Which Secondary is Superior Fire Or Rad? You Decide!

[ItsDecoy]

Hello All,

 

This is straight to the point. This poll is made to determine which armor type is the best for every aspect of the game. Soloing (AV and GM's Included), Teaming(Taskforce and Special Missions implied) ,  and just having the most fun. Put your reasons why you like or dislike either powersets and tell us your experiences you have had playing them 

 

I'm creating a Psychic Blast character and whichever one wins the poll I will probably go with. 

[biostem]

I much prefer radiation armor.  Particularly, the absorb shield and extra recovery granted by particle shielding.  You also get some extra recharge and even an AoE/team heal.

[Without_Pause]

I found FA to be lackluster on a Brute outside of AE compared to the other armors, and then the FA changes happened. If I were to do another Sent, I would likely pick /rad. You basically are good to go once you hit 24, and it goes up from there. 

[FupDup]

Rad is waaaay more durable and probably better at damage thanks to the extra PBAOE it gives you. 

 

Fire's lack of immobilize protection outside of Burn is very annoying against certain enemy groups and its resist holes are bigger and more numerous (Rad basically has no holes at all while Meltdown is active). Fire isn't unusable by any means, but if you intend to go up against some stronger enemy groups who have hefty debuffs, you're gonna faceplant a fair bit more than a Rad armor toon would. 

[Sovera]

Both have a second PbAoE to help with a Sentinel's ailing Aoe, but Burn has a tiny radius and half its damage is DoT, so with no agro aura the mobs run away and half the damage is wasted on air. In a team it's ok as we can just follow a tank and drop the napalm by their feet.

 

But at that point Rad does the same and is more durable while the PbAoE is also huge and coincides with the nuke's CD which means there is always double nuke time during Aim/Gaussian's window.

 

 

That said Burn has a couple nice things going for it:

 

- Recharging faster means using it more often. That's always nice.

- Burn's scatter effect makes things safer for a ranged solo character (though we usually can just Hover out of melee range anyway) as all that fear has mobs ignoring us to leg it.

 

Frankly it is not really that much when compared to Rad where the nuke makes for much more effective AoE and it remains sturdier.

 

 

Sturdier-ish anyway, I felt fragile on my Elec/Rad as Sentinels are truly not built to rely on resistances. Bio remains a more solid option in terms of defense and much better still for ST than either Rad or Fire, but lagging behind both for AoE. So it's a matter of picking what matters most for you.

 

In terms of regular gameplay the distance between Rad and Bio is probably shorter even in ST since we go into a group of enemies and double nuke which means even bosses will have eaten plenty of damage. But in terms of hitting an AV/pylon we don't use the nuke since it has such a slow cast time and Bio pulls ahead again. But we face AVs about 5% of the time anyway.

 

 

I've been meaning to try a Storm/Rad since Storm would easily help Rad's survivability between -tohit, KBs, and etc, and Rad would help Storm's not all that great AoE (if we skip the cone) but the trick to surviving is more often just kill things fast (which is not Storm's strong suit to put it nicely) so a Fire/Rad might be the most optimal Sentinel for general gameplay once we stop thinking about pylon times.

[Frosticus]

All things being equal, Rad has much better debuff protection to recharge debuffs and endurance debuffs.

Those are both things that resistance based builds will have to deal with.

 

 

[ItsDecoy]

Essh! Fire is getting smoked. Should have made the poll SS vs Rad or Reg vs Rad! 

[Without_Pause]

21 minutes ago, ItsDecoy said:

Essh! Fire is getting smoked. Should have made the poll SS vs Rad or Reg vs Rad! 

I assume you mean SR. If I went Psy, I would go SR simply because Def > Res and Psy doesn't really go in close so SR works for that. With Rad, you want to be in melee so you can proc bomb.

[drbuzzard]

On 8/30/2023 at 4:10 PM, Sovera said:

In terms of regular gameplay the distance between Rad and Bio is probably shorter even in ST since we go into a group of enemies and double nuke which means even bosses will have eaten plenty of damage. But in terms of hitting an AV/pylon we don't use the nuke since it has such a slow cast time and Bio pulls ahead again. But we face AVs about 5% of the time anyway.

 

Now this is an interesting question. Now for normal missions, 5% for AVs is likely accurate if even high. However for TFs, I wonder if it is, by time spent, actually a low estimate. TFs always seem to come down to the AV beatdowns taking the most time. 

[Without_Pause]

25 minutes ago, drbuzzard said:

 

Now this is an interesting question. Now for normal missions, 5% for AVs is likely accurate if even high. However for TFs, I wonder if it is, by time spent, actually a low estimate. TFs always seem to come down to the AV beatdowns taking the most time. 

Depends on how you play. AVs are rare outside of TFs. I don't think I would hit 1%.

[Sovera]

4 hours ago, drbuzzard said:

 

Now this is an interesting question. Now for normal missions, 5% for AVs is likely accurate if even high. However for TFs, I wonder if it is, by time spent, actually a low estimate. TFs always seem to come down to the AV beatdowns taking the most time. 

 

Doubtful. Depends on the TF of course, but it has been a long time since I saw any AV take more than 30 seconds outside of mechanics reasons (Romulus or whatever since he respawns 4 times, Reich guy with the extra resistances we need to use the temp power to negate, etc).

 

I HAVE seen teams crumble against an AV and just give up (Market Place set too high level, ITF with low level characters and a bad comp and set too high level) but this is the cream of the cream in the rare soup.

 

I have not tested a Rad Armor Sentinel against an AV but I did test a Bio Sentinel with the 25% power turned off (since Rad has no extras and the Sentinel version has no -res either) and predictably it went from 4 minutes to break the pylon to 5 minutes and change. I assume this would be the time for a non-bio.

 

Trapdoor tests @Ston ran with Sentinels put the Rad Armor comfortably ahead of Bio for regular missions though. And I do mean comfortably, not things like 30 seconds ahead. So it's a matter of picking your poison. Me being me playing a Rad or Bio would lead to when I played with Brutes and Tankers and if I am playing a Tanker I miss the extra damage of a Brute and if I am on a Brute I miss the sturdiness of the Tanker.

[drbuzzard]

I guess I tend to be biased about AVs since I do mostly ITFs, MLTFs, MCs, Tinpex, and Kahns.