nihilii

I fail to understand *why* something needs to be done with procs. All it does is provide build options. You are not getting something for free, you sacrifice set bonuses for the sake of damage. If procs get nerfed back to flat rate or whatever, we'll just go back to the old way of building things. There will be less variance. Damage ATs will pull ahead even further. Boooooooooooring. The real problem with PPM is a lack of tutorial/interface explaining the concept to players ingame.

Truthfully, I view it that way too. For me, Sentinels function perfectly as ranged scrappers. For context, I've been playing since I3 and was mostly a scrapper player. I'm not saying this for some misplaced veteran "cred", but on the contrary to give some perspective on where I'm coming from and my potential biases. In the early years scrappers weren't aggromachines leading the team, only invul had an aggro aura. Scrappers were more like the blenders going on their own and doing their own thing, the element of chaos parallel to the more traditional tanker/blaster/defender/controller structure... the guys who could solo. Sentinels embody this mindset to the fullest, with a power order reorg giving them their ST big hitters earlier (generally by level 8 ) and a comprehensive mez protection by level 10 or so. They get near Stalker level defenses, with the advantage of range - and it is a sizeable advantage, as enemies deal roughly twice as much damage in melee as they do at range. In that light I couldn't care less if Sents get 70% of defense values rather than 75%, to me it's like arguing about your electricity bill when your yearly takehome is in the 6 figures. (Going even further, if it justifies boosting other aspects of the AT instead, like damage... all the better. Given how close we can get to the 75% resistance cap and how many ways there are to get defense in this game, I'd be happy to accept a damage buff in exchange for our current lower defense values.) Range is defense, and I don't hoverblast, ever. Getting Combat Jumping enables effortless kiting. It's especially relevant in incarnate content, which is fond of anti-melee mechanics: Apex autohit toxic aura around Pylons, BM's blue patches of Doom, Marauder's Nova Fist, Antimatter's weird bubbles, and so on and so on. But even without dipping in incarnate stuff, I want to repeat for emphasis there is a sizeable damage output difference between melee and range against most mobs. Solo, my Sentinels take on +4/x8 against every faction at competitive speeds. Only my TW characters and my /fire Dominators go faster. I don't know what to say beyond that because this is a scenario where the Sentinel is actually so overwhelmingly superior to me. The ability to nuke a full spawn down to a couple lieuts and bosses every half minute makes for impeccable highend performance. Attacking mostly at range makes the damage instant and reliable. You take that solo performance and bring it to a team and it's fine already in itself. Sentinels can handle alphas and contribute competitively. They can follow the group or go out on their own, need no support but can benefit from it, can stick in the thick of things or protect squishier teammates by targeting their oppressors. Now I've never been the kind of person who believes "Tankers must hold aggro", "Defenders must heal/buff/debuff", and so on. All my characters pursue self-sufficiency in dealing ST damage, AoE damage, having as many useful buffs/debuffs/heals as possible and enough survivability to stand upright on their own. So that may be where my incomprehension of the debate regarding a supposed lack of role for Sentinels stems for. In CoH all you need is to defeat mobs to win, and the corollary to that is that your performance is only limited by how fast you can defeat things while staying alive. So when it comes to design space, I see uniqueness in Sentinels in that they are the most convenient AT to play, to me. There's no special mechanic to take care of if you choose to incorporate the T1 or T2 as part of your attack chain and act as if it didn't exist. There's no pets to manage. More importantly there's very little constraints on your maximum damage output. Most other ATs, even the overpowered ones for that matter, have some constraints on their performance. The vaunted TW/bio scrapper must manage Momentum and fight ground-based enemies (AoD doesn't work in the air). Any melee character in general needs enemies in melee range. Squishies either need to manage their survivability or have someone else manage it for them. Those constraints can range from inconsequential to unplayable, based on situation and playstyle. Nonetheless *I* enjoy having the "braindead" Sentinel AT where performance is as reliable as can be. And I think it's a good thing for the game as a whole that there is such a choice. Hence my preference for straight buffs to numeric values, and my distaste for radical reworks turning Sentinels into yet another micromanaged AT.

The comment wasn't meant to target you or anyone in this thread. Rather, I see hyperbolic statements against Sentinels on the boards as a whole. A few days ago: "Sentinels do less damage than Defenders without damage procs". That is actual hyperbole, because factually impossible given equivalent care put into each build. Most if not all Sentinel primaries can reach 250+ ST DPS once fully built. A Defender without damage procs would struggle to reach 200 DPS. Perhaps Storm could do it, but even that is up in the air. Heck, for that matter I've had trouble reaching 250 DPS on a Defender WITH damage procs. My Time/Sonic built for DPS is under that. And I'm giving Defenders the best case scenario here: ANY Defender vs MOST Sentinels (= picking the weakest). If you compare a FF/Nrj Defender to a Fire/Bio Sentinel, it's not going to look pretty for the Defender in a pure damage comparison. I do have some problems with your own numbers, but not so much I'd call you "hyperbolic" in a passive aggressive way. 😉 You say your procced out Fire/Bio/Psi deals "between 280 and 340 DPS", but I've never managed to go *below* 300 DPS on my own Fire/Bio/Psi, even without Hybrid. When it comes to Tanker builds dealing 300+ DPS, I think you will find those tend to be either Titan Weapons, Bio Armor, or both. In any balance discussion it's critical to recognize both sets are broken=overpowered (on melee ATs). Rationally TW needs a huge nerf, but it would be socially untenable to do so; so we have to be fair and exclude TW from balance comparisons (much like it makes sense for the HC devs to show us stats exclusing Fiery Armor brutes). As for Bio Armor, it's also brokenly good to throw a damage aura AND a -res aura AND a damage boost AND extra toxic damage. Sentinels get a somewhat more rational version thanks to lacking the auras... although it still makes /Fire sad in comparison. This is also what rubs me off when I hear the idea a very select subset of Sentinel builds are viable and that it is what supposedly informs the opinion of people who think Sentinels are fine. I think the literal opposite situation is playing out. People playing TW or Bio Armor or Fire Blast on other ATs (Fire Blast is *also* fairly overpowered on other ATs, getting huge DoTs as free damage, while Sentinel Fire Blast is rebalanced into sanity), and comparing that to Sentinels. The fact is if you compare a Katana/Inv scrapper, a WP/Stone tanker or an Elec/Elec brute to a Dark/Inv Sentinel, a Sonic/Ice Sentinel or an Elec/Rad Sentinel, the Sentinels are going to look pretty great. I don't agree with the perception Fire/Rad is some sort of power build. My Elec/Inv/Psi Sentinel already outdamages my Fire/Rad/Psi Sentinel (even if the difference is slight), and will likely outdamage my Fire/Bio/Psi Sentinel as well once she's T4 and Degenerative Interface is fixed. The perception of Fire Blast supremacy is IMHO a leftover from other ATs where Fire Blast *is* significantly stronger.

I find +absorb ATOs underwhelming, on Tankers and Sentinels (and Defenders I guess? haven't used it enough and not on teams enough to know how well the PBAoE works). For Tankers I'd love to see it replaced with a -20% res proc, high PPM and all. Basically this would be a way to get back Bruising. But perhaps that'd be broken in terms of damage output, on top of the recent buffs. For Sentinels I like @macskull's idea of a damage proc. People are shouting left and right Sentinels don't do enough damage, that's one way to address the concern. 😉

What I wish for: Opportunity rework that mostly respects what currently exists and just makes it better with less friction. Offensive and Defensive Opportunities blended into one, activated by either the T1 or T2. Being able to stack Opportunities between different Sentinels. Letting Sentinels apply Opportunity again if the previous Opportunity target died (I don't care about this one at all personally, but I feel it would really help the perception the inherent is useless on teams) What I hope for: for whatever change happens to not be destructive to the current playstyle of the AT, nor influenced by forum hyperbole. I don't want to play a Dominator or a Brute, I have my Dominators and my Brutes for that. Sentinels have an unique role and a very distinct feel as a ranged attacker with armor, the core of it is convenience with special mechanics you are free to ignore. For that reason, if we posit Sentinels are underpowered, any Opportunity rework ought to be a straight buff with no frills and/or it'd be better to raise the damage and defense scalars of the AT. Weirdly enough I hope we don't get more targets in our AoEs even though I loved the Tanker buffs. I personally struggle to justify playing Blasters over Sentinels, and I want them to keep their niche as ultimate damage dealers.

I think CS is somewhat underrated in a world of Gaussian BU, but KM is definitely one of these primaries where the T9 is optional.

I wanted to reply to this thread but all the good answers were taken. Drat.

My bad, I stand corrected. Used the power 9 months ago and I could swear it did 60 base... ...but then again, I also used Blazing Blast for months while its damage was bugged and never noticed a thing. Mids-implanted memory sounds more likely. Man, that is bad. And here I was planning a build with it.

Psy Shockwave does ~60 base damage, as far as I know. Perhaps you were fighting an enemy with 50% psi resistance, like a robot?

I mean, if you get down to the nitty gritty of what "everyone" "should" have (which probably implies you're talking about full teams/leagues, which is a set of assumptions in itself), then everyone *should* deal at least 200 DPS and more likely anywhere from 300-700 DPS, solo. So when you're looking at a full team which *should* deal 2000+ DPS before any force multiplying is added, then -regen is a pretty paltry debuff to bring. Playing on +4 will only cut that DPS by a third (because everyone is alphashifted) and +4 AVs only have about 35k HP. If you do the math, that's give or take 20 seconds of survival. Maybe one tick of regeneration, if that. Only -res really matters here. Which makes sonic a better support powerset than rad, especially as half of its -res can be anchored on a teammate and has 0 opportunity cost. But OK, in all seriousness. There's a wide range of performance in this game. Picking an arbitrary line based on what you experience and/or feel is the average performance is doomed to be unfruitful... For example, from the March 2020 Statistics thread we can see roughly half of the time played is played below level 50. If you care deeply about game mechanics every endgame TF is soloable, yet we keep seeing people dropping dead in full teams. People are people, with their different levels of interest in the game and even approaches (not everyone is a powergamer), so there's uses for providing survivability.

Hear, hear. Basically my thought after seeing my friend's character. WD -> Scramble -> WD -> Dom -> MP ought to be a competitive attack chain, following the same model of a tier3 blast with Apoc and Glad used as often as possible with the other powers slapped in between. It's great to have the epic compliment the primary so well both thematically and mechanically. Got my baby Psy/Dark (thanks 😉 ) leveling slowly in Praetoria hoping to get there one day. (Shoot... Talking about all of this makes me want to take a look at Ice Blast, which I dismissed so far. BIB -> BFR -> BIB -> Dom -> MP ought to be pretty good. Although it requires more recharge.)

I hear you on that one. Even though I grew to enjoy it personally, there's definitely a design flaw in having some of our best attacks be these specific powers. Not to mention if PPM gets nerfed at some point (which Cap Powerhouse has hinted at), Sentinels will feel the hit more than other ATs. ST epic attacks are weird on any AT. Either they're worst than your primary/secondary options so why bother, or they're better and they overshadow those native options. AoEs have a niche in that it's rare to have a gapless AoE rotation (and/or some sets may lack the specific kind of TAoE/PBAoE/cone/radius you want), but ST attacks are always going to fall in an useless/overpowered binary choice IMHO. Indeed. Zapping - Tesla - Zapping - Lightning Bolt - Charged Bolts is also a good alternative. For my own /psi abuse build, I swap to Zap - Tesla - Zap - Charged Bolts - Ball Lightning while exemplaring. Basically getting as much Zapping with Apoc and Glad procs as possible. Well, I have one ingame friend who shares the opinion... Hehe. Nothing like timing those Opportunities up one after another, coupled with various -res procs. My buddy's current pet project is a Psy/SR, with which he whams AVs for 4 digit damage in our duos. Psychic Blast gets a ranged Total Focus essentially, damn if that's not fun. That is to say, coming back to AoEs... Even on Psychic Blast and its terrible AoEs, you can just skip these, leverage Aim + Psychic Wail, grab Psy Shockwave, and end up with something decent.

On the topic of Elec's ST DPS, I think it might actually be the top Sentinel primary for that purpose. Simply because a procced out /psi epic is such a cornerstone of Sentinel performance. I've had promising results using an attack chain of Zapping Bolt -> Dominate -> Mind Probe -> Zapping Bolt -> Tesla Cage, with Voltaic Sentinel adding its own shots. How promising? Well, at the same level of incarnates and against Rikti Pylons, my Elec/Inv is dealing roughly the same DPS as my Fire/Bio. That's invul "does-nothing-for-your-offense" versus bio "hey-let's-give-you-a-permanent-25%-damage-boost-and-then-let's-throw-more-toxic-damage-on-top". Zapping Bolt is basically Blaze without the DoT, and Tesla Cage is a proper T4 with a slightly long animation balanced by the ability to take all those juicy damage procs from hold sets (of course, the purple one still goes in Dominate). The game changer in this setup is Voltaic Sentinel. Once you use a powexec_location self macro, it's an easy 3s cast for about a dozen charged bolts. Hard to beat that kind of DPA. But, of course, this is also the caveat. While this gives you good DPS in any situation where you're only fighting one tough target, you can't control which enemy VS will attack if you're fighting several enemies. For AoEs, BL -> TB -> BL -> SC does a good job at clearing stuff. Although it's interesting to see plain Fireball -> Inferno -> Fireball from Fire tends to perform better, at least for me. With TB you need to either herd or have a mob placed at the exact center of everything (and click on it fast), while with Inferno you're the center, no aim required.

I've streetsweeped my fire/bio sentinel from 1 to 50. Solo, it works just fine. With all the zones added over the years there's a wide array of choices no matter your level range. Took me ~15 to ~20 hours I think. If that number doesn't speak to you, let's put it another way: it likely would have taken me longer to solo missions from 1 to 50. In the streets you can jump from one mob group to another, never waiting. Instant base teleports and trainers/vendors in base make it a breeze to just keep the action going. My goal was specifically to avoid talking to any contact, but if you're not adverse to that, you can even set yourself to a specific exemplar level through Ouroboros arcs for streetsweeping purposes.

The Degenerative Interface fix seems to have broken it on Rikti Pylons specifically. Behavior before patch: keeping ~4 stacks up on the target for a total of ~-12.5% HP. Behavior now: only one stack can be up, for a total of ~-3.25% HP. On level 54 Rikti bosses, it's still possible to keep 4 stacks up (until they die, anyway). Edit: trying it out on an AV in AE, I'm only able to keep one stack. Might be a pattern of Degen being broken on tough targets? Edit 2: also broken on a GM in AE (1 stack max). Normal mobs in AE work fine (up to 4 stacks).

It sounds a bit hyperbolic to me, but perhaps you're mostly playing leagues or raids. My own experience, on a $800 computer from 2015, is the other way around: I'm most often well above 60 FPS, and dips under that are tied to specific circumstances. But to be fair, I'm not using the preset Ultra settings. Some graphic settings will absolutely murder your framerate for very little visual improvement. Decreasing shader quality alone can double your framerate.

Do you use the alternate animations, with hands? There's a new bug with the cast time for these animations being much longer than it should be. Switch to the default "mouth" animation and you should be good.

To be fair, if you're willing to get Tough, Charged Armor, slot Shield Wall and Reactive Defenses, you've got pretty good resistances to the most common damage types. Heck, even Surge of Power can be useful in a pinch. But there's the issue unique to Dominators... Having SLEET on a high damage AT is such a fantastic proposition, it becomes very very hard to justify passing up Ice Mastery. Which, in turn, locks you into a defense shield rather than a resistance shield. I die a lot on my Doms, but I can only blame my own greed.

The -maxHP of Degenerative Interface doesn't work at all on Beta. I tested Degenerative Core Flawless Interface, Degenerative Total Core Conversion and Degenerative Interface on a level 50 Electric Blast Sentinel. I put Charged Bolts on auto, and aimed at several enemies in the RWZ: Pylons, and ordinary mobs between level 47 and 54. Looking at their HP bar as well as monitoring HP with Power Analyzer, the -maxHP debuff never happened. Just to rule out location, I went to PI and shot a few more mobs, then stepped into the "Defeat Infernal & his guards" mission from Maria Jenkins. The -maxHP debuff never procced there either.

IMHO, Elec Blast endurance drain is fine. It's just not obvious enough for most people to take notice. You don't think of the 4-5 seconds a mob with a zeroed end bar spent looking at you doing nothing with a dumb look on his face. What you recall is the next second he got a tick of end back and attacked you. Endurance drains work like slows, with extra boons. Nothing like sapping War Walkers in Apex/TinM and preventing them from getting that 1300 HP heal off. If you fight harder content, you will get more out of endurance drain too. Simply because harder foes have more powers. The Avatar of Hamidon archvillain in Number Six's arc has so many attacks you will be able to drain his end solo, despite his AV status. I'd hate if sapping went away. It's unique and it works and frankly, it feels awesome to pay attention and watch mobs do *nothing*. I'd rather we see some special GFX effect (like "wheezing") to show an enemy is out of end. I'm willing to bet it'd do wonders to sway the perception end drain does junk.

Does this mean Targeting Drone will no longer give a +DAM buff for one attack every ~10 seconds or so while in combat?

I am still using EC SK CAK SK, Focus Chi replaces the second SK. Using EC -> CAK after BU would mess your attack chain afterwards, I think. You'd have SK, then... wait wait wait. Gaussian BU should last long enough for EC + SK + CAK anyway. With AD I sometimes risk it and sometimes I don't. Hasten I just click the moment it's up. Exact Incarnates are: - Musculature Total Core Revamp - Degenerative Total Core Conversion - Assault Radial Embodiment

I don't see Degen as an issue without pets. It's more likely to me the 1:47 run was lucky. On such short runs and on a powerset so reliant on hits, variance can be meaningful. Yesterday I've had another 2:08 run without activating Hybrid. Then just now, 2 Hybrid active runs ending at 2:28. Incidentally, the second of these Hybrid active runs was about to hit 1:50 until: - I got KBed - missed an Eagle's Claw - Hasten and Hybrid dropped as a result There's a bit of cascading failure that can occur there (or cascading "success" the other way around). You might have noticed with the build copy that endurance is very tight without Conserve Power, but not unbearably so. That's another randomness factor for a Pylon run. If Panacea and the 2 Perf Shifter decide to proc a lot, CP sits unused. That's another second and a half saved. Whether I choose to click Active Defense or not is also another 2 seconds shaved off. But with the risk of getting KBed and losing more. In actual gameplay AD could have to be spammed. Real DPS for this character is much more likely around 380 than 480. 🙂

I used a Power Analyzer on my fire/rad/psi Sentinel to check this just now. Every attack she has is 1.32s or under, so she's likely close to the highest possible number of stacks you can throw on a petless character. Average -maxHP was -3900 (which fits with expected value against 30677 Pylon HP = ~12.5%). There was ONE spike of -4900 for a moment, but it was gone as soon as it happened. Rejoice, for your testing needs shall be met 😉 https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/57-homecoming-beta/

Maybe memory fails me but I could swear I tried to stick the Achilles' Heel proc a few months back in CAK and it didn't work. (And even if there was no such change, it's possible Kaeladin made the same mistake as I did based on Mids, and didn't slot the -res proc.) This alone makes a huge difference in damage. The proc is basically perma on this attack chain. I'm not using AAO fodder for Pylon tests. I believe the math was done on the old forums and conclusively proved Degen is superior. Not by much but still. I use the -75% maxHP no dot Degen, I don't recall the name. I'm from the EU as well (160ms ping on netgraph, used to be 220ms), and in my experience we have to queue attacks well in advance if we want the server to actually register them on time. Perhaps you're already doing this, but just to be sure: while your character is doing Eagle's Claw you should already have pressed Storm Kick, while your character is doing Storm Kick you should already press CAK, and so on. Without doing this, subsecond delays stack fast and wreck DPS.