aethereal

I mean, they didn't. Did you read the first post? The base damage on the powers in brute Energy Melee is exactly where the scalars say it should be -- it doesn't get any special tuning to be worse than you would expect. The weird tuning is on Scrappers/Stalkers, since Energy Transfer and Total Focus get much-less-than-full-strength crits (and, in return, some non-damage benefits for critting). But Brute Fury works like normal on ET and TF, and the base damage is, as I said, right where it's supposed to be.

Okay, great. So why is it nothing spectacular? It's perhaps the single-highest-ST damage set on Scrappers and Stalkers (maybe new Fiery Melee will give it a run for its money), and it seems like Brutes get versions of Energy Transfer and Total Focus that slightly surpass the damage that a Scrapper could get with a highly optimized crit rate. Like, I'm looking for someone who says, "Oh, yeah, I tried to run Brute EM for a high-end Pylon time, and here's what you're missing..."

It's not a bug report. I don't know why you're so confused about this, honestly. I am saying, "it seems from a basic look at things like a brute's ST damage with Energy Melee should rival a Scrappers. Does that actually bear out in play? If so, why aren't we talking more about that? If not, where does the reality diverge from the simple numbers?"

I don't really care if they should be or shouldn't be, my question is -- are they? If they aren't, why not? Where does the extra damage creep in?

Yes, but it's theory-crafting, and I assume that if someone was throwing down Scrapper-like numbers on pylons or whatever with Brute Energy Melee, I'd have heard about it.

But the point is, here they seem to be on-par damage output.

I think we all got excited when Energy Melee was simultaneously revamped and proliferated to Scrappers (and Stalkers were given some kind of AoE). And of course Scrappers/Stalkers got the weird bells and whistles for crits -- but they don't get full crit damage on the two lynchpin Energy Melee attacks. Brutes, of course, get full benefit of fury to Energy Melee. Here are the numbers: Energy Transfer Scrapper: 285 damage normal, 365 damage crit If 95% damage enhanced + 20% additional damage from Alpha or whatever, 612 damage normal, 784 damage crit Brute: 190 damage base If 95% damage enhanced + 20% additional damage from Alpha or whatever, + 160% damage from fury: 712 damage. A Scrapper will have to crit 58% of the time to equal Brute damage with Energy Transfer. Total Focus Scrapper: 223 damage normal, 285 damage crit If 95% damage enhanced + 20% additional damage from Alpha or whatever, 479 damage normal, 612 damage crit Brute: 148 damage base If 95% damage enhanced + 20% additional damage from Alpha or whatever, + 160% damage from fury: 555 damage A Scrapper will have to crit 57% of the time to equal Brute damage with Total Focus Now, okay, Scrappers will enjoy their usual benefits on the rest of the attack chain compared to Brutes, but TF and ET are the three best DPA attacks in Energy Melee (it goes fast ET, slow ET, then TF), and are central to the attack chain, and it feels like scrappers are pretty unlikely to equal Brute DPS with those attacks (you might get slightly north of 58% crit chance on one of your Energy Transfers (at best 90% chance of the ATO2 proc going off, so that's like 45% crit chance plus 16% base crit chance), but not on both of these attacks). How does this all fall apart? Obviously, you have to deal with damage from Energy Transfer, not "fairly likely to heal you instead of damage you," but that doesn't feel like a deal-breaker. You don't get the chance of two fast ETs per chain, but it doesn't feel like scrappers build towards that anyway?

I compared-and-contrasted with Brute Energy Aura > Energy Cloak, and certainly the stealth in Dark is coded differently from the stealth in Energy Cloak (which does suppress for 10 seconds after attack etc for both PvE and PvP). https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=brute_defense.energy_aura.energy_cloak&at=brute I don't have enough knowledge of the minutiae of how Stealth works/what exactly happens when you trigger a power's "cancel" condition, how notifying spreads between members of a spawn to understand exactly what behavior to expect from this difference, but Dark Armor's stealth really is different from other powers' stealth.

Hmmm. The PvE stealth definitely cancelled when you attack or are hit, but unlike the PvP stealth, it doesn't suppress for 10 seconds -- I think it's reestablished on the next pulse of the power. Not sure of this, could be misinterpreting.

And you probably should slot for recharge. Sentinels need to work to get their damage up.

Dual blades doesn't have a strong AT bias. It's an overall solid set and you should feel comfortable choosing the AT based on the armor set or your overall enjoyment of the dynamics of the AT rather than any particular synergy of Dual Blades.

He said two different things: 1. That some attacks lack positional tags. This is true. 2. That he didn't know if the recent defense changes stripped any possible tags from attacks the previously had positional tags. These changes did not (intentionally) render any attacks newly positionless.

Nope! Attacks with multiple types got collapsed to one type, but nothing should've lost a position in the recent defense changes.

Here's my shot-in-the-dark, untested hypothesis for the inconsistent behavior that @WindDemon21 is seeing: Impassioned Serenade executes its confuse after a 0.25 second delay. I'm not aware of other redirects that redirect after a delay, and I wonder if, in addition to the LoS issue, there may be circumstances where the redirected power gets preempted by another power that might execute in the same tick as it. If that is the issue, it might be better to put the delay on the effect group within the redirected power (so the redirect happens immediately, but the effect of the redirected power has a 0.25 second delay on it).

This is almost pretty easily explicable, with a huge caveat. The way that the power accomplishes the "DoT for up to 30 seconds while confused" is it gives a 30 second DoT that suppresses if you're not confused. But the power still ticks on. So if you are confused, then unconfused, then confused again before 30 seconds is up, you'll start getting damage from the original DoT again. (This would happen even if you were confused from some other source). So what's happening is: T=0: You hit them with impassioned serenade. They start getting DoT T=10 or so: The confuse wears off, and they stop taking damage. T=20 or so: You hit them with another impassioned serenade. Now they take damage from the second impassioned serenade's DoT and the first impassioned serenade's DoT. EXCEPT: The DoT is marked not to stack with itself. It's supposed to replace existing effect, not apply a second DoT. Conceivable that that's failing to work somehow?

When you look back at the levelling progression of your 50+3 Sentinel and from levels 27 to 38 you see only one set of footprints, it was then that Underfyre carried you.

Tidge asserted that Provoke had a target cap of 16 in City of Data.

At launch, I think much of Archery's draw was a non-crashing, long-distance T9. That advantage has obviously been significantly degraded now that all T9s are non-crashing, and its shorter recharge is at least arguably a disadvantage in a context of 180% global recharge for all builds that really, you know, try.

City of Data doesn't show a target cap of 16 for Provoke, it shows 5.

The usual caveat that sets like Invul and Super Reflexes are clearly in good overall shape, don't need any more damage mitigation tools, and that their crashing T9s are important in PvP.

No, so... The confuse portion of Impassioned Serenade is coded onto a separate power that Impassioned Serenade redirects to, instead of being a straightforward effect of Impassioned Serenade. I think that the second LoS is a result of that, and yes, I agree it's a bug (and could probably be fixed by making the redirect power not require LoS). But my question is, why is there a redirect in the first place? Other Symphony Control powers don't redirect. Other confuse powers don't redirect. I assume that there's something that they're trying to accomplish with it being a redirect at all, but I don't understand what it is. Maybe @Bopper can see something about how it works that makes the redirect useful/necessary? https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=controller_control.symphony_control.impassioned_serenade&at=controller

The confuse being a separate redirect effect of the power is sketchy. Why is it coded like that? I'm pretty sure that's why there's a second, separate LoS check for just the confuse part of the power that can result in "no" when the main LoS check is "yes." I wouldn't be surprised if there was other weird behavior due to the redirect. What's the desired behavior that we get from having it be a redirect instead of a straightforward effect of the power?

Nope, they went through! Live patch notes here: The quick-and-dirty version is: the res debuffs were made partially non-stacking Cast time reductions for: Scream, Shout, Howl, Shockwave, and Siren's Song Damage buff for Shockwave and Siren's Song (and Screech, but not for Sentinels) But for Sentinels, all the cones went to 6 targets instead of 10

I think your comments on Sonic Blast refer to a now-outdated version of the set (both on Sentinels and on others). Siren's Song now does the most damage of the three cones, and Screech does good damage on all Sonic Blast characters, not just Sentinels. There were also some cast time adjustments. EDIT: There are some other errors here. You refer to Ice as a "mostly positional defense set," but it's typed defense, not positional. You also refer to the T9 as though Sentinels got Hibernate, but Sentinels (along with Stalkers and Scrappers) get Icy Bastion, a 30 second big +resistance-all clicky with no crash, not Hibernate (the heal yourself in a block of ice power that Brute and Tanks get).

But invulnerability, unlike rad, is a defense/resistance hybrid set. I don't think it makes sense to ignore defense on invul, unlike at least potentially rad. If you wanted another zero-defense build, how about electric?