nihilii

I agree! Elec was already topping the charts for damage on Sentinels, on par with Fire. With this change it should be slightly above Fire. It won't mean much against the toughest targets, because Shocked is much less efficient there. But, we're still getting a permanent Voltaic Sentinel attacking twice as much - this adds up. And against normal groups, beta Elec plows through mobs like butter.

I agree, Heal > EndMod in Inexhaustible. /bio is fairly generous when it comes to end, and EM/ is especially light on end thanks to ET costing 0. You're generously slotted in DNA Siphon, and you have good end reduction in attacks, so I think you likely won't run out of breath. For Incarnates I would almost always recommend Musculature. Scrappers love +damage 🙂 EM is one of those sets with "low"/standard +damage (Build Up and nothing else) and high base damage, so benefits greatly from more damage enhancement. And given that EM has passable AoE with Whirling Hands, adding the Musculature boost to Judgement really helps thinning out crowds. Plus, the recharge in Agility would hurt your proc rate. While you're not running a proc build, it still would impact your chance for Critical Strikes on TF and your Heca proc in ET. Wait, you're talking about DDR, perhaps we're talking about Ageless here? I like Ageless on the +recovery side for ultra proc builds with low end reduction. But I think here you've covered these bases. You could pick Barrier instead for a complementary defense buffer that essentially acts as DDR, especially with the occasional Shadow Meld; and the resistance in Barrier is very very nice for /bio to shore up F/C/E/N resistances.

I don't come at it with a plan, although I often settle into habits. Like Flea says, hazard zones and insps are great. Personally I will move deep into the zone, as the trainer is only one base teleport away. Pick anything that's level appropriate, chug those insps, and chances are things will go well. And if it doesn't, switching to another level-appropriate zone tends to work. At times I've done Croatoa, First Ward, Boomtown, the Shadow Shard... ...Come to think of it, I've never done streetsweeping on villain side. Perhaps that could be the next frontier. Of course, villain zones are much more compact so there is less to discover.

I've ran a couple characters from level 1 to 50 streetsweeping exclusively. It's a completely different experience from the standard instanced flow we're used to. You start to map out the environments in your mind, the maps become familiar in a way they just aren't when you just superspeed past everything. You discover new places, and develop affinities for specific spots. And man, there is a lot of streetsweeping content. The devs didn't slack in filling up zones with varied encounters, even in the latest issues when it was clear 99.99% of our activity would happen in instances anyway. It's kind of fun to see dialog in every encounter; even if you quickly see a lot of repeats, overall it makes the world feel more alive. Probably the most interesting part in that playstyle is that when you commit to it, you feel like you've discovered a hidden game within the game we all know and play. It's like going treasure hunting for abandoned relics, all that decade old developer work that was mostly background.

I'm morbidly interested in watching PuGs handle Master of Market Crash - and giantbot's ridiculous broken abilities - without an equally broken Lore/Destiny spam.

I would assume anything performance (FPS) related would be local, so unrelated to the resources allocated to Beta servers? In any case, it's "encouraging" to hear you've had repeated performance issues on Beta (as in, it gives me hope the issue won't happen once we go Live). Thank you! This is the first time the particular machine I'm using right now experiences Beta servers, so I have no past referential.

I think you've got all your bases covered! At a quick glance: - I feel Inexhaustible is underslotted. It deserves heal enhancements, +maxHP is essentially like resistance on top of your resistance, and improves your regen and absorb which /bio has loads off. - you will probably run in Offensive Adaptation 99% of the time, but given that Inexhaustible and Stamina have the same base recovery and that Inexhaustible's recovery is boosted in Efficient Adaptation, it might make sense to put endmod slots in Inexhaustible if you slot endmod at all. - I don't see the Panacea proc. It's superior to the perf shifter procs or even to miracle +recovery, if a replacement is needed. - slots could be shaved from Maneuvers to fuel these things. The defense enhancement and regen/HP bonuses are minimal there. - Shadow Meld might be better served with a straight defense enhancement, rather than a def/rech. You typically don't want to use Shadow Meld as often as it's up, with its 3 second animation and all. And a higher defense maximises the impact in those situations where you do need to use it.

For me, the Rage Crash always hurts on anything that isn't a 65%+ defense SR Tanker. This is because even on a resistance build, going from 0% defense to -20% defense makes a strong difference in the hit rate of your foes. (Plus, is anyone ever truly running 0% defense? I tend to hit ~20% through the glad+steadfast uniques, Weave, CJ, Maneuvers.) Now the question can be... how *bad* can it hurt? If you build for overkill survivability, which many many tankers do, it might be that you will hardly notice the crash simply because your base mitigation is 10x if not 100x what you need for the challenges you face. In terms of specific powersets, Invul isn't so bad to handle Rage crashes simply because you've got layered mitigation including defense, resistance and maxHP.

You could! I don't think this would successfully address any point I've made, but why not. Although a Fire Blaster should use procs, Fire Blast supremacy has little to do with PPM math, simply because the attacks are so strong to start with procs represent a smaller part of overall damage output than on just about anything else. It is not my point +rech is the be-all-and-end-all of IO slotting. It is my point Fire Blast has extremely high DPA attacks, and the Blaster AT in particular has very high self +damage mod. I'll reiterate, your earlier argument is clear. It just isn't accurate. Fire Blast is *further* ahead than the SO screenshot suggests, once IOed out and incarnated out. Regarding (i), you never want to take Spiritual or Agility on a highend build. This is because +recharge alphas mess with your proc rate. It's better to stick with Musculature and chase recharge elsewhere. Blaze -> BB -> Fireball is technically an impossible chain, and not optimal. You'd always have a gap before Fireball, even at the recharge cap. Not to mention slotting FB for full recharge destroys its potential proc rate. It's far better to include at least one extra power from your secondary or epics, for self-sustainability. On fast moving teams, and considering moving around, target selection, rotating Aim/BU, yes, you will likely chain these three attacks. But you never want to build for a hypothetical solo attack chain of these 3. Regarding (ii), on a team minions/lieuts are going to evaporate no matter what. Dots have some effect on bosses, greater effect on EBs still, and so on. It's "corpse blasting" against mobs where corpse blasting doesn't matter, and extra damage against mobs where you need the extra damage. If anything, the animation times of Blaze and Fireball are a hedge against corpse blasting. I would argue here you are precisely judging the powersets in a vacuum. Sonic -RES is incredible on Defenders... on paper. Have you played endgame /sonic and /fire Defenders? Here's what happens for me: I quickly realise even with procced out Dominate, my practical damage still struggles to catch up compared to the same Defender running Fire Blast, because that -RES takes time to build and to maintain *and* I have other actions I want to do with my primary, compared to Fire Blast keeping its 100% potential from the very start of any encounter; and I lack a true targeted AoE (let alone a TAoE with the fast cast and damage of Fireball). There is basically opportunity cost to Sonic attaining its full potential, while Fire allows for maximum flexibility. Yep. Much of the overpoweredness of Fire Blast boils down to animation time. Then we throw DoTs in there, and the combined selection of excellent staple choices (T3, TAoE, snipe). You could disregard the existence of animation times, and argue in spreadsheet terms, DoTs and Fire Blast are not overpowered. I can see the logic in that take. Personally, I like to think about the ingame reality more than how the game "should" be balanced ideally; in that light, animation times aren't changing anytime soon. DoTs, living outside the damage formulas, are the most suitable candidate to point finger at, especially as we have an example in Sentinels of a successful rebalancing mostly tackling that aspect and leaving the rest untouched (ok, the Sentinel snipe also got gutted with Repel...).

Your point is clear, but your argument is incorrect. If anything, Fire Blast pulls further ahead the more IOs and incarnates you use. Fast animation high damage attacks benefit more from recharge slotting, because the ceiling for the maximum amount of recharge you can add to improve your attack chain is higher. Likewise, being able to afford the endurance consumption of chaining high DPA stuff cranks up the practical damage you dish out. The supremacy of Fire Blast is so uncontested, it is the top powerset even on Defenders. Defenders, with their absurdly low base damage mod; who therefore benefit most from procs (which are lacking on Fire, and more prevalent on many other blast sets). On Blasters? It's not even close. At the high end, you have Fire Blasters and then you have everything else. There are edge cases, but handwaving ill-defined team content in new difficulty settings cannot save other Blasters. You can make any primary impressive compared to some unoptimised player average, but a Fire Blaster with the same level of optimization will outperform that first Blaster. For all the OP's argument might come from the wrong place, there's definitely a balance problem with Blasters - with Fire Blast specifically. Look to the Sentinel rework for a successful rebalancing. With much tamer and normalized DoTs (and boosts to other powersets lacking T3s), Fire Blast is still a highly desirable choice but not the uncontested #1. Blaster Fire Blast is the prenerf Titan Weapons of ranged ATs.

The most important currency is time. Personally, I delete white/yellow salvage, as well as most yellow and orange recipes. Selling to the vendor or listing on the AH has an opportunity cost compared to punching mobs in the face or playing the market.

I'd rather the whole "hold green mitos to drop their resistance by 90%" (or whatever absurd number) gimmick is reworked. But really, given that a solo character spamming a 16s recharge epic hold with 3 recharge / 3 hold and Hasten is juust enough, and that (I think?) every AT has access to it, I think the current state of things is OK if not ideal. Have two people make an alternate build, train to 50 in a couple minutes picking random stuff save for Hasten and a hold, buy 6 recharge SOs and 3 hold SOs, you're good to go.

A criminally underrated opinion. This is why snipes are so incredibly good. Not only they give you an excellent DPA attack, it's also a ranged option that does one of the less resisted damage type.

Can't scale up beyond +4/x8. That's what I'm using, and where I base my "base end drain is enough" statement from. I mean, OK: you *could* use the new challenge setting to disable incarnate powers, which would get rid of the level shift. Or you could use the reputation trick to fight +5s. Edge cases for me, not worth lowering efficiency elsewhere. If you're really worried about enddraining everything instantly, just pick Short Circuit. Short Circuit adds tremendous (and frankly, unnecessary on a Sentinel) -recovery and drain. I only use Ball Lightning + Thunderous Blast given that it works well enough and it's more optimal to deal ST damage on bosses than overdose on AoEs. Add SC to that, chain BL + SC consistently and open with TB, nothing below an archvillain is going to have any end remaining. I get it: endmod sets coupled with elec changes are a cool idea... in theory. I think the easy mistake theorycrafting can lead you into is thinking mob attacks cost 0 end... When in fact mobs spend end, and harder mobs tend to spend end even faster. Now, minions/lieuts won't stay bottomed with just BL+TB, but minions evaporate and lieuts die fast enough. Bosses will stay at 0 end under a stream of constant attacking (Zapping Bolt, Tesla Cage...), and that's where you want Shocked to happen, because bosses are always the HP sponges. For what it's worth, Beta servers now have a super convenient feature where you can just export a Mids build and get all the enhancements in your tray. Coupled with the freebies menu, getting everything set up for testing is just a 10-15 minutes affair.

I think it would be silly to slot attacks for endmod. TB + BL essentially zeroes out a spawn on alpha strike, or close enough, that you don't even need to grab Short Circuit. I was literally on Brainstorm 5 minutes ago blasting stuff and getting Shocked on pretty much every attack. By the way, damn, buffed Elec is POWERFUL. I always thought it was the #1 Sentinel primary, and now it's even better. I'm getting ~350 DPS against Pylons on a full ranged build using no epic attack and no extra damage from secondary (SR). Which lets me grab Chain Fences for crowd control, and Elude for ridiculous survivability against things far exceeding the softcap (there'll be more of that with the new difficulty settings).

I'm getting a sizeable performance drop on Beta, compared to Live servers. Ultra mode, Live servers, anywhere in the RWZ: 70-90 FPS. Exact same settings, Brainstorm: 30-35 FPS. On Brainstorm, I need to drop down to "Recommended" to barely get to 60 FPS.

On the topic of new challenges... Anyone gearing up for the new settings on Beta right now? I was afraid we'd see things that would all but force teaming, but looking at the changes, it's incrementations that should make things extremely punishing and *potentially* impossible to solo, but not *necessarily* so. Namely: enforced +4/x8, no insps, no temps, no amplifiers, some lieuts become bosses, some bosses become EBs. All mobs get +20% Resistance[Lethal/Smashing], +30% Resistance[All but S/L], +30% Defense[All], +40% Damage[All], +30% ToHit, 66ft Perception radius. AVs get double HP (but still the same regen) and Praetorian tohit (63.75% base). Which I guess would imply AVs actually get 93.75% tohit (?) It seems to me being mostly defense simply won't cut it anymore outside of T9s*, but resistance+regen/hp ought to work just as well (we'll take 2x the damage or what have you). The challenge being to keep DPS up enough to take out those level 54 AVs with +20/30% resistance on top of whatever native resistances they already have. *and I'm already overjoyed I get yet another excuse to work on Elude+Barrier builds. Maybe Relentless/Invincible will prove too hard (I still intend to exploit Lore to the best of my abilities to try to make things happen...). But I wonder how far we can crank up the difficulty anyway. There's a lot of granularity to this new challenge system, and I'm hoping to see all of you kings posting some new achievements once this goes live. 🙂

There's actually a surprising amount of AVs you can solo with a baseline ~20% def to all and an epic shield covering S/L resistances, simply because many of them are melee based and keeping them perma-immobilized at a 40+ feet range destroys their DPS. Throw in a strong -regen secondary, decent healing to patch up the hits that do get through, and good positioning so you have an obstacle to break line of sight should the need arise. But unless you ran dry or do it as a self-imposed challenge, it's obviously simpler to just carry a tray of purples and chomp 2 at a time.

Holy cow, we're already in mid-October. How time flies. Thank you for posting this. I think I'm still sitting on hundreds of winter packs I need to unload!!

I'm with you. I think I understand the concerns some may have - that adding damage to sets would dilute the enhancement of other aspects. Personally, I wish we changed the rule here, and recognized damage is king, and to a lesser extent so are accuracy, endurance and recharge. Other aspects are generally secondary (even mez duration), and shouldn't imply a sacrifice in the above primary aspects. i.e., I'd switch debuffs and mez to a +50% per enhancement schedule (even currently +20% stuff like -tohit); and then cram damage in tohit/mez sets without damage, in a way that the net result for a debuff/mez set would be same debuff/mez values as before, with damage on top. With a cap in the 60% damage enhancement like you suggest, so it wouldn't overshadow full damage sets or frankenslotting creatively.

Now that's interesting to think about. I played on the European servers, and we barely could take on Hamidon. There definitely wasn't the same farming as on US servers. So ++ SOs were the best you were going to get, realistically. With uber HOs I could see the scale tipping back to oldschool characters. Especially as you got the accuracy part taken care of too. Very different ceilings for power based on where you happened to play!

It was +0/x1, +0/x2, +1/x1, +1/x2, and +2/x1 ("Invincible!"). But come to think of it, there was that potential level spread, so I'm wrong above: the toughest indoor foes were level 53 rather than level 52. Which more or less means equals to level 54s if we abstract the level shift from incarnates. But, your regular mission boss is always always at the base level, so AVs were +2.

I think the biggest thing that gives people the impression oldschool characters were more powerful than incarnates of today is the reputation system of the time. The highest you could go was +2/x1. There weren't highend TFs, much less Incarnate trials. The toughest stuff you'd face in an instanced mission was a lone archvillain. Even enemy power selection was markedly weaker than the higher tier foes of today. 6 slotted for damage was +200% damage. Compared to +95% damage from enhancements, ~+35% from Musculature T4, ~+10% from Assault T4, ~+10% from damage set bonuses = ~+150%. We're talking a +50% damage difference here. Totals of 250% and 300%, so a ~20% relative damage difference. And yeah, that would still be pretty sizeable. But... ..there weren't procs to boost damage further ...no Gaussian proc for Build Up either ...no global recharge for a fast flowing attack chain ...no global accuracy, no Kismet. So you generally did a mix of getting Focused Accuracy, or living with some whiffing, or going with 1 ACC 5 DAM rather than 6 DAM (which significantly lowers the damage gap here)... and that was OKish because once again, the hardest thing you were going to face was a level 52 freakshow boss. Most oldschool builds wouldn't cut it against level 54 enemies. Especially because they had no incarnate level shift either. That alone more than makes up for the ~20% relative damage difference, against +4s: you deal 0.48 damage without level shift, 0.65 damage without level shift. That's a 35% relative damage difference here in favor of newschool builds. We're not touching Destiny or Lore either. 6-slotted Stamina was nice, sure; but by and large not enough to sustain 6 DAM slotted attacks going at full speed, especially if you ran Focused Accuracy. Many people used highly suboptimal attack chains and begged for Emps to cover their blue bar. Some made do with 6-slotted Conserve Power. Stamina pool not being free either meant one less power pool. Can't get Hasten and Jumping and Fighting and Leadership. Gotta get one travel power too unless you enjoy being slow, as Ninja Run wasn't a thing. Oldschool balance (and brokenness) was a mix of lack of challenge, comparatively speaking, and certain very specific powers and powersets being overpowered. Even PI radio teams of today face tougher odds! +4/x8 Carnival or Malta is harder than anything I3 had to offer, save for Hamidon.

To be fair, we run exactly in the situation you often mention re: -RES procs. Claws loads up with them, and the Pylon fight is an ideal environment for Claws where lethal damage isn't resisted, -RES works at full power, and the target is immobile for optimal Follow Up stacking. EM shines in real gameplay as it deals most of its damage without -RES, largely in energy type, and does high burst, highly conductive to fast-paced environments. IMHO those roughly even Pylon times translate to a ~30% performance difference in real gameplay (ST, obviously. Claws is lovely for AOE). Probably one of the most extreme cases.

Fire Tankers were nerfed so many times and so hard, simply because they were grossly overpowered. I don't think I even experienced the height of it, having started in the European beta. But I remember my I4 Fire/Ice Tanker. Burn was his attack power. Burn was his SOLE attack power. You literally did not need anything else. Whether you herded 100+ freakshow in a dumpster or let them gather around you normally, literally all you had to do was drop the Ice Patch and Burn in succession, and watch as everything melted in seconds. It was so ridiculously broken. There's been a lot of power creep over the years, especially since Homecoming, and it's easy to wonder if the memories we have of being OP would hold up of the current metagame of purpled out T4 incarnates. But I think oldschool Fire Tankers would still be up there, standing shoulder to shoulder with the strong builds of today.