Sorry my alerts just notified me that there were posts in this thread (or I just did not notice yours). To answer your question I would go for the Human Poison-Based (Advanced Mechanic) loadout as described in the first post. You can experiment with using Voracious Plants or Hive Mind in Carnage's slot if you want to. Replace 1-2 Harvest usages every 12 seconds if you use Voracious Plants. This could compromise your damage a bit though but will be pending on how well Weapon Mastery combos/regular combos are updated in their upcoming pass. If you are comfortable with switching forms here and there then the Human->Wolf (6-DoT Stacking) would be good too. I would not touch any Canine involved rotations if your client can't handle shapeshifting well as you shift forms quite a bit and need the animation to play out near perfect for the rotation to be effective. Hope that helped even if it were delayed.
Maybe you can help me out too. I'm thinking of switching to Nature on my DPS mostly because it's underperforming compared to other powers and I want to take on the challenge of keeping up with the top powers. I mainly play endgame 8-man content, which means, currently, I'm in UM reg or elite most of the time. That being said, if I do go Nature, I want to be able to do the absolute most amount of damage per second possible. I'm looking for tips on what loadouts and rotations would allow me to achieve that. If I play smart, I believe I can safely stay in melee range for the most part if that's what will net me the most DPS. I'd also like to have a midrange alternative for situations where melee isn't possible. Also, since I'm currently a might-based power, all my mods are might. A nature loadout/rotation that benefits from this would be great, but I guess I can remod to Prec/Might if that would be better. Thanks in advance.
Human->Wolf (6-DoT Stacking) Midrange https://forums.daybreakgames.com/dcuo/index.php?threads/sores-nature-guide.74/#post-215 Setup: SavageGrowth, VineLash, Briar, Wolf/Harvest <-- It's tricky to get that to clip, if you can't then do "Harvest, Wolf" instead Main: LupinDarts/Swarm/Carnage, LupineDarts/Roar/Jump, LupineDarts/SerpentsCall, LupineDarts/Harvest, LupineDarts, LupineDarts/Harvest Rotation: Setup->Main->Main->Main->Main->Main->Main Human Poison-Based (Advanced Mechanic) Melee + Midrange + Range https://forums.daybreakgames.com/dcuo/index.php?threads/sores-nature-guide.74/#post-215 For Melee I suggest: > Weapon: Dual Wield Setup: UltraFlurry/SavageGrowth, VineLash, Briar, Harvest/Carnage Main: UltraFlurry/Swarm, UltraFlurry/Harvest, UltraFlurry/Harvest/Carnage Rotation: Setup->Main->Main->Main->Main->Main->Main
What Sore posted would work with the only side note being if you don't really want to remod. I can give you my exact build which allows for both using just 1 Armory if you don't. I need to get on the game to detail everything I do so let me know and I can get it to you later today sometime. Edit: Sore actually has it already under Human->Wolf->Dog (6-DoT) already. I usually do Roar before Serpents Call though just so I can sneak in Serpents Call on my way down from a jump. I also keep Carnage in human instead of Harvest for solo situations and use a fast Thrash/Fling instead of Harvest. If things die before switching to Canine it is not usually worth using Harvest anyway. I'd be better off doing a second Vine Lash -> Briar on the other target. If you need midrange simply use the Primal Wolf variant Sore mentioned and just ignore Canine is on your human form loadout. Using Canine also has the benefit of not "tracking the target" if you don't want to. Most melee attacks fling you towards the boss and this could be bad (death). Canine keeps you still but that also means transforming out of Canine and doing a quick lunge if your target repositions. That is not usually a problem though. Also Canine's attacks are single target so you may want to splice in Dual Flurry -> Canine -> Fling -> Return to Normal if you want more area based damage. Time your form change as a clip. Canine has the added benefit of quick spreading and easy burst in Solos/Duos too. It also gives you plenty of routine breakouts if you are in a heavy control environment. Do whatever works for you. Going Sore's route may require 2 Armories based on your preference though which may be a problem if you are mid-combat and you want to switch ranges due to Armory cooldowns.
Please read my edit as I found Sore already had it for the most part. Ultra Flurry is still a great melee attack so what you choose between the 3 rotations will depend on your Armories and how sung you want to be with the boss. Personal experience I can use 7m rotations on every boss so far in progression content. The only boss I go midrange for is Trigon simply because I want to get pentagrams easily. So you should be good using Canine for most of the game.
Not really. There'd only be three of the six dots that could be "carried." As it is, people change forms and have a whole second loadout. There's plenty of other things to be doing and casting. The only thing that would make it easy is if things are dying quickly. I like the idea. For sure, it'd be a savior for PS3 where switching forms constantly is out of the question.
Hi everyone. Just changed to nature and was wondering if anyone could give me some help with a loadout. I'm not going to mess around with firm changes so was thinking Vine lash/savage growth - briar - harvest for 3 dots that are spread (4 if I go never range) then WM combo into voracious plants. Rinse and repeat. Not looking to be top end in damage but want to at least be able to do duos and solo stuff. Also been thinking about what could be done to improve the AM when it forms to the next change and was thinking would it be possible for our poison spores to be great like pheromones so have something that applys dots and spreads them then have a removal method so all the poison spores are removed for extra damage. So something like vine lash/savage growth - briar - ??? (3rd dot plus spreader) then use harvest as a mass removal power that does extra damage for every stack of poison it removes. However in order to stop it being apply 3 dots and remove (like mental, atomic, gadget etc) have the removal power be on a 10 second cooldown. This would mean you have to allow your spores run then remove them. Do ppl think this would work. Could also do the same for electric. With electrocute (big storm thing) as dot spreader then voltanic bolt as removal.
Your idea for a blossom like move for dps has been going around for a while actually. Sometimes I love the idea other times I hate it. Right now when you have multiple nature dps in an instance you can use harvest on the other player's dots and you will have your own set. Very useful if you get knocked out or miss a refresh. For the remove dot move to be fair that would have to be removed. It would be way to powerful to let one dps do the burst move and then only need to harvest the other players dots to get the full affect again. It also wouldn't work to balance around this seeing how you can't always have 2 nature players dpsing. A 10 second cooldown like you suggest seems weird to be honest. A gadget dps need 3 moves then they get a big hit. If this idea would happen you would have to do 3 moves, then get a big hit. Why would you wait for the big hit and then have to the 3 powers again just like gadgets, when gadgets doesn't have to wait? Having the cooldown just long enough to restack you dots would make a bursty and play from the tray alt playstyle some people keep asking for.
There would need to be some balancing issues but if they can make it so pots and hots don't overwrite I'm sure they have the ability to make it so that dots don't overwrite and only yours are removed when you did the removal power. The thing about the cooldown is so its not just apply dots then remover apply dots remove. That's basically a 1234 am as opposed to a dot one. I would suggest having the dots be strong enough so that if you let them run for 10 seconds then remove that is roughly a 12 second rotation. I would like to see them balance the number around the dos from a full 12 second 3 dot then removal rotation VS say 3/4 full rotations of the 1234 am as that's how many you are likely to get off in that 12 second window. This would mean that we are still a dot play style. The other two powers could be ways of increasing the strength of the dots or the speed of the ticks. Or a some kind of single target power like voracious plants where the more poison stacks we have the bigger the hit. That way we'd have the 3 dot and spread an aoe removal and a single target burst hit. And then maybe a buff. Would give people a reason to stay in human form and maybe give a use to give mind in dps stance as could maybe have hive mind increase the speed of the ticks if there are two or more poison spores on an enemy.
So, again, someone wants to change the powerset because they personally don't like how it plays? I would much prefer we actually wait and see how how the balance pass affects both a) weapon damage, b) Thrash & Fling Damage, c) overall DoT damage, d) pet damage, e) if more burst damage is added during setup and f) speeding up/giving more flexibility to form changes. There is so much that can be done and keep the fundamentals of Nature intact that new players to Nature (or those not specializing in it) are too impatient to wait for. Also because you are new you don't even know everything that can achieve. For example Vine Lash + Savage, Briar and Harvest only gives you 2 Poison Spores. If you go to midrange and include Savage Growth you get 3 Poison Spores. The reason this is is because Harvest does not include any Poison Spores. All it does is spread and refresh them. That's it. Now a human form only loadout could work (pending weapon damage balance passes) but you need more than you mentioned. Specifically a version of this is listed under Human Poison-Based (Advanced Mechanic) of the first post. That will really only work if you want pure range in pure human form. This is probably the least effective way to do damage, however, so you will need to expect to perform badly. Form changing is not all that bad even on a PS3 as long as it is limited. For this reason you should really use Wolf->Human (Loadout Extension) from the first post if you are insistent on staying in human form. Still don't expect optimal results. Now as for changing cooldown times. So you want to break certain ways to play Nature? The Human->Wolf (6-DoT Stacking) relies on a lot on Harvest having a short cooldown for various clips. You can't fit in, say, Voracious Plants in these loadouts. Nature healing will soon take advantage of increased damage at various ranges. The following loadout works extremely well when healing and interacting with another Nature user: Savage Growth - Harvest - Cross Pollination/Bloom - Metabolism - Regeneration - Swarm Shield It relies heavily on Harvest keeping its current cooldown as it is the main, and very effective, heal. On its own it will allow for 1/3 of the Poison Spores to be setup and maintained. With a Nature Damager in the group it can take advantage of 3 Poison Spores. Sore lists an alternative under the The Harvester loadout of the first post. Harvest needs to have a 1 second cooldown. Additionally you can go for a full out battle Healer loadout such as: Savage Growth - Harvest - Carnage - Metabolism - Swarm - Swarm Shield Which again relies on Harvest as both a clip and the main heal. This loadout has the benefit of up to 4 DoT's and a Precision buff. Without Harvest having a 1 second cooldown the effectiveness of this battle Healer loadout goes down dramatically. So no making Harvest work as a mass removal trait and on a 10 second cooldown will not work as it will affect established loadouts and playstyles in other aspects of Nature. If you want to improve Nature (and Electricity) don't change its fundamentals. Nature's fundamentals are listed in my first paragraph. I mean no direct disrespect but please have a pretty firm understanding of Nature before you make suggestions to altering its traits that directly affect the many ways to play Nature (in both roles). Reading the first post of this thread helps a lot with this. I'm not kidding when I say I have 11 Armories that cover all of the various ways to heal and do damage in PvE. I have an additional 4 Armories dedicated to PvP. 5 of those (2 Healer and 3 Damage) Armories either rely on Harvest having a 1 second cooldown or have relied on it in the past (1 of them, Damage).
Im sure I never said that. It was only a suggestion and based on your reply if seems you don't want to change your play style just because you are used to it. It was merely a suggestion as a possible change as opposed to something that requires people to constantly change forms every few seconds.
Which then affects someone that is well established with the powerset. If you actually with a Primal Wolf loadout (not Canine) you really don't need to change forms all that often where it counts (boss fights). You change forms maybe once every 30-60 seconds. Most of your damage is either done in Primal Wolf or Primal Wolf is used merely as a loadout extension (as I showed) and you do most of your damage in human form. Also point f) of my first paragraph directly affects the usage of form switching. The most common suggestion would be to reduce its animation time from 1-2 seconds to 0-1 seconds just like Canine. Also keep in mind that weapon damage directly affects Nature in pure Primal Wolf and human form. Before even that stage we can't just say "well give it Advanced Interactions but in a DoT form" because that is how other powersets work out. Yes of course I don't want to change how I have been playing for going on just over 6 years if you count my testing time. From day one Nature has maintained the DoT Advanced Mechanic. It has done well with this before the devs got into this "never nerf always buff buff buff" mindset. At one point Nature was considered a fairly balanced powerset in all regards. It has almost no redundancy. Everything basically has a purpose and use. So yes I would hope that Nature continues this trend and tries to main a pure DoT Advanced Mechanic instead of Advanced Interaction with DoT tacked on. If this means telling new Nature players to find a different powerset that attunes better to them then so be it. I mean an Ice player wouldn't take my comment easily if I said "Hey guys I'm new to Ice. I think your damage is a little too bursty. If I need to play an objective you lose out on so much damage. So instead let's change how Chill Effects work so that instead of buffing the damage of Arctic Gust or Avalanche directly each Chill Effect will add a DoT layer. Then when you use Arctic Gust you extend its duration." I'm fairly certain Ice players wouldn't be thrilled to see that happen either and I know for certain even core rotations will change because of it. I don't main Ice because I don't want to mainly Tank and use Mobile Focused Attack. So why shouldn't a new Nature player expect to be a Healer and use Damage Over Time instead of Advanced Interactions?
FYI I'm not new to nature. Was my main power when I first started (here since launch) but I have moved about and switched powers as my league or pug life has dictated. Now my league requires healers so I'm back where it all started My idea was just a suggestion of a way dot power sets could work. I never said it was the best way or the way I think it should play and at no point have I said I don't like the way dps is handled with nature I just merely stated that I didn't want to have to mess around with form changes. You let opinion is your opinion and your play style is you're play style. But you stated numerous times that you don't want changes implemented that don't suit you're particular play style. Why not think about the way that the community could benefit even at the detriment of your particular play style or are you more of a ME ME ME UNIVERSE ONLINE.
Really? Or you could see that I have stated in relation to what Nature has always been, since launch, a DoT powerset. It has always been like that. I am by far not the only one that uses Harvest and relies on the 1 second cooldown. All of those replies, rotations and usage are listed in this thread. I know of other players that play a "Harvest Healer" as well. An entire way to play, noted in the first post, is based around Harvest clips. That section was based around videos of other Nature users or discussions from other Nature users. I do not update the first post myself. Your change is also not in scope with how balances passes are being delivered. Quantum, Fire, Gadgets and Celestial did not change their way of play just to suit/avoid mechanics in that powersets. With that perspective I also don't expect Nature to change its way of play (ie not incorporating shapeshifting). In addition I have already gave you your solution to a pure human form rotation with the pass of weapons getting an increase in damage at various ranges. Before weapons are updated no other change should really be made. They shouldn't be made so that they don't have to be redacted if weapons tip the scales. So save me the lecture of self-importance.
Ok just to be clear I am not saying change harvest in healer role. Pretty sure powers can have different cool downs in different roles and also if memory serves me when I used to be nature you didn't have to incorporate form changes to be successful. I often healed in human form and dps'd in human form as well by spreading my dots then hitting impailing thorns to finish off bosses. So saying that natures play style of incorporating form changes is its way of playing hasn't actually always been true. It might just be your way of playing.
Nature has incorporated Shapeshifting (for those that wanted maximize effectiveness) since its initial revamp. At the very least using it as a loadout extension. (In fact initially Primal Wolf was adjusted so much that the best potential was to stay in Primal Wolf for the majority of your rotation time.) That will be roughly 3 years in december or most of DCUO's lifespan. Per the definition of and categorization of its DoT Advanced Mechanic shapeshifting is apart of it. Any tweaks to Poison Spores directly affects shapeshifting. You can't use shapeshifting without Poison Spores. Damage comparison and threshold balancing (compiled by Sore) shows human, Primal Wolf and Canine styles. That is why I already mentioned weapons for human form and is why they are being adjusted before the powerset itself. Why I mentioned Harvest in the Healer role is because, as of the upcoming damage changes, a Nature Healer will be taking advantage of the full Advanced Mechanic as a Healer where appropriate. Harvest would be apart of that Advanced Mechanic. So if your change goes through the cooldown would have to be the same in both roles to account for Healers using the Advanced Mechanic.
Or perhaps instead of healers using harvest another power could be used to do what harvest currently or another power could be used in the dps rotation to spread the spores. I only said harvest as that's its current use. Doesn't mean it had to be it in the final build. Off the top of my head I know that the t3 poweres in the flora tree are impailing thorns, voracious plants and something else that I can't remember. That 3rd power I never see used in any of the videos I have watched so not change that to the aoe removal. Then u still have harvest as your spreader on its oh so important 1 second cooldown but have a new power that could be used it as the aoe removal and voracious plants as a single target power that deals extra damage for every poison spore on a target. And you also still have the ability to shape shift. These are all just ideas which I'm sure the devs may or may not pay attention to. But much like atomic with its multiple AMs would it not be great if nature had a viable shape shifting am as well as a poison application/removal am to cover multiple play styles as that way more people may play the power and the healer role as well
