aethereal

I can't tell if this is serious or some kind of rhetorical device. If it's serious: They added non-sword options to ice sword and greater ice sword. They added sword options to frozen fists, freezing touch, and assassin's icicle. And they added a ground punch option to frozen aura. Their version of stalker ice melee is different from ours: we have assassin's ice sword, no greater ice sword, and ice patch. But I think it's the different animations that people are calling out. (Their ice armor also has a series of less intrusive coatings.)

Sure! I personally always tend to like to be able to perform well against single large targets, but being best against a large group is a valid role.

@Nerva I don't think you're wrong -- everything you're saying is true and makes sense -- I just think that this matters relatively little. Yes, sents' armor sets don't get much of a workout in typical team play (that is: relatively easy content) as they do in solo. But neither do scrappers' or stalkers'. And Brutes that aren't primary-tanking for the group. Sents can absorb alpha for a team if necessary. Yes, if a sent plays in the melee, they aren't getting much out of their range. But they do get something, they can blast without repositioning, etc. The real issue with sentinels isn't their lack of team role, it's their low damage for a primary damage class. If they did 10% less damage than scrappers, then they'd be perfectly fine as a scrapper replacement. Scrappers aren't the most valuable teammembers of all time, but they're FINE. The issue with sents is that they don't do 10% less damage than scrappers, they do about 35% less damage than scrappers.

Honestly, the group role that a Sentinel should probably have is "relatively survivable DPS." It's kinda boring, but it's a fine role. We can talk until we're blue in the face about what the role of Scrappers, stalkers, and at least some Brutes should be, and yes, they potentially can do some sophisticated group role, but my experience is that most of those ATs fil the role of "relatively survivable DPS." If a given group/content dynamic is such that the content is difficult and prone to killing squishies, then having some armored classes in the party gives mitigators an easier job -- they can focus on the squishies. If a given group/content dynamic is such that everyone is prone to dying, then "relatively survivable DPS" is DPS that gives the tank a little bit of a chance to be imperfect. If a given group/content dynamic is such that everyone's steamrolling and nobody is worried about dying, then the group can subdivide and conquer fairly safely. The issue that Sents have is that their inherent is overly fiddly and their damage is tuned low.

Quality of life changes mean "changes that minimally affect balance, but remove some kind of annoyance or provide a streamlined way of performing an action in the game." Changes to damage scalars or target caps across a whole AT are the opposite of QoL. Rightly or wrongly, I doubt they'd make a major change to class balance in advance of a whole rework. You won't likely see changes like this unless they decide that this kind of change is the long awaited sentinel rework.

Huh. TIL.

If I'm reading City of Data right, Meteor's damage lands 5.5 seconds after casting, Rain of Arrows' damage lands 3.6 seconds after casting, so yes. Almost 2 seconds more delay on Meteor.

Almost all enemy-targeting powers take at least four: End Reduction Recharge Reduction Accuracy Whatever their primary effect is (damage, mez duration, whatever) Ranged powers typically take range enhancements. Powers that have a secondary effect usually can enhance it, too. So it's pretty common for powers to take 6 enhancement types. Much rarer to take 7, though still not exactly hard to find (like, Dark Blast has three different powers that take 7 enhancement types: Moonbeam, Life Drain, and Abyssal Gaze all take Acc, Dam, End Redx, Rech Redx, Range, and To-Hit Debuff, then Moonbeam takes Interrupt Redx, Life Drain takes Healz, and Abyssal Gaze takes Holds).

I don't think there is currently tech for "increased endurance cost only for some powers." I mean, I guess that's not totally true, you could make an effect of Fiery melee powers be to remove your own endurance, but that is different from endurance cost: if Fire Sword's cost is 6.864 endurance and it also has an effect that costs you another 5 endurance, then: a. You'll be able to activate the power if you only have 6.864 endurance, and the effect would do nothing (you'd be at 0 endurance which is the floor). b. Endurance reduction would only affect the 6.864 -- the other 5 endurance would be affected by endurance modification (if endmod were allowed in the power and the effect was not flagged to ignore it -- also I think endmod would affect it opposite from the direction you'd want it to). You don't have any way to expend Heat, unless you meant incinerate and burst of flame to do so?

Your friend is correct, EM's defense is just out of combat defense. It's supposed to keep you from getting sniped while flying through a zone, not keep you alive in combat.

A lot depends on how much end reduction you slot in your other powers. If you're proccing out attacks so they're all at full end, you need a lot more recovery than if you're using sets that give you substantial end redx.

How about the power to kill a yak from 200 yards away? With MIND BULLETS? Which, you know, I guess is the Psi Blast power of your choice.

A hilarious perverse incentive.

For most non-armored characters, the right (boring) answer is probably the mez protection toggle of your choice.

Sadly, Vengeance doesn't give you more of a bonus if more of your team is dead. BUT IT SHOULD.

Avatars of Hamidon use confuse.

Yep, 30% chance for a mag 9 kb, per CoD.

Hey @xl8. I think it's an interesting suggestion. Let's explore it a little. As I think is implicit in your initial proposal, Enhancement Diversification prevents "lots of slots in a power" from equalling "lots of enhancement of a given stat to that power." You can put 10 +5'd damage enhancements in the power all you want, it'll be a waste of slots. "Overslotting" a power would give you the ability to max out (ie, to ED limits) all of the enhanceable attributes of a power, but not to overenhance one of attributes. So you could, if you wanted to, have a Freezing Touch with ~100% accuracy, damage, recharge reduction, endurance reduction, and hold duration. You probably almost can do that with frankenslotting today, and I agree that this would not be abusive. There are a few powers that currently suffer from it being very difficult to effectively enhance all of their useful enhanceable attributes -- powers that significantly damage an enemy and heal yourself are a classic example -- and this change would provide a buff to those powers. There aren't a ton of those powers, but some of them are pretty good, and we'd need to watch closely what would happen if you could easily slot them for both healing and damage. But what about the effects of the change that aren't purely on how easy it is to enhance power attributes? This change would allow you to do things like, if you wanted, slot two complete sets in a power and pick up the set bonuses of both. Perhaps more realistically, it could let you five-slot one set and three-slot another. In the case where you're somewhat starved for the ability to slot certain kinds of sets, you could see this being a pretty significant advantage to some builds. And, perhaps most importantly, it would let you slot a full set (or most of a set) and then pile on a bunch of procs, and that's where I think the change really falls down. Because ED prevents you from usefully 10-slotting damage, but it does not prevent you from usefully slotting Freezing Touch with 5-piece Hecatomb (ignore pure-damage), then Unbreakable Constraint proc, then the following procs: Gladiator's Strike, Mako's Bite, Touch of Death, Ghost Widow's Embrace, Basilisk's Gaze, and Gladiator's Net. And that seems problematic to me.

My understanding -- which may not be correct, it comes from a random forum post (but I glanced at the wiki and it seemed to confirm) -- is that interrupt-time-reduction enhancements do not actually reduce the total window of interrupt time, they just reduce the amount of it which is interruptible. So: If you have a 1 second interrupt time, no matter what happens, it's 1 second before your power starts playing its activation. If you have 100% interrupt time reduction, the first 0.5 seconds are actually interruptable (ie, if you move or get hit, the power is canceled) and the rest of it is just, you know... time.

Well, it's after a 1.0 second interrupt time. So not entirely instant.

CoD says about Aid Self: Cast time 4.333 seconds Interrupt time 1.0 seconds Animation time 3.333 seconds Animation time before effect 0.033 seconds

So right now, many builds (particularly ones without many/any defense powers in their primary/secondary) want Hasten + four or five defense powers in their pools -- this allows them to build for softcap defense and also pick up 37.5% global recharge with LotG (and 70% with Hasten). It's a bit tough right now if your primary/secondary doesn't support you: Fighting gets you one defense power (but it's double-strength, and people generally want Tough as well) Leaping gets you one defense power (and people like that one a lot, with its low endurance cost and good combat mobility) Flight gets you two, but only with a three power commitment (and hover doesn't necessarily work with a bunch of builds, and EM doesn't give defense in combat) Leadership gets you one (and people like tactics as well) Concealment gets you up to three (one of which affects others), but people maybe don't like them very much So if you regard Speed and Fighting as must-picks, and you want 4 (or 5) total defense powers, then you need to pick up 3 or 4 defense powers in two pools. This can get fairly tight (people probably WANT to get Leaping and Leadership, but that's only two defense powers). Being able to dip into Leaping and Concealment to pick up CJ and Stealth, while not being locked out of Leadership/Fighting/Speed (or sub in Flight there for whatever, if the character works well with flight) would result in some power creep. There are also powers like Rune of Protection which are at least arguably somewhat balanced by not being in a pool that includes any defense powers (and also not being in Speed of course).

I definitely have seen SR scaling resistances show up in combat stats (not specifically on a stalker -- I've only made SR in other armored ATs). Combat bonuses refresh a bit slowly, but if you can't see your scaling resistances when you're at say 25% health, that seems like a bug. (Obviously, you need to have selected the auto-powers in SR to get those bonuses, but I assume you have).

As @Uun alludes to, Kismet, unlike seemingly similar global bonuses like the lotg global recharge or the various +3% def-all pieces, needs to be in an active power.

Scrappers also get epic Hibernate. Geode has a 3m cooldown and Hibernate has a 4m cooldown. Each has a 30s max time-out time. You can't get to the point where you can perma them by alternating, and giving yourself a perma time-out seems not like it's that big a deal anyway? I guess you could maybe be obnoxious in PvP by waiting out some substantial chunk of an arena match? But especially in PvP, with DR on recharge, you aren't going to be anything close to perma. It doesn't feel like a big deal to me?