Striving for Mediocrity - Gravity/Earth - A Journal

Day 39 - It's going to be a tough week
This is the last week of school for my kids before Christmas holidays. In Australia, it being Summer, the kids won't go back to school now until the end of January. That means this is a busy, busy week with awards nights, school performances and band performances. As a result, I'm not getting much time to play.

Tonight's effort is pretty much the Vivacious Verandi arc (that contact needs another arc or two) which goes down pretty quickly solo.

Day 40 - VG night
Another late start-early finish night has me doing badge missions on a lowbie VG team with Capella. On a team of 8 we had 5 Doms, which by the time I left was a team of 6 with 5 Doms. The one remaining Brute was feeling the peer group pressure because he offered to switch to a Dom

We motored through some paper missions and a mayhem, and Lili even got motivated to bump the difficulty because we were doing so well.

By the time I left I'm about half way through L33 and I'm beginning to pick up Crushing Impact recipes on the various bids I have outstanding.

Nice read!

Glad you put this out there.

That's certainly something I'm willing to try.

Singularity is the only power in Gravity I would describe as a pleasant surprise. It's far more effective than I thought it would be. In fact, it begs the question that two sources of ST controls backed up with poor AoE controls may well be equivalent in effect to a single source of good AoE controls backed up by ST controls. At least on small teams anyway.

Day 41 - Straddling Maintenance Again
A little bit of play before maintenance and a bit after has Capella close to L34 and doing Hard Luck's arc. Hopefully I'll get some more time tonight.

Day 42 - I've got my Eye on you
A question for the crowd: just how many eye puns can you get into the final mission of the Operative Renault Strike Force?

From observations of the VG coalition force team I led through it tonight, my answer is all of them. Much fun was had with me leading a team of three Brutes, a Widow (I think NW rather than Fort) and two Thugs MMs. It was an excellent opportunity to observe the performance of a Gravity Dom in the midst of a large competent team and against a few very different AVs.

Actually, I was really only dissatisfied with two elements of my performance this time around and overall I was happy with how it went. Firstly, the recharge of my AoEs just didn't keep up. I had WH available for every other spawn, but GDF was not, so there was a gap there. This is a known issue, and I'm taking steps to rectify it with more slots in these controls and more global recharge. In fact this SF put me at enough reward merits to claim a Luck of the Gambler +recharge recipe which will be crafted and slotted shortly.

Secondly, without AoE damage on a large team, I just feel like a bit of a leech. All the heavy lifting is being done by the rest of the team. Offsetting this is the effect that Earth Assault smash attacks have on the various bosses and AVs in these missions.

After all of that I'm L34 and well on my way to L35 and a probable Mud Pots.

Day 43 - Tickets
So I've got my Luck of the Gambler +recharge recipe but due to a large number of bids for various Crushing Impact recipes, I'm a little short on the immediate inflamy side of things. Sure, I could switch to one of my other characters, but I need about 3.5 million inf for the 2 rare salvage items I need and that's only about an hour or two in the MA so that's what I do.

In the process I do two complete Dev's Choice arcs which I need to chase up and include here because they were both brilliant (the one with the new Visage villain and the horror story from the Storyteller).

By the end of the evening I have slotted the LotG: +rech in CJ and I have hit L35 and Mud Pots.

Day 44 - Much Better
Now at +20% recharge and things are really looking up. The AoEs are faster; WH is almost up every time I want it and the attack chain just feels smoother. Mud Pots is there and I'm using it, but to be frank, I have absolutely no idea if it's doing anything. After quite a few missions I think I can safely be rid of it along with Crushing Field. Neither are contributing to the success of this character, and I think I can do better with the Medicine pool.

I also have a Crushing Impact set 4-slotted in Heavy Mallet and a 5th IO in my tray along with the rest of a Kinetic Crash set for Lift. L36 will have a nice effect on Capella's +recharge and with +30 or so recharge I think team play will be a lot easier.

The extra +recharge and accuracy have made a significant difference as I've been able to bump the difficulty settings up to +2/x1 and Capella performs well. In particular walking up to a +2 Lieutenant and reducing them to a sliver with Seismic Smash is just wonderful. I'm also starting to get the hang of manipulating Singularity to put it where it is most useful.

By the end of the evening I'm at L35 and about a third of the way to L36.

OMG - I dont believe it....
Min
is
actually
liking
Grav/
..... <checks to make sure the sky isnt about to fall>


What next, will the devs actually release MM pet customisation?

No, I'm liking Earth Assault and learning to live with Grav. It's still a fairly dysfunctional and abusive relationship though, and I'm fairly sure that were it not for the kid (Singularity), I'd be out of there.

Staying for the kid then when it leaves home breaking up the relationship...

I suppose like others have said its a ST focused powerset which on teams isnt the best, but has its place.

That said it could be improved (but then im sure everyone thinks that each powerset could be improved [make Seeds of Confusion do AOE 1.5 damage as well - lol]).

Are you planning on getting a Patron Pool Min?

Day 45, 46, 47 and likely 48
A combination of pre-holiday crunch and downtime (install on Tuesday, regular maintenance tonight) has me not doing very much this week. About all I've done is to start Capella on the RWZ missions where she is performing well. Against small numbers of tough targets the heavy-hitting Earth Assault powers really shine.

As far as planning a patron pool? Not so much yet. I'll see if I want to take the character beyond L40 first.

I'm very much looking forward to Fissure at L38.

As far as PPPs go, Mako looks to be a natural combination with Gravity to me. Waterspout on a held tough target for that extra ST damage source, Hibernate for when you get overwhelmed and Bile Spray for another AoE attack.

I may also get ahead again because I'm off work all of next week and it's too hot this time of the year to get out much.

Day 49 - Back to it
Last day of work for a while and I get a fair bit of time to play. Capella finishes off the RWZ missions and I get her cleaning up some Nerva contacts, during which I hit 36 and immediately slot lots more +recharge. For the rest of the evening I run at +32.5% recharge.

I pick up a VG mate for some duoing and it's an interesting experience. He's at a double disadvantage as he's only L20 and he's running a Stalker. With me having my difficulty at +2/x1 we found it a bit rough, particularly when the Arachnos mission we were doing was complete with a Night Widow for every second spawn.

I'm not going to complain about poor performance against +2 and +3 Night Widows. If I ever find a character that does well against them I'll let you know.

But overall, I'm much impressed with where things are at. The attack chain still needs some smoothing, but the AoE controls are now there when I want them. There will be another +12.5% recharge at L37 as well so that should only help.

Stalkers are good against Night Widows. :P

Day 50 - Another Day, Another Stalker
I pick up another Stalker for duoing today. This one is only L17 but compared to yesterday it's like night and day. He turns out to be extremely competent and generally does what I never expect a Stalker to do: pull his weight. Yes, I am a Stalker bigot. Is it still bigotry when 3/4s of the population of the AT live down to expectations?

As Capella is still 36 I only have the difficulty at +1/x1 and we don't have too many issues. By the end of the evening I'm only a sliver off 37.

Day 51 - Quiet Sunday
A quick bit of levelling in the morning and I'm 37 and I add another +10% to my +recharge. That's three sets of Crushing Impact with a set of Kinetic Crash and maybe one of Positron's Blast yet to be added.

On and off during the day, but I do get to do another clever AE arc and I also wind my difficulty back up to +2/x1.

Day 52 - Holidays = Levels
Playing during my morning is usually rewarding as it coincides with peak times in the US, it's just that I only rarely get the chance to do so.

I start where I left off the previous night and fairly quickly hit 38 and Fissure. It's an interesting power. Very, very short range and small AoE with small damage. I estimate with slotting it will slightly out-damage Stone Spears. Oh well, I still occasionally use Stone Spears to take off slivers left by my SMASH attacks, and I suspect a fast AoE version of that will be useful. If it wasn't for Seismic Smash I suspect I would be very disappointed, but that power kind of makes up for a poor last two picks.

Then I get snapped up by a team doing Grandville missions which gets large quickly. This is an excellent test for Capella because she now has 42.5% +recharge and I want to see if her team performance has improved. The team starts out with another Gravity Dominator (Grav/Psi) and a Fortunata and picks up a Fire/Fire Dominator after a few missions, so we have plenty of control.

In short, Capella performed beyond all expectations. I had AoE control options for nearly every fight and my Wormhole or GDF was usually the fight starter or soon after the Brute gathered aggro for Fury. The SMASH trio are almost at the point where I need not rely on other attacks to fill out the chain (really just a Lift here and there) and due to all the IO slotting I really have to exert myself to run out of endurance.

By the end of it I'm a couple of bubbles away from 39.

I suspect I'll be wrapping up the journal in the next few days. At time of writing I'm already well into L39 but I'm not going to journal it until I've finished the day. By L40 or 41 you've got to have enough information about whether a combo is viable or not.

Noooo you cant end the show after just the first season...
We want to know what happens to Capella Rising even after she gets to lvl50.

Does she finally hook up with that Arachnobot she flirted with?

Do her kids get into the fancy pre-school that you had to Dominate the head teacher in order to get into?

How does she handle it when her mother is killed in an 'accident' but she believes it to be an attack from the Longbow?

So many more adventures for Capella - dont deny us Min

Day 53 - Ballistae
Still working my way through the St Martial contacts and I ding 39 early on and pick up even more recharge by slotting Hurl Boulder with a set of Kinetic Crash. One of the St Martial contacts sends me to Nerva and the portal next to Technician Naylor, so I take the opportunity to open his arcs. Then I proceed to go through them and encounter Longbow Ballista after Longbow Ballista.

They're really not much threat due to three sources of stacking holds, but looking at the numbers I think they sit at around 50-60% Smashing resistance. Which means that fighting one is just one endless stream of button mashing where he's no threat to me, and I'm a very minor threat to him. After the third Ballista in a row I head off to Bloody Bay to pick up some energy-based help.

This is an interesting experience in itself. In Bloody Bay my recharge from IO sets goes from around 50% to nothing so it's a good way to measure where I am now as compared to where I was at around L28. In short: ugh. I mostly avoided the Shivans around the meteors but one group did summon and aggro on me and I had trouble dealing with them. It's not the attacks: the only power that I regularly use that I don't have at L28 is Singularity. Basically these encounters just reinforce that all that recharge is worth it.

On the good side, I've never seen a firebase go down so quickly to any character except a Blaster. The SMASH trio are something special.

Ok, let's wrap this up. At time of writing I'm about half way through L40 and I don't think there's a lot to add to this by going through picks that won't be from either Dom powerset.

Striving for Mediocrity
Let's talk about the title of this journal. It went to my expectations based on what I've seen from the performance of various Gravity Dominators as well as the expectations based on the stats of the powers. It also went to my expectations based on the stats of Earth Assault and a distaste for the hosing that Mud Pots and Fissure got on the way into the Assault sets. I honestly thought that this character would find it difficult to achieve "mediocre" performance.

I believe this character is far from mediocre. It's still not clear to me what the character would be for as such. I have better characters and better Doms for all of the ITF, LRSF and the LGTF. It might work well for the BSF and it might be better than my other Doms for Rikti Mothership raids. I guess that's a question I will answer to my satisfaction over the next 10 levels.

But, getting back to my point, this character is far from mediocre. I've never had a Dom solo so easily at +2 or +3. Most of mine do well against numbers and do ok against tough targets. This one does ok against numbers and excels against tough targets. The only drawback I can see in that is that Smashing resistance seems to be even more common than Lethal, and I don't think I would have considered that possible.

So let's look at the breakdown: