Focused Feedback: Powerset - Radiation Armor

[The Curator]

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Radiation Armor

 Ground Zero

• The offensive components of this power now can only hit 16 foes.
• Power still can hit up to 255 allies.

 

 Radiation Therapy

• This power now has Adaptive Recharge. It has a base recharge of 25 seconds, and each affected foe will increase the recharge by varying amounts to a maximum total of 90 seconds. First target adds 20 seconds, each additional target adds recharge proportionate to it's buff strength.
• Every subsequent target will yield a 30% weaker effect than the previous target
• Accuracy lowered from 3x to 1.2
• Heal per enemy increased from scale 2.2% to scale 11%.
• Heal with no enemy in range lowered from scale 11% to scale 6%
• Total maximum heal with all targets increased from 33% to 38%
• Regeneration buff reduced from +100% to 50%, duration reduced from 60s to 45s
• Fixed power description showing wrong adaptive recharge numbers.
• Fixed a bug where this decay was not working as intended.

 

 Meltdown

• Power now has a visual indicator that the power is going to crash in the next 10 seconds.

 

Quote

Design Notes:

Ground Zero is a power that should had never been released in its current form. It's high cap was set so it could reliably cover allies and still be able to hit some foes. This ideally should had been split into two independent components when finalizing the set, but was not done due to how hard it was to create such powers at that time. Making an armor power affect more enemies than even incarnate nukes was never the intended goal. These days we have new tools to properly split these components without the legacy headaches. We should had done this long ago, but that does not give the power a pass. 

 

Radiation Therapy is another power that has other issues. It does too many things at once. The original version left by the devs never had such a high accuracy, nor did it grant endurance to the caster. These are things that were added later in an experiment and resulted in the power being too overloaded. The accuracy was never meant to be increased to 3, but to 1.13 (would had resulted in about 85% acc against even level foes). The original power, as left by the dev team, had an accuracy of 1.0x. We are compromising with 1.2 in this pass, but at 3x we may as well make the power auto hit. Such an incarnation would lose access to accurate healing enhancement sets. 

 

Despite this we still feel the power does a lot for it the set out of a single power, and that should be reflected somehow, either by removing effects or increasing recharge. Simply increasing recharge did not seem like a good compromise since it would make the power way less useful in boss encounters so decided to use the new Adaptive Recharge technique with the power. This means the power has a very low recharge that scales with it's usage. At maximum saturation, the power will have a higher recharge than it does currently live, but with fewer foes around the power will recharge much faster up to the point where 1v1 fights the player will be able to continually use the power. The power can now be used anywhere between every 25 seconds and 90 seconds depending on how many enemies (if any) were in range.

 

We understand nerfs are never popular, but sometimes we need to tone some sets down.

 

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[arcane]

Can we please have a developer weigh in on the elephant in the room not mentioned by the patch notes? How will PPM interact with Adaptive Recharge?

[macskull]

22 minutes ago, arcane said:

Can we please have a developer weigh in on the elephant in the room not mentioned by the patch notes? How will PPM interact with Adaptive Recharge?

Not a dev but when I asked this exact question in closed beta the response was that proc rates use the base recharge of the power. This means for powers with adaptive recharge they’ll always use the shortest possible recharge time regardless of how long the power actually takes to recharge. Adaptive recharge ends up being an apparent buff for a lot of powers that has the side effect of effectively being a pretty huge proc nerf.

 

Also while I’m here, can we get Ground Zero’s animation sped up? 3 seconds is way too long for what it does now.

[Player-1]

24 minutes ago, arcane said:

Can we please have a developer weigh in on the elephant in the room not mentioned by the patch notes? How will PPM interact with Adaptive Recharge?

 

PPM interacts with the base recharge value. Adaptive recharge takes effect immediately  after the power activates. 

[ScarySai]

Rad armor's one of my favorite sets, so here we go.

 

Rad's weakness is it's sustainability in a fight, largely due to the long cds between your clicks, and a total lack of debuff protection. 

 

1: Why is the max recharge for therapy longer on top of the other nerfs piled on to it? The adaptive recharge change doesn't really make sense to me, unless it was specifically to target procs.

 

2: Why is ground zero's cast time still so slow? It should be faster now that it's a normal aoe attack.

 

You claim rad therapy did too much at once, but other armor sets, especially now, have a lot more going for them than rad does. So I question if this was a relic of an earlier build that just never got adjusted.

[Monkerlotus]

ground zero could lose its heal for all i care but 90seconds excessive on recharge, rad therapy is fine, i dont see the need to change it, compared to my other melee including my bio armor who can toggle between unstopple force and immovable object at will.

Edited May 27 by Monkerlotus

[Shin Magmus]

     Well at least I can 5-slot Panacea into Rad Therapy now and get more Recharge for my other powers on my Scrapper... y'know, cus the damage procs are hilariously worthless in it now.  For characters who heavily relied on it as a source of AoE dmg, that stings.  The Ground Zero nerf just normalizes it with every other power in the game, which is only really going to severely affect AE farms with extreme target saturation.  Sucks for them, but they can roll up another farmer in no time.

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, Shin Magmus said:

cus the damage procs are hilariously worthless in it now

3.5PPM procs ought to have gone from 90% (@60s base rech) to... 46.72% (@25s base recharge)...
So yeah about half the previous damage, on average; but still a fairly big radius and reasonable target cap.

Personally I'll probably keep the existing 4x procs; and swap the Lv50+5 Heal IO to a Lv53 Acc/Heal HO; so something like this (worst-case with 90s elongated recharge)


(that's a Touch of the Nictus Lv50+5 Heal IO to nab the 2-piece set bonus)

The lessened Regeneration buff is annoying (it means my Scrapper won't quite hit 50 HP/Sec any more!) but the Heal is worth far more if there are only 1-2 enemies nearby.
The lessened Accuracy is almost ignorable at endgame; but might hurt whilst levelling up.

All-round a nerf, but manageable.

However yes, lower the activation time on Ground Zero; please.
It's not a meganuke any more; so it doesn't need to feel like we're waiting for Armageddon to arrive.

[csr]

On 5/26/2025 at 5:00 AM, The Curator said:

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Radiation Armor

 

 Radiation Therapy

• This power now has Adaptive Recharge. It has a base recharge of 25 seconds, and each affected foe will increase the recharge by varying amounts to a maximum total of 90 seconds. First target adds 20 seconds, each additional target adds recharge proportionate to it's buff strength.
• Every subsequent target will yield a 30% weaker effect than the previous target
• Base -Regeneration Res is now flat 25% per target for all ATs

 

The -Regen is still -150% on the Tanker I tested.

 

The heal (again on a Tanker) is 70% of the first target on all subsequent targets.  Not X, then 0.7X, then 0.49X and so on.  The END gain scales the same as the heal.

[Kaika]

Having already tested it, I can confirm it's still very worth it to proc bomb if that's your thing, it hits for very respectable damage with 4 procs and no recharge. It's just no longer a pocket nuke that heals/recovers end. Rad kinda needed a nerf and honestly this feels rather well directed. I do agree though ground zero could use a slight reduction in it's activation time here, but I feel the set isn't exactly hurting for AoE presence.

[Heatstroke]

23 hours ago, macskull said:

 

 

Also while I’m here, can we get Ground Zero’s animation sped up? 3 seconds is way too long for what it does now.

 

 

THIS.. 100%,, THIS

[ScarySai]

I'm gonna just say that the nerfs to rad make absolutely no sense with what every other armor set in this patch got. If anything, it should be buffed.

 

This, coercive and plant are the biggest L changes in the patch by far.

 

At least speed up ground zero, bare minimum.

Edited May 28 by ScarySai

[Maelwys]

17 hours ago, Maelwys said:

The lessened Regeneration buff is annoying (it means my Scrapper won't quite hit 50 HP/Sec any more!) but the Heal is worth far more if there are only 1-2 enemies nearby.

I got around to testing Radiation Therapy a bit more:
Below figures are for ED-capped Healing (2x Lv50+5 Heal IOs) and no local recharge (but 65% Global Recharge).

Live with nobody nearby:

Brainstorm with nobody nearby:

That's 7.5 End vs 5 End; 346.15 Health vs 157.34 Health (owch!)

It looks like the new version doesn't count yourself as a hit any longer; so you're missing an extra tick compared to what's on live.
So "Heal with no enemy in range lowered from scale 11% to scale 6%" is not accurate as it does not include the 57.69 "hit" on myself in the above screenshot.
In relative terms this is actually more like moving from scale 13.2% to scale 6%

Although to be fair; it recharges a lot faster (~11 sec rather than ~37 in my build) so over time it will still return more HP than before.

- - - - - - - - - -

Live with 3 foes nearby:

Brainstorm with 3 foes nearby:

That's 15 End vs 23.61 End; 519.22 Health vs 970.25 Health
And it also recharges a bit faster (~31 sec rather than ~37 in my build).
The Regeneration is cut in half; for ~8HP/Sec rather than ~16... which when factored in still doesn't catch up to the new figures.
So Brainstorm is the clear winner here for HP and Endurance recovery; and damage procs are still kicking in at about half the previous rate.
 

Edited May 28 by Maelwys

[csr]

On 5/26/2025 at 5:00 AM, The Curator said:

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Radiation Armor

 Radiation Therapy

• This power now has Adaptive Recharge. It has a base recharge of 25 seconds, and each affected foe will increase the recharge by varying amounts to a maximum total of 90 seconds. First target adds 20 seconds, each additional target adds recharge proportionate to it's buff strength.

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The "Notes" in the character creation screen say 20s and 18.5s for the adaptive recharge times instead of 25s/20s.  This is for all melee ATs.

[Shin Magmus]

   I just went ahead and swapped to Melee Hybrid preemptively to not die after Rad Armor gets nerfed, and also accepted the need for another outside AoE, changed the proc-slotted Rad Therapy to 5pc Panacea.

[Super Atom]

Ran some more missions on my main (rad/ss) tank on Beta. Ground Zero (Pre-nerf) was kinda crazy, being able to jump into a group and hit all of them AND knock them down and do damage and heal your team. Crazy work really. Ground zero (post-nerf) feels a bit trapped when using it now, I feel its position is further in the rotation now than before. The longer cast time felt right when it was over-performing, felt deserved. That has changed.

 

To alleviate, please lower the activation on ground zero. My suggestion is this.

 

Ground Zero 3s > 2s Activation time

 

I would even settle for 2.5s, 3 just feels a little too long now.

 

The meltdown indicator is very helpful, thank you. 

 

 

Edited June 9 by Super Atom
Updated to make more clear instead of making a new comment

[Shin Magmus]

   Count me in the "why do these 3s animations even exist?" camp.  So many overly long animations have been trimmed down over updates on HC, from Rad Emission toggles to Ice Patch to Full Auto.  Leaving a power like Ground Zero this slow even after nerfing it doesn't pass the consistency sniff test, and reads more like some people just don't like the power.

[Super Atom]

 

 

 don't forget about it 

🤌

[Maelwys]

FWIW, because it's not overly spelt out in the patch notes: for Radiation Therapy this line
 

On 5/26/2025 at 1:00 PM, The Curator said:

• Every subsequent target will yield a 30% weaker effect than the previous target

seems to refer to all damage dealt (the initial energy damage, the toxic damage DoT and any damage procs); as well as to the amount of health/endurance recovered.
This appears to be using the same mechanic and follow the same exponential diminishing returns curve as "overcap" Tanker AoEs did on a previous Brainstorm build.

My /RA Scrapper using it on a small pack of +3 (Lv54) Cimerorans looks like this:

51.96 Energy damage to the first
36.37 Energy damage to the second
25.45 Energy damage to the third
17.81 Energy damage to the fourth
12.47 Energy damage to the fifth
8.72 Energy damage to the sixth
etc. etc.



Note that proc damage should be higher than in this screenshot as it's currently still bugged; but it's going to be adding much less damage to large packs than on Live.

Compared to Live... when slotted up with damage procs and a Musculature Alpha slot; per activation you can expect Radiation Therapy to be doing roughly the same damage as before (or even slightly higher) to a single target; but half of the previous damage to 5-6 targets and only a third of the previous damage to 10 Targets.

The table below shows typical average damage per activation on Live and Brainstorm; including T4 Musculature Core:
 

Targets:	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
LIVE (4x Procs)
Energy Damage	18.14284	18.14284	18.14284	18.14284	18.14284	18.14284	18.14284	18.14284	18.14284	18.14284
Toxic DoT Damage	22.67873	22.67873	22.67873	22.67873	22.67873	22.67873	22.67873	22.67873	22.67873	22.67873
Avg Proc Damage (x4)	258.3004	258.3004	258.3004	258.3004	258.3004	258.3004	258.3004	258.3004	258.3004	258.3004
Total:	299.1219	299.1219	299.1219	299.1219	299.1219	299.1219	299.1219	299.1219	299.1219	299.1219
Cumulative Total:	299.1219	598.2438	897.3658	1196.488	1495.61	1794.732	2093.853	2392.975	2692.097	2991.219
BRAINSTORM (4x Procs)
Energy Damage	68.1935	47.73545	33.41482	23.39037	16.37326	11.46128	8.022897	5.616028	3.93122	2.751854
Toxic DoT Damage	85.26	59.682	41.7774	29.24418	20.47093	14.32965	10.03075	7.021528	4.915069	3.440549
Avg Proc Damage (x4)	134.088	93.86162	65.70313	45.99219	32.19453	22.53617	15.77532	11.04273	7.729908	5.410935
Total:	287.5415	201.2791	140.8953	98.62674	69.03872	48.3271	33.82897	23.68028	16.5762	11.60334
Cumulative Total:	287.5415	488.8206	629.7159	728.3427	797.3814	845.7085	879.5375	903.2178	919.7939	931.3973
BRAINSTORM (3x Procs plus Lv50+5 Dmg IO)
Energy Damage	93.1194	65.18358	45.62851	31.93995	22.35797	15.65058	10.9554	7.668783	5.368148	3.757704
Toxic DoT Damage	116.424	81.4968	57.04776	39.93343	27.9534	19.56738	13.69717	9.588017	6.711612	4.698128
Avg Proc Damage (x3)	100.566	70.39621	49.27735	34.49414	24.1459	16.90213	11.83149	8.282044	5.797431	4.058202
Total:	310.1094	217.0766	151.9536	106.3675	74.45727	52.12009	36.48406	25.53884	17.87719	12.51403
Cumulative Total:	310.1094	527.186	679.1396	785.5072	859.9644	912.0845	948.5686	974.1074	991.9846	1004.499
BRAINSTORM (2x Procs plus 2x Lv50+5 Dmg IO)
Energy Damage	107.2989	75.10926	52.57648	36.80354	25.76248	18.03373	12.62361	8.83653	6.185571	4.329899
Toxic DoT Damage	134.1522	93.90654	65.73458	46.0142	32.20994	22.54696	15.78287	11.04801	7.733607	5.413525
Avg Proc Damage (x2)	67.04401	46.93081	32.85157	22.9961	16.09727	11.26809	7.887661	5.521363	3.864954	2.705468
Total:	308.4952	215.9466	151.1626	105.8138	74.06969	51.84878	36.29415	25.4059	17.78413	12.44889
Cumulative Total:	308.4952	524.4418	675.6044	781.4182	855.4879	907.3367	943.6308	969.0367	986.8209	999.2698

And this only tells part of the story - because of the new "Adaptive Recharge" it will also cycle much faster than before vs 1 target but much longer vs 10 targets. 


So as Shin pointed out earlier in the thread... realistically you could now completely ignore the damage Radiation Therapy inflicts and just use it as a mule for 5-piece Panacea (providing you have sufficient Global Accuracy!). However if you still want to leverage it for damage as well then from what I can tell the best balance is going to be:


(Obliteration IOs are Dam + Dam/Rech; Touch of the Nictus IOs are Heal + Heal/Rech + Acc/EndRed/Heal + Proc)

On my Scrapper this slotting seems to be producing the optimum damage on Brainstorm over time, regardless of how many targets I'm fighting.
Compared to my 4-proc slotting on Live it's working out at ~143.4% of its previous damage over time vs one target, but only ~24.1% vs ten targets.

1-Proc version on Brainstorm:
vs 1 foe (every 16.128 secs) = 16.05839 DPS [258.9896 per activation]
vs 10 foes (every 31.068 secs) = 27.00247 DPS [838.9127 per activation]

4-proc version on Live:
vs 1 foe (every 26.718 secs) = 11.19552 DPS [299.1219 per activation]
vs 10 foes (every 26.718 secs) = 111.9552 DPS [2991.219 per activation]

Personally I've found it to be a noteworthy boost to survivability if I'm fighting only one target like an AV; and the DPS bump vs 1 foe means that using it for that purpose hasn't been quite as harmful to my DPA as it would otherwise be. However it's still a very noteworthy loss in AoE Damage output whenever I'm herding mooks.


Or if you're inf-rich and don't overly care about completely ED-capping its Healing Aspect:

(Obliteration IOs are Dam + Dam/Rech + proc; HO is an Acc/Heal; Touch of the Nictus IOs are Heal + Proc)

2-Proc version on Brainstorm:
vs 1 foe (every 17.968 secs) = 16.99362 DPS [305.3414 per activation]
vs 10 foes (every 34.758 secs) = 28.45544 DPS [989.0543 per activation]


Also... if you really need more recovery (Battle Axe?) then the 'Theft of Essence' +Endurance Proc still works fairly well despite being affected by the diminishing returns:


(Obliteration IOs are Dam + Dam/Rech; Theft of Essence IOs are Heal + Heal/Rech + Acc/Heal + Proc)
 

Edited June 12 by Maelwys

[Auroxis]

Yeah this is a big deal, "yield a weaker effect" didn't register to me as also reducing the damage you inflict.

[Shin Magmus]

   Gutted the power, it already has Panacea slotted.  I'm done engaging with how much it was nerfed.

[skoryy]

4 hours ago, Maelwys said:

Also... if you really need more recovery (Battle Axe?) then the 'Theft of Essence' +Endurance Proc still works fairly well despite being affected by the diminishing returns:

 

Why do you need even more recovery beyond Gamma Boost and Particle Shielding, though?

[Super Atom]

I think with Mael's breakdown, this is only further evidence to support lowering the cast time on ground zero. 

 

Give some with the take

[Maelwys]

28 minutes ago, skoryy said:

Why do you need even more recovery beyond Gamma Boost and Particle Shielding, though?

Gamma Boost is up to +40% recovery (whenever you're at 100% HP) or about +0.8 End/Sec
Particle Shielding is +50% recovery (unenhanceable; and not perma out of the box) or about +1 End/Sec

My BattleAxe/ Brute averages about -4.6 End/Sec just by spamming their attacks with no toggles running.

 

[Shin Magmus]

   Still time to realize the mistake of leaving Ground Zero's animation this slow, and dial it back since the powerset is being nerfed already.  Needlessly long animations do not add "fun" to the game.