drbuzzard

On a positive note the amount of things which manage to actually be tough in this game is vanishingly small, so sentinels should feel secure enough. I do enjoy the +4 MoITF time challenge we run on Excelsior, and right now the reining champs are blasters (they just narrowly beat the def/corr team I had previously set the record with). The organizer keeps bugging me to get a sentinel team together, but when the blasters are able to survive and set a fast time, there's simply no way for sentinels to beat that. If survival is our edge, and the blasters can survive it, we sure as hell can't out damage them.

But what? I mean, sure, we could pick one of the two choices already in use by DPS classes, but that really is about it, and it won't be novel at all. I'll see if we do see it going towards a crit solution, I'd like it to be more like the 'I have a choice' stalker type. Perhaps something which has a power/bar like domination that once activated grants a pretty damned high crit rate (like 25%+, not a piddling 10%) for all attacks for a period of time. Of course this again would be the feast or famine we are supposed to have now (which we only kind of do). Really I'd rather have something which builds up and is consistent. Personally I'm simply not the biggest fan of crits since the randomness means I'm as likely to crit a lieutenant as boss (using scrappers as an example). Yes, I understand that each crit roll will hopefully be independent (unless they have a streakbreaker active), but it will realistically only pop so often.

Defenders barely needed? You can steamroll this game easiest with a pure defender team. Also resistance debuff isn't really about reducing an amount of resistance, it effectively acts as a damage boost. If I do 30% resistance debuff to a target, I do 30% more damage. While that may seem obvious, the fact that every resistance power in the game inherently resists resistance debuff by exactly as much as the value of the power means it really does just act as a damage boost. However it is an independent damage boost from damage enhancement. What it does mean, though, is you never hit a 0% resistance, you just keep boosting damage (I believe there is a cap, but I don't recall what it is 400% maybe). But what other options are really on the table? Let's look at DPS classes: Blasters, brutes- enhance damage Scrappers, stalkers - have crits (some argue corrupters are a DPS class, though I would not as their scalar is so low, but they crit also) Right now sentinels do a combination of enhancement and resistance debuff, which is at least something different even if implemented a bit poorly and in an underpowered fashion. Most options seem to be handing crits to sentinels to replace the current flawed system. That would be fairly brutal for all the proc builds as resistance debuff at least helps them, crits won't very much.

I haven't seen anyone really come up with a particularly new suggestion for sentinels but then game mechanics rather limit the amount of 'new' options really so this isn't a criticism. I've suggested stacking up resistance before, but I think CP doesn't like that notion. It allows too much team stacking I suspect. It's how we always did superteams back in the day (stacked buff/debuff classes). So that basically leaves us with two ways of boosting damage on the table (OK, I guess just a straight up boost of the scalar is an option, but I doubt they'd want to boost it up enough to make it feel like a DPS class). That can be something which simply enhances damage (like defiance or fury) or you can do crits (scrappers, stalkers, corrupters). Personally, I'm not a particular fan of fully random crits (like scrappers), but rather like controlled ones (stalkers). Of course while I do appreciate the analysis by CP, it doesn't include the ATOs, and those are truly make it or break it items on any scrapper build. The difference in performance between a scrapper with or without them is night and day. The sentinel ATOs are fully meh by comparison. A trivial amount of absorption or a boost to get the lackluster inherent working. I understand that things aren't balanced around ATOs (or IOs) in theory. Right now competitive sentinel builds are fully dependent on procs. Without them sentinel damage is fully lackluster. Hence it's hard to consider anything without IOs and ATOs. Also one should note that the analysis is at even level. However the way the powers interact makes for greater penalty against higher level targets. Let me demonstrate: He talks about stacked enhancement and resistance debuff. So at best you have 20% damage boost from offensive opportunity, 30% resistance debuff (from the target). So in practice, we'll assume 100% damage enhancement. If we take a power of 100 damage (before scalar) we get .95*2.2*1.3*100= 271 (- with no opportunity we have .95 *2.0*1.05 *100=199) Then we look at scrappers (I'm assuming bosses or Lts since nobody will be wasting opportunity on minions) to compare. 1.125*2*1.1*100 = 248 . As the uptime is around 50% we get 235 for sentinel damage. Averaging the feast and the famine makes it look pretty sparse. However it is at least ballpark. However let's look at fighting +2s. The purple patch means both damage done and the debuffs are both scaled down to 80%. So let's see what we get: Scrappers are nice and simple since the patch only applies once straight up to damage: 248*.8= 198 However the sentinel is a bit more complicated since the damage and the debuff are both affected so the level effect is squared. So it ends up being (.95*2.2*.8)*(1.3*.8) which gets us 173. So now, against mere +2s, feast becomes famine. (and of course this is worse against higher levels). If we throw in scrapper ATOs it really goes to hell. 1.125*2*1.16*100= 261 (208 vs +2s) Even if sets were equivalent scrappers are clearly ahead, and honestly against hard targets, which are worth a lot more, they are well ahead. Honestly, the way the purple patch works, I think CP's concern about resistance debuff is probably overdone as it suffers a square effect purple patch. Honestly I think a strong case could be made for the resistance debuff stacking mechanic on all attacks just as something different for a DPS class, which also helps teams.

Maybe I'm a bit odd, but I find double rage stacking and the associated double crashes too annoying to put up with, so I just make sure I single stack it. YMMV of course. When I saw the power field medic existed, I somehow assumed medicine pool might now be worth a damn. Nope. Field medic is pretty much worthless (it doesn't work at all on aid self).

I have a shield/dark melee tanker with perma soul drain. The damage is pretty crazy and I don't get a rage crash.

You are correct.

The absorption shield is actually quite a bit of regen, and honestly it's an elegant solution to make the set work more like the old pre-nerf regen than any other version of regen in the game. It just has a cap on it because the amount of absorption is limited. This was (IMO) a brilliant way to give back regen the old feel of shrugging off a certain amount of abuse, without it being so over the top as toggle instant heal used to be. It's well known that a saturated WP brute or tank are what demonstrates real regeneration as opposed to the sets of that name. Sentinels come the closest of all the sets. Regeneration for the melee bros is all about click heals, and the very temporary boost of instant heal.

The tanker will be easier to solo (IMO) if that factors into it.

Either you didn't take instant regeneration, the absorption toggle, or you are not paying attention to it. On my elec/regen I have 475 points of absorb which replenishes very quickly. I don't know the exact rate though. Even combat log doesn't tell me anything, but it's quick enough that (with my ~56% l/s resistance) four knives of artemis minions beating on me at even level couldn't get past it and do any actual health damage.

Yeah, I pick whichever attack is better. If the numbers justify it (good DPAS), I take both. I never take them because I want both versions of opportunity.

It's a lot easier to boost defenses than damage. You can leverage procs, but really that is about it. Though procs really are rather broken. I have both elec/claws and elec/fire tanks, but didn't want to make a mirror. Both do a good bit less damage than the brute in question. They also have better psi and neg energy resistance (capped, and 80ish then tanker proc). I admit I use the tanks for DA content instead of the brute because there's so many flavors of damage in there (certainly a lot of negative energy). If I could be sure of getting Tsoo missions every time, I'd use the brute always. He does kill faster.

I find that tashibishi does a pretty good job of keeping things out of your face. Mind you the rest of that epic set I consider to be crap, but the caltrops are quite nice.

I remember before I tried ice, I had been thinking that perhaps frigid shield's absorption shield might make the set reasonable, the way the absorption shield in regen does it. Heck, regen on sentinels is excellent because of how that toggle absorption shield works. However the amount of absorption in the ice power is less than a single hit from a minion, so it is utterly worthless. I ended up respeccing out of the power.

The thing is, you're using one of the outlier cases which is what gets you so close. If the comparison were, say, war mace, I'm reasonably sure it can demonstrated that the difference is more in line with the durability gap. After the tanker boost, I still see plenty more brutes out there and I'm pretty certain the player statistics data will bear that out. Heck, you're really picking on two anomalies here in your comparison. First is the damage distortion of follow up, and then there's the incarnate softcap. You might ask why I consider that a distortion- but compare it to resistance sets. A brute and tanker both share a 90 resistance cap, and it is fairly attainable for many damage types depending on the armor set (I have a rad/elec brute who caps lethal, smashing, fire, cold, energy at 90% with decent values for psionic and negative energy- leaving only the toxic hole). This 90% resistance doesn't care if the game content is incarnate or non-incarnate. I don't think you are being disingenuous or anything, you're using the characters you have and like. It happens to be that your characters are sort of edge cases.

I suppose I could mention it again- this demonstration is picking a comparison which does not favor the brute here. Given that we're doing ratios, using procs and a set (claws) which gives a permanent damage boost which favors the tanker and that is clear if you just look at the numbers. It's not enough to close the gap, but it has to narrow it. I'll do some lazy numbers again (same, I'm still lazy) . tanker at +100% damage enhancement for power doing 100 damage is 190 damage (.95 scalar) brute at +100% damage enhancement plus 75% (another 150% damage) fury (low honestly) 262.5 Which gave us tanker damage at 72%. Say we add in follow up stacked twice: +40% damage tanker goes to 2.4 x.95 x 100 =228 brute goes to 3.9 x .75 = 292.5 and the ratio becomes 78% Make that a triple follow up stack for 60% damage boost and we get to 80%. Throw in procs and it gets closer still. You see, Bubba, the thing about CoH is that it isn't balanced. Has never been balanced. It likely never will be balanced. There's simply too many nooks and crannies of power interactions which would have to be accounted for take try an make everything work. You want your brute and tanker to be balanced? OK, we'll get rid of how follow up works, and give you build up. There, problem solved. Be careful of what you wish for. The anomaly here isn't a tanker/brute imbalance due to the buffs, it's follow up (or we could bring up rage or soul drain).

I dislike people who waste my time for no good reason. The other day I was recruiting up a TF, and it took a while (was morning). Then when I finally get a team of 8 together and am about to start, one play says "I'm switching to an alt, brb" and logs. WTF. They were an early pick to the team, and it took 10-15 minutes to get it all together, and at no point during that waiting time did it occur to them to change their damned character if they wanted to? Someone earned a global ignore spot right there.

I may have to finally get around to building a super reflexes brute to see how much trouble it would be to incarnate softcap it. Tanks are trivially easy to softcap, and even incarnate softcap (iirc you can normal softcap easily with just SOs and weave). Since that is so easy, I can't imagine it will be impossible to do it on a brute, it just might have some annoying tradeoffs. Just need to pick a primary, and I'm running out of ones which interest me. Honesty the thing about the tanker changes which I have liked the most has been the expanded AOEs, and when I switch back to brute versions without them they feel so small (but fierce because of the higher damage).

Yeah, I tried to make an ice armor sentinel. I dragged it over the lvl 50 finish line and spent a fair amount of influence decking it out to an acceptable level. I still considered it crap. It was the last of the sentinel secondaries I tried, and was clearly the worst. While I have not deleted it, I have stripped it of useful IOs and will probably never play it again. WindDemon pretty much covers why it is awful. Moisture absorption is a clear demonstration of how bad the set is. On every other ice set, that's the cornerstone power (pumping defense to crazy levels). On this it is single target, and actually has to be targeted. Then for that you barely get anything in defense, and you also have to use it for your endurance recovery tool. Contrast that with dark armor on sentinels where obscure sustenance is a PBAOE, but single target so you don't have to actually target anything to make it work, just be vaguely near a target. Then it gives you a heal, a bunch of regeneration for a while, and an endurance recovery boost. It's actually superior to the versions on other sets. It's really quite odd in that a strong case can be made that sentinel sets of armor are the best versions of those sets except ice (and arguably willpower, but the change there was sort of mandatory). Ice is pretty clearly worse on sentinels than elsewhere and that's got nothing to do with the lower defensive scalar.

Yeah, I know about that, but use it for caltrops.

Only place I have played electrical blast on homecoming is on a couple of sentinels. I quite like it on them, but bad memories of electrical from other ATs on live means I don't bother using the other versions of the set. The sentinel version is quite nice in general. About the only things I wouldn't mind seeing changed are: A) making voltaic sentinel less clunky with continual resummons and why does it have to be placed anyway? Have it just summon in place near you like auto turret in devices. This will save time and bother. I'd also not object to seeing it have a chain effect since the chain gimmick does seem to be universal in the other electrical sets (save armor). B) quicker animation on thunderous blast. Otherwise I don't mind it at all, and it's one of the best of the sentinel sets.

Not really sure what one can do about leveraging back out the effect of the damage boost powers in certain sets. It would have to be individual treatment to those sets since they are anomalies.

That seems like a reasonable test and not even tedious. Go for it.

But because of the tanker having a higher damage scalar, the power closes the gap in damage output between the ATs. Rage and soul drain do it as well. Those power de-emphasize the effect of fury which is the core of brute damage.

I would never inflict the tedium of beating down a pylon on anyone I like.