Darth Nihilus needs a...buff?!?
Delay your typing of perplexed and/or outraged comments, my reader! Hear me out! I refer not to his kit, but his leadership ability! If you are at all interested, I encourage you to read on, and hopefully I can persuade you to my line of thinking.
Let's start with what his leader ability is currently to refresh anyone who may have forgotten or does not know. While Nihilus is the leader, all sith allies convert their protection into health, gain 60% offense and 150% health steal, cannot crit, and cannot be healed from sources besides health steal. So the basic idea is you trade the high potential damage granted by crits for a guaranteed damage boost and the ability to self heal via damage. You also avoid proccing any abilities triggered by landing crits as a nifty bonus. Sounds fair, right? WRONG!
Let's start by addressing that colossal (seeming) 60% damage bonus. This is the highest flat damage boost from a leadership in the game. Impressive, right? At face value, maybe. Let's do some math to figure out why. For simplicity, let's say a nonspecific sith character has a base offense of 100. Under a Nihilus lead, he has 160! Neat! ...except for the fact that the same character with no boosts and no mods can hit 150 total offense just by landing a crit. Suddenly that's only 10% behind a Nihilus lead. Factor in just mods, and a crit damage set will put our hypothetical character at 180 offense. A 5 dot crit mod? 216! Almost twice the boost that Nihilus gives! Factor in another leader and it gets even worse. Let's say Vader. Ignoring every other effect his leader has, he gives 30% offense. Our sith now has a base 130 offense. Less than Nihilus, but don't forget those crits! With no mods, that offense becomes 195 on a crit. Crit damage set, it jumps to 234. Additional crit damage mod? 280.8! That's encroaching on double the offence under Nihilus. "But wait, that's only if you crit! Nihilus' boost is guaranteed!", I hear you protest. True! Except that with the right mods and other factors like crit chance up in battle, you'll be critting more often than not with almost any character you care to have do so. Not only that, but the crit damage buff is useless under Nihilus, which means that depending on your team you could be losing out on even more damage! Still not convinced? I have more.
What about that delicious 150% health steal? And all your protection is converted into health, meaning you can heal off any damage. Sounds good, right? Well, sort of. This is a mixed bag. That health steal can make your team incredibly hard to kill. ...against any team without heal immunity, shock, stun, or any type of damage over time. If the other team has any of these in abundance (spoiler: tons of them do), you're done for. Heal immunity obviously stops healing. The one thing your team is supposed to be able to do under Nihilus ca no longer be done. Shock? Same thing. Stun? You can't heal if you can't attack, and that means you're a sitting duck since your team can't heal through any method except damage. And the big one. Any damage over time effect will eat your team ALIVE due to your protection being converted into health. A regular DoT does 5% damage. Ok...not too bad. You can heal that off with your next attack. Burning from R2, who is in most teams right now does 15% damage. Ouch. Expose? Ha! You'll be dead before you know it. Those 20% damages will chew you apart like your Aunt Susan attacking her third helping of Thanksgiving dinner. Oh yeah, and Sith don't haVE ANY CLEANSERS EXCEPT ZAVAGE, SO YOU GET TO JUST DEAL WITH ALL THOSE DEBUFFS. *ahem* my point being, the health steal can be mitigated incredibly easily by most competitive teams. Sure you could run Kenobi for cleansing and Barris for cleansing and health equalizing, but then why bother running Nihilus as your lead when you could be using a more universal leader?
As good of a character as Nihilus is, his leader ability is just...lackluster. Especially for a Zeta. So! I will be offering what I think are some reasonable solutions. First, that damage. Easy fix, let's bump it to a 70 or 80% boost. That would put him more in line with other characters, but still not as crazy as some crits can be. Now, those pesky debuffs. I have two potential solutions to these, one of which might be too powerful. The first is just a Tenacity bonus. Nothing crazy, but something like 20 to 30% to let your team shrug off some of them more efficiently. The second option would be to let Sith under Nihilus heal through effects like heal immunity and shock. This might be too strong, but I think it could also bring Nihilus into the spotlight of leaders, somewhere he's never been. Now, hit me with your thoughts and feedback!
Let's start with what his leader ability is currently to refresh anyone who may have forgotten or does not know. While Nihilus is the leader, all sith allies convert their protection into health, gain 60% offense and 150% health steal, cannot crit, and cannot be healed from sources besides health steal. So the basic idea is you trade the high potential damage granted by crits for a guaranteed damage boost and the ability to self heal via damage. You also avoid proccing any abilities triggered by landing crits as a nifty bonus. Sounds fair, right? WRONG!
Let's start by addressing that colossal (seeming) 60% damage bonus. This is the highest flat damage boost from a leadership in the game. Impressive, right? At face value, maybe. Let's do some math to figure out why. For simplicity, let's say a nonspecific sith character has a base offense of 100. Under a Nihilus lead, he has 160! Neat! ...except for the fact that the same character with no boosts and no mods can hit 150 total offense just by landing a crit. Suddenly that's only 10% behind a Nihilus lead. Factor in just mods, and a crit damage set will put our hypothetical character at 180 offense. A 5 dot crit mod? 216! Almost twice the boost that Nihilus gives! Factor in another leader and it gets even worse. Let's say Vader. Ignoring every other effect his leader has, he gives 30% offense. Our sith now has a base 130 offense. Less than Nihilus, but don't forget those crits! With no mods, that offense becomes 195 on a crit. Crit damage set, it jumps to 234. Additional crit damage mod? 280.8! That's encroaching on double the offence under Nihilus. "But wait, that's only if you crit! Nihilus' boost is guaranteed!", I hear you protest. True! Except that with the right mods and other factors like crit chance up in battle, you'll be critting more often than not with almost any character you care to have do so. Not only that, but the crit damage buff is useless under Nihilus, which means that depending on your team you could be losing out on even more damage! Still not convinced? I have more.
What about that delicious 150% health steal? And all your protection is converted into health, meaning you can heal off any damage. Sounds good, right? Well, sort of. This is a mixed bag. That health steal can make your team incredibly hard to kill. ...against any team without heal immunity, shock, stun, or any type of damage over time. If the other team has any of these in abundance (spoiler: tons of them do), you're done for. Heal immunity obviously stops healing. The one thing your team is supposed to be able to do under Nihilus ca no longer be done. Shock? Same thing. Stun? You can't heal if you can't attack, and that means you're a sitting duck since your team can't heal through any method except damage. And the big one. Any damage over time effect will eat your team ALIVE due to your protection being converted into health. A regular DoT does 5% damage. Ok...not too bad. You can heal that off with your next attack. Burning from R2, who is in most teams right now does 15% damage. Ouch. Expose? Ha! You'll be dead before you know it. Those 20% damages will chew you apart like your Aunt Susan attacking her third helping of Thanksgiving dinner. Oh yeah, and Sith don't haVE ANY CLEANSERS EXCEPT ZAVAGE, SO YOU GET TO JUST DEAL WITH ALL THOSE DEBUFFS. *ahem* my point being, the health steal can be mitigated incredibly easily by most competitive teams. Sure you could run Kenobi for cleansing and Barris for cleansing and health equalizing, but then why bother running Nihilus as your lead when you could be using a more universal leader?
As good of a character as Nihilus is, his leader ability is just...lackluster. Especially for a Zeta. So! I will be offering what I think are some reasonable solutions. First, that damage. Easy fix, let's bump it to a 70 or 80% boost. That would put him more in line with other characters, but still not as crazy as some crits can be. Now, those pesky debuffs. I have two potential solutions to these, one of which might be too powerful. The first is just a Tenacity bonus. Nothing crazy, but something like 20 to 30% to let your team shrug off some of them more efficiently. The second option would be to let Sith under Nihilus heal through effects like heal immunity and shock. This might be too strong, but I think it could also bring Nihilus into the spotlight of leaders, somewhere he's never been. Now, hit me with your thoughts and feedback!
