'Nerve: Is it worth it?': A discussion on the value of Nerve.

I'm rather fond of the Alpha Slot system and the benefits it provides. It eases up requirements to meet certain goals, or improves that goal past the point we had met prior. With that said, I've felt Nerve is perhaps the least valuable of the four choices. I am primarily going to talk about the very rare boost.

Nerve most certainly has its benefits. We can look at a bubbler or someone with some sort of defensive buff for the team and see an immediate benefit.

Deflection Shield with...
3 Def SOs: 23.4%
plus Nerve: 25.5%
2 Def IOs: 22.46%
plus Nerve: 25.15%

Dispersion Bubble with...
3 Def SOs: 15.6%
plus Nerve: 17.03%
2 Def IOs: 14.97%
plus Nerve: 16.77%

Why, just with that, an FF defender can nearly cap all of his teammates! An unenhanced Maneuvers on top of it would cap every player nearby who had bubbles maintained on them. It would also ease the FFer's burden of potentially softcapping themselves. MMs and Controllers under the same circumstance would provide 35% to the team.

The question is, though, outside of DEF buffs for the team, is nerve worth it?

Let's look at the accuracy component.

I would like to start by saying that if you fight only +0s, Nerve will cap your accuracy completely, and waste some of the benefit. If you fight +1s as well, it will bring it to 94.25%. Both without any additional enhancements. +2s will require one SO worth of accuracy. +3s require two SOs worth. We are going to ignore +4s for this majority of the discussion because you are level shifted if running this type of Alpha. With that said, fighting -1s will waste a large portion of the benefit.

This seems very nice, you don't have to slot a bunch of accuracy to hit +3s. Hey, makes life a little easy against, say, Rikti on ship raids, the AVs in STF, etc.

Right? Not really, at least not when you take sets and teammates into account. Or even simply a real world situation involving a fully built character with their powers together.

How about a Scrapper? Well, if they're into any sort of high end play, they'll have probably picked up Tactics or Focused Accuracy. Perhaps for the extra tohit/acc, or possibly for the extra defense from a set of Gaussian's. If they built for recharge, they are quite likely to run into global accuracy bonuses. LOTG sets, Oblits, Crushing Impact, Positron's Blast. A character like this wouldn't benefit from Nerve at all. Slotting 5 Crushing Impacts, even doing your best to avoid accuracy bonuses, will result in an IO's worth of acc.

How about an Elec/SD/Fire scrapper? They're going to stack plenty of recharge IOs. Some oblits, maybe some crushing impacts. Posiblast in fireball. Tactics with Gaussian's to bump up Defense isn't too unlikely, that's another chunk. The only thing they'd benefit from on Nerve is the Defense increase, and if they're softcapped, it doesn't really matter, does it? They'd benefit much more from any of the other choices offered for Alpha slots.

The same is going to go for almost anybody who uses an offensive power requiring an accuracy check. If they pick up a bit of recharge, or tactics for defense/team benefit, they are easily going to push over the 95% cap for +3s, and even +4s. Accuracy on any IO'd toon is possibly the easiest goal to meet since it's just so common when aiming for other goals.

The difference between Nerve and the other Alpha choices is that you can tack on any of the others and just go while reaping the benefits. Nerve, on the other hand, can waste a lot of the bonus. Already defense capped? Have the accuracy you need? Wasted. You have to literally build around Nerve to take advantage of it. But, with that said, an offensive character would have a hard time taking advantage of it. Heck, a tank building for softcap defenses would be fine on accuracy.

So now we're back to characters with defense buffs.

Cold is out on the accuracy aspect because they'll be working on recharge for Benumb, Sleet, Heatloss, etc. They'll benefit from the defense, to the same turn as Deflection shield above. Arctic Fog would get a nice little chunk as well. Heck, Cold should be able to put nearby teammates at 35% with Nerve. Not bad, but the accuracy is wasted.

To my understanding, traps is in the same boat. Needs recharge, so it should be acceptable on accuracy. Both are also rather likely to pick up Tactics, either for their pets or the team. Granted, one could argue against it for the pets with taking Nerve, but Tactics still does two things that the Alpha does not: Protects against -PER and buffs the team.

This leaves two others with significant team defense buffs. VEATs and FF. VEATs are going to be fine on accuracy with TT: Leadership. They have, perhaps the easiest time in capping Defense. They don't need either of these aspects. They are also picking up recharge for pets and other abilities. Would the team benefit from the extra defense? Sure. My Bane provides 21% to the team by herself, that'd jump up to MAYBE 25%.

Forcefielders are thus the sole survivor. Taking Nerve will allow one to easily softcap their entire team, as I stated earlier. In fact, it might be the only power set that can truly benefit. FF does not need to be built for recharge, it doesn't need much in the way of end reduc. A few of the MM primaries would benefit from building global recharge, but not on a large scale. The controller primaries will seek global recharge and thus not need the accuracy component. A defender may want recharge bonuses for their secondaries, however. This, again, negates the accuracy benefit.

Very briefly touching on the rest of the benefits provided by Nerve:

Hold, it's likely better to just have more recharge and fire the ability more often. Fly is a waste. Taunt isn't necessary with any slotting at all. Confuse is also in the same boat as Hold, in my mind.

So, with all of that said, I don't feel Nerve is really worth it unless you are:

Running on SOs or generic IOs against +3s/+4s.

Playing a Forcefielder with the sole intent of getting that extra 2-3% Defense OR having built exclusively away from accuracy.

Do people feel differently? Can someone show me moments when, hey, nerve is just really awesome and the best choice?

Reasonable analysis. I've been finding similar issues on my characters. When planning my level 50 Crab, I only focused on Defense set bonuses, and I still wound up with something like 35% global accuracy. Take that, plus the fact that many Defense set bonuses need all 6 IOs in a set (and thus incorporating all the accuracy in the set), plus TT: Leadership, and I'm already past 95% to-hit even when fighting +4s. Nerve is simply not a useful option, even though it would squeeze out an extra 3% to defenses. I'd get more survivability through Musculature or Spiritual.

It's been observed before that the Alpha boosts are more helpful the less you plan out your build. Someone working on just SOs or common IOs can throw 2 Recharge, 2 Damage, and 2 End Redux or whatever in their attacks, use Nerve, and be happy, but the minute you start incorporating set IOs you run into trouble.

It would be neat if wasted to-hit converted to something useful. The idea I had recently was critical chance. Say for every 10% or 20% over 100%, you'd get a 1% chance to crit. So if your final to-hit before clamp was 120%, you'd have a 2% chance to crit on that attack. That may be overpowered, but it would certainly make more Accuracy useful.

I would guess it depends on which Nerve Alpha you were taking and on which AT...

I find that the Nerve Alpha is great for my trollers and dominators.

im using nerve on my stone brute because when i slotted him, a few powers skimped out little on accuracy plus the def buff helps his granite

before the nerve boost i had a couple powers only going off of the tohit bonuses from soul drain (not up all the time), and tactics (minimal benefit), so with the tier 3 nerve boost, they at least have 1 acc SO worth of enhancement in them

as for the def aspect, his granite and maneuvers add a total of approx 5% more def and on his own power can run at almost 30% def to most dmg types except psi

another aspect that i took the nerve for was because it also has taunt duration, which is a great bonus for brutes, and i didnt have to waste any slots actually slotting for taunt duration

overall i think the boosts are meant for supplementing your characters by enhancing portions of their powers which you didnt have the slots for, or wanting to squeeze out a few more % on something, a vast majority of my toons are going either cardiac or spiritual because the needed those portions of the enhance, but my stone is going nerve because hes pretty set for rech (91% rech with hasten inside of granite) and the other bonuses that the other trees affected wouldnt have really helped him much or at all

most of my doms use cardiac because they have excellent rech already, but are a little end heavy and even with perma dom end can be an issue

my ill/cold troller uses spiritual though to help with perma PA and the cold dom debuffs

the only tree i havent used on anything yet is musculature

Necrotech, would you mind posting your stone brute's build?

here ya go, this is the build hes been using for over a year now, except now he has a nerve partial radial revamp to help

there are a few minor things i could change to get a little more rech out of him, but i dont feel like burning a respec to move 2 slots around and i have no plans for what would replace his legacy fitness so im leaving him as is

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About a month ago, I posted a similar question and did some analysis on Nerve vs. Spiritual for my Cold/Dark defender. Looking at the math, the +def at every level, from common to ultra rare, weren't as valuable as faster recharge for powers like Benumb, Heat Loss (which also obviates Cardiac), Sleet, etc, much the same w/your conclusions. I think a pure FF defender is about the only toon I'd consider Nerve on. Basically, every one of my alpha slotted toons have gone Spiritual or Cardiac, and as a min/max'er, I can't think of anyone I'd want Nerve (or Musculature) on.

I'm running the Nerve Partial Radial Revamp on my Mastermind for two reasons. Firstly, because I'm */FF so I wanted the extra 20% defence - it's what makes me soft-capped on S/L/E without having to really stress about IO's and power selection.

Secondly is because I'm a Mastermind - over half my henchmen are behind the curve in accuracy because they're one or two levels below me. When I'm fighting a L54 minion (+3 to me, when level shifted), they're fighting +4/+5's. Every little bit of accuracy (and to a certain extent, damage) that I can extend to the Bots is important.

Slotting global accuracy doesn't work for Mastermind henches, but the Nerve Alpha does

I'm not sure I could call myself a minmaxer, but I built my Blaster assuming Cardiac. Turns out that build still has enough endurance reduction without Cardiac to make it through a fast-paced TF, but if I slot Spiritual I bottom out due to firing off my powers too quickly. So I wound up with Musculature, and having the Rare slotted gets me a solid 125% damage in every attack. Works very well.

I'm annoyed with the Fly speed enhancement, given that not many powers use fly speed enhancement and Flight hits the speed cap without any bonuses to flight speed.

That said, I do quite like Nerve on my shield tanker. The +taunt is fun to have, the defense bonus is excellent (Yes, I'm soft-capped without it, but it doesn't hurt to have the extra), and the accuracy doesn't hurt at all.

I don't however, know why anyone would take the 45% accuracy nerve.

I would be happy seeing it become Fly/Run/Jump.

I am using Nerve (only 1st tier so far) on my KM/EA Brute. The build has Kinetic Combat 4-slotted in four powers, two of those (Smashing Blow and Concentrated Strike) with two of Pounding Slugfest. That amounts to about 23% ACC for the powers w/o the extras, or 45% with. I have 6xKinetic Crash in Repulsing Torrent/Energy Torrent (yeah yeah, I know) which is ~40% acc. Burst has 6xEradication for 54% acc.

I opted for Conserve Power over Focused Accuracy (reconsidering that given I have Energy Drain) and 34% ACC from bonues. My accuracy is probably fine, but there wasn't a ton of it in the powers themselves, so I figured there was some room there.

I also figured the +DEF portion could benefit Kinetic Shield, Power Shield, Energy Cloak, Combat Jumping (even just a little), even Overload. I figure every little bit helps.

I took the Nerva on my SR scrapper with the intention of getting my non-melee defense closer to the softcap but the more I've played it since getting the extra accuracy, the more I think I've screwed up since I rarely get hit vs the +1 & +2 guys I fight and it isn't like I've ever fall below 95% chance to hit (nevermind how often I actually DO hit), at least not since getting focused accuracy. The occassional EB still hurts sometimes but that's what the god-mode power is for.

I'm really thinking I just wasted 12 shards and need to go musculature for that particular character. That hurts a lot since that character is not on Justice and so solos a lot. She's had 4 shards forever.

I was planning Nerva for my up and coming cold/cold controller, mainly so glacier's awful base accuracy can be improved plus the extra hold duration would be cool... but I think the recharge folks have convinced me to go that way instead.

I'm planning on the Nerve tree on my Plant/Kinetics/Earth controller (currently 49) and when my Mind/FF/Primal controller (currently 44) reach 50 -- they can use Acc, Hold, Confuse and Defense buffs. That provides more benefits than any of the other trees.

Both of them will really benefit from the Hold and Confuse enhancement, as well as the Defense and Accuracy.

I put a Nerve Boost on my PvP Stalker for use in RV.

I'm hoping the extra Acc applies there and will help vs High Def builds,
and I'm hoping the extra Def boost applies there and offsets DR, even if
just a little bit.

OTOH, my expectation is pretty low, so if it doesn't work out, it's nbd.

Since this guy is a PvP toon and his PvP fights are short, and he doesn't
run much PvE content, he has no real need for Cardiac or Spiritual boosts.

Since he's a Stalker, it's like pulling teeth to get on an SF team anyway,
so what little PvE content he does run is mostly solo Tips.

I wouldn't have even bothered with the Alpha at all, but he got some early
shards from Rikti MS raids, so I figured, why not? At that point, Nerve
was a better choice than Musclature due to less of an ED hit (he's well
into ED on his dmg slotting).

That said, he's the only toon I expect to equip with a Nerve Boost.


Regards,
4

Ah, good call on Mind control. I'd probably go Nerve on my Mind/Kin were I to actively pursue it.

I have a Bots/FF (that I love) and went Nerve too. The Accuracy is nice because bots doesn't have any extra pet powers to slot auras or other pet IOs into. So I can slot for extra powers this way and still all my pets are now over 90% accuracy.

And for the Bubbles, as it's a secondary, I have to slot lots of Def, but right now with the rare Nerve and Power Boost, I can pass the soft cap: 45.6% def adding Dispersion Bubble and Maneuvers (which any FF MM wants anyway).

Note that I'm measuring with the little bubbles power boosted, but Dispersion Bubble and Maneuvers at normal. With Power Boost active, I have 53%+ def.

I took a screenshot, but forgot to turn on the UI, so you'll have to take my word for it. Pics maybe later after the mouse battery charges up.

I got Nerve for my FF/Energy/Psi Defender. I mean, why not?

I can softcap the team (if they're in Maneuvers range), and when I solo, my Dominate power lasts a little longer. The +Acc is just a bonus, but it's nice to be able to fight at practically any level and not miss much.

For End, I slotted the Miracle +Recovery in Health, and for Damage, I used som Set IOs to fish out a little more damage. I'm not softcapped myself, though, but I'm only a small luck away, so that's close enough.