dukedukes

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. Note the character doesn't really come online until you get Singularity at level 26, but people will appreciate your shields until that point I'm sure. Spoiler sections contain more advanced details, skip these if you're just starting, refer to them if you want to understand how to use powers better. I'll make references to i28p2, a patch released recently (June 17th 2025) which changes a few things about how to use the power sets. Warning: This is not a simple character to play, 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. I highly encourage keybinding everything as there is a lot of moving around and fast back to back power/command activations, I use 27 or so power/command keybinds for this character. If you prefer to be laid back and/or not use keybinds you may have a bad time. Disclaimer: I am not responsible for those who misuse these powers to disrupt your gameplay (unless it's me), it is challenging though so please cut us some slack while we work on improving 😅 Power overview I'll skip explaining the overall power sets of grav and ff and assume you're familiar, this topic will focus on grouping enemies together and how powers assist with this goal. Gravity Control Lift Lifts enemies over ledges. This is useful here and there. You need Repulsion Field or Singularity to do the actual pushing as lift just raises the enemy. Enemies in the air are 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. Remember this power applies -fly, flyers can be a pain to group up so you might want to knock them down with this. Dimension Shift Let me propose Dimension Shift as a power like this: do you want a button that makes you immune to damage? That's nearly what this is. You can coordinate larger pulls or pulls against stronger enemies if you can void incoming damage at its peak. If you're at the point pulls seriously hurt you it's time to consider this power. It's an optional power, definitely more of an advanced tool. Extra Info: Gravity Distortion Field In i28p2 this power became location based and lasts 60 seconds. For situations where you can group 3+ mob packs or otherwise taking some heat this is a great power for reducing incoming damage as you can make use of the long duration in longer fights to get full benefit. It's important to only initiate this power when 16 targets are present as the initial hold hits 16 targets, don't use it early before mobs are grouped up. 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. Have a remediation strategy for dealing with the remaining mobs. I will either provoke them, bump them with Repulsion Field so they aggro 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, their relative level, and the obstacles in the way. Be sure to convert knockback to knockdown with an IO. Extra Info: 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. You can initiate pulls by TP'ing your pet into a pack once you get a feel for the character and your defenses. Be sure to convert knockback to knockdown with an IO. Extra Info: Force Field Deflection/Insulation Shield Keeps your pet alive longer. Singularity will take a beating so this is useful. 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. Extra Info: Dispersion Bubble Up to 12% all defense plus hold, immobilize, and stun protection. Good defense is important as you will receive a lot of attention from mobs. The leftover mez that does affect you is terrorize, sleep, taunt, and confuse so the important stuff is covered with this power. Sleep and terrorize do get me occasionally but it's not too bad, so I don't use Clarion. Force Bomb This power has a nice knockup effect. Other than using it for bouncing your enemies on the ground for damage mitigation it can also be used as an AOE form of Lift. In situations where many enemies are pulled up against an obstacle (like a railing) Force Bomb can knock them all over the obstacle at once with the help of a nearby repel power. 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. Extra Info: Teleport Target Needed to teleport Singularity. It's possible to use pet goto commands but I find TP target more consistent. Goto commands are still useful at times. Your pet is fairly slow so it gets far behind a lot which will delay it getting involved in pulls without TP target. 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. Extra Info: Power pool: Presence Provoke There's many situations a taunt is useful, it's always about getting the mob to ignore your teammates and walk straight into Singularity. Typically this looks like provoking then standing on the opposite side of Singularity, or going behind a corner if the mob has very high range. A side-goal with this approach is to remain active while kiting, such as throwing out damage powers on the main pack while the mobs get closer. Good use of provoke can be more effective than any other approach. It's an optional power but I wouldn't want to part with it even though power competition is high. Temporary/Prestige/Origin Attacks Throwing Knives It can be useful to have a fast ranged attack to get some aggro for a pull without running over to the target or using your regular attacks which cause knockup or knockback. Throwing Knives (available via p2w/start vendor) is a 1sec activation time and an 80 ft range. Feel free to use whatever you want though. Pull Ethics COH players do not like knockback, or more accurately they don't like mobs moving out of melee or AOE range. Given this character excels at moving enemies there is a middle ground you should find to be humane to your fellow players. No throwing entire packs of mobs into corners making the entire team adjust for your decisions or Fold Spacing to Narnia. Try to minimize the friction between you and your team. I can guarantee you'll see melee go for straggler mobs that you could group with the main pack in about 1 second with a combat TP, you can just let them have it unless it causes some greater impediment. For every thirty players that speak out of joy for what this character can do for pulls there is a tank lurking behind a corner waiting to be outraged by you. "You're a controller, not a tank!" - it's a simple fact this character can do more than a tank for herding up a big group of mobs, and because your herding process anchors on where Singularity is you have a say for where the team engages in a fight, and some tanks don't like that. They lose some control and could get upset about it. These players are not cooperative, but you should be. If a tank wants to really get involved they can pull more mobs to you, taunt stragglers so they run into the pack, or just hold some aggro to lower incoming damage. If the tank engages first Singularity goes on top of them, if they try to corner pull just let them, put Singularity at the corner. Tanks can work with you but this is an oddball character so they're not used to what you do, it's a constant learning process with the community. Nearly all pulls begin at the first pack, that's where Singularity goes. It's the most predictable approach, which minimizes friction. If your team is keen and understands how you operate things can be more fluid, kite the front pack to the next, wormhole another group in, bump a pack with Repulsion Field, kite, and gather them all up. Pet Command Macros i28p2 introduces controllers being able to command their pet. Here's the commands I use. After teleporting Singularity I will use this command to stop Singularity from moving and start attacking enemies. This must be used every time you TP: /macro_image "PetCommand_Action_Stay" STAY petcom_all stay aggressive Attack your target. Keep in mind this allows the pet to move if it feels like it: /macro_image "PetCommand_Stance_Aggressive" ATTK petcom_all attack aggressive Make the pet go to a location. This can be good for tweaking your pets position. This command is a little silly for flying pets as the pet will stop very very far away from the destination so you have to overshoot the intended destination. I prefer to overshoot by a lot and press the stay macro at the right time to get the pet where I want it. You can also make your pet run in first to a pack with this, which can conditionally be a good option. /macro_image "PetCommand_Action_Goto" GOTO petcom_all goto Make the pet follow you: /macro_image "PetCommand_Action_Bodyguard" BG petcom_all follow defensive Other Macros There's several other 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, I don't use this much for this character but it's occasionally useful: /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:max Teleport Target" 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$$powexec_location front:max Teleport Target" Spawn Dimension Shift behind you as far away as possible while still being affected. This does unfortunately re-queue the power when toggling off: /macro_image "GravityControl_DimensionShift" "DS Behind" "powexec_location back:26 Dimension Shift$$powexec_toggleoff "Dimension Shift"" You can also try "up:26" to spawn it above you but this will hit teammates and enemies very close to you. You might find some use cases for it but the back version is my preference. Example Build I've been leaning toward building damage heavy so you have more impact than just gathering the mobs. Make sure you have the target(s) immobilized or held for containment damage. ST rotation = Gravity Distortion -> Lift -> Propel -> repeat. Skip Gravity Distortion if your recharge allows for it. AOE = gather mobs (use Crushing Field doing so) -> Force Bomb -> Umbral Torrent. You could go Mu Mastery for Ball Lightning if you want but cones work well with this character. Some things to shoot for: Good defenses. I aim for high ranged defense, good aoe defense, balanced resists. Force Feedback recharge procs to help with longer cooldowns 95% to hit chance for Fold Space and Wormhole against +3 Good range boost for Teleport Target, but all teleport powers (including Wormhole) are better with range dukedukes damagev1.09 (Gravity Control - Force Field).mbd Other power options if you drop Provoke/Dimension Shift: Repulsion Bolt (ST -res), Damping Bubble (DDR, LOTG mule, other random stuff that sometimes helps), Maneuvers, Combat Jumping, Sorcery for Arcane Bolt (superior to Propel) and Enflame (very effective on Singularity). If you play more carefully you could go Mace Mastery for Poisonous Ray, Scorpion Shield sucks so your defenses will take a hit in some way, the upside is a potential -77.5% res including procs (-45% res without procs). The incarnates selected in the build are mostly for damage. If you're up against stronger mob types it might help to switch them: Hybrid - Control Radial. Applies a TON of mez. Spam Crushing Field and other AOE's to apply it Destiny - Barrier. You need to be more conservative with endurance when not using Ageless Alpha - Cardiac Core will help if you're using Barrier Judgement - Void Radial. -50% damage for 30 sec on 32 targets Gameplay If the written information doesn't seem like enough to understand how to go about playing the character here's a video doing a Yin TF. Yin is a good one to practice on because there are many good pulls where you can use your powers effectively. Keep in mind relative mob level affects how strong repel is via Purple Patch, +2 is pushed very hard compared to +4. There's some odd pulls during this particular TF but overall the execution was decent. I died on 3rd raid leader as I didn't realize my pet died before I engaged, then assumed a tank would hold aggro. When you do initial pulls exemplared you usually need a purple insp because most of your set buffs and buff powers are disabled. Thanks for your time. If you try these power sets out I hope you have fun! My global name is @Ducks if you have questions and happen to catch me online, or ask here.

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.