drbuzzard

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?

I can see the arguments in favor of defense (Bill is correct certainly about not getting debuffed if it doesn't hit you), but many things just basically seem to ignore defense altogether if you pick the wrong enemies. Final Rommy in an ITF has a nasty auto-hit attack. Ruularu will lay the smackdown on any defense based character turning your defense into wet paper mache. Any baddies with rad defense debuffs don't have to hit, and will make your life really bad (Crey, BP). Resistance, OTOH, is pretty much just what it is. It inherently resists its own debuff (without any additional help- and a lot of defense sets have minimal DDR). Also it's a rarer thing, IMO, to see resistance debuffs, especially big enough ones stacking up to melt you. Personally I prefer my resistance based tanks. (I have both flavors, well most flavors really). I prefer to take my beating in a slow and controlled fashion rather than the BIG WINNER LOTTO bursts of pain you find in defense builds. Call it a matter of taste more than necessarily a performance thing.

I suppose that's one way of looking at it. I'm a bit more concerned with final outcome. Of course a good bit of those numbers I get are from adding toughness and weave plus a bunch of set bonuses.

Either you didn't herd those maps, or your memory is faulty. It wasn't that simple. I did herd those maps. I did the dumpster dive. You had to aggro all the groups, keep up line of sight with the regularly to keep them aggroed, and path through all the groups. It was nothing like 'enter map, put burn on auto' and rewards are served up on a silver platter. There's no question farming has always been around. We see the aftermath of it in the timed portal missions which have those timers because of efforts by the devs to kill the most popular farming maps. However, before AE, you couldn't just tune enemies to make the map come to you. It is a completely different ballgame. One thing I see all the time and find to be utterly farcical is the comment 'don't criticize how other people want to play' and this is used to defense AFK farming. OK, I want to play with the auto boosting commands from the test server. Or I want the aggro cap at 200 for my play style. If you think any play style whatsoever is bad for the health of the game, then you have no leg to stand on defending AFK farming.

Umm, no. Farming certainly existed from the start, but you actually had to move around and do something. Nowadays there are AE maps where you get on the map, put burn on auto, and come back in X amount of time when the map has kindly cleared itself by wandering into you. This is basically the same as the free stuff commands on the test server but requiring a bit more setup.

Odd, my bio armor tanker has capped l/s resistance and softcapped e,ne,f,c as well. Not really sure what's limited.

When you're on a server where AFK farming is possible, it's hard to throw stones about 'game breaking stuff'. There certainly was and is broken stuff on other servers, but that's usually due to broken code and other messy stuff.

If one is capable of ignoring the animation (or at least not caring about it like I do), Taser is a great attack now. Range is a bit short at 20', but when it does 100 damage base in 1 second of animation, that's damned good. I quite happily put it into my attack chains on my multiple /dev blasters. Personally I have trouble finding any other blaster secondary I want to play other than dev, but I also don't much care for blapping.

Neat trick since EM isn't available to scrappers.

I've mentioned this before, but what War Mace really needs is a rolling pin.

One thing should be noted which makes AR look even worse. They lowered the animation time of rain of arrows to 2 seconds a while back.

Defiance in its current state is one of the best inherents out there and does not at all need to be changed. Blasters already do very high damage, they sure as hell don't need criticals added in. I say this as someone who actually does play blasters.

Sentinel opportunity mechanic needs some work. It's hard to understand, makes you take both T1 and T2 to fully utilize it, and is fairly weak. A good case could be made for scrapping it altogether for an alternative. This has been discussed plenty in the sentinel forum. Soldiers of Arachnos have a pretty weak inherent. The AT is pretty solid, and plays well, but the inherent is not terribly noticeable. I suppose it is useful, but it's very background.

I guess I like never having to worry about endurance, which means other than on a sentinel, I have not bothered with invulnerability since creating characters on homecoming. I do have some shield defense builds, but I'm willing to do that for the damage boost. Yes, I know there's plenty of ways to get around this (P2W and destiny), but I get irritated on the ride to 50 and I generally don't PL.

I find I can get 35% l/s resistance without too much trying. You could get to 50% if you really wanted to, but I don't put in the effort since I'd rather have more recharge usually. Though without any defense debuff resistance (which a resistance set won't have a lick of), that bit of defense will crumble under pressure very fast. I suppose some of the reason I favor defense sets on my stalkers is having started on stalkers back before they were buffed up to their current state when attacking from hide without ATO procs meant you had to hope to not get hit and the AS from hide was your bread and butter. I generally assume nerf regen just goes without saying.

I'm a bigger fan of defensive stalker secondaries myself. Resistance capping at 75% doesn't really cut it IMO. I'm actually a pretty big fan of ice melee on a stalker. Freezing touch is just a great power, and frozen aura is quite an excellent AOE. The main issue is the primary is a bit shot on attacks. Frozen fists is utter crap, so you take the rest just to move along your crit charging. You have to fill up a decent chain using PPPs (dark was my choice). Frost isn't actually bad either, with a decent arc and solid damage.

Hmm, interesting question. I'd probably say WP is more durable since it has a stronger base to stack other defenses on top of than regen. You can softcap f,c,ne, e, with some work and get to l/s 75% resistece as well. Regen doesn't have a lot of defenses to build on (a fairly low resistance to all). However the absorb shield in regen is great really. It's good enough to let you ignore a few minions without even thinking about it. Nice thing about regen is it is fairly damage type agnostic, and it has a strong feel like old school regen without being as powerful as old school regen (which we do have to admit was pretty damned broken).

Not a bad set by any means. A bit short on DDR, but positional defense so fairly easy to softcap, and throws in healing and endurance tools, so that's nice. Funny how the original place for it (stalkers) is the worst version. Have a sentinel and scrapper at 50 that use the set, and it works pretty well. I'm still not a big fan of click status protection, but some people like it, so it's just a YMMV thing there.

My fire/fire/fire lives well enough and I didn't make any attempt at defense. I play it in hover most of the time, and managed to cap lethal/smashing resistance to 75% and pushed everything else reasonably hard (50+ for energy/neg energy). If you stay out of melee and give your layered heals time to do the work, you usually remain standing. It's certainly not the most durable sentinel set, but played right you can survive. Of course I also have Rise of the Phoenix slotted for damage and recharge for when it doesn't work out. I guess my first suggestion would be that burn is a trap. If you think you can tough it out in melee, you're wrong. For use of the */*/fire pool, swoop into melee, hit, and get clear again. Same for the nuke. Now maybe it's possible to build in enough defense to be sorta tough, but with no defense debuff resistance, it will be an egg shell and thus prone to cascade failure. Play to the strengths of the set which are resistance (and it's some work to get them up since the numbers start pretty low), and healing. Cauterizing blaze is capable of saving your butt fairly well if given even a bit of time. So stay mobile and allow your healing to work. I think you need to accept you are no ranged tank, particularly in this case.

Nope. Sentinels have a .95 damage scalar, both flavors of SoA have a 1.0 https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Damage#Damage_Scale