drbuzzard

Oh, I should also mention the case that certain sets close the gap between tankers and brutes because of built in damage boosting powers which leverage the higher damage scalar of the tank. Claws (this case with followup which can stack 3 times for +60% damage pretty easily), rage, or soul drain. You picked a test which isn't all that kosher. Pick a set which doesn't leverage a constant damage boost (and yes, build up will always help close the gap, but not as much).

It's more than that. When you push in damage which will not be helped by the inherent, you basically discount the inherent. Brutes and corrupters have damage boosting inherents (defenders do too, but it's not to the same degree) which don't help procs.

Sorry, but this is dead wrong because considering the damage scalar without considering fury is utterly farcical. For the same of simple numbers we will look at a tank with +100% damage enhancement (slotting and some bonus, though mostly because I choose to be lazy and use round numbers). Then we will set the brute at +100& from enhancement, and then another +150% from fury (which is actually low, but I'm being nice and like round numbers). We pick a power which does 100 (lazy me). Tank will do 190 damage. (2x.95) Brute will do 262.5 (.75*3.5) As we can see, natively the tank is nowhere close to doing 90% (or even 86% of brute damage). (number here is 72%) Then we add in procs. They generate a constant number for damage. We'll call it 50 for a proc. So a tanker has a proc go off and his damage is 240. The brute's goes off and damage is 302.5. Tanker has gained a 26% damage boost from the proc. Brute has gained a 15% damage boost. As you add in more procs you will close the damage gap between the ATs. Here the damage gap goes from 28% to 21% (tank does 79.3% after proc). You add more procs, you get a smaller gap. Also the greater the damage value of the proc compared to the power damage will also close the gap further. So as I said before, procs distort the hell out of AT comparison.

I'll be the first to concede I'm not nearly as good a player as you. I'm getting a bit long in the tooth and my reaction time isn't what it ought to be. You posit range being important because you're constantly jinking back to avoid melee attacks. I don't know that I could pull that off well, and I'm certain I wouldn't like to. There will always be a gap between what the best people can do and what is the norm (best defined in both play ability and formulating builds). You didn't, however, address that some factions are equally dangerous at range (or they sure seem that way). Banished Pantheon hits like a ton of bricks at range.

We're getting into where procs distort the hell out of AT balance, so you're introduced a separate can of worms into your comparison. If procs are large chunk of your damage, then they disfavor the brute since their inherent will not affect them. Personally I think damage procs need a severe nerf beatdown, even if that's an unpopular view. As I said in the other thread, brutes have plenty of mitigation. Only on the hardest possible content do you really noticed the difference between a decked out tank and a decked out brute. A bit of support on the brute, and you are fine. Do I have a numerical case to be made? No. I merely have experience across a bunch of different tanks and brutes. About the only place I ever note a brute being a bit too soft is when I do +4x8 incarnate stuff in DA. Everywhere else I rarely notice the green bar move much at all.

Not sure where you get the idea that tanks are at 90% of brute damage. And honestly you have to be pushing it pretty hard for one to find a place where the survivability edge of tankers over brutes means all that much (though leveling up, it's pretty clear, but then the damage gap is even more clear). Once builds are done, both tankers and brutes are pretty close to unkillable in normal content, and brutes can take what is handed out in incarnate stuff with a bit of support with no problems. Perhaps if you have a kinetics buffer in your pocket all the time, this may be the case, but in the world we actually play in, tankers do a lot less damage (and I play a whole lot of tankers and brutes). It takes very little support to get a brute to tanker level defenses. But back to the topic at hand. I would love to see them buff the hell out of sentinels, but having moments of acting like a grownup, I accept they can't be buffed too much. While I'd like crits and to keep the resistance debuff of opportunity, I can't see that flying. Likely it will be one or the other. As I tend to like consistent performance from my characters, crits are not exactly ideal, but I'd rather just have them on, and at a picked value which is deemed to be where the damage should sit. This can be tuned pretty specifically. So I'd probably just ditch the opportunity mechanic altogether, increase defensive values to 75% (over 70%) since defensive opportunity is going away, increase the scalar to 1.0, and add crits which are finely tuned to make damage where the devs think it ought to be. Oh, and as to range as defense, yes in many cases it works quite well, and can make some content almost laughable. However that is nowhere close to 100% of the time. There are of course 2 main issues. First is if you are in a mission where space is tight- then you simply don't have range as an option, and the enemies will be in your face and you can't avoid it (even caltrops don't guarantee anything). Second is when you fight enemies heavy on ranged attacks. They do exist and can hurt quite a bit. I was playing my elec/bio stalker who hovers and uses caltrops to keep things out of my face. I was doing incarnate content (DA arcs), and had it set to +4x8. I went into a mission where you deal with the BP, and damn if those guys aren't heavy on ranged smackdown. I got slaughtered. Caltrops didn't help. Being at range didn't help (they happily blasted away). Having defenses past softcap (but not to incarnate softcap) didn't cut it at all. I had to tune the difficulty down to finish the mission. I have tanks and brutes that can do that mission on that setting without a hiccup.

Not going to debate most of this. First line, I probably agree with. Second line in factually incorrect. Sentinels are wet with .70 of tanker values for a given armor set (vs. .75 for scrappers). However the sets have been substantially modified on stalkers such that the comparison isn't quite right. For example, every stalker secondary has some power which helps endurance, and many of the sets which they share don't have that. Regen on a stalker (as I mentioned before) is IMO the best version currently in the game. Stalkers do need a tune up, but they are easy to play and fun. They are just a bit short of optimal at endgame.

I have a host of sentinels, and a few blasters. Blasters do quite a bit more damage between defiance, a higher scalar, AOE caps, and snipes (with quicksnipe). At 50, with incarnate and the right IO build, their durability is quite impressive. Sentinels can be extremely durable(more so than blasters, assuming they are both built by competent people), and it's nice to pop a nuke every 23 seconds or so (when you build for recharge). Their inherent is team friendly, and they feature almost always the best defensive versions of their armor sets found in the game(they have far and away the best regen set in the game). Their ranged attack sets are also the best balanced across sets, as opposed to those sets for other ATs which have major gaps in quality. They make for a pleasant and easy ride up the levels, and are quite enjoyable to play. However if you at big on playing lvl 50 content, a blaster is probably more useful, especially on teams. If you solo or like sub 50 content, I'd favor a sentinel. Oh, and it should be emphasized that competitive sentinel builds lean heavily on procs for their damage, which I personally find very gimmicky, and have a suspicion isn't going to last forever.

I am quite certain that every day is nerf regen day already.

Fear and confuse are regular holes in status protection. The status protection powers always list what they cover, not what they don't cover.

Good information, but I'm far too lazy to want to avail myself of it. There's a reason I do fly in the first place.

Actually to get to max flight speed with afterburner, you do need to put some slots and enhancements into it. With slotting you can get to 87 MPH which isn't bad really. (2 in fly, 2 in afterburner)

I don't know that it's likely to happen, but when I build one melee build or another with one of the endurance strapped sets (which I define as any that doesn't have some endurance gaining trick), I feel fairly compelled to take one of the EPPs which offers an endurance recovery boost. I don't even consider PPPs in those cases. Not sure if it's a great idea or not, but perhaps something like the body mastery (and others) which can be found in the EPPs. Though this would make the PPPs even that much more superior to the EPPs, so maybe not.

OK, that is amusing. I was wrong. I had not tried it under threat in so long I didn't even know it was possible now. I was able to finish planting a trip mine on my BR/Dev blaster while being beaten on by legionaries.

So you want to nerf the regen nerf?

Nope, I'm pretty sure trip mine can be interrupted. Mind you I've not tried it in a likely time to be interrupted recently because I know better. Perhaps it has changed. I'll have to check.

I'm curious what you mean by this. I don't notice much difference (other than damage of course) between trip mine on my dev blaster and my traps defender.

Damn, Goob is back too. I've been on for a long time now. Never checked in. @docbuzzard on justice. Member of Justice Brigade (small) and Tempest Legion (Chaos Legion) Lots of alts.

You can go to ouroboros and play them again as things are now. You get the rewards again as well.

You already missed that boat. People AFK farm in AE as things stand right now. Adding another auto power would only make it a bit quicker.

Honestly I don't really see how the kiting would work on a 5 second timer anyway. If you're running from them, they will be in either of 2 conditions. A) close, and the mine won't go off or B)losing aggro. It is possible B will grant some window , but 5 seconds is fairly long, and that would be very tricky to work that window. Right now this is a doable tactic in practical terms given how they currently work. You set up your ambush (and can use a swarm of mines), then pull the baddies to it. I'm not sure what you mean by target location bind being new. The teleport bind (lshift+lmouseclick) has worked since live. It was always the only bearable way to use that power. Mind you, I currently use it for caltrops, so this is a complication unless there's another such bind.

I like all these Red, though I did like the idea of tossing tripmines a short distance. Toe bombing an AV is very often not a healthy pass time. I'd say go with both, you can toss the mines a short distance and they activate in 5 seconds. Give them a 10' range for the toss.

I'm going to echo the chorus saying the EPPs are quite good for sentinels. I don't always use a lot of them, and there are some traps which look good until you look at the numbers (warmth- good god what were they thinking?!?) but they generally are very useful, and are strongly leaned on in high end builds. I don't like to do the proc leaning builds as much as some other people, which of course does cost me in ultimate performance. However, FSC and cremate (for example) really do add to your ability to hand out more hurt even if you aren't playing proc games (I personally build for over the top defenses and lots of recharge). Funny thing is I happen to like the caltrops power myself on some builds, but in that case the rest of the set gets skipped. When I use other EPPs, I use a few things.

Chasing regeneration boosts on WP is a fool's errand (they simply can't amount to enough to really matter-I've tried before). The way to approach is to leverage the other defenses which effectively multiply your regeneration rate. Willpower is a l/s resistance set, and a defense set to everything else. On a tank it is not hard at all to cap l/s resistance and the typed defenses as well. Once all that is done, WP is extremely durable. About the only weakness ends up being debuffs, which can hurt a lot if they pile on. I find that resistance sets (rad/elec/fire) are all pretty capable for much of the level run as long as you grab tough fairly early, and can get the tank ATOs in place. About the only complaint I have on any of them is the long recharge on electric armor's heal. It could use a bit of help there, but otherwise they are all pretty tough sets. Radiation armor is damned tough, though I'd say the trick is to have particle shielding on auto fire (and enough recharge that the absorption is permanent). After fiddling around in DA with all the enemies there, I definitely find that the resistance sets are the way to go. There's lots of debuffs and exotic damage types flying around. It is possible to get to incarnate softcaps, but I found a bunch of things shooting right through it on my overcapped SR tanker.

It's quite easy to level up and you have 1k slots.