Issue 4 Changes for Gravity - Official Thread
By
Airhammer,
Posted on: 2005-03-22 14:26 in Developers' Corner
Heh, I agree with CircuitBoi on this one.
That is all.
[*]The new wormhole is great. -Much more useful PvP & PvE [*]Dimension Shift should be un-Nerfed (give us the full duration and recharge time back please)[*]Propel could be even stronger? 
[ QUOTE ]
No dev response and their continued [Censored] with Worm Hole is really starting to worry me. -Thoth93
[/ QUOTE ]
Mark my words. "The new wormhole is here to stay." Its has most of the same usefulness+extra power and control. If you dont like it, you are prolly a lowbie controller using it instead of tp foe... 
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
No dev response and their continued [Censored] with Worm Hole is really starting to worry me. -Thoth93
[/ QUOTE ]
Mark my words. "The new wormhole is here to stay." Its has most of the same usefulness+extra power and control. If you dont like it, you are prolly a lowbie controller using it instead of tp foe...
[/ QUOTE ]
No Einstein. I'm a 37 Grav/Kin and the new wormhole sucks.
It just flat does. Want me to tell you all the reasons why it sucks? Alright...
1. It randomly picks up several mobs in a group and ports them... melees hate you.
2. It then knocks them back... melees and anyone with you on a bridge or catwalk, etc... hates you, more.
3. THEN it disorients the mobs so they go careening and leaping over walls and all over the room... melees and everyone else, including other controllers who had a nice tight group... HATE you. Alot.
Didnt we learn anything from DS having random "lets screw with the fight process" properties that makes everyone around you Hate you? Hardly anyone uses it either.
Let's get something straight here. Wormhole was not changed so that we could have an AoE "teleport Foe" for some peoples amusement, Mr. Seasoned Veteran. Nobody was asking for that. Wormhole was changed to alieve the control gap. Period.
You may not have a control gap, or at least not a bad one. If you are one of the vaunted Rads or Darks or Storms, groovy for you. But if you are Kinetics, or Empathy or FF... you are screwed waiting for GDF to recycle... because it's pretty much all you have. Your secondary has no backup control. None. Zilch. Unless ya wanna die quick using crushing field. Heaven forbid a second group aggroes, you might as well just forget it and hope the team can manage them without you. Because there aint really [censored] you can do until GDF comes back. (then you use it on the second group perhaps in the nick of time, perhaps not and now the first group gets free and comes gunning for you. Now what?) And even with GDF 2 slotted with recharge and perma hasten, you're gonna be waiting for a WHILE.
So while some of you may be able to use Wormhole as a liesurely "AoE foe teleport when desired", because you don't rely on it for control with "your" secondary, the rest of us are now forced to use as our Control secondary a power over and over in combat (in between GDFs) against already engaged foes, that ultimately pisses off everyone around you, is extremely situational and dependant on terrain and it has cost you the old functionality you once had with the old WH.
Great!
Shall we continue with how badly all this sucks...
4. So now our secondary AoE function is a detriment to our teammates much of the time. Becomes very situational depending on team, mobs, terrain (do you have a corner or wall? One they cant jump over in their stupor?) Is CF up to lock them in place? Have you apologized enough to the melees yet for breaking their stride and sending them chasing?
5. Now, as they (the melees) try to angrily and hastily reassert their taunts and their aggro control, on mobs that are running in all directions, if GDF still isnt up when the disorient wears off guess what, yep... the mobs are all gunning for you. Isn't that nice?
Is GDF back yet? No? Well, I guess you could WH them again, it comes back faster than GDF... boy are your teammates gonna love you.
6. We've lost the functionality of the old WH.
And anyone who thinks TP Foe is a valid replacement is a complete idiot. With the old WH we could seperate mobs and send them off into the far distance away from your team, great for several mob and pet types like generators, cant do that wit TP foe. TP foe doesnt disorient. You cant use it to stun a boss. TP Foe all but guarantees and alpha strike, on you. WH was a great power.
Now it's only useful (arguably) on groups (randomly) of mobs... see above.
7. Because WH was chosen and apparently will remain the AoE control "fix" this means that Propel probably will stay the same as well. Which also sucks. Propel is entirely too slow to be a single target attack. Period. Quadruple the damage, so what? It still is too slow. As an Aoe Stun... say as in a secondary control function it would be quite decent. But alas, the new craptastic WH is "here to stay".
8. Same could be said for DS. Another power that could stand to be changed into a more useful power, that wont be because they have chosen to give us "Hate Hole".
If so I will likely retire my Grav/Kin. I (we) needed the help of the devs to fix the inharent problem of having no good secondary control function along with no viable backup in "our" secondaries... and we get this.
Thanks, but no thanks.
[ QUOTE ]
No Einstein. I'm a 37 Grav/Kin and the new wormhole sucks. It just flat does. -Thoth93
[/ QUOTE ]
Sure it could control more by slowing or holding... I wouldnt be mad. But then it might be a bit to powerful. No? I have used wormhole for year. I am still able to pull single targets with a little timing.. Could it be even better? Yes. Should it be? Not so sure. Is it better than it was? YEP
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
No Einstein. I'm a 37 Grav/Kin and the new wormhole sucks. It just flat does. -Thoth93
[/ QUOTE ]
Sure it could control more by slowing or holding... I wouldnt be mad. But then it might be a bit to powerful. No? I have used wormhole for year. I am still able to pull single targets with a little timing.. Could it be even better? Yes. Should it be? Not so sure. Is it better than it was? YEP
[/ QUOTE ]
No, it is not better than it was. It isn't anywhere close to what it was. WH was an apple, now it's an orange. I dont care how ya time it, you aren't going to be pulling a sapper, or a boss, or a FF generator out of the middle of a group to seperate them and send them singly away from your team or to your team. Sure you can single pull some lone wanderer if ya wait long enough. BUT THATS WHAT TP FOE IS FOR. It IS NOT what WH was for.
And yes, if you added a slow or hold to it, it would be too powerful. Which is why the whole idea simply DOES NOT WORK. It's either overpowered or a nightmare. Scrap it, and try a disorient on Propel... one that doesnt knockback (except the one mob it hits), doesn't teleport mobs away from melees and one that only disorients for a time as an AoE disorient originating from the point of impact... and with just the disorient can be managed effectively with Crushing Field or just your pets. As a viable secondary control function.
Can you give me tarpatch, and call it ...high gravity patch. That'd be better than the new wormhole afaiac.
Another thought would be to leave wormhole as it is, remove the damage from crushing field, and add a recharge rate slow to crushing field. It'd come at a level where the controller could really use it, it'd have effects that are consistently useful (as opposed to just being an AE root with crappy damage) and with any luck removing the damage might help mitigate the suicidal aggro factor of the current crushing field.
I havent played my Grav/Kin since the Winter Lord event and I doubt I will until they make a serious change to a sucky powerset. I stand there and watch Ice and Earth controllers and just go WOW.... see how they actually CONTROL...
The hard things I can do--- The impossible just take a little bit longer.
If numbers are so much more important than a teammate who is fun to play with, forget about the game altogether and go play with a calculator instead. -Claws and Effect-
I was seriously looking forward to using the precision of old wormhole in PvP. Alas, however, I'm fairly sure this new one is going the way of the garbage bin. Heck, if i can figure out another power to ditch, I might even be able to fit in phase shift.
Currently I'm thinking SS, wormhole and psy tornado..
Does grant invisibility work on Singularities?
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.
wow, there is so much debate over wormhole, but I think what Thoth93 stated in his post exactly sums up what the new wormhole is like in a team enviroment.
what i dont understand, is why there is no feedback from any of the developers of the game, isnt that what this forum is for, to report our opinions on proposed changes?
and isnt that what the test server is for, to test those changes and report if they are good or not?
are they just going to post issue four live and not even check if the changes to wormhole are good or not?
from what ive read, the few that like the changes, are outnumbered by those that dont, but i think dont thats important. putting aside the fact that they have removed the one use wormhole has, the question is, is the new wormhole a useful power?
and from all that ive read here in the post, i have to say no,
the new wormhole is a random effect, situational power that takes the control out of the power that it once had and has no use in teams, PVP or otherwise, and does not allieviate the control gap, which im assuming is what was intended.
so i cant understand how if so many people have given negative feedback, that this change will go through...
im going to make a poll in the test forum, please read it and place your vote, maybe someone will see it....
Worhole slotted with several range enhancements was actually pretty precise, and it had a better accuracy than teleport foe... thats why I called it a precision tool.
Plus you could have slotted it to recharge quicker and then tossed people up in the air to death, letting them take the fall damage =)
Too bad fall damage takes away from your xp gain.
you don't get experience... in PvP
[ QUOTE ]
you don't get experience... in PvE
[/ QUOTE ]
... I hope you meant PvP...
I hope I do too! (Blush) 
[ QUOTE ]
Sure it could control more by slowing or holding... I wouldnt be mad. But then it might be a bit to powerful.
[/ QUOTE ]
You know.... the more I think about it, the less I buy that. If it held them, sure it'd be overpowered. That's obvious. But if it slowed them? Look at the secondary soft control powers other power sets get. Giving us an AE slow would not be overpowered in any way, shape or form. Whether or not it were attached to an AE teleport that's a liability at least as often as it's an advantage.
Really, I think people should stop evaluating this power by whether or not, in their opinions, it's better than what we had before, and instead compare it to the other controller primaries. Does this bring us up to par with other controller primaries (discounting particularly synergistic combinations of sets like ill/rad)? If not, then it fails to do what it's supposed to do and the devs need to know that. That's the bottom line. We shouldn't be required to use expert play skill just to get ourselves up into the same league as other controller primaries, we should be using expert play skill to excel.
[ QUOTE ]
you don't get experience... in PvP
[/ QUOTE ]
Since when did CoH become PvP only? Powers should be balanced with PvE in mind, NOT PvP.
I like the new Wormhole. The disorient may be short-lived, but those few seconds could mean the difference in winning a battle or taking a trip to the hospital.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
No dev response and their continued [Censored] with Worm Hole is really starting to worry me. -Thoth93
[/ QUOTE ]
Mark my words. "The new wormhole is here to stay." Its has most of the same usefulness+extra power and control. If you dont like it, you are prolly a lowbie controller using it instead of tp foe...
[/ QUOTE ]
Well if they do change it I can get used to it. The knockback will be kind of a bother though. I still like the old single target wormhole better, and wish they would change something else other than the old wormhole.
I'm a high level controller, and I use wormhole instead of TP Foe. Wormhole is much more flexible since you can actually more target levels with it. TP Foe is limited to -4 Bosses, even-level Lieutenants, and +10 minions (problem with the 1st 2, not much problem with the 3rd limitation.)
Upsen.
Here's a question. My grav controller is 27, been stuck there for a while now but still having fun. The difference for me is that at 27, with only one slot in it, the new wormhole offers less control and utility. The question ends up being, does the new Wormhole fit with what it's being advertised as?
Supposedly it's an AoE control to fill in the 'control gap.' Wormhole is available at 26, thats eight levels after GDF and 6 levels before Sings. Is that the right place for it? The recharge time on GDF is the cause of the 'control gap' and AoE Wormhole is supposed to fill that, yet it can be argued that Sings also fill that gap in a much better way.
Another thing to consider is the level you're testing the power at and the team size and composition. I would imagine that post-32 the new Wormhole is much less offensive to a controller as they have two or three hold spamming pets beside them, while my 27 is actively hurt in his control efforts by the randomness added by the penalty to accuracy. So for me the six levels where I have Wormhole before Sings make this a bad pick because it's harder to use and has to be slotted up. I can as easily do the next five levels as I have the last nine to get to Sings without Wormhole. I probably would want tp pick up Wormhole after Sings as a nice way to feed stuff to the Sings, but at that point it's not patching the control gap, the Sings are.
Earth control gets AoE immobilize and disorients early, before 16. Fire gets AoE immobilize and disorients by 18. Both sets get an early AoE to augment these again in the form of a sleep and -accuracy power. While Gravity gets CF early on like the others do it waits until 26 for the AoE disorient and lacks another control power to assist these, I'm discounting DimShift for this purpose.
Another thing to consider is our secondary sets. Would a Wormhole with 2 accuracy and 4 disorient duration and a CF with 1 accuracy and 5 Immob be better control than some of our secondary powers? For Radiation and Storm no, six slotting Freezing Rain with slows or Radiation Infection with -accuracy is probably better control and uses fewer slots and powers to do so. For Empathy, Kinetics and FF, yes because those secondaries offer no AoE control. Yet would those three secondaries take Wormhole at 26 and slot it at 27 and 29 in preference to taking a power from thier secondaries?
Another question is in the direction we want to take Gravity. Many people seem very emphatic that we need more AoE control, mabey we need less? Would we accept having GDF as our only AoE power if CF and DimShift were replaced by strong single target controls? What if DS was turned into a single target intangible toggle with very high endurance use? What if CF turned into a single target hold with very short or unenhanceable duration but extremely high magnitude? Would Gravity accept a change from AoE control to a very strong single target control?
That last bit was brought on by random thoughts about an Ice blaster I met recently, you can disregard it if you want but it might be worth discussing.
Well from a "n00b's" perspective, just meaning someone who hasn't played Gravity much... I like the sound of it a lot.
The timing of this change is kinda funny. I was fiddling around with a build for a new gravity controller the other day. And I noticed right away that I'd have issues controlling if the sh-- hit the fan with this character.
If my team aggro'd too much with my ice/storm 'troller around... I could lay down glacier in one spot followed by snow storm, run over and shiver another while holding them in my arctic air, then cause another area to do the ice slick dance in an ice storm and keep firing ice block at the bosses till one sticks.
With gravity I could lay down that aoe hold, then.... try the aoe immobilize and hope they don't kill me before firing up personal force field? Granted I would have dimension shift, but honestly I didn't want it because most teams just hate that power. It's too situational, ONLY for those really ugly whole-room-is-aggro'd scenerios. Other than that it was all single holds and the comedic yet not terribly useful wormhole.
But with this change, at least I've got 2 useful all-purpose AoEs. I'm looking forward to it.
--
My AE Story Arcs:
Family Matters - 82136
I have a poor lvl 14 Grav/FF controller. She doesn't have Wormhole yet but she does have Dimension Shift. For me its a 50/50 toss-up as an "Oh crap" power. 1/2 of the time, I use it to phase out mobs I don't want to deal with (I solo with this controller ) while i take out a smaller number. The increased recharge will greatly affect my play style since I can no longer rely on it as a buffer against getting overwhelmed.
As for the new wormhole, I've never used it but it looks like it can enhance or replace my Dimension Shift in the sense that i can remove a group of mobs I don't want to deal with at the moment. The almost nonexistent disorient is something I hope gets looked at though.
Just my 2 inf.
[ QUOTE ]
It seems clear to me the overwelming majority do NOT LIKE the new Worm Hole. Why have the devs seemingly ignored this little insight?
Please STOP wasting dev time on WH. Remove the new WH code before you patch it live. Read this thread. The Majority would prefer the I4 WH not go live. Look into Propel as an alternative AoE stun or even DShift. Please.
[/ QUOTE ]
Agreed. God forbid we actually go back to considering changing D-shift to something worthwhile, like a gravity-themed power similar to ice slick. Or an AoE slow. Or something that doesn't combine, disoriented running around, knockback, and potential for imprecise targeting to guarantee that we piss off melees and send our targets all over the place anytime we don't have a convenient corner to use. Not to mention the fact that the old wormhole was actually a good power, and it's previous uses are lost with the new wormhole.