aethereal

I would love to see one or the other of the ATO procs replaced with a damage proc that does a small radius (6', maybe?) blast around the target damaging say up to 3 total targets with the proc damage. Just something that helps spread around a liiiiiiitle more AoE damage, while also being a normal damage proc. Feels like that would help on some weak areas of Sents while not being overpowered at all. I agree with @oldskool that having Sentinel's ward replaced with a proc that gave health/endurance would be a nice way to honor old Defensive Opportunity and fill its gap, providing a little more utility than the current small absorb shield does.

It still increases your opportunity meter (so makes vulnerability usable more quickly).

Okay, so I went back to live and did the same mission as I did on test (it's for what it's worth one of the missions in Number 6's arc, so it's against level 50 Praetorian Devoured Earth), on +1/x6 (which is what this character was set to on live -- look, don't laugh at me, I made it like three years ago and didn't know how to build). Then I did it on test again. My takeaway: I didn't notice a difference on Live vs Beta except that I missed having defensive opportunity, which felt like a better way to refill my end bar than using the Ninjutsu endurance heal. But that'd probably not be a real thing if I rebuilt this character for the beta environment, so no biggie there. It's probably not that my damage wasn't a little better on Beta, it's just that the controlling factor on how fast you deal with a spawn on +1/x6 is not "how fast do you damage the ones that you hit," it's "how many do you not damage at all because they're excluded due to target caps." EDIT: I know that I'm virtually alone in liking defensive opportunity, and I do get that what a sent generally needs is more damage, not more survivability or more endurance, but I did feel like Defensive Opportunity made it so that the inherent was of some use when you weren't fighting EBs or higher -- you tap Defensive and now you get a mild top-up on endurance and health without having to do anything except keep fighting. That was nice. On beta, I don't feel inclined to even look at Vulnerability until I'm fighting a better-than-boss-class enemy.

I would like to speak in favor of there being some kind of choice involved in the inherent, not just a fully passive ability. Sentinels have the potential to be really, really simple to play -- Armor sets are mostly not very active, blast sets for the most part don't have any combo mechanics (water being the exception, and I guess to some extent new electric). Positioning is broadly simple for Sents, more so than for melee. Sentinel blast sets almost never have any tactical powers -- things that in other blast sets are infrequently used mezzes are just part of your attack rotation for Sents. Your nuke is up every spawn. That being the case, I think having an inherent that adds some tactical tension to Sentinel gameplay is more welcome on Sentinels than it would be for any other AT. I recognize of course that some people strongly favor extremely hands-off play, but we're already way over on one side of that. A little concession to active play surely isn't too much to ask. I can brainstorm up lots of suggestions for exactly what that inherent looks like -- from "something kind of similar to how Opportunity/Vulnerability currently works" to "completely off the current path," but I feel like generally these threads aren't the right place for that.

I just ran some missions with my old old old main (an Archery/Ninja sentinel, level 50, with some incarnates). I don't really notice anything in particular in terms of damage output -- but then it's been a long time since I played this character and I don't have much of a sense of how much damage it "should" do. In general, in ordinary gameplay, the issue with damage output for sentinels is more target caps on AoEs than raw damage anyway. Played around with a pylon, but definitely didn't know what I was doing until partway through it. Once I did kinda figure out how a rotation would work, I was working slowly on it but clearly had a long haul ahead of me (but that's basically because this character was built incompetently a few years ago).

Could we get either a freebie menu option to bring Long Range Teleport off cooldown, or just reduce the cooldown of LRT to 0 on Beta? Would make it easier to get around.

I'll note that pylon testing probably mildly understates the state of beta Sentinels. Despite their mediocre times, Live Sentinels are fairly optimized towards pylons -- they get a hefty resistance debuff (which as you've convincingly shown have vastly overstated effects on pylons vs other enemies), and it's easy for them to optimize Opportunity. Beta Sentinels rely less on resistance debuffs and the debuff they do get shouldn't have outsized effects on pylons vs other hard targets, plus it should be easier for them to apply Vulnerability in less controlled circumstances in a more optimal way than Opportunity could be applied on Live. So, being careful about what I'm saying here: On Live, Sentinels overperform versus pylons, and their mediocre times masks even-less-than-mediocre performance against other enemies. On Beta, Sentinels probably do not overperform as much versus pylons, and their mediocre times probably are more fairly representative of mediocre performance against other enemies.

So I think damage needs to come up more. I have three possible (mutually exclusive) suggestions: Increase Scalar to 1.2 I seriously doubt that anyone is going to go for this since it's an unprecedentedly high number, but I'll just point out that the damage from Scrappers/Blasters/Stalkers/Brutes would still be solidly higher than Sentinels (just straight up boring regular crits for a Scrapper put their scalar at de facto 1.22 or so, before their ATOs, and Scrappers without ATOs underperform Brutes and Stalkers). Restore the -5% Resistance Debuff on all/most attacks And ideally make it also not affected by the purple patch. It's not a huge difference, but it'd make the scalar be the 15% damage buff that it's advertised as, rather than a 10% buff, and it makes Sents a little better on teams. Install a damage buff effect from high Opportunity Make the Opportunity meter give a 20% damage bonus when at 100% (so 10% at 50%, 5% at 25%). This gives Sentinels an implicit tradeoff between AoE and ST, with AoE benefitting from maxing their Opportunity meter and ST benefiting from Vulnerability. 20% damage bonus is roughly the equivalent of a 10% scalar improvement, and you'd only have it some of the time. I think a problem here is that people might plausibly say, "I'd rather have a 20% damage bonus than Vulnerability even when fighting a single hard target." If that's true, it ought to make us take a really serious look at Vulnerability, because a 20% damage bonus is genuinely not that much.

That's nice.

If I'm understanding correctly, we lose the -5% resistance debuff that we used to get on all attacks, and also lose the offensive/defensive opportunity procs (so the heal/end heal of defensive opportunity and the damage proc of offensive opportunity). And vulnerability is -15% resistance while the old Opportunities were -20% resistance. Is that right, or do I misunderstand? That seems like a lot to lose for what cashes out to like a sub 10% damage improvement when solo and probably a net loss of damage when on a team. QoL and ease of play seems better, but doesn't feel like it comes close to fixing Sentinel damage underperformance. What's the cast time on Vulnerability?

Ninja does have the increased crit chance from "hide," but it's not that big a deal? Like, the charm of the set is easily soft-cap the positionals + a heal + an endurance tool + some minor other stuff like cap your psi resist. I don't know that I would fret about somewhat suboptimal use of the crit from "hide" business.

I was joking about the (objectively terrible) name "Eliter Bosses," but to be clear, I did make a serious proposal back on the first stage for how an intermediate-between-EB-and-AV rank could work, and I feel like everyone ignored it and then went on to say things that would've been solved by my scheme:

Or, hear me out here: an Eliter Boss!

Enhancement Diversification doesn't affect the bonus recharge from Blood Frenzy, as it's, you know... not an enhancement, it's a global recharge bonus.

Its de facto damage bonus is higher than it seems: the most overlooked part of Blood Thirst is that it turns the bleed effects that Savage Melee attacks have from being 75% chance to continue (per tick) to 100% chance to continue. So on say a level 50 Brute Vicious Slash, this goes from: 13.5133 * (1 + .75 + .75^2 + .76^3) = 37.1815 To 13.5133 * 4 = 54.0532 So a fairly solid increase in damage there (which is in turn affected by both the actual damage bonus of Blood Thirst and by Fury). Is it still worse than normal Build Up? I dunno, probably.

You have to be 50 to slot purple enhancements. And there's no point in getting attuned purples. ATOs are auto-attuned and can be slotted at 10 or 7 or something. However, you won't be able to slot superior ATOs until 50, though they still are technically attuned.

So here's what I'd specifically propose: a difficulty setting that's called Eliter Bosses. It's a binary difficulty setting that is separate from the AV/EB toggle. It makes Elite Bosses Eliter. This applies to any Elite Boss spawned when you're the mission owner, whether that EB is an enemy who is only spawned at the EB level, or whether they're a scaled-down AV due to the solo-EB difficulty setting. Eliter Bosses would have something like 2x the normal EB hit points, a resistance to debuffs that's roughly half of what an AV's debuff resistance is, and, I don't know, maybe a scaled down purple triangles of doom. Something in that general range. People who are like, "No, the point of EBs is to not be that much tougher than a normal boss" can leave that setting unchecked and never see an Eliter Boss. People who want a challenge consistently between EBs and AVs can turn the "solo AVs" difficulty OFF and the "Eliter Boss" difficult ON, and they will never face an AV, but they will face Eliter Bosses instead of EBs. And people who want all the difficulty they can get can have solo AVs on and Eliter Boss on, and they'll face AVs when available and Eliter Bosses when AVs are not available.

There certainly is a big gulf between an EB and an AV. I don't know if EBs should exactly be moved up, but it would be nice if there was something in the middle so the challenge level wasn't so dichotomous. The kind of thing that might challenge a small group of people (maybe 3-5) with levelling builds who are slotted but not 100M+ inf builds? EDIT: to expand, the specific problem is that it feels like there are lots of group power levels (be the "group" solo or small or large or whatever level) that find EBs trivial but AVs too difficult.

The bug fix for Savage was a huge nerf to Hemorrhage on Stalkers only. The power was legitimately bugged, but it was bugged in such a way that, I forget the details, you could get like 2x crits by critting specifically from hide, I think? This wasn't the most recent SM bug sweep, which mostly didn't do much, but from a couple of pages ago.

Yes, I mean... everyone knows. For what it's worth, Hemorrhage with 5 Blood Frenzy is the highest DPA attack in Savage Melee (that is, when factoring in its animation time, it does the most damage per unit of activation time). Damage and recharge time are, in general, linked in a strict ratio. I don't think that Hemorrhage's basic problem is too much endurance cost (in general, Savage is, due to its inherent, a very endurance-efficient set). But again, the point of the post you quoted was not to defend Hemorrhage's holistic worth as a power -- it's a bad power -- it was to point out that it gets a significant "extra" bonus when used at Blood Frenzy 5. I mean... those are all really good powers that definitely don't need any buffs.

It's another 4% plus a higher base damage and an extra tick of damage. You seem really determined to turn this into an argument about whether Hemorrhage's 5 blood frenzy bonus is worthwhile. I'm really not arguing with you there. I agree that Hemorrhage is underwhelming at all levels of Blood Frenzy. But there is a significant extra bonus on the transition from 4 to 5 Blood Frenzy, that is not just a linear increase of the same kind that you get from all the other levels of Blood Frenzy. I think that the design concept here is that this is a significant trade-off, and is the "minigame" of Savage Melee -- deciding whether the additional bonus effect that you get from burning 5 stacks of Blood Frenzy is worth the lockout that follows, or if you should take the lower outcome of 4 Blood Frenzy in return for the ability to quickly rebuild your Blood Frenzy. It just doesn't work that well, because Hemorrhage sucks. By the way, comparing Hemorrhage to Vicious Slash is maybe a little unfair because Vicious Slash (on Brutes) actually is a very good single target attack, with a better DPA than Total Focus, a very attractive cast time, and a worthwhile secondary effect. Vicious Slash is very good! Savage Melee arguably shouldn't get another attack that's as good as Vicious Slash. It's worthwhile to note that Hemorrhage with no Blood Frenzy is in fact lower DPA than Maiming Slash as well as Vicious Slash, and that Hemorrhage doesn't benefit from the somewhat underrated Blood Thirst bonus of turning bleeds from 25% chance to cancel to auto-hit.

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=brute_melee.savage_melee.hemorrhage&at=brute So the way that Hemorrhage works is: For Blood Frenzy 0-4, it does 5 ticks of 13.597 damage plus an additional 4% damage per level of Blood Frenzy. For Blood Frenzy 5, it does 6 ticks of 14.306 damage plus an additional 20% (ie, 5 x 4%). (EDIT: both of the above are on top of the instantaneous 31.6979 damage that it does -- that amount is not affected by Blood Frenzy) So, is that "worth" it? I mean, I think no. Hemorrhage remains a bad power. But the point is, you get things from level 5 blood frenzy that you don't get from levels 1-4, in exchange for the lockout. The difference between 4 and 5 blood frenzy is not just another 4% damage boost, like the difference between 3 and 4 is.

Note that both Rending Flurry and Hemorrhage get an additional bonus for spending all 5 blood thirst stacks, over and above the linear bonuses they get for other blood thirst expenditures. I think that the implicit "game" of Savage Melee is supposed to be deciding when to tactically spend down below 5 and avoid the lockout, and when to go all out and suffer the lockout. This is one reason why SM really needs both spenders to be worthwhile powers -- if you just have Rending Flurry as a spender, it's very awkward to manage your blood thirst stacks, both because at low global recharge it's pretty easy to earn up to 5 blood thirst before Rending Flurry comes off CD. and because sometimes you're like fighting a single opponent and don't want to use Rending Flurry for its bad ST damage.

In fairness, the base damage of Hemorrhage is better than Vicious Slash as soon as you have I think one point of Blood Frenzy, and when you have 5 points of Blood Frenzy, the DPA of Hemorrhage is better than Vicious Slash. That doesn't stop Hemorrhage from being a pretty garbage power. I think its position as a Blood Frenzy spender sits awkwardly with its status as a heavily DoT power. Hitting your opponent with a DoT sort of implies that you expect the fight to go on for a while, which suggests that Blood Frenzy lockout is bad for you. It seems like Savage does need this additional Blood Frenzy spender (without Hemorrhage, the only spender is Rending Flurry, the PBAoE). I don't know that it's super valuable to game out exactly what fixes it needs -- I don't think the devs pay much attention to that kind of specific suggestion -- but some kind of up-front damage, or maybe applying the same buff to you that the Build Up does where your other attacks' DoTs become guaranteed.

As usual when discussing this topic: 1. Armor sets don't really need a buff (in PvE). You can be plenty invulnerable with Invulnerability. Giving it another power that either made it more efficient to achieve invulnerability or gave it a spike of no-downsides additional mitigation isn't really warranted. 2. The current crashing godmodes make the sets in PvP, and changing them to provide less of a bonus with less of a crash would probably nerf the sets in PvP.