Underfyre

Well their secondary is made to take more damage, and they don't do that super well either. So subpar primary and subpar secondary for what? Because they're not allowed to do as much damage as Scrappers? Get outta here.

I'm looking at what I think a team looks like from a classical MMO background. Not what CoH of today thinks a team looks like, but like classic Tank, Heals, Control, DPS kind of thing with just 8 people. Out of spite I'll use a Brute as the tank with 80% rage lol. But like I said, simple math, not looking at every single modifier available to every AT in the group kind of math. Everyone just gets the 1 attack, 100 base scaled by their AT and the ability will use a 100% modifier. Opening attack, so no defiance up, no scourge, no containment, nothing to keep track of. Just scrapper doing its crits and a sentinel that saved its opportunity for the AV.

I'll tackle it later today. I'm just thinking of using the standard 100 damage ability, then spread the AT modifier to each member, then compare having just the Scrapper doin its damage, and having everyone doing more damage from the Sent. Not trying to tie in a million different debuffs, just show the result of total damage done between each AT.

I mean if you want to punish yourself even more, you can do the math on the effects of a team with the Scrapper and Sentinel swapped. Show what the 15% resist debuff does for a similarly built team. I'd do it, but I'm at work right now.

Another consideration is that Scrapper crits are active 100% of the time, but Sentinel Opportunity is up about 50% of the time. So it's more of a 15% debuff.

Gunna put my spreadsheet through validation tests now. This will be a running tally. I'll just post times as I get them. Feel free to put your times up if you do your own comparisons. I'm running tests with Rikti Pylon settings since that is a single target with the least amount of variables involved. Bear in mind that the sheet can't account for lost time due to things like healing and clicking Ageless and stuff there are going to be variations. It's occurring to me that using Hybrid will skew numbers since it will be up for like 1.8 cycles (with Water/SR anyway) instead of up half the time like the sheet factors. Anyway.... The sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t-biqau7l2-_mKiNXdRlB2ZmvwbIUCfP7k83dvz3Mg0/edit?usp=sharing Assume no runs use Hybrid from here on out. Just the passive 10% boost. Also assume I'm stringing out the rotations to match the longest cooldown (Usually AIM) I am recording these runs if anyone wants them for time verification. Red numbers are deprecated since the set has changed so much that I would have to do new runs to get new numbers. Set Expected DPS Observed Avg DPS Variance Variance % Water/SR 255.23 230.42 -24.81 -9.72% Elec/Bio w/Pet 330.68 330.45 -0.23 -0.07% Elec/Bio 314.05 296.08 -17.97 -5.72% Dark/Fire 281.31 276.00 -5.31 -1.92% Dark/Fire no Decimation 273.61 272.45 -1.16 +0.43% Dark/Rad 225.03 219.25 -5.78 -2.64% Dark/Rad w/Annihilation 228.54 222.17 -6.37 -2.87% Psi/Regen T2 248.04 230.91 -17.13 -7.42% Psi/Regen T1 235.56 217.32 -18.24 -8.39% Water/SR: This one was probably bad to start with because I don't have the 10 second cooldown on Enhanced Water Jet implemented. I changed the rotation to match what I ended up using in game. Rotation: (5)-7-7-4-21-1-8 Build: Expected DPS with given rotation: 246.55 258.39 (227.39 237.78 without hybrid) 328 seconds: 244.73 DPS (hybrid used) 325 seconds: 245.81 DPS (hybrid used) 308 seconds: 252.33 DPS (hybrid used) No Hybrid runs Time : DPS 335 : 242.29 406 : 222.27 367 : 232.31 387 : 226.91 379 : 229.00 348 : 238.02 372 : 230.91 351 : 237.07 Time : DPS No hybrid average: 373.75 : 230.42 Electric/Bio: Already had this made on the test server anyway, may as well compare. Seeing a bit of disparity, but I also 0'd out the cast time of VS on the sheet, which is cast twice in the time frame of the runs, so 6.6s unaccounted for. Lengthened rotation to 60s and added abilities 1 and 5 to rotation. Fixed VSs doubled damage, added his cast time back in, added in VS Radial debuff procs in. You get to double dip with him up. He's somewhere between helpful and very helpful. Expected DPS with given rotation: 370.56 330.68 without hybrid Time : DPS 208 : 312.18 208 : 312.18 190 : 329.65 198 : 321.49 198 : 321.49 174 : 348.21 170 : 353.39 168 : 356.08 Avg: 330.45 Removing the pet from the equation kind of smoothed things out, but still seeing disparity. Probably because Decimation mostly only applying to the ability immediately preceding it, but the formula just applies to to the total rotation time. That and Annihilation nor proccing near as often as it should. Added in abilities 1 and 5 to rotation to account for Aim and Opportunity casts. Rotation: 3-6-4-20-21-(1), Two cycles will build your opportunity, there's a chance it may trigger off of Tesla Cage and you cast it out of cycle. The very high damage runs had many procs. It's essentially worth 4.4 seconds of cast time. Contribution is only averaged in the sheet. Build: No pet, Expected DPS: 332.86 314.05 246 : 283.70 215 : 306.18 245 : 284.34 252 : 279.99 226 : 297.50 249 : 281.83 230 : 294.55 213 : 307.86 214 : 307.01 219 : 302.94 198 : 321.49 Avg: 232.22 : 292.95 As promised. Dark/Fire. This one I plotted out because I was tired of doing */Bio builds. Dark was a top contender, so I wanted to see how it played with */Fire. There's also good synergy between Fire being a resist set and Dark having the To Hit debuffs. The answer was "above average." Molten Embrace is no Fiery Embrace, it doesn't scale with enhancements like Fiery Embrace does. Rotation: 3-4-(5)-21-7-20-(1) Dominate holds the Decimation Proc, so I moved it to be in front of the 2 hardest hitting abilities not based off of procs. Switched Aim to be before Dominate, it lasts long enough for all 3 abilities after it to be under the Gaussian proc. Looking at the DPS shift after the first run kind of shows this. Once again, a 5 ability rotation kinda synced up Opportunity casts to happen after 2 full rotations. Build: This build *REQUIRES* Cardiac and Ageless to function. It's too end hungry without them, but it has enough damage to do well without Musculature. This is an end game build that doesn't function well in exemplar content. Expected DPS: 262.12 273.09 New sheet DPS Long rotation: 253.11 New sheet DPS Short rotation: 261.28 275 : 267.27 261 : 274.75 263 : 273.63 248 : 282.45 247 : 283.07 Average: 258.8 : 276.00 Decimation removed, slot empty, Expected: 253.42 263.70 New sheet DPS: 234.21 237 : 289.62 (yes, really) 272 : 268.80 282 : 263.81 269 : 270.38 274 : 268.78 251 : 280.60 271 : 269.32 Average: 265.14 : 272.45 Apparently lengthening the rotation to match the longest cooldown (Aim) is pretty important. Alright, Dark/Rad test coming to you courtesy of @Sir Myshkin. Check his Post for the build. So off the bat, Meltdown has a cooldown of ~118 seconds and Adrenal Booster has a cooldown of ~163 seconds, and I'm not going to expand the sheet out to cover that kind of time span. I think as long as I cover the duration of the buff that should cover things. The expected will probably be lower than the actual, as I've seen in almost every test so far. So this build can be End hungry, Ageless offsets it at first, but towards the end you have to hit Proton Therapy on cooldown to keep your endurance up, this ties up some cast time. Meltdown crash definitely hurts, be ready to use Proton Therapy when it drops. Being pinned to Defensive Opportunity also helps with End use. Damage wise, it never went below half health, very sturdy with a near constant 44% (7.5% after resists) to hit debuff. Proton Therapy was purely to keep End up. Also, I haven't modeled for Tactics to hold Build Up. Whatever, it's fine. Rotation: 3-6-4-7-19-(2)-(18) Expected: 202.98, these tests are going to take forever. Roughly 8 and a half minutes per run. I'm not excited. 601 : 191.63 Switched rotation and build, dropped Engulfing Darkness to pick up Smite. Integrated Gloom into rotation, first run saw several procs. Retooled the Gaussian proc in the Aim slot to have Tactics numbers just to account for the damage increase. Make sure you make a duplicated page before you do this stuff kids. Rotation: 2-4-6-7-20-(18) Expected: 206.9 New sheet DPS: 196.52 365 : 232.88 438 : 215.37 431 : 216.80 445 : 214.00 429 : 217.21 For the next runs I swapped the Ragnarok piece out of Dark Oblit for the Annihilation proc Expected: 226.61 New sheet DPS: 214.17 430 : 217.00 420 : 219.13 414 : 220.45 375 : 230.08 389 : 224.17 Today's build is Psi/Regen/Ninja. This is the character I built after I challenged @ScarySai to a race between Sentinels and Blaster with the lowest end damage producers and he never acknowledged. I used Ninja instead of Psi to get a hold of some -res debuffs. The secondary does nothing to boost damage output, and Psi is filled with lackluster attacks. On top of that, the T1 ability is absolute garbage, so you're locked into Defensive Opportunity. Counterintuitively, I have Decimation slotted in the hardest hitting attack, now that I think about it, but whatever. Lotus Drop almost guarantees a Fury of the Gladiator proc, and Sting of the Wasp should give about a 50% uptime of Achilles' Heel. The Rotation: 2-4-8-20-22-(5). At the tail end of Ageless a gap does start to form between SotW and LD. The build: Expected: 225.93 New sheet DPS: 207.03 384 : 227.69 390 : 226.15 399 : 223.93 363 : 233.46 332 : 243.33 Swapped the T1 for the T2, other wise everything is identical. Switching to the T2 power and losing Offense mode is still a 5.89% increase in DPS. And that's with a secondary that doesn't directly increase damage. Expected: 212.33 New sheet DPS: 203.15 417 : 219.78 428 : 217.42 458 : 211.55 425 : 218.05 417 : 219.78

So are you saying my numbers are blatantly wrong, or are you looking for numbers validation? Cuz I can run some in game tests and get expected vs real results. I understand not taking numbers for gospel when they're, by and large, purely theoretical. I've mostly only tested and verified mechanics, not complete builds.

I'll grant you rotation errors, they're for AT combos I have never and will never play a lot of the times. If there are math errors, they need to be pointed out. I'm just the one guy and nobody responds to the threads about anything they find. Anyway, we can record and post videos now. What is this "trapdoor" mission you speak of. I've seen the threads for the other ATs, but I still don't know the mission.

I'd rather just buff the existing inherent than try to shoehorn in a reversed version of an existing mechanic. Then nerf it to prevent it from being abused. Picture it. 4 Sentinels all rushing in with staggered Ageless buffs, their T9 ready every single pull, synced up casting on just about every pack of mobs. Everything dies in seconds. Knowing everything is a snapshot at the time of casting, it won't matter that casts are slightly off, they count as 100% health anyway. Clear times make everything other AT look like a joke. How long until they nerf it to quiet down the Blasters?

Well either it's an inverse of Corruptors, or it's a modified version that is now weakened because it is not that.

Resident pessimist here. Let's say we inverse the Corruptor's mechanic. At 100% health they would have 100% crit chance on their first attack, which is almost always going to be their T9. I guess this isn't a pressing concern with the low damage scalar, but something to consider.

Would you say "ain't a blaster alive that can keep up with me"

So scalar wise, if they were to make the Offensive Opportunity proc scalar 100% instead of 20%, and allow the damage to scale with enhancements, it would... well it'd make mastery pool powers wildly powerful since it scales off of recharge and they inherently have very high recharge. The minmax would have to be dropped down to 0/10 or something. A 75% scalar looks like the sweet spot, depending on what type of damage output your looking for. This also includes making the damage enhanceable. So looking at risk vs reward stand point a Blaster basically has to wade into melee to maximize damage. A full IO build will mitigate the risk, not to the point of pushing it off the table entirely, but close. Looking from a "git gud noob" stand point a Blaster should be mixing their attacks. Do Blasters need to be penalized for just wanting to safely blast from range? I mean, currently they're still doing a bit more damage than a Sent simply because of their damage scalar. But if you made the changes I said, you would essentially be penalizing them. A Blapper styled play will still outpace a Sentinel by an acceptable margin if the target is under the Opportunity debuff, and a fairly hefty margin if the target doesn't have the Opportunity debuff.

Maybe they should make Scrapper crits work like crits in Skyrim lol, that's basically what they did with Sentinels.

How about we aim more for a "Want ranged damage with the option to do a little more at a higher risk? Blaster" "Want similar ranged damage at little risk? Sentinel"

Yeah, I guess there are a lot of cross comparisons to be made. But does the game really care if Sentinels are doing comparable damage to another damage dealing class?

If Scrapper and Stalkers can coexist doing similar damage, so can Blaster and Sentinels?

NGL, I'm so confused right now.

So ...not alright? I think the term for that is not alright.

We've been over why Fire is fine. Blasters are a sum of their parts. In that aspect, Fire is adequately "past" the other sets enough to emphasize that their secondary effect is "MOAR DAMAGE" without being overboard.

A guy can dream. Sometimes the answer is buffing a class, sometimes the answer is nerfing a class.

Okay, but that's not what I'm saying. That post is in reference to halving the set bonuses. I'm saying switching the limit from 5 down ..I'd have the look at how many different bonuses are available, but 3? There are several 5% S/L/E/N/F/C bonuses, and stacking those gets potent fast. Limit to 1 depending on AT. Just that change there makes it a challenge.

Nah, like drbuzzard said, putting a 40% cap won't work, and it'd be indirectly nerf buffing classes. Make those Blasters a high risk, high reward class.

Give healers a job? Give need to tanks besides herding? Making the game a threat to squishies would help more than it would hurt, I'm sure. Sometimes you have to do the right thing despite the cries of the wicked.

I know. I thought about editing that in, but I also thought people would give me the benefit of the doubt and assume I knew that already. I meant cap it further per AT.