Water/Bio.

[Sovera]

Since Water had some small ST buffs I decided to level one up. No reason to play anything other than Bio for Sentinels since the armor being a bit squishy doesn't matter as much on an AT that starts every fight with a nuke.

 

After looking at the recharge times I saw no reason not to lean hard on procs. Not as hard as some, but much more than I usually build. As such every ST attack has three procs, even though I replaced a damage proc in some for utility such a FF proc or a -res proc. If wishing for more tooltip damage replace them for damage procs instead. I still worked on endurance which is another thing that can be tweaked and try to add another damage proc but I preferred it this way.

 

 

If we can trust Mids (which we can't always. Oh, wasn't this prophetic) it ended with:

 

Edit: as spoken about lower in the thread I checked the damage on the test server and there is a really wide discrepancy to what Mids says. But, part of it is because Mids does not account for resistances (obviously) and the pylon I was testing on has those resistances.

 

The good news is that the build still does more damage than originally stated despite the pylon res and Mids' numbers not being correct. The bad news is that most buttons other than Water Jet are a lot less interesting to press.

 

- Water Jet = A bit miserable at 268 and only recovering if used with three combos to be re-used right away which boosts it to 566. That means the initial rotation will hit for half. Initial damage hits for 385, and then the Enhanced Water Jet at 3 combo points does a boggling 715 for a grand total of 1.1k.

 

- Dehydrate = Low key the heavy hitter if used with three combos at 480 damage once we hit the target with other powers first so that they become 'Wet', but Water Jet still hits a bit harder with three combos. Also, the extra damage from the Wet mechanic comes from a slow DoT so that extra damage needs a target that lasts at least 5 seconds for it to finish ticking. Kind of correct-ish but not really. Actual damage with the Wet mechanic is about 355 which does almost catch up to Water Jet, at least the unenhanced version. But the second loop of the rotation onward and Dehydrate is left in the dust.

 

- Hydro Blast = 329 damage. I initially took Aqua Bolt but Aqua Bolt does nothing other than -def (which isn't particularly useful) and Hydro Blast does KD which is both soft CC and a FF proc. Aqua Bolt also recharges and animates too fast to warrant heavy proc usage though this makes it a good candidate to place the second ATO. Doing this makes Aqua Bolt do half the damage of Hydro Blast at 151 though the end damage is roughly the same since to fill up the gap Hydro Blast covers neatly then Aqua Bolt needs to be used twice which makes the damage from using it twice 302, so pretty close to the single use of Hydro Blast. Replacing the second ATO for five Apocalypse + a second damage proc can up this to 180, but even the purple damage proc that has a much higher chance to go off will be at a miserable 18% (and it will have to be removed from Water Jet which lowers its damage even more when replaced with a regular damage proc). Despite the temptation to swap the FF proc for a damage proc upping the damage to 393 I kept the FF proc since there are a lot of cooldowns that I want to have back soon. Even for soloing and not trying to have the nuke + Aim back as soon as possible there are still the defensive cooldowns, but slot this to taste as the temptation is real. Reasoning still stands, but most numbers are wrong. It actually does 262 damage.

 

- Geyser = our nuke. Nothing much to say, with a damage recharge it shaves 2 seconds down to 26 seconds for 691 damage without Aim. With Aim+Gaussian it's 896. Replacing the damage/recharge IO with an extra damage proc has it recharge slightly slower at 28 seconds rather than 26, but it goes from 690 to 718. With Aim+Gaussian it's 922.  So, either way the difference is minimal and as such slot according to taste. If teaming a lot then the 2 seconds might be the difference between having it at every group or not. But, if it's not used at 26 seconds on the dot then the shaved time accomplished nothing. I choose to go with the extra damage proc. Probably wrong numbers here too but I just tested as is on a pylon and with Aim+ Gaussian:

- 817 with three damage procs.

- 756 with damage/recharge IO and two damage procs.

The damage difference is partly due to the pylon resisting damage, which Mids does not account for. Procs that were meant to be doing 71 damage were doing 59 (which is a 17% damage drop) and that extends to the power's damage too.

 

The actual single-target should also be lower than stated here since the pylon resists damage and I've thrown the damage proc percentual increase as is, but it would be partly resisted. I don't think it's important enough to untangle.

 

 

In terms of AoE Water has always been good and indeed it is not uncommon to wipe a spawn within Aim's duration, except bosses. Not *too* unlike a regular Sentinel here but the extra AoE is still felt. My usual opener is picking a boss, using Opportunity on it, Aim, Geyser (soft CC with KU), Whirlpool (mobs get up from Geyser but start running away instead of fighting due to the fear effect), Water Burst (more soft CC with KU) and rinse with Steam Spray. After that there's enough time for two hits so I usually shun Water Jet (too little damage without three combos) and instead go for Hydro Blast (fishing for the FF proc) and Dehydrate (heal a bit, and it's the heavy hitter of the set anyway) which gives me three combos in time for Water Burst to be recharge which is where the three combos are used. By then it's just rinsing the rest with the ST rotation and sprinkling AoEs if mobs are clustered. Well clustered then Water Burst and Steam Spray are good, if not well custered but in line then Steam Spray only. Steam Spray hits hard enough that any chance of it hitting at least two mobs already puts it ahead than an ST attack.

 

Even while leveling and in a duo this usually clears everything so fast that the nuke is not ready for the second group so I just use the regular AoEs and don't use my nuke on an half dead group. When soloing this isn't much of a consideration since between mobs running and scattering the nuke has recharge by the time the spawn is cleared.

 

 

The ST rotation is Water Jet, Dehydrate, Hydro Blast, then Water jet twice and continue. At some point the dinossauric 5% will mess the rotation when Water Jet misses which then has Dehydrate using it but the rotation will fix itself on its own and doesn't warrant, in my opinion, waiting to correct it manually since it'll just happen again in the future. Regardless the rotation is gapless either way though when Hasten is not up there is some worth in trying harder for the Water Jet rotation since the gap can be filled with the second use.

 

 

Regarding defenses I didn't chase them very hard. I find Bio can handle most things even with just 33% defense since we open with a nuke and clear most of a group before they can retaliate much. This has been my experience even soloing against true +4. At worst gobbling a small luck will soft cap elemental defenses before level 50 and at 50 Barrier replaces that. Despite not chasing very hard it still ends with near 45% E/N (despite what Mids shows) with F/C lagging behind at a comfortable 35%. It's high enough a small purple can soft that if needed though neither fire nor cold exist in enough quantities to be worrisome, IMO.

 

Resistances I did push for since it's the only thing the build has against S/L and it ended hardcapped at 75% despite what Mids says.

 

Lets not sugarcoat it that the build will be squishy while leveling if not either focusing on defenses or playing in teams.

 

 

The build feels good as it is right now even solo despite my many deaths by dint of not slotting defenses. Dying from a volley of werewolves alpha rock throwing happened more than once thanks to going in with an unslotted Hardened Carapace toggle. But I am aware it is neither the build nor the AT's fault if I'm playing pretty much naked.

 

 

Note, don't try to level with this build the way it is or it will be a lil nightmare. It needs a fair bit of global recharge to feel good. This incidentally might mean it doesn't feel very good to exemplar too far down (Synapse and under).

 

Sentinel (Water Blast - Bio Armor).mbd

Made some changes to lower the price of things from the original build. No reason to use +3 Hamis at 100 million a pop when it's already blunted by ED. Also no reason to slot and +5 a second purple IO for around 22-23 million total in Geyser just for 0.04 EPS when a +5 Positron for 5-6 million total reaches the same numbers and only loses 0.02 EPS.

Edited 5 hours ago by Sovera

[Underfyre]

1 hour ago, Sovera said:

- Dehydrate = Low key the heavy hitter if used with three combos (480 damage) but Water Jet still hits a bit harder with three combos. Without them Dehydrate hits for 379.

 

Dehydrates damage doesn't increase at 3 TP, its healing does. Its damage does increase when a target is "wet," which happens when you use any other ability in the set.

[Sovera]

1 minute ago, Underfyre said:

 

Dehydrates damage doesn't increase at 3 TP, its healing does. Its damage does increase when a target is "wet," which happens when you use any other ability in the set.

 

That must be the boost thing I'm seeing on Mids. Thanks for the tip o/

[Underfyre]

Essentially that means your best use for Tidal Power is either going to be Water Jet or Geyser, depending on circumstances.

[Sovera]

Just now, Underfyre said:

Essentially that means your best use for Tidal Power is either going to be Water Jet or Geyser, depending on circumstances.

 

Yeah, and as I play I find the rotation rights itself even when the 5% miss happens leading to Dehydrate eating the combo points. I'll edit that out as well.

[Underfyre]

Thankfully the mods removed the pin on collab post where I did a write-up on Water Blast explaining these mechanics. Then we wouldn't have the chance to explain things a second time.

[Underfyre]

Which reminds me, I need to update the one for Water Blast explaining the "wet" mechanic now.

[Sovera]

3 hours ago, Underfyre said:

Thankfully the mods removed the pin on collab post where I did a write-up on Water Blast explaining these mechanics. Then we wouldn't have the chance to explain things a second time.

 

To be fair it was widely out of date. Collating your posts into their own thread and asking that one to be pinned might work out better.

[Underfyre]

21 hours ago, Sovera said:

 

Collating your posts into their own thread and asking that one to be pinned might work out better.

 

That's an upcoming project. I'm deployed and I'm finding I have a lot of down time on these 12 hour shifts.

[Sovera]

Made some small tweaks to the build and update the OP with more numbers.

[Sovera]

After a second look at the slotting I realized that the +3 Hami was an expensive overkill considering the 45% Musculature since it was pushing into ED territory. So I've ditched the 100 million +3 Hami for a 5-6 million +5 Thunderstrike and lowered the damage by a minute percentage (Water Jet does 265 instead of 268) with the added bonus of pushing E/N to 44.4%. Also dropped the second purple in Geyser to further lower the price since the stats are almost the same (loss of 0.02 endurance per second).

 

A good trade.

 

The three Thunderstrikes don't need to be +5 in order to keep their bonuses starting at level 27 if attuned and the damage difference will be again minimal (from 265 to 251) though the accuracy will drop to 89% instead of 96%. I don't particularly care about the extra defense in the low levels if exemplaring so I'll +5 them, but not doing so would lower the price tag to roughly 500k-1 mill per Thunderstrike.

 

Edited 4 hours ago by Sovera

[Underfyre]

Those are changes you make at the very end of character development when you're eeking out every single ounce of optimization.

[Sovera]

Finally reached 50 and transitioned to the final slotted build. The bad news is that Mids is slightly off on the numbers it presents from what I have in-game.

 

The good news is that the real numbers are higher than Mids says. Namely S/L resistance is capped at 75% and E/N is also at 16.6% in-game instead of 14.9% of Mids.

 

On the other hand it shows EPS at 3.63 without accolades where I'm actually at 3.35. Not a big deal since endurance is well in hand in actual game play with only the occasional Rebuild DNA needed.

 

 

I would usually say to keep S/L at 70% and use Barrier to cap the last 5% but I don't see the point. Doing this would save two slots though. Not sure it warrants the effort but keeping S/L at 69.5% and saving those two slots (res/recharge in Tough and the Celerity in Sprint) could be another 4.5% more for E/N by placing one slot in Aim and change the two recharge IOs for three Adjusted Targeting and the last slot in Punch for two Touch of Death.

 

Edited 4 hours ago by Sovera

[Sovera]

1 hour ago, Underfyre said:

Those are changes you make at the very end of character development when you're eeking out every single ounce of optimization.

 

Well, yeah, it's an end-game build with as much eked out as possible within my building parameters.

[Sovera]

As I was posting the bugs in Mids' discord one of the devs, Zed, mentioned that the combo system isn't working either so I'm talking mad shit about Water Jet but the second use will do a sizeable amount more than regular Water Jet. 

 

 

That's 80 points of unslotted damage there, and he says it's affected by slotting. So I did what any normal person would do and copied my character to the test server, gave myself T4 Musculature and hit a pylon a few times.

 

Without any procs slotted and no three combos I was doing 63 Smashing damage, 190 Cold Damage, and 24 Toxic (from Adaptation).

 

Without procs slotted and with three combo points I was doing 76 Smashing, 228 Cold, and 28 Toxic, followed by three ticks of Cold damage at 69 (noice), 57, 57. 

 

A few tests show the numbers don't vary.

 

So, normal Water Jet hits for 277 without procs.

 

Enhanced Water Jet hits for 515 without procs.

 

 

Now to add the proc damage. Fair warning that this will be cobbled and is not backed by real math. I'm going to look at Mid's damage without procs and then see the percentual increase with them, and then add that percent.

 

So, in Mids, with damage procs, the average damage is 265 (that's already way lower than in-game WITHOUT damage procs). 

In Mids, without damage procs, it's 190 (again, this should be 277).

 

190 to 265 is a 39,4% damage increase.

 

Adding 39% to normal Water Jet gives me 385 damage.

 

Adding 39% to Enhanced Water Jet gives me 715 damage.

 

 

Okay, lets take this with a huge grain of salt since the last numbers are napkin math. I'm not 100% sure there isn't a small dip in proc damage from Enhanced Water Jet's faster animation slightly lowering the proc chances and thus lowering the proc chances, but, I was talking mad shit about Water jet on how it does 265 x2 and thus 530 but it's actually meant to be doing 1.1k 😄

 

 

Just for completion sakes the base numbers without Adaptation or procs are: 

 

- Enhanced Water Jet: 57 smashing, 172 cold and three ticks of 57, 57, 57

- Normal Water Jet: 57 smashing, 172 cold.

Edited 4 hours ago by Sovera

[Sovera]

While I was at it I tested the other attacks and the news aren't as good.

 

Hydro Blast: without proc Mids says it should do 283 damage. In game it does 210.

 

Dehydrate: according to Mids it should be doing 449 with the Wet mechanic. In game it's 284. Brrrrutal.

 

 

Now to do the same percentual math game with procs (in theory no shenanigans should happen since there is no wacky Enhanced mechanic).

 

Hydro Blast's 210 with procs becomes 262.

 

Dehydrate with Wet mechanic and procs becomes 355.

 

Much sadness through the land. Still, more damage than originally though but firmly hinging on Water Jet. O ye who were so maligned!

 

 

Original wrong damage:

 

Water Jet = 294x2 = 588.

 

Dehydrate = 531.

 

Hydro Blast = 357.

Total = 1476

 

 

Correct-ish damage:

 

Water Jet: 385 damage. Enhanced Water Jet: 715 damage. 1.1k total

 

Hydro Blast: 262.

 

Dehydrate: 355.

 

Total = 1717

 

 

I only later noticed/remembered that pylons have 20% resistances to all which partly explains the difference between Mids and in-game. The total ST is thus not correct since I calculated the base damage on the pylon (which is fine) but for the procs I just added them percentually (which is probably not fine). I don't think it matters greatly since it's not like a build will be played or not played because it does more or less 10-15% damage.

 

Edited 5 hours ago by Sovera

[Underfyre]

Well, that's the fun part. The numbers in my spreadsheet are 100% correct. You can question how they're applied in the rotation bar at the top, but the numbers in the chunks are right. I've always said not to trust the damage numbers in Mids, they've never been right.

 

The thing that baffles me is that, even though the DPA for Hydro Blast is higher than the DPA for Aqua Bolt, Aqua Bolt turns out higher dps when in rotation. The thing happens almost every T1 power. There are only a few outliers.