Favorite Crashless Nuke

Take your vote, I'll tally it up each night.

1.) Full Auto - For your OG Blaster 360 camera spin goodness. Immediate activation, super narrow cone that begs to be range boosted. 10 Targets.

2.) Rain of Arrows - Back in the day this was a game changer, things like shield charge and lightning rod didn't exist, and NOTHING could level a spawn like this could excepting crash nukes. Easy to Target, Rain means high target cap, Comes with aim, can be used around corners and walls. Only downside, long *** activation time leaves you on the razors edge of aggro death, trying to beat the team to the next spawn before they could kill what you wanted to kill.

3.) Hail of Bullets - I haven't experienced this yet, but from what I can tell you've got an incredible animation, fast activation, and all the pros and cons of being a PBAoE (you have to be in the middle of the spawn, but you hit 16 targets and you don't need to take time aiming). Multiple ammo types is a bonus, and you do more damage than full auto, at the expense of twice the recharge of FA or RoA (2mins) ------ Of any, best pairing with psyshock.

4.) (L)ong (R)ange (M)issile ... Rocket - For those times you need to snipe EVERYONE, usually you're so far away the team has no idea why the spawn disintegrated and no one gives credit where it's due, but an honorable mention surely. And all you have to do is choose this EPP.

5.) Time Bomb - Are the other nukes too fast for you? Is there an unsurpassed feeling of joy when you time that remote mine perfectly with the explosion of the timebomb? Have you been wondering what those interruption time enhancements could possibly do for you? FINALLY a nuke you have to set three spawns in advance of your team, they might be questioning your actions when they see you rush off, but when that spawn FINALLY explodes 19 seconds later... they still wont know what you did and assume it was the fire blaster next to you doing inferno. But you'll know.

If you prefer Hail of Bullets, explain to me it's awesomeness, I'm thinking about making a DP and that may push me to getting it done.

Also, my personal preference? Full Auto is Awesome, but I like my spawns dead and covered in pointy sticks.
RoA, followed by FA and LRM.

P.S. Don't bring LRod and Shield charge in to this Those two powers make my blasters sick.

Results so far: Updated 2/28/11

1.) Rain of Arrows - 9
2.) Hail of Bullets - 7
3.) Full Auto - 3
4.) LRM Rocket - 2
5.) Time Bomb - 0
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RoA has pulled ahead, with that and HoB being the main contenders. FA is lagging a bit now, surprisingly with LRM right on its tail.

What I've gained of these results is - Numbers say RoA which rivals HoB, however they are able to be competitive because HoB has good damage, and the animation either gains full support or completely loses it. (The defense has helped in the decision once).

FA Seems to get by on sheer awesomeness (unsupported by statistically sound superiority in any area). Dev's might want to take a look at this, it's not just numbers that make or break a set, this is partially why we have low elec blaster numbers and low warshade numbers despite their both being good classes IMO.

LRM, People love it for the same reason I do. It makes the spawn explode, I just wish it came with a bazooka animation instead of your gun... however it does allow weapon customization to those without, so it's kind of hard to say.

Time Bomb sucks, so far it has gotten negative votes from people if those were allowed, and Milady's Knight who tried to support it a little had an excellent quote to sum up the power '1 thumb up and 5 thumbs down' I agree whole heartedly. I use it on my devices because I have an obsession with explosions... but, it sucks, it sucks so hard.

Rain of Arrows for me hands down. For me what you describe as minuses are positive joys.

My favourite is most certainly Full Auto, it just feels like a real oomphy attack.

Then my numerical side team up with the part of my brain which goes "Ooooh cool!" and puts Rain of Arrows and LRM in close second.

HoB is way too flashy for my liking, and has too many cons for a crashless nuke IMO.

Time Bomb is at the end because it's got more cons than HoB and less pros too.

In terms of performance it's rain of arrows and it's not that close. Does a bunch of damage, recharges fast, and you can do fun stuff like fire it around corners.

I love HoB and full auto is fun (and has a great sound/animation), but RoA is just ridiculous.

Oh, why HoB is awesome.

The animation is cool. Screw the haters, Equilibrium was awesome. Also, it doesn't activate quickly at all. It does have a knockdown and kind of a pseudo stun while it's going off though, and it gives you 10% positionals while the animation is playing.

The biggest 'pro' in favor of HoB is that you can chain straight into FSC, psishockwave or whatever other pbaoe ability you have and immediately kill anything HoB didn't quite finish off. I would definitely go either /fire or /psi if you decide on MM.

Full Auto. It's one of my favorite individual powers ever.

To be fair, I haven't played Dual Pistols to a significant level and I've never played Archery ever.

Wild Streak - Lv. 50(+3) Beast Mastery/Sonic Resonance Mastermind, Amnesty - Lv. 50 Staff Fighting/Dark Armor Stalker

I'm not going to say Rain of Arrows because not only have I not played Archery yet, but whenever there's an Archery blaster on my team they always deprive me of unleashing my own AOE goodness. There's a brief sound, then a small forest appears and turns the spawn to corpses, while my Omega Maneuver lands on a paltry two enemies.

Blaster-wise, I've got to go with LRM. It's got a long activation time too, but there is such joy in blowing up a spawn with it.

Quasar!

...

*crickets*

Okay. Okay it has a crash. But I eat the corpses anyway so my blue bar doesn't care.

Cough.

Hmmm... LRM is considered a "nuke"? It does do a lot of damage, but not quite as high as most "nukes" so never really thought of it in that manner, but ok.

Well, LRM is just plain fun and I giggle everytime I use it. Time bomb is the same for me on every successful explosion with mobs flying everywhere...especially when I put a Rain of Arrows on top of it right before it explodes! Full Auto is fun--especially range boosted--but I hate the 10 mob cap.

My top 2 are RoA and HoB--love them both!! They play completely differently so it's like comparing apples and oranges. But if I have to choose only 1 top crashless nuke, I'd have to go with....

Hail of Bullets!


Why over RoA?

1. I can click once and it activates. RoA requires 2 clicks, once to get the targeting reticle to place it and the second to activate the power. Too many times have i clicked RoA and the "placement" of the reticle didn't take and I had to click it again, or a third time, or a fourth time... That never happens with HoB.
2. With HoB, you start damaging your foes as soon as you activate the power (so from click to last damage tick, it's 3.5s or 4.1s if you have incendiary rounds loaded). With RoA, you have 4s of animation +1.8s of delay before the 1st tick of damage hits, then 1s of DoT (that's 6.8s from activation to final damage tick--that doesn't count the time it takes to initially click the power and place it).
3. With HoB, I just look cooler while animating than I do during the 4s pause of RoA.

RoA would have to get first pick for me. Recharges fast, good damage, can use around a corner. Plus the set gets aim as well to use with build up with it. Second would be FA. It would probably get 1st place for me if it would get its freaking 30 degree arc back, but it's 20 degree arc continues to make me want to kill a kitten until it's fixed back.

If anyone says HoB, I'm going to find where you live, stalk you and kill and torture you in your basement until they give it a proper 60s recharge time like RoA and FA have since it has the same damage as they do but twice the recharge time for absolutely no reason :/. (if you're considering the secondary effects, that's NOWHERE near enough to compensate for the double recharge)

Hail of Bullets.

I'm not a huge fan of cones, nor of location based powers. Both are a pain for me to aim. I am, however, a fan of getting up in the enemy's face and making them dead. There's nothing quite like stealthing into a mob, opening with HoB, Power Thrusting one Boss away, using Bone Smasher and Energy Punch to drop a couple Lts, hitting the other boss with Total Focus, then drawing your guns and putting an Executioner's Shot in the face of the first Boss just as he gets back to you.

HoB.

It just looks that cool. And it's lots of fun when damage capped. (DP/Kin's perspective here - although it's good with build up on my DP/Mental).

Hail of Bullets.

Haters gonna hate. The Tanker rushes in, talking crap to a bunch of the enemies. They rush to him, and the Controller stops them in their tracks. The Mastermind unleashes her pets and the Corruptors and Defenders lay down their debuffs...

And then you jump in!

In the middle of all that chaos, there is you, dancing in the middle of all that mess and firing your guns madly, making the enemies flip-flop in the air with all that knock back before everything's shot into hell and back.

And then everything calms down, and there is only a field of corpses around you.

Yah, that's pretty darn satisfying to me!

And with the right recharge bonuses, it can go down to 30 seconds recharge. It's really my favorite T9 attack of all time! It gets only more badass when you combine it with Psychic Shockwave.

Also, you forgot Psychic Wail from Fortunatas. That one's pretty awesome too!

I'm a fan of them all but Time Bomb... and Time Bomb, I dunno if I'd technically call it a nuke. It's not really in a primary. But I guess LRM is a ranged nuke, so we might as well throw Time Bomb in. Anyway, it takes way too long to set up, so even if the damage is nice, there is too much getting in the way of leveraging that damage.

The rest are just peachy, though. LRM and RoA are from range and have a nice and noticeable impact on mobs, plus satisfying animations. Full Auto is pure Rambo, how can that not be fun? Hail of Bullets is awesome: dash into a mob and unleash. Build on the short burst of defense it gives you and you're untouchable while you do it, too (it also does more damage than the other crashless nukes, which I quite like. No crash, but still takes out most minions and lieutenants).

I know its subjective, but if we're talking favorite then I'll put my 2 bits in for FA. While I could reiterate all the points made by others and concede the damage output and versatility of RoA, I still smile to myself when my AR blaster pulls off FA on almost every mob of a fast moving team with his cigar hanging from his mug, laughing like a mad man.

I have my DP toon made up but have yet to get HoB so I respectfully claim ignorance on that. LRM is fun but due to its longer recharge I would place it behind both RoA and FA because I use it maybe a quarter of the time of FA and more use equals more enjoyment. Time bomb? ...... uh, yeah, I'll leave that one.... my mom always said don't say anything if you have nothing nice to say.

Rain of Arrows wins for me, hands down - damage is great, you have Aim in the set to boost damage, and it's not a PBAOE so you're not as much at risk. It doesn't have to stop there, though. Pick up */Dev and you get Time Bomb & Trip Mine. Then pick up Munitions Mastery and grab LRM. Oh my...