Hardlight/Gadgets vs Nature DPS

Hope the next nature update. They will remove shapeshifting and replace it with multiple target poison skill. It would be great. Maybe shapeshifting belong to its own tree like beast boy& matrianMan.

Actually meant that a good HL/Gadget DD will obviously beat Nature almost all the time. A good Nature DD can keep up with. Won't go as far as saying that they will beat those two powers but you won't get totally blown out the water in damage out.

Edit:

And IMO the only way a good way to top the charts as Nature is to mod for balance and use Thorn Sheild/One- Handed. The downside is that you will use slot more power that you'd probably like.

Nature can burn bosses faster than hard light or gadgets all day everyday twice on Sunday.

I can tell most of these people never run with good dps...

Nature is (in my opinion) the worst dps power out at the moment. It's DoT based which means you have very little burst capability and since most adds in this game die within a second using DoTs as primary damage isn't effective. Ontop of this many of natures powers have very slow animations, just watch the video and compare those animation lengths to those of many other powersets, half the time by the time you finish the animation of some of the powers the enemy will be dead. Furthermore many of the powers that do have a burst damage component to them have a very low base damage.

With t5 coming out and since we wont overgear the content instantly and things will take time to die I can see nature dps falling less behind however it will still be the worst dps power ingame.... at least until it gets its very needed update

Incorrect, my buddy out dpses hard light and gadgets with Nature all the time like it's going out of style. I don't know what he uses though, I've seen him turn into a wolf or something though.

You know it doesn't count if your buddy has full t4 and goes against scrubs that hardly know howto dps in their crappy escaped inmate gear.....

It is mathematically impossible for a good nature dps to out dps a good hardlight/gadget dps.

What am I a noob? Of course he out dpses full t4s with Nature. His name is King Atom on PS3. Maybe he drinks a cola or something because he's that good.

not saying you're a noob or your friend isn't a good nature dps, im just trying to point out that its mathematically impossible for equally geared/skill players of nature to out dps those of hardlight/gadgets. I don't want the OP to get incorrect/skewed information.

thats why I'm I'm switching my nature toon to quantum unless you go wolf form then you can't keep up and when you do go into wolf form you are giving an attack boost but so is the group so you are boosting the other DPS's. I my experience Wolf form is the best to nature DPS if you are not might base if you are you can try to put a might base loadout on wolf form to boost attack but its the speed that's the problem it just too slow. I will try to find a loudout that uses nothing but its fastest attacks and see how that goes I'm guessing it will not go well since that might be less damaging attacks

Weird everyone seems to be doing good with wolf. I tried wolf in fos 2 with equally geared Electric dps. It was hard to keep up with him. as soon as i went human form I started outdpsing him easily. By the end of the raid i had 300k more damage in fos 2 no wipes on either dps.

I did same thing with Hardlight and trust me was not easy keeping with Hardlight. Hardlight has too many clippable burst moves in its arsenal that can be used to kill things faster. Even if i clip with my nature its hard to keep up with Hardlight. I just think that is somewhat unfair. because as new Tiers come in, DOT powers become less popular for dpsing and every low end raid, alert topped by a gadgets or hardlight.

Sorcercy and Nature wil be revamped soon. How about starting these threads after the revamp.

Wow, you actually beat an Electric DPS with Nature? I'm hardlight and Electric in the hands of a good player I'm neck and neck with them. What I have noticed from Nature that if used properly it can burn boss's a lot faster than hardlight or gadgets.

I love how everyone has an opinion on this topic and the opinions vary so much. Some of them insightful, some of the conflicting, some pretty bad, and some thought provoking. There's no need to exaggerate the strength of Nature but a lot of players have written it off as weak without ever really learning it.

Rotation to try at least once
Phase 1 (speed stacking): SavageGrowth->VineLash=>Bloom-X>Jump=>Briar->Harvest
Phase 1a (short stacking): SavageGrowth->VineLash=>Bloom-X>Jump=>Harvest
Phase 2 (thorn slapping): SpinChop=>ThornShield->SpinhChop=>ThornShield->SpinChop=>ThornShield (etc)

Phase 1 is to stack and spread poisons to establish a foundation of sustained damage. Phase 2 is to supplement that foundation with burst damage. Phase 1a is a shortened stand and spread alternative for really weak mobs. The are other alternatives for short stacking. Find what works for your pace. For mobs weaker yet, just go to Phase 2 immediately. Keep and eye on when DoTs are dead to repeat the stack and spread phase.

Gadgets/Hardlight
I feel you can start any number of threads where you compare Gadgets/Hardlight to _________ (fill in the blank). The polite way to say it is that those two powersets are clearly the two strongest for DPS right now and have been for a while. I laugh when people use them as the touchstone for comparing their powersets because I personally believe Mental/Fire/Ice are the real standard. Regardless of your personal preference, what do you think the devs are more likely to do? And honestly search your heart on this one... Will they bring every powerset up to the top with the two strongest? Or bring the strongest/weakest towards the middle of the pack?

Performance of Nature
In a skilled group, sure, I'm not top DPS against a really good Gadgets or HL player. You might not say it was close (within 30-40k). But I'm getting my damage doubled or being beat out by 200k either. Against most other powersets, it is pretty close. In an unskilled group, I'm top DPS every time. I've gotten speed feats in groups as the top DPS. I've come into groups that have been wiping and turned the next run into success. But think about what that means. We've passed the threshold of good enough a while ago. There aren't any second tier speed feats for finishing the raid even faster yet. If I'm getting beat on the scoreboard, we must be having a breeze of a run because my damage out is a very nice threshold to pass. So unless you're a FOTM scoreboard chaser, there's nothing wrong with Nature DPS. If you are a FOTM scoreboard chaser, why aren't you Gadgets/HardLight?

Wolf form is for Nature healers that don't know how to DPS but get impressed at the results they can get with little effort. It's good for them to run their DUOs and CHALLENGEs in. They get impressed at how easy it is to put up damage because they're only used to how weak healer damage is. They like it better than actually trying to DPS because they aren't skilled yet at building a DPS loadout or rotation. And that's not an insult. That was me 1.5 years ago. It's for people that haven't discovered how much research goes into becoming an effective DPS. It takes math, experimentation, practice, comparing notes, and experience. Or just a really good guide to have been written for you.

1) Shifting damage modifiers are better than a fixed 40% modifier
2) No ranged attacks really hurt you in key fights
3) Putting 'Wolf Form' or 'Return to Normal Form' in your loadout will take up loadout slots you can't afford to give up

The day all power sets stop comparing themselves to gadgets and hard light is the day they see there true potential

I love Nature in PvP, but Nature is wayyyy to slow in PvE compared to HL/Gadgets. The only way I'm top DPS is if I use Briar, Whirling Dervish, and clip Thorn Shield.

I hope in the future nature update. All nature skill has initial big damage followed by poison tic. No more poison spreading. That will fix alot.

a) Sort of off-topic, but do you have any idea how the arena crit chance/damage nerf works? I'm particularly interested whether it's just a hard cap, or if it's a percentage reduction of what you already have (chance/damage from innates etc). This basically tells you if you should completely max innates for pvp weapon crit chance/dmg, or you should stop wasting skill points after a certain threshold. I've searched everywhere for this type of info with no reliable answers, and found some other thread where someone was claiming that arena critical damage was nerfed again with the HomeTurf DLC.

I think the best way someone could test this is with Primal Wolf with plants spec and the Rampage supercharge.

125 (default) + 15 (melee) + 5 (plants spec) + 60 (skillpts) + 10 (iconic) + 50 (rampage) = 265% critical damage (Ouch!)

With something like 61% critical chance (base, innates, carnage, rampage) it shouldn't be hard to get all those crits going.

b) Does anyone know how the pvp counter damage works? I know it scales with 100% precision but i don't know if this damage can crit, or whether it replaces normal weapon damage (BB/interrupt) or just gets added to it.

c) Can canine form be used to reliably escape pvp combat? In DPS role, Hard Light Shield doesn't last long enough for me to shift to canine and stealth, especially with the transformation delay (even on PC).

Sorry for the long read, but this type of stuff isn't documented, and I'm not in the right "environment" right now to test things myself.

Great questions but unfortunately that's not anything I have details on or have tested myself.

That sounds like it would improve our single target damage at the expense of our mob damage. Mob damage is typically where you get your numbers.