Are you sure? (Destiny)

by Monochron, Friday, October 09, 2015, 14:13 (3557 days ago) @ Xenos

My memory could be fuzzy but I am fairly certain that a Nova Bomb cannot one-shot Majors either. Maybe if I get a direct hit on him, which is much harder to do than GG, it kills him, but I'm not even sure of that. I think we need hard numbers but my general experience is feeling that GG or Striker outclass Nova in nearly every situation.

I was talking about this with Beorn last night. Nova Bomb has perks that can help you kill Majors (Vortex and Bloom for example), so for example if there is a group of trash adds and a major bloom can kill all the trash which does additional damage to the Major and can kill it. In comparison no (non-exotic) perk can increase the amount of damage that it does, only the area in which it does that damage (with Combustion), which is a tiny area.

But even if that's not true, how does GG outclass Nova without Nighthawk? You do at least a comparable amount of damage to a large area that GG gets in 3 shots on a single target.

Vortex is only helpful if your enemy decides to stay still in the big swirly ball of pain. Some do, but it is less likely with new bosses which dynamically move around. I'll have to trust you on Bloom killing the major as long as he is stationary, I don't have the hard numbers on that.

As for outclassing though I think the biggest thing is GG's range and lack of travel time. Nova is honestly useless at range in Crucible because any reasonable player can watch it slowly comes towards them. If the Nova has tracking on they can literally dodge it with a single jump, because tracking will pull it away from the ground and it will wiff under their feet. Nova's blast radius is tiny and only made semi reasonable with Annihilate selected. Sadly the splash damage isn't all that effective. If I spot a GG user popping their super, the lack of travel time on that shot makes my death immediate. If someone spots me nova bombing they can jump out of the way as my Nova travels toward them and continue putting shots on me.

Nova is still very useful at close range. But you can't use it as close as a panic smash, because firing too close will kill you. And you don't get the mad resistance of a Striker while using it either. The big benefit Nova has is keeping it if you get killed in the animation. But as Bungie described it as a "Glass Cannon", that's kind of the intent. They want you vulnerable as you use it