Gell's Gravitas: what...how?


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Slime Squisher

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Post Saturday, 24th January 2015, 12:05

Gell's Gravitas: what...how?

I'm curious as to what the design philosophy behind this spell was, how it was envisioned to be used by crawlers.

Firstly, i'm not saying the spell is broken, useless or otherwise bad. I however cannot find a viable use for it and am wondering if anyone out there has found a niche for this Hex and what the original goal of the spell was to be.

I read it described somewhere as a one-turn singularity, I havent used that other spell so cant really comment on that or any tactics inheritable from 'Sing'.

I also noted this spell has reached current state over 2 commits, someone went back and added the little confuse effect.

My experience with GG:

I found and picked up Gravitas very early on a SpEn who already had the skills to run it (and dream apts). For those who havent used it you target a monster (will fail on empty tile) and it pulls other mobs from a 2-tile radius towards the target, causing collision damages and with a chance to confuse the mobs who get moved.
Firstly the confuse is a little (very) sucky. I noticed a couple of monsters would get confused, then collide, then recover confusion. All in the single turn taken to cast the spell, nobody was ever confused by the time I got another go. This despite 6/10 power pips for GG. I could get better (longer) group confuses out of Mephitic (without any Cjr/Pois, powered by mediocre air and high spellcasting) for less mana and hunger. Given the shared schools a lot of people able to use GG with any power can probably fire mass confuse anyway, though this character didnt find that spell.

So I decided this isnt the idea behind the spell, collision damage is pretty weak and the confuses wont last or compete with other options. Next plan was to try and use it as a method to pin stuff in damaging clouds, so I get freezing cloud online and started to experiment. This doesnt work either unfortunately. You fire up your freezing cloud and start casting GG on something in the middle of it. Yes, it keeps sucking monsters back into the cloud, but you have to cast it non-stop to hold them there, and GG costs the same mana/hunger as freezing cloud anyway, so why not just keep adding/expanding the cloud?

The only time I used this spell and didnt feel like I was throwing away mana/satiation was when I was fortunate enough to find some stupid monsters caught in naturally occuring clouds (vault placed). I was able to paralyze one foe with a wand to use as a focus for the GG and held the group while the clouds did the work. But 6 mana a turn... I could do so much more with 6MP.


Long story short. Anyone got a use for this? What was the original concept? At lvl 6 with 2 schools its not trivial to run, but feels very lacklustre.

Edit: I did just find an occasion to fire it, though im still not sure it was optimal. A shadow trap spawned a Brimstone Fiend which I was immensely displeased with, I used GG to drag it close to a corner thereby allowing me to break LoS using 1 less step/turn. Im a Sp and had scroll of fog which I would normally use instead, but sure. Forgotten the spell now, not worth 6 slots for me.
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Tomb Titivator

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Post Saturday, 24th January 2015, 13:07

Re: Gell's Gravitas: what...how?

Sounds like a pure escape spell to me. I guess you cast it to buy some time to run to the stairs.
Haven't used it myself though.
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Slime Squisher

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Post Saturday, 24th January 2015, 14:23

Re: Gell's Gravitas: what...how?

Oh, thats a thought. Now I think back on it I suspect the monsters being moved lose their next turn or get delayed or whatever, somewhat like fan of gales produces. Could be handy for an escape I guess, suppose it never occurred to me as I tried it on a very fast character.
Online Wins: MiFi, GrFi, TrMo, HOGl, SpEn, {DEWz, DDNe}, {OgBe, CeHu}, FoFi, VSFi, MfGl, {HaGl, VpEn, HESk}, KoAs, DsFi, TeMo
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Crypt Cleanser

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Post Saturday, 24th January 2015, 19:03

Re: Gell's Gravitas: what...how?

Can it be suitable for a Chei caster?
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Saturday, 24th January 2015, 20:02

Re: Gell's Gravitas: what...how?

celem wrote:What was the original concept?


I get the impression that Gell's Gravitas mostly exists because "forced motion" and "collision damage" got implemented or improved for Singularity and someone wanted to see what other things could be done with them.

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Post Sunday, 1st February 2015, 22:12

Re: Gell's Gravitas: what...how?

From my experience the idea behind GG is to work as a low term discord, you see something surrounded by other creatures and you try to kill it by pulling other creatures towards it, dealing lots of collision damage to that one crature and leaving the others confused while you move away. Unfortunately, thats doesnt seem to work very well.
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