What do I need to know? grav/nat

[EmmySky]

Fizix just got rerolled last night as grav/nat.  Nature is new to me but I love love love gravity (but yeah its been a decade or so since I played it).  

 

What do I need to know about Nature, since I havent played it before?

 

What might I have forgotten about Gravity since its been a while and I am old?

 

Are there any 'must have' or 'definitely skip' powers from either set, and why?

 

I love Propel so please don't expect me to skip it lol, but I have never really understood things like Wormhole and Singularity so if someone could bring me up to speed I would appreciate it! 

 

Thanks for your time, happy hunting!

[Erydanus]

First this is not a great combination for controller play though you're going to be helpful to teams.  You're just not going to get a lot of synergy from it, just control on the one hand and drop a lot of buffs on the other hand. And as much as I love gravity, we all know it trades away some control potential for straight up damage, which, if you're on a team, is probably less useful because they will have people who can do it better than you. That said here's the deets.

What's good about Nature Affinity? Everything. Everything in this set is good, take everything. The theme of the set is like if someone looked at Regen and then looked at Willpower and then looked at Empathy and said "Well I've got an idea for a new set." It's heals, heals over time, regens, some damage resistance, some absorb shield, randomly some recovery, and it finishes off with a sick AoE damage buff. The heal is an AoE cone that starts behind you so you're affected too (remember Singularity cannot be healed but it can be buffed otherwise); Rebirth is a Big Heal if you use it on someone who's not already dead; Lifegiving Spores is similar to a regeneration beacon but it's a HoT instead and also has some +recovery. For debuffy things in the set you get spore cloud which is your typical radiation infection type anchor but it's got some -regen and some -damage in it, plus it puts a mushroom on the head of your anchor target which makes it actually easy to see (bonus lols when used on giant monsters). Entangling Aura is kind of a choking cloud type power. The other powers are pretty obvious buffs.

 

Gravity was changed significantly a few issues before shutdown so you may not know a lot of this. Lift and Propel were straight up buffed; Lift does a lot more damage now, and Propel is faster to cast and recharge, it also does knockdown on the target in a tiny AoE just big enough that when you hit a Hellion with a couch, expect the two mobs flanking him to be knocked on their butts too. It sometimes does knockback on the main target but the collateral damage is usually knockdown. I don't feel it requires a kb->kd proc, I find it manageable. Basically Gravity Distortion, Lift, Propel is now a fast flowing attack chain. You can still weave crush in but it's a filler attack.  Dimension Shift was changed from a click AoE intangible power to a TOGGLE albeit with a maximum duration. It's also a placed AoE and if anyone goes into the effect area they become "phased in" to the foes and can attack them so if you shift some foes and the team's ready to grab them they can just run in or you can turn it off. (People don't magically love it now but it's not going to get people pissed at you.) Finally Wormhole got buffed (… yeah I know this is all nuts, right?) so that it no longer causes aggro when you use it so if you target 5 guys and teleport only 3 of them the other 2 will usually just stand there going "I felt a breeze? what? oh nothing." The knockback is still a bit strong so people are often slotting the knockback to knockdown proc in it.

 

Finally if you aren't familiar with the controller Archetype sets let me just recommend you get the energy font proc and slap it into Crushing Field. If you put your Spore Cloud on a mob and then spam Crushing Field as you are doing your attack chain there's a very high chance the proc will trigger; it creates temporary pets that have an AoE stun power. Trivial damage but as a Grav/Rad I found it helpful to have these 10 second decoys flying around and occasionally stunning some minions.

 

[roleki]

I highly recommend the KB:KD enhancement in Wormhole.  With that slotted, mobs just appear exactly where you want them;  if your endpoint is in a restricted space, the mobs get packed into that space like sardines.  If your endpoint is in open space, they just drop RIGHT there.   But if your endpoint is only partially-restricted, like say you fire them into a bus stop or in a doorway, if the mob is large enough they form a perfectly straight line and it is hilarious.

[EmmySky]

Thank you both for all the info!  Wow thats a lot to process.  Seems gravity is better than it was when I left the game and nature seems like a very useful set!

 

My toon, Fizix, was previously a grav/ff but, just like in the old days, I just couldnt get into ff, so I am hoping Nature is 'my thing'. 

 

As for lack of synergy, my main on live was storm/energy defender....no synergy....they seemed to work at cross purposes so much of the time, so I think I can deal with it (I mean it cant be as bad as storm/energy lol).

 

Ok what is this energy font proc of which you speak?  And wormhole is the only one that needs kb-kd, not in propel?  Cuz I knock guys all over the place with that thing.

 

Okay thanks again y'all are very helpful!

[quixoteprog]

30 minutes ago, EmmySky said:

Ok what is this energy font proc of which you speak? 

It is a byproduct of one of the enhancements from the Overwhelming Presence set of enhancements. You get them from the merit vendors scattered around the city. I have had a hard time finding extensive documentation on what exactly it does myself, other than this single post, but it sounds cool.

 

The other set Will of the Controller is probably better overall, for the set bonuses.  But the Energy Font proc sounds pretty good and you only need the one enhancement to get it.

[roleki]

Best as I can tell, the Energy Font materializes on your location, then finds a target and flies to it, delivering love taps and minor stuns for ~20s, drawing some aggro before disappearing.

 

They're cool to look at, and you can give them fun names like "Times New Roman" but apart from that, I prefer the kind of procs that explode on contact.    (As an aside, at ~120M a set, I find the whole swath of controller ATOs to be entirely skippable. But, people lile them.)

 

Anyway, before i came to that conclusion I used the Energy Font proc in a few places and seemed to get the most out of them in AoE immobs.  I routinely ran with 2x energy fonts floating around, with occasions where I had three rolling.  

[roleki]

2 hours ago, EmmySky said:

[...]And wormhole is the only one that needs kb-kd, not in propel?  Cuz I knock guys all over the place with that thing.[...]

 

If your attack chain fires Gravity Distortion immediately before Propel, the 10s KB reduction from GD should mitigate most KB from Propel.  

 

Also, if I am in a situation where KB would be bad, I tend to just jump over the target when firing Propel, so whatever KB results from that attack is directed downward.

 

Or, you could forget all that and just slot the KB:KD enhancement - but then Propel isn't as good as it *should* be.

[Redlynne]

Feel free to (*ahem*) cross-pollinate (*cough*) ideas from two of my Controller builds ... Gravity/Time (Propelling the Future NOW™) and Mind/Nature/Primal (Mind Over Vegetables) ... since there might be insights in there that appeal to you for making a Gravity/Nature build.  I've posted a number of builds on these forums and I find that knowing how things work in other builds and how to "port" them into builds I want to play is extremely valuable.  Often times there are little tricks that can be found in one place that can apply to other builds even with some adaptation.

[oedipus_tex]

The best thing about Gravity solo is that Wormhole doesn't alert enemies, so you can easily run missions at x8 by hoovering enemies away. With Grav/Nature I'd try to drop them right on top of Singularity (both powers with KB to KD) with my Hold aura running. I doubt if anything will hit you through the combo of Holds and Knockdown.

 

The fact that Singularity can't be healed is a big bummer given how strong Nature's single target heal is. But you can recruit another pet in your patron pools if you want. Plus your Absorb shields and -ToHit toggles will make him hard to kill.

Edited November 21, 2019 by oedipus_tex

[EmmySky]

On 11/20/2019 at 3:29 PM, roleki said:

If your attack chain fires Gravity Distortion immediately before Propel, the 10s KB reduction from GD should mitigate most KB from Propel.  

Okay, thank you thank you thank you for this tidbit about gravity distortion (almost abbreviated it GD but no that sounds bad lol) then propel.  That is a genius mini-chain that I dont remember working that way back on live.  I hold them and throw stuff at them and they crumple!  

 

Also, for Nature, the anchor power (cant remember name but its early in the set) is brilliant on Freaks.  Since it stays toggled on until they despawn, you can move forward and if they rez you know it because the toggle won't fall off.  This speeded (sped?) up my Freak arc and got me extra delicious XP from not missing the rezzers.  It will work with any anchor I suspect but with a long history of my anchors always being killed first by teammates (or me) I have a habit of skipping those powers until later in the builds and using them as fillers when there isn't another power available that I need/want.

 

Fizix is 20 now, and by the end of the day I am hoping for 25 (got to go clean house at my parents today to help them so not as much play time as I would like on my first day of a week long vacation.)

 

Thank you all, you've been very helpful!

[roleki]

10 hours ago, EmmySky said:

Okay, thank you thank you thank you for this tidbit about gravity distortion (almost abbreviated it GD but no that sounds bad lol) then propel.  That is a genius mini-chain that I dont remember working that way back on live.  I hold them and throw stuff at them and they crumple!  

I don't remember as clearly as I used to, but I think Gravity Distortion has had the -KB for a while; that said, as a Gravity controller it's always a good idea to lead with a mez (GD/Crush/Wormhole) before Lift or Propel, to set up Containment (double damage on mezzed targets)

[Redlynne]

3 hours ago, roleki said:

as a Gravity controller it's always a good idea to lead with a mez (GD/Crush/Wormhole) before Lift or Propel, to set up Containment (double damage on mezzed targets)

Gravity Distortion > Propel ... you not only get Containment on the base damage but you also get Containment on the Impact extra damage.  With some slots in Propel you can basically 2 shots Minions a lot of the time, and if you need to 3 shot them you can follow up with Lift ... which will also get Containment on the base damage and the extra Impact damage.

 

Against harder targets than Minions I like to do Crush (to set Containment), Gravity Distortion (to enable Impact), Propel (for AoE Knock splash) and then Lift ... with the latter two leveraging Impact AND Containment for some serious face smacking.