Nuke Disparity

[drbuzzard]

Recently I decided to make more sentinels (shocking!). While I had already tried all the primaries and secondaries, I decided it would be an interesting experiment (and excuse to level up an alt) to vary the primary across ones I don't think I'd given a fair shake to while keeping the secondary constant with SR (probably my favorite). While doing archery and assault rifle, I notice the nukes were a bit off. 

 

Nametotal

Full Auto 147.45 (this includes a 16% crit that adds some damage, base is 138). 

Rain of Arrows 122.84  (keep in mind, the way RoA works is 1-3 ticks of damage, with equal chances, so this number is the average at 2, even if there were 3 hits, it is below normal nuke numbers for other sets)

Overload 194.584

Blackstar 194.584

Thunderous Blast  194.584 (with shocking can be a good bit higher)

Nova 194.584

Inferno 207.79 (owes it to DoT which is variable)

Psychic Wait 194.584

Meteor 194.584

Dreadful Wail 194.584

 

I left out the ones which were a bit more arduous to calculate (DP, ice, water). 

 

As we can see, they are quite consistent for the most part. Fire gets its usual DoT boost, but mostly they are identical except AR and archery. Why is this? Well AR and archery are the odd ducks in every other AT having a 60 second recharge, so they break the rules for nukes and are a bit different. AR was the first one, and did lower nuke damage but with a crit chance to each DoT which could boost it a bit. I just looked at the blaster stats for AR, and boy did the sentinels get screwed. The ATs have very close damage scalars now (1.1 vs. 1.125) and for some reason blaster full auto does 172.2 +potential 65 crit chance, but on a 60 second recharge. That's compared to 138 for the sentinels for the base damage. If the sentinel damage reflected a direct translation across the scalars you'd have 10 ticks of 16.8 for the sentinel instead of 10 of 13.8. This leaves out the fact that the blaster gets it on a 60 second recharge instead of 90. At least if the sentinel used the 168, it would likely be in order with the normal 194 nuke damage after you added the crit chance. 

 

Archery is even worse as it is currently the worst sentinel nuke set. It works via a location pet which hits 1-3 times for 61 damage. Blasters instead hit for 75 damage each possible time. If we did a straight up scalar conversion, the sentinel value would be 73. Again, I'll not bother to consider the issue of recharge (again, every other AT is 60 seconds, sentinels are 90). 

 

I could live with just adjusting both sets for the scalar values instead of actually making them comparable across ATs. 

 

So to put this in TL:DR terms, sentinels are getting screwed on their nukes on 2 of the sets, AR and archery. It would be nice if this was resolved. 

[FupDup]

Somebody brought up the Assault Rifle nuke disparity during the most recent page testing and the lead power dev said that it's all perfectly fine and balanced because AR's random crits can hit any target in the cone, compared to other circular AOE and PBAOE nukes that only crit in the center. I would argue that's actually a further downgrade because you can't control which targets get hit by the bonus damage. 

 

This was said by the same guy who thinks that Archery needs to get a nerf if the 3 ticks issue gets fixed on Rain of Arrows...so yeah. Just use Fire Blast as god intended is the takeaway I get from all this. 

 

EDIT: Found the quote: 

 

Edited July 4, 2023 by FupDup

[Glacier Peak]

Faster recharge means higher damage output over time. 

[FupDup]

3 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Faster recharge means higher damage output over time. 

All Sentinel nukes have equal recharge of 90 seconds baseline. 

Edited July 4, 2023 by FupDup

[Glacier Peak]

3 minutes ago, FupDup said:

All Sentinel nukes have equal recharge of 90 seconds baseline. 

The original poster is highlighting the discrepancy between Sentinel nukes and Blaster nukes.

[FupDup]

6 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

The original poster is highlighting the discrepancy between Sentinel nukes and Blaster nukes.

The OP is highlighting the disparity between Rain of Arrows/Full Auto and the other Sentinel nukes: 

 

1 hour ago, drbuzzard said:

So to put this in TL:DR terms, sentinels are getting screwed on their nukes on 2 of the sets, AR and archery. It would be nice if this was resolved. 

 

On other ranged ATs those two get faster recharge to make up for their lower damage, so there's actually a real tradeoff to consider, but Sentinels inherited the lower damage despite having normalized (slowed down) recharges. 

Edited July 4, 2023 by FupDup

[drbuzzard]

1 hour ago, Glacier Peak said:

The original poster is highlighting the discrepancy between Sentinel nukes and Blaster nukes.

 

The original posted (me) is highlighting the disparity among sentinel nukes as well as the poor way in which the supposed blaster vs. sentinel damage scalar was implemented in this case. 

 

AR and archery are deficient by either measure and need some love. For the moment I would advise not playing them on sentinels (which means the two I just worked up and incarnated will sit). 

[drbuzzard]

1 hour ago, Glacier Peak said:

Faster recharge means higher damage output over time. 

 

Yes, and as I mentioned they have slower recharge than blaster, and much lower damage. That breaks one of the baseline rules of how powers work in COH. 

 

If I wanted to make up for both disparities you'd have to factor in both the scalar error and increase the adjusted damage by an increase of 50% because of slower recharge. 

 

Sentinel FA would be 10 ticks of 25 damage and the arrows would drop 1-3 times for 110. They would then be the best nukes among sentinels by a fair margin. 

[drbuzzard]

1 hour ago, FupDup said:

The OP is highlighting the disparity between Rain of Arrows/Full Auto and the other Sentinel nukes: 

 

 

On other ranged ATs those two get faster recharge to make up for their lower damage, so there's actually a real tradeoff to consider, but Sentinels inherited the lower damage despite having normalized (slowed down) recharges. 

 

Yeah, I can live with some of it, but the incorrect scalar translation really makes it suck. If just the scalar values were properly adjusted they would fall in line with the rest of the primary T9s. 

[Glacier Peak]

1 hour ago, FupDup said:

The OP is highlighting the disparity between Rain of Arrows/Full Auto and the other Sentinel nukes: 

 

On other ranged ATs those two get faster recharge to make up for their lower damage, so there's actually a real tradeoff to consider, but Sentinels inherited the lower damage despite having normalized (slowed down) recharges. 

 

3 minutes ago, drbuzzard said:

Yes, and as I mentioned they have slower recharge than blaster, and much lower damage. That breaks one of the baseline rules of how powers work in COH. 

 

If I wanted to make up for both disparities you'd have to factor in both the scalar error and increase the adjusted damage by an increase of 50% because of slower recharge. 

 

Sentinel FA would be 10 ticks of 25 damage and the arrows would drop 1-3 times for 110. They would then be the best nukes among sentinels by a fair margin. 

 

The powers developer Captain Powerhouse indicated in the beta thread linked above that there is not a disparity or a scalar error with regards to Sentinel T9s - they are in fact designed to align closer to melee AT mini-nukes like Shield Charge or Lightning Rod than Blaster/Defender/Corruptor nukes.

 

Quote

It does the correct amount of damage, all sentinel T9s are balanced in entirely different ways, closer to melee AT mini-nukes like Shield Charge or Lightning Rod (not carbon copied, just closer to them) than to Blaster/Defender/Corruptor nukes.

 

The typical Sentinel nuke is a sphere and does the bulk of its damage only to the smallest area in the center, cones cant do that, so instead of that Full Auto for sentinels randomizes how many targets in the cone will get hit for the bonus damage that would normally only hit those foes in the exact center.

[FupDup]

11 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

 

 

The powers developer Captain Powerhouse indicated in the beta thread linked above that there is not a disparity or a scalar error with regards to Sentinel T9s - they are in fact designed to align closer to melee AT mini-nukes like Shield Charge or Lightning Rod than Blaster/Defender/Corruptor nukes.

 

His explanation only covers Full Auto - which I'd argue is actually a further nerf since the "inner radius" mechanic of other Sent nukes give you control over which targets get hit hardest. It doesn't explain the enormous gap between Rain of Arrows and the other Sent nukes. If these abilities were created from scratch for Sents specifically I don't think this extreme gap would exist. 

 

The simplest explanation here is that these Sent nukes all inherited some of the design traits from the parent powersets on other ATs, but the two outliers (Full Auto and Rain of Arrows) did not get any special Sentinel consideration for their unique tradeoff of lower damage for faster recharge that other ATs get. 

Edited July 4, 2023 by FupDup

[Glacier Peak]

6 minutes ago, FupDup said:

His explanation only covers Full Auto - which I'd argue is actually a further nerf since the "inner radius" mechanic of other Sent nukes give you control over which targets get hit hardest. It doesn't explain the enormous gap between Rain of Arrows and the other Sent nukes. If these abilities were created from scratch for Sents specifically I don't think this extreme gap would exist. 

 

The simplest explanation here is that these Sent nukes all inherited some of the design traits from the parent powersets on other ATs, but the two outliers (Full Auto and Rain of Arrows) did not get any special Sentinel consideration for their unique tradeoff of lower damage for faster recharge that other ATs get. 

This makes the original poster's point clearer to me now. Is there a standard damage formula that is unique to Sentinels?

[drbuzzard]

15 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

 

 

The powers developer Captain Powerhouse indicated in the beta thread linked above that there is not a disparity or a scalar error with regards to Sentinel T9s - they are in fact designed to align closer to melee AT mini-nukes like Shield Charge or Lightning Rod than Blaster/Defender/Corruptor nukes.

 

 

Yet somehow Full Auto and Rain of Arrows are completely out of whack with respect to every other sentinel T9. 

 

His explanation in regards to full auto is IMO fairly weak sauce, but does not at all address rain of arrows which is simply the weakest of all sentinel T9s. I've enjoyed playing up that new archer, but the T9 is just so bad, I will go back to other more effective sets. Archery as it turns out has a great single target chain, but that nuke is just so bad it blows out the remainder of the set. 

 

Actually this leads to some amusing calculations. I'm not going to read through that old thread, but there's some odd disparities. 

 

Say we look at scrapper lightning rod, that's probably the best example of a mini nuke. It came out first and has the same recharge time as sentinel T9s. It does 200.19 damage. If you multiply that by the ratio of sentinel to scrapper scalar, you get 195. That's basically what all sentinel T9s do. Thus he's right when he says those are comparable rather than blaster nukes. Funny when you look at blaster nukes, they are worse. Take blackstar or dreadful wail, they do 250 damage with a 145 second recharge. If you adjusted them to sentinel recharge and scalar they would only do 151 damage. 

 

So when I compare FA and RoA blaster values and sentinel values and the latter are pathetic, it really breaks the mold for how the numbers should lie. I don't see how it would be even vaguely unreasonable if they were in line with the other nukes. 

 

 

[drbuzzard]

21 minutes ago, FupDup said:

The simplest explanation here is that these Sent nukes all inherited some of the design traits from the parent powersets on other ATs, but the two outliers (Full Auto and Rain of Arrows) did not get any special Sentinel consideration for their unique tradeoff of lower damage for faster recharge that other ATs get. 

Actually based on recharge (which is supposed to be the key balance aspect of a power determining damage), FA and RoA are way out of whack in a positive way for all ATs except sentinels. The numbers are pretty wacky. 

[Underfyre]

So if you take a look in City of Data you will see this:

 

Those two little circles are for an inner and an outer radius. So for Inferno we have:

 

The first part doing 56.7669 damage is for the inner radius exclusively, which is a 10 foot diameter around your character, not very much. It's 5 feet in each direction. Like, they have to be basically standing on you for that damage to apply. The rest of the damage is always done.

 

Now lets look at Full Auto:

 

There is no inner/outer radius. It always does its full damage to all enemies in its cone. This is shared with Rain of Arrows, Blizzard, Cat 5, and Geyser.

 

The undependable inner radius damage bonus is the reasoning for the damage disparity.

[Brutal Justice]

3 hours ago, Underfyre said:

The first part doing 56.7669 damage is for the inner radius exclusively, which is a 10 foot diameter around your character, not very much. It's 5 feet in each direction. Like, they have to be basically standing on you for that damage to apply. The rest of the damage is always done.

I am confused by this portion and could use further explanation.  The circle icons indicate a 10ft radius.  You said it’s a 10ft diameter with a 5 ft radius.  Is it a 10ft radius and thus 10ft in each direction, or a 5 ft radius and 5 ft in each direction?  Or is your character model occupying a 5ft radius and therefore the 10ft radius is actually reduced to a 5ft radius outside of your personal space?

 

Edit:   I think Bopper has answered my questions in his following post. 

Edited July 5, 2023 by Brutal Justice

[Bopper]

On 7/4/2023 at 7:15 AM, drbuzzard said:

Nametotal

Full Auto 147.45 (this includes a 16% crit that adds some damage, base is 138)

Your numbers for the nukes are adding both the total radius and the inner radius damage. If you go back and look at the nukes, you will see the total radius all do a base of 138 damage (just like the base damage of full auto).

 

Since full auto is a cone, it can't have an inner radius like the sphere attacks. So some math hackery is done to balance it out. You'll notice target AoEs (like elec blasts nuke) us an 8' inner radius while PBAoE nukes use a 10' radius, because your character eats up 2' radius in the center.

 

When you use the 8' inner radius, compared to the 20' total radius, the 8' radius covers 16% of the 2-D area (8/20 x 8/20 = 0.16). So full auto uses a 16% crit chance to represent the 16% likelihood a target would be inside the 8' sphere. Is it perfect? No. But it's a fair compromise to balance itself with other nukes who only do their max damage in a very small area.

Edited July 5, 2023 by Bopper

[drbuzzard]

6 hours ago, Bopper said:

Your numbers for the nukes are adding both the total radius and the inner radius damage. If you go back and look at the nukes, you will see the total radius all do a base of 138 damage (just like the base damage of full auto).

 

Since full auto is a cone, it can't have an inner radius like the sphere attacks. So some math hackery is done to balance it out. You'll notice target AoEs (like elec blasts nuke) us an 8' inner radius while PBAoE nukes use a 10' radius, because your character eats up 2' radius in the center.

 

When you use the 8' inner radius, compared to the 20' total radius, the 8' radius covers 16% of the 2-D area (8/20 x 8/20 = 0.16). So full auto uses a 16% crit chance to represent the 16% likelihood a target would be inside the 8' sphere. Is it perfect? No. But it's a fair compromise to balance itself with other nukes who only do their max damage in a very small area.

 

Ok that explains the math. It doesn't, IMO, make it math well applied however. Say we have a 10' radius. That's 314 sqft. If each mob takes up 2' radius, then each ones is around 12 sqft. You have a target cap of 10. That's 120 sqft. Even for the ranged nukes with 8' radius for big bada boom. we're still talking 200 sqft, so you can still cram in all 10 targets. While it is certainly possible to get a  number into the greater area outside the inner 10 (or 8) feet, I don't find myself having much issue with it as aggro makes things bunch up nicely. If you're teamed up with a tank, you are basically guaranteed to put them all into that 10', and FA just gets boned. 

 

Though if they justify the 8' radius on ranged ones based on a person in the middle of PBAOEs, they are rather math challenged there. You subtract out the roughly 12 sqft of user from that 314 and you have basically the same area. Going to 8' radius cuts your area by 1/3. 

 

 

 

Edited July 6, 2023 by drbuzzard

[Sovera]

On 7/4/2023 at 4:22 PM, FupDup said:

The OP is highlighting the disparity between Rain of Arrows/Full Auto and the other Sentinel nukes: 

 

 

On other ranged ATs those two get faster recharge to make up for their lower damage, so there's actually a real tradeoff to consider, but Sentinels inherited the lower damage despite having normalized (slowed down) recharges. 

 

Simple enough to resolve though: stop making sentinel nukes normalized and have AR and RoA on 60 second timer as they were designed for.

[drbuzzard]

4 hours ago, Sovera said:

 

Simple enough to resolve though: stop making sentinel nukes normalized and have AR and RoA on 60 second timer as they were designed for.

 

That would be interesting, but the sentinels get the powers on higher recharge at lower damage that the other ATs (by scalar). There's a rational for it with FA (which I find to be rather weak, but at least it exists). There's no excuse for RoA for being the absolute worst sentinel T9. You recharge in 30 more seconds to do less damage than other ATs. 

 

Blaster RoA: 75 (adjusted for scalar )= 73

Corrupter RoA 51 (adjusted for scalar ) = 73

Defender RoA 43  (adjusted for scalar) =73

 

Alas, the sentinel with 90 second recharge (compared to 60 above) does 62. 

 

(to be clear this is a single damage tick in the RoA field where there can be up to 3, average being 2, so sentinel RoA does 122)

 

I rather imagine the fact that RoA doesn't have some area damage function is how they rationalize it doing crap damage, but that's weak. 

Edited July 7, 2023 by drbuzzard

[honoroit]

never taken a sentinel past 20, and that only once.

 

the AT pays steeply for a 2ndary armor set.

 

effectively, youd do low range aoe better on a spines stalker, and have valid use of your armors in melee range, great ATOs, and hide.

 

it is categorically inferior to blaster, corruptor. despite having a few abilites swapped here and there.

 

 

i dont see the appeal.

 

honoroit, the philosopher

 

 

[Underfyre]

5 hours ago, honoroit said:

i dont see the appeal.

 

You don't have to. The door's over there.

[honoroit]

1 hour ago, Underfyre said:

 

You don't have to. The door's over there.

 

objectively though, what's good about it? 

 

I'm not being wicked, nor inviting summary dismissal - unless the reason is 'cuz' with nothing more to add.

 

[FupDup]

8 minutes ago, honoroit said:

objectively though, what's good about it? 

 

I'm not being wicked, nor inviting summary dismissal - unless the reason is 'cuz' with nothing more to add.

It's a ranged AT that gets built-in mezz protection, debuff resistance, and overall better protection (armor set depending). 

 

Also, IMO a big selling point is that you don't need to spend all day in melee (Blasters) or buffing/debuffing (Defender/Corrupter). It's an AT that just can spend all day shooting without losing massive parts of their kits' functionality. It can create character concepts like Iron Man or War Machine that don't really feel right on the other ATs. 

 

Boiling hot take: Sentinels might be the only truly ranged AT in the game (Blasters are melee/mezz, Corrs are supports). 

 

Bonus Round: Some sets on Sents translate better than others, like for example Super Reflexes gets a clicky aborb plus passive endurance recovery and toggle mezz protection. Invuln is another one that is truly stupid, gaining passive absorb plus greater max endurance in one power. 

Edited July 8, 2023 by FupDup

[honoroit]

6 minutes ago, FupDup said:

It's a ranged AT that gets built-in mezz protection, debuff resistance, and overall better protection (armor set depending). 

 

Also, IMO a big selling point is that you don't need to spend all day in melee (Blasters) or buffing/debuffing (Defender/Corrupter). It's an AT that just can spend all day shooting without losing massive parts of their kits' functionality. It can create character concepts like Iron Man or War Machine that don't really feel right on the other ATs. 

 

Boiling hot take: Sentinels might be the only truly ranged AT in the game (Blasters are melee/mezz, Corrs are supports). 

 

Bonus Round: Some sets on Sents translate better than others, like for example Super Reflexes gets a clicky aborb plus passive endurance recovery and toggle mezz protection. Invuln is another one that is truly stupid, gaining passive absorb plus greater max endurance in one power. 

 

that makes sense I guess! ty