Sunsette

That's not a bad move at all, thank you for recommending it!

The problem lies in the fact that Power Push is the only noticeable 'spike' in DPA damage and it's not a very big spike either on a per second basis or considering how fast the animation is (meaning the spike is for a relatively small amount). Energy's numbers are really consistent and the only reason to take one attack over another, besides Power Push, is what fits your attack chain best. Fire is very, very spiky. I put up an analysis here. Honestly, I wasn't expecting to wow anyone but I really wasn't expecting anything this bad.

The above quoted post reflects my current thoughts on fixing Energy Blast. The original post with its original proposals is left for posterity's sake, so as not to confuse the casual reader, and continues from this point. This is not going to be a thread about knockback. There will be some discussion of knockback, that is unavoidable, but this is not a thread about knockback, there are a hundred threads on that subject already. This is also absolutely not going to be a thread about Defender, Corruptor, or Blaster Energy Blast. I haven't run the numbers on those powers enough and also I didn't spend two months on my first character on this CoX fork and like 2.5 billion inf trying to make them work. Is Sentinel Energy Blast uniquely bad? I can't honestly answer that question. What I do know is that Sentinel Energy Blast is atrocious. 1) Constant random Knockbacks and a 60 foot range don't synergize. The ATOs are straight-up required for Energy Blast Sentinel for range increases. Yes, Aim can increase the range and that's nice, but 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. I've gone into more detail elsewhere about why random KB on attacks is a terrible gameplay element so I'm not going to do that again here. 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. 2) Its damage is approximately half that of Fire Sentinel. 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. A lot of this is probably the case because Focused Power Bolt sucks. I'm given to understand that its equivalent in other ATs, Sniper Bolt, is actually one of the best sniper attacks in the game, I don't know, I haven't played a blaster with a snipe attack since before they were just terrible attacks no one used ever. Why does Focused Power Bolt suck? It has 10% more DPA than the standard energy blast attack, and has an ultra long 3 second animation time. This means that when it fires, it is a mild increase in damage for a very long cast that gets easily clipped or sniped out from under you. Its recharge is very long for a standard attack, at 20s, which means you're not using it a lot either at low levels. (Ironically this long recharge is its primary saving grace at high gear levels, making it a good choice for PPM frankenslotting). Furthermore, it only has 5% more DPA than the move Power Burst, which is also a long-ish cast time (2.2secs) and neither of these moves have any special effects. Both possess a bad chance of a mediocre knockback that does nothing productive for you. 3) Ranged ST attacks have much worse IO sets than any other kind of attack, but no Energy AoE attack is worth putting into single rotation; there are no 'cheats' like Piercing Round. Literally all KB sets are bad; while individual pieces have some utility (though the ICD and low PPM on Force Feedback makes that one questionable unless you're melee AoEing), the sets are always, always bad. If you're using KB purely for the control, you save slots by one- or two-slotting. If you're using them regularly for damage, they're heavily inferior to damage sets. 4) Its AoE damage is bad too. It has three AoEs: - Explosive Blast is a horrible AoE; it is a slightly less accurate clone of M30 grenade, which it ties for DPA. I found only one Sentinel AoE that has AoE damage as its primary function that I would consider worse, Frost Breath in Ice. - Energy Torrent is somehow arguably worse because it's an unreliable knockback cone with a target cap of 6 that doesn't have single target range or damage. (It's close. Ish.) - Nova is actually really good, as long as you have KB to KD or AoE Immobs because there is no other KB mitigation tactic that will regularly work with Nova. Flat recommendations, following the cottage rule: - Double Focused Power Blast's damage. It's a slow-casting T8 with a 50% chance of mag 1 KB. Even if you play purely to ragdoll people this is a bad power. And yet, it's necessary, basically, for PPM builds. This would give it similar PPM as Fire's Blaze, but obviously a lot slower and thus harder to use. +50% damage rather than +100% might be a better choice here once the individual math shakes out on enhancing damage versus procs, but either way, this attack is just flat unacceptable at this stage. It's a massive disappointment. - Give Power Burst a 100% chance to knock so it's reliable and +40% damage. This puts it on par with Fire's Blazing Blast. - All powers except Power Push knockdown rather than back. (I'd like to do it to PP too, but cottage rule, and that's the power's original raison d'etre). - All AoE powers give 100% chance to knock. 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. Furthermore, it would make all of the powers actually attractive to take at level up and synergize appropriately. I'd like a further damage increase than this tbh but I'd need to do more parsing to honestly advocate for it, avoid edge case brokenness, etc. Finally, while not our pylon parses, I've included screenshots of the damage estimator in Mids showing both of our builds at their very best before including incarnate effects like the Doublehit effect from Hybrid. The trend is still strong here, and it's worth noting that my build loses more than theirs from unreliability of procs (as my frankenslot gives a huge amount of hasten).

You can't see it because you hate knockback so you're primed to think in that condition. I've had very few people ever bring it up at all, and when >I< do I am usually told not to worry about it; some powers knockback, that's just part of the game. I hear this from people ranging from casual people arriving from other MMOs to people who have insane badge counts already that run super-smooth speed iTrials. But if it's something that someone can just toggle on at will, then they will. And they'll expect all gameplay to work like that. And suddenly if you want your powers to work like normal, you're the one asking to change the status quo.

Not gonna lie, this ended up being an extremely demoralizing post for me. With all the effort I've put into my builds, my Pylon DPS comes out to about 165, and this is after a roughly 25% DPS increase from my PPM findings. Sitting here wondering 'why did I even bother'. I know Energy Blast isn't the greatest, but sheesh. I could get another 15% increase by bringing melee back in, but I'm increasingly less a fan of mixing up melee as I've pulled out my defenses to get as much offense as possible. Nothing gets me in the neighborhood of 300. I'm at 180 while Double Hit is active. I'm this close to just throwing in the towel and rerolling as fire.

The problem with your suggestion is that it's just going to highlight the issues and polarize them further. Currently I've had people not even -realize- I'm an energy blast user because I keep things under control so well. You're going to have people just flip that setting on and then expect it to always be on when they always do group content -- and more people will throw a fit if it's any other way, as that becomes the new status quo. If the group leader is that allergic to KB now, they have a right to say that up front. But we're setting a bad precedent the moment a group leader can outright shut off other people's abilities. It wouldn't impact my own abilities very much because of how I choose to contain my KBs but I've got to object to it entirely on principle.

This is incorrect. Ninja Run is subject to travel power suppression, just like any other travel power. I present this poorly-encoded WEBM as evidence. You're absolutely right, I forgot to fix that earlier, thank you. I confused the animation still firing with the power still being active. Dark and Fiery are listed as soft-or-no crash. They're in the 'no crash' side of that, and they're still resurrections, yes.

This is entirely an aside, but at a game theory level, the trinity is 'sticky' because basically it's the smallest stable model of interdependence. Unit A supports Unit B but needs help from Unit C. Unit B supports Unit C, but needs help from Unit A. Unit C supports Unit A, but needs help from Unit B. Interdependence models support teaming while reducing prima donna behavior and keep balance easy to control. Fewer type pieces needed mean it's easier to put together a group. CoH gets around this by not caring a lot for balance, but you can still see all the 'parts' of the trinity, and the harder the content, the more likely you are to benefit from either a trinity or a group of hybrids that have all the pieces of the trinity. Content isn't its main draw, the characters are.

Thanks for sharing this. I've snagged it to link in my guide, along with credit to the original creator. This is very, very useful.

Very, very nice. Makes sense -- just checking. :)

I broadly agree with your (very-well-put!) points, nihili, but it did raise a question for me -- did you say '300-ish DPS'? I ask because I'm not sure how that number is reached, unless you're including Hybrid and Lore incarnate abilities, which I haven't seen good numbers for.

Will note that pine's has a limitation in that during a respec, you can basically shove all the slots you want in the last few powers, while in Pine's, there is an actual limit. I've had one or two builds that depended very heavily on the final epic powers in a way that was possible in-game but that pine's screamed bloody murder about until I moved some high slotted pool powers to earlier in the build. It's not a big issue, as SwitchFade points out, it reminded me that while exemping I probably wanted that pool power earlier anyway. But it is worth noting.

Heya, Smalltalk -- thanks for the kind words. I will update the guide to be a little more clear on what I mean by a crashing T9. While that can be reasonably understood as a kind of crash, traditionally what is meant by a crashing T9 is one where 100% of endurance is lost at the end. While you need to be careful using Radiation's T9, it is not a near-guaranteed death sentence for your character if it ends while you have the focus of an enemy's attention.

Strongly do not recommend bio for tanking on a Sent. Good aggro generation, decent defenses, but no defense debuff protection for anything vaguely hard, no resistances of note to even energy, you'll melt fast against anything but Council at 50.

...You're coming off as kind of fixated at this point, no offense. This is like almost every post you've put in this thread.

It's 'popular' because it's effective. Taking apart spawns with AE attacks is significantly faster than having to take down every mob one by one. In many high level groups, your Brute or Tanker can just as easily solo the content you're doing. Now, if your contribution helps them solo faster, that's one thing. But when your contribution is to reduce their effectiveness, why would they want to bring you along? Builds with uncontrolled knockback do precisely that. Quite a few ATs can solo those groups fine too -- it's not a special trait held by the Brute or Tanker. There are situations in which contributions can slow everyone down, but it's not automatically dependent on the tank. The most important thing is that mobs are consistently controlled, and outside of an AV, multiple ATs can pull that off.

Honestly, I have no idea what everyone is about with numbers of 5, 6, 7 thrown around. Fireball and Inferno hit 10 (normal versions hit 16). Perhaps cones who usually hit 10 only hit 6 on sents? All cones suck anyway, skip them. ;) This is correct. As far as I've noticed, cones hit 6, all other AoEs hit 10, and while I wouldn't mind an increased target cap, I don't understand why this is one of the sticking points. I'm sitting at vet level 93 now, and have seen astonishingly few scenarios outside of farms where I'm massively over target cap on any of my AoEs. Brutes and Tankers usually don't do LoS pulling necessary for a true herd, at least on Everlasting. And hell, I frequently solo on +4/x8. I wouldn't mind the target cap being increased, but while I am an advocate for this AT being buffed, I just don't see the target cap as the major hindrance some others do. Also, thanks for the kind words earlier up thread.

The other day I was on my thermal support and we had a Warshade enter the group. I was very glad; we went from scraping by to survive to me having to just do basic maintenance, which is great when I'm still learning how to play MM. Not long before the Brute pipes up: "stop knocking back or I stop tanking." I mention that Warshades can't really help it, not without a build change. The Warshade herself is quiet, I guess she's used to it. A few pulls later, in a fit the Brute goes off to doorsit. Rest of the mission was cleared just fine, quickly and efficiently. I'm quite sensitive to the idea that KB is often unnecessarily disruptive in this game, and have a litany of suggestions for ways to improve this on this server. Like, most of my characters have been scrappers or brutes, I get it, having the dude fly away mid-punch isn't fun. But sometimes, people should just ... chill. I don't have any shame in saying that that Warshade was carrying us, they were a one-woman storm of death.

Version 2 of the Guide has been updated based on my improved understanding of the PPM system! I hope it is helpful.

The hardiest Sentinels I've seen have to take four power pools that give a defense bonus, because the most durable Sentinel sets are either resistance primary or layered. None of those power pools are Presence. I almost think this was an intentional design decision to avoid the fear of a ranged tank finding exploits.

It would be better to call out a specific power or powerset you think is underperforming/doesn't synergize well. In general PBAoEs are much more powerful, both in raw numbers and in terms of the IOs they can apply, than targeted AoEs.

I actually have a small guide to Knockback in my Energy Sentinel Guide; if there's anything noteworthy that needs to be there that isn't, feel free to check it out and let me know.

I wouldn't depend on lore pets for facetanking unless you're a strong healer.

There was a link in the second sentence of the very first post that discusses how this is a change from live servers at the time of shutdown, actually. So... you sort of skimmed the very first post! This thread is about how enhancement recharge negatively impacts chance to proc and global recharge does not. Paragon Wiki has made the decision to remain accurate to the game as it was at time of shutdown, and so it cannot be updated for information on the myriad unofficial servers. The Homecoming community, I believe, is working on its own wiki to centralize information. Interesting info, thanks.

Thanks for the vote of confidence! :) I've updated this a bit for some additional clarity regarding some things.