drbuzzard

I'd like to think I'm a pretty competent tank. I do have a mix of builds with and without taunt, depending on how things fit. Heck, now that you can get assault at 15% boost, it's hard to convince me that tanks should go without it, and that that boost in damage won't help a team more than a mostly redundant ranged taunt. Of course, I've gotten crap from people when I do play a tanker who lacks taunt. Often for reasons which has nothing whatsoever to do with taunt. A bunch of clueless sorts often see it as a litmus test of a good tanker without any idea of how the game mechanics actually work. Tanks have a very hard time losing aggro these days, and taunt is only for pulling things or bailing out a teammate (though a ranged attack will do these just as well, and still do damage). About the only time Taunt is particularly handy is MLTF for getting LR's attention and keeping it at the end.

One nice thing I didn't see mentioned is that tanker SR is very cheap. If you're new to the game and don't have piles of influence sitting around, tanker SR will softcap you just fine on SOs (or common IOs), and you can play a tough enough tanker without spending much at all.

At least you no longer look like Mr. Hanky.

Purple triangles don't work on immobilize from what I understand. I have good success locking down Rommy and the Malta AV in Tin Mage.

I dipped into an immobilize in the fire EPP to keep them locked into place. Yes, that means I give up mind probe, but the running really annoys me.

Even playing at 50, if I'm solo, I'd rather be on one of my sentinels (and I do have a couple of defensively specced out blasters). On teams, my blasters can shine however and do quite a bit more damage. To leverage the sentinel survivability, I tend to go for speed runs and things where you have to operate independently more. My blasters tend to stay near support and tanking more. I like both. The amount of things in this game where it makes noticeable difference such that a team will really care which you brought is pretty limited.

Bah, I played Classic traveler back in the day. You had a good chance of dying during character creation in that game.

Yeah, can't tell someone how to slot things if they have their like, but for those in the peanut gallery, if you actually want to do damage, avoid that slotting like the plague.

I have to expect that this is a known bug by now, but I suppose it should be reported just in case. When you look up damage listing during character creation (or power selection) for some tanker attacks, damage from fiery embrace is calculated in. This doesn't, however, happen in all cases so comparisons across power sets as you decide on a build are drastically distorted. It also doesn't happen to all powers within a given set. For example if we look at Dual Blades, the first three attacks include the fiery embrace damage during the display throwing their damage (and damage per activation which I consider the key stat) way the hell out of whack. as listed during character creation vs. actual Nimble slash 64.34 vs. 44.38 Power Slice 88.86 vs. 61.29 Ablating Strike 101.12 vs. 69.74 That's a pretty drastic distortion. Not looking carefully led me to make a dual blade tanker thinking it had damned good DPAS when it fact it is sub par. I suppose my lesson is to look more carefully at the numbers, but it should be fixed. It's rather inconsistent across power sets. Doing a quick scan of sets I only also see it in energy melee so at least it's not too common.

Maybe have the computer explode in a 10' radius burst of shrapnel?

There is little doubt that I'm weird, but RotP does pretty damned good damage. I slot it for recharge, damage, and knockback to knockdown, and it becomes a pretty nice attack.

I agree. The main thing I like about most T9s is I feel no remorse skipping them. This is, though, poor game design because if a choice is presented, it really shouldn't be automatic (especially a skip).

I generally avoid T9 powers in defensive sets as I'd rather maintain a consistent level of durability without the 'Oh Shit' button. I have barrier for that which costs me neither a power nor slots and doesn't crash. Given IOs, I can usually build in enough durability to satisfy, and I rarely pop barrier for that matter. Oddly enough, the only T9 I take regularly from the defensive sets is Rise of the Phoenix simply because it's a good damage dealer. I don't die all that often, but I like getting in a bit of payback if I actually do. For me to have any interest in the powers at all, they would have to be drastically changed into a non 'Oh Shit' power, but I doubt that's what others would want. I like consistency in performance, and build around that, so any defensive power which has too massive a cool down to be even in the same county as permanent doesn't much interest me. Now, as for crashing T9s, those are just silly. Perhaps they can be dramatic as a desperate struggle against the clock, but when your 'Oh Shit' power actually kills you (unstoppable, power surge), I have to say that's just no good. Oh, then there's granite, which is a great and awful power all on its own. A little while ago I made a stone/WM tanker thinking about giving it a new shot since you can overcome much of the slowness with IOs. Then I played up to the point of rooted and deleted it remembering how much I abhor leveling up stone armor (probably shouldn't have left the 100M influence on it when I deleted it though DOH). Even with granite as the end prize, I didn't want to put up with the suck. Though if the cottage rule means anything, granite kinda needs to stay as is.

It's an aluminum matrix composite. Heat will do a number on it pretty easily I would expect. A laser or a torch would go right through it.

Every power choice is an opportunity cost. These powers are a good example of that. Is there potential use for said powers? Yes. Would you likely be better off with something else which is less situational and will help you more often? Yes. I suppose with multiple builds these powers might be leveraged more since you can make a build specifically for cases where the powers would be of the most use.

The version on sentinels breaks the trend of sentinels generally having an improved version of a defensive set. It's the worst sentinel defensive set in my opinion after playing all of them (to 50). It's a mixed defense/resistance set, which can be nice if they overlap, or have another protection mechanism (like Bio or Willpower), but this one is mostly defense based, but with exceptions for fire and ice (and barely any resistance to fire). It includes a dull pain like heal/HP boost, but on a damned slow timer. The linchpin of the set on other ATs is energy absorption, changed to moisture absorption here, and it's comparatively crappy. To gain the biggest chunk of your defense, you'd have to go into a crowd, pick one, and drain endurance to get your defense up high enough to be credible. While the power says it targets more than one enemy, it only applies the defensive bonus once (unlike the version on other ATs) so you get a whopping boost of under 5% defense when slotted up. I remember when I built a character to try this out, I read the defensive numbers, but held out hope that Frigid Shield might be a nice defensive buffer like the absorb shield on regen for sentinels. Nope- it's pure garbage. It gives you a 30.12 HP shield at level 50. That's less than a love tap from a minion. What's the point? People say Icy Bastion is good stuff, but I generally skip tier 9s and try to maintain a consistent level of defensive performance on my sentinels. Perhaps Icy Bastion is enough to make the set tolerable, but it doesn't work for me, and the rest of the set is mostly either under powered or simply a hot mess (ok, cold mess). Every other sentinel set I have played allowed me to make a good durable build without considering the tier 9 power.

I suppose that could be it, but it fails to do it to the original target, so it should not count towards the damage number, but it is included. I guess as a positive it does mean both the T1 and T2 both spread disintegrate (I was a bit fuzzy on that). This means the T2 is the better of the two since it at least gets a damage bonus when disintegrate is up.

As I mentioned in the first post, the T1 and T2 for Beam Rifle are wrong because they include energy DoT which doesn't actually happen. I tested this quite a few times on alts to make sure. You can probably get away with just including the base number listed (below) and leave out the DoT. I know the number up top on the creation display is completely wrong.

Well you might want to steal my beam rifle numbers for damage since the character creation values are dead wrong.

OK, put a bit of time into making up a spreadsheet on sentinel offense. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ys_WYSHarVfYLmvtiSnPkac8u0Eds9lbjTYqhy8LOG0/edit?usp=sharing It includes only the single target attacks as that's generally the core of making up a high DPS chain (a couple of high DPAS AOEs are included since they are high enough to be noted, but one should understand the proc numbers are off for them). Arcanatime is included in the DPAS (damage per activation second)results. I also included the ability to figure out proc rates (another note, proc rates are capped at 90% or .9, so rates above that are meaningless, however will give a guide as to what powers can be recharge enhanced). Beam rifle is out of alphabetical order because the numbers available at character creation are way off because they claim an energy DoT for the T1 and T2, but neither one actually does that (I made a report in the bug forum). I measured the numbers myself on rikti pylons adjusted for their resistance and sentinel debuff. I'm not one that provides builds to people as many others do. I prefer people to understand the powers and make their own builds given their own preferences. I don't much use character designer since I prefer to get a feel for the set as I go along and build at that point. This is not to criticize those who do otherwise. This is to explain why I bothered with all this (which took a little while). This should provide people with a fairly comprehensive guide to compare the primaries for single target ability. So go forth and build, the numbers are already crunched. One final note, DPAS is the key number in any comparison of powers (by this I mean actual powers, not proc builds). People should never be fixated on the damage done by a power without considering how fast it animates.

Yeah, the fact that it requires redraw on the attacks, and melee all has defenses, so the PPP doesn't grant any means it has little appeal.

Ok, the first two attacks in sentinel beam rifle say that they do energy damage over time. From in game information: Single shot 6 ticks of 10.63 over 5.5 second Charged Shot 6 ticks of 5.28 energy damage over 5.5 seconds. Neither of these actually happen either with disintegrate up or not. Charged shot has a value for bonus damage when disintegrate up, and that does work. Because these values are incorporated into the damage numbers shown for the sets, it make the damage appear to be much higher than it actually is. Now I of course don't know if the DoT component is supposed to happen or not. If it is, Beam Rifle is getting massively shortchanged in damage. If it is not, please remove it so people don't get pulling into using a set which displays very false numbers.

Way I see it, it depends on what AT you're talking about. The advantages of Mace mastery for blasters is pretty large. I don't see it as huge for other ATs (just my opinion though of course).

The only place I used the Black Scorpion set is on my blasters to get some softcap going for energy damage. I use other pools pretty much everywhere else. For tankers I usually do either the EEP which gives a place for endurance, or Mu mastery. Brutes, I do the energy mastery one, which also helps endurance, or Mu mastery. Scrappers have mostly been body mastery. Sentinels either the Psi pool or the fire one (EPP). Defenders- sometimes fire, sometimes psi. Controller- psi Stalkers- soul mastery While you do see a heck of a lot of the Mace Mastery, it's for reasons already made clear. Defense is easy to work with in an IO world.

Somehow people have expanded the definition of 'things come to you' rather expansively. The portal farms (Rikti and Behemoth) were both eliminated fairly quickly when found. Heck, all the 'sorta, kinda, AFKish' farms people bring up were eliminated with game changes. Do you object to those changes? Though nevermind, I can't even imagine why I'd bother to argue with people who defend AFK farming. Why don't you all just campaign to allow bots?