Sovera

Oof 😄

Uuuuugh, I hate running that on a squishy 😄 Damn cramped quarters...

As Vanden said. That tooltip ought to have been changed long ago since I ran with the same assumption early on HC and had to be told, and went and double checked, to see that yes, it only adds an extra fire damage to all attacks be them fire based attacks or otherwise. Apparently it does work like the tooltip says in PvP but don't quote me.

It's still 50% of the damage on a Tank, but preach on because I'm with you. I would understand the proc nerfing since it was adding a lot of power, but then give back some of it. Instead we get double nerf. And, okay, sure, at least I got the same numbers for mission clearing (once more reports come in we can see how that actually works out on a bigger spread) but that ST nerf made playing a Tanker unpalatable to me.

RoTP is only up every 90 seconds or so (Hasten, lots of global recharge, etc). It's an explosion, a KB, a heal and an endurance recovery clicky all rolled into it. But it's still a defensive T9 meant for when things go badly. And the 90 seconds-at-best makes using it for damage an outlier. Even Blaster nukes are up every 50 seconds at worst making it once every 2-3 spawns. So the Brute/Tanker using it for damage (assuming that they are slotting RotP for damage instead of a panic button with heals) would happen every.. what, 4-5 groups? Not gonna say it would not happen, but...

You make a good point. Pylons are just an easy test subject. Not sure what we could use instead other than some easy AV in the AE. The -resist not being resisted by +3 enemies should show results straight away. Or not. Which is why we have tests.

While FM has everything is needs to finally have better numbers it just feels... generic. Well, yeah, I love having a KD effect in the attacks, and the -defense will allow to slot much needed procs, and combustion is no longer glacial (but still too long for an attack that still does not even kill Gears). But -defense and KD does not scream Fire Melee in the slightest. It's just.. dunno... kinda generic. Buffing the DoTs or adding some sort of mechanic to the set (Build-up makes DoTs happen 100% of the time, or make them do all their damage in the initial hit so that they can 'stack' or whatever someone more ingenious can think of). I'm a bit shy to nitpick because this is a buff the set sorely needed, but as I said above the -defense (melting armor, sure) and KD don't seem firey. But while not firey they are -useful- and that's why I'm shy about rocking the boat.

Yeah, so far there is only looking at numbers and crowing at the buffs, but the two who have tested and reported say the numbers are the same from live to test server. Lets go easy on the general jubilation until more testing has been done.

Define 'really strong'. It's 100% regen, that's about 10 HPS. Not going to spit on it, but 'really strong'? Build on live has 20 HPS and on the PTS it has 30 HPS. Those near 11 extra HP a second go of Temperature Protection go up to 13 with Consume slotted for heals making the build go up to 40 HPS. The combo of regen from Temperature Protection and Consume slotted for heals will double the regen though, but it's a small thing in my book to have an extra 20 HPS when our HP is 3.1k (assuming Consume slotted for heals).

I'm not super fussed about the level change of powers (I hope the bug I reported earlier was just birthing pangs though). I'm also not worried about 'early level' power creep since I'm solidly on the camp that we should have all our powers when exemped (hey, other games manage this). 'Early power creep' is not something testable anyway. The devs being able to lick the problem of secondaries being forced to take the T1 is the real tour de force here and such a magnificent QoL (or power creep, sure).

Yes, but, it's not terribly useful either way. Or should I say it is about as useful as a Rad toggles. Which seems paradoxical since rad toggles are huge. But they don't get used during regular gameplay because everything melts too fast. What is the point of using Rad toggles (or Opportunity) on anything other than an AV/GM (probably on the Tinpex EBs since they are still decently sturdy)? Even a boss lasts a cant handful of seconds. So now there is one less second if Opportunity was used. Different than Rad toggles glacial 3 second activation times Opportunity's no-cast-time nature will maybe allow it to be bound so it is automatically used while in combat. Something to test. Speaking of testing, I beg the rest of you lot to log your Sentinels and test and then bring back numbers. At least with mine there was no improvement (or slightly worse but that can be RNG. We need more data samples please) in pylon times with Opportunity used religiously. So no need to start making noises about being too good of a buff and maybe nerf it some, eh?

Elec/Bio Sentinel. Pylon test, no -res involved, no incarnate clickies: 3:27 3:08 Previous on Live: 3 minutes. No improvements detected despite the upped scalar even if there is some RNG involved in pylon tests. I never ran out of Opportunity since I could not re-apply it before the effect ended and the bar would refill in the meanwhile, so it can be considered a perma effect on a single target, but the perma 15% -res had no discernible effect compared to previous tests and neither did I notice the sapping happening noticeably faster. It is probably one of those spreadsheet things.

The heck you're talking about? The patch is cosmetics only? Patch does no damage? On a Tanker the initial damage is 143 Fire damage followed by ten ticks of 7.39 of Fire damage over a period of ten seconds for a total of 74 damage. So the 'cosmetic' fire patch does 50% of Burn's damage. On live the patch did 40% of Burn's damage. On a Brute I hit a pylon until the Fury bar was full as it gets then used Burn. The initial hit is 194 Fire damage with ten ticks of 6 Fire damage (these numbers fluctuate due to Fury so don't take them as set in stone like the Tanker's ones) making the patch do 31% of Burn's damage. The difference between Tanker Burn and Brute Burn is 17%. Guys, please, test shit out. I am as annoyed at the single target damage loss as anyone else, and my first reaction was that in AoE Burn became crap. But tests showed the AoE remained the same and claims the patch is cosmetic only does not help this thread. Test shit, bring numbers not gut feels.

Fire Armor/Martial Arts character used. Some pylon tests, no incarnate clickies used, no -res procs: 5:27 with Burn used. 5:12 with Burn used. 5:36 without Burn used. 6:06 without Burn. 6:12 without Burn. Previous times on current live servers under the same conditions: 4 minutes with Burn 4:56 4:37 4:55 4:34 Trapdoor test, bosses enabled, no incarnate clickies used, no -res procs: 6:13 6:07 Previous times on current live servers under the same conditions: 6 minutes. I'm probably skewing things with Dragon Tail's FF proc speeding things. To be honest I'm conflicted. On one hand the AoE clear times remain the same despite the too-large-in-my-opinion extra recharge, but the nerf to single target is pretty darn brutal. I don't see what could be done about it that would not increase the AoE clear times though. Perhaps shaving some recharge off Fiery Embrace. Fire Armor remains a good alternative for attack sets with weak or very late AoE and Burn still adds a nice boost to use instead of the weakest ST skill of a build. All the rest works as advertised with Consume increasing HP from 2551 to 2832. Switching to full Panaceia made the HP go from 2579 to 3134. This is pretty decent and bordering the HP cap, but making Consume the carrier of the HP buff does not make much sense since it is a much needed endurance clickie and it is thus slotted for endurance recovery. Frankenslotting will be a thing for the future if the more logical change to attach the boost to Healing Flames is not made. Now being the time to tune the set I would add my voice to making the endurance part of Consume auto-hit. It is a LONG cooldown just to be hit by the 5% fairy.

Tried to respec in Brainstorm. Consume (level 😎 only became available at level 16 at the same time as Crane Kick (also a level 16 pick) forcing me to choose. This forced to either pick Plasma Shield (normally level 12) or Dragon Tail at level 20. This is a respec, not leveling.

I'll test before saying anything, but Burn carried Fire Armor and if it's not good enough the small bumps FA got won't make the set appetizing for anything other than theme. But, testing first before knee jerking. I'll report on my findings.

Holy guacamole! You magnificent bastards, you did it! You finally did it! Something that stumped devs for so many years but you did it!

The damage is not great but /Fire does help and FF procs in TK and Mass Levitate help Burn returning faster. Mass Levitate is serious CC and the FF proc helps it get back sooner as well. Kind of a pity it tosses mobs around. Not much, but it's not a vertical climb and drop so they start scattering. Seriously though, Mass Levitate is on the level of Shockwave in terms of mitigation and much easier to use than a cone. This plays very well with a both a Brute and Fire Armor's squishyness. The damage turns kinda disappointing though. Weird as it may sound I would not even use Greater Psi Sword to eat Insight since Insight is adding Fury boosted damage anyway and GPS is kinda not worth using outside of having Insight, making it an extra power pick and finding slots for it. Hmm... Now I ponder a Psi/Stone with Fury boosted Brimstone and Insight and the defensive power of Stone with the CC of Mass Levitate. That would definitely fix the squish. But soloing until Mass Levitate would be miserable since the only AoE would be the aura and the small cone.

I got to say that the lack of healing is one of the reasons I don't play Fortunatas. I played a Widow for a bit with Aid-Self and it was fine for regular play but trying to do Hami while it seemed to ignore my defenses was too much and I dropped out. Some small suggestions: - You have a Numina end/rech in Health. I think everyone will know what you meant to slot there but, just in case. Someone mathed that a Panaceia proc beats either procs in terms of endurance recovery. For regular play I'd trade the Preventive Medecine proc for it, but for super hard play I suppose it has a place for that extra bit of survival (the game is a lot about stacking small things). - Since you have zero AoE outside of your nuke I'd consider trading one of the damage procs in TK Blast for a FF proc to help shaving those 40 seconds down. The fast animation and recharge would not have it firing very often, but, either proc there is not terribly useful for the same reason and for their damage types anyway (Toxic is widely resisted as is Smash) - The -damage and terrorize proc might not be super helpful but the dmg/rch one in Psychic Wail is way way past ED anyway, might as well slot it in since you'll lose nothing. - There is a -very- fractional gain in swapping the slotting from Mask Presence to Weave. Very fractional though, just a bit of endurance reduction on the heavier toggle and a bit less of 1% gain in extra defense. - The BotZ in Fly could be changed for a Winter's Gift 20% slow resist (I initially thought you meant to slot a -KB in there but Fortunatas have CC protection toggles). - The slotting between Maneuvers and Foresight could be swapped. It is another miniscule gain in defense (about half percent) but more importantly Foresight is an auto that does not make use of the staggering endurance reduction stats the full set affords, while Maneuvers is a decently hefty toggle. - The same applies to Combat Training: Defense auto and any other defensive toggle such as Weave. - Could trade one Unbreakable Guard in Tough for the +HP proc. It's about 100 HP. - The Reactive Defenses resist proc is missing. I can see how those 3% were not considered crucial when you're defense based and starved for slots though. None of these are game breaking and are tiny tiny min maxes at best but since it's a min maxed built maybe you can incorporate them. There are things I would not do like six slotting the Red Fortunes. Cutting them in half and throwing a few BotZ two slots around would give more slots to play with. Hasten is already at 5 seconds from being perma without even a team using Ageless or that FF proc mentioned above so chasing recharge does not seem strictly necessary if wanting a few more slots to play around with. I would not have taken both Assaults either since despite being 30% on paper it's probably more like a bit less than 10% for both, which, fair, 10% for the whole team, but it's a bit of a drop of water (this is a case of hitting something with both Assaults on, then toggling them off, hit the same thing again, then calculate the percentage from the difference. On a Tanker the 15% Assault was a bit less than 5% but I did not do this on a Fortunata). For a character based on support this is probably sacrilege though, but mathematically speaking the gains just don't seem useful. In return for not taking both Assaults perhaps Evasive Maneuvers for more speed in combat or moving between packs or missions as well as being another recipient for two slot BotZ. The other could be Leadership for yet more team wide accuracy to help get over hard mode defenses.

Stone Armor should not have growing pains, but, it depends on how much money you have to throw at it. i found I had nearly 40% defense by level 22 which is a dummy thick amount. If you want to show us your build we can help, and if you need help with how to make money take a gander at my signature.

I ended up leveling this the old fashioned way. The leveling was not hard since I was teamed. The damage... well, it's not great. Like, about Sentinel damage in terms of single target, but it does clear in AoE with soft CC pretty decently and the heal from Dehydrate works very well in keeping the character up (for example the pylon tests required no inspirations to survive and it was not uncommon to be dropped to yellow and heal back to full). The sturdiness is good too. Doing normal ITF at +3 and soloing cysts is pretty good in my book. The pylon hurt more because all its attacks are AoE and the defenses are for Ranged, but the heals kept the character up. Oil Slick is a bit of a mixed bag. Tested on a pylon the initial hit is 605 followed by about 150 ticks (yep, 150, though they roll to hit) for 6.05 damage which makes 907 damage making about 1500 all Fire damage total over a period of about 15 seconds. To compare Geyser does 192 Fire plus 64 Smashing followed by 11 ticks of 17.46 damage making for a total of 448 over a period of 5 seconds. ... that's pretty weak. But it's without combo points. Using Geyser with 3 combo points changes the damage to 72 Smashing, 216 Fire, 72 Fire, followed by 11 ticks of 24.61 Fire for a total of 630. Still weak but worth pondering using Tidal Waves with Geyser instead of using Upshot for the 30% faster recharge for Geyser to come back sooner. Oil Slick is thus a pretty decent pseudo nuke despite its DoT nature not really working well with the current CoH rush rush meta, but it feels good being able to alternate nuke and pseudo nuke in a team and always have something instead of nuking every couple of spawns while always grumbling if someone gets their nuke/judgement off making that once-every-two-spawns moment wasted. This part of the build I liked and would do again. The ST damage is the ugly part though. Pylon tests at 4:20 and 4:48 are pretty much Sentinel level, but, it's the price to pay for Dehydrate. Seriously, even not slotted for heals Dehydrate heals for 4 ticks of 33 HP making 132 HP every 3-4 seconds. With three combos it goes to four ticks of 50 HP totalling 200 HP. I currently have 1671 HP so a regular Dehydrate heals for nearly 8% per use making Water a good choice to go around surviving bad odds, and this does not account for using the combo points when things are dire. In AoE mode when soloing it was not uncommon to slip Dehydrate between AoEs to keep my HP up. After leveling I've changed a few things around. Things I've noticed: - Almost 3 EPS is not enough when in full AoE mode (though lasts indefinitely in ST mode). Probably wants Musculature 33% for a bit more income though the few times I plumbed by blue bar I just used a Recovery Serum. In a team this was not necessary but it was when I parted ways to solo stuff that required vast uses of AoE. - Oil Slick can be annoying and the ultimate troll is seeing 'miss' when trying to light it on fire. I did not feel the mobs were as Fear-ed by it as when using Burn since they did not run off as much. The Slow can be noticed but they hardly ever were KD. - Steam Spray is the only way the build has to light Oil Slick so keep that in min when it's its turn. Glue Arrow would definitely feel better instead of a 'short' range Cone, but, Oil Slick. - Oil slick has a delay between being cast, showing up, and actually be targetable. This is noticeable if using Oil Slick and then queueing Steam Spray/Geyser with them being used but the slick not being lit. I've taken to always cast a skill after Oil Slick and before using Steam Spray/Geyser. During the pylon test I would Oil Slick, Upshot, Tidal Wave, Geyser, as casting all these skills gave Oil Slick time. - I made a few binds for the build to be as hands free for me to drive. They might not be the best for everyone though (obviously change the keybinds to your preference): /bind lshift+4 powexec_location target oil slick arrow /bind lshift+1 powexec_location target whirlpool In conclusion I felt the build was good to survive. I would not necessarily say it was good to -solo- though, for that I would recommend taking Ice Arrow to shut down problematic targets, just in case. The single target is definitely not amezeballs but it's an AoEcentric build and it can spend a lot of time just throwing AoE after AoE with barely any ST skills used, so if someone feels CoH is an AoE game then this will work fine, but if someone feels that CoH is a ST game then this will not be it. But even so other sets might do as good or better AoE (Fire, for example, does everything well, -and- it would light Oil Slick without much input on our side) so I feel that Dehydrate is pretty much the star of the show. Lastly I'm not a Blaster expert and others have chimed and added their own version of this so take those into consideration.

I come from leveling a Water/Tactical Arrow in the old fashioned way. Wouldn't call it the best solo anything and the damage is not rightly impressive, but surviving (normal +3x8) ITF's when the team was having trouble just really shows how the Sentinel's sturdiness fails to shine. Soloing cysts, spawns, even tanking the last boss when the team wiped. Not gonna say I could do it indefinitely but 45% defense and the small heal of Dehydrate kept me about as safe as the Elec/Bio Sentinel. Not 100% sure I was doing more damage (I need to hit a pylon) but I'm also incarnate-less. That said soloing the ITF Council spawns made me remember why I kept a row of breakfrees since they were chain CCing.

Will the real fake nemesis please stand up? Will the real fake nemesis please stand up?

There is barely a benefit in using Granite Armor these days. In terms of numbers the other armor toggles will make you near impervious without using Granite.

You're missing my point. I respect Voltak's knowledge and understanding of builds and how to drive them. What I -am- saying is that a player at the level of asking which Blaster is best to solo with is not someone who ought to be dissuaded from a Sentinel. There are different levels just like simply blindly copying a meta build will not ensure the same result compared to an advanced player. Which is why I stated it was all good advice (even the part about the Sentinels), but my caveat stands IMO.