Nukes need to be nerfed

[KaizenSoze]

I guess I have woken up today and chosen violence.

 

In the process of working on a parsing tool I discovered that 40-50+ percent of all damage done by my Blasters and Fortunata is from one power. Their nukes. Nukes are not the sole issue with the end game, but they are a part of it. Built up, Assault, Muscular buffed nukes obliterate almost all the minions and cripple the lts even at +3.

 

What do I *not* want:

Lengthening the recharge...

Lower the target caps...

Lowering the damage...

Adding back the crash...

 

My suggestion:

Suppress all toggles for 10 seconds and 10 second mag 4 taunt on any target hit. Anything that survives is going to only have eyes for the nuker. Mobs still could be taunted off the blaster, but that would require good timing.

 

 

The player can still attack, run like before, but this greatly increases the risk.

 

[PoptartsNinja]

I don't think the toggle suppression would do anything since most defense comes from set bonuses, but I also don't hate the idea of nukes being a taunt. Agro management is pretty trivially easy unless you're at the target cap and Nukes are pretty notable.

 

It would be another way to buff weaker nukes like Rain of Arrows without boosting their damage, too. They could just taunt less.

[Akisan]

What remaining targets?  A boss and a handful of severely wounded lieutenants?  Even at 20% defence, a lone blaster is generally more than capable of finishing that off.

 

You pretty much named the 4 meaningful ways that they can nerf nukes, and you don't want them.  If you want a meaningful penalty in the same vein as your suggestion, (high risk/high reward glass cannon gameplay), that self debuff should also include -def & res, last a significant amount of time (5-10 minutes), and stack.

[KaizenSoze]

Rain of Arrows could simply not taunt or suppress. That would return it to its' pre-crash removal advantage.

[Lunar Ronin]

6 minutes ago, KaizenSoze said:

Rain of Arrows could simply not taunt or suppress. That would return it to its' pre-crash removal advantage.

 

Along with Hail of Bullets, the other nuke that didn't crash prior to sunset.

 

Not saying that this is a great idea, mind.  Just a lot of people forget that Dual Pistols' nuke didn't crash prior to sunset either, and lost that advantage like Archery did.

[biostem]

I wonder if they could implement a system whereby the longer you go without using your nuke, the more powerful it becomes - so you could fire it off like every 30 seconds or so, but it'd only deal as much damage as your typical AoE, but after the 1.5 - 3 mins mark, it'd deal significantly more, (all with no crash, mind you).

[Rudra]

I agree with @Akisan, the thread title says you want nukes to be nerfed, and then you rule out all the ways to nerf them. And if everything is dead, like when you use Aim + Build Up + Assault + incarnate buff (plus a few reds just to be quadruply sure), then who cares if you just aggroed their corpses with your toggles suppressed?

 

Edited April 5 by Rudra
Edited to remove odd "a an".

[macskull]

Well, looks like I found my new frontrunner for today's "bad ideas as answers to nonexistent problems" thread.

[Videra]

Lol

[biostem]

1 minute ago, Krimson said:

You just described Assault Rifle. 

Can you elaborate?  Do you mean the "only deal as much damage as your typical AoE" part?  I'm not aware of it having some mechanic that causes its damage to ramp-up the longer you wait...

Edited April 5 by biostem

[Luminara]

44 minutes ago, KaizenSoze said:

Suppress all toggles for 10 seconds and 10 second mag 4 taunt on any target hit.

 

I'd use nukes at every opportunity for the Taunt alone.  Save me a hell of a lot of time chasing down survivors.

[ScarySai]

Define end game. I have brutes and scrappers that can outclear blasters fairly easily, and in 4* content, corruptor stacking is much more the thing to do over stacking blasters.

 

I think too many people think their opinions based off very little experience should dictate how the game is balanced.

 

Also, not all sets are created equal. As funny as it would be to randomly nerf sonic into irrelevance (again).

 

Nukes are fine, broaden your horizons and you'll learn that soon enough.

Edited April 5 by ScarySai

[Sunsette]

In an ideal world, Blast sets would probably be designed very differently.

 

However, I am not convinced that any attempt to bring nukes in line after we've had them like this for five years would be constructive or pleasant rather than disruptive, and I very specifically dislike your proposal, sorry. Every single powerset is bespoke (positive) or inconsistent (negative) to some degree and this would completely shake up every single blast powerset such that you'd need to look at them in totality all over again. 

Edited April 5 by Sunsette

[ZamuelNow]

1 hour ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

Along with Hail of Bullets, the other nuke that didn't crash prior to sunset.

 

And Thunderous Blast had the odd quirk that the crash was based off the number of targets hit so you could do things like use it on smaller spawns and not fully crash.

[Greycat]

Nukes don't need nerfing. They're the *BLASTER Tier 9.* They SHOULD be doing damage. Blasters already inherently trade defenses for damage - not everyone builds "I'm def-capped to everything, recharge capped" builds.

 

What needs nerfing is what makes them (Blaster nukes) irrelevant in end game. Judgement in non-Incarnate content. Where YOU get a nuke and YOU get a nuke and EVERYONE gets a nuke!

 

Besides, you're (A) describing Incarnate-buffed nukes, forgetting there's an (even larger now that they get them earlier) swath of the game BEFORE 50 that nukes are available and certainly *don't* do that and (B) not remembering Corrupters, Defenders and Kheldians have them as well, and they certainly aren't a problem.

Edited April 6 by Greycat
Clarification

[Riverdusk]

Sorry to bring up a slight tangent, but anytime nukes come up and how powerful they are, it is a really sore point to me because I always compare them to controller/dom AoE holds and how weak they are.

 

Controller/dom AoE holds take 4 minutes to recharge to maybe hold things for 15 seconds.  Nukes in the game that can just delete things instead recharge in much less time.  Oh, and to rub salt in the wound, controller aoe holds have a huge accuracy penalty, whereas nukes have a huge accuracy BONUS.   

 

Pretty sure I remember aoe holds were nerfed at one point because holding everything for a brief period of time more than once every 4 minutes base recharge and without a huge accuracy penalty was considered OP, but just flat out destroying them in like half the recharge was determined at some point to be just fine and dandy.  🤔

 

I'd be much less annoyed by how powerful nukes were made to be, if they'd finally do something about how weak aoe holds were made.  By the way, if controller AoE holds need to be all swapped to tier 9 in order to get the same kind of recharge and accuracy bonuses that nukes get, I'd be fine with that.  😁

[Saiyajinzoningen]

iirc nukes were originally supposed to be part of your situational "oh $hit" toolkit

with reduced recharge and zero crash, nukes are now just part of the rotation.

maybe like some of the armor t9's we can make nukes unaffected by recharge rates?

so now instead of using a nuke every mob 

it would be treated like a heal (use it when needed and not constantly)

tbh i wholeheartedly agree with @Greycat

judgements are a bigger issue compared to standard nukes

they remove what little strategy remained in game

also @Riverdusk while you are not wrong in any way

no one needs mass holds if everyone has nukes 😞  

[Uun]

You seem to be ignoring that nukes aren't unique to blasters. Corruptors, defenders and sentinels also have them. Even with their debuffs, corruptor and defender nukes don't produce the same amount of damage as blaster nukes and are currently being used at a higher level of risk. Sentinel nukes have lower damage scales, target caps and recharges and simply aren't designed to obliterate a x8 spawn.

 

I might also remind you that when the crash was removed from nukes and the recharge reduced, the trade off was a reduction in damage. Nukes used to have a lower base damage level plus 2 tiers of additional damage that procced on a per-target basis. Currently, most nukes are 4.0 damage scale. Originally, nukes were 3.0 scale base damage with a 75% chance of 1.5 scale additional damage and a 50% chance of 1.5 scale additional damage. The average was 4.88 scale, but if both tiers of additional damage hit the total was 6.0 scale, 50% higher than current nukes. (This change was announced by the original devs in the I24 beta but was never released to the live servers.)

[Azari]

So, basically you want to turn nukes into suicide buttons for hard mode runners?

[Super Atom]

💀

[Grouchybeast]

Don't hate on blasters just 'cause we're pretty awesome.

[Luminara]

2 hours ago, Grouchybeast said:

Don't hate on blasters just 'cause we're pretty awesome.

[Ukase]

I have to say, this post just boggles my mind. Truly. Of course, these days, that doesn't take much.

 Saiyajinzoningen  - thank you very much for the break down of how things used to be. I tend to be one of those that just hit the nuke button and don't think about any of that. 

Some of you may not be aware, but the OP is smart. And he's not deliberately trying to troll. Now, I do think he's made an error, perhaps conflating what he would appreciate with something else. I can't say with certainty. I do trust that his heart is in the right place. 

There's a lot of things that "ruin" the game for me. Some are really bitter-tasting pills that take me a while to choke down. But, ultimately, I digest them, as disagreeable as the taste was. I have to continually remind myself that I'm not willing to invest the resources of time and money into making my own server just to do it my way. Thankfully, within reason, I'm allowed to point out reasons why I think something shouldn't be the way it is, or the way it might become. 

As to nukes, personally, when I use blizzard, it's not usually the opener. I'm still expecting an endurance crash, and am always a bit surprised when I can keep my toggles on. The changes that have occurred for just the blaster AT are numerous. Most of those changes have been for the better - and when I say better, I mean that my character is easier to play, survives when in earlier times, it might not have fared so well. Inferno seems like a riskier proposition to me. The idea of nerfing a power that is already quite laden with risk doesn't make sense to me, despite the effort to explain it. 

Our OP mentions a problem with the end game. I am wondering what problem he is wanting to solve. If a nuke or judgement takes down a group - there is another group after that. If your team is so nuke heavy that the clear times are just ridiculous, I say "Well done!" 

If it is not broken, please don't fix it. 
 

[tidge]

I sort of feel what @KaizenSoze is feeling, but I think it is less about the nature of the (Blaster) nukes and more about how Blasters have some "easy mode" features on top of their nukes that don't really apply to other AT. In no particular order:

 

1) It is easy to bump up defenses (this applies even more to Fortunata)

 

In addition to having enhancement bonuses, Blasters, because of the raw power of the nukes, can be a little more liberal about swapping out single-target attacks for power pool choices to improve defense and resistance.

 

2) It is relatively easy to sidestep mezz effects from critters (in response to a cast nuke that may have missed).

 

Not only does the first point apply (Rune of Protection is rather trivial to pick up for Blasters), but there is also Defiance. Every time I have a Controller cast an AoE control and it immediately gets mezzed... I am wee bit jealous that a similarly mezzed Blasters can still have up to three different powers to use.

 

3) It is rather easy to manage both global recharge and Endurance, such that the nukes are often available and there is very little practical cost to working them into an attack chain.

 

This is so deeply baked into the game that I wouldn't want it any other way.

 

Edited April 7 by tidge

[Riverdusk]

10 minutes ago, Ukase said:

Our OP mentions a problem with the end game. I am wondering what problem he is wanting to solve. If a nuke or judgement takes down a group - there is another group after that. If your team is so nuke heavy that the clear times are just ridiculous, I say "Well done!" 

If it is not broken, please don't fix it. 
 

 

Can only assume their take, but can give my own issue with it.  That is that it just makes the game boring sometimes.  Especially for those of us that like to play something like a controller, or a MM, or even a scrapper.  We end up feeling more like a spectator than a participant.  It becomes more of an issue when there are more than a few that have nukes and as mentioned once everyone has judgement incarnate nukes to go along with it.  Incarnate nukes I agree, are the bigger issue and I think the "easier" thing to "adjust" as it'd affect everyone equally. 

 

With the prevalence of people asking to tag along as "sitters" on farms, obviously a lot of people don't mind that kind of playstyle, but it isn't what I find fun personally.  And, no I don't find the hard star content much of a solution as I find them too "fiddly".  Just feels like that sweet middle ground spot is more elusive now.

 

I mean, it isn't terrible and I still join teams at high level, but often by end game I find soloing more fun and that's definitely part of the reason.