Linea

I've rebuilt entire builds to gain 40dps .... *glares at scrapper brimstone*

I 💖 💘 💝 LOVE 💖 💘 💝 Battle Becky! ... and I definitely want to stash her somewhere safe next run, so I can use her psi-dps later after I clear the hordes. Angel Hornet (EnM/EnA 801-built Scrapper) finished her Villainous (Difficulty 1 of 5) solo run too. Pretty much a cake walk. Never even toggled up my full armor capabilities. Got a little hairy on the 'DE Horde'. Had to swap targets to Horde Clearing Mode instead of Primary Target DPS Mode, and funnily enough killed the AV due to splash damage just as I finally started clearing out 'The Horde' and was getting ready to swap back to Primary Target DPS Mode. Midas can one-hit for ~80% damage. Luckily he only did that about once per fight. I'll crank it up a notch next run. 😜

If you can quote it, select it, or copy clip it, you can resize it inside the editor as-if you were going to post it ... but you don't have to actually post it. Size 16:

Run it +0x8 Villainous (difficulty 1 of 5), this is equivalent of running 'normal' TFs +4x8. or Run it +0x8 Malicious (difficulty 2 of 5) for badge runs. This is equivalent of difficulty to running a 'master of' 'normal' TF. Faultline called me 'Just Plain Evil' once upon a time. I don't remember what I did that time. But right now I'm working on a solo run of the ASF. +0 of course. It looks to be entirely solo-able +0 Villanous, and probably +0 Malicious. I have serious doubts at about Vicious.

*** DO NOT JUST LEROY THE ASF +4x8 BLINDLY *** It's pretty explicit this is NOT intended to be your normal Steamroll Task Force. Run it +0x8 Villainous (difficulty 1 of 5), this is equivalent of running 'normal' TFs +4x8. or Run it +0x8 Malicious (difficulty 2 of 5) for badge runs. This is equivalent difficulty to running a 'master of' 'normal' TF +4x8. Running the ASF +0x8 will be roughly equivalent to running a normal TF +4x8. Start it +0x8 until you are very comfortable with it, then ease it up one notch at a time. Running the ASF +4x8 will be roughly equivalent to running a normal TF +8x16. I Strongly suggest you have a core of at least 2 very competent players on very competent builds, then build from there. I would also suggest a FULL and WELL BALANCED team of Tier 4 IO Tier 4 Incarnates. At a minimum I'd suggest an 801.7 capable tank, backed by a highly competent defender, and controller, and then some 801.7 capable dps. One of the support should probably be resist based, and one defense based. Expanding to a full team of 8 should make this much easier overall as well as lower the requirements on the armor down to as low as 801.2 levels. PAY ATTENTION TO THE BIG BOLD WARNINGS. The powers that give a massive big warning, similar to the warnings in the Lambda, are effectively one-shot tank killers when set to +4x8. I would have preferred 95% lethality to a def/res capped tank ... I'm not sure exactly where they ended up, but I suspect it's still in the 100% lethality range. (at least some of) The devs have seen my 801 builds and what they are capable of in-game, and (some of them) have played 801 from 801.2 up through 801.A. If your team can't handle 801.7 +4x8, then you'll probably get slaughtered in a Hardmode 5 +4x8 ASF. The Devs are even nastier than me and have access to even nastier and more complicated tools and techniques than AE. The same way that as you increase the decimal in 801, the mobs get harder and get more powers; the devs did that using the + difficulty factor in the ASF. When they say +4 mobs get exponentially more and stronger powers, they are NOT joking.

In general I recommend defender. Something like this, but adjust it to your blast set. FF Beam Dark Sniper - Heavy Gun 42-59 - Overwatch 1b - [i25].mxd

I think I'd like to see an Nihilli Procced out full offense Electric/EnergyAura sentinel build. I think the idea shows real promise.

Maybe.

Re: EnA The issue is the Stacking +Def in Energy Drain. Perma 80s defenses on the brute frame, with resists added in. Some of this has already been addressed by adjusting Rune. Now Imagine that with Tank mods.

My thanks and congratulations to everyone that participated in the the 'All Sentinel 801' runs. We finished both +4x8 801.2 and +4x8 801.5. I apologize for not getting screenshots and names, it was enitrely too late for me to still have more than 3 functioning brain cells.

This. It's 801.5 to 801.7 range difficulty, with BUFFED AVs added in. If you can solo 801.5 to 801.7, no-temps, no-inspirations, and still be packing 500 dps, ... that's more or less what I expect it will take to solo ASF Hardmode 5. ... which is to say I wholly expect to duo it, but not solo it. Downgrade the AVs to EBs, removing the dps check, and yes, I suspect I'd at least try to solo it HM5.

Only Minimally. I strongly limited auto-hit and unresistible effects. I did not limit them completely, and the farther up the scale you go, the more there may be, but they remain limited even in the hardest versions.

Kin + Cold = LOL! Kin caps +damage while cold and sonics floor -resist ~= 9x damage, and since there are two of you, that's ~18x, more than double the 'average' team's offense. The only way you can push damage higher would be run heavy Proc_Builds and Hybrid_Assault_Radial bypassing the damage caps. At least one of you should run Degen, if not both, as -res will already be taking a beating. That might push you into "triple the 'average' team's offense", maybe higher. The whole idea is just pure "Ouch!".

I expect the hardest setting to be pushing 801.7 territory. But we'll see. Global me, and I'll try to run some 801s this week on Excel, 7pm-9pm EST.

Congrats, Jilaiya will buy you some drinks next time you're in Pocket D. The Cimmies can get lucky in any mission, but I'd say it's about twice as likely to happen in Mission 2 than any other. But at the same time, you can't let your guard down after mission 2, they can get lucky in any of the missions, all you have to do is get overconfident or blink one too many times.

I'll be around 'some' this week, but mostly afk IRL. Global @linea

I'm really busy IRL, so I'm barely in-game lately ... but if you can catch me in-game (Everlasting and Excelsior)... I solo* up to 801.6 +4x8 with my Sentinel, and lead groups up to 801.A. I usually swap if it goes higher than 801.7 as teams get exponentially less reliable as soon as you hit 7 and above. *I don't have enough firepower to complete above 2 in the time allotted, but can tank 6 pretty comfortably, and take out one group at a time just up to the edge of 7. I can probably do 7 +4x4, but not full +4x8.

I edit mine from time to time to move whole pages of characters around. So I'm not sure what's happening here that it's not behaving the way it always has in the past.

Unless you are doing non-attack things, and/or have a very active armor set. If you miss or otherwise interrupt frenetic dps activity, you can quickly lose the core's advantage. If you're a dps chainsaw on a high damage AT, then yes definitely Core. In-game testing shows Core leading Radial for high-damage ATs, with little room for debate. I personally try to test both when I have any question. My most egregious result was on a stalker where core was +100dps over radial. However, that gets more complicated with some sets, and if you start including AoE as well as ST damage. I frequently take radial regardless, as the difference is often minimal, and sometimes I take both. You might want to conjur up @UberGuy, as he has an excellent guide somewhere, and very good understanding of both the math and application of hybrids.

I think I've used Defensive once .... way back in beta testing.

You should also keep in mind, T4 incarnates can contribute up to half of your perceived effective applied damage, and that Tier 4s are subjectively twice as effective as Tier 3s. Those little tid-bits can completely skew and warp all your results. Note I said perceived and subjective. And it gets much more complicated than that. I have builds that behave almost exactly as stateded above, but I have others that don't. I have a stalker that mids says is 350 dps, but pylons say 650 dps. If the pylon is dead in a minute, the pylon is dead, I don't care what mids nor the log analyzer say, dead is dead. Then you have proc builds and proc variance, where a build can vary from 450 to 650 dps, averaged over 10 runs it's still a mess, 20 it's still a mess, but if you do 40 or 50 runs the average finally starts to show itself. Procs and Proc builds make dps a nightmare. I used to only do 3 to 5 runs, now I have to do 20+ if it's a proc build. (yes, that means clearing the whole zone, typically almost twice). ... and heaven help you if you want to test multiple proc builds at once, I spent 8 hours straight one saturday testing a trio of proc builds.

Keep in mind, 'Zone Pylons' are vastly different from 'LFG Event Pylons', just in case you accidentally tested vs the 'LFG Event Pylon' Versions. All testing should be done vs 'Zone Pylons' to be backwards compatible with previous testing.

Defender, it's much easier and more flexible to build the defender. The synergy is very nice. I also like Storm/Elec. Elec/Beam would also work well. I always recommend (Fire, Ice, Water) as well.

I have to say I think this is the way to handle things, even if it is a bit more difficult to implement. 👍