Here Comes the Boom - a Combo Primer

No. No, no, no. Brother, listen. There is only one source of ComboBonusPassive - the person detonating's passive Skill- either Offensive Biotics or Offensive Tech (or Ascension, if you wanna nitpick).

Detonators, do, not, have, ComboBonusPassive.

This is why we called it "ComboBonusPassive", because it comes from a passive skill. 

Are you using the word "detonator" to mean "power that detonates" or "person that uses a detonator power"? Because that could be the source of your confusion.

Just one more time though, to clear things up (and just read this in isolation, don't try to combine 3 or 4 posts at once to see this)

The combo is detonated by the person who casts the detonator power. Therefore only the person who casts the detonator power can contribute their combo bonus skills to the final damage. The person who primed it has nothing to do with the final damage formula. The person who detonates can boost combo damage in two ways: with a PASSIVE skill, meaning either Offensive Biotics or Offensive Tech, for a 50% bonus to base damage, or with their ACTIVE skill i.e. the detonator power,  for a 30% bonus to base damage. 

Sequential Combat Log from the gif. (You can watch the log in the gif if you don't believe me heh)


In the log, you can see the cascade effect a little more clearly. 6 targets are hit with Explosive Purge, priming them. As the target gets hit by Charge and triggers an explosion, it also triggers that target's combo immunity. That's why the colors disappear as you get farther down the list. You can also see that there's an oddity with Combo 2. The dark blue target 9E8474D0, was outside the combo radius of combo 2. He also did not get hit by Charge, otherwise there would be another 2 rows to the log showing it getting hit by Charge 6 / Combo Damage 6. Hope this illustrates the cascade combo effect a little more clearly, and why some targets (like the dark blue one) take massive damage and you're able to one shot some things that doesn't seem possible. This also applies to Krogan Gladiator Pull + Melee, although the "combo" radius is A LOT smaller and harder to cascade 4-5 times. Most likely you'll only get a double cascade or rarely a triple with Krogan Gladiator.

OP: How long is Nova's priming duration? If I take Charge evo 6A, is it possible to detonate Nova combo with Charge-Nova-Charge in succession?

not only it applies. It also applies to all targets hit by that combo AOE even if only the pulled detonated target was actually debuffed by pull .

no need to assume

We are working on compiling priming duration for all primers in a new revamped version of the Combo Damage Table. Just checking with that, it looks like 3 seconds for Nova. So, Charge-Nova-Charge is fine as long as you wait a couple seconds after the first charge.

The window is small, but the projectile travel time lets some classes self-detonate even a R1 throw.
You need a bit of distance for this usually, but can also delay it by curving the shot (turning sharply and throwing very quickly just before the power un-targets - lets you throw around corners which is handy).

For example, Throw followed by Energy Drain at the moment of impact can detonate.
With Energy Drain ranked to prime, you can even get two detonations if the drain hits at the same time as the throw projectile.


As for held targets - Targets held with pull are not primed, only targets lifted by tap-pull.
If throw has any similar hold-action, I'm not aware of it - There seems to be very few powers that actually have an alternate mode.