Luminous X's Guide To Nuking Effectively

You have just hit level 32 and you want to nuke. Nukes are point blank area-of-effect blasts that can do extreme damage. You need to know just how to do it so that you don't die from the survivors. That is why i am here.

The first step is looking at your teammates. Nuking can be made very easy if you have teammates with powers such as recovery aura, adrenalin boost, transference, or speed boost. These powers allow you to recover the endurance that you lost from nuking. Healers can be very helpful when it comes to nuke survivors.

Then you will want to make sure you have the right powers. Endurance recovery, heal, endurance transfer, and intangibilty powers can all be helpful. If you don't have such powers you must rely solely on your teammates. God mode powers such as the peacebringer light form are helpful to use before you nuke to see to it that the enemy doesn't do more damage than you can handle. For quick use of the post-nuke powers you should have an endurance inspiration on hand. Also make sure you have slotted your nuke so that it does decent damage. The fewer survivors the better.

Now it is time to execute the nuke. Let your team members buff you up. If they plan to use any debuffs (such as fulcrum shift), make sure you wait until they have casted it. Now you go to the middle of the group of enemies. Never nuke when there is less than 5 or so enemies unless it is a dire emergency. You execute the nuke and deal massive damage. Most nukes have a secondary effect. They may knock the enemy back, hold the enemy, or do some other form of damage. This is very important to you. If you have a kinetics defender or controller, stay in the group so they can buff you by transferring endurance to you. If you can transfer endurance to yourself do it promptly. Try to receive any endurance boost buffs before nuking (these include speed boost, adrenalin boost, and recovery aura). After you have taken whatever buffs you can from your enemy, if you are still short of endurance or are getting close (you cannot regenerate your own endurance for a short while after nuking), don't be a hero, RUN. Spare endurance, health, and break-free inspirations are always helpful. If you have done all of this and still need health or endurance, get to a safe distance and rest.

If you follow this guide closely, you can nuke safely and happily. Take your time to perfect your technique and you will become an expert. I hope this helps all of the blasters, defenders, and kheldians out there. I also hope you will enjoy nuking as much as i do!

if you read this post, please give me some feedback. i want to know what you think.

Good solid advice!

I fid that with a group I play with regularly (I'm looking at you RO!) I use a bind (Artillery says: "Prepare for pretty lights, here comes NOVA!!!!!), then I run in (I use SS & Stealth), hit build up and aim, and by the time I've finshed my self buffs and hit the attack key for Nova my teammates have dropped all the appropriate buffs and debuffs on the mobs.

Communication with your team is KEY to surviving the fun of nuking! Teaming with Kin defenders also means getting to Nuke every few mobs instead of a few times a mish.

As a side note= even with the various methods to recover end Conserve Energy is your friend. I usually pop this before Aim & Build-up so, just in case transference misses, or a teammate is out of synch a single blue insp lets me start blasting again right away!

Go Blasters!

Cool guide!

One thing you forgot though, Corruptors also get nukes.

Give the villain side some love too!

Not a bad guide. I personally find that on my Fire/Ice blaster, I can nuke a large group and survive without buffs or even teammates if other survive. I usually have spare endurance inspirations. If not, I rely on my Stamina to regain endurance from my Inferno, then use my holds on the enemies that are doing too much damage. Just a suggestion, add in info about different nukes to the guide, such as the names of the nukes, secondary effects, and what set they are in.

I suppose i did forget the corruptors lol. You guys bring up some good points. There are some things that i didn't put in the guide because i just haven't had much experience with them. Keep the extreme damage AoE alive! Viva Nukers!!!!!!

Woooo, nukes rock. You might also want to talk about how well-slotted nukes (with at least 3 damage) and Aim/Build Up, certain nukes can do beyond extreme damage. Talk about how you can run into a group and really destroy minions and some leutenants with one blast!

When I use my nukes I like it to be the surprise/unplanned nuke. This also depends on which nuke I'm using. Inferno is nice because it does not fling the mobs all over the place. For higher level mobs, if you have 2 nukers, its best for the Inferno nuke to go first then the Blaster Nova or PB Dawn Strike to go second. For the lvl 32 unslotted nukes its best to be a secondary nuker or use it after AoE's have softened the mobs.

Using a nuke on large groups of PP's is somethign a lot of nukers don't think about. It can be dangerous because if they don't completely demolish the PP's you're gonna have a spawn of PP's all using MoG.

Also, I typically won't use a nuke if I don't have a couple of blues to eat right away so I can still be useful or at least protect myself once the nuke goes off.

I was planning to talk about slotting, but then i realized that would all change drastically with the new inventions system so, standby.

Things worth noting:
Adrenaline Boost slotted with 1 or more End Mods WILL overcome the 10 second no recovery downtime caused by nukes.

Nukes are inherrently accurate, and don't need accuracy unless you will be using it on +2 and up mobs AND without Aim and/or Buildup.

Some nukes have secondary effects such as Sonic's disorient Dark's Accuracy debuff and Electric's End Drain which make it easier to duck around a corner somewhere safe while you wait to recover.

If you are teamed with a tank that can hold some aggro or a controller that has the mob locked down you can always hit the group with a standard AoE attack or the boss with a high damage single target attack BEFORE you nuke thus taking advantage of your Aim and/or Build Up and increasing the chances that you eliminate as many foes as possible.

Nice advice Luminous, but you don't need to be fully buffed to survive a nuke retaliation. Really, you just need to find cover and find it fast.

Typically if I'm expecting a lot of retaliation from my nuke, I'll do the run and hop trick using Hurdle or Super Speed. Just run toward the mob, just before hitting you jump and hit nuke at the same time and you'll fly to the other side of the map and the nuke will go off where you activated it at. Takes practice.

btw, you forgot sumthin:

Thunderous blast is ranged

lot's of good add-ins. everyone has their own distinct style. feel free to post anything that i overlooked.