Retool the Nukes

With the advent of the behavior of powers like Hail of Bullets, Full Auto and the Incarnate Judgement powers, I think it's time the Nukes for the Blast sets got an overhaul.

I'm sick and tired of getting COMPLETELY shut down just because I used a power that exemplifies what a Blaster can do. Or, better yet, a power that finally puts a Defender into the offensive range.

I hate the Glass Cannon concept. My character shouldn't be getting wiped out with a power that isn't even killing the entire group of enemies. The Judgment powers do INSANE amounts of damage and don't drain the player nearly as much. Heck, the Judgement powers use less Endurance than most of the powers in the attack chain to begin with...

Here's the inspiration for this...

The Ice Nuke. In Ice Blast's Nuke, you call down an ice storm that slowly eats the life out of your enemies. They can still shoot you. In fact, they will. What are Nukes good for? Wiping out large groups of enemies. What do large groups of enemies do? Shoot to death the Blaster that thinks he can take them down in one hit.

Now, there are a number of toggles that could help a character mitigate this issue. Unfortunately, none of them work anymore because this ice storm has completely and utterly drained the Blaster of his energy... And oh look! Some of the bad guys are STILL moving!

This is ludicrous. I've seen the same thing with the Fire Nuke and the Energy Nuke. It's gotten to the point that I don't even utilize the damn powers anymore. I used to just keep them as "Emergency Use Only."

Granted, I've seen some players do some amazing things with their Blasters. Buff up, charge up, run into the enemies and BOOM! Bodies are scattered...

Then the max target range was put on ten or so. Fantastic. Now one of the best things Blasters were good for has been eradicated. Judgement powers can exceed that range, but these powers that are supposed to be so phenomenally powerful in order to justify siphoning all the energy out of your body have a maximum of ten or so enemies. And most uses of the damn Nukes don't even wind up killing the enemies. You have to use Aim and Build Up for that, and good luck when the Boss survives that blast and starts coming after you.

With the drawbacks in the Nukes as they are, it makes using them simply ludicrous. Judgement powers are better, recharge faster and don't wind up leaving your character sucking wind and vulnerable to a mosquito. Full Auto, Hail of Bullets, Rain of Arrows, even Overcharge (which is a lot like the Thunderous Blast, only without the extra damage to robots and fired from a weapon) doesn't wind up debilitating you.

But for a fraction of the utility, powers like Inferno, Atomic Blast, Thunderous Blast, Blizzard, Dreadful Wail and Nova all cut you down. Heck, even the weaker-out-of-the-box Peacebringer and Warshade powers, Dawn Strike and Quasar do the same thing!

With these powers, I'm tired of feeling like I'm being punished for having them. These are the powers that are supposed to be the edge for the archetypes (because once you hit the mid-30s, it's obvious the rest of your powers aren't quick enough to kill the enemies before they're ticked off at you; triply so for Defenders).

Please get rid of the Endurance Drain tacked onto these powers. There is no reason for them to be doing this when they're not effective enough on their own to warrant the drawbacks.

P.S. While I'm at it, Electrical Blast needs more damage. I shouldn't have to cycle through my attack chain three or four times to kill any enemy lower than a boss. The Endurance Drain it's doing is not justification. The NPCs don't use Endurance the same way we do, so it doesn't shut them down and PvP is it's own little quagmire of opinions.

Just reduce the -end to -75% end instead of -100% and keep the recovery debuff. This way you still have to pop blues or use a recovery power to keep fighting, but you won't lose your toggles.

I agree with the -end being reduced, but the end recovery debuff should be lifted so you recover at 50% (or lower) so you can at least fire off your starter powers within a reasonable time (while still having to pop a blue or two). Could also add a minor weaken that lowers your damage output for a bit while you regain your footing, since you did just halt the rotation of primal earth for a moment (and still came away with your eye brows barely singed).

Yeah, I actually dropped my nuke on my corrupter because it wasn't enough bang for my buck and I rely on toggles a lot.

I would drop the end cost to 75%. Make the damage/accuracy increase to become autohits. You are firing a huge blast, everything is gonna get hit.

Or, add a new IO set for nukes. Maybe the proc can be 100% recovery buff so you have a chance to retain your recovery.

And making the powers look more nukish. Big blasts and bolts and explosions.

I agree.
Blasters are a bit out of fashion lately with those poor secondaries and endurance drain after nukes.
Need some tweaks soon.

I'd prefer the devs make the nukes more worthwhile for their cost vs simply lowering the cost. Lowering the cost just makes them the same as the weapon-set nukes. Why not make them different instead?

And the target cap for all nuke powers is 16, not 10.

I almost never used Thunderous Blast on my Elec^3 before I had Endless Destiny slotted. Now I use it whenever Ion Judgement is still recharging.

Still, I tend to agree with DreadShinobi, full endurance drain is a bit much. 75% should be fine, hell even 90% would be doable.

Lol you guys just want to cheapen the cost of the power. But then that'll come with a weakening of the damage (and the Defender version doesn't hit all that hard on teams anyway) and a lessening of the effects (such as the -ToHit or Endurance Drain).

Now if all you're concerned about is keeping your toggles going, maybe a DoT (drain over time) effect could be exchanged for the all-at-once cost of those nukes? Something like an 80 END cost up front + 3 tics of 15 EoT over 10sec (or 10 tics of 4.5 EoT over 10sec). That still leaves you some endurance to pop a few blues, or if you have an endurance refill power, it'd only drop you to 60 afterwards from a full bar.

But I'd much prefer the damage, the range, the debuffs, the mez, the target cap, etc to be ramped up to make these powers unique, not just another vanilla AoE.

Just for reference, it's worth noting VEAT Fortunatas already get a crashless nuke - their crashless Psychic Wail has the same mag 3 stun and massive recharge debuff of the blaster/defender version, it even does more guaranteed damage than the defender version, although the 2 additional chance-for-damage ticks are lower damage, all for a mere 20.8 endurance and on an AT that could have ~25% slotted defence to all (more to melee specifically) running through a crash.

We also have Beam Rifle's crashless nuke, Overcharge, with half the recharge of the crashing nukes - considering the devs have been consciously pushing recent nukes away from the benchmarks of Full Auto and Rain of Arrows, this seems noteworthy for the sort of performance they want from a nuke. Ignoring the 'disintegrate' effect, it has a 60% chance for a short duration mag 3 stun and a mediocre 10.5% defence debuff with base damage equal to the guaranteed portion of the crashing nuke. It also has a guaranteed DoT totalling damage 1/3 of one of the chance-for-damage ticks. Where a crashing nuke fails to apply either chance-for-damage ticks Overcharge will actually deliver more damage. And while its total potential damage is almost half a crashing nuke, it also has half the recharge.

With these in mind I don't see why there would need to be any lowering of performance if the crash was dropped, unless the recharge was reduced as well - if the recharge was halved and the chance-for-damage ticks were replaced with a guaranteed DoT, I'd be more inclined to use them than I am now.

I think, as is, the only nuke that retains it's worthwhile status out of the crashing nukes is Inferno, and that's simply because Fire/anything with Build Up chucks out so much damage that even Bosses are left wondering if anyone got the registration of that steamroller.

Any changes to Nukes would be welcome, provided they are on the lines of crashless and not being turned into pansy moves. They should be powers people WANT to take.
Same boat with snipes, they need to make them much more useable than they currently are.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I've always found nukes as a concept distasteful, a product of an old design mentality which balanced the game around punishing its players for high performance. Right now, Blaster nukes aren't just situational, they're deadly dangerous to use. Because, honestly, once you've used one, what are your options? "Use inspirations or die, I suppose."

If Blaster Nukes are to be these big, "skip spawn" powers, then fine. Bound them by recharge, or by direct cost. But putting penalties on them to rival a Scrapper God Mode power just isn't fair. A Scrapper's God Mode enables said Scrapper to finish off his enemies most of the time, and if that fails just leg it for the crash. A Blaster Nuke, on the other hand, is a roll of the dice. If you roll double sixes, the spawn goes away and you move ahead one position. If you roll snake eyes, you die and have to try again.

I'm generally biassed against "situational" powers, myself. I'd rather have a tool kit of powers I WANT to use as often as I can, if necessary bounded by how often I can use them, than powers that sound really cool on paper but end up being so awkward to use that they train me to never want to use them at all. I don't think Nukes need to do terribly much more than this, because they're pretty dang strong as it is. I'd settle for them not killing the Blaster who uses them. If they have to pay with recharge for a lower cost, then so be it.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I happen to like, and take, nukes on all my blasters. And my defenders and corruptors. Thunderous Blast is great. And if you're getting shot at with Blizzard, you're doing it wrong. The enemies are slowed and trying to get out of the way - and dying.

And no, it's not "just half or 2/3 of a group." I'm wiping out full spawns, typically, on my blaster. The only fix I'd make is making it ignore AT modifiers, so that it's guaranteed to be just as dangerous on a Defender. As far as END issues? Half the blaster secondaries have some sort of END recovery built into them. Not that hard to use. I'll typically have blues anyway (regardless of character) - use them.

Plus, if you "hate the glass cannon," why the heck are you playing a blaster? It's like someone complaining about playing a mastermind because they hate dealing with pets. *Play something else.*

If anything, I think the Judgement no-cost-but-recharge-and-give-them-to-everyone nukes are the ones broken. That's ridiculous.

I would like the drain "100pts" of end to happen over the same time it takes to cast, but after the power finishes, so you can pop a blue before empty.

Yes, remove recovery debuff.

/signed

I don't play Blasters that much (mainly cause they're "just damage" which is "meh" to me ) but I agree that something needs to be done/changed with "nukes" in general.

Maybe make them more like Rain of Arrows/Hail of Bullets. Something that is up more often and can be used, if the person wants, every spawn or every other spawn.

Yes, that'd be less damage potentially but...*shrugs*

I also like the idea of making it like -80 end and a "endurance drain DoT" of the rest in ticks.

I would prefer them to pe a choise. I can either devestate a mob, or put all the same power into attacking ONE enemy and devestate an AV. Makes sense to me.

I really do not know the numbers or and tech stuff about the game i can give my honest opinion on how they play and the way i think they should. the end power before they started adding the levels above 50 was the top at the time. I say remove the recover time increase damage or give it a secondary effect fitting the power of each. It still drains almost all of the end so your still weak so may have to pop some inspirations. And i know there will be those who will say that this may be too much but the recharge should fix this. make it to were its not effected by powers or effects that recharge powers. So they really have to wait for it to come back and recharge so theirs no over nuking. And have the secondary effect last a long time.