Sentinels. Are they underused?

[Underfyre]

3 hours ago, Sovera said:

@underfyre with his claims that are never substantiated and spreadsheets that are shown to have either rotation or math errors

 

I'll grant you rotation errors, they're for AT combos I have never and will never play a lot of the times. If there are math errors, they need to be pointed out. I'm just the one guy and nobody responds to the threads about anything they find.

 

Anyway, we can record and post videos now. What is this "trapdoor" mission you speak of. I've seen the threads for the other ATs, but I still don't know the mission.

Edited May 16, 2021 by underfyre

[Bill Z Bubba]

9 minutes ago, underfyre said:

What is this "trapdoor" mission you speak of.

 

 

[Sovera]

Just now, underfyre said:

 

I'll grant you rotation errors, but if there are math errors, they need to be pointed out. I'm just the one guy and nobody responds to the threads.

 

Anyway, we can record and post videos now. What is this "trapdoor" mission you speak of. I've seen the threads for the other ATs, but I still don't know the mission.

 

I have nothing against you personally, Under. I don't know you enough and our paths don't converge. But your insistence that you have some holy grail that only you from amongst all other players have noticed, who then point flaws in rotation or math, is becoming the stuff of legends. And then we have the opposite like Sir Myshkin who comes into a thread with hours of testing and lays it all down. You don't see people argue with him and it's not some thing about charisma or diplomacy or using soft words. He just shows the results from different slotings or rotations and then says, alright, this is what I found.

 

I read your last incursion into the Blaster forums and saw you mentioned it here as being 'shouted down'. You could have shut down everyone by going 'alright, you said this was not possible, but I went and tested and here are my results. Suck on THAT!', but it always devolves into math and spreadsheets with the other side saying no while you say yes.

 

It could be as simple as, 'Oh you say Fire is the absolute best? But Electric is at least on par. Here, I tested it, you got X for Fire? I got Z for Elec'.

 

 

As for the Trapdoor it's over the Scrapper forums. It has all the details.

[Bill Z Bubba]

34 minute 4 Sents MoITF run. I'll take it.

Edit: This was also our first attempt and first time together as a team. And, yes, this was at +4/x8 with no temps or insps.

Edited May 16, 2021 by Bill Z Bubba

[drbuzzard]

20 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

34 minute 4 Sents MoITF run. I'll take it.

Edit: This was also our first attempt and first time together as a team. And, yes, this was at +4/x8 with no temps or insps.

Yeah, not bad (we did OK). But you should mention the blaster time for comparison- 23 minutes. 

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, drbuzzard said:

Yeah, not bad (we did OK). But you should mention the blaster time for comparison- 23 minutes. 

 

I'm honestly surprised the four blasters survived. Overwhelming offense wins the day, huh?

[drbuzzard]

2 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

I'm honestly surprised the four blasters survived. Overwhelming offense wins the day, huh?

Yeah, has to be. I doubt I could do it on any of my blasters. Best defense is a good offense.  Though honestly we didn't have a whole lot of pucker moments. I saved the bacon a couple times with rebirth, but overall we were pretty safe. 

Edited May 16, 2021 by drbuzzard

[DarknessEternal]

3 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

3:36 pylon time. 305ish DPS. Hybrid assault core and pyronic judgement were used.

 

Powers?

[Bill Z Bubba]

12 minutes ago, DarknessEternal said:

Powers?

 

Chain is Blaze, Flares, Blazing Blast, Flares, repeat. Replacing flares with Aim or Pyronic when available. That could probably be tightened up with a rebuild but it looks cool so I'm not in a hurry.

[Underfyre]

3 hours ago, Sovera said:

I read your last incursion into the Blaster forums and saw you mentioned it here as being 'shouted down'. You could have shut down everyone by going 'alright, you said this was not possible, but I went and tested and here are my results. Suck on THAT!', but it always devolves into math and spreadsheets with the other side saying no while you say yes.

 

So are you saying my numbers are blatantly wrong, or are you looking for numbers validation? Cuz I can run some in game tests and get expected vs real results. I understand not taking numbers for gospel when they're, by and large, purely theoretical. I've mostly only tested and verified mechanics, not complete builds.

[Sovera]

14 minutes ago, underfyre said:

 

So are you saying my numbers are blatantly wrong, or are you looking for numbers validation? Cuz I can run some in game tests and get expected vs real results. I understand not taking numbers for gospel when they're, by and large, purely theoretical. I've mostly only tested and verified mechanics, not complete builds.

 

I'm saying number validation. A lot of the back and forth when ever you bring up a spread sheet can be snipped by the root when you say 'I mathed this. You think it's wrong? I went and tested and got this as a result'.

 

I'm not pissed at you or anything like it. But I have been around long enough in a number of games where under the hood mechanics or synergies not working as expected (Path of Exile is infamous for this since it has a lot of 'added damage' not being the same as multiplied damage despite having nearly the same nomenclature) that things mathed out turn out not to be what is expected when adding and subtracting.

 

 

Even the arguments about the best attack chain can be boiled down to tests and results. Which may or may not show results. For example I got better results with my claws Tanker once I realized using Burn after Focus meant the FF proc in Focus had half its duration eaten by Burn's animation time.

 

When I tested the -res procs against AVs I didn't do it all perfect and savvy like Bopper who started calculating regen of AVs, health ticks, damage done. I did super simple like: hit mob for 5 minutes. Look at HP. Hit mob for five minutes without -res procs. Look at HP. Subtract HP, get %. Done.

[Wavicle]

Just to be clear, I don't think Sentinels are "trash", just like I didn't think Blasters, Dominators, Stalkers, or anyone else was "trash" before they got their boosts. I just think there's room for improvement without stepping on anyone's toes.

[Arcadio]

/bio shouldn't be mentioned in a question of balance. We all know what bio does. (or //psi for that matter)

[Haijinx]

4 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

34 minute 4 Sents MoITF run. I'll take it.

Edit: This was also our first attempt and first time together as a team. And, yes, this was at +4/x8 with no temps or insps.

 

A really Decent time

 

Most pug ITFs (8 person) Ive run in the last year were closer to an hour

 

And they would include at least 4 mature builds I'd guess, with Inspirations used liberally. 

 

[Haijinx]

1 hour ago, Wavicle said:

Just to be clear, I don't think Sentinels are "trash", just like I didn't think Blasters, Dominators, Stalkers, or anyone else was "trash" before they got their boosts. I just think there's room for improvement without stepping on anyone's toes.

 

Tankers were probably in a better spot than Sents are now before their recent buff. 

 

I guess the Homecoming team still needs to decide what it is they want Sents to DO.  Since that really effects how you would adjust them. 

[Sir Myshkin]

17 hours ago, Sovera said:

There is currently a Scrapper test that is the Trapdoor mission. I've tried it on my Fire/Fire Sentinel (75% resists, 45% S/L) and the poor thing tried three times and died three times (can't hover blaster). I reckon a Blaster would do better by killing faster. I don't recall a single Blaster doing better than their melee counterparts though.

 

I haven't really been playing much, maybe I'll consider a short sprint with my Beam/EA just to see a time or two with it (I know it can clear it, just don't know about speed). On the Blaster note, I posted a knowingly bad run of ~6:00 for an Ice/Atomic Blaster that falls a bit behind typical optimal Melee runs (5:00-6:00), but an organized/clean run is ~5:00-5:20 depending on a runner. A proper AoE Blaster build should be able to handle the Trapdoor Test fancifully better than 5:00 if someone were to make the effort.

 

Actually, take that back, did a discount double check, Ratch_ did post a Fire/Fire Blaster at an average of 4:00ish minutes so... yeah, point made.

 

14 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

3:36 pylon time. 305ish DPS. (Fire Sentinel)*

 

2:48 on a Plant/Dark/Leviathan Controller. Clearly your Sentinel needs buffs badly. jk jk

Breaking 4:00 for a Sentinel I believe is good from what I remember. I'd really have to dig to try and find my Beam/EnA but if I remember right it was somewhere between 4-5 minutes which tends to be in line with most Defender DPS.

 

Alright, I'm back out this thread, see you kids in nine more pages!

[Wavicle]

I just compared the numbers in a few Sentinel primaries with the numbers for the Scrappers Katana primary, and honestly, power for power, they look fine. This leads me to believe the problem lies mainly in the inherent.

[Zeraphia]

Sentinels are what you make of them. 

 

They will never be Blasters. Ever. Sure, a Fire/Bio Sentinel will out-DPS a Water/TA Blaster for example in a ST race, but that's not really here nor there so to speak. In most 1:1 blast to blast set comparisons, Sentinels have a "weaker" kit. 

 

However, "weaker" =/= "bad." Sentinels objectively are not a bad AT, they're a jack-of-all-trades master-of-none in a game that highly rewards specialization. If you're a newer player Sentinels will be friendlier to you, if you're experienced and want more technical gameplay, Blasters are IMO better. I know people love to exaggerate the squishiness of a Blaster, but they're really not all *that* squishy. 

 

Hey, you want that DP/SR Sentinel that plays both those for a theme? Here you go. Want an ironman character? Here you go. Want "wipe everything in seconds" buttons? This is not that. 

 

It's what you make of it.

[drbuzzard]

8 hours ago, Wavicle said:

I just compared the numbers in a few Sentinel primaries with the numbers for the Scrappers Katana primary, and honestly, power for power, they look fine. This leads me to believe the problem lies mainly in the inherent.

Funny thing about scrappers is that if you consider the inherent without the ATOs, they are only kinda powerful. The ATOs take them well over the top. Of course the sentinel ATOs are decidedly meh.

 

 

Edited May 17, 2021 by drbuzzard

[drbuzzard]

One thing people rarely note on sentinels is how the inherent is the most level disparity dependent one in the game. Now you may wonder why I say that. This is because on every other inherent, it provides a damage increase of a sort in a nice linear fashion.

Scrapper: crits multiply by damage (say damage x 1.05 for a 5% crit chance)

Brutes: linear damage increase with fury

Blasters: damage increase with defiance

Stalkers: crits again

 

All of the above are affected by the purple patch in a straight up linear fashion. You take the damage result you get from the inherent, and multiply it by .48 if you're fighting +4s

 

Now let's look at sentinels, baseline they get a 5% resistance debuff on targets, and with opportunity, this increases to 25%. However it should be noted that the purple patch also hits debuffs.

 

So let's compare a scrapper hitting a +4 with a sentinel hitting a +4. In both cases we use an attack doing 100 damage because I wish to be math lazy.

 

Scrapper hits for 100, with 5% crit chance so average is 105. Apply purple patch and we get 50.4

 

Let's see the sentinel: Sentinel hits for 100. He also debuffs for 25%. This means on even level targets you hit for 125. However both of those get the purple patch. damage goes to 48, and debuff goes from 25% to 12%. This gives us 53.76. That looks good since it is more than the scrapper number, but compare the no purple numbers. The scrapper does .48 of the initial damage, while the sentinel does .43 of the initial damage. That is about 10% less. So we start with a lower damage scalar, get a part time inherent, and then the inherent takes an extra hit from the purple patch.

 

A more real comparison would take a power which would do 100 damage on a 1.0 damage scalar and we the adapt it to the two classes.

 

for even level

Scrapper does 100 x 1.125 x1.05= 118

Sentinel does 100 x .95 x 1.25 = 119

 

for +4

Scrapper 100x1.125x1.05 = 57

Sentinel 100x.95x (1+ (.25x.48) = 51

 

Sentinel starts out ahead if he has opportunity up, but falls behind at top difficulty (which is often where people do the comparisons). This disparity becomes much greater if we throw in the scrapper ATOs which increase the crit rate quite a bit, and can do it in a focused fashion which will favor the best DPA attacks.

 

Edited May 17, 2021 by drbuzzard

[Bopper]

11 minutes ago, drbuzzard said:

Sentinel 100x.95x (1+ (.25x.48) = 106

Did you forget a 0.48x? I think you wind up at 51.

100x0.95x0.48x(1+0.25x0.48)=51

[Underfyre]

15 minutes ago, drbuzzard said:

Now let's look at sentinels, baseline they get a 5% resistance debuff on targets, and with opportunity, this increases to 25%. However it should be noted that the purple patch also hits debuffs.

Another consideration is that Scrapper crits are active 100% of the time, but Sentinel Opportunity is up about 50% of the time.  So it's more of a 15% debuff.

[Myrmidon]

20 hours ago, Sovera said:

When I tested the -res procs against AVs I didn't do it all perfect and savvy like Bopper who started calculating regen of AVs, health ticks, damage done. I did super simple like: hit mob for 5 minutes. Look at HP. Hit mob for five minutes without -res procs. Look at HP. Subtract HP, get %. Done.

Its hard for human calculation capabilities to keep up with that if a functioning AI. Honestly, so long as this one leans more towards Johnny 5 than Skynet, just look at the Bopper AI as a community benefit.

Edited May 17, 2021 by Myrmidon

[drbuzzard]

38 minutes ago, Bopper said:

Did you forget a 0.48x? I think you wind up at 51.

100x0.95x0.48x(1+0.25x0.48)=51

Derp. My lack of proofing gets me again. I shall fix.

Edited May 17, 2021 by drbuzzard

[drbuzzard]

22 minutes ago, underfyre said:

Another consideration is that Scrapper crits are active 100% of the time, but Sentinel Opportunity is up about 50% of the time.  So it's more of a 15% debuff.

This would be another example of me being math lazy. You are, of course, correct. The disparity is larger than indicated, but I wished to show how the purple patch is stacked against sentinels.

 

Personally I found it funny when, a while back, Captain Powerhouse indicated he was extra paranoid about debuffing target resistance because it was too powerful. Now it is powerful in the sense of being a force multiplier, it takes more hits when you are measuring yourself against the hardest stuff (which generates more rewards).