My first impressions are natures a tiny bit better but dot damage is still weak and nature still doesn't keep up with other powers even the lower ones. Thorn burst: Still needs work. it has such a long cooldown you can't properly use it to spread/refresh poisons. It needs to have a short cooldown and deal melee scaled burst damage. This power should be the melee version of Harvest. Roar: The damage it does needs to be looked at cause its way to good. Base hits of around 22k for 3 ticks, when it crits it can hit 50k plus. Thats pretty crazy. Thats wearing 190cr gear incase anyone was wondering. Also with roar its not a ability that people like to use cause its a channel and it just feels super awkward and messes up the fluidity of your loadout. Roar would be much better if it was just change to a burst ability. The only way i would use roar would be if it was extremely "OP" like it is now, other then that if it was only a tiny bit better to use i would rather take a damage loss cause its just not fun to use. Please change it to a burst power Savage growth: I really like how it has a few extra ticks on the cast of it cause it helps deal a bit of bursty damage while setting up the dots. Defiantly a good improvement cause nature has a pretty slow setup time. I have a few more things but just want to go over stuff a bit more before i leave any other feedback.
A little off topic but tied in with everything going on. What do you think about how power consumption is being scaled? I don't like it at all. My thoughts on power consumption are not even close to what the devs are trying to implement.
Not a fan but hopefully it will come together in the end. We should worry about getting the damage straight first then adjust the power costs correctly. Also power from a low level doesn't scale up correctly to higher levels. Somewhere a long the line it takes a crazy jump up, I think the formula is a bit off.
Part of the 1.6 update: Whilst Munitions and Fire plays a much bigger part of 1.6, Nature is still involved and received some changes. These changes are worth talking about.
I don't have enough time nor top-tier experience for in-depth feedback on nature so I'll show myself out - I just want to bring some attention to Wolf Form again, hope it can get its claw combos back instead of standard MA. Or at least, if it has to be standard MA, then it could have its visuals replaced and be a pure reskin of MA with claws. The combos are a huge part of Wolf Form's flavor so seeing them go would greatly diminish its appeal to me.
Sigh....it pains me to see that nature dps is STILL a struggle at this point. This is literally all I feel that needs to be done: Make ALL DoT casts AoE. Harvest should refresh ONLY. Speed is the biggest killer of nature. You literally have to target a single enemy to put all your DoTs on in an orderly yet time-consuming fashion, AND you have to hit ONLY that same target with harvest to spread them, which happens a full second after you hit the move. In the time it takes you to do all that, a sorcery dps, for example, can already have near 100k or so damage out. And that's not including the possibility of that core target getting out of range or you managing to lose your lock on it and cast initial DoTs on separate targets, in which case you either have to recast the move on the RIGHT target or hit harvest on all the ads you put DoTs on to get the max spread potential (second one being impractical of course, strengthening my point). I understand that DoT spread is the traditional nature way and I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I'm only looking at the direction that the revamp is taking and comparing it to what the devs are doing with the other powers. If other powers, most of which are burst, can fire their damage out instantly at the beginning of any fight, then DoT powers should have at least a little more time accommodation in order to not feel like they are getting smoked. If I cast a move that sets a DoT, I should be able to hit everything in the area to save time. Harvest should just do a burst and refresh the DoT time, on ANY ad I set it on. Return Primal MA (Darts) to wolf and give gorilla some sort of AoE range attack. As any true nature player knows, Wolf form and its burst damage from lupine darts was a good part of the reason why nature was top dps alongside electric back in AF2 days. You know, before they nerfed wolf by the same standards as weapon mastery (yes, it still hurts). It was the perfect mix of speed and AoE damage, and it allowed nature to actually keep up with burst powers on ads and not have to go through a full DoT spread in a 10 second fight in a hallway to do decent damage. Now we have regular MA which, for one, is totally ugly in the form and I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. Two, shuriken storm is not effective in the least bit, against just about anything ranged in the game. The first hit and last hits are single target, and the flurry hits are AoE but they hit like pillows. Literally. Not to mention the cast time is cringy. I could do the full 2-part lupine dart combo in the time it takes to cast the first shuriken. It's sad and there is literally no accommodation for it from anything you can put in your loadout. Wolf is useless without its unique weapon. For gorilla, I don't need to say much on it. Anything ranged with brawling is single target and auto less effective than anything AoE. Now I understand that a few power moves are AoE inside of gorilla, which makes for great PftT gameplay inside it, but there are more traditional players, like myself, who prefer to use our weapon alongside our powers. We simply can't do that effectively with slow, single target brawling ranges. I don't have any set ideas as to what kind of AoE range attack gorilla could have inside the brawling power set, but I feel something needs to be explored there for improvement. SCALE OUR DOTS INSTEAD OF MAKING ONE MOVE OP. I cannot stress this one enough. Ever since nature hit test, this has been the problem. All the poison DoTs hit like pillows, but it will be balanced by swarm 2k per tick, per ad. Or it will be balanced by roar hitting 20ks base and critting 50ks. This is not the way to do nature. It is a DoT power. The core of its damage is supposed to be accumulated from the stacks. Everything else is complimentary. This is what made nature so great back in the day. They need to be prioritized again. So yes, buff the DoTs. AGAIN. Won't stop saying it until I see it. These things will simply make nature one of the greatest and most fun dps powers on the game again, and as long as nature's been bad, I would hate to see it only minimally improved in the revamp, especially considering the absolutely PHENOMENAL way they pulled electric out of the muck. I won't stop fighting for my favorite power to be great again.
So heres the rest of my feedback....Some of the things i'm going to outline here have been brought up before but since nature got some changes and these things weren't fixed i'll go over them again just to make sure they aren't forgotten about. Nature only needs pretty simple changes to get it where it should be so I'm hoping this will be a easy road to making nature preform well. I'll start with Dot damage. Increasing the damage of the dots was a good start but the damage was so low before this that just increasing it this little bit still doesn't put nature in a good place and the Dots are still very weak. I'll give some comparisons of other dot damage thats on test vs nature. The below comparisons are from single target and with pi's applied if they use one. Nature - 500-1300 a dot - 1500-3900 when 3 are combined Elec - Electrocute (with pi) 2400-4400 - Egen 1500-3000 Fire - Inferno 2200-4400 - Overheat 2200-4400 - Stoked flames 1500-3400 So just by those comparisons you can see how low natures DoTs still are. Just one DoT with elec does more damage then all 3 of natures DoTs combined. I won't even comment on fire cause it makes me sad that its the best DoT power on test and its not really even a DoT power Nature still needs quite a increase in DoT damage especially if you keep in mind its burst power is only a 100 power cost ability so nature lacks in burst but should make up for it with the DoT damage but the dot damage is going to have to be a tad higher then you might see other powers have to make up for that lack of burst. I'm ok with small adjustment like we just got in this update as long as we keep trying till we get it correct. Thorn shield - I'll touch on this again quick. Poisons last 12 seconds and this ability has a 12 second cooldown so by the time thorn shield comes off cooldown the dots expired and you can't refresh them, it a pointless power with such a long cool down. Like i stated above this should be the melee version of harvest and i don't understand whats going on with it???? Another thing about it, why is it a shield in healer role now??? Healers have swarm shield and would never put this on their bar and clog up a space they need for a heal. Thorn shield was 100% fine the way it is on live server and i have no clue why it keeps getting changed around in such weird ways. Please just put it back to how it functions on live server. Roar - Like i previously said this ability does crazy damage, 3 ticks of 20k non crits and 50k crits. It defiantly needs to be looked at. I really just recommend to make this a burst power. Channels are super awkward especially with the way nature plays, it just doesn't fit being a channel. Nature could really use a good 300 burst power and this could fill that spot. On the subject of Roar's damage being crazy so are a lot of other recently added abilities. I think the damage formula got messed up somewhere cause we have huge differences in older 300 cost abilities vs newer 300 cost abilities. Even some newer 200 cost abilities are a bit much, some seem to do the damage older 300 cost abilities do. I made a thread with some examples of what in talking about here Power Creep Now on to supers.... Rampage - The crit super just plain stinks, your lucky if it brings your damage up 1.5k per second. it can also not be used to clip powers like other similar supers can, i'll post a vid below demonstrating what i'm talking about with the clipping. If you have any questions about it feel free to ask me. I recommend Rampage get changed like Circuit Breaker to a damage percentage not crit bonuses and be made so it can be used to clip powers with just like other similar supers. Carnivorous Plants - 100% super charge. The damage of this super has been scaled wrong. For a 100% super it only does the damage of a 50%. I'll compare it with Chaotic Growth below which deals the correct damage for a 50% super and is in a good spot. A 100% super should deal 200k damage and no more then 240k. This is the trend with most 100% supers, there still are a few that need adjustment but this is the bench mark they should be at. So whatever Carnivorous Plants is at now it needs to be doubled and that should put it in the correct place. Heres a example of another 100% super just for comparison. Its right around the 200k mark
N A T U R E S U P E R C H A R G E S I agree with the DOTs buff, I'd like to see them become more as the focus, and not just 3 abilities you fire and forget. It's almost like you're casting 3 abilities to set it up, and 1 more to reset it; In essence using 4 abilities for 1 ability-sized DOT... Granted, it's only one ability to refresh, and only periodically, but having to use 3 others beforehand in order to get there is essentially unrewarded downtime. Yuck. But be wary, this may mean that the burst options will probably have to take some form of hit for the sake of balance. If each DOT gets, lets say, a normal damage amount it's essentially 3 ability-sized DOT for 1 ability, plus normal amounts of burst and utility on the loadout. Granted setup times will be a factor and in order to achieve the 1-ability-for-3-DOTs dream it certainly implicates using Wolf Form as a second power tray, further complicating setup times. But I don't think that'll matter much when you're way ahead of everyone boss-wise, and on par with them on ads (keep in mind, one nature DOT = one normal DOT in this scenario. Going through ads ads with maybe savage growth and normal burst abilities, or even saving gorilla super for ads, then vine lashing & using burst will certainly keep us right up with them). Our best bet would probably have something along the lines of a 3/2 or 3/2.25 ratio, where 3 nature DOTs = 2/2.25 normal DOTs in terms of tick damage. That way we're rewarded more than we are now for our extended setup, without making the concept of 1 ability for multiple DOTs a bit too lucrative. Then nerfing nature burst by about 5% or 10%. Just throwing out numbers, but that's the idea behind a general direction that could be taken.
I'm not the biggest fan of forms cause they never play out well in raids but giving wolf form the animations of catwoman/cheetah would be very cool.
You forreal? Wolf was GODLY in raids back in the AF2 days bro. Forms aren't good in raids under a NERF yeah, but if wolf gets lupine darts back in this revamp? Phenomenal. Plus, they HAVE to make it viable in all PvE content. It's utterly useless in its current state. Revamp is a PvE update, so their excuse for why it is the way it is can't be PvP. So something has to be done. I just hope they aren't done looking at it.
The best thing I've tried on Nature so far is Weapon Mastery + Carnage, Swarm, Roar, Robot Sidekick, and Neo-Venom Boost. Weapon Mastery + Roar accounts for most of the damage. Carnage, Swarm, and Robot Sidekick provide some supplemental damage. Compared to Neo-Venom Boost, all of the other Nature Supercharges feel very lacking. A 40% defense boost beats out the +10% crit boosts from Rampage. Trying to use a DoT build has been producing suboptimal results for me. I was really surprised at the lack of damage on the DoTs when I was doing some parser tests. The damage is very lackluster compared to what you could be using
Thorn burst being a self shield is a mistake lol. They tried it with DMcB in Cele and didn't play out well at all. 4 man shield or nothing at all or at least a 4 man burst heal. Anyway. Thumbs up Crappy
I honestly think this is the time to get rid of the forms. It's rather unique but they never truly fit in well with the powerset (shapeshifting and nature are two different things in my opinion) and by getting rid of them it allows for new powers to be introduced that could potentially help with the problems Nature is currently having. I have had fun with the forms in the past, but I think this is the best step moving forward. What about you guys?
what about weapon locked to martial arts in wolf form? LAME!!! cant say if good or not, though i would HATE to see wolf with dual pistols WM, also all WM combos are still OFF... come on, devs! give back the claws (unique weapon combos) or just let us choose our weapons we would like in wolf and bug forms...
I'm not a fan of forms but i like to have wolf form for a extra loadout holder cause nature just doesn't have enough spots to run a full loadout and a super like other powers and at least at bosses you can stack your dots in wolf then switch to human and have your burst buff and super. In a idea world though i would love nature to be able to have everything it needed to do max dps on one hotbar but i don't know if the devs are up for that. If something like that was to happen we could make savage growth a melee burst power and just make vinelash and briar stronger dots so only those two were needed......actually that sounds like a great idea. It would speed natures slow setup time up and give it a much needed 300 bust melee power.
So what do some people think of this idea....? Nature suffers from a slow setup time and not being to have everything on one loadout to achieve natures max damage. Other powers can use a supercharge, buff, 2 bursts and some dots all at one time and have their max dps potential all on one loadout but for nature you really need all your dots, the buff and a burst just to keep up but then that leaves you with no spots left for super. Sure you can trade something for the super but whatever it is you swap out its gonna drop your overall dps and the only way to then reach max dps potential is to run wolf form as a place holder for your dots but that only works at bosses cause of all the steps it takes to do that. I've been really thinking about these changes for a while and after reading what someone said above i really think its time we can get everything nature needs on one loadout bar and make some changes to ease up on the setup times and overall improve nature dps. -So instead of 3 dots we take nature down to 2 dots Vinelash and Briar (also increase the burst briar does or give it that nice burst of dots on the initial hit that was recently added to savage growth. Thats a real nice touch and adds to the dot theme while helping out the setup time) and increase the damage both dots do to compensate for only having two. -Then we make Savage Growth into a melee 300 power cost burst, something nature is really lacking. With those changes made that frees up a slot for nature to run a supercharge without sacrificing damage. In this update supercharges play a very big part in dps and if nature stays like it is i fear it will always be behind cause of its limited loadouts. If we got those changes and the ones i mentioned above about Thorn shield, the supers and other things i think nature would be in good shape.
