Add some kind of nano to help out with enforcer/soldier NCU woes!

[Litestrider]

I was playing yesterday with a guy whose enforcer is extremely powerful, but he has constant issues teaming with others because his NCU is very easy to overfill. People love to buff him (the buff which plagues me personally is iCRT, if my NCU's full it's always that one!), and when he gets more than a couple OSBs he won't be able to mongo. And of course when the tank can't mongo, even for a couple seconds, things go to hell in a handbasket. I'm sure everyone has run into this issue at some point, especially enforcers and soldiers.

I thought of a solution to this: add a nano which does nothing, but takes up as much NCU as mongo/TMS, and stacks at the very bottom of that respective line (ONLY the tms line for soldiers, which would let them run it and a reflect shield together). This would allow the soldier or enfo to "reserve" some NCU space such that they can be 100% sure they can mongo or raise their reflects. This would result in a lot fewer initial mishaps due to misguided attempts to help the tank with buffs. It also wouldn't render things completely safe and mindless, if/when mongo or tms wears off mid-fight there's still risk of someone's NCU filling up and they have to be mindful of that. Also unless I'm mistaken NCU debuffs (like what fixer received) could still make it impossible to replace the "reserved NCU" buff if your max NCU were taken too low.

Obviously this could be extended to any other emergency nanos which eat up the NCU, but I think mongo and tms are the big ones.

[SirAronar]

I'd rather see TMS/AMS, Challenger, and Mongo dropped to 1 NCU. Much easier fix that hits the same goal, and heck Agents get a little bit of extra sanity added for Mimic. Similar could be done for other lines like Agent's concentration buffs and Adventurer short term form buffs. Would also be a major quality of life bonus for Froobs and lowbies without access to high quality NCU units and gear.

[drainbamage]

Yeah, I can't see any real adverse effects of having all short-term (under a minute) self buffs being 1 NCU. I see NCU limits as something to prevent mass stacking of buffs, it shouldn't get in the way of combat tools.

[Scvm]

I'd rather see TMS/AMS, Challenger, and Mongo dropped to 1 NCU. Much easier fix that hits the same goal, and heck Agents get a little bit of extra sanity added for Mimic. Similar could be done for other lines like Agent's concentration buffs and Adventurer short term form buffs. Would also be a major quality of life bonus for Froobs and lowbies without access to high quality NCU units and gear.

Adv short-term buffs are already 0 NCU (except blur of claws, guess that's a bug to report), so that's obviously already a design direction somebody thought was an okay idea. Not sure why it wasn't applied to concentration/mongo/mirror shield lines that were also fiddled with in 18.7.

[Conspark]

Agreed. My low-level enf is currently struggling with this.

[Xootch]

lol. try playing an agent.

[Litestrider]

I'd rather see TMS/AMS, Challenger, and Mongo dropped to 1 NCU. Much easier fix that hits the same goal, and heck Agents get a little bit of extra sanity added for Mimic. Similar could be done for other lines like Agent's concentration buffs and Adventurer short term form buffs. Would also be a major quality of life bonus for Froobs and lowbies without access to high quality NCU units and gear.

Well, we'd have to go 0 NCU if we did this, since 1 NCU still faces issues with a full NCU. Still, a good suggestion, the main reason I didn't suggest it off the bat is that it's essentially a buff to those professions since they'll require less NCU and thus can have more OSBs. The "reserved NCU" buff I described would maintain neutral balance while also achieving the same goal.

Adv short-term buffs are already 0 NCU (except blur of claws, guess that's a bug to report), so that's obviously already a design direction somebody thought was an okay idea. Not sure why it wasn't applied to concentration/mongo/mirror shield lines that were also fiddled with in 18.7.

Good catch, this makes it seem like 0 NCU is the way to go for these for sure.

lol. try playing an agent.

Agent is my main, why do you think I'm so familiar with these woes?

On this note, I notice that the Bail Out line is another emergency defense nano that costs 0 NCU. On the other hand the concentration line still has its NCU cost. The concentration line may need fixed, or it could just be that the design choice is for defensive nanos to not eat NCU, which would further support suggestions along the lines of this thread.

[Ghost]

There are some real problems with NCU since last patch.

Many nanos feel too NCU heavy while others have almost no NCU usage, which to me feels really weird.

For example, the Base cast for SL reflect on soldier/engineer is very heavy, but the actual reflect when it lands on your team only costs 1 nano.

How does that make sense?

Same with keeper nanos. The base is NCU heavy, the actual buff is NCU light.

The only nano, afaik, that does not act this way is umbral wrangler - where the base is NCU heavy and all the buffs on team are similarly NCU heavy.

I think that nano NCU cost needs to be re-evaluated and adjusted across the board.

Broadly speaking, the weighting on many nanos is very screwy.


I do like that there is an inherent value to teaming in opposition to getting a buff from a prof then going solo (i.e PNS vs RRFE, since RRFE is like 43 NCU or something and the 29% reflect from PNS is 1 NCU) but it leads to a weird kind of play where you're buffed completely with auras and even with shoddy /poor choice NCU's you've got 40% free, whereas some profs which provide a lot of auras (eg. keeper) get completely screwed over since keepers can use a fair number of direct OSB's but then are totally out of NCU since all their nanobases take up so much NCU already.


Here are some examples of bad NCU weighting:

Fervor of the Fanatic 43NCU
Fervor of the Disciple 36NCU
Fervor of the Zealot 49NCU
Fervor of the Minion 24NCU (not bad, but 24 for top end would be better)

oh hell, I just looked at keeper nanos and the ENTIRE page is full of nanos that basically scream: FULL NCU! FULL NCU!

Just to give an idea of how retarded it is, at endgame a keeper would probably be expected to buff himself with all usable nanos:

Giant of Swords 55 NCU
Fervor of the Zealot 49 NCU
Discipline of the Vindicator 40 NCU
Divine Sanctifier 55 NCU
Improved Guardian of Might 48 NCU
Elude Pain 48 NCU
Ambient Renewal 57 NCU
Imminence of Extermination 57 NCU
Improved Vengeance of the Immaculate 53 NCU
Watch Ward 48 NCU
Wrath 43 NCU
Punisher of the wicked 20 NCU
Courage of the Just 20 NCU

Comp att 4 NCU
Comp melee 4 NCU
Comp melee spec 4 NCU
Comp combat 4 NCU
Comp heavy 4 NCU
Comp nano 4 NCU (not necessary)

For a grand total of WTF: 617 NCU.

Off the top of my head that seems like about 120 more NCU used on average than most classes.

For a normal TL7 setup, that's room for maybe 2 OSB's, maybe 3.

But no other prof is so jammed for NCU - and keeper has dark blue CL!

[Xootch]

maybe that is because the trader actually does get umbral.