How would you buff Sentinels?

[aethereal]

Dude, if the cottage role is, "what if build up built a cottage," that's a violation of the "wow" rule, which is, "what if build up logged you off, created a new account for you in World of Warcraft, and logged you in there?"

 

You're proposing an entirely different AT.

Edited October 24, 2019 by aethereal

[Cutter]

Yeah, it goes pretty far out, but given that the entire inherent is going to be scrapped, I figured it couldn't hurt to spitball something new on top of that. No harm in proposing ideas after all.

 

Guess we'll all have to wait and see what comes down the redesign pipeline.

[QuiJon]

On 9/17/2019 at 5:05 PM, Murcielago said:

Playing an Archery/SR Sentinel I really have not had a hard time playing this character, it's been a smooth but slow ride. I cannot help but feel that Sentinels were undertuned for fear of them being OP from the gate. Range + mitigation has a recipe to be the Titan Weapon/Bio of ATs. So if you were part of the homecoming team, how would you buff, if at all, Sentinels? For starters I would like to see them have their range brought closer to Blaster level and have the same AoE cap. 

Don't know if this has been said, but for me I say drop this idea they are ranged, or mid ranged. Make them a short range play character. Mix the Primary sets between stronger Melee attacks (closer to brute or scrapper damage) and weaker ranged attacks, but shorten their range again by about 30 percent. Keep low AOE caps, and get rid of the alpha strikes at level 32 completely and give them a melee attack of some sort. Thing is here to me you wanted to have the defenses but then everyone complains they wanted to play like a blaster with that level of defense and considers that a "fix". Well it isn't. I have always maintained sentinels had no place in the game but cosmetic to begin with. But IMO I see Ironman in the movies fighting in mostly melee or long melee range, not from 80 feet away. You wanted up close and personal but with more range options then have it, the stronger melee will help to take down enemies faster and then cut the range so you have a more limited area of effect for the longer attack. 

[Rathulfr]

1 hour ago, QuiJon said:

Don't know if this has been said, but for me I say drop this idea they are ranged, or mid ranged. Make them a short range play character. Mix the Primary sets between stronger Melee attacks (closer to brute or scrapper damage) and weaker ranged attacks, but shorten their range again by about 30 percent. Keep low AOE caps, and get rid of the alpha strikes at level 32 completely and give them a melee attack of some sort. Thing is here to me you wanted to have the defenses but then everyone complains they wanted to play like a blaster with that level of defense and considers that a "fix". Well it isn't. I have always maintained sentinels had no place in the game but cosmetic to begin with. But IMO I see Ironman in the movies fighting in mostly melee or long melee range, not from 80 feet away. You wanted up close and personal but with more range options then have it, the stronger melee will help to take down enemies faster and then cut the range so you have a more limited area of effect for the longer attack. 

No, thank you.  If I want to play a melee character, I'll play a Scrapper, Brute, or OG Blapper (*/Energy Blaster).  If I want a melee/ranged hybrid, I'll play a Dominator.  I don't like any of your suggestions for Sentinels, so I respectfully decline.

 

[Rathulfr]

On 10/24/2019 at 2:58 PM, Cutter said:

I made a couple comments over in the Sentinel forum, figured I should perhaps drag them over here where they are better situated. Copy/pasting rather than linking because I'm like that sometimes.

 

Let's make Sentinels play well everywhere, and give them an Assault primary paired with a hybrid Defense/Support secondary? I'd rather stick closer to the idea of Sentinels as ranged scrappers (or if I can rephrase it, armoured lite-blasters), which was the Captain's stated design goal.

 

To that end, a primary with mostly ranged attacks and 1-2 melee/pbaoe attacks makes sense (as there are some scrapper sets with range). I see the primary as being at least 2/3 true ranged attacks. For many of the current Sentinel blast sets, given existing pbaoes and even cones, that's likely to mean swapping in maybe only 1 true melee attack, and making one or two target aoes into pbaoes.

 

The idea of a hybrid secondary comes from my own desire to add a little more team utility - I'm thinking 5-7 armour set powers and 2-4 support powers, to make it clear that self-protection is the main focus of the secondary.

 

As a very (very) rough example, here's a quick re-imagining of Water/Regen cause I play those sets:

 

PRIMARY

Aqua Bolt - no change
Hydro Blast - no change
Water Burst - changed to pbaoe
Dehydrate - changed to melee ST attack
Tidal Forces - no change
Whirlpool - changed to pbaoe
Water Jet - no change
Steam Spray - no change
Geyser - no change

 

SECONDARY
Fast Healing - no change
Reconstruction - replaced by Healing Aura (empathy)
Quick Recovery - no change
Instant Regeneration - no change
Dismiss Pain - replaced by Regeneration Aura (empathy)
Integration - reduce +regen
Resilience - remove res disorient (it's redundant with Integration anyway), add +hp from Dismiss Pain
Second Wind - changed to self/ally rez
Moment of Glory - no change

 

 

No thank you. One of the reasons I play a Sentinel is to avoid melee attacks: there's already far too much of that in the Blaster sets.  

[SmalltalkJava]

Yes.   Sentinel fills a nice missing niche.   Range and defenses

 

assault and defenses would be a different AT to me. 
 

maybe they could make that after they do a melee/support AT

 

 

[boggo2300]

A lambswool pad and some cutting compound,  thats really all the buffing they need 

[Cutter]

9 hours ago, Rathulfr said:

No, thank you.  If I want to play a melee character, I'll play a Scrapper, Brute, or OG Blapper (*/Energy Blaster).  If I want a melee/ranged hybrid, I'll play a Dominator.  I don't like any of your suggestions for Sentinels, so I respectfully decline.

 

I do appreciate the respectful part of your decline! And yeah, I'd already acknowledged that it was an "out there" idea. I'm content now to wait for whatever CP proposes.

[Steampunkette]

I'd love an Assault Primary AT.

 

But because an Assault/Defense character wouldn't have a "Nuke" or an "Extreme" damage melee attack, and wouldn't have build up -and- aim for maximum Burst potential like Blasters, their baseline damage scale would need to be fairly high for both melee and ranged attacks.

 

Of course, that could make them an interesting and engaging option for players on it's face, with an inherent mechanic that -doesn't- modify their damage, but instead plays with their defensiveness, or offers some support or utility to groups.

 

Imagine playing a character that deals damage on par with Scrappers (Who don't have Crits) or Blasters (Without Build up + Aim + Nuke). Consistently solid damage combined with moderate survivability jumping in and out of melee to survive..? 

 

I'd love it. It'd be an Ultrablapper. Give 'em Scale 1 or Scale 1.08 and let 'em go to town.

 

But it wouldn't be a Sentinel.

Edited October 26, 2019 by Steampunkette

[QuiJon]

16 hours ago, Rathulfr said:

No, thank you.  If I want to play a melee character, I'll play a Scrapper, Brute, or OG Blapper (*/Energy Blaster).  If I want a melee/ranged hybrid, I'll play a Dominator.  I don't like any of your suggestions for Sentinels, so I respectfully decline.

 

You just made my original point about Sentinels for me. If you want melee, it exists just with different power sets then "blasts" if you want a combo there are dominators, if you want to actually blast there are blasters. Sentinels server no purpose other then that comestic idea of a Iron Man character that frankly can not exist in game because it would be to uber. 

However my problem with sentinels is that they are shit tasticly under powered because I do like Blasters. And after 15 years my ideal of playing a blaster set is that it is fast paced and I drop enemies within 2-3 shots max. I can not get with the idea that I have "got time" to take some 20+ attacks to take down a boss in a fight. (and yes I have counted it was really that many) So the only thing that can save them in my opinion is by finding a middle ground. Which would be to take more range away so their range was maybe like 20-25 feet on any ranged attack, but give those attacks a slight boost in damage, and then to give them a few true melee attacks that can do the normal level of scrapper/brute kind of damage because they are melee attacks. 

I get this is not ideal for many people. Because frankly many people want sentinels to just be a blaster with defenses, which IMO can not happen. It breaks the balance of the game. So when we start these "how would you fix" threads they ultimately center around ways to increase a sentinels over all damage out put. Maybe hidden behind changes to the inherent power or other things, but ultimately it comes down to people want them to kill faster.  So let them operate predominately in that zone that is considered the most dangerous zone to be in to warrant the defenses, and let them do better damage because of the limits of their attack range. But I get it, this is a not ideal fix for what most people want. 

[Rathulfr]

1 hour ago, QuiJon said:

Because frankly many people want sentinels to just be a blaster with defenses, which IMO can not happen.

And this here is the crux of your argument: "IMO (in my opinion) can not happen".

 

I have a different opinion: I want something like "blasters with defenses", and I believe it can happen.  If Titan Weapons/Bio can be as stupidly OP as it is, and not be considered "[too] uber", then Sentinels can be a ranged DPS class with defenses, like Iron Man and Captain Marvel and many other similar examples from comics.

 

I don't want Sentinels' base damage modifier, range, or AoE target caps be the same as Blasters: I agree that would be OP/too uber.  I think sacrificing those for defenses is a good trade-off.  And on paper, the current Sentinels config seems like a fair trade: it looks like they intentionally under-tuned Sentinels to prevent them from being OP.  But now that Sentinels have been played for thousands of hours over the past 6 months, it has become obvious that their damage is sub-par, as a whole (there are some outliers, of course).  This is why most of the suggestions have included a conservative buff to increase the base damage modifier to 1.0, which is still significantly less than Blasters (and not more than EATs).

 

And don't even get me started on the */Atomic, */Tactical Arrow, and */Temporal Manipulation secondaries for Blasters, which are legitimately too brokenly good to be true.  Hell, it's why I'm playing an Energy/Temporal Blaster now, instead of a Sentinel.  At 50+3 T4 with the proper IO sets, my EB/TM Blaster is as durable as my Sentinels (the only gap is mez/status/debuff).  The whole point of Blasters is to be "glass cannons", but now they're "reinforced-bullet-proof-glass cannons".  And that's just wrong (even though I'm going to abuse the hell out of it for as long as I can).  😈

 

In a perfect world, TW/Bio, */Atomic, */Tactical, and */Temporal should be nerfed (along with some variations of */Rad, while we're at it).  Yeah, I said it, I said the "N" word.  The real problem is unchecked power creep across most of the other ATs, not Sentinels' range+defense.  Blasters should never have been allowed to soft-cap defense/resistance without team buffs in the first place, if we want to be honest.  Blasters are supposed to deliver the most damage, but at the highest risk.  But power creep has eliminated almost all of the risk, in most circumstances: that's what's "too uber". 

 

Sentinels should be ranged damage dealers that are able to mitigate risk (not eliminate it), but at the cost of reduced damage, range, and AoE effectiveness.  Don't mess up the AT by adding melee attacks, which would completely change them (and render them indistinguishable from other existing ATs).

 

This is just one player's opinion.  Thank goodness I'm not a CoH developer.  LOL!  😜

 

Edited October 26, 2019 by Rathulfr

[Teirusu]

 

29 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

I get this is not ideal for many people. Because frankly many people want sentinels to just be a blaster with defenses, which IMO can not happen. It breaks the balance of the game. So when we start these "how would you fix" threads they ultimately center around ways to increase a sentinels over all damage out put. Maybe hidden behind changes to the inherent power or other things, but ultimately it comes down to people want them to kill faster.  So let them operate predominately in that zone that is considered the most dangerous zone to be in to warrant the defenses, and let them do better damage because of the limits of their attack range. But I get it, this is a not ideal fix for what most people want. 

 

@Captain Powerhouse Has stated that he wants the Sentinel to be more comparable to scrappers; make them into the 'ranaged scrapper'.   I'd argue that, with their current numbers, that Sentinels are pretty well balanced.. when we're talking about them attacking purely from range.  So, with any tweaking we'd give them, it can't be too much if it's a across-the-board damage tweak.  And, if the buff is too small, people will still complain that X AT will still be better then Sentinels during blah blah blah...

 

 So, this quote gave me an idea.  Why don't we play into the whole Risk VS. Reward system of range vs. melee?

 

 

The Sentinel Aura

 

"While the Sentinel can attack from range, as enemies draw closer, Sentinels are able to easily find and exploit weaknesses in their enemies, creating opportunities to do more damage to their foes.  Especially when they continue to hammer on upon those weaknesses.  Moreover, either through super-natural, magical, or technological means; the Sentinel is never truly blind and will always be able to sense their foes, at least, within melee range."

 

So, what would this power do?  I'll start with the last part first.

 

If I recall right, Captain Powerhouse mentioned, at one point, making Sentinels sorta Anti-Stalkers.  The idea here then is for Sentinels to have a minimum Perception range to be within melee range.  So, they could see a Stalker coming up to AS them, but couldn't stop them from doing so.  It still be a surprise attack.  Also, things like multiple stacking smoke grenades wouldn't completely blind them.  Handy, but not too over-powered.  They may not be able to see the target they were attacking but, they can duck into melee range to continue attacking.  (Could they share this ability with their teammates?  A further idea)

 

What would the rest of the power do?  It's be a near-melee range aura power.  (Range being anywhere between 10 to 20 feet?)  It grants a power (Sentinel Proc, lets say) to every foe within it's range.  The proc's duration is 2-3 seconds and gets refreshed by the aura.  The Sentinel Proc then grants the Sentinel buffs based upon the rank of the mob. (Like Victory Rush)  These buffs can only stack up to X times on you, which easily caps the maximum effectiveness of them. (I'm thinking 4 for minions and lower, 3 for Lts, 2 for Bosses/EBs and 1 for AVs )  The general idea is that they grant damage buffs to the Sentinel but could also be anything else really.

 

Moreover, when you hit enemies with ST attacks whom have the Sentinel Proc on them, you can exploit their weaknesses to do more damage.  For LTs and lower. this becomes a high random chance to do extra damage on them, a critical basically.  For Bosses and higher, this creates a stacking -Res debuff along with a chance to do extra damage. (Probably not as high of a chance as the one with LT's and lower.)  This power can only stack X times on any particular mob.  Exploiting the weakness of your enemies tends to tick them off.  (Minor taunt, nothing huge that a brute/tanker couldn't out generate.) 

 

I might also suggest that ST attacks can grant the Sentinel Proc regardless if they're within range of the Sentinel Aura.  That way, their next ST attack can grant the chance for the opportunity along with getting the base damage buff.  ST attacks will refresh the Sentinel Proc's duration along with refreshing the damage buff you get from that one mob.

 

 

This kind of system would reward you for taking on more risk.  Getting into melee range either accidentally or purposely gives you a decent all around damage boost up-front (Scaling to the rank and number of mobs around you) and sets up for immediate opportunities for damage boosting exploits on your Single Target attacks.  Sentinel Single Target attacks themselves can also setup for opportunities but, you only get a chance for the opportunity on the next attack.

This would further enforce them being a kind of anti-Stalker.  They'd be pretty good at landing a heavy barrage of steady damage against a single target, just not in burst and regardless if you're in near-melee range or not.  They'd keep about the same damage at far-range as they have now where they are more balanced currently, while getting more damage in the melee-range where they're lacking in the defense department in comparison to the other more tankish ATs.   Higher risk, higher reward.

[aethereal]

That sounds like a bunch of basically good ideas that comes together into an incredibly complex package.  If people don't understand the sentinel inherent now, how would they figure out all those different, largely invisible, abilities? 

[Crysta Clear]

I feel like all Sentinels really need is to have their base damage scale brought up to par with the Scrappers whose ranged counterparts they're supposed to be. That way, each has their occasional damage increase -- Scrappers have Critical Hit, and Sentinels have what I suspect to be the only Unresistable Resistance debuff in the game, but their baseline damage would be relatively equal, whereas currently, Sentinels just deal next to nothing.

Edited October 28, 2019 by Crysta Clear

[Steampunkette]

2 hours ago, Crysta Clear said:

I feel like all Sentinels really need is to have their base damage scale brought up to par with the Scrappers whose ranged counterparts they're supposed to be. That way, each has their occasional damage increase -- Scrappers have Critical Hit, and Sentinels have what I suspect to be the only Unresistable Resistance debuff in the game, but their baseline damage would be relatively equal, whereas currently, Sentinels just deal next to nothing.

Equal to Scrappers would be equal to Blasters. Both have a 1.125.

 

The target count would help to separate them a bit, the lower range. But it would hit as hard as a blaster on the baseline and the things that make Blaster different would be a flimsier secondary that makes them run in to land big melee hits where they have no defense.

 

Oh, they wouldn't have the burst potential of Blasters, obviously. No aim+bu. But trading half the target cap (Or less for some powers) in exchange for near scrapper-levels of survival? Kiiiiinda on the power creepy side.

 

As it stands they're at .95, the Dominator Scalar. The intent of the 5% Res debuff on their ST attacks was to bring them up to the equivalent of a 1.0, and then the 20% resist debuff target-marking after that takes them to 1.20 (or it's equivalent). Feast and Famine back and forth but only on a single target...

 

Which is really only useful against Bosses (But not much) and EBs/AVs. So they wind up in Famine for most of their careers and feast once in a while against harder targets.

[Crysta Clear]

Eh. That's fair. All I know is it feels really bad and low-damage every time I play a Sentinel. I want to like the archetype, I really do. But it has exactly one purpose right now, and that's the fact that its Resistance debuff is Unresistable, which makes your much more damaging party members perform better against... one enemy. The entire rest of the archetype is falling behind in basically every aspect.

 

Perhaps the better answer is to let the 20% resistance debuff apply to every target shot while the opportunity is open, and let both of them apply on AoE attacks as well as single-target. That way, it really feels more like you're pointing out weak points to your team, and the opportunity stops being worthless in the majority of content.

Edited October 28, 2019 by Crysta Clear

[nihilii]

Any buff that would demand a change in playstyle to attain at least equivalent performance to what we have right now is a nerf. Change my mind. :)

Suggestions to plainly buff Sentinel's damage = why not.
Suggestions to introduce complex mechanics requiring to play in melee, use certain powers, extra clicks = eeeh.

Plenty of ideas in this thread are good ideas in a vacuum and even in general, but bad Sentinel buffs. YMMV.

[Crysta Clear]

No, a change of playstyle is just what's expected of you as a player to keep succeeding.

[nihilii]

I'm not convinced.

If I can do X today, and if I must change something after change Z to be able to do X again, then Z was a nerf, not a buff.

It's a question of semantics. "What's expected of you as a player to keep succeeding" doesn't seem relevant to that precise question, instead it would open up a much bigger debate.

[Steampunkette]

The powers themselves are fine. The damage scale is fine. The smaller target cap is okay (Personally I would've gone to 75% instead of 50% because it's neither a blaster or a scrapper but somewhere in between, but that's just me!).

 

The problem is that it's built around an inherent that in regular play largely goes unnoticed unless someone is fighting AVs. Like a -LOT- of AVs. And even then it's mostly viewed as a team-benefit rather than a personal benefit.

 

They're slightly weaker than scrappers and blasters, baseline. That's fine. That's 100% acceptable, go team good shit. But Blasters -get- Aim and Build Up to make their stuff hit harder. They get Defiance to make it hit harder than -that-. And Scrappers get to hit harder because Crits which through ATOs (not baseline, I know, but still!) can be partially controlled. All this stuff makes -their- damage stronger.

 

The Sentinel gets a 5% res debuff on their enemies to make everyone's damage better. And a 20% res debuff on a single enemy to make everyone's damage better. Yeah, they get to feast, too, but someone who drops from 300ft popping aim and build up on the way down to land near the boss and drop to 1hp before popping their nuke followed by an instant cast snipe is going to benefit from that 20% debuff a lot MORE.

 

I'm not saying the idea of debuffing as an inherent (especially unresistably) is a bad idea. They just also need something for -themselves- to feel good about. 

[Crysta Clear]

Not if Z allows you to do something better after you learn how to do it. Complexity isn't something to be afraid of.

Edited October 28, 2019 by Crysta Clear

[QuiJon]

On 10/26/2019 at 2:24 PM, Rathulfr said:

And this here is the crux of your argument: "IMO (in my opinion) can not happen".

That is what this entire thread is asking for. Is our opinions on how to change the AT to improve it. It is obvious not all those opinions will agree. 

 

You talked about power creep but frankly that has happened all over the place. Tanks and melee now get 40 target AOE alpha strikes and regen recovery self buffing. But I disagree with your over all theory that a blaster can be equal in defenses. Or at least that it creates the false equivalency that it is as easy. I mean sure I can get likely take most blasters sets and get a toon to have maybe soft capped 1 positional defense, and probably close to capped res to S/l and maybe one other type like fire or energy. But in most cases there are still gaping holes in that blasters defenses. The surest way to plug them is to take the destiny barrier click buff and ride that everytime it comes around which is damn near a perma buff of some type. However if I take that power I cam essentially saying I don't get to take mez protection because destiny is really the only way to get mag resistances for mez protection on a blaster. So for a blaster having a lacking but somewhat situationally strong defense requires still like 450m or so investment if not more to get any defense of note, and then to have incarnate mez protection. 

A sentinel can get that mez protection from their sets. SO they can be a level 50 with full time mez protection, then use barrier to stack on top of their normal armor sets on a perma t4 click on top of standard IO invention hancers and have more defenses and resistances then a blaster I spent half a  billion influence on. 

The only solution to this IMO, again I know it is my opinion, is to allow them to have at best situational damage. I used the example of giving them melee attacks as well as ranged because IMO this was the easiest way to do it. Melee attacks can do more damage where range do less, like a blaster risk vs reward. However if  you wanted only ranged style/looking attacks, you couldl also have a sliding buff to damage depending on how far away an enemy is and accomplish the same goal only using "blasts".

The real issue here is that the more you change them the more they just simply become another AT. Give them more damage they become blasters, give them melee attacks they might as well be scrappers. They were a stupid damn AT to add to the game in the first place. They were obviously added by someone butt hurt that they couldn't have it all with a blaster because of balance issues, and tried to find a way to make it work. But really it just doesn't. 

If you want my true opinion frankly I say ignore them and just let them go away. Put the effort that would otherwise be spent on "fixing" them into something that has the opprotuntiy to be truly newish and work well like the new primal sets being discussed. Or leave them as ass suck PVE toons and alter them to make them the jack of all trades for a PVP character to give them a place to shine but not screw with the community at large in PVE. 

[Rathulfr]

1 hour ago, QuiJon said:

They were a stupid damn AT to add to the game in the first place. They were obviously added by someone butt hurt that they couldn't have it all with a blaster because of balance issues, and tried to find a way to make it work. But really it just doesn't.

Obviously.

[Shazbotacus]

I don't think they're stupid. Some of us have an "Iron Man" concept, and being someone with a liking for power armor and guns I'm happy to have my Beam Rifle/Energy Aura Sentinel. 

 

[Bossk_Hogg]

Tweak the damage up a bit. I could see giving them a higher debuff scaling as well, closer to defenders (right now they're under blasters). Make the inherent more usable - the damage and healing is rather piddly during opportunity. Maybe give a mag 1 taunt on their attacks - not enough to override any actual tank or even scrapper, but enough to tank for a small team and keep stuff from running around like a chicken with it's head cut off.

 

Otherwise you just have a few power specific issues, like Chill Ray being a crappy sleep or Burn forcing a ranged AT into melee (at which point, why not be a fire tank and deal more damage and have more survivability).