MinMin

Yes, there's a point where all the Boss turrets become Toxic Missile Turrets (I think around 6 team mates) and another at 8 where all (or most) of the non-popup turrets become Boss turrets. That one is tough.

Have you considered the Leadership pool instead of Fighting?

There's two spots for LotG in there. If you had one of the sets with Power Boost it would be a lock; PB+Vengeance is a thing of beauty, but even without PB, Maneuvers, Assault/Tactics and Vengeance are a pretty significant team contribution.

Well done Hirsh.

Summary
Is this character fun? Definitely, even if part of the fun is trying to work out how to do stuff with it that other Doms might find trivial. But it also has some unique abilities, and as far as pure stacking Hold magnitude goes it's extremely formidible. Now if only there was some part of the game that required enormous stacking hold magnitude from a single source ...

What really keeps me coming back to it is the SMASH trio. Huge orange numbers and red and purple mobs just melting away.

Do I recommend a Grav/Earth Dominator?
No. Not really. The synergy of having all that stacking hold magnitude is blunted by a relatively slow ST hold and that all the damage output is highly resisted. Singularity is very good and has a myriad of uses, but I think it falls short of making up for the rest of the set. On Controllers, I can see it being far better as Propel is actually a good thing, but Dominators shouldn't see it that way.

What I do recommend are sets that synergise with Earth Assault in better ways. Sets that work well at melee range like Fire Control and Ice Control leap to mind and both can make very good use of Power Boost.

As far as recommending something that goes well with Gravity Control? Earth Assault is definitely one of your better options, but frankly, I'd recommend Storm Summoning or Trick Arrow and a move to an AT where the set just works better.

Thanks all for reading, it's been an interesting experiment and thanks for all the words of encouragement both here and in game.

Earth Assault
After doing this set, I am of the opinion that it is a fantastic Dominator secondary set. Probably only second to Psionic Assault and on par with Fiery Assault. The SMASH trio makes it highly melee though, and I'd go so far as to say that you could go with only Stone Spears as your ranged attack and not lose much utility at all.

Going down the list again:

Stone Spears
It's got a cool animation, but its drawbacks are annoying. You have to take it, and I still use it occasionally to knock a sliver off a very sick target.

Stone Mallet
The first of the SMASH trio. This is by far the least of them too which is kind of amazing given that (for comparison) it does only a little below Mind Probe which has long been the powerhouse ST attack in Psi Assault.

Tremor
This is the longest animating PBAoE damage effect that Dominators get while also being the lowest damaging one. In my opinion this is one of the "dump stats" of the set. Even if you treat it as a control nearly three and a half seconds is a long time to wait for a control effect.

Hurl Boulder
It's ok. Long animation, relatively low damage, but it is very cool looking and the best ranged option you have.

Power Boost
This is the power that makes Gravity Control tolerable. Others can sing the praises of Power Boost; typically I would prefer a damage-buff at this point, but it's hard to argue with the results. Gravity Control needs Power Boost to be viable as it brings GDF online as a workhorse AoE control.

Heavy Mallet
The second of the SMASH trio. It's the same as the first Mallet only better!

Seismic Smash
The third of the SMASH trio. The only Dominator power that compares is Total Focus. This is a brilliant power. It has less than half of Total Focus's animation time and nearly the same damage (albeit Smashing). It also does Hold rather than Stun which means that it stacks well. I would go as far as to say that this may be the best ST damage power available to Doms.

Mud Pots
Awful. Another "dump stat".

Fissure
It's not great, but it's not complete dreck like Mud Pots. It's really the only AoE worth taking and it is useful, but it's AoE and range are tiny. I typically treat it as another melee attack.

Gravity Control
It's been an eye-opening experience. Some of the issues that people have long complained about I feel are justified and some aren't. I also think not enough emphasis is put on how good a pet Singularity really is. I'm still not a fan of the set though, and I can't see myself ever rolling another Gravity Dom.

Let's go down the list:

Crush
I didn't take this. Generally I find the ST immobilizes to be quite passable.

Lift
I didn't like this power to start with, but it grew on me and by the time of writing it's probably my preferred ranged attack power. The delayed damage still annoys the hell out of me though.

Gravity Distortion
A very middle of the road ST hold, at least in terms of animation. It's a ST hold, a Dom's bread-and-butter, so it's hard to say bad things about it, but the animation time is middling to long and the hold effect is almost imperceptible. Also, the fact that Gravity does things backwards and it's the holds in this set that do the -kb and not the immobs remains a source of angst. A favourite tactic on my Mind Dom for bosses was to Dominate-Levitate-Dominate and it took a while to break myself of the habit of trying to do it with Capella. Actually, one of the better effects of all that recharge is that I can now go Lift-GD-GD and the second GD will hit before the target has gotten up from the original knockup.

Propel
Took it. Laughed at the effects. Hated the animation time. There's only one power in this set that I hate the animation time on more. At least this one is highly replaceable, so I eventually respecced out of it.

Crushing Field
I have a love-hate relationship with AoE immobs. They do have some utility, but for me that's always been at the price of a much better power pick and generally I find that unacceptable. This is still in my build, and I still use it after every Wormhole, but I got along fine with Wormhole when I didn't have it and I question whether there is better utility in either the Leadership or Medicine pools.

Dimension Shift
Hahahhahahhahahaa. No.

Gravity Distortion Field
I'm a fan of Dominator AoE holds when backed up with Power Boost. The extra recharge doesn't hurt either and I find this power reliably up every second spawn. The bad news is that it suffers from the same issues as Gravity Distortion, but at least it's a targeted AoE rather than a PBAoE like some of the sets get.

Wormhole
This power gets a lot of discussion, from questions on what the hell it does to people praising it for its utility to criticizing it for its complexity. It is definitely fiddly to use and the animation time has got Capella killed more than once. It's not always possible to get out of line-of-sight to avoid the weird "attack at start of animation" thing and there isn't always a good wall or corner to place the location target against. It's also definitely not a great mid-spawn oh-carp power. (Note previous comment about animation time). It also comes far too late.

But all that being said, it's still a very good power that performs a unique function. I was also pleasantly surprised regarding the other often complained about issue with its AoE radius which is smaller than other AoE controls. I only rarely noticed the issue once I got some practice with the power.

Singularity
This power makes the set in my opinion, even more so than Wormhole. Having an autonomous source of control that makes relatively intelligent decisions regarding targeting and is damn close to unkillable is brilliant and far more key to set performance than I anticipated. In fact, it almost makes up for the rest of the set.

Ok, let's wrap this up. At time of writing I'm about half way through L40 and I don't think there's a lot to add to this by going through picks that won't be from either Dom powerset.

Striving for Mediocrity
Let's talk about the title of this journal. It went to my expectations based on what I've seen from the performance of various Gravity Dominators as well as the expectations based on the stats of the powers. It also went to my expectations based on the stats of Earth Assault and a distaste for the hosing that Mud Pots and Fissure got on the way into the Assault sets. I honestly thought that this character would find it difficult to achieve "mediocre" performance.

I believe this character is far from mediocre. It's still not clear to me what the character would be for as such. I have better characters and better Doms for all of the ITF, LRSF and the LGTF. It might work well for the BSF and it might be better than my other Doms for Rikti Mothership raids. I guess that's a question I will answer to my satisfaction over the next 10 levels.

But, getting back to my point, this character is far from mediocre. I've never had a Dom solo so easily at +2 or +3. Most of mine do well against numbers and do ok against tough targets. This one does ok against numbers and excels against tough targets. The only drawback I can see in that is that Smashing resistance seems to be even more common than Lethal, and I don't think I would have considered that possible.

So let's look at the breakdown:

Day 53 - Ballistae
Still working my way through the St Martial contacts and I ding 39 early on and pick up even more recharge by slotting Hurl Boulder with a set of Kinetic Crash. One of the St Martial contacts sends me to Nerva and the portal next to Technician Naylor, so I take the opportunity to open his arcs. Then I proceed to go through them and encounter Longbow Ballista after Longbow Ballista.

They're really not much threat due to three sources of stacking holds, but looking at the numbers I think they sit at around 50-60% Smashing resistance. Which means that fighting one is just one endless stream of button mashing where he's no threat to me, and I'm a very minor threat to him. After the third Ballista in a row I head off to Bloody Bay to pick up some energy-based help.

This is an interesting experience in itself. In Bloody Bay my recharge from IO sets goes from around 50% to nothing so it's a good way to measure where I am now as compared to where I was at around L28. In short: ugh. I mostly avoided the Shivans around the meteors but one group did summon and aggro on me and I had trouble dealing with them. It's not the attacks: the only power that I regularly use that I don't have at L28 is Singularity. Basically these encounters just reinforce that all that recharge is worth it.

On the good side, I've never seen a firebase go down so quickly to any character except a Blaster. The SMASH trio are something special.

Day 52 - Holidays = Levels
Playing during my morning is usually rewarding as it coincides with peak times in the US, it's just that I only rarely get the chance to do so.

I start where I left off the previous night and fairly quickly hit 38 and Fissure. It's an interesting power. Very, very short range and small AoE with small damage. I estimate with slotting it will slightly out-damage Stone Spears. Oh well, I still occasionally use Stone Spears to take off slivers left by my SMASH attacks, and I suspect a fast AoE version of that will be useful. If it wasn't for Seismic Smash I suspect I would be very disappointed, but that power kind of makes up for a poor last two picks.

Then I get snapped up by a team doing Grandville missions which gets large quickly. This is an excellent test for Capella because she now has 42.5% +recharge and I want to see if her team performance has improved. The team starts out with another Gravity Dominator (Grav/Psi) and a Fortunata and picks up a Fire/Fire Dominator after a few missions, so we have plenty of control.

In short, Capella performed beyond all expectations. I had AoE control options for nearly every fight and my Wormhole or GDF was usually the fight starter or soon after the Brute gathered aggro for Fury. The SMASH trio are almost at the point where I need not rely on other attacks to fill out the chain (really just a Lift here and there) and due to all the IO slotting I really have to exert myself to run out of endurance.

By the end of it I'm a couple of bubbles away from 39.

I suspect I'll be wrapping up the journal in the next few days. At time of writing I'm already well into L39 but I'm not going to journal it until I've finished the day. By L40 or 41 you've got to have enough information about whether a combo is viable or not.

Day 50 - Another Day, Another Stalker
I pick up another Stalker for duoing today. This one is only L17 but compared to yesterday it's like night and day. He turns out to be extremely competent and generally does what I never expect a Stalker to do: pull his weight. Yes, I am a Stalker bigot. Is it still bigotry when 3/4s of the population of the AT live down to expectations?

As Capella is still 36 I only have the difficulty at +1/x1 and we don't have too many issues. By the end of the evening I'm only a sliver off 37.

Day 51 - Quiet Sunday
A quick bit of levelling in the morning and I'm 37 and I add another +10% to my +recharge. That's three sets of Crushing Impact with a set of Kinetic Crash and maybe one of Positron's Blast yet to be added.

On and off during the day, but I do get to do another clever AE arc and I also wind my difficulty back up to +2/x1.

Day 49 - Back to it
Last day of work for a while and I get a fair bit of time to play. Capella finishes off the RWZ missions and I get her cleaning up some Nerva contacts, during which I hit 36 and immediately slot lots more +recharge. For the rest of the evening I run at +32.5% recharge.

I pick up a VG mate for some duoing and it's an interesting experience. He's at a double disadvantage as he's only L20 and he's running a Stalker. With me having my difficulty at +2/x1 we found it a bit rough, particularly when the Arachnos mission we were doing was complete with a Night Widow for every second spawn.

I'm not going to complain about poor performance against +2 and +3 Night Widows. If I ever find a character that does well against them I'll let you know.

But overall, I'm much impressed with where things are at. The attack chain still needs some smoothing, but the AoE controls are now there when I want them. There will be another +12.5% recharge at L37 as well so that should only help.

I'm very much looking forward to Fissure at L38.

As far as PPPs go, Mako looks to be a natural combination with Gravity to me. Waterspout on a held tough target for that extra ST damage source, Hibernate for when you get overwhelmed and Bile Spray for another AoE attack.

I may also get ahead again because I'm off work all of next week and it's too hot this time of the year to get out much.

Drain Psyche makes a good replacement for Stamina only when you've got a fair bit of recharge in your build. Otherwise neither it or Domination are up often enough to serve. I normally encourage people to respec out of Stamina later on rather than try to build without it.

It's fairly bad.

There are a number of major issues which I'll address first.

* Flashfire is the single most important AoE control power of Fire Control. I'm used to seeing people underslot it, but this is the first I've seen to skip it completely. Take it. Give it 5 or 6 slots.

* Char is the single most important ST control power of Fire Control. You take it at L1 and you slot it quickly. You should feel bad about not having 5 slots in it by L10 and mortified if not by L20.

* Ice Sword Circle is your major source of AoE damage. One of the real beauties of Icy Assault is that it gets such good AoE damage early. So take it when it's available.

* You're taking Hot Feet way too late. For most Fire Control characters it's a key power, not just for the extra source of damage, but for the extra control effect of enemies fleeing when they are in its radius. Leave it until after Stamina, but not into the PPPs.

* No Hasten. Hasten is near mandatory for Dominators. Yes, taking it will excerbate your endurance issues. Not taking it will negatively impact how awesome you are.

* Ring of Fire and Smoke are marginal powers at best. I'd leave the former out completely and the latter makes a good L49 power.

There's also lots of slotting issues. Health does not need 2 slots and Fire Imps doesn't need 6 (4 would do it). Bonfire just needs a single Recharge slot. Frost Breath needs some damage. Hot Feet needs another 3 slots all End Reduc.

Hope that helps!

Day 45, 46, 47 and likely 48
A combination of pre-holiday crunch and downtime (install on Tuesday, regular maintenance tonight) has me not doing very much this week. About all I've done is to start Capella on the RWZ missions where she is performing well. Against small numbers of tough targets the heavy-hitting Earth Assault powers really shine.

As far as planning a patron pool? Not so much yet. I'll see if I want to take the character beyond L40 first.

Hang on a sec. I'm not having a shot at the achievement. I think Earth Assault is pretty cool for stacking mag and I entirely agree that having one on your team is a good thing if you want to take down an AV and the video shows that well.

My only point in this is that calling an Earth Assault Dom an AV Killer implies to just about anyone reading it that the video is going to be of an Earth Assault Dom killing an AV. Not a team killing an AV that happens to include an /Earth Dom.

So don't lump me in with the "put-up-or-shut-up" response.

No, I'm liking Earth Assault and learning to live with Grav. It's still a fairly dysfunctional and abusive relationship though, and I'm fairly sure that were it not for the kid (Singularity), I'd be out of there.

You can get away without Fitness, but typically after a respec rather than levelling up. You need a bit of recharge in your build and some EndReduc in your attacks before Drain Psyche is a viable complete replacement for Stamina.

YMMV, but that's a good general rule.

No, no, you need to read the thread again.

For the purpose of this thread "AV Killer" doesn't actually mean what nearly every player in the game thinks it means. This thread has instead redefined it to mean "useful as part of a team fighting an AV".

Please help the rest of the forums understand the new meaning, because I suspect we'll have better luck convincing the rest of the world of this then to get DarkCurrent to admit that "AV Killer" is a misleading title.

Day 43 - Tickets
So I've got my Luck of the Gambler +recharge recipe but due to a large number of bids for various Crushing Impact recipes, I'm a little short on the immediate inflamy side of things. Sure, I could switch to one of my other characters, but I need about 3.5 million inf for the 2 rare salvage items I need and that's only about an hour or two in the MA so that's what I do.

In the process I do two complete Dev's Choice arcs which I need to chase up and include here because they were both brilliant (the one with the new Visage villain and the horror story from the Storyteller).

By the end of the evening I have slotted the LotG: +rech in CJ and I have hit L35 and Mud Pots.

Day 44 - Much Better
Now at +20% recharge and things are really looking up. The AoEs are faster; WH is almost up every time I want it and the attack chain just feels smoother. Mud Pots is there and I'm using it, but to be frank, I have absolutely no idea if it's doing anything. After quite a few missions I think I can safely be rid of it along with Crushing Field. Neither are contributing to the success of this character, and I think I can do better with the Medicine pool.

I also have a Crushing Impact set 4-slotted in Heavy Mallet and a 5th IO in my tray along with the rest of a Kinetic Crash set for Lift. L36 will have a nice effect on Capella's +recharge and with +30 or so recharge I think team play will be a lot easier.

The extra +recharge and accuracy have made a significant difference as I've been able to bump the difficulty settings up to +2/x1 and Capella performs well. In particular walking up to a +2 Lieutenant and reducing them to a sliver with Seismic Smash is just wonderful. I'm also starting to get the hang of manipulating Singularity to put it where it is most useful.

By the end of the evening I'm at L35 and about a third of the way to L36.

Day 42 - I've got my Eye on you
A question for the crowd: just how many eye puns can you get into the final mission of the Operative Renault Strike Force?

From observations of the VG coalition force team I led through it tonight, my answer is all of them. Much fun was had with me leading a team of three Brutes, a Widow (I think NW rather than Fort) and two Thugs MMs. It was an excellent opportunity to observe the performance of a Gravity Dom in the midst of a large competent team and against a few very different AVs.

Actually, I was really only dissatisfied with two elements of my performance this time around and overall I was happy with how it went. Firstly, the recharge of my AoEs just didn't keep up. I had WH available for every other spawn, but GDF was not, so there was a gap there. This is a known issue, and I'm taking steps to rectify it with more slots in these controls and more global recharge. In fact this SF put me at enough reward merits to claim a Luck of the Gambler +recharge recipe which will be crafted and slotted shortly.

Secondly, without AoE damage on a large team, I just feel like a bit of a leech. All the heavy lifting is being done by the rest of the team. Offsetting this is the effect that Earth Assault smash attacks have on the various bosses and AVs in these missions.

After all of that I'm L34 and well on my way to L35 and a probable Mud Pots.