nihilii

Even though the damage aura seemingly works against it, Scrappers can make good use of it in that the fear stops enemies from running, if intermittently, and keep them longer in the damage aura. Of course, it's less valuable on Brutes and Tankers, and that use remains questionable even on Scrappers because of the end cost. But if the end cost was negligible, I'd definitely use it for that purpose.

It feels that way, to an extent. I think the playerbase overvalues damage and undervalues survivability - and I say this as someone who pushes for near max damage on every build. Kinda crazy we generally accept "lose a % of the damage to have several times the survivability" as balanced. I get the argument you only need as much survivability as to survive the content you face. At the same time, extra survivability even in easy content can translate into not having to take defensive measures you might have to otherwise, and ergo more damage. Claws is probably on the extreme side of the Tanker/Brute balance curve, in that Follow Up +dam is about twice as good for a Tanker than it is on a Brute to start with, Fury and all. But still. Tankers got a lot out of the last buffs. I don't think I've played a Brute since then, save for my StJ/Rad/Soul - which is somewhat on the other side of the balance equation in being able to hardcap resistance through Meltdown + Melee (but then, the similar Tanker could just cruise by on their toggle resistances and grab Musculature + Hybrid...).

Demon/Cold/Mu Mastermind Musc T3, Reactive Radial T3 (old character, need to work on Degen), Ageless T4 Attack chain is a mix of Corruption, Lash, Infridigate, Electric Shackles and Electrifying Fences, all fairly procced out Pets 1:15 = 639 DPS No pets 4:33 = 268 DPS Pretty happy with this so far. I've always struggled with MMs because the DPS feels too conditional, and the level of challenge I like to face wipes out pets too often. Being able to do ~200 to ~250 when things fall apart more or less meets midrange corruptor performance; making for decent contributions in hostile environments. Not to mention, through cycling Rune of Protection and Melee Hybrid, resistance is hardcapped or close to it on most damage types (Mids inflates the numbers for demon shields somehow, but they're still pretty good). Build

This was in reference to the StJ/Rad brute. 🙂 Here's the Fire/Atomic build

You're not wrong on that one. I tend to load attacks with damage procs, which makes Strike twice as good as Swipe in that regard (as base recharge and animation time influence proc rate). But on the base stats, it's just like you say, and Strike can definitely go if power picks are tight.

The recent Tanker buffs removed Bruising in favor of raising Tanker damage scale instead. So you're good with the usual Rend Armor -> Follow Through -> Arc of Destruction -> Crushing Blow -> Follow Through (or any other attack chain you prefer). I went Musculature because all I care about is DPS, but I feel like Cardiac + Ageless Radial + Conserve Power would be better overall for a no insps/temps character (in fact, I would have crafted a quick T3 Cardiac 5 minutes in this TF if I had the materials for it). I can't find recorded pylon times for this character on my spreadsheet, but I want to say she's above 300 DPS for sure. Build Edit: I gave a Pylon a go, and got 2:55 = 344 DPS. This was without using Hybrid, and getting KBed twice (the build doesn't have enough KB protection for Pylons). Another run with Hybrid on and getting KBed just once gave me 2:28 = 386 DPS.

10 seconds. I love Vorpal Judgement. I think of it as a Shadow Meld that does nuke damage.

I went through it with the DA/TW today! Amusingly, this took 2 attempts. The character is built with the assumption of either Ageless Core (+recovery), or Ageless Radial (+debuff res) coupled with Conserve Power and Recovery Serum/the occasional blue insp. With no insps nor temps, her end becomes much harder to manage. I noticed Ageless Radial on pretty quickly, but decided to tough it out. Until I had to AFK for lunch anyway right as I was engaging Sister Solaris' friends. So I went up flying, and when I came back ~30 minutes later, I used this "out of combat" opportunity to equip Ageless Core. To then jump into a big horde of dwarves and novas that accumulated around Sister Solaris. First realisation: hey, that debuff resistance actually helped a fair bit. My life is going down quick. Better use Dark Regen. Second realisation: now my attacks are taking a long time to recharge, and Dark Regen isn't coming back so fast either. Right, they've got slows, too. Well this is bad. Third realisation: I'm not going to be able to take this. Better run away. That is, fly away. Fourth realisation: why is my jetpack not working?! Oh. Oooh. The dwarves have -fly in their attacks too. ...and I died. Really, if I had been a little quicker on the draw, it would have been no trouble to (say) use the Jump Pack and hop away. Goes to show, overconfidence can wreck even some of the most overpowered characters. Starting over, the second run was a smoother experience. Mission 1 and 2 were mostly uneventful, taking a few minutes each. In mission 2 I ran from cyst to cyst, exploiting the 17 aggro cap and positioning myself as to not "wake" the Bright Novas with AoEs while attacking cysts. Mission 3 was a bit more challenging, I had to fly away from the beast pack a couple times; those minotaur -res -def debuffs can stack up with normal Cimerorans streaming in. The biggest hurdle was endurance management. On the Sentinel, despite her being built with Ageless use, it wasn't too hard to deal with, given that Radiation Armor comes with a lot of endurance tools on Sents. This Tanker doesn't have so much leeway to play with. So I did the unthinkable: dragged back Rest to the power bar. (To be fair, I also used BP lore pets on the Sentinel. The +recovery buff was a significant help. This Tanker only has Longbows, and I made it a point to avoid using Lore.) Took on Requiem by attacking him at full speed while Conserve Power was up, flying away on a hill, Resting, attacking again with a full end bar, flying away again... Rest recharges so fast nowadays, even level 54 AV regen can't really keep up. At least when the AV is Requiem, who damages himself with Oppressive Gloom. Swapped back to Ageless Core for Romulus. Not much to say about it. Hit him until he goes down. Mission 4 was more of the same. The final fight is really no trouble for a DA Tanker (provided you attack the Nictus first, so the ambushes linked to Romulus health don't jump you while they're all alive). Final time: 1 hour 29 minutes. The same challenge played out so completely differently with the two characters, it didn't even feel repetitive. It is pretty interesting to go without insps for such challenges. You can often skip learning about your enemies by just popping lucks and powering through. Come to think of it, not only your enemies but your own characters. I found use in 2-slotted Defensive Sweep, in using knockdowns with purpose, even in Rest. I did use Lore twice, mostly to speed up things. In mission 3 against the Romulus Phalanx, as the computer doesn't regen. They helped take 1/4 off it and died on the first wave of robots. Then in mission 4 once I had killed the autohit Nictus and the healing Nictus, as I was confident those previous kills proved I had the DPS and survivability to beat the next Nictus regardless (and the pets died right as the summoning Nictus died, making for a proper final duel with Rommie.)

Inspired by your thread, I went and had a go at this just now. Using my Fire/Rad/Psi Sentinel... which is tuned for constant insp use, and built around Ageless. Fun times! Needless to say, when you start from 40% melee 20% ranged 20% aoe defense, no DDR and a resistance cap of 75%? There was *a lot* of kiting involved. Starting as soon as mission 1. It took me roughly as long to get through each mission, with mission 3 rather than 4 being the longest. Total time about 2 hours and 50 minutes, pretty intense all the way through. I must have had a dozen close calls if not even twice that, especially in the caves of mission 2 which aren't so friendly to kiting +4/x8 hordes. Switched from Ageless and Assault to Barrier and Melee to finish the remaining 2 missions, but that came with its own challenge as this character can't sustain her attack chain without Ageless. For the final fight, I kept flying to take out the Nictus 1 by 1 while letting Rommie pelt me with his one ranged attack. No big problem here, save that Romulus will run and aggro everything on a character without aggro management (also true for mission 3). Even on a first try success, easily one of the most challenging things I've done. This Sentinel had no business surviving some of the stuff she did, but there's a great deal of mitigation to be had from kiting. Thanks for pushing me to try this, Werner. 🙂 Re: Tanker subtopic. DA/Katana may or may not be a winner, but I expect many other flavors of DA would take on the same challenge without too much trouble. DA is beastly on a Tanker, to the point you can stuff the +RES Tanker proc in Death Shroud, all the +def +res uniques somewhere, and then basically forget about building for mitigation. I'll probably have a go tomorrow with the most unfair combos of them all (DA/TW) and report.

[[EDIT]] After thinking further about those too-good-to-be-true numbers, I'm pretty sure I had amplifiers on. Will have to retest for sure. [[EDIT 2]] Had one go at it. 3:15 = 324 DPS. Makes a lot more sense than the previous, inflated results. [[Original post below]] StJ/Rad/Soul Brute, Degen T4, Cardiac/Rebirth/Melee Starting from Gloom -> Shin Breaker -> Rib Cracker -> Crushing Uppercut -> Shin Breaker -> Rib Cracker, but in practice I mix Radiation Therapy and Build Up in there to the point SB and RC are used less often. 2:36 = 373 DPS 2:42 = 364 DPS ~+80 DPS from my previous build... after a respec meant to sacrifice some ST DPS in favor of AoE. Likely thanks to Radiation Therapy. Supercharged with procs, it becomes quite potent not just as an AoE but as a ST attack, too. 1.2s animation, and according to Mids stats, 355 damage, 90% chance to proc the Fury -res proc, and -150% regen. Build::

Hard stats from devs show it's a massively popular combo (especially once pure farmers are averaged out). You can see the data dump here:

It was definitely possible. Getting enough kins (or rads) on the team to get your Dom to perma was a big thing back then; especially as one of the early LRSF strategies was to bring a Mind Dom on the team to permasleep AVs and let you fight them one at a time.

Jurassik is an Archvillain at the end of the Numina TF, even though it shows Monster in his rank as flavor. Still pretty cool to solo him on a leveling character IMHO, well done. 🙂

I feel you ought to forget the "flavor" IOs - slow/immobilize in Crippling Axe Kick, disorient in Eagle's Claw. These powers are attacks first and foremost, and enhancing their damage to the max is more important than getting a slightly longer secondary effect. Likewise, Focus Chi is better served with 3 recharge enhancements than with 2 tohit and 1 recharge. Shinobi Iri could use defense rather than endurance and jump. Kuji-In Sha is your heal, your main source of sustain. The toxic resistance is of minimal use in comparison. Stick 3 heals in there, and add recharge in extra slots. This will help you survive a lot better. I'd move the Critical Strikes set from Thunder Kick to Eagle's Claw or Crippling Axe Kick. The way procs work, you have a much higher chance to fire in powers with long animations and slow recharges. Right now your chances to get the proc off is 8%. Moving the entire set to Eagle's Claw, your chances would be 28%. Even though it might feel better in Thunder Kick because you might use Thunder Kick more often, you're looking at 350% better chances in EC. If you can manage to get the money for it (roughly 6-7M at "buy it NAO" prices, or 4M if you let a bid sit for a while), the Steadfast Protection unique can be slotted in Bo Ryaku and will give you an additional 3% defense. The Gladiator Armor unique comes at a higher price tag (10-15M) and does the same thing. Each point of defense getting you closer to the softcap will do a lot for your survival. Generally speaking, a scrapper can survive Marauder indefinitely without purples. Sometimes the big guy will get 2 lucky hits in a row, which is what we want to avoid (hence the use for slotting Kuji-In Sha as a heal, and making sure defenses are as high as can be). You have Fly and Warrior's Challenge, too, so you can get creative about it too: if Marauder gets a hit in and your heal is still on cooldown, you can Fly in a straight vertical line from him while spamming Warrior's Challenge for the -range. This would prevent him from hitting you with anything, provided you're far enough (granted, the environment might play a role here). You could also stuff the new Power Transfer: Chance to Heal Self proc in Physical Perfection or Stamina. Get a little bit more of healing that way. If you don't have it yet, the Preventive Medicine chance for +absorb proc is also killer for survivability.

I agree with everyone here. E/N res set bonuses are hard to come by, usually involves chasing suboptimal sets. Here we have it as part of a set that gives full damage enhancement and near full recharge enhancement, and all other set bonuses are also useful. Full 5 sets of Bombardment, probably not, but 1 or 2 or 3, replacing whatever slotting you had in TAoE powers before, yes!

Claws is absolutely bonkers on a Tanker. Arguably THE big winner of the Tanker buffs. 1) Spin is the star here. Spin already broke all the math formulas - that is to say, it deals much more damage than it should and costs less endurance than it should for the recharge it has. Now, the Tanker buffs pumped this bad boy from 8 feet radius to 12 feet radius, and from 10 targets to 16 targets. Oh boy. Couple that with your Dark Armor damage aura, and you don't need any other AoE. 2) Claws has fast animating, fast recharging powers. At high levels, Claws likes to run lean attack chains like Follow Up -> Slash -> Focus -> Strike. The Tanker buffs removed Bruising from the T1 attack (Swipe in this case), in order to raise Tanker base damage. Another win for Claws: this leaves full freedom to chase the best natural attack chain. Dark/Claws? + Claws is light on end + Claws animates fast, so you'll always be ready to tap Dark Regeneration on time There's no cons to the combo. Note for maximum damage output, you will want to make use of the numerous proc options available to Claws. Apoc in Focus, Achilles Heel in Slash, Hecatomb in Follow Up. Ageless is still likely the optimal strategy to sustain DA toggles coupled with Claws full blender mode; but if you pace your attacks (and eventually take Conserve Power at level 35, for exemplar friendly down to lvl 30), you should be able to get by in the lower levels too.

Thanks for the corrections Coyote, my statement reflected my bias. I don't like pet DPS for the same reasons I don't like Storm DPS, too conditional on having only one enemy in range for my liking. But Poison DPS is also conditional on being able to be in melee 100% of the time (which is difficult to impossible in some circumstances). So I was definitely incorrect here. There are Controllers doing great DPS feats, and it's a question of picking the conditions we're personally willing to work around.

I'm thinking it depends how you used to play your Fire/Rad. i.e., if you were used to deliberate, cautious play throwing RI, EF and LR to nullify every group you engage, it would take significant defensive building to get the Fire/Atomic up there. But if you were more reckless and just charged ahead, throwing EF/LR and not caring too much about RI, perhaps the blaster wouldn't be too much of a change? It ought to be doable to build for the ranged softcap and keep great DPS, in any case. Homecoming saw some powercreep, which is helpful for us here. Instasnipes and crashless nukes combine in a tremendous increase of damage output. Procs are also more potent. Shield Wall + Reactive Defenses + Gladiator Armor + Steadfast gives you +6% def and +8% res right off the bat, Unbreakable Guard an extra +7.5% HP, and so on. With all that in mind, I'd say going from Live Fire/Rad corr to Homecoming Fire/Atomic blaster could be an exhilarating change of pace, if only for the oodles of pure damage you're going to deliver. Plus, you get new toys to play with. If you're on the fence, you could hop on the Test server. It lets you build a character directly to level 50, unlock full incarnates and summon any IO through the freebies menu on the bottom left.

I don't know if Frosticus is fanboying over Poison. But I'm definitely fanboying over Frosticus' writeups on Poison. 😉 Many claims are thrown around on the forums. Very few hold up to pressure if you investigate them. Heck, I just got painted an overemotional villain over in S&I because I asked (perhaps too forcefully (ok, I may have been a raging asshole in the process)) for posters claiming Defenders outdamage Sentinels on average to help me out posting their builds so I could replicate their results. I love defenders, corruptors, controllers, but moved on from them a bit because I find it a struggle to reach >200-250 ST DPS in Pylon times yet alone practical situations. I like ST damage. It's an addiction. Frosticus claims 400+ DPS on his Poison/Fire in "defensive" mode. From my own limited testing borne out of following his advice these numbers definitely hold up. I made my own build blind and am in the 350 DPS range. Fantastic stuff by my standards. I know I'm not getting the full potential out of Poison too, as Frosticus put his finger on the issue in unrelated posts: newbie Poison players can overuse the debuffs, as we're conditioned to click such powers whenever they recharge. It requires extra discipline to remember the debuff lasts 30s and not go overboard. So there is a Defender combo that does provably 400+ DPS, and there is an extensive writeup basically leading you every step of the way to the process of getting there. Complete with a build you could copypaste. Very, very few posters support their claims with this level of data. None (that I know of) have posted Defenders, Corruptors or Controllers with similar damage output. Yes, Poison requires to be in melee range with no survivability, and yes, it can be pretty tough. At the same time, what are our options for maximum damage? - Storm kicks ass in Pylon charts but struggles to convert that DPS to practical uses, as Tornado and LS don't deal focused damage output when [enemy count > 1] - Time is awesome for building a survivable toon, but ultimately only comes with -22.5%/-30% native res tied to a lengthy animation and long recharge; the latter meaning once you blew your -res on a group and nuked them in 10 seconds, you spend the next 15 seconds on base damage alone - Rad has to an extent similar flexibility as Poison in applying -res, and can stay at range doing so, but caps out at -22.5%/-30% native - Cold actually performs decently in that in many practical situations it's basically "Storm + Heat Loss + Benumb". Not bad, but still, no comparable -res debuffing to Poison in a nutshell There's definitely other benefits to these powersets (and that's a good thing for balance). But when it comes to damage, it just seems like little can match Poison. You hop in melee and enemies passively suffer almost the same resistance debuff other primaries have to work for. You throw 1.5s Envenom and you're ahead of everyone. You add Poison Trap and Fury of the Gladiator starts proccing. It's just insanely good. High risk, high reward.

Removing the Momentum mechanic entirely would improve the endurance/second consumption. *ducks for cover*

Edit: removing quotes so there's no unwanted ping. Modest, I am not asking you to create builds out of scratch to prove your claim these builds could deal 250-300 DPS. One would assume you had some form of previous evidence those builds could deal 250-300 DPS, in order to make that claim. At least, I assumed as much. You compile Sentinel times. But you don't compile Defender times. You post the Sentinel times, and conclude with "as you can see, on average Sentinels have worse Pylon times than Defenders or Corruptors." How can we see "X < Y" if Y is an unknown? All I am asking for is something to support your claim. Or the claim that "Based on Pylon tests, Defenders that are focused on dealing damage (often referred to as offenders) out-damage all but two players' Sentinels." Likewise, I don't really see how [my words] "most Defenders trump Sentinels in Pylon Tests" fundamentally differs from [your words] "on average Sentinels have worse Pylon times than Defenders or Corruptors". Certainly not to the point claiming statements like the former have been made. Quotes or no quotes, "like" implies (to me?) likeliness and not exactitude. If anything, my statement seems tamer than yours. "Defenders or Corruptors" without qualifiers implies all, whereas I stuck to a milder "most". Maybe I'm wrong? If you feel I'm misinterpreting your position, do feel free to set me straight. All this semantic nonsense is the reason a subtopic that deserved no more than a couple posts turned into this long back-and-forth. You can call out my emotions or personality or manner of speech, but I'd rather we focus on finding some common ground, based in numbers and testing, to derive productive conclusions from.

If I'm not mistaken, you can fully slot PS for recharge and remain at the maximum chance to proc (90%). Indeed, I see it proc all the time on my Kin/ scrappers slotted as such.

Dark Armor is the Bio Armor of survivability. Make sure you're comfortable with the GFX, because it is way too easy to get stuck in an endless loop of DA alts once you get a taste of sweet, sweet dark goodness.

I feel it'd definitely be too squishy without insps. But, if you're willing to use insps and/or amplifiers, the sky's the limit. On Live, I later made a Fire/Dev/Pyre that dealt respectable "range" damage (if we accept Taser as range, at 20 feet) while also boasting decent survivability through alternating Melee Core Hybrid and Rune of Protection. /Dev is pretty sweet in giving you +tohit for maximum snipe damage (meaning you don't need Tactics) and a couple more defense points. But (I haven't played the character for a while) I think the Targeting Drone fix made it so the damage boost comes up only after you've been out of combat for 8 seconds, whereas it used to happen every 8 seconds. So YMMV on /Dev. I think Melee Core + RoP is a good basis for any Blaster anyway, you don't lose much by giving up Assault Hybrid; then build for ~20% def to all and you can have decent survivability by popping a couple lucks as needed, while chasing as much DPS as you can through Musculature, Ageless and procs.

Zeraphia, you know I tend to see the logic in your take even if I don't necessarily agree with it. You're always logically consistent in looking at top performers and comparing them. Our disagreements come from my feelings there are outright broken sets in other ATs, that Sentinels are better balanced overall, and game balance shouldn't aim to make everyone overpowered. I don't think I'm right nor that you are wrong. We just have different takes. My issue comes from comparisons I feel are flawed on a logical level. There's people who look at Sentinels earnestly, crunch the numbers, play them, and conclude they're underpowered. That's fine. Then there's people who come up with all kinds of somewhat dubious to factually wrong claims, and become evasive and slippery when called out. This is annoying. At the same time, I do have to nitpick your numbers. The /psi pool is probably not half of Sent DPS (except perhaps in extreme cases like AR?). Fire/ without /psi can dish out ~300 DPS. Fire/ with /psi is in the ~400 DPS range. Other primaries likely take a larger hit because their attacks aren't innately as great as Fire. Still, I know from experience Dark/ can deal 250+ DPS without /psi (or without any boost from the secondary, from that matter). Elec, Rad and Beam are likely up there as well. BUT this is not to disagree with your overall point. Which is that Sentinels rely too much on /psi epic for their DPS. It's probably a solid third in many cases, and overreliance on /psi epic is a fair point that will have to be looked at one day. Also a strong argument/conclusion I can't disagree with. But I would like to see those droves of mythical Discord Defenders easily outdamaging Sentinels! That is my main point of contention in this topic: a claim heralded as fact, but with little basis for it. (And beyond this discussion, here's a selfish reason I'd like to see those 300+ DPS defenders: I'm struggling to get there myself on anything that isn't Poison or Storm. So by all means, teach me!) To reiterate: it's completely OK to argue Sentinels might be underpowered because the entire mix of what they bring to the table supposedly isn't as good as the entire mix some other ATs bring to the table. I'm down with buffing Sentinel damage - always has been, regardless if I feel it's necessary or not. But extraordinary claims like "most Defenders trump Sentinels in Pylon tests" could use some form of evidence.