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Feedback on a few points for Radiation Blast/Radiation Armor

pearbear

By pearbear
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pearbear

pearbear

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Hi all. I'm nearing 50 on my very fun Radiation Blast/Radiation Armor Sentinel so I took a stab at planning how I would respec and enhance him. Radiation Armor is a resist set with a Cold and Psionic gap, so it offers Regeneration and Absorb to back up survivability in those cases. I noticed Sentinels can really leverage this situation with the Devastation blast sets that offers +HP, +Regen, +Cold Resist in addition to +Damage. With that in mind, my priority was:

  1. Sets with Damage+HP+Regen+Cold Resist
  2. Sets with Damage+HP+Regen
  3. Fill in Cold gaps where boosts are high
  4. Fill in Psionic gaps with procs
  5. Squeeze in Regeneration, Heal, HP and Absorb procs 
  6. Sets with S/L Resist+HP+Regen

 

I ended up with decent resists (64 S/L, 59 Energy, 48 Negative, 71 Fire, 43 Cold, 73 Toxic, 32 Psionic), ~700% regeneration, and I think around +348 HP.

 

There are a few things I am unhappy with and am looking for some guidance on these from someone more experienced:

  1. Proton Therapy slotting - I'm not sure 53% Heal and 53% Recharge is good slotting practice, perhaps it should have more of both?
  2. Irradiate slotting - Because I focused on filling the Cold+Psionic gap and Regen, Heal, HP and Absorb procs, I ended up using a lot of slots that could have gone to proccing this out. Wondering if it makes more sense to sacrifice something for this to be better enhanced?
  3. Meltdown slotting - I don't know if 2 Resist/Recharges is good practice.
  4. Endurance usage - with 5 toggles (Alpha Barrier, Proton Armor, Fallout Shelter, Hover, Evasive Maneuvers, Tough), I'm a little nervous. Does this build look like it uses too much endurance (even with the way Stamina and Gamma Boost are slotted)? 
  5. Kismit: Accuracy +6% proc - I used this because I only have 1 +15% Accuracy bonus. Unsure if that is necessary or not? My other character went for purple sets which offer a lot of Accuracy bonuses.

 

Thanks for any help you can provide, build is below!

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Edited by pearbear
Uun

Uun

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While the resist numbers are quite good, you managed to create a build that has absolutely no defense other than Hover. You don't need soft-capped defense, but it's good to have 20-30%. At the very least, I always slot the 2 +def uniques. 

  • You use a ton of slots on Gamma Boost, Health and Stamina. Massive overkill for Rad. You could redeploy these to Proton Therapy and Irradiate. 
  • You miss several opportunities for recharge bonuses (6-slot Sentinel's Ward, 6-slot Preventative Medicine).
  • No slots in Ground Zero?

I went in a very different direction, but here's my build. 

 

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Uuniverse

  • 2 weeks later
pearbear

pearbear

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Okay an update: I never solo so it's not built with soaking an alpha strike in mind. Basically when I get hit I want to be able to survive and react - so I lean into beefing up damage, resistance, HP, regen, and making sure each power has sufficient damage and recharge for play. I fixed some of the issues mentioned (too much endurance slotting, unslotted Ground Zero, etc.) as well as some mistakes (not knowing that Impervium Armor: Psionic Resistance can be used 5 times to fill the Psionic gap) and came up with the following build:

 

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Here are the resistance totals and set bonuses:

totals.png.57d2b0e7228e3129063d45ff28955514.png 

+365.9 HP (30.37%) HitPoints
+45% Enhancement(Accuracy)
+16% DamageBuff
+6.25% Enhancement(EnduranceDiscount)
+10% Enhancement(RechargeTime)
+10% Enhancement(Range)
+22.5% SpeedFlying
+10.5% (0.18 End/sec) Recovery
+76% (3.82 HP/sec) Regeneration
+18.5% Resistance(Smashing/Lethal)
+37.25% Resistance(Fire/Cold)
+11% Resistance(Energy/Negative)
+8% Resistance(Toxic)
+43% Resistance(Psionic)

 

 

 

I'm still looking for feedback on 1.) any obvious mistakes and 2.) alternative slotting recommendations that might produce better results (besides more defense - the objective is to lean into resist, HP, and my heal/absorb powers).

 

drbuzzard

drbuzzard

Posted
Posted

My build style generally chases recharge, so perhaps I'm not the one to offer much advice here, but you should look at the winter IOs. They offer some nice fire/cold resistances when in superior form. 

pearbear

pearbear

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  On 1/4/2023 at 1:14 AM, drbuzzard said:

My build style generally chases recharge, so perhaps I'm not the one to offer much advice here, but you should look at the winter IOs. They offer some nice fire/cold resistances when in superior form. 

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Thanks! I think the only place I could possibly swap out the enhancements for that is the 4 Overwhelming Force in Ground Zero. I'd be trading 1.5% HP, 12% Regen, and 3% Damage for 6% more Cold resistance (since I'm already near cap for Fire resistance). I'm thinking the HP, Regen, and Damage is more generally useful than taking my Cold resistance from 45.5% to 51.5% though.

 

On the recharge topic, I think I'm okay because I have so many abilities to use at any given time and my Hasten recharges in 150seconds. Here are my recharges on key abilities:

Neutrino Bolt 1.5s
X-Ray Beam 3s
Cosmic Burst 3.75s
Proton Stream 4.14s
Irradiate 7.7s
Neutron Bomb 5.52s
Atomic Blast 36.53s
Ground Zero 37.54s
Meltdown 165.6s

 

I know they aren't exceptional but I feel like they're good enough to always have something to do. 

Edited by pearbear
oldskool

oldskool

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Posted (edited)
  On 1/4/2023 at 7:46 PM, pearbear said:

Thanks! I think the only place I could possibly swap out the enhancements for that is the 4 Overwhelming Force in Ground Zero. I'd be trading 1.5% HP, 12% Regen, and 3% Damage for 6% more Cold resistance (since I'm already near cap for Fire resistance). I'm thinking the HP, Regen, and Damage is more generally useful than taking my Cold resistance from 45.5% to 51.5% though.

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TL;DR: You're not getting nearly as much bang for your buck chasing sets with % Regen or Damage as you may think. Hit points are always worth it, but the idea of "effective hit points" is also a thing. EHP can come from other mitigation strategies which Radiation Armor is already pretty good at with both absorb and Meltdown as possibilities. You may, or may not, want to completely reconsider your approach to how set bonuses interact with game mechanics. This may, or may not, completely change your entire build. 

I don't quite know how I would build Rad/Rad here, but there are somethings you may benefit from knowing. You're looking at full set bonus percentages, but it also appears you're missing some contextual data around them. 

For example, dropping out a set with 12% Regen changes your health return from 45hp down to 43hp. 2 hit points of regen. Increases your resistance is a more substantial mitigation tactic (as is defense). 

3% damage is *base damage*. So, if you have a power doing a base of 50 then it is 3% of that, and not what you modify it to be with enhancements. This doesn't mean there isn't an impact. Given your current build, losing out on 3% global damage is roughly a 4 DPS loss. 

Procs vs sets. Procs work better with less recharge slotted in the power but more global recharge from other sources. You could completely dump the concept of running Devastations and use procs. You could drop all the way to just 3% global damage, but with running 3 procs (Proton Stream could get 4 with Apocalypse) you'd increase your DPS by at least 30% more than what you have now. Endurance management can be a problem, but you're running Rad Armor so it shouldn't be a huge deal. 

And with more global recharge you could get away with just 1 recharge IO (+5) in Aim and end up with potentially the same recharge time. This can spare you a slot.

If you're going to use 2 level 50 IOs, then you can stop at +4 and save yourself some cash. The additional +1 on both isn't significant. 

With Meltdown, you shouldn't need a Rec/Resist pairing. Just recharge. With 160% Global recharge (Hasten + Ageless Destiny) you'd have 131 recharge on Meltdown (two +4 lvl 50 IOs) vs your current 189. I'm using Ageless here to simulate what could potentially be possible with more +10% global recharge sets (can only use 5 for 50% and you may not be able to fit all of them in) placed strategically in the build. The final recharge with more optimization in Ageless would be higher which also comes with its own benefits. 

Edited by oldskool
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drbuzzard

drbuzzard

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Posted

It's worth noting that chasing resistance or defense yield increasing effect towards your cap (percentage wise), which chasing regeneration is a linear thing (though the combination does interact, so you get get effectively more regeneration as you increase resistance, and defense- though the latter is less direct and more unreliable due to damage spikes and the RNG). 

 

Radiation blast is actually one of the weaker sets when it comes to DPAS of the attacks, but is very easy to proc up damage (because if the -def attached to the attacks). You should consider what Oldskool says, though personally I don't like going all in on procs, but as I said, I like my recharge and other set bonuses. It's not hard to load multiple procs into attacks using radiation blast. 

oldskool

oldskool

Posted
Posted (edited)
  On 1/5/2023 at 2:30 PM, drbuzzard said:

I like my recharge and other set bonuses. 

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Fixed for you. (Just teasing... 🙂)
 

Recharge and procs often go hand in hand. It isn't as much of a mutually exclusive situation as you state, but it is definitely mutually exclusive with set bonuses above 3 slots. 

There can be benefit in building up with deeper sets, but it also helps to understand what sets are the most beneficial. That is fundamentally the point I was trying to get to for the OP. They are stacking a number of bonuses which may not glitter nearly as golden as they think. So maybe some different sets would be more appealing knowing that stacking 12% regen in multiple powers could be swapped for something else. OR... maybe regen is the way to go for their goals. I don't know their life. 

There is no one way to skin a cat here. Sometimes what is optimal for one particular mode of play isn't as great at others (proc stacking doesn't contribute to mitigation strategies directly which have its own pitfalls too). The OP did note they don't intend to take alpha strikes so maybe worrying too much about mitigation and HP recovery can be reduced for other avenues. *shrug*

Edited by oldskool
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aethereal

aethereal

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Posted

So, look: if you exclusively team, and you aren't doing any kind of absorbing hits for the rest of the team (like taking alpha, really the only kind of "tanking" that a sentinel really can do), then, frankly, sentinels aren't a good AT for your style of play.  Teaming with someone else playing an active tank is a very safe activity.  Blasters should be able to be built plenty durable for the job.

 

If you do want to play a sent for concept reasons, again looking exclusively at "teaming with someone else being a primary tank," then in general you should try to build your sentinel to as close to a blaster as you can -- ignore mitigation, focus on DPS.

 

Of course the flip side of all this is that teaming in CoH is generally very easy, outside of a very small number of hard content types.  So if you want to just build to concept, that'll probably be fine too.

Meknomancer

Meknomancer

Posted
Posted (edited)

Sents are awesome since page 5. Imagine a scrapper that gets its ranged/aoe up front and its melee/pbaoe from epics. Play it like a scrapper and go for dps. I did post a rad/rad a little bit back but that was a themed toon running mace and aiming for specific melee def. If as you say your only playing in teams then be the scrapper. Don't bother aiming for more than minimal def+res. Go proc heavy. The beauty of the /rad sent is you can do this and get away with it and if needed you can take the alpha thanks to the small absorb and a quick heal. Most of the time you won't need to.

 

Hop in the mob irradiate for the debuffs sets them up for the bomb. Ground Zero/Neutron Bomb/Epic pbaoe (whatever you picked theres a few that are interchangeable like fire sword circle/engulfing/frozen aura/psy shockwave)  will wipe pretty much the entire mob. Whatevers left and not running away (usually a boss trying to leggit) punch and shoot. You have to take 1 epic melee to get the pbaoe but thats ok, you want it. It becomes part of your single target attack chain. Your playing as a scrapper in melee anyway so you can drop a ranged attack. Aim, Irradiate, Nuke whenever you can. Thats your advantage over the scrapper. You gave up a procced out rad therapy for a nuke. I call that fair exchange.

 

Irradiate and Ground Zero give you a kind of soft control. Both have a chance to knockdown in them. If you take cosmic burst instead of proton stream and run psy shockwave as the pbaoe you can stun the boss thats left over after you hammered everything else.

 

Even if your not teaming /rad sents are awesome. They can pump out silly high dps. Single targets are for stalkers. Hit those mobs with massive amounts of aoe. Make the blasters jealous. Make the scrappers go 'Why is that boss running towards me crying and only got half his hp?'

 

Example build, this one has fire in but as i said simply swap in whatever epic fits your character or whichever one you like best:

 

 

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Edited by Meknomancer
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pearbear

pearbear

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First, thanks everyone for the feedback! It is very much appreciated. I want to follow up on a few things:

 

 @oldskool: I do realize that chasing global recharge is the 'end game' for most because you can exploit procs PPM while building other generally useful global bonuses, and I do see what you're saying about global damage bonuses and getting more bang for your buck with recharge global bonuses and procs. I think I should have been more straightforward with my original post stating: I am not looking to chase global recharge at end game, so I'm looking for something that feels well-rounded and robust and I don't think global recharge is necessary for that. I do think I will re-evaluate global damage bonuses in the future - thanks for that. Also on Procs, I have only 4 abilities with them and only 2 have 2, but both are AoEs and one has a long recharge. I know Global Recharge and Proc'ing out will maximize DPS, but given what I *do* have, I'm not hearing that they are mislotted - is that assessment correct? 

 

@drbuzzard: On the Regen topic, I'm really prioritizing +Damage, +HitPoints, +Fire/Cold resistance (3 things that are *VERY* specifically useful to a Radiation Armor Sentinel) that also happens to have Regeneration. I think the end result was pretty good, no? I mean, I end up with +365.9 HP HitPoints, +16% DamageBuff, +37.25% Resistance(Fire/Cold) while *also* having +76% (3.82 HP/sec) Regeneration which stacks with baseline and Radiation's regeneration for a total of  641% Regeneration. It certainly seems like killing 2 birds with 1 stone to me. But I do get that it doesn't scale well and I should carefully consider situations where resistances might provide more value than some extra Regeneration. In fact, given oldskool's comment on global damage and yours, I think I am leaning into dropping the Overwhelming Force for the winter set. So thanks!

 

@aetherial: I'm asking for build feedback given my maybe not articulated enough goals, I really think you telling me to stop playing a Sentinel because I don't solo or constantly absorb alpha strikes is unnecessary and unhelpful. And to better articulate: I do take alpha strikes when needed, I'm just saying I don't BUILD myself to act as a tank.

 

@Meknomancer: Thanks I will check that build out!

 

 

Edited by pearbear
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aethereal

aethereal

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  On 1/6/2023 at 5:47 AM, pearbear said:

 

@aetherial: I'm asking for build feedback given my maybe not articulated enough goals, I really think you telling me to stop playing a Sentinel because I don't solo or constantly absorb alpha strikes is unnecessary and unhelpful. And to better articulate: I do take alpha strikes when needed, I'm just saying I don't BUILD myself to act as a tank.

 

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I don't care what AT you play, and teaming is easy in CoH unless you're chasing four star hard mode or Really Hard Way or whatever.  Playing a slightly suboptimal build isn't going to ruin your team's experience, and you should do what's fun for you.

 

The issue is that it's hard to give you advice when you have these kind of invisible restrictions in your mind.  Like, why are you asking for build advice at all here?  What is actually going wrong with your play experience such that you need to change your build?  If you have a clear goal, people can help you build toward it, but I don't know what your goal is.  You don't want to build towards soaking alpha. You don't want to build towards procs.  You don't want to build towards global recharge.  Like, sure, okay, but what do you want to do?  Does your current build fail you at all?

aethereal

aethereal

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By the way, about global recharge:

 

It is of course true that global recharge drastically improves the efficiency of procs in your build.  But that's far from the only reason to chase global recharge.  People were building towards global recharge well before the PPM system was a twinkle in the eyes of the original devs.  Indeed, I don't think it's crazy to suggest that chasing global recharge is the earliest recognizable "build goal" in CoH in any kind of modern sense -- dating back to six-slotting Hasten with recharge bonuses in the pre-invention, pre-ED days of CoH.

 

It's wild that after recognizing that it was possible for everyone to have 70% global recharge with relatively minimal investment, and taming that beast with ED, they then said, "But what if we made it possible for everyone to have 180% global recharge with, admittedly, somewhat more investment?"  But that's the world we live in, and, honestly, the albatross around the neck of CoH power design: you have to now contend with an environment in which everyone's powers will recharge in approximately 1/3rd of their listed time without any actual recharge slotting in that power.

 

Beyond wild is that someone in issue 24 was like, "Okay, but now that we've had years of people obsessively building for global recharge as a general utility to everything, what if we now make global recharge be the key to efficient damage slotting with PPM mechanics."

 

Crazy history aside, the point here is that global recharge is a swiss army knife of build awesomeness.  Do you want to be more durable?  Well, you can get Proton Therapy and Particle Shielding and Meltdown to much higher uptimes.  Do you want to do more damage?  You can drop your lower-damage powers out of your attack chain because your high-damage powers are all you need.  You can ignore recharge slotting in your power and instead focus on maximizing their primary effects because once you have 180% recharge, additional local recharge isn't a big deal.  Basically everything in your build that isn't served by toggle powers gets much better with global recharge.  If you then want to stack way more damage, PPM abuse is there to be a cherry on top of your sundae, but you're likely going to find that you'll get more damage out of your build with global recharge than with global damage even if you straight up ignore procs and just use the primary benefit of "can use higher-damage powers more often."  Global recharge is just stupidly good.

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oldskool

oldskool

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Posted (edited)
  On 1/6/2023 at 5:47 AM, pearbear said:

 @oldskool:Also on Procs, I have only 4 abilities with them and only 2 have 2, but both are AoEs and one has a long recharge. I know Global Recharge and Proc'ing out will maximize DPS, but given what I *do* have, I'm not hearing that they are mislotted - is that assessment correct? 

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Ah, I was mostly looking at your original build and not the second one, sorry. 

I wouldn't say what you have is "misslotted". That would be pretty arrogant of me if that were my approach. Instead, I wanted to just chime in on some of the underlying mechanics which involved the set bonuses themselves. However, since you seem to know this already my posts weren't really necessary. Also, since you revamped your build into something showing what you are deliberating choosing to chase for reduces a need to keep discussing it. 

So no, not "misslotted", but definitely not how I would build or play this combo. However, that's an awesome thing in COH where you can make whatever you want within the confines of the game's framework. So, I really should just say good job you seemed to have made something you are happy with. 

Edited by oldskool
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pearbear

pearbear

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  On 1/6/2023 at 12:38 PM, oldskool said:

So no, not "misslotted", but definitely not how I would build or play this combo. 

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Okay just for fun, could you possibly slap together a build for how you would play it so I can go through and see how it compares? I might learn a lot this way and re-evaluate my reluctance to care enough about recharge. I understand from everyone's comments that I am leaving a lot on the table by not chasing recharge, but maybe when it's actually visualized in front of me and I'm not seeing any survivability costs with the build I'll care more about that.

 

  On 1/6/2023 at 12:38 PM, oldskool said:

However, since you seem to know this already my posts weren't really necessary. 

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I actually *just* learned this a few weeks back by reading an old post from 2019, I definitely want to say thanks for taking the time to mention it because maybe someone else will read this thread and it will be their first time hearing it too.

 

  On 1/6/2023 at 10:59 AM, aethereal said:

Like, why are you asking for build advice at all here? 

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I had very specific questions when I posted (they are enumerated, even), some of which were answered right away, some that weren't, and I modified my build and posted that. I think I should have clarified better that I wasn't looking to min/max but was more focused on 1. Does this build make any obvious mistakes (bad slotting) and 2. Knowing that I'm chasing HP, Damage, Regen and trying to fill Cold and Psionic gaps, are their alternatives to how I did it that would result in similar values but better outcomes. I do appreciate your feedback and thoughts maybe it was hyperbole when you said to stop playing the Sentinel, but I did find it a little unhelpful is all. I really like the class, and I might not be optimizing it because it is well suited for soloing, which I'm not doing, and I'm not prioritizing recharge, but I still feel like I'm not holding anyone back.

oldskool

oldskool

Posted
Posted
  On 1/6/2023 at 6:47 PM, pearbear said:

and I'm not seeing any survivability costs with the build I'll care more about that

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I care a lot less about the survivability of my Sentinel builds. Therefore, whatever I did would have some tradeoffs involved. I'll think about it though if some inspiration hits me to explore the pairing.

The recharge bit is just an option. You don't have to do it. There are plenty of builds that don't push too hard for things like permanent Hasten uptime and they can complete content in this game just fine. 

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