Crashless Nukes WOOOOOTTT!!!

I'd actually agree. Considering some of the mitigating effects of the other nukes, they often have the mez potential to put most things sans bosses out of the fight for 20 or more seconds (in the case of Blackstar, put you at practically capped defense and in the case of Psychic Wail or Blizzard, recharge debuffed into the ground).

Heh, no one is even talking about that part though. While the KB in Nova is nice, it hardly amounts to 20 seconds of mitigation...no clue about Inferno.

If nothing else, a mag 2 stun should be added to Nova with a % chance (maybe 50%) for an additional mag 2 so as not to make it guaranteed but possibly shut down targets that matter.

Still not impressed with Dual Pistol changes. An increase to the damage swap would have been more useful than shaving off time from the attacks. While it does help DPS, it really doesn't help the mechanical reasons to pick dual pistols: for the variety and utility. If I want DPS, I'll play fire or ice or rifle. I picked dual pistols because it says I can shoot ice and fire bullets so why doesn't it do that (well)?

If the power doesn't crash, its much less necessary that the power have a guaranteed chance to disable targets for extended periods of time.


The changes being made to Dual Pistols are intended to counterbalance the snipe changes being made to other sets. That change is fundamentally a single target DPA/DPS change. What you're talking about is your opinion that dual pistols doesn't appeal to you, something that the devs haven't specifically identified as a problem yet.

Indeed. I am trying to figure out where I stand. For me, I love scale 4 with 2:25 recharge and no crash. I often skip the nuke or take it just as a for fun power. This change makes them as useful as HoB and I love HoB. To be honest, I feel some WOAH when I think of Inferno back to a faster recharge, even if it deals a bit less damage (and with a bit of DoT, I bet Inferno will be really close to Lt killing).

OTOH, I think of those who like nukes now and I know many of them have frequently said they prefer the big boom. This might be a time for me to advocate for my preference though, since I think my preference is not just better for me, but better for the AT in general.

The changes to DP are welcomed, and they make the set competitive with the current environment, but come the new changes the set will fall behind again.

~ Once all other sets gain a crashless nuke DPs loses one of its big advantages. It's not nerfed, but it does lose ground in the balance scale.

~ DP still has redraw. This hurts its DPS when trying to incorporate attacks and defenses from its secondary. I always saw the crashless nuke as the counterbalance to the redraw sets.

~ With no Aim and no snipe the set loses a lot of burst potential that other sets gain. DP *really* loses out when paired with /Dev or /Energy that can perma Snipe.

Here's my suggestions for further changes:

~ Shorten the animation* on Piercing Rounds. Make the -Res debuff work with any ammo. Ammo dancing to keep up the -Res debuff against hard targets for the benefit of the group is annoying at best.

~ At 20 seconds Piercing Rounds should have a higher damage. Bitter Ice Blast has a 12s recharge and it does 142 while Piercing Rounds only does 128. That's pretty bad, even adding in Incendiary ammo. My guess is that Piercing Rounds is using AoE damage numbers but the "cone" which is more like a straight bolt usually only hits 2 and even that's unreliable. Someone skilled at it can get some 3 hit openings but that's tough and they probably spent enough time lining up the shot to waste several hundred damage worth of potential damage.

Like Shadow Maul, make the extra one or two enemies that may be hit by this power a freebie and up the damage to be competitive with single target attacks. This is not a power that will reliable hit 5+ enemies, and to leverage it requires time to position.

~ Why is DP's Suppressive Fire only 9.54 seconds while Archery's Stunning Shot and Assault Rifle's beanbag at the same recharge are 11.92 seconds? Both AR's and Archery's activation time is much shorter than Suppressive Fire. Why are all three of these substantially shorter than the hold in Bitter Freeze Ray which also does substantial damage? None of these stuns deliver damage at all. At least bring Suppressive Fire's stun up to par with Archery and AR.

~ Have a higher percentage of damage use the more exotic damage type when you swap ammo. It is an intuitive and cool gameplay element to be rewarded by knowing what ammo to use against which enemies. I suggest making swap ammo change the ratio of lethal to special damage to 50/50.


*Admittedly I am biased because I hate the animation.

When these changes go through Archery will probably need to be reviewed as well since it has redraw and it's main competitive advantage was a crashless nuke.

I think a reasonable compromise might be to have, in the case of Nova and its cousins, a 33% chance for a 50% crit on Bosses. You only had about a one in three chance of having a lot more damage in the first place, and concentrating that extra damage against bosses would mean the actual damage of the power in most situations would not go up by much, but it would go up where it counted the most.

Yeah, I already like my elec/devices blaster, I think all these changes are going to move it to love. Which is great since he's my first character and all, so there has always been that sentimental attachment. Now I think it's going to actually be justified.

I have a gut feeling that the devs will finally fix this little oversight when they normalize and adjust all the nukes. So Defenders/Corruptors will get a weaker version of Blizzard instead of the Blaster version..

At this point Ice Storm being fixed wouldn't surprise me either.. (And RoF on Corruptors)

I hope I'm wrong.

The first thing I thought when I heard about this change to nukes, is that I finally knew where I was gonna stick that KB->KD converter on my Energy blaster.

Significant buff to both playability and power for a Blaster, if they don't jack up the implementation.

They've still got to be willing to make the numerous small changes necessary to ensure a clean implementation, but this is a good sign.

Like I need you to pretend to be the dev's mouthpiece. Goldengirl does an adequately annoying job of that as it is.

If you're going to comment about someone's opinion why bother pretending it's what someone else's rational is?

But then I specifically remember Hawk and Zw saying in the coffee talk I did get on that Synapse has something particular in mind for Swap Ammo specifically...so the 'haven't identified as a problem' is already counter to what has been said.

What I said was that the devs haven't identified your specific issue as a an explicit problem, but thanks for making it much more obvious what your problem is.

Hey! That was my first thought too. I don't think you could beat this idea fun-wise. Sure it might be more efficient in Explosive Blast but yeah, a no KB Nova sounds super fun.

It sounds efficient, but I don't think I have the heart to do that to my Nova. To me, its just not the same if wriggling feet aren't sticking out of walls in all directions.

I never really got to know my Nova - so if I overwhelm it with force right out of the gate, I can make it into the Nova I want instead of loving it as the Nova it is.

That's how healthy relationships start, right?

Yeah. It's probably an even better idea to negate the KB on a character like my /energy defender since between no BU and lower base damage his nova is almost guaranteed to not kill everything (heck, even with PBU, aim, and all my +damage bonuses he still only barely kills even con *minions* now), but I don't think I could bring myself to do it either. Nova just isn't nova without a ludicrous KABOOM sending stuff flying all over the place.

Hopefully Full Auto can get the 16 target cap, but since AR already has a great tier 9, it doesn't need a corresponding buff. Changing the "true" nukes is due to the fact that Full Auto and powers like it are already much better.

It's not visually KABOOM-y enough for me to be attached to the KB.

In fact FA at its target cap will have roughly the same damage over time as I24 Nova at its target cap for reasonable levels of recharge.

That is a little misleading. In both cases the powers are best used in conjunction with either build up full auto or aim and build up in nova's case. So their real usage rate is the recharge rate of Aim and Build Up. It's also very rare to see multiple full autos or for that matter rain of arrows used on a spawn, because of the difficulties in positioning and the long cast times.

AR could really use a look at just the same. The set is really going to be very overpowered. Its going to have the best single target damage of all the blast sets and will still be in the top 3 for AoE. When you consider its natural pairing with Energy manipulation makes its problems go away gives it a perma snipe and a nuke cone that can have a 200 foot range that seems just a little over the top.

On a separate but related note Energy Manipulation could use a once over given the effects from i24 changes. Between permanent boost range, power boost, and conserve power this set has gone from the front of the pack to lapping the pack.