FupDup

Those numbers can all be verified in City of Data as accurate. Snarky posed this question on the Sentinel forum and this is how I answered it: Most of the gap between Blaster and Sent comes from these factors: Blasters get way more melee attacks (Sents only get 1 in their epics) and the game favors melee over ranged Most of the Sentinel sniper replacement powers are a bit weaker DPA-wise than their Blaster quicksnipe counterparts (Zapping Bolt is actually stronger than Zap but that's an outlier) Blasters get a stacking damage buff from Defiance Lower target caps on most AOE powers To answer Snarky's question for this thread, as to whether he wants to try a Sent, that does indeed depend on what he's looking for. Sents are in a weird spot where they don't have a strong focused specialty at one specific thing like most ATs do. Rather, they're more of an all-rounder that is decently good at several things. Some have likened them to "Ranged Brutes" in that kind of way (Brutes sort of sit between Scrappers and Tankers rather than specializing). Sents are self-sufficient and adaptable with a focus on mostly ranged but with a bit of melee mixed in via their epic pools and certain primary/secondary sets (including Dark). For those familiar with Battletech/Mechwarrior, I would compare them to a medium or a lighter heavy class Battlemech. Or maybe someone like Soldier 76 from Overwatch, The Soldier from TF2, etc.

Opportunity Strikes just gives you a little bit of +Opportunity when it triggers, which means you get to have a bit higher uptime on your inherent clicky. Specifically, the purple version gives you +10. It's an okay proc but it's not going to be a gamechanger. Really the main reason to slot it is for the set bonuses that the set gives you. If you don't want or need the bonuses then it's entirely optional. Sentinel ATO procs are comparable to Brute ATOs in this way.

Yes, these numbers are correct, as we can verify in City of Data. Which part is surprising? Were you expecting a larger gap between the two? If that's the case, most of the gap between Blaster and Sent comes from these factors: Blasters get way more melee attacks (Sents only get 1 in their epics) and the game favors melee over ranged Most of the Sentinel sniper replacement powers are a bit weaker DPA-wise than their Blaster quicksnipe counterparts (Zapping Bolt is actually stronger than Zap but that's an outlier) Blasters get a stacking damage buff from Defiance Lower target caps on most AOE powers

I don't play Doms so I don't really have a horse in this race here, but clicky mezz protection buttons aren't a good comparison because they actually have some situational advantages over toggles (can't be disabled by sapping, stackable protection, lower end cost over time). Domination doesn't really come with a trade-off or consideration like that. It's kind of just an old school design.

They're based off the same powers with the same animations and FX, but with tweaked damage, recharge, radius, and target cap. They're close enough that a name change wouldn't serve much purpose. My semi-related pipedream fantasy would be giving Sents entirely alternate range-focused powers that could replace their primary PBAOEs (including nukes and normals) with different names, like Radiation Blast getting "Atomic Bomb" (ranged AOE) instead of Atomic Blast or such. This would be treated like Sent SR treats Practiced Brawler vs Master Brawler; You could pick the one you wanted but they'd be mutually exclusive. The devs said they never want to do that again though so it'll just stay a pipedream.

I think the dev rationale for doing this was because people complained about the recharge buff making their procs fire less frequently (I will once again say that the PPM formula is objectively bad game design, faster recharge should never be considered a nerf ever), so this was a compromise to keep the old slow recharge for those who want to load up procs while still having the alternate ammo as an option that can stand on its own. I can see this logic on the other ATs where Suppressive Fire used to deal almost no damage in any firing mode, but since Sents did used to deal high damage with normal bullets here, it was stupid to include them in the change. But the devs are most likely not going to revert this, because Sents are generally not allowed to have nice things.

IMO we should just add some bubble alternate FX to Energy Aura since that powerset thematically seems to fit a "forcefield" kind of feel already, minus the FX difference.

My belief is that all rez powers should be usable on living targets to some effect, like what happened with Phoenix Rising. The support AT rezzes thus would/should get the same treatment.

I think if we were going to add a whole separate Power Armor set, it should come with some utility/offense powers because folks like Iron Man have a lot of gadgets up their sleeves. We're also a bit short of offensive/utility armors in general. Let Invuln be the "pure tanky wall of steel" armor set. One possibility could be a ranged AOE missile barrage, as a ranged counterpart to Shield Charge. Maybe a tractor beam to pull an enemy into melee range (Sentinels might get an inverted version that knocks them away instead). Perhaps deploy some Seeker Drones as a tool to eat alpha strikes and debuff enemy To-Hit. It'd be cool if the T9 could be a transformation like Granite that turns you into an enlarged Assault Bot with added firepower or something. Definitely needs some kind of "Enhanced Targeting" toggle with To-Hit and Perception buffs. Kinda just spitballing here.

Field Medic is just a weird capstone power to have in a pool. Like imagine if the final power in Speed was just a clicky that made you run faster for a while. IMO the final Medicine power should've been a PBAOE heal but this might run into the "Cottage Rule" issue. Aid Self and Aid Other shouldn't have any interruption window whatsoever, regardless of what happens to Field Medic. Resuscitate could maybe be changed so that it can be used as a large burst heal on living allies, similar to what was done with Phoenix Rising. Aid Self's endurance restoration should take endmod enhancement and I think the power could even use a weak amount of recovery by default (there are way too few recovery tools in pools and all of them except Aid Self are T3's with extremely long recharge times, one of which is unenhanceable). Lastly, I'd like to see a "synergy" effect similar to what the Fighting Pool has. Depending on which Med powers you pick, other powers get different bonuses, like for example picking Aid Other as your T1 would make Aid Self's heal stronger, but picking Injection would make the recovery portion a bit stronger.

Hitting more targets and having wider AOEs does make sense in regards to helping Tanks grab/hold aggro from more enemies at once.

I'm not arguing against Brute changes here, but it's kind of worth pointing out that Hardmode tends to result in a meta of 7 ranged supports with one melee AT, and that melee actually ends up being a Scrapper more often than a Tanker these days. Scraps are able to fulfill the melee tank role "good enough" when megabuffed by allies/Barrier while providing more damage. Are we going to conclude that Tankers are underpowered from this? Hardmode's meta is kinda sorta fucked, to the extreme, so if even the mighty Tanker of all things can't compete against a Scrapper there, it's gonna be real hard to make a Brute compete without just making them outright better than Scrappers. Again, I'm not saying don't change Brutes, I posted some ideas of mine earlier, I'm just saying that maybe there might be some underlying/overarching metagame issues to resolve so we can get a more clear picture here. And hopefully have a meta that isn't a harem of 7 ranged supports following an armored melee AT of some sort.

Yeah, maybe it could be a -res and -def debuff to enemies instead? Like a reverse-Buildup that achieves a similar effect but by weakening enemies instead of empowering the user.

This would be a problem because as it stands now, Storm Blast only has 4 ST attacks, two of which are your basic ones. This change would make the set a lot weaker in the ST department on non-Blasters who don't have a secondary full of ST attacks to fill in.

The recharge provided by Agility and Spiritual is not global, it counts as slotted recharge (which reduces proc rates). Global recharge is stuff like Hasten and Luck of the Gambler.

There's a difference between relative balance and absolute balance. (Relative means that you stayed the same but other things changed around you, absolute means that you actually changed directly). From a relative standpoint, Brutes now feel worse because Tankers are almost a direct upgrade (15% higher ST damage on Brutes isn't that big of an edge). From an absolute standpoint, Brutes only received a very small nerf to their base kit (max damage buff reduced from 775% to 700%) in the same patch that buffed Tankers (the Fire Armor thing is separate from the AT as a whole). But then again, Brutes also got a slight buff to Fury in that same patch to make it generate a wee bit faster on teams and with attacks slower than Brawl. If the Brute changes were the only things that went through and Tankers never got touched, we wouldn't be having this conversation. If we compare Brutes and Scrappers in a vacuum, there are actually quite a few advantages in their favor. A bit higher base HP, much higher max HP, much higher resist caps, universal taunt auras, and being able to function without ATOs (Scrappers without ATOs don't really have an inherent, like at all, the base chance is so freaking tiny). The one edge (admittedly a very important one) that Scrappers have over Brutes is that they put up much bigger orange numbers when fully built out. Fortunately for Scraps, the game's meta revolves entirely around orange numbers. But when we compare Brutes to Tanks, their only edge is around 15% higher ST damage while losing a whole bunch of other stuff in the process. Virtually no one thought that Brutes were some irredeemable pile of trash before that fateful patch. They were what everybody used in place of Tanks because Tanks didn't put up as many orange numbers. I'm not saying that Tanks shouldn't have been buffed (they should've been) or that Brutes shouldn't get any more changes (they should), I'm just trying to remind everybody of the past so we don't keep repeating it. What I think should happen: Tankers: *Base damage modifier reduced down to around 0.875-0.9 (currently 0.95, used to be 0.8) to find a middle ground between pre-buff and post-buff, in order to increase ST damage gap between them and Brutes *Possibly nudge the AOE down a little bit if the above change is insufficient (but they still should remain the AOE kings of melee to distinguish them) Brutes: *Base HP increased a bit so it sits between Scrapper and Tanker a bit more evenly instead of being way closer to Scraps (max HP cap remains untouched) *Base armor modifiers increased to around 0.8-0.85 (currently 0.75 for Brutes and Scrappers, 1.0 for Tanks) *Replace +Fury ATO with something else, possibly Shin's recharge buff idea (but I would make it stackable similar to Unrelenting Fury) *Some kind of change to Fury to make it a bit more unique (like Ston's speed idea or something, IDK)

The Unrelenting Fury proc already adds a stacking endurance discount, along with regen too. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Superior_Unrelenting_Fury:_Recharge/Chance_for_%2BRegen/%2BEnd_Discount

In regards to "which direction to break Brutes in," I think slightly breaking them towards Tankers makes more sense since Scrappers and Stalkers are already kind of neck and neck against each other. We don't need a third AT competing for the same spot. Furthermore, a common character archetype in gaming and fiction is the "bruiser" (or off-tank) who has a combination of good damage and durability, so I think that having something sit between Scrappers and Tanks to fit that bill makes sense instead of making people choose all-or-nothing between pure tank or pure DPS. Tanks should retain their AOE advantage over Brutes to help them stay different but I think the ST gap should be widened a bit (15% is too small). In addition to that, something unique like the ATO suggestion in this thread and/or something else (like maybe Ston's idea for Fury to grant a speed boost). I really don't like the suggestion for Brutes to be basically better Scrappers but with a higher skill requirement because you're resigning the Scrapper to be nothing more than training wheels that experienced players will inevitably discard.

Maybe instead of a large upfront bonus, make it like the other Brute ATO (the regen/end discount one) where the recharge bonus can stack multiple times but is a bit smaller per stack? I think that fits the "building power over time" motif a bit more accurately than a single big number.

An issue to contend with is that the existing eye beam and head-psi powers have specific animation time durations but there's a pretty wide variety of different animation times out there for the various blast powers. We need to match them up exactly or things would look/feel wonky. If I weren't lazy I would put to together a list of the ani times to see if there was at least one whole powerset that would match the eye/head blast ani times...but I am.

Maybe the Warriors could be given a "Quantum Mace" or some other melee weapon to fill a similar anti-Kheldian role but being more thematically appropriate?

In terms of armor, I think plant-based alternate FX for Bio Armor would fit the bill here without needing to try to balance a whole new armor set. And Bio can be kinda ugly sometimes so it could really use some more options.

Savage Blast and/or Savage Control could be cool, but the OP already ruled out animals. 😔

In this particular example, most debuffs against a +5 enemy will have their strength reduced to just 0.30 of their standard strength. So that 5% (unenhanced) Cloak of Fear gets bumped down to just 1.5%. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Purple_Patch

I has an idea. Let's nerf Cloak of Fear by like 50% to increase the "power budget" of the set so we can do good things with the other powers (assuming we don't trust the devs to only give a slight heal reduction to Dark Regen instead of gutting it like a fish). Totes balanced.