nihilii

I believe a couple specific snipes had much faster animations, possibly in the 0.5s - 0.67s range, and they got normalized to 1.33s or 1.67s. Perhaps this is what OP refers to?

ATOs (Brute's Fury etc.) always come attuned. Can't be boosted. I think it doesn't matter whether a proc is attuned or plain, it should work all the time even when exemplared below its level. I could be wrong and there might be different types of procs there. Posting wrong stuff is the universal Internet way to get smarter people to correct you and give the right answer, so there you go.

Yomo lays it all out. My own goto for 100 merits is a winter IO. Sell it for 20MM on the marketplace, call it a day. Time is our most important currency and our hard limiter. If you're already at capacity, 20MM that take X units of time beat 100MM that take 10X units of time.

The Longbow Cataphract does -500% regen for 30s on a 10s recharge, 4s animation attack. It has few enough attacks it probably uses the power as often as it's up, but on the flipside it also has a tendency to want to hug the target and then get KBed away...

SR vs Dark was quite the revelation for me in the endgame. My SR alts struggle with nothing... except the end drain from Lord Recluse. Oh and the end drain from Freakshow Super Stunners. Oh and the end drain from... etc.. Meanwhile, Dark fixes end consumption with Ageless and lives happily ever after.

Also, power customisation! Possible concepts were expanded significantly with the Soul Noir theme. And removing the constant throbbing and noise...

This was the poster I thought of when it comes to the forums: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/18585-titanbio-scrapper-stf-solo-tactics/?tab=comments#comment-20706

That's not my proposal. There is actually no proposal/suggestion at all. I'm reacting to your own dismissal of marcus' idea. Maybe I'm expressing myself poorly, but I think you're reading something way more aggressive in my replies than I intended. I'm not claiming I have the right answer, I'm wondering aloud what is the right answer. IMHO, comparison of individual effects in a vacuum isn't as interesting as net effect ingame. Ergo interface vs interface matters more to me than interface vs existing -regen powers. Arguably, you could make the case -regen could use a boost overall. The Defender-type perma -500% regen powers who tend to have strong additional effects tied to them are fine, but the -50% regen splattered here and there in many other powers are almost useless. I've acknowledged I don't care about the -tohit portion of Diamagnetic, and that I accepted your correction and amended my comparison to the offensive aspect of these interfaces. The tohit portion is a limiting argument on how strong the contribution of Diag should be, but until we hash out in numbers how much that tohit should be valued as exactly, it cannot be used as a blank state to arbitrarily dismiss any figures as "too strong". I don't understand where the 75/25 vs 100/50 fit in. If Degen gives me +~30-50 DPS with 75%/25%, it is the same to me as if a hypothetical Degen with lower values but 100%/50% gave me +~30-50 DPS. How we get there isn't as important as what we have once we're there. LR: - AoE - activates in 1.5s - massive slow Hypothetical turbo Diag: - ST - takes constant attacking to maintain - tohit debuff Can you really argue against my dismissal of tohit debuff even though I specifically reframe the debate on the offensive side of it, and then ignore the AoE + slow aspects of LR?? Sorry to insist, but I feel you're getting bogged down in seeing me *attacking* your point and us sparring to prove who's right when that's not really my goal. I'm musing, and if anything, I'm completely willing to rally to your point; I just want to see solid logic behind it, as to why these numbers and why not other numbers. Would you switch your current Degen toons to Diag if your proposal of 26% effective regen debuff against AVs went through? If not, what would it take? If yes, of course, that's all the answer needed. I'm also curious if anyone else reading this would make the switch as well. Edit: I guess I'm coming at all of this from an angle of... We've all seen players, ingame and on the forums, even players who do decent challenge stuff like soloing highend TFs, swear by Diagnametic for soloing AVs, "for the -regen". There is a strong psychological effect to the game telling you X does Y, even if Y turns out functionally useless. As it is, Diagnametic is a trap. It would be nice to see it changed to something worth it. 26% effective regen debuff against AVs would at least make it worth *something*, and I'm certainly not complaining about that. But I wonder what it would take to make it competitive.

But why? You state it is too powerful but I'm not seeing your rationale supporting the statement. Mine is laid out: Diamagnetic is useless (ok, I account for your correction - *offensively* useless) compared to Degen and Reactive against normal foes. Degen can account for up to ~+50 DPS against AVs. Why shouldn't Diamagnetic account for ~+90 DPS against AVs? In comparison, a 26% regen debuff against a level 50 AV would be about ~+20 DPS. Why should Diamagnetic be less than half as potent as Degen against AVs, while also being offensively useless against bosses and below? Only speaking for myself, I can say I wouldn't switch to Diamagnetic if it did 26% effective regen debuff against AVs. And I love solo AV hunting, probably more than 99% of the playerbase. If it were 50%, I'd think about it - but breaking even with Degen, and Degen remaining better on bosses, would likely make me stay with Degen. At 90% regen debuff, I would definitely go for it. So maybe there's a right balance between 50% effective regen debuff and 90% effective regen debuff. Or maybe those numbers are completely personal and arbitrary - but again, given that I lean towards solo AV hunting, what of the efficiency for players with a more balanced playstyle? I can accept my lack of consideration for tohit debuff (IMHO, useless, but YMMV) can be a factor that needs to be accounted for, but either way, I think "this is too powerful" needs to be qualified and hashed out in numbers.

Would it truly be too much? This would make the interface useful against AVs+, but still useless against bosses and below. Degen and Reactive are great against AVs, but they're also good against bosses, lieutenants and minions. Debuffing Regen is also meaningless if there's already other sources of regen debuffing flooring regen, on teams and such. So the effectiveness of that interface is more conditional than, say, Reactive (which benefits from other sources of -res, if anything) or Degen (-maxHP is an unique debuff). Ideally, the Regen debuff interface (incidentally, I find it funny we're all calling it that ITT, because it's so useless nobody intuitively remembers the name...) should probably be at least twice as efficient as Degen/Reactive against AVs to make up for being functionallypointless everywhere else. I see T4 Degen adding ~30 to ~50 DPS on my toons, so the Regen debuff Interface hypothetically flooring lvl 50 AV ( = ~90 DPS) doesn't seem so out of line to me. Perhaps a little bit too strong but not by a factor of 5 and not even by a factor of 2.

Evidently we don't. 😄 The blaster vs sentinel debate has been hashed out on the Sentinel forums, and two popular, divisive statements rise to the top: - "you can get a blaster to sentinel levels of defenses" - "throw some procs on a sentinel and you'll feel near blaster level damage" I say "divisive" because roughly speaking, there's also 2 groups of players. If you're part of group A, you think the first statement is true and the second is crazy talk. If you're part of group B, you think the second statement is correct and the first is bonkers. Anecdotally it feels like group A outnumbers group B. So the proper answer to OP is probably to try the blaster. But the even better answer is to try both to get a feel for it, because different people seem to end up at polar opposites in their perception of either AT.

You have to deal at least 1 point of damage to earn experience from confused mobs, so that would be out. Badges and such also don't give XP until you earn your first experience point. Not sure about your options. Would destroying ("defusing") a bomb be considered violent? You could take down rikti bombs from raids and earn XP that way, they give elite boss XP. At least to get started so you can then earn XP through exploration badges. It's true you could pick newspaper/radio missions that are strictly "collect glowie". Use Confuse for all mobs in the room to defeat each other. Then use Telekinesis to push the remaining mob towards mobs outside the room, where you Confuse other mobs to kill him. Get mission completion XP that way. It would be pretty slow 😄

Blue King, no contest. Art was better, characters were relatable, story felt more focused. It even tied game concepts to the comic pretty neatly.

Ridiculously cool. It's fascinating to read through your summaries and explanations and picture the immense amount of work that goes into building an AI that can... build; also gives me an appreciation for the sum of "intuitive" knowledge we take for granted when it comes to truly minmaxing. Artificial brains and human brains are both beautiful things. I for one welcome our Robot Woman Overlords.

I'm pretty dumb when it comes to the arcane workings of procs. You may be right and I may have gotten the theory completely wrong. Truthfully, I followed Frosticus' excellent Poison guide: which suggests slotting the power with procs is a good idea. I did, and it does feel effective ingame. Whenever I drop the power mobs seem to get hit with the proc more often than not (easy to see with just Arma in there, as if they take 2 digit damage at all, I know it's from the proc). I mostly run a Poison/Fire defender focused on ST damage, and Fireball + Poison Trap tends to clear minions and lieuts fast enough as I focus on bosses. No doubt Fireball does the brunt of the work, but I have enough experience with Fire Blast without extra to know Fireball alone just doesn't match this clear speed. (But come to think of it, it could also be that Poison's tremendous -RES boosts Fireball to the point it clears weak mobs much faster, regardless of Poison Trap.)

edit: double post

This is a fantastic idea, in my opinion.

A damaging Screech benefits Sentinel Sonic immensely. Having Dreadful Wail on the standard Sentinel nuke timer doesn't hurt, either. It animates fast and makes an excellent candidate for the Fury -proc, which coupled with native -RES gives you a -29.6% RES AoE up every half minute. I don't use the cones but others like @Sovera (IIRC) have reported they work fantastically well with Opportunity. As for better or worse than Defender... I think the changes between the two ATs are widespread enough the sets play completely differently, to the point it's an apples-to-oranges comparison. Any decisive result will likely be influenced by personal goals and playstyle. Essentially, Defender Sonic Blast is awesome in protracted fights against tough targets, especially as team support. Sentinel Sonic Blast can be played as a straight shooter without any ramp up. The -RES becomes an additional boon rather than the cornerstone of the set. It deals competitive damage with other Sentinel primaries. And, of course, you can exploit -RES to boost the usual psi epic suspects; turning procced out Dominate and Mind Probe into even stronger punches.

That is an excellent point. I wish I could have more self-control. 😄

Toxic res is king given the autohit aura from the pylons, then enough absorb/regen/healing and HP to handle everything long enough. Given that you're starting at 52% T res with just one proc, Melee will bump that up to 68%. Fairly respectable starting range with tanker HP. Then we have to consider additional targets boosting Melee, potential double and triple stacks of ATO, and your Shield Wall and Reactive procs bumping RES further as life gets lower. From experience with different characters soloing/duoing Apex, ~75% res + capped defense + a standard "Reconstruction"-type heal on ~1600 to ~2400 HP will let me survive reliably, with care. At ~90% res and on tanker HP, death requires a personal mistake. I feel your build has enough mitigation tools to handle Apex sewers; then again, it is easy to underestimate the negative effect of ET's -HP. I have several Dark Armor tankers, and I put them all through Apex. On a standard DA tanker the pylons are never an issue, but I've actually died on the DA/EM. But even if it turned out your Tanker can't quite handle that part, it is such a specific scenario. Unless you're determined to make it work without insps, I'd save a couple oranges for the sewers. Going from 70% to 90% only takes 2 small insps and cuts the damage to a third.

Agree with you. "Force multiplier" is what a Defender is. I've seen enough people expecting Defenders to be healbots, but the mentality has died down over the years. I think there's probably an idea of the Defender as a protector more than a damage amplifier, just based on the name.

This is IMHO the most concise and relevant answer. There are players who are happy hunting for their own challenges, and CoH provides venues for that; but there's also players who, just as legitimately, want the game to force a brickwall onto them, and these players will not be satisfied with the difficulty here. Basically, you can get all the loot and run all the content in easy conditions. There's no gatekeeping whatsoever, which can be good or bad depending on perspective.

I like 5 piece Arma (all but Damage) + Fury of the Gladiator proc in Poison Trap. PT's base recharge is low enough you keep 95% chance to proc with that setup. You get juicy set bonuses, a solid damage proc in Arma, + great -RES uptime on Fury of the Gladiator, stacking with your other -RES debuffs. But, this is from the perspective of ST damage above all, and on a defender. On a Thugs/Poison MM, if you're not dipping into patrons for a proc-heavy hold, you could go all out in Poison Trap. Stuff the Unbreakable Constraint proc, the Armageddon proc, Fury of the Gladiator, then any other 3 standard damage procs to your liking. You'd end up with a mininuke in your hands.

But is that so, really? Street Justice is considered a top tier set and has abysmal AoE. Dark Melee has also its share of fans; although admittedly many of whom pair it with Shield. Illusion is beloved despite being the least AoE capable control set. Ice Blast and Sonic Blast have awful AoE yet enjoy some popularity. On the other end of the spectrum, some sets with great AoE don't get much love. Fire Melee. Elec Blast. Radiation Blast. Sentiment often goes *against* Fiery Armor anywhere but in AE, which leads forumgoers to specify you can in fact make it work in the real game. I think the only instance where I've heard "this set sucks because it has no AoE" is EM. And that perception is debatable. IMHO, EM suffers because it's been nerfed to the ground, and because no model properly accounts for the impact ET's -HP has on survivability. It is a bad set overall, which leaves any of us to summon their own justifications as to why.