Nova always been Templar's defensive ultimate, since Major Maim was very rare and had impactful damage reduction back then. Nowadays is only used with 3x Harmony pvp synergy group bombing as its synergy does the most damage from all skill synergies in the game.
From universal ultimates Shooting Star most of the time will be best option for its cost, deals fire damage, leaves fire damage AoE (chance for extra Burning dot) and refunds a bit of cost in tight group. Frost version deal more damage on impact, but does not give benefit of extra Burning dot or damage increase from Engulfing Flames, so its mostly pvp morph.

Baconlad wrote: »

Hey guys. Wanted to get a discussion going on the state of ultimates.

I'm a magplar main, have been since 2014.

From what I see there is currently one ultimate to rule them all in PvE. That's meteor, for stamina and Magick builds which I find odd...

There's a few ultimates that don't seem to be up to par from a magplar perspective guy so keep that in mind.

-nova, i can't put my finger on this ultimate, but comparing it to meteor it's more expensive and deals dramatically less damage per ultimate. One reason is the maim debuff. I suggest removing it from the damage morph and either A-including the synergy damage with the immediate drop of it instead of a synergy, or B-decreasing the cost of as well and removing maim from damage morph.

-crescent sweep. Deals great damage per ultimate, it's actually higher than meteor! But for some reason when I try a parse I'm losing damage...it may be because of the frequency to cast it, causing wasted global cooldowns on it...or wasting ultimate for every cast (every cast of ultimate waste a small amount off ultimate points.) Not sure what to do...leave as is, great ultimate.

-dawn breaker. Maybe increase the dot damage, similar issue to crescent sweep, low cost results in innate dps decrease

-soul assault. My favorite ultimate tied with nova. I believe it was WAY over nerfed. They increased cast time, decreased overall damage (used to have 120k tooltip with four second channel, now I'm at 100 damage 6 seconds channel) plus 70% increase in cost. I understand the changes were due to PvP...

-toxic barrage, I'm including this and not batista as I think the batista is....dumb. looks bad, shouldn't be a thing...just dumb. But I've compared toxic barrage to soul assault. Cost is the same, but the damage is much higher...FOR THE CHANNELED PORTION ALONE...it's higher than soul assault, but deals it's damage through 4 seconds instead of 6....kinda unfair, even though this isn't a Magic morph the skill also doesn't make sense when you compare it to its bow passives, which last five seconds...meaning you lose the bonuses...needs to be reassessed.

-meteor, holy crap...it stuns, deals all it's damage without synergy, is cheaper than nova, comes with slotted passive, smaller range than nova granted...almost begs to be slotted over other ultimates...really makes it hard to chose anything else other than lore focus.

Anyway, add your own thoughts to the various ultimates, I'd like to get some attention to nova and soul assault particularly, but anything you can think of for other ultimates let's hear em

"-dawn breaker. Maybe increase the dot damage, similar issue to crescent sweep, low cost results in innate dps decrease"

People don't use Flawless Dawnbreaker for the dot damage. Slotting the ability gives a bonus in the same way Meteor does and using Flawless Dawnbreaker gives a significant Spell/Physical damage buff that is useful for short damage bursts.

"-nova, i can't put my finger on this ultimate, but comparing it to meteor it's more expensive and deals dramatically less damage per ultimate. One reason is the maim debuff. I suggest removing it from the damage morph and either A-including the synergy damage with the immediate drop of it instead of a synergy, or B-decreasing the cost of as well and removing maim from damage morph."

Nova is and has always been a defensive ultimate. There is no reason to change any damage values, considering they are already significant and not necessarily meant to be competing with other damage dealing ultimates. Once upon a time people were getting one shot by this synergy before the Harmony jewelry trait was nerfed.

"-meteor, holy crap...it stuns, deals all it's damage without synergy, is cheaper than nova, comes with slotted passive, smaller range than nova granted...almost begs to be slotted over other ultimates...really makes it hard to chose anything else other than lore focus."

The effectiveness of this ultimate is highly contingent upon whether or not the target is going to take the full damage from the DOT. If not, Ballista, Crescent Sweep or Dawnbreaker would be a better choice, as it's far more likely the target will take full damage from the ultimate.

"-soul assault. My favorite ultimate tied with nova. I believe it was WAY over nerfed. They increased cast time, decreased overall damage (used to have 120k tooltip with four second channel, now I'm at 100 damage 6 seconds channel) plus 70% increase in cost."

Soul assault is not a good ultimate in PVE because it requires you to stop casting abilities and channel. It will always be behind other ultimate abilities in PVE as a result.

"-toxic barrage, I'm including this and not batista as I think the batista is....dumb. looks bad, shouldn't be a thing...just dumb. But I've compared toxic barrage to soul assault. Cost is the same, but the damage is much higher...FOR THE CHANNELED PORTION ALONE...it's higher than soul assault, but deals it's damage through 4 seconds instead of 6....kinda unfair, even though this isn't a Magic morph the skill also doesn't make sense when you compare it to its bow passives, which last five seconds...meaning you lose the bonuses...needs to be reassessed."

You shouldn't be using the Toxic Barrage morph in PvE for the same reason Soul Assault is a bad PvE ultimate - it requires you to channel. Regardless of your personal opinion on the aesthetics of Ballista, it is a better ultimate because you can cast while the ability is active and in comparison to other ultimates is actually fairly competitive, because the target will always take full damage unless they are invulnerable or manage to leave the arena (like the dragons in SS).

i do think some of the ultimates definitely need to be looked at

the biggest offender in my eyes right now is empowered sweep, with the empowered nerf that buff is absolutely useless on this ultimate and causes its dmg to suffer, even with its low ult cost

i dont think there is anything wrong with using the other ultimates you had listed, but if you want better dmg outside of a niche scenario like nova bombing is to use the options available

as others mentioned, all of the channeled ults are generally not the best outside of gank pvp scenarios because you give up 3-6 GCDs for the channel duration while all other ultimates only cost 1 GCD

there are alternatives to the meteor, the main draw of the meteor is that you can restore ult for each target hit, allowing you to cast it again sooner, but like the destro ults are pretty potent although shorter duration, but larger area and more dmg than the meteor