Analysis: Nova I23 vs I24

In I24 Nova is going to become a crashless, scale 4.0 damage attack that recharges in 145 seconds (2 minutes 25 seconds compared to the current 360s or 6 minute recharge). It gets much faster, it loses the crash (actual end costs for activation go up slightly) but it deals less damage than now. But the question is how much less damage. I'm going to look at the Blaster version for this post, since this analysis is going to hinge on archetype-specific numbers for the most part. I'll deal a little with other archetypes at the end.

First of all, how much damage does Nova deal now? Answer: it deals a guaranteed scale 3.0, with a 75% chance for an additional scale 1.5, and a 50% chance for an additional 1.5 on top of that. On average, it deals scale 4.875 damage. So you could say I24 Nova is going to deal about 18% less damage than I23 Nova does now.

But actually, that's not the whole story. In actuality, I24 Nova is going to do a lot better than that. And the reason has to do with the fact that you cannot just average doing scale 3 damage sometimes and doing scale 6 damage other times. At these damage levels, Nova is capable of outright killing targets sometimes. And once its dead, its not really the case that dealing more damage is meaningful. So lets look at how much damage Nova really does to different critter ranks.

At level 50 (the ratios are a bit different at different levels so I'm selecting level 50 for now: the principles will be similar at different levels to a large degree) Nova deals 187.68 damage base, with a 50% chance of dealing 281.52 damage and a 37.5% chance of dealing 375.36. A minion has 430.8 health, so in all cases that damage will count against a minion. The average damage will be about 304.98. I24 Nova will deal 250.24 all the time (when it hits), so I24 Nova will deal 82% of the damage of I23 Nova, which is 18% less. That's what the average predicts above.

But what about slotted Nova? Slotted for +95% damage, now Nova is dealing 365.98/548.96/731.95 damage. But minions only have 430.8 health. So in reality, slotted Nova can do no better than 365.98/430.8/430.8. The actual average isn't 594.71 like you'd expect, but really 422.7. I24 Nova is always going to do 487.97, but really it can do no better than 430.8 also.

Notice something amazing. I24 Nova averages 430.8 against minions - basically a guaranteed kill. I23 Nova averages 422.7. That's because it almost always kills minions, but sometimes (12.5% of the time) it only deals 365.98 to them. I24 Nova is dealing *more* damage than I23 against minions in this case.

Against Lts and Bosses its still dealing 82% of I23 Nova, because neither I23 Nova nor I24 Nova are capable of defeating Lts or Bosses at all without help. So lets look at the case of slotted Nova + Build Up.

Now we have I23 Nova dealing 553.66/830.48/1107.31 and I24 Nova dealing 738.21. At this point both Novas are killing minions guaranteed: I23 and I24 Nova are indistinguishable when it comes to minions. But now I23 Nova is capable of defeating Lts at its highest possible damage. And that means its actual damage against Lts is 553.66/830.48/857.5 and its average damage is really 806.01. That means I24 Nova will be dealing 91.6% of the damage I23 Nova deals against Lts when buffed by Build Up. Nova is only 8.4% lower. It will still be 18% lower against Bosses.

There's a couple ways to look at this. We can ask what the average damage of both powers will be when used against spawns where the spawning ratio is consistent with how the game spawns critters. My experience suggests that for sufficiently large spawns, the game spawns critters in approximately the ratio of two bosses to five Lts to ten minions. That's seventeen targets. Nova has a 16 target limit. I'm going to assume Nova hits an average of two bosses to five Lts to nine minions. I could actually just use the previous ratio because the target cap is not relevant to averages, but I'd rather not spend five paragraphs proving it: 2:5:9 is close enough for these purposes.

Against a 2:5:9 spawn, slotted and with Build Up I23 Nova will, factoring in kills, deal about 9706.64 damage. I24 Nova will deal 9044.656. That's 93.2%. In other words, I24 Nova will only deal 6.8% less damage than I23 Nova does now.

And if you use BU+Aim? The figure drops to 2.7% with these ratios. And with BU and Aim I24 Nova will be *better* than I23 Nova against Lts, dealing 2.8% more damage to them.

And in terms of blasters that solo with bosses turned off, I24 Nova will be a bit less than 1% better than I23 Nova when BU and Aim are used with it (assuming a ratio of 1 Lt to 2 minions on average). Its a more reliable spawn-wiper outside of bosses.

Conclusion: I24 Nova will recharge more than twice as fast and won't crash. It will deal less damage, usually. How much less damage. Worst case: 18% less. In actuality? Between 2.7% less and 8.5% less. And for solo blasters with bosses turned off, I24 Nova will actually deal *more* damage when you buff it with BU and Aim consistently. The difference is surprisingly low, because I24 Nova will be a much more efficient attack.


Of course, this analysis doesn't work for other archetypes. For example, Defenders don't get Build Up and they have lower damage modifiers. They also sometimes have other damage buffs or critter debuffs that complicate matters more than most Blasters do on average. So this effect will be less pronounced for them because overkill will tend to happen less often. But a simple check of slotted Nova with Aim suggests that I24 Nova will deal about 13.7% less damage for Defenders on average rather than the 18% the base numbers suggest. Without Bosses its closer to 12.7%.

So basically up to a certain point where everything is onehit, the more damage buffs you have the better i24 Nova is in comparison to i23 Nova.

There's also the fact that, in a 360 second period, you'll have the ability to fire off your Nuke at least twice as often as a similarly slotted/enhanced i23 Nuke.

Sitting at Recharge cap, you're capable of firing off nearly ten i24 nukes in the same time it takes to fire off four similar i23 nukes.

With no crash.

DoT Nirvana!

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

There is also the not having to re-toggle a bunch of stuff.

A very nice analysis.

Is this all assuming even-con enemies?
By the time I've got Nova I'd usually be fighting +2s and +3s, which would up the damage of old Nova a bit, due to less overkill on leiutenants and bosses, right?

Purple patch means 80% damage against +2's, which is roughly equivalent to discounting Aim
(Aim boosts damage from x2.95 to x3.6, ie slotting + Build Up does 81% of the damage that slotting + Build Up + Aim does).
Also, to counter this effect, I guess the best nukers eat a couple of reds beforehand.

The main thing is, the new Nova is going to be a massive improvement.

These mafs make me kinda tingly.

Thanks for the analysis. Much more reassuring that the change will be a positive one.

i can always count on Arcanaville to make my head swim...

I assume everyone will slot the Overwhelming force proc in nova if they have energy blast.

Why would it be more beneficial to have all the corpses fall over near you, rather than far away? ;P I'd still rather slot it in Explosive Blast.

How would say a fire/kin corr who can cap himself for damage and has an oblit set in so 100% damage and recharge values compare pre and post i24?

I find it a bit weak atm but that might just be me on a corr, and the fact i dont use it often as it crashes

The one thing i'm curious about is the change coming to the crashless nukes (RoA, FA, Geyser, etc.). I know that at least some (if not all) of them are getting their recharges tweaked...but that's all I've read on the subject. Are they gonna have their damage modified as well (ie be "normalized" with the rest of the nukes), or will it stay the same?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smiling_Joe ::looks at RaikenX's signature:: Something funny.

I wonder what Blizzard will become. It is currently a "guaranteed" scale 9 (4.5 cold, 4.5 lethal).

Arcana care to figure for Kin Defenders?

assume capped damage and Def values.

nice thread.

It better be only knocked down to scale 7 damage.

Thanks Arcana for some reason people were looking at the Nuke change as a negative so it helps if you word it differently so they can understand or relate.

I was starting to wonder about some of our posters...

So someone (meaning Arcanaville) do the math.

Assume
a lvl 50 IO'd but non incarnate NRG/NRG blaster
a +4/x8 spawn with an average breakdown of bosses, lts, minions.
all attacks hit
average resistance on foes
if the stealths up and starts with a nova, which, and how many attacks does it take to wipe out the spawn in i24?