Issue 4 Changes for Gravity - Official Thread
By
Airhammer,
Posted on: 2005-03-22 14:26 in Developers' Corner
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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.
Gothika (Grav/Kin) Marionette (Ill/Rad) Terra Firma (Earth/Storm) Alana Dale (Arch/Nrg)
Iceblink (Ice/Dark) Fantasia (Mind/Fire) Shadow Minx (Claws/Nin)
--Virtue
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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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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.
If their going to give you a DS why not just a single target one or one that you can click two foes and they switch places and are shifted for a while and after the shift they get disorient for a bit too?!?!?! That sounds like an ok idea i guess. 
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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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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.
Wormhole: There is nothing I hate about the new Wormhole. It now has more than one use. That is great!!! Yay!
Dimension Shift: Got nerfed. Badly. Unlike many Controllers, I got this power back in the day and used it TONS until about lvl 32. I kept it all this time so I could use it PvP and now they reduced the duration of the effect by over 50%.. Please, reconsider this move. It is the best power to put a nasty tank or scrapper into time out mode. 
Dev test notes say they've increased wormhole's disorient duration. TIME TO TEST!
Base disorient is now 12 seconds against an even-con Nemesis LT, but enhancements currently do nothing to increase this.
I made a bug post.
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.
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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.
well considering Dim shift's new recharge time it's not something you'll be tossing out every fight. It's long enough that I won't use it unless I have to use the power because I won't be able to count on the power recharging quickly enough. And I loved dim shift 
I have to say it sucks to have so many long recharing gheto hold like powers. I'd just like a power the complements Crushing field. Moderately quick recharge, and decent duration. Even having applied crushing field the mobs are still knocked back with wormhole. You can hold them and then move them... but what's the point in that.
The changes don't really touch the control gap at all in terms of effectiveness for pve.
Dim Shift... longer recharge, shorter duration. Last thing we needed was for a nerf to our trinary form of control. I can see the shorter duration but increasing the recharge. Duration and recharge should match as we can't effect the duration of the power.
Wormhole... we lost our single target go where I say and got an area effect go there and scatter when you get there. It lost a lot of utility.
To me we lost control with these changes. We need a disorient that matches all other disorients in the game for controllers. A teleporting, knockbacking, disorient, area power just doesn't cut it as a secondary form of control.
Wormhole comes down to this... the power is trying to fill to many requests at one time. Only the requests are not working as imaginged.
People wanted a means to gather mobs into a tight group. Result turn a single target teleport into an area teleport effect.
People wanted an area disorient....Result turn a teleport with minor disorient and knockback into a disorient power, meeting the suggestion of the above.
It does to much and the end result is a power that does a lot of things but the only thing it does well is the teleport away from me. This function was ruined when it became an area of effect as we could not longer control what teleports away from me. It's lost it's primary purpose of go where I say, secondary purpose of a disorient control is ruined by knockback, it's trinary purpose of gathering the mobs doesn't work because of the way the mobs exit the wormhole, the stumbling disorient upon exit and the scattering of the knockback.
Wormhole is doing to much and none of it well.
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.
WOW. 12 seconds base duration. Holy smokes.
Once they fix the bug with enhancers not working this is going to be great.
This will fill my control gap nicely even just 3 slotted, woot.
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
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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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Um... they already have this power, it's called Gravity Distortion Field
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Wormhole comes down to this... the power is trying to fill to many requests at one time.
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I think you hit the nail on the head.
I love the idea of keeping wormhole single target and simply gutting dimensions shift from the set. Making it a dissorient that pulls everything into one spot is just.. Well it was a stroke of genious on the part of who thought of it first. Maybe a very violent pull toward the center, and the resulting WHAM causes the dissorient rather than the gravity itself(Yeah yeah. No real diffrence in the end, but this would make great RP sense).
I have a grav/kin in mothballs, and I will say this without beating around the bush. The changes on test are simply not enough to get me to play her again. I had actualy been looking forward to the single target wormhole myself. It actualy gives me LESS of a reason to play her. When all is said and done it just feels very much like we got thrown a bone to shut us up for a while. Oh well.. I was sort of looking forward to playing her again. She was interesting while I could bare to play her.
Actually this change is going to make me drop Wormhole from all my Grav builds. The increase in disorient duration tells me that the power is going to go live as an AoE.
I used Wormhole as a placement power to pull, push, and move individual anchors and troublesome foes but the AoE change has killed that for me. I'm not going to use it to pull because I can't just get one when soloing and teams don't need the controller to pull the entire group. I can't push with it anymore because I can't control what I send away and what gets left behind. Moving stuff around in battle has the same problem as pushing but with the added problem of knockback, I could take CF to deal with that but then I have to slot two powers to replace one unslotted power.
Since I'm not going to be using the new Wormhole as a placement power that leaves it as an AoE disorient. An AoE disorient, at level 26, with three times the activation length of any other AoE disorient. Actually I'm thinking that most of the controller secondaries have a tier 6 or 7 power I could take and slot instead, even though I'd have to wait untill level 28 to take the 7th tier secondary power. Wormhole was a slightly better choice for me than Lingering Radiation, now LR is much more group friendly for me than Wormhole.
While it's nice to know that this thread is being looked at, I do think that actual dialog with the players might be better than picking at the suggestions we blindly throw out into the silence to see how many /bug reports they generate. A number of us didn't like Wormhole being made AoE and we made fun of it being described as an AoE disorient power, now it is capable of being a difficult and annoying AoE disorient + knockback power and we still lose the useful Wormhole placement power.
I'm going to be rambling a little here, so I apologise in advance...
My concern isn't really with how well we do in comparison with other controllers as far as "they get X at level Y, but we don't get anything similar till Z", but more with how my character will end up in the late game. Provided I can perform on a (roughly) equal level to everyone else by the time I hit, say, 35, I think I'll be happy.
So for me, Wormhole is great. Sure, I need a wall to have every mob grouped up properly, but now I can keep a group of mobs incapacitated for as long as my endurance and luck holds out.
And if they do scatter? I have a 30 seconds before my AoE Hold recharges, and I also have Hurricane. In an open area where this is an issue, I should have more than enough time to herd everything back together. Just make sure you're at 90 degrees to your wall and you shouldn't see scatterage as a problem, though.
I don't doubt that there will be times when I miss the old Wormhole and it's uses, but even on live I've found myself thinking "I wish I had that AoE Wormhole now", especially when fighting Rularuu.
Just wanted to respond to this one point, not trying to argue against the whole post:
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teams don't need the controller to pull the entire group
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Ah, but that's where AoE Wormhole could be unique. Why don't we pull the whole group?
Because if you control a whole group with any other controller, you have to run into a room filled with mobs. Lots of things can go wrong with this one. The controller could get alpha'd, a stray blast could aggro a second group, squishies will take damage if the enemy sees you and starts firing at range before you're able to fire.
Cue the new wormhole. Instead of running in, you sit safely just around the corner and wormhole the group to you. They arrive already disoriented and knocked on their backs. Your damage dealers are then free to take out everything you brought them.
Miss any? Gravity Distortion as they come around the corner.
Aggro a second group? Dimension Shift (if you're in danger of having the second group wake up, and need breathing room to finish them off) or just Gravity Distortion Field. With just the one point they could be coming from (the door), rather than 360 degrees of death that could happen inside the room, you could even stick some Singularities in the doorway to repel and draw aggro.
It's the ultimate lazy person's pull. 
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Actually this change is going to make me drop Wormhole from all my Grav builds. The increase in disorient duration tells me that the power is going to go live as an AoE.
I used Wormhole as a placement power to pull, push, and move individual anchors and troublesome foes but the AoE change has killed that for me. I'm not going to use it to pull because I can't just get one when soloing and teams don't need the controller to pull the entire group. I can't push with it anymore because I can't control what I send away and what gets left behind. Moving stuff around in battle has the same problem as pushing but with the added problem of knockback, I could take CF to deal with that but then I have to slot two powers to replace one unslotted power.
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You know, now that Wormhole is AoE, it wouldn't be stepping on any toes if they improved Teleport Foe to act more like the old Wormhole did (minus the disorient and knockback, of course). You could place single foes where you need them, remove eminators, etc. And since Teleport Foe has no prerequisite, it could easily be taken instead of the current Wormhole, for those who don't like the AoE version. Or take both for even more fun.
I've not had a chance to test out the new, longer-disorient wormhole but it sounds like a step in the right direction.
I'll still beat the rapidly dying horse of grav. needing some more love in the 8-17 range more than it needs 26+ range, but any love is better than no love.
With the disorient being more respectable, I can see this becoming our alternative form of control for when GDF isn't recycled, with the side benefit that you can do other fun things with it too.
I'll jump on test and take it for a spin, but my initial instinct says this is something I could live with - certainly a *lot* more than the earlier AoE wormhole.
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Actually this change is going to make me drop Wormhole from all my Grav builds. The increase in disorient duration tells me that the power is going to go live as an AoE.
I used Wormhole as a placement power to pull, push, and move individual anchors and troublesome foes but the AoE change has killed that for me. I'm not going to use it to pull because I can't just get one when soloing and teams don't need the controller to pull the entire group. I can't push with it anymore because I can't control what I send away and what gets left behind. Moving stuff around in battle has the same problem as pushing but with the added problem of knockback, I could take CF to deal with that but then I have to slot two powers to replace one unslotted power.
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You know, now that Wormhole is AoE, it wouldn't be stepping on any toes if they improved Teleport Foe to act more like the old Wormhole did (minus the disorient and knockback, of course). You could place single foes where you need them, remove eminators, etc. And since Teleport Foe has no prerequisite, it could easily be taken instead of the current Wormhole, for those who don't like the AoE version. Or take both for even more fun.
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The only hang up with that idea is it will take up one of your power pool slots.
Virtue: multiple characters.
CoH/V: Woot! Maybe Fun is to be had once again.
Ack! RUN! Regen is glowing mean & green!
If it reduces you, it's a nerf.
If it buffs the mobs, it's challenge.
They are not the same.
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.
That works if you are using Gravity to fold/bend space to allow you to warp from point to point. I however use gravity to allow me to float/fly, bend light (concealment pool), and to fall sideways extremely fast (speed).
Virtue: multiple characters.
CoH/V: Woot! Maybe Fun is to be had once again.
Ack! RUN! Regen is glowing mean & green!
If it reduces you, it's a nerf.
If it buffs the mobs, it's challenge.
They are not the same.
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That works if you are using Gravity to fold/bend space to allow you to warp from point to point. I however use gravity to allow me to float/fly, bend light (concealment pool), and to fall sideways extremely fast (speed).
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Well, that leaves you an open pool for Teleport.
Seriously, though, I think the AoE Wormhole fills a much needed control gap. If the only downside is needing to go to a power pool for single-target foe teleports, I think we got a good deal.
How in the blazes do I get on the Test Server(Training Room) for PvP? Is it even possible? Must I get intimate with one of the admins?
Grrr!
I don't know why, but all this thinking about my Grav controller makes me long to play her again. Back in the sig she goes!
Darn you Cryptic!
Well, I've tested the new wormhole and, well, I'm surprised to say, that I like it. Not tried it yet in a group, which may be hard to arrange, if everybody is in the arena
However, if I was to weigh things up, I think I'll miss the old wormhole more.
Best solution for me, would be to have both, that would make me really happy.
So, onto my solution:
Get rid of Dimension shift, I've tried it (on test), I can see groups hating it, and as a oh **** power, stuff tends to get spread out, and typically you'll miss anyways, so would of been better off just legging it.
So, part 1: In slot #6 (leve 12th) Replace it by wormhole 1.0 keep the name and everything.
In the wormhole "slot" #8 (26) put the new aoe wormhole, but it needs a new name, how about "vortex" ?
Lastly, never liked propel, but I know enough do, so fair enough, but if I had my way, I'd make it like the warshades cone attack in look and a cone disorentate