Who thought wrong?

[Lines]

10 hours ago, aethereal said:

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.

Worth noting that it didn't take 6 months to redesign Energy Melee. It's taken that time for the team to be in a position that they can consolidate page 6.

 

57 minutes ago, Steel said:

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. 

I doubt PPM changes will arrive in page 6. It sounds like they've started looking at it conceptually so far.

[Bossk_Hogg]

On 9/18/2020 at 12:24 PM, 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.

Scrappers arent at the bottom of damage. Sentinels should do roughly comparable damage because they offer nothing otherwise. Halfass scrapper damage for people to lazy/drunk/stoned to chase down mobs isnt a great claim to fame.

[Bossk_Hogg]

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

 

 

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.

 

 

The sentinel is still limited by the alpha soaker getting into melee, unless they want to spread the mob all over or call in a ranged alpha on the other squishies they are standing near. 

[drbuzzard]

On 9/18/2020 at 6:15 PM, 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.

Fundamentally the issue with balancing around survivability is that it doesn't gain you a whole lot. Sure, phase shift is great for survivability, but if you aren't killing anything it's rather pointless.

 

If sentinels are a damage AT (and since they offer no team support, crowd control, and don't have pets, they aren't anything else), they need to actually do damage. Right now they do fairly tepid damage with a very mediocre inherent. In a world of IOs, you can get nearly as much survivability from a blaster which gives you a huge amount more damage. That damage gets you rewards that surviving simply doesn't.

 

I know you like to do extreme examples of play (solo TFs and whatnot) and there survivability does come into play, and a sentinel can shine a bit there. However not everyone pushes the game to the limit, so outside of those edge cases, a blaster will do you fine and get you more bling for your time.

[Underfyre]

So baseline, we provide 5% -res and +3.75% to hit. On an average scrapper that's roughly a 4% increase in damage. Assuming a 4% increase to all 7 party members, that's a 32% increase in damage output depending on damage type. This stacks with other Sentinels. It can be spread around pretty liberally, but I mostly focus it on bosses.

 

Assuming a 50% uptime on Opportunity, there's another 10% coming into play. Now it's an average 15% damage increase, which is a 12.75% average damage boost, or a 101% damage increase for the entire party. I'd say Sentinels provide a fair margin of team support. Not Defender levels, but definitely a boost. The best defense is a good offense, amirite?

[aethereal]

2 hours ago, underfyre said:

So baseline, we provide 5% -res and +3.75% to hit. On an average scrapper that's roughly a 4% increase in damage. Assuming a 4% increase to all 7 party members, that's a 32% increase in damage output depending on damage type. This stacks with other Sentinels. It can be spread around pretty liberally, but I mostly focus it on bosses.

 

Assuming a 50% uptime on Opportunity, there's another 10% coming into play. Now it's an average 15% damage increase, which is a 12.75% average damage boost, or a 101% damage increase for the entire party. I'd say Sentinels provide a fair margin of team support. Not Defender levels, but definitely a boost. The best defense is a good offense, amirite?

 

All that assumes you're fighting even-conn opponents, and that you're achieving 50% uptime on opportunity on all opponents that your party is fighting.

 

Defenders are also hurt by the purple patch, of course, so that's somewhat apples to apples (their buffs aren't affected by it though).  But it's important to note that if you're comparing sentinels resistance debuffs in a +4 world, you're doing half those numbers.

[Underfyre]

20 hours ago, aethereal said:

But it's important to note that if you're comparing sentinels resistance debuffs in a +4 world, you're doing half those numbers.

Purple patch doesn't affect resistance debuffs.

[aethereal]

2 hours ago, underfyre said:

Purple patch doesn't affect resistance debuffs.

Yes it does.  You're thinking of AV resistance, which doesn't affect resistance debuffs.

[Underfyre]

23 hours ago, aethereal said:

Yes it does.  You're thinking of AV resistance, which doesn't affect resistance debuffs.

Shit. you're right. Guess who needs to fix his spreadsheet again.