Nano-Technician Nano Document Discussion Thread

[Dancingrage]

Here's a good question:

Where's the +nanodamage going? While NBS is going to be a long term low intensity buff, what about times when you need to lay down the Personal Armageddon?

MP's have Focused from Trance, which will give them a massive boost in nanodamage for a few nukes, and I think NTs at the very least should have something similar...are there any plans to stuff a version into the perks or the like?

[DecemberSky]

Update:

Still writing the summary. This is going to take awhile, but itll be nice and easy to read!

[quieter456]

So yes, those are gone and their effects moved into the Burst system. Sorry froobs.

Allow access to burst system up to mk2 only without spec1/cyberdeck, profit?

[Puheenjohtaja]

Allmost all nukes are 100% nr defcheck and nr debuff is 80% def. Seems we have to go pure nanoskills setup. Bye defsetups if we wanna hit someone I think I'm running around 2550 matcrea atm but it just wont cut it after rebalance. People perking just nr1 will have huge impact on resisting nukes. We need "as" nuke

[Lliers]

There is a lot to like in the NT nano changes, but...

AoE nukes getting their recharge time increased by about a factor 5 to discourage mass kiting. We all knew something like this was coming.

I would like to know what the purpose of AoE nukes at all. There has been no other use for AoEs except in solo kiting or kite teams.

* If we are intended to kill one mob at a time, then AoE draws unwanted aggro in solo.
* In teams, I never AoE nuke so as to not accumulate unwanted aggro on the tank or healer.
* One possible use for AoE nuke would be to try to pull aggro off the healer, but this generally results in the swift death of the NT, so the sacrifice is hardly worth it.

If NT's are not to be weapons of mass destruction, then I would like to know what our role solo and in teams ought to be. Crats are better for crowd control. We will hardly be the main DD due to the cost and recharge/lockout times. Roots and snares are being discouraged across all professions. Is our future purpose primarily to feed NP to our teammates?

Other things that I'm finding a bit disappointing after spending a long career as a (Froob) NT:
*NT's loosing city warps and getting warp to grid so that we'd be just like Fixers, Docs, and Traders.
*All special nukes and special effect nukes getting pulled from our toolset (GA nukes, Gravitational Anomaly, Candycane, etc...)
*Apparently froobs will be able to receive NS, though I would have been perfectly happy to continue to prevent froobs from receiving Neuronal Stimulator, but rather have the ability for Froobs to *give* Neuronal Stimulator to SL players.
*I'm guessing the wiggle room for additional MC buffing items will probably not be froob friendly.
*No nano burst for froobs is really unfortunate.

I felt that NT's lacked clear direction and role in team before the nano doc, and now it's even less clear to me.

[Djiax]

Allmost all nukes are 100% nr defcheck and nr debuff is 80% def. Seems we have to go pure nanoskills setup. Bye defsetups if we wanna hit someone I think I'm running around 2550 matcrea atm but it just wont cut it after rebalance. People perking just nr1 will have huge impact on resisting nukes. We need "as" nuke

At the above : we have no idea yet what kind of NR number we ll be dealing with in the future, and we get at least 2 heavy NR debuff in perks documents (-800 and -1200 nr), which should allow us to hit at near 100% landrate when we need it (= when we want to alpha & stuff), specially after landing some of our NR debuff (because of the 10 sec cooldown, we should land 1 or 2 times before wanting to alpha, imo, so that s 300ish less NR on target to allow us to perk). NR perkline hasn t been rebalanced yet, so we don't know what gonna happens. Enfos can't keep Rage running all the time anymore, so there ll be some hole to exploit. MA always had some hole when UWOS isn't up. Other NT probably won't be perking NR if it still exists. All in all, and as far as our informations goes, there should be a lot less prof in the 2.5K/3.5K NR region.

Now, what does a maxed out endgame MC setup tells us ?

http://auno.org/ao/equip.php?saveid=172064 (put HHaB instead of merciless)

With trickle, new MC buff, and on a NM, that s 3134 MC self.

Adds in Umbral + Moch, you close to those godly 3.5K.

Of course this is an extreme setup and our buffed up defensive tools might not make up for the massive losses of evade, but as far as it goes today i could see some balanced setup popping with aroud 2.7K MC self and doing okey. Will be about balancing your setup pretty much.

The only unknown to me is nanopool managment, which might requires some added ameliorations in setup.

Now about my trox NT and his 20K HP, well i might go for 24K with added perk heal, 45% DtN and be nearly unkillable, and still do well with something like 2.5K MC. Time will tell.

Edit : i almost forget, no AAD for NR checking perk

[ArienSky]

NS2 is so pwned ;( WTB ns3 & 4

I am still waiting for the Agent documents, because NR2 is my usual panic-button as agent..

Glass canon indeed..
NS2 is a really good defence as it is, the new version way much less so.

Kind Regards
-Ariensky

[Butsut3kkai]

AoE nukes getting their recharge time increased by about a factor 5 to discourage mass kiting. We all knew something like this was coming.

I would like to know what the purpose of AoE nukes at all. There has been no other use for AoEs except in solo kiting or kite teams.

* If we are intended to kill one mob at a time, then AoE draws unwanted aggro in solo.
* In teams, I never AoE nuke so as to not accumulate unwanted aggro on the tank or healer.
* One possible use for AoE nuke would be to try to pull aggro off the healer, but this generally results in the swift death of the NT, so the sacrifice is hardly worth it.

If NT's are not to be weapons of mass destruction, then I would like to know what our role solo and in teams ought to be. Crats are better for crowd control. We will hardly be the main DD due to the cost and recharge/lockout times. Roots and snares are being discouraged across all professions. Is our future purpose primarily to feed NP to our teammates?

I m not totally agree on that. As froob it s true that AoE might no be really usefull, but extended people can often have a great opportunity to deal awesome damages with AoE especially at APFs for exemple.

I d really like to be a "mass destruction" weapon tho. With the current possibility of a really decent def setup, the glass canon isn t really significant. i d love to see a possible gameplay of Nts wich really allow us to make crazy nukes by sacrificing a big amount of def/HP.

If i read well there won t be 25K ish nukes anymore, but more lower nukes instead. as a pure PVMer POV, NT should be able to nuke at 100K ish every minutes or so in the same fashion of what DM is now. the pleasure of seeing the mob life reduced by half on a single massive nuke is really what i enjoy when i play my NT. i want a glass canon please
sorry for poor english, hard to expess opinion well but i hope you see what i mean

EDIT and oh pls give the MP ofab ring to NT

[xxaaaxx]

With trickle, new MC buff, and on a NM, that s 3134 MC self.

Adds in Umbral + Moch, you close to those godly 3.5K.

The link in the nano doc says that the new MC buff is in the same line as MP buffs. Not sure if it'll stay that way, but it would make sense if they don't stack.



If they DO stack however, then ignore all of the above and put me down for "holy [insert expletive here]"

[Gatester]

Allow froobs to use cyberdecks.

Would like to see nukes which check something other than Nano Resist, situational tool.

Reflect reducer Burst effect should be no longer than 5 second duration, 15 seconds is too long to strip several professions of that much of their defenses.

Make AOE blind 10 second in pvp, keep it 20 second or extend it for pvm.

Is the 0 nanocost on roots intended? I think that is fine actually, but I would like confirmation.


That is it from me, overall I like it although the damage in pvp from all the nukes thus far seems excessive. Nano resist as a defensive skill might need to be adjusted. The DtN+nano costs are going to drain an NT incredibly fast so I am not sure how well that will balance out.

[RedWatr]

looked thru it, looks fun...and scary. kindof sucks that lots of us did all that work to get NBG/NBS for our twinks, now flies out the window.

endgame NT pvm dmg looks like it'll be over the top.

time to start searching for all those weird replacement nanos.

[Kintaii]

Gonna answer a bunch of stuff here. If I don't directly respond something you've asked, it's probably because I've answered it elsewhere in the thread or otherwise don't have the information at hand at the moment ('cause I'm writing most of this stuff from home) - We'll get the various questions/replies added into the opening posts soon enough so everyone has a central repository for this sorta thing. =)

1. -50 attack range debuff sounds like still useless... many players and mobs have buffed attack range much more then 40m.
2. Izgimmer's Enflaming Self-Righteousness
3. What? NT planned be tank??? (wipe hate list and after it instant 60k taunt).
4. I can't undestand this calculation. I see, this is not calculated time for casting, recharging and cooldown - NT not soldier who can hold permanent DPS from start to end. For landing all this nanos need time. Regular situation on SL-mishes - NT cant do good DD if mob not so fat and died fast.
5. Blind icons very identical. It's not so good.
6. Many nanos want so much nano for cast. This is really need? If need what compensate it?

#1: Like others said, it's % based. =D

#2: Trivia: Enfraam wrote this nano (and Izgimmer wrote the other one).

#3: Yup.

#4: Well, remember - All the nukes now are relatively quick-cast with no caps and only 1s global cooldown. This means that, assuming you have the nanoinit, when you target a monster you will be casting four nukes in four seconds; if you have the Cyberdeck (and are 220), you'll have a level 6 Burst very quickly.. and if the mob dies before you can get your Burst off? You have time to go fine another mob before the charges wear off. So even if you can't alpha the first mob, you can unleash a L6 Fire Burst right at the start of the next encounter.

#5: I'll poke Genele, might be able to do some colour changes there.

#6: As stated before, a lot of values in this sheet (and all the others) are 'close-ish'. They're by no means final and in some cases we've even purposely gone over (or under, as the case may be) where we think we may *really* need to go - This, again, give us some wiggle room when we're testing all of the changes. Once we've had a chance to have some practical experience with how things play out on Testlive, we can start finalizing numbers then. Like I've said before - The purpose of what we're doing right now is to make sure the feel of the *designs* are good. Changing numbers is easy; tweaking your game's entire design is a horrendous nightmare that should only be undertaken by the crazy, stupid, or deranged (luckily everyone on the AO team is all three [they ask during the interview]).

All in all I like the changes a lot.

Some questions tho:

1) While its nice to see us getting more NR while being alone, in relation to what other profs got the gain seems substantially lower. Or was it decided that our current NR is too high and that we would need less NR while counting in doc buffs. (pre: 140im+142inr+40iic[+100infmap]=322[422] vs. post: 250im)

2) for the same line: incompatiblity with ibehe/Kraken essence (results in loss of nr unless a doc is around, way more ncu usage that way). Or is that the silent wink that NTs should be low hp?

8) Nullity Sphere: no root is nice, 15s duration is ok. About ns1: pity with the debuff really... can still refresh absorbs tho and cast nano heal. And would still allow weap users to shoot... suppose the lowbies can live with it. About ns2: wtfh At least set the dmg2nano a bit lower. Also: Will we need to recast the long-term shelter after each ns2? If so it would be nice to have the shelter that was running before ns2 re-executed at the end.

#1 & 2: One thing we've been doing a lot of in the rebalancing is giving professions various things in their toolset that they feel they need to be at best capacity, while not making them *quite* as attractive (and, of course, not letting them stack). The HP/NR additions & changes to the Mockery are in-line with the rest of the changes we've done for other professions; it helps the NT feel as though they aren't *reliant* on other professions to buff themselves, but it's not as good as it would be if you had the real things. Same reasoning and logic behind the new MC buffs for NTs (which, for the record, do *not* stack with the MP buffs).

#8: NS1 is designed to let you stand there and refresh yourself mid-fight; you can buff, you can heal, you can regain nano, but you won't be doing damage. It's meant more as a "take a breather" nano, both for you and your team - If the Doc is suddenly getting pinged, the NT has a window of opportunity to activate NS1, hit the ooh shiny taunt nano, and hopefully let people get their stuff correct in the next fifteen seconds.

NS2... I'm not 100% sold that we've hit the mark on NS2 just yet. I want them both to be similar but equal - Choices, each with their own point and purpose. But as it stands I'm not entirely sure that NS2 is attractive enough to make it viable. I'll be talking more with Genele and we'll see where we end up. =)

Questions:
- What's the difference between the different calms? I can see none, except the requirements; so you could just keep using the lowest one.
- Can you cancel the damage type buff?
- What about the new roots? E.g. I do have Burden of Atlas, which I won't be able to use as a froob. Will my Burden of Atlas change into "Velocity Cessation" or will I be stuck with a useless nuke and need to get a new one? I wouldn't mind rolling a new one, but that doesn't seem how you guys are usually doing it .

Typo's?
- layers self only, Mockery-line on target. If intended: I like it the other way around so I can use layers to keep somebody alive (due to lack of heals :P)
- AC debuff line from nano burst is in nano skill debuff school...

#1: Yeah, I... I actually have no idea what's up with that. I'll ask Genele and get back to you guys.

#2: Yep! The nuke will then gain the damage type of whatever weapon you have equipped (if you have nothing, then all your nukes will be melee).

#3: Burden of Atlas will change into Velocity Cessation automatically when we press The Big Red Button that ships all of this to live. =)

#4: Layers are self-only - This was one of those "tough choice" things, as we did really want to keep layers on target because hey, cool, buff. On the other... *sigh* Ok, look - How many times have you gone to cast layers on yourself, forgotten you had yourself targeted, and cast that big nuke? Sucks, doesn't it? This is one of those places where I'm kinda begrudgingly making a conciliation to noobs - Having to target yourself to cast layers is... honestly, kinda dumb. If there was some way I could make it check "is friendly target, cast on target; is hostile target, cast on self" then that'd be awesome, but... yeah. This is to help the noob standing in the startup area trying desperately to bring his defenses back up and then finding himself back at reclaim wondering how he died.

#5: Yeah, that's probably a bug - Will poke Genele about it next week.

There is a lot to like in the NT nano changes, but...

AoE nukes getting their recharge time increased by about a factor 5 to discourage mass kiting. We all knew something like this was coming.

I would like to know what the purpose of AoE nukes at all. There has been no other use for AoEs except in solo kiting or kite teams.

* If we are intended to kill one mob at a time, then AoE draws unwanted aggro in solo.
* In teams, I never AoE nuke so as to not accumulate unwanted aggro on the tank or healer.
* One possible use for AoE nuke would be to try to pull aggro off the healer, but this generally results in the swift death of the NT, so the sacrifice is hardly worth it.

If NT's are not to be weapons of mass destruction, then I would like to know what our role solo and in teams ought to be. Crats are better for crowd control. We will hardly be the main DD due to the cost and recharge/lockout times. Roots and snares are being discouraged across all professions. Is our future purpose primarily to feed NP to our teammates?

Other things that I'm finding a bit disappointing after spending a long career as a (Froob) NT:
*NT's loosing city warps and getting warp to grid so that we'd be just like Fixers, Docs, and Traders.
*All special nukes and special effect nukes getting pulled from our toolset (GA nukes, Gravitational Anomaly, Candycane, etc...)
*Apparently froobs will be able to receive NS, though I would have been perfectly happy to continue to prevent froobs from receiving Neuronal Stimulator, but rather have the ability for Froobs to *give* Neuronal Stimulator to SL players.
*I'm guessing the wiggle room for additional MC buffing items will probably not be froob friendly.
*No nano burst for froobs is really unfortunate.

I felt that NT's lacked clear direction and role in team before the nano doc, and now it's even less clear to me.

On AoEs: We're not trying to remove kiting - In fact, among all of us on the team, we all agree that though kiting can be somewhat problematic in certain ways, we don't want to discourage it from the NT because it really is a unique and cool part of your profession. Anyone who's ever played an NT has, at least once, gone out and rounded up a huge group of brontos or something, and then lobbed VE at them until they all bleated and died. And it. Was. Awesome. You've all experienced that - It's a cool feeling. We don't wanna remove that from the game.

... but. While kiting is cool, kiting is also something that needs to be controlled a bit. The 5s cooldown on AoEs is *global*, not local, meaning that while you are kiting you will not be doing anything else. Note, however, the cast time - Unlike Kel's, all of the AoEs are now no longer capped, including the big mofos at the end of the line. This means that even though the NT will be in slightly longer recharge (and unable to cast other nanos), as long as you have the nanoinit you won't have to stop *running* while you crank out the decent damage, and that's a bit more important. ;P

(I should also note that's why we've added in a lot more AoE DoTs, to help ensure the NT keeps aggro while kiting. it's also an interesting choice for the NT in PvM, as their single-target DoT and their AoE DoT are both in separate stacking lines [line A and line B], meaning they *can* run two DoTs at once... if they wanna risk potentially hitting something else)

Most of the points on your other list have otherwise pretty much been touched upon through-out the thread, but regarding Neuronal Stimulator it's exactly like you said you'd like it: Froobs can't upload NS, but expansion players can cast it on them. =)

As for your larger question, though... The NTs "basic" direction and role in a team is pretty simple after this design: Damage. Pure, plain, out-right damage. NTs DD after this, as I've said before, should place them in the top percentile of all damage-focusing classes in the game. At the same time the NT brings support in the form of a versatile debuffing set thanks to the Burst action and the NR Debuff Nuke line, as well as offering the team massively enhanced nanopool buffs/regain, good AAO debuffing, some crowd control options and even some limited tanking capability.

The NT also has good options for soloing as well, as their new nuking system/lines will enable them to be more competitive damage-wise at a wider range of levels, and the Burst debuffs/Roots/Calms are also all very powerful tools which will help in soloing content.

They are also a very versatile profession under these changes, (and will be even more so with the incoming perk changes we currently have planned) and will be able to perform very differently depending on how they equip their character; I fully expect to see 220/30/70 NTs dual-wielding pistols in the BS and doing great even if their nuke damage is suffering because they decided to go for a more defensive/evades-based setup. I also fully expect to see a team of six NTs fully kitted out for MC going crazy at a tower battle somewhere with AoEs and Bursts all over the place.

I think the changes we've made really allow the NT *themselves* to define what they want their major role to be, offering choices for the player that drives them to experiment and tweak and play around with their profession's options. Truthfully I can't wait to see what you guys make of it. =D

Allow froobs to use cyberdecks.

Would like to see nukes which check something other than Nano Resist, situational tool.

Is the 0 nanocost on roots intended? I think that is fine actually, but I would like confirmation.

#1: We *MIGHT* consider allowing some kind of 'special cyberdeck' for froobs that only works with Burst levels 1/2 down the road, but anything higher than that will remain SL-based.

#2: Also not a bad suggestion, but something for more down the road.

#3: Also not sure what's up with that one. Will bug Genele.

[Crowena]

#4: Layers are self-only -<...>This is one of those places where I'm kinda begrudgingly making a conciliation to noobs - <...> This is to help the noob standing in the startup area trying desperately to bring his defenses back up and then finding himself back at reclaim wondering how he died.

You could do it like MA heals are - first one is self only and the better ones are target based. Starter first aids and heal kits are also self only.

[nanoforcer]

I belive what ppl are saying about the layers is that perhaps the lower ones (from 1- 700-ish) could simply be modified to ALSO get a second version that can be cast on others, to migrate damage from tank or whatever.
Could perhaps add " - other" to the name so it's clear

[Mountaingoat]

Lots of new and exciting stuff in this doc. Phrase I most like to hear when playing my NT "god NTs pull such hard agg". Glad to see that's still on the table (and outside of the "shiny" nano). I, as another poster said, also like those massive chunks of damage of up to 30k (enhanced with boom effect of DM) on mobs. I like to throw it in MA's faces with that massive DD perk of theirs that they always put in their logins. Kinda sad to see that go. But all in all positive changes I think. I love going suicidal with damage/agg on my NT (and tanking when I'm not supposed to be for the lulz), the "shiny" nano plus our damage looks like loads of fun to me.

With cyberdecks, are we gonna be smacking them in the face with the computer thingy on our forearm? Or is the cyberdeck design gonna change? Or am I missing something?

[Parranoid1]

Why is it the top two cyberdecks have higher crit mods then the endgame agent rifles?

Other then that, very interested to see how these changes play out, looks like it could create alot of creativity and alternative plays for NTs.

[Kintaii]

With cyberdecks, are we gonna be smacking them in the face with the computer thingy on our forearm? Or is the cyberdeck design gonna change? Or am I missing something?

Tracer effect. ;P But we will need a new animation for the attack.

[Phargus]

Tracer effect. ;P But we will need a new animation for the attack.

Zomg lasers!!!!111oneone

[Jayice]

One of the problems I have with the new NS2 is that it replaces the current NBG/NBS with an exceptionally rare nano. Beyond that, the current NBG/NBS drains our nano pool fast enough as is already (~80% DtN). Now that Izzy's Wealth has been replaced with a much smaller nano pool buff, I don't think using NS2 post-rebalance as an "OH @#$!" button will be practical.

Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that it doesn't drain your nano pool like NBG/NBS does, but our pool won't be able to take much heat with the huge nanocost on nukes now. Now unless you can use NS1, then NS2 back-to-back, I can't find a problem with NS2. MK1 to absorb the "alpha" and NS2 for damage mitigation from regular hits and less damage-intensive perks.

[whitey]

looked thru it, looks fun...and scary. kindof sucks that lots of us did all that work to get NBG/NBS for our twinks, now flies out the window.

They will still have useful functions, it's definitely not 'out the window'.

One of the problems I have with the new NS2 is that it replaces the current NBG/NBS with an exceptionally rare nano. Beyond that, the current NBG/NBS drains our nano pool fast enough as is already (~80% DtN). Now that Izzy's Wealth has been replaced with a much smaller nano pool buff, I don't think using NS2 post-rebalance as an "OH @#$!" button will be practical.

I wouldn't be surprised if NS2 was made rollable, or atleast a much higher droprate than currently. Also, it's currently 150% DtN (for nanomage, and higher for others), ~80% is just how much of the damage you absorb. 100% DtN will be a large improvement.