Sentinel Ice Blast Balance Pass

[Kachooman]

Good morning,

 

Just suggesting that a balance pass on numbers might be needed for Ice Blast in the Sentinel Sets.

I think a lot of the sentinel sets are in really in a good shape at the moment feel fun to play etc, Ice Blast is a bit of a weird one where the balance parity when compared to others sets in sentinel seems a bit off.

 

Using Damage per animation numbers and comparing it to say Fire and Energy the first powers are out of step with each other.
Fire and energy are pretty consistant with the other Sent sets in that the first two powers hitting for similar to their blast counterparts but a little less than the blaster versions, ice however has a bit of a chunk less.

Left hand side is the blaster right is the Sentinel notice the damage per animation changes.

 

 

Then Freezing Ray to chilling ray for me makes the least sense, thematically all ice sets have strong holds, Icy Touch with the melee and then class defining double hold for the blast set. Currently Freezing Ray has this swapped for a sleep which thematically is pretty out of step with every other ice set. In addition it has a much longer animation time than the blast counterpart meaning it hits for a lot less.

 

Again Blaster left Sentinel Right
 

I don't think there is any big changes needed to resolve this however I just think a quick balance pass on this powerset to bring it in line with other Sentinel sets level of parity would be nice and make for a better experience for players wanting to try this set out.

 

Thanks for taking the time to read!

 

Have a good one!

Edited June 10 by Kachooman

[Glacier Peak]

I'm not sure why you're comparing Blaster to Sentinel.

[FupDup]

2 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

I'm not sure why you're comparing Blaster to Sentinel.

Both ATs sit in the Ranged Damage category in the role diversity system and both have similar primaries. Sents were created for people who wanted a Blaster-like playstyle with armor instead of melee for their secondary. 

 

Blasters are most definitely supposed to deal more damage than Sents, but in the case of Ice Blast the gap is drastically wider between the two than it really should be. And even compared to other Sent primaries, Ice Blast is among the weakest despite being one of the strongest blast sets on the other 3 ATs who can choose it. 

[Glacier Peak]

27 minutes ago, FupDup said:

Both ATs sit in the Ranged Damage category in the role diversity system and both have similar primaries. Sents were created for people who wanted a Blaster-like playstyle with armor instead of melee for their secondary. 

 

Blasters are most definitely supposed to deal more damage than Sents, but in the case of Ice Blast the gap is drastically wider between the two than it really should be. And even compared to other Sent primaries, Ice Blast is among the weakest despite being one of the strongest blast sets on the other 3 ATs who can choose it. 

Given the poster decided to thumb down my question instead of answer it, I'll take my leave. I will leave you with this reply, however. When a suggestion fails to take in to account there are other qualifiers beyond damage (like range difference, soft control, and the fact that Sentinels are given armor powersets as a secondary) the comparison is moot. The original post could've said Corruptor or Defender too and made little sense, but for some reason DPA is chosen against Blaster even though it doesn't account for Sentinel debuffs or their protection from their armor, let alone the range difference. Why not compare to other Sentinel powersets, not in the vacuum of DPA, but in a holistic approach backed up by objective data? This is just another suggestion that begs for more damage without any consideration for balance (even though the poster was given plenty of reason why the powerset is the way it is over in the Sentinel Archetype sub forum).

[Rudra]

To show what @Glacier Peak is saying, just taking a look at the author's 3 listed powers at start and how they differ from each other:

 

Power Bolt: 61.1712 damage, 5.2 END cost, 4 second recharge, 0.833 seconds animation before effect

Flares: 70.04107 damage (41.5964 damage + 28.44467 DoT over 3.1 seconds), 3.536 END cost, 2 second recharge 0.833 seconds animation before effect

Ice Bolt: 51.3838 damage, -20% jump height, all movement speeds, and recharge for 6 seconds with a stacking effect; 4.368 END cost, 3 second recharge, 0.633 seconds animation before effect.

All 3 have 1 second animation, 60 feet range, are ST, and have an accuracy of 1.

(All data pulled from City of Data for Sentinels.)

 

I did not count the Mag 1.163 KB that Power Bolt has because it only has a 20% chance of triggering whereas the other effects listed have a 100% chance of triggering, though Flares' DoT has a 100% chance of an 80% chance which I am rather confused by. So Ice Bolt looks pretty comparable to me, with Flares again being the ubermensch of the 3. (Edit: I believe Flares' DoT has a 100% chance for each tick of damage to check to see if it actually triggers at an 80% chance each.)

 

Yes, Sentinels are part of the Ranged Damage group of ATs, but the ATs don't really cross to each other very well, other than Corruptors and Defenders. So Sentinel power sets aren't really comparable to Blaster power sets despite being derived from them. The Sentinel power sets all seem to be balanced against each other as far as I can tell.

Edited June 10 by Rudra

[Kachooman]

37 minutes ago, Rudra said:

To show what @Glacier Peak is saying, just taking a look at the author's 3 listed powers at start and how they differ from each other:

 

Power Bolt: 61.1712 damage, 5.2 END cost, 4 second recharge, 0.833 seconds animation before effect

Flares: 70.04107 damage (41.5964 damage + 28.44467 DoT over 3.1 seconds), 3.536 END cost, 2 second recharge 0.833 seconds animation before effect

Ice Bolt: 51.3838 damage, -20% jump height, all movement speeds, and recharge for 6 seconds with a stacking effect; 4.368 END cost, 3 second recharge, 0.633 seconds animation before effect.

All 3 have 1 second animation, 60 feet range, are ST, and have an accuracy of 1.

(All data pulled from City of Data for Sentinels.)

 

I did not count the Mag 1.163 KB that Power Bolt has because it only has a 20% chance of triggering whereas the other effects listed have a 100% chance of triggering, though Flares' DoT has a 100% chance of an 80% chance which I am rather confused by. So Ice Bolt looks pretty comparable to me, with Flares again being the ubermensch of the 3. (Edit: I believe Flares' DoT has a 100% chance for each tick of damage to check to see if it actually triggers at an 80% chance each.)

 

Yes, Sentinels are part of the Ranged Damage group of ATs, but the ATs don't really cross to each other very well, other than Corruptors and Defenders. So Sentinel power sets aren't really comparable to Blaster power sets despite being derived from them. The Sentinel power sets all seem to be balanced against each other as far as I can tell.

I don't agree with this, I think the sets they are based off are a good point of comparison especially when you can compare across the Sent AT powers, just as looking across similar sets to different ATs are this isnt a apples to watermelon comparison. Even with your comparison it might just be 10 DPA but why is it ice bolt is 10 DPA lower when the others are not?

Definately there are less issues with the first two powers in Ice, but Chilling ray compared to any other ice power and even in the set is a big outlier for me at least. the 1.67 second animation time along with the sleep make it a lot less effective than any equivilient ice power across any AT with ice powers.

 

I don't think there are big tweaks to be had, but if a pass is done on the set might as well fix up the smaller imbalance along with Chilling Ray.

 

Edited June 10 by Kachooman

[Glacier Peak]

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

Yes, Sentinels are part of the Ranged Damage group of ATs, but the ATs don't really cross to each other very well, other than Corruptors and Defenders. So Sentinel power sets aren't really comparable to Blaster power sets despite being derived from them. The Sentinel power sets all seem to be balanced against each other as far as I can tell.

Since you @ me, I'll also add what @Luminara posted on the Sentinel sub forum:

 

"It deals less damage than the blaster version because sentinels aren't blasters, they're scrappers with a ranged primary; and it has a shorter recharge time (HC uses a formula to determine damage, base recharge time is one of the variables in that formula.  the faster an attack's base recharge, the less base damage it deals).  It uses Sleep instead of Hold because sentinels were designed to be less reliant on hard controls, none of their primaries have two hard controls which can stack (you can select a *PP with a compatible hard control if you want to stack)."

[Rudra]

27 minutes ago, Kachooman said:

I don't agree with this, I think the sets they are based off are a good point of comparison especially when you can compare across the Sent AT powers, just as looking across similar sets to different ATs are this isnt a apples to watermelon comparison. Even with your comparison it might just be 10 DPA but why is it ice bolt is 10 DPA lower when the others are not?

Definately there are less issues with the first two powers in Ice, but Chilling ray compared to any other ice power and even in the set is a big outlier for me at least. the 1.67 second animation time along with the sleep make it a lot less effective than any equivilient ice power across any AT with ice powers.

 

I don't think there are big tweaks to be had, but if a pass is done on the set might as well fix up the smaller imbalance along with Chilling Ray.

 

That 10 DPA difference is balanced by having a faster recharge, lower END cost, and the -20% speed and recharge debuff the power is guaranteed to apply. (Whether the target has resistances to that is another matter entirely.) So I'm going to go out on a limb and wager that the devs aren't going to change that.

 

As for the Chilling Ray bit? Blaster's Freeze Ray has a Mag 3 Hold that lasts 9.536 seconds in addition to its damage. Chilling Ray has a Mag 3 Sleep that lasts for 9.536 seconds while also reducing the target's jump height, jump speed, run speed, fly speed, and power recharge by -20% for 6 seconds that stacks with itself and every other slow effect from the power set. So yeah, the change from a Hold to a Sleep is annoying, but the power does more than just sleep the target too.

[Kachooman]

37 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Since you @ me, I'll also add what @Luminara posted on the Sentinel sub forum:

 

"It deals less damage than the blaster version because sentinels aren't blasters, they're scrappers with a ranged primary; and it has a shorter recharge time (HC uses a formula to determine damage, base recharge time is one of the variables in that formula.  the faster an attack's base recharge, the less base damage it deals).  It uses Sleep instead of Hold because sentinels were designed to be less reliant on hard controls, none of their primaries have two hard controls which can stack (you can select a *PP with a compatible hard control if you want to stack)."

This rationale doesn't make sense because powers are not designed in a vacuum why would this be changed to a sleep and the bitter freeze not?

 

Sentinels are not blasters is also a weird straw man. You can compare these powers across the different sent sets this one is just an outlier it terms of not being good. All remain based off their blast set as the starting point and for most of them you can see the design choice in the changes. This one just stand out. It doesn't matter if they are not the same it's obtuse to bring it up when talking about the damage of powers.

 

 

[Troo]

3 hours ago, FupDup said:

Sents were created for people who wanted a Blaster-like Ranged playstyle with armor instead of melee for their secondary. 

 

Fixed this for you. (just my opinion)

 

6 hours ago, Kachooman said:

the balance parity when compared to others sets in sentinel seems a bit off.

 

not everything has to be same same, game loses some flavor trying to make everything equal.

 

[Rudra]

20 minutes ago, Kachooman said:

This rationale doesn't make sense because powers are not designed in a vacuum why would this be changed to a sleep and the bitter freeze not?

 

1 hour ago, Glacier Peak said:

none of their primaries have two hard controls which can stack

My guess? Because of this part of the quote you are ignoring.

 

22 minutes ago, Kachooman said:

Sentinels are not blasters is also a weird straw man.

But they aren't Blasters and were never intended to be?

 

23 minutes ago, Kachooman said:

it's obtuse to bring it up when talking about the damage of powers.

Except powers are not just their damage. They are their damage, secondary effects, END cost, recharge, animation time. number of targets capable of being affected, and the other elements used in their creation. And all of that has to be balanced. In the case of Sentinels, all their power sets seem balanced against each other to me. Not against Blasters. Not against Corruptors, Not against Defenders. Against other Sentinel power sets. And those power sets are balanced in whole against each other, not on a power by power in their respective tiers arrangement.

[Kachooman]

Yep, this is going in circles so I will just agree to disagree on this.

 

I don't think the set is in the same state as other Sentiel sets but seems like for you its perfectly balanced and should not change.

[Rudra]

45 minutes ago, Kachooman said:

Yep, this is going in circles so I will just agree to disagree on this.

 

I don't think the set is in the same state as other Sentiel sets but seems like for you its perfectly balanced and should not change.

All I'm saying is that you need to consider more than just damage to determine if a power is balanced and that Sentinels cannot be compared to Blasters for what is balanced. (Edit: Because Sentinels are not armored Blasters, they are armored ranged characters.) You're right though, we are going in circles, so like you said, we'll just agree to disagree.

Edited June 10 by Rudra

[Ghost]

For what it’s worth (and admittedly not very much) I think I understand what OP was trying to say.

He wasn’t using blasters as a comparison, but more of a baseline.

If using blasters as the base, he is saying comparable sent power do (we’ll just say) 10% less damage per same attack.  But cold is doing (again just throwing out a number) 30% less per same attack. 
He just wanted it evened out.

 

Dont know if I agree or not, and heck I could be wrong about what he is saying.

[FupDup]

24 minutes ago, Ghost said:

For what it’s worth (and admittedly not very much) I think I understand what OP was trying to say.

He wasn’t using blasters as a comparison, but more of a baseline.

If using blasters as the base, he is saying comparable sent power do (we’ll just say) 10% less damage per same attack.  But cold is doing (again just throwing out a number) 30% less per same attack. 
He just wanted it evened out.

 

Dont know if I agree or not, and heck I could be wrong about what he is saying.

That is indeed a summary of what he is trying to say. 

[Luminara]

7 hours ago, Kachooman said:

You can compare these powers across the different sent sets this one is just an outlier it terms of not being good. All remain based off their blast set as the starting point and for most of them you can see the design choice in the changes.

 

DPA for sentinel attacks comparable to Chilling Ray (54.29):

 

Aimed Shot - 51.49

Charged Shot - 54.29

Gloom - 58.26

Suppressive Fire - 58.46

Lightning Bolt - 54.29

Power Blast - 54.29

Psionic Strike - 54.77

X-Ray Beam - 54.29

Dehydrate - 50.54

 

The design philosophy is evident when viewed outside of the vacuum of Blaster > Ice Blast versus Sentinel > Ice Blast.  The HC team set criteria and adjusted powers to meet it.  Some attacks were given faster animations when ported to sentinels, others were given slower animations or had their animations extended with additional dead time.  They were balanced against a baseline encompassing sentinel attacks and a predetermined formula, not against blaster attacks.

 

7 hours ago, Kachooman said:

why would this be changed to a sleep and the bitter freeze not?

 

TO PREVENT STACKING.

[Ghost]

1 hour ago, FupDup said:

That is indeed a summary of what he is trying to say. 

If it is, he probably needs to run the same numbers with defenders, also using blasters as the base.

If defenders stay a consistent (again, made up number) 30% below blasters across all powers - there is an issue with Sent cold.

However, if Defenders have roughly the same drop on cold - it’s not an issue.  It was purposely designed that way.

[Uun]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

DPA for sentinel attacks comparable to Chilling Ray (54.29) T4:

 

Aimed Shot - 51.49 T2

Charged Shot - 54.29 

Gloom - 58.26

Suppressive Fire - 58.46

Lightning Bolt - 54.29

Power Blast - 54.29

Psionic Strike - 54.77

X-Ray Beam - 54.29

Dehydrate - 50.54

Chilling Ray is a T4 power. You're mostly comparing it to T2 powers. On Suppressive Fire, you're using cold ammo, not fire ammo. Comparing to other T4 attacks gives a different picture, but there's also variation in recharge time. Chilling Ray is at the lower end with an 8s recharge. (Psionic Strike is a T6 power with a 14s recharge. It has its own balance issues.)

 

Slug - 63.33 (8s)

Disintegrate - 62.56 (10s)

Abyssal Gaze - 70.21 (11s)

Suppressive Fire - 63.69 (20s)

Zapping Bolt - 100.92 (10s)

Power Burst - 57.79 (11s)

Blaze - 100.92 (10s)

Will Domination - 90.83 (10s)

Cosmic Burst - 57.79 (11s)

Shout - 57.79 (11s)

Dehydrate - 50.54 (8s)

[Ukase]

I do agree with one thing - freeze ray on the sentinel should be a hold, not a sleep. Other than that, I think it's just fine. 

I initially thought you were comparing Sentinel Ice to other Sentinel fire. Comparing to blaster ice is comparing apples to oranges. Both might be tasty, but they're supposed to be different. 

Don't discount the Sentinel inherent. It is a debuff that goes unnoticed by the npc. It allows for your attacks to deliver more bang. The recent revamp which allowed this is nothing short of great creativity. It was hard for me to understand it at first, because it's not obvious how the opportunity is built - until you're told, or find the info in the forums, and then you smack your forehead in a Homer Simpson fashion. 

[Uun]

An additional note regarding the T1/T2 powers. On all other ATs, Ice Bolt is 1.0 damage scale with a 4s recharge and Ice Blast is 1.64 damage scale with an 8s recharge. When the set was ported to sentinels, Ice Bolt was changed to 0.84 damage scale with a 3s recharge and Ice Blast was changed to 1.32 damage scale with a 6s recharge. While this does follow the standard balance formula, it also results in the T1 and T2 powers having lower DPA. Quite a few other sentinel primaries received similar tweaks to the T1/T2 powers (as compared to the versions on other ATs).

[Luminara]

4 hours ago, Uun said:

Chilling Ray is a T4 power. You're mostly comparing it to T2 powers.

 

I'm comparing it to powers with animation times which were adjusted when they were ported to sentinels, or with comparable DPA (you'll note that i specifically said "comparable to Chilling Ray (54.29)", not "in the same tier as Chilling Ray"), to illustrate the design philosophy behind sentinel ranged attacks.  Some of them were given faster animations, some were given slower animations, some were left as-is, the goal being a degree of parity between the sets, instead of Cryptic/Paragon's "fuck it, just make it do something, don't worry about the numbers" approach.

 

It's a 54.29 DPA attack, it's directly comparable to other 54.29 DPA attacks (it's not coincidence that there are five primaries with attacks that deal exactly 54.29 DPA), regardless of tiering, and to attacks with adjusted animation times to put them close to 54.29 DPA, because the question I was answering was "why was it designed like this?".

 

Does it suck to have a T4 attack with an arbitrarily imposed 0.66s dead space in it?  Oh yeah.  Watermelon through a garden hose.  But it is what it was designed to be.

[Uun]

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

I'm comparing it to powers with animation times which were adjusted when they were ported to sentinels, or with comparable DPA (you'll note that i specifically said "comparable to Chilling Ray (54.29)", not "in the same tier as Chilling Ray"), to illustrate the design philosophy behind sentinel ranged attacks.  Some of them were given faster animations, some were given slower animations, some were left as-is, the goal being a degree of parity between the sets, instead of Cryptic/Paragon's "fuck it, just make it do something, don't worry about the numbers" approach.

 

It's a 54.29 DPA attack, it's directly comparable to other 54.29 DPA attacks (it's not coincidence that there are five primaries with attacks that deal exactly 54.29 DPA), regardless of tiering, and to attacks with adjusted animation times to put them close to 54.29 DPA, because the question I was answering was "why was it designed like this?".

 

Does it suck to have a T4 attack with an arbitrarily imposed 0.66s dead space in it?  Oh yeah.  Watermelon through a garden hose.  But it is what it was designed to be.

I don't disagree with what you're saying, however, if the dev's goal was a degree of parity between the sentinel sets, they failed woefully. I haven't played all the blast sets as a sentinel, but it's clear that Ice underperforms. There was no reason to muck around with the damage scale and recharge of the T1 and T2 powers (which works against parity), nor was there a good reason not to port Freeze Ray as is and just change the hold to a sleep or an immobilize. It's poor design to have a T4 (or T6) attack that performs like a T2 attack.

[Shin Magmus]

     Ice Blast is disproportionately worse on Sentinels than it is on other ATs, because Sentinels were made "last" (most recently).  The person who was in charge of originally making Sentinels thinks that Fire Blast and Ice Blast are too strong, and gutted certain powers in the sets to move them toward a new (weaker) baseline.  It's extremely unlikely that after literal years of Chilling Ray being this weird (deliberately nerfed) Sentinel-exclusive power, that the devs will consider buffing it or changing it to be Freeze Ray.  I'm glad some people still want to see improvements to the set, but I just play Ice Blast on other ATs and don't even look at it on Sents.  Same reason I play Fire Blast on other ATs and don't look at it on Sents.

 

     You might think I don't have a Sent, but I do actually: Dark Blast.  Since it wasn't maladjusted like Fire and Ice, I've found Dark Blast (which now contains Dark Obliteration) to be a much more palatable experience on the AT.  If you have a concept you want to do on Sent that requires Ice Blast, my advice is to just buckle up and prepare to deal with Chilling Ray and a weirdly nerfed T1 for the long haul: I'd be shocked if the set ever got buffed this late in the game.

[Seed22]

23 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

I'm not sure why you're comparing Blaster to Sentinel.

You have got to be joking right. Please tell me you’re joking.