Coyote

We ARE talking about small, medium, or large reds, right? I mean, all other pills get converted to those, don't they 😄

Well, if it's -100, that would explain why it would be very hard to drain. At -1000, like it had been for a long time, it really should floor the recovery of +3 AVs. But if it's been changed to -100, then you'd need to dedicate a build to it, and at that point you're probably better off going with Drain Psyche... it's easier to get its -500 almost perma than to get -100 to do enough to matter. Edit: it may be worse than -100... the Poison Trap in Traps shows -1000 Regeneration FOR 10 SECONDS. The version in Poison, shows -100 Recover... but with no duration. So it may be bugged to do NO -Recovery since it doesn't specify a duration for the debuff. Ouch.

Just to note, most of the arguments that you received WERE about the AoE... several of us who said that overall Sentinels were fine, DID agree with your point about their damage being low when looking specifically at single-target DPS. Also, just as a note, I've found that Sentinels do FAR better than Blasters, to chase DPS via damage procs. Their base damage is lower, and several of their attacks have longer durations, and they have higher defenses base, so they can afford to sacrifice more set bonuses in order to go for damage via procs. This makes their builds look different, and if they're built in a "normal" way, their stats are a lot lower than when you build them oriented upon damage procs. For example, I have a Dark Blast build with 2 single target attacks that are over 400 damage each before Incarnates... 450 and 490 or so, with Musculature. Without procs, they're well over 100 points lower for each of them. So, yes, you do have a point about their single-target damage being low. I'm not sure how much this MATTERS when considering whether the AT is weak or strong, or otherwise grading it, but there is definitely a good amount of truth to that point.

If you want to sap AVs as a Defender, I think you have to use Poison since its version of Poison Gas Trap does huge -Recovery. Pair it with Electric for the actual sapping and you have a chance. I don't think that the Shock set will do enough -Recovery. Alternate options, that are still better than Shock on Defenders: 1: Electric/Psy Dominator. Electric Control saps better than Electric Blast, and Drain Psyche does very good -Recovery. 2: Electric/Shock Controller, again because Electric Control > Electric Blast. However, I think the best bet for effective AV sapping is a Controller, Electric/Poison. Poison's huge -Recovery along with Electric Control seems like the best pairing.

It may be a reasonable design choice to say that this set can support up to X players, just like Empathy has SOME powers that support an entire team, and OTHER powers (Fortitude and Adrenal Boost) that only support a limited number of targets. If Electric Shock Resonance Therapy or whatever it ends up called instead has ALL of its powers able to support 8-12 targets but not more, that's a reasonable option for a support character. What I would like to check, however, is that usually the target-limited powers are very strong. As they become usable upon more targets, they become weaker or cannot be up all the time. I'm not sure right now that the Electroshock buffs are buffy enough to warrant being too limited in target numbers. Their uptime is good, though, compared to some other ally buffs.

Ah, I missed that. And I forgot that Lightning Rod doesn't proc damage IOs as a normal power, but as a pet summons... that does change the balance question, then. With LR's damage lower and DC's higher, it seems that DC's damage has been raised to be comparable to LR or maybe higher, depending on how many targets were hit by Soul Drain.

Not that I actually disagree with the CONCLUSION, but retroactively picking an activation where all IOs fired off is not appropriate math for balancing. Use a 90% cap formula for the damage procs to determine the actual average damage of the power (about 572 damage). The point is still made, as this seems high, but it's based on a more solid foundation. Also, just to put another point of comparison: Lightning Rod, similarly slotted, does about 610 damage, with Knockdown (though it may be slotted for lesser damage in order to put in the Force Feedback proc), and that's without Adrenal or Soul Drain. In a much larger area. I'm ... kind of thinking the new DC is REALLY good, but then I look at a few other long-recharge PBAoE powers (LR, Shield Charge and Burn from the secondaries, Savage Leap), and it seems to be within the ballpark of those powers in damage, but with good utility balanced with a MUCH smaller radius. Edit: to add... Soul Drain was used for DC's numbers. Generally you'd have Build-Up available for LR, and using that, LR goes up to over 800 damage. I'm really starting to be less worried about DC's being overpowered as I look at more comparable builds. It's become an excellent power but we're not ending up with an OP set, I think. Well, unless the argument is that it's OP because it combines what's good AoE damage WITH probably the best defensive abilities for an attack set.

Earth. Rock Armor with Fade makes it easy to cap Smash/Lethal without having to spend a lot of slots on set bonuses. You're in short range so Fissure's short range doesn't matter. Dark Consumption should be useless to you with Soul Absorption providing +Recharge. The only argument is Soul Drain, but I'd rather get the +Recharge from slotting Force Feedback in Fissure than the damage bonus, given that much of your damage is going to be coming from procs if you want more damage, not from having high-damage powers.

Dehydrate is awesome, you can put 3 Thunderstrike, 1 Achilles, 1 Theft of Essence, and 1 damage proc in it, and you get to debuff Defense and Resistance, Heal yourself, and regain Endurance. Oh, and do damage. I would skip Hydro Blast, because I use the T1 or T2 more to call in the Tides, and since they both give 1 Tidal Power, I use the faster-animating one. But if you take Hydro Bolt instead, I think it can slot a Force Feedback proc, so that's a fine choice also. Water Jet is fine, don't slot Recharge in it and use the the auto-recharge to fire it more often, and put procs in it. It does good damage with procs. Otherwise it's just average.

Just shut your armor toggles off already and join us. It's fun.

I get the impressing that by "offensive aspects" they were including aspects that those powersets have: +Damage, +Recharge, -Resistance, etc. Powers that increase damage dealt, not necessarily powers that directly deal damage. Support CAN mean supporting offensive output, not only supporting defensively. I'd have to take a much closer look at the set once I have time to see the power numbers, to have an opinion. Basically, it looks like it provides +Damage... is this up often enough and at a high enough strength to make a noticeable difference, or is it a minor boost? For now, I have no opinions on how strong it is on either defensive or offensive support.

This also seems to me like something worth wondering about. I assume that there is some reason why Dark Melee specifically was easier to fix. We did have some dev comments saying that they're aware that Energy Melee needs some fixing, so I don't think it's an issue where they disagree with the existence of the problem. Maybe putting a fix in for it like Energy Assault received might have been more complicated, and they put out what was easier to finish?

Right. I think we've reached where I thought we were 😂 The AT is fine, but it's not top-tuned for specific purposes. But it's fine for general-purpose builds. If you're looking for an AT that is tuneable for top-level tanking, or debuffing, or control, or (most relevantly) damage, it will not match up to other ATs that are better tuned for those purposes. If instead you're fine with a generalist build that checks all the boxes (except melee attacks), it's solid.

Actually, it does. A powerful AoE damage set kills everything dead too fast to bother throwing AoE controls, AoE debuffs, etc. Basically, anything other than more AoE damage to finish off the few who survived the alpha strikes of the high-AoE-damage sets. Let's extend it to a silly level: If you have an AoE insta-kill button for the entire spawn, that kind of does diminish the role of anyone else on the team. Does that sound like a silly argument? Maybe, but there are builds who have every-spawn AoE openings of 900 damage pretty fast, and 1100+ with weaker follow-up AoEs. What is the point of an AoE Hold when in 5 seconds we're down to Bosses? There are already lots of builds whose presence on a team makes AoE controls and debuffs irrelevant due to their high AoE damage. So, yes, SOME powerful sets DO diminish the roles of other people on the team. And it's literally impossible to fix this by buffing, because... you buff my Fearsome Stare to be -100% ToHit, and I still wouldn't bother activating it in many fights, because it's still literally useless to debuff enemies into doing nothing when they're going to be dead a second after my animation ends. I'm not against buffing, but sometimes it's just not possible to solve balance issues through buffing. Nerfing is absolutely necessary at times, painful as it may be.

I can't put enough likes for this post. Lowering top-tier damage will effectively buff control, buffing, debuffing, endurance drain, etc. As well as balance sets within ATs.

I wouldn't slot that set into Roots... Roots is more of a damage power, so it should be slotted for damage. The set's bonuses aren't good enough, IMO, to slot it up for Immob. I wouldn't slot up Combat Jumping for Defense, its base D is too low. I put in the uniques in there... the resist IOs and Kismet. Especially for Plant, AoE attacks from the secondary are major, so I would 6-slot Fling Thorns. The 6th slot bonus from the Purple sets is usually not that good, I like to 5-slot them and then put in a useful proc IO. For example, in Thorn Barrage, the Force Feedback proc would be a great choice. My personal choice for pet powers on a Dominator is 6-slot Expedient Reinforcement. While you lose some desired Acc/Dam enhancing, the set bonuses are great. Unless I missed it, you have only one of the 3% defense IOs... put the other one in Tough. Put the Gaussian proc in Build Up rather than a ToHit Buff. 90% chance for an additional huge boost to damage is better than the ToHit increase (if you're having problems hitting, put the Kismet in Combat Jumping instead, and try to 4-slot Weave for the Accuracy bonus from Luck of the Gambler... those bonuses will give you a little better than 15% to hit chance improvement all the time, and that's actually a lot more than the enhancing will boost Build Up.

Like the others, I would agree that Elec/Kin is a good set but not one for soloing. Kinetics is a damage multiplier, but that means that you want to have attacks with more damage so that you get a greater effect out of multiplying it. I would suggest: Fire, for the highest base damages for a Controller (Fire/Kin is a known power build) Plant, for high personal damage, plus extra damage from Carrion Creepers that can be buffed with FS (though timing is an issue) Dark, for decent damage plus buffable extra pets (Haunts)

And to go back to my point about debuffing and controlling, the Sentinel T9s don't lose debuffing or control effects compared to Blaster T9s, despite recharging a lot faster. So while they put out comparable DPS (less up front, but in a more convenient damage vs recharge package), they also put out a lot more debuffing. You can actually plan a character around starting a fight with an AoE mez or Blackstar's -35% ToHit Debuff. I mean, Defenders open fights with -25% from Fearsome Stare (ENHANCED!!!), while a Dark Blast Sentinel gets a 35% (unenhanced) from its T9. Granted, they can't perma it, but when you're opening with about 500 damage on top of -35% to hit, that's better than Fearsome Stare + Darkest Night (because while the debuffing isn't as much, dead mobs are very strongly debuffed)... and Dark Miasma is one of the stronger defensive debuff sets.

New powerset suggestion: Poop Flinging? Poop Blast? Poop Assault?

For example: with the right IOs and damage procs, my build's Psychic Wail will be up at the start of every fight, and do a 12 second Stun to 10 targets with a nice radius. And a -70% Recharge debuff for 20 seconds. Oh, and 500 damage. It gets followed by Engulfing Darkness (APP power) that with procs is about 370. These are up every fight for damage equivalent to Blaste-level nukes, with solid debuffs and status effects. The Electric Blast one has a similarly strong opening salvo except that I think it does a bit less damage but zeroes out the Endurance of the targets hit. Both characters still have some follow-up AoEs like Psychic Tornado, Ball Lightning, etc. Yes, a Scrapper's AoE salvo is up faster, but does it matter? This is still up every fight except for facerolling teams (in which case, does it matter much?), puts out debuffs or controls that limits return fire, and puts out a lot of damage when you want it, at the beginning of the fight. As Frosty said, the AoE damage is solid, it's the single-target DPS where they're not that good. Even with a proc-designed build that takes advantage of having both a longer-recharge attack in most sets and access to a Hold with longer recharge, it's still hard to build a top single-target DPS character with a Sentinel. But they survive well enough to last longer against a boss, and clear the trash pretty well for a character with solid defenses. I am not arguing to say that they're a top AT, or that they don't have problems, especially teaming at the top levels. But I don't understand why you're picking on their AoE damage, which to me looks like their strength (well, that and a solid mix of range/defense), while their single-target weakness and lack of team abilities are their weaknesses.

I don't think it's worth the time to go through all of this, so I'll say a few short pieces: 1: Comparing an 8' PBAoE against 20-25' AoEs/PBAoEs? You'd expect higher damage from smaller AoEs. 2: I don't know about others, but I see major control/debuff effects on Sentinel nukes that make them useable as openers that shut down spawns in addition to doing a good amount of damage, while most Scrapper AoEs are far more damage oriented. 3: Crits aren't on demand. Their chance to occur should be calculated, and the base damage of a power multiplied by the chance to crit bonus, rather than just saying that they happen a lot and then going on assuming that "a lot" is "all the time". That's not good math, if you're going to go so deeply into math. 4: By the same type of argument, ranged damage taken is a lot less, so handwaving away a Sentinel's benefit from having even moderate range doesn't feel right. 5: Similarly, Sentinels will take damage far better than a Blaster. Sentinels with Defense sets will have Defense Debuff Resistance, and they all also have status protection. Granted that Blaster clearly do far more damage, but arguing that Blaster defenses are equivalent to Sentinel defenses at range, ignoring the large differences, and then fixating on 1% difference in base stats for Sentinel vs Scrapper defenses, just seems myopic. This is getting long, so I'll try again to shorten it: your arguments may be right. And they may be wrong. But you're not giving them a good mathematical grounding, leaving aside the whole opinion about what is better and more important when looking at different abilities. And as long as you're going to treat opposing arguments as irrelevant while saying that yours are overwhelmingly important, it's not a discussion that's worth having. To me, Sentinels seem fine... a bit lacking in value for a team due to lacking a focus even more than Scrappers, but still decent enough and excellent soloists.

Well, yeah, but that's because I was comparing the power vs power for a Dominator, who have both powers but don't have Containment. If Controllers had Mud Pots, it would probably get the same Containment effect as Hot Feet, so the ratio should remain even between Controller Hot Feet vs a theoretical Controller Mud Pots.

I went with Psy/Dark in Praetoria. It seemed to fit the milieu, and Dark Armor's high Psy resists should help a lot against the most annoying enemies there (Seers). SR would also do well since it's type-independent, but it has a click mez protection.

I'm not sure, given the relatively popular opinion that TW's damage is an outlier and not really balanced... that it is reasonable to use the outlier set's most damaging AoE attack as "one such example" and implying that this is the normal damage for Scrapper AoE attacks. TW is unbalanced, using it as the point to which other sets should be balanced is not going to result in better balance. I'm not saying anything about Sentinel damage, good or bad... or about the comparison between Scrapper and Sentinel damage. Just that balancing arguments are best done when using balanced powers/powersets for comparison.

There is a persistent rumor going about, that Sentinels have better ranged than melee attacks. I'm glad to see that it's merely a rumor 😁