nihilii

A fair point. I like that Sentinel Fire Blast in particular got balanced down - in every other AT with access to traditional Fire Blast, I end up throwing my hands up in the air whenever I try to build with any other damage powerset and realise Fire Blast would just be THAT much better. Snipe/mez replacements seem rather arbitrary, but I want to argue intuitively this chaotic mishmash ends up sort of more balanced for Sentinels than it is on many other ATs. i.e. say the difference between Fire Blast and Assault Rifle on Blasters or the difference between Titan Weapons and Battle Axe on Scrappers is 1x, maybe the difference between, well, Fire Blast and Assault Rifle on Sentinels is 0.5x or 0.8x (and that's with AR being one of the Sentinel ports that gets shortchanged, IMHO). So Sentinel balance isn't perfect, but it trends in the right direction. Perhaps a more coherent argument would be one cannot aim for Blaster Fire Blast or Scrapper Titan Weapons as a balance design goal. 🙂

But he doesn't want to deny anything, as this is the status quo. You are the one opening the topic for the sole purpose of denying people passive level shifts. Stopping at T2 Alpha and T4 everything else will let you face true +4s in most content with minimal difference compared to T3/T4 Alpha. We're talking about maybe a ~15-20% enhancement difference in the one or two aspects your alpha provides you. If the DA content is really a problem to you, well, stop at T2 Lore and T2 Destiny. T2 Destiny is admittedly a pretty big change (but surely you cannot think Destiny is balanced if you feel level shifts are broken - Destiny is tremendously more powerful than level shifts, at least in my opinion), but T2 Lore probably won't change much because how often do you pull out Lore in regular gameplay, really.

I'm someone who likes building for accuracy/tohit. To the point my builds prompt comments I'm way overslotted for it. 95% against +3s? Set up with 48 base tohit in Mids, the numbers I tend to see are more often closer to 200% than 100%. But OK, perhaps I'm doing this wrong. With a recent interest in proc monster builds, which involves breaking sets in tiny pieces and having less % enhancement in some powers, I found myself barely shooting for that 95% mark instead. This is fine. In theory. Once ingame? First LRSF mission, Crimson, Deflected Deflected Deflected. Longbow Ballistas, Deflected Deflected. Slinger? Deflected. Citadel, Positron, more Deflected. There's just so many enemies with defense powers in the game. They tend to be the tougher ones, too. Shooting for 95% just doesn't seem to cut it for me. But I'm interested in hearing from the people who DO advocate "not overslotting for accuracy", in understanding where you're coming from. Are you more often on a team, where tohitbuffs or defense debuffs are likely to be around? Do you feel fine cruising on just Aim/BU? Do you just count the occasional whiff as cost of doing business?

I don't have a Mids build for this first one. But, the Cross Punch build below would be able to run the same attack chain. If you're not interested in Cross Punch, simply remove the power and put the 5 slots anywhere else.

In theory, Barrier may very well be too strong. But 99% of my builds end up with Ageless. Hmm. The ability to completely ignore endurance management with just one Destiny pick is very, very powerful.

Fire/Bio/Psi Sentinel At last, T4 everything! (Musc Core, Degen Core, Ageless Core, Assault Radial) Blaze -> Dominate -> Fireball -> Blaze -> Mind Probe -> Flares Hybrid ON 2:10 = 422 DPS 2:14 = 413 DPS Hybrid OFF 2:42 = 364 DPS 2:44 = 361 DPS Then I decided to hop on Test for something different. Well, OK: what follows was planned all along, and those first few runs were to establish a baseline. Seeing as I get some flak for my Sentinel builds using the /psi epic all the time and not enough of the primaries... Why not up the ante. Everyone likes Cross Punch, right? One respec later, we now have an attack chain of Blaze -> Dominate -> Mind Probe -> Blaze -> Cross Punch -> Fireball. Fireball becomes Flares when Opportunity is up, or is replaced by Aim/Hasten as needed. Cross Punch has the Arma proc, the Fury -res proc, and 2 more damage procs. Hybrid ON 1:57 = 455 DPS 2:06 = 432 DPS 1:58 = 452 DPS Hybrid OFF 2:37 = 372 DPS (very first run, working out the attack chain) 2:25 = 392 DPS 2:25 = 392 DPS Woozah! I think those are my best Sentinel times to date. But then, is ~+30 DPS *really* worth standing in melee range for much longer than with just Mind Probe? At the same time, this build doesn't give up much. We can revert just as easily to the previous attack chain. So there's only slight opportunity costs, in fitting one extra power pick (Cross Punch) and breaking the Arma set in pieces (no set bonuses, and no juicy Fire damage proc for Inferno). Hmm... Come to think of it, I intuitively defaulted to the "Aim -> Inferno whenever up" routine in those runs. Which is definitely beneficial to ST DPS in "traditional builds" when Inferno is slotted with Arma + Fury, giving a guaranteed -res debuff and hefty damage. However, the Cross Punch build only has an Opportunity Strikes set in Inferno; which means Inferno is probably a poor DPA option here. -- EDIT: got a few more runs done, skipping Inferno. HYBRID ON 2:00 = 447 DPS 1:51 = 473 DPS 1:54 = 464 DPS 1:51 = 473 DPS 1:55 = 461 DPS HYBRID OFF 1:55 = 461 DPS (?) 2:20 = 401 DPS 2:12 = 418 DPS 2:12 = 418 DPS That 461 DPS run without Hybrid feels a little too good to be true. I probably missed another player slapping a -regen power and dying just before, or somesuch. Excluding that run, it still looks like a slight improvement over using Inferno. >400 DPS on a Sentinel without Hybrid! And now we've gone from a just for kicks evening project to a serious respec consideration.

Make that every single ST hold in the game, IMHO. It's absurd the number of ST holds that are nigh useless because they have a ~2.2s cast.

It is so much better on scrappers. About the only argument one can make for a brute is using the 90% res cap. But TW/bio scrappers get: - vastly superior DPS and burst damage. The nature of Momentum works perfectly with the scrapper ATOs and Gaussian in Build Up on a high base damage scale. - decent aggro control. This is worth mentioning because most scrapper secondaries do not get aggro control. So usually this can be a reason to go brute over scrapper. No such reason here. - Shadow Meld patching the /bio defense/DDR hole perfectly. - more of a bonus from /bio offensive mode, both absolute (scrapper base damage is higher) and relative (scrappers aren't balanced around Fury) The brute will still be an incredibly potent character, thanks to both TW and bio being crazy strong to start with. But a properly built TW/bio scrapper lives on another planet.

Some caveats with that argument. Normal Fire Blast is very very strong (*cough* OP *cough*), while Sentinel Fire Blast was rebalanced (DoTs are normalized). On Blasters, Corruptors, Defenders... and Dominators for that matter... try as you might, you will not find a powerset as damaging as Fire Blast at the higher end. On Sentinels, however? Elec Blast will give Fire Blast a run for their money, and many other powersets aren't far behind. In the great picture, picking the high end for a whole AT comparison penalizes properly balanced ATs where no single powerset or combo outshines the rest, and favorizes ATs with OP builds. So... If all you care about is the high end, I think that's a fair argument to use. With that "if" caveat. But if you care about the entire AT? The discrepancy between a Fire Blaster and a Fire Sentinel is unlikely to be reflected between an Elec Blaster and an Elec Sentinel. You can't project performance 1:1 from Fire Blast, doubly so because many other Sentinel primaries got *buffs* from their original form.

Durability gives a small amount of +absorb every few seconds. It doesn't stack with itself, but effectively it works like +regen beyond your HP cap so it adds up fast.

This is IMHO the trick to Tanker SR. Capping S/L res is doable, and coupled with 59% defense and capped DDR makes you the most survivable character in the game against the most common damage type. No healing required, passive regen + panacea/preventive medicine procs will top you off against anything (S/L) the game throws at you. Of course, there's more than this damage type. So it's a good thing you've got Siphon Life as a DM. Perhaps for your particular combo it might make sense to not chase S/L res as much and instead grab F/C/E/N res whenever available, for more rounded mitigation.

This is a really neat suggestion. The costume editor clutter would be unreal, but so would our options for making truly unique looking characters.

Yes. Zapp and Moonbeam both deal excellent DPA, superior to most attacks found in primaries. On top of that, it's often your sole source to slot the Apocalypse proc - and their high base recharge ensures a near guaranteed proc.

That's true. My statement was a simplification more than anything, using the no insps/temps/lore baseline we're used to from Pylon testing. There is nothing inherently special about the 700 DPS number, it's just the number a TW/bio scrapper can hit without insps, temps or lore. Ergo, the baseline applicable most of the time. You can then stack insps, temps and lore on top of that for multiplicative results far beyond what any other build can get with the same tools, especially as TW/bio is also the melee build with the highest access to -RES. Characters with a baseline of 350 DPS deal roughly 130 damage per second to a lvl 54 AV without resistances once their regen is factored in. Takes several minutes of focused attacking to take them down. In that same scenario, a baseline of 700 DPS deal 350 damage per second. The same level 54 AV hits the dirt in less than 2 minutes. The real story here lies in the differential and not the specific numbers, as well as in the respective strength of the enemies (which we can't sum up so easily). When I take on STF Lord Recluse with my average alt, it's a marathon of dealing enough damage to take the towers down faster than my inspirations run out. Quite often, I have to use Lore as main damage dealers while I stick to watching obsessively for repairmen. Victory isn't a guarantee. I'd say most of my roster cannot be sure whether they'll succeed or hit a brickwall trying to solo the STF. Grabbing my TW/bio scrapper for the same task, I just chug a couple oranges and purples, pop Lore and go to town with the towers in melee range, making no compromise save for using the absorb shield preventively. There can be the odd string of bad luck getting me killed, but there lies another strong advantage of overwhelming DPS: if you shave off a 30 minutes fight to 5 minutes, you only have to roll the dice for 1/6th as long. It's never a worry whether the TW/bio scrapper will succeed or not.

IMHO, TW is easily ~30% above any other choice. Like Sovera suggests, the playerbase will not stomach a ~30% nerf. If a TW nerf happens (and this remains to be seen), I'll bet dollars to peanuts the top performing combo will still be a TW/bio scrapper. As for the point of nerfing, I think Sovera says it well too. Playing Doom with IDKFA is fun for a few minutes but the complete lack of challenge can only hold your attention for so long. In CoH specifically, much of the interest lies in rerolling and tinkering with the systems in place. Having one power combo be the best by an overwhelming margin means any attempt you make with something else is just "pretend". You know you've got this one alt in your roster that would do better anyway. At least for me, I get a kick out of making a new alt and thinking "this new project will be the most awesome thing I've ever built for [specific purpose]". But I have to ignore my TW/bio scrapper in order to make this work. I can do that mental check, and I solo or duo with friends most of the time, so I don't care whether TW is nerfed. But some people can't come down from the high of TW performance. One of my friends left the game around July 2019 after a 2 weeks stint with his TW/Rad scrapper. With his playstyle, every spawn would become herd, BU, annihilate, and there simply wasn't anything for him to achieve or reroll. The cost of having overpowered combos is somewhat hidden, in that if people leave over it, you won't hear them complain. "Overpowered" is of course in the eye of the beholder. For many people, folks who like 8-man teams, overall power creep is a big issue. They argue incarnates should be limited. They yearn for a time before IOs. The arguments are understandable from their perspective. For those of us who like solo stuff, the game is at a pretty nice spot. +4/x8 against factions like peacebringer PPD, awakened, dark astoria mobs, rularuu and such can offer a challenge or at least the perception of challenge, with occasional deaths, and taking on an ITF or a STF or a RSF solo is still a big deal. That is, for the average highend build. A TW/bio scrapper significantly moves the needle on that, to the point most of these challenges become trivial. Buff everything slightly? Probably wouldn't change much. It's a big gap. Buff everything to the point it's getting closer to TW? Now challenges aren't as challenging, for everyone. On top of that, the aforementioned team players are devastated over more power creep. Entirely arbitrary take: for solo/duo, ~350 DPS is where the game is fun. ~700 DPS breaks the game. The former forces you to think against certain encounters, and you will always welcome the addition of a friend. The latter lets you power through almost anything the game can throw at you without adjusting your tactics, and friends are there to watch you be awesome more than anything.

Why do you need to have all previous 15 anniversary badges,? Why do you need to have them right now? These are purely vanity things with no ingame effect. You are not losing anything by not having these badges. You could go on a merit hunt now and have 1500+ by the time the 17th anniversary rolls around. Or even take multiple years to get them. In may 2019, the badges cost just as much and the servers had just started being up. There was no problem then.

I have never wanted to steal a costume so bad.

First thing that jumps to mind: swap Practiced Brawler for Master Brawler. Master Brawler is a strong +absorb power with a fast recharge which adds (passively) mez protection on your toggles. Master Brawler adds the extra layer of mitigation SR wants. It's superior in every way to Practiced Brawler save for the once in a blue moon fight where doublestacking mez protection helps. Other: find slots for Panacea +hp/+end and Preventive Medicine +absorb procs in Health. These are useful on every character, even moreso on SR.

Strongest mitigation ingame, IMHO. Granite only surpasses it on the condition you don't need to move - the survivability of a Rooted+Granite Tanker in a stack of Apex blue patches is 0. I'm not talking about IOed out to the gills and incarnates, either, but starting as soon as level 1. The combination of resistance to every damage type + mild defense + full heal on demand is such a strong base to stack defense on, whether from buffs or insps. No other powerset really compares. Pure defense like SR can be even more amazing earlier on, but then there's no damage aura in SR; and DA pulls ahead in the endgame anyway. Caveat, obviously: I use inspirations as they drop. I also tend to buy 8 hours worth of amplifiers when I start a new character. I will also buy the Recovery Serum temp power and use it as needed. This is my standard operating protocol for just about any reroll, and I don't think it's an outrageous starting point as all it takes is a bankroll of ~1M influence. But YMMV.

That is how it feels for me as well. Level 54 AVs right now (no Lore) are roughly like level 50 AVs back when we had the Alpha slot and nothing else. I've soloed most if not all level 54 AVs on my Fire/Rad sentinel, which isn't the best character for the task. I want to agree with this so bad (and I love what you're doing with your beam/dev), but the sheer destructive power of a TW/bio scrapper is head and shoulders above any other option in the game right now. It's to the point I specifically avoid putting my own TW/bio through challenge stuff, *yet still end up beating challenges I want to get through with other characters*. For example, I've had this goal to take on the LRSF final 7 without lore/temps/mail/pulls/ultimates. No moving outside of the main ring. I built a DA/TW Tanker for that purpose. She managed to take down Numina before getting killed on her first try. Then with more attempts, she managed to take down Numina and Penelope. Then another day, I casually solo the LRSF with my TW/bio and decide to jump in just for the fun of it. Managed to take down Numina, Penelope *and* Manticore before getting killed. I have an AE testing mission where you fight a bunch of endgame factions, one group of each, on a timer. I put the characters I like most through it in +4/x8. Surprisingly, highend builds of completely different ATs tend to end up in the same range. Except the TW/bio scrapper, who pulls ahead by a disgusting margin. (Except the Fire/Fire Dominator. But then, Dominators are well-suited to traditional static fights where enemies are nicely bunched up for a mag6 AoE mez + immobilize.) Being able to deal ~700+ DPS that isn't *too* conditional just breaks the game in absurd ways. A level 54 AV with no resistances melts in less than 2 minutes. The gap grows further in challenge situations where you have to implement defensive measures, as lower DPS characters get closer to the "barely break even with regen" point while a TW/bio scrapper maintains a healthy differential. True, in Apex the blue circles make that DPS drop down somewhat. But then you pop BU, your Gaussian procs, your Critical Strikes follows and you deal 3000-4000 damage in just a few hits thanks to Momentum. TW/bio isn't just extremely high sustained DPS, it's also mindblowing burst damage, so high that it translates into extremely high sustained DPS in the longer run. It's no surprise the only recorded solo Lambda sector was done by a TW/bio scrapper. Even "no insps/temps" don't constrain a TW/bio scrapper so much, as he can just cruise on Shadow Meld + /bio clicks to still boast decent enough survivability his ludicrous damage will get him through it. Fire blasters (with amplifiers and insps) aren't too shabby either. But they do need the amplifiers or insps, IMHO. If you build for no insps/temps or even just longterm sustainability without preparation, the blaster will likely need to dip into Clarion and/or Rune of Protection + Melee Core, and chase for ranged defense or whatnot at the expense of pure damage. While a TW/bio needs make no sacrifice. At the same time... who cares about TW/bio, I guess. It's the Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo Akuma of CoH. When one combo is so grossly overpowered, it's easy to make a mental distinction between what you achieve with it and what you can do with everything else. 😛

The disproportionate power of /psi is undeniable right now. At the same time, that's strictly ST and even there it won't represent 50% of your damage output, regardless of primary. So "in spite of" or "in addition to"? YMMV, but semantically I think the primary accounting for >50% damage justifies "in addition to". I use 50% as the halfway point, but in practice for many primaries the significance of /psi won't be as pronounced. i.e. Fire Blast is capable of dealing 300+ DPS without touching epics, probably 350+ DPS with other epics, and will barely touch 400 DPS with /psi. So /psi is probably worth a fourth of the ST damage here, and the comparative advantage over other epics is even less. For a lower damaging primary like Energy, it's likely /psi will account for more damage. There's two sides of the coin here. On one hand yes, that makes it more of a /psi character and less of a nrj/ character. On the other hand, having access to good attacks in epic pools means no primary is left behind for decent ST damage at the upper end. We all ought to follow the stuff @oldskool does, as he plays many many Sentinels including perceived underpowered ones and pushes them to great numbers. A good example here: Taking Dual Pistols and Assault Rifle, SR as a secondary (no offense boost save for +rech through Quickness), with only Musculature T2 for Incarnate, no /psi epic, attack chains using the primary in full, and reaching 200+ DPS on both characters. This will not top min/max charts using uber powersets, but forget about yellow bosses in 3 minutes - 200 DPS will let you solo a level 50 AV in roughly that amount of time. 200 DPS is enough damage output to solo the ITF, with some effort. And oldskool's builds make no "theme" sacrifice.

If you're Plant or something, sure, which is why animation times for ST holds between powersets should be looked at, as well as which attacks can accept Dom ATOs (all should, IMHO). On something like a Fire/Fire Dom, procced out Char spam enables 500+ DPS attack chains.

The Superior version does +21% DMG, stacks 3 times and has a PPM of 6 (in layman's terms: will go off everytime in your ST hold). It's closer to perma Rage than to a small red, and for free. This ATO is what enables (some) Dominators to deal Blaster level damage. IMHO, the real problem with this IO lie in the animation time disparity in ST holds, and/or the discrepancy in which Dom powers you can slot Dom ATOs. Corruptor's is 3 PPM, Defender's is 5 PPM. Would not trade -2 PPM for +END. The Defender proc is very useful in getting high damage healless builds to be sustainable, as it's a near guaranteed proc on the higher tier blasts.

(IMHO) This was true on Live before ATOs but fell by the wayside by now, especially with the PPM changes and easier (Homecoming) incarnates. Critical Strikes gives Scrappers excellent burst damage Brutes can only dream of, for example.

The very fact people use unconventional strategies to beat Lord Recluse suggests he's enough of a threat to most people. When was the last time you saw a team *not* bumrush the final 7 in the LRSF? Let me rephrase it: you can trivialize the final 7 through pulling and flying as well. But people don't bother because they don't need to. This goes for most traditional tasks. Before the devs went all out breaking the rules of their own game in incarnate content, there's always a "cheap" way to get through it.