aethereal

So, basically: If you have 0% resist, then you get hit by a 20% resist debuff (a resistable one), then your resistance drops to -20%. If someone hits you with a 100 damage attack, you take 120 damage, or 20% more than you would've without the resist debuff. If you have a 50% resist, then you get hit by a 20% resist debuff (a resistable one), then because resistance resists resist debuffs, you resist half the debuff (so it's 10%) and your resistance drops to 40%. If someone hits you with a 100 damage attack, you take 60 damage, or 20% more than you would've without the resistance debuff. If you have a 75% resist, then you get hit by a 20% resist debuff (a resistable one), then because resistance resists resist debuffs, you resist three quarters of the debuff (so it's 5%) and your resistance drops to 70%. If someone hits you with a 100 damage attack, you take 30 damage, or 20% more than you would've without the resistance debuff. So basically, if you hit someone with a 20% resist debuff, then no matter what their starting resistance is, they take 20% more damage after the debuff than before. I think that's nice. In contrast, defense debuffs: If you have 0% defense, then you get hit by a 20% defense debuff, then your defense drops to -20%, so an enemy who ordinarily hits you 50% of the time hits you 70% of the time, so you take 40% more damage than you would've without the defense debuff. If you have 20% defense, then you get hit by a 20% defense debuff, then your defense drops to 0%, so an enemy who would hit 50% of the time unaided, and who hits you 30% of the time with your normal defense, is back to 50%, so you take 67% more damage than you would've without the defense debuff. If you have 40% defense, then you get hit by a 20% defense debuff, then youor defense drops to 20%, and you take 200% more damage than you would've without the defense debuff. This is why DDR is such a big deal, and in my opinion it kinda sucks as a game dynamic. It makes a really sharp line between "extremely high levels of mitigation" and "extremely low levels of mitigation." So I like the resistance dynamic better. Unresistable resistance debuffs work like defense debuffs. I'm still not sure if the purple patch is technically "resistance" and whether unresistable means "ignores the purple patch" or not.

Does unresistable even affect purple patch reductions in values? I'm not clear. Anyway, unresistable on resistance debuffs creates the whole Defense Debuff dynamic where resist debuffs become massively better on high-resistance characters than low-resistance characters, which is not, I think, a great dynamic.

Some notes on resistance debuffs: Remember that resistance debuffs are affected by the Purple Patch! If a team is at +4, as lots of teams are, what does that mean? If the team level and your level are both 50 and the team is +4, then enemies are 54, and so they're either +4 to you or +3 to you if you have a level shift. If the team level is below 50 and you're at or above the team level, and the team is +4, then enemies are a 50/50 mix of +4 and +5 to you (+3 and +4 if you have a level shift) If the team is below 50 and you're below the team level, and the team is +4, then enemies are a 50/50 mix of +5 and +6 to you (impossible for you to have a level shift in this situation) Debuff modifiers if enemies are: +3 to you: .65 +4 to you: .48 +5 to you: .3 +6 to you: .15 Corruptors get a 15% debuff per attack (on Live, split into pieces on beta). If you have a .65 modifier to that, it's roughly 10%. If you have a .48 modifier to that, it's roughly 7.5%. If you have a .3 modifier, it's roughly 5%, and .15 is roughly 2.5%. Yeah, you'll do better than that against +2 and lower opponents, but... does a large team really need help against +2 and lower opponents? Even AVs? Unfortunately, like all debuffs, there's sort of a catch 22 where the things that you most need the help against are least affected by the debuffs. Like, the 10% debuff per attack that a Corruptor with sonic blast gets against a +3 opponent (ie, a level 50 team when you're level 50 and you also have a level shift) is pretty substantial. But then we're talking a large team of incarnates against an AV. That's usually zerg-o'clock. Are there teams where you're like, "Some of this team is underleveled and we're fighting someone tough and I'd really like the help?" Sure. But then you're probably at 7.5% or 5% per attack, and it's honestly not a ton. So, TL;DR: Test it out, don't just rely on your intuition about resistance debuffs.

Guys, maybe consider that it's not supposed to be super easy for you to continue to squat on 200 names of characters that you rarely play and have never frequently played.

They stack.

I think you're under a misapprehension about how the Sentinel inherent works. So a Sonic sentinel under the current Beta rules has access to four separate sources of resistance debuff that can be (in some cases) triggered by their T1 and T2 powers. The Sentinel Opportunity inherent applies a -5% resistance debuff to any hostile target hit by any power from the Sentinel, including but not limited to the T1 and T2. This does not stack from your own powers -- so once you hit with any power, you apply this and further power hits do not stack any more resistance from this source. Both the T1 and the T2, as well as most other sonic attack powers, apply the "Short" debuff, which is -5.76% resistance. This does not stack with multiple applications from the same caster -- so once one of your powers applies this, it won't be applied again. Both the T1 and the T2, and not the other sonic attack powers, apply the "Lingering" debuff, which is -3.84% resistance. This does not stack with multiple applications from the same caster -- so once one of yoru powers applies this, it won't be applied again. If your rage/opportunity meter is >90% full then you'll get red and blue rings around your T1 and T2, then either the T1 or the T2 will apply a -20% resistance debuff that's generally considered part of the Sentinel inherent, though actually it's coded onto the T1 and T2 powers themselves. This is called the "Vulnerability" debuff. This does not stack with anything, including other casters' use of Vulnerability. There shouldn't really be any opportunity for you to use both the T1 and the T2 vulnerability (using one puts you in lockout and removes the chance to use the other), but if you somehow did, they wouldn't stack. All of these four sources of -resist stack with each other, so you can potentially put a total of -34% and change resistance on a target with one hit of the T1 or T2 power (but only if your rage/opportunity meter is > 90%). The only change here in the beta is changing the former -9.6% or whatever it exactly was debuff to two pieces and how they stack with other powers. The Sentinel inherent is unchanged and independent of the Sonic Attack specific changes.

Huh? For me, the first color selection changes the color of the energy. (The second color appears to do nothing).

You can test it by getting the power analyzer and going and shooting something (a pylon is the trad choice) and analyzing its resistance. But I honestly don't think you need to. It would have been a huge amount of work for them to make the Sentinel inherent debuffs not stack with the Sonic debuffs. There's pretty much no chance they accidentally screwed that up.

I assume you mean the sentinel inherent, which is -5% normally and an additional -20% when opportunity is activated. That stacks with all the sonic attack resistance debuffs.

Here's what I'd do with Sonic Attack: 1. Change the non-stacking/stacking split from 12/8 to 10/10. Justification: This doesn't really matter. Nobody is actually going to notice the difference in stacking an additional 2% resist debuff per power. But it will mean that three power applications can get to -40% resist debuff and despite the fact that 36% and 40% are essentially identical, it will make people feel better. 2. Give Shriek and Scream separate debuffs. Justification: This will make the early game flow more smoothly, especially for Defenders who have to wait a long time to get Screech and Siren's Song. People who prioritize taking both T1 and T2s for Blasters or Sentinels because of their inherents won't feel as victimized (and given Blaster and Sentinel debuff values, the additional resist is negligible). If someone on a Defender at level 50 really wants to take a single-target power because it allows them to stack 10% more resist debuff, I mean... Cool, bro, you do you. 3. I dunno, maybe give Sentinels a little something more, not sure, Sentinels are a mess anyway. 4. SHIP IT. The basic idea of the changes is great. People aren't spending enough time on the big cast time reductions of Howl and Shout.

Uh. Single Shot and Pistols provide no resistance debuffing, though. I mean, maybe so, but the set is still not clearly better after the patch than before, on Sentinels.

I don't know why we're comparing Piercing Rounds and Piercing Beam to Shriek. Isn't Screech a better comparison? Screech looks pretty favorable in comparison to either, to me. I'm not convinced that Sentinels got a buff. They already had the highly damaging Screech, which I think is one of the big benefits to the other three ranged attack classes, and they got the target cap reductions. For them, it seems like more of a wash.

I'm asking for it! I like Sonic thematically, but I don't want to make characters focused solely on SBB and shaving seconds off AV fights in large teams. Especially since it's still fine at those things. Yes, not as good as it was, but it still puts out quite a bit of -res.

Scorpion shield is, uh, very obviously for S/L and E defense. If you have X sets that get you about 30% S/L defense, and Scorpion Shield to get you to 45% defense, then if you can get equally powerful sets that give ranged defense, you'll need probably another three to six sets to get you to ranged defense softcap instead. It's certainly possible to softcap ranged defense as a squishy, but it takes much more build room than does softcapping S/L defense, assuming that you were willing to get Scorpion Shield with your ancillary pick.

There's no equivalent of Scorpion Shield for ranged defense.

I do think that making T1/T2 not share a buff is worthwhile. Powerhouse stated something like "people felt like then they needed to get every power." Well, I mean, that's their neurosis, man. We don't have to cater to them any more than we have to cater to the people who want all debuff, no damage at all. For everyone else, their early leveling experience is better.

Sometimes... but not very often.

Why Doesn't Everyone Just Use Fire Blast? I mean, it's a real question, to be sure. It's one of the reasons why I'm not on board with all the people who are like team "we should fully divorce mechanics and aesthetics, so that I can make a 'Banshee' that shoots sonic waves from her mouth which is Fire Blast." Howl giving -20% res to 10 targets at the start of each spawn seems like... not the biggest deal in the world, but a notable advantage. But new Sonic Blast still has it. Putting accumulated -res on a hard target has a niche, it's just not a big enough niche to justify the entire rest of the set sucking.

It won't be that hard to find a situation where it's a nerf to a teamed character: just go find an AV or GM, especially at +0. It'll survive long enough for the debuffs to actually matter, and the debuffs do go higher on live. And there's no way that the difference between one character's low-end blast set and mid-end blast set is worth an extra, I dunno, 20% or 40% damage for a whole team. But is that important? AV and GM fights are a very small part of the game, and on a large-ish teams are very foregone conclusions. Is chopping ten or twenty seconds off a fight that happens once or twice in a TF, and 0.1 times in an average arc, a role for an entire powerset? Is the new sonic blast actually any worse in non-AV/GM fights even on a full team? I'm highly dubious. In a classic large-team zerg attack, what debuffs was a Defender applying? One Howl to give everything -20% -- which you still do. Then maybe a couple of ST attacks on a boss, assuming you don't have something better to do from your, you know, primary powerset. But now your ST attacks are better and faster, and that partially compensates for the lower stacking. Is there anything observably slower here? People just tend to overestimate how good -res debuffs are. Ask @Sovera.

Teams are heavily all about AoE. If you're going around trying to stack ST res debuffs on things on a team, man, everything's already dead. Even if you were at Defender levels, if you're dealing with +4 opponents they're taking half of your -res. Two hits would put around a 20% debuff on something before, now it's a 14% debuff. Is the 6% debuff actually that big a deal? Let me submit that it's not. Like, I get it, there were a few situations where it was really nice to attack a single hard target and stack up major resistance debuffs. But they were a small minority of the game -- mostly, what Sonic was was a low-performing set that paid for resistance debuffs by having bottom-of-the-barrel performance in both ST and AoE. In solo play, you spent a whole bunch of time stacking up -res just to get yourself back to par. In team situations, most of the time, by the time your second or third debuff hit something, it was already long dead.

Two powers went from "basically not damaging" to "solid damage output." Three powers got major cast time reductions (and two got minor cast time reductions), which also has a big effect on damage. Sonic had a big problem previously that it only had the three standard ST blasts and one of those blasts had an incredibly slow cast time. Now it has four ST attacks, and they cast faster than before. That's much better ST damage output. Having the three cones now all do solid damage and cast time reductions on them as well makes for a big damage output improvement across the set.

Yep. Katana sheathes at the hip. Ninja Blade, despite being very similar to Katana, is not Katana. Per the patch notes, Sentinel ninja tool sheathes at the back, like Ninja Blade.

Could we get Carnival of Shadows Rapier ported to Dual Blades as well? I know that canonically, the Carnival of Shadows fencers use only one blade, but given that a PC wielding the CoS rapier is going to be a special snowflake of some kind anyway, it doesn't seem crazy to make a dual-wielding option. Normal rapiers are already in DB, so obviously the powerset's animations and everything work with them.

They clip right through. Note that katanas sheath at the hip, not the back, and at least on a lot of wings won't clip. Everything else sheaths on the back, though, I think.

Yeah, thanks, I have been, you know, alive for the last 30 years. But there are plenty of reasons why people might want a small costume without it being chibi, or without it being so aggressively chibi.