Bio Armor on sentinel. Good or bad?

[Astredax]

My fire/bio kills a pylon in about 4 min, and it's built defensively to softcap to all but psi.  I'm sure it can be brought lower if you focus on offense with more procs etc.  I'd guess 3:30 or maybe 3:00 as a cap for fire/bio. 

[nihilii]

I think a fire/bio could reach sub 2 minutes. For contrast, my fire/rad generally averages 3 minutes with top runs around the 2 minutes mark. This is without Meltdown, which is a wash due to its animation time; so a fire/bio has all the same tools + extra.

 

(Of course, these times come with a complete disregard for softcapped defenses. 😉 )

 

In a nutshell: leveraging procs, hybrid, offensive adaptation, blaze -> mind probe -> flares -> blaze -> dominate -> fireball with gaussianed aim + arma/fury inferno whenever up.

You might be able to use BB to good effect, but in (limited) testing I found it to come out about the same, and I don't want to deal with an extra power pick + its side effects in regular gameplay.
 

Edit: @HelenCarnate has posted a 2:05 time for his fire/nin:

So that's an approach if you like damage *and* defense. It also suggests fire/bio might be capable of great DPS feats. 🙂

Edited February 15, 2020 by nihilii

[Bill Z Bubba]

I must admit my amusement at myself for shifting gears so much during the snap. Disregarding my work on my claws/bio scrapper, I went from "DPS is all that matters" to "do I look cool while I'm beatin down the baddies?"

 

Aging. It does things to your brain.

[Sovera]

Not sure if times using Hybrid toggled on really help anything other than muddle the waters. There is a reason why people tend to post without its use to serve as a baseline.

 

I quit on my Fire/Bio at 48. Dat low damage... Trying to kill mobs in AoE and they run away at 20% (or even more when under RoF, and I do mean -run- away). I sort of feel like finishing it on the PTS to test  the build since I think I had it tight.

 

Edit: Nvm, incarnates still aren't free.

Edited February 16, 2020 by Sovera

[nihilii]

37 minutes ago, Sovera said:

Not sure if times using Hybrid toggled on really help anything other than muddle the waters. There is a reason why people tend to post without its use to serve as a baseline.

I'll take the opposite side of that argument: I find toggled Hybrid times more realistic than untoggled.

Encounters that require 2+ minutes of sustained DPS are significantly less common than the other way around. You're basically looking at AV fights, strictly solo and generally excluding insps or any extras. 

 

"Burst" DPS over an entire 2 minutes is going to be more meaningful to 90%, 95%, perhaps even 99% of your character performance, because so very few encounters will require that level of ST focus out of you for more than 2 minutes. Against boss level mobs and below during actual gameplay, it's basically a wash whether you deal 300 or 350 DPS. Time spent moving and even picking targets likely accounts for a bigger difference.

 

I'll go one further: IMHO the reason people like to post without Hybrid is for the sake of simplicity ("if it's not perma, I'm not using it"). Ideally you want to have both toggled on and toggled off runs to see how much variance it gives your particular build. And if you care strongly about having as accurate a number as can be, you'd then average the numbers (provided you do sub 2 minutes runs with Hybrid on, anyway. or you can do more complicated math to account for Hybrid uptime in longer runs).

[SwitchFade]

The REAL question is...

 

Is it so good it's bad? Or so bad it's good?!

 

Word up, yo.

[drbuzzard]

OK, got a BR/Bio up to speed and I've been playing with it a bit. I also have an archery/bio, but since I hate lethal damage, I wasn't willing to put in much effort. 

 

BR being my favorite sentinel primary led to me putting in more effort here. Bio armor is pretty damned good. It's rather similar to willpower with it's mix of resistance and defense for various things. However it's different in that it is more hands on (ablative carapace and rebuild DNA) with clicks.  I'm still chasing incarnate stuff, but I have it to perma-hasten, and have ablative carapace on my forward movement key so it's up almost all the time as well.  Lethal/smashing is capped in offensive mode, and fire/cold/energy/negative energy are nearly softcapped. Durability is quite good. 

 

A bit of quick testing on a pylon indicates that offensive mode is inconsistent in how much it boosts each attack, which is a bit annoying.  It seemed like weaker attacks got more proportional boost, and the nuke got a marginal boost percentage wise. However as offensive mode doesn't really have significant downside (IMO of course since I can cap l/s resistance anyway), there's no reason to run anything else. 

[Underfyre]

So are you talking about the Toxic bonus damage component? I haven't done any testing on Bio yet, but I've read that it does a flat 25% boost and a Toxic damage bonus on top of that. Which part is inconsistent?

[drbuzzard]

I was trying to find out where the 25% bonus was mentioned, and I didn't see it in game anywhere or in Hero Designer. That's probably a good thing since it simply is not true. The boost to damage and the toxic bonus damage are varying percentages by power. My build was missing two attacks (2nd and 8th) from beam rifle, but I tested the rest on a pylon with ablative carapace up, and the damage increase and bonus damage varied greatly percentage wise from offensive mode, to no mode at all. The tier 1 attack got the biggest percentage boost, and the tier 9 got the smallest.

[Frosticus]

On 2/16/2020 at 12:53 AM, nihilii said:

I'll take the opposite side of that argument: I find toggled Hybrid times more realistic than untoggled.

Encounters that require 2+ minutes of sustained DPS are significantly less common than the other way around. You're basically looking at AV fights, strictly solo and generally excluding insps or any extras. 

 

"Burst" DPS over an entire 2 minutes is going to be more meaningful to 90%, 95%, perhaps even 99% of your character performance, because so very few encounters will require that level of ST focus out of you for more than 2 minutes. Against boss level mobs and below during actual gameplay, it's basically a wash whether you deal 300 or 350 DPS. Time spent moving and even picking targets likely accounts for a bigger difference.

 

I'll go one further: IMHO the reason people like to post without Hybrid is for the sake of simplicity ("if it's not perma, I'm not using it"). Ideally you want to have both toggled on and toggled off runs to see how much variance it gives your particular build. And if you care strongly about having as accurate a number as can be, you'd then average the numbers (provided you do sub 2 minutes runs with Hybrid on, anyway. or you can do more complicated math to account for Hybrid uptime in longer runs).

While I dont necessarily disagree with what you've stated, one could make the same argument about lore pets.

 

For me I lean toward conservative reporting because for spawns my aoe matters more than my sustained st. Where my sustained st matters is generally much longer fights than a pylon. A no insp/temp/lore of lvl 54 romulus aug takes me much longer than 2 min. 

 

That said I still know my pylon capabilities with and w/o hybrid and a few other scenarios. So I guess I dont have much to say after all haha. 

 

 

[nihilii]

27 minutes ago, Frosticus said:

While I dont necessarily disagree with what you've stated, one could make the same argument about lore pets.

I view the 10 minutes cooldown on Lore as more significant than the 2 minutes cooldown on Hybrid. i.e., if you use Hybrid for an AV in a TF, generally you'll have Hybrid recharged for the next AV fight in the next mission. On the other hand you have to pick and choose the times you use Lore.

Then there's Lore being pets, and doing ludicrous damage. Against a Pylon, the resulting numbers are hard to translate into relevant data for overall performance. Hybrid is milder in comparison, it just boosts your damage.

I think your counterpoint is valid. Putting the line at Lore but not Hybrid is somewhat arbitrary. It makes sense to me, but it might not to everyone.

[Frosticus]

3 hours ago, nihilii said:

I view the 10 minutes cooldown on Lore as more significant than the 2 minutes cooldown on Hybrid. i.e., if you use Hybrid for an AV in a TF, generally you'll have Hybrid recharged for the next AV fight in the next mission. On the other hand you have to pick and choose the times you use Lore.

Then there's Lore being pets, and doing ludicrous damage. Against a Pylon, the resulting numbers are hard to translate into relevant data for overall performance. Hybrid is milder in comparison, it just boosts your damage.

I think your counterpoint is valid. Putting the line at Lore but not Hybrid is somewhat arbitrary. It makes sense to me, but it might not to everyone.

No for sure, I suspect we have a similar mindset to be honest. I only have lore for the level shift where applicable. I've summoned them once just to see them. 

For my sub 2 min pylon builds I run 3-5 pylons consecutively and then subtract the travel time. I found that my offense heavy builds were sometimes geared too heavy toward offense and weren't endurance (or even health) sustainable in longer fights. Such things weren't really exposed in such a short fight, or most mission content. In which case hybrid is a-ok by me. 

[Underfyre]

9 hours ago, drbuzzard said:

I was trying to find out where the 25% bonus was mentioned, and I didn't see it in game anywhere or in Hero Designer.

So the Beta server is back into "test your build with incarnates" mode. First things first, checked Bio armor.

Combat Attributes -> Damage Bonus: Hardened Carapace - 25%. Confirmed.
 

Now I'm going to check this toxic damage business.

[Sovera]

On 2/19/2020 at 4:11 AM, underfyre said:

So are you talking about the Toxic bonus damage component? I haven't done any testing on Bio yet, but I've read that it does a flat 25% boost and a Toxic damage bonus on top of that. Which part is inconsistent?

The actual final damage. Unless something has been changed (it's been many months since I did this). Try hitting something once without Offensive Adaptation, write it down, hit it again with Offensive Adaptation on, add the toxic tick since it's part of Offensive, check the percentage of damage increase from one to the other.

 

Spoiler

Quote

 /Bio is not an around the board 30% damage boost as I kept parroting In particular the omfg look at these T9 numbers hue hue hue. Tested on fire mobs, then lethal mobs, then +0 mobs, then +4 mobs, but the damage increase was within a 0.5%:

 

Inferno:

 120 smash + 291 fire = 411
 128 smash + 310 fire + 8 Offense damage tick= 446
  8.5%

 

Blaze:

170 + 20 fire tick = 190
186 + 22 fire tick +17 Offense damage tick= 225

18%

 

 

Blazing Bolt:

77 + 8 + 104 from 13 ticks = 189

85 + 9 + 122 from 13 ticks + 19 Offense damage tick = 235
24%

 

 

Fire Blast:

 

113
134
18%

 

[Underfyre]

I already tested the Offensive toxic damage ticks against +0 mobs, pulled the numbers from the damage logs. Posted results in a separate thread.

Edited February 21, 2020 by underfyre
The mobs also had 0 resistances to all damage types.

[Sovera]

On 2/21/2020 at 5:14 PM, underfyre said:

I already tested the Offensive toxic damage ticks against +0 mobs, pulled the numbers from the damage logs. Posted results in a separate thread.

Unless I misread you tested only the toxic tick and not the combined damage because you trusted the damage monitor. If you'd like to then please do what I said instead.

 

My own tests never gave me 25% damage. And this is -with- the toxic damage. If we were to trust the damage monitor we would have had 25% and then with the toxic damage it would climb to about ish 30%. Instead the highest I got was a 18%-21% damage boost and as low as 4% -total- damage boost.

[Underfyre]

Alright. So I already made a thread about this. The 25% damage boost from Offensive Adaptation can be confirmed by going into Combat Attributes.

 

So let's break it down:

Character currently has Superior Winter's Bite slotted, + another 10% in damage bonus from sets

Scream base damage - 34.85 S/E = 69.7 total + 101.37% + 10% = 147.32 expected damage against an even level mob with 0 resistance to S/E. Observed was 14.72 * 10 = 147.2

Technically it was one tick at 14.72 * 2, then all further ticks of damage included 1 + 5% + 9.6% damage resistance boost taking them to 16.87.

 

Now I activate Offense Mode.

Expected: 69.7 total + 101.37% + 10% + 25% from offensive boost = 164.75. Observed 164.7 + an additional 17.42 toxic damage.

 

Does this satisfy your needs?

[Sovera]

On 2/23/2020 at 4:22 PM, underfyre said:

Alright. So I already made a thread about this. The 25% damage boost from Offensive Adaptation can be confirmed by going into Combat Attributes.

 

So let's break it down:

Character currently has Superior Winter's Bite slotted, + another 10% in damage bonus from sets

Scream base damage - 34.85 S/E = 69.7 total + 101.37% + 10% = 147.32 expected damage against an even level mob with 0 resistance to S/E. Observed was 14.72 * 10 = 147.2

Technically it was one tick at 14.72 * 2, then all further ticks of damage included 1 + 5% + 9.6% damage resistance boost taking them to 16.87.

 

Now I activate Offense Mode.

Expected: 69.7 total + 101.37% + 10% + 25% from offensive boost = 164.75. Observed 164.7 + an additional 17.42 toxic damage.

 

Does this satisfy your needs?

I'm satisfied actual testing was done, yes.

 

I went to check on Fire and with Fireblast (including toxic tic) I had a 26% damage increase so whatever was going on during the multiple tests all those months back seems to have corrected itself.

 

Now to hear something funny? I grabbed a character I had stripped out of IOs a Water/Bio Sent since it had no DoTs to muddle things, and went to test. It was a 45% damage increase to turn on Offensive Adaptation on both the  T1 and T2 blast (didn't test the rest) 😄

[Seed22]

On 2/15/2020 at 8:43 AM, Bill Z Bubba said:

I must admit my amusement at myself for shifting gears so much during the snap. Disregarding my work on my claws/bio scrapper, I went from "DPS is all that matters" to "do I look cool while I'm beatin down the baddies?"

 

Aging. It does things to your brain.

I seemed to go the opposite it seems. Earlier I preferred a slower more nuanced approach to things. It made me really have a slew of 50 defs/trollers. But now I’m strangely all about damage. Maybe it’s my hectic schedule irl that’s bleeding over into my game preferences haha 

[EyeLuvBooks]

On 2/7/2020 at 1:23 AM, DrBasics said:

So I know that bio Armor is missing things when used on a sentinel compared to a melee. That being said, I see some people say that is the reason it is trash. Meanwhile, other people are saying it is great, as in the best option for sentinel. I need some clarification, please and thanks.

My Bio/Assault Rifle is now 50 and I had a LOT of fun getting here! In MSRs I can hold a ramp myself it feels like especially when you get into Incarnate powers that extend your range.

 

It can also be great for themed builds because you can turn the FX on and off.

[Zepp]

Was playing with builds... It seems absurdly easy to hit Afterburner cap with Hover on Bio...

[Gobbledigook]

One thing i noticed on my Bio/SS Tanker was the offensive Toxic damage bonus did not increase when i hit Rage. The damage buff does not buff the Toxic damage, whether working as intend i don't know?

 

Could be that Rage doesnt increase Toxic damage at all.

Edited March 22, 2020 by Gobbledegook

[Underfyre]

2 hours ago, Gobbledegook said:

Could be that Rage doesnt increase Toxic damage at all.

%Damage boost does not increase the damage bonus. -%Res does.

[UltimateXao]

Good. Real good. Bit more difficult to use than other sets, as it's very click heavy, but unlike Regen you do get some toggles. 

 

Unlike other oddball defense sets that interact with enemies (I. E. Dark Armor) it's actually been modified properly for a ranged AT.

 

It's also one of the few options that helps some with the anemic sustained damage of Sentinels... Mind you, if they go through with the proposed changes for Sentinels, that wont matter so much any more.

[therealtitanman]

1st i was skeptical,

tested 1 elec/bio, surprisingly work great, can even tank tinpex.