Annihilate

glomoro

Annihilate is one of the only powers in Heavy Weapons that doesn't have an advantage of its own. Yeah, it has Crippling Challenge. True, it also has Accelerated Metabolism. But those are generic advantages tons of things have, and frankly this power is a terrible choice as a CC application source right now.

In fact, the entire Heavy Weapon power set is pretty bad at Crippling Challenge. One source is a melee power with hefty knock back range and the other two each have a three second cooldown on top of their activation times, making timing for appropriate tanking use racing against a DPS spamming this advantage because they put it on a power they need for damage way more difficult than it needs to be (I'd generally just let these guys get themselves killed, but it's not THEM I'm worried about protecting, it's the other DPS who might be able to spike their aggro over my own while I'm getting locked out of taunting).

As such, I propose the following advantage for Annihilate for the purposes of improving HW tanking viability and adding more electric effects to the set since the fire is presently a bit more pronounced.

Thunderous Blow: Empowers your Annihilate with electricity, knocking foes up (10ft, double height if affected by Negative Ions) instead of back. Hits with Annihilate also have a 25% chance to apply Negative Ions.

I feel this will be a good addition to the set as it makes the choice of Annihilate or Eruption one for the look of the powers, and it also offers some new synergy with the Electric power set. Given that Heavy Weapons visuals match both lightning and fire, this could increase the use of all three power sets together for builds. The distance used for the knock is of course open to be fiddled with in either direction at your discretion, as is the chance of Negative Ions application.

taintedmess

Heavy weapons has more of a fire theme running through it so linking it to fire would probably be better say.

Backdraft: Empowers your Annihilate with fire, knocking foes up (10ft, double height if affected by clinging flames) instead of back. Hits with Annihilate also have a 25% chance to apply clinging flames

glomoro

Well, visually speaking the set charges its weapons with lightning even on many of the attacks that use fire as secondary damage. Perhaps we could split the difference and keep it using fire as the secondary, but the fire is started by getting zapped up into the air. I was just suggesting the new synergy with Electric powers because it also seemed odd that the sets had nothing to do with each other despite all the animations.

vincyre

I'd love some interesting advantages on annihilate myself...

but what I want more is that freaking annoying self-root on it removed!

atompenguin

A lot of powers don't have custom advantages. It's because they (Cryptic) are lazy/understaffed and can't be bothered to add them in. They also have a tendency to scurry from project to project without really looking any deeper than the surface and leaving what they just did as a mediocre mess.

These issues really, really showed in the laser sword powers which were a) swaps and b) didn't have custom advantages. Heck, plasma burn still doesn't refresh on stack.

All that being said, I would like Annihilate to have some kind of fire damage advantage. I would suggest that the suggestions maybe do a bit more to make them worthwhile. Knock up is good and so is clinging flames, but the advantage should be something that would make you want to take it over R3. I wouldn't expect to see anything like it any time soon, but I would love to have more options for these powers.

finalslaps

Annihilate is pretty good as it is. It's a powerful attack with Crippling Challenge attached. Meaning in PvP nobody can block against this attack and would be sent sailing across the field.

crypticbuxom

finalslaps wrote: »

Annihilate is pretty good as it is. It's a powerful attack with Crippling Challenge attached. Meaning in PvP nobody can block against this attack and would be sent sailing across the field.

Unless, of course, they step back slightly. Even a rooted character can break free and get away before a full charge hit (more like miss) is pulled off.

smoochan

Should have a stun that only occurs against knock-immune targets. If they don't go flying, all that force is basically going right into their jimmy hendrix.

agentnx5

I will agree with you comments about Crippling Challenge. Very good point!

Hmm, Brute Strike would actually make more sense for Crippling Challenge, Eruption is OK but not amazing (certainly subpar to something like Force Gyser).

I'm not keen on it working of Negative Ions however, the set as a whole doesn't have synergy with that. I'd rather you be given a choice between either Clinging Flames and/or Disorient.