Major NT Changes in the Rebalancing Act

[Gunnandahalf]

Oh and I would rather the combo idea to be somewhat complex, rather than just a few different combinations...

[aramsunat]

should only half of the things what Masta's said make it to live, I'm happy this all sound like a good change

[ninst]

So, what's going to happen to NTs when the great rebalancing patch starts to head towards live? Well, for one, triples and such are most likely going byebye. So, better start lvling that triplenub if you want those easy kills, 'cause they're not gonna be around forever. Good stuff, LE nukes were so insanely boring anyway.

LE nukes are the only thing that make us competitive vs soldiers. Sure, it allows us to kill 97% of soldiers who are too lazy or stupid to resist/remove blind without breaking a sweat. But good soldiers are 50/50 fight currently, and if you remove LE nukes or just lower the amount of reflects debuffed, we wont be able to kill decent soldier ever again. Hopefully there will be a reflect debuffing nuke combination that will allow us to kill them even without LE nukes.

So to give an example of how tings might work out, that's straight out of the imagination, we might cast an Ice nuke, it deals some damage, and because it's ice, the opponent gets sort of frozen, leaving him more open to a melee damage attack, so we cast a melee damage nuke on him, pretty fast too, since the ice nuke went into local recharge, and because the ice-nuke was cast first he takes additional damage from the melee.

Just a note here: one of our strong points is that almost all damage we do is radiation. If for example your ice nuke would do cold damage and made our target more vulnerable to melee damage we would get into problems when fighting coon/absorb professions. I think enf/advs are hard already for us, last thing we need is our nukes to do several different damage types.

Exciting times are coming! We're moving away from the insta-kill arena that is current day PvP

Insta-kill arena? Who can you instakill nowadays except greenies and low hp huggers? Most of my fights last about 20-40 seconds and I like it this way. If we are going to get more defense thanks to more viable NS but paying for it by loosing LE nukes then I say: "No, thanks." As an option? Sure. Forcing everyone to play more defensively? No. I like current concept of fragile but hard hitting NT.

[aramsunat]

I think one of the nuke combos will have the effect of reflect ripping so dont worry about soldiers

If your thing is to keep mashing the dubbule and triuppul buttonz then go for it, push hard, and push it a lot you do not have much time

[Mastablasta]

awesome NT pro quote also:
"So, better start lvling that triplenub if you want those easy kills, 'cause they're not gonna be around forever. Good stuff, LE nukes were so insanely boring anyway."

I can see you got our best interests at heart, or maybe your own? do you even pvp? it's a serious question.

**btw I ccl about the triple, but you touch my double, I'm gonna TP your house

I pvp'd loads in the years before LE nukes. LE nukes ruined NT pvp, turned it into some kind of retard mill where the hardest and largest part of it was to keep a lid on the flames in the forum. I never liked the LE nukes and I never expressed otherwise. Double is also going away, of course, it's an "LE nuke" after all.

The only thing I can see from your post is that you're quite content with the dullnes that is today. I'm sorry that you feel that way, because there was so much more fun to be had in the old days, SL and LE ruined that by taking away everything that was NT. And no, there's not going to be a drop of sympathy for this current 1 button fest from my side. No matter how much it requires a "superior tactics" to figure out when to cast double or triple on a target.

[Mastablasta]

Well, I gotta agree with this aswell.
I chose to play my NT for a reason, like ive played other chars in other games for a reason.
In those games i've seen a rework of how skills work for balance, adding newperks/removing old, but not a complete change in how the class is played.

I think its the best to try keep NT as we know it when it comes to playstyle and tactics and rather balance it from there. This goes for all proffesions realy, I dont think anyone wants to log on after the patch and feel like they are playing a completely new character.

When you think of it we already have a nuke that requires another nuke(dot) to run, even our main nuke line benefits from this, realy just need to add similar nukes like DM earlier in the game.

I welcome a change for nukes having a debuff that might come in usefull for different situation so we got to think abit yes, but I dont want to have to learn to play my character again.

In the end, who is it that decides what we NT's realy want?
The quote about LE nukes didnt realy show a great insight of the NT proffesion, a NT like every other class has different toolset and we can give up a pretty good defense tool for a good ofense tool.
People pretty much go for the LE nukes, PvP as we know it is all about killing fast if not your target either get away or kill you.
The problem with NT's is that if you make a choice if you want a defensive or ofensive focus, you got to stick with it for 30 minutes.

Sorry, it's going to completely change. There's not going to be a shred of "I should only use this one nuke for 50 levels, then this other nuke for 50, and this one the next 50 and finally after raiding all endgame encounters this combination, when not just spamming this 1 nuke for the rest of eternity". If you seriously can sit and say that this is the idea situation, the most fun you could possibly have. Even if your idea of rebalancing from there includes adding so there's a new nuke every level that's 5% better than the previous level, then that would change nothing at all. The same boring old 1 button powerspam that has been NT since about 2004 would still be there.
And hey, that's exactly what the entire NT community tried for many years to voice dislike towards. Sure, maybe I'm the only one left from that time, though I know Solstiare is here sometimes, but apparently those ideas were what the devs picked up and the devs are who decide what's best for the NT population after all.

And if you think I don't have any insight into the NT profession because I don't care for triplenubs and the ridiculous overall complete lull of boredom that things have become at the highend where it's so easy to deck out for pvp, just tweak everything towards dodge ranged and don't go too high on HP and get a nice pool. Then go out and spam LE nukes. Sure, there's a tiny bit of brain required to decide when to cast the LE nuke, but you can reduce the amount of brain by piling on more dodge ranged.

And like you say "pvp is all about killing fast" well, like I said in my initial post, that's disappearing. PvP is of course still going to be about killing fast, it will always be in every game ever, but the speed with which it is possible differs, and in AO it's going to go up a lot and make PvP encounters take longer than they presently do.

[Mastablasta]

I'm all up for new stuff, it's like re learning the game which is pretty cool, hopefully there's more diversity for us, I did enjoy pre SL being able to not be the same as everyone else

oh how about a decent high end aoe? With more than 2m range oh and name it after me hahaha

Will blinds and nukes fall under the same line? Eg can I blind and nuke at the same time? I'm guessing no but layer spaming/nulitys would be seperate?

AOEs will likely be extended across all level ranges, so we can expect some more and better AOE nukes.

Currently there's been no firm information on what nanos will share cooldowns. Some nanos will still remain on the "global cooldown", that is how they work now. Where blinds will land, local and castable in between nukes without delay or with full recharge, I don't know.

Oh and I would rather the combo idea to be somewhat complex, rather than just a few different combinations...

There's a couple of ideas up and floating, neither of them are set in stone or chosen, I'm sure we'll get more firm info in the future and be able to discuss it here. But the overall idea is that there'll be some added complexity. How much, well, we don't want to have to fire 5 nukes to do something good once we'll have to wait and see what becomes available, but for instance complexity also implies many different results from shorter chains...

[Edta]

I also like the idea of "kill fast or be killed" idea in pvping as NT. But the way it currently is for LE - having 1 nuke for all situations - is something I detest. The new situation has room for a lot of things; there could be something that deals with reflects, there could be something that deals with layers, there could be something that functions as a burst of damage. But all at once? No thanks.

[DocJones]

Heyas,

keep in mind: we still need some fast, hard hitting nukes to maintain our "glass cannon" role in team missions, etc. Often enough, when running a team mission with other DD'ers, i have trouble to nuke more than 3 or 4 times on a mob before it goes down

So, basically, what EDTA said: "Kill fast" is still needed.

regards
/Z

[Mastablasta]

LE nukes are the only thing that make us competitive vs soldiers. Sure, it allows us to kill 97% of soldiers who are too lazy or stupid to resist/remove blind without breaking a sweat. But good soldiers are 50/50 fight currently, and if you remove LE nukes or just lower the amount of reflects debuffed, we wont be able to kill decent soldier ever again. Hopefully there will be a reflect debuffing nuke combination that will allow us to kill them even without LE nukes.

Just a note here: one of our strong points is that almost all damage we do is radiation. If for example your ice nuke would do cold damage and made our target more vulnerable to melee damage we would get into problems when fighting coon/absorb professions. I think enf/advs are hard already for us, last thing we need is our nukes to do several different damage types.

Insta-kill arena? Who can you instakill nowadays except greenies and low hp huggers? Most of my fights last about 20-40 seconds and I like it this way. If we are going to get more defense thanks to more viable NS but paying for it by loosing LE nukes then I say: "No, thanks." As an option? Sure. Forcing everyone to play more defensively? No. I like current concept of fragile but hard hitting NT.

Please try to refrain from assuming that in the future everyone else will stay the same and the changes discussed only applies to NTs. This is the major problem going on in every single balance thread. People look at the changes that affect them and then complain that in the context of the present those changes are bad.

The radiation is a strongpoint, but it is also a weakness in the overall game mechanics that we have one or two strong absorbs that make us all streamline towards a single damage type. It is however a very valid point that I am aware of, and like I said above it was only a fast example, there is no currently released information about what exactly this nanoweaving will do, other than there being several different effects.

Don't forget that the game will only ever be balanced around teams, the whole "my fights last 20-40" seconds, because you're alone, doesn't really come very much into play. Sure, it'll always be possible to play on your own and do stuff that way, but all design changes will be based around teams of players. And in that respect, we have instakills.

[Mastablasta]

I also like the idea of "kill fast or be killed" idea in pvping as NT. But the way it currently is for LE - having 1 nuke for all situations - is something I detest. The new situation has room for a lot of things; there could be something that deals with reflects, there could be something that deals with layers, there could be something that functions as a burst of damage. But all at once? No thanks.

Heyas,

keep in mind: we still need some fast, hard hitting nukes to maintain our "glass cannon" role in team missions, etc. Often enough, when running a team mission with other DD'ers, i have trouble to nuke more than 3 or 4 times on a mob before it goes down

So, basically, what EDTA said: "Kill fast" is still needed.

regards
/Z

The NT concept will remain the same. Powerful fragile ranged DD. We will have our hardhitting main damage output still, and one thing that's also in the changes is the cyberdeck, it may turn into an auto-nuke device or a hardhitting weapon. The main damage output will remain, and other things will lie on the side of that and not interfere as drastically as it does now.

[Shrubberyman]

I don't have a problem with LE nukes going away if every prof is reviewed in consequence and if game mechanics are changed to take into account. I however really hope that either IU will have the reflect ripper perma attached to it or that it's kept in our toolbox in a readily available way.

You already covered the blur around defence atm, however one of my strongest hopes, the kind of hopes that will prolly influence the choice of clicking on "Cancel" or on "Resuscribe", is about % resistances. Nothing, nothing, is as retarded as flat resistance (or even immunity when resistance >= 100%), because there's no way you can twink or team around them. Basically, everything that is more powerful than 20% resistance to anything has to go or be tweaked imo.
Hence my question : are there any plan to hardcap resistances or lower resistances?

[Mastablasta]

I don't have a problem with LE nukes going away if every prof is reviewed in consequence and if game mechanics are changed to take into account. I however really hope that either IU will have the reflect ripper perma attached to it or that it's kept in our toolbox in a readily available way.

You already covered the blur around defence atm, however one of my strongest hopes, the kind of hopes that will prolly influence the choice of clicking on "Cancel" or on "Resuscribe", is about % resistances. Nothing, nothing, is as retarded as flat resistance (or even immunity when resistance >= 100%), because there's no way you can twink or team around them. Basically, everything that is more powerful than 20% resistance to anything has to go or be tweaked imo.
Hence my question : are there any plan to hardcap resistances or lower resistances?

Resistances are being looked at. There has not been anything specifically said about numbers, for now, but it has been stated that % resistances will be looked over and stuff like the total blind resistance is going to be nerfed hard.

I hope you aren't all sitting around thinking that soldiers are the only relevant target. The reflect fix pretty much fixed the issue we had with low hp protecting people from IU, and now high HP is a defence against us.

[Shrubberyman]

Lol Masta, no, I'm not being obsessed in any way by soldiers. It's only that if the reflect mechanic remains as is, it's still a serious defence vs not capping attacks. Even with a "mere" 25k hp, capping a hit is highly unlikely : Enfos, sols, docs, keepers, some agents, this is their realm. With everyone being able to stack somewhere between the very minimum (20% from graft and bracer) to whatever will be the reflect cap, I certainly wish that we retain some way to go through if we want to (I'm not opposing a local cooldown of some sort though).

Resistances being looked at is some real good news.

[Molotoff]

Overall, interesting changes.

My main concern would be the role of the NT compared to other classes with nukes, namely crats, docs and MPs. When reading the shared info on those professions, it seems that their nuke toolset will get a good boost. Will we end up as being a crat or MP without pet, or a doc without heal ? I certainly hope not.

On a more specific topic, i really hope NS2 duration won't be reduced. I love it so much for PvM. And as was said, if fights are supposed to last longer, why shorten it ? It could also stay as it is, and a new PvP oriented NS without selfroot could be added.

[MisterBishop]

Question: does this "Local Cooldown" mean that looting and equipping will no longer be locked out during nano recharge?

[Mastablasta]

Overall, interesting changes.

My main concern would be the role of the NT compared to other classes with nukes, namely crats, docs and MPs. When reading the shared info on those professions, it seems that their nuke toolset will get a good boost. Will we end up as being a crat or MP without pet, or a doc without heal ? I certainly hope not.

On a more specific topic, i really hope NS2 duration won't be reduced. I love it so much for PvM. And as was said, if fights are supposed to last longer, why shorten it ? It could also stay as it is, and a new PvP oriented NS without selfroot could be added.

Their nuke tools will be buffed up, but if you look at them now they are quite pathetic compared to what we have now, in the past crats and MPs max nuke potential were about 1/3rd of our potential nuke damage, and I would not think that they would ever come close to being as powerful nanousers as we are now and are going to be.

Lengthening fights doesn't generally mean "let one guy be invulnerable for longer" it's kind of a boring mechanic, and while its cycling time may change, the duration will be reduced as it will allow movement. Reduced how much? Who knows. But under any circumstances, with a local recharge you'll be ready to do things 2 seconds earlier than you would now.

Question: does this "Local Cooldown" mean that looting and equipping will no longer be locked out during nano recharge?

Not for nanos in local recharge. You can test this out already by casting snowball 2 or improved complete heal (if you're a doc). For anything that stays working like they do now, I figure it won't change.

[RedWatr]

See? this is what bothers me, with all due respect Masta, i don't think you have a clue about what's going on for todays NT. Since your pvp knowledge obviously ended with a flash of grief towards LE changes, you actually thinking we just double our way to success now is somewhat ignorant.

even at tl5, I use a variety of nukes, double + totp are only my main spike dmg nukes, and a vital part of my toolset; both allow me to adjust to situations when combined with debuffing and crowd control, there's already enough to do just to maintain control in kiting/CC/debuff situations without having to take a calculus course to put together a decent combo.

explain how we'll kill or even have a chance against enfos, docs,adv's, Solds, Agents in fp enfo/doc, and maybe I'll have some idea how this is "better". o wait, you have no clue what these other professions are doing now do you? because you haven't pvp'd in what..almost 3 years?

you're way too bias'd without having any proper insight on how things are in pvp since LE imo. maybe take a more open approach and hear our arguments as if you're not already headset on pushing thru these changes pls, or hand the baton to our other pro which i know does actually pvp, and hasn't hidden in a cave since the release of LE.

** I am NOT saying that these changes are bad, what I am saying is that I do not want to be a test monkey for the entire overhaul of a profession at this point. I know what's up with test, and there isn't enough time or people on there to properly test this type of thing with all the new changes in every other profession to test as well.

[Fleshman]

Yea i have to agree with Red.
In your previous posts and 'ideas' you are just basically promoting your own setup.
You speak alot of PvP but you are still completely unseen by me in BS so far.
Those who can does, those who can't .. teach.
I'm all for changes. But don't take credit for these. You were working in another direction.

Don't worry Masta. I'm sure you possess other usefull skills, but PvP isn't one of them.
My NT prof representative should spend more time ingame than posting visions about PvP/PvM in his ideal Atrox world, where other profs just wants to give us hugs and maybe even a kiss if we behave ^^

Anyway these changes are just white noise until we get some concrete info.


Signed a non-pacifist.

[Mastablasta]

See? this is what bothers me, with all due respect Masta, i don't think you have a clue about what's going on for todays NT. Since your pvp knowledge obviously ended with a flash of grief towards LE changes, you actually thinking we just double our way to success now is somewhat ignorant.

even at tl5, I use a variety of nukes, double + totp are only my main spike dmg nukes, and a vital part of my toolset; both allow me to adjust to situations when combined with debuffing and crowd control, there's already enough to do just to maintain control in kiting/CC/debuff situations without having to take a calculus course to put together a decent combo.

explain how we'll kill or even have a chance against enfos, docs,adv's, Solds, Agents in fp enfo/doc, and maybe I'll have some idea how this is "better". o wait, you have no clue what these other professions are doing now do you? because you haven't pvp'd in what..almost 3 years?

you're way too bias'd without having any proper insight on how things are in pvp since LE imo. maybe take a more open approach and hear our arguments as if you're not already headset on pushing thru these changes pls, or hand the baton to our other pro which i know does actually pvp, and hasn't hidden in a cave since the release of LE.

** I am NOT saying that these changes are bad, what I am saying is that I do not want to be a test monkey for the entire overhaul of a profession at this point. I know what's up with test, and there isn't enough time or people on there to properly test this type of thing with all the new changes in every other profession to test as well.

I'd like to ask you to come up with something better than some kind of ridiculous assumption about things you have absolutely no way in hell of knowing even the slightest thing about. Allow me to bow in the dust before your superior knowledge of lowlevel twink pvp, you are right, I haven't touched lowbie pvp in several years. That you seem unable to realise that exaggeration promotes understanding, I guess I'll have to start cutting things out in cardboard in future, but please, don't hold it against me if I forget to do so.

Also, you seem to be of the perception that professionals can "push through changes" or have any kind of influence on anything being developed outside of forwarding information back and forth. You think that anything professionals say is going to be taken right then and there to be some kind of masterword that the devs go on to implement? It's not. It's a discussion group. That's it. These changes, do you know who came up with them? The devs. Not me.
This is all stuff that is lined out to us, and then we can debate the pros and cons and suggest improvements based on player feedback, which we're only getting now because we haven't been allowed to publicize any information till yesterday (and you may note that I was the first professional to come out and actually give their community as much information as possible, but I guess that doesn't count for anythin to you, but consider, I could've just said nothing at all, or only said "yea we're getting new AOE nukes").
Stuff like LE nukes going away? Was news to me the other day as well. I've never suggested it, since they were the only thing that made us viable in today's pvp environment, in a dull way which is what I've been opposed to.
If you think that because I don't enjoy LE nukes that I am incapable of discussing how to make things more interesting in pvp and pve and have NTs be capable of being a threat to other professions like we are now, then you are sorely mistaken, but then, from reading your post I don't find that surprising in the least.

You think I'm not open to discussion or arguments? Well, none of you have been posting any arguments other than "we're scared of change" like now, and that I don't know about pvp because I haven't bothered with the unfun thing that it has become at high lvl, I have no knowledge of how "fun" it is at low levels, last I tried it wasn't any fun because credits and items ruled everything, blocking anyone with less than several hundred million available to make their characters from participating in any meaningful way.
So, if you could get your own facts straight and take an open and interested standpoint in relation to these things, instead of immediately attacking me for no reason other than your own ignorance, then we could get somewhere.

You are worried that you will lose your killing power in pvp, because the only thing you know about pvp is LE nukes, complete healing agents, 120% resistance and 40k hp enforcers. So, if that's the case, wouldn't it be valuable to have someone without this ingrown idea of what pvp should be like, because that's what it's like now? Or don't you value a fresh viewpoint.
And if you want DecemberSky to voice his oppinion, even though as professional his oppinion should be that of the community, then maybe you should send him some PMs and ask him to be active, and not just drop out of the grid after the first week. Which is quite annoying, actually, as now when there's actual information and feedback to recover and discuss, I'm sitting here alone and as I have no qualms about saying that he knows pvp better than I do, I would of course like that he was here as well to participate.

For your fears for how the changes will roll out, then Kintaii has expressed that he most definitely does not want to have any kind of untested catastrophe happen. Things are going to be tested thoroughly and we can expect a long betatest before it gets anywhere near live. That the previous dev teams have said this before they're also aware of, but they are pretty confident they can avoid this