Sovera

The problem with Sentinels is not their inherent, their target cap or their damage. The problem lays deeper and will not be easily fixed with a quick band-aid. The REAL problem lays in the current City of Heroes. When we sell a Sentinel as 'ranged damage, but with armor so they are sturdy' it makes a newcomer think that there is such a thing as a glass cannon aspect to the game such as playing, say, a priest or a mage in WoW, where gameplay, knowing skills, kitting and etc is necessary to survive, but, always as a glass cannon that cannot take more than 3-4 hits before going down. In CoH this has long since not been the case. With IOs we don't truly have glass cannons anymore and for a long time now. Armor? We can use a Blaster and be softcapped. Mez? We can use incarnates to close that hole. So the problem here is deeper because if we are selling an AT saying they should be doing less damage since they are ranged and also have armor and mez protection then a Blaster is just 🙂 as they hear it. But now you could say, but Sov, a Blaster needs to be at high level to have this while a Sentinel has it at a much lower level? Do they? Do they really? Other than super early blooming sets such as SR it still requires to be in the 40s or maybe 50 for a Sentinel to be softcapped unless they use inspirations, and if they use inspirations a Blaster can use them too and be softcapped as well. That leaves mez protection that a Blaster must wait for level 50 to obtain and then not be able to exemp down without losing it, but in a game with AH bought Breakfrees this is not a huge problem, nor do all factions have CC to begin with. Someone might then say, but Sov, during leveling... What during leveling? A casual player can take a week to reach max level. If they play the character for two months before becoming bored what is a week of leveling, or just 2-3 days if they are happily logging on each day to smack bad guys? Alright, this is not another Blaster VS Sentinel thread here. My point is that the way the game sells classes they are each with their downsides and strengths, but the IO game has changed this so that there are no downsides, so when we are sold a class who is supposed to do less damage AND have target caps AND a wacky inherent because they are oooooh, armored and sturdy and CC protected. the truth is that we are only getting the downsides. And while we can compensate for downsides we can't really augment strengths. We can softcap a character and make them sturdy, but we can't give an AT a (substantial) damage boost. At most we can give lots of recharge to increase DPS (not really a damage boost per se) but the characters who softcapped themselves ALSO give themselves that so the gap is not narrowed down.

My own take on Aim (and BU) is that a Blaster's damage is nearly inconsequential compared to the nuke, and the nukes take too long to recharge to be used at every pack. So when I play my Blaster what I do is NOT use Aim and BU on the first pack, just the nuke and then regular AoEs, at the second pack THEN I use Aim and BU to empower my regular AoEs. Aim and BU together sort of fill for the lacking nuke, and when we use the nuke it already automatically kills all minions leaving the regular AoEs following after moping up the lieutenants with ST attacks to finish the last sliver on the boss(es). That said you can be a bit more proactive with popping Aim and BU. If it takes 3 seconds to get both off don't run to the middle of a pack and then pop both. As you're running there start popping them. With minimal practice you'll get the hang of the timing to not do it too soon and waste time while you finish snuggling to the middle of the pack nor too late that you are there and soaking damage while running through the activations.

It's late in the suggestion thread, and when I mentioned it there was no traction, but I'll bring it back again since the conversation has returned to the homogenization of the classes between Brute and Tank. Now the truth is that it's not Brute VS Tank we should look at but Brute VS Scrapper. The difference between 90% (seldomly achieved outside of a /Radiation or /Electric Armor since how often do we usually team up with a Thermal or a Sonic?) and 75% is minimal IN PRACTICAL TERMS. Yes, spreadsheets show how much more survivable the Brute will be. Spreadsheets are fine, but in practical terms is there really a difference? S/L or Fire my Scrapper can be tossed into a ComicCon and be at agro saturation levels for 5 minutes in a row and survive it just fine. Do we ever reach target saturation outside of special farm maps? Even regular farm maps don't do agro saturation since they tend to be one pack of mobs and we rarely go about agroing one pack and then bounce to the next and wait for the two to meld. So, if, IN PRACTICAL TERMS NON SPREADSHEET, the trio of Scrapper, Brute and Tank are all so similar what separates them? Agro management. - The Scrapper has weak agro grabbing and anyone playing it is not going to aim for REAL tanking. What they might do (as I do) is jump into the spawn first, toss a couple AoEs, make the mobs mad at them for the first few seconds before they all die under the rest of the team's onslaught. - The Brute is the mid-term. People want to tank, sure, but are not aficionados to the point of wanting to slog under the low damage Tankers currently produce. They may care about grabbing agro, some might get Taunt, but bottom line: a Brute player wants to do damage and tanking is secondary but most of the time it is an actual consideration unlike a Scrapper player. - The Tanker is that masochist that wants to keep the team safe and soak ALL THE AGRO IN THE WORLD, AAAAAAAAH! They slog through the game with their attacks coming late and doing less damage to a point that one of the first fixes Cap Powerhouse instated was adding an extra 20 points of endurance because that's how slow they are at killing things. So anyone who currently has a Tanker IS that masochist who wants to sponge all the agro already. Surviving? Other than 5% of the game such as some prrrrrretty specific AVS (not all of them. Has Imperious in ITF made anyone tremble lately, even as a +4?) surviving is not a consideration. Heck, most Blasters can facetank MOST AVs. So, do Tankers really need to up their damage? Sort of. A Tanker is not a class someone picks to solo things. It's the class picked for teaming. In a team a Tanker's individual damage is not much of a problem. Yes, in spreadsheet terms in vacuum their lower damage drags a team down by some single digit percentages, but things usually revolve around T9s and Judgements and unless we are timing things with a watch no one is going to notice that the Tanker that was brought slowed things more than if a Brute had been picked. Where this is noticed is in farming where 1-2 minutes of being slower when doing 6 minute runs is an appreciable difference but not really in a 30-40 minute full team TF run. So, damage buff? Yeah, sure, why not? But it's not what the class is about. Those who care about damage and want to play melee are already running Scrappers or Brutes. Those who run Tanks want to be agro sponges. So I re-re-bring my suggestion (without knowing if it is really mechanically feasible): make a TANKER's Taunt become a PbAoE that does an inverted KB. Give it a good radius. Instead of knockback (push away), or knock up (push up), make it an implosion (pull in). All that scattered pack of mobs with some at range, some in melee, are now a clumped ball around the Tanker fit to be AoEd down a la Death Knights in WoW. 'Shit, dude, don't knock mobs away...' BOOM! Tanker reels everyone back in. And I mean, does anyone here not think that this would be a lot more mechanically distinct than what we have? Or that it would not make a Tanker worth their weight in gold and make them super attractive to any team?

This is a bit late now, but as someone who had been doing the Widow's arc each time and took the suggestion to do Black Scorpion I was very pleasantly surprised at how much faster it was. Auto complete the third mission and ignore mobs to look for the objectives for all the others. For those who want to rush through remember to -1 x1 the difficulty.

That's the general consensus. In fact, even Hemorrhage is skipped. The link I posted has some detail about it.

I'm just 21 but I'm not super amazed yet either. The endurance discount isn't doing much atm but once at 22 and having bought the usual IOs it may change. Flurry being a measly 8y radius AoE was a unwelcome surprise too and not wanting to use a fully charged finisher also adds another layer. Yet that link I posted seems to point it works well in actual use. I've no interest in farming but there's no reason it should not translate well for regular play.

I'm actually making one, but made for all purpose and not just farming. I'm not sure if it will be all that, but heck, I never played FA or Savage Melee.

I'm definitely interested in this and will try to butcher it into something all purpose. I've never played FA *or* SM so it will be something new to try. Before I start my butchering have you tried making a generalist version of this?

*headscratch* Anyway, for the OP. I don't know if EA is fixed but there is something missing from it and I'm not sure what, but even softcapped and such it feels real fragile. Perhaps because the heal is a bit too long. But this is only in really intensive farm like saturated target cap situations that do not arise from regular play. For regular play (bounce to a spawn, smack them, move to the next) EA is fine.

*recovery

The difference with DNA Siphon lies in that if you use it on live targets it grants Endurance, but if you use it on corpses it provides with Recovery. So once you kill a spawn, pop DNA Siphon and you'll be full of blue juice. In practical terms it's probably best to use it after the initial volley of AoEs that killed all minions (corpses despawn after a few seconds, so the minions will have disappeared by the time the lieutenants and bosses have been killed). This makes for very easy use while doing regular content but falters once hitting something for a few minutes since the Endurance part of DNA Siphon barely pays for its activation against a single live target.

Alright, good talk.

Farms farms farms. Once in a while someone mentions they made a FA character for regular playing and it is completely unkillable because of its toolbox. Anyone has a base build for it with their experiences on the topic?

Yeeeeeees, buuuuuuut, thiiiis iiiiiiiis fooooooor theeeeeeee claaaaaaaass caaaaaalled taaaaaaaankeeeeeeer.

Tanker is a class, not a role.

YOU!

Amazing amount of testing, Myshkin, simply amazing! Sorry to hear about your twitch finger though. I quoted just to mention that I don't know which browser you are using but there are several addons that fix this problem. The old Lazarus, the more recent Form History Control and Textarea Cache (I have both, juuuuuust in case after a few fatal accidents like you had).

When in doubt check https://forums.homecomingservers.com/status/

All those changes for mercs, like, wow, I'd play one. One of you MM afictionados should go to the COHX test server and report on the changes. Especially removal of brawl.

This was very informative to someone who does not play StJ. Thanks for the time taken to write it all down, Frost. Tbh Rad isn't very thematic at all for my character, it is Staff I'd like to get into, but I like the ST damage of Rad and ST is where Staff flounders a bit. A close second would be StJ though and that makes me interested in checking it up on the PTS. I think the proc removal off Contaminate is not yet 100% removed though. I have noticed Blistering Cold's icey proc hitting different enemies than the one I had targeted.

I have never played an StJ (though I do love the animations) so take what I say with a grain of salt. I perceived it as being pretty AoE-less though. Isn't Spinning Strike a six yard radius AoE? I don't visualize it hitting many enemies which in practical terms makes the claim of having a better AoE a bit iffy if their numbers are similar but one hits twice as many mobs. Personally I would put Irradiated Ground firmly in the ground of underestimated AoEs. It's basically two patches doing hurts and spewing procs pretty much 24/7 (once we settle down to fight, if we are always on the move this does not happen), and more importantly we don't waste animation time on it, so it's ticking while we do our bit with other attacks. And then Contamination effects. Not much damage, but there and in AoE. Right now I do three ST attacks while waiting for Atom Smasher and using Siphon last so the other two can use the Contamination effect before Siphon eats it. Friendly argument, I have no vested interested on either side and haven't even played an StJ to speak with assurance that X has the better AoE.

I've managed to drain and keep mobs drained with my Elec/* Sentinel. I've also noticed that most of the time I have killed things before this has happened which made the draining useless.

Rad only has one power that demands being close to the ground. It can be annoying because of that, but I've leveled both a brute and a scrapper with it and it worked fine, it just requires to point my nose to the ground when using Atom Smasher. I recommend a Rad/Bio. I'm leveling a Scrapper but it can easily be converted to a Brute. It doesn't need anything expensive to get started, the brute has better AoE (Electrifying Fences + Ball Lightning), the scrapper has better ST (my best time so far 1:45 pylon), both I've thrown at Comic Con during idle times and they survived fine. Street Justice is slightly better ST further, but has no appreciable AoE, where Rad has a Footstomp like power + damage aura, and /Bio is pretty survivable and has a *second* damage aura.