aethereal

Sadly, doesn't work. The extra damage on Savage Leap is capped. The deal is, you get no extra damage at range 0 through 25', then more damage for more distance between 25' and 40', and then after 40', you no longer get any more extra damage (ie, 60' away is the same as 40' away in terms of extra damage). EDIT: Fun fact, the same breakpoints also determine how much blood fury you get. 1 point for distance < 25', 2 points for 25 to 40', 3 points for 40+. EDIT again: This was wrong, the damage caps at 65', not 40', see below.

I think there's a very reasonable real argument for Breath of Fire getting the 45 second DoT on players and keeping current version on mobs. Not related to fire farming -- just the value of "a 45 second DoT" is very different between players and mobs. It's not like it would be unprecedented for mobs to have a different version of a power than players do -- see for example the Moment of Glory that Paragon Protectors get.

I think that Vulnerability suffers from being just slightly underwhelming for its level of effort. Like, a Stalker has to watch for Build Up recharging -- that definitely complicates play and demands attention. But hitting Build Up is also like, "YEAAAH!" With the likely slotting of the Chance for Build Up proc in it, you get 5 seconds of 160% damage bonus and another 5 seconds of 80% damage bonus (which helps you against ST and AoE opponents). It's very clearly worth it to pay attention to Build Up being auto-recharged. Vulnerability is like... meh. Worth it against hard targets. But it's not "YEAAAH!" I want to be clear, I'm not saying that Vulnerability is terrible or worthless. It seems straightforward that if you are fighting a hard target, it's worthwhile to use Vulnerability. But it's probably not worthwhile against normal spawns, and even when it is worthwhile, it's not like super awesome. And so it feels more like a chore than like a chance for you to do Really Cool Shit. Design of Sentinels has been and I think continues to be dominated by some kind of really intense fear that Sentinels are poised to become a superpowered Archetype that obsoletes all other ATs. I think that's just not engaging with reality. Yes, really safe play is possible with Sentinels -- but it's also possible with all the other armored ATs, and at least Tankers, Brutes, and some Scrappers can better utilize that very safe play (via taunts). As long as Sentinels have their target caps, they will never, ever, ever displace Blasters from their niche, even if Sents did significantly greater damage than Blasters (which they are very far from doing). A Sentinel that had a huge damage increase that affected every attack they made might start to impinge on Stalker/Scrapper niches, but they'd need an across-the-board additional 20% or so damage increase on top of their Beta performance to get near that point. Beta Sentinels are, like... Eh. They've gone from being significantly undertuned to moderately undertuned. If this were the first in a series of steps in the right direction, it'd be great, but my sense is that this is The Big Sentinel Change, Goodbye, and it's not a good Big Sentinel Change.

You're probably noticing the difference between the resist debuffs that you do on live (5% for normal ST attacks, plus 20% for Opportunity) and on beta (no resist debuff normally, 15% for Vulnerability).

Of course it is. Some of this other pylon tests don't have -res procs. So if you compare beta fiery melee (with lots of -res procs) to live fiery melee or energy melee (no -res procs), then you say, "Wow, beta fiery melee drastically outperforms live, and is competitive with energy melee." And that's true if you care about the pylon minigame. Which is a fine thing to care about. But if you are looking at pylon times as a generalized test of ST DPS, you have to say, "but I know that beta fiery melee's times will be relatively better in pylons than other targets compared to live fiery melee's performance on pylons versus other targets, meaning some prob of the improvement is illusory."

Offensive opportunity does two things: it debuffs its primary target (the one you hit with the attack that triggered offensive opportunity, who then gets a yellow target under his feet), and it adds an additional damage component to all your attacks. The additional damage component lasts until the end of the opportunity period, even if the primary target dies. As others have mentioned, the build on beta changes this.

It's clearly both. And to the extent that it's a test, that is, to the extent that you care about not pylon times per se but about overall single target DPS performance, it's a test that overvalues the trait of "able to slot -res procs." This is extremely understandable and straightforward. The purple patch makes -resistance much more valuable at +0 (which pylons are) than at +3 or +4 (which most other hard content is). This doesn't make pylon tests worthless: all testing is necessarily imperfect. The map is not the territory, but that doesn't make maps useless. But if you understand the ways in which the map is imperfect, you need to compensate for them. This thread is like someone saying, "we can finally go to Greenland; it's huge!" and then getting angry at me when I point out that mercator maps greatly exaggerate the size of Greenland.

What about an increase in Vulnerability duration? Maybe to 30 seconds, for 100% uptime against hard targets? Or 25, even. This won't materially improve sentinel performance in most play: you will still only be able to cast Vulnerability twice per minute at equilibrium. If you're casting it on bosses, the extra duration will be largely wasted. But it will give sentinels a little extra performance and specialization in hard fights. This wouldn't be my ideal change to sentinels, but the devs appear uninterested in more ambitious proposals.

I'm similar in terms of wanting to ideally put as many common clicks as possible on my top row of keys. Something I've found helpful is to bind `, MINUS, and EQUALS to additional powers, so that I have 13 keys instead of 10. I put the remaining three powers in tray two above the 1, 9, and 10 keys, but I hit them with the binds (so I can see when they're off cooldown -- conceptually, it "wraps around" to the overflow keys. If you're sort of hovering right at trying to cram one or two more things, I find it pretty useful, thought you might too.

It does go a ways. But with purple patch, -res procs are relatively less effective (compared to just "more damage" such as a conventional damage proc) than they are on pylons, if the opponent you care about is +3 or +4.

There's nothing wrong with it. If the question is, "Who can win the minigame of 'beat a pylon fastest'?" then by all means do whatever you want to make the pylon die faster (but, I mean, probably roll a MM, right?). But if we're trying to use a pylon time as an approximation of the performance of the set in ST DPS, we should be aware that -res procs give pretty strongly differentiated results on pylons versus most other hard targets. And a set that can slot a lot of -res procs will do great on pylon times, but if that's it's big virtue, it won't do nearly as well in other ST DPS scenarios.

While Breath of Fire is a mechanically underwhelming power, it's very thematic. I have no doubt that there are a bunch of characters out there skinned as dragons or other fire-breathing creatures who want to continue to be able to breath fire.

Blasters' damage scalar is 1.125, not 1.25. The 1.1 damage scalar of a beta Sentinel is, I promise, indistinguishable in actual play from the blaster's 1.125. (This doesn't mean that beta Sents' damage is indistinguishable from Blasters'. It means that Blaster damage superiority doesn't come from a better scalar, it comes from a combination of: 1. Target caps 2. Full strength nukes 3. Snipes 4. Build Up + Aim instead of just Aim 5. Powers in the secondary pools of Blasters 6. Defiance.)

If you routinely fight a lot of +0 foes, then sure, sort of. But the proc that increases your damage by 20% against a pylon increases your damage by 9.6% against a +4 enemy, 13% against a +3 enemy. Against normal spawns, you don't get the -res on the alpha strike that kills the majority of minions and does a significant amount of damage to the lieutenants (or kills them). Pylon tests certainly have their place. But specifically -res procs are more effective against pylons than they are against most other hard targets, and more effective against hard targets than they are against normal spawns.

Heavy use of -res procs has outsized effects on Pylons that aren't very indicative of performance in other areas.

You don't need to apologize: I have thick skin. But you're also having a conversation with a fantasy version of me who exists only in your head, and it's not particularly productive.

Did you somehow fail to read both before and after the comparison where I noted that Tankers have better AoE than Brutes and that creates an area which is not directly comparable? Scrappers who don't use the ATOs will absolutely underperform Brutes in basically all circumstances. I think people really underestimate just how much of Scrapper performance is locked into the ATO2. Basically: Without ATOs, Scrappers are strongly outperformed by Brutes (on pure damage) With just ATO1, Scrappers are slightly outperformed by Brutes (on pure damage) With ATO1 and ATO2 and no PPM abuse, Scrappers are somewhere pretty close to Brute damage With ATO1 and perma-hasten levels of global recharge leading to about triple the listed PPM of the ATO2, Scrappers solidly outperform brute damage With ATO1 and perma-hasten levels of global recharge leading to about triple the listed PPM of the ATO2, and the ATO2 proc slotted carefully in just the right power and the attack rotation made to bias the big hitter powers right after the ATO-procced power, then Scrappers can do really crazy amounts of damage The ATOs are crucial to rescuing Scrapper performance, and specifically PPM abuse on the superior version of the ATO2 proc is necessary for the kind of scrapper performance that we see on things like Pylon tests. That's, like... I don't know. It's better than just having Scrappers be inferior to Brutes in every way. But it's a pretty bad approach to the AT balance, in my opinion. The very highest end scrappers are probably overpowered. Lots of scrappers who don't know how to use the ATO2 proc at its most effectiveness are pretty underpowered.

That was me. It's true. So comparing Tanks to Brutes is complicated. Brutes do significantly higher damage in terms of numbers, but obviously Tanks have the improved AoEs. How you weigh those things is a judgment. But just to be super clear: Heavy Mallet power on Brutes, Scrappers, and Tanks, with the only assumptions being that we are attacking with 80 fury and hitting a Lieutenant or higher-ranked enemy, with 95% damage enhancement: Scrapper: 142.6402 damage base, +95% enhancement = 278.14839 damage, twice that on a crit, blended average of = 305.9632 damage Brute: 95.0936 damage base, +95% enhancement + 160% from Fury = 337.5823 damage Tank: 120.4517 damage base, +95% enhancement = 234.8808 damage Those are very apples-to-apples comparisons. And Brute has the highest value. ATOs for Scrappers change things. Tankers get better AoEs. If you do something like add in an external buffer or assume farm conditions where everyone's scarfing reds like they're going out of style, it changes things. But these are straightforward, bread-and-butter damage numbers for the same power.

Yep! It's a little obscure post called "the first post of the thread." Here's the relevant section: "In my opinion. Ahem, the long ago great Fury nerf of Brutes was a tragic mistake As I recall, there were accusations, spreadsheets, data, that Brutes could out damage Scrappers at full Fury. If I remember (and it is vague) some Brutes with specific attack sets and combos once in a while might do it. But the damage to the Scrapper ego had been done. There were spreadsheets after all And so, the great Fury nerf was decreed." Un-nerfing Fury would make Brutes do more damage than Scrappers. And Snarky brushed aside concerns that Brutes were, pre-nerf, doing more damage than Scrappers. He is also pretty substantially incorrect that it was "some Brutes with specific attack sets and combos" -- it was straightforwardly every Brute who could maintain any substantial amount of Fury. But see, the straightforward evidence for that was "spreadsheets," and so that means it could be dismissed. And that's all basically wrong. I'm pretty united with Snarky that I don't love where we ended up after that, but his whole gloss of "there was never even a problem" is wrong.

But Brutes v. Scrappers is actually the place for numbers. Like, look, I agree. There are lots of places in City of Heroes where a numerical argument can only offer some suggestions, not hard answers. Are Tanker increased AoE/Target Caps better than Brute higher numbers? Reasonable people can disagree! Blasters get both Aim and Build Up, and Stalkers get rapidly recharging Build Up, allowing both of them to operate under the effects of damage boost for quite a large percentage of the time -- but do people actually effectively use these abilities in real game play? It's not clear. But Scrappers v Brutes: They get almost exactly the same powers They get pretty exactly the same AoEs and target caps Their inherents are both pretty straightforward damage boosts with little nuance This is the place in CoH where a direct numerical comparison does the best. And here's what it looks like: A power that does 100 damage at scale 1: On a Scrapper: (Base damage 112.5. +.95 * 112.5 for damage enhancement) * 1.1 for crits = 241.3125 On a Brute: Base damage 75 + .95 * 75 for damage enhancement + 1.6 * 75 for 80 fury = 266.25 That's the situation before Scrapper ATOs. With Scrapper ATOs, Scrappers pull ahead. But the reason Fury doesn't get much better than it is today is because, before ATOs, Brutes do solidly more damage than Scrappers. And these are very good numerical comparisons. Now, I agree with Snarky that to the extent that Fury actually does fluctuate up and down, and to the extent that it's genuinely hard/dangerous to put yourself into a position to max Fury, things break down and get hard to quantify purely with numbers again -- and I think it would be good for Brutes to face genuinely fluctuating Fury. But I'm also not sure that without sweeping levels of systemic change, we can really put Brutes on the razor's edge of death to max Fury. Doesn't that entail game-wide challenge-level changes? We know that in most normal content, it's easy for most Brutes to not be in serious danger of dying. Brutes have to do less damage than Scrappers. A Scrapper who can't outdamage a Brute is a completely eclipsed AT -- why would we ever play someone who gets the same powers as another AT, but has less hit points, lower resist caps, and worse taunting, and also lower damage? I'd love to see more of Scrapper performance moved into the AT proper and out of the ATOs (and very specifically out of PPM shenanigans for the second ATO proc). And I'd love to see Fury fluctuate more instead of going to 80 and then barely moving.

Yes. Sentinels with a buffed scalar do really substantially less damage than Brutes. They remain really far from Blaster damage.

Same problems in the detailed info from the enhancement and level up screens, not just during chargen.

H This is the Scrapper version, which shows the minions crit line, doesn't show the LT/Boss crit line, lists the major normal effects as being only with fiery embrace, and then has these 2 and 4 ticks of DoT that I don't understand -- maybe they really are Fiery Embrace effects? Not sure. As far as I can tell, these are display bugs for the detailed info, the powers actually seem to be functioning okay (though my testing is not in depth and there may be subtle bugs).

Stalker detailed info from chargen screen for Breath of fire: This is pretty screwed up. We seem to be seeing the line for from-hide crits, showing a 0% chance for normal crits, and then seeing what I assume are the normal up-front damage and DoT are both tagged with the crit detail saying that the "chance increases the more allies are nearby."

It can be hard to see why Blasters do so much damage, because unlike most other DPS classes the answer isn't primarily in scalar or in an obvious damage-increasing inherent like crits or Fury. Instead, it's a combination of things. They benefit from a variety of tools that let them quickly delete spawns -- full-strength nukes, getting both Aim and Build-Up, and the ability to put together several medium-strength, large-area, high-target cap powers together in an alpha strike before the enemy mob gets a chance to respond. They're kinda late-blooming, especially on the mitigation side of things, but a level 50 Blaster in HC is still perhaps the strongest AT this game offers.