Bill Z Bubba

And we both know neither of us have those quotes. They haven't been made. This is not NCSoft's City of Heroes. It's not Paragon's City of Heroes. It's not even Leandro's hidden for 6 years and tweaked to his liking CoH. This is Homecoming's. Old rules need not apply and in this case, absolutely shouldn't. Balance should include the entire spectrum of the game and what it has to offer. It shouldn't ignore a vast portion of content simply because of some ancient and arbitrary statement.

Have the current devs stated so? I don't recall that post. Anything the old devs had to say on the topic became null and void as soon as the SSPS was set up by Leandro.

You win for most correct answer.

O.o Someone needs to up their meds cuz the voices are gettin a wee bit violent.

I don't slot SOs. Or DOs. Or TOs. At 32 I get lvl 35 basic IOs or start slotting sets. How can the game still be considered "balanced" around something that isn't used? Even if you go with the argument that most are actually playing the first 32 levels and not doing the two PL me fast lowbie trials how can we ignore the fact that many that ARE playing that content are leaning on lowbie sets? Or P2W buffs? The game needs to be balanced around how it's actually played, not how we once played or wish it was played. We now have many posters stating that an AT's lack of mez protection is meaningless because it's easy to stay loaded up with the defensive amplifier. I'm logged on to a nature/water defender right now with it and she has 19 set IOs slotted... at lvl 23. The rest are lvl 25 basic IOs. "The game is balanced around SOs" was something people discussed back when we had the OLD difficulty settings. It was stated when we discussed HO builds. It's no longer a belief that has relevance.

No dual blades, either. It has something to do with the dual-wield animations but I don't recall the specifics. It can't be because the leaps would look silly since you can do granite/ma and eagle's claws to the head with rooted feet.

Deleted demon/kin. AT just ain't for me. Like stalkers. No biggee. Love what ya love and all that.

While I would never deny that scrapperlock is real regardless of what AT I'm on at any given moment, this statement is false. My demon/kin's secondary is my primary focus because it has to be so that my demons remain buffed and healed and semi-useful.

Nah. I don't keep what I don't play. I'm not a fan of clutter.

Another option to consider would be to go FU/Eviscerate/Slash/Repeat using a damres debuff proc in both evisc and slash. Fury of the Gladiator for evisc, Achilles' Heel for Slash. That's what my claws/bio runs and if I could tolerate evisc's animation I'd probably go that way on the 3 Bills. The fun part of this chain is that it loads up evisc's already higher than normal base critical chance when using the +crit chance proc in FU.

This is how I judge my characters. If they can't do this, then they aren't good enough. They might be fun, they might be relegated to "team only," I might still like and play them for a variety of other reasons but they will remain not good enough for normal play. Normal play is max diff against everything. Edit: Forgot to mention that this is as true for my claws/sr scrapper main as it is for my claws/sr brute or sr/claws tank. Always a good rule but at that point we're not soloing so thinking of the welfare of others is always a good thing. Although staying at max diff with fair warning also works. 🙂

Kinda surprised that no one really spoke about Bio apart from a slight side mention. I've got 50s of fire/bio, fire/sr and fire/nin and by far, the added damage from Bio makes that one shine above the others. Being unkillable due to all the absorption is a nice bonus.

If that's all there is to it, fine. Go to Dark Astoria, run repeatable missions from Ephram at max diff, compare your gains on a maxed out Sent vs a maxed out Blaster. I already know the outcome.

Sentinels are not blasters. They have mez protection. They have armor. Sentinels come into the mix with built in damres reduction which can not only be stacked with multiple sentinels but be stacked on any damres debuffs you can slot in your build. And again, a non-faceplated sent is going to out-dps the blaster who spends their time licking dirt.

There is no argument. There is no impasse. Anyone that states range doesn't reduce incoming damage and thus the likelihood of faceplanting is delusional or lying. I mean WTF.... go sit in melee on the 3rd mish of the ITF in the spawn of nothing but EB monsters and then hover above them blasting away and come back and tell me that being in melee doesn't increase incoming damage. Seriously. WTF.

Pretty sure they're the same caps. And coupled with being ranged instead of melee, they're actually vastly more durable. Just logged mine on and ate an orange. Yes, damres cap is 75% just like scrappers. Defense cap is 175%. Unsure if that's the same on scrappers.

Agreed. As safety goes up, damage should go down. That's why my scrapper does better damage than my brute which does better damage than my tank. All Claws and SR so it's a true comparison.

Nope. Didn't forget them. But this is a sentinel thread. VEATs have their own ridiculous design issues.

It's in the 30s, so no. Again, precisely because the incoming damage at range is so drastically less than the incoming damage at melee.

It's a fair statement. So explain why I feel the exact same with my dp/sr sent? Edit: Who is in the 30s ... and doesn't hover. Another edit: or my brand new lvl 14 rad/regen sent? We'll discount the fire/nin and fire/sr sents since they use fire blast.

Obvious to who? My fire/bio sent takes down pylons faster than both my claws/sr brute and my sr/claws tank. And thanks to being able to stay at range suffers from VASTLY less incoming damage. See above comment about the discrepancy between incoming melee damage and incoming ranged damage. A tankmage. And that's what they are. They sit in extreme safety blasting away without a care in the world, arguably as safe as tanks and dishing out greater damage. Quite frankly, from the moment I first viewed them when the post-snap CoH was back online, I called them out for what they are: something that doesn't actually belong in this game. But they are here, and I've got several of them because they are fun and they are safe and they do get the job done.

Having recently struggled with my blasters in a way I don't at all with my sentinels, I can't agree to this. I see no reason for sentinels to match blaster damage output at all, in any area, when they spend their entire existence cruising along with vastly superior mitigation.

They're gone. Replaced by a single demon/kin who is now 34 and pretty heavily IOed. I don't think MMs are for me regardless of any possible changes.

I can only assume that we were never told that there would be no math. @BopperYour work is wonderful but it's starting to feel like we're diving into Heisenberg levels of silliness.

I've got 3 MMs that are languishing and damn near close to deletion. Part of the issue is that I can't use the 3 attacks I'm given, or the others I take from power pools without bottoming out on end even with 4 perfshifters in stamina on all 3 and proper end-red in each of the attacks. I could do what others suggest and sit back idle while my pets do the work but then I get bored and if I'm bored with a character it has no reason to exist. Remove the end penalty, please. Return MMs to the normal end usage equations.