FupDup

Some of the stuff like Mecha Armor and Black Knight have a shiny texture that can make them hard to use with many of the older, flatter-colored pieces so sometimes it feels like "all or nothing" with them. I wish that either the shiny stuff had options for matte/flat textures, or the older stuff had shiny options, similar to how some stuff like chains and skulls have metallic or basic options. I wish that the Cosmic Corsair backpack's armored color had an alternate version that was lowered a bit, because if you try to use it with tights or such it will be just floating way above your collar area and it looks wonky. I wish armored chests in general had more chest detail and shoulder pieces because sometimes it feels like tight chests can create a bulkier feel by using certain pieces like Black Knight that aren't available when you're "armored." The Mechanical Claw feet should have an in-between medium option. The small version looks like a robotic goat or something, while the large version looks too goofy.

Minimal FX gets rid of most of the stuff. Ablative Carapace and Parasitic Aura don't get min fx options, unfortunately.

So I just rolled a Staff/Ice Brute. The issue is that whenever my weapon is drawn, and I try to strafe using W + D or W + A, then most of the time the usual strafing animation generally won't play like it does with most other sets. Sometimes it strafes normally but most of the time it looks like I'm sliding sideways. If I move purely sideways with just A or D, then the animations work as they normally should. The weapon is currently set to not holster, if that influences the situation. If I have Ninja Run active, this issue goes away, so I think it's just the default stance where this happens.

The idea of a "universal enhancement" category that can go into almost anything has come up a few times before. I even took a stab at it myself using Vanden's IO set designer: One issue is that besides trying to get the devs on board with it, we've got to deal with market scalpers who don't want any kind of competition or price reduction. The D-Sync Provocation would still offer slightly stronger values, but a +5 boosted acc/rech piece from this set or any other would be "close enough" that a lot of people wouldn't care and would rather just deal with a few % lower values than paying like 800 million inf per slot. It'd be nice if there were at least a few measures taken to deal with the prices, like for example removing "duplicate" D-Syncs from the drop pool so only the unique ones remain (increasing their chances and thus supply) and/or allowing multiple to be combined together to get a random new one (makes the currently trash ones actually useful for something).

There's already the D-Sync Provocation for this, but they're hella expensive.

Spines Blast could be a fun concept, being the only ranged set with a damage aura in it and having some toxic damage in it.

It's open to anybody who signs up, no invitation needed. Just need links to get there, which I've got right here: https://discord.gg/DptUBzh

Once I've started leveling a toon I've always stuck with them until the "end" (T4 incarnates). After that I kinda feel like there's not much to do, and since T4 can be a bit of a slog, I tend to take a break for a while until the next alt. I rarely revisit "completed" toons. I do have a lot of level 1 alts collecting dust in the character list (to reserve names), some unused costumes, and builds in Mids that might not ever get used.

Willpower also doesn't have a good rep on Sents, mainly due to the scaling regen power being made static...but it actually comes out ahead of the melee version when you have only 0-3 enemies nearby (8ft radius). With 4 they're equal and with 5+ baddies the melee version wins. However, the Sent variant doesn't have any kind of replacement for the -tohit effect given by the same power and the same low DDR that others get. So it's still a net loss, but not the reason that most people say it is. Regen at least gets passive absorb on Sents and a clicky burst heal, while WP doesn't have much in the way of "crisis management" buttons. If nothing else the Sent Regen is at least a unique experience while Sent WP is only slightly adjusted with an overall net loss due to the lack of to-hit debuff or replacement for it (the scaling to static regen thing actually has a trade-off to it).

On Regen you'll probably want the full kit. Second Wind is useful for capping your HP (very important for Regen) or helping you get up if/when you die (and if you wanna be Deadpool that fits the theme). Dismiss Pain is useful for the same HP reason, and it can carry one of the various global procs that normally go in Health if you want. On Moment of Glory, as long as it gets you to the res and def caps you can focus its slotting on recharge for max uptime (and stick stuff like LOTG in there). Piercing Rounds is safe to skip because the animation is pretty long. The damage it does in one hit is actually fairly hard but it's an opportunity cost that locks you from doing other stuff while you watch the fancy animation. It's not useless but it's kinda superfluous, especially if you're already kinda low on slots to begin with. For Lotus, 8ft PBAOE is the same radius that most melee AT's get on their PBAOE attacks (including this same power). It's not huge but if you're in the middle of a mob you'll hit enough of them to justify it. I can't speak for the fancy sounding smoke bomb power. The damage and to-hit debuffs could help your survival a bit, especially if you want to be in the thick of melee. Your call on this one. The Opportunity Strikes proc is kinda weak, it just helps your inherent debuff have a bit more uptime. The real reason to pick the set is for the set bonuses, which are pretty nice. On a set like Regen you can get away with just 5 slots since the extra defense bonus at 6 slots won't apply here much (do whatever you want with that last slot, if you choose to take it).

This is currently unpossible due to how janky and haphazard the implementation of shield was. It's not just about having a weapon or not, it's about having a completely free left hand. Ideally, shield should have had an option (or make this the default way it works) to mount it on the side so that the left hand can still hold stuff or at least shoot hand blasts. Look at this cheater here using Assault Rifle and Shield: In our archaic game, IDK whether or not it would be possible to have the shield attach to the side of your character's left glove piece similar to how holstered weapons work (except in this case it would stay "holstered" forever unless you toggle off all the shield powers maybe). That's the first potential workaround I can think without knowing anything about the spaghetti that holds this game together. As for meta/gameplay discussion, the set has a lot of potential on Sents because so far all armors that lacked sustain on other ATs were given it on Sents, and the lack of sustain is the main weakness of the set. The scaling damage boost would either be made static (similar to WP's scaling regen) or replaced with a sustain power. Shield Charge could maybe be replaced by Shield Throw if we found a way around the animation issues, or just replace it with another sustain power of some sort. Grant Cover would be pretty great here because you could protect backline teammates with it, whereas the current version is more about helping melee teammates who are in the thick of it with you (as a melee AT).

I like slotting IO sets as early as possible to start building up set bonuses. Sometimes I might use a placeholder set until I reach the level threshold for what I wanted in the finished build, if necessary. Thankfully ATOs, Winters, PVPs, and Overwhelming Force can be slotted at level 7. When you're done, you can unslot them and put them in your SG base for the next alt to make use of. PVPs in particular often give you a little bit of KB protection at 3 slots, which can let you deal with low-level knocks before your proper KB protection powers come online. EDIT: Also, for attack powers in early levels you can lean on the 5 free prestige enhancements that can be picked up at P2W.

The travel power stacking thing only applies to proper travel toggles. For auto speed buffs like inherent fitness or Athletic Regulation, those don't conflict with anything. We can see this by looking at powers in City of Data. Here is Infiltration: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=pool.invisibility.invisibility&at=sentinel Note the blue key icon stating "Stacks per attribute by key TravelBuff." That's the sign that it can't stack with other stuff. Athletic Regulation: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=sentinel_defense.bio_organic_armor.athletic_regulation&at=sentinel No blue key icons, so you're free to stack it up.

The word on the street that I heard (source: trust me bro) is that the reason that Sister P got killed off was because she was another character made by Jack Emmert, rather than being chosen for best storyline material. Much of the point of Who Will Die was just to give Jack the middle finger by killing his characters after his departure.

If we wanna talk about a real missed opportunity, my fantasy for the inherent would be to make it kinda like the old version that had a split between offensive and defensive, but as separate clickies with a shared cooldown so you aren't forced to pick both the T1 and T2 powers. They'd build up over time like Vulnerability does. Offensive makes you hit harder and more accurately, maybe even add a little range IDK. Defensive makes you tankier and maybe applies a taunt proc to your attacks, letting you be a sort of offtank for a short time. Takes the generalist/adaptability aspect to a new level, basically making them like "Bio Armor: The AT."

My problem with the "endgame" is that almost all of it is co-op, meaning that every blueside and redside alt will end up retreading the same territory. The story arcs up to level 50 are more replayable because most of them are faction segregated, so at least a hero and villain will be doing different stuff (and blueside especially because there's more contacts and zones to take a slightly different path each time). I want moar level 50 stuff that is faction segregated. And I don't mean level 45 contacts that scale up to level 50 like MJ, I don't count those. I mean stuff that only unlocks at 50 specifically (such as incarnate arcs). Or at least do it like Pandora's Box and Who Will Die where they cover similar events but with different angles that make them feel fresh. DA tries to do that with the whole "stab the goddess" thing but that feels like it was just tacked on at the last minute because everything plays out exactly the same before that one final choice.

Since Sents have armor that does also mean that they will rarely have VT get detoggled due to mezz (one of the drawbacks to making it a toggle). It's only appropriate that the literal Sentinel archetype gets more mileage out of a Voltaic Sentinel than the others. 😁

Psionic weaknesses are generally deliberate because psi's whole thing is that most targets don't have protection against it. You can see this in armor set descriptions in the character creator. Toxic, however, is a bit weirder. Originally the game didn't even have specific typed toxic defenses at all, toxic attacks only used positions (ranged, melee, AOE) but the HC team added it later. After this addition, there are still some powers that lack toxic defense. Also noteworthy is that there are no IO set bonuses for toxic defense, but there are bonuses for psi defense. Since psi and toxic are bundled together for resistance bonuses, I think that all existing psi defense bonuses should also get toxic defense for consistency and because they're currently a bit niche in use (if you're not starting with a high psi def value on an armor set like Stone or something then the bonuses aren't going to help much). Toxic kinda feels like the "new Psi" in the sense that it's harder to build for using IO's (can only grab resists, usually in 6-slot bonuses, while Psi has typed defenses and two different single-slot pieces for resists).

I can't speak for him, but my guess is that since it's a toggle that means it gets dropped if you get endurance drained or mezz'd, whereas a clicky would persist until its duration expired (or the owner died). As a toggle that also means a slightly higher continuous endurance load that needs to be built around vs. a periodic clicky.

Early today I saw this happen at the end of Belladonna's arc now too, this time with Praetor Sinclair vs. Chimera. Interesting that they used different names that time.

Generally I'd only use flashbacks just to grab a badge/accolade if needed, so not very often. On my first hero and villain toons I did flashback most or all of the arcs available at that time but nowadays I don't spend enough time on each alt to do that. It also makes the leveling up experience more replayable since I can pick different paths for each alt (instead of playing everything with every alt).

In regards to element mixing, Sentinels can take a good swing at that too. You could do something like Storm Blast primary (ice and electric), Stone Armor secondary (stone and fire), and then whatever epic you want (ice, fire, or elec probably but could also mix in some dark/soul if you're feeling spicy).

For Dark Blast I decided to look at the actual numbers in City of Data to illuminate the comparison. T1: Dark Blast Blaster: 62.5615 Sentinel: 61.1712 T2: Gloom Blaster: 13.7635 (DoT) Sentinel: 13.4577 (DoT) T3: Umbral Torrent Blaster: 60.059 (10 targets) Sentinel: 58.7244 (6 targets) T7/T4: Abysmal Gaze Blaster: 44.231 Sentinel: 43.248 T5/T7: Moonbeam vs. Antumbral Beam Blaster: 139.3 base using quick form (had to use Mids for this) but it can vary based on your to-hit bonuses, or 247 slow form, 150ft range Sent: 168.8325 (no variability), 60ft range T6/T5: Tenebrous Tentacles vs. Dark Obliteration Blaster: 8.4458 upfront, 6.2562 DoT, mag 3 immobilize, 40* cone, 10 targets Sentinel: 55.0541, 15ft circular AoE, 10 targets T8: Life Drain Blaster: 102.6009 damage, 120.4759 heal Sentinel: 100.3208 damage, 80.3173 heal T9: Blackstar Blaster: 187.6845 and 62.5615, 25ft radius, 16 targets, 145s recharge Sentinel: 137.8187 entire radius, 56.7669 bonus in 8ft center radius, 20ft radius, 10 targets, 90s recharge So the basic verdicts: Most ST attacks are pretty close, with some only losing a few decimal places of damage. The sniper comparison is murky because of their variability. The self heal is noticeably weaker for some reason. AoE is also murky because Dark Oblit easily stomps Tenebrous Tentacles but Sents have a weaker Umbral Torrent (in terms of target cap). The nukes can be debated because of the tradeoff of more targets and larger alpha strike vs. faster recharge (potential sustained damage edge at the cost of lower alpha strike). However, these numbers fail to consider the impact of Blasters' Defiance buffs as well as Sentinels' Vulnerability buffs. Defiance can vary but Vulnerability is a flat 15% resistance debuff (also debuffs secondary protections to stuff like end drains etc.) that helps everybody on the team. All in all it's probably not going to be a giant difference because the damage gap between the 2 AT's is nowhere near the size that it used to be. Contrary to popular belief, Sentinels do in fact inflict greater damage than a petless Empathy Mastermind built using SO's. Much greater, in fact. I still maintain that if you don't care much for melee and don't want to deal with mezz, Sents will probably tickle your fancy more accurately than Blasters who usually need to take a more "proactive" approach to survival (kill or mezz them before they do the same to you) and have a greater dependence on consumable items to prop up their defenses. Sents can just "stand and deliver" without a care in the world, armor set depending. Speaking of which, knowing what armor sets you'd be interested in would make this comparison easier because some are quite a bit better than others...

Some have said that a Blaster without melee is like a Sentinel without armor, which is at least true in terms of flavor/feel (only one Blaster secondary without melee, compared to a whole bunch of Sent secondaries without melee AND Sents can't pick up melee ST attacks until level 35 and they only get 1 there). Blasters are designed such that their strongest attacks are usually melee. A pure range Blaster isn't going to be kicked off of teams or anything, and can still contribute fine, but it kind of misses the point of the AT (excluding Tac Arrow of course). I have a just a wee bit of a bias here, but I think Sents would fill your intended fantasy (mostly range, mezz protection) more accurately. And Dark Blast is pretty nifty on Sents due to having Dark Oblit as a part of its kit. Also the range gets pretty close if you slot the ATO sets (crappy procs but good set bonuses, similar to Brutes).

This seems to happen in a few other places where there's an enemy that starts neutral/friendly but then respawns as an enemy, without deleting the original one. I reported something similar for Captain Castillo in a Talos story arc.