ForeverLaxx

35 here. I'd say I'm surprised so many are 10, 15, 20+ years beyond me but that's not surprising at all considering it was the same even back when the game was still live. Seems CoH just attracts the older crowd by default.

Adding flying at all to WoW was a mistake. Chances are, the ambush was already headed your way before you even got to Indigo. They caught up because you were standing there reading text. That said, there's a chance that if you opened your mission window and clicked the "show more" button that Indigo's information could be displayed there to re-read. I'll do this sometimes if I get a "multiclick" bug where the game thinks I clicked my mouse twice and closes a window immediately after I open it. The information lost isn't always there, but it often is.

I'm not going to read the entire 12 page thread (as of this post), so apologies if I end up repeating what some others might have said. Without getting into another debate between the "hardcores," the "casuals," and why certain people think they're better at the game (and other players) than they really are, I'm just going to mention that much of the reason behind people who seem to think the game is too easy overall is because they're tackling content that has little difficulty to start with. Yeah, they might be running +4/x8, but they're only doing so against Council and are intentionally avoiding Carnies, Nemesis, and refuse to step foot into the Shadow Shard unless Dr. Q is the featured Task Force for double merits. That's the real issue, in my opinion. We have options to make things more difficult, but players are not incentivized to do it since all mobs have roughly the same EXP reward for their level regardless of how challenging certain enemy types are to a general player. When players were essentially locked into Hami-Os as the "top end" of slotting options, it made more sense to keep things more even as certain powersets could handle the "tough" enemies like Carnies better than others and giving those powersets a boost in EXP simply because they come with more Psi defense/resistance wasn't fair. The game doesn't really work this way anymore, though, and that's coming from someone who still uses only basic IOs and hasn't broken level 40 in two years of being on the server. It may be worth keeping rewards the same so as to not move the Standard SO/Generic IO balance off, but I'm also not against increased EXP reward for enemy types that are typically more difficult for the majority of powersets. If someone wants to make a build that specifically targets these enemies in order to "more efficiently farm," then let them do it. It's not any different than someone building for a Fire Farm and players, as I've been told many times, can get to the level cap within a day or two already. Just to reiterate, I think the real issue isn't that CoH is too easy, but rather, that CoH doesn't have real incentive to do anything difficult in the first place. The imbalance of IO Set Builds is likely to stay so I think starting with the reward structure is a good first step if one needs to be taken at all.

Ah yes, that infamous hacker group known as 4chan. They always gotta be doin' somethin'.

And my experience, which is just as anecdotal as yours, says there's no problem. A Dev already weighed in and found nothing out of the ordinary. If you want to stamp your feet until a different Dev says something vaguely like what you want to hear, you'll be waiting awhile.

6 people with a biased opinion based on kills they can't actually quantify as getting credit for, with rewards falling into the parameters, is not a problem. It was explained pages ago; no need to rehash it here just because you believe there's an issue when no demonstrable issue exists.

RNG is RNG. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, and sometimes you swear it doesn't exist at all. That's just how it is.

Are you not also getting hit at the moment you would have gone into Hide? That can happen sometimes.

This sounds likely since Placate only works against a single target. If there are more mobs around, you aren't considered Hidden against those and AAO may be affecting them, taking you out of "Hidden" for the Placated target. I can't think of any other power available that would explain this behavior.

Whatever floats your boat, man.

So you didn't say this, then? -- I'm not attacking you. These are words you used and I extrapolated based on them. I'm not here to fight you BillZ but you're being really silly. It's probably time to move on.

And more homogeneous. It being a "problem" that the sets aren't all identical across the ATs isn't a problem to me, though. Different ATs have a different focus and that focus will change what becomes important/useful to the AT. Do I think every set fits that mold well? No, probably not, but claiming wholesale that the problem exists due to SR (for example) being slightly different across 3-4 ATs is just your opinion. One I don't happen to agree with. I'm not, though. You want Stalkers to change because you don't like playing them and it just so happens one of those reasons fits into your "all powersets that are the same in name should match across all ATs" campaign. You even stated earlier in the thread that one of the reasons you may not enjoy Stalkers is that you feel like you're "losing" powers in order to gain Hide and decided Hide should just be inherent in order to fix that so-called problem. You have multiple reasons to not like Stalkers. I used one of those examples, which you stated in this very thread, as a reason why you want them to change. If you don't want people to "put words in your mouth", make sure they aren't already there first. This thread has been derailed far enough, though. To the topic of Sentinels, I think they're mostly fine for standard play. They're a ranged option that's more soloable than a Blaster or Defender. I think that's the point. I wish they didn't get outmoded by heavy IO builds late-game, but many ATs suffer from this problem. My biggest complaint about Sentinels is how wide the effectiveness gap for each Primary is, where some are great and others are marginally better than shooting spitballs at something. After that gets addressed, maybe the inherent can be given a look since that's the next big sticking point.

So does Combat Jumping, but the value you start with is so small that it's not worth slotting for Defense anyway. I was just speaking to how there's nothing worth slotting so making it an unslottable free power wouldn't really impact anything beyond losing a potential LotG mule. Which is, admittedly, something that certain builds will probably miss. That said, it's not really pertinent to the thread at hand and I don't think it's the "answer" to Stalkers anyway. It just fits how BillZ wants a Stalker to be since he generally doesn't like playing Stalkers in the first place and wants them to change so he might be more likely to pick one. In other news, Brutal Justice is back with his 40% defense cap talking point so I expect this thread to go even further off-topic.

I know this thread is about Sentinels, but since the concept of "inherent Hide" was brought up again by BillZ's quest to make every version of a powerset identical across ATs (something I don't personally agree with, for the record), the idea of a "free" inherent power already exists with Dominators. All Hide would have to be is a free, unslottable toggle power like how Domination is a free, unslottable click power. Hide already softcaps your AoE defense while active (and invisible) so it needs no slots there, it already costs nothing to run so no slots there either. All you actually lose is a "free" LotG proc mule, which might be worth getting one of the other powers originally lost from the set back. All that said, though, Hide also took the place of some of the armor's own +Stealth power so it's not a simple cut/paste job where all Stalkers get Hide for free and the powerset goes back to having what would technically be an additional stealth power with very minor, if any, use outside of PvP builds. His "simple fix" starts getting complicated really quickly once you go further down the rabbit hole than I think he realizes.

I haven't seen any of these, but then I'm not refreshing the site every 3 minutes religiously in order to catch them.

Everyone's gotta start somewhere. What better time to make a forum account than when the game you love to play mysteriously shuts off and you're wondering what's going on? Not everything is a Nemesis Plot.

If I could give you my ignore slots, I would. I don't use them at all. Specialty channels get their own tabs and if things get stupid in those channels I just don't tab over to them for awhile. It's not too hard to mentally screen beggars, either.

Many people, if they care about badges at all, usually only care about them for a single character. You may not be doing this intentionally, but you're sounding like people in World of Warcraft that would deny entry to a Raid unless you were already geared in armor/weapons that only come from the Raid you're trying to join. In effect, you can only do this Raid if you've already done the Raid. It's your team and you hold all the keys and barriers to entry. I just find it marginally silly that you chose badges of all things to deny/allow people on. It's like you're looking for ways to screen players, find CoH wanting in that regard, and settled on one of only a tiny handful of options available that suggest potential character familiarity. I just find it strange.

This is where your primary disconnect lies. You assume these people don't know something because they aren't doing X thing at Y speed for Z reward as efficiently (in your head) as possible. For a bit of perspective, I'm a min/max player. I roll up multiple Dark Souls/Bloodborne character builds for invasions, built for PvP and designed to do very specific things, whether that's playing into or countering the meta. I'm a deck-builder in MTG. When I'm playing Destiny, I'm grinding for the right loot drops and stat totals for the character I'm trying to build. Back when I played WoW I made twink characters for different PvP brackets and even got kicked from a guild for beating the guild leader one too many times. Even in single-player RPGs I'm making sure my character is built to be the best for the role. In tabletop RPGs like D&D I plan out my character's path and spell selection in order to craft the perfect version of that character. I want you to read the last 5 words of the previous sentence again, just so it's clear: "perfect version of that character." "That character" is the operative phrase. People make characters for many reasons, be that for PvP, RP, concept builds, experimentation, whatever. When I min/max, I start with a goal. Depending on what that character is, that goal can change. Is it a PvP character? Is it a concept character? Is it an experiment? All of these characters are created for a specific purpose, and that purpose will dictate how that character builds and operates in-game. I'm not going to make a character designed for speed-running content if it's meant to be my PvP character just as I wouldn't make choices for PvP on a character who will never step foot in a PvP area. In CoH, every character I make begins with a concept. I select powers that fit the concept, then set up a build to leverage that concept as far as I can. Sometimes that means the character is just a permaDom character. Other times it means that character has "sub optimal" Epic Powers or a "bad" Primary/Secondary Power simply because the concept doesn't work at all without them. You don't know the driving force behind the player's decision to pick certain things or play a certain way. All you have is an assumption that if they aren't playing the way you deem optimal, then they are, at best, ignorant of the systems involved. That's a very narrow-minded, almost elitist way to judge players in a game that never demands the player be turbo charged in the first place. As long as you can recognize that your "best" isn't going to the same as someone else's "best", you'll grow as a player and teammate.

@Snarky Look, man. I'm not going in circles with you. You wanted someone else to do your footwork and compare the damage numbers of Sentinel Energy Blast to Blaster Energy Blast. You neglected to detail exactly how you wanted those numbers compared, which I assume was to give you an out in case you were mistaken. You've taken that out and are now demanding more footwork from other people to support your own claims. You were "thumbed down" because of that reason -- you're like a kid that says he wants a cookie, then gets mad because his mommy didn't give him the RIGHT cookie. I'm not entertaining you further on this. It's just not worth the headache.

Because some of us already are. Just because it doesn't conform to your arbitrary list of things required to be "the best" doesn't mean the character isn't exactly where we want it.

I did exactly what you asked. You said: If you wanted a robust, realistic ST DPS comparison then you should have asked for it. Your constant use of "Arcanatime" as some sort of derogatory "your numbers only work when you change the data to suit them" confounds the hell outta me. Maybe it's you that doesn't know what you want or what you're talking about? No, it's us who are all insane.

Ignoring the fact that Mids is often incorrect about many of the finer details, I went ahead and entertained this just for the sake of it. Outside of Nova, which is admittedly a big drop of around 27 base damage, and that Sentinel EB's replacement of Snipe is about 23 damage short, the other blasts are only 10 points less damage baseline. In an attack chain that can add up, sure, but keep in mind that Sentinel's version of Power Push also does actual damage (and is the highest DPA attacks in the set, no less) so Sentinel EB has 5 single-target attacks to the Blaster's 4. Sentinels, in a full volley of all their ST attacks, will do 297.25 total base damage. Blasters, in their full volley of ST attacks, will do 274.86 points of base damage. Yes, Sentinels are getting an extra attack so they do pull ahead slightly in total damage dealt, but the difference isn't all that much. Energy Blast was probably a poor choice to pick considering it's one of the "serviceable" Sentinel blast sets, but you can see here that your dismissal of their damage as being "worse than a Defender" is patently unfounded since they do more damage than a Blaster if focusing purely on single-target attacks in a standard build. That said, it's not a realistic concept of what an attack chain would be, especially since most players skip one of the T1 blasts. In that case, the Sentinel falls to around 242 whereas the Blaster drops to about 220, leaving the Sentinel still ahead in the end (again, because it gets an extra attack). Still not a likely attack chain, of course, but I did what you asked. Where it starts to actually lag behind is in AoE potential and high recharge builds. With the exception of Water Blast (excluding the set's nuke), Sentinels have reduced AoE caps. This lowers their spawn DPS by quite a bit, and it's hampered further due to their weaker nukes in general.

I mean, if you're going to take the angle of "some Defenders use Debuffs/Buffs to ramp their damage" then sure, Defenders "do more damage" than Sentinels. They also "do more damage" than Blasters in that scenario, too, but try using that argument when Blasters are involved and you usually get laughed at since to do that, Defenders have to spend time laying out the buffs/debuffs which slows down their clear times when solo and can be completely nullified by a single CC or, in the case of something like Poison, miss entirely and do nothing at all. Blaster Ranged Damage Scalar is 1.125. Sentinel Ranged Damage Scalar is 0.95. What this means is that a blast with a base 100 damage will do 112.5 damage on a Blaster and 95 damage on a Sentinel. To "raise Sentinel Damage" would be to increase their damage scalar, something that seems to be lost on you for some reason. The only other way to adjust a Sentinel's damage is to completely rebuild their ranged damage sets and choose different blasts, or adjust the ones they do have by giving them slower recharge so they fall into a higher damage tier according to the Standard Damage Formula.

Running the risk of derailing this thread, what IO Builds do you propose the game be balanced around? Considering the plethora of set bonuses people can chase, and how ED does effectively lower the in-slot values to just above SO level for most sets anyway, trying to balance around "IO Builds" assumes all players are chasing the same bonuses and that just isn't the case. You're asking for the impossible; you should be asking for more ways to inject optional difficulty into the game in order to flex your personal build, not dictate the game be made to suit your personal build and F everyone else. @Snarky The real problem with Sentinels is how widely varied each blast set is and how the AT overwhelming favors defense sets due to their smaller HP cap (though Regen breaks this mold, likely entirely due to the absorb power and nothing else). I feel each blast set needs its own sort of tuning pass, because as it stands, some of them are actually pretty good when compared to other AT versions while the rest are below average to terrible. It just doesn't feel like there was a unifying idea between what each blast set offered, so instead of getting one set of perks in exchange for losing something, some sets just lost everything while gaining nothing. For the base game though, Sentinels are actually pretty fine. They're more soloable than a Blaster out of the box and safer than a Scrapper for the most part. The issue with Sentinels, once you get past the questionable intraAT balance, is that certain IO Builds show how ultimately meaningless your "easier time leveling" means for high-end content. In a world of people PLing and tricking out every character, Sentinels are going to be left behind. Any change made to make them better, though, will likely have to be limited to just how they perform in high-end content as I have no real complaints leveling one solo. I will say though that in a team, some people expect you to take the alpha since you have an armor set. This... doesn't usually end well for most of the armor sets, particularly the resist ones. Maybe that should be addressed first.