Nova Flare needs to decide what it wants to be

kamokami

Should either have slightly lower healing for slightly larger AoE....or have slightly more healing and be single-target.

As it is right now, it's tough to think of situations where it would be the best heal to use

roughbearmattach

Agreed. It's "neither fish nor foul".

ealford1985

SO......Nova Fail?

Nova Fair...No Flare...

revanantmorituri

roughbearmattach said:

Agreed. It's "neither fish nor foul".

Definitely foul.

markhawkman

roughbearmattach said:

Agreed. It's "neither fish nor foul".

foul and fowl are not the same thing, although objects CAN be both.

theravenforce

I have to agree here, I don't really know why the AoE effect was reduced from 15ft to 5ft...it seems a bit much to compensate for the fact that it increases in it's healing power with stacks of Fiery Escalation.

Personally I'd like to see Nova Flare deal its healing in a 20ft radius (self and other target-able maybe) and have a 3 second cooldown. Move the "healing is buffed by Fiery Escalation" to an advantage which can be made use of by those who want to focus on Fire and allow Nova Flare to be a slightly more general healing power with a bit more varied application.

It's a nice power but hampered by it's current mechanics.

aesica

I feel like we're having a rerun of the PTS topic about this power, back when it was still in the pipeline. The way I see it, Nova Fail's shortcomings are threefold, as they were back then:

• As pointed out already, it fails as both a reliable aoe due to its absurdly tiny size and it's not strong enough to be a worthwhile single target ability.
• Its ramp-up buff is so short (6 seconds) that you're not getting the most out of it unless you're spamming it on CD to maintain the buff. Not exactly a pleasant way to use a 3sec CD power. Honestly, I think it would've been better off being a buff/debuff applier (Light Everlasting on affected allies, Illuminated or clinging flames on enemies near the primary target, etc) as well as delivering the proper payload without any lame-**** buff maintenance.
• It can't be used on the caster. Just...why? Yeah this needs to be changed to affect the caster as well.

​​

spinnytop

Well currently it's an aoe heal for tightly packed groups, and a self buffer. So, I think that's what it wants to be. It mixes the healing with the ability to keep that one buff up on yourself.

roughbearmattach

spinnytop said:

Well currently it's an aoe heal for tightly packed groups, and a self buffer. So, I think that's what it wants to be. It mixes the healing with the ability to keep that one buff up on yourself.

If you are in healing mode, that self-buff is good. I guess you could tap Nova once every so often while doing other heals.

I think it would have been neat to go with a different direction on the Fiery Escalation buff: for each stack, the radius of Nova Flare's healing effect increases by 5'. So, with max stacks, the power would become a sort of click-Vala's Light.

aiqa

roughbearmattach said:

If you are in healing mode, that self-buff is good.

Just curious, how is "Fiery Escalation" good for a healer apart from being a requirement for Nova Flare.

roughbearmattach

I think it's about as good as another stack of compassion.

aiqa

How is it just as good as a stack of compassion? Compassion helps all heals, Fiery Escalation only makes Navo Flare stronger. And Nova Flare itself is useless.

jaazaniah1

Seems to me that Pillar or Poz, Expulse, and Pyre w/ adv are also much more useful/ NF is only really useful in tightly packed scrums at cosmics. However, K. is now on to an MA revamp, so any change to a Fire power seems unlikely, even if obviously needed.

roughbearmattach

Fiery Esc helps damage on the fire blast, too. Not sayin that it's great.

I think the idea, whether executed well or not, is that the character could be sort of a hybrid: alternate between healing and attacking, and Fiery Esc helps both.

aiqa

Still not seeing what is good about that. It helps a questionable heal and a questionable attack, but they are still not great. You're far better off taking a good heal and a good attack, and just never bother with Fiery Escalation.

markhawkman

aiqa said:

Still not seeing what is good about that. It helps a questionable heal and a questionable attack, but they are still not great. You're far better off taking a good heal and a good attack, and just never bother with Fiery Escalation.

Ok.... so... how would you tweak it to make it useful then? it seems like a neat idea for a mechanic to me and something that makes this different from the way other heals worked. Maybe just increase the AoE of the heal?

aiqa

As a 15 feet sphere it would be nice.

avianos

The power has only 5ft sphere radius? REALLY? Not even Endgame Cosmics piles of players are enough to excuse this design flaw
I haven't got to test the power outside the PW, but good lord this is incredible Underwelming

Now I understand why people disliked the final product​​

aesica

markhawkman wrote: »

Ok.... so... how would you tweak it to make it useful then? it seems like a neat idea for a mechanic to me and something that makes this different from the way other heals worked. Maybe just increase the AoE of the heal?

Having a stacking mechanic may sound neat at the drafting board, but when put into practice, it's pretty much garbage since its competition can do all that it does and more without the extra complication. You want a fix, here's a fix:

1) Increase effect radius. 10 would be better, 15 would be ideal.

2) Drop the fiery escalation ramp-up nonsense entirely and balance the power to deliver a more worthwhile healing payload.

3) Allow it to apply Clinging Flames to nearby enemies. This makes form and EU interaction less toxic.

4) Add some other useful healing advantage, such as Light Everlasting for affected allies.

5) Increase cooldown slightly due to the fact that this is now a more useful ability.

There you have it, a junk power is now decent.

I should probably note that Fire Strike (the other fiery escalation ability) is also pretty unpleasant. It would've been better off as a charge, maintain, or combo without any fiery escalation nonsense.​​

roughbearmattach

aesica said:

3) Allow it to apply Clinging Flames to nearby enemies. This makes form and EU interaction less toxic.



​​

Ah, this would be really nice, and actually fit better with the heal/attack mix of the fire healer AT, too.

markhawkman

Maybe add that as an advantage? I'm sure there are builds that wouldn't want it always on.