arcane

Blasters are very easy to make durable if all you do is play the easiest content. You’re correct that none of these balance metrics matter if you’re playing in a setting where Blasters are durable enough. If, however, you bother to stray from that level of play, the Sentinel’s durability adds something no other Ranged AT gets. If you are not having durability issues with Blaster, you should be playing Blaster, yes. Likewise, if you’re only playing content a Scrapper can tank, you should have zero reason to ever make a Brute or Tank. Etc etc. But the game’s balance isn’t based on how IO builds do in easy mode content, so that’s all irrelevant stuff.

Sentinels get Armor Sets and Blasters don’t - the vast difference in mitigation is not that hard to grasp…

Think there’s a little bit more difference between Sentinels vs Blasters and Tankers vs Brutes AND a reasonable amount of consensus that Tankers were overbuffed, but, sure, yeah, do whatever.

Regardless, the most durable ranged AT needs to be [at least one of] the least damaging ranged AT’s, because balance, and that’s why we’re here. That said I understand the frustration with the target caps because even Defenders don’t have to deal with that. So my question is: would people be ok with Sentinel’s damage modifier decreasing from where it is now if that was the justification devs needed to increase target caps? Say between 0.1 and 0.15. Personally, I would say yes.

There’s literally no way to balance a ranged damage / armor AT without something feeling watered down. This is basic stuff.

Ill/ Trollers just spoil you in general. I have Ill/ with /Dark, /Storm, /TA, /Traps, and /Cold. All of them pretty OP at this.

FWIW as annoying as SwitchFade is about economics, he was basically correct about the long term market effects of the last major patch-induced shift (when no xp / double inf option was nerfed).

Yes, the vast majority of leveling wouldn’t be happening in AE if it wasn’t an extreme outlier in terms of rewards output per unit of input. Not sure which part of that is debatable.. You can acknowledge this as truth without wanting to nerf the whole thing into the ground. So people don’t need to lose their shit over mere statements of fact.

That’s how every damage buff in the game has worked since forever so it’s just an extremely weird point to make. Do you come here to make the same point about every other damage buff in the game? Doesn’t seem like it.

Assault seems fine to me. I find myself taking it on many builds for just the self buff, and that’s only 1/8th of its effects!

I too generally have faith in the devs to filter out the crazies without our help

I can see how you extrapolated that far but I disagree that solo-ness is the reason AE is being referred to an outlier in the context of this thread. Look at that, you and I are at another agree to disagree spot. Cheers 🙂

Nobody is suggesting that. Zero reason to entangle your own private soloist AT balance agenda with an unrelated issue. 🙂

Been trying to explain this for like years, thanks 🙂

You keep incorrectly associating everyone who disagrees with you with some group or another and it makes you look reeeeeally ignorant af. PS You’re one of the only people here that seems “shook” by disagreement and difference of opinion. PPS And the downvote thread is obviously a joke thread in which everyone is having fun but nice try? Incessant misrepresentation seems like it would take a lot of mental energy.

This was pretty well explained to us but I was unaware of the true reasoning until then. Makes a lot more sense now. Maybe that post could be pinned or stickied or something.

I love Enflame 😄

Actually this one is a good point. I would be in favor of changing Time Manipulation to Time [Anything but "Affinity" 🤢].

Hyperbole and this forum will never part. I mean 30 seconds of Rune of Protection uptime was the cause of the previous weeks-long forumpocalypse. Wild, really.

HELL NO to the suggested names. Electrical Affinity could change back to Shock Therapy though, that would be good.

If you don’t have any “interest” in a currency’s primary use, it’s not a dev problem when the currency is rendered useless to you. I don’t use every form of currency in the game either. No big deal. As for concerns about incentives to run certain content, I don’t think proposing to bulldoze the game’s entire incentive structure yesterday makes today’s arguments look very sincere.

That sounds normal to me..

If having incentive structures is exercising force, then every game in existence forces you to play a certain way, rendering the entire idea of being forced to play a certain way rather meaningless. If all you mean by being forced/pushed towards things is that incentive structures are adjusting around you, then I have no qualms with the devs mind controlling you or whatever you want to call it. Because adjusting incentive structures is a core job of any half-decent MMO dev.

Changing incentive structure is *NOT* forcing anyone to do anything.