Issue 4 Changes for Gravity - Official Thread

After trying to show the new wormhole to some of my SG mates, my jaw dropped when the power didn't scatter the mobs to the four winds from knockback - it piled them up neatly into a disoriented, knockdown-ed heap!

I was actually kind of stunned for a bit - looks like I can really use this as a control power. No need for a wall/obstacle to push the mobs against even, like we had to on test. It's quite powerful and manipulable in it's current live form.

And I have a respec so I can figure out how to work teleport foe into my build again.

whistles happily,
Upsen.

I'll have to test that out tonight and see if I get similar performance. I'll still miss the functionality of the old wormhole, but losing the knockback should open up a lot of possibilities that were sketchy and very terrain-dependent before.

[ QUOTE ]
After trying to show the new wormhole to some of my SG mates, my jaw dropped when the power didn't scatter the mobs to the four winds from knockback - it piled them up neatly into a disoriented, knockdown-ed heap!

I was actually kind of stunned for a bit - looks like I can really use this as a control power. No need for a wall/obstacle to push the mobs against even, like we had to on test. It's quite powerful and manipulable in it's current live form.

And I have a respec so I can figure out how to work teleport foe into my build again.

whistles happily,
Upsen.

[/ QUOTE ]

Huh. Not what I experienced last night. I was scattering foes to the four winds with Wormhole. But I only used it a few times, I'll play some more tonight, see what's up.

Several things seem to contribute to knockback distance. The most obvious (and also the most proven) is level difference. Higher-con mobs scatter less because they're less affected by the knockback.

The other thing I noticed a while back, which probably is NOT true but warrants some investigation, is that knockback might be related to the distance you try to move the mob, or perhaps the distance you try to put the mob from yourself. Not totally sure here. Knockback always sends the mobs in a line away from you, unless the mob has a jump power and can manipulate the movement. This one I'm not sure of, and I need to check on it.

But yeah, if you use it to port some reds, they won't move far.

I just did a quick test. All the villains were the same distance away when I Wormholed them, and the exit point was the same distance away from me (pulled them from out of aggro range to a couple of feet away from me). These were all Nemesis minions and Lts. No other powers were used beforehand.

vs one even con: Knockback

vs two even cons: Knockback

vs a group of 9 -3s: no Knockback, just Knockdown.

vs the same group of -3s after killing four jaegers, leaving 5 targets: Knockback with a lot of scatter. These didn't Knockback in the same direction, it was more of an arc so they ended up farther away from each other than they started.

Your guess is as good as mine as to what's going on here. The only thing that seemed to affect the Knockback was against the one large group of villians. Didn't have time to do more testing, and more is definitely needed. I'm still very unhappy with the Wormhole change, enough so that it's likely I'll be retiring this character.

Edit: By the way, there was also a very subtle change to Crush. At first I thought they actually lengthened the activation time slightly because it seemed longer somehow. I think what actually happened though is they 'stretched' the animation to cover the whole activation time, instead of having that bit at the end were there's no animation but you're still rooted in place for about half a second. A very minor change that has no actual effect on anything really, but it was noticable since I've been using Crush for over a year now, heh.

It would make things so much simpler if they'd just change the knockback to a knockdown, there's no need for all this level and number based complication in the first place. It's not like either version of this power was so powerful that it needed some kind of drawback like this.

I've played with the new propel alot, and I really like the damage increase. I tend to use it knocking opponents into my partner's burn radius I REALLY wish that it was a cone though. It's still painfully slow to solo with a grav controller (at least pre-32) and it just doesn't make sense that the group of guys around my target weren't affected by the car I threw at him.

I think the best way to do it would to be a cone like the katana cone, based on the targets location and not the players.

Another thing I don't really like about propel is that when I see a car, other people might see a monitor or a forklift. Everyone doesn't see the same effect.

I've just been testing Wormhole on live. The base accuracy is either 65% or 75%, I was at 65% for the first 70+ shots until a string of 30 hits with no misses kicked that up.

The knockback is... interesting. When the -kb from GD was on there was no knockback or knockdown. When the targets were held but the -kb expired there was knockback. When the targets were not held there was always knockdown but not always knockback. Testing was all on even con minions, Family and Warriors, and when they were charging me to attack there seemed to be knockdown while when they were just running around there seemed to be knockback. So there being a knockback/knockdown switch based on the direction of movement is something we may have to consider.

On a team the AoE effect either went unnoticed or was disliked because of the scatter. A half decent tank and a defenders snipe negated Wormhole for use in pulling, I wasn't going to aggro my group on me by sending half the fight away, and moving stuff around during combat just scattered it unless it was held already. My feelings here are that it's a minor power in need of slotting now, and I'd rather slot up Propel or a secondary that's useful all the time. Mabey I'll pick it up again in the late 30s once Sings have covered the control gap, which Wormhole can't do because it takes too long.

[ QUOTE ]
I just did a quick test. All the villains were the same distance away when I Wormholed them, and the exit point was the same distance away from me (pulled them from out of aggro range to a couple of feet away from me). These were all Nemesis minions and Lts. No other powers were used beforehand.

vs one even con: Knockback

vs two even cons: Knockback

vs a group of 9 -3s: no Knockback, just Knockdown.

vs the same group of -3s after killing four jaegers, leaving 5 targets: Knockback with a lot of scatter. These didn't Knockback in the same direction, it was more of an arc so they ended up farther away from each other than they started.

Your guess is as good as mine as to what's going on here. The only thing that seemed to affect the Knockback was against the one large group of villians. Didn't have time to do more testing, and more is definitely needed. I'm still very unhappy with the Wormhole change, enough so that it's likely I'll be retiring this character.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's pretty messed up. It should be more consistent. higher level = bigger knockback doesn't go in line with any other power that I can think of...

Regarding my experience, I was in Kings Row with my L50 Controller, and using Wormhole on L7-8 Skulls. Many batches of Skulls in different groups, sized 2 to 8 members, sometimes wormholing the same group up to 3 times.

I was expecting them to go flying everywhere.

Upsen.

Hmmm. Much concern. I should play CB some and take a look. Here are some thoughts and hypotheses though.

1. I know that when I use team teleport, a phenomenon I call "gathering" occurs. Everything I team teleport attempts to reappear in the same location, and everyone bumps against each other before the hover drops to find their own space. One boon of singularity is that those pets aren't affected by gathering, because they don't bump against anything. Singularities always show up exactly where you port to.

2. Does wormhole suffer from gathering? Or does it pull the group of mobs to your destination point and keep the same distances and directions that the mobs had from your target when they initially reappear? I don't remember seeing gathering working on mobs with wormhole. But I wasn't exactly looking for it. Right now, I'm assuming wormhole does not gather. I will test this tonight or tomorrow.

3. My observation on wormhole knockback has been this: When a mob gets ported, it suffers knockback from the direction of the controller. This is why you see those arcs on knockback--If you teleport a line of mobs to yourself in such a way that the line is perpendicular to you, then each of the lines from controller to mob are at a different angle. The result is you kick the mobs back in an arc. But I think the controller is the center (origin) of the arc-circle, not the destination point of the wormhole. Otherwise, things would shunt in all directions. If it was knockback from the origin point, things would typically be knocked back towards the controller. Both those are not what we've observed, so I think knockback originates from the direction of the controller, just like what would happen if you simultaneously hit each mob with a force bolt.

4. Power effects are reduced against higher con mobs, effectiveness, durations, and accuracies. The only ones that aren't are those that merely have a chance to occur, like the disorient on punch. I have absolutely no idea why the group of grey jaegers did not scatter unless they had been rooted by the player's AoE hold. Keep in mind that a lot of our powers have -knockback components. Perhaps Jaegers have knockback resistance? Were there any non-jaegers in that group? My assumptions are that those mobs had -knockback for the first test. Keep in mind that the knockback resistance granted by grav powers to mobs will cancel before the holds do if you have slotted any hold enhancements at all. Doubt this? GD a mob and wormhole him into a singularity. GD another mob, count to 20, and wormhole him into a singularity. The second should fly immediately. The first should be rooted.

5. All of these concerns are mitigated by the use of terrain. Corners are still useful here. Knockbacks into the wall in such a way that the line is perpendicular to you should minimize knockback for the targeted mob, but the other mobs should bounce along the wall and will scatter. The best use for a group should still be TP to corner. Because the push-range is so much longer than the pull range, you can pretty much always find a corner to use as long as you aren't on an outdoor park map. Oh, and keep in mind that you can port things to a location outside of your LOS so the mobs can't shoot you as easily.

I'll take a serious look at it tonight.

A couple of important points: mobs with combat jumping can't be used to verify these tests well, since they can control/affect their air movement. An example includes carnie strongmen. Has anyone determined if there is a cap on how powerful a mob wormhole can move? I don't remember there being a cap on it. Also, while you can queue wormhole up while out of range, you can move forward to your target and wormhole will automatically start once you are in range.

Wormhole... I've got it six slotted at the moment. 3 accuracy and 3 range. Will be going for HO's in the power. My major concerns are as follows... The activation distance doesn't mesh with TP foe. Even unslotted TP foe is squeeking out a few more feet then my 2 50+ SO and 1 50 damge/range ho. The activation distance should mesh with TP foe, this is our second form of control. Range slotting should be a secondary concern not a primary one. Recharge is far to long and you can feel the recharge vs duration when you use the power. We can't reapply or stack the effects to build up mag. Hastened might be able to do it but I know that as an unhastened I can't.

Primarily I've been using the power as an alpha strike when my hold is down. Overall I'm starting to like the new Wormhole but have yet to test it in a large group situation. I definately see the power as an area TP that happens to have disorient and knockback.

Dim shift is another story entirely. I've got the power 5 slotted as I used it a lot. Slotting was 4 untang, and 1 accuracy. With the shorter and unenhancable duration and the longer recharge a situtional power was made far worse. With this sort of power I really beleive the duration and the recharge needs to match, at the cost of having an unenhancable recharge speed.

The way I used the power was to phase the second group before the team dies. Often I would die in the process but it would buy me and my team time so I could get everything under control. If I couldn't handle that group I would phase them out again. Solo and prepets the power allowed me to take out larger groups of mobs which gravity has an issue with. I didn't pick up the power till my late 20's but it completely changed the solo game for me in a good way.

Dim Shift needs to be a quickly recharge, shortish duration phase out power. The long recharge makes it all but impossible for me to control two groups at once even taking into accout wormhole and sings. With a tank on the team it's less of an issue as the tankers control better then I can.

Overall I still beleive gravity still has it's control gap for the following reasons...
Recharge vs duration on our area powers. The recharge time far exceeds duration on our area powers for all but Crushing Field. We need either the duration increased or the recharge reduced to make Dim shift and wormhole viable forms of control and not situational/neat powers.

Secondary control lacking... While wormhole is a wonderful power it is an area teleport that has a few tricks. It needs to have a duration increased to 24 base seconds and enhanceable. Knockback removal would be nice but isn't required. I wouldn't mind it dropping in recharge back to where it was as a single target porter.

Trinary control... I like phasing of the mobs, others don't. But like all trinary control you should be able to skip it. Only problem is gravity will be without a true area control until 18 and then won't have a gheto hold slotted up until almost 30. This is far later then other controllers. While the late end of the game catches up the lower level Gravity controllers sufffers. Because of this I would switch wormhole and Dimshifts places and allow wormy hole to be taken at level 12.

Hmm. Wormhole seems to gather, but not the same way as team TP. Mobs get shuffled, but they don't seem to bounce off one another. Then they knock back away from you. Strange enough, lots of times they would appear in a line.

It could be pretty swank to combine it with a mind controller with TK.

Honestly, i dont know how anyone could complain about the current state of wormhole now. the knockback is not a problem at all, especially when you slam all the bad guys into a wall, and the KB is the same direction for all mobs, which is nice, they get gathered quite perfectly. The dissorrient is great, and its nice to use with crushing field(FF 2ndary, so i dont worry about aggro quite so much) and along with DF you can hold guys for an extremely long time. Sure we cant solo tp 1 FF gen or tree of life, but i found, assuming they arent bunched a TON, you can tp the 2-3 guys over, get them disorriented, have moved the tree, and you actually was more of a service than before. The only issue is that the same problem as team TP happens with wormhole, with everything getting stacked, but i can live with that :-).
I say kudos to the DEVS on this power, and anyone who says different is being greedy.

They are upset because the precision of moving a single mob, i.e. a stationary pet, is gone. That's all. As a puller, one mob or three mobs doesn't really make that much of a difference since we'll already have GDF.

We can still move these stationary pets, it's just sloppier.

quick dim shift comment... slotted 1 accuracy, 4 intang I was able to phase out Black Swan in one hit. So it could be possible the power could phase out monster or even Hamidon ((which is an evil thought for someone wanting to ruin an Hammy run))

I'd never get close enough to hami to find out on test if it could phase him. If I can phase an archvillian I don't think there is a limit on what can be phased. I won't test it on live and ruin a good raid. But its something you may want to check for.

Incedentally, this power is still bugged such that disorient duration enhancements have no effect on it. Any word from the devs on whether a fix is coming down the pipe?

I noticed that the enhancements aren't working also. That makes it kind of hard to use on higher level mobs who have more resistance.

I've been using the new wormhole the past week and I'm finding that it works pretty well. That's not saying I don't miss having a way to move single targets. But when I'm street hunting and there is a small group that doesn't require wasting GDF I'll use WH 2.0 to feed them right to the Sigs. The one major problem I'm having with it now is the alpha strike before the disorent hits them.

Who uses Dimension Shift? It's a terrible power and you wasted 4 slots on it.

I think grav absolutely NEEDED another AoE control power, so I'm thankful of the new and improved wormhole, but the knockback when they are spit out is VERY annoying when trying to place baddies where I want them. I mean come on, it already let's them roam free all drunk like, making them scatter, at least make them START OFF grouped where you intended them to go, instead of having a wood-chipper-type-cone-spray-baddy-salad-shooter.

Ideally I'd like wormhole to either spit em out held, or spit em out without knockback. It would be much more useful.

[ QUOTE ]
Who uses Dimension Shift? It's a terrible power and you wasted 4 slots on it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I actually used Dim Shift a lot before the recharge/duration change that is why I've the power 5 slotted. To me it wasn't a waste of slots. But to each there own. *shrugs*

My thoughts thus far on the Grav changes. Thank you Devs for giving a power that actually DOES damage. I think all controllers should have one to two damage powers so that they can actually solo. I have a grav/rad now, and the going is still slow... but at least I have a reason to be at the keyboard during a mission instead of just slotting a hold for damage and seeing what's in the fridge (different floor of the house). We won't outgun the blasters, scrappers, tanks, or even most defenders with a single damage power.

I do have a couple of further requests though. When in larger teams I find it much easier to target foes and see the battle field when I move the camera to strategic (look down on the battle like you would in Diablo or other combat strategy games) It could of course just be me, being hard to target around the 6-7 foot tall teammates when I'm standing at 3'8". Can they make an option to disable the automatic camera rotation?

Oh, and can we put our hands down now? Yeah it looks cool to pluck enemies off the ground and suspend them by moving our hands, but we still have our hands up when the second tick of damage occurs. The animation time for Gravity Distortion is THREE times that of Char.

BTW, does anybody know if Assault increases in potentcy with level at all? 12% increase is great if you don't have damage slotted at all, but if you have 5 DO for damage it's more like 6% and would be 3% I'm guessing with 5 SO (trivial at DOs, almost non-existant at SO if it doesn't)

So I'm still somewhat miffed that I don't have a single target TP Foe anymore. I guess I can get that from the Teleport PP. I started using WH instead of GDF while soloing. I have sings slotted 4 recharge, 2 dam. I stand near a wall, and WH a group into a wall right into my sings. It's like dropping them into a blender.
Now that SS doesn't have the acc debuff, life rocks again. I double slotted WH for acc, and 1 range. If I don't have a wall then I make it rain minions and watch the sings bounce them. I still think my acc dropped some, but I can't tell for sure.
Not sure how this will work in a group, but I can I can imagine that adding scrappers and other nasty surprises to the drop zone won't make it any better for the incoming folks. I guess if I have enough ACC and Range enh, then the mobs I miss can get picked up by the blasters or tanks?

I liked being a Grav / ff controller, instead of one like everyone else. There are definitely challenges to being a Grav controller. But I would get bored pretty quickly if there wasn't some challenge.

As far as soloing. I can solo +1/+2 mob missions all day. Any group of 3 or less isn't too much of a challenge. Larger groups get GDF instead of WH'd into a sings blender. My Sings don't seem to suffer from damage, might be the Dispersion Bubble, it's not the others because I only bubble them individually when I am facing Malta TOs/OEs, or PPS and I only have 1 or 2 out, or against AVs.

In summary, I still am not completely happy with I4 changes, but combined with the UI improvements, It's a net good ... once they get all the bugs resolved.

Are there really 20x the number of fire controllers and psy controllers than grav? Just curious... I've been playing a grav/rad controller (level 11 now) and I swear that out of all the controllers I've been bumping into, literally 1/3 or more have been gravs. Which sort of surprised me... but just thought I' d offer the observation.

The lack of damage is frustrating, as everyone suggests. I don't even need to be a powerhouse. It's just frustrating that the thought of soloing a white mish is an exercise in tedium, if not slow suicide, due to the fact that it literally takes me 45 seconds or so to kill one minion, while I force the others to stand around and wait their turn.

Some AT builds can solo purples; I find that I can't even function UNLESS I'm on a team. I don't ask that they be equal, not in the least; but even 3-4 slotted, my crush and lift powers are peashooters in comparison to other controller builds.

Well grav/rad is now a FOTM, so that's why you are seeing them more now. Everyone and their grandmother is building them.

I have one at level 50, and I'll tell you this much, don't even think for one second that you can actually hurt anything. Get it out of your head for good (until you have sings). Grav is the least damaging AT ever. BUT, What they can do better than any other build in the game (and more so with the /rad) is single target hold/control. No other build out there can lock down an Archvillan like grav/rad. And Although Grav isn't as multifaceted as any other controller, it admittedly has the best holds. Mag 2 for grav holds. And sings that spam holds.

The only other thing that comes close to a grav's sings spamming holds is a dark defender.

I've been using the new wormhole quite a bit, and it seems rather useful. I hope they finally get disorient enhancements working, as that's an annoyance. Primarily, I am frustrated by the "free shot" everyone gets at you when you use the power. As others have mentioned, if we miss someone with the wormhole they obviously can shoot all they want, but not people flying out of a dimensional rupture upside-down. Apparently it's not just us that are being affected by this since I4, however, as other controllers have been complaining about their disorients also causing aggro before the status effect is applied.