I've lurked the forums since I started about a month ago and exclusively been playing with a Grav/Dark Controller. I didn't really see too many posts on Grav/Dark and felt I'd put one up that I've been messing around with. I feel like I should get a Badge for how much time I spent on the forums looking stuff up.
Anyway, this is what I've been playing with. Lots of tinkering around, but I'm not too min/max in that I'm not thrilled with doing math stuff!
*Edit: Decided to break down how it plays. I noticed there wasn't too much stuff for newer players like myself. Or rather, those that played during live that recently discovered CoH is a thing again.
How it plays / My anecdotal experiences:
One of the things I noticed being a controller is that I constantly felt like I was running around chasing everyone in groups. Didn't feel like I was contributing very much, but didn't want to switch AT as I get attached to my character. The early levels are very much like this and I honestly had no idea what was going on half the time. Throw in a hold, a propel, run to the next group and maybe throw a crushing field. However, it became better once I started into higher level content. In general, I'd say it isn't very fun in lower level content and I really don't do it anymore simply because without all the later tools it makes me feel like someone's little kid brother wanting to play with all the cool kids. Constantly chasing those that are blowing up stuff in the mosh pit.
Preaching to the choir for the most part, but as has been stated on these forums many times about Gravity is that it is a good single-target controller primary, but not a lot of AE, which hurts it a bit in groups. With some power picks and, of course, incarnates that come later - it really starts to shine. It's not a strictly ranged or close-in AT. I am constantly ducking in and out of the mosh pit depending on what power needs to be used.
Power picks:
In the Primary and Secondary pools I picked up everything except Crush, Dimension Shift, and Black Hole. Black hole is pretty self-explanatory as a not-so-awesome-power. Didn't choose Crush mainly because of it's damage. Instead, when I was leveling up, I chose Arcane bolt and used Mystic Flight until later levels. Propel, Lift, and Arcane Bolt helped quite a bit when soloing and found the damage to be pretty nice and a good single-target rotation until I was able to start slotting the powers. A case can be made for Dimension shift, but I felt it's rare utility was not great for groups. I PuG everything and don't know anyone, so I really didn't want to irritate random people.
Beyond the Primary/Secondary I went with Hover/Flight mainly because I like to hover. Not hovering is yuck and it helps with Defense and slotting extra goodies. Haste for recharge. Then Combat Jumping for more defense and another spot for a LoTG def/recharge. Chose Leadership and selected Assault/Tactics and tried Maneuvers for awhile, but Assault/Tactics gave the build some boosts in some nice areas for group play and just one-slotted them.
I think I tried most epic power pools, but settled on Ice. Soul Mastery was what I ran with the most, but I didn't really like the damaging powers in the set and their AOE was too small. Ice has hibernate, which I honestly hardly ever use, but it's nice to know you have a OH-NOS! button. Frozen Armor is a nice power to boost defense and I skipped the other damaging cone powers, because I just don't like cones. Ice Storm is very nice with a wide area, some control elements in it...very cool.
Power Slotting:
This is honestly it's own mini-game, I swear. I don't even know if there is a 100 percent right way to slot powers. Mostly I was looking at other posts from power sets like Grav/Time (which there is a lot of) and Dark/Dark (which there is also a lot of!).
A great deal of what is posted, like the build below, is advanced IO slotting and it would be a massive post to list how everything was slotted up throughout the leveling process. I think there is enough out there on how the slot powers, but for me I like IO sets and I'm a bit OCD on having everything look all nice and tidy. Everything is attuned with the exception of Haste and Assault, which is +5.
Not going to mention everything, but wanted to touch on some of the highlights:
Propel
Biggest damaging power with a longer animation, but also fun as throwing billiard tables and street lights never gets old. 2 Acc, 2 Damage, 2 Recharge can work. Ultimately 5-slotted it with a Universal damage set that removes the knockback and turns it into knockdown, which I did with every knockback power. I've seen it slotted with decimation and stuff, but I like this.
Crushing Field
There is a great post on Gravity/Time by Redlynn about the energy font and crushing field is up so much that you can almost chain crushing field to poop out a lot of the little energy font pets. It's actually really nice soloing as things will attack the pets instead of you. Big bonus.
Wormhole
This really makes me feel useful in groups. It is so fast paced! I generally take a role of herder in that I scoop up baddies and throw them into whatever mosh pit is currently going on. Makes me feel like I'm doing something! Again, the knockback to knockdown, because I've played without them and ugh...mobs go all over the place and I can see all the melee running around and probably not being happy!
Hmm...I think that is about it for the big stuff. Hopefully someone like me will be able to look at this and the other great stuff on the boards to flesh out their build on how they play. It really didn't feel like it came into its own until it was fully slotted out. Could solo, but mostly grouped with TF, ITF, BAF, etc. However, no farms, so not much experience there. It's pretty durable and lots of nifty tools.
If anyone has comments/discussion stuff about it...cool!
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