Gravitar - How?

xgco

Hi there everyone. Ok so here is the story.

I tried to do the Gravitar Alert the other day and when the mission started there was only 5 of us in it when I thought it was supposed to be a 10-hero Alert. Anyways we got destroyed and locked out within mere minutes of the battle.

So my question is this: How does this Alert even work? What is the strategy for the battle and what are some things to watch out for. Thanks.

polishlightning

I just posted this, it may be helpful. Grav packs a punch, in yellow bubbles blocking may not even help. So if you're squishy, the trick is to remain spaced from your teammates and get out of the bubbles. If the bubble is following you, stop and block, all you're doing is bringing it into your teammates. Block during force attacks until she starts spamming bubbles again.
If you're a melee DPS, you're pretty screwed. Masterful Dodge is great for mitigating the bubble attacks, Unbreakable is pretty useless for squishies.

hubrix

xgco wrote: »

Hi there everyone. Ok so here is the story.

I tried to do the Gravitar Alert the other day and when the mission started there was only 5 of us in it when I thought it was supposed to be a 10-hero Alert. Anyways we got destroyed and locked out within mere minutes of the battle.

So my question is this: How does this Alert even work? What is the strategy for the battle and what are some things to watch out for. Thanks.

Trying to queue as a group will kick all of you in said group once you zone in. And sometimes the game just hates you and kicks you out for no reason. Just think of it this way, the ones left behind are probably thanking Cryptic for such a great challenge now that Gravitar has less targets to spread the Cascade love with.

xgco

@polishlightning: Thanks I'll take a look at it!

secksegai

I personally feel its no longer worth doing - As players figured ways to fight smarter and not harder, Cryptic's solution has been to make said powers worthless.

She can definitely be done by a select population of the community, but it's required much more effort with no improvement to a lackluster reward.

She's hardly melee friendly, and any melee's hoping to spend any significant amount of time standing will need strong mitigation (ie MD/Invul) and know when to block or evade.

Ranged folks are randomly targeted by FC, so glass cannons are practically obsolete now that smoke no longer provides cover. Ranged are still better suited, but mitigation, self-healing, and often rez powers have become much more necessary.

She's a tank and spank boss like everything else, except unlike most fights, Tanking is less about threat management and more about the majority of the team being able to tank her hits. If it wasn't for her random gravity cascades that she can cast up to 3 times instantly upon the same target, it would merely be a matter of understanding her bubbles pattern.

chalupaoffury

Secksi hit the nail on the head. It's doable, but why? 1500q? You can nemcon and get twice that, and it doesn't degrade in reward like she does. Plus random drops. The challenge is fun, I run it once in a while, but it's certainly not worth what you get out of it.

monsterdaddy

Well, she doesn't always drop 1,500 Q. Today I got 4,500 then 2,700 twice on three separate toons plus I actually got three costume drops (toons were one tank, 2 ranged). All within 2 hours in maybe 5 Grav rampages. Highest award of Q for one Rampage was 5,400.

I think some of this is intended. Players who contribute alot of damage and maybe tanking seems to get higher chances at multiple Q rewards and drops like open missions. Never played support in her rampages so I dunno how healers do for rewards & drops.

Her new immunity to Skarn and Smoke has had me redesigning ranged builds to better handle her. Giving up a little DPS for more (actually TONS more) HP and some self healing is making my ranged toons more surviable and ultimately deal out more DPS over time now than a pure DPS toon just cuz you stay alive longer. (I've never used CON as PSS before but for a Pulse Beam Rifle/Targeting Computer build in ranged role it's working pretty well.)

secksegai

monsterdaddy wrote: »

Well, she doesn't always drop 1,500 Q. Today I got 4,500 then 2,700 twice on three separate toons plus I actually got three costume drops (toons were one tank, 2 ranged). All within 2 hours in maybe 5 Grav rampages. Highest award of Q for one Rampage was 5,400.

I think some of this is intended. Players who contribute alot of damage and maybe tanking seems to get higher chances at multiple Q rewards and drops like open missions. Never played support in her rampages so I dunno how healers do for rewards & drops.

Her new immunity to Skarn and Smoke has had me redesigning ranged builds to better handle her. Giving up a little DPS for more (actually TONS more) HP and some self healing is making my ranged toons more surviable and ultimately deal out more DPS over time now than a pure DPS toon just cuz you stay alive longer. (I've never used CON as PSS before but for a Pulse Beam Rifle/Targeting Computer build in ranged role it's working pretty well.)

The Q drop is still bugged. The standard rate is 1500 first kill, 1200/900/600 and 300 until reset. When you receive more than that, it appears to be related to the q system where people get dropped or leave early, at least from what I've seen in the countless runs I've done.

Up until the latest choice to make two debuffing powers completely useless for debuff, I would rarely die and even then only on my soldier if someone pulled her out of the smoke (by not understanding perception debuff/ranges). Most of the time she never hit me at all because I debuffed her perception and stayed out of her perception range. I can tell you solo it took me about 33 minutes from start to finish to kill her once, and that was doing almost nothing but damage, not wasting time healing or repositioning constantly. Now with that said, consider how much efficiency you lose when the team is spending most of its time rezzing or healing - that's a lot of damage to make up.

Grav basically requires a lot of Con now, which isn't too practical for the glass cannon ATs. Even with added con, it's not uncommon for her to blast one to death in one to 3 (she can chain up to 3 in a row) hits in a matter of an instant.

Costume drops are completely random. I've carried plenty of alerts only for the drop to go to someone who spent almost the entirety of the fight afk or simply dead on the ground. The rate is so abysmal it's not even a reward worth mentioning, and that's coming from someone who runs around pvp in a grav outfit.

Really the issue at hand is that the failure rate has been increased substationally, yet the reward is still weak sauce. Why invest the time with a much higher chance of failure when there are far more efficient methods at acquiring questionite. My biggest motivation for doing her so often in the first place was in pursuit of the rare costume drops (the necklace and couture, the ones that actually matter), and after completing my set, only bothered because it was common for the q reward to bug out and give more than 1500.

agentnx5

polishlightning wrote: »

I just posted this, it may be helpful.

It is helpful but please don't redirect people away from the correct subforum for these kinds of topics... Do what you will, but that's my opinion based on the structure setup of these forums.

I'm asking nicely as fellow member.

theravenforce

She is a MAJOR cow...she is rude and extremely powerful.

I have only ever beaten her 3 times with my tempest AT, I think I just got really lucky with PUG groups.