nihilii

You know, you're right. I'm being uncouth. I feel you come from a position where you claim your thesis is rational, yet mangle data horribly to support your point. This gets me going. I have no problem with improving Sentinel damage. I have problems dealing with what I perceive to be bad logic. All I'm saying is I haven't seen 250+ DPS builds posted on the Pylon thread from non-Storm defenders. If you accept we can use other sources than the Pylon thread for Defender builds, surely the name should go for Sentinels? You have hunted down a 1 year old post of mine to claim the first posted time, using a BUGGED power and on a suboptimal build with very few procs, and again I quote your own words: "I would argue that this number is more indicative of the innate damage output of the archetype." You've ignored the latter half of this very same post where DPS was 240+, still using the same bugged power. You're still not acknowledging any of that now. Playing with words might work if you're considering a career in politics, but in the end, you seem purposefully misleading. You have still not demonstrated that "fact" to any meaningful extent. The topic you linked earlier shows Defender Pylon times inferior to Sentinel Pylon times. You're now mentioning the Homecoming Discord, without details. I repeat my previous enquiry: please post attack chains, builds, details. This would be helpful. "A bunch of us on Discord are doing this thing and we all agree" is not helpful data. This is so factually wrong it's criminally so. You have no basis whatsoever to make that claim. Your whole "thesis" relies on purposeful ignorance of any Sentinel data that isn't in the Pylon thread, with vague allusions to unclear Defender data that isn't in the Pylon thread. You diss the /psi epic for Sentinels - I'd be curious to know how many Defenders minmaxed for ST DPS skip their own /psi epic. I'll repeat my own previous claim: a solid half if not more of Sentinel primaries can achieve 250+ DPS, regardless of secondary. I'll happily demonstrate the claim if it comes to that, provided you actually put up too and start showing attack chains, builds, details, for this previous claim you made: "Defenders are able to reach the numbers that you quoted [250+ DPS? 300+ DPS?] using Dark Blast, Rad Blast, Fire Blast, and Ice Blast when paired with Cold Domination, Storm Summoning, Poison, and Time Manipulation. It is possible that they can reach these numbers with other sets as well. " Again: I would like to see examples of Time/Rad, Cold/Dark doing this. I am not asking you for much here. Just two specifics builds. I'm not even holding you to the implication other sets might do the same, even though you only name 4 primaries out of 16 possible choices, and 4 secondaries out of 13 possible choices - making for 16 possible combos out of 208 possible choices, or a mere 7.69% of all Defender combos. In exchange for just two fully detailed builds of yours, I would post 250+ DPS builds for Elec, Fire, Rad, Dark, Beam, Psi and Ice, 7 primaries out of 13 possible choices, using any secondary (you can even specify which secondary, if you want); meaning the results would show 53.8% of all Sentinel combos can deal 250+ DPS. If your interest in this discussion is truly genuine, please don't ignore this part of my post. Please avoid semantic games with other parts of my reply. Let's be serious for a moment and focus on trading hard data. Ageless isn't typically used for recharge, but to sustain the endurance requirements of the highest DPS attack chains. It's a common rhetoric sleight of hand to ignore attacks made on one's logic by questioning the motives of the attacker and painting them as emotional, but you still haven't addressed the double standards argument that is at the core of my tone in answer to you. To sum up points that were unfortunately ignored once more in your post: - a comparison has to be defined using the same scale, either by its top performers or by some measure of the average. One cannot argue the best Sentinel times are outliers while pointing to outlier Defender times as representative. - additionally, it would be nice to have any sort of hard data on Defender times! Pointing out a thread about procs where posted times don't meet your own claimed threshold is not helpful. Saying people in the Homecoming Discord "share times and builds" is not helpful. You tell me to push Sentinels to the Pylon thread. Please push your Defender Discord friends to the Pylon thread. - outliers go *both ways*. Taking the worst Sentinel time you can find at a time where one of the main attacks used was bugged, ignoring a better time posted in the same post and concluding "I would argue that this number is more indicative of the innate damage output of the archetype." is not serious data collection. Frankly, until you actually address this last point, I feel justified in my "personal attacks" of telling you "I know you've been wrong and twisted data"... As far as I'm concerned, that claim is hard data. But once more, let's please refocus the topic. Answer the rhetorics if you want, but also please post detailed example builds of Time/Rad and Cold/Dark builds dealing 300+ DPS, to help support your previous claim combos of Time, Poison, Cold and Storm paired with Dark, Fire, Rad and Ice would be able to reach the numbers I quoted (which were "250+ DPS? 300+ DPS?"). If you want to retract that claim and specify you were only referencing the first of the two numbers, you are welcome to do so, even though I strongly feel an intellectually honest participant wouldn't have left it vague in the first place. And in answer, I will post similarly detailed example builds for 7 Sentinel primaries, in order to help support my own claim a good half of Sentinel primaries can reach 250+ DPS. This would be a healthier starting point for any discussion on Defenders vs Sentinels. Of course, it would only mean (at most) 7.69% of all possible Defender choices can equal (at least) 53.8% of all possible Sentinel choices; but we could then expand the discussion and tests to other builds if you want to pursue your suggestion "it is possible other sets may do it as well" and your repeated claims Sentinel Pylon times compare poorly to Defender Pylon times. The ball is in your court. I would welcome you proving me wrong, in a rational manner.

That might make sense if you divided the number of players reporting high damage by the total number of players reporting damage, as well as by the number of players active on the subforum, and did that for all ATs. An absolute amount in a vacuum isn't relevant. But in any case, I disagree with the idea. The performance of any AT is defined by its upper bounds. In this thread you spend half of the time arguing Defenders geared for ST damage specifically against a Pylon by some of the best minmaxers outdamage Sentinels, and the other half insinuating any posted proof of high damage Sentinels is invalid because an edge case. Sorry, you can't have it both ways. Either they're both edge cases or they're appropriate as comparison points. This was when I didn't understand the new proc system, didn't use any epics, had Cardiac as an Alpha, Reactive as an Interface, didn't use Ageless, and when Blazing Blast had bugged damage, dealing as little as Fire Blast, a Tier 2 blast available at level 1!! This was also only one attempt, and in that very same post you linked a second run with Degen T4 is posted dealing 247 DPS... Merely adding Alpha and replicating the same suboptimal attack chain and build would force you to be above 250 DPS. The Blazing Blast fix alone doubled its damage. It's amazing: you dismiss my numbers when they spell a positive story about Sentinels, then suddenly if it seems like some of these numbers can be used to say Sentinels suck, you pounce on it like a fire farmer on a thread about nerfing AE. While also ignoring the latter half of the post not going along with your narrative. Time/Dark, Cold/Rad dealing 300+ DPS? Where are you getting this from? The Defender proc thread you linked from above has very few Pylon times that I could see at a quick skim/reread, most of which are above 5 minutes. 5 minutes to kill a Pylon = 255 DPS. You need to get the timer down to 3:40 or below. As for the Scrapper Pylon thread, I don't recall even 250+ DPS times posted from non-Storm defenders. I could be wrong, but I don't feel like going through 28 pages of it on the offchance you're right, given that I know you've been wrong and twisted data about other things... I'm not even saying it's impossible, but I'd like to see attack chains, builds, details. Also once again pointing out you can't argue on one hand Sentinels must have no procs and no epics to accurately represent AT performance, and also argue Defenders can be fully procced out and use all the powers they want! For any comparison the scale used has to be the same. High DPS build examples of this, please? Time/ can softcap all 3, but I'm doubtful of 300+ DPS claims from this primary in particular. High DPS builds typically must use Ageless as well, which implies either you consume amplifiers permanently (an option, but one I would argue is *significantly* less representative of AT performance than any shenanigans any Sentinel can get up to), carry a tray of breakfrees (then you get no lucks for extra defense against defense debuffs, no oranges for extra resistance, no rages for extra damage), or enjoy mezzes. The point of Pylon tests isn't "can a Defender survive a Pylon". Pylons are more or less the bottom tier of damage you'll have to survive if you want to take on situations where high DPS is actually useful. All Defenders can take on all +4/x8 factions solo, just like all Sentinels can do the same, the question is how easy it is for each AT, and how does any extra effort required to survive play into the ability to do damage. I have a Poison/Fire (all credit to Frosticus). I love the character. She dishes out fantastic damage competitive with my Sentinels, and improves the offensive output of her teammates significantly. At the same time, she is MUCH harder to play and dies more often as a result. The gap is so wide there is simply no comparison. This ugly debate rears its head every now and then on the Sentinel forum, with people arguing a Blaster softcapped for range defense is all you need. Look, if you want to play in a team all the time and always have someone else take the aggro, that may be true. If you're an elite speedrunner emailing yourself 100 T3 insps before any 20 minutes run, that may also be true. Play a Blaster and be happy for the extra damage. In any other situation, the survivability gap between Sentinels and traditional squishies is massive, and that extra survivability is useful - anytime you don't have to manage staying alive, you can deal more damage.

I don't understand how Overpowering Presence fits into this. I wasn't sure if I was confusing it with the Dominator Fiery Orb, so I went ahead and tried the Superior version. The PPM is pretty bad according to macskull's sheet (2 PPM), which coupled with the +recharge part of the IO, makes chances to proc in even an unenhanced Char pretty low (~26%?). The Energy Font itself does a tiny tick of AoE damage when it appears, then 5 more similar ticks until it dies (provided it's in range of the enemy). Total damage was 60 against a level 51 minion with no resistances. Basically, roughly even with a damage proc in ST but with worse PPM. Of course, it can also do AoE damage if enemies are close and stick together, so perhaps that's your angle. Personally, I'm not concerned about AoE damage. Or more accurately, I need all the ST damage I can get. The white whale here is Frosticus' own Poison/Fire dealing 400+ ST DPS against a Pylon. For a controller to "easily" top that, I'd expect to go at least to 600+ if we tried hard. But to be honest, I'm not sure I will even get to 400 with my own Fire/Poison/Psi (admittedly not Earth, but...).

Using Venomous Gas rewards you with a -25% res debuff that doesn't cost you animation time. *shrug* I don't know, it seems pretty clear cut to me. -res is -res no matter if it's applied to a melee power, ranged attack or PBAoE. The damage increase is the same. The reward is the same. I think sticking to "melee powerset goes best with melee powerset" severely restricts your choices for no reason and even keeps you away from some top performing combos. OK, Controllers can get Hot Feet and Seismic Smash. With these options, can they match the sheer damage i.e. Poison/Fire puts out? That's the question worth asking, in my opinion.

A good half of Sentinel primaries can reach 250+ DPS. Probably more than that. At least 6-7 different players have reported 300+ DPS numbers on their own Sentinels on the forums. Besides, why do we care how many people have high damage Sentinels? Is this a covert way to call people liars? CoH is deterministic, and Sentinels are largely condition agnostic. Performance can be replicated, if there's truly a will to do so. Copypaste the builds, hop on Test, whack on some Pylons. Now: how many Defenders that aren't Storm or Poison will reach 250+ DPS? 300+ DPS? How many of those Defenders won't have /Fire as a secondary? How often can you translate Storm DPS to practical situations? In this very topic, we have people arguing Sentinels suck because they can't hit 16 targets at once. Yet we're also asked to believe at the same time Storm DPS that only applies when Tornado and LS have only a single target to attack is somehow equal to "situation agnostic" Sentinel DPS... Even Poison, lovely as it is, requires significantly more effort than a Sentinel to push out the numbers it can do, due to having to stay in melee with no native defenses and apply debuffs.

I'm in the strange position of disagreeing there is a problem to the extent you suggest, but also liking your solution a lot. I don't bother building for perma dom, but perma dom occurs naturally because recharge requirements are fairly low in this day and age. I suspect people who struggle reaching perma dom levels of recharge tend to overvalue the defense softcap. I certainly don't use mule powers. And I don't even care all that much about perma dom, even if I could run it. I tend to spam my powers, so quite often Domination drops. Big whoop. For about ~30 seconds, my controls aren't potent and I'm vulnerable to mez (provided I don't get protection through amplifiers or teammates anyway). Then we're back at full speed. That said, it'd be great to smooth the curve, and honestly the change should be imperceptible to any permadom who actually plays their characters. If someone complains because they want to keep permadom when they have it on auto while sitting AFK in their base... Meh. The annoyance would be understandable, but at the same time losing some small QoL seems like a small price to pay to make the AT smoother overall.

IMHO Primaries: Fire, Elec, Dark, Rad, Psy are all great choices. The easiest way is to build an attack chain around a fast animating 10s recharge T3 blast. Secondaries: all Sentinel secondaries are viable. If you're willing to use inspirations, resistance secondaries are very nice because it's easy to raise your defense with insps, which makes for strong layered coverage. That's /rad, /elec, /dark, to a lesser extent /invul and /ea. /bio is also a top pick simply because of the sheer damage it can add (and still come with great absorb powers). /sr is also worth mentioning as building for the softcap isn't too hard and Master Brawler makes a great heal replacement, leaving you free range to slot your attacks for maximum damage and proactively carry a full tray of oranges. Epics: /psi is king for adding a procced out Dominate to your attack chain. Mind Probe isn't too shabby either, although it takes a backseat in challenging content as you may be forced out of melee quite often (any build planned around a Mind Probe attack chain should also think of a backup pure ranged attack chain to fall back onto when needed). Other epics may be useful for their immobilizes if you don't feel like jousting, but at the same time you don't want to spend too much time on mez rather than damage; which would likely limit the selection to /elec, for Chain Fences. Any of these primaries, secondaries and epics can be combined together without too much attention to potential synergies. Dark/ can complement /invul nicely by adding a little bit of healing with Life Drain, but to be honest that extra healing can help just about any secondary.

I was being tongue in cheek, but still... "Ranged vs melee" doesn't have to figure in whether you use ranged attacks at range or in melee. Irradiate isn't significantly better than Fireball. IMHO, there's two ways to approach range: 1) "I will use my attacks regardless of my distance to enemies". This turns range into an advantage, because you don't have to chase runners or be hugging whoever you target. 2) "I must stay at a certain distance, to get the most out of the damage tax I pay compared to melee". This turns range into a constraint, where you do your best to avoid melee range. Regardless if you pick 1 or 2, your ranged attacks are going to deal the same damage. So I'd rather go with 1. To look at it another way, it's irrelevant whether Knockout Blow outdamages Cosmic Burst. Melee archetypes don't get Poison.

A ranged attack is just a melee attack that can hit runners in the back from far away.

This works in AE 100% of the time. In other missions it seems touch and go. I never quite understood what triggers this behavior.

Subjectively, I've noticed since the Gauntlet changes a few months ago (same time as Tanker buffs?) my /bio scrappers don't hold aggro as well as they used to. Some enemies run every now and then, despite being in melee. Which is not a bad thing, IMHO. It was always stupid that all it took for every enemy in the game to stick glued to you permanently was a single damage aura with taunt effect. (I say "/bio" scrappers, but it's mostly a result of not playing anything on scrappers BUT /bio these days. Curious to know if /inv, /shield or /rad players have seen the same thing. /wp was always a bit weak, but the point of these Gauntlet changes was supposedly to put them up to par, so it'd be interesting to hear from WP scrappers as well.)

I appreciate your detailed reply. I don't feel a 2x to 3x ratio can be quite accurate, even in these conditions and even considering the superiority of fast snipes vs their Sentinel counterparts. My gut says the ratio is closer to 2x on snipes and 1.5x on most everything else. But look at me now, entering territory of "feel" and "gut". Maybe you're right and I'm not. All in all, I *was* the guy who used the bugged version of Blazing Blast all the way to 50 and beyond before being told (and I had to be told) its damage was equal to Fire Blast... 🙂

The numbers I've posted have been corroborated by several people on the boards. Some have even outdamaged my builds. These numbers can be replicated on the Test server. I have posted video evidence of many of the things I've claimed to do here. You're not giving us much to work with here. "I tried, it doesn't work" is not helpful for a healthy debate. What would help: defined goals, testing methodology, attack chains, builds. I'm not even sure what numbers of mine you're objecting to, although I can assume that would be ST DPS numbers as those tend to come up the most. I'm fairly descriptive about my own setups, and I think if you search my posts with an open mind you will have no trouble replicating my results. CoH is a deterministic game and Sentinels are not a luck-based AT. Still, I take issue with one point in particular in your post: it's not possible for a Blaster to kill in 2-3 hits what a Sentinel does in 5-7, unless you cherrypick some of the highest damaging powers in Blaster secondaries under Aim/BU and compare them to Sentinel T1s/T2s. The damage scale difference simply isn't big enough. My Dark/Invul Sentinel averages 250 DPS with an AG -> AB -> LD -> Dark Blast attack chain. Life Drain, even procced out, is hardly an optimal DPS choice either. There is often a counterpoint along the line off "but you used Hybrid". Which somehow isn't a problem when a Blaster time is posted, but becomes so with a Sentinel. In any case, Hybrid or no Hybrid doesn't change the rough pecking order, because you can't compare "no /psi, no Hybrid" to "Dominate + MB AND Hybrid". Even then, a Fire/ Sentinel post Blazing Blast fix doesn't really need /psi nor active Hybrid to push 250+... especially if /Bio. Beam and Rad Blast are likely up there too. It's undeniable Dominate and Mind Probe are disproportionately good as is. At the same time, I think there's too many hyperbole and not enough data flying around. Edit: reworded (some) abrasive wording

Numbers would have to be high for this not to be a nerf for my Sentinels. Right now you can have both your cake (+dam) and eat it too (-res). -res is good for more than just you, it helps your team and your pets. So you can't just end up at the same point through +dam if you take away -res. Something like the Tanker buffs (higher base damage) makes more sense, although it is still not the same. Some people were disappointed Tankers lost their significant -res debuff. Rightfully so IMHO, and I say that as someone who loves the Tanker buffs, was hardly playing Tankers before and now have two dozens in my roster. Is it fair I get to have fun with Tankers, while some genuine Tanker lovers lost what they liked about their toons? Likewise, you can't rationalise (i.e.) cutting the strength of something in half by changing it from 50% uptime to perma. In practical gameplay, burst damage matters. I don't mind Opportunity being off for the 3-4 seconds I CJ from one spawn to another. I don't care if Opportunity is off while I'm clearing straggler minions/lieutenants who die in one or two hits anyway. I strongly feel any Sentinel buff needs to be an improvement over their current state, and not remove functionality. @Galaxy Brain's suggestion is good. Takes away nothing, makes things easier to use for everyone, doesn't alienate people who currently enjoy their Sentinels and might get other people to enjoy Sentinels. I'd go one step further and let any ST blast activate Opportunity whenever full, *and* switch the reticle to whoever you hit last while Opportunity is active.

Frosticus, THANK YOU for that guide!! I'm done PLing a poison/fire to 50 and have been playing it for the evening, TFs and the like. What an absolute blast. The sheer numbers it pushes out, the force multiplying... But more than that, it's such a dynamic playstyle with so much going on that you have to manage to get the most out of it - and that management process is fun, something that isn't always true for all sets. Having all of this tied to lightning quick animations makes everything incredibly responsive, victories feel earned and mistakes deserved. It's been a long, long time since I've been able to truly enjoy a support AT. And now I might just have my new favorite debuff powerset. A++

All gold suggestions. Tying to the spawn points, I'd really really love the ability to craft arbitrary encounters. Think like the final 7 in the LRSF, the patrons in the STF, even just being able to stick 2 specific AVs together. It would be OK if this came with an XP penalty or even nullification, to avoid reward exploits.

I have very few people on ignore. Perhaps 3 or 4. "Too cool for school" types, who hang out in Ouroboros, have several characters with variations of the same name, treat Help/LFG/General like their private club and are generally obnoxious. I'm not an old man but I'm still way too old for this nonsense.

You STEP AWAY from Combat Jumping, sir!

Might as well have discussions about all servers here, as no other server can't be arsed to use proper forum software. 😛 Reddit and Discord are great in their own ways but not well-suited for long-form discussions and indexing information.

I've found the effect to be a wash in static tests. 3 seconds of doing 0 damage is a lot of time to for a 33% damage buff lasting just a minute. Then you have to deal with the -recovery crash, which can actually hurt if it happens at the lower bound of your Ageless cycle. That said, in practical gameplay Meltdown can be useful whenever you have "free" animation time for whatever reason. Entering an elevator, opening a door... You tap Meltdown before clicking, and it's ready once you come out. Free damage.

All newer zones seem fairly problematic. First Ward is bad, Night Ward is worse, Kallisti tops the charts when it comes to bad performance. My computer handles 3 instances of CoH at 60 FPS on relatively high (custom) graphics just fine, and it's still easy to spot the difference in these zones. Loading times go from the usual 3-4 seconds on SSD to a solid 10+. Forgetting to run /maxinactivefps will sometimes freeze an instance for a few seconds. Beyond performance reasons, I think it would be pretty cool to use the opportunity to highlight the fantastic work base builders are doing.

lol Great guide jampacked with information. Also flabbergasted to see a defender reach those levels of DPS! Might be time for a new reroll...

We're all more or less sensitive to this, but bottomline... A 5% chance to miss means AV only happens at best ~85% of the time (0.95 * 0.95 * 0.95). I say "at best", because in my own experience, some combos were simply lost due to switching targets (as in, the entire mob group is dead and I have to move on to the next one, or maybe the remaining enemies are running away). Combos like Street Justice are much less sensitive to misses because they're order agnostic. But combos like Dual Blades really ought to have a bigger payoff in comparison. This is also why I can't really get into stalkers despite all the positive sentiment these days. The whole high damage attack chain planned around 3 assassin's stacks deal sounds wonderful until you realise most of your powers don't have 100% chance to generate an assassin's stack. In some extreme cases, certain primaries end up with a cumulative chance to generate 3 stacks reliably within 3 attacks below 50%. Of course you can add a 4th or even a 5th attack to significantly increase your chances, but then you also restrain your normal DPA in the process. For me, it makes for a frustrating experience where I never know if my AS is going to hit for normal damage or double damage - or call me a "glass half empty" type, but I tend to think of it as normal damage or half damage. That's before we get into chance for BU and chance for hide procs, both of which are highly luck based because you might get that BU right before you used BU, and you might get hit right after the chance for hide went off thus instantly cancelling your crit. Um. I'm not sure why I'm ranting about stalkers now. Buff DB combos please.

Truth. Fighting Darrin Wade on the moon? No biggie. Playing without Combat Jumping? UUUUUUGH.

Bulk amplifiers for level 50s only. Give me 100 hours of defense amplifier at once, and I'll pay 250M for it and not think too hard about it. Perma mez protection, here I come. Of course, it's not actually perma. There's the trick. Make it long enough we get hooked to it, instead of a sometimes thing. Currently, with "just" 8 hours tops... I tend to *think* about my purchase. I don't want to go AFK in base, or to stand around doing nothing. (Why level 50 only? Amplifier price scale with level. If bulk amplifiers were available at level 1, people would buy 100 hours for 100k inf.)