Nukes for Defenders?

[Sailboat]

Debating whether to take Blackstar, the capstone Dark Blast nuke, on my Storm/Dark Defender.  I intend to team but also I find myself soloing quite a lot.  The usability of the power may also be an issue -- might be too dangerous to enter large crowds to use it optimally.

 

Interested in generalizations about Defender nukes across the AT as well as any specific opinions for Storm/Dark.

[Bopper]

Are you going to fly and stay at range, or will you be ground based - potentially getting charged by enemies? If you can potentially get swarmed, you can think of Blackstar as a nothing to lose grenade. Hope they die, or get debuffed enough to not hit you as often.

 

Keep in mind, you are Storm/Dark. You can stealth into a mob, pop Blackstar, and everyone you hit will have their ToHit floored. So you can easily run in, pop them, turn on snow storm, drop a freezing rain and just have at it. You should have no problems surviving, especially since you will mitigate any alpha attack with the tohit debuff from blackstar.

[Hyperstrike]

I agree.  If you suspect you're going to get mobbed, even accidentally, you may as well have your "So long!  SUCKERS!" *KABOOM!* option.

[Ankhammon]

i almost defy you to go in using blackstar and faceplant... ok, i'm going too far. 

But it's really easy to get that one going kaboom and stay safe. -35% tohit for 20 seconds is a huge amount. 

[Tachstar]

I have a kin/rad defender -- my second 50 on Homecoming (first was a very blappy electric/martial blaster).  I play solo a lot, so my characters are always in the middle of it.  One of the things I like to do with this defender is run up to a group of bad guys, hit 'em with Fulcrum Shift, followed by Irradiate to soften 'em up a little, and then nuke the <bleep!> out of 'em with Atomic Blast.  Clean up any leftovers with Dominate, Cosmic Burst, and Proton Volley, and apply Transference and Transfusion as needed.  Doesn't always work, of course, and some mobs nuke better than others, but when it does work it's a thing of beauty.

 

Defender:  Knock, knock!

Bad guys:  Who's there?

Defender:  Ka!

Bad guys:  Ka who?

Defender:  Ka BOOM!

 

I try to keep plenty of breakfrees on hand.  With my blaster purples were the thing, but this defender gets stunned if a bad guy looks at her funny.  Anyway, it's a lot of fun.

[Leogunner]

I haven't gotten my poison/dark up to level 38 yet but I want it so bad.  I already have a -ToHit/res PBAoE toggle + stun minions and some more debuffs from poison trap.  Being able to just debuff the crap out of their ToHit even more...I want to get the recharge down on Blackstar as much as possible...gotta get it first though 🙂

[hastened]

Nukes in general are really,  really good now. You should be able to drop freezing rain on the way into a pretty large group and nuke it with relative safety. 

 

I've been trioing with two defenders and a tank,  and I would estimate our total damage output probably went up by 30% when the defenders got nukes.  It very noticeably improved fight times. 

[Tath99]

I would advise treating Defender nukes as an extension of their attack chain rather than an out and out finisher, as on a Blaster.  This is even more evident when you consider the secondary effects of said Defender nukes are so strong.  A well-timed Blackstar might turn around a fight mid-encounter.  You have greater strategic scope as to when to use it.

 

 

[oedipus_tex]

Blackstar on Defenders should be thought of as a debuff aura that happens to do big damage as a nice secondary effect.

 

Blackstar with 2 -Tohit IOs starts at -95.36% Tohit, but thats just where the fun begins... 

 

One a Defender, Power Boost (from the Soul Mastery pool) + Blackstar loaded with 2 -ToHit IOs does -155% ToHit for 20 seconds. Against a +4 boss that's still around -75%. Which will soft cap the team against all positional attacks from every source, even on incarnate trials, and provide significant room for edge cases where a team member got hit with -defense.

 

I would cast it every time it is up and not save it for special situations. 

 

Edited September 25, 2019 by oedipus_tex

[Doomguide2005]

Read the bit about crashless nukes.  First thought was wow!.  Second thought was welcome to the world of Green Machine, essentially crashless nukes since 2006.  AB = +recovery over 1000%. and that was before considering it was often while also under multiple RAs.  You could tell when the team was on point when end bars hardly moved and toggles often didn't drop (when that was still a thing) even when engaging mobs at a 'ludicrous' speed while using Nukes.  

[Ankhammon]

On 9/24/2019 at 8:30 PM, oedipus_tex said:

Blackstar on Defenders should be thought of as a debuff aura that happens to do big damage as a nice secondary effect.

 

Blackstar with 2 -Tohit IOs starts at -95.36% Tohit, but thats just where the fun begins... 

 

One a Defender, Power Boost (from the Soul Mastery pool) + Blackstar loaded with 2 -ToHit IOs does -155% ToHit for 20 seconds. Against a +4 boss that's still around -75%. Which will soft cap the team against all positional attacks from every source, even on incarnate trials, and provide significant room for edge cases where a team member got hit with -defense.

 

I would cast it every time it is up and not save it for special situations. 

 

Only Problem with Darkstar is slotting it with all the goodness you can get. I would think something like 2 Lyso's, 2 Armageddon's and 2 Cloud Senses. Get you like 93.32% -tohit (w/ BU ~ 155%), 397 pts of damage, 175% acc on a recharge of 96 seconds (66 w/ Hasten) at a cost of 24 End.

 

So one third of the time you can floor baddie ACC with just this power + a BU.

 

FYI, throw in BU + Dark Pit and you can stun the Minions of another group for 23+ seconds.

 

Torrent and Tents with BU will add in 45% -tohit on the rest of the things you haven't covered.

 

With Just your "offense" you have cut all damage to your team by approx 3/4 or better with just those five powers (6 including Hasten). Maybe Tex can fix my math on this as Incarnate numbers aren't my best thing.

 

 

 

Yep, Defenders suck.   🙂

[Call Me Awesome]

Oh HELL yes get the Dark nuke.  Stealth in, KABLOOIE!, then enjoy soft capped defenses for the entire team.  It was very good back when nukes killed your own blue bar and recovery, now that it's a zero consequences massive debuff with a side of Kaboom why wouldn't you have it and use it on every big group?  Welcome to your new job as a FF defender.

[Bopper]

1 hour ago, Ankhammon said:

power + a BU

Do you mean Power Boost (Power Buildup)?

 

I will say this about Blackstar. If you use Power Boost and have the T3+ alpha (Intuition Radial or Musculature Radial), you will have 118.34% tohit debuff enhancement added in, making your BlackStar achieve -136.5% ToHit debuff without slotting. 

 

Throw in Clarion Radial destiny, and you hit 186.5% tohit debuff (in theory, but combining CR+PB actually is probably much more than this, like 235-245%)

Edited November 2, 2019 by Bopper

[Ankhammon]

Sorry, I was using Power Build up not the Soul Power Boost. I figured if you were gonna use it every minute or so might as well get a damage boost too. 

 

And I didn't add any of the Incarnates on purpose. That way peeps can play to figure out if they want a different one. The joys of mids include different ways to get to the same results.

[Ankhammon]

1 hour ago, Call Me Awesome said:

Oh HELL yes get the Dark nuke.  Stealth in, KABLOOIE!, then enjoy soft capped defenses for the entire team.  It was very good back when nukes killed your own blue bar and recovery, now that it's a zero consequences massive debuff with a side of Kaboom why wouldn't you have it and use it on every big group?  Welcome to your new job as a FF defender.

Mix it with TA and now you are Throwing out that kaboom and nohit with a hold em all (EMP Arrow +Ice Arrow) on the next group and then a "Let's just cook em" Oil Slick Arrow on the next.

[Bopper]

2 hours ago, Ankhammon said:

Sorry, I was using Power Build up not the Soul Power Boost. I figured if you were gonna use it every minute or so might as well get a damage boost too. 

 

And I didn't add any of the Incarnates on purpose. That way peeps can play to figure out if they want a different one. The joys of mids include different ways to get to the same results.

True, the extra boost is nice, unfortunately PBU has a 240 second recharge versus PB having 120 second recharge. So depending on how often you use Blackstar, you might only have it boosted half the time with PBU as opposed to everytime with PB. 

[MunkiLord]

Always yes to nukes for me. People have already covered the reasons why. You likely won't faceplant, but if you do, debt builds character. Also if you think you're gonna die after nuking, hit self destruct to make it worth it.

[Doomguide2005]

Or have a /RadEm or RadEm/ use Fallout then Mutate to rez.  The debuffs from Fallout are quite nice to put it mildly. 

[Call Me Awesome]

30 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

Or have a /RadEm or RadEm/ use Fallout then Mutate to rez.  The debuffs from Fallout are quite nice to put it mildly. 

True, but very few Rad characters take the power, it's one of the most situational in the game since you need a dead teammate who died in the right place and has a group around him, and also doesn't pop a res power or have another teammate res him first.  I skipped it on all my Rad characters and I think I only saw it used a handful of times in all the years I played.  Rad has so many excellent powers that fitting in everything else in your build gets tricky and you have to sacrifice something.

[Ankhammon]

4 hours ago, MunkiLord said:

Always yes to nukes for me. People have already covered the reasons why. You likely won't faceplant, but if you do, debt builds character. Also if you think you're gonna die after nuking, hit self destruct to make it worth it.

With that face, you should tell Kif to self-destruct.

[Doomguide2005]

12 hours ago, Call Me Awesome said:

True, but very few Rad characters take the power, it's one of the most situational in the game since you need a dead teammate who died in the right place and has a group around him, and also doesn't pop a res power or have another teammate res him first.  I skipped it on all my Rad characters and I think I only saw it used a handful of times in all the years I played.  Rad has so many excellent powers that fitting in everything else in your build gets tricky and you have to sacrifice something.

Yes it is, but we have 3 builds and if you play with friends or a static team then it's a good power to at least remember you have the option to take in your build.  Add Recall Friend and positioning is no longer a problem. 

[Call Me Awesome]

7 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

Yes it is, but we have 3 builds and if you play with friends or a static team then it's a good power to at least remember you have the option to take in your build.  Add Recall Friend and positioning is no longer a problem. 

That's a different story, static teams tend to have wildly non-standard builds to maximize synergy between everyone on the team.  My old Rad superteam on Pinnacle consisted of an Ill/Rad & Fire/Rad controller, Rad/Rad & 2 Kin/Sonic defenders, Fire/Fire blaster (don't ask, Dragonar marched to a different drum... usually straight to the floor.  Repeatedly.  Every mission.) and a couple of rotating friends who came and went.   I remember taking out Lusca with just the 6 of us at level 25 in under 5 minutes.

 

Certain things were a given, everyone had Leadership, AM and SB took care of recharge & endurance issues (this was pre-IO, and pre inherent fitness) so we were sitting with high defenses, high damage and high debuffage.  Yeah, we could have optimized the team more but it was still the most fun trip to 50 we ever had.  And yes, in that case we DID have Fallout and Vengeance thanks to our suicidal blaster.  Really suicidal.  Frequently faster than 3 different Mutation's could recharge.  Always cussing a blue streak about dying again.  Always debt capped.