Sentinel Inherent Addition

[Naraka]

I just would like to put an idea down so I can stop thinking about it so much but would enjoy getting feedback on it. Weak? Overpowered? Clunky? Unnecessary?

 

Preface

For this suggestion, some overall AT changes are required:

• Rescind the decrease in range, partially for QoL but primarily to help cones.
• Slightly reduce the target cap reduction. Instead of 10 targets for true AoEs, it would be 12 and instead of 6 targets for cones, it would be 8.

 

Opportunity

The bar and the various effects for offense and defense are unchanged.

 

New Addition

Unsure of name but some I thought could fit were [High Caliber], [Focused Fire] or [Roulette].

Type: Inherent Toggle

Enhancements: None

Cast: None

Recharge: 25 sec

Specifics: Unaffected by recharge reduction

Effects: you no longer build opportunity while toggled on. Any AoEs from your primary set deals double damage (excluding non-nuke rain powers) but affect fewer targets (12 target AoEs >> 8 target AoEs; 8 target AoEs >> 4 target AoEs; 3 target piercing attacks still affect 3 targets).

 

Now I didn't scour all the sets for exceptions to the target caps of all blast set AoEs or to compare how it would affect some sets vs others. Most blast sets seem pretty standard in how much AoE they have so at first glance, it doesn't seem to favor any sets in particular.

 

That all being said, I'm not as experienced in Sent, only just made a new DP/Inv to brush up on them so take this idea as just a fun thought. A lot of players seem to love their AoEs and I don't blame them but when on a team, all vying to splatter their AoEs on as many things as possible, I've tended to care less about hitting as many as everyone else as much as I care about taking out the ones that I do hit. I see the same value in hitting 8 enemies with Empty Clips and weakening them for a follow up AoE as I do hitting 4 with Empty Clips and actually taking at least 3 of them down right then and there.

 

And with it being a toggle, it creates the dynamic of weighing the amount of damage you could do with how many targets are present.

[Outrider_01]

/jranger to short range and caps.  You got mez and defense, play a blaster if you want to hit more. 

 

Sentinels are poorly designed.  Range exceeds melee of normal melee sets but have melee range AoE buffs.  Sentinels should of mean Assualt/Defense; secondary from Dominators.  Than chance the inherent to something that works between melee range and blast range.

[Koopak]

This has some merit as it does synergize with opportunity's single target focus to some degree, though i feel it might add to much gameplay complexity to an already obtuse AT without giving enough benefit.

[Naraka]

6 hours ago, Outrider_01 said:

/jranger to short range and caps.  You got mez and defense, play a blaster if you want to hit more. 

 

Sentinels are poorly designed.  Range exceeds melee of normal melee sets but have melee range AoE buffs.  Sentinels should of mean Assualt/Defense; secondary from Dominators.  Than chance the inherent to something that works between melee range and blast range.

 

I think they did a decent job with Sent as it is undertuned. That's good. That means they can alter the sets or AT upward to smooth out it's gameplay.

 

The range reduction for the AT, to me, was partly to balance it but in the long run, no one uses strictly uses extreme range as a defense (moderate range with either flight or using some kind of obstacle is enough to keep you safe). The range limit was to restrict Sent's offense and require the Sent to need to close gaps enough to stay in range. I doubt Sents are trying to push range to stay safe, in fact, it's probably the opposite in that they try to utilize their defenses and maximize their offences. At best, it's purely an offensive change to give them more range, specifically for things like cones.

 

As for blasters being the go-to for bigger caps, they still would be. Blasters have 16 target caps while this proposition limits Sent to 12 for equivalent AoEs or 8 targets (half the targets!) If they used the inherent toggle I'm suggesting.

 

I don't think anyone but Dom should use assault sets.  Giving Sent an attack set that incentivizes close melee neutralizes having ranged attacks at all. Assault was made for Doms only because they benefit from keeping things at range but also can capitalize on the inert enemies they lockdown.

 

I think the go-to risk v. reward balancing point is range v. melee and that's fine until you take into consideration a lot of blast sets have PBAoE aspects so balancing that on an AT might be a bit tricky.  My suggestion is aiming to add another reward balancing point into the mix via trading some kind of potency for another, in this case, hitting fewer foes to hit those fewer foes harder.  It's kind of the balanced version of how Tankers got changed...i.e. they shouldn't have gotten their offense bumped up and just stuck with increasing their AoE (range and target cap).  You can kinda consider my idea as a "Tanker attack" mode and a "Brute attack" mode in that one is meant to hit more foes normally while the other is less effective AoE but more potent damage.

 

5 hours ago, Koopak said:

This has some merit as it does synergize with opportunity's single target focus to some degree, though i feel it might add to much gameplay complexity to an already obtuse AT without giving enough benefit.

 

That was also a concern. As is, I tend to just take what I can get with the opportunity attacks and adding something else on top might get dicey. I feel Stalkers start to get in a similar ballpark though with it's assassin's focus, team crit rate, assassin's strike (slow and fast), demoralize, hide, ect. But for them, most of it is passive.

 

If another variable power were added to Sent, it might require turning one of their current opportunities to a passive effect... Or maybe roll them together so you just get both offense and defense at once and only require tying it to the 2nd blast power with perhaps a shorter duration.

 

The funny thing is, I like the opportunity mechanic-wise, it's just a slight bit muted on the offence if you're not built to maximize -res (IOs, powers, etc).  If they combined them so you get them together, it might feel pretty strong and might be the actual change Sent needs.  Outside of my suggested toggle inherent, if they just rolled Offense and Defense opportunity together, would that be enough to give the AT the right bump up?  

 

Overall, I think it'd be an interesting dynamic giving the player an equivalent choice of hitting their normal amount of targets for regular damage or hitting half the normal targets for twice the damage. In some cases, it might net you the same damage, but in other cases (fewer targets or only some targets being debuffer or in range) it could be pure gain.

Edited June 24, 2021 by Naraka

[Outrider_01]

On 6/23/2021 at 3:33 PM, Naraka said:

I don't think anyone but Dom should use assault sets.  Giving Sent an attack set that incentivizes close melee neutralizes having ranged attacks at all. Assault was made for Doms only because they benefit from keeping things at range but also can capitalize on the inert enemies they lockdown.

Good discussion, no one but controllers should use control powers.  Dominators shouldn't have melee, lets leave that to scrappers and tanks cause brutes/stalkers shouldn't have them being a second rate character because of their release date.  The range attacks on dominators should be null and void, lets leave that blasters and defenders as now corrupters are second rate because of their release date.  You know what, just null and void corrupters since they are reverse defenders with an inherent that works at killing things.

 

The laughable fact of a dominator is, they don't need range since anything held/stunned/immob isn't moving, fear/confused are not really hitting back, KB/KD/KU can be mitigated with some of the immobilize powers, and sleep is the only outlier.  Literally every control power but confuse and sleep doesn't require range attacks against the target since isn't moving; so a Dominator could just melee them to death.

 

To me, a functioning sentinel concept should have melee and range.  Being exclusively range primary, makes no sense for the defense secondary except to FOTM a Tankmage of ye olden days of yore or just be a  blaster that can't be mezzed.  An Assault/Defense would probably be a very popular AT and would go well with shorter range or lower hit point caps since melee generally have lower caps to begin with.  The AT then gets the best of both worlds (range/defense) with the penalty of lower target caps or shorter range.

[Naraka]

40 minutes ago, Outrider_01 said:

Good discussion, no one but controllers should use control powers.  Dominators shouldn't have melee, lets leave that to scrappers and tanks cause brutes/stalkers shouldn't have them being a second rate character because of their release date.  The range attacks on dominators should be null and void, lets leave that blasters and defenders as now corrupters are second rate because of their release date.  You know what, just null and void corrupters since they are reverse defenders with an inherent that works at killing things.

 

 

That's just a disingenuous strawman.  I didn't say no one should use Assault sets because they'd be second rate or less than.  I said only Doms should use them because they are built FOR the Dominator AT.  It's not a simple building-blocks type of set like Control sets, Armor sets or Blast sets but rather a hybrid of 2 building block sets and the conceptual dynamic of using range when foes are not locked down and then using melee when they are is how the set was meant to complement the Dom AT.

 

45 minutes ago, Outrider_01 said:

The laughable fact of a dominator is, they don't need range since anything held/stunned/immob isn't moving, fear/confused are not really hitting back, KB/KD/KU can be mitigated with some of the immobilize powers, and sleep is the only outlier.  Literally every control power but confuse and sleep doesn't require range attacks against the target since isn't moving; so a Dominator could just melee them to death.

 

Things are not always 100% locked down.  Not everyone has perma-domination to one-shot hold all bosses and not every set is tricked out with low-cooldown AoE confuse powers.  Further still, Doms can be pretty hectic swapping targets to apply their various controls on so having ranged attacks can fill in the time you're swapping targets or closing the gap.

 

And I disagree.  On a standard (i.e. not IO'ed to the gills build), you're not going to be able to melee everything to death without huge risk.

 

50 minutes ago, Outrider_01 said:

To me, a functioning sentinel concept should have melee and range. 

 

It's too late for that and outside of the scope of this suggestion thread.

[Sunsette]

I think the Sentinel was basically *intended* to fulfill a one-on-one "delete this" role, similar to the stalker and scrapper, so the suggestion is in line with that. However, the solution feels 'hacky' to me, 

[Naraka]

45 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

I think the Sentinel was basically *intended* to fulfill a one-on-one "delete this" role, similar to the stalker and scrapper, so the suggestion is in line with that. However, the solution feels 'hacky' to me, 

 

I'm not 100% sure I know what you mean by "hacky" but I assume you either mean "slapdash" or maybe "cheaty".

 

One thing I didn't elaborate on when I made the OP was some of the conceptual ideas behind it which might make a difference in your perception of it. I touched on it with the names but didn't talk about it.

 

The power name that doubles the power of your AoEs but cuts the amount of targets I was going to call "High Caliber" or "Focused Fire" and the concept brings in the concepts of the other blasting ATs.

 

To make an analogy, Blasters are like a flood or tsunami, capable of sweeping away most anything in a semi-chaotic fashion. The Corruptor is like a waterfall, the higher the drop, the stronger the downpour. The Defender is just your standards river, you can use them as a vehicle to attain other things but they are going to have limits depending where they cut into the earth.

 

This idea would make Sentinels into structured flows like a hydroelectric dam or a fire hose, able to control their flow for specific purposes. You have the opportunity feature to weaken single targets, a wide spray to whittle down lots of targets and a mid-control setting to better handle the stuff between single target and mass swarms of enemies.

 

The other name, "Roulette", was kind of touching on the randomness that might occur if you have 8-10 enemies really close together but your AoE will only hit 4 of them. It's be like a lottery but with bullets. Instead of everyone taking a couple of pecks of birdshot, a lucky few will be taking a proper high caliber shot to the face. Who will win the prize? Lol

[Sunsette]

I picked up on that from the mentions of those names itself; just mechanically, I don't think it feels good. For one thing, making the target caps even lower than they already are on the AT doesn't really match the animations for most of these. Target caps in general are just really unintuitive by today's standards of gaming as a balancing factor.

 

I'd rather do something with the Opportunity mechanic, which is already geared towards ST damage, or the ST attacks themselves. Beam Rifle is a naturally small-group focused set (on every AT except, ironically, Sentinel) and it does it without being about target caps.

Edited June 26, 2021 by Sunsette

[Naraka]

11 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

I picked up on that from the mentions of those names itself; just mechanically, I don't think it feels good. For one thing, making the target caps even lower than they already are on the AT doesn't really match the animations for most of these. Target caps in general are just really unintuitive by today's standards of gaming as a balancing factor.

 

I'd rather do something with the Opportunity mechanic, which is already geared towards ST damage, or the ST attacks themselves. Beam Rifle is a naturally small-group focused set (on every AT except, ironically, Sentinel) and it does it without being about target caps.

 

I haven't tried Beam Rifle on Sent (I haven't tried a lot of sets on Sent, to be honest).  What do you mean by not being small-group focused? Or just the generalities.  I know the disintegrate spread mechanic from my Beam Rifle Blasters, just not sure how it differs on Sent.

 

As for target caps being unintuitive in current games, I find that an interesting assertion.  Most MMOs I can think of today have some sort of limiting factor for their AoEs, be it having larger enemies so AoE is inconsequential, having far fewer AoEs (perhaps having 3 or less with inhibiting cooldowns), having weaker AoEs, having only specific classes with any amount of AoEs or just having fewer foes to take advantage of AoEs on.  I'm sure there are other limiting factors out there but it's hard to take them out of context.  Many current MMOs I can think of indeed to have target capped AoEs, most notably the "cleave" of basic melee classes.  I can't remember off the top of my head if FFXIV has any sort of target caps but that game's bread and butter is big boss fights with intricate raid mechanics, not masses of foes.  If the Dynasty Warriors games are considered MMOs, then yeah, they don't have target caps but it's also a pretty brain-dead beat-em-up.

 

I think the only thing that keeps CoX in check *AT ALL* is the target caps and they are being used to balance the ATs against each other and there's no changing that.  That being said, yeah, I don't see my idea being very attractive to anyone who values hitting as many targets as possible...which is why I added a slight reduction in their cap nerf to give room for my idea.  But yeah, if you are all about getting those procs and splattering that fodder, then my idea would certainly be a flop in that regards.  

[Sunsette]

28 minutes ago, Naraka said:

What do you mean by not being small-group focused? Or just the generalities.  I know the disintegrate spread mechanic from my Beam Rifle Blasters, just not sure how it differs on Sent.

 

Sent adds another AoE that is extremely easy to use and good damage. This moves BR from being an ST/Cleave focused set to really just being an area set altogether. It's more intuitive to pick up and play for anyone already used to how CoX plays, but less fulfilling, imo.

 

Cleaves having clear target caps is one thing; big flashy AoEs like Nova or the big cones is another. WoW reinstituted target caps a few expansions ago; these were not met kindly by the players, and rather than hard caps for wide area techniques, they've moved to soft caps where the damage scales down on each target past a certain number of targets, which makes sense with big blasts. It's not as fun to blow up, ofc, but it also makes an intuitive kind of sense compared to "you erupt with power and half of the guys there didn't even get touched, somehow". Instituting this system in CoX would not be worth the effort, but I don't think the problem should be exacerbated by making already low caps even lower, even by choice.

 

I am a big proponent of Sentinels getting Assault sets; I'm not about big target caps, I like the design intent of the Sent as an ST-focused fighter. I just don't think the Blast powersets actually fit that well right now, and a toggle to turn their AoEs into things that hit fewer targets harder feels at odds with what you're actually seeing on screen.

 

Sentinels need T9s that are ST or Cleave focused, not big groups, but that runs into cottage rule. Your solution respects the cottage rule, but at the expense of natural-feeling gameplay imo.

Edited June 26, 2021 by Sunsette

[Naraka]

34 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

 

Sent adds another AoE that is extremely easy to use and good damage. This moves BR from being an ST/Cleave focused set to really just being an area set altogether. It's more intuitive to pick up and play for anyone already used to how CoX plays, but less fulfilling, imo.

 

Cleaves having clear target caps is one thing; big flashy AoEs like Nova or the big cones is another. WoW reinstituted target caps a few expansions ago; these were not met kindly by the players, and rather than hard caps for wide area techniques, they've moved to soft caps where the damage scales down on each target past a certain number of targets, which makes sense with big blasts. It's not as fun to blow up, ofc, but it also makes an intuitive kind of sense compared to "you erupt with power and half of the guys there didn't even get touched, somehow". Instituting this system in CoX would not be worth the effort, but I don't think the problem should be exacerbated by making already low caps even lower, even by choice.

 

I am a big proponent of Sentinels getting Assault sets; I'm not about big target caps, I like the design intent of the Sent as an ST-focused fighter. I just don't think the Blast powersets actually fit that well right now, and a toggle to turn their AoEs into things that hit fewer targets harder feels at odds with what you're actually seeing on screen.

 

Sentinels need T9s that are ST or Cleave focused, not big groups, but that runs into cottage rule. Your solution respects the cottage rule, but at the expense of natural-feeling gameplay imo.

 

Ah, the way you describe BR makes me not want to play it.  I suppose part of what I like about games is trying to get the best out of something so having that something made simpler just means I have to try less which is boring to me.

 

As for cleaves, yes, having the AoE do less damage on more targets is another form of limiting AoEs.  I'm not sure how feasible it is for CoX to do that but that probably would be a great change to help balance the game.  For ATs like Blasters, you can actually give them less of a diminishment as a kind of feature and have Scrappers circumvent the diminishment via critical hit to give them an identity.

 

...but as is, CoX happens to use target caps as a balancing feature.  I would agree with you that it might seem unintuitive to have a big bomb go off and some foes not be affected *IF* defense was actually balanced.  It isn't and thus I feel this point is moot.