I believe this is one of those areas where you have to bend lore to keep balance. Because in the lore, Nurgle's Rot kills EVERYTHING by the dozens. That's obviously inbalanced so I figure it would either be an aura or a castable, lasting AoE spell that causes increasing damage over time. It should be deadly though. A comparably short kill time to other DoTs to give it that feel. Might also toss in a couple other debuffs like that slow Demetri was talking about, perhaps a temporary reduction to maximum health, etc.
Well... no cure perhaps, but maybe you can put it into remission, like cancer. Wouldn't that be interesting? You survive the DoT, go about your business load up in transport and then literally explode with pestilence, granting the hibernating DoT to everyone around you who if they survive gift it to others and even back upon those of Chaos? Imagine a TRUE EPIDEMIC where players are running around trying to avoid each other because of this reoccuring DoT that has no warning and no symptoms until it becomes active?
That's really what I want to see. A game changing dynamic based on a simple, effective, and seemingly benign mechanic. Nurgle's Rot literally becomes a weapon of biological warfare rather than just an Aura debuff/DoT.
And it's not really, if you consider that only Plague Marines and those devoted to Nurgle are immune to the effects of Nurgle's Rot. So unless everyone on the Chaos Faction plays in a certain way, the DoT could spread everywhere regardless of faction.
Alright, but imagine a delayed ambush. Entire convoy of SM is on the move towards an Eldar base. Nurgle sorc manages to hit ANYTHING. Both factions are completely taken by surprise. They don't know how to react, everyone dies. Everrrrryone dies. One man just annihilated two forces of 100+ people. That's OP Plus it'd be way too easy to be a troll with it, cast it in the middle of a battlefield just to watch your side fall over and get angry.
You Demetri, just gave me a boner. In any case ive pondered this before though was hesitant due to my nature of disliking OP stuff. But then lets be honest, we will have Plasma Cannons ingame which will be instakills on infantry if they directly connect, im sure the same could be said of the Multi Meltas. Granted these two are gonna be very highly ranked weapons that take ages to unlock, so putting Nurgles Rot as something similarly highly ranked and attainable after a while is a good way to play with the concept and its rarity (Nurgle isnt the most popular, that will add to the rarity too). And the slow but sure death fits the lore like a glove, Nurgles Rot is a very strange disease. It can take you in moments or it can hibernate for years and slowly just get worse, theres not a clear and concise method through which every victim suffers. This usually is attributed in lore by how much the infected is resisting the disease (which ironically makes the end result Plaguebearer all the stronger the longer the incubation period). So a medium DPS DoT that slowly eats away at you would be cool, Apothecaries could administer healing to you (which should perhaps be halved) but that would only bring you up a bit, they wouldnt remove the DoT. So in the end you are not worth the Apos time and he will move on the save the cases he can, whilst you will die to the Rot wether that be in a few secs if you dont get help or a few mins if you are attended to. Truly it could work, its not the only thing in the game that will spell certain instant death to people. Gibbing friendlies is kinda a risky path though, anything of the FF sorts has a risk of griefing. Add to the issue that the griefer can hide under roleplay (It was Nurgles will i swear! I wasnt trying to be a dick! DO YOU HEAR THE VOICES TOO?!) and you got yourself a nasty problem with allowing it to FF.
Actually forgot this gem, Ive made a thread for the Rot before stating my worries over its implementation and went to Brent personally on the matter: "Hey man, I personally have no inherent problem with insta-kills, it just depends on whether it feels fair or not. For example, a lascannon might be able to instakill an ork because it's been balanced for destroying vehicles, but due to warm-up times etc., it might be difficult to hit a person-sized moving target. And if the enemy is fielding lots of lascannons and having success with them, it might be time to bring in the Meganobz that can take more damage. When they get up close, those las-devastators are toast. So when it comes to figuring out how we want those Nurgle powers to work, there are a lot of variables to play with." Also the semi-confirmation of Nurgles Rot (or something similarly nasty): "So Nurgle (or indeed any god)-specific stuff is going to be in the game at launch and we're going to expand on them as time goes on. I can pretty much guarantee that a Nurgle's Rot or Nurgle's Rot-inspired power is going to be in the game at some point, it just may not be there first (I honestly don't know yet myself, we haven't come close to finalizing psychic powers yet). That said I think you can probably expect the god-specific powers to work similarly to how you describe. Tzeentch blasts would be more direct, Nurgle doing damage over time, and Slaanesh probably including some other nasty effect along with the damage."
Whoa, hold on their chief. Nobody's said that a single DoT is gonna be able to target and kill 100 people instantly and with a guarantee. That's not how disease works in the first place. There has to be transmission, a carrier, and remission. If you get the flu, you got the virus from entering your body, it self replicates using you as a host, and then you breath/hack/piss/bleed/defecate/sneeze it out. Outside of the host, all parasitic organisms don't last long on their own. What you're talking about is that somehow a Pysker can summon some giant plague bomb and melt everyone into vile goo with it with one shot. What's more likely to happen is that a Pysker, or other Nurgle aligned player is going to have some sort of vile Aura around them. Players who enter the Aura risk the chance of are guaranteed exposure to the virus. The virus is a DoT and is independent of the player who unleashed it. Once the DoT is done, it has a high chance of going into remission (hibernation). On its own, Nurgle's Rot cannot kill a player unless from direct exposure in its Aura form but it can be gifted to other players within a short distance without them knowing when it is in remission. Thus, it can travel wide and far throughout the world until it is triggered; perhaps by an X amount of remission counters. Suddenly, it appears out of nowhere, and everyone in range immediately becomes an active host, activating and re-stackingtheir triggers of Nurgle's Rot where it becomes utterly lethal to all except those favored by Nurgle. Imagine the sheer panic of that type of DoT....
I should also say that yes, a single Pysker could in theory kill 100's if not millions of players from a what seems like a giant plague bomb that melts everyone into vile goo.. but by that time, he's already been killed 1000 times trying to spread the disease, and the disease itself will be most active in the social and tactical hubs players who survived the front lines bring them back to.
