Sunsette

The 25% dampening to reduce the effect of being AoE was implemented, if that's what you mean. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,6646.msg55599.html#msg55599

Appreciate the build, Rath. It will be a little while before I get around to actually making that archer as I have a lot on my CoX plate ahead of it, but I will be sure to come back here when it's ready. :D

I RP villains all the time when I'm GMing for tabletop, but I make those villains with the understanding that my players will take them down; I get no joy in those characters except in creating an enjoyable experience for my players, and I frequently get pretty emotionally shook up after a session if something particularly bad happened. I find the idea of playing a villain for its own sake to be completely and utterly cringe-inducing. People tell me about their 'badass' plotline brainwashing Praetorian Penelope Yin -- a character whose primal persona we met as a child, the Praetorian version of which subjected herself to remarkable torture to try and stop a horrible evil -- and I seriously just cringe in real life thinking about it. The idea of even fictionally enabling or glorifying that is totally anathema to me. I don't understand it, and I don't want to understand it. I'm OK with the fact that a lot of people enjoy it, there are things in other areas I enjoy that cause people to cringe too. But I don't want to be anywhere near it in my game time. I could get behind being the 'hero of your own story' where people who genuinely mean well come into conflict with traditional heroes, but I haven't really seen anything that suggests the actual lore underlying most of the missions on red-side actually underscores that. I've done a bit, y'know, but it looks like it's pretty much just someone's headcanon between being either an Arachnos flunkie or total megalomaniac. If that headcanon works for you: more power to you. But it doesn't for me.

While it would be nice and +1 for the idea, it may be easier to just add a measure of air control to Super Speed, as Ninja Run and Combat Jumping have which basically allow for all sorts of ludicrous shenanigans. Something like this may be very difficult to add into an engine this late and without the full toolchain.

While I appreciate the feedback, I include a lot of discussion about the poorness of the experience generally both in the original post and in later updates, and in fact pointedly have been ignoring the fact that Sentinel ATOs boost range, at which point Energy Blast KB's become a lot more tolerable in the solo experience. There is quite a lot of quant data and anecdotal examples and 'feel' analysis altogether in this thread. The HC devs are free to ignore what they feel isn't relevant, although I don't think completely ignoring things that exist and are widely accessible is a very good way to analyze anything. We can't assume optimal case scenarios, but we also shouldn't pretend that they don't exist either. The point of citing an optimal case scenario was to show just how systematic the problem is if it carries into the most endgame of builds, millions of influence deep, from the casually observable problems that exist at the low levels of play. Citing IO procs is a best case scenario, too. If we just go with straight SO builds and avoid epic power pools, the problems become only more distinguished. You're looking at an EB chain there of maybe 110 DPS at 50 to Fire pulling 180 just from looking at the basic attacks at Mids. None of which touches on just how abysmally knockback synergizes with the default ranges on Sentinel, but fortunately, I also discussed that upthread.

Range is per-power. I don't know any way you could see it dynamically change. If you bracket the name of a power in chat and hit enter you can see its effects independent of buffs and enhancements, but that only works if you have a way to uniquely identify the power the AV uses, otherwise it'll show you a player ability by the same name if one exists. Trickshooter, been meaning to ask, can most player melee attacks be enhanced for range or have they all been flagged to prevent this?

100% agreed with that last post on everything (AND BUFF FLURRY).

I think Afterburner takes away something that made Super Speed feel thematic and fun. As far as flight... I think it was a mistake to begin with that flight's 'ultimate' achievement was group fly (but not any worse than whirlwind; LRT and Acrobatics were always good until there were too many convenience ports and the nerf, respectively). I also think it was a mistake that characters never 'felt' fast while flying until Afterburner , given that many iconic flyers are very fast in their flight. I see what you mean about Super Speed being allowed to raise the flight cap instead and that could have been fine too, I remember wishing that it worked that way back in early issues. But I have no preference here since lately there's a shift to make people who are fast flyers not also be as fast running. Superman's ground superspeed has been inconsistently but usually de-emphasized the last few decades, for example. My problem with Burnout (and also with Hasten) is that it's not really how Superspeed actually works in comics and I don't see it ever doing anything like that in Pencil and Paper. Being able to do everything more often isn't the same as doing those things faster. Being able to do things more often is really about your stamina, not your speed. If I could have built the game from scratch, I'd have made animation times able to change dynamically with Hasten effects, but have it do nothing to the global recharge. I remember taking super speed on my Martial Artist and just gawking at how -not- fast any of his attacks felt. Sometime around the T9 he learned chi flight instead and I abandoned the notion that he was a superspeedster. Anyway, too late to fix Hasten, but I don't think it's too late to give Superspeed things that feel fast in combat. Hell, I'd be down for 'speedburner', a slottable auto that makes Superspeed raise your defense somewhat and reduces the effect of travel power suppression.

The tankiest Sent secondaries overall are probably Energy Aura, Invulnerability, and Bio Armor (if you IO set bonus the hell out of it, it's almost like it was designed to be as exploitable as possible for IO set bonuses). EA and Invuln are lower performance but aren't nearly as vulnerable to being exemped. Super Reflexes and Ninjitsu get up to tank quality fast but will be outshined at taking alphas by those three at end game. I know you're interested in doing it from a low level but I feel it's best to be up-front about that. I think it's really hard to argue using anything besides Dark as a primary except that Dark doesn't have great damage, so it really won't take long to rip them away from you. But you're mostly interested in the alpha, so that's okay.

Difficult, no. I actually think it's really fun, in fact, to make a game out of jumping over obstacles and dashing around them. I also think it's fun to dodge tall buildings and navigate windy caves with afterburner. But it is more involved in any case -- I can just go on autorun for a sec and tab out while flying if I want. I don't think the devs messed up by adding afterburner, but I do think the speed pool needs something else good to recommend it. Hasten is ridiculously good and Superspeed has its uses -- recently doing the Praetorian underground I was just remarking how much better it would be to have superspeed there -- but there's nothing to ever make you want to go three deep in Speed. Could we have a "Super Flurry" attack or like a crashless mini-Elude or something? And yes, SJ could use something since it's now lackluster against Fly and Superspeed -- we're not the same game we were at Issue 0 with Praetoria, Ninja Run, Inherent Fitness, etc. Teleport's biggest issue is that it's supreme at transport but it does literally nothing for you in combat except in PvP but also in PvP everyone takes the IO to resist enemy teleports I assume...

22 is probably a bit early to try it, but yes, you can absolutely take alphas as a Sent and I have done this in groups pretty often.

Opening salvo against an enemy with Energy Blast at 60 ft. range: 20 to 50% chance they land on their ass and go outside of my range, requiring me to move to keep up pressure on them, and you rarely get single pulls, so, interrupted DPS. You close much more than that and you also make it easier for them to reach you. This is not +defense. The AoEs aren't really any better. I experimented a lot with various set-ups and invariably I found I killed faster and died less if I actually put up a KB-blocking AoE immob and then just cut loose immediately, a beneficial quirk of the interaction between Sentinel immobs only being Mag 3 (that is, not enough to trap a boss, who tend to be the most dangerous and yet also poor immediate kill targets for Energy's atrocious ST damage -- better to kill all of the support first instead) and knockback. I'm going through the exact same leveling content with a reroll of the exact same character, only changing Energy Blast to Beam Rifle, and I die far less and fight far more effectively. (All Praetoria content. If it ain't gold, it ain't bold.) There was a mission my EB/EA died to four times straight up that was instead an exhilarating, intense, but reasonable challenge on BR/EA. And I've made a point of not getting anything I didn't get on my Energy Blast version of the character -- no money handouts from my main or handmedown IOs. Water Blast shows what 'throwing people around' can do when it's done right. Energy Blast... doesn't. Solo or on teams. Not for Sentinel.

So I said this fairly early on: And I meant it. While I'm collecting data as fast as I can, there's simply no way for me to give an honest answer across 'all Sentinel primaries.' Furthermore, there is in fact more to the game than damage, and the lack of synergy between Energy Blast's secondary effect and the Sentinel role is a significant contribution to its problems. But if we want an idea of how most Sentinel primaries perform in ST, my estimation of how well they perform is that median performance for a dedicated player at max level is going to be about thrice the DPS of the highest single DPS attack in the set's base value.1 Following that, again, rough estimation. Archery 210 Assault Rifle 165 Beam Rifle2 240 Dark Blast 185 Dual Pistols3 189 Electrical Blast 249 Energy Blast 186 Fire Blast 324 Ice Blast 240 Psychic Blast 225 Radiation Blast 186 Sonic Attack 225 Water Blast 1504 1 Highest DPA attack in EB is 60, my DPS is 180; highest DPA attack in FB is 100, Fire Blast parses seem to hover around 280 to 320, with nihilli in particular getting 360, and Fire Blast's highest DPA attack is 100. 2 Disintegrate effects included. 3 Incendiary Ammunition included. 4 I have absolutely no numerical data for the benefits of Tidal Power. So with this very rough estimation, what are we seeing? First of all, a median of 210. EB is looking in the bottom third of sets here for ST damage. Its peers are: [*]Assault Rifle [*]Dark Blast [*]Dual Pistols [*]Radiation Blast [*]Water Blast 1. Assault Rifle: 165 It's looking pretty awful. I can't say I'm seeing any strong reason to take it. While it has a mix of secondary effects, unlike a lot of newer sets, most of these secondary effects are bad or weak, the strongest exceptions being Burst (it allows slotting of Achilles' Heel, but OTOH, it has a terrible chance to activate) and Disorienting Shot (with a measly 3s base stun even if it is Mag 3). M30 Grenade as discussed in the first post is a very slightly superior version of Explosive Blast in Energy Blast. I'd consider it as bad as Energy Blast, maybe even worse, barring something huge I'm missing. 2. Dark Blast: 185 This one's been getting some recent discussion over in the Sentinel boards, so I expected it to show up here. However, the secondary effects are much, much stronger here, given that's Dark's signature trait as an attacking set always. As is standard for Dark, every single attack applies a hefty amount of -ToHit, making it a strong psuedo-support. Umbral Torrent has a strong KB of 8.31(!) that always triggers, putting Energy Torrent to shame in return for a narrower cone shape. Abyssal Gaze has an OK Mag 3 5.2s Stun, which is great for an opener on a hard target, and it comes with a self-heal attack. I think it's hard to make an honest argument this is a bad set, but it might be reasonable to say it's mediocre for a Sentinel set. 3. Dual Pistols: 189 Dual Pistols loses a lot in the transition to Sentinel because, unlike Defender, Corruptor, and Blaster, there's no other way to give it an Aim + Build Up or Double Build-Up Effect. It is not a strong set. But I have actually played a Dual Pistols Sentinel (though not to 50) and I would be hard pressed to say it's as bad. Its AoE is far better than Energy's with no unnecessary KB (Bullet Rain if you don't swap ammo types) but a lot of KD if you want it, and Piercing Rounds lets you cheat Annihilation: Chance for -Res into your ST rotation very reliably, which stacks with Fury of the Gladiator in the T9. It's not gonna win any pylon races but it actually brings a lot to the table on the AoE front. Definitely better than Energy. 4. Radiation Blast: 186 Every single attack can slot Achilles' Heel, and Irradiate and Atomic Blast can slot Fury of the Gladiator, and Electron Bomb and Neutron Haze can slot Annihilation. That is reliably -20 Res, -20 Res, -12.5 Res respectively. Way better than Energy, which can only get Annihilation and Fury, neither reliably. Radiation should melt in AoE and do about 15% better than listed in ST. 5. Water Blast: 150? I have no numerical data for the Tidal Force effect, but this is generally agreed by most Sentinels on the discord to be one of the six strongest primaries that Sentinels have, from unusually high Blaster caps for AoE to its excellent herding AoE controls. Even if Tidal Force raises the damage by no more than 10%, water can handle groups really well and that's important. I have never seen someone say "Water Blast feels weak", and I have heard that about literally every other set in this list of five + energy. So it's very possible that Energy Blast isn't uniquely bad -- there's one other set about as bad. Neither are near the median and my asked-for buffs would place Energy right about at that rough median, in fact.

I have already completely addressed the value of knockback to an Energy Blast Sentinel, discussed how it is often more harmful than helpful while leveling1 2 3 4, acknowledged that Fire Blast is a high DPS outlier upwards5, and did not request buffs to Energy Blast that would, in my estimation, do more than put it at approximately 70% of the ST damage of Fire Blast rather than approximately 50 to 60%.6 7 It's entirely reasonable to disagree with me on my estimation of the values of such things, but I very definitely DID address those things. 1"Constant random Knockbacks and a 60 foot range don't synergize." 2"Power Push is the only good attack in Sentinel Energy Blast, which means that while leveling up, one of your attacks is constantly throwing enemies out of range out of all your other attacks, unless you surrender an IO slot and a lot of influence to fix it." 3"...(W)hy random KB on attacks is a terrible gameplay element..." 4"Suffice to say that if your soft control is not only the most controversial form of soft control in this game that has arguable team utility and it's also bad for you in solo, it's bad." 5"Fire is a high outlier, but I shouldn't be pulling Pylon DPS numbers of 170 to 180 when a similarly geared Fire Sentinel using similar gearing philosophy gets DPS in the 360 range. I expected to be within 25% of fire, not pulling half of its numbers." 6"...(S)imilarly geared Fire Sentinel using similar gearing philosophy gets DPS in the 360 range." 7"Based on my pylon parses, this would give Energy Blast a 16% higher parse, at about 210 pylon DPS and make it very reliable AoE control." I would love it if there were a 'if hit someone while knocked, damage increases' mechanic but I'm not sure it wouldn't violate the cottage rule, since I suspect at least some players of Energy Blast may enjoy it for not having the complications of, say, Water Blast.

Pretty useful list, thanks.

Fair enough -- still think my next archer'll be blaster though. Tactical Arrow looks -fun-.

Just chiming in here to say that I think Obitus' summary is very, very well thought-out and even-handed. It's about as accurate a 'state of the sentinel' post as I've seen. I've been heavily on the negative side on Sentinel, but I'm leveling a BR reroll of my Energy Sent through Praetoria and the performance is so much better it's ridiculous. In hard content, you really feel it if your primary sucks, and I think Sents possibly have a lot of bad primaries (from a casual scan, AR and Psy are not looking hot at all and of course Energy is bad) which can be responsible for some of the serious ups and downs in how people evaluate them.

I know one thing -- I don't foresee myself trying an archery sentinel anytime soon. They look like they might even be worse than energy when it comes to AoE. The T9 is the saving grace for a lot of them but it's one of the worst attacks in the set for Archery, at least at first glance. Hopefully the ST redeems it a little bit, they're at least higher on that front than Energy.

Also because it's important information that I'd also been meaning to get onto the web: List of disintegrate additional effects in BR at 50 Single Shot: -75% regen for 10 secs Charged Shot: 13 damage Cutting Beam: 16 damage Disintegrate: N/A Aim: N/A Lancer Shot: 22.4 damage Refractor Beam: 15.7 damage Piercing Beam: 37.83 damage Overcharge: 100% chance of Mag 3 stun, 6.4s (normally 60% chance of Mag 3 stun, 3.2s)

My only other 50 on Homecoming is a support and Y I K E S. I only care about KB as a support if people are dying as a result and have yet to actually have that happen.

...it's done.

Or, you're misreading what I said. I said I spent 2.5 billion influence working on my build, not that the final build itself is worth 2.5 billion influence. I literally have only played this one character seriously on Homecoming and poured virtually all of the money I've earned into that character. I have used all of the freespecs earnable from leveling up (I'm vet level 99) and I have purchased ten, some of which I purchased before people told me you can buy respec recipes in the Consignment House, almost all before I started buying salvage packs. I have multiple T4s of every single incarnate slot except Judgment. I have owned a full set of every purple trying different epic pool powers to see what helps best. All of this experimenting costs influence. I've blown through 600 converters in a single day, multiple days, switching builds to test with -- and that was after I realized it was more cost-effective to overload on converters than selling old pieces that were already boosted and buying new ones. Note that my estimations are based on actual costs, not opportunity costs. The point is: If there's something good about energy blast, I've probably found it and obsessed over it. It is incredibly disappointing that I was not able to make this character work for me. Now there is the caveat that by the end of the build, I was so optimized that in most content I couldn't tell how bad the spec was -- up until this parsing test I'd chalked up my earlier bad performance to me being an aggressively bad player, but I feel confident saying that, like Shii-Cho, I may be clumsy but I am eventually effective through sheer methodical straightforwardness. So it is possible to make Sentinel Energy Blast work at endgame. But CoH is not just endgame, and this awful performance permeates every aspect of the leveling experience with Sentinel Energy Blast.

Most of this information is actually available on the character creation screen with the detailed power button, and I'd been meaning to dump it out all into one place that's web-accessible. General observations: Cones are usually capped at 6, unless they are 5°, when they are capped at 3. Assault Rifle's T9 is an exception and is a very wide cone. It's possible that extremely wide epic/patron cones are also capped at 10. Spheres are usually capped at 10. Sonic Attack and Water Blast appear to use Blaster caps instead for everything but their T9. A table depicting changes in AoE powers from Blaster to Sentinel. POWERSET POWER NAME TYPE # FOES CHANGES Archery Fistful of Arrows 40 ft. Cone (50°) 6 Cone shorter (10') and wider (10°), target cap reduced by 4. Explosive Arrow 15 ft. Sphere, 60 ft. range 10 Range shorter (20'), target cap reduced by 6. Rain of Arrows 25 ft. Sphere, 40 ft. range ???1 Range shorter (50'), cooldown increased (30s), target cap ???.4 Assault Rifle Buckshot 40 ft. Cone (30°) 6 Target cap reduced by 4. M30 Grenade 15 ft. Sphere, 40 ft. range 10 Range shorter (20'), target cap reduced by 6. Flamethrower 40 ft. Cone (45°) 6 Target cap reduced by 4. Full Auto 40 ft. Cone (90°) 10 Cone shorter (40') and wider (70°), target cap reduced by 4, cooldown increased (30s). Beam Rifle Cutting Beam 40 ft. Cone (45°) 6 Cone shorter (10') and wider (10°), target cap reduced by 4. Refractor Beam 15 ft. Sphere, 40 ft. range 10 Replaces a single-target snipe. Piercing Beam 60 ft. Cone (5°) 3 Range shorter (20'). Overcharge 20 ft. Sphere, 40 ft. range 10 Range shorter (40'); radius smaller (5'); target cap reduced by 6. Dark Blast Umbral Torrent 40 ft. Cone (30°) 6 Range shorter (40') and target cap reduced by 4. Dark Obliteration 15 ft. Sphere, 40 ft. range 10 Replaces a 40', 40° cone with a 10 target cap. Blackstar 20 ft. Sphere, PBAOE 10 Radius smaller (5'), target cap reduced by 6, cooldown reduced (55s). Dual Pistols Empty Clips 40 ft. Cone (30°) 6 Target cap reduced by 4. Bullet Rain 15 ft. Sphere, 60 ft. range 10 Range shorter (20') and target cap reduced by 6. Piercing Rounds 60 ft. Cone (5°) 3 Range shorter (20'). Hail of Bullets 20 ft. Sphere, PBAOE 10 Radius smaller (5'), target cap reduced by 6, cooldown reduced (15s). Electrical Blast Ball Lightning 15 ft. Sphere, 40 ft. range 10 Range shorter (20') and target cap reduced by 6. Short Circuit 20 ft. Sphere, PBAOE 10 Moved to T8, target cap reduced by 6. Thunderous Blast 20 ft. Sphere, 40 ft. range 10 Range shorter (20'); radius smaller (5'); target cap reduced by 6; cooldown reduced by 80s. Energy Blast Energy Torrent 40 ft. Cone (45°) 6 Target cap reduced by 4. Explosive Blast 15 ft. Sphere, 40 ft. range 10 Moved to T7, range shorter (40'), target cap reduced by 6. Nova 20 ft. Sphere, PBAOE 10 Radius smaller (5'), target cap reduced by 6, cooldown reduced (55s). Fire Blast Fire Ball 15 ft. Sphere, 40 ft. range 10 Range shorter (40'), target cap reduced by 6. Fire Breath 40 ft. Cone (30°) 6 Target cap reduced by 4. Rain of Fire 25 ft. Sphere, 40 ft. range ???1 Moved to T8, range shorter (20'), target cap ???4 Inferno 20 ft. Sphere, PBAOE 10 Radius smaller (5'), target cap reduced by 6, cooldown reduced (55s). Ice Blast Frost Breath 40 ft. Cone (30°) 6 Target cap reduced by 4. Ice Storm 25 ft. Sphere, 40 ft. range ???1 Range shorter (20'), target cap ???4 Blizzard ???2 ft. Sphere, 40 ft. range ???1 Range shorter (20'), target cap ???4, cooldown reduced (80s). Psychic Blast Psychic Scream 40 ft. Cone (70°) 6 Replaces a single-target power. Psionic Tornado 20 ft. Sphere, 40 ft. range 10 Range shorter (20'), target cap reduced by 6. Psychic Wail 20 ft. Sphere, PBAOE 10 Radius smaller (5'), target cap reduced by 6, cooldown reduced (55s). Radiation Blast Irradiate 20 ft. Sphere, PBAOE 10 Target cap reduced by 6. Electron Haze 40 ft. Cone (30°) 6 Target cap reduced by 4. Neutron Bomb 15 ft. Sphere, 60 ft. range 10 Range shorter (20'), target cap reduced by 6. Atomic Blast 20 ft. Sphere, PBAOE 10 Radius smaller (5'), target cap reduced by 6, cooldown reduced (55s). Sonic Attack Howl 50 ft. Cone (30°) 10 Only damage and res debuff values changed. Shockwave 50 ft. Cone (30°) 10 Only damage and res debuff values changed. Siren's Song 40 ft. Cone (50°) 10 Only damage values changed. Dreadful Wail 20 ft. Sphere, PBAOE 10 Radius smaller (5'), target cap reduced by 6, cooldown reduced (55s). Water Blast Water Burst 15 ft. Sphere, 60 ft. range 16 Range shorter (20') Whirlpool 25 ft. Sphere, 40 ft. range ???3 Range shorter (20')5, target cap ???.4 Steam Spray 40 ft. Cone (50°) 10 Only damage values changed. Geyser 20 ft. Sphere, PBAOE 10 Radius smaller (5'), target cap reduced by 6, cooldown reduced (35s). --- 1 Expected value of 10. 2 Expected value of 25. 3 Expected value of 10 or 16; Water seems to use Blaster rules sometimes. 4 Expected value of 16 5 Not a typo; Water got very minimal reductions from Blaster.

Simply put because you can't build them the exact same way. If I built Havoc Punch into the rotation (the single best melee attack except maybe Knockout Blow), I'd get about 15 DPS extra max. Because Fire's highest DPS attacks are both quick animating/recharging and a good deal stronger than the analogous ability in Energy, and because Fire's attacks only have access to the ST ranged damage IO set pool (which has a dearth of procs, let alone good ones) if it wants to find a PPM mule with a slow recharge, it needs to go into an epic pool. It's worth understanding that just like Focused Power Blast, Dominate is not actually a high DPA move naturally but can be frankenslotted up there on the strength of its recharge and then made fast recharging through global recharge. This person's fire build without the melee attack is still 300ish DPS on the pylon.