Ok Devs.. Its time to fix Gravity...

I dont want to hear about the cottage rule and how they dont change powers around because we actually had that happen withe Gravity initially ( remember when we DIDNT have Singularity as a pet?? ) and most recently we have seen Energy Aura for melee toons get a rework because it was underperforming horribly...

Well guess what.. Gravity has been underperforming for YEARS>. We have had promises of it being looked at.. promises of animation changes...

Enough is enough.. Its time to fix this powerset..

Sarcastic response: How much you think they'll charge for that in the PM?

Actual response: I agree with you 100% but I'm worried they have almost zero priority towards spending time fixing old powersets when they presumably have more "free" sets in the works, along with premium sets to come.

Gravities problems are not easily to fix, the set can't be fixed just by boosting the numbers(short of bosting them so much as to make the set broken), the set would have to be rebuilt, with a better power selection.

Generally speaking, they don't make dramatic changes to a power set. People have been using the set for years, they selected powers from it, enhanced them, built builds around it, and are still using it today. Making changes to what powers are in the set, would screw around this, not only would people complain about them "screwing up" the set, but envitably the only way the set could be changed would be to make people who are using the set have to respec to use the new powers, which would screw hundreds, of people out of their carefully crafted IO builds.

When a set isn't very good anymore, they typically just make new sets that improve upon the ideas, leaving the old sets in for people who still want to try the old set. If you don't like gravity, DON'T PLAY IT.

I disagree, OOB. I think Gravity could be (and should be) brought up to speed fairly easily.

Shorten the animations on Propel and Wormhole, both to around 1.5 seconds.
Swap Wormhole and Dimension Shift in order of power selection.
Up the radius on Wormhole to match other area stuns.
Give Lift a 1.3-ish Damage scalar like Gravity Dominators and Mind Controllers get.

You now have a set which shines in single target damage, and is no longer too far behind in area control. Ideal for solo Controllers or a more aggresive/less support role in teams.

^^^^
But id make a few more changes to wormhole;
Increase the Teleport magnitude on Wormhole to affect bosses
Change the KB magnitude to be KD

Quote:

Originally Posted by VoodooGirl [*]Watching out for the Spinning Disco Portal of D00M!*

Being a fan of Grav, I have to say the set is very misunderstood. What people must realize is that a good portion of the set's control is in the pet. Okay, problem, the pet comes pretty late, so Grav struggles for 32ish levels to compete.

I'd make one simple change to make Grav more playable: I'd make it the early pet set. Swap Singularity and Dimension Shift. Extra points for making Dimension Shift into something that won't make your team hate you. And that's it.

WARNING: I bold names.

One thing that would fix Gravity more or less "instantly" is to give some of its powers a non-stacking -Damage secondary effect to go along with the current -Run Speed that is largely ignored. If the total -Damage after all powers were stacked on one enemy was around -50%, Gravity would be a very good set with a different flavor than other Control sets in that it would specialize heavily in Elite Bosses and AVs (who don't directly resist -Damage). You wouldn't need to change much else about the set for it to work, and wouldn't be outrageously overpowered either.

The problem with Propel is a bit harder to fix. IMO for the current animation time investment, Propel should apply a 6 second Mag 3 hold in a 8ft radius around the target. If something like Seismic Smash can apply holds under the logic that it hit the target really hard, throwing a Refrigerator ought to do the same thing. Short of outright changing the animation (which they have talked about but not acted on yet) the amount of sheer damage this power would need to do to justify its current animation time is unlikely to be acceptable, so its probably better to add a control element. Even if they drop the animation time by a second and a half it would still be a long animation time by single target standards.

Looking at control sets , most of them offer single-target and AOE immobs & holds, a pet power, and a range of differentiating powers. The better-performing sets have a lot of additional AOE control (or tons of pets). Gravity gets Wormhole, which is fun and very different from most sets' powers, but then it gets a couple weak single-target attacks and Dimension Shift.

The single-target attacks are just terrible. I guess it's nice to have one Controller set that has more attacks and can feel a little more aggressive, but they don't match up to the powers of the other sets when viewed as a whole. Replace one of those single-target attacks (Lift) with an AOE and the set becomes instantly more viable.

Dimension Shift is great in some very few circumstances and little better than a griefer's tool outside of those. This would be much better as a single-target attack with a higher magnitude. Nobody needs to take minions and lieuts out of the fight for 30 seconds. You need it to lock down a boss, EB, or buffer.

Gravity's not "that" broken.

- Propel needs to be faster, yes. More than once I've targeted a live something only to finally fling whatever I was flinging at a dead something. The dinosaurs come to mind.

- Wormhole's time/effect activation could use looking at.

- I find dimension shift useful, thanks. But I do agree it needs to be more obvious things are shifted, and/or be able to cut it off earlier. Those would make it more team friendly.

- AOE lift... not sure they'd go for it. Then again... *glares at Kadabra Kill*

See my Guides and Tutorials

I have soloed mine, but not much. Usually I have been lucky enough to end up on some large teams in chaotic missions, which is awesome. I went with Grav/FF and it is honestly the only controller I have ever stuck with.

Speeding up Propel would be nice, like they did quite a while back with Hurl. Though the old slower Hurl animation did look more powerful.

Gravity's problem is that it has approximately the same amount of control that Fire has, minus all the damage and plus some retardedly long animation times. To fix it, you'd need to increase its damage to match fire or give it enough control to significantly outmez fire.

please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong ....
I find I use crushing field (immob)quite a bit - it cycles up quicky to use on multiple mobs... However - as it has a -fly component (which is different from other sets which have their -fly in their hold). This makes "Lift" ineffective as it doesn't actually lift immobilized foes - no damage done.
I find lift totally incompatible with gravity immobs and never use it
Did I miss something ?
PS - don't make it too good as I'd hate to see too many Grav controllers - I like not ever being FOM

I thought gravity was fine/fun until the ridiculous nerf of wormhole where every enemy in the mob gets a free shot at you. I've since deleted my grav dom.

I think they could leave the set as it is, except replace Dimension Shift with a copy of Jolting Chain (the chain knockdown power from Electric Control). Changing it to chain-knockup would be nice but not required. They could even keep the electric animation as far as I care though.

Lewis

What if Propel were at Targetted AoE? I mean sometimes you're tossing cars at something. Surely a car would hit more than one thing in a mob. They could even keep the activation time as is if this were the case. Doesn't have to be a large AoE, either. 10-12ft?

Dimension Shift needs to be changed, at the very least. I've seen here on the forums the various suggestions for a change. My favorite being a pseudo pet patch that has a random chance to apply various mez effects on targets in the field.

Or perhaps a 'polarity shift' for Singy depending on where you are. If you're within Melee range, Singy would act as he does now - repelling foes who come into range. Outside of melee, what if Singy's repel turned into a taunt? Gravitational forces pulling foes towards the Singularity.

I'd like to see Propel animate faster and also act as a cone, something relatively narrow, like 20-30 degrees.

Wormhole's mechanic is... really odd, sometimes.

Singy needs to fly faster... Or pick up the teleport-to-catch-up trick that MM pets have. It's really annoying to be working through a map and suddenly realize that your Pet is Not with you. I've had Singy get hung in the geometry on even a simple map, forcing me to dismiss and re-summon.

There are times when I wish the SFX of Gravity were more noticeable, even flashier, but most of the time I really appreciate how subtle it is... even insidious. I like it! Just needs a couple of small tweaks.

Be Well!
Fireheart

I keep thinking that Dimension Shift would be somehow better as a Toggled Ally PBAoE Phase Shift rather than as a Click Target AoE Foe Phase Shift. Simply making the power into a Buff for you and your Team/League rather than a Debuff used on Foes nets you substantially the same effect ... but with some interesting "wrinkles" to how things would work due to nuances and implications of how the game mechanics play out for this.

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