nihilii

I rather like Rad as well. It has a proper T3 in Cosmic Burst and a T4 through the snipe changes in Proton Stream. Animations are a little lengthy, which makes Rad essentially a "Fire Blast minus" - before procs. But there are so many good procs for Rad. Perhaps the DoT nature of several powers, coupled with lengthy animations, add to the feel Rad is low damage.

I'd argue Sentinels get an excellent port of Elec Blast, especially during leveling: - Zapping Bolt replaces the snipe and gives you a "Blaze" level tier 3, thanks to its lightning quick animation at 1.188s - Tesla Cage becomes a defacto T4 while keeping its hold properties. The animation is a little lengthy for an endgame build, but fills up your attack chain more than anything during leveling - The ticks of Ball Lightning + Short Circuit have been sped up on Homecoming. The two powers make an excellent aim-free AoE combo - Thunderous Blast gets the standard Sentinel 90s recharge even though on other ATs it's the slowest recharging nuke. TB keeps its tremendous end drain and -recovery, so you will sap a group dry which significantly lowers their attack rate by the time you're done executing Thunderous Blast - Ball Lightning - Short Circuit - Ball Lightning (but a better question can be: will anything even be left standing save for a couple bosses) Elec's biggest issue, for me, is... Wait, I get *this* many cool powers? There's no real clunkers, even Voltaic Sentinel is useful if you break down the DPE and DPA it deals over time (although having to recast it every minute is such a major PITA, the power really ought to be perma or at least a longer duration pet with a similarly longer recharge).

Claws Scrappers are pretty great. Alternatively, Claws Tankers aren't too shabby either. The recent Tanker buff benefits them in several ways: - Tankers, like Brutes, have different numbers for Claws. Slower recharge, higher damage. This is good, because you're animation-locked more than anything - higher base damage coupled with Follow Up +damage - Spin has a radius of 12 feet rather than 8 feet (or >200% the surface area) and hits up to 16 targets rather than 10 To illustrate these points: Spin on a level 50 tanker does 99.85 damage unenhanced. Spin on a level 50 scrapper does 98.85 damage unenhanced (before crits). The scrapper will still pull ahead in damage, mind you, thanks to the scrapper procs and crits. But if you want comfort, as well as easy farming ability? The tanker is up there, with wider radius, higher survivability and built-in aggro control without restricting yourself to /bio.

You guys work so fast we don't even have the time to exploit fun bugs (100% KD procs). Seriously though, great job!! 😄

Bio/Claws Tanker, running FU -> Slash -> Focus -> Strike Offensive Adaptation Musc T2, Degen T3, Assault T3 (hybrid active) Heca proc + damage proc in FU Apoc proc + damage proc in Focus Achilles' Heel + damage proc in Slash 3:34 = 307 DPS The new guy shreds +3/x8 riktis with such effortless grace, I had to throw him at a pylon even though he's not quite ready for prime time. No level shift, no ++ IOs leaving a ~20s Hasten gap, some missing sets in other powers, mild endurance issues... Come to think of it, with double stacked Follow Up, Offensive Adaptation, Leadership Assault and Hybrid Assault I *could* go Cardiac instead of Musculature (a secondary goal was to avoid the usual Ageless build in favor of Barrier). Hmm. Man, the tanker buff is nuts. At least paired with already-nuts Bio Armor.

^ Important point the discussion about Confront being useless is missing, IMHO. Confront is an all-in-one solution for Lord Recluse in the STF (you hovertank him at max range). In a more general sense, coupled with flying or immobilizes it can allow you to tank stuff your mitigation shouldn't allow you to tank. It's extremely situational because progression has gotten so fast we live in the end game, and the game has other options to tackle the same problems, options that are good enough in most cases. But there's uses for the power. I'd put it in the exact same spot as Placate. Placate can help you during leveling. At max level it can be a specific pick if you want to solo 2+ AVs at once, letting you focus on your target and tell the others to take a hike. It's fairly useful for soloing the Tin Mage TF for example, as Goliaths aggro on you the moment you step in the city area (and resume aggroing even if you die/zone out). Objectively the powers could be made better and more useful in a variety of cases, no question about it. Outright replacing them (and removing their current utility) would be a shame.

IIRC, the optimal attack chain is Follow Through - Rend Armor - Crushing Blow - Follow Through - Arc of Destruction - Crushing Blow. When Momentum isn't active, either RA or AoD becomes the Momentum-generating power, skipping one CB. With that in mind, it might be good to slot FT with 5 Heca (all but dam/rech, if build allows) + the Critical Strikes proc. For AoD, the Arma set is worth it as the proc adds a non-negligible amount of damage (5 pieces, and complete it with the Fury proc as you did). I wouldn't bother 3-slotting defense powers with LotGs. Stick a defense and a defense/end, ++ your IOs and you get ~90% of the effect for 2/3 of the slots. Gives you a few extra slots to play with. Splitting Superior Scrapper Strikes in 2 (3 + 3) can let you grab 10% S/L defense easily. This can be useful to /bio builds which tend to have decent F/C/E/N with S/L lagging behind. I'd give Ablative Carapace some +heal love, it's an excellent absorb and regeneration power. Recharge hardly needs enhancing with Hasten and your set bonuses (although if you end up putting 2+ slots in Ablative, you'll want to start with Heal and Heal/Rech for obvious reasons). Unless you have specific survivability goals, avoid Agility alpha. +recharge alphas hurt your proc rate. I'd go Musculature to boost your tremendous damage even further. Shield Wall and Reactive Defenses are IMHO staple IOs every build should include. You get at the very least +8% res to all with both these IOs combined. Really helpful in offsetting Offensive Adaptation. (I also consider Kismet +tohit a must have as well, but YMMV on that one.)

A scrapper, a kinetic defender and a helpless mob enter a bar. The resulting crit damage took so look to compute, it caused the 7-year delay we refer to as "CoH shutdown".

My fire/rad sentinel roughly hits ~300 DPS without melee and close to ~400 DPS with melee (hybrid on in both cases). But! I also had a go at a fire/atomic/pyre blaster on Justin that could sometimes do 500+ DPS on a pure ranged attack chain (with hybrid active): It feels like blasters have solid options for high ranged DPS. Using fast snipes and proccing a hold from the secondary. Then there's fun options like Electrified Net Arrow which becomes a decent attack thanks to procs and makes ranged DPS even more efficient in "real world" situations, keeping an AV immobilized for example. Although pushing ranged DPS really high on a blaster can require severe survivability tradeoffs. Fine for those of us willing to use insps and/or amplifiers, but not as plug-and-play as your average pylon build otherwise.

Illy is a troll in the oldschool sense of the term. A few months back he made a topic where he complained there was no difficulty, then he dodged every legitimate suggestion and kept bickering with less relevant posts.

Hear, hear. Let Opportunity activate from any attack and/or combine Offensive and Defensive and/or let the reticle move from target to target during Opportunity's duration. It'd fix any performance issue with Sentinels that isn't powerset specific. IMHO

My main clocked in around 670 hours the other day. I tell myself most of it has to be AFK.

Thirding Claws. Spin is fantastic to start with. With a 12 feet radius rather than 8', a 16 target cap rather than 10, and increased Tanker damage, Claws Tankers will be AoE blenders. Not having to use the T1 for Bruising is also a relief for Claws.

Sentinels are well balanced for low levels. I think DP/Nin should do just fine. /nin is stellar on common enhancements, at level 20 you get full defense coverage, a click to refill end and a click to refill health.

You don't get the temp power for running the arc again through Ouro. I tried. You cannot pick the other temp power, either. I seem to recall it as 2.81% (I rounded it up to 3% in my head, when I was adjusting my build thanks to it). Are you looking in the Combat Attributes, or by rightclicking through the power? A rightclick gives incorrect values sometimes but Combat Attributes should always give the right %.

I believe the HP cap is ~3600ish (?). Pick your poison between inv and stone to get there (basically, you want Dull Pain/Earth Embrace, accolades, then get to the cap through HP set bonuses).

Getting Hibernate and Icy Bastion on the same character... what a cool idea. Tempted to steal this 😄

Rumors of /elec sucking are greatly exaggerated. Well, after level 40+ anyway. This is the era of fast snipes, crashless nukes, procs, and Short Circuit got a DoT speed buff in Homecoming too. So: - Short Circuit + Ball Lightning take care of your AoE needs - Thunderous Blast adds some burst AoE every now and then (and if you want end drain, does it provide!) - Zapp gives you extra ST punch (and you don't need that much extra, because you've got Tornado and Lightning Storm providing for you) - optionally, a damage procced out Tesla Cage could round up your mid-level ST damage, if you feel the need for it. You could also grab Dominate at level 35

For some quick and dirty numbers, my sentinel hopped in Atlas Park right now to get amplifiers. Ablative Carapace in Offensive Adaptation at lvl 50 with 88% heal enhancement and 1900hp: +1072 Absorbpbp Same setup, with survival amplifiers (+15% base hp, bringing us to 2081hp): +1174 Absorpbpb

Sorry, I'm being confusing - I meant Absorb% increases with your current max HP. (Probably a bug, because it makes no sense and isn't explained anywhere.) I'm not sure how much it changes, nor how it relates to heal enhancements, as I've never bothered to test it nor seen it mentioned on the boards. All I can say is I've noticed the difference when my max HP increased; through accolades or amplifiers, for example. Re: tank max HP, they got a buff at some point to distinguish them from brutes. It was raised to 3600ish or so.

Hear, hear. I kinda feel like there's some nostalgia for the good old days at play. It was fun to feel buffs/debuffs really helping, yes. At the same time, it led to LRSF/STF runs stacking corruptors/defenders/controllers as the automatic "I Win" answer to anything. There wasn't much endgame content to tackle either. And you had no carrot to keep you running on the treadmill. Your build was pretty much done with HOs, and you'd reroll just to have something new to play/do. The only thing that's missing from the game is IMHO a more comprehensive reward system. AE seemed like a strong attempt in the right direction, with player-built missions you could have theoretically infinite content. Trying to build rigid rules for rewards doesn't work so well because players will find ways to exploit things, but a self-balancing system tied to datamining completion times could have worked, perhaps (not unlike what they've done with merit rewards).

Absorb is capped to the base max HP for your class. So on your tank, you can have up to ~3600 hp and stack 1874 absorb on top of that. Tangentially, Absorb% increases with your current HP. As in, the more HP you have, the more Absorb you get from any of your Absorb powers.

It's so easy to earn influence as a level 50 I have no concern whatsoever people paying to be powerleveled might be in trouble later. There's no gatekeeping to learning anything in this game; nor does the leveling process act as a particularly good guide, for that matter. Only time teaches you how to play. Someone who played 50 hours starting at level 50 is likely as competent as someone who played 50 hours, period. They might even be *more* competent in the specific range of level 50, because the new player going through the leveling process might not know as much about level 50 play yet (if they even reached it).

I'm with Troo. Let's take the old ET animation for a spin on Test. No other change needed just yet. I bet everyone will end up loving it, and that it won't be overpowered.

It's absolutely insane how gamechanging the defense amplifier can be, for squishie ATs. I'd rather use it than Clarion in most cases. For starters it lets you stack another Destiny option, either Barrier/Rebirth for impressive survivability or Ageless to push out maximum damage. And then, it's available as soon as level 1 and doesn't force you into a long cast every 2 minutes. Mag4 protection carries you through so much. I guess because we start at Mag2, which adds up to 6, which means 3 similar mez effects are required to overcome that. Right? It can be heavy on your finances at level 50, but as price scales with level there's no reason not to snatch 8 hours of all 3 amplifiers on a new alt. Carries you through the early game, if nothing else.