Underfyre

Well I had an idea about racing a Psi/Regen Sent against an AR/Plant Blaster if you're game. By my numbers, both are bottom of the barrel in terms of damage output. Let me know, I built the Psi/Regen character on the test server out of boredom @ScarySai

Saying that, I kind of wish Sentinels had more melee abilities beyond the 1 we can get from the epic pools. Something more like the Assault sets for Doms. I mostly like Sents because of the near invincibility factor and I don't have to worry about hugging the mobs to do damage. But! if I have a few hard hitting melee abilities and they're weren't a major hinderance to get in range to use, I'd use them.

While true, the primaries will have varying responses to how they react to the added secondary. For instance, If I used Atomic as the secondary on Electric it yielded a higher DPS increase than I got when I used the same things with Fire. As has been pointed out, Fire basically has a coherent attack chain with just its primary, while Electric clearly needs a boost from the secondary. BUT, adding the secondary into the mix with the Fire also showed that Fire's damage went even higher when combined with a secondary. Adding a third or fourth attack from the secondary patches up the fact that Electric doesn't really have a lot going for it in the single target department. Adding those same attacks to Fire will simply replace one of the weaker attacks from the primary. Overall both sets will end up doing similar damage. So over all is Fire more capable as a primary and only a primary? Yes. Is it better off with a secondary? Also yes. Dos this make Fire better than everyone else? Hardly.

Yeah, I got yelled at in the Blaster forums for showing the DPS of a purely ranged builds. Apparently you have to play blapper style or you're doing it wrong. So I fiddled around a bit and found myself staring at DPS numbers on blapper builds that were 100 DPS higher than pure ranged builds. The problem there is that a Blaster, though apparently designed to wade into melee range, wasn't really designed to survive the foray.

So yeah, on Dominate. It has a base of 52.83. Which is a DPA of 48.02. That DPA is actually higher than your T1 and 2 abilities. What it also has going for it is a 16 second recharge. A single target ability needs a recharge of around 10.6 seconds and it will have the maximum chance to trigger a proc at 3.5 PPM, which is 90%. Procs only care about enhanced recharge. So you global recharge can bring the recharge all the way down to 6 seconds and it won't care, the proc will still be 90% as long as the enhanced recharge is above 10.6 seconds. For Dominate this is around 50% recharge, or a single level 50 recharge IO at +4. Chances are you won't be enhancing the recharge anyway, so just assume 90% proc chance for 5-6 procs at 71.75 each, and either 1-2 of them at 107.1. I usually only put the epic proc from the hold set, and 4 more of the other procs. EDIT: Sorry, I meant an ability with a 1.1 cast time will need a recharge of 10.6 seconds. So: 107.1+ (4*71.75) = 394.5 That's 740% more damage. Enhancing the ability with regular enhancement sets will probably get you to 133% tops. Putting in 6 basic Damage IOs at +5 will get you to 159.95%. Hell, subbing one of those out for a +5 damage IO from an epic set will top you out at 161.94%. Now granted, they have a 90% proc chance, so it effectively drops down to 355.05 damage, but you get the point. There's a reason everyone says that Psi Mastery is the best blast set for Sentinels.

Knowing I'm only going to be using 4-5 attacks in a chain I generally only focus on slotting those powers and everything else in a build is aiming towards capping out defense or something. The slotting for both builds was pretty similar: Superior Winter's Bite in the weakest attack, ie. Flares or Charged bolts. They're weak, they're fillers and they have low proc chances anyway. Fire Ball and Ball Lightning, all procs and Annihilation -Res. Both only have the 4 procs available, so the other 2 slots I usually just put in the rest of Annihilation to shore up accuracy. Blaze gets the full set of Blaster's Wrath. Blazing Bolt and Zapp 5 slot Apocalypse with the proc. Dealer's choice on whether it gets Decimation or Gladiator's Javelin at the end, whatever yields more damage. Usually minor difference at best. Voltaic Sentinel is kind of a special case. 5 slotting Soulbound Allegiance with the proc, and tacking the Blaster's Wrath proc on the end yields big results, and Electric doesn't particularly need the full set anywhere with just the 2 single target abilities. The two melee abilities use Superior Blistering Cold and Hecatomb with the proc + Touch of Death just because negative has a low resistance chance globally. As for set bonuses... I'll just post a picture. I didn't make any builds, these are just the bonuses I usually end up with after making a build, so they're a good ballpark. The Incarnates chosen are whatever yielded the highest damage. Agility/Nerve because a Blaster chasing defenses will take one or the other. Actually making the build and getting exact numbers will change things minorly. As for damage changes across the different pictures, the sheet is dynamic, so changing something like just swapping an ability will change the total time, changing the amount of Defiance and Hybrid Assault and Annihilation up time.

So... Dehydrate is is vastly better power once you slot it with procs. Yes, it has horrible base damage, and yes it hardly functions as a heal. But procs? It was made for procs. You ignored the part where Black_Assassin said you went several powers into Psi Mastery and never took Dominate. Water Blast doesn't really need help in the AOE department. It's the single target area that it suffers. You skipped Water Jet? It'd probably be a good idea to use Gaussian's in Tidal Forces. Especially with 6 slots. You seem to have confused resists for defense. The way you're currently slotted you will function as an underperforming Blaster. You will be able to take a punch, but you won't have the defenses to avoid the rest of the punches, then you will die and will have done very little damage to compensate. I'm drunk so sorry for being blunt. High resists are only potent when you have high defense to back them up.

This isn't arbitrary. It's literally part of the set. This isn't me cherry picking an ability and saying "but if Electric could have crits like Scrappers it would keep up!" Whatever. Here's both sets bound to just their primary attack sets because apparently that's how Blasters are played. A 9% difference.

The AT isn't just the primary tho, is it? The AT has a secondary available to literally no other AT in the game. Limiting dps to just the primary isn't really a dps check. That's like people telling me I couldn't use the Psi epic on Sentinels when doing comparisons. It's part of the AT, it's a viable way to shore up a weakness of the primary set.

Follow up. After changing to more of a Blapper approach, I found a much higher damage secondary that pushes Fire past Electric. So Electric without the VS does about 13% less dps than Fire. Electric with VS does similar dps, but you need to find a way to keep his attention. The standout is Dark pushing out 5% more damage than Fire.

Well some good has come of this. While I was searching for a secondary that could possibly add to Fire's primary damage output, I found out that Shinobi applies a "crit" chance that is just a damage proc. So now I need to code that in to the sheet.

With what rotation? If you have a better rotation to offer, share it. I've fiddled with rotations endlessly building this, and this is the highest output I've found.

So unfortunately a little more goes into damage output than an abilities sheer DPA. Feel free to tell me how I didn't slot correctly, or how my bullshit spreadsheet isn't an accurate representation.

I guess it's fun to see how many times someone an be wrong in a single paragraph. The single target chain of 1-2-6-whatever secondary ranged you have is plenty sufficient as a chain to nearly keep up with Fire. We're talking a 3% difference. 10% if you go for Nerve over Musculature to shore up those sad defense numbers. Adding in the Voltaic Sentinel sees the set surging up 20% over Fire. Long story short, Fire's "more damage" mechanic doesn't add as much damage as everyone wants to believe.

If you've used my Sentinel sheet, you can use this without issue. If you are unfamiliar, make a copy on your google drive, edit pertinent cells and make a rotation with whatever abilities you have slotted. Seriously, I don't think this sheet works in any other spreadsheet programs. You can use your enhancement numbers from in game, or use enhancement numbers from your Mid's builds. You might be wondering why use this sheet instead of Mid's? Because my numbers are right. In my experience it's easier to pull set bonuses from your Character Attributes in game than it is to pull them from Mid's. Thanks to everyone that's been finding errors I missed. Gunna leave a link for the older version for people that don't care to include pool powers. After fiddling around with it, the only powers worth including are Cross Punch and Corrosive Vial. But that was half assed work on my end, I'm far from an expert rotation builder for Blasters. I didn't any real in-depth investigating, mostly just checked to see if numbers were pulling correctly. I had to change how Reactive Interface and Assault Core were done because the way they calculated before would make it so including Toggles would affect DPS. v1.0.3: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1N1J_UjpZtpCYrg3NtrHVGlboQyp1kQoqZVtxsNNfpf8/edit?usp=sharing v1.1.2: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tA7KrJ9TfkkioVjuLfTSVTXWVCtJfG9r967NC9smXpI/edit?usp=sharing History: v.1.1.2 - Fixed dumb mistake with Patron Pet damage. - Added Reactive Interface debuff to Patron Pets. - Capped both Radial and Core at 10%. - Minor correction to PPM calculations. v1.1.1 - Minor fix to Interface procs. v1.1 - Added Pool Powers. They're to the right of the Primary/Secondary/Epic powers. I'd recommend zooming out to 90% if you're on a 1080 monitor. - Basically every pool power has an associated Toggle. Toggle it if you're using it. Applies to buffs, toggles and the Boxing/Kick/Cross Punch mechanic. - Re-tooled how Reactive Interface is calculated. - Re-tooled how Hybrid Assault Core is calculated. - Fixed how Darkness Manipulation > Death Shroud is calculated. - Fixed how Fire Manipulation > Hot Feet is calculated. - Fixed how Hybrid Radial damage for those two auras and rain spells is calculated. - Fixed Plant Manipulation > Toxins calculation for rain spells. - Fixed how many times Interface procs will activate for 15 second rain spells. - Fixed Patron Pets. Technically the 3 spiderlings can each apply the Achilles debuff, but I rarely saw the buff go over more than 1 stack, so I'm just going to elect to keep it capped at 20%. v1.0.3 - Fixed various abilities not having either -Def or -Res (or both) debuffs that should have. - Updated Defense and Resist reduction cells to reflect. - Changed Defiance to only grab slot 22 if Flame Mastery is chosen. Apparently Melt Armor gives Defiance. v.1.0.2 - Added Sting of the Manticore proc to Snipes - Fixed End calcs for Tactics and Assault. - Added End Discount to Energy Manipulation > Energize. Also added check box to toggle whether you took the ability or not. - Added check boxes to the various Build Up ability slots (4, 5, 6, 12, 13, 14, 15), they are toggled on by default. If you didn't take a Build Up for some reason, you can untoggle it. - Extended Rotation bar to allow it to encompass a longer time. After my Sentinel tests I found that a longer rotation gave me accurate results, especially for Electric Blast. - Removed doubled damage from Voltaic Sentinel. - Added Reactive Interface debuff to Voltaic Sentinel. - Added half-assed calc to include Incarnate recharge into Hasten/Unrelenting/Adrenal. v1.0.1 - Added damage proc to Ninja Training > Shinobi. v1.0 - Initial release. It's been a long road from the Sentinel spreadsheet.

This is taking those facts into account. Theoretically your bottom of the line Blaster is going to be AR/Plant doing the same kind of damage as a Psi/Regen Sentinel. Might be fun to have a clear time race with the two of them and see how that pans out.

Let's set down some facts. An "average" Blaster chasing 45% defense does not do a truck-ton of damage. They do about 20% more damage than a Sentinel chasing offense. Which will more than likely still be defense capped and have status protection that a Blaster does not. Now, your top end Blaster, Fire/Devices by my numbers, will absolutely destroy anything a Sentinel is capable of. Ever. But not everybody is playing that. This is averages I'm talking about. And honestly Elec/Devices and Fire/Devices are outliers and are throwing the averages out of whack anyway. Your Average Corruptor will be matching Your average Sentinel. It will also not have innate status protection. Defenders do 20% less damage than a Sentinel. In every instance. They're an actual support AT. Don't play them to do damage, play them to support. Scrappers? A Scrappers average damage is a Blaster top end damage. Brutes are right behind them, and Tankers right behind Brutes.

And y'all have engaged him for days. Unbelievable.

Generally lower damage isn't an advantage, no. But a higher damage ability doesn't necessarily imply a higher damage throughput ability. The throughput of Lightning Bolt is lower than Charged Bolts.

Lightning Bolt is lower damage than Charged Bolts. Charged Bolts also activates your Offensive Opportunity. At the end of the day your rotation probably won't use either power except to activate Opportunity.

Absolutely do not take Lightning Bolt over Charged Bolts.

How about you make an attempt and we'll give some pointers.

Yeah, I'd also Dark/Energy. Darks a great blast set, Energy is an easy secondary. If you go for frankenslotting, the end reduction of the Energy heal will also come in handy.

It's almost like I made a DPS spreadsheet to do this math quickly and show people how DP/SR/Fire is never going to approach 300dps. Nobody plays at +0 that has a build like you're describing.

Fire as a primary doesn't really excel with procs since it doesn't really have a secondary effect.