Gravity (Again)

Hmmmm, i havent read all the posts but....My first character is a Grav/Emp (Deep Reach), my second character is my Dark Defender. I never had any problems with Deep.

The heal power is good, damage from Propel is good, and Lift takes the bag guy and throws him down for a second so i can have a breather. The control powers immobilize and hold, so i see absolutely no problem with this set. The pet helps hold opponents and distracts them, i solo nicely and am able to act as a great support as well.

I think the problem is most people are tank and scrapper minded. I am lousy at those, i can tank better with my Emps, all 4 of my mains are Emp based. (Dark Defender, Grav/Emp, Fire/Emp, and Emp/Rad). You just need to adjust your attack style.

I did not load up on IO's, i used SO's and made lvl 50 in 3 months doing missions and streetsweeping only - no TF's, PLing, or Farming. 8 people teams running constantly 2-4 hours a day for 3 months and you will have your 50 as well.

I owe Cobalt for helping me realize Grav/Emp works good against hamidon.

As for PvP - Neuronia taught me defenders and controllers can be very effective. Deep has Dimension Shift, Phase Shift and Hibernate (Epic Power), so it is easier for me to control the timing of my attacks and leaving my opponent unsure. For offence i added the Frost Blast and Ice Storm powers, this also gives me much improved damage! When i add special sets she will be a whole lot more dangerous.

If you get Invisibility and Phase Shift by level 20 you can stealth Bloody Bay and even enter the villian base. You can also use invis to stealth TF's so dont laugh at these powers. Phase Shift is also good for triggering ambushes (Arachnos and Stalkers).
Dimension Shift is very useful for knocking out Hami Nodules but your allies might not like it, your Hold powers are better for this.

Thanks Felecia, but I think you missed the point of the thread. Please reread my original post and also consider how much your happiness with empathy is dictating your happiness with gravity ;-)

Emp sux. get a real secondary

Gravity is fine, at the bottom of the heap. Its unwieldy doesnt mesh well with itself is toolboxy without any awesome..... leave it alone otherwise the devs will make all the other sets just like it

[ QUOTE ]
Emp sux. get a real secondary

Gravity is fine, at the bottom of the heap. Its unwieldy doesnt mesh well with itself is toolboxy without any awesome..... leave it alone otherwise the devs will make all the other sets just like it

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think that is true, saying that Gravity needs improvements does not mean the devs will nerf all control sets to be equally as bad. I think its pretty clear Gravity could use a few minor tweaks. This thread has spawned many good ideas as well.

[ QUOTE ]
Emp sux. get a real secondary

Gravity is fine, at the bottom of the heap. Its unwieldy doesnt mesh well with itself is toolboxy without any awesome..... leave it alone otherwise the devs will make all the other sets just like it

[/ QUOTE ]

Is this a parody post or something?

I want to throw cars at people without doing for "theme."

Anything they can do to improve it I'll approve lol.

Hmmm, i hear lots of ppl say Emps sux, but teams that do not have an emp with them die alot and waste alot of time. To balance a 8 person team Emps really do speed things up, you need a good mix of types. Plus as an Emp i am always in demand.

As for Gravity, i did not miss the point. MY point was the Holds are the main point of gravity powers and are useful for locking down groups. Having a pet that also helps lockdown and acts as a distraction is very useful. As a SUPPORT POWER gravity does very well.

If you want more damage and defence you get that from the EPIC power sets.

Each AT and power has their uses, you just have to understand what they do and what your playstyle is.

Dominator's Lift is a GOOD power now. It does decent damage and it's a great knockup. It's like a must-take power in Gravity Set.

Propel on the other hand.... T_T

If I were gonna reorganize the set, it would be like this:

- Move Dimension Shift to 26.
- Move Gravity Distortion Field to 12.
- Move Wormhole to 18.

Done.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

[ QUOTE ]
Hmmm, i hear lots of ppl say Emps sux, but teams that do not have an emp with them die alot and waste alot of time. To balance a 8 person team Emps really do speed things up, you need a good mix of types. Plus as an Emp i am always in demand.

As for Gravity, i did not miss the point. MY point was the Holds are the main point of gravity powers and are useful for locking down groups. Having a pet that also helps lockdown and acts as a distraction is very useful. As a SUPPORT POWER gravity does very well.

If you want more damage and defence you get that from the EPIC power sets.

Each AT and power has their uses, you just have to understand what they do and what your playstyle is.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think it is you who is misunderstanding things. This thread has nothing to do with Empathy, it is a comparison between control sets amongst controllers and dominators.

I told you that your positive regard for gravity is probably because you are playing the Hero as a Empathy/Gravity defender, which is something you pretty much confirmed.

No offence, but please stop speaking with authority over something that you clearly do not understand.

[ QUOTE ]
Dominator's Lift is a GOOD power now. It does decent damage and it's a great knockup. It's like a must-take power in Gravity Set.

Propel on the other hand.... T_T

[/ QUOTE ]

We really need to get lift sorted for Controllers, it should do the same damage as Mind Control's Levitate, there is no reason why it shouldn't.

It did originally by the way, just was nerfed early in the games life, perhaps even in Beta when it was worried that with Lift + Propel, Gravity would do too much damage.

My arguement to that is A) It wont do too much damage and B) If you design two powers in a control set who do very little but damage + knockback, they should do respectiful damage to make up for the control they are replacing.

[ QUOTE ]
Hmmm, i hear lots of ppl say Emps sux, but teams that do not have an emp with them die alot and waste alot of time

[/ QUOTE ]
Utterly false and irrelevant to the discussion of Gravity Control.

While i do agree that Gravity could use some adjustment, and personally consider Dimension Shift a mostly useless power that is most likely the reason that Gravity has so little useful AoE, so far there's been nothing that suggests that the Devs feel the same way or have any plans to look at the set.

There have been some really interesting suggestions and analysis in this thread so far. Unfortunately i think that Gravity performs well enough that it's very low on the list of sets to be looked at by Castle.



P.S.- Empathy is a great set with some awesome buffs, but it is hardly required for success, survival or speed. In fact no single set is required for any content.

Has anyone actually PMed Castle or any of the other Devs about this? I believe they see that Gravity is quite underperforming compared to the other control sets and the ideas that have been suggested in this thread can lead to bringing it up to par while still abiding by the cottage rule..Personally I'd take a power reorder of having AoE lift at 8, Wormhole at 12, Dimension Shift at 18, and Gravity distortion field at 26..That way Grav is on par with Ice and Earth as having a soft control and its every mob control at 12.

Please correct if I'm wrong, but are you referring that gravity has soft control? I have a lvl 20 Grav/RAD troller and I rarely miss. In large mobs, I only miss the most 3 including the mob with minions, Lt.'s and bosses and I dont have a single power slotted with any enhancements. I have yet to understand how to use Dimension Shift b/c I cannot attack the target and neither can the target attack. Ignore this if this has nothing to do with your post. Earth in my expericne has great accuracy as well.

Ok let me explain as I'm not quite sure if you knew what I meant by soft control..A soft control is a control power that does not grant containment and allows enemies to attack and move still..Soft controls however last quite a bit longer then Hard controls like AoE holds or disorients and are usually centered around locations for example Ice slick, Earthquake and quicksand but as well as arctic air, and terrify. Although they don't grant containment which is usually associated with lockdown they are quite useful in control sets for mitigating damage..At the moment Grav has no soft control..What I'm supporting is the change to lift for it to become AoE or a cone with an upped recharge and endurance cost in order to become a soft control to bring it up to par with the other sets.

Some dev feedback here would be lovely :-)

What i'd like is if Going Rogue added a new game mechanic that allows critters to be pulled to a location/target, not just repelled from it.

Then i'd suggest replacing Dimension Shift with Collapsar, a large radius AoE that pulls enemies to the target.

Do people think that Dimension Shift is bad enough that it could be seen as an exception to the 'cottage rule'? (god I hate that name)

I'm really hoping we can make some progress with Gravity Control, it really deserves some attention and a bit of an overhaul.

Change Dimension Shift to a toggle with a maximum duration of 20 seconds and give it a stun that builds magnitude.
upto 10 seconds - minions
10 -20 seconds - lieutenants
20 when it detoggles - bosses

Makes it readily avaible as per Stalagmites but if the team is prepared to wait, some additional functionality and uniqueness to the set.

Wormhole
Give it a maximum total tunnel length between entry and exit points but no fixed distance for each from yourself. In this way you can either use it to send targets away from you (as now))or bring them from a far distance to you.
This would add additional utility

I wholeheartedly agree with the original poster. Gravity is the weak sibling of Controlers (along with Mind) and is in need of some developer TLC.

Here are my suggestions:

Lift: Change damage scalar as they did for Dominators so it compares better with Levitate. At present Lift is even worse than the pool power Air Superiority and Gravity Controllers are forced to take one of two very skippable primary powers at level 1 (Crush or Lift).

1. Air Superiority: Dmg: 30.6, Rech: 4, Cast: 1.5
2. Lift: Dmg: 24.5, Rech: 6, Cast: 1.03 (damage incurs after a couple seconds delay)

Propel: Damage is sufficient as is. Lower animation time somewhat to limit the amount of corpse blasting on teams. Change feedback (on hit and miss) so it comes at the end of the activation and not the beginning. Knowing you'll miss somehow makes the seconds it takes to animate fully extremely long.

Dimension Shift: Turn into toggle. Decrease radius of effect. I absolutely love the idea of making it a sort of reverse Earthquake/Ice Slick power with knock up instead of knockdown though! The reverse repel idea also has a lot of merit. Both suggestions have a much better thematic fit than an intangible power.

Wormhole: Increase radius to 20. This is still less than other similar powers in other sets.

I think the most likely change for Dimension Shift is the one suggested over on the dom boards. Reduce the duration of the intangible period and add a stun/fear to the end of it (because other dimensions are spooky). I also don't think it would be terribly detrimental for it to simply be made a single target phase. It would lose some functionality as a panic button, but would gain a great deal more in strategic value by letting you zero in on troublesome mobs without splitting an entire spawn.

The numbers are taken from both Mid's and verified with Red Tomax/City of Data, so I assume they're not both wrong in the exact same manner.

The only reason I held back on a few powers was that I wanted not to look like I wanted balance AND a bag of chips. I really do consider your aggregated list of suggestions fair and balanced. I fear the set will continue to linger in obscurity though since as a whole the Controller AT is doing great. The developers seem more interested in making new content rather than fixing old anyway.