stryve

I've been playing around with comparative testing with my Storm/SR Sentinel off and on since build one, just to get a feel for the proposed changes. Per Player-1 Sentinels were not affected by the Storm Cell bug, so that has not colored my experiences. The toon is level 50, with full IO sets and Tier 4 Incarnates for everything but Judgement. For context, I actually enjoy Storm Blast as it stands on Live, in spite of it's shortcomings. I realized early on just how much the set incentivizes using primarily it's own powers to increase the rate of Storm Cell and Cat 5 procs, so I went Sentinel with a non-clicky armor (in addition to just plain liking Sentinels in general and SR in particular). Things tend to scatter under Cat 5, , but the armor lets me dive into the middle of groups to keep their attention, and Sentinel Ancillary Pools have a good selection of AoE Immobilize powers to mitigate spread (I went with Chain Fences for theme, and also the fast animation). Finally, Storm Cell is slow and has unreliable target selection so I built for recharge to be able to recast it at need (this also lets me keep Cat 5 up almost constantly, and use Intensify often). Most of my comparative testing has been Peregrine Radios for equivalent groups, so Arachnos and Carnies. However, for a more controlled comparison I ran the first few missions in Levantera's "Join The Vanguard" arc at +4x8 this morning. I have found that the proposed changes are an improvement over Live in most every metric, with combat feeling smoother and groups being cleared more quickly. However, RC3 is a significant step back from previous builds. The Storm Cell strike lockout increasing from 1 to 2 seconds, and Cat 5 strike lockout increasing from 5 to 6 seconds, is very noticeable. Especially when a group starts getting down to just the surviving hard targets. The normalization of damage between Storm Cell procs may also have an effect here: it's a minor buff for the Spread proc, but a minor decrease for Split and a major reduction for Focused. Additionally, the increased odds for additional targets as a fight goes on is a little hard to parse out what is actually happening. How quickly do the odds increase? Do the odds reset when Storm Cell is recast? At least with the damage and lockout normalized between procs it won't matter if you have fewer than 4 targets, since it doesn't matter which hits them. As an anecdote, last week (RC1) I was running Carnie Radio missions on Live then comparing to Beta. At the time, it felt noticeably smoother and faster on Beta than Live, which was satisfying. Later I realized I had Notoriety set to +3x8 on Live, but +4x8 on Beta. After RC3 came out I tried again, and felt about the same or maybe a bit less effective on Beta compared to Live, but that time both were set to +3x8. The last thing I wanted to discuss is Chain Lightning. I'm not the best at picking individual effects out of the scrum, especially when things get as busy as Storm Blast does at high levels, so I don't often notice how well it's performing. There's lot less going on at low levels, so it was easier to see what was happening during the Posi 1 and 2 I ran on Live with some friends yesterday. I definitely noticed missing the first target several times, which does feel pretty bad. On the other hand, I also noticed several instances of the chain spreading through an entire group stung out along a passage, which was pretty amazing. A really well placed ranged cone might have been able to pull something similar off but not easily, and cones have a lower target cap anyway. That said, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have happened at all with a 10ft jump radius; every time I saw it happen there were multiple gaps that would've been too wide. In summary the increased Accuracy is great to help prevent disheartening misses, and the reduced Recharge makes attack chains a little smoother, but the decreased Jump Distance is going to hurt a lot in anything but a tightly packed group (I'm not familiar enough with chain mechanics to comment on decay, delay, and fork changes).

Did some more Sleep Grenade testing at both low and high levels on Release Candidate 2. First, I finally had the Combat Log open when Sleep Grenade failed to trigger: looks like there's a To Hit check when Sleep Grenade is fired, and if it misses nothing else happens. 95% chance to hit with one +3 Acc SO, so it's no wonder we weren't seeing it often. Also posted over in Bug Reports. Decided to see what Sleep Grenade looked like right out of the box, so I went Street Sweeping in Atlas Park at level 4. Only a single Acc SO slotted here. A little dicey on such a large group, but it worked. Next jumped to level 5 so I could slot one Sleep and one Recharge SO as well. This went a lot more smoothly. Still have to be wary of Bosses, or other Sleep resistant mobs, but still pretty smooth. Also at level 5, 0x4 Lost with Bosses. (not shown is the first try against this group, where Sleep Grenade missed and I didn't notice. Que frantic fleeing). Jump up to level 10 to see how things work with Liquid Nitrogen. I reiterate: still have to be wary of Bosses. Especially when there's two in a group. The rest of the group was held up enough to recover, though. 0x4 Hellions with Bosses. Last of the low level tests was my old nemesis (not to be confused with Nemesis), Vazhilok. Sleep Grenade really showcased it's improvements over Build 4 here, though Smoke Canister helped as well. Level 16 0x4 Vazhilok with bosses, though none in this group. On the high end, I started with a +1x8 Safeguard Mission. The Arachnos bank robbers were a bit too frantic of a fight to showcase Sleep Grenade, so I went and found a nice group of Carines outside. Deliberately restricted myself to just Smoke Canister, Liquid Nitrogen, and Sleep Grenade until most of the group was down. +1x8 Carnival of Shadows with bosses. Next I took on the new Council. Didn't restrict myself as much here, but still shows how much of a group can be shut down just with Arsenal Control. +1x8 Council with bosses. Finally, an unrestricted run against new Circle of Thorns at max difficulty. +4x8 Circle of Thorns with bosses. Overall I have to say Sleep Grenade is now in a pretty good place. With only minor slotting it's very reliable at low levels, and remains useful all the way to end game (though I still prefer slotting for Slow rather than Sleep at 50). This obviously will be subjective, depending on playstyle and player preference. I haven't tested things with a team yet, but I expect it to be at least as effective as Static Field from Electric Control, which I do consider worth using in teams. I saw some complaints early on about damaging sleeps, but personally I like that three of the five AoE powers in Arsenal Control can reliably trigger Smoke Canister's Confusion. Only Smoke Canister itself and Tear Gas can't. It wouldn't really make sense for the former, and the recharge is too long to pull it off anyway. For the later, there isn't much use for Confusion when the enemies are busy purging their last three meals.

Pretty minor, but looks like some text was left over from "Devices - Field Operative" when Clocking Device is activated.

Finally remembered to have the Combat log open and caught it on video on RC2. Looks like there's a To Hit check when Sleep Grenade is fired, and if it misses everything else cancels. I had a single +3 Acc SO slotted today, which gave 95% chance to hit, and only saw it miss a handful of times this morning. I saw it more yesterday with no Acc slotted, but that may have just been bad rolls as I didn't think to check the combat logs..

Aha, all my testing was done yesterday and earlier this morning; took me a while to get videos uploaded and the post written. Just ran the update and hopped back on: I am happy to report sleep is no longer suppressing KD and damage for Liquid Nitrogen. I can also report that Sleep Grenade is no longer taking several seconds on average to actually apply Sleep. I am still seeing the glitch where Sleep Grenade just kinda cancels itself without triggering anything, though. Won't be able to upload new video until tomorrow, but the visuals haven't changed from my post to the Bug Thread: Something I forgot to mention in my last post: I was seeing the double damage for Containment on targets in Sleep Grenade with Tranquilizer, Cryo Freeze Ray, and Toxic Dart even before todays update. Now I also saw a big "Containment" notification. I keep forgetting to check the Combat Logs, so that's just what displays onscreen.

I completely missed that patch note, and was going off experience with previous builds. This did inspire me to do some more dedicated testing of Sleep Grenade, and I'm afraid I have to report that it is currently suppressing KD and damage for Liquid Nitrogen. First, Sleep Grenade followed by Liquid Nitrogen, with my fully kitted level 50: Then, Liquid Nitrogen followed by Sleep Grenade on a level 17 with SOs: As can be seen, as long as the target is asleep Liquid Nitrogen has no effect. This is also true for Tranquilizer, though I didn't get video of that. I also tested general effectiveness against a wide variety of groups, with both my level 50 IO and level 15-17 SO builds. Overall, it seems to work better than I expected for the level 50, considering I have it slotted for Slow, with Intuition Radial Alpha. Possibly the extra -Run Speed keeps them from running out of the patch as much. As a disclaimer, I was deliberately pausing to see what happened after firing off Sleep Grenade in most of these videos. That said, it's still not a reliable opener. Some enemies are more resistant, or you just get a string of bad rolls. The level 15-17 was even less consistent, probably due to lack of available slots. I admit, the early encounters with Vazhilok loom large in my memory. More of an emotional response, but it definitely affected my opinion of Sleep Grenade. I also tried out combining Smoke Canister with Sleep Grenade. The combination does work, but there's more chance of leakers than Smoke Canister with Liquid Nitrogen, from what I've seen. I have an encounter with the new high level Council that demonstrates that clearly, with Warwolves just charging straight at me. Unfortunately I ran into my daily upload limit before getting to that video. @ShinMagmus: I can't blame you for feeling that way. Sleep Grenade had utility while leveling with SOs to help cover Recharge gaps in the other AoE controls, but it was relegated to backup as soon as Liquid Nitrogen became available. On my full IO build it's mostly there for the set bonuses; the only time I've used it in regular gameplay (not counting all the specific testing I just went over) was Exemplared down for Posi 1, and to stack Slow on Clamor at the end of Yin.

Was playing around with Sleep Grenade, and finally caught this on video. Only noticed it once in 10-15 applications.

I feel like my experience has been somewhat different than other frequent posters here, and after watching a few videos I think it's down to build and playstyle. So, rather than try to describe it in text, I finally took the time to figure out how to record and upload video. Here's my own test build running the first mission of Yin at 0x8. As I've mentioned before, if you can encourage flying enemies to stay close to the ground, they'll still be affected by Liquid Nitrogen; you can see a Super Stunner do flips a couple times in the first group. Otherwise, the Stun from Flash Bang combines fairly well with the Slow and KD from Liquid Nitrogen to keep things in the patches. The Confuse from Smoke Cannister helps too, since they are more likely to turn on each other than start running. That said, sometimes mobs just run, and flying mobs are the worst for that. First group I lead with Smoke Cannister, Liquid Nitrogen, Flash Bang, then cycled powers at range. Second and third groups I added Tear Gas in so I could close and use Traps. I didn't use Sleep Grenade here at all since it wasn't needed, and also because it turns off KD/Damage in Liquid Nitrogen. I did continue the TF, and didn't run into any major trouble until the Reactor Core ambushes. Had to eat a few greens and re-summon Tri-Cannon once during that, due to losing track of details in the crush. Once the adds were cleared I used every Slow I had to keep Clamor from running around too much (the combined -Run Speed was very noticeable) and eventually wore her down. Took 97 minutes to complete, which is pretty long for a TF that often takes 30 minutes with a PUG, but this has never been a fast set. I find that Smoke Cannister is a good opener, since it doesn't notify. Following up with Liquid Nitrogen, Flash Bang, or even Sleep Grenade tends to trigger the Confuse on everything but bosses immediately. Mobs on the leading edge sometimes start running towards you after triggering the follow up but before it impacts, which can get them out of the area, but Tri-Cannon usually takes care of them. As for Release Candidate 1, I didn't notice any real difference from Build 4. Possibly that's because I wasn't seeing the psuedo-pet accuracy issues others have reported, which again comes down to build style. I tend to favor set-bonuses over procs and hate missing, so I usually slot for accuracy anyway. Comments about psuedo-pets not inheriting Global Accuracy buffs (like Tactics) just reinforced that choice. I also agree that adding -Fly to a single target Hold is of limited utility; it works to keep individual mobs from hovering out reach for Melee powers, but generally by the time you manage to target and hit an escaping mob it's already out of the patches. Plus, it's often Held anyway. Sometimes between animation and travel times, it ends up Held out of range from your current position (though this is a more common problem with Teleporting mobs, which isn't limited to Arsenal Control).

Decided to try out a Posi 1 with my existing test build, so fully slotted. 0x4 because I wasn't sure how much I could handle at that level and didn't want to be at it all day. Quickly found that Sleep Grenade isn't very effective slotted for Slow when Exemplared down like that, as the Sleep pulse duration tends to be too short to keep most mobs asleep natively. Also, Attuned Slow sets don't enhance Slow enough at that level; the difference between -50% and -60% Run Speed is pretty negligible. Swapped Ice Mistral out for Call of the Sandman midway (both chosen for Global Recharge), and got a lot more utility. In retrospect SOs or plain IOs might have done better, since 15 is below the cutoff for most set bonuses. Did have trouble with runners in large groups, especially the ambushes at City Hall; fortunately they all came back. Oddly, the Shadow Simulacrum seemed to use a lot more Traps than Arsenal powers. Overall conclusion: Clockwork have annoying interactions with Knock, Ruin Mages suck, and 3 Eidolons at once is too many. Did notice some interesting interactions between Sleep Grenade and Smoke Canister, so I went back to PI and ran a few more Radios at +3x4, +4x4, and +4x8. Ended up with Council once and CoT twice. End Result: the initial damage from Sleep Grenade will consistently trigger Confusion on enemies in the Smoke cloud (Minions and Lieutenants; Bosses tend to have more Mez Protection). Many mobs start fighting each other before falling asleep, which results in them staying in the Gas long enough for the ~4 second delay on the first Sleep pulse. Some just fall asleep, but some get woken up by their own damage and attack each other in a chain reaction. Also doesn't matter so much if Tri-Cannon starts waking mobs up, since they tend to attack whatever is closest (each other). This can be effective, but I find I still prefer Liquid Nitrogen and Flash Bang for the extra damage. Also tested out Sleep Grenade by itself for thoroughness: just about anything that stays in the Gas long enough will eventually fall asleep. This obviously works better with ranged mobs, since they stand there shooting instead of charging out of the Gas. On another note, as best I can tell Liquid Nitrogen was pretty much a straight clone of Ice Slick in Build 1: 30 second duration with 151 ticks with each tick having 8% chance for KD and 75% chance for around .5 damage. Even checked City of Data to make sure, and that's what Ice Slick is doing on Live. Since Wet was rolled back, the only change to Liquid Nitrogen in Build 4 is greatly increasing the base damage per tick, but setting it to only trigger if the KD does. 8% chance to KD does seem low, until you consider the check happens 5 times per second. Generally should see around 12 flops over the duration for individual mobs (barring KB Protection; darn Shield Generator Shadow Simulacrum). Further thoughts on the set in general: Could use more Slow to help thing stay in patches. Flying mobs can zip off for parts unknown more or less at will without specific attention. Oddly, if they're near the ground they still take damage from Liquid Nitrogen; Stunned enemies tend to not go straight up, so Flash Bang helps there. Of the five AoE powers, only Sleep Grenade can reduce cool down enough to match duration without extensive Global Recharge bonuses. Tear Gas probably can't at all, but that's no different than other AoE holds on Control sets. In some ways it's better off, since it's a 45 second duration patch. Can be a very safe set when things go well, but that can turn very quickly with bad rolls or choosing the wrong time to use a power. When it does, there's a fair chance all AoE controls will be on cooldown. Secondary powers will have to fill the gaps there. I find Liquid Nitrogen to be safer than Arctic Air just because it can be used from beyond most mobs aggro range (at least it can with Cloaking Device). Seeds of Confusion isn't as clear a choice: more powerful Confuse in exchange for a 50 foot cone, as opposed to a 80 foot range ground patch. Damage potential is on the low end for Controllers, short of abusing procs. Which would likely lower the effectiveness of the various soft controls, and therefore general survivability. Not my usual build style, so I can only speculate here. Another argument for high Global Recharge. Solo large groups will probably take more than a minute to whittle down, requiring multiple casts of 30 second duration powers. In teams you'll probably need to stagger activations just to have SOMETHING available every group, much like Traps.

Ran through my usual testing cycle with a Arse/Traps Controller again. Normal leveling to 10, then skipping 5 levels between mission to 50. SOs only, except for the usual Endurance Management IOs in Health and Stamina (and a KB/BD in Temporal Bomb, eventually). First few levels are basically unchanged: the extra Slows don't make much difference against Minions and Lieutenants at very low levels. Not sure how much was the improvements in Build 4 and how much was my just getting better with the set, but I bumped difficulty to 0x4 with Bosses by Level 4. Sleep Grenade is back to doing negligible AoE damage as a patch, but the flexibility of placement is nice; easier to catch a whole group this way. Still taking up to 4 seconds before mobs start falling asleep, though. Other reviews here and my own previous experiences have brought me around on Liquid Nitrogen as a damage dealer in addition to soft control. It does work well to whittle down Minions. Except Clockwork, those either just go flying with a single tick or ignore it. At 15 I ran a Banished Pantheon mission and discovered they resist most everything I do at that level really well. At least the Husks are already slow, so they don't tend to run out of the patches. But doing barely any damage with Cold, Toxic, and Smash/Lethal made it quite a slog. 20 and 25 didn't see any major shifts, just slowly added capability with Flash Bang and Tear Gas. Still opening with Smoke Cannister, then Liquid Nitrogen, then cycling powers until the group is down. Can only get those two powers (and Flash Bang) to around 45 seconds recharge with SOs, so there's a gap. I compensated by watching the recharge numbers to fire off Sleep Grenade a little before they'd time out, moving to Tear Gas as available at 25. At 30 I had access to Tri-Cannon and suddenly things seemed to be going a lot faster. First run was 0x4 Council, so to be sure I took on Freakshow at 0x6 and still did fine. Between the added single target DPS and taking aggro off of me, Tri-Cannon made a very noticeable difference. I had all my desired Primary and Secondary powers by 30, so 35 to 40 were just picking up a few Pool Powers and filling out enhancement slots. 35 went about the same as 30, but by 40 the extra enhancements (plus Leadership Toggles) had added up enough that I tried 0x8 Carnies. I was riding the edge, but only died to the first group (two Master Illusionists summoned all their pets on top of me, and I didn't react fast enough). I continued at 0x8 for 45 and 50; enemies including the new Council and Arachnos. Definitely had to pay attention or things could go south very quickly, but it was doable. Sleep Grenade was the only Arsenal patch that didn't have a recharge gap, so cycling powers at an offset to cover those gaps was necessary. Traps was mostly defensive here, except for Acid Mortar and Seeker Drones. Warwolves and many Banes are functionally immune to Slow (Immobilize as well, so that wouldn't change things), so they often escaped the patches and ran up on me. Retreating behind Tri-Cannon usually resulted in them diverting off of me, which with the Traps made it manageable. Next I respeced and slotted IO sets, with a preference for Global Recharge bonuses. Managed to get Smoke Canister, Liquid Nitrogen, and Flash Bang to right around 30 seconds. That let me keep the patches up more or less permanently. Firing off all three in sequence will get most of a group thoroughly disrupted (mostly Confused, Stunned, and flopping with Containment). Tear Gas and Sleep Grenade get thrown in for extra debuffs when things start going wrong (or just because large groups of vomiting enemies are amusing). I ran several missions, culminating in +2x8 Carnies, which again was difficult but doable. Most trouble came from very hard hitting enemies killing me faster than I could react, or getting distracted and losing control of the fight. Finally, I slotted full Incarnates and turned things up to +4x8, but not solo Archvillains. First mission was a Safeguard, so Malta, Carnies, and Arachnos. Charged straight for the bank, and it turned out Ghost Widow had come out this time. Even as an EB she's pretty tough, especially with a mob of Boss Bane Spiders backing her up. Still, I managed to not die (barely). After I finished in the bank I took on a few Malta groups just to see; went pretty well, but I was targeting Sappers first. Exited after that and ran several more Radios, all Arachnos for maximum difficulty. The first was a save the hostage in blue caves, which went smoothly until the end when I couldn't finish the ambushes fast enough and got overwhelmed by multiple groups. That mass sent me back to the hospital several times before I cleared it out. Might have been able to do better with more caution, or just being more on the ball with power use. Continued on with Arachnos on an Office map, which keeps groups in more concentrated blocks. Had to be very careful, especially with hard hitting bosses, but I was able to wear them down consistently. That said, it wasn't anything close to fast; I was using Smoke Cannister and Liquid Nitrogen 2 or 3 times for every group, and usually ended up with at least some on top of me by the end. Overall this does seem to be the best version so far. Pretty sure the Slows have been increased in general, and adding Slow to Tranquilizer and Cryo Freeze Ray helps against harder targets. That said, flying enemies can just take off in open maps (Sky Raiders are especially bad for that), and Tear Gas is the only tool in the set that can do anything about it. I'll probably add more observations later, but I've lost track of things over the course of writing this up.

Temporal Bomb is lacking almost any details in the Power Details window, and the Enhancement Details mouseover only shows percentages for everything but Accuracy. Additionally, the Pet Combat Logs refer to Temporal Bomb as both Time Bomb and Remote Bomb.

Tri-Cannon failed to follow me between floors on standard Office Maps a few times yesterday. It also didn't follow me into the bank on a Safeguard Mission, but I'm pretty sure it was just fighting all the Malta I ran past.

Occasionally Sleep Grenade will impact, the cloud will come up, and then immediately fade. Looks almost like the cloud is sinking into the floor. As best I can tell, the Sleep and Slow effects are also ending early in these cases. Only happening maybe once in 10 uses of the power, I think. Harder to tell in higher levels due to Smoke Cloud, Tear Gas, etc. I have seen it happen with both manual selection of power/location and "powexec_location target" keybind.

Still seeing this in Build 4. Combat Logs and Power Details for Tranquilizer: Compared to Combat Logs and Power Details for Cryo Freeze Ray:

I jumped up to level 15 for continued testing, and am no longer concerned about the interaction between Liquid Nitrogen and Smoke Canister. Seems to be working just as well as in build 2. Also, and I feel like I should have already known this, Trolls tend to be resistant to many forms of mez. This includes Sleep, but thankfully not Confuse.