Gravity Control Suggestions

[Nayeh]

I have been playing my Gravity Controller a lot lately, brainstorming and irked by little things this line does. I believe these small changes will make some of their capabilities seem more logical considering what these abilities currently do and don't do.

 

 

Propel
In this ability's current state it applies knockback to not only the target but also surrounding enemies. However, the surrounding enemies do not receive any damage. The effect is quite odd to witness a launched projectile that sends enemies flying but not applying damage.

 

My suggestion for Propel is for additional foes within the threat area to now receive reduced damage that can be influenced by the Impact modifier.

 

 

Gravity Distortion Field
It's essentially an AoE of Gravity Distortion, the single Hold. In it's current state this ability does not apply the Imapct debuff. It also does not contain the -Fly debuff.

 

Simply put, I request this ability to apply impact to all effected targets.

 

 

-Fly, Wormhole, and Falling Damage:
Several abilities within the Gravity line apply a -Fly effect that can immediately ground airborne targets. This is a rather graceful decent for something that should be abrupt and impactful such as when a player applies Crushing Field on a fleet of Sky Raiders. Even without applying -Fly, using Wormwhole to teleport enemies into an aerial location only applies a negligible amount of falling damage.

 

I have several suggestions for this unique scenario:
1) Alter the scales of falling damage so it has more detrimental effects on gameplay for both players and enemy NPCs.
2) Impacted targets suffer additional damage when grounded.
3) A single knockdown when the target reaches the ground.
4) Apply a unique debuff from the gravity line that alters the scales of falling damage. Which... is basically impact.

-------------------
-------------------

I imagine having these three changes would allow Gravity users to perform unique combinations to dish out extra damage.

 

Scenario 1 with changes:

With enemies clumped together under the application of Gravity Distortion Field granting the Impact debuff, a user could hurl out Propels to chunk out more damage on not just one target but several. Such as Impact across 5 enemies, 1 takes full damage and the rest might take (let's just say) 30% from the radius Propel itself but the damage has been increased due to Impact modification.

 

Scenario 2

A user applies Gravity Distortion Field on a platoon of Sky Raiders. They aren't falling (yet) however at least you have them all locked under the Impact debuff. The next immediate ability is Crushing Field which immediately grounds enemies, chucks out critical falling impact damage, and knocks them down.

[Saiyajinzoningen]

well done, i too believe grav requires some love. i think grav suffers from a lack of secondary effects. id suggest slow or recharge rate but i think ice and psi have those on lockdown how about some kind of end burn. something like 

 

New status effect:

 

[Density Surge] foes effected by density surge have the endurance cost of their powers increase by 1% this effect stacked up 10 ten times and lasts 5 seconds per stack.

 

 

[Uun]

I feel like these might be nice, but not really feeling they're meaningful. Some of these would require a lot of dev time, which I think could be better spent. I would much rather see Crushing Field get a damage buff.

 

10 hours ago, Saiyajinzoningen said:

i think grav suffers from a lack of secondary effects. id suggest slow or recharge rate

Crush, Crushing Field, Gravity Distortion and Gravity Distortion Field all have -62.5% speed. Obviously only applies to mobs that aren't held or immobilized, 

 

[Chris24601]

My suggestion is that Propel needs it’s range buffed to match the rest of the set and have an customization option that either causes the summoned object to despawn on impact (like it does with particle effects turned off) or, that is not possible, an energy pulse (the core of the Singularity pet would work) option that disappears on impact.

 

In a tight space (ex. the blue caves) propel debris can quickly reach the level of not being able to see anything if you’re soloing content. I’d like an option to turn it off via power customization without also turning off all the things like swinging signs and gates in the process.

 

Beyond that, one other significant buff I can think of for the set as a whole would be to take a cue from Kinetic Melee and make its damage type a mix of smashing and energy as this would help a LOT in dealing with many of the things smashing damage alone is weak to.

 

Thanks to Propel, Lift and Impact, Gravity already has something of a reputation as the “damage-focused control set.” The mix of smashing and energy damage (so its not a complete joke to things like ghosts) would cement that as gravity’s particular shtick.

[TraumaTrain]

Gravity is a cool set; I like it overall. These proposed changes are cool.

 

What I would love to see is an animation change to Propel. The animation is fine, even - but instead of pulling a car (or couch or sink or whatever) out of the floor and throwing it, pull a ball of energy out and throw that. The energy hits and then poofs away.

 

I don't pick Propel simply because of the junk. And that's unfortunate because it is one of Gravity's best attacks. 

[kelika2]

I just want Dimension Shift and Wormhole to swap places.

 

[SwitchFade]

While these are fine, none address gravity's main detraction: it does not lend itself well to teaming.

 

Wormhole is superb, but take quite a long time to animate and when you are positioned to use it, the spawn you're moving has already been engaged. Worse, half the time you try and position spawns but it isn't right, as teammates are out of position.

 

Propel is fun and powerful, and slow. It knocks back groups. By the time you set up the immob to benefit from impact damage, the MOB is dead.

 

Singy is one of my favs, but his AI is odd, he's slow and he spams single target holds and immob. While fun solo... Teaming it is not as helpful to hold foes far away from melee teammates. Plus, singy hangs back, vs diving in.

 

AoE intangible... Utterly grief skippable. Not much more to say.

 

Lift. I love it for fun, but it's just fun.

 

I've rolled a grav/rad, a grav/kin and a grav/storm, tried to love all of them and still have the grav/kin in her 40's. She's ok, fun on slower groups.

 

I realized that the main fun of each was the secondary, as grav really only had 2 real usable powers on decent teams, AoE immob and wormhole sometimes. Everything else was too slow or not useful.

 

I have controllers of every kind and love them all, including grav, but if we're going to debate change we should really dive in, come up with effective modernization and craft a convincing selling point to the devs.

[Redlynne]

4 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

Propel is fun and powerful, and slow.

Not as slow now.  Animation is 2.244s arcanatime, not the 4+ seconds of the "bad old days" where you'd spend like 3 seconds summoning something before finally throwing it.

[SwitchFade]

5 minutes ago, Redlynne said:

Not as slow now.  Animation is 2.244s arcanatime, not the 4+ seconds of the "bad old days" where you'd spend like 3 seconds summoning something before finally throwing it.

That was the worst, back then. I actually loved grav more then because I could summon 3 singys, and I actually skipped propel.

 

When they changed pets, grav took it in the shorts. I miss my 3 singys.

 

Make propel a targeted AoE with a .5sec faster animation, make singy spawn in a duo, cut wormhole animation by .7-1sec, replace AoE intangible with AoE gravity pulsing knockdown... Much better set.

Edited March 15, 2020 by SwitchFade

[Redlynne]

You sure you don't want a pony too?

[Izuela]

It could definitely use a boost since it lost the no -KB on immobilize exclusivity.  Maybe multiple singys (or just better ones) but I feel low level gravs need some love too. Minor defense and/or resist debuff to all the things, perhaps?

[warrior]

propel is the best damn way to play. you used it to toss forklifts,chairs, anything.

 

i'll roll with grav/kin and grav/energy to test.

 

[Rathulfr]

1 hour ago, warrior said:

propel is the best damn way to play. you used it to toss forklifts,chairs, anything.

It's also my favorite team drinking game.  Because Propel's summoned objects are rendered randomly on the client-side, not everyone on your team (or vicinity) sees you hurling the same object.  In fact, it's possible that nobody will see the same object at all.  But it does happen, infrequently.

 

That's where the drinking game comes into play.  Whenever a teammate casts Propel, everyone else on the team shouts out what they see.  If any two or more teammates sees the same thing, then those teammates need to take a shot.  This is a hoot to play on voice chat, like Discord, because everyone ends up screaming and laughing along the way.

 

For example:

1. Forklift!
2. Chair!
3. File cabinet!
4. Forklift!
5. Auto body!

In this case, teammates 1 and 4 would need to take a shot, because they saw the same thing.

 

Try it sometime!

 

[Tugzug]

I recall someone saying in the past that Wormhole has a sort of unique problem in that it simply fails to work on level 53 and 54 bosses, due to teleport magnitude being too high even for an incarnate to overcome. Is this still an issue? If so, definitely something to look at if Gravity Control is ever on the table for changes.

[MTeague]

On 3/13/2020 at 6:16 PM, Uun said:

Crush, Crushing Field, Gravity Distortion and Gravity Distortion Field all have -62.5% speed. Obviously only applies to mobs that aren't held or immobilized, 

I have definitely used this to kite some bosses on my Praetorian Gravity / FF Controller.  

(no, maybe, not the best AT / powerset combo to solo praetoria 1-20 with, but I have to have one Praetorian of each AT....)