Grav/Kin Help - new to controllers

Hi everyone,

I'm very new to the controller AT, but I've recently fallen head-over-heels in love with my newest character, who happens to be a Grav/Kin controller. So, I've decided to get to know how to play a new AT.

Are there any basic tips you can give me to help me out? I'm level 9 at the moment.

My Illusion/Radiation guide has a section in the beginning for people new to controllers. That might be helpful.

An important factor is whether you expect to mostly solo or team. Your strategies will be quite different. Grav/Kin is not the combo I would suggest to someone new to controllers, but there are no bad controllers -- some are just a little better than others. But if it is fun for you, that's all that matters.

Gravity is fairly strong on single target control, but weak on AoE control. If you plan to solo, your single target attack chain can be Gravity Distortion-Crush (slotted as a damage power) - Propel. That chain takes a while to animate, but it deals out a lot of damage thanks to Containment. However, on teams, the animation on Propel is so long that often foes will be dead before they get smacked by whatever item is thrown at them from Propel. Some people who mostly team go with Lift instead of Propel -- you give up some damage, but a lot of the damage from Propel is wasted.

Most people skip Dimension Shift -- and intangible powers are widely cursed because it is often hard to tell when a foe is intangible, so teammates keep attacking a foe they can't hurt. There are some uses to DimShift, but it is easily the weakest power in the Gravity set.

Gravity takes a while before you get your two best powers, Wormhole and Singularity. They come at 26 and 32. Wormhole is a really fun and unique power -- an AoE foe teleport with Stun and knockback that you can use around corners. Singy is your pet, and arguably the toughest in the game (other than Phantom Army and Phantasm's decoy, who are invulnerable).

Kinetics is a busy set -- very clicky and tends to encourage you to be in melee. It is mostly buffs -- the only significant defensive power, Repel, is the most frequently skipped power in the set. Kinetics makes a travel power optional. Most kinetics players have a love/hate relationship with Speed Boost -- it is one of the best ally buffs in the game, but only lasts 2 minutes so it runs out quickly. It is a good idea to set up binds to "SB" your teammates. If you solo mostly, then Speed Boost may be fully skippable.

Gravity is one of the controller sets that is more "offensive" like Fire, only it has actual attacks, whereas Fire just has its damage cranked. Those attacks should be used while you're leveling, especially Lift, which can be used to juggle an enemy in the air, sort of like a second hold.

Be careful of the long animation time on Propel. An enemy can run right up to you and punch you inna face before the power goes off.

Crushing Field, your AoE Immobilize, has very low accuracy. This is a power that I would skip, personally.

Slot up your ST hold, for it is your baby.

You may want to pick up your AoE Hold in order to add a little AoE control to your repertoire until you get Wormhole.

GET WORMHOLE. It's your bread and butter, a Stun that groups enemies close together so that people with AoE attacks can slap them around without fear of reprisal. It's better than your AoE Hold. Wormhole tactics are a big part of playing a gravity troller. One thing you can try is using Wormhole to pile enemies into a corner, and then use Repel to keep them bouncing against the wall. This will take up a lot of endurance, and Transference will help you keep it up by draining the endurance from an enemy and restoring your own. Also, Wormhole and Fulcrum Shift work well together.

Your pet is a mini gravity controller, and everything that tries to touch it will be knocked back. You can use it to block doors, disrupt enemies in the event of a near-wipe, and a few other ways, I'm sure. Be creative with it, but don't let it get so close to mobs that it might accidentally scatter them by getting into melee range.

Slot your important Kinetics powers with accuracy first. The less often they miss, the better.

Be careful if you choose to get Dimension Shift. It has its uses, but it's much easier to misuse.

Use Siphon Speed. It's Super Speed plus a recharge boost, and it's unrestricted, so as long as the power lasts, you'll be moving faster than normal. It's great for pulling and running away quickly.

Grav/kin was my first controller... then I left the game for a while. Gravity was then the last control primary I took to level 50. I don't want to tell you to run screaming from the set, but I would advise maybe shelving it for a bit. Castle has stated that they're looking at the animations and some of Gravity's issues. If you can wait for that, then your first experience with Gravity might not sour you to the set like it did for me.

If it fits your concept, go for it. I can easily see Gravity fitting the bill for magnetic powers. On secondaries, I could justify a number of them including Kinetics, Forcefield, Sonic, or Radiation. Power customization has really opened up how we play up our powers.

The only reason I give caution is that sometimes a very un-fun set can turn you off of a cool concept.

Love my grav/kin
She'll be my next 50 ... Two more levels to go!

Without IO bonuses, Siphon Speed paired with Hasten make your AOE hold come back fast enough to use on every other spawn (depending on team speed.) WITH set bonuses it can recharge even faster.

I chose the Psionic Mastery epic pool. Being kin means being in melee quite often and Indominatable Will helps avoid an unexpected hold/stun/sleep/fear from hitting.

Make sure to 2 slot for accuracy on Transfusion, Siphon Speed, and Fulcrum Shift as you do not want these to miss their target.

One caveat: Keep the long animation of Propel in mind to avoid A) corpse blasting and B) getting stuck in the animation when what you should be doing is running away.

This is a fast button mashing toon to play. Always something to do (unlike my Robo/FF MM which is dead boring.)

Have fun!

Love my grav/kin. Wormhole is my favorite power, be sure to slot at least one range in there

Gravity is a fun set, however it can be frustrating to use and I would reccomend some of the other control sets first, until you get to grips with Controllers :-)

Also, /Kinetics does not really offer any extra control.

Grav/Kin was my first 50 in City of Heroes. See my avatar? That's him. And I still play him! Not as often anymore, but he's still my main. "String theorist granted superhuman powers in a particle accelerator accident. Uses applied chaos and string theory to manipulate the fabric of space and time."

Anyway, generally the advice in this thread has been sound. As mentioned above, Gravity is long on single-target control, but short on AoE. But the /kin side of the equation will help boost your AoE control capability. Here's how:

First, you're going to want Siphon Speed. Take it and slot it with 2acc, 2rech. It's very important that it doesn't miss, and that it recharges fairly swiftly. Now, use it every chance you get. The +recharge buff will stack with itself as you apply it several times, and this will make all of your powers (including Siphon Speed) recharge faster.

Next, you're going to want Hasten. Take it and three-slot it with recharge and set it to autofire (control-click the icon in your tray). This will give you a large +recharge buff, too, and again, it will make all your powers (including itself) recharge faster. With stacked Siphon Speed, Hasten will be in the ballpark of "perma," which is to say that the +recharge buff will be on you nearly all the time. Along with the +recharge from a couple Siphon Speeds.

That is a lot of +recharge.

Okay, so you have Hasten on autofire and you're using Siphon Speed every chance you get. Now make sure you have Wormhole and Gravity Distortion Field. Slot each of them with 2 accuracy, 2 recharge, and 2 of either disorient or hold, respectively. With the amount of recharge you have and the recharge slotted in those AoE controls, you will always have a crowd control power ready. Now you have good single-target control AND good AoE control.

Make sure you slot Crush, Lift and Propel for accuracy and damage. Generally this goes without saying, but I saw upthread some talk about three-slotting Lift for knockback. That's.. well, okay, it may be funny to toss something up in the air very high. Fine. Go back to Atlas Park and toss some level 1 Hellions up in the air. Get it out of your system. Then slot Lift for accuracy and damage like a rational person.

Another good idea is to take Hover. Not only will Hover allow you to stay above the melee, which can be valuable, especially if you're using Siphon Speed--it's fast, unsuppressed movement in three dimensions--but also it will allow you to use Wormhole with much greater precision. Generally speaking, the more options you have for mitigating the knockback in Wormhole, the better. Using it at ground level will tend to scatter mobs unless you can throw them against a wall. Sometimes you don't want to throw them at a wall, though, you want to throw them at your Tanker who is already engaged in battle in the middle of the room. So, if you're hovering above the tanker, you can wormhole the mobs straight down to his him and they'll pretty much stay bunched up in his taunt aura, since the knockback will be straight down into the floor.

In any case, whether you take Hover or not (it's thematic though, assuming you can indeed control gravity...), Wormhole is your real bread-and-butter AoE control, at least until Power Boost and +recharge bonuses from IO sets become available, at which point GDF might become your front-line AoE control. So get used to using Wormhole, and learn to use it with PRECISION. Get really good at putting the mobs RIGHT where you want them. Also make a bind for it, something like /bind shift+lbutton "powexecname wormhole" which will allow you to target an enemy, shift-click a location, and wormhole that enemy and those near him to the location you've clicked.

Let's see... what else? Um, about Kin powers. Slot Transfusion 2acc/2heal/2rech. Any time you're fighting an AV spam it whether anybody is hurt or not. It's a stackable -regen debuff and it will really wilt AVs nicely if you spam it as fast as you can. DO NOT SLOT SPEED BOOST WITH RUNSPEED. Or use it to mule Blessings of the Zephyr. If you do this, I swear I will reach through the internet and smite you. Put endmod in the base slot and call it good. Slot Fulcrum Shift with 2acc, 3 rech. You're going to want to use it a lot. Remember that although you get a damage buff from it if you use it at range, you get a BIG damage buff from it if you use it from amongst the bad guys. Same goes for your teammates: they get a damage buff for each foe around them as well as one for being next to you. Learn to use Fulcrum shift to buff your melee buddies and ranged buddies alike. Or learn to use it to cap your own damage (Wormhole 1 group into a second group. GDF both groups, Siphon Speed, zip in real fast, Fulcrum Shift, then zip out and start crushing face with Propel).

All in all, Grav/Kin is a well-rounded troller. Not an especially powerful combo, but still a strong soloist and a big asset to any team. And yeah, it's an awesome thematic pairing. So, have fun with it.

That's some sound advice from Chaos. I'd like to second the usefulness of Hover. Flying above the tank and dropping strays directly down on him is quite useful. On outdoor maps, it's one of the best ways to mitigate some of the knockback (which can be a bit upredictable due to its high magnitude and enemy resistances).

I'd also second the suggestions that has been made about slotting some range into wormhole. A bit of range will make it much easier to position yourself to deal with the knockback as well as easier placement of enemy groups. Frankenslotting with IO's lets you hit good values on acc, stun, and recharge with a decent boost to range.