Plan to test Sentinels

[MHertz]

I would like to test Sentinels under live in-game conditions to see what kind of team contribution they are making — in specific, the amount of aggro taken versus the amount of damage dealt.

 

The plan is to run the same AE mission with pairs of characters at a fixed level, say around level 25. I want to compare how much aggro a Blaster gets when teamed with a Sentinel and compare it to being teamed with a Controller, a Defender, etc.

 

I have written a combat log parser that will analyze the log file and calculate the number of attacks (for and against), number of hits, and how much damage. If I can get volunteers to send me combat logs (you can just send the combat part, not the whole file), that would greatly speed data collection.

 

Is there anybody out there willing to run these tests? It shouldn’t be much harder than running a single mission on AE and emailing the log to me.

 

When I have some volunteers we can talk about testing protocol and control tests, number of trials, which AR mission to run, and so on.

[MHertz]

Proposed testing protocol:

 

1. Tests will be run in pairs only (at first). Some tests will be two non-Sentinels, some will be one non-Sentinel paired with a Sentinel; I will also need some tests for 2 Sentinels. Both members of the duo should be actively played by separate players. This means

a) no farming with door sitting because one character is deliberately drawing 0 aggro; also AFK farming is probably not good data either

b) no dual-boxing with one character on follow, as this puts a character into melee and AOE range that might not otherwise play at that range

 

2. Tests will be conducted in an AE mission with a fixed level, where both members are set to the same level, so there is no noise coming from level differentials (eg, someone sidekicked and fighting at an additional +1, as can happen in regular missions).

 

3. Both players in the trial will send their combat logs to me so I can calculate the total amount of aggro accrued by the team. A solo combat log doesn’t tell me very much, nor does getting only half of the player data.

 

4. Tests will be conducted at a fixed difficulty. This difficulty will likely be +0/x2, to reduce the possibility of team wipeouts or player defeats (which would skew the figures for incoming aggro, as the remaining mob will turn all aggro on the surviving member). It may be that problems with Sentinels only become obvious at higher team sizes, due to the number of AOEs available to some ATs, but let’s start with something we can manage.

 

5. The combat log should not be modified except to trim out any personal conversations before, during and after the combat to be reviewed, or to remove non-essential log data before and after that combat. If you run multiple tests on the same day, please indicate this, or send separate log files (so the parser doesn’t combine them).

 

6. Please indicate the names, effective combat levels, ATs and power sets of your duo in the log file. You can do this by speaking in Team, or by adding a line preceding the combat log.

 

7. If one character is heavily twinked out and the other is not (eg, running mostly IO sets by level 20 while the other has –2 DOs) then indicate this as well.

Edited December 22, 2021 by MHertz