If you could change the sentinel (or not) which would you choose?(Poll/Opinions)

[drbuzzard]

I should be clear, I don't mean just AOE. In both single target, and AOE, blasters are well ahead. I have only 2 blasters, -BR/dev and fire/atomic and their damage is so far out ahead of any of my sentinels than it is really just not comparable. My blasters are not defensively oriented, but built for recharge, so they are pretty comparable to how I do sentinels, and the damage is just so much higher (and I have sentinels with the same primaries) that when I go back to a sentinel, I feel like I'm plinking away with a BB gun vs. a .308. I don't blap either, so it is pure ranged vs. ranged comparison. 

[oldskool]

3 hours ago, drbuzzard said:

I should be clear, I don't mean just AOE. In both single target, and AOE, blasters are well ahead. I have only 2 blasters, -BR/dev and fire/atomic and their damage is so far out ahead of any of my sentinels than it is really just not comparable. My blasters are not defensively oriented, but built for recharge, so they are pretty comparable to how I do sentinels, and the damage is just so much higher (and I have sentinels with the same primaries) that when I go back to a sentinel, I feel like I'm plinking away with a BB gun vs. a .308. I don't blap either, so it is pure ranged vs. ranged comparison. 

I'm not going to do a run down on every Blaster vs Sentinel comparison.  I do however want to show you where I am coming from as best as I can.   

I pulled some numbers from the game off of my Dual Pistols/Super Reflexes Sentinel and a Dual Pistols/Tactical Arrow Blaster.  /TA is a really good set for playing pure range.  Its also got a lot of bonus powers to help build defense and some CC resistance.  This comparison cannot be apples to apples, but one nice thing here is both include a passive +recharge power.  Still, the /TA build hits 45% ranged defenses without any Incarnate options.  My Sentinel hits Melee 47%, Range 48%, and AoE 47%.  Since the Blaster is capped on Ranged defense, its Energy/Negative defense is also capped (slightly higher due to sets used).  Scorpion Shield not taken or else Smashing/Lethal would likely jump to mid-upper 30's.  

Global Recharge on the Blaster at 177.5% without Upshot active.  The DP/SR at 185%.  

Attacks taken by the Blaster, all.  

Attacks taken by the Sentinel, all but Piercing Rounds.  

Single target attacks on Blaster - Pistols, Dual Wield, Executioner's Shot.  OR pistols x 2, piercing rounds, executioner's shot.  The recharge in ES is lower than 3.03 seconds making a far faster chain with Pistols + Dual Wield.  

Single target attacks on the Sentinel - pistols x2, suppressive fire, executioner's shot.  

 

AoE - Largely the same options minus Piercing Rounds.  

Let's first look at the pairing of Empty Clips and Bullet Rain.  

Sentinel: 

Empty Clips, Cooldown = 2.59 seconds, animation 1.848 seconds.  Target cap 6.  damage dealt to a single target = 210 (Mids shows 178, this is wrong).  

Bullet Rain, Cooldown 4.67 seconds, animation 1.848 seconds.  Target cap of 10.  damage dealt to a single target = 201 (Mids shows 173, this too is wrong). 

 

Blaster: 

Empty Clips, Cooldown = 2.68 second, animation same.  Target cap of 10.  Damage per single shot = 248 (Mids reports 176, which is too low). 

Bullet Rain, Cooldown = 4.75 seconds, animation is the same.  Target cap of 16.  Damage per single shot = 238 (Mids reports 138 which is wrong).  

 

Loaded up a S/L farm.  Counted the enemies per spawn set to +2/x8.  I counted 12 targets.  Spawn packs are fairly consistent.  I did not pull 16 targets except on a few tries for experimentation.  Chained Empty Clips and Bullet Rain... 
 

OK, so first off the Blaster build has 20% global damage (Sentinel has 18% but doesn't build Defiance). No red inspires dropped, ever.  A few times I used Upshot with Gaussian's (went over 200% damage boost). Some of that constant 20% is from Assault, and the other from IOs.  Defiance between the two powers hovered consistently around 40% bonus damage.  Adding in the occasional Hail of Bullets made this global bonus go up slightly.  Weaving in some single target fillers let me get over 50% global damage.  

 

So just firing both powers back to back against a single foe = 486.  If Empty Clips can catch all 10 out of 12 enemies, that's 2480 damage spread out.  If Bullet Rain can catch all 12 within its sphere that's 2856.  If there were more targets and Bullet Rain hit all 16 that's 3808 dmg possible. 

 

The Blaster is going to do hands down more damage in AoE, but the Defiance contribution never consistently pushed my global damage over 60%.  In this case, the Dual Pistols powers have fairly low Defiance contribution on AoE.  Piercing Rounds is an exception though and grants more.  

The Sentinel, if they can catch 6 targets in Empty Clips can get 1260 dmg.  Bullet Rain if it can catch all 10 can expect 2010.  In the above, we're looking at 12 targets so the Sentinel caps out and the spread of damage might actually hit all 12 targets but unevenly so.  

 

Still, total damage against said packs of 12: 

 

Sentinel - 3,270 (raw damage, not counting Offensive Opportunity when active)

Blaster - 5,336 (raw damage, not counting the extra consistent 20% global damage buff of Defiance in the scenario).  

 

So not 70%, but just over 60%.  However, I was talking about a single power previously (Bullet Rain) so the comparison comes to 2,856 and 2,010.  Offensive Opportunity being a bit of a chore to quantify due to how it functions.  

So for the purpose of this exercise, the Sentinel is far less capable when looking at raw numbers.  When the Blaster can engage all targets it gets better.  OH BUT WAIT.... I don't just run Empty Clips and Bullet Rain.  I layer those powers with a selection from the Epic Pools.  So with that consideration, my Sentinel's expected AoE damage actually goes UP.  Does it eclipse a Blaster, F NO.  I wouldn't argue that, and not imply to any one that I did, but still...  How you build is important.  

One thing I noticed too, my Sentinel doesn't need to worry much on prep.  I can click Master Brawler and jump.  Even if its more targets than my caps can handle, I can do it without much fear.  That Blaster on the same map?... Not so much.  These weren't hover Blaster builds.  The Blaster needed to think a good bit more before diving in to Hail of Bullets.  ESD Arrow is pretty good for that.  I didn't notice this mysterious combination of events where I click Hail of Bullets and everything was completely defeated.  That was with Upshot running.  There were stragglers that I had to mop up with Bullet Rain and Empty Clips.  Was it faster on the Blaster?  Sure it was, but it I didn't find it SOOOOO fast like common forum knowledge would indicate.  Would that have been different if I had run melee PBAoE's?  You bet your ass it could because melee sets are generally stronger.  The disparity is apparent even between Blaster primaries and secondaries.  

Still, for a ranged AoE vs ranged AoE comparison I found my Sentinel to hold up far better than some commentary I tend to see.  So I shared that observation.  I also run a Defender and also attest that the Sentinel is far better than it is compared to there.  

Single target... 

 

Slotting matters or it doesn't.  

 

Blaster: 

 

Pistols, cooldown 1.15 seconds, 1.188 animation, 126 listed damage at 101.47% enhancement.  DPS average 106.  Can build Defiance (6% global damage) 3 times.  

Dual Wield, cooldown 1.73 seconds, 1.848 animation, 166 listed damage at 101.47%.  DPS average 89.92.  Can build Defiance (11% global damage), got it to stack 2 twice. 

Executioner's Shot, cooldown 2.89 seconds, 1.848 animation 267 damage at 101.47%.  DPS average 144.  Can build Defiance (11% global damage), never got it to stack more than once.  

Piercing Rounds 4.93s cooldown, animation 2.64.  286 damage at 101.47% enhancement.  DPS average 108.  Can build 13% Defiance, but tough to stack.  

I could get over 70% global damage running Executioner's Shot -> Pistols -> Dual Wield.  A few times I must have stacked something a bit higher since I hit 77% for short periods.  

That 3 hit chain animates in 4.884 seconds and does an average total damage 559.  

 

Using Piercing Rounds needs to sandwich Pistols since it is better overall DPS than Dual Wield.  Piercing Rounds - Pistol - Executioner - Pistols is repeatable with a slight break.  That takes 6.864 seconds to animate.  It has a potential average damage dealt from the numbers above of 805.  This is the foundation of what I want to beat as a Sentinel.

Sentinel: 

 

Pistols, cooldown 1.14 seconds, animation the same.  The damage at 101% enhancement would be around 105.  I do not slot my power this way.  

Suppressive Fire, has a 2.25 second cooldown and 1.848 animation.  Damage at 101% enhance roughly 173.  I do not slot my power this way.  Dual Wield not used as Suppressive Fire is a designed replacement T3 power.  If Dual Wield is swapped in, for pure apples to apples, the DPS will drop.  

Executioner's Shot, 2.86 second cooldown, animation the same.  Damage at this enhancement level would be 210.  

 

The above is capable of Executioner's Shot - Suppressive Fire - Pistols for animation time of 4.884 seconds wit ha total damage dealt of 488.  That's over 80% of the Blaster (when not using Piercing Rounds, obviously) not counting either's inherent.  What's important here is that the Sentinel design change includes powers that are slightly better than certain options in their parent set.  The Sentinel can drop Piercing Rounds since it both slows down the attack chain and Suppressive Fire can be a better replacement.  I've tried to like Piercing Rounds on the Sentinel, but It keeps coming up short.  For Blasters it can be good for damage.  For Defenders/Corrs its great for debuffing.  For Sentinels, speed is KING.  Piercing Rounds also messes with how I run Opportunity and I found the uptime slightly lower.  These all factor into my decision making.  

 

Now, some primaries will incorporate the snipe power on the Blaster side, like Beam can, which is going to skew things with the fast snipe changes.  This is exactly the kind of thing I am talking about with current power creep.  However, if you look at sets that do not have this problem, and Dual Pistols is rather unique, you can see that in this case the Sentinel is far closer than it may sound.  

 

How I really slot those attacks... 

 

Pistols cooldown 1.4 seconds, expected damage with 89.92% enhancement (well over ED with Musculature - not discussed here) plus 2 procs is 143. 

Suppressive Fire's cooldown is 2.81 seconds.  Same damage enhancement but 3 procs one of them a purple.  Average damage is 323.  

Executioner's Shot cooldown is 3.51 seconds.  Same enhancement.  2 procs, one a purple.  Average total damage 339.  

 

I can run ES - SF - Pistols with a slight pause.  That's 4.884 seconds at 805 damage dealt (potentially).  Not shown is Decimation Build-Up and Achilles' Heel -20% resistance in that attack chain.  I'll often run ES - Pistols - SF - Pistols.  That's 6.072 time for 948 damage.  So the Piercing Rounds chain is slightly longer for less damage BUT it builds Defiance which is additional bonus damage.  The triple hit chain of Executioner - DW - Pistols needs to add another Pistols to meet that 6 second marker.  That's only 685 before Defiance.  

 

So when I say stuff like the lines get blurry with the Sentinel, this is where I am coming from.  I'm trying to be as objective as I can without any of "my feels" getting in the way.  

 

It is easily observable that a Blaster can, and will, out damage a Sentinel in AoE.  The exact amount depends on number of targets.  The lower the target engagement, the more blurry the lines get as Sentinels can still shine.  The higher the target engagement, which can be common, the more Blasters shine.  

In single target, the changes to Sentinel power availability and action matter.  These changes make the attack routines between the ATs very different.  The damage from a Sentinel isn't that far behind, but yes Blasters are ahead at their core.  That's kinda what happens when one AT starts with a high modifier and can build additional bonus damage consistently.  The Sentinel has a lower modifier and an inherent that is wildly inconsistent.  Its not rocket science.  

The way you close the gap here, right now, is through damage procs and/OR Incarnate options.  Any Blasters chasing Agility plus any other non-damage quality of life effects are leaving damage on the table.  Don't think that matters?  My example of damage on Empty Clips/Bullet Rain didn't account for Musculature.  I removed that socket from my Incarnates to gauge the slotted damage at the percentage shown.  Musculature starts to narrow that gap in the example above.  Granted, the DP/TA build can also push Musculature since it doesn't need Agility and if that happened it would move the goal post.  

So this is another reason why I always say the comparisons can get very blurry.  I do not know how you build all of your Sentinels nor do I know how you built all of your Blasters.  All I can say is what I have experienced due to my own building preferences.  What I tend to find is that Sentinels are far closer at dealing damage at level 50, than they are credited with.  To me, it is like seeing posts about two different games.  

--------------

Also, when I note that the optimization ceiling on Sentinels is likely lower.  I absolutely mean it.  What's tough to compare is when Blasters mix melee into their builds and blap.  Those melee powers can dramatically move the needle, and there are potentially lopsided power gaming builds with far higher ceilings in that AT.  I'm not blind to it. 

Edited May 8, 2020 by oldskool

[drbuzzard]

While I appreciate the detailed analysis, I consider Dual Pistols an udder dud of a set. It's the only sentinel primary I tried that I retired the character after it was 50 and stripped of enhancements because I could find better uses. Maybe it's not that bad, but as I'm a shooting enthusiast, the amount of egregious wrongness employed in the set terminology and animations just irks me. The performance failed to impress me at all as well, but the feel probably annoyed me more than anything. Also you are also picking the single set that lacks an aim power which would have a telling effect at higher recharge values. I  don't see build up mentioned, which again with lots of global recharge has significant uptime, and thus benefits from the higher scalar. 

 

I'd have to say if someone wanted to compare sentinel to blaster output, you'd want to pick the high end, which would generally be considered fire blast. I know my fire/atomic puts my fire/fire sentinel to shame (and honestly I like to play the fire/fire more even if it feels like I'm just pecking away at things). 

 

Now as for my BR/Dev, maybe it's the targeting drone that does it (it gives a perpetual damage bonus), but I find my damage bonus to range between 80 and 100 just about all the time during a fight. 

[oldskool]

30 minutes ago, drbuzzard said:

While I appreciate the detailed analysis, I consider Dual Pistols an udder dud of a set. It's the only sentinel primary I tried that I retired the character after it was 50 and stripped of enhancements because I could find better uses. Maybe it's not that bad, but as I'm a shooting enthusiast, the amount of egregious wrongness employed in the set terminology and animations just irks me. The performance failed to impress me at all as well, but the feel probably annoyed me more than anything. Also you are also picking the single set that lacks an aim power which would have a telling effect at higher recharge values. I  don't see build up mentioned, which again with lots of global recharge has significant uptime, and thus benefits from the higher scalar. 

 

I'd have to say if someone wanted to compare sentinel to blaster output, you'd want to pick the high end, which would generally be considered fire blast. I know my fire/atomic puts my fire/fire sentinel to shame (and honestly I like to play the fire/fire more even if it feels like I'm just pecking away at things). 

 

Now as for my BR/Dev, maybe it's the targeting drone that does it (it gives a perpetual damage bonus), but I find my damage bonus to range between 80 and 100 just about all the time during a fight. 

What you think of Dual Pistols is besides the point.  I'm showing you a comparison of a ranged only Sentinel vs a ranged only Blaster both using the same primary set.  These were used within the post you cited as if I was making a sweeping broad claim that all Sentinels do 70% of Blaster AoE.  That's not something I did.  Instead, that short comparison was purely 12 target potential of Bullet Rain and the average expected damage is listed in the post above.  And I did that because it was somewhat more realistic of a solo situation vs the polar opposite.  Claiming all mob spawns are 16 target and therefore all Blasters are guaranteed max damage.  In real play that's not true, even on teams.  It can be true in certain conditions, and it can be true more often than it is false.  Still, a claim on max capacity of Blasters can be just as sweeping and frankly silly. 

Now, for further reference I go far behind the curtain into my thought process behind builds.  I highlight what I think I can do with the same Blaster and then set that as a goal to hit on the Sentinel.  In the case of Dual Pistols its real blurry.  However, the moment you start dropping Dual Pistol powers for melee from a secondary that goal post SHIFTS.  So if I where to build Dual Pistols/Martial Combat or Energy for that matter the goal post would be different.  The context is key, and that looks a bit glossed over to just say "congrats on the analysis but DP sucks".  Not the point.

 

Fire Blast is a dead horse.  If you want to see what Fire Blast can do, there is that Pylon thread in the Scrapper forum.  The way that set gets built to really get ridiculous numbers incorporates procs in Dominate.  Still, Fire Blast on Sentinels at its core is still quite good.  I have no idea how you ran it with Fire/Fire.  Maybe there was room for improvement, but if you didn't like there would be no point in pushing the issue.  There are plenty of folks that have Fire Blast builds that do respectable damage.  

 

...Of which, what is respectable damage anyway?  I've seen a few Sentinel builds that can easily average 98-110 DPS when built with purple sets.  I wouldn't be surprised one bit if that was the norm.  So folks capable of building higher than that are the apparent outliers.  The level of effort it takes to push those builds higher can also be done on any other AT with often greater returns on the same investment.  

Anyway, I'm not going to debate that there is an issue with the Sentinel.  There are plenty that feel that way.  I'm willing to make suggestions on how to make the most of the AT as it currently is though, and if folks want to know how to do that then great.  If folks are unwilling to compromise or think about their builds differently, then there are plenty of other things to play while they wait for a Sentinel buff. 
 

Edited May 8, 2020 by oldskool

[drbuzzard]

Ok, nevermind. You do good work pointing out how to optimize sentinels. I'm done. 

[nihilii]

49 minutes ago, drbuzzard said:

I'd have to say if someone wanted to compare sentinel to blaster output, you'd want to pick the high end, which would generally be considered fire blast.

Some caveats with that argument. Normal Fire Blast is very very strong (*cough* OP *cough*), while Sentinel Fire Blast was rebalanced (DoTs are normalized).

 

On Blasters, Corruptors, Defenders... and Dominators for that matter... try as you might, you will not find a powerset as damaging as Fire Blast at the higher end. On Sentinels, however? Elec Blast will give Fire Blast a run for their money, and many other powersets aren't far behind.

 

In the great picture, picking the high end for a whole AT comparison penalizes properly balanced ATs where no single powerset or combo outshines the rest, and favorizes ATs with OP builds. So... If all you care about is the high end, I think that's a fair argument to use. With that "if" caveat.

 

But if you care about the entire AT? The discrepancy between a Fire Blaster and a Fire Sentinel is unlikely to be reflected between an Elec Blaster and an Elec Sentinel. You can't project performance 1:1 from Fire Blast, doubly so because many other Sentinel primaries got *buffs* from their original form.

[drbuzzard]

I think the point I would make, if I cared to continue arguing (which I don't) is that by comparing Dual Pistol, which is usually regarded as a low end set for blasters against sentinel DP (which as you say is better balanced), you slant things towards sentinels. I get your point that many blaster sets are ill balanced, but certainly it's not just fire blast which doesn't suck. I found beam rifle on a blaster to be pretty powerful as well. Hence when I compare my BR/Dev to my BR/Bio (or elec, or dark), the sentinel feels very wanting. We both picked a data point, and unless you do a hell of a lot of analysis across all manner of primary/secondary combinations any generalization won't be terribly valid as they are based on singular data points. It's simply not worth the kind of effort  required to do proper analysis(at least not to me). 

 

But honestly I shouldn't have responded. It doesn't really matter. We all acknowledge that sentinels need some work and OldSkool does a nice job of giving people advice on how to make the most of the AT as it is. 

[oldskool]

3 minutes ago, drbuzzard said:

if I cared to continue arguing (which I don't) is that by comparing Dual Pistol, which is usually regarded as a low end set for blasters against sentinel DP (which as you say is better balanced), you slant things towards sentinels.

I think there is a bit of miscommunication here.  The point I was intending to make is not the point you think I am making.  

I think you cherry picked a line from another post and put it out of context.  At no point was I striving to make a comparison of Dual Pistols (numerous ATs 🙂)  to say Sentinels are universally OK.  

No, the point was that Sentinels aren't as bad as they are made out to be.  There is a tremendous amount of hyperbole tossed around about the AT.  Such that comparisons in a vacuum make it sound like it is entirely unplayable.  It isn't, and that's all I wished to originally express.  Dual Pistols could be replaced with several other examples in the AT.  It happened to be a set I know very well, but the specific chosen was besides the entire point.  

Hell, in the response you just gave, THAT was the entire damn point.  There is an awful lot of variance across AT power pairings that broad generalizations are inherently flawed.  They help no one.  Even pointing out numbers of X percentage this vs Y percentage that lacks context.  It lacks a perspective from playing the game.  When I ran the characters through the same kind of content, I shared my observations.  Within this thread, I'm just showing real numbers taken from the game.  Even looking at total possible damage potential against 16 targets on a Blaster doesn't really tell a full story.  

We agree with a lot of points here, and I hope you realize that.  

Also, accept my apologizes if my responses seemed harsher than intended.  I only sought to explain my position of a very narrow point, and not exactly make a global commentary as you implied.  

[Hardboiled Hero]

3 hours ago, nihilii said:

In the great picture, picking the high end for a whole AT comparison penalizes properly balanced ATs where no single powerset or combo outshines the rest, and favorizes ATs with OP builds. So... If all you care about is the high end, I think that's a fair argument to use. With that "if" caveat.

  Which begs the question..  why are we talking about making changes to, what is quite possibly, the most balanced AT in the game?  Shouldn't we be discussing changes to the AT's that are not balanced?

 

  How can we have a reasonable discussion about balancing sentinels against other AT's, when many other AT's contain elements which aren't balanced within the AT?

 

Can sentinels really be balanced with blasters when the discrepancy between Dual Pistols or Archery Blasters and Fire Blasters is so great?

 

  For that matter, we've only been talking about damage.  One of the reasons I like sentinels is because it seems like all sets can be built with comparable damage..  which means the actual crowd control and debuff effects on the primary sets becomes more meaningful, not as compared to blasters, but within the sentinel AT.

 

P.S.:

 

  If they can greatly reduce the range on sentinel attacks alone, then they can greatly increase the damage on those attacks as well.

Edited May 8, 2020 by Hardboiled Hero

[drbuzzard]

Being internally balanced within the AT has little to do with being balanced against other ATs. Sentinels are a weak choice to pick for a team at endgame. Just about any other AT would add more to a team. Now while you are leveling up, sentinels are just fine, their improved durability vis a vis blasters means they are doing damage while the blasters is closely examining the carpet, and that does serve a purpose. However once everyone has a fully decked out build, the blaster will be quite adequate in survivability, and sentinel damage is left far, far behind.

 

Of course this does involve the rather sticky wicket of how the devs don't want to balance around IOs, but rather SOs, and in that case blasters at 50 are not even close in durability (but then without procced up builds, sents fall even more behind in damage). 

 

I recently decided to bite the bullet and see how I could remake my BR/Dev for peak durability. He's now got past softcap in ranged and energy, with near softcap in l/s defense. Since he has core clarion, he has permanent status protection as well. While he lacks def defbuff resistance, there's really not such a wide gap in survival between him and a sentinel since he just hoverblasts. I gave up pretty much nothing in terms of damage to accomplish this (still perma hasten, with my nuke up in 33 seconds or so). The damage gap between the blaster and my directly comparable sentinel is huge (vs. BR/Bio- in offensive mode at all times). I mean huge enough that the sentinel feels like it should have tanker values for defenses to even vaguely make it a fair trade off (though mentioning tankers-they now seem to eclipse sentinels in damage other than the nukes which I will always say are the strong point on sentinels). 

[oldskool]

So how much does Penetrating Ray play in your assessment? 

 

Blaster powers: 

Disintegrate = 135 dmg

Lancer Shot = 170 dmg 

Piercing Beam = 135 dmg 

Penetrating Ray = 319 (!) dmg 

 

Sentinel versions: 

Disintegrate = 114 dmg

Lancer Shot = 143 dmg 

Piercing Beam = 114 dmg

Penetrating Ray... doesn't exist as it was replaced by Refractor Beam

 

Disintegrate + Lancer + Piercing animates in 6.732 seconds (Arcanatime).  The total damage from a Blaster runs around 65 DPS and the Sentinel runs around 55 DPS.  That's just base numbers.  It isn't that hard to keep this proportion close between builds, but there will be some variance.  Without damage procs that proportion will always favor the Blaster, but the gap doesn't need to be vast.  

 

Now, if you replace Piercing Beam with Penetrating Ray the difference jumps in favor of the Blaster considerably.  Fully enhancing it and accounting for variance can drive this gap even further.  The only way for the Sentinel to catch up at this point is to bring in a high DPA melee power from the Epic pools and start mixing it up in close quarters.  The only way it can even think of getting closer is to take a hold and proc the crap out of it.  

 

Any builds that can maximize snipes and make them rotational should be eclipsing a Sentinel's DPS.  If a build on a Blaster isn't doing that, then a Sentinel's damage running some alternative attack cycle will get closer.  

This is why I said before that the fast snipe change was a huge swing against Sentinels.  You could give the Sentinel AT the same damn modifier as the Blaster (1.125) and it will never eclipse fast-snipe performance without heavy use of damage procs.  

Lets say for the sake of argument that procs in epic powers go the way of the dinosaur.  Sentinel's will get pretty gutted when making one on one comparisons to Blasters running fast-snipe chains.  

 

Thankfully for Sentinel Beam AoE the inclusion of Refractor Beam gives it something of a bone.  Between Cutting Beam + Refractor Beam + Overcharge the AoE potential isn't that bad compared to the Blaster version.  The Blaster version does more damage per target and generally hits more on the T9, but the real difference in raw numbers isn't that bad.  The single target is very different when looking purely at primary vs primary.  

I can make some pretty effective Sentinels without dipping into the Epics, but I can't beat the power of a snipe without abusing Dominate.  

Edited May 12, 2020 by oldskool

[Hardboiled Hero]

7 hours ago, drbuzzard said:

Being internally balanced within the AT has little to do with being balanced against other ATs. Sentinels are a weak choice to pick for a team at endgame. Just about any other AT would add more to a team. Now while you are leveling up, sentinels are just fine, their improved durability vis a vis blasters means they are doing damage while the blasters is closely examining the carpet, and that does serve a purpose. However once everyone has a fully decked out build, the blaster will be quite adequate in survivability, and sentinel damage is left far, far behind.

 

Of course this does involve the rather sticky wicket of how the devs don't want to balance around IOs, but rather SOs, and in that case blasters at 50 are not even close in durability (but then without procced up builds, sents fall even more behind in damage). 

 

I recently decided to bite the bullet and see how I could remake my BR/Dev for peak durability. He's now got past softcap in ranged and energy, with near softcap in l/s defense. Since he has core clarion, he has permanent status protection as well. While he lacks def defbuff resistance, there's really not such a wide gap in survival between him and a sentinel since he just hoverblasts. I gave up pretty much nothing in terms of damage to accomplish this (still perma hasten, with my nuke up in 33 seconds or so). The damage gap between the blaster and my directly comparable sentinel is huge (vs. BR/Bio- in offensive mode at all times). I mean huge enough that the sentinel feels like it should have tanker values for defenses to even vaguely make it a fair trade off (though mentioning tankers-they now seem to eclipse sentinels in damage other than the nukes which I will always say are the strong point on sentinels). 

 

  I disagree with that first line.  Being internally balanced within the (sentinel) AT has a great deal to do with being (un)balanced against other AT's because, if you're going to balance AT's against one another, then you need to decide on some reference points. The current sentinel might not be balanced against a blaster no matter whether your talking about a fire/fire blaster or a DP/Martial blaster..  but if you were going to balance the Sentinel AT against the Blaster AT,  at some point you'd have to figure out how your blaster AT should be balanced.  Therefor, the first step in balancing the sentinel against other AT's, must be balancing each AT within itself. Alternatively, you could balance individual powersets against those same sets in other AT's, but that would involve unbalancing the Sentinel AT within itself.  So it's impossible to balance the Sentinel AT against other AT's without either balancing other AT's within themselves, or unbalancing the Sentinel within itself.. these things are intrinsically linked.

 

  I don't have a ton of end-game experience, but I can see your point about sentinels always being a "weak choice".. all sentinels really bring to the table is damage (despite the fact that most attacks have a secondary effect of some sort as well).. even if their damage was "as good" as a blaster's damage, there would be no reason to choose a sentinel over a blaster (or Vice Versa).  For that matter, if it's so easy to survive end-game, is there really any reason to take a scrapper or stalker over a blaster?  Brutes can at least theoretically taunt and tank.. but what's the purpose to any other AT with a defensive secondary?  There are even some corruptors and Defenders (I'm looking at you FF), that are pretty much considered worthless because no one doubts their survivability end-game. Honestly I've been starting to think the real imbalance issue is with how easy it is to get survivability from pool powers and other people's buffs, compared to the difficulty (perceived at least) of getting good offense from pool powers and other people's buffs.  But in the end, even this doesn't really matter because a "weak choice" at end-game is still a viable choice from what I've seen.

[Obitus]

On 5/8/2020 at 6:49 PM, Hardboiled Hero said:

Can sentinels really be balanced with blasters when the discrepancy between Dual Pistols or Archery Blasters and Fire Blasters is so great?

The balance between ranged blast sets (specifically with regard to DPA) has been a glaring issue pretty much since launch day.  The developers acknowledged that when they standardized t1 and t2 blasts, but they never got around to the rest, which left sets like Fire and Ice (which both have a great T3 attack) with a preposterously high advantage relative to their cousins.

 

And even at that, Fire Blast didn't compare favorably with most melee sets, in terms of single-target damage.  It still doesn't, in fact, not without heavy proc slotting and investment in at least one Epic pool attack; Dominate is the standard on Sentinels, but what's often ignored on this forum is that ranged Blasters also have to take something like Epic Char to put up truly high-end numbers.  Yes, that's even after the fast-snipe buff.

 

The truly monstrous numbers you see from Blasters in the Pylon thread invariably include melee attacks from the Secondary set.  And Blasters with melee attacks generally don't have great survivability, because, contrary to some of the handwaving you see on the forums, Blasters generally can't soft-cap Defense to more than one position or 2/3 types.  The most durable Blasters aren't putting out world-beating Pylon times, and the ones that put up those numbers can't remotely compete with Sentinel durability. 

 

Just by way of example, my ultra-tweaked, heavily-procced, Char-wielding, billion-inf ranged Fire/Temporal Blaster scores about 365 DPS.  It's a very high number in practical terms, and I have no complaints, but it can't touch Nihilii's Sentinel score.  For that matter, I have an Elec/SS Tanker that can beat the Blaster's score.

 

In short, you make a good point.  More generally, I agree with @oldskool: the problems of the Sentinel AT are often overblown.  I don't dispute that the AT needs work; a new or reworked Inherent would be nice, perhaps a boost to target caps or damage--but many of the AT's perceived problems are inherent to ranged ATs in City of Heroes.  Too often, albeit valid misgivings are substantiated by anecdotal half-truths or misconceptions.

 

Ideally, we'd see a balance pass for ranged DPA across the board, in addition to whatever happens to Sentinels.  I'm not even sure Sentinel Primaries are all that well balanced against one another; just at a glance, it seems that some sets won the lottery in the what-will-replace-the-snipe sweepstakes, while others got the boobie prize.  Electric Blast is a good example of the former, as is Sonic Attack (a set that as far as I'm concerned isn't even worth playing on any other AT, unless you're going for max team support on a Defender or something).

Edited May 13, 2020 by Obitus

[nihilii]

6 hours ago, Obitus said:

I'm not even sure Sentinel Primaries are all that well balanced against one another; just at a glance, it seems that some sets won the lottery in the what-will-replace-the-snipe sweepstakes, while others got the boobie prize.

A fair point. I like that Sentinel Fire Blast in particular got balanced down - in every other AT with access to traditional Fire Blast, I end up throwing my hands up in the air whenever I try to build with any other damage powerset and realise Fire Blast would just be THAT much better. Snipe/mez replacements seem rather arbitrary, but I want to argue intuitively this chaotic mishmash ends up sort of more balanced for Sentinels than it is on many other ATs. i.e. say the difference between Fire Blast and Assault Rifle on Blasters or the difference between Titan Weapons and Battle Axe on Scrappers is 1x, maybe the difference between, well, Fire Blast and Assault Rifle on Sentinels is 0.5x or 0.8x (and that's with AR being one of the Sentinel ports that gets shortchanged, IMHO). So Sentinel balance isn't perfect, but it trends in the right direction.

Perhaps a more coherent argument would be one cannot aim for Blaster Fire Blast or Scrapper Titan Weapons as a balance design goal. 🙂

[ForeverLaxx]

32 minutes ago, nihilii said:

Perhaps a more coherent argument would be one cannot aim for Blaster Fire Blast or Scrapper Titan Weapons as a balance design goal. 🙂

I personally feel that damage, particularly area-damage, is too high across the board anyway. I understand everyone has superpowers and it feels good to throw out two AoEs (or one T9 Nova) and decimate +4/x8 spawns in a matter of seconds but this leaves behind everyone else who is running a set that can't realistically do this or opts for a build that doesn't. Sets known for their single-target damage numbers (or formerly known, say hi Energy Melee) only find a home now in PvP, which is an area of the game that even now is pretty ignored from the development side of things and was never talked about much on the Live servers unless someone wanted to blame another for balance changes. If you're running one of those sets or builds you often feel like you're just along for the ride in a group; being there or not has no effect on whether your team succeeds. This might be why I solo a lot.

 

I know this shift in focus was pretty gradual and Set IOs are so ingrained into the system with builds set to razor-thin edges that would crumble if any changes were made to them, so I don't think this is going to change. While the game is "balanced around SOs", it's completely broken with IOs and Incarnates. It's going to be next to impossible to balance a system whose players have decided that cycling 3 high damage area attacks every 5-8 seconds, with the "occasional" (30 second) Nova, is how the game is meant to be played thanks to how IOs work. Plus, this isn't considering the defensive aspect of set bonuses completely pushing out "once great" team sets by causing their buffs/debuffs to be rendered null, replaced instead with the almighty -res/-regen debuffs. If you don't have good sources of those last two, you aren't considered truly helping the team.

 

The only thing you could do about it at this point is to make attacks have a portion of their recharge unenhanceable and I don't think anyone wants that either. The game is in a rough spot when it comes to balancing ATs against each other so that everyone has options to feel like they matter. Back when the top end of the spectrum were SOs, teams of Defenders/Controllers with heavy debuffs and a Kinetic would mow down everything but no one felt like all teams had to be that in order to succeed because nothing in 99% of the game required that level of overkill. But now that everyone has access to that level of overkill thanks to IO set bonuses, powersets and ATs that are completely fine on their own are suddenly shoved to the wayside because they don't compare to the bigboys.

 

The advent of IOs and a relatively small, dedicated playerbase that is very efficiency-focused have sort of created this situation where Sentinels are considered "not good enough" by any metric. Blasters do more damage and have better defenses once they've slotted their sets, Scrappers do more damage and have better defenses overall baseline even before sets are included, Corruptors/Defenders bring buffs/debuffs for their team as a force multiplier which Sentinels don't really do, etc. Due to how the game evolved, Sentinels just feel like they were tacked on as a missing AT

 

I kind of went on a rant about the state of the game as a whole, so to bring this back to what I would do regarding Sentinels, maybe they need the Stalker treatment. Stalkers are considered good due mostly to their changes to Assassination and the ATO that recharges their Build Up power. Perhaps Sentinels could use something similar that boosts performance in a unique way without fundamentally changing what a Sentinel actually does. How to do something like this, though, I haven't thought much about.

[oldskool]

4 hours ago, ForeverLaxx said:

I kind of went on a rant about the state of the game as a whole, so to bring this back to what I would do regarding Sentinels, maybe they need the Stalker treatment. Stalkers are considered good due mostly to their changes to Assassination and the ATO that recharges their Build Up power. Perhaps Sentinels could use something similar that boosts performance in a unique way without fundamentally changing what a Sentinel actually does. How to do something like this, though, I haven't thought much about.

I tend to feel critical hits are the way to keep Sentinel dps relevant in the "go big or go home" meta.  There will always be a meta and the current seems to hover around a "if you're not doing 300+ dps on Pylon you're doing it wrong".  That may not be how the HC devs wish it to be, but I have no idea where they stand on the meta or what that looks like.  

 

A scalar improvement by itself won't add much.  Even pushing the Sentinel to a 1.125 modifier alone won't be enough.  The per target shot in the AoEs would be equal to a Blaster's but the target caps being less will still cause controversy.  If the devs dig their feet in and don't want to raise target caps, and there are good reasons not to, then Sentinels will still be seen as behind the curve.  

Depending on the primary, a shift in scalar can be around +30 dps on single target.  I've seen more builds than I can count that start at just over 100 dps with a huge push on defense IOs (within the Sentinel).  A dps increase like this from scalar alone isn't going to do squat to change anyone's perspective.  

 

Critical hits would add damage and it doesn't need to exceed Blaster performance.  You control rate of contribution there through how frequently the crits can occur.  So the Sentinel should go more like a Scrapper in that regard than a Stalker.  Stalker's current level of controlled criticals influences the damage on at least one high DPA attack (Assassin's X) and very likely lines up with another one.  For example, my Dark Melee Stalker's Assassin's Eclipse comes at the end of my chain but right before Midnight Grasp.  Assassin's Eclipse gets 2-3 Assassin's Focus depending on misses or target swap.  Still, that's a high chance to crit.  If Assassin's Guile puts me back in stealth, then Midnight Grasp is generally up next with a guaranteed stealth crit.  Anyone that's played Dark Melee on a Scrapper/Stalker knows that the front loaded crit damage on MG is pretty large.  That's just one Stalker.  I have several.  I have another Stalker that does all that plus has procs.  Anyway, Stalker damage is controlled criticals and that contributes a lot to its high standing on single-target despite its 1.0 modifier.  The ability to weave in repeat build-ups is icing on the cake and shouldn't be ignored either.  The entire AT is heavy on burst damage.  

I'm not sure I want to see Sentinels go that direction.  The DPA in their primaries just isn't there like it is in Stalkers.  Furthermore, Sentinels have far better AoE spread than most Stalkers and that needs to be considered as a counterbalance point.  

 

As it stands, there is no ranged-only AT with criticals outside of Scourge.  Scourge is conditional and can come across as irrelevant in cases where the heightened chance is missed due to another player taking out a low health target.  So a Sentinel could have a lower rate on chance to critically hit to get it closer to the damage found in other ATs.  AoE with criticals available from 100% enemy health need to be considered too.  That could end up adding too much damage per target and allowing Sentinels to wipe out enemy spawns at the same speed as Blasters regardless of target caps.  For instance, if the Blaster needs 3 powers to take out 16 targets but the Sentinel wipes out 10 targets in one casting of a T9 what's going to happen next?  The Sentinel will clean up on the next attack and if that wipes out everything due to lucky crits that's a possible problem.  

If the AoE stays capped as it is, then the single target needs to be a focus.  In that regard, Sentinels can be viewed somewhat like the Stalkers of the ranged ATs.  Stalkers trade AoE potential for high single-target and perhaps Sentinels need to do the same.  

The other problem, as I see it, is damage procs.  Unless there is a dramatic change to procs they aren't going away.  Just because a Stalker has a lot of goodies to make its ST damage top notch doesn't seem to stop powergamers from adding procs to attacks like Assassin's Strike.  If a Super Reflexes Stalker can get all the defense they'll ever need from their secondary + the possibility of Shadow Meld, then why not push damage higher?  So some Stalker builds can and do just that.  That's not going to change overnight with Sentinels either.  If my /SR characters can still increase damage per slot by more than a minor percentage increase as I approach ED capping, then you can win a bet that I'm going to do that.  

Certain builds that abuse procs in Epic holds will just get better than they already are.  

So is a 300 DPS meta where all DPS ATs need to be, or is there some other problem here?

 

 

Edited May 13, 2020 by oldskool

[drbuzzard]

15 hours ago, oldskool said:

So how much does Penetrating Ray play in your assessment? 

 

Blaster powers: 

Disintegrate = 135 dmg

Lancer Shot = 170 dmg 

Piercing Beam = 135 dmg 

Penetrating Ray = 319 (!) dmg 

 

Sentinel versions: 

Disintegrate = 114 dmg

Lancer Shot = 143 dmg 

Piercing Beam = 114 dmg

Penetrating Ray... doesn't exist as it was replaced by Refractor Beam

 

Disintegrate + Lancer + Piercing animates in 6.732 seconds (Arcanatime).  The total damage from a Blaster runs around 65 DPS and the Sentinel runs around 55 DPS.  That's just base numbers.  It isn't that hard to keep this proportion close between builds, but there will be some variance.  Without damage procs that proportion will always favor the Blaster, but the gap doesn't need to be vast.  

 

Now, if you replace Piercing Beam with Penetrating Ray the difference jumps in favor of the Blaster considerably.  Fully enhancing it and accounting for variance can drive this gap even further.  The only way for the Sentinel to catch up at this point is to bring in a high DPA melee power from the Epic pools and start mixing it up in close quarters.  The only way it can even think of getting closer is to take a hold and proc the crap out of it.  

 

Any builds that can maximize snipes and make them rotational should be eclipsing a Sentinel's DPS.  If a build on a Blaster isn't doing that, then a Sentinel's damage running some alternative attack cycle will get closer.  

This is why I said before that the fast snipe change was a huge swing against Sentinels.  You could give the Sentinel AT the same damn modifier as the Blaster (1.125) and it will never eclipse fast-snipe performance without heavy use of damage procs.  

Lets say for the sake of argument that procs in epic powers go the way of the dinosaur.  Sentinel's will get pretty gutted when making one on one comparisons to Blasters running fast-snipe chains.  

 

Thankfully for Sentinel Beam AoE the inclusion of Refractor Beam gives it something of a bone.  Between Cutting Beam + Refractor Beam + Overcharge the AoE potential isn't that bad compared to the Blaster version.  The Blaster version does more damage per target and generally hits more on the T9, but the real difference in raw numbers isn't that bad.  The single target is very different when looking purely at primary vs primary.  

I can make some pretty effective Sentinels without dipping into the Epics, but I can't beat the power of a snipe without abusing Dominate.  

You don't seem to be including defiance. You might as well be comparing performance cars by looking at the engines with no regard to the weight of the chassis and the quality of the transmission. 

 

As I've said, on the BR/Dev my damage bonus (from defiance and targeting drone) tends to vary from 60-116% damage boost (from the stealth of field operative with targeting drone up, it starts at 116 set bonuses are part of this of course, but I have those roughly the same on the sentinels), and doesn't seem to get below 56 (the out of stealth value) as I blast away).  

 

Just to pick one point- aim+overload from stealth gives me 791.13. Not from stealth I was getting 698.01 (I shouldn't have to say these are combat monitor numbers). 

without aim 660.93

without aim or stealth 549.94

 

We'll also do lancer shot since it is available both sides

from stealth: 467.05

after breaking stealth: 378.72

 

 

Lancer shot in offensive bio offensive mode: 304.4+31 toxic (bio offensive FTW)

 

overcharge 494.45 (with gaussian boosted aim)

without aim 322.7

I am leaving off the DoT since it is variable (and the power is identical)

 

It is interesting that the 'after breaking stealth' is generally the low point in the blaster damage (since I've no been building defiance, just waiting for lancer to be up and firing it while the targets are still seeing me and attacking). It's only about 12% higher than the BR/Bio, but it's the low point. If compared out of stealth which seems closer to where I usually am after building up a head of defiance, it's 39% higher. Defiance makes a very large difference. Of course /Dev is an odd beast so it throws things off a bit (with the constant damage boost from targeting drone and the stealth interaction). However for other builds, we'd be talking about build up, with high global recharge so a good bit of uptime, and any sensible build will have the gaussian proc thrown in (I do on my fire/atomic). The base damages cannot be simply considered in a vacuum. 

 

I certainly concede that piercing beam does throw things off since it does plain silly damage. Here's some numbers:

an actual snipe from stealth: 961.79

a snipe not from stealth: 774.29

a non stealth  non snipe shot: 517.9

 

These numbers are from picking on lvl 50 Cimerorans on the wall. Both characters have T4 alpha (spiritual core for both). 

[drbuzzard]

I do agree with you OldSkool that crits are probably the best solution of what the devs are likely to consider. It's controllable and certainly can give a feel of finally hitting hard without so many hoops to jump. I still prefer the option I once suggested to stacking resistance debuffs  to a level chosen to keep them competitive. This would have a number of interesting advantages and balancing effects. First off, it would be fairly novel as inherents go (and basically a riff off the present one). We seem to have exactly 2 different inherent themes when it comes to DPS classes- you either get crits or a version of fury. Peeling off resistance would at least be a change of pace. Secondly it would be something that built up on a target over time, and hence wouldn't help a whole lot on steamrolling teams until you actually got to a hard target. Hence that would be a balancing factor in rewards over time. On a positive note, it would be a force multiplier effect, which would make the sentinel have a support angle (which it has in the current inherent, if poorly impemented) which again isn't seen in DPS classes. 

 

However Captain Powerhouse has shown a dislike for stacking resistance (probably watched too many Repeat Offender videos or something), so this is basically nixed. 

[drbuzzard]

13 hours ago, Hardboiled Hero said:

 

  I disagree with that first line.  Being internally balanced within the (sentinel) AT has a great deal to do with being (un)balanced against other AT's because, if you're going to balance AT's against one another, then you need to decide on some reference points. The current sentinel might not be balanced against a blaster no matter whether your talking about a fire/fire blaster or a DP/Martial blaster..  but if you were going to balance the Sentinel AT against the Blaster AT,  at some point you'd have to figure out how your blaster AT should be balanced.  Therefor, the first step in balancing the sentinel against other AT's, must be balancing each AT within itself. Alternatively, you could balance individual powersets against those same sets in other AT's, but that would involve unbalancing the Sentinel AT within itself.  So it's impossible to balance the Sentinel AT against other AT's without either balancing other AT's within themselves, or unbalancing the Sentinel within itself.. these things are intrinsically linked.

 

This argument basically says that until everything is perfectly balanced, you can't do anything. Pardon me, but that's simply ridiculous. If a clear disparity between general AT performance is evident, you can adjust things to close the gap. Say we have blasters with a fairly wide error bar in performance, but where even the bottom of the blaster zone still exceeds the sentinel (with it's small performance error bar). You can close the gap between the bottom of the blasters and the top of the sentinels without fiddling with either error bar size first. 

 

We just saw a very substantial revision to tankers which didn't affect anything outside of tankers (some changes to brutes, but small IMO) though it did tighten the melee set error bar some (and it's a plenty big error bar- ahem TW), but only by limiting the impact of the boost to tankers. This was clearly a case where different ATs were felt to have performance gaps (particularly at endgame) and the devs moved to close the gaps between ATs without actually closing the error bars. 

 

13 hours ago, Hardboiled Hero said:

  I don't have a ton of end-game experience, but I can see your point about sentinels always being a "weak choice".. all sentinels really bring to the table is damage (despite the fact that most attacks have a secondary effect of some sort as well).. even if their damage was "as good" as a blaster's damage, there would be no reason to choose a sentinel over a blaster (or Vice Versa).  For that matter, if it's so easy to survive end-game, is there really any reason to take a scrapper or stalker over a blaster?  Brutes can at least theoretically taunt and tank.. but what's the purpose to any other AT with a defensive secondary?  There are even some corruptors and Defenders (I'm looking at you FF), that are pretty much considered worthless because no one doubts their survivability end-game. Honestly I've been starting to think the real imbalance issue is with how easy it is to get survivability from pool powers and other people's buffs, compared to the difficulty (perceived at least) of getting good offense from pool powers and other people's buffs.  But in the end, even this doesn't really matter because a "weak choice" at end-game is still a viable choice from what I've seen.

 

If the sentinels damage was as good as a blasters, there would be no reason to choose one over the other (though AOE caps would at least give some reason, but then survivability could weigh in the favor of the sentinel). However sentinel damage is clearly not as good as blasters, so if one is picking an optimal team (say you want to set a speed TF record, or the Master of ITF challenge that I have mentioned) you will not be picking a sentinel. In a circumstance where you are competing in a stated goal, a sentinel must fall by the wayside. 

[oldskool]

1 hour ago, drbuzzard said:

You don't seem to be including defiance.

There are a lot of reasons why I didn't, and I don't see you making notes that I didn't go into Opportunity either.  In order to really make use of either inherent, then a build is necessary, and we've already had this talk about how variance exists.  

So I used numbers from the game.  All things considered if the same attacks are used and the same enhancements are applied, then the ratio doesn't change.  It wouldn't shift until Defiance started stacking beyond one application, and even then its a tough model since a build assumes a lot.  To pretend Opportunity does nothing while showing off Defiance is equally disingenuous.  There are a lot of variables that influence Opportunity's impact and its uptime.  So it isn't as easy to just say "...but Defiance" and call it a day.  

Furthermore, Disintegrate and Lancer shot add +12% per stack, and Penetrating Ray adds +11%.  Depending on how high you're stacking it, then sure it can be a really big deal.  That wasn't my takeaway when running a test with Beam/Dev at all.  This "performance car" you speak of definitely wasn't Defiance.  It was Penetrating Ray.  

[drbuzzard]

I find that defiance makes a huge difference, and given the 12% (.95 vs. 1.125) scalar increase, every increase in defiance increases the disparity. Since one of the largest complaints about sentinels is how bad their inherent is, not comparing the effects of the inherents IMO defies there being any point in comparing at all. 

 

The numbers I provided couldn't even really include the sentinel inherent since the targets would die too fast for it to matter. The blaster inherent, OTOH, stacks between spawns and keeps helping. 

 

I'm pretty sure I showed the effects of defiance outside of penetrating ray. You can disregard that if you like. You can say the snipe is the difference between the ATs in damage. I think you're dead wrong, but I also am sure I won't convince you, so I'll just stop wasting time putting forth data. 

[oldskool]

Edit: 
Originally lots of other stuff here.  The poster's comments where both infuriating and insulting.  There is just no point at all in continuing a conversation while my words get twisted, put out of context, or my ideas being regurgitated back to me (despite concessions of the underlying point) as if I'm an imbecile. 

Edited May 13, 2020 by oldskool

[drbuzzard]

1 minute ago, oldskool said:

You're putting words into my mouth where they don't exist.  That or you are misunderstanding my most recent response.4

And there I was thinking we were done. 

[ForeverLaxx]

On 5/13/2020 at 7:55 AM, oldskool said:

snip

 

 

I didn't necessarily mean they should get crits or have controlled crits like a Stalker, but rather, have a system in place that can be manipulated to more effectively bring them in line (just as what happened to Stalkers). This probably means an overhaul of Opportunity to remove clunkiness or consolidate its effect into a single power, then introduce Sentinel ATOs that can ratchet up the potential DPS. Just straight giving them crits I think would make them fall even harder into the "ranged Scrapper" camp, so rather than comparing them to Blasters they just get compared to Scrappers and we're back where we started. How to go about a change to their inherent I haven't given much thought to, though.

 

What I can say, however, is that I still think it's silly they have reduced range and lower target caps for seemingly no real reason. If anything happens to Sentinels, it should start there.

[oldskool]

15 hours ago, ForeverLaxx said:

I didn't necessarily mean they should get crits or have controlled crits like a Stalker

I didn't think you did, and I didn't intend to imply anything different.  I've made the critical hit suggestion before but decided to walk through my ideas a little bit.  Your comment inspired me to consider some outcomes a bit more thoroughly. 

The range and lower caps do not seem to be the way they are for no reason to me.  There was clearly a balance decision being made.  I think the balance decision was not necessarily against the Blaster/Defender/Corruptor alone.  

Captain Powerhouse mentioned before that behind the scenes there was a concept of the Sentinel having modest damage with periods of damage on par with the Scrapper.  So there was some consideration to the melee archetypes within the Sentinel design.  It wasn't purposefully made out to be some gimp Blaster as I sometimes see arguments being made.  CP was not interested in raising the target caps, at least.  Other ideas on improving the inherent and to generally bring the Sentinel upwards are probably on the table. 

In the meantime we can all have fun speculating and sharing our own visions on what could be.  If you'd like to see how grossly overpowered a Sentinel could be with a 1.125 scalar, criticals, full target caps, and a defensive secondary, then one can be altered on a private server.  Alternatively, there are other private servers running with versions of the Sentinel with full target caps, Defiance instead of Opportunity, and full on melee secondaries (complete with damage auras).  Some of those don't work, but there are combos of that that are potentially overpowered in relation to the Blaster AT.  I wouldn't be surprised if the HC team has already thought of this and decided against it.  

Hell, CP even suggested that the Sentinel not have a direct DPS inherent at all.  More like something relate to a to-hit bonus or something completely different from the current set of designs.  So we'll see what happens.  

Edited May 15, 2020 by oldskool