Underfyre

Tested. Horribly wrong. Not unexpected. If there is an internal cooldown, it isn't long enough to keep it from being available every time Shockwaves was up, or the abilities cooldown was up.

Alright, so I haven't run an in game tests on it yet, but the numbers say that using the improved Stalagmite instead of using the improved build up will yield a higher damage output.

If the options are to use one of two lackluster attacks, or to use a buff twice as often, the two attacks should be in direct competition with the buff. right now it's not even a thought, you use the buff.

Seeing all those combos, are there any you wish you would have paired differently?

So I took Electric/Bio for a roll on the Beta server to check out the numbers at work. Dropped the new pet numbers into the sheet, updated all the enhancement numbers, updated the Rotation to match what I'm using and set to work. Since I have predicted kill times, I now kinda have a way to track how much Assault Hybrid will be up, but I'm pretty sure that will fall apart once you have a time longer than 240 (360 maybe?) seconds. I have run tests on Sentinels that do. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get there. Since it looks like that with Sparky at my side Degen Core is the highest output, that's what I went with. Predicted kill time: 119.21 Observed kill time: 113, 116 I'll take it.

**Drops a meteor the size of a house on their heads** Missed?

I personally don't like how many which powers benefit from it, probably because "benefit" means the power resets. Rotationally I'd rather use Rock Shards over Upthrust, because damage, but doing so frequently put me in the position of "wasting" my Shockwave stacks instead of using them on the Seismic Force I would have otherwise.

Seeming as it isn't exactly something I can model for, and testing it on a Pylon won't really yield results since it's based off of current endurance values, I'm wondering if the Preemptive Interface might work better for Electric.

I dunno, generally a set needs a nerfing when it can be played poorly and still excel. I don't know what happened, but it doesn't sound like he excelled.

I'd say the attack names sound like controls more than blasts. Additionally, there doesn't seem to be many projectiles either, so it feels even less blasty.

They get the changes. The changes also further cement Electric Blast as the premier Sentinel blast set too. Were you worried about the aoe capabilities of Electric? Fear not, the new Shock mechanic has you covered. Does it kind of suck that it's tied to Tesla Cage? Fear not, that's your best attack, you're a Sentinel. Sparky? He's perma, no more stopping every minute to cast a 3.1s pet that also increases your damage by 5%.

Apparently there's more to the set than the main post lets on, but nothing I saw since I was Hoverblasting, which this set doesn't get along with.

I'd run a quick pylon test, but there's no instant incarnates right now. Without those I'm looking at 540 second runs. Just taking the character through a Dr. Aeon for now. We'll see. Yes, numbers are pulled from beta in dropped in a spreadsheet. I have to use the "standard" snipe numbers for Tombstone since I don't have city of data to work from. I'm sure they're fine. After playing the set through the new SF, I have to say I don't like the delay between the cast time of Meteor and the time until it hits. Nobody has parsed the new data yet, so I can't say what the delay time is, but I can say if it's going to be that long the cast time needs to be shortened.

Based on numbers alone I can say Seismic will put out lower ST damage than Archery, the former lowest damage set on a Corruptor. I wanted to be excited.

Still perplexed by the Diamagnetic number. I mean, the math should be right. At max stacks it's only 40% -regen, reduced by 87%, bringing regen down to 96.94 from 102.26. Over, we'll call it a 350 second kill time, that will equate to another 33929 health to work down, versus having to work down 35791 health if it were 102.29. A whopping 1862 health difference. Assuming the Water/SR average of 230dps, that's another 8 seconds difference. But then you look at the averages from the runs with the different Interfaces and they're a total of 3 dps apart. Let's just systematically take things apart, kind of easy if you don't mind ruining the sheet. Removing the -res debuff from Reactive takes us from a base of 211.02 to 206.89 dps. The proc adds 4.13 dps (kind of, the proc does more damage on account of the debuff). The proc on Degen takes it to 203.5 from having no proc at all, 188.98. Diamag has no proc damage, it's just the base 188.98. It doesn't do anything else with regards to damage output, just lower the regen rate by a staggering 5.32/s. With the server ticks being, I think 15 is what Bopper said? that will shave off 79.8 per server tick. 1454.10 instead of 1533.90. It just isn't that much and you're doing 14 dps less than the other two. So why the eff is it keeping pace with them. Grinding these numbers through the inverse time formula gives us... Reactive: 30677.15 / (206.89 - 102.26) = 293.19s Degen: 30677.15 / (203.50 - 102.26) = 303.01s Diamag: 30677.15 / (188.98 - 102.26) = 353.75s So just baseline Diamag is already taking 50 seconds longer. But that's not the whole picture, Reactive does more damage with the debuff, Degen also reduces total HP, and regen as a result, and Diamag is lowering regen. So let's pump those through again. Reactive: 30677.15 / (211.02 - 102.26) = 282.06s Degen: Couple steps 30677.15 - 1000 (kind of the average with 25% proc chance) = 29677.15 Regen = 29677.15 * 0.33% = 97.93 29677.15 / (203.5 - 97.93) = 281.11 Diamag: 30677.15 / (188.98 - 96.94) = 333.30 Diamag is 50 seconds behind still. Reactive and Degen have mostly merged as expected, but Diamag? Fuck your observed results. This is just baseline, we aren't even accounting for the part where there's lost time to keep buffs up, at 333/50 seconds Diamag should only be casting 1 more Aim than the other two, Hasten and Ageless would still be cast the same amount. I kind of feel like maybe I just had really lucky runs with Diamag, but who knows. The math thinks it's wrong.

Okay, now I have what I would call a minor sample size for each Interface. I have a sheet that has the resistances per ability removed and they are instead passed through the inverse time function with the regen and HP total, in the event that resists were double dipping on effectiveness. It seems like they were? I kinda have manual times put in where I can control the amount of lag, since I have 3 different delays observed. I also use an average delay time. None of this matters particularly when I just arbitrarily apply different levels of lag to get what I want. Anyway, we have observed dps of 233.20 for Degen, 231.99 for Reactive, and 230.36 for Diamag. All are fairly close together. In the sheet tho? Not so much. Degen and Reactive work out, but Diamagnetic? It doesn't intend to play nicely I guess. It's lagging behind 8% of where it should be compared to the other two. Now sure what to do with that information.

I had to cut hybrids out of my testing because when you're testing for averages and there's no 50/50 split for uptime, it skews the average. Which is why I can't account for it. AOE-wise, there are a lot of situations for Sents where using an AOE will yield better damage than trying to shoehorn on one of their single target abilities. Especially for one's that can be proc monsters. But that tends to be pretty end heavy.

I can only refute this mathematically because I had to cut hybrids out of my testing, but mathematically --lets face it, I have some form of spreadsheet for every AT-- it seems like every AT gets more benefit out of Radial than Core. The exceptions are damage auras; they do just about dick worth of damage with Radial, so benefit more from having their sheer damage increased instead. But math also wants to imply that Reactive is better than Degen, but observations disagree. So who knows?

I guess I need to expand my sample size to 10 per Interface or something. Feels like math is math. With all else being the same and the only variable (kind of) being the Interface, the math says Reactive should not beat out Degen.

Manually removing resists from ability damage calcs and only having them in the time/dps calcs also does not do the trick.

Flat out removing resists from the time/dps calc does not do the trick. It brings Degen and Reactive closer, but Degen should be doing a good 4-5% more.

Anyway, yes. Gun, jumped. My issue isn't that the observed numbers and predicted numbers don't match up. That was never going to happen with the wide array of cast times you can have in just a 1 minute span. No, my issue is with how the inverse pylon time is working out. The idea was to see how it played with Degen and Diamagnetic. I wanted to account for "unmeasured timings" from Hasten and the like so I could see how those Interfaces held up in an "equal" environment and the time would change when you changed the Interface. I have some a small batch of runs to get some observed times for those, but when I put the build data into the sheet? It greatly over values -Res versus -HP and -Regen versus what I'm seeing in game. I've tried accounting for lost time in 2 ways now. The way I described above, and seeing how many "rotations" exist in the total time, then dividing the unmeasured time cell by the amount of rotations, then putting that amount in a new DPS. Oddly the two ways give different results, the first way being closer to the observed times. So we'll say I have 20.90 seconds of unaccounted for time that needs to be put in the calculation. The predicted kill time is 256.53 seconds. now it's 277.44 seconds. The other way is we have a rotation that takes 32.32 seconds to complete. So we divide 256.53 by 32.32 and get 7.94. We have 7.94 rotations that take 32.32 seconds to complete. So I also broke that 20.90 seconds into 7.94 chunks to get 2.63 seconds. Theoretically the rotation should be taking 34.95 seconds to complete. now it's 6450.44 damage/34.95 seconds. Clearly this isn't helpful when I've observed that I do 240.61dps and I'm adding time to make the already too low 199.61 dps now 184.57 dps. That's because before I couldn't really account for HP/Regen debuffs. That's where the inverse time calculation comes in. I can account for them in there. But like I said, it's over valuing -res. Possibly because -res is double dipping? It's being accounted for the initial dps calcs, but then also being accounted for in the time calcs. I'm not really sure how to isolate it properly to get a correct measure. Maybe @Bopper can come in and save me from myself here.

Actually you know what it is? Interface procs don't care about cast time. They only care that you hit, so hitting faster is more beneficial than slower. Dark Blast has a lower cast time, thus benefits more.

I know, but more goes into a rotation than sheer DPA it seems.

You want to think it does, but it doesn't. It isn't as glaringly obvious as Psi Blast, but the difference is there, then gets exacerbated by Offense mode.