drbuzzard

I doubt it. TF just has a lousy DPAS. 241+78+188+78/(2.67+3.3+1.1+1.1) = 72 That doesn't really change much since adding in more Gloom which has a DPAS about the same as the (not really chain) chain I posted can't shift it any. Energy punch has a DPAS of 63 iirc, so there's no helping it (and bonesmasher is even lower than energy punch though higher than total focus). For the hell of it, let's look at ET like it used to be (had a 1 second animation like power thrust) DPAS is stupid east to calculate 241/1 (derp) so 241 DPAS. Of course working up a chain is more than I want to figure out right now, but just imagine what that does to an average when most everything else tankers have seems to cap at 125. Back at the dawn of time I did a fairly extensive analysis of the tanker secondaries with chains and all that good stuff. This was back before war mace got buffed, with the original tanker sets. Energy melee was single target king, and it wasn't even vaguely close.

I think you are being rather hyperbolic. Sentinels are nowhere near as bad as you describe them. I think they need help, but they are not an utter train wreck (like khelds out of the box). Really sentinels need a bit more damage and they will be OK. Your suggestions were way too powerful. Though perhaps that's how the first iteration on the test server should be started and then whittled down from there. When we compare blasters and sentinels completely to the advantage of blasters, it's at end game with incarnate abilities, builds which cost around a billion influence, and the PPPs thrown in. This isn't the whole game. I'll admit, I like that part more, but I oddly enough also like sentinels. Truth is, sentinels have a much easier ride to 50 than blasters, so for those who don't just PL alts up to 50, and deck them out from farming money, they are a pleasant AT which is fun to play, lacking the frustration of taking a blaster up the levels. There is a space for them in the game, they just don't have a very compelling space at the top end of power at endgame.

That's not quite true. Have to take numbers from in game (and do the math myself since the in game numbers and math are often FUBAR). I'm also not going to figure out actual optimal attack chains since I'm lazy. I will put in what I recall from tanks I have and how I can chain. Energy Transfer: damage 241, animation 2.67 sec, DPAS: 90 Total Focus: damage 188, animation 3.3 sec, DPAS 57 Gloom: damage 78.32, animation 1.1, DPAS 71.2 So for the chain 241+188+78/ (2.67+3.3+1.1)= 72 Considering energy punch has a higher DPAS than total focus, you'd be wise to work it into the chain (but this is what you wanted to compare) Let's try War Mace Clobber: damage 154, animation 1.23, DPAS 125 Pulverize: damage 86.64, animation 1.5, DPAS 58 Jawbreaker: damage 104, animation 1.83, DPAS 57 Gloom: damage 78.32, animation 1.1, DPAS 71.2 so for the chain 154+87+104+78/(1.23+1.5+1.83+1.1) = 74.7 so a slight edge, and you also have AOE in the set. Let's try Stone Melee, always known for single target power. Stone Fist: damage 53, animation .83, DPAS 63.65 Heavy Mallet: damage 120, animation 1.63, DPAS 74 Stone Mallet: damage 86, animation 1.61, DPAS 53 Seismic Smash: damage 188, animation 1.5, DPAS 125 Gloom: damage 78.32, animation 1.1, DPAS 71.2 We can easily chain all these (which won't be optimal since stone mallet kinda sucks) 53+120+86+188+78/(.83+1.63+1.61+1.5+1.1) = 78.7 I'm pretty sure a better chain can be built using more stone fist and taking out stone mallet. (this is being tried on my SM/Bio brute without perma hasten, so it's the best chain I can do- numbers are still tanker) SS, SF, HM, SF, G, SF, repeat 188+53+120+53+78+53 /(1.5+.83+1.63+.83+1.1+.83)= 81.1 There might be better possible, but that's certainly not bad. I'd consider doing fire melee, but I hate the DoT calculations.

Invincibility gives defense based on how many enemies are around you. It stacks up to quite a substantial value (starts at 6% unenhanced for the first one and 1% more per add up to 10). It is far more powerful than weave, for less endurance cost. Tough hide is an autopower, so no endurance cost for equal defense to weave. To see those as even close is utterly fatuous.

Do you remember back in the day when an odd interaction of gauntlet made tanker single target attacks into effectively AOEs if you stacked the bodies close enough? Now ET was damned deadly in those days.

I think if the goal was to make it a well rounded set comparable to other melee sets, then yes. It would need a major re-tooling. However if they just wanted to put it back to where it was, which was king of a single target, but an AOE joke, then the tinkering would be minor. Heck, just putting energy transfer back on the original animation would likely make it a single target contender (not sure of the numbers against current sets, so I don't know that it would be king). If you also reduced the total focus animation, I bet it would clearly be king. Most people who ask for changes to EM want it back as it was, a mean single target set which was AOE LOL.

If you think MA is bad, EM will be worse. While it does appear that the devs will be buffing the set, we have no idea when that will occur. Hence you will be stuck with an underperforming tank for the interim. The important thing to realize when you look at EM is not how high the damage is on any given attack, it is how much damage it does in a given amount of time. Once upon a time Em was king of the single target hill because energy transfer was fast. Then it got nerfed into a slow animation, and this honestly broke the set.

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).