will give us anything like that.

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A single-use AoE Lift seems a bit like a waste of endurance to me. I mean, it would need to have a higher cost than Lift, probably by a fair bit. Otherwise, why use the regular Lift?
For three seconds of villains lyring down (provided they're not knockback resistant or partially held). How long can you keep that up before your endurance runs out, especially if you have any toggles up to keep you alive for longer?

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I always figured if they added an AoE Lift, it would be something along the lines of no damage, but with a Disorient upon landing. Just the Knockup by itself wouldn't be very good for controlling a group, imo.

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Agreed. Something like this would adequately address the issue of crazy agg, IMO. Even if the disorient were relatively short compared to some other disorients.

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Something easier might be the AoE lift, but what if unlike the ice slick it would actually be a one time hit. Then one could place several recharges and knockbacks into it to potentially lock down a group. The draw back would be that the controller would have to keep using the power to lock down the group.

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That, and if the controller couldn't lock the group down completely it'd build some pretty heavy aggro. The power would have to be tuned with that in mind.

If it were tuned so that it were useful and not a death sentence for the controller like crushing field often is, I would absolutely love an AE lift. It's very in keeping with the feel of the gravity control set.

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There are a couple of simple ways to fix this problem without redesigning the whole powerset, or damaging the effectiveness of existing powers. 1) add a disorient to crushing field that would last for the duration of the immob. 2) Remove the agro generation from CF. This would make it less of a suicide tool at higher levels. 3) Significantly drop the recharge timer on GDF, enabling it to be used more often during a battle.


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while I like your suggestion about Crushing field (a lot) I don't think they will give that too us, mainly because "heaven forbid we get a group lock down that damages" they will most likely see that as over powered...it's too much to hope for really althou Personally I say "drool" for that

I don't see how they could remove the aggro generation from it without making it a lock down... every other controller gets a group immob and they have to deal with aggro, so unless they change all of these to lock downs, Again I don't see it happening.

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More importantly, a single power with both disorient and immob effects is exactly the same as a true hold for all practical purposes. And they're not gonna give us two AE holds.

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i haven't test this yet, but will try it, if someone already said this im sorry haven't had time to read the whole thing.
with wormhole an AOE we now have a semi viable run away/ control duo. wormhole then DS and run/fly/jump/tp away as fast as you can. this could also save your team the trouble of dealing with two MOBs

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I'd rather have one viable power that lets my group beat a large group or even two groups than a semi-viable combination of two powers that lets us successfully turn tail and run away. Considering the other controller primaries have such powers, I don't see any reason why it's too much to ask for gravity.

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Plus, even if your secondary IS FF, I would think alternating Force Bolt with a quickened-version of Propel would be a good thing, allowing you to knockback twice as much as normal.

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No, it wouldn't. Force bolt has a very fast recharge and a huge accuracy bonus right out of the box. Another knockback power without any other meaningful effect would be 100% redundant for a */FF controller.

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As someone who's always had Propel and never respecced out of it, I can tell you it's fairly meaningless in AV battles. Against Held opponents I use it all the time, but relying on Lift and Crush for damage instead of Propel gives you about the same damage over time, if not more (I believe Crush on Live is the best damage over time power in the Gravity set if slotted for damage, though I'm not sure if Propel has overtaken it now with its new damage). So a longer recharge time on a Propel with an AoE Disorient on impact shouldn't really hurt overall Gravity damage much if Lift and Crush are slotted for damage.

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Fair enough. I'm taking into account though the fact that propel seems obviously intended to be a direct damage power; honestly, given that we get lift and propel I suspect that grav was originally intended to be a comparatively high damage controller set, back in the days before people envisioned fire imps and other pets being heavily slotted with recharge SOs. I'm probably a bit biased here by my own preference as well, I'd really, really like to be able to just slam a guy with a forklift and not have to worry about anything other than the fact that I just beaned him with the forklift and did a bunch of damage. So my preference just based on how I envision my character is to see propel stay a direct damage power, possibly with a single target disorient. But again, that's just my aesthetic and I admit it'd very likely be best overall for the set if I were dissapointed and propel turned into an AE disorient.

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Detention Field isn't hailed as a wonder power, it's true. However, it isn't reviled nearly as much as Dimension Shift and Black Hole from what I've seen. Faint praise, I know. I guess the best judge of the relative usefulness of Detention Field vs Dimension Shift would be a Grav/FF Controller. Which power would a Grav/FF rather have?

Edit: And seeing as the person I'm quoting is a Grav/FF, which would you rather have if you had to choose one, and only one? (I'm honestly curious, a lot of us aren't in the position the Grav/FFs are)

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You know, that's a difficult call mostly because I don't see myself using either power all that often. If I had to choose I think I'd take dimension shift, I rarely find myself thinking "OMG if only I could have taken that one mob out of the picture, my holds just couldn't do it!" Anything I find myself really needing to do to a single, non-AV non-giant monster target (against whom detention field is worthless anyway) I can do without too much trouble with my regular holds and/or lift and/or force bolt. I see the odds of my wanting to use dimension shift as slim, versus nearly none for detention field.

Now, both powers will probably become more useful in PvP, though how useful remains to be seen. But then I'd still rather have an AE that I can use on an entire enemy team than a single target power with a root that won't get around anti-hold powers any better than my holds already do.