Musket: I think gravity orb's AoE could use a buff. Discuss

[Kala]

Been playing musket for a while and found this orb to be very interesting but not really useful enough to main often or almost ever.

I’ve played with some specific groups that actually benefited from it. In that case we (musket, ranger and warrior) were grinding and my warrior found it useful for positioning when we drew two mobs from party aggro. In general though, the crowd positioning is hardly ever useful.

However when playing with an all dps (4 runemages + musket) group that accidentally triggers 8 cacti to walk toward us in a dungeon, well, it would be nice if musket’s crowd positioning orb was actually useful and could put army of cacti in a single spot for a moment together. Sure the cacti are going to spread right out in a second anyway, but in the meantime the runemages will have had an opportunity to do a lot of damage if they were able to capitalize at that moment.

Tl;dr, increasing gravity orb’s AoE will make Musket more interesting by having to decide if the best way to help your party is through using that orb slot for a heal or for crowd positioning.

[Corgi_C]

Yeah I think in general gravity orb just needs to be re-worked. Even with buffs that you suggested, its just not going to take priority over heals in a group situation nor is it particularly useful as a damage orb.

[Kala]

Yeah, it’s really cool conceptually so I’d love to have reasons to put it in my loadout. But I gotta think of the party first so there is never really a reason to use it. Here’s a couple ways I think it could work better:

1. I suppose it could maybe go for a very large AoE and do no to very little damage. So It becomes purely a positioning tool.

2. Only slightly increased AoE, but freezes the mobs at that location for 3-4 seconds so the party can either take a break from kiting and heal up or release insane DPS at that time.

3. I admittedly haven’t tested this, but I’ve heard that it used to interrupt heals by mobs. I don’t think it works anymore though. That’d would at least give it a reason to end up in Solo Musketeer’s loadout.

[Infraggable_Krunk]

It seems utterly useless in practice. If you can anticipate the need for the stun BEFORE the animation starts to fire off it MAY work on the scog trolls. Worms in the desert it seems entirely broken. It will move them sometimes, but the stun sure as hell isn’t stopping them from diving.

There is no point in using Gravity Orb or Weakness Orb. They are utterly ineffectual as currently implemented. Frost has an incredibly situational use, but still can’t remember the last time I used frost in the 100+ hours of playing.

The only orbs that get any use from a lvl 20 are Renew, Shield, Cure Wounds, Poison, and sometimes lifewell. Decurse from time to time when it’s needed. Others aren’t worth your time.

[Decoy]

If you’re talking about the 8 cacti groups that spawn in the desert dungeon then I know exactly where you’re talking about it and the orb by itself when shot in good positioning can achieve creating a single unit to be destroyed by runemages. If for some reason the mobs are a bit more scattered, the larger aoe effect can be attained by shooting your orb at your turret. Ideally, a tank will blow his horn to draw aggro before this occurs and when the enemies are united with the gravity orb they will be drawn to a single target (the tank). The orb is situational and odds are it’ll never be used in a group setting that would overtake the slot of a healing orb but it should be your goal to find ways to use the gravity orb in an unconvential way. Something like shoot a turret just off the side of the mountain to pull off a stuck mob or using it behind an enemy to create a little bit bigger window for its target to escape or get the next spell off.

[Kala]

I guess the problem is that the orb is situational to the point of almost never seeing use. At least that’s been my experience with it and I have been trying to find uses for it. I do need to try playtesting shooting it at the turret, I’m not sure if that will work with gravity orb. It would be cool if it does but saccing the turret with a gravity orb seems incredibly overcosted for a decent crowd positioning effect. Especially since without really good aim this might require a run through the mobs. I understand musketeer is a healer and 90% of the time my orbs are going to be all healing. But I’d like a reason to switch to it at least 5% of the time. Right now, gravity orb is in my loadout closer to 0.5%.

[Kala]

This is pretty close to my loadout at level 17. I should probably start using shield instead of lifewell more but I can outheal most things I take on anyway. I just wish there were reasons to use the other (non-healing, non-poison) orbs in our toolkit about 5% of the time. As it is now, the use for frost, gravity, and weakness is closer to never.

[Kala]

So I playtested using gravity orb on the turret earlier today. The AoE effect is definitely impressive and might be able to be utilized in very specific circumstances (i.e. getting a lot of trash mobs into a single spot) but I still think saccing the turret for this effect is overcosted.

[Corgi_C]

Right but even when you move all the enemies to one spot, then what?

Most rangers aren’t running AOE. Most mages aren’t exactly casting arcane missile or ray.

The stun is so low. There are just so many improvements that need to be made just to make this orb on equal footing to say, poison orb as an offensive tool.

[Kala]

I suppose the next playtest to do is get a party together. Request that everyone run their AoE arrows and spells and see how it goes. Like could grinding be done faster or more efficiently with the party running experimental AoE loadouts?

I think you’re right though, it’s probably not going to work. In which case, gravity orb is in need of buffing or total reworking.

[Decoy]

A good way to do AoE with a runemage and musk would be to gravity orb them all together, frost orb the pack, and let the mage ice lance. The ice lance would be utilitize the right grouping and could be casted fairly rapidly for great damage.

[Kala]

Does the combo still work if the musket is the one using frost orb? For some reason I thought the combo was tracking the runemage actions. I suppose if the combo is tracking is the enemy has a frost label on them this might be effective. Does the combo track the status symbols on the enemy or just the individual player’s actions to activate?

[Decoy]

Frost orb applies the same effect debuff as a frost spell would, the ice lance gains a significant damage increase when an enemy that has a frost debuff is hit. It’s not based on the runemage getting a frost hit follows by an ice lance.

[Kala]

Hmm, I got to try this. I can think of one or two situations where it might have worked very well. It still seems like a rather expensive combo to pull off. I’m thinking of it like this, get runemage to pre-prep ice lance, musket runs through or close to the mobs, drops turret, sacs turret for the increased gravity AoE, fires off frost and jumps out. Runemage does ice lance for damaging several mobs with a lot of damage at once.

There are certain setups in dungeons and the overworld where I think this could work. Might not want to do it without a second musket though, since it costs the turret and two orb slots that could be used for heals.