drbuzzard

Yeah, I can live with some of it, but the incorrect scalar translation really makes it suck. If just the scalar values were properly adjusted they would fall in line with the rest of the primary T9s.

Yes, and as I mentioned they have slower recharge than blaster, and much lower damage. That breaks one of the baseline rules of how powers work in COH. If I wanted to make up for both disparities you'd have to factor in both the scalar error and increase the adjusted damage by an increase of 50% because of slower recharge. Sentinel FA would be 10 ticks of 25 damage and the arrows would drop 1-3 times for 110. They would then be the best nukes among sentinels by a fair margin.

The original posted (me) is highlighting the disparity among sentinel nukes as well as the poor way in which the supposed blaster vs. sentinel damage scalar was implemented in this case. AR and archery are deficient by either measure and need some love. For the moment I would advise not playing them on sentinels (which means the two I just worked up and incarnated will sit).

Recently I decided to make more sentinels (shocking!). While I had already tried all the primaries and secondaries, I decided it would be an interesting experiment (and excuse to level up an alt) to vary the primary across ones I don't think I'd given a fair shake to while keeping the secondary constant with SR (probably my favorite). While doing archery and assault rifle, I notice the nukes were a bit off. Nametotal Full Auto 147.45 (this includes a 16% crit that adds some damage, base is 138). Rain of Arrows 122.84 (keep in mind, the way RoA works is 1-3 ticks of damage, with equal chances, so this number is the average at 2, even if there were 3 hits, it is below normal nuke numbers for other sets) Overload 194.584 Blackstar 194.584 Thunderous Blast 194.584 (with shocking can be a good bit higher) Nova 194.584 Inferno 207.79 (owes it to DoT which is variable) Psychic Wait 194.584 Meteor 194.584 Dreadful Wail 194.584 I left out the ones which were a bit more arduous to calculate (DP, ice, water). As we can see, they are quite consistent for the most part. Fire gets its usual DoT boost, but mostly they are identical except AR and archery. Why is this? Well AR and archery are the odd ducks in every other AT having a 60 second recharge, so they break the rules for nukes and are a bit different. AR was the first one, and did lower nuke damage but with a crit chance to each DoT which could boost it a bit. I just looked at the blaster stats for AR, and boy did the sentinels get screwed. The ATs have very close damage scalars now (1.1 vs. 1.125) and for some reason blaster full auto does 172.2 +potential 65 crit chance, but on a 60 second recharge. That's compared to 138 for the sentinels for the base damage. If the sentinel damage reflected a direct translation across the scalars you'd have 10 ticks of 16.8 for the sentinel instead of 10 of 13.8. This leaves out the fact that the blaster gets it on a 60 second recharge instead of 90. At least if the sentinel used the 168, it would likely be in order with the normal 194 nuke damage after you added the crit chance. Archery is even worse as it is currently the worst sentinel nuke set. It works via a location pet which hits 1-3 times for 61 damage. Blasters instead hit for 75 damage each possible time. If we did a straight up scalar conversion, the sentinel value would be 73. Again, I'll not bother to consider the issue of recharge (again, every other AT is 60 seconds, sentinels are 90). I could live with just adjusting both sets for the scalar values instead of actually making them comparable across ATs. So to put this in TL:DR terms, sentinels are getting screwed on their nukes on 2 of the sets, AR and archery. It would be nice if this was resolved.

As while back they had their weekly thread about ranged sets and I suggested some sort of thrown set. Boomerangs would be neat, but a bit too specific and requiring lots of animation past other thrown options.

Funny I was thinking I needed to come in here and mention this since I had forgotten to earlier. I dislike that they only get PPPs. Perhaps there's a thematic reason for this, it doesn't mean I think it necessary.

I'm quite a fan of both flavors of VEATs. They both work pretty well. I prefer the SoA because it's a bit less clicky. Both sides have lots of valid build options that do respectable damage and help out a team. I see it as rather clear that the dev team that made them learned from the mistakes of the HEATs. I suspect people don't understand their strengths very well since they are kinda rare. A superteam of all VEATs can be pretty devastating. I will echo Snarky here that I'm not an over fan of the crab arms being present even if you don't actually have any of the attacks. I use only rifle attacks, but there's the arms waving around anyway. I ended up using prismatic aether to pick a Malta gunslinger costume so I didn't have to see the useless arms. The redraw revisions are a hug help on SoAs in particular since it means that the patron pool powers no longer cause that redraw penalty in your chain.

If you're talking sonic resonance, it still needs some love. While it debuffs pretty well (there are better), and sonic shields are a nice change, it lacks a bit compared to other support sets. I have sonic/sonic defenders and corrupters. Think I prefer the defender. The blast set did lose some debuff, but it became a drastically better blast set.

Is the damage the same? I can't figure out how to reference what it used to be.

Umm, fire blast doesn't have any melee powers. Fiery aura does. Everything you're thinking is synergizing is also a secondary power. You'd probably need a set which has more PBAOEs than normal. Primaries with more than t9 PBAOEs are electric and radiation. You can pick up one more in a bunch of the different EPPs. The t9 PBAOEs are fire, dark, sonic, psi, DP, energy, radiation. Of course DP (plus archery, BR, and AR) won't combine since it needs both hands. If they do adapt shield for sentinels I hope it's just a set damage bonus power instead of dragging you into melee. While I do mix it up with some sentinel builds, I like the option of keeping my distance. Also, I would hope they pull a master brawler and give us a toggle status protection option. However I remember reading a dev on this a long time ago that making master brawler was a PITA so it is unlikely to happen again. Maybe just make it a toggle overall?

The sentinel lost their unique fire single target and got the new ignite power. I consider this a bit of a loss, but not huge.

I think they need a balance pass. VEATs are drastically better in performance. HEATs amount to being an odd mix of powers in human form, a lousy blaster, or a lousy tanker. I suppose it's nice to be flexible to suit what a team may need, but on a server where near unlimited alts can be made, you can instead have an optimized blaster and tanker as they are needed. Unless I missed it (which is possible since I don't follow HEATs much, I only recently leveled up my WS) while there have been balance passes of fairly major effect on blasters and tankers, the HEAT which mimics both remains a pale clone of the way those ATs used to be. Heck, just on that basis they need a bit of love. I built up a humanform WS made for durability and recharge which can, if all the fluffies stay alive, do OK damage. He'll also sit at 85% resistance to most things which when coupled to a very nice corpse dependent heal is very durable. However you can't just dive right in. All WS abilities (or good ones) depend on enemies or their bodies. The lack of status protection is also pretty annoying since 85% resistance isn't much good if you are just mezzed all the time. Both my crab spider and my fortunata do more damage, and do more for a team in general through force multiplication. Honestly, I'm not really sure how one should go about fixing the HEATs. People seem to like them as is I suppose, but then I've had people defend petless MMs as well. PB did not appeal after looking at powers/numbers. I made and played to 50 my WS, and as mentioned above it is acceptable. I imagine I'll keep it for theme events or something, but I would not bother to play it otherwise. I have a multitude of more effective alts which are both more fun to play and do much more for a team, or are worlds better solo.

I'll comment on the questions by AT ( I favor sentinels, stalkers, and tanks). like most- On sentinels I favor SR, on stalkers, I favor energy aura, and on tanks, I quite like electric armor, but you need to make a careful build since the heal is a bit slow. Pair it with a secondary which heals and it works well. Least- sentinels- ice armor is crap, stalkers- regen or a resistance set. Most dislike regen since it's just not great and you lose the endurance power. Tanks- just looking at the numbers makes me skip ice armor. I've played the rest just fine. Overtuned? You want me to nerf call? Nah. Pass. Undertuned- ice armor on sentinels, heck probably ice armor in general. Regen is a hot mess anywhere but sentinels. I rather wish the click status protection sets had an alternative like on sentinel SR. On sentinels or stalkers I like defense based sets. The 75% resistance caps for the ATs make them a bit soft at the extremes, and I tend to push my luck. I don't mind resistance as much on sentinels since I can stay back a lot easier and distance avoids the AOEs. Defense amounts to 90% mitigation so I go with that. On tanks I like resistance sets because they can get to 90%. Of course I understand the def>res>heal mantra, but teams are very quick to hand out def, and rare to hand out resistance, so if you have a resistance tank, you'll likely end up a resistance+defense tank on good teams. Sentinels have a good version of regeneration which is fun to play, but they are not aggro magnets. On a more aggro focused even sentinel regen would possibly be too soft. Regen on everything else is far too much of a click fest to interest me. I know my reaction time wouldn't be up to optimal play. WP is OK for the regen rate, but against the things which focus on its defense, it is very weak since it has no DDR. I take taunt on tanks mostly because teams will often complain if you don't have it even if you're holding aggro just fine. It is good for grabbing stragglers. I don't much take it on brutes (and I'm not really talking brutes since I don't play mine much). I have tanked pretty much everything short of being the Hammi HP sponge, having done solo, small teams, big teams, league, and relentless. One of the reasons I favor resistance is that the game has a lot of ways around defense that happens in high end content. I've mentioned before electric armor is nice because it allows you to cap resistance to everything except toxic (with alpha), and if you throw in dark melee, siphon life is up enough for enough healing to keep you alive through some rough stuff. I imagine radiation melee's radiation siphon would work for this as well, but I don't much care for the set.

Recently made a poison defender to try out the set (and I had a name+concept in mind). It's pretty powerful with very strong debuffing potential, meh healing, and an amazing rez. I don't much, however, care for the tier 9 since it's pretty much asking to die. Sure on normal content, it works all well and good, but once you hit hard stuff, having to keep a defender in melee range without the ability to heal yourself like a kin is damned close to suicide. Given my druthers, I'd make it so the debuff could be anchored on a teammate like disruption field from sonic resonance. Sure this would further penalize the ability of a poison to solo, but given no self heal, I think they are already pretty limited, and this would greatly increase their survivability on teams doing challenging content. Also the fact that 2 powers are wasted (IMO) on holds on this set is not a great design. Sure, I imagine that synergizes well on a controller to lock things down (or even with ice blast), I prefer to keep to buffs and debuffs. I find a force multiplier is usually more valuable than a control. I doubt these will be popular suggestions. I've already commented on sonic in another thread, though it's a hybrid as one might say. I have yet to make a trick arrow, though I suppose I'll get to it. I've played dark plenty in the past and it is a solid set, though again, I could do without the hold.

It's a pretty set, and an interesting to play set. That doesn't make it a particularly powerful set. Got one to fiddy, and it will sit. It's just not worth the intricacies of playing when there's little payoff.

I've been a fan of sonic since its inception back on live. However the buffs to forcefield really show how one dimensional the set really is at this point. Ok, mostly one dimensional. You either buff or debuff resistance in most everything. There are a few exceptions, but they have issues. I'll go by Power: 1. Sonic Barrier- fine 2. Sonic Siphon- very one dimensional, could use some other sort of effect. Heck, the force field equivalent knocks the target down at least. 3. Sonic Haven- fine 4. Sonic Cage- I suppose some people find uses for cage powers, I consider it an easy skip. Cage powers usually just protect the target from competent people on your team who already meant to kill the annoying mobs you'd hit with this (Sappers, Surgeons, etc.) I wouldn't mind something else, but I also don't mind an easy skip. 5. Disruption Field- Fine. This one used to be pretty awful when it pulled aggro back to the sonic, but that was fixed a long time ago. 6. Sonic Dispersion- fine 7. Sonic Repulsion- If you drop a KO->KD IO into it, it can be splendid. However the noise it makes appears to tick off a team more than the protection that it generates makes them happy, so I often keep it off. The endurance cost is so damned high, it's hard to justify. If the noise could be fixed somehow, the power might be good, though the fact that you need a special IO to make it bearable is not a great design decision (I'm not a fan of knockback). 8. Clarity- basically a waste spot in the face of sonic dispersion running all the time. If it did more in the way of buffing it might actually be worth taking. 9. Liquefy- this power is actually pretty good while in use. However the uptime is so absolutely horrible, that it's a major come down when you've finally achieved it as your capstone power. 300 seconds recharge for 30 seconds of debuff. Even with perma hasten this recharges in 81 seconds so you're at a fairly pathetic percentage of uptime. The debuff numbers are quite good, but on a fast moving team, the location based nature of the debuff means it's fairly meh, and if you hit a hard target, not many AVs drop in 30 seconds, so again, meh. This one could use some love. So in a set of 9 powers 4 are fine. Every other power has significant issues. Sonic could definitely use some love. I'd have to look for actual scarcity numbers, but it is pretty rare in play. If you're odd enough to try and solo without a pet handy (corr or def) with the set you basically have 3 powers, with one on a overly long timer (siphon, dispersion, and liquefy).

I never got around to responding to this (didn't read the whole thread either so if I'm repeating, forgive me). However I thought my idea was worth adding. I had an idea of a new blast set. Thrown Weapon - I have some ideas for powers, but have not fleshed out the whole set idea. 1. quick toss - use a fast backhand animation, keep the damage OK though. Many sets have a tier 1 which is pure garbage, and it would be nice not to have it that way again. As storm avoided this I expect the Devs now get that DPAS is important and make sure the attacks are all at least decent. X. Strong throw- use the impale animation for pretty high damage (would have to be to make impale damage have good DPAS). Y. fan of grenades- not really sure how to do this but the idea to toss a spread of explosives that detonate on hitting the ground. I'm not sure if this would be a pain to code, but it's mostly just a special effect. There's plenty of options here for different ideas. I guess I am a bit too late though.

I should note that I think energy is a splendidly effective sentinel secondary, but I just prefer the sets with passive endurance recovery methods. I'm lazy and just want to blast like a hyperactive 5 year old.

If you are solo, things will either stick around you because of aggro, or they will scatter like roaches with the lights on if they are in one of the storms without any other reason to be there (like you as a target). Personal aggro will keep them in place somewhat. On a team, regen is fine particularly if you have an aggro magnet like a tank or brute. I imagine you could build to find a way to keep things in place at a distance, but those are only so so in effectiveness (IMO of course).

Ultimately I made a storm/SR (started it as /regen, but found it a bit soft since you need to stay in the middle of things when solo to keep stuff in your storms). I'm not the biggest fan of storm blast, though it does have a good fun factor and looks great. I just find it a bit meh on teams, and I always team. I have come to the conclusion that SR is my favorite sentinel secondary though. It is yet another instance in which sentinels get the best version of a defense set.

Ok, tried it out against evens and it does not do the damage listed. As you say, though, it's still a solid hitter with a fast animation for a PBAOE.

Damn, I guess I never noticed it at over 300 damage and that should have made me suspicious. Then again I'm usually fighting +4s. I'll try it out on evens sometime.

I'm not sure why I had not looked closely enough already, and from seeing builds around here, I get the impression that nobody else has. Did anyone else notice that the ice mastery set does really nice damage? Sure, ice sword is no mind probe, but it still does reasonably good DPAS (damager per activation second) of 82 (mind probe is 90). Among all the epic pool melee single target attacks, it's only beat by mind probe, KO Blow, and Havoc punch (which is king). The real gem is frozen aura. That is a great power to take if you have a melee AOE nuke. It's got a recharge of 40, and does 173 in 10' radius to 10 targets. Couple this with your T9 nuke and you're doing well past blaster nukes on your nice short sentinel recharge. Sentinel nukes do about 193, blaster nukes do 250 (base without other stuff). Add in 173 on a timer shorter than the sentinel nuke timer, and you're clearing some spawns. Frozen Aura even has a fast enough animation that it is fairly high DPAS (77). So if you're going to be mixing it up in melee anyway, you might want to take a closer look at ice mastery. Actually I'm a bit concerned about posting this in case it gets a nerf because people notice it.

For the lazy man to make this work, and I was too lazy to go all the way, you find a low level enemy and nuke it with a fiddy. He didn't specify any details. I took a lvl 50 sent and nuked a lvl 2 hellion. This is obviously sub optimal, but I did 5k damage. No debuffs, just aim and 2 red candy. Heck, I didn't even bother to use vulnerability. With more effort I could get over 10k. I don't think it's worth doing.

If you are on a team with anything but corrupters and maybe a tank, you're sub optimal. That's just how the game works. Complaining that sentinels are less than optimal is like saying water is wet. So are scrappers, brutes, etc. Sentinels are at least roughly competitive now. Given good slotting, and knowing how to play the game, I can keep up even on good teams (perhaps not with my storm, but with a better sentinel).