Underfyre

Blessed be his name.

Well this is one of those "I planted the tree so you can have shade" moments because I don't really play much anymore.

The only changes would be to specific rotations because your T1/T2 are no longer necessary to a rotation to activate Opportunity.

Secondary Powerset: Stone Armor Medium Healing, Medium-High Defense, Medium Resistance, Low Clickyness 15% Global Recharge Reduction, 2.5% To Hit bonus, 10% Accuracy bonus, High Defense Debuff Resistance, High HP Increase, High Psionic Defense, High Perception, No Protection vs. Fear or Terrorize Stone Armor is the new kid on the block for all of the damage-primary melee Archetypes. It was proliferated to Scrappers and Stalkers in Page 3, and was then modified to fit a ranged attackers (us. just us.) in Page 5. Much of the theme of the set revolves around "being in touch" with the earth below your feet and drawing your power from it, so many some basically just one of the powers of the set are suppressed when you leave the ground. If you came here to hover-blast, know that you are somewhat diminishing your potential. Very minor somewhat. This largely affects the Terra Firma and Rooted powers. And even then it apparently only affects Rooted in that you have to be on the ground to activate it, otherwise the effects of the power maintain active when flying. Terra Firma is fully suppressed during flight. So skip Terra Firma if you plan to hover-blast. It's just a range boost with some to-hit and accuracy, it'll be fine. Obviously, if you're using Seismic Blast you have to be grounded anyway. That set is absolutely tied to the ground. Let me be clear. Hover-blasting with this set is perfectly acceptable. You aren't losing out on anything you will miss. Beginner's Overview Defensively, set follows the "strong here with resistance, but weak with defense/strong here with defense, but weak with resistance" approach of Willpower and Bio Armor (Energy Aura to a smaller degree) in that the set has high innate resistance to Fire/Cold damage, but very low starting defense against them. Side bonuses of the set include a 100% regen bonus in Rooted, a +15% recharge bonus in Minerals, a 20% recovery bonus in Crystal Armor (essentially making it a free toggle), and a cast time (versus recharge time) based damage proc. Those are some sexy bonuses. Other sets need to step up their game. Or it's power creep, whatever. Geode has a side bonus of granting stacks of Geothermal Power which will increase the damage of the Brimstone proc by 8% per stack, but to get these stacks you have to be in the Geode. Not a bonus to actively pursue, but if you took Geode and also had to use it for some reason, you may as well get some stacks and come out swinging. Slotting Basic Slotting Not a ton to say on the "basic" end of things. Aim for 1 End Reduction and 3 Defense/Resistance IOs in the powers that want them. In Crystal Armor you'll also want an End Mod IO to increase the recovery bonus, you'll need it to help with keeping all your toggles active. A single healing IO in Rooted is sufficient. 3 Heals, 1 End Red and 1 Recharge in Earth's Embrace should do you. Advanced Slotting I feel like, optimally, you should be aiming to have the full 5 Luck of the Gambler recharge reductions in a defense set (versus a resist set). I'm going to assume you have Hover or Combat Jumping as an easy way to boost your defense, and one of the LotGs in that power. So you need 4 more. You probably also went for Weave, so 3 to go. The rest will likely go in your Secondary abilities, so I'll point you to what I think would be the optimal places. My first pass through trying to slot this set with a slot hungry primary yielded a secondary that also seemed very slot hungry. The assumption will be that you have fully slotted 6 of your 9 primary abilities, and 2 epic abilities, plus 1 for a second slot in Hasten for a total of 41/67 slots used. 26 left. I am not factoring in putting recharge in Aim, so plan accordingly. I feel like I should also point out that attaining 45% defenses against all types without making sacrifices is a tall order. Unlike Bio Armor, you don't have a ton of regen, a heal and an absorb to keep yourself standing. So eschewing some offense to make sure you don't take too much damage might be the way to go. But that depends on what kind of playstyle you have. Rock Armor - This is a 4 slot ability. This your S/L defense, but diminishing returns are going to limit you anyway. So toss in a LotG here for gits and shiggles (2 to go). Red Fortune 3-slot will get you S/L/F/C resists, or LotG 3-slot will get you more health and regen. Reactive Defense 3-slot will get you just S/L resist and more health. All are good choices, but LotG will give you an excuse to slot the LotG unique here and get away with 3-slotting, or grab another 9% accuracy with the 4-slot. Might be useful. Stone Skin - This is a 6 slot ability. Being that this ability provides more resistance than defense, this is a key spot for LotG (1 to go). A good place to 5-slot Aegis for higher than average F/C defense. This ability is also the only power that gives F/C defense, but slotting for defense here will not match what the Aegis set will give you. If you 3-Slot Aegis, it will leave room for 2 uniques, or moving the slots elsewhere. Uniques to consider are Impervious Skin for status resistance and 25% regen, Steadfast Protection and/or Gladiator's Armor for the 3% defense, Impervium Armor if you're desperate for psi resist, Kismet for some To- Hit, Shield Wall for +5% resist to all, or Reactive Defenses. Earth's Embrace - Either 5-slot Panacea or 6-slot Preventative Medicine if you're leaning towards a recharge heavy build. If you're chasing defenses go for either 6-slot Panacea or 6-slot Numina's. If you have the spare slot, you can 5-slot Panacea and tack on one of the uniques from the resistance sets. Since Panacea is a PvP set, you can safely +5 it and keep your set bonuses when you exemp down, which will also give the power more recharge than if you used a plain level 50/attuned Preventative Medicine set. Minor consideration. Terra Firma - I'd recommend putting the Gaussian's in your primary's Aim ability unless you went Dual Pistols. Being that the only thing enhanceable in this ability is the 2.5% to-hit, I wouldn't push to enhance that stat unless you have spare slots lying around that you can't use better elsewhere. This is a good slot for the Rectified Reticle unique to get a good perception bonus. Otherwise just a single to-hit IO will do. You're slot hungry, please don't try to shoehorn the whole Gaussian set in here for 2.5% defense. I know you're thinking about it. Just.. just don't. Rooted - Yes, this is your only other means of self healing, but I would probably consider minimal slotting in this ability. If you don't really need the healing, put the Miracle unique here. If you kind of do, but also need the recovery, go with the Numina's or Panacea uniques. If all you care about is the regen, a +5 healing IO will serve you better than Regenerative Tissue. Crystal Armor - This is a 4/5 slot ability. Being that E/N resists are hard to come by, I'd consider 4-slotting Shield Wall here to grab some. Adding a fifth slot to the ability to drop in a Performance Shifter proc would not be a bad idea. I probably wouldn't try to add in one of those LotGs here, but do you. Brimstone Armor - This is a 4 slot ability. You can go with 4-slotting Unbreakable Guard for some Melee defense, but as a typed defense kit, that's 1.56% S/L to you, which ain't a lot. Bearing that in mind, you can 4-slot Reactive Armor and get 1.25% in S/L/E/N which is probably a better bargain. Or you can 3 slot Aegis and pop in one of those resist-set uniques for the fourth slot. Or just 3-slot it. Minerals - This is a 4 slot ability. Obviously it's your only place to effectively get Psi defense, but the LotG unique also has a defense component, so not a huge loss. Otherwise follow Rock Armor slotting suggestions. Geode - I would just slot this with recharge IOs. In total we've used 23 of your 26 remaining slots on the high end here, so you do have wiggle room, but you'll probably want those slots in Tough/Weave/Hover/Combat Jumping or whatever other pool powers you took to grab more defense. So like I said, this is a slot hungry secondary. Skippable Powers • Terra Firma - If you plan to Hover Blast, this power will be completely useless to you. • Geode - While it is a no-crash T9, you really shouldn't need it in a final build. Ancillary/Patron Pools: Ninja tools will unlock the Achilles' Heel proc to sets that may not natively have it, which will be a damage increase. The attacks that unlock that proc are also purely melee abilities, so if you want to stay at range you'll have to pass on them. It can also unlock the Fury of the Gladiator proc for something like Ice Blast that would otherwise not have access to it. Other epics can do that as well, but not every epic can nab that Achilles' proc. Otherwise just go with Psi for Mind Probe and Dominate. Until they add Earth Mastery. I hope it has Mud Pots. Complementary Choices: If we're looking from a purely "grounded" perspective, only Seismic Blast has that requirement. Otherwise, just about any Primary can benefit from something in this Secondary. I has recovery for thirsty sets that you may have franken-slotted a little recklessly, and it has recharge. Everyone likes recharge. Thematically, you can change the appearance of the toggles to be crystals, stone or lava. I feel like crystals covers Ice, and Sonic, for some reason. Maybe Energy and Psi. Electric seems like a stretch, but a good enough backstory can cover for it. Plain stone seems like it should fit with both water and fire, especially with that stone waterfall backpack costume piece. Oh, and Seismic, obviously. Lava is fore fire only. Only fire. But these are just my drunken ramblings. It's an almost 20 year old game, do whatever you want. Just don't use Lava for anything but fire. Incarnate Abilities Being that this is an offensive AT, I can't really recommend going for incarnates that further your defensive capabilities, but people like to take ATs down roads they weren't expressly intended to travel. Bearing that in mind, if you wanted to travel those roads, I would personally aim to enhance your resistances over your defense. Reason being that your defenses can be patched up pretty well with set bonuses, but less so for your resists. So if you don't plan to take Musculature Core, maybe aim for Resilient or Cardiac. If you have Terra Firma, Resilient will also bump that up. If you go with Cardiac, it will lower your endurance costs and potentially free up a slot from Crystal Armor.

Hell, Seismic has an entire mechanic dependent on your proximity to the ground. Not hover-blast friendly. Electric Armor also has mechanics that work best on the ground. Bio Armor: for top end damage output Dark Armor: good resists, Obscure Sustenance required for end management Energy Armor: +20% recharge, great all around defense/resistance Fiery Aura: Burn was crippled and is a shadow of its former self. Molten Embrace is the lowest of the damage proc secondaries. Okay resists, very quick Heal. You'll need it. Ice Armor: Looks bad on paper, never played it, heard nothing good from those that have. Invuln: +10% to hit, best all around resists/defense, very slow recharge heal. Ninjitsu: Good position defense, good utilities. Still don't like it very much. Radiation Armor: Has the T9 that all other T9s should aspire to be. Like, it's literally the only unskippable defense set T9 in the game. Good blend of resists and healing/regen. +20% Recharge, PBAE attack. Regen: Best version of Regen available. Stone Armor: Has ground mechanics. Second best damaging proc, technically first best, but Bio has another +25% damage. Has regen, recovery and recharge. Typed defense, F/C is the weak spot. SR: Best positional defense, resists scale as you take damage. Master Brawler makes it the best version of this set as well. +20% recharge. Willpower: Straight in the trash.

2.4.1 was silently released. 2.4.2 is up, Seismic Shockwaves affects are now implemented.

Yes, it was changed. The ability to proc up to 6 times was removed. Now the only reason to slot the set is for the bonuses.

10 for superior and 7.5 for regular. This is also correctly tracked in my DPS sheet. For superior anyway.

48%, not 42%. So 10.8% and 14.4% respectively. Still winning.

I mean, a Sentinel does that now too if all you're doing is plinking away from a good safe distance. Gunna have to put on those big boy pants and wade into battle if you wanna show them dirty Sents h'wut for these days.

Just Disintegrate and Single Shot from Beam Rife.

All these Blaster comments about not wanting to get in close to optimize damage is kind of revealing why they're so threatened by the Sentinel modifier coming close to theirs. Like I said in an earlier post, it's Risk v Reward. Blasters have it, Sentinels kinda don't. The option is there to increase damage for Blasters, they just have to take a risk to get it.

I'd skip Burn because it got neutered (or fixed, depending on your stance). The damage toggle is the weakest of the bunch. Cauterize is great. Throw a Numina proc in it and it basically pays for itself. Largely the set is...alright? I guess?

So something you're not accounting for is that Beam Rifle has 2 bonuses going for it. Disintegrate grants a stacking 12.5% bonus to damage (probably a bug from the copy+paste coding like the smashing damage bonus in Ice) (I probably shouldn't have pointed that out), and both Disintegrate and Single Shot have a regen debuff. Obviously one is only relevant in single target situations, but every bit of health a mob isn't regenerating is an indirect increase to dps. These two bonuses plus the Disintegrate mechanic make Beam Rifle a top tier set.

So Lancer Shot and Disintegrate are your bread and butter attacks. I'd put the Apocalypse set in one of them to draw more damage out with the proc. Reason being that Lancer Shot has a 100% proc to trigger the Disintegrated spread damage, so you should be using it often. I'd drop Piercing Beam unless it's purely for muling. I'd move Sentinel's Ward to Overcharge. I'd move Opportunity Strikes to either Lancer shot or Disintegrate. You should be using both of these extremely frequently and they have a higher chance to trigger that proc than Charged Shot. I'd drop Tactics entirely unless you intend to exemp down a lot, Invincible gives you a +10% To Hit buff and you already have Kismet. You'd probably be better off with Assault, especially since we now have a juicier base damage. No Gaussian's?

I didn't compare the old Fire Armor numbers, but Fire armor got a relatively smaller boost, 3%, because they fixed Burn activating procs twice which was pretty big part of the sets damage out put.

Like I said on one of these other posts, it boosted the average (between all powersets) from a 218 to a 239 for a 9% increase. That's the maximum end with Bio. Stone actually averages a 238, fire is dragging behind with a 223, and...maybe I should do an average using Regen or something to get the unboosted baseline. And like @Snarky said, it was a boost, but it wasn't enough for my tastes. But it was also too much in the eyes of the Blaster try-hards? I think a lot of the problem is that the AT has essentially no risk v reward to it. It's just a ranged AT, and that's about it. They're in virtually no danger, and they have no reason to put themselves in danger to increase their damage. I mean, they can. But the increase you get from wading into melee to use your one melee attack from your epic pool does just about nothing to help catch up on damage. The change made the inherent slightly less clunky, but the clunk still exists. And it's only for a single target, and it could honestly be doing more given that fact. We got something, but it'll probably be another 2 and a half years before they take another look, all the while creeping the damage up on every other damage AT in the meantime. Honestly I'd like to take a pass through the under-performing sets like Water, Psi and Energy before we worry about trying to get a better inherent or something.

Page 5 changes up.

Ignoring level difference is not ignoring how resist mechanics work. Having a 20% resistance to type also means a 20% resistance to resist debuffs to that type. So for a Pylon, that means, well technically nothing since they're even level, but it means it's a 12% rebuff because it resists 20% of the 15% debuff. Hell, I wish it was just a flat 15% no matter what. Then it would be a damn good inherent that almost keeps pace with Defiance and crits.

Your math is on track. But wait 'til you find out that Bio gives a 25% damage buff and a +7.5% To Hit buff. With a damaging proc like Molten Embrace. And Vulnerability adds 15% res debuff. Or roughly 7.5% when you factor in it being up half of the time. So there's 1.47. The sky is, in fact, falling. For some reason you neglected to mention that the average Defiance up-time will give you a roughly 30% damage buff. So there's 1.46. So yes, if you're playing your Blaster purely at range, they could almost do similar damage from this wildly simplistic comparison. But if you want to play your Blast wrong, that's on you.

The inherent goes around purple patch. Hamidon is already +0. It does not go around inherent resistance levels, which Hamidon has plenty of. My bad. Booper already pointed this out.

No, I'm pretty sure this is massive power creep and the sky is falling.

Here's what you can expect from these changes: The T1 Offense mode added a proc, but only to your single target abilities and it couldn't be enhanced. The only way to increase its damage was with -res. Now that damage is essentially always there, enhance-able, and is applied to your aoe abilities. Overall, the spreadsheet says you should see an average of a 9% increase in damage, going from 218dps to 239dps. Obviously the spreadsheet doesn't account for extraneous casts and just assumes you're going all out at all times, so your mileage will vary. The Vulnerability click applies a a -15% res that ignore purple patch. Against a +3 target, your 25% debuff was brought down to 16.25%, so you haven't lost much there. And you're now largely in full control of when and where it goes off. The proc from Stone armor is better than Fire, but worse than Bio. Seismic can be a top end set, or a lower end set depending on its secondary. So we'll just call it middling. Can't everyone be the best.

The Brimstone proc isn't working for the Voltaic Sentinel pet. Molten Embrace and Bio procs do work. Bug?