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

Incidentally, the extra 3% my Shield Brute gets with the Nerve slotting gives her a buffer against almost any single defence debuff - when fighting Cimerorans, for instance, it takes two hits, not one, before she's under the soft cap now.

Going back to the Musculature comment, I did take it on one Scrapper - a BS/Invul. He doesn't have endurance problems, and I didn't see big value in Cardiac for just the extra damage resist. The biggest bang for him is probably Spiritual, but he's got decent though not amazing +rech from sets and Hasten. Recharge is good for high DPS attack chains, but Broadswords animations kind of choke that early compared to a lot of other sets. The only thing for him that seems to majorly benefit from lots of recharge is Dull Pain, and on average I am close to perma with it now. Ultimately, though, I wanted to try something different - I have a bunch of other melee characters who I gave Spiritual to. Broadsword's appeal, for me, is the steady "crunch", and it seemed that Spiritual was moderate enough in benefit to him that Musculature was attractive for making that "crunch" louder.

If you use 3 lvl52* membranes in active defense and 3 lvl52* Cytos (i think) in battle agility, with double stacked active defense and Grant Cover, you can attain 95% DDR. Bug? Yes. Its on Paragonwiki, too. It's been known for a long time and I dont see it changing. I like it as a design feature to really make people think more creatively about slotting.


*Keep in mind, I think this number is used so that 50++ will do the job. A lot of work? Yep. Worth it? YEP! Castle did this when Grant Cover's contribution was re-evaluated and the new numbers were based on this. Dont quote me tho.

I found a similar problem on one of my scrappers, most things were enhanced to around ED (and I didn't really benefit hugely from the 15-20% more buffage)

Simple answer, since I do NOT ever exemplar that character? Respec, I removed a bunch of recharge slotting (sometimes I had been forced to forgo the 5th or 6th slots in a set) like fireball (posi set is awesome but crap for natural recharge), or only liked slotting 2 50 rech IO's in Build Up. Now I could remove those recharges and either fill their space with sets or move the newly acquired slots to other powers to do more with what I had.

I, personally heavily invested in IO's on most of my scrappers, find I have a huge global acc bonus. So nerve is unimportant, however, without IO's, I could see nerve taking the same role, removing the need to acc slot every attacking power. Or perhaps on an SR for example, you would gain a large amount of defense due to the number of defense abilities affected. (esp the passives, which we often underslot due to piddly enhancement returns, causing them to still be able to eke out another 1-2 def before even hitting ED)

I run Nerve on my Rad/Rad defender for four reasons.

Choking Cloud: Getting choking cloud up to the level where hold procs last longer than it ticks is a huge part of my damage mitigation as a solo defender. More hold duration is delicious, and increases the reliability of having all non-bosses held by the second tick.

Lingering Radiation: The most powerful anti-AV tool in my arsenal, Lingering Radiation requires a to-hit roll to be of any use. Considering the need for speed and regeneration debuffs, I need this power to never miss - even when it's a +4 AV with a crazy high level of defense.

World of Confusion: In my Psychic Mastery build, I use World of Confusion as a second damage mitigator. Yes, it has a tiny duration, but the tiny duration does stack, making it possible to confuse even bosses. Even if the confusion doesn't proc a second time, the extra duration from the Incarnate slot often has my foes making another attack in my name before it ends.

Vengeance: In my Power Mastery build, I use Power Build Up in conjunction with Vengeance to increase my teammate's defense to near Elude levels. Nerve makes this even "more so."

did spiritual on my ill/kin/power team build as musculature and cardiac aren't really as helpful with kinetics and i had power boost for duration and tons of accuracy anyway.

but then i realized solo it was being held back by the lack of damage in the primal set, so i planned for switching to stone and slotting for S/L then R defense to survive melee range for the stone powers. i was done with most of the sets but the expensive ones but then got nerve tier 2 and realized that i might be able to avoid getting kinetic combat sets if i went all the way with nerve. definitely a boost of a 3-5% with rare so far, considering i have stone armor, cj, weave, and maneuvers. allowed me to underslot for acc and hold duration and not miss power boost when i am practically softcapped for cheap.

I don't think that is relevant unless you are trying to chain-hold the same group of critters over and over again. In real play, moving from spawn to spawn, it would be more valuable to have the power recharge faster since a decent team will knock over a spawn before the hold ends (especially with domination rolling).

But, as you said, from a purely numbers perspective, yes, it is better.

Nerve is like a godhood to my wp/db tanker.

due to the combo nature of DB, extra acc is always welcome. It adds to "taunt" effects, which of course is the lone glaring weakness of a WP tanker, ANNNND

Thanks to a little creative IO'ing, the def buff has my wp tanker softcapped vs every type of damage except psy (she's only at 41% for psy).

no other alpha slot power fits any of my characters as well as Nerve fits this one.

I definitely am planning on Nerve for my DB/EA stalker

The problem with nerve isn't the defense enhancement, because defense is great and lots of builds use it.

The problem is the accuracy. Not that accuracy is bad, but most of the characters I'm regularly playing at 50 are long since acc-capped via slotted enhancement and set bonuses. There's always room for more recharge or more damage, but piling on more accuracy is literally useless for most of my builds.