The road ahead: Post 18.7 Changes and Vinkera's thoughts on how to fix NT's.

[Lliers]

I'd still like to see froobs have a cyberdeck of their own. One that doesn't set any flags, "Nano Focus Level" wise, but something that actually makes a decent weapon at 200. I thought if it added 45 to all nanoskills and 2% Nano damage at 200, it would make it a little bit easier to cast the top RK nukes.

I'd also like to see some lower end versions of Nanobot Sheler, Izgimmer's Wealth, Notum Overflow Injector, and possibly others, that can be used by froobs. They would be rather inefficent versions compared to paid, but would make froob NT life a bit easier standing toe to toe with mobs. I know that tends to come down to praying the mob dies first, and the NT surviving with a sliver of HP left, if any.

It's why roots and kiting are important for the froob NT tool set. It makes no sense to just stand toe to toe with an enemy and watch it chop you down while you do little mosquito bites of damage on it.

+45 to nano skills is not super compelling for a froob NT at level 200. I think it should have level/tier system like the basic/augmented/jobe-chipped cyberdecks with the buff at 200 at least +55 or +60. If that were the buff, I'd switch over my to using a cyberdeck without hesitation. I'm currently able cast all the froobable nukes. The nukes just don't land as reliably as they need to for froob NTs to be taken seriously.

Thanks, Vinkera, for taking the time to think about froobs. It means a lot.

[Vinkera]

Ahh, yes...

Nano Resist... As much as anyone may know, there's still something they don't. There are so many convoluted things that happen in regards to nano resist, I'd probably need at least a couple of hours to explain what I've discovered on my own.

The short of it is.. Even in regards to trash mobs, at very low and very high levels, some mobs are VERY unbalanced with the amount of nano resist they have. In those cases, it's extremely hard to land nukes or even other nanos, but... Some mobs have strong or weak resistances to entire nanolines, specifically. Some debuffs even have hidden values that specifically make them suck in the Shadowlands, that are specific to the individual nano (as far as I can tell). Luckily, nukes don't seem to be resisted in such a way much, if at all.

However, froobs can't get much MC "AR", for lack of a better term. I tend to believe that usually a mob's NR is a bit stronger than its evasiveness. Meaning, it's harder to land nanos on them than bullets by design, but then the other complexities come into play, depending on the nano. Fixing all the mobs in the game with ultra high NR sounds like more work than we could ask for from the developers at the moment. But, lowering the NR check on everything would most likely throw balance all out of whack.

This is a complicated problem with a difficult fix, sadly. It's been band-aided many times, where it's kind of a stack now. Pulling one out of the middle would break a bunch of other things in the process. It may be worth allowing froobs to upload "Distracting Shower" as another band-aid, because I doubt anything much more involved is actually plausible.

Yes, that was the short of it. ;p

[Jundant]

Ok vinkera so i was thinking about what u said with being offensive and defensive and how we should get buffs for which ever we are and my personal thought from being pvp/pvm are that if they were to give us more aad when in defensive focus that would virtually make us unkillable as my current setup most prof can not perk me and if they do all i do is pop NS2 or nanobot aigus. which would make 99% of the non nt players rage and not ever do Battlestation or flagged pvp against us anymore. and as for ur thought of being offensive and losing evades/aad is the dumbest thing i have ever heard of, for the reason being if they take that all away and give us more add nano damage wouldnt that be the same as what nanobot shelter did? reason being why they got rid of it? Most nt's that stay offensive all the time in pvp relay on there evades and aad to live since they barely have any when they are offensive focus/add nanodamage setup. but then again this is just my thought and i just wanted to put them out there

[Cratertina]

Froob wise, starting solution would be opening MC buffs to include infuse and mocham...

Other than that new NS1 and 2 is handy and not to expensive... To be honest I find froob NT more well rounded than my 220 NT.

Which brings me to 220 NT, what is its role in the world?

As suggested I tried doing IS with it, and it worked somewhat well, mobs have low enough AR and damage + AOE nukes take care of fanatics.. Yipikayey.

But I feel profession as a whole could use a lot of buffs.

Finaly I got 3000MC to cast top Dd nuke... Yet damage is lower than before... 3000MC Gruak feels insuficient, 21-24k damage, spamming then AoE Mastablasta cataclysm for Add clearing produces round 200k damage overtime, god forbid boss is tough I have to cast Absorbs then and Blinds...

On single targets its simple Grauk, Sl nuke, Dot... Why on earth are SL nukes not Instacast? That is the biggest issue for me right now. To many nukes have a hardcap to casting speeds.

I would much prefer instacast and then Local cooldown. Long cast time stop nanodeck attacks, long recharges lead to booring actions.

For example Trader now has a compelling casting sequence with 6-7 fastcast local cooldown debuffs, NT could be like that.

Imagine 5-6 nukes like Grauk, instacast 1s recharge 10s cooldown,

We go from 1-2 gameplay to asortment of funz that you cast inbetween nanodeck shots. Nanodeck should replace the old Spam, effective fast paced nukes would be NTs special attacks.

And finaly wtb instacast endgame nuke.. Whats with 5 second or so casting time on Cataclysm... VE is a much more pleasing nuke to cast.. Also has better aoe range.

Improve plox. Paid NT is distinctly poor now. Least engaging profession to play. GRAUK + Nuke wait 10 seconds, throw some perks and you are done roughly 20 actions per minute... NT should be a casting bananza, damage laddering nukes a la Shade, procs a la Crat.

I dunno, maybe NT is really fun in pvm amd I am doing it all wrong.

[mechanuf]

I feel the same way about the gameplay. NT gameplay feels slow, press button to nuke, wait, wait wait, nuke goes off, recharge, recharge, recharge, repeat. The constant waiting between casting makes it booring. All nanos seems to be slow to cast (often with capped casting speed) or long recharges. And while in recharge, we're essentally locked into doing nothing. Capped casting times makes us stationary and tanking .... a bad design for a squeshy profession.

I'd much rather have all the nanos insta-cast with local cooldowns to prevent spamming.
Insta casts means we can move and there is a lot of freedom and tactics in not being stationary.
Local cooldowns instead of recharge limits options for spam, but encourages the use of more nanos. With slow casts, we often resort to brute force to nuke the mob down, instead of doing the sensible thing of refreshing that blind or cast a root. We loose so much damage from casting that slow debuff compared to just brute force it and hope the mob dont crit. That feels very un-NT like.

I'd like NT's having lots of different and perhaps smaller booms, instead of slow grinding big booms.

[Vinkera]

Yes, lots needs to be tuned up, but the progress of change is taking a back seat to other things.

Other than the lowbie GIVA nukes and an off-hand weapon, I don't know of anything else in the works for us, unfortunately.

[fevaxium]

Copying my suggestion about pistols being viable:

Ok so after writing this post i discovered the candycane pistol build in some old thread and decided to give it a go. I added a custom imlpant to my left wrist besides my alphas which add to multi ranged and became able to switch between dual lust of xans and cyberdeck. Playing this build was a refreshing experience. but there are only a few curcumstances in game that let me play this build and not feel bad about it, here are my suggestions to make this viable:

Some SL nanos cyberdeck req. must be removed, the most important line being the nano resist debuffs, w/o constant barrage i can not land candycane on a lot of bosses and cant help the doc in team land his ubt. Candycane having 4sec cooldown makes it even worse when it is resisted, lowering my overall dps to unacceptable amount in endgame environment.

The other, less important SL nano lines that needs removal of cyberdeck requirement are roots and calms. Without these nanos this build loses what little utility nts have and makes it pointless to play pistols unless you are in a big pve raid group.

Aside from these, since the agg/deff slider needs to be on full agg for acceptaptable candycance cast time, this build is not good for either pvp or solo pve. Still I like to change the play style from time to time when the circumstances allow and the changes i listed above would greatly increase the number of circumstances where this can be played.

[Vinkera]

I'm not a fan of constant barrage as it is, but simply removing the cyberdeck requirement doesn't seem like too much of a problem. I don't see much of an issue with NT's being able to cast pistol mastery either. That would help froobs out, actually.

Regarding roots and calms, you already have versions that do not require the cyberdeck. They are a bit less effective, but I don't see a particular issue with that. Using a non-standard setup should come with drawbacks, and that's a very minor one.

[Cratertina]

Oooo, mah old candycane... I remember well, dual lust massive candycane spam + big detonation Matrix.

Then for a brief moment NT had amazing damage... Best of all professions.

Well then came DM exploitz and everything was nerfed, including legit pistol setup.

Any chance we would get cyberdeck requirement removed from most nanolines? Replace maybe with just specialisation reqs?

[Vinkera]

Oooo, mah old candycane... I remember well, dual lust massive candycane spam + big detonation Matrix.

Then for a brief moment NT had amazing damage... Best of all professions.

Well then came DM exploitz and everything was nerfed, including legit pistol setup.

Any chance we would get cyberdeck requirement removed from most nanolines? Replace maybe with just specialisation reqs?

Due to the possibility of NT's getting a second legit weapon, I'm hessitant to suggest any changes to deck requirements, honestly.

I'd like to see if that happens and how it works out first.