dukedukes

Shameless necro bump. Control set pet AI drives me insane. They do the most ridiculous things, especially flying pets. A command to "stop" moving and "follow" (default behaviour) would be enough to deal with their issues.

Greetings controller enjoyers. I've been having a blast with my grav/ff controller for a while now, I haven't seen people play in a similar style with all these powers, so I'm making this post to get it on more people's radar in case they could have some fun with it. The focus here is on packing enemies tightly together so your teammates can AOE them easier. You accomplish this with powers that manipulate the positions of enemies. The play-style is similar to a herding tanker but with a very different kit. Warning: This is not a simple build to play when using the full kit, there is nuance involved in using each power. You can cause your teammates grief when you mess up or are too disruptive. Proceed with care. Disclaimer: I am not responsible for those who misuse these powers to disrupt your gameplay (unless it's me). Power overview I'll skip explaining the overall power sets of grav and ff and assume you're familiar, this topic will focus purely on moving enemies around. Gravity Control Lift Rarely useful but you need to take this or Crush. Used to lift mobs over ledges sometimes. Repel from Repulsion Field or Singularity pushes them over. Enemies in the air get pushed harder by repel. Crushing Field Don't bother using Repulsion Field or even Singularity TP without it. It stops mobs from moving around while you try and group them up. I'm not a fan of immobilize outside of soloing but this is an incredible use of it. Wormhole Teleport outlier mobs to the main group of mobs. You can wormhole entire packs of distant enemies but it's likely you will not pull them all. The target mobs should be tightly packed or I wouldn't bother using this power, you can group them up yourself if you want! Have a remediation strategy for dealing with the remaining mobs. I will either provoke them, bump them with Repulsion Field so they agro and kite them over, or Crushing Field and Repulsion Field to push them toward the main clump of mobs. The choice depends on the number of remaining enemies, how far away they are, and the obstacles in the way. Singularity The reason to use Gravity Control as a primary. You've likely seen grav controllers teleport their pet in the middle of a group of enemies. Singularity attracts enemies toward itself with a large radius. This is the primary way to group mobs together and you often don't need any other powers other than Crushing Field. Force Field Deflection/Insulation Shield Keeps your pet alive longer. Singularity will take a beating so this is useful. Repulsion Bolt I don't use this at the moment but I do see it having some purpose. You can either use it as a strong knockback to get mobs over obstacles or just use it for the -res it applies and kb->kd convert. Using it for both effects may be annoying because it's difficult to counter the very strong knockback effect this has, so using it is disruptive. Maybe fine for AV's. Repulsion Field The reason to pick Force Field as a secondary. The basic idea is to push enemies toward your Singularity. Singularity makes Repulsion Field more forgiving and effective, the repel/attract effects work together. Be aware the knockback effect has a smaller radius than the repel effect, sometimes you won't want to trigger knockback as repel has no effect if the enemy is knocked on the ground (more relevant to lower level mobs) Dispersion Bubble On the defensive side of things Dispersion Bubble gives you access to a very welcome amount of defense (nearly 12%). Good defense is important as you will receive a lot of attention from mobs. Power pool: Teleport Combat Teleport A very useful way to maximize Repulsion Field uptime and effect. Rather than moving to the position you would have the best repel you can teleport there. Can be used to get around mobs without disturbing them with Repulsion Field as well. Teleport Target Needed to teleport Singularity. Teleport For repositioning where Combat Teleport won't move you far enough. Fold Space Obviously a great way to move mobs, similar to Wormhole it often won't TP every mob you wanted it to. Ideal for situations where mobs are scattered around you in many directions and too far for Singularity to pull in. Gather the remaining mobs similar to Wormhole. Power pool: Presence Provoke If there's mobs far from the main clump you want to pull in a good old-fashioned taunt may just be the best tool available, you wouldn't want to Repulsion Field a bunch of mobs over long distances. Provoke can be nice to get the leftovers of a pack you partially Wormhole'd to the main pack. You don't get the range reduction on the target like tanks do, so you have to out-range or LOS to get them moving. Bumping the mob with Repulsion Field to get agro can fill the same role, nearly. Macros There's several macros that are useful, generally to make teleport powers less clunky. Teleport to cursor: /macro_image "Teleportation_Teleport" "tp" "powexec_location cursor teleport" Combat Teleport to cursor: /macro_image "Teleportation_Teleport" "ctpcursor" "powexec_location cursor combat teleport" Combat Teleport up against your target. You'll appear on their closest side if they're not moving: /macro_image "Teleportation_Teleport" "ctptarget" "powexec_location target combat teleport" Target your pet with a keybind to then teleport it: /macro pet petselectname YOUR_PET_NAME Teleport Singularity the maximum distance possible in front of you: /macro_image "Teleportation_TeleportFoe" "tppetfront" "powexec_location front:39 Teleport Target" With boosted zephyr 3 set I get the value of 39 as my max distance but yours may be different. You could put the pet select in the same macro though it requires two button presses, not sure if there's a way around this: /macro_image "Teleportation_TeleportFoe" "tppetfront" "petselectname YOUR_PET_NAME$$powexec_location front:39 Teleport Target" Example Build This is my current build for reference, I'm still changing it often. I tried to focus ranged/aoe defense and balance most resistances while getting some recharge. I'm using vigor core for accuracy (you want to be 95% chance to hit for fold space and wormhole) and endurance reduction. With Diamagnetic interface it'll get you a bit closer to the defense soft-cap. You could cap these defenses easily, it just depends what you want out of your character. dukedukesv1.01 (Gravity Control - Force Field).mbd Gameplay Here's a +2 Yin TF. Keep in mind relative mob level affects how strong repel is via Purple Patch, +2 is pushed very hard compared to +4. Thanks for your time. I may go into the nitty gritty of all the complexity you will run into using these powers at some point, but you'll likely need to experience the problems first-hand and build a strategy that works for you.

The level shift is a good point, I forgot the difference between the incarnate and level shift. I'd still limit what I would take a debuffer to in terms of missions, generally on teams people should be stacked out in, like harder content.

To provide perspective the topic came up for myself when I wanted to explore debuff builds as far as I could as an avenue of scaling damage and defenses different than typical tried and true approaches (+dmg, procs, def soft-cap, a sprinkle of -res). The initial thought was cumulative -tohit -dmg -res from debuffs and a good IO build should be capable of taking and dealing a lot of damage, and it does! But only if the critter is a giant monster (counter-intuitive much??). Instead when I run a +4 it's half as effective or more, which ends up being massively less effective like with defense. There's this split in the content where debuffs are very effective or not worth specializing in which feels arbitrary and build limiting. In a team setting you will not carry the team with debuffs (maybe an AV, especially -regen), though you will make a difference for an already strong team. Sure you can run some -res here and there and get a small damage scaling increase, but the more you invest (especially as an individual) the less relative gains you get like with most scaling factors, going all-in is counter-intuitive when your efforts are halved 4 days of the week (read: arbitrary) and my opinion is this lowers character diversity. Debuffs are arguably more difficult to play with yet are punished more. You have to apply the debuff before getting any benefit. Buffs are generally always active and happen to scale much better. Take defense and tohit for example. If you cap defense with -tohit you need roughly -90 tohit (good luck) for +4 but if you cap with actual defense instead you only need 45. There's a near 100% difference in the numbers you need to reach cap based on what you happen to generally be fighting: +0 or +4.

No because everyone deals with the damage PP reduction. Debuffers effectively have a second multiplier (even a third reduction thanks to the resist mechanic, occasionally) further reducing their effectiveness. scenario: you deal 100 damage. let's say kin gives 2x damage and a debuffer makes an enemy receive 2x damage at +0 +4 kin: outgoing damage = 100 * 2 = 200 incoming damage = 200 * 0.48 (dmg effectiveness reduction) = 96 +4 debuff: outgoing damage = 100 incoming damage = 100 * 0.48 (dmg effectiveness reduction) * (1 + 1(debuff amount) *.48(debuff effectiveness reduction)) = 71 If you wanted these two scenarios to equal you would have to not reduce debuff effectiveness at all. These were just example numbers though. Kin realistically can increase your damage by much much more, and debuffs would have a very hard time reaching 2x for +0, as a solo at least. I'm not saying debuffs should equal what kin can do because debuffs usually affect more stats and the stat floor/ceilings are different. you're unlikely to reach the -res floor but likely to reach the damage ceiling, especially in leagues Debuffs have a place but it's very niche. In general +4 groups like radios without AV's you won't have much impact, it doesn't feel like it's worth playing, so i won't!

Debuffs vs +4 enemies are very underwhelming. Sets like rad or poison bring barely anything to the table in terms of -res, -dmg, -defense, etc (ok, rad does good -regen). With +3 level shift (1 level difference) or enemies with no level (GM's) I can see them contributing much more but for other content you just won't feel much impact. There's also some odd interplay with resist mechanics lowering debuff effectiveness even further. Does kin lose effectiveness vs +4? 0% loss. Debuffs? An insane amount. Buffs > Debuffs. Make debuffs great... please.