Throwing Knife 33% farther range than Sentinel blasts?

[Thraxen]

I'll preface this that I have 4 fully done T4'd IO'd sentinels.

 

Throwing Knife has 80 ft range.  You get it on a sentinel.  

 

Sentinel attacks have 60 ft range.

 

You can throw a knife farther than you can shoot an assault rifle.  

 

This is dumb.   

[macskull]

Yes, I agree the arbitrary range limitation on Sentinels is dumb especially considering they get lower target caps and worse nukes to boot.

[biostem]

46 minutes ago, Thraxen said:

This is dumb.   

You should see how far firearms can be effectively wielded in real life.  Regardless, it was a general buff to the origin powers, not one that targeted sentinels, specifically...

Edited April 18 by biostem

[Videra]

2 minutes ago, biostem said:

You should how far firearms can be effectively wielded in real life.

 

Literally why is this relevant?

On-topic: Sentinels are dog-ass and they shouldn't be kneecapped in literally every category like they currently are.

[Thraxen]

18 minutes ago, biostem said:

You should how far firearms can be effectively wielded in real life.  Regardless, it was a general buff to the origin powers, not one that targeted sentinels, specifically...

 

I'm well aware.  Are you?  80 feet with an assault rifle?  Verses a throwing knife?  

[biostem]

9 minutes ago, Thraxen said:

I'm well aware.  Are you?  80 feet with an assault rifle?  Verses a throwing knife?  

You are missing the point;  Firearms, especially rifles, should have ranges in the multiple 100s of feet, yet in-game they are severely limited.  Sentinels have reduced range to "balance" them also having armor sets, and to keep melee ATs competitive.  The origin attacks were buffed across the board to the "standard" 80'.  It has nothing to do with realism and was merely a QoL change that benefitted everyone.  I notice no one is talking about black wand or Nemesis staff, which always had that 80' range advantage...

[Videra]

1 minute ago, biostem said:

You are missing the point;  Firearms, especially rifles, should have ranges in the multiple 100s of feet, yet in-game they are severely limited.  Sentinels have reduced range to "balance" them also having armor sets, and to keep melee ATs competitive.  The origin attacks were buffed across the board to the "standard" 80'.  It has nothing to do with realism and was merely a QoL change that benefitted everyone.  I notice no one is talking about black wand or Nemesis staff, which always had that 80' range advantage...

 

It doesn't balance shit.

 

Sentinels are bad, their range is knee-capped, their target caps are knee-capped, they literally don't do anything that is noteworthy outside of an inherent that is easily looked over because other ATs can do -Res without the same constrictions vulnerability has.

They need to make Sentinels actually good at something - as it stands, they're a hockey-padded Defender, not a 'ranged scrapper' or 'armored blaster'. They're just straight trash.

[A.I.D.A.]

Daggers have a range increment of ten feet.

[ScarySai]

Sentinels should have longer range than anyone in the game imo.

 

They are built like a sniper, with lower target caps and such - but lack a snipe, lack any notable damage, and lack pretty much any redeeming qualities. Even peacebringers laugh at them.

 

If you could build a sentinel to be some eye in the sky sniper, that'd be...something?

[Thraxen]

Throwing knife, nem staff, whatever, has 80 ft range.  Sentinels have 60.  I just used assault rifle as an example because it compared to throwing a knife easiest.  Obviously, it isn't a real game.  You can shoot lasers out of your eyes. 

 

The range differences were the issue.  

 

Limiting sentinels to 60 ft range is just dumb...........................................................................

[FupDup]

Having the reduced range could make some sense in terms of making them attract more aggro than the squishier ranged classes, as Sents have more armor to be able to handle the extra heat. Or, in other words, there's less value in having extra armor as you get further and further away from the action since there will be less return fire as you get further out. And there's the point people like to make that Sents often get their strongest attack as a level 35 epic melee attack, which means you're now at 7ft range anyways. 

 

But that being said, the most likely reason for this is that the devs were very overly-conservative when designing the AT, similar to how many of their new powersets are also very cautious to avoid "rocking the boat" too hard. Don't want to make the Fire Blasters feel nervous. 

 

Of all the drawbacks that the AT has to deal with (melee set target caps on ranged sets, low armor/HP modifiers, inherent that can't stack, ATO procs suck, weird epic power choices besides the melees...), the range is the least impactful by far (albeit annoying in the early game). Slotting the ATO sets makes the issue disappear entirely, but that does come at the cost of wasting two set bonuses on range. I think that the superior ATO range buffs should be rolled into Sents' base stats just so that we can replace those ATO set bonuses with some extra resistances or something else more useful. 

Edited April 18 by FupDup

[Triumphant]

The range on Sentinel attacks has always been a sore spot for me.  Now, I will say, I think recent tweaks to the class have indeed improved it from the original version, so a heart-felt "Thank you" to the Devs for that.

 

None-the-less, I still think their attacks should lean more towards the standard 80ft of other AT's, rather than the current 60'.  I've heard all of the arguments for why they were given the anemic range, and find none of them credible or compelling.

 

Just one guy's opinion.  It doesn't make me right.

[Sovera]

In practical terms the short range is mostly cosmetic. If solo then the mobs are all over us the moment we initiate and if in a team we can park our butt still well out of melee range and pepper the mobs from mid range.

 

Now the target caps really need to go as Sentinels depend on their nuke and AoEs to quickly clean and they hit half the spawn instead.

[Uun]

12 hours ago, Videra said:

Sentinels are bad...as it stands, they're a hockey-padded Defender, not a 'ranged scrapper' or 'armored blaster'. They're just straight trash.

I don't know what you've tried, but I quite enjoy my sentinels. I wouldn't turn down more range or higher target caps, but I find them very effective as is. 

[Videra]

4 minutes ago, Uun said:

I don't know what you've tried, but I quite enjoy my sentinels. I wouldn't turn down more range or higher target caps, but I find them very effective as is. 

 

I've tried the only sentinels that are worth making, and if you look at something as simple as Ston's 'good' pylon time on a sentinel, you're going to notice how eminently Sentinel's maximum output is unsustainable in real gameplay.

They do not have a niche - even as a starter AT, which is something Brute is better at.

[tidge]

I admit: I found the range of the Sentinel attacks to be annoying, up until I got the secondary set to the point at which I felt I could stand toe-to-toe with most critters. Similarly, the target cap is really annoying until I can turn up the spawn sizes.

 

I find it a somewhat jarring play experience to start with a tougher, but inferior ranged attacker and then end up with (via powers and slotting) a very tough, but still inferior ranged attacker... especially considering the melee damage that a well-built Blaster can do. I find the trade off to be that Sentinels are less likely to have things go pear-shaped than Blasters. In addition to the Sentinel secondary, I find it to be almost impossible to get/hold aggro in team play. I can easily see how Sentinels can be a frustrating play experience, since it is generally enemy defeats that trigger the endorphins. 

 

I generally find Sentinels are in a pretty good place vis-a-vis Blasters; they certainly offer more of a difference (in play) than what might be seen between the assorted melee classes (Scrapper, Stalker, Brute, tanker).

[Thraxen]

Well, sents do get ko blow. So there is that. 

[SeraphimKensai]

You're absolutely right that throwing knife shouldn't put range a sentinel's blast.

 

In the real world, I'm a cog in the government that is a combat vet and used to find time to do martial arts and black smith (knives, swords, etc).

 

Take a knife for instance, it's size, shape, weight, and balance can vary significantly which can drastically change the range one can throw a knife. Also if you have no training on throwing a knife it's not going to go anywhere reliably, but even some of the best knife throwers out there have a range of about 25 feet. 

 

LEOs (law enforcement officers) typically adhere to a range of 21 feet as a potential dangerous area to be in if an assailant has a knife.

 

Sentinels have a range of 60 feet before set bonuses. In MLB baseball the distance of the pitcher's mound to home plate is 60 feet and 6 inches. You're average person has difficulty throwing a baseball that distance, and has even worse accuracy with wild pitches all over. A baseball is significantly more stable to throw than a knife by leaps and bounds.

 

Perhaps the solution is to ensure that Sentinels' blast range isn't dwarfed by throwing knives, and we reduce the range on throwing knives to say 25 feet? Or even better give the knives less accuracy then further the target is away from the player, and still limited to a range of 25 feet.

Edited May 2 by SeraphimKensai

[Larellei]

On 4/18/2024 at 8:58 AM, Videra said:

 

I've tried the only sentinels that are worth making, and if you look at something as simple as Ston's 'good' pylon time on a sentinel, you're going to notice how eminently Sentinel's maximum output is unsustainable in real gameplay.

They do not have a niche - even as a starter AT, which is something Brute is better at.

See the two words I highlighted? "real gameplay." It's twelve years since your argument had any merit whatsoever. Homecoming is a labor of love for people who want to have fun playing the game. The end-game "all that matters is incarnate munchkin power groups" were a real thing to complain about back when NCSoft ran CoH as a subscription service - you were, after all, a paying customer of a commercial product.

 

This isn't a commercial product anymore. If all you can find joy in is post-50 meta builds, that's cool - you do you. But don't gripe about not every class not being twinked to max the way *you* want to play. This version of the game is - more than any other MMO, ever - for relaxing and experiencing all the fun that most people never get a chance to get to in a live-service, subscription-based game.

 

Sentinels are fun as-is. They may not be everything possible in the end game, and that's ok. I'd strongly suggest you take a step back and look larger than just metas. Actually play to have fun with different ways and not just following lock-step with arbitrary end-game dogma.