macskull

Seems like this is only for the Brute version, but its text description somehow got replaced by the text for the experimental version of Dark Consumption that never made it off the beta server.

Hate to burst your bubble (haha) but values beyond the hardcap are still calculated, the game doesn't just go "oh you're at the cap, time to forget everything past that!" Example: a Tanker has 120% fire resistance, which gets capped at 90% by the game because limits but the game is still calculating the uncapped value. If that Tanker gets hit with a resistance debuff they resist the entire debuff, not 90% of it. Along the same lines, if the game capped my defense at 40% but I had 100% before cap, I'd need to get hit with 60% -def before I went below 40%. So no, lowering the defense hardcap will not make defense buffers more valuable. EDIT: Besides, all that change would accomplish is reduce build variety and unfairly punish the sets which primarily rely on defense for mitigation (SR, Energy Aura, Shield) which still have the downside of being vulnerable to multiple rapid lucky hits. EDIT 2: I guess it would also make higher-difficulty content substantially harder since mob rank/level accuracy bonuses are applied after the clamp, not before, which really just means teams that struggle through content would struggle even more while teams having an easy go of it would not be substantially impacted. One way you could implement your suggestion is by bringing PvP-style diminishing returns into PvE but then you'd have the misfortune of watching players leave in droves for a server which chose not to implement such an asinine system.

Not really, you'll just end up with players picking up different power picks and slotting them differently. Besides, after several iterations of buffing Blasters because apparently they were too squishy I hardly think limiting set bonuses on them is in the cards.

When "nerf defense" comes up unironically in a thread I like to refer to this post from @Luminara. The post specifically addresses defense bonuses but can be applied to defense as a whole and the argument is still sound.

This creates more problems than it solves. If you nerf defense players will just find another way to get around it, and you’re left right back at the beginning. 45%, 40%, the actual value is irrelevant. This change would also make the game more difficult for everyone while gutting some support sets and epic/patron pools... for what?

Nerd!

This is what makes Sentinels so frustrating from a design standpoint - they were so worried about stepping on the toes of Blasters that they kneecapped the AT out of the gate. In a solo situation that’s probably fine but in a team situation you end up with an AT that only brings damage but is outpaced in many cases even by Defenders and Corruptors, both of which are also acting as force multipliers for everyone else on the team. If Opportunity were reworked to not be so clunky and be more valuable to a team, Sentinels would at least bring something other than subpar damage. This is contrary to statements from that person over the last two years which have continued to describe the design and intent of Sentinels as ranged Scrappers. In that case, either the creator of the AT has no idea what they are talking about (a possibility) or the AT as currently implemented fails to meet its intended design goal (a much greater possibility).

I believe it was you who said Sentinels are a “utility” AT rather than a damage AT and I’m having difficulty understanding exactly what you mean by that. A Sentinel isn’t capable of tanking (where “tanking” = managing aggro) significantly more than any other non-Scrapper/Brute/Tanker AT unless they dip into the presence pool since their armor sets lack taunt auras, their attacks lack a taunt effect, and they don’t get a taunt power to manage aggro. They have a higher threat level than other ranged ATs (2.5 vs 1) but threat level is only part of the equation for threat generation. A Sentinel can’t reliably pull enemies off a teammate. Sentinels also lack much in the way of support powers. They do get a few in their epic pools but those are generally too weak to be consistently useful. About the most useful support a Sentinel brings is offensive opportunity, and even then it’s a mediocre debuff that is only available periodically on single targets and also requires the Sentinel to take a specific power but also to use it at the correct time before accidentally using a different power and wasting the opportunity (puns!). So if they’re not an aggro management AT and they’re not a support AT... what are they? The AT text at character creation describes them as “powerful ranged combatants.” The guy who created the AT has at multiple points described them as “ranged Scrappers.” Both those make Sentinels sound like a damage AT to me. A far better example of a “utility” AT would be Kheldians because unlike Sentinels they can deal high damage at range and deal respectable damage in melee and manage aggro via dwarf form.

I think you are overlooking my earlier post(s) in this thread where I said something along the lines of "people can play what they want." I'm not in here trying to tell people to not play Sentinels, or saying that I would rather die than have a Sentinel on my team, or someone else's playstyle preferences are wrong, or anything weird like that. Those are all subjective viewpoints and I'm not here to change anyone's mind on those. If someone likes playing Sentinels, cool. My subjective opinion is Sentinels are boring as hell because there's little to no risk involved and you give up a lot for that lower risk (incidentally, the same reasons I dislike non-Stalker melee characters). However, the last page or two of this thread has revolved around the discussion of which AT performs better in the role they fill (Blaster = damage primary/damage and utility secondary = damage dealer, Sentinel = damage primary/armor secondary without taunt = damage dealer) and in this case the Blaster is objectively better by almost every measure.

I think another key difference people are missing is how trivial it is to make a Blaster approach Sentinel survivability levels most of the time while the inverse just isn't possible - the Sentinel's lower base damage, lower damage cap, and lower target caps mean a Sentinel will never be capable of performing to the level of a comparably-built Blaster when both are being intelligently played. Obviously there will be content where the Blaster will have a more difficult time in the survivability department than the Sentinel but that only matters if you ignore a player's ability to choose the content they want to run. I also wanted to address something I've seen come up a few times in this thread, specifically re: Sentinel nukes being better by virtue of their faster recharge. At face value you're looking at a 90s recharge versus a 145s recharge so the Sentinel's nuke will be up more often. Sounds nice, right? Welllllllll it's not quite that simple. I'm going to use Nova for these numbers but the damage scales are the same for all the PBAoE nukes (minus the extra DoTs Inferno gets). With no enhancements a Blaster is getting 250.246 damage every 145s while a Sentinel is getting 168.0513 damage every 90s. This works out to an effective damage per second per target of 1.726 for the Blaster and 1.867 for the Sentinel, or about an 8% advantage. Sounds good so far! But wait, there's more! The Blaster's nuke has a 25% larger radius and a 60% larger target cap, which means it is easier for the Blaster to hit more targets more consistently. Once you factor in the total number of targets, assuming you're hitting the max every time (and if we're talking x8 you almost certainly will) you end up with an effective damage per second of 27.616 for the Blaster and 18.67 for the Sentinel, or a nearly 50% advantage. But wait, there's more! Did you know about 30% of a Sentinel nuke's damage does not apply to targets outside the first ten feet of radius? So not only are Sentinel nukes hamstrung by lower radius and target caps, but they're also doing even less damage to some of those targets. Yikes.

Me? Probably, yes. At any rate, a Sentinel would not be my first choice, or probably even in my top ten. I think the point here is Sentinels don't have a clearly-defined role on teams. They're good training wheels for people who are unable or unwilling to play a Blaster but that's all they are - training wheels. In an environment where the tools exist to make a Blaster survivable enough the extra survivability a Sentinel brings is rarely needed and isn't worth giving up the damage in exchange. Unfortunately Sentinels are stuck in this weird spot where they don't have the tools to tank and/or manage aggro, don't deal competitive damage with other damage-centric ATs, and generally don't bring significant buff/debuff to the party which would at least excuse their lower damage. EDIT: All this being said, I'm not going to disparage someone because they like Sentinels and I'm not going to turn down a Sentinel on my team specifically because they're a Sentinel - I know the person at the keyboard is far more impactful than the character they're playing - but none of that changes what I said.

It is worth pointing out that almost every solo task force speed record is held by Blasters, and the team composition of 8-person teams setting records in that same content is usually 6-7 Blasters and 1-2 Corruptors. Also would like to see a Sentinel clearing at anywhere near the speed of a high-end Blaster build.

"This set is better than comparable sets both on its own merits and when combined with secondary powersets, therefore it is not better than other sets." I'm confused here. On another note, here's some actual data on clear speed for each ranged attacks done by @Galaxy Brain which represents how a set will perform in more-or-less actual conditions encountered in the game. These numbers are with SOs only so there is plenty of room for improvement but adding IOs into the mix (specifically for global recharge which is what's required to make the attack chains you want) only further helps Fire because of how ridiculously good the DPA on Blaze and Fireball are. The only real IO options that can get other sets close to Fire are when you start adding procs into the mix and that's only because Fire can't slot any additional damage procs besides those available to ranged damage sets. TL;DR: There's a reason Fire (and far less commonly, Ice) is the only ranged set you see on most high-end, DPS-crazy ranged character builds.

I don't know where you are getting your numbers, but you might want to apply your first sentence to your own post. The only set that can even be kind of competitive with Fire for raw damage output is Ice, and that's with a lot of procs and a lot of recharge from buffs or set bonuses. If the only thing you are looking at is the absolute damage an attack does then sure, Fire is only a little bit better but... animation time is a thing that exists and it's probably the biggest reason Fire is the best set out there if you care about damage. Damage isn't what matters - damage per animation time is.

Fire Blast's secondary effect is "more damage," so in essence every other set is trading that extra damage for secondary effects. In Elec's case, it's a very binary secondary effect which is completely and utterly useless until the enemy's endurance is at zero and their recovery is floored. The set lacks real single-target damage because it gives up an actual T3 blast in exchange for Tesla Cage (which is addressed on Sentinels at least). The snipe changes helped, sure, but they also equivalently buffed every other set with a snipe, most of which already had a T3 blast. Voltaic Sentinel is also a pretty awful power which doesn't help the set out either.

Dominators got a sizeable secondary set balancing pass in late 2019. They could probably use some more tweaks to eliminate the reliance on permadom, but as far as archetypes go in this game they're not in a bad spot.

PvP's not super active at the moment but at least leveling and building a character is way easier than back on live. You can get to 50 pretty quick, an entire build costs about as much as like half a purple set did back on live, and you can buy PvP-only versions of all the accolade powers from arena/zone vendors.

I would argue since mez protection powers were intentionally left out of the "short-cooldown single-target buffs are now AoEs" change (and in the case of the one buff which gives mez protection and was made an AoE the mez protection only applies to the initial target), and considering the back-and-forth discussion about the changes to Rune of Protection and its impact on mez protection for squishies, this is something that probably won't happen.

SoonTM.

Was doing some digging after a question on the Discord and discovered that in PvP Stalker Focus and Shockwave are incorrectly using the ranged_pvpdamage modifier table instead of melee_pvpdamage, resulting in an attack that does about 60% of the damage it should. It also seems like the Scrapper version of the power, which correctly uses melee_pvpdamage, is incorrectly scale 1.1799 when it should be scale 1.459.

Off-topic, but I would guess the reason the IO set change is happening is because there are probably some more global enhancements a la Winter's Gift or Synapse's Shock which are considered to be too powerful to slot into the different versions of prestige sprints players have access to for free.

Agility lowers proc chances, which when you're at the damage cap is the only way of going faster.

If you're flying, you're doing it wrong.

I don't think the "feature or bug" discussion is really relevant as unless someone manages to dig up relevant forum posts from 10-11 years ago we will never know with 100% certainty which is true. Additionally, what might have been originally intended as a "feature" in the context of the game at the time might no longer be true given how much things have changed since then. That being said, the reasoning for the change matters far less than the effects of the change. KM is a middling set with the main appeal of getting a single-target attack chain early (additional bonuses for Stalkers are a faster-than-normal fast-cast AS and the higher crit rate from hide on Burst). Outside of that KM is plagued by slow animations, a T9 that can't crit in exchange for resetting BU/Power Siphon, and (on non-Stalkers) a BU replacement that by most measures is inferior to other sets' BU replacements. Reducing Burst's hidden crit rate nerfs the set for the only AT with an appealing version of the set and doesn't solve the problem of the set being mediocre.

I'm also opposed to the Burst change but wanted to address these: Stalkers are the least-popular non-epic AT (by which you're implying "popularity = effectiveness" but that's not really true because if we used the same logic then Empathy would be the best support set when that's clearly not the case) but that's at least partly due to two factors: The huge QoL buff that turned Stalkers into absolute beasts happened late in the game's pre-shutdown life so many returning players aren't aware of it The description and apparent playstyle doesn't appeal to players who don't know what the individual ATs really do The only ATs that have higher melee damage scales than Stalkers are Scrappers and Dominators. Scrapper melee scale is a little more than 10% higher than Stalkers get and Scrappers don't get reliable crits most of the time, and Dominator melee scale is only 5% higher than Stalkers but they only have access to 2-4 melee attacks depending on their secondary.