marcussmythe

Just heard in chat in game, cannot confirm, that when they 'renormalized' Energy Transfer Animation Time/Damage, they counted the self-damage component as damage dealt by the power. Suggesting that the intended base damage for Energy Transfer is actually (current damage+self damage) and that it should not be hurting you. That might make me take the set, TBH.

Does Ageless impact your ability to do your ideal rotation, or do you have sufficient recharge to hit it without Ageless? How much recharge do you think is required, total? What I'm finding interesting with the Titan/Bio approach is that it really illustrates power-at-a-price: You can push DPS to crazy levels, with increasing sacrifices in your build. I wonder how much DPS is left in Titan/Bio if you build to softcap all - or is my preference, build to softcap in Defensive Stance, with all remaining 'headroom' in recharge, and maybe in +DAM if that can be fit in.

The problem with relying on resistance is that all the debuffs land, and you get hosed. The problem with relying on defense is that the defense gets stripped away by debuffs. Then they all land and you get hosed - though you may just get floored first by damage if you were relying on defense. Endgame content is well designed to quickly strip any defensive scheme to ‘kill them before HP run out’

Id be curious to see where it differs from the other builds posted. Likely its mostly about execution - TW has a high skill cap.

I wouldnt say too far behind Invuln. Certainly close enough that on a team, the buffs that you should be getting will still render you more than sufficient to handle any anticipated incoming damage. Youll be pretty far behind Granite. Everything and everyone takes a bow to Granite. Granite can only be defeated by bumps in the terrain, curbs, and stairs. My honest advice is (if your concept allows for it), Shield. Shield gives positional rather than typed defense, easier to raise and lacking vulnerable spots. Shield provides additional defense to, and derives additional defense from, nearby friendlies - which can be handy, or give you powers you can just totally skip or use for IO mules. Shield provides the single best self-damage-buff in the game in the form of Against All Odds - it gives you more damage when your fighting a lot of bad guys. A very very large buff if its a lot of bad guys. Guess what you do, Mr. Tank? It also has a nice teleport AOE. See above. The classic pairing for Shield is Dark Melee - Dark Melee covers the main hole in Shield, the lack of a self-heal. Dark Melee provides the OTHER best damage bonus in the game - so long as you have a crowd to draw on. (See above). Damage helps you hold aggro, and you wont always be with a team, and if your solo, you might want to complete the mission this week rather than next. The only downside is other than shield charge, your only in-set AOE is the rather non-AOE Shadow Maul. You may have to switch between targets to spread around the punchvokeing.

1.) Its an impressive build, and the use of Bioarmor can close some of the damage disadvantage. 2.) Its a sad fact that some ATs are just radically better than others. That aside, if we let 'But X can do everything better than Y' keep us from building Y, several ATs and many powersets would not exist. Luckily, its a squishy enough game that you can still have fun even with the 'bad' ATs and Powersets.

Ice will have the best aggro management, Willpower the worst. Invuln will be toughest overall, with some holes. Shield and Willpower will be close enough to Invuln in survival that you probably wont notice much difference, and lack the holes. Shield has a huge damage buff and a built in AOE. All are solid sets, it just depends on your priorities.

I dont have the time nor will to do all the math on that, but what I can say, is the set *feels* like, if the original animation was brought back, and the range of the AoE was extended, the set would be back up to snuff. Hmm. Extending the range/AOE (and number of targets, likely) on the AOE could work. Im still about EM getting its 'single target' hat back, but I may be crying alone in the wilderness, there. If we make it bigger, the leap-spinny-hands bit may not match up. Maybe one of the big, meaty, ground-punch animations, or a hand-clap followed by a wave of energy?

While your visiting with Energy Assault, Energy Melee (in all its forms) might benefit from some attention, given that its noteworth attributes are terrible AOE damage, terrible single-target damage, and an attack you can kill yourself with. :)

Can someone better with numbers than me let me know if reverting EM to its original cast time would be sufficient to repair EM by comparison with other Tank Secondaries? Or do we need to start reworking other damage values and animation times? My gut is telling me that in light of Sets That Have Come Since, the reversion would not alone solve the problem, but Im not good enough to math that.

Id be down for removing the defense crash (but retaining the damage crash). What does it look like compared to other tank sets, DPS wise, if were running perma-rage? Double-Rage? Triple-Rage?

Yeah if I am understanding how he does his calculations(and I may very well not understand) it looks like he is using base damage calculations with max recharge, so he is not including things like buildup in any of his calculations, at least not that I can see, so if every attack just used buildup all things would still be equal, but they don't. Take for example, Energy, Energy Transference at max recharge would substantially increase Energy dps. There are others in there like this also. Well, a model that modeled uptimes for various buffs, potential impact of procs, timing on hide/placate and its DPS impact, impact of Momentum in terms of 'momentum-time' vs restarting momentum, all for ideal attack chains at various levels of recharge would be a lovely model to have - but I'm not up to programming it. That said, his results, even for all that they miss certain things (DM and SS would show much better if DMs near-perma-super-buildup was taken into account, much less stacking rage), the overall results arent badly out of whack with what we already knew. StJ is awesome for stalkers, TW does crazy things for damage, EM isnt seen much for good reasons, anything with the word 'fire' in it is always a solid choice, etc. I do recall seeing old, live tests for StJ that were just nuts for stalkers, and while I anticipate the change from % Procs to PPM will have reined in that number substantially, Ive seen nothing that says to me that StJ isnt a good choice for pursuing maximum DPS. Like a lot of 'later' sets, it performs very well on almost every useful metric.

Im honestly wondering if it wouldnt be even better on a tank - better aggro gen, easier trip to def/res goals, more HP, etc. Now, the damage loss hurts - but how badly? Spines/Bio Brutes arent for AV hunting - cause, yannow, spines - and neither are tanks - so the only loss from Brute is thw room full of minions takes an extra spines burst to drop.

Kinda hard on all the Fire Sentinels who dont want their powers to change? I mean, sure, you would be happy...

Ive wondered about the toggles with the Mez Hybrid, but thats a power thats only ‘doing its thing’ half the time...

... Hold my beer. :)

If I were to persue AV killing, Spines is probably not something that would leap to mind. I recently encountered a +3 Mako the way a sentence encounters a period. Was barely within the real of doable with lore pets, cool downs, shivan, and enchanted daggers, but nothing at all like ‘worth it’. Abandoned my attempt after watching his health shoot back up when I stopped the daggerspam to resummon a Shivan. Its important to remember that they made AVs nigh immune to most debuffs, because Defnder and Corruptor debuffs were crushing them. Amusingly, this results in a situation where Defebder/Corruptor Debuffs still turn off their health recovery just fine (as those be uffs are often very, very large), but the smaller debuffs available to other ATs are unnoticed.

Anything with Energy Melee. Worst AOE, dead heat with Ice Melee for worst single target, self-damaging on its ‘best’ attack, and it brings disorient to the party - I could have played Mace and been better at AOE, Single Target, and Not Killing Myself, and still have the priviledge of watching stunned mobs wander away at superspeed.

Hear, hear. The +DAM looks beefy enough on Mids, then there's playing it and the realisation it's just one part of the picture added to the extra toxic damage (and a -res aura AND damage aura, for scrappers). Pure madness. :D And if you are towards the lower end of the damage scale, the PBAOEs DPS contribution is valued. That plus quills is the only reason my Spines Brute doesnt look much, much worse. Non-Linear Thinking Time - whats the highest DPS AV in the game, and can they be confused?

-looks left- -looks right- Am I the only one who thinks we shouldnt talk about Bioarmor where the devs might see us? :)

This is probably accurate, but I don't think 10:45 is the ceiling here. My fire/rad sentinel is at ~215 DPS (7:16), on one try starting when Hybrid was on CD. Attack chain Blaze -> Flares -> Blazing -> Flares, Aim with Gaussian BU + Inferno with Arma Fire and Fury -RES. Setup: Hybrid T4 (doublehit), Reactive T4 (-75% res, -25% dot), Cardiac T4 Given that Meltdown < Offensive, I'd expect a Fire/Bio to push this time down. End management being a nonissue, you could likely include Fireball in your attack chain with an additional -RES proc too! Oh, Ive no doubt it can be gotten lower. Fine tuning has a huge impact. I also agree that Bio is likely the proper vehicle to do so. I just anticipate that we wont be able to push Fire/Bio times into the Scrapper range, much less Stalker. Probably similar to single target brute builds. No value judgement attached thereby, just thinking numbers. I will note that Bioarmor is a massive DPS boon to any AT that can take it, as is TW. Im wondering where the best Stalkers will end up, since the change from % Procs to PPM.

The only drawback of the set (which is real, if minor) is the attention requirement. I dont know if intentional on the part of the dev team, but several newer powersets that show really top-flight performance are also higher in attention requirement. And my Bioarmor has certainly taken no small number of trips to the hospital that wouldnt have happened on my Invuln while I watched, helpless, stuck in an animation.

As the happy owner of several Bio Armor characters... It doesnt need it. Its a really incredible set already, and as an owner-operator, borderline too good -right now-. Its high return high investment. Heck, its high return on low investment. Its flexible and can cover all bases. If it wasnt so clicky or had debuff resistance, Id never play anything else.

I second /WP if you want to enjoy your TW. Hopeling, I feel you on /Fire. Ive got a /Bio TW, and I waffle a lot between ‘verything dies this is awesome’ and ‘so much clicking this is terrible’

So, thanks to this work: Bio Armor>Fire Armor for Plus-DPS Bio Armor != Saving Sentinel DPS Thank you for your efforts.