Underfyre

So I just had a "no fucking way" moment. Been fiddling with the inverse time formula, figuring out how to add in the time lost from casting extra abilities and what not. Obviously what I'm getting isn't what I'm seeing. But for gits and shiggles I decided to make a duplicate sheet and drop in manual times instead of the Arcanatime it does on its own. So normally I'm seeing between +0.233 seconds minimum, .0267 seconds, and +0.347 seconds maximum. I just averaged it out to 0.307 seconds. The abilities that need to be tracked are Hasten, Ageless, Aim and Voltaic Sentinel for the purpose of the "no variables Elec/Bio." Baseline it's looking at 214.29 DPS. We turn that into 30667.15 / (214.29 * (1 + (-4.26%)) - 102.26) and get 298.08 seconds to kill the Pylon. But now we have to add in the lost cast times. Unfortunately there's no easy way to do this without creating a circular reference that just fucks up everything you hold dear in life. Basically you take the total time you just got, and divide that by all the recast timers of the abilities you need to track. For that rotation and track the 4 abilities mentioned earlier it ends up being around 43.12 seconds. You add 43.12 to the 298.08 and you get 341.20, and after pushing that through the standard pylon dps equation you get 240.21 dps. The exact average of the runs I did for the build. I'm obviously jumping the gun here, and technically I should really be running the "lost time" equation a second time to account for the fact that the total time is now 43 second longer. But whatever, I just thought that was super wierd.

So both modes give the additional 20% resistance debuff. Offense adds an additional damage proc Defense does what you said. I take whatever yields more damage. The only set that the T2 will yield more damage (which I did a dps test to show) is Psi. The T1 in Psi is just absolute garbage. This is all ignoring going into Offense mode. Generally the T1 in most of the sets just does more damage as a filler in a rotation than the T2. Just not Psi.

One day they'll fix Sentinels. One day.

Definitely what he said. Char is a good place, probably your highest proc chance, just make sure your "rotation" afterwards has abilities that will take advantage of the boost, ie. not a low damage power padded up with procs. Especially considering Char has a pretty high base recharge and won't be used in every rotation cycle.

Rad is better for AOE, DP is better for ST. They're both kind of middling sets otherwise.

Well, assuming a completely procced out Dehydrate, and a Water Jet slotted with Apocalypse, Dehydrate isn't going to do the same amount of damage as Jet. Then factor in that Jet will have a 1 second cast time, followed by a 1.43s cast time, that's twice the damage of Dehydrate in 2.43 seconds. Looking at 448.18 x 2 in 2.43, or 470.25 in 1.87. This is assuming all procs go off on both attacks. 368.88 DPA vs 251.47 DPA. Water Jet is your preferred "burn" for Tidal Power in a single target situation. I'm usually more worried about wasting my TP on a Dehydrate.

Degen Radial Runs: 319 : 248.03 348 : 238.02 353 : 236.46 Avg - 340.00 : 240.61 Same applies to these runs. 339 : 240.94 351 : 237.07 394 : 225.15 393 : 225.40 399 : 223.93 354 : 236.15 353 : 236.46 317 : 248.79 369 : 231.74 370 : 231.46 Avg - 363.9 : 233.20

Diamagnetic Radial Runs: 406 : 222.27 348 : 238.02 409 : 221.58 Avg - 387.67 : 226.74 I forgot I used Hyrbid once these runs, then maintained using it once each run. Definitely fucked with numbers. 378 : 229.27 388 : 226.66 384 : 227.69 397 : 224.42 347 : 238.33 341 : 240.28 332 : 243.33 369 : 231.74 395 : 224.90 409 : 221.58 Avg - 374 : 230.36

So I've been doing some playing around just to check how some things react. I've Implemented a modified (for resists) Inverse Pylon time formula, then pulled DPS from inverse time. It's probably wrong to use it that way, but whatever. With all the extraneous casts to keep track of during a Pylon kill, especially over a Sentinel kill time, there's probably no way to get exact numbers. I digress. Back to inverse time/dps. I fudged the Total time (added 8.2s) number until Inverse time equaled the Water/SR run. I added a regen/HP cell for the Pylon. These cells have formulas to react to Degenerative and Diamagnetic. Diamagnetic Radial at 40% from normal rotation. Degenerative Core at 9.72% So, unless I'm just way off base with my numbers and thought processes, it looks like with "all things being equal" Degen Core=Reactive Radial<Diamagnetic Radial. At least in terms of a Pylon run.

Disregard. Wrong numbers used.

Alright. So now we're playing math and minmaxing. I've already made a spreadsheet for this. Some people might chime in and say it doesn't give exact numbers from observed and expected, but ain't nobody going to achieve those numbers when server lag is at play. Every other number available is mathematically correct. Anyway. The only thing I don't have modeled is the 10 second cooldown on Enhanced Water Jet, you kinda have to account for that on your own. Anyway, my main is Water/SR. So I plugged your numbers into said spreadsheet, and all things being equal, you did produce a higher dps than my current loadout. But all things are not fair; I have Mind Probe slotted for damage. Changing my rotation to include Mind Probe instead of Aqua Bolt yields higher damage. It's a nominal increase, so whatever. 1. If you slotted Aqua Bolt for damage instead of muling, you would get more damage. Minor, so whatever. 2. You have a lot of ghost recharge in Mid's with the 2 Force Feedback procs toggled. Otherwise you're running 87.5% before Hasten. Water Blast, however, has a fairly strict rotation that isn't exactly thirsty for recharge, so once again, whatever. 3. The ATOs do love being in AOE powers. You'll probably fill your bar with Opportunity Strikes in Geyser. Sentinel's Ward will only proc the one time for 160hp since it's a pseudopet. So because of how pseudopets interact with Opportunity Strikes, you're not looking at the 6.5% chance to proc. I think I had it figured out to use the pets recharge+cast instead of the base 10 seconds of a psuedopet, which gave it around a 14% proc chance. I've spent like an hour looking for the post where I said the real number, but I can't find it to save my life. I definitely see way more than a 6.5% proc chance in practice. Anyway, I would probably flop the slotting on the two powers. Geyser will get you a shield for 6 targets (cap for the enhancement) instead of the one, Opportunity Strikes will proc fairly often in Whirlpool. The "whatevers" do come into play when you're minmaxing. You're not exactly maxed when you're saying whatever to losing some dps here and there.

/raiseshand Yeah, as a heal, the heal is trash. As a damaging attack, however, it's great. 3.5PPM procs have a 57% chance to trigger. Slot it with procs, don't look back.

From what's available, I'd say give Dark/Regen a go. Dark has the capacity to do high end damage, but it's very endurance hungry because of procs and really wants Cardiac Alpha to pad end use. Regen might be able to offset that enough to allow for Musculature.

Ice and Water are the lowest in single target damage, but Water is definitely worse than Ice. AoE wise, Water is the absolute top end. Water's heal is trash.

You didn't put procs in Dominate. Durability doesn't take a ton of slots to function. Put the full set in Dull Pain if anything. Durability pulses a 30.1 hp absorb every 5 seconds. Making it a 52 hp absorb is only mildly helpful, especially when Hasten would like another slot and Invincible would like more slots as well.

Prices seem to fluctuate with whatever ATs people are building at the time. Sometimes PS drops down to maybe 2.5M, and UG can go as low as 3M.

Level 25 IOs have the same strength as an equal level SO, without the degradation as you level. I'd honestly just buy whatever is cheaper. A lot of times it seems like 25 IOs cost more than their 30-35 counterparts. If you have the currency to support it, I'd look at getting the Performance Shifter proc to put in Quick Recovery or Stamina. Since Regen likes HP so much I'd also look at getting the Unbreakable Guard unique for the extra HPs. You can either wait until 28 for Resilience, awkwardly stuff it in Reconstruction, or get Tough. Anywhere should be fine since it's for leveling.

Oh, never really addressed your question. I guess you can aim for those soft controls, but it's like you said, trying to make it into something it's not. As you have it built, you'll be fine, you're only missing out on a few procs at best anyway. Sonic as a set is more about force multiplication than it is about sheer damage output. If you're also out there randomly doing soft controls you're just leaning a bit more into the team support aspect.

I would probably skip Scream in favor of Shout. With Screech as a viable attack for Sentinels, Scream isn't needed to complete a ST attack chain. I would either just put a plain recharge IO in Amplify, or the Guassian proc. A +5 recharge will sync its recharge time to be more inline with Dreadful Wail, or the Gaussian proc will give whatever you use after the build up more oomph.

Corruptors, Defenders and Controllers already buff/debuff harder.

The theoretical maximum single target rotation would be 4-6-20-21-4-8-20-21, but that is also kinda endurance hungry. Having Dominate procced out will do that since it has a fairly high base cost. Disintegrate has 5-slot Apocalypse with the proc, and the Gladiator proc as well too. Lancer Shot has one of the ATOs in it, probably OS since that affects damage output. Piercing Beam just has the Positron set 5 slotted also with the proc. Mind Probe just has whatever you need for your defense slotting. Dominate is also procced out. Obviously this doesn't mesh with your build, but those are the slottings for the most damage out of that rotation.

Actually, you know what? I'm not even seeing 30% proc rate. Screw procs in this ability.

I dunno, how much does a proc at 90% chance for 71.75 (x3) damage appeal to you? If it does not, then skip it.

Maybe he was shooting for the under-powered Blaster build. None of the benefits of a Blaster coupled with none of the benefits of a Sentinel.

What I'm referring to is the procs ability to stack up to 6x when used on an aoe ability. It's the difference between a 180.7hp shield and a 1084.2hp shield. But the only ability Ice can use to take advantage of this is Frost Breath which isn't very good, so I guess it doesn't matter anyway.