Focused Feedback: Sentinel Archetype Revamp

[Dispari]

If anything I'd be leaning toward giving sentinel more durability before more damage, so they can safely fall between blaster and scrapper in damage/defense. Right now they have the weakest defenses in the game.

One thing at a time though. These current changes are good steps in the right direction.

[aethereal]

5 hours ago, jlm2924 said:

One of my mains is a Energy Blast / Super Reflexes Sent. She is awesome and powerful.  Vulnerability seems just OK to me.  If you really want to help the class out I have a few suggestions.

 

1. STOP NERFING RANGED CHARACTERS! Take that 1.1 and bump it to 1.25 like the blaster. Give us a little edge, Sents deserve it, after all, we have an attraction of what? 3.0 compared to a tank's 4.0? So we are the classic example of Geek the Mage!

 

Blasters' damage scalar is 1.125, not 1.25.  The 1.1 damage scalar of a beta Sentinel is, I promise, indistinguishable in actual play from the blaster's 1.125.

 

(This doesn't mean that beta Sents' damage is indistinguishable from Blasters'.  It means that Blaster damage superiority doesn't come from a better scalar, it comes from a combination of:

 

1.  Target caps

2.  Full strength nukes

3.  Snipes

4.  Build Up + Aim instead of just Aim

5.  Powers in the secondary pools of Blasters

6.  Defiance.)

[TygerDarkstorm]

5 hours ago, jlm2924 said:

One of my mains is a Energy Blast / Super Reflexes Sent. She is awesome and powerful.  Vulnerability seems just OK to me.  If you really want to help the class out I have a few suggestions.

 

1. STOP NERFING RANGED CHARACTERS! Take that 1.1 and bump it to 1.25 like the blaster. Give us a little edge, Sents deserve it, after all, we have an attraction of what? 3.0 compared to a tank's 4.0? So we are the classic example of Geek the Mage!

 

2. Increase our range. Nearly all my powers are 60 ft and a few 40 ft. COME ON, seriously? I may as well go point-blank. Bump those ranges up 50%, so 60 ft. to 90 ft and 40 ft to 60 ft.

 

3. Point-blank fighting. Okay, so this is a major pet peeve of mine. If I am in that person's face, there is no way to miss. Create a new sub calculation that says (pseudo-code warning) <IF SUB Rng=>11' THEN increase soft cap to 99% to HIT>  Meaning, if we are within 10 ft of the target, we need to bypass the 95% to hit cap and it needs to increase to 99% with only a 1% miss chance. Range characters in melee range tend to get slaughtered anyways, so please increase.

 

4. Our Nuke. Look, our nuke is a T9 power and for energy blast and most other powers as well, and even though it says "extreme damage" that is bull crap! It should Auto kill ALL White enemies, ALL Yellow enemies, do 75% to oranges, 50% to reds, and 25% to purples. I have buffed my nuke with +5 Purple set and the damage is dismal. Even when I bump it with AIM, it's still barely 600 points. That SUCKS! My blaster's PSI Nuke I have seen it go beyond 2000 damage, so let's bump it WAY up. It's a NUKE, it's supposed to even the odds so let's make it do its job!

 

Also, make the Oro menders belt and chest piece available as costume parts. Even better, make it part of the welcome to Oro mission sets where we can unlock them like we used to have to do missions to unlock capes. I like the idea of unique and meaningful pieces that have to be earned.  Also for those of us that like playing girls, if you set breasts to min OMG they are still too big! Her chest should be flat as a board. Fix it!

First of all, all the yelling and exclamation marks aren't going to serve you well. Secondly, do you understand what the Sentinel AT is? They were purposely designed to not have the range of a blaster. The nukes do less damage because they recharge 2-3x as quickly as a blaster nuke (a few of them can be made to recharge in like 30 seconds). Your secondary is an armor set; if a blaster can be made to handle blapping, then a sentinel should be able to handle being in melee some as well. Or learn to kite.

[oldskool]

5 hours ago, Dispari said:

If anything I'd be leaning toward giving sentinel more durability before more damage, so they can safely fall between blaster and scrapper in damage/defense. Right now they have the weakest defenses in the game.

 

I'm not sure Sentinel's are last place in defenses. Sentinels share the same defense buff value as Blasters (0.70). In practice, this difference with Scrappers/Stalkers/Brutes isn't really an issue. We're talking about 1-2% less on the Sentinel vs the other DPS ATs. 

HP-wise, Sentinels share the same minimum and maximum as Stalkers (the base is also the same for Blasters; their top end is lower though). 

Sentinels get other bells and whistles into their secondaries that the melee ATs don't. Its pretty minor stuff, but it can add up when you can also potentially limit minion damage to just ranged attacks. 

I personally would love to see Sentinels get the same 0.75 modifier as the other melee ATs do. This is more for consistency than anything. The actual mitigation effect is going to be really low given that most Sentinel builds are capable of maximizing what their secondary is good at already. 

Also, not a response for Dispari, but when thinking about the 1.1 vs 1.125 scalar thing, here is some context. Bringing up that remaining 0.025 scalar on a power with a value of 100 is adding like 2.5 damage. So other folks talking about the effective difference between the Sentinel buff and Blasters have that to fall on too. We're talking about 2.5 damage being the difference without all of the other factors that the Blaster has going for it. In actual play testing, folks will find that the Blaster does more than just 2.5 more damage than the Sentinel does. It's not a big deal. 

 

[Cutter]

Did a really quick set of tests on my 37 Fire/Bio sent: Bricks radio, council, +0/x2. Might as well be the one to look at barely above baseline. Anywho. I can't say I noticed much of a difference between live and beta. I suspect the damage buff numbers really only become noticeable at higher team sizes and/or +values?

 

Feedback-wise, I will say that I appreciate having control of Vulnerability vs wasting it on a minion (which I inadvertently did on live, on the spawn right before the boss too). Not having to watch for power rings and feeling like I have to forgo using my T1/T2 in order to get maximum value from it is nice.

 

Having Vulnerability as another button is a little awkward tho - I lose my cursor a lot, especially in heated combats, so I place all my attacks in tray 1 so I can just hit a key rather than have to find my mouse to click on a tray icon (and forget about Alt+ or Ctrl+, I do not have the coordination or muscle memory for that). Maybe need to test more, but right off the hop I feel like I'd want to have Vulnerability in the same bar simply for speedier flow. In many cases my tray 1 is full, which means moving things around to place Vulnerability there. Not a huge issue (just means some amount of shuffling depending on what else is in my other trays) but I mention it in case it might be relevant.

 

I didn't get into any scenarios where the slightly buffed perception range and debuff protection proved relevant. I don't recall seeing anyone mention it here - is that bonus 10% actually meaningful? Cause if it's not, why bother? (Maybe it could be a shared-with-the-team thing, and let it stack?)

[Wavicle]

2 minutes ago, Cutter said:

I didn't get into any scenarios where the slightly buffed perception range and debuff protection proved relevant. I don't recall seeing anyone mention it here - is that bonus 10% actually meaningful? Cause if it's not, why bother? (Maybe it could be a shared-with-the-team thing, and let it stack?)

 

The passive bonuses are enough to let you see and hit enemies with NO additional Perception bonus IF you are in melee with them.

It is also enough that if you add just 1 +Perception IO (Rectified Reticle or Warp) you basically won't ever be unable to see even when debuffed by a +4 Widow.

 

It also makes it a little easier, especially in combination with the Auto Hit Defense debuff of Vulnerability, to hit Sorcerers through their Hurricane.

 

For a passive version of Focused Accuracy that you get free at level 1 I'd say it's good enough.

[arthurh35353]

Make it sparkle feedback: Make it a passive that activates at 100% build up on targeted attacks that hit (so it will not trigger on PBAOEs) and allow it to be customizable so that when you hit 100% it makes a noise and SFX. Leave the target SFX under the target.

Suggestions: I felt a little on the squishy side. Even +4 red boss (singular) smoked me easily. I'd aim at 82% res cap so Sentinels are theoretically a little tougher, but without all the melee centric buffs that armors tend to give.

Edited October 13, 2022 by arthurh35353

[Dispari]

2 hours ago, oldskool said:

Sentinels get other bells and whistles into their secondaries that the melee ATs don't. Its pretty minor stuff, but it can add up when you can also potentially limit minion damage to just ranged attacks.

Yeah it can be hard to say. Some sets are largely unchanged while others are extremely different. Sentinels probably have the best version of Regeneration available. So it can be difficult to say if their overall durability is lower. But I do still wish their numbers were higher regardless. Having done numerous builds, they're a lot harder to build DEF on as well, due to most S/L/melee DEF being on melee powers (they do get a couple in epics and sometimes nukes at least).

[oldskool]

1 hour ago, Dispari said:

Yeah it can be hard to say. Some sets are largely unchanged while others are extremely different. Sentinels probably have the best version of Regeneration available. So it can be difficult to say if their overall durability is lower. But I do still wish their numbers were higher regardless. Having done numerous builds, they're a lot harder to build DEF on as well, due to most S/L/melee DEF being on melee powers (they do get a couple in epics and sometimes nukes at least).

 

I almost went into the disparity between melee vs ranged IO sets and defense bonuses. It definitely blurs a lot of lines.

[aethereal]

4 hours ago, Cutter said:

Having Vulnerability as another button is a little awkward tho - I lose my cursor a lot, especially in heated combats, so I place all my attacks in tray 1 so I can just hit a key rather than have to find my mouse to click on a tray icon (and forget about Alt+ or Ctrl+, I do not have the coordination or muscle memory for that).

 

I'm similar in terms of wanting to ideally put as many common clicks as possible on my top row of keys.  Something I've found helpful is to bind `, MINUS, and EQUALS to additional powers, so that I have 13 keys instead of 10.  I put the remaining three powers in tray two above the 1, 9, and 10 keys, but I hit them with the binds (so I can see when they're off cooldown -- conceptually, it "wraps around" to the overflow keys.  If you're sort of hovering right at trying to cram one or two more things, I find it pretty useful, thought you might too.

[Helgrenze]

Playing my Fire/Fire Sent, with Vulnerability and Molten Embrace, I seem to be doing better than Blaster standard damage.

The added +10% from ME boosts the damage to 1.21 (I think), plus the DoT effect. Vulnerability adds 5% on top of that for 1.28 on the damage scalar.

I can see this being exploited by 'power gamers" with Fire/Fire becoming the "go to" build.

 

I could be wrong about how all the bonuses add up.

 

 

[MsAligned]

On 10/11/2022 at 1:39 PM, Cutter said:

Having Vulnerability as another button is a little awkward tho - I lose my cursor a lot, especially in heated combats, so I place all my attacks in tray 1 so I can just hit a key rather than have to find my mouse to click on a tray icon (and forget about Alt+ or Ctrl+, I do not have the coordination or muscle memory for that). Maybe need to test more, but right off the hop I feel like I'd want to have Vulnerability in the same bar simply for speedier flow. In many cases my tray 1 is full, which means moving things around to place Vulnerability there. Not a huge issue (just means some amount of shuffling depending on what else is in my other trays) but I mention it in case it might be relevant.

 

 

I to have similar issues, probably why I did not like it much when trying it.

 

Dispari hit it, the damage buff is nice, but I would like to see some upgrade on the secondaries.  I have a Dark/Bio scrapper and a Elec/Bio sentinel.  I generally play my sentinels like scrappers that have ranged attacks, increasing the range would be nice, but not huge, same with max targets.  Scrapper get Parasitic Aura, Sentinel get Parasitic Leech, night and day difference between them.  Scrapper/Sentinel Willpower, Rise to the Challenge vs Up to the Challenge, would trade for the scrapper version in a heart beat.  If I could get better S/L and Melee defense, who knows.

[Cutter]

Little more testing, this time on a fresh 50 (no incarnates) DP/Fire, Council radios, +0/x8. No changes to the build from live. Bonus: getting to test some of the /Fiery Aura changes as well.

 

I did notice things seemed to die get arrested a little faster, hard targets notwithstanding (seriously Warwolves are a pain in the rear). I will admit it's hard for me to tell for sure if I'm knocking things down with fewer attacks or not because I'm running a dot-heavy primary, but it felt like it. Crunching the numbers I see the scalar's 15% damage increase almost right on the nose. (The October 12 patch notes indicate it should be 15.8%, but I rounded my numbers so that's within the margin there.)

 

The faster activation on Healing Flames was nice when I needed it but not necessarily game-changing. The +HP increase from Consume gives me an extra ~180 HP (from 1382.5 to 1563.2) with no heal slotted, which I can't complain about. I have minimal recharge in Consume on my live build, so I don't have that buff up full-time (2 minutes up vs 2min 22s recharge), but that looks like it should be super easy to make permanent if I wanted. I didn't see much difference out of using Burn, but there's a lot of bouncing around which makes it hard for me to get a sense of it. Looking back, I had a few instances where I could have tried the new Phoenix Rising, but that's a big enough usage change that it's not in my brain yet. I'll have to remember to move it to a power tray I use more so I have a better chance to see that it's available.

 

As far as Vulnerability goes, the more I use it the more torn I am on it. I like that I get to control when I use it, and with a full bar being able to drop it on 2 bosses in a spawn at practically the same time is a neat usage. Loading in with a full bar is a nice little extra for an AT with no Build Up, and especially on a pairing with no Aim. But I find it really breaks my flow when I use it. Zero activation time or not, there's still keypress time which means I'm replacing an attack, which doesn't feel good to me on an AT that only brings attacks to the table. I want every button push to hurt someone right now. Like other testers I also noticed myself only using it when the red ring is showing; it wasn't til near the end of one of the radios that I remembered it's not fully drained on one use, which is when I decided to try tagging 2 bosses with it. An indication more noticeable than "the button isn't greyed out" would be a nice reminder that it can be used back to back if I want to.

 

The "I like cruise control" old man part of me says I'd be happier with a passive of some sort. (If I was pressed to pull an idea out of my butt right on the spot, I'd suggest something like a scaling chance to apply Vulnerability with all attacks, similar in application to Corrupter scourge. Not really controllable, but it gets there on hard targets without me having to do something special.) Gonna need more time with the clicky implementation to determine whether it's something I can get used to.

 

Council still doesn't let me see any benefit to the perception changes, so I will take the word of more robust testers that it has value against other content.

[Underfyre]

20 hours ago, Helgrenze said:

Playing my Fire/Fire Sent, with Vulnerability and Molten Embrace, I seem to be doing better than Blaster standard damage.

The added +10% from ME boosts the damage to 1.21 (I think), plus the DoT effect. Vulnerability adds 5% on top of that for 1.28 on the damage scalar.

I can see this being exploited by 'power gamers" with Fire/Fire becoming the "go to" build.

 

I could be wrong about how all the bonuses add up.

 

 

 

Your math is on track. But wait 'til you find out that Bio gives a 25% damage buff and a +7.5% To Hit buff. With a damaging proc like Molten Embrace. And Vulnerability adds 15% res debuff. Or roughly 7.5% when you factor in it being up half of the time.  So there's 1.47. The sky is, in fact, falling.

 

For some reason you neglected to mention that the average Defiance up-time will give you a roughly 30% damage buff. So there's 1.46.

 

So yes, if you're playing your Blaster purely at range, they could almost do similar damage from this wildly simplistic comparison. But if you want to play your Blast wrong, that's on you.

[Helgrenze]

4 hours ago, Underfyre said:

 

Your math is on track. But wait 'til you find out that Bio gives a 25% damage buff and a +7.5% To Hit buff. With a damaging proc like Molten Embrace. And Vulnerability adds 15% res debuff. Or roughly 7.5% when you factor in it being up half of the time.  So there's 1.47. The sky is, in fact, falling.

 

For some reason you neglected to mention that the average Defiance up-time will give you a roughly 30% damage buff. So there's 1.46.

 

So yes, if you're playing your Blaster purely at range, they could almost do similar damage from this wildly simplistic comparison. But if you want to play your Blast wrong, that's on you.

What I am trying to say is that Blasters are supposed to be the top ranged damage types. Giving what is basically the second best, close to similar damage might affect not HOW blasters are played, but IF they are. Blasters are basically glass cannons, though still better survivability that Doms.

 

The range/def trade off is only one aspect of the Sentinel. There is also a strength/survivability trade off. They have a low-mid Melee rating, a high-mid ranged and a low-high Def. Moving them up to a low/mid-high on ranged damage doesn't make sense to me. Just seems to be playing to a vocal minority.

 

If they MUST add to the Sentinel attack strength, a 1.00 rating would be better with the changes to Opp/Vuln.

[KeepDistance]

On 10/4/2022 at 8:02 PM, Bill Z Bubba said:

Pylon time with fire/bio sent, 2:56. This puts it on par with my shield/nrg tank and claws/sr scrapper. While hovering above the fight in complete safety. (Edit: In normal content, of course. I know it doesn't matter with pylons.) Also took out a lvl 54 Tub Ci in Mr G's arc in less than 5 mins.

 

Yay. More power creep.

Weird. I copied my top performing sent from live, which is elec/regen - 2:15 pylon time. On beta I got 2:35 and 2:45 in back to back runs. In the first run I didn't use Vulnerability, then the second run I did use it.

 

Really not sure what to make of this.

[KeepDistance]

My overall impression of these Sentinel changes is that while they are well intentioned it's not clear they are improving the AT in any meaningful way. I strongly urge Vulnerability to at least have some visible effect both on cast and on target, that's a significant gameplay effect while on teams. But if I were the product manager of the HC team I'd say don't ship this and find some other path to address sentinels' shortcomings.

[Wavicle]

15% Base damage increase isn’t meaningful? An auto hit debuff that ignores level differences?

 

They are never going to do as much damage as blasters. They now come close to scrappers on AoE, or surpass them in many cases.

 

 What are you expecting?

[KeepDistance]

I almost forgot this:
 

Quote

• Vulnerability is Auto-Hit and ignores level differences.

 

I would strongly urge the team to reconsider ignoring level differences. Under most circumstances, it's only a moderate advantage, but in certain circumstances like Magisterium Really Hard Way attempts and +4 Katie Hannon runs, it's broken compared to other powerset mechanics.

 

I guess at least Vulnerability doesn't stack, but it still smacks of a one-trick-pony effect.

[Wavicle]

41 minutes ago, KeepDistance said:

I almost forgot this:
 

 

I would strongly urge the team to reconsider ignoring level differences. Under most circumstances, it's only a moderate advantage, but in certain circumstances like Magisterium Really Hard Way attempts and +4 Katie Hannon runs, it's broken compared to other powerset mechanics.

 

I guess at least Vulnerability doesn't stack, but it still smacks of a one-trick-pony effect.

It’s only a 15% debuff. Have you tried these changes out on Brainstorm?

[flakoff]

2 hours ago, KeepDistance said:

Weird. I copied my top performing sent from live, which is elec/regen - 2:15 pylon time. On beta I got 2:35 and 2:45 in back to back runs. In the first run I didn't use Vulnerability, then the second run I did use it.

 

Really not sure what to make of this.

I think there's not much difference tbh and no power creep as bio is totally different to rest of sents @Bill Z Bubba

[Wavicle]

Here are the results of my uptime tests.

 

Opportunity Strikes (Regular NOT Superior) and Sentinel's Ward are slotted in Screech, and I have 2 LotG slotted.

On Excelsior: spamming all my attacks, with a few useful OS procs and a few wasted, got me 8 uses of Vulnerability in 4:45.

 

Page 4 Uptime: 42%

 

On Brainstorm: with Screech on auto, no wasted procs of course, I hit Vulnerability 12 times in 5:00.

 

Page 5 Uptime: 60%

 

 

 

 

 

[Helgrenze]

Just tried an experiment.

I've used the CTRL+Click for Healing Aura.

You can put Vulnerability on "auto-fire" with CTRL+Click. Works from any tray, so you can have it in one you don't use much.

This means that even when only half charged it hits what you have targeted. The caveat is only one power on auto-fire at a time. But it does eliminate the need to click the power. In a large mob, it will trigger every 30 seconds as the Opp bar fills. This works even when double clicking or tabbing to a new target. It also keeps the Vuln on a target that takes longer than 30 sec to defeat. Makes it MUCH more useful.

The 100ft range might be an issue, most of my Fire/Fire's powers are 40-60ft.

[Wavicle]

53 minutes ago, Helgrenze said:

Just tried an experiment.

I've used the CTRL+Click for Healing Aura.

You can put Vulnerability on "auto-fire" with CTRL+Click. Works from any tray, so you can have it in one you don't use much.

This means that even when only half charged it hits what you have targeted. The caveat is only one power on auto-fire at a time. But it does eliminate the need to click the power. In a large mob, it will trigger every 30 seconds as the Opp bar fills. This works even when double clicking or tabbing to a new target. It also keeps the Vuln on a target that takes longer than 30 sec to defeat. Makes it MUCH more useful.

The 100ft range might be an issue, most of my Fire/Fire's powers are 40-60ft.

 

I've been setting up a bind that lets me switch between having Hasten on Auto and Vulnerability on Auto with one keypress, so I can have it Manual most of the time and then switch it to Automatic for EBs and AVs.

[aethereal]

What about an increase in Vulnerability duration?  Maybe to 30 seconds, for 100% uptime against hard targets?  Or 25, even.

 

This won't materially improve sentinel performance in most play: you will still only be able to cast Vulnerability twice per minute at equilibrium.  If you're casting it on bosses, the extra duration will be largely wasted.  But it will give sentinels a little extra performance and specialization in hard fights.

 

This wouldn't be my ideal change to sentinels, but the devs appear uninterested in more ambitious proposals.