Warp_Factor

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Seems the best solution remains an elusive beast. The more I think about it though, the more I favor an AoE disorient or stun to Propel. That way it doesn't in any way lose it's current functionality (single target direct damage) for those who like it as such, and at the same time fills a very large gap at the oportune moment and becomes/remains a useful power justifying that ungodly activation sequence.

Meanwhile, wormhole remains unchanged for those who have come to depend on it over the last year as it is. As for DS, make it single target... or don't. /shrug

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This does sound like a pretty good solution, my only worry woudl be that it'd reduce the utility for controllers who want to spam a direct damage power over and over for damage on AVs or held opponents; there's no way we're going to get a worthwhile AE disorient with the recharge time propel currently has. Then again, as much as I love the idea of pounding the ever living stuffing out of a target with a rain of sofas and forklifts, it might be the overall least painful solution. As much as I dislike dimension shift, it does seem like it'll be very powerful in PvP.

IMO it'll also be an even more inferior power if made single target, after all I haven't heard people talking about how ungodly good detention field is and that's better than a single target dim shift (and available to defenders too, so if it was that good you'd think you'd hear from them about it). Then again, that's just my opinion and it's not an especially well informed one since I don't really read the defender forums.

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Would I? You're one of I think 2 gravity controllers who've admitted to liking it on the forums. I've never met or even inspected a gravity controller in game who had the power, never mind used it. I don't think I'd be very surprised at all.

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I use it. I am I the other one? What do I win?

DS is the debt preventer. The offical "TIME-OUT!" power. Default slot for acc, or slot for accuracy and intagibilty. Use as that "uh, things ain't going so well" action.

BTW Doctor_Gravity, you da man.

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No, you make three now. I'm serious when I say that, there's you, Processed, and one other person whose name I forget who spoke well of a it a while back. Those are all the DS users I can think of. And I literally have never inspected another grav controller, looked at their powers and seen DS listed. And I inspect nearly every grav I run into. Maybe things are very different on other servers, but frankly the posts I see on the forums are consistent with my experiences on Virtue so I'm not very inclined to change my thinking on the subject.

As for wormhole, it has it's fans and it's haters. However, it is worth noting that as a game community matures different abilities that were once dismissed (and ATs for that matter, hi scrappers!) become more accepted as players learn how to make good use of them. This has happened, to one extent or another, with wormhole; I doubt anyone would argue that it's a critical power in the grav set, or that it's not placed too highly in the heirarchy of grav powers, but a great number of players have chosen it and like it. IMO, the ability to drop a mob wherever I choose, rather than right next to me, and for it to be disoriented (even for only 5 seconds) at the end of the port makes it markedly superior to TP foe even with the stupid knockback. Then again, saying it's more powerful than a first tier pool power that isn't hasten doesn't say much.

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These powers are only as effective (or not) as you want them to be. You'd actually be suprised at the number of Gravity controllers that actually have, use and like Dimension Shift. It's probably more than you think.

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Would I? You're one of I think 2 gravity controllers who've admitted to liking it on the forums. I've never met or even inspected a gravity controller in game who had the power, never mind used it. I don't think I'd be very surprised at all.

You can say all you want that a power is only as useful as you want it to be, but the fact is that at the end of the day some powers will just have overall utility far and away above other powers. In this case, virtually every other AE controller power has overall utility above that of dimension shift. That's not to say that dimension shift couldn't be made into a worthwhile power, but it hasn't hasn't yet and the devs have yet to show any inclination to change it.

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Also, please note that the biggest advocate against wormhole had a gravity controller but deleted her. For those that currently play a gravi/* controller have, for the most part, found good application for it. I for one think that it is a good alpha strike as well as an excellent tool for herding (which, coincidentally, also involves packing large groups against fences and in corners)

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I'm afraid I'm gonna have to weigh in with the others and say that I'm not thrilled with the new wormhole, and I do in fact still play my gravity controller as my main. If the disorient duration were lengthened, and particularly if it were made a single target port with an AE disorient centered around the point the single target is ported to (not the point they start at), then I'd be pretty happy with it. Right now IMO it's far more situational than the old wormhole, does not address the problem that the devs clearly intend it to address, and basically trades away what utility it had for a heaping mound of "coolness" but not much else. I'm not as attached to the old wormhole as others are, but that doesn't mean I'm very happy with it as it stands on test right now.

I do have to agree with you though (and almost every other grav controller really) that dimension shift is just a really bad power. Sure, you could concoct a theoretical situation in which it could be really, really useful, but the fact is it's a pain in the neck that slows the team down most of the time. Actual, non-theoretical CoH gameplay situations revolve too heavily around damage dealing to make a power that negates the group's ability to deal damage viable.

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Here is a less drastic suggestion that would return the precision control to wormhole but would incorporate the new AOE disorient -

Have the wormhole teleport only ONE enemy, but have the destination area qualify for an AOE disorient.

It could be described as the re-appearance of the 1 foe causes a disorienting thunderclap. That causes everyone in the targeted area to possibly become disoriented. (and we could use a nice big "BAM!" sound effect too 8)

While it would create aggro at the wormhole exit point, it would be much better than wormholing away half or all of the enemies all of a sudden.

Upsen.

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I like this solution pretty well. Admittedly I do really, really like the "coolness factor" of porting away a whole kludge of bad guys in one shot, but in terms of practical function this would be a much better solution. Wormhole would remain a viable pulling tool, reasonably useful for positioning, and still be a cool AE control power.

Of course, the disorient duration would still need to be jacked up to make it worthwhile, 9 seconds out of a 5 slotted power is just sad and silly.

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Single target holds work to diable DE eminators and FF generators (not 100% on the gens). You don't need to wormhole them away.

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Hmm. I've tested holding emanators and generators, as well as Total-Focus-stunning them with my tank, and never been able to disable them. (Plus of course it's really hard to hold the emanator that prevents holds...)

Maybe this is something that has changed in a recent issue? Guess I should go test again.

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Holds haven't worked to stop them for me, either. I usually either force bolt them out of range and then slap on a hold, or just let a scrapper deal with them.

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I don't see how this closes the control gap at all. Processmeatman and the rest of us have posted numerous times on this power and our testings.

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It's duration might not be spectacular, but that's why you slot things

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PMM and others, found the duration to be 10ish seconds with 1 accuracy and FIVE!!! Disorient Enhancers.

Still a fun power, but in no way does it even remotely touch our control gap issues.

As for being the best Single target mag builder in the game: What glory is there to that? The only things that even needs that much magnitude stacking are Monsters and AVs that compose what percentage of all CoH encounters? Subpar in about 99.99% of all CoH fights, but we are above average in that 0.01% Yay...

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What he said. It's cool, but the disorient duration is ridiculously short even with enhancements. And increased ability to build mag makes our distinction among controllers what.... "Less halfass against AVs than other controllers are"? Not a bad perk, but not something to write home to mom about either.

We're on the right track, but we still need some tweaking and tuning before this goes live before our problems are dealt with.

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I can't wait to do some real testing. The server is too slow to get a good feel. Now with syphon speed adding onto perma-hasten I might be able to throw out GDF more than once per battle. Has anyone tried coming up on two groups, wormholing the first in the midde of the second. While wormhole is activating start gdf and then capture both groups at the same time? Could make for some awesome setups for an AOE blaster.

Also I want to throw out a question. Do we know if siphon speed stacks? If so there is potential for some super fast stuff.

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Just fooled a bit with wormhole, the disorient is indeed not long enough to exactly "capture" anything. I'm holding out judgement on it, since it can easily be used as an AE lift just like a lot of us were asking for, and that could be useful. Once the test server is less crowded and less laggy I'll try to give it some real combat testing.

I'm not certain whether I like or dislike that, but it does have absolutely MASSIVE! cool factor.

OK, so how does wormhole work now exactly? Does it port everything in it's AE, port one target and disorient everything else in it's AE (in which case does it disorient around the target before or after it ports?), or is it just an AE disorient now? Inquiring minds want to know!

Great stuff, thank you for posting it. I just picked up teleport and this'll make it much easier for me to make good use of it.

Contact Trip, Sahalla or Red Nile on the Virtue server if you like, The Urban Legends sound like we may fit the bill for you.

You can have a look at our web site here: http://urbanlegends.big1web.com/0000...D/5452/SID/435

I like the idea of trams, anyone can get to them and it makes sense for people to meet and chat at the train station.

They probably haven't done it because other companies have tried it and been flamed to high heaven every time someone runs into a non-RPer they don't like.

The problem with magic shops is they're difficult to get to for lower levels, unless there are more around low level areas that I don't know about. Also, I have to agree that moving groups of roleplayers into an area where newer players probably wouldn't think to go is maybe not the best idea.

Sarah Mitchell - Dark/dark magic defender
Warp Factor - gravity/force field mutation controller
Aerinyi - invulnerability/firey melee magic tanker

All on Virtue, all members of the Guardian Angels supergroup.

No, I would not. It's a great idea, but so far no one has been able to run a roleplay-enforced server where roleplay was actually enforced. Dark Age of Camelot and Horizons have already tried it, and while the RP on their roleplay servers was better than that on their regular servers it was still less than what I see on Virtue or on the Anarchy Online servers. It'd be nice if they had an official RP server, but I don't have enough faith in the concept to pay extra money for it.

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One of the developers has stated on the main forum that the problems Virtue is having *are not* related to character load. (Those of us who were in beta have seen a heavy load server in the launch day tests, and while chargen/login is slow to them, they tend to work fine in actual play.) With the new maintenance window, I suspect they'll be tracking down and fixing the issues soon enough.

In other words, let me be the voice of dissent here and say we ought to stay on Virtue.

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Agreed. Trying to move the RP community will just wind up fracturing it, and even if server load is causing a problem odds are some of the players who have no special reason to be on Virtue will wind up moving on anyway.

Yes, Poz stated that the problems with Virtue have nothing to do with the server load.

If you did want to change, you could... but you would not be able to move your characters, that's not how these games work. And you can bet that you wouldn't be moving the entire community, most people would stay on Virtue now that they're there and established.

I'd sit tight and try to be patient, the game just launched so it's likely to have some lag and crowding issues. The odds are some of the players who have no particular reason to be on Virtue will wind up moving on, anyway. There's no sense in trying to move a burgeoning community over some problems that will likely wind up fixed in the very near future, anyway.

I can't honestly say I know anything at all about the community on the Freedom server, I've never played there. If you fall in with the right crew though, Virtue is doing reasonably well as the unofficial RP server. I've enjoyed RPing there as much as one could reasonably expect from a server that's not officially designated as roleplaying.

If you wind up checking out Virtue, you might try getting ahold of anyone from the Guardian Angels, or really any RP superteam. For that matter, you could look for RP superteams on Freedom and do the same. RPers usually enjoy being with other RPers, so you'll probably find a good number of RP superteams.