Got on my nature toon this week after 4 years and wow! What happened to nature. Absolute garbage as DPS
In a vacuum, on sparring targets, a lot of powers seem good and well balanced. Put into practice, and that’s where things change. Nature is one of those powers that has fallen off due to the nerfs to its supercharges, it being a DoT power, which isn’t inherently a problem on its own, but it’s held back because of the meta we’re in. That problem is especially exacerbated by the Eye of Gemini meta which has gotten progressively problematic since it came out. For one, it’s a power entirely reliant on gorilla for boss fights and wolf for hallways, if you’re in a struggle group and wipes start to happen, there’s a good chance you won’t be at your best because you won’t have enough super to go back into gorilla when you want. Your base loadout is generally just getting your dots up, your real damage comes when you use that in conjunction with the loadout in gorilla or wolf. You can’t do one without the other. Secondly, EoG is an issue for nature because it’s a reason adds die too quickly. We’re in an awful meta where tossing sc as much and as fast as possible is the best dps. Nature’s best dps is when it’s allowed to stack its DoTs and go into wolf or gorilla, can’t do that if everyone’s EoG is killing the things way before you can even get into your supercharge. That’s why gadgets is so good, you can put 3 supercharges in stealth and abuse EoG on top of its base powers being really good. Elec is also a DoT power but circuit breaker is so broken and on such a low cooldown that it alone can compensate. Nature doesn’t have a supercharge like that and it’s only good burst is savage growth so it’s difficult to even make a different play style with it. There’s a possibility you can make it work in crit since it’s a more prolonged fight, but it’s a lot of work where the reward is most likely not worth the work. That being said, if the devs don’t want to nerf EoG, reverting Nature’s supercharge nerfs would actually help it quite a bit.
Hallways with less that 10 adds in a group is where I really see nature and electric suffer. There's just not a lot "big burst" damage coming from dot's. By the time you get all the dots going, the adds are dead or very close before nature can pull off (can't remember the name) the power that makes em take all dot dmg at once.
Nature is NOT a garbage power at all. Its just not a cookie cutter one size fits all power. Yes it is true that it can fall behind on hallways but that is if you are not sure how to use it. This is a power that you are meant to have multiple loadouts for different situations. For example, if you know adds are dying quickly than why try to set up 3 poisons? But for bosses it is one of the stronger powers. If all you care about is topping the scoreboard with 1 or 2 loadouts that you are better off being a different power. But if you are willing to learn how to use it than it is a Good Power.
Because that doesn’t work as well as we think, not for all powers at least. Nature is one of them, it doesn’t have the powers to run a more burst loadout and still be competitive in the current meta. It has savage growth, thorn burst, and roar(which requires poisons) and only one of those is good. If wolf was still a 12 sec/2500 then it could definitely be much more viable in hallways, but that’s only one of the problems it has. One of the other problems is something that can be entirely out of your control. All it takes is one death or one wipe where gorilla isn’t ready and you’re useless. It’s boss loadout isn’t even something where you can carry another armory for, it’s gorilla loadout is easily ones bread and butter and the only part where one can make up lost damage in hallways. Nature is unique in where you have to actively hold 50% of your supercharge in fear of wiping, in a meta where regurgitating super is the best dps. No other power has that problem. You don’t get rewarded for the amount of work you put in with nature and some of that isn’t even the powers fault.
Ok but who says that’s all you’re allowed to use? If you choose to only use power set abilities than you are purposely handy capping yourself.
You’re right in that you don’t have to use natures powers, but the only iconic power that aren’t supers that is worth running for hallways is sonic cry, then you’d use vortex trap and dirvish. That may have it perform better, but in my opinion, not enough to make it competitive. That would just make it a worse version of mental mights AoE and we’d be shoehorning players into being super speed as it easily has the best movement mode dps powers. It also doesn’t solve the fundamental issues with nature. The power set is in a tricky spot.
I think the fact that certain iconic abilities are so strong that they have to be included in loadouts in order to “not handicap” yourself is an entire issue on its own that has been a problem for a long time and should be addressed There are just too many situations where nature needs to be able to leave their supercharge and re-enter it, and you can’t do that continuously when all your supercharges are 5k costs. When a power goes from being undisputedly the best to one of the least used in the game because of a single update, that signals there is a problem with the changes made. That is not balance.
Sonic cry is not the only power that’s good iconics. Why is it an issue? Every single MMO has abilities outside of your class to monitor max. A person has the right to not use said abilities. But why should you do as much damage when you personally choose to not use everything available. And regarding nature. Nature does one of the best if not the best rotations because they have so much background damage to mix in with other forms of burst. That’s why nature is so strong. Because it can have a high volume of ticks going on while using other abilities. So saying nature is not good is a false statement. A true statement would be “I haven’t found a way to make it work”
I already said why- it’s an issue because of the fact that you are handicapping yourself by NOT using iconic powers. Emphasis on the handicap. Point me to where I said it’s not a good power. I said it’s one of the least used. And it is, I checked the populations before wavedox and all the other sites stopped working and the only power that had consistently lower populations amongst endgame players (where maximized dps loadouts and rotations are found) was atomic. I main nature and sorcery, so to say I haven’t found a way to make it work would be false. The reality is in order to truly maximize the potential of nature you need to be able to utilize the supercharges given to you. You CAN do decent numbers in human form but you will always do better with your supercharges. When all of them are 50% you cannot consistently leave and re-enter which affects your dps, especially when you are stuck with either being unable to re-apply your poisons or doing less damage in human form while you build up the super again. Nature is not “so strong” right now. It’s not garbage, but it is not even close to being on par with the top powers.
Yes it is. If you’re alluding to heat vision and frost breath? Those are definitely not worth running on an AoE rotation. For one, you have to dedicate a whole art slot for solar, which is definitely not ideal or best in slot for hallways as we’re in an EoG meta and taking out Trans or Strat is a serious dps loss. Frost breath? I wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot pole except for maybe on Ice for the PI And I know your second point wasn’t directed towards me, but as I’ve said before, ideally that’s what nature would do but put it into practice and it doesn’t work out that way. Any competent group will deny you damage as you won’t be able to setup all those ticks. With that knowledge, any loadout that is made to compensate for that, using iconics or not, won’t be competitive. If you truly feel that way, I’ll pay for your power change tokens to go to and from nature and invite you to a TSDe group of my choosing, in a week or however long you need to find a suitable loadout and see if you can stay within 20 mill of us. Now I’m not offering this because I doubt you as a player, I’m offering it because I don’t believe nature can compete regardless of the player and this threshold I gave you is far fast the point of even being competitive.
FB is one of the stronger abilities when used right. Saying you wouldn’t touch it just means you don’t know how to use it. It’s a strong power for might and for precision.
Yes I do. You pop frost breath and jump cancel for some quick damage, let some of the ticks ring out before jumping out of it, or let it’s whole animation play, just depends on your rotation. That’s all there is to it, it does nothing special with mediocre damage. As for prec, sure you can use that to 4 tick but it’s bad. I’d rather use more bots for a clip or any of the super speed tree powers and run another supercharge to take advantage of the EoG meta.
FB can be used both in single damage and AOE. FB does good damage within 2 or 3 ticks of damage compared to other powers. Letting the power continue will only net you in weaker overall damage. FB also freezes your enemies in place letting you setup immediately a second ability in which case for me will be Amplified HV. Without Solar, HV is mediocre I admit that but it shines incredibly well with Solar in which it becomes both a single and AOE damage.
FB just feels like a filler power, from what I’ve tested, the damage it does, even jump clipping out of it immediately or only allowing it do a couple of ticks isn’t worth it. I would never use it in my rotations as I’m trying to draw out as much damage as I can. At least in raids, FB freezing your targets is not a good thing, it ruins the CC rotation of your tank and makes their job much harder. And at least for me, I would never use solar on hallways over Trans/Eog/Strat. Those are best in slot for a reason, of the 3, Strat is the most replaceable for might but you’re better off using a Scrap for more Gemini procs or Flute to do more Supercharge damage because of our Gemini meta.
If the tank isn’t able to pull adds because a player used FB then that tank doesn’t have enough dominance. In all my years I have never heard anyone say that using FB will ruin a tank. As of matter of fact the adds don’t stay chilled long enough to be a problem since there are so many attacks going off that would juggle them or levitate them etc…
That’s not it. The CC rotation has nothing to do with Dom. Too many CCs in quick succession will render the adds immune so the tank can’t CC them. In hard content like critical, it means those adds get up and start wailing on the tank thus immensely stressing them and the healers out. It’s why trolls have to pick and choose when to debuff adds in critical for example because a lot of debuffs are hard stuns. Tanks maintain their CC rotation because it is the easiest way for them to keep the adds in a neat pile and it keeps them from taking too much damage. Not to mention, an immune sniper in TSDe is risk to the group because their could be moments where the tank or support role is not able to lunge and the person who the sniper is targeting might not block. A tank who can maintain their CC rotation on adds means nobody has to focus on them.
I can see his point though and I know for me personally I like to use powers from the power set im using not just half iconics as that just bums me out having to run dervish or sonic cry for DPS builds. I pick a power for that power not how it best works with iconics that all can do
