aethereal

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.

This is the Scrapper detailed info for Breath of fire at chargen. It implies that the 45 second fire damage ticks are only with Fiery Embrace. Is that correct? EDIT: Just tested, you definitely get the 45 ticks of DoT without Fiery Embrace. So I think there's maybe a detailed info display bug? What I'm actually trying to test is the crit behavior of BoF for Scrappers and Stalkers, haven't had a chance to yet. I assume the 45 seconds of DoT don't get an up-front crit, but I don't know what the crit behavior is/is supposed to be.

Patch notes say it's non-stacking, haven't tested personally.

The 45 second Fire Breath is presumably interesting against AVs/GMs, too, where you can get most/all of its damage in. I agree that the dynamics are very different when it's player versus mob (expectation is that most mobs will live far less than 45 second from start of engagement) than when it's mob vs player or pvp (expectation is that most players will live far more than 45 seconds from start it engagement). If fire breath does become a specialty AV-killing tool, it would be nice to have some clear hint as to when its DoT is over and it's useful to reapply.

It looks to me like you apply your first Vulnerability at about 0:04 and your second vulnerability at around 0:35? We'd expect the Rage meter to recover by then, but Vulnerability lasts 15 seconds, not 30 seconds.

To be clear: Sans ATO, if you start a long fight with a full bar, the way it should go is this: Time 0: You cast Vulnerability, applying it for 15 seconds, your Rage meter drops from 100 to 50 Time 15: First Vulnerability ends, your Rage meter should have regenerated to 75. You recast Vulnerability, your Rage meter drops from 75 to 25 Time 30: Second Vulnerability ends, you Rage meter should have regenerated to 50. You recast Vulnerability, your Rage meter drops from 50 to 0. Time 45: Third Vulnerability ends, your Rage meter should have regenerated to 25 -- you are unable to cast Vulnerability for another 15 seconds. With the ATO slotted efficiently and in your attack chain, it seems very plausible that you'll have gotten three activations in 45 seconds, so you should really be able to chain together four Vulnerabilities in a row. But unless you're getting on average 2.5 activations in 15 seconds, you shouldn't be able to indefinitely maintain Vulnerability. Currently the chance for +Opportunity proc has 1 PPM -- I assume it is the same on beta. With perma-hasten levels of recharge, we would expect it to fire roughly once every 20 seconds. So three activations in 45 seconds is plausible, if a little lucky, but 2.5 activations in 15 seconds would be massively lucky. Have I ever mentioned how underwhelming the Sentinel ATOs are?

Two guesses: 1. You have the ATO somewhere very efficient, where it has a high chance to trigger, is in your attack sequence, and with no local recharge. 2. Somehow you're still getting Rage(/Opportunity, but behind the scenes it's Rage) from attacking? Leftover from live. FWIW, I had the same experience as others when I did a pylon test: I could not perma Vulnerability, despite having the ATO in an attack in my ST attack sequence.

So some commentary: Sentinels, on both live and beta, are feast-and-famine people -- they (can) spend about 50% of the time under Opportunity/Vulnerability, the other 50% out of it. Let's talk about a power that does 100 damage at 1.0 scale. Live Sentinels Famine: 95 damage (due to scalar) * 1.95 (enhancement slotting) * 1.05 (inherent resistance debuff) = 194.5 damage Feast: (95 damage (due to scalar) * 1.95 (enhancement slotting) + 10 damage (Offensive opportunity proc)) * 1.25 (inherent resistance debuff + Opportunity resistance debuff) = 244.1 damage Average damage (assuming 50/50 Famine/Feast): 219.3 damage Beta Sentinels Famine: 110 damage (due to scalar) * 1.95 (enhancement slotting) = 214.5 damage Feast: 110 damage (due to scalar) * 1.95 (enhancement slotting) * 1.15 (Vulnerability resistance debuff) = 246.7 damaage Average damage (assuming 50/50 Famine/Feast): 230.6 damage So this is why, on Pylon tests, you see basically the same results -- Beta has only a 5.1% damage buff over live, almost entirely ignoreable. But the secret of course is that the 50% feast/50% famine thing was never true -- both Opportunity and Vulnerability are only useful (in terms of their damage buffs) against single hard targets, which is a small minority of CoH gameplay. When you were facing ordinary spawns, you don't really get any damage buff out of Vulnerability, and only the small proc out of Opportunity. Essentially, you're permanently in Famine mode. Beta has a clear slightly-greater-than 10% damage buff in Famine mode. Maybe even a little better than that when you're talking about trying to alpha out groups ASAP, since your first strike doesn't get the effect of the resistance debuff, and it's a big chunk of how you deal with minions. By shifting its Famine up and Feast down, Beta makes the overall reality of "permanent Famine" notably better. I'll also say that for low-end targets of vulnerability (ordinary Bosses when you're low enough level that Bosses are challenging, or Elite Bosses which drastically outnumber AVs/GMs in high level play), the fact that you're likely to start the fight with them with 30 seconds of Vulnerability on demand probably makes for a better chance to get your rare Feast mode to actually pay off for Beta. It's against AVs/GMs/Pylons, where the fight goes on for >1 minute, where it doesn't really matter if you take your Feast mode right at the start or the middle -- it all averages out. So that's another point for Beta. --- Stylized damage of Scrapper (assuming same 100 damage power if scalar = 1) 112.5 damage (due to scalar) * 1.95 (enhancement slotting) * 1.22 (crit rate, assuming 10% base rate + 6% for ATO1 + another 6% for ATO2) = 267.5 damage Stylized damage of Brute (assuming same 100 damage power if scalar = 1) 75 damage (due to scalar) * 3.55 (slotting for 95% damage + 80 Fury = 160% damage bonus) = 266.25 damage Both Scrappers and Brutes get damage that's significantly better than Feast damage for Sentinels, all the time (without a ton of ATO2 PPM abuse in the case of Scrappers). So do Blasters and Stalkers, but they're more complicated to show with math, because their damage is built into weird contingent stuff around Build Up and what actual powers they get. And yes, Sentinels are ranged and that is an advantage, but note that melee damage powers are generally better than blast damage powers, so Sents pay for this in two different ways: the basic power and then their considerably lower damage (and also worse defensive values). With this being the case, I think we could do one of either further increasing Famine mode damage, or else making Feast mode more useful when dealing with ordinary spawns, and we wouldn't need to worry about stepping on the toes of other DPS classes.

I analyzed Blaster performance with procs, and the scalars are close enough to identical now. Procs consistently provide more damage enhancement than a normal damage enhancement does, even at Blaster/Scrapper/(beta Sentinel) scalars, if you have no local recharge, with very rare exceptions for a tiny minority of powers. Here's the sheet (ignore the Sentinel row on that sheet, it's Live Sentinels, not beta Sentinels. Just look at the Blaster rows, they'll be only like 1% different from Sents). https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1exC_bOWKCrjQ4eCjN12Cs5ETFPOpJCaBjmBnUIyMXHU/edit?usp=sharing

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.