Tier 9 'Nukes' with End Crash - Proper Strategy?

Hey folks,

Although I've been playing for a long time, I just got a Corruptor to 32 for the first time tonight and picked up Inferno, the only Tier 9 Nuke with an Endurance Crash I've ever had.

What's your strategy for using and slotting these kinds of powers? High recharge seems like a good idea, along with the usual Accuracy and Damage boosts.

I know you can pop a blue pill to deal with the end crash, and certain powers (such as Heat Loss from my /Cold Domination secondary) can help too. But even with those, your contribution to the fight will be pretty limited after setting one of these off.

So how do you know when it's a good time to nuke? And does the way you use these powers vary depending on which AT (Corruptor, Blaster, Defender) you're using it on?

Well this is one of many perspectives of course, but I'd say you ought to focus on using it as an emergency type of power. Are you about to die? Then hitting inferno is a good alternative to that. It is the strongest nuke, but with corr values it isn't going to wipe entire spawns as it occasionally can in blaster form. You correctly note that its opportunity cost is overly severe.

On the other hand, some people just like nuking. Why not? It's fun, it kills things. You should at least run a TF or two where you just fire it off with abandon. Especially once you have it slotted, it does itself some dang damage.

Slotting: damage and rech - they have high acc and you'll likely use Aim or eat a yellow before - Obliteration is perfect for a PbAoE nuke and you can use only 5 slots unless you really want to max out your recharge, but adding a 6th slot for a rech IO won't do much, although the Oblit proc is nice (but better in a fast recharging power if you don't have the slots or the cash).

They can be emergency powers but they're motley 'fun' due to the stupid long recharge.

But depending on your secondary, you can wipe entire spawns with it, although PleaseRecycle is not wrong when saying it's not that good for a corr because for clearing up spawns you'll have to set up debuffs first so it may not be that helpful as an emergency power, although it has saved my Defender (only one I have) a few times because he's /psy and his nuke has a Stun (and also because since his primary is rad I can use EM Pulse first so it's kinda safe to use the nuke). But even if I had a blaster, I'd only keep a nuke for fun purposes, I don't really need it on my defender, I just like it.

I know this is currently useless to you at 32, but when you hit 50 and start Incarnating (if you choose to do so), go for the Ageless Destiny tree. At tier 4 it will completely refill your end bar (costing you nothing) and buff your recovery. You'll still have a brief period of 0 recovery after the largest part of the buff wears off, but you won't lose enough endurance during that time to matter and you'll make it back since the rest of the buff lasts longer than the crash.

Ageless Destiny -- making Blaster nukes worth it since 2011.

My fire blaster has it six slotted. My Peace Bringer also has his fully slotted, well in one build anyways.

The PB doesn't hit as hard, the crash isnt as hard either.

There are a few sets, pbaoe, ranged aoe, as is the case that can give very good bonuses, purple or otherwise. For strategy, solo it is very, very rare I would use it with either. The crash just isnt worth it. Even say with a duo, the number of uses is small. On bigger groupings with maxed out spawns I have had teams adjust to my inferno schedule. Gather them up Nuke, plink the few that survived and move on.

I'd say the nukes are useful when there are large numbers of spawns, not so much so when there isnt.

My strategy is to not use end crash nukes. It's simply not efficient compared to normal fighting, for me. Ideal scenarios where kins, colds or emps refill your endurance at just the right time are great - except that you still have to retoggle, except that it won't work out perfectly each and every time unless said kin/cold/emp is far, far above the average skill level of the playerbase.

I'll second the "fun" point, though. Regardless of efficiency, it's just great to wipe out most of a spawn in one go. Good time to nuke? Whenever there's a bunch of mobs and that you'll be sure your contribution won't be needed for a few seconds afterwards.

Ageless destiny is new, Tier9 endcrash been around since they made the powers. There are quite a few ways to continue the fight after you popped the tier9. Just pop a few blue and you should be ok untill your recovery kicks back in, from Ice epic you can take hibernate wich gives you a new recovery, an empatch can use that errr.. recovery buff on you, kin troller/defender can use the end-gain power (old days people would actualy pay attention to what others were doing, rather then just spam stuff). /elec and /fire blasters have the +end drain power (dark too?).

Solo its mostly a 'oooooh foook!' moment, where the ice blaster version is probably one of the strongest versions (knockdown and flee) in terms of survivability (pop a blue and use the 2 holds to shut down possible bosses).

Agree, incarnate power does bring the 'frequent' use of the T9 nuke, but the way to handle with crash-nukes is the same as 16 issues ago.

Since I pretty much always use Aim & Build-Up before the nuke, I just 4-slot damage/recharge to the ED cap. No point whatsoever in endurance reduction, either. :P

If I have the power, popping Conserve Power before the nuke sequence helps make my follow-up blue inspiration last longer.

There are three reasons I use Inferno on my Fire/Fire Blaster: 1) as a last-ditch power; 2) as the final piece of an AOE attack chain against very large/tough spawns; and 3) because I want to. The last is the most compelling. Sometimes I just like to see the big orange numbers fly.

Eh, I personally don't take end crashing nukes especially on corrs that are incredibly busy like colds. On a kin I can see it since you have transference. But on a cold the recharge is so long on heatloss. I guess ageless is an option but I prefer rebirth or barrier. I find that between fireball, rain of fire, sleet and whatever your judgement is most likely pyronic you'll have enough aoe.

"With great moustache comes great responsibility" - Zee Captain

Nukes are a beautiful thing when you work together with a Tank to make the most of it. A fully saturated nuke is actually remarkably efficient.

My E3 Blaster has Thunderous Blast.

He doesn't use it very often, except as a last-ditch desperation move, or in
an occasion where I'm pretty sure it will take out the entire spawn.

Assuming I'm still alive (not always true in the first case) I'll chew a blue
inspie and then hit Power Sink at the next mobs - that fully recharges the bar,
and I'm good to go again...

My Fire Blaster will probably go the Ageless route. He's only used Inferno a
handful of times and for him, the cost simply isn't worth it. If Ageless solves
that, fine, otherwise, I'd probably respec out of it entirely. We'll see.


Regards,
4

I have played around with this and found my nuke slows me down now days.

Fire/Ice blaster running 5 toggles.

Assuming I have no blues, if I nuke, I lose my toggles and end for that period of time essentially putting me on the bench for a minute. Where if I kept up my high DPS I am far more efficient and no down time.

Granted I could hold my nuke till have a couple blues on hand, but honestly I have seen my DPS and efficiency much higher skipping the nuke.

Solo, I almost never use nukes. None of the characters I've got with nukes are durable enough to build up a worthwhile cluster of targets.

On teams, I use nukes whenever I see a sufficient group of targets. If I'm on a character with an endurance-recovery power, I'll use it on any survivors to replenish my endurace; if not, I'll stand near something durable and hope the team's Kinetics-type will notice and use Transferrence on me (there's usually a Kin, and they usually notice).

There actually exists at least one non-Incarnate, non-outside buff option for completely mitigating a nuke's End crash; Mental Manipulation's Drain Psyche. Slotted to the ED cap for Recovery (and with other Recovery IO bonuses as well), it's possible to boost your Recovery past the point of a nuke's crash. I used to do it with a Fire/MM; run in with PFF and WoC, click Aim+Concentration, detoggle PFF, click DP, nuke. If you manage to hit the target cap with DP--admittedly difficult due to its 10' radius--you will actually not even lose any toggles. Well, I didn't, at any rate, but I wasn't using very many toggles. It also worked for Force of Nature.

It was an awful lot of work for something that wasn't successful every time, not to mention that Ageless does it better.

This is my system:

Aim/Build-up.
Leap into spawn with zero-defense fire blaster.
NUKE.
DIE.
Rise of the Phoenix.
PROFIT!