Sentinels. Why???

[Snarky]

The Sentinel forum is one of the best organized in the game.  Tons of well documented research on each power set. It takes quite a bit to impress me.  They did that.  
 

spoiler alert

 

 

so.....   

 

The Archetype is a horrid option to take.  The inherent does not do much at best.  Oh, and the entire Archetype does the flat out absolute worst damage in the game.  Like it was designed to do that.  If it was designed to be a completely neutered kindergarten class then congratulations.  If it was designed to be an Archetype that could proudly stand next to so many great  choices,.....danged.   Sorry. Sucks to be on that Dev team.  Epic fail. Laughable.  Cryable?  
 

oh.  Laughably easy fix.  Bring all damage to around 90% Blaster damage on the attacks. Leave Target caps nerfed.  No idea what to do with the inherent. Whatever they were trying for...it went over like a lead balloon.  Something simple on the AT mechanic maybe?  Like serious Mez protection free?   
 

By upping the damage to near Blaster but leaving the caps you will not have the AT the 1st choice of powergamers.  That is all you need. Just dodge that bullet by being sub optimal. By changing the inherent to the ability to stand and deliver No matter what you get to the core of the Sentinel design

Edited June 19, 2021 by Snarky

[drbuzzard]

I think you are a bit overly harsh, though not wrong in the main. As I will always say sentinels are a fine class for the ride to 50, but once there, they lag well behind. Given that blasters can be made to attain enough defense (and status protection) at 50 to do what a sentinel can do, but with tons more damage, there's not much point. As said however, before 50, sentinels certainly have a place. They make for a fun ride up through the levels, and they absolutely represent a comic book archetype. The glass cannon blaster of the run from 1-50 is a very rare thing to see in comics compared to the ranged attacker with defenses that is the sentinel. The sentinel covers Iron Man, Human Torch, Booster Gold, Captain Atom, and many more. 

 

Sentinels need some help. I love the archetype, but I don't play my lvl 50 sents all that much just because there's far better options for any team I join, and I don't really like to be carried. They do damage, and a nuke every spawn isn't bad, but I could grab a blaster and do a hell of a lot more damage, or could grab my VEAT and do comparable damage with major team buffs. 

[Bill Z Bubba]

Why? Because I have much more fun with my fire/bio sentinel than I do my fire/time blaster. Then again, I hate being mezzed and/or faceplanted both of which happen often to the blaster and never to the sentinel. Granted, I solo a lot. The blaster obviously dies a lot less when she can hide behind sturdier characters.

[Coyotedancer]

Here we go again...

This apparently endless routine of someone grouching on the forum about "OMG Sentinels suck! Because they aren't Blasters!" is really getting old. 

 

Yes. Sents were intentionally undertuned and need some tweaks. Some of the damage sets feel very uneven. AR is just-... yikes. Their inherent isn't a flashy Big Deal when you're in the middle of an 8-toon Incarnate smash team. But they aren't useless and some of us have a hell of a good time playing them, in spite of the AT in general not suiting power-builders. 

 

They're solid soloists, and that's just as valid a role in the game as Team Centric Uber Damage Monkey. 

[drbuzzard]

14 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

Yes. Sents were intentionally undertuned and need some tweaks. Some of the damage sets feel very uneven. AR is just-... yikes. Their inherent isn't a flashy Big Deal when you're in the middle of an 8-toon Incarnate smash team. But they aren't useless and some of us have a hell of a good time playing them, in spite of the AT in general not suiting power-builders. 

 

Actually I find with the fix to the animation time on full auto (shaved off 2 seconds in the last patch), AR is actually a very solid sentinel primary now. To be quite honest the sentinel version plays a lot better than the blaster one. 

[Alchemystic]

One of the more well-received ideas was making it so that Sentinels had more AoE potential since their secondary powers would allow them to endure more aggro.

 

Similar to the Tanker treatment of increasing the target cap on their AoEs, and maybe change their inherent power entirely, since it's not all that effective.

 

Maybe something as simple as giving powers a chance to chain or deal splash damage to play on the theme of increased AoE.

 

 

Edited June 19, 2021 by Tyrannical

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 minutes ago, drbuzzard said:

Actually I find with the fix to the animation time on full auto (shaved off 2 seconds in the last patch), AR is actually a very solid sentinel primary now. To be quite honest the sentinel version plays a lot better than the blaster one. 

 

This is one of my main issues with the direction things have been going. I miss when the only difference that existed for a given power came from AT Modifiers. But alas, that ship, too, has sailed.

[Vanden]

2 hours ago, Snarky said:

Oh, and the entire Archetype does the flat out absolute worst damage in the game.

 

It has a .95 ranged damage scalar, which is higher than Defenders, Controllers, or Kheldians.

 

2 hours ago, Snarky said:

Laughably easy fix.  Bring all damage to around 90% Blaster damage on the attacks.

 

Well that's about a 6.5% increase in damage. Not really sure that's gonna have the effect you're looking for.

 

2 hours ago, Snarky said:

No idea what to do with the inherent.

 

I thought you said this was easy?

[Snarky]

2 hours ago, Vanden said:

 

It has a .95 ranged damage scalar, which is higher than Defenders, Controllers, or Kheldians.

 

 

Well that's about a 6.5% increase in damage. Not really sure that's gonna have the effect you're looking for.

 

 

I thought you said this was easy?

I was not talking damage scalar, although cranking that across the board might be a good start.  Compare an Energy Blaster (random pick, do it with any powersets) ST damage chain Blaster vs Sentinel.  Tell me again a 6% damage increase will fix it.  Oh?  What?  What did you say?

 

I did offer a simple solution for fixing Sentinel Inherent.  A metric Crapton of Mez protection.  

 

This is why it would be important to leave the AoE caps alone in Sentinels.  By increasing their damage to the neighborhood of Blasters (which 6% will not do.  Not sure why you believe that it would.  Like watching a 90 year old try to merge onto a freeway)  you run the danger of creating the AT that everyone switches to.  By leaving the AoE caps hobbled you leave the AT as undesirable by true power gamers.  They can out damage with a Brute or Blaster still to Farm or do TFs.  But it would give the Armored Ranged Crew an AT worth investing in.  (at 50 as well as at 1-49)

Edited June 19, 2021 by Snarky

[Greycat]

4 minutes ago, Snarky said:

  A metric Crapton of Mez protection. 

 

... they have an armor secondary. With mez protection. Not sure why you think they'd need more or why... apparently turning mez protection into their inherent somehow would do anything.

 

8 minutes ago, Snarky said:

you run the danger of creating the AT that everyone switches to

 

Hahahahhaha... no.  WIth any change there'd be some spike of having more people play it to try them out, yes. But... *people like different play styles.* Sometimes even the *same* person. If I feel like playing support, I'm not playing a sentinel (or a blaster or a brute.) If I feel like getting in the mix in melee, I'm not playing a sentinel (or a controller, say.)

 

15 minutes ago, Snarky said:

By leaving the AoE caps hobbled you leave the AT as undesirable by true power gamers

 

I'm 100% against trying to tune things for (or against) anyone's play preferences. That should never be a consideration.

 

Besides, who decides who the "true" any-sort-of-gamer is?

 

Honestly, reading both of these, it sounds like you were told they were bad, read forums, looked at a spreadsheet to see how "bad" they were, but haven't really played them 1-50 (or even to a "significant" level, like, say, 35.)

 

 

As for why sentinels are undertuned - which, yes, they are, but not to the point you seem to have assigned them - well, they were created by a small playerbase, not the live team, with a very small beta testing group. Starting too far down and buffing them up gradually was likely seen as more desirable than having them overpowered and having to dial things down (aka "nerf") them later.  We *still* have a small dev team and small community compared to live. Things take time. Yes, more than two years. In the meantime, I for one find them enjoyable, they're fun for me to play, they fit certain concepts and I don't even mind the inherent.

[Snarky]

8 minutes ago, Greycat said:

 

Honestly, reading both of these, it sounds like you were told they were bad, read forums, looked at a spreadsheet to see how "bad" they were, but haven't really played them 1-50 (or even to a "significant" level, like, say, 35.)

 

I was the OP on this thread.  I started it off by complimenting the vigorous, detailed, and well presented information in the Sentinel forums.

 

When I rediscovered HC I created many many Sentinels.  No, i did not 50 one.  Does garbage get better with time?  usually not.  I can easily out damage any Sentinel on a Brute.  I can easily out survive any Sentinel on a Brute.  

 

Did you need some type of documented DPS side by side comparison for this?  Maybe we can get Arcana to come down and show you tick by tick how much these things are out damaged by everybody else.  I'm not going to waste much time on it.  Sentinel bring NOTHING to the board but damage.  They do no significant controls, debuffs, or buffs.  Unless you need that broken down with scalars and stuff as well.  Which i really hope you can find someone that offers that service.

 

As far as starting them too far down and buffing them up.  You have this all penciled out for the 2030s and we should not start threads about it prematurely?  Because it does not seem like anyone is in a mad rush to gradually do anything with these things.

[Ghost]

Would it be possible to make all the characters exactly the same ?

Same damage.  Same powers.  Same weaknesses.  Same everything.

 

 

[Ghost]

By the thumbs down reaction, it appears as if my sarcasm went over someone’s head.

 

 

Looking at you Tyrannical 🙂

 

Edited June 19, 2021 by Ghost

[RikOz]

4 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

Some of the damage sets feel very uneven. AR is just-... yikes.

Not to mention that the idea that a non-superpower set like AR doing less damage depending on who's pulling the trigger is absurd.

[Blackbird71]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

I was not talking damage scalar, although cranking that across the board might be a good start.  Compare an Energy Blaster (random pick, do it with any powersets) ST damage chain Blaster vs Sentinel.  Tell me again a 6% damage increase will fix it.  Oh?  What?  What did you say?

 

I did offer a simple solution for fixing Sentinel Inherent.  A metric Crapton of Mez protection.  

 

This is why it would be important to leave the AoE caps alone in Sentinels.  By increasing their damage to the neighborhood of Blasters (which 6% will not do.  Not sure why you believe that it would.  Like watching a 90 year old try to merge onto a freeway)  you run the danger of creating the AT that everyone switches to.  By leaving the AoE caps hobbled you leave the AT as undesirable by true power gamers.  They can out damage with a Brute or Blaster still to Farm or do TFs.  But it would give the Armored Ranged Crew an AT worth investing in.  (at 50 as well as at 1-49)

 

Do you even read the posts you're responding to?

 

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

Tell me again a 6% damage increase will fix it.  Oh?  What?  What did you say?

...

 

By increasing their damage to the neighborhood of Blasters (which 6% will not do.  Not sure why you believe that it would.  ...

 

Umm, that's NOT what Vanden said....

 

4 hours ago, Vanden said:

Well that's about a 6.5% increase in damage. Not really sure that's gonna have the effect you're looking for.

 

This seems to be the most accurate statement in this entire thread:

 

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

Honestly, reading both of these, it sounds like you were told they were bad, read forums, looked at a spreadsheet to see how "bad" they were, but haven't really played them 1-50 (or even to a "significant" level, like, say, 35.)

 

 

[skoryy]

Why not?

 

Let people enjoy things.

[Alchemystic]

52 minutes ago, Ghost said:

By the thumbs down reaction, it appears as if my sarcasm went over someone’s head.

 

 

Looking at you Tyrannical 🙂

 

 

You'd be surprised how many people make this same suggestion in earnest 😆

[Snarky]

I went looking through my back pages of 50s I have shattered.  two Sentinels, An Ice Blast and a Dark Blast.  I am looking back there for a Incarnate to take on a Really Hard Way Magisterium attempt.  Guess what AT I am NOT going to bring to the League?  Go ahead.  Guess.

[Ghost]

11 minutes ago, Snarky said:

I went looking through my back pages of 50s I have shattered.  two Sentinels, An Ice Blast and a Dark Blast.  I am looking back there for a Incarnate to take on a Really Hard Way Magisterium attempt.  Guess what AT I am NOT going to bring to the League?  Go ahead.  Guess.

Blaster ?

 

im gonna make a Sentinel and name it SnarkyLovesMe

Edited June 19, 2021 by Ghost

[Yomo Kimyata]

I suspect that if you look in every AT forum, you will find someone complaining about how their *FAVORITE* AT is *UNPLAYABLE!* and is the weakest of all ATs because it doesn't have the damage of a blaster and the defense of a tank and the control of a perma-dominator.  

 

Personally, I have two or three sentinels, mainly for theme, but I don't play them much.  If you want ranged damage and good easy mez protection, it's certainly a good way to go.  It's much more difficult to get "good" mez protection on something like a blaster, so I think the lesser damage for the higher protection is a fair trade-off.

[Hew]

I have a sent, closing on 50, that I really like. Elec/regen. I slotted a LOT of power transfer everythings, heal all the time, have little to track for armor stuff, pretty mez proof, get to giggle when i flatline pretty much everythings blue bars, and do unknown amounts of damage. Why unknown? I get through my content, it doesnt feel like a slog, I am pretty damn durable, and zoooooooooooooot there goes your blue. Its pretty chill and fun!

[Katharos]

There’s a lot of things I find frustrating about sentinels individually (their modifiers are sad, the inherent was designed based on theory and not on play, their funky position in team content, how ranged IO set bonuses really don’t want you to build for the various defence/res types sentinel secondaries need,) but probably the main dealbreaker for me is that their ball taoes have a weirdly pathetic range. 40ft instead of the standard 60, that all of their other attacks follow. Plenty of enemies can jump 40ft high. At that point, you’re basically in melee. Which, melee has ranged aoe attacks that have that range or even longer, but, you know, without all the other sacrifices. 
 

When I found out about the reduced range on ball taoes I nearly bug reported it because it seemed like such nonsense. You might tell me that’s just a me problem and the ATOs resolve that with a range increase in their set bonuses, but the ATO set bonuses aren't universally useful either. The lack of resists in them make them a lot less useful for resist secondaries, for example. 
 

Not that resist secondaries are necessarily a good idea with sentinel modifiers and sentinel base values either... Ugh. Still. It’s the weirdly nerfed ball taoe range that’s the dealbreaker for me. 

Edited June 19, 2021 by Katharos

[Snarky]

i get it.  people like the things.  people like classic VW bugs too.  and they work.  but that is some old tech.  

 

I am getting hooked on a Dark/Dark/Dark Corruptor.  Not as much Damage (not near) as my Dark/Dark/Soul Blaster.  But it is where the character needs to be.  But a Corruptor does have good damage, and a Dark^3 brings to hit debuffs and soft controls that are quite serious.  

 

However you want to look at it a Sentinel does not get a "fair shake" in the game.  Their armor and lack of serious buff / debuff / control, role as a damage dealer indicates they should be on a parity with Scrappers for damage.  Higher than Brutes.  Fold it back some if you want to argue they are ranged and easier than Scrappers.  Less than Brutes then.  These things do less damage than Defenders.  I am not talking about scalars.  i am talking attack chains and actual DPS.  They put out ....not a lot.  

 

This is not fair to the players who run these characters.  it is not fair to the Teams and Leagues that carry these characters.  I already know the comments that will fly about we carry everyone, you do not know what a team or league will be.  But the Devs know this thing is hot garbage and people are going to run it.  That is on them for sticking it to the entire player base, with the Sentinel players taking the hardest hit.

[Dark Dove]

I've rifled through seven sentinels to 50+ incarnate with full builds.  Only a single one is fun to play in endgame and exemplar, and the entire reason for that is I abused the poorly balanced Epic pools for Mind Probe/Dominate procs, and Bio Armor for reasonable damage output, nothing "sentinel" makes it fun to play, only the exploitation of the best available options makes it fun to play. I've tried really hard to enjoy the others but it just doesn't work, every single one of them in play feels like I should just roll another AT for the concept and actually have fun by doing good damage or good debuffing or absorbing alpha strikes or other things better.

 

I can have a great time, lots of fun, playing the worst options among the other AT's.  I'll slog away on an Axe/Ice brute happily, or a FF/Psy defender, or an MA/Regen stalker, it's fine, they still perform when optimized at an acceptable level. The baseline power of those AT's is just in-tune with the game.  Sentinel doesn't feel that way at all, the very best character I can make feels as fun to play as the very worst characters from other AT's, which like I said, I can have fun with.  The big difference after that is, those other AT's also have the option to play on-meta level power, where Sentinel doesn't.

 

This is a little hyperbolic for effect, I'm sure it's not that bad, but the problem is that it's bad enough that I have no interest in continuing to play the AT outside of a few outlier cases (maybe I can make /Fire fun enough when extremely optimized?)

 

I definitely don't think it's as bad as the OP implies, I don't feel like teams are carrying sentinels or sentinels are a blight on the teams they join, and any other post that says it is unplayable is clearly not playing the same game. It's still bad though. The game is about fun, more than anything else, and Sentinels aren't fun enough. I won't argue that you aren't having fun with your sentinel, but I will argue that you could be having more fun with your sentinel if they were fixed. Having more fun is a good thing.

[Brutal Justice]

3 hours ago, Ghost said:

Would it be possible to make all the characters exactly the same ?

Same damage.  Same powers.  Same weaknesses.  Same everything.

 

 

My tanks are tired of just taunting and holding aggro.  I would like for taunt to give me a toggle that allows my tanks to crit.  Shorter duration than scrapper crits, so they still feel useful, but strong enough I don’t have to chase runners.  

 

Shoot, am I in the right thread?