Who thought wrong?

[Diantane]

I can understand why Defenders have a weak blast because it is a secondary powerset, but why is a Sentinel's primary powerset so weak and only marginally better than a defender?

[Omega-202]

3 minutes ago, Diantane said:

I can understand why Defenders have a weak blast because it is a secondary powerset, but why is a Sentinel's primary powerset so weak and only marginally better than a defender?

The development team has said that they are revisiting Sentinels in the near future.  They are due for a buff and a revamp to their inherent powers.  

 

The reason that they are underpowered in practice is because they were originally created with the idea that Opportunity would be used optimally and as often as possible.  On paper, when used perfectly, Sentinels can match Scrapper damage.  But that assumes perfect usage of Opportunity.  By comparison, Scrappers hit optimal damage with way less effort.  The end result is Sentinels don't do nearly enough damage because Opportunity is awkward to take advantage of and the -20% resist on the main target is usually wasted outside of AV fights because the target dies so fast.  

[aethereal]

50 minutes ago, Diantane said:

I can understand why Defenders have a weak blast because it is a secondary powerset, but why is a Sentinel's primary powerset so weak and only marginally better than a defender?

Sentinels do about 150% defender damage based on scalar (before resist debuffs or opportunities).  This whole idea that sentinels barely outdamage defenders is just wrong.

 

Now, some defenders can get big damage boosts out of their primary.  But that's different.

[Diantane]

Those points are good to know. Thanks.

 

when I first looked at Sentinels on the creation page, it showed ranged damage at 7, with blasters at 10 and defenders at 6. If Sentinels has a 150% higher damage than defenders., than the damage number should have read 10 at least. Just curious, what did Scalar rate blasters at?

 

Since some of the blaster secondaries buff the damage output, many players like the idea of being a glass cannon. When Sentinels were designed, they should have had all of the damage of a blaster (without the buffs) and the same defensive secondary to keep it balanced.

 

The Sentinel idea has been a dream of mine for a very long time. Cox has the best melee characters I have seen on any mmo, but I’d like to play ranged without giving up the defense. Much like an archer on Asherons Call.

[Omega-202]

8 minutes ago, Diantane said:

Those points are good to know. Thanks.

 

when I first looked at Sentinels on the creation page, it showed ranged damage at 7, with blasters at 10 and defenders at 6. If Sentinels has a 150% higher damage than defenders., than the damage number should have read 10 at least. Just curious, what did Scalar rate blasters at?

 

Since some of the blaster secondaries buff the damage output, many players like the idea of being a glass cannon. When Sentinels were designed, they should have had all of the damage of a blaster (without the buffs) and the same defensive secondary to keep it balanced.

 

The Sentinel idea has been a dream of mine for a very long time. Cox has the best melee characters I have seen on any mmo, but I’d like to play ranged without giving up the defense. Much like an archer on Asherons Call.

The character creation bars are completely useless.  Do not ever rely on those for accurate information. 

 

Regarding the comparison with Blasters, feel free to check a number of threads in the Sentinel boards on the topic.  I disagree that their primary should equal a Blaster's, but it definitely needs to be closer.

 

If you're looking for a ranged character that does great damage and has armor, check out Arachnos Soldiers and Widows.  A Crab or Fortunata can put out damage in the same ballpark as a Blaster (still a bit lower) but with mez protection and ver good defenses.  

 

Edit: For comparison here are the real damage scalars:

- Defenders - 0.65

- Sentinels - 0.95

- Crabs and Forts - 1.0

- Blasters - 1.125

Edited September 17, 2020 by Omega-202

[pearbear]

On 9/17/2020 at 8:05 AM, Omega-202 said:

The development team has said that they are revisiting Sentinels in the near future.  They are due for a buff and a revamp to their inherent powers.  

What exactly did they say and where did they say it? Just curious about any details and how long ago it was. Thanks 😄

[Bill Z Bubba]

Sentinels *should* be at the bottom in overall performance of their blast sets. The order should be blasters > corruptors > defenders > sentinels. Why? Because Sents are vastly more survivable than the other three. They even come with built in mez protection very early in their careers.

[MTeague]

10 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Sentinels *should* be at the bottom in overall performance of their blast sets. The order should be blasters > corruptors > defenders > sentinels. Why? Because Sents are vastly more survivable than the other three. They even come with built in mez protection very early in their careers.

I'd say if considering blast powers ALONE, not buffs or debuffs

• Blasters > Sentinels = Corruptors > Defenders

The Blast tree IS a Sentinel Primary tree (as it is for Corruptors), so it should be better than Defenders secondary.

 

Now, with the effects of their Support tree thrown in, I'd say some certainly could/should outdamage a Sentinel.  Particularly Poisen, Trick Arrow, Rad, Dark, things with very strong -RES debuffs.  And a Sonic Blast Defender taking pains to stack the -RES, would probably outdamage a Fire or Ice Sentinel. 

 

But I would defintely expect any random Sentinel to outdamage a Empath Defender with the same blast set, or a Force Field Defender with the same blast set.

 

 

[Bill Z Bubba]

@MTeagueWhile I do see your logic, I think it downplays heavily the survivability a sent has over the other three archetypes. As they sit now, I consider sents to be the broken tankmage that MMOs are supposed to avoid.

[MTeague]

8 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

@MTeagueWhile I do see your logic, I think it downplays heavily the survivability a sent has over the other three archetypes. As they sit now, I consider sents to be the broken tankmage that MMOs are supposed to avoid.

Well, if we have to agree to disagree, that works too. 

But I'd say that ship sailed several years ago in the form of Kheldians, Crabs, and Fortunata's.

And really a Sentinels range is fairly limited. They're still in melee or very short range for a cone quite often.

[Haijinx]

Never saw Sents as all that good, to be honest.  

 

Blasters seem to be miles ahead.  More targets affected, and of course most Blaster Secondaries ALSO do big damage.  

 

Also I don't that Damage vs Survivability is the only Axis

 

You also have Control and Support to consider. 

 

Defenders and Corruptors tend to be pretty high on Support and sometimes decent on Control. 

Blasters have some Control depending on Secondary 

 

A Defender can increase Survibility for the Entire team, not just themselves.   

[Bill Z Bubba]

But control and support both add to damage and survivability. So we're back to a single axis. My argument is that no blaster, corruptor or defender can match the survivability of the armors available to the sentinel AT throughout the course of their career.

[Omega-202]

1 hour ago, pearbear said:

What exactly did they say and where did they say it? Just curious about any details and how long ago it was. Thanks 😄

 

There's some comments in that thread from @Captain Powerhouse, who is currenly in charge of such things.  In terms of timeline, as you'll see in that thread, there's been discussion regarding a potential revamp for about a year now, but the world being as it is and the team being volunteers, who knows when we might see the update.  Can't blame them because its obviously a group of volunteers and any updates at all are a gift.  

[oldskool]

2 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

My argument is that no blaster, corruptor or defender can match the survivability of the armors available to the sentinel AT throughout the course of their career.

That "no" part of the comment is a pretty big comment.  I think it is fairly accurate for most Blasters.  It isn't accurate for Defenders or many Corruptors.  Though I guess it depends on what you're basing this on.  

 

If you base survival purely on mez resistance than Sentinels have an advantage.  If you base it purely on passive mitigation then Sentinels have better than 0 the first armor toggle they turn on.  However, this ignores active mitigation available to Blasters, Corruptors, and Defenders.  For Blasters the options of active mitigation is fairly limited for most of the AT.  Ice Blast is an exception to that.  Still, Blasters can apply holds and immobilizes to singular enemies.  So they have to pick their fights early on.  

Certain support sets can neuter enemy to-hit.  Unfortunately, those often have longer cooldowns so they aren't available every spawn if you're moving really fast.  However, if you solo on a Corr/Fender you can totally wait for those cooldowns to refresh.  A Dark Miasma Defender can have more than 1 option for gutting to-hit chance even before the mid-20's.  By the 30's once Fluffy comes into to play enemies are far less dangerous.  

 

Early on Sentinels can still get overwhelmed.  They don't have the base hit points of Tankers or Brutes.  I've had lowbie Sentinels crumple from being focus fired before.  The mez resist isn't a big help when you get dropped by big attacks you can't absorb.  

 

When it comes to damage I've played more than one ranged blast set on at least 3 out of 4 ATs with access to it.  When it comes to Dual Pistols I've played it on all the ATs it is open to.  Due to how I build my Sentinels, they are almost always behind the Blaster in single target damage.  Sometimes that gap isn't very big and sometimes it is.  Often times it takes the use of the Blaster secondary to push it further.  When it comes to Corruptors and Defenders the Sentinel is still ahead on single target.  In AoE Corruptors can be far better.  Defenders can be only marginally better but this depends on what powers I am leveraging.  

 

Any whole sale Sentinels do less damage than Defenders, or even many Corruptors, is a load of crap. 

Edited September 18, 2020 by oldskool

[Omega-202]

2 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

But control and support both add to damage and survivability. So we're back to a single axis. My argument is that no blaster, corruptor or defender can match the survivability of the armors available to the sentinel AT throughout the course of their career.

Throughout the course of the 1-50? Maybe not.  But I've tinkered with Def/Cor builds that can compete withe Sentinels, durability wise.  I had whipped up a Water/Storm/Dark build on test that had soft capped ranged def, Hurricane, 40-50% resists to all but psi, and pretty stupid damage for a non Blaster.  

 

[Replacement]

4 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Sentinels *should* be at the bottom in overall performance of their blast sets. The order should be blasters > corruptors > defenders > sentinels. Why? Because Sents are vastly more survivable than the other three. They even come with built in mez protection very early in their careers.

The issue here is you're kind of completely ignoring party role.  Sentinels don't have a taunt or anything, so their survival doesn't provide anything to a party.  So if their damage is lower than a character that also has a Support set... what's the Sentinel really bringing to the table?

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 hours ago, Replacement said:

The issue here is you're kind of completely ignoring party role.  Sentinels don't have a taunt or anything, so their survival doesn't provide anything to a party.  So if their damage is lower than a character that also has a Support set... what's the Sentinel really bringing to the table?

The sentinel's role is the same as the scrapper's or the stalker's: dish out death, don't faceplant and do so without the need of outside assistance. And they get to do so while being able to stay at range where incoming damage is drastically reduced so they're arguably safer than their scrapper/stalker brethren.

Edited September 19, 2020 by Bill Z Bubba

[Replacement]

3 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

The sentinel's role is the same as the scrapper's or the stalker's: dish out death, don't faceplant and do so without the need of outside assistance. And they get to do so while being able to stay at range where incoming damage is drastically reduced so they're arguably safer than their scrapper/stalker brethren.

But Scrappers would also be useless if they didn't bring top-tier damage. That's their party role. If sentinels brought less damage than a defender... yeah, they would be useless.

[HelenCarnate]

7 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

The sentinel's role is the same as the scrapper's or the stalker's: dish out death, don't faceplant and do so without the need of outside assistance. And they get to do so while being able to stay at range where incoming damage is drastically reduced so they're arguably safer than their scrapper/stalker brethren.

And out of those they do the lowest base damage  while having low HP, lower modifiers and cannot crit. All seem like fair trade offs.  As others have pointed out they would bring little to the team if buff/debuff classes could do more damage before accounting for the extra utility they bring.

[Haijinx]

No one ever dies in COH anyhow.  

 

Or almost never.

 

In a team setting, survivability is a bit overrated.  

 

 

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 hours ago, Haijinx said:

No one ever dies in COH anyhow.  

 

Or almost never.

 

In a team setting, survivability is a bit overrated. 

Well, you'd think, but some players have fun dying and even use self-destruct often and are at their happiest with a full team wipe. I run with one of those and he's a hoot. 🙂

[Bill Z Bubba]

6 hours ago, HelenCarnate said:

And out of those they do the lowest base damage  while having low HP, lower modifiers and cannot crit. All seem like fair trade offs.  As others have pointed out they would bring little to the team if buff/debuff classes could do more damage before accounting for the extra utility they bring.

Based on what Captain Powerhouse states, the plan for Sentinels is to have them do better AoE damage than scrappers. Don't know about yall, but my scrappers can dish out some very nice AoE. But since they already do better damage than their defender/corruptor counterparts (when not considering their buffs/debuffs,) it seems to me that their place on teams is just fine. Granted, I'm also in the camp that doesn't care about roles on teams, especially now where the power creep has turned us all into gods.

 

But even in lower level game where roles can be more important, the sentinel is in an even better position to provide assistance to a team thanks to being ranged. It takes time for a scrapper to run across a room to help out their squishier teammates. A sentinel can just fire off attacks. But I'd still have to argue that both are there to handle hard targets, scrappers with crits (which only benefit the scrapper,) and sentinels with opportunity (which benefit everyone attacking that target,) while being able to survive ticking all the bad guys off.

 

All that said, I hear you on arguing against sents having less base damage than corruptors. If the stated role for the sent is ranged scrapper then damage output at base should be comparable to scrappers. I'd probably care a WHOLE lot less about the damage to survivability axis if every AT had at least some mez protection by lvl 12.

 

 

Edited September 19, 2020 by Bill Z Bubba

[Steel]

On 9/19/2020 at 4:45 PM, Bill Z Bubba said:

Based on what Captain Powerhouse states, the plan for Sentinels is to have them do better AoE damage than scrappers. Don't know about yall, but my scrappers can dish out some very nice AoE.

 

I'd love to have my Sentinels do more AoE, but if they get 1) better AoE than Scrappers, and 2) slightly lesser ST capabilities than Scrappers, at the expense of 3) worse-than-Stalker survivability, then I think it may prove difficult to balance that.

 

As for 1), if a revamped Sentinel could typically clear +Nx8 maps faster than a Scrapper,  I don't think I'd really have any problems with that in principle (as long as they won't overshadow Blaster dps). For me it would definitely increase the fun factor.

 

But as you said, Scrappers can dish out some very nice AoE. And I see no reason why another damage AT shouldn't get an even higher AoE damage output if that's its intended design goal. But we should at least acknowledge that Scrapper AoE is already so good that Elec/SD Scrappers were some of the premier S/L farmers more than a decade ago. Better AoE than that may be pretty OP.

 

Which brings me to 2), lesser ST damage than a Scrapper... I think the way procs work right now might be the elephant in the room here, but we've been able to abuse the hell out of them in the ST attacks from the epics. I'm not really a numbers guy, but I suspect when Sentinel damage is buffed to less-than-Scrapper levels, procced out epic powers could actually give them the edge. Not to mention Opportunity  benefits not just you but the whole team, so you bring more to the table.

 

As for 3), as long as incoming ranged attacks inflict less damage than melee (which is pretty much baked into the combat mechanics), staying at range is the smart thing to do if all of your own attacks are ranged themselves. I hear Sentinels will likely lose their range penalty, and good riddance, but I sincerely hope their decreased survivability won't mean that players feel forced to hoverblast.

 

This post is getting way longer than I intended, but I suppose I needed to get this off my chest. 

Honestly I don't think it's a good idea to give a ranged AT with defensive secondaries so much AoE potential. It puts it firmly in tankmage territory. I mean don't get me wrong, I like playing OP characters, and the case could be made that game balance went out the window anyway when we got Incarnates, or maybe even before, but I like having a semblance of balance.

 

I guess I'm a just a bit worried. I hadn't read Captain Powerhouse's statements until you linked to them. I had hoped to get a completely reworked inherent with much better ST damage and only slightly increased AoE, more like a ranged Stalker than a Scrapper. But... in Cap we trust.

 

Sorry for the rant but it's been a crazy week 🙂

[aethereal]

23 hours ago, Steel said:

Which brings me to 2), lesser ST damage than a Scrapper... I think the way procs work right now might be the elephant in the room here, but we've been able to abuse the hell out of them in the ST attacks from the epics. I'm not really a numbers guy, but I suspect when Sentinel damage is buffed to less-than-Scrapper levels, procced out epic powers could actually give them the edge. Not to mention Opportunity  benefits not just you but the whole team, so you bring more to the table.

This would be in a redesign that removes Opportunity.

 

I am honestly...  pretty doubtful that this level of ambitious redesign of Sentinels is going to actually...  happen.  I mean, it's been more than six months to redesign Energy Melee.  I don't think there's any suggestion that a Sent revamp would happen in page 6.  The thing that CP has been talking about -- completely changing the inherent of Sentinels -- seems like a bigger lift than anything that has so far happened in Homecoming.

[Steel]

9 hours ago, aethereal said:

I don't think there's any suggestion that a Sent revamp would happen in page 6.  

It's a good thing they'll change the PPM mechanics in Page 6 before revamping Sentinels. On the other hand I'm also a bit sad that Sentinels will likely take a big hit in performance as a direct result, at least until Page 7 or later. But it's the right move.