Gravity Has Issues

Do you think they could add a secondary damage such as energy or something like that to help with the resist smashing later in game? I'm working on a Grav/Thermal and solo he's slow but do-able, however, teaming up with him, I am able to hold and immob, but I find myself more support with healing and shields. As stated many times before, propel just lets me smash already defeated bodies. Shorter animation would be a big help.

Great suggestions. Here are a few of my own.

Gravity Distortion Field - Change this power to an auto-hit PBAoE that effects both enemies and friendlies. This results in everyone outside the radius being unable to attack anything inside the radius, but everything within the radius able to attack each other. One use of this is to make the team invulnerable for a brief period so that they can run through an area. Another would be sealing off an area against an incoming wave of enemies until you can deal with the current batch.

Propel - Add a chance to summon an object that is targetable. These objects create variable effects when they are destroyed.
- Vehicles - AoE fire explosion
- Computer Equipment - AoE electric blast
- Canisters - Small oil slick/ice slick
- Metal / Glass Objects - shrapnel (caltrops)

(Note: I am aware that this change is not compatible with the current version of Propel, and may not be possible from a technical perspective.)

Lift - Have Lift apply an unenhanceable Mag 1 Hold that lasts 15 seconds-ish. This effects no one, but stacks with Gravity's single target hold. This would make Gravity the king of boss lockdown, giving the set at least some direction.

Ill start off with saying I love the visuals for this power set, thats the main thing that draws me to this it.

And for a couple ideas...

*Propel
A. Keep the same damage, animations and KB, but make it a cone effect

B. Have it cause the "chain induction" effect, based around the idea the object propelled is going to bounce around a bit. This could be done as a % chance to hit targets around your first target. 100% for first jump and then reduce it by 20% chance for another jump. The jumps would cause KD, instead of KB

*Lift (as is there isnt enough flying foes to make its secondary effect that useful)

A. Using the idea of making it an AoE, why not have it similar to TK from mind control. It lifts and holds the target and all other targets around him in the air (Soul Storm's hold animation for this would be perfect ). Using the same numbers like TK, 10ft radius, mag 3 hold, and 3.12 endurance a second. Only instead of a repel, lift the target into the air, even if they arent held.

B. Leave it as is, just add a secondary effect for a good 10s-15s. Stun, hold, -dmg, -resist, or -def. Base this idea around your target smashing into the ground, knocking the wind out of them. Making them less effective at fighting/defending.

*Dimension Shift ( More often than not, youll get teams yelling at you for using this in normal rotation )

A. Turn it into a team buff. By putting your team half way between 2 dimensions, you increase their defence/resistance by 25%-50%. Same duration, same recharge.

B. Similar concept to Illusion/ and make it a phase shift for the team. This would turn it into another situational skill.

C. PBAoE hold toggle. Similar to Radiation Emissions' Choking Cloud

*Gravity Distortion ( this would be just a small little bonus effect )

A. Add a small AoE KD or immobilize, similar to the sleep effect for Blind from Illusion.

Please don't touch Lift. Apart from the hold, it's the only early control tool that Gravity gets. You learn very soon to hold one enemy, keep the second on his behind, and attack the third. The only thing it could use is a damage boost like Levitate.

Give Dimension Shift a hold effect, so that the enemies stop moving and trying to attack you, at the very least.

Otherwise, I'd like it to be two layered AoEs in one. A small phase shift AoE in the middle, and a big mez AoE around it: fear, for example. That way, you get a lot more control about who exactly gets phase shifted, and the power is also useful as an early area mez in a lot more situations. It can be conceptually explained that gazing into the rip in reality's fabric is a harrowing experience even for those that don't get swallowed into it.

Another idea for Dimension Shift: make it the opposite of a knockback zone. I know the game engine lacks "reverse propel" mechanics, so this is how it would work.

Dimension Shift would summon an immoveable pseudo-pet that has two powers. "Dimensional Anchor" is an aura that latches on to enemies that get nearby (similar to the way Glue Arrow works). This tags the enemy as someone who has been in the zone of effect.

The pseudo pet's other power is "Mass Summon." This is a PBAoE (but on a pet) with a huge radius that works similar to Teleport Foe. The catch is that it only works on creatures tagged by "Dimensional Anchor" who are at least 20 feet away.

The end result is a power that constantly teleports enemies who get too far away from its center back into the zone of effect.

I proposed many years ago to give Gravity a power like Anti-Gravity field which works like Ice slick which would cause foes to fall UP.. however the problem here is that it would negate the use of the AoE Immobilize but thats no different than Ice or Earth..

Gravity needs some type of soft control within its set. My Earth controller puts Gravity to shame.

*shrug* Dimentional Shift = Timed Toggle, like a targeted Hibernate (no +regen/+end of course)

ability to turn it off would be hot...

Another possible way to create an "anti-repel" would be a targeted AoE drop which creates a ring at a certain radius (20-40'?) from the drop point. Along that ring, you create a series of pseudo-pets which all generate a hurricane-like effect with repel and KB. The pseudo-pets are invisible, and the graphic is at the centre.

Enemies would have a chance to escape, just because of the way that repel and KB fields tend to work, and you'd be able to have a KB-heavy character launch enemies into the ring to bring in more. The thing that causes issue is the fact that if you don't catch everyone within the ring, or if some escape, you will have a hard time getting them back in by yourself. Plus, it would probably be very system intensive. Still, better than DS.

I think the main problem with Gravity is that the AOE hold adjustments made back in 2004 were blanket changes, across the board, without looking at how the sets would play afterwards.

The AOE holds used to have a much shorter recharge, on a par with the AOE stuns, and double their current duration. However, this allowed complete lock down of mobs, which was never intended and so it was decided to double the recharge and halve the duration of the AOE holds to balance them.

Most of the sets had an effective level 12 AOE control, whose recharge was unaffected and allowed the sets to continue to contribute with a valuable level of control at intervals regular enough for each mob. (Illusion and Mind were a bit different, but had an AOE fear to fall back on, plus a bag of other tricks).

The problem with Gravity is that its level 12 AOE control was very situational and didn’t provide an effective fallback. Even its AOE stun, at level 26, was somewhat situational and not nearly as useful as other set’s AOE stun.

In my opinion, although a lot of the suggestions on this thread sound amazing, there is a much simpler and quicker way to patch up Gravity, which wouldn’t require any development resources at all. Why not swap the 90 second recharge on either Dim Shift or Wormhole with the 240 second recharge on Gravity Distortion Field?

Gravity would still be below the curve imo, but this fairly simple change would bridge the gap sufficiently to make it much less noticeable on teams, whilst having very little impact on the way you use the powers which make Gravity unique.

After all, Dim Shift could never have been designed to be cast every mob, it is an interruption to play for when things go wrong and how often does anyone actually want the teleport and KB which comes with Wormhole’s stun? Once every mob? Once every four mobs? It’s nice to have available, but 95% of the time I use it for the mezz effect, not the teleport/KB and in that 95%, I’m actually using it despite the teleport/KB.

Who do I need to sleep with to get Grav's cast times sped up ??

I love the grav set with its sounds and animations but compared to other trollers its like playing in molasses. The control effect (stuns, holds, immobs) simply kick in FAR too late.

Would be nice if the AoE immob activated at the start of the cast instead of at the end, by which time all the foes have managed to run 3km in all directions.

The "hey everybody....look at me" window on wormhole its far too large for a power designed to stun.

As far as the AoE intangible - great in concept but hugely impractical in play.

p.s - see point 1

Or just give controllers /traps already. The synergy between wormhole and trip mines would basically prop the powerset up better than anything short of a redesign.

Even with traps though there's still the current theme of Gravity needs to be paired with either TA,Storm, Rad or Reroll. I highly doubt we're going to get the current version of traps due to the fact of how badly a controller could abuse it. With traps though I still see almost no reason to play Gravity. Sure Trip Mine+Trip Mine+Wormhole maybe even leverage time bomb in but other primaries that actually have the tools to tackle mobs head on would be even better with it. For example cast quicksand and volcanic gasses from out of LoS, move into LoS and Stone cage followed by trip mine+trip mine while the -KB from stone cages is still active. Traps would alleviate the only weakness of some of the best control sets, being low damage. The fact that Gravity would have to rely on it to even be effective should prove that something is wrong with the set :/

Grav's biggest problems (From 50 levels of Grav/FF, so I didn't have a secondary that can prop up problems with the primary):

1) Lift doesn't do enough damage. After playing a Mind controller, I have to wonder why the otherwise identical attack does twice the damage. And now Dominators have the same damage in Lift as in Levitate, so give it to Controllers, too.

2) Dimension Shift's usefulness doesn't occur in early levels. Quite frankly, despite its disuse, I can't get behind the idea of heavily changing it or replacing it, though, because it is really the best flavor-power for Grav. To increase its usefulness, perhaps lock its duration, while keeping it enhanceable for intangibility magnitude. Increase the immobilize magnitude to 10 or so, high enough to ensure it locks anyone it hits in place. Don't make it auto-hit, but give it an accuracy bonus.

3) This is going to run afoul of the cottage rule, but it needs to be done. Swap Wormhole and Dimension Shift. A level 12 controller is getting to where he can really use his first AoE mez. And Wormhole fits perfectly there.

The set is not horrible, but it has a few issues is all. It has one of the best pets in the game (possibly the best depending on who you ask), does decent ST control and a good chunk of ST damage. But those three changes I listed above would definitely bring it in line with the other primaries.

And Wormhole has such great potential...Sad.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Propel would be a better power if it was converted into a Snipe attack.

Think about it.
The animation is *already* almost as long as a snipe attack.

Propel
Cast Time: 3.5 seconds
Recharge: 8 seconds
Range: 60 ft
Endurance: 9.36
Damage: 1.96 multiplier

Snipe (Defenders and Blasters)
Cast Time: 4.33 seconds (3 second Interrupt)
Recharge: 12 seconds
Range: 150 ft
Endurance: 14.352
Damage: 2.76 multiplier

Such a *simple* change would make Propel a FAR more useful power. And it's not like you'd need to remove IO sets from it by making such a change, since Castle would only need to permit Propel to accept Sniper Sets in addition to the ones it already takes.

S imple.
E asy.
E ffective.

Not even being contemplated.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...