Grav/Kin Slotting Need Help

[Fista]

I've never had a support toon. No idea how to even begin. Help me City of Heroes forum. You're my only hope. 

[oedipus_tex]

Kinetics is a weird one. You're probably want to have different slotting leveling up than when you get situated.

 

Basically as a Kin you will find yourself in many situations where you hit the Damage Cap. Since the Damage Cap is a cap per power, any Damage slotting in your powers doesn't help you out when at the Global cap. You will mostly be hitting this cap after level 40 or so once Fulcrum Shift is slotted.

 

From that point you want to decide how many of your powers to add damage procs to.

 

At 50 take a close look at your Alpha slot. You want to pick one with as much overlap with your build as possible. As a Kin, one that adds Accuracy is often useful, so you can get away with slotting less Accuracy in your actual powers. This may open slots in other powers. Vigor Core Paragon is good one because it will also add Healing and Endurance Reduction.

 

 

 

 

[Redlynne]

I've been ... looking sideways ... at a Gravity/Kinetics build, based on my work on Gravity/Time/Primal, but I haven't had anywhere NEAR enough free time to polish it up into a draft form worthy of being posted (let alone used).  Still have lots of "research" to do on it to ensure that everything falls into place the way that I assume it ought to.

 

Wormhole+Fulcrum Shift however just gets RUDE ...

 

Curiously enough, however, in looking over the build that I've been working on, for once I didn't feel compelled to pick up Hasten ... probably because there's enough Force Feedback proc potential in Gravity and Kinetics to not really "need" Hasten.

[Andreah]

I'm playing a grav/kin controller alt, and just got to level 50. I had one back on Live, and it was very good there, but not truly great. I have a few observations to add now, on how it's different in regards to WH and FS, and better.

 

Foremost, we can convert knockback to knockdown. This takes Wormhole and makes it a truly fantastic control power, as well as an enemy positioning power. Combining this with Fulcrum Shift is, as Redlynne said, truly RUDE to the enemy. You can come up to a group, grab most or even all of a second group, stack them on top of the first group with the stun in place, and then let Fulcrum Shift go to get a maximum FS boost for you and your whole team.

 

Since this is Homecoming, I have my Wormhole bound to a key as "powexec_location camera:max Wormhole" -- I select the target at the source group, turn to face where I want them to go, generally right in the thick of our current fight, and the tap the key.  Sometimes it will say the target is too far away -- I just slide (or hover) towards the other group until I'm in range, and pow! it will fire and grab them once I'm close enough, and they will go to my originally targeted spot, even if my camera has moved around since I tapped the key.  This is HUGE.

 

With enough global recharge, you'll have hasten perma'd, and I added a +45% recharge Alpha, and my Wormhole and Fulcrum Shift are now recharging fast enough to do this twice per mob group, if they live long enough.

 

My Wormhole power has a Sudden Accel Knockback to Knockdown IO, and then is frankenslotted the rest of the way with attuned Accuracy/Stun/Recharge pieces from stun sets. With my global recharge WH recharges well before the stuns from the last use expire -- 24 seconds vs 39 seconds of stun.

 

For Fulcrum Shift, I have plain Recharge IO's slotted to get it up to the ED limit. From there, global recharge and alpha get it to recharging in 19 seconds. You can have two FS's stacked on your team constantly from that multi-spawn group you WH'd in on top of them.

 

As a Grav/Kin, we also have good area effect controls to apply after the giant double-spawn-mob-group is WH'd and FS'd, and plenty of group buffs and emergency skills to use. I added recall friend, grant invisibility, and carry 100 charges of Resuscitate temp power. If someone's in trouble, I can single key grab them, teleport them to safety, rez them, invis them, apply mezz mitigation with Increase Density, and then throw Speed Boost on to get them on their feet and a little breathing space to re-self-buff. 

 

You can rescue the whole team when things are hitting the fan. You gather scattered mobs other people blast around, and put them on top of the tank and in the fire.  You run everyone up to the damage cap and make their powers recharge like lightning. The ones that bounce off walls can talk to Null the Gull and ask for speed mitigation.

 

You can be a master of mob positioning.

 

You make everyone faster, stronger, better. 

 

Pick up teams will thank you for joining today, and cry when you have to leave.

 

Life is good.

 

Go, hunt, kill skulls.

 

 

[Erydanus]

On ‎1‎/‎25‎/‎2020 at 1:37 PM, Fista said:

I've never had a support toon. No idea how to even begin. Help me City of Heroes forum. You're my only hope. 

Well the first thing you need to do is ask yourself how you want to approach the character. Do you want to focus on the team support? If so are you interested in prioritizing the Kin buffs a bit more and treating the gravity powers as more support? I ask this because how I would slot a grav/kin I wanted to mostly solo with vs one I teamed with a fair amount vs one I wanted to be more passive with and focus on team help is radically different. For instance, for option 3 I might start taking Assault and Tactics at a much lower level because they're an easy way to help a team and honestly have a lot of impact in low level content like a Synapse or Penelope Yin TF if a lot of people are at-level (meaning they have weak enhancements still). 

 

This is also a build that as Tex points out easily self-caps on damage but only after you get Fulcrum Shift. So before then, damage enhancements are useful in that you may want to shoot a few baddies. Personally if I were soloing a Gravity controller I'd be slotting Gravity Distortion, Lift, and Propel with 1 Acc 3 Dmg at first. (Yes, ignoring putting any hold in Gravity distortion; it's not needed when you're soloing at x1 and leveling.) Those powers make a natural attack chain and Lift and Propel get a 2nd kind of specialized containment damage called IMPACT for hitting mobs that have been affected (not held, just affected) recently by Gravity Distortion. But again, if you're focusing on the more support aspect of play that's not as important. So here are some random Tips For Leveling!

 

- Skip Dimension Shift. It's really not good, and we've argued it to death in many posts. It's got uses solo but teamed you will almost certainly "use it wrong" and draw aggro from your team. (Like that time I was surrounded by 5 war wolves and someone cast dimension shift on the mobs surrounding me, phasing them AND ME so that the blaster couldn't nuke them and I died because they killed me...)

 

- Wormhole is probably the most important power in Gravity because it's your ability to tactically control the battlefield. It's a stun as well as a foe teleport. It used to shoot things out at high velocity but a knockback to knockdown proc means that things now land on a dime so it's great for feeding mobs to your tank or nuke-happy damage dealer. What Redlynne is saying above is that you can, once you get Fulcrum Shift, literally pick up the enemy group and teleport it right to you, dropping them on their butts and leaving them stunned and giving you the time to use point blank Fulcrum Shift. DO NOT PROC wormhole with any damage dealing procs, you will draw aggro with it; it is a no-aggro power like confuses otherwise.

 

- the controller ATO that spawns an energy font pet (which does a low mag AoE stun, but the pets also draw aggro and have 500 hp) works really well in Crushing field. It's a very spammable AoE immob with trace damage, if nothing else. That one you might want to proc. You will probably find it to be your spammy group power on most TFs.

 

- Singularity is love. I recently discovered that Singularity will quite happily use the Controller ATO chance for psionic damage proc and at a high rate. Teehee.

 

- on the Kinetics side be sure you have enough accuracy in your powers that make accuracy checks. Also, until you get the Transference power you may find yourself with end problems. Paradoxically because you can't benefit from Speed Boost's +recovery bonus, but you can benefit from Siphon Speed, it's quite easy to run yourself out of endurance. So watch that, you may need a bit more end reduction in your powers, and you may find slotting a Miracle +recovery in health to be ideal even at a fairly low level. 

 

- by extension if you want to focus on kinetics then you're going to be putting more emphasis on their slots. However, many Kinetics powers only need a few slots to work well so it's more of a case of figuring out the mix of actions you're taking and assigning some extra accuracy or end reduction where you need it. Honestly if you can squeeze tactics into your build it'll be a really big help in the 14-30 range when you have weaker enhancements at first and are still slot poor even when you get better enhancements. I don't routinely take it in my builds but it's pretty helpful.

 

For support heavy leveling I might do something like: Transfusion, Lift, Gravity Distortion, Siphon Power, Assault, Crushing Field, Siphon Speed, Mystic Flight, Tactics, Increase Density, Propel (or Repel), Speed Boost for my 1-20 powers.  Wormhole at 26, Singularity at 32, Transference at 35, and Fulcrum Shift at 38 are assured. That means total options at 22, 24, 28, and 30. I would not worry about feeling you must take any of the following: hasten, the fighting pool, or medicine. You might want to take another sorcery power and then Rune of Protection (it's a mez shield as well as damage resistance), or you might prefer a different travel power but Rune is valuable enough I thought it was worth seeding the potential in a sample build. 

 

 

[Andreah]

On a PUG, another grav/ player offered some interesting advice. I think, for me, it's too expensive to do routinely, but I can see how it works. This other player was using an Ultimate inspiration to be level shifted up by one (to +2), which allowed Wormhole to teleport some Bosses as well as Minions and Lt's.

 

Ultimates on my server sell for 1-2 Million each on the /ah. I have plenty of Inf, but not enough to routinely use those on pick up mission/radio teams. But for special circumstances, I could see it.