drbuzzard

Perhaps. All things considered, I think you could get away with quick and dirty on sentinels. Pick a simple new inherent (say crits), adjust the damage scale up a bit, and fix the ATOs. Done, then play with numbers on test until it's not too broken. I don't think anyone expects a full rebalancing of the sets or anything. To be honest, compared to blasters, sentinel primaries are more balanced within the AT, so just a gross upward adjustment is good enough.

Considering how involved the travel pool modifications were, the branch wasn't that low.

Yes, and the stalker ones that refresh build up or put you back into hide to crit again are also excellent.

The scrapper ATOs are basically transformational doing a massive damage increase to the AT. The brute ones are meh.

I have to say, from seeing MoITF results, blasters at the high end really don't have survival issues. Now the ITF isn't the hardest thing in the game by any means, but still there's a lot of debuffing thrown around for IO builds, and they still plow through in quads and solo.

While I fully agree that sentinels have a much easier life leveling up in this game, it begs the question of how much time is spent leveling up vs. playing characters in their mature builds? Personally, I more commonly play characters up to 50 instead of being PLed (though I do that too sometimes as well). The amount of time that amounts too is really quite short (between p2w 2XXP and experienced power). I spend far more time per character chasing down completion of incarnate abilities to an acceptable degree (I try to get most every character to 50+3). Thus in my case at least, the blaster has a lot more value for a lot more time. Now granted one does go back and do WST stuff, and that will cycle your level down, but the IO protections will likely scale down pretty well with you, and if you think you'll miss clarion, pop the 2.5 M influence for a defense amplifier, and you've got enough status protection to get you by. As I said, I've played sentinels on another server who lacked build up and inherents, and were not over the top (even with full scrapper value secondaries which are higher numbers). Add in the extra hindrances that sentinels carry here of lowered range and AOE caps, and I don't really think we're talking about excess. Heck, we could just keep it simple. Give sentinels no inherent which helps damage, and increase the scalar to 1.125 like blasters and scrappers. Though really, I've proffered so many different sentinel solutions at this point, I don't know why I keep bothering. If pool travels powers were more important than a class which most don't seem to finish to 50 much less play there, I don't expect any action soon if ever.

I use web grenade, but don't think I've slotted it for damage. The DoT is too slow on teams, and I play my blasters only on teams. As you say time bomb is too damned slow to be useful (again, especially on teams).

I consider the toe bombing option of tripmines a relatively recent addition, and rarely use it ( I do like ambushes with it). Really the best attack in devices is taser which is damned good DPA and has a 50' range. Unless you are talking the time bomb, but that's crap.

Honestly, even if they come up closer in damage numbers, the lower AOE target numbers give blasters an edge. In my exploration of various other COH servers, I happened upon one (which is no longer running) which had sentinels which had scrapper secondaries (duplicate numbers) and blaster primaries. They just had no inherent. It actually didn't really work badly at all, and was not over the top. Mind you, I like most of the sentinel secondary versions here, but just saying that some more damage wouldn't break everything.

There are a couple ranged only blaster secondaries at that (which are the ones I like).

I tend to prefer defenders over corrupters since I'm of a mind that if I want to play buff/debuff, I want to be the best at it. As for mixing a bow and a rifle, umm... I got nothing. I mean there's no trick rifle, so what can you do?

This question does beg what your circumstances are. Are you new to HC, or are you well endowed in resources? One advantage of a SR/Claws tank is that you can softcap without even using IOs. That's a pretty nice luxury if you're poor. If you're in it for the damage, I'd say scrapper is your best bet. Follow Up is the cornerstone of the set (allowing a substantial permanent damage boost), and leveraging that with the biggest damage scalar available makes the most sense to me. I would generally advocate stalkers over scrappers myself (their controlled crits are devastating, though they usually give up AOE for it), but they have build up instead of follow up, and that really detracts from the set (and they give up some good AOE). With the resources softcapping a SR scrapper is not overly arduous.

Though I feel it necessary to toss out there that if the devs decided that fixing travel pools was more important than sentinels, I wouldn't get my hopes up on it happening any time soon.

That's already part of the IO system. Any particular numerical bonus value from sets can only be done five times.

Given how that soft cap comes about, I'm not really sure it's possible. It's based on the basic chance to hit. I suppose you could cap how much defense a character can add, but then you're crapping all over the buffing people (bubblers in particular).

Sentinels are very fun for the ride to 50, and are still fun to play at 50. They just aren't optimal at 50 compared to blasters. If you aren't one of those who needs to have the best possible option, sentinels are fine. They do need some damage help, and I believe it will happen eventually. For the moment, I just play my sentinels when I feel like it and still have fun. That's why there's different ATs, so you can enjoy the content in different ways.

This is a very impressive effort. Kudos.

I agree with the sentinels are the 'nice and easy' AT. They really make the road to 50 easy if you're actually going to play it instead of stand around and get leveled up by someone. Once you're there, they are better solutions to most challenges as all the tools are now available.

I don't solo blasters all too much. On teams things move fast, so (normal)nukes might be around every other spawn or so. Yes, you drop them when you have them, and if PBAOE, you move in to do it. Then <gasp> you move back out so the critter AOEs don't take you out. Not sure why you're talking about 80' since it's rather hard to maintain that. You stay at a reasonable range so you can get in with the nuke when needed, move back out to avoid damage. Personally I prefer the sets which let me ranged nuke altogether though. In fact I actually like nukes enough that my favorite blaster is archery/dev so I have my nuke on a 17 second timer and I nuke constantly, from range. I have a few blapper builds (at 50, IOed), but don't much care for them. If I want to be in the thick of things I like ATs with actual defenses (like a secondary or primary). But to get back to the claim that the primaries were designed with blapping in mind, one should recall that the nukes initially crashed out your endurance hard. That's hardly a blapping incentive.

Yes, it is clear that you discarded any argument which might have been carefully constructed. PBAOE Nukes are on a long base timer, and even with perma hasten pop around once every 30+ seconds. Now maybe I'm playing wrong (I'm not), but I'm not standing around waiting to pop off my nukes, and to be quite honest they are hardly the focus of the sets. They are best used at optimal times, since the recharge is long and in many cases the DPAS isn't all that hot if you're down to one target (some are standouts, but not most). The rest of the PBAOE nuke primary powers (except rad) are all ranged. Yes, for most secondaries you are expected to blap, but you were making an argument that primaries drive blapping which is specious. How about I quote you and take it apart directly? <quote>Blaster sets are sold as "Ranged" Horsecrap. The entire Archetype was built from the ground up as Blapper and there are some pure ranged sets. Not in secondaries. But Primary you have Electric which is almost all ranged and Ice. I just got tired of the 100x variation on Ice Machine concept. I mean, I love Ice...but running an ice machine is only so entertaining. Also the damage is meh. </quote> 'some pure ranged sets' - about 40% of the primaries only some? The rest of the sets minus one have 1 PBAOE. That looks pretty ranged in focus since it is the, well, primary. Then you go on to complain about ice which is actually excellent damage, and ignore the other 4 pure ranged primaries. Yeah, no point in expecting a carefully constructed argument.

The funny thing about it was that when I first used it, I thought it was actually fast since the animations 'look' fast to me. Then I check the animations times and meh. It's good against things which do unstoppable. Otherwise, meh.

Cold is fairly uncommon, but BP Ravagers can be trouble, and CoT ice demons are bad as well. The fact that ice damage is usually from a 1/2 lethal source is probably the saving grace.

My pedantic nature won't let this stand. Honestly, electric has the best resistance coverage in the game. The only thing you can't cap resistance for with that set pretty easily is toxic, which is pretty uncommon. On a tanker you start with 35% base for lethal, smashing, fire, psionic, and cold. You also have 30% for negative energy, and 82.5% for energy. With slotting it's very easy to get quite high resistances even on just SOs, and with sets, capping all those to 90 is not a challenge. You are left with the toxic hole though, and outside of the tier 9, it's just there. Compare this to dark: lethal, smashing, fire, and cold are all at 30% base. Negative energy is at 40% base and psionic is at 50% base. Energy and toxic are at 20% base. Thus you really have both energy and toxic holes. Radiation: you have lethal, smashing 30%, fire and negative energy 35%, energy 45%, toxic 50%, psionic 15%, and cold at 7.5%. These are strong numbers, but you basically have 2 holes in cold (especially) and psionic. Both dark and radiation armor have holes, and start with lower base resistance numbers for most things. Dark has a rather (IMO) glaring energy hole, and radiation has a cold damage hole (and psionic), both of these energy types are a lot more common than toxic (especially energy). Now this is not to say that electric is superior, as it surely is not. The heal is on way too long a timer, and it is far lower in actual survivability than the other two. Personally I think it could use a reduction in the timer on the heal to at least get it into the ballpark, because right now it is one of the weaker armor sets in actual play .

This is a truly odd paragraph. Electric has just as much ranged as the rest (1 PBAOE). Yes, most of the sets have a PBAOE nuke, but that's really not a defining power which makes them mixed or melee. Yes, you can pull the recharge down pretty low, but you're starting with a fairly high number, and are not cycling the attack in terribly often. But let's look at primaries which are pure range: Archery Assault Rifle Ice Beam Rifle Water Blast Then we have primaries with a single PBAOE Electric Fire Energy Dark Psionic Dual Pistols And then the single primary with more than 1 PBAOE Radiation Now to say that the primaries demand blapping is rather specious. 40% are pure ranged. Most of the rest have a single PBAOE, and in most cases it's the nuke on a long timer. For electric you can skip it since endurance drain is an iffy prospect. Yes, you can argue that radiation blast is a blapper set, but it's hardly the king of the hill, and something you don't see a lot of for fairly good reason. Heck, there's devices which can be played as a purely ranged secondary without missing much of anything. Heck, as I see it only some of the secondaries have good enough attacks to really justify blapping in any case. I play blasters as purely ranged, and I really don't suffer for it. Oh yeah, and calling ice damage meh? Huh, it's the best single target primary, and blizzard is damned good.

When I first started on HC, I followed the policy of waiting till I hit 22 and then slotting up with lvl 25 IOs. They are about the same value as even level SOs (32% for example in damage) and never expire, so will not cost you more in the future. Sticking to lvl 25, 30, 35 IOs will keep costs down, and allow you to save money. Using SOs ends up being a money pit as you have to update them with levels. To make some quick money as you go along, convert merits into enhancement converters and craft any uncommon IO recipes which drop. Then use 2 converters to change them into rares, and keep converting the rares till you hit something valuable (resistance, defense, are tops, some healings are good, some end mod are good).