Hopeling

One thing that nobody seems to have brought up yet is that TW outright does not follow the design formulas, and instead all the attacks deal more damage than they're "supposed to". For a Brute, here is how much damage the attacks "should" do for their recharge and area, versus what they actually do: Defensive Sweep: 25.7 formula, 30.4 actual (18% extra) Crushing Blow: 68.4 formula, 75.2 actual (10% extra) Titan Sweep: 50.5 formula, 59.6 actual (18% extra) Follow Through: 81.7 formula, 89.9 actual (10% extra) Rend Armor: 121.8 formula, 134 actual (10% extra) Whirling Smash: 33.4 formula, 48 actual (44% extra) Arc of Destruction: 91.6 formula, 108.3 actual (18% extra) So by the game's own rules, every TW attack deals at least 10% more damage than it "should". Follow Through and Whirling Smash then get a DoT effect for free in addition to breaking the damage formula, and unlike Fire which gets DoTs instead of secondary effects, these powers also have a high chance for knockdown. The numbers make it look like the devs thought the Momentum mechanic was going to be a drawback, so they gave it better raw numbers to compensate. I don't think this works out in practice; Momentum means TW is blazing fast for 4 attacks out of 5, which is a pretty major perk. It's only a serious drawback when you can't reliably land a hit, or when you have to move so often that you can't chain attacks together. Now, in fairness, many attacks break the damage formula in some way. For example, Head Splitter is calculated as if it were a pure ST attack rather than a narrow cone, so its damage isn't reduced for being an AoE power; the ability to hit 2-3 targets occasionally is "free". Or for another example, Foot Stomp's damage matches what it would do if it had a 10-foot radius, when in fact it has a 15-foot radius, so it gets that increased radius "for free". Many sets have one or two powers that get free bonuses like this. But TW is the only set I know of where all the attacks break the damage formula. Whirling Smash is especially egregious: it get its extra radius "for free" just like Foot Stomp, then gets the 10% TW bonus, then gets a DoT too! With the DoT, it deals as much average damage as Foot Stomp, in the same area, with nearly the same chance for knockdown (75% vs 80%), with a much shorter recharge and half the animation time - even though Foot Stomp is already an unusually good power! So I think there is a real argument to be made that TW is overpowered in an absolute sense, because the original devs overcompensated for the Momentum mechanic. I don't want to see the set nerfed into the ground either; it's one of my favorite power sets and I've played it from 1 to 50 three times. But if nothing else, I think it would be very reasonable to just remove the DoT component of Follow Through and Whirling Smash; these are very good powers already, and there's no clear thematic reason they should have a DoT at all.

Buffs or debuffs from different powers or different players always stack. Some buffs or debuffs are flagged to not stack from the same player, like Force Field bubble, but Sonic Blast attacks and most support-set debuff powers do stack though. Unfortunately, power info does not display the "does not stack from same caster" flag, so it's hard to tell which powers will or will not stack with themselves except by direct testing or looking through City of Data. As an additional wrinkle, a few debuffs (mainly Tanker Bruising, the Achilles' Heel proc, and Interface procs) do a weird thing: rather than actually applying a debuff, they grant the target a short-duration temporary power, which is an auto power that reduces resistance. This means they don't stack even from different players, because you can't have that same temporary power twice. On the other hand, it means these debuffs are not reduced by the purple patch, because it's the target debuffing themselves, so the level difference is 0.

Technically no; some debuffs are flagged as unresistable, like Rest. But every -res debuffs that players can apply to enemies is resistable, yes. This is already accounted for in Bopper's math though.

I mean, the actual game got shut down. It's hard to give you any guarantees about an unofficial server run by fans. At minimum, it doesn't look like Homecoming is going to vanish any time too soon.

I soloed it with my Beam/Elec sentinel in the mid-40s. I couldn't do it without using stupid tricks with temp powers, though. When you're solo, only one Cleansing Flame spawns, and you have 12 seconds to kill it before it heals him; just pull him to the spawn point and kill it where it appears. For a character with strong single-target damage, that isn't a huge issue, although doing it for several minutes without messing up gets difficult. Also, Positron himself isn't toothless, with huge -def from his attacks and some Radiation Emission debuffs. There are multiple other AV fights to handle too, including the triple AV fight against the Midnighters, which is rather hairy solo. So... yeah, soloable, but I would not call it an easy introduction to soloing SFs.

They are, but that code could be changed in a future patch. cejmp proposed raising that price from 10m to a higher number as a way to take more influence out of the economy, hopefully reducing inflation.

Incidentally, searching for other Sentinel pylon scores reveals that - at least, according to a search for the keyword "sentinel" - Nihilii's Fire/Rad times are the only recorded pylon times for a Fire/ sentinel. So it's not that most players are around 200 DPS and Nihilii is somehow at 450, it's that nobody else has even tried. It makes me want to roll a Fire/Bio sentinel and see what can be done.

Placate is a debuff, like stun or immobilize. The effect of a placate debuff is that the target cannot attack you. The power [Placate] places a placate debuff on the target, and as a second separate effect, it immediately puts you into Hide. Other placate effects don't do that second part, including (as far as I know) the Fortunata Hypnosis proc.

I... just did. Here it is again: Actually, I just noticed that I wrote it the wrong way above: I said "...Tsuko asking how you got less damage for a Corruptor than a Sentinel", rather than "more", stating the comparison the wrong way around by mistake. If this is the entire point of confusion, I apologize for the error. Right, and again, it's not unbelievable for that AT and powerset combo, but it is unbelievable for that specific chain under those specific conditions.

People weren't contesting the power info numbers, they were contesting your projected DPS. Right here: You did not answer these questions. You said you agreed with her assessment of /Storm, and then cited some more DPA numbers, again without saying where you got them. Yes, if somebody posted a pylon time that did not seem believable, I would indeed criticize them for not providing details.

The obvious way: with evidence. Or at least show your work. Moreover, that simply is not what happened. You got multiple detailed responses to your post immediately, all of them pointing out that your numbers were nonsense; you did basically nothing to address these concerns. For example, the very first response you got was Tsuko asking how you got less damage for a Corruptor than a Sentinel, and how you got your numbers at all. You quoted her, but didn't actually respond to that pretty basic question. Instead, you responded with more context-free numbers without saying how you got them. If you throw out a bunch of numbers that look wrong, and don't say where they came from, how is anybody supposed to respond other than to say that your numbers are wrong? Obitus commented a full page later, and also said that he thought you were wrong, without going further into that because all the important points had already been made, and you still hadn't addressed them.

That information is not being received negatively, nor is it "offensive"; it isn't even the point of discussion. Blasters doing 400 DPS is not news and nobody has said that it is. I have no idea why you think this is where people disagree with you. People were criticizing your calculations as not making sense. Nobody said that 400 DPS is impossible to achieve, just that the specific attack chain under the specific conditions you proposed won't do it, because your math is wrong.

Trying to calculate DPS from raw power data is the very definition of theorycrafting. "In-game experience" would be something that involves playing a character, not just looking at their power info.

@Frostweaver and I had an exchange about that on the last page which I feel was reasonably illuminating. Also, the hubbub of this thread is about /Shield just as much as it's about Broadsword/. Even though BS/ is much less popular than Psi/, StJ/, or Elec/, BS/SD is much more popular than Psi/SD or StJ/SD, and the most popular combo with /SD besides Elec/. It's a combo that people are excited about, rather than either set in isolation.

In case anyone else is confused like I was by the juxtaposition of these two statements, Inferno is an outlier among nukes, in that the Sentinel version loses most of its "free" DoT damage. For most other power sets, it's more like 600 vs 1200, instead of 600 vs 2000. That's certainly still a big difference though, especially in combination with a higher target cap. Hybrid Melee is a pretty direct tradeoff against more damage from Hybrid Assault. Rune of Protection is also not an easy power to fit into a build, requiring one of your pools and three power choices. It may not trade off directly against offense, but it probably trades off against SOMETHING, even if it's just Tactics or a travel power. For what it's worth, I think the game is less than 90% AoE at the "level 50 and Incarnated-out" stage, although it depends on what you like to do with your game time. Hard targets like AVs or high-resist EBs (Cimeroran monsters, War Walkers) feature pretty heavily in many high-level TFs and trials. AoE is still very important, but an ST specialist has a lot more opportunities to shine in an STF or Tin Mage or Lambda than they do in level 35 radio missions, and with so many Judgements flying around, clearing minions is rarely a concern.

Not if you have a secondary with a taunt aura 😉 Dark Melee might get a pass too, with the immobilize in Midnight Grasp. Haven't tried it.

You can, it just requires a build that can handle all three types of mitos, and really it's mainly the green ones that are the problem (ie, you need a hold power). @nihilii has done it, for example. The last fight might also be problematic depending on your damage type, since Honoree has high resistances and Unstoppable. The Horsemen are actually not too hard to deal with; they're just EBs. Most AVs are soloable if you don't mind using /ah to load up on inspirations first, and possibly throw Envenomed Daggers. You could really go all-out with Shivans, Warburg nukes, signature summons, etc if necessary, but for most AVs they aren't. My Scrapper soloed Dr. Vahzilok and Clamor this way at about level 25.

Ah, you're right, I had misremembered. The full-duration one is mag 6. Melee Core Hybrid is indeed nice, but it's not specific to Blasters. I'm not saying that Blasters cannot be made durable. I'm saying that exactly the same amount of effort will make a Sentinel significantly more durable than that.

RoP+Melee Core gives a 30-second gap every cycle.

Yes, of course there's an endgame for Blasters. Blasters are one of the most popular ATs in the game and clearly do quite well. The question of this thread was whether there's an endgame for Sentinels in their current state. The claim I was contesting was that Blasters have a way bigger advantage in damage than their disadvantage in durability. If the Blaster focuses very hard on mitigation and the Sentinel doesn't, sure, that durability gap gets pretty small, but like you say, the Sentinel could do the same thing and be even tougher. Or if they focus on offense, they'll still be about as tough as the toughest blaster, and narrow the damage gap. A similar argument goes for Clarion, which some others were talking about - sure, a Blaster can patch their mez hole that way, but they're still only getting mag 3 protection for half the duration, and in exchange they're not using Rebirth or Barrier, which widens the durability gap.

I was thinking something like Kinetic Combat that isn't too heavy on recharge, but frankenslotting would work too. With PPM 5 and considering that proc chances cap at 90%, there's no benefit to a cycle time longer than 10.8 seconds, and since Broadsword's AS has a 1.67s cast time, that means you can enhance the recharge down as low as 9.13s before seeing any drop in proc chance at all. That's 64% recharge enhancement, and the proc itself gives I think 26.5% recharge at 50, so any set with less than about 40% recharge enhancement is already "optimal" in terms of ATO proc chance.

As of i24, PPM proc rates are calculated off recharge rate including enhancements (but not including global recharge), rather than base recharge. The Paragonwiki page still gives the i23 info because Paragonwiki in general hasn't been updated for Homecoming stuff. Stalker's Guile does indeed have a lot of recharge. The good news is that with PPM 5, even slotting the full set in AS will still give a pretty high proc rate, around 75%. If you don't mind missing the 6-piece S/L resist bonus, you could also slot just the proc in AS along with something else that doesn't give too much recharge enhancement, and then put the other 5 pieces in another power.

Right, that's about what I'm seeing too: 25%ish profit on average, but requiring a great deal of micromanagement, and either a high tolerance for risk or pockets deep enough to work in large volumes where it balances out. At current margins, lots of players seem to find it not worthwhile, as seen in eg this thread. If prices rose significantly, that calculus would change.

It obviously would raise prices on ATOs, but I don't see how it could reduce the price of purples. Supply would decrease slightly (Super Packs contain significant numbers of merits, which can be used to buy purples), and demand would increase because ATOs become less viable as replacements. Similarly, the supply of catalysts, boosters, converters, and unslotters would decrease, leading to a rise in prices. The price of Super Packs partially acts as a control on inflation: if prices rise, Super Packs become more profitable, so more people open them, which destroys inf and increases supply until prices fall again. Right now, prices are such that Super Packs are barely profitable, if at all; unless this is just coincidence, it suggests that the control is fairly effective. Raising the price amounts to relaxing this control, allowing prices to rise until Super Packs are once again profitable.

Typing /ah and dragging over a bunch of salvage is often easier than figuring out which salvage to buy and zoning to find an invention table. For really high merit counts, boosters offer a similar return to converters with far less clicking.