FupDup

Someone did a comparison and found that overall, redside story arcs result in fewer merits than blueside ones. This is largely due to many redside arcs being a bit shorter, which could in theory mean more merits per hour at the end, but in practice I feel like my villains have to work a bit harder to earn money than my heroes.

Sents have a high enough base damage modifier that, in an environment with few damage buffs/insps active, Assault Core can give greater damage returns than Radial. However, Radial still has the advantages of bypassing the damage cap (if you're heavily damage buffed by allies/insps then Core doesn't do much or anything), energy damage type (helps against lethal-resistant enemies), and requires no stack building/maintaining (pretty easy to do on a Sent but it's still a little bit of added convenience). It's hard to go wrong in this case because even the "worse" choice is still going to be good (unless you're using Core and get a lot of external damage buffs), but Radial is a "safer" choice because of the damage cap thing.

For Ignite, the important thing to note is that it will always deal full damage to the primary target even if they run. Only secondary targets can escape the DoT by running. Ignite is advertised/slotted as AOE, but in practice it's actually a single-target power with some occasional AOE as a cherry on top. Due to Sents lacking Sniper Rifle, Ignite is a mandatory part of your ST attack chain.

I think there's potential for filling niches within the existing slots as opposed to adding entirely new slots, the latter of which may require a rebalancing of high-level content including the Hardmode stuff that was built with the existing incarnate powers as the baseline. Alternatively, perhaps some of the "new" powers could take the place of one of the existing slots, like replacing your Destiny with a Genesis ground patch for example. That helps keep it more of a "horizontal" power expansion as opposed to being a purely "vertical" straight buff.

The OP is referring to the default animation where the user stiffly holds their guns at their hips, pointing downwards and elbows not bending much while moving, for a while after attacking. Assuming we can't get an entirely new/unique animation, I think the standard weaponless jogging animation (but with guns in your hands) should just play instead so my arms don't look stiff. The Naruto run only triggers with Ninja Run animations active, and doesn't have the "stiff" feel that the OP is referring to.

Every Stalker set uses the generic build up power as opposed to set-specific deviations like Fusion. If I had to guess, the reason it was done this way is because Stalkers have an ATO that refreshes the recharge on Build Up, thus the abilities need to be based off the same generic power in order for this ATO to work.

Basically, a Scrapper without their ATOs slotted properly is just a weaker Brute. There are other strong ATOs out there like the Stalker ones, but even then the ATs can at least function without them. Scrappers need their ATOs.

The only idea I can think of that might be in the realm of sanity might be to have the game track your uncapped HP for determining your regen per sec (regen ticks scale off your HP). Since resistance debuffs already track your uncapped resists (100% resistance = immunity to res debuffs) I think this might be possible? But even if it's mechanically possible, there is still the legitimate counter-argument that it might be imbalancing to give certain armors this type of buff (Invuln, Stone). So status quo probably wins here.

On one hand I do understand this issue, being someone who likes to play armored ATs there are certain armors that push way over the cap without any effort. It does feel bad having any HP set bonuses become useless and feeling like I have to avoid them at all costs. But on the other hand, just globally buffing max HP doesn't seem like a good idea for balance because the game is mostly pretty easy as it is (although that will change over time as more NPC groups get revamped). Additionally, most of the armors that provide such massive HP boosts tend to already be high performers anyways, so this kind of buff might just make the rich get richer. ...I don't really know what to do about it.

My first HC toon was a DP/Dark Corruptor, but I skipped a ton of the /Dark powers because I basically wanted to play like a semi-tanky ranged character instead of an off-support like Corrs are designed to be. It was still fun, but definitely not getting the most out of the AT. I know I'm going to cause a lot of cringes when I say this, but I legitimately would've been better off playing a Sentinel at that point because it would give me the playstyle I was looking for but without skipping half of my secondary.

Stalkers are around, they're just hidden.

My observation from playing on a 4-man beta team was that the newly revamped factions were only a little bit harder than before, mostly just a bit slower...but that's on teams. Doing it solo, however, was quite a bit slower than previously, especially the new Council being very bullet-spongey. I'm not a fan of pillow fight pacing. I feel like these two outcomes are kind of backwards. There are indeed a good number of complaints about stuff being too easy and enemies dying too fast for people to use their powers, but those complaints are almost always coming from the context of a steamroller team. If you're flying solo you're not going to be worried about whether or not enemies live long enough for you to do stuff. That's a team problem, it needs a team solution. My take is that most faction revamps should focus on making team play moderately or even significantly harder (depending on exactly what the starting point was) but having a relatively modest solo impact. As for how to do that, IDK if it's possible in this game's engine but I'd like something similar to Diablo games where enemies scale in power based on how many players are present. There would need to be a max limit somewhere so large leagues don't get totally hosed by this of course.

Lore wise, it might almost make sense to move that functionality to the actual trainers directly (besides the whole chat bubble thing that already exists). It makes sense that you might go to the person training you if you want a greater or lesser challenge.

Unfortunately, Sentinel's Psi Mastery does not have access to Harmonic Mind. And there's no cone attack, it does have Psychic Shockwave however. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/powerset.html?pset=epic.sentinel_psionic_mastery&at=sentinel

I actually asked a dev about this on the closed beta discord a week ago. They said that they probably won't do it for DP because of how complex the powerset is with all of its redirects and such. Assault Rifle/Arsenal however probably would be much simpler. Also note that the game has no way to determine what sounds to use based on individual weapon variants. The way it would need to be handled is that the player would just select an alternate FX option that comes with a different sound effect. This would allow for weirdness like using beam sounds for traditional rifle models and vice-versa, but that shouldn't be too big of a deal.

Looks pretty good for the most part, aside from my obsession with set-slotting. One thing I see is that your self-rez maybe shouldn't have that KD proc slotted into it, because the power already has KB by default so this means they will stack their magnitude together and fling your enemies even further than default. Swap it out with one of the other pieces from Avalanche to keep the slow resist bonus. You could then move the Avalanche proc to replace Overwhelming Force in Psy Shockwave because it has a higher proc rate (assuming you want the soft control). Otherwise, I don't see anything else to complain about. EDIT: I guess one other possible concern might be the extremely low proc rate on the Decimation Build Up proc. I don't have maths, but it might potentially be better (or at least way more consistent) to replace the two pieces of Deci with 2 pieces of Gladiator's Javelin (including toxic proc). This would come at the cost of 1.5% en/neg resistance but that loss should be manageable.

In the final mission of Graham Easton's arc, when you're fighting the students of the final boss guy, Sun Xiong uses incorrect pronouns when referring to the player. My toon was male and did not have any huge or female costumes in alternate slots, but he still used female pronouns for me:

Regen is better on Brute than Scrappers, BUT Energy Melee is better on Scrappers than Brutes. So it's a toss-end depending on which you value more (offense or defense). A Regen Brute with support buffs can actually be super tanky so they have an endgame/hardmode niche, while Regen on Scrappers is mostly just for concept/theme. Scrappers are of course good in the endgame because damage is king, and hardmode has some serious DPS checks, but there are better choices than Regen for their armor set. So if you're set on Regen specifically, then Brute has a bit more of a clear niche carved out for it.

How many set pieces you try to frankenslot in there vs. pure procs is also another preference call, influenced by what exact kind of set bonuses you might be able to snag in there. I think most people lean toward only 1 or 2 acc/dam pieces and then fill in the rest with procs, but as I said I'm less knowledgeable on that subject since I tend to just cram in full or mostly full sets most of the time. Some of the more min-maxxed builds use Hami enhancements for acc/dam here instead of set pieces, which does give a slightly higher base value but you don't get the set bonuses. Some examples of partial set slotting could be 3-slotted Thunderstrike for energy/negative defenses, Devastation for some regen and max HP, or Gladiator's Javelin for recovery and max HP, and then the remaining slots filled in with procs. Also note that people tend to load procs into single target powers more often/more heavily than AOE powers because the latter typically don't proc as consistently, so AOE powers might be good set bonus holders for things like ATOs if you want to go the proc route.

On live I only played a bit during free trial periods and it was very early in the game's development (like before VEATs and a short time after). I've played way more HC on my first toon than on any of my live trial toons combined, and it felt like a whole new world with all of the shiny new stuff that got added after I stopped playing.

Short Circuit is your primary sapping tool. Electric Blast attacks have a chance to deal bonus damage against enemies who are low on endurance, so sapping is like a damage buff. SC is also a decent source of AOE damage while your nuke is recharging. So TL;DR: Yes it's worth it. If you're concerned about melee you could always just hop in, press SC, then hop back out and continue blasting.

Procs are generally a matter of personal taste, at least when your AT/powerset has high base damage like Sentinels usually do. Proc'ing will get you more damage and more damage type diversity (helps deal with enemies who resist your main damage type) but it might come at the cost of set bonuses, depending on exactly what gets replaced. DP in particular is known for having somewhat low single target damage, and having so many secondary effects does give it a wide variety of proc options, so many people do lean on procs to make up for the lowish base damage. Most veteran players do tend to lean on procs in general, especially for a set like DP, but I'm a bit of a weirdo who likes to cram in more bonuses most of the time. If you wish to go that route I won't be as knowledgeable, but just know a few things: 1. Proc rate is based on both the base recharge and the enhanced recharge of a power, meaning that quick powers like your T1 blast will tend to be poor for procing (good for set bonus holding). Hard hitting powers with slow recharge tend to be the best proc choices, like Executioner's Shot or Suppressive Fire in this case. 2. Slotting recharge enhancement directly in a power will reduce the proc rate, but global recharge from things like Hasten, LOTG, or set bonuses will not hurt you. Some powers have long enough base recharge that they can retain a high proc rate even when slotted with recharge directly. Sometimes the set bonuses gained can make this a worthwhile exchange, like 5-slotting Apocalypse for the 10% global recharge and other stuff it comes with. 3. Mids actually has a built-in proc chance calculator, but I think it only works properly for single-target powers? You can see the estimated proc chance by hovering over a power's damage chart in the lower left corner of the interface:

So here's my first stab at it. Current Build.mbd A summary of my changes and reasoning: -Swapped Agility for Cardiac because the resistance and endurance reduction will be more useful here -Added in Temperature Protection for some extra survival and slow protection, but had to drop Evasive Maneuvers for it -Dropped/swapped some defensive IO set bonuses (like Opportunity Strikes is now 5 slots instead of 6) because Fiery Aura has no native defense and no protection against defense debuffs -Swapped Dual Wield for Pistols because the latter has higher damage-per-animation -Swapped Eradication for Apocalypse like you planned to do later -Swapped power order around a bit to flow a bit better -Swapped slotting of Healing Flames and Cauterizing Blaze because the full set has a much greater impact in the former power because it has higher values -Added the Miracle and Numina procs to Health for more recovery -Added Kismet To-Hit to more consistently hit enemies -Boosted various IOs to +5 for more power -Enabled the passive health and endurance accolades -A bunch of other rearrangements that I don't remember

Yes. Alphas don't give you "free" goodies like IO set bonuses do, they're like a global enhancement. So for example, if you pick an alpha power with resistance enhancement, it only boosts your existing resistance-giving powers. If you don't have any res powers, it won't give you anything.

I think you forgot to post a link to the build. Anyways, I would recommend against the Agility alpha incarnate power here because it doesn't really do a whole ton for Fiery Aura. The endmod portion doesn't help much because Consume's recovery buff is fairly short in duration, and the defense portion doesn't help since Fire doesn't have any defense on its own (and no DDR). A lot of people would also say that the recharge from Agility would nerf your damage proc rate, but since the build doesn't appear to have many damage procs that part won't really hurt much in this case. I'd have to see the build in Mids to decide on the best replacement but my first instincts are either Musculature for more damage, Cardiac for resistance and endurance reduction, or Vigor for greater healing, endurance reduction, and accuracy.