Sunsette

A small note about AoE defensive opportunity and the opportunity bar: sometimes it works per target. Sometimes it doesn't. I can't tell which is intended, but I notice it happens a lot less at 50, even soloing, so it warrants a lot more investigation.

Great! Glad to hear it. 🙂What would you feel most comfortable giving analyses for?

That's actually a misread. It's supposed to always convert KB to KD, then there is a separate chance of KD.

Is that intended? Because I let it timeout all the time on my 50s no problem. It's low levels where timing out usually grays it out, for me.

I will do a more detailed check soon since ever since Mids added it, I've been second guessing my own test.

One thing I'd really like to work on, if possible, is to create a group repository of information on Sentinels as a whole, explaining what makes a strong pairing from each primary to each secondary and all of the pool powers, as well as what distinguishes Sentinels from Scrappers and Blasters. I understand that this is a big undertaking, but I think it could be extremely helpful to new players. I have some thoughts on these subjects, but the fact of the matter is, I didn't play CoX live at a very high level of proficiency and there are limits to how much I've experienced in Sentinel as-is. I will say that i would like to avoid contributions from people who are of the position that there is no such thing as a weak choice of powerset in CoX, or of the position that any powerset is so bad it should not be taken by anyone with an interest in m making the most of their characters. I believe it is possible and responsible to speak in general terms about average player performance and also support a diversity of interests. There is no wrong way to play, but I want players to be reasonably well-informed going into their choices -- at least, if they want to be. Some enjoy the discovery! I think the best way to create such a project would be for people to submit "sets" of opinions, where they analyze multiple different powersets in compare and contrast, so that we can get a feel for each reviewer's independently, then have a "czar" for that powerset synthesize all the submissions into something that succinctly reflects the consensus and any important divergences thereof. However, that assumes a large interest in this project. I don't know if anyone else would be interested in contribution. Also, accepting general feedback at this stage. Post inspired in part by @oldskool and their excellent comments in various threads. Set Reviews List of posters reviewing what powersets; click the [X] next to the name to see a completed review. Set Name Review 1 Review 2 Review 3 Review 4 Primaries Archery @drbuzzard @oldskool [X] Assault Rifle @oldskool [X] @Sunsette Beam Rifle @Sunsette [X] @drbuzzard [X] Dark Blast @drbuzzard @oldskool [X] Dual Pistols @oldskool [X] Energy Blast @Sunsette [X] Electric Blast @Save-vs-DM [X] Fire Blast @drbuzzard [X] @underfyre [X] Ice Blast @underfyre [X] Psychic Blast @drbuzzard [X] @oldskool [X] Radiation Blast @underfyre [X] Sonic Attack @drbuzzard [X] Water Blast @drbuzzard [X] Secondaries Bio Armor @drbuzzard Dark Armor @oldskool [X] Electric Armor @Hopeling[X] @drbuzzard [X] Energy Aura @Sunsette [X] @drbuzzard [X] Fiery Aura @drbuzzard [X] Ice Armor @357trall [X] Invulnerability @Sunsette [X] Ninjutsu @drbuzzard @oldskool [X] Radiation Armor @Destlin [X] Regeneration Super Reflexes @Sunsette [X] @drbuzzard [X] Willpower @drbuzzard @oldskool [X] Epic Pools Dark Mastery Electricity Mastery @Sunsette Fire Mastery @Sunsette Ice Mastery @Sunsette Ninja Tool Mastery Psionic Mastery @Sunsette Leviathan Mastery Mace Mastery Mu Mastery Soul Mastery Utility Pools Concealment @Sunsette Fighting @Sunsette Flight @Sunsette Leadership @Sunsette Leaping @Sunsette Medicine @Sunsette Presence @Sunsette Sorcery @Sunsette Speed @Sunsette Teleportation @Sunsette We can have more reviewers than four, but I chose not to assume everyone in the world ever would want to participate in this. I'll increase the number of slots if necessary. I intend to do the synthesizing of reviews into a coherent whole and will also be doing primary reviews on a number of sets; please feel free to keep me honest and call me on my shit if you think I've done a poor job somewhere. I'm initially going to be conservative on picking sets and stick to ones I feel I have a very, very strong grasp on; I'll branch out to ones I feel I have an OK grasp on if we have a lot of holes. If you're interested in submitting a review, this is the current format. Submissions are not yet open, but will be soon barring major disagreements. Set Review Format (Tentative) Powerset Name Basic Qualities:0 If damage primary: High/Med/Low Single-Target Damage1, High/Med/Low AoE Damage2 (# Cones/# Spheres/# PBAoEs)3, High/Med/Low Control4 If survival secondary: High/Med/Low HP/Healing5, High/Med/Low Defense6, High/Med/Low Resistance7, High/Med/Low "Clicky-ness"8. If pool: The main purpose of this pool. Special Qualities: For primaries, list secondary effects here: knockback, knockdown, stun, -regen, -res, -def, etc. Do not include the benefits of Passive or Active Opportunity. For secondaries, list things that aren't defense, resistance, healing, absorbs, or max HP here. So +recharge, defense debuff resistance, any notable mez protection the set lacks or is weak in, etc. If pool: Can skip Other: Anything else that you think should be noted about this powerset. Significant changes in this powerset from their implementation on other archetypes should go here. Beginner's Notes: Any powers or strategies that are especially beneficial to low level or new players to this set. This is a good place to put down slotting ideas for before level 50 (keep it to under 10 million inf. costs please) as well as early level rotations. Skippables/Must-Haves: For primaries or secondaries, list the powers that typically are considered optional or bad. For pools, list powers that are the strongest in the set. Whenever possible, please explain your reasoning. Advanced Slotting: L50 builds. (sky's the limit for budget). Whenever possible, please explain your reasoning. This will probably be a pretty long section that needs subdivisions, I'll work on this some more. Base Rotation: The standard attack rotation leveling up or at early 50s, for people to refine. Note any cooldown benchmarks that may be necessary for a specific rotation if it requires over 70% or so enhancement or global recharge. Complementary Choices: Suggest any primary, secondary, or pool (save ones that are mutually exclusive with this one) that synergizes with this one, and explain why. Ex: Energy Blast synergizes well with pools that contain an AoE immobilize with knockback protection and a strong melee attack to make the most of position with Nova; Dark Blast synergizes well with Dark Mastery to completely floor the opponents' accuracy. Whenever possible, please explain your reasoning. Incarnates: Would skip this for pool powers generally speaking, but incarnate powers that pair notably well with this powerset. Whenever possible, please explain your reasoning. 0 All measures assuming fully geared and incarnated at 50; this is just so we have an empirical baseline. 1 High: ST damage of approximately ≥230+ DPS. // Medium: ST damage of approximately 190 DPS. // Low: ST damage of approximately ≤160 DPS. If damage type is mostly Smashing or Lethal, consider it one tier lower. 2 High: Has 3+ AoEs. // Medium: Has 2 AoEs. // Low: Has 1 AoE. If damage type is mostly Smashing or Lethal, consider it as having one fewer AoE. 3 The breakdown of the number and type of each AoE type. 4 High: Reliably reduces incoming damage from the average pack of enemies by 50% or more. // Medium: Reliably reduces incoming damage from the average pack of enemies by about a third or a quarter. // Low: Controls can be beneficial sometimes but not to be relied upon. 5 High: Unaided, can heal or absorb a third of base Max HP (400) every 10 seconds or less. // Medium: Unaided, can heal or absorb a third of base Max HP (400) every 20 seconds or so. // Low: Unaided, can heal or absorb a third of base Max HP (400) every 40 seconds or more. Does not include the benefits of Defensive Opportunity. 6 Use values derived from Reistorm's chart located here. High: Gets S/L/E or all Positional to ≥32.5%. // Medium: Gets some of S/L/E or Positional to ≥32.5%, or gets all of S/L/E to 20%+. // Low: Any other result. 7 Use values derived from Reistorm's chart located here. High: Gets S/L to ≥45% or S/L/E to ≥30%. // Medium: Gets S/L or E o to ≥45%, or gets all to 20+%. // Low: Any other result. 8 High: Has 2+ abilities with an enhanced cooldown of a minute or less used frequently. // Medium: Has an ability virtually used on 'autocast' or an ability with an enhanced cooldown of a minute or less that otherwise needs to be frequently used for a non-healing purpose. // Low: Active abilities with enhanced cooldowns of a minute or less are rarely used for any purpose but an emergency heal. Outline (Tentative) Why Play a Sentinel? Seize the Opportunity: Sentinel Basics The Never-Ending Battle: Attack and Defense Mechanics Zoom and Enhance: Enhancement Mechanics Four-Color Fantasy: Leveling Red, Blue, Gold, and Black Primary Colors: Blast Powerset Reviews Secondary Strategies: Defensive Powerset Reviews Fly Like an Eagle: Utility Pool Reviews EPIC!: Epic Pool Reviews The Alpha and the Omega: Incarnate Mechanics A Few Provisos: Badges, Macros, and other Miscellany At the moment these are all things I intend to write myself, but I will gladly take volunteers for any sections.

It would be really hard to balance, since the lore pet benefits from your alpha and group buffs, is subject to being targeted and killed, can target independently of you if wanted, and is an absolute DPS increase unrivaled by anything else in the game. I'm not crazy about the lore pet either but I find it hard to envision a scenario that doesn't end up with either the lore pet or the replacement being far stronger than the other for most situations.

Annihilation: Chance for -Res. 3 PPM, works in all targeted AoEs. Pines calls it -20% but I don't believe that's correct. Actually I think it might be -10%. When I used the analyzer I don't think I remembered to compensate for the -2.5 res effect on all our attacks. This was tested on the pylon which has 20% resistance base to everything so it's also possible it's 12% depending on whether or not it is a resistible resistance penalty.

The money is also a big cost to a new player, not to mention the difficulty of finding out such a thing exists, etc. Multiple builds likewise are not great because you have to have the money to completely furnish two builds of one character. On the whole, I don't really think these IOs were good additions to the game, because they've been radically, powerfully game changing for situations that didn't really need it, and the powersets that needed them most were already fighting to fit enough enhancements into a narrow amount of slots.

ATM it's looking like my chains are Disintegrate --> Piercing Beam --> Lancer Shot at Range, adding Havoc Punch to the chain at melee. With disintegrate up, looking at a paper throughput of... 200 DPS, 100% chance of -9.60% Res, 40% chance of another -12.5% Res, + offensive opportunity for roughly 12 DPS, 60% uptime on another -20% Res, 33% uptime on Aim+BU, and -225% Regen.

! Thanks so much! That was a rapid implementation. I don't see the button on my posting bar yet -- will it just take some additional time to proliferate?

Can confirm this is likewise an issue in various Energy Blast powers for Sentinels.

I was under the impression the reversion plans were cancelled as of the most recent announcement (checked approximately an hour ago). I, too, prefer the new forums, with the exception of lacking some way to create tables afaik.

Hi, yes, I am a compulsive data tabulator, or at least I pretend to be one in my four-color fantasy game. I am perfectly fine with having a WYSIWYG editor, I'm actually kinda sick of BBCode, but one way or the other I would really love the ability to use tables -- especially something as simple as wiki or markdown syntax tables. <table><tr><td> just becomes tl;dr or at least too long; hated myself for writing. Pseudo-HTML like the previous implementation's form of tables is really annoying when you don't even have any formatting controls in those tables. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Azrael: You disagree with my subjective perceptions? That's your right. By all means, state your disagreement, it's the only way to have a healthy conversation. It is neither hysterical nor absurd to state my views, support my position with evidence, and make a conclusion -- and it's rude to come in here claiming otherwise when I think I've made a pretty good showing of trying to be polite and thorough in making my point. The facts I cite are undisputed, and enough people agree with me in my analysis of those that it seems unfair to characterize them as fringe. And Bossk, while I appreciate the support -- really, I do -- let's try and keep things peaceable when we're talking about our superhero fantasy game. Finally, yes, there are alternatives to double-posting, and I will try to update my earlier tables to the new formatting when I don't feel like dying.

A useful solution could be a forced collapse where if a signature is above a certain size, you only see a preview which must be clicked. I've seen this solution before on other websites and enjoyed it a lot.

...it is a weird, weird thing in my eyes for one aspect of an ability to stack with itself and another to not. I'm not saying you're wrong or that I disbelieve you, just that it's weird.

You're sure that the Disintegrate DoT and -regen stacks?

Hm. Wonder if it's possible to change the blur and red enhancement screens to Prae Gold then? I actually much much prefer that one to the Paragon and Rogue variants.

It's very possibly the best possible combination for EB to take advantage of Force Feedback, and EB can use every advantage it gets. The added damage bonus from Rad's T9 would be a big improvement. Glad that my build was able to help!

My biggest concern was that recharge has diminishing returns in a way that damage does not which could lead to some unfortunate edge cases, but I think 60% is a fair conversion to at least begin with and tinker up or down as needed. I feel like it'd be a very welcome benefit to the frail, high damage melee pets who languish a bit compared to their ranged brethren. So, yeah, sounds good. I support it.

...I will fix what the upgrade did my table later.

1) This is old, and I have a better build listed in my guide. 2) Empty IO slots in attacks are meant to hold Sudden Acceleration KB to KD. At the time of writing, that set was not in Mids/Pine's.

That was very interesting/informative additional information, thank you.

It ain't DiGiorno, b/c OP delivered. +1 inf. Shame I can't get Reshade working to test out some of those lighting options for myself.