Why Sentinel vs Blaster?

[Apparition]

27 minutes ago, Hopeling said:

Yes, of course there's an endgame for Blasters. Blasters are one of the most popular ATs in the game and clearly do quite well. The question of this thread was whether there's an endgame for Sentinels in their current state.

 

The claim I was contesting was that Blasters have a way bigger advantage in damage than their disadvantage in durability. If the Blaster focuses very hard on mitigation and the Sentinel doesn't, sure, that durability gap gets pretty small, but like you say, the Sentinel could do the same thing and be even tougher. Or if they focus on offense, they'll still be about as tough as the toughest blaster, and narrow the damage gap. A similar argument goes for Clarion, which some others were talking about - sure, a Blaster can patch their mez hole that way, but they're still only getting mag 3 protection for half the duration, and in exchange they're not using Rebirth or Barrier, which widens the durability gap.

 

Where's this mag 3 protection for Clarion coming from?  My Blaster has a minimum of mag 6 from Clarion Core.  Rebirth and Barrier are nice, but Melee Core Hybrid gives very nice regen and +resistance as well.

[Hopeling]

RoP+Melee Core gives a 30-second gap every cycle.

[Hopeling]

12 minutes ago, Apparition said:

Where's this mag 3 protection for Clarion coming from?  My Blaster has a minimum of mag 6 from Clarion Core.  Rebirth and Barrier are nice, but Melee Core Hybrid gives very nice regen and +resistance as well.

Ah, you're right, I had misremembered. The full-duration one is mag 6.

 

Melee Core Hybrid is indeed nice, but it's not specific to Blasters. I'm not saying that Blasters cannot be made durable. I'm saying that exactly the same amount of effort will make a Sentinel significantly more durable than that.

[Obitus]

18 hours ago, modest said:

From this I can conclude that Sentinels at Incarnate 50+3 deal roughly 67% of the damage of a Corruptor without factoring in the Corruptor's secondary. Sentinels deal roughly 46% of the damage of a blaster without factoring in the blaster's Build Up or Defiance.

Just want to reiterate that there's something way off about these numbers.  I don't have the time or the energy to go through the theorycrafting at the moment, but let's look at what various high-end builds do in the RIkti Pylon thread.

 

If you go there, you'll find that Sentinels like Nihilii's have very good single-target DPS, competitive with most ranged Blasters.  The reason for this is partially the power of procs; if you stack 6 damage procs in, say, Dominate from the Epic Pool, you end up with an attack with a 5-6 second cycle time and an average damage of 451 just from procs alone.  Since that damage doesn't care about your AT scalars, this is an enormous equalizer, both inter-AT and intra-AT. 

 

(As noted earlier, Mid's doesn't calculate proc damage correctly; it will severely underestimate proc damage on any build with significant global recharge.)

 

Then you have things like -RES procs, which may be harder for Blasters to justify slotting given that they need more set bonuses to achieve a reasonable level of survivability in the end game.  These have an outsized effect in high-end Pylon runs.

 

That said, Sentinels do have offensive disadvantages.  The major one is their lower AoE target cap, which will never show up in a Pylon test.  In practice, and on a solo basis, this disadvantage is mitigated somewhat by the Sentinel's faster nuke CDs - and of course the Sentinel's superior defenses tend to make solo AoE output a lot less urgent.

 

On a single-target basis, it's harder to make direct comparisons, because Sentinel Blast sets are vastly different from their Blaster/Corruptor counterparts.  In the case of Fire Blast, the most obvious difference is the Sentinel's lack of a fast snipe (and the fact that Blazing Blast is bugged).  I would say that Blasters, on the whole, have a pretty sizeable advantage in terms of single-target burst or if you prefer, realistic short term killing power - but it isn't anywhere near the two or three-fold difference described earlier in the thread.  In a highly theoretical long-term test like a Pylon run, the difference is reduced even further.

 

(Ranged Blasters have always suffered in long-term DPS comparisons; it's only recently, with the introduction of fast snipes and the PPM proc system, that they've started to sniff Scrapper-competitive scores.  Blasters still generally need melee attacks to put up truly impressive numbers, and even then the best Scrappers/Stalkers are markedly better.)

 

BTW, the best Fire Blaster attack chain will be some combination of Blaze, Blazing Bolt, a proc-monster hold skill (e.g. Epic Char or Ice Arrow), and Fireball.  Flares is decent filler; by no means does it deserve the lavish praise it received earlier in the thread as a DPS booster.  No one would be happier than me if a Blaster could get 500+ DPS out of a pedestrian Flares-Blaze-Flares-Fireball attack chain, but it just ain't gonna happen.

19 hours ago, modest said:

• Fire Blast/Atomic Blaster (without aim, without ionize): 427 DPS. Flares --> Blaze --> Flares --> Fireball. (Musculature Core Paragon, Degenerative Core Flawless, Ageless Core Epiphany, Assault Radial Embodiment.)
• Fire Blast/Atomic Blaster (with aim, with ionize): 527 DPS.

 

[Radiaria]

8 minutes ago, Obitus said:

Just want to reiterate that there's something way off about these numbers.  I don't have the time or the energy to go through the theorycrafting at the moment, but let's look at what various high-end builds do in the RIkti Pylon thread.

 

If you go there, you'll find that Sentinels like Nihilii's have very good single-target DPS, competitive with most ranged Blasters.  The reason for this is partially the power of procs; if you stack 6 damage procs in, say, Dominate from the Epic Pool, you end up with an attack with a 5-6 second cycle time and an average damage of 451 just from procs alone.  Since that damage doesn't care about your AT scalars, this is an enormous equalizer, both inter-AT and intra-AT. 

 

(As noted earlier, Mid's doesn't calculate proc damage correctly; it will severely underestimate proc damage on any build with significant global recharge.)

 

Then you have things like -RES procs, which may be harder for Blasters to justify slotting given that they need more set bonuses to achieve a reasonable level of survivability in the end game.  These have an outsized effect in high-end Pylon runs.

 

That said, Sentinels do have offensive disadvantages.  The major one is their lower AoE target cap, which will never show up in a Pylon test.  In practice, and on a solo basis, this disadvantage is mitigated somewhat by the Sentinel's faster nuke CDs - and of course the Sentinel's superior defenses tend to make solo AoE output a lot less urgent.

 

On a single-target basis, it's harder to make direct comparisons, because Sentinel Blast sets are vastly different from their Blaster/Corruptor counterparts.  In the case of Fire Blast, the most obvious difference is the Sentinel's lack of a fast snipe (and the fact that Blazing Blast is bugged).  I would say that Blasters, on the whole, have a pretty sizeable advantage in terms of single-target burst or if you prefer, realistic short term killing power - but it isn't anywhere near the two or three-fold difference described earlier in the thread.  In a highly theoretical long-term test like a Pylon run, the difference is reduced even further.

 

(Ranged Blasters have always suffered in long-term DPS comparisons; it's only recently, with the introduction of fast snipes and the PPM proc system, that they've started to sniff Scrapper-competitive scores.  Blasters still generally need melee attacks to put up truly impressive numbers, and even then the best Scrappers/Stalkers are markedly better.)

 

BTW, the best Fire Blaster attack chain will be some combination of Blaze, Blazing Bolt, a proc-monster hold skill (e.g. Epic Char or Ice Arrow), and Fireball.  Flares is decent filler; by no means does it deserve the lavish praise it received earlier in the thread as a DPS booster.  No one would be happier than me if a Blaster could get 500+ DPS out of a pedestrian Flares-Blaze-Flares-Fireball attack chain, but it just ain't gonna happen.

 

The issue that arises with Scrapper's damage though is real time in game. Scrappers lack taunt, and AV's can fly all over the place and move around quite a bit (forcing them to move around, lowering their actual real-time DPS). Scrappers also do inconsistently large damage with their crits. Over a long sustained period, this is fine, but on an actual real game period, it shows. 

 

I actually do agree with your post though, the sentinel versus blaster damage for ST dps is not far off - at least not for Fire/ now... Ice is different because Blizzard on a Blaster gets to such extreme levels and is a faster cast making it worth casting whereas Fire's inferno isn't quite the same. Because of this, the Sentinel's being half the damage of the Blaster version doesn't make sense to really cast with other powers that generally do more damage, so this does result in DPS loss on their end sadly.

 

 

[Obitus]

2 minutes ago, 3333053222 said:

The issue that arises with Scrapper's damage though is real time in game. Scrappers lack taunt, and AV's can fly all over the place and move around quite a bit (forcing them to move around, lowering their actual real-time DPS). Scrappers also do inconsistently large damage with their crits. Over a long sustained period, this is fine, but on an actual real game period, it shows. 

Yes, this is the same reason that Storm Defenders and Corruptors don't typically solo AVs all that well, despite their WTFPWN numbers in Pylon tests.  You haven't seen AVs run for their lives til you've played a Storm toon with no immobilize.  Lightning Storm goes from an essential weapon to a glowing ornament in such engagements.

 

This same problem affects Blasters in an AV-soloing context, though not in exactly the same way.  Most Blasters do get a single-target immobilize, but spamming one of those will lower DPS.  Of course, Blasters have a harder time surviving an AV's attacks than a Scrapper or even a Defender would, so the concern on their end isn't so much the AV running away as it is the AV getting in their face.

 

Oddly enough, the tendency for AVs to run for the hills is an advantage for solo Sentinels, who have (very near) Scrapper-tier durability and ranged attacks.  Sentinels can therefore not only survive up close; they can also use the AI's headless-chicken quirks to catch a breather, while still putting out respectable damage of their own from range.

 

Still, in the end there's a good reason that builds like Ill/Cold are generally regarded as the best AV soloists.  Pylon tests aren't a very good proxy for AV-soloing; they're a good proxy for "how much ST damage can I sustain against an extremely hard target in a situation where its movement is controlled in some fashion."

13 minutes ago, 3333053222 said:

I actually do agree with your post though, the sentinel versus blaster damage for ST dps is not far off - at least not for Fire/ now... Ice is different because Blizzard on a Blaster gets to such extreme levels and is a faster cast making it worth casting whereas Fire's inferno isn't quite the same. Because of this, the Sentinel's being half the damage of the Blaster version doesn't make sense to really cast with other powers that generally do more damage, so this does result in DPS loss on their end sadly.

Ice Sentinels get boned on their version of Freeze Ray, so they're not going to win any prizes in the single-target comparison.  On the other hand, having Blizzard's massive debuffs (most notably the -20% ToHit debuff) up nearly full time is a really nice perk.  I'd say that Ice/* synergizes especially well with the Sentinel's faster nuke CDs, even if the damage isn't spectacular.

[Hopeling]

31 minutes ago, 3333053222 said:

The issue that arises with Scrapper's damage though is real time in game. Scrappers lack taunt, and AV's can fly all over the place and move around quite a bit (forcing them to move around, lowering their actual real-time DPS).

Not if you have a secondary with a taunt aura 😉

 

Dark Melee might get a pass too, with the immobilize in Midnight Grasp. Haven't tried it.

[Sovera]

The praise on Sentinel damage is becoming a bit hyperbolic. When I said earlier that their damage in *practical* terms was good what I meant was that their nuke + Aim is available at every spawn making half of it dead from the start and only leftovers to mop. A Blaster does not do 'a little bit' more damage. It does on average twice the damage.

 

Sentinel's Inferno + Aim  is 600 damage (with the Offensive Adaptation of /Bio it should go up to around 800 damage), while a Blaster's inferno without Aim or BU does 1k. *With* it their Inferno does 2k. One recharges in 25 seconds and the other in 40 seconds, sure, but because Inferno does so much damage there is no point in popping Aim + BU with it and a player can do Inferno + AoEs on one spawn, and then the next spawn use Aim + BU + AoEs.

 

The best pylon time I saw with a Sentinel was 3 minutes. The best time with a Blaster was 1:30-ish, though usually around 2 minutes which *is* pretty close.

 

Saying a Blaster will diminish their offense to stack defense is a bit daft. What can they add more when recharge has reached near perma? Procs, sure, but Blasters do so much damage that they don't even *care* about procs and their best offensive set doesn't even take well to procs. I recently tried a radiation blaster with quadruple procs expecting some unholy marriage of blaster damage and a proc monster only to be disappointed at 5 minute pylon times. That's how much disparity there is between Blaster sets unlike Sentinel's homogenization (Aim + BU + Radiation's Blast's T9 doing 1200 damage while Inferno does 2k. Procs? Whatever for?).

 

And what will a Sentinel add to their offense once they defense is softcapped? The only thing is procs, which are more the territory of ST and not AoE, and the game really is 90% AoE.

 

 

Bottom line:

 

- Without a DPS meter like Recount it does not matter nor will we ever manage to know who is staying ahead. It's a pity really, because I *loved* the mini game of trying to be the best. It's what pushed me to get better and in raid guilds where I was #1 in damage I stopped trying while if I was 2nd or 3rd I'd scour the net for theorycrafting and test and experiment and keep pushing to improve.

 

- Blaster has the burst when it needs it (ITF, Cyst, pack of kheldian bosses, Sentinel does 600 (800 if /Bio) damage, Blaster does 2k. In fact, it does a lot more since it will then continue to unload their AoEs while still empowered by Aim and BU) but can pace themselves to keep up with a Sentinel's sustain by not blowing BU + Aim + T9 every time that they are up. This is what's called a low ceiling. No matter what the Sentinel will never get past that 600-800 ceiling while a Blaster can pick and choose whether to play in sustain damage mode or burst mode.

 

- The difference between the two is not all that large for someone who loves a Sentinel. It's not like playing one means insta-kick from teams. I mean, yes, the average Sentinel using a theme and six slotting their build like normal will see 6-7 minute pylon times (I'm using pylon times as a reference, not because pylon times matter) while someone in the in will be proccing the heck out of their build and picking their secondaries with care. Simply by loading up in procs my Rad/Ninjutsu went from 6 minutes to 4 minutes. I keep using Nihilii's Sentinel as a reference since he had the best times I saw yet, but by picking /Rad he went to 3 minutes. If a Blaster gets an average of two minutes if doing *well*, then three minutes is pretty darn close. But that three minute time is not going to be for the average player though. That said there are Fire Blasters in the pylon thread with 4-5 minutes (perhaps using Flares as a filler (yes, I'm roasting you @modest, come at me! *flees!* 😄 )).

[DocRadio]

On ‎9‎/‎8‎/‎2019 at 8:43 AM, Sovera said:

Playing devil's advocate. Of course if this is asked in the Sentinel forums the response will be (and were) overwhelmingly in favor of Sentinels.

 

Most of what you speak happens as we level (I have bad memories of dying against grey mobs on my blaster). But double XP doesn't make leveling a tremendously long process. 4-5 hours from 1 to 50 if powerleveled. 2-3 days for me by doing TFs from level 8 to 50.

 

At 50 we get Clarion, and T3 is enough, and again this is not a long thing to obtain and then boom, CC immune. One day to achieve? Two days?

 

With enough infamy we get softcap levels of defense, which requires about a billion inf, but, yet again, this is not a six month process but rather two or three weeks, more or less depending on time to play or desire to do market flipping. To me this is a bonus. The longer i have something to work for the longer I'm playing it. Once maxed out there isn't much more reason to play the character, but this is just personal preference.

 

What of content under 45 like the weekly strikes? Does it matter? It's usually ran at +0 and not +4.

 

 

So depending on slowness we can say it takes a month to level a character to max and then trick it out to have a 'glass cannon' with scrapper level of defenses and be CC immune as long as doing level 45+ content.

 

End result? Both my Blaster and my Sentinel jump into a pack of +4 ITF (unhealthy thing, cascading defense failure is a thing, but funny enough y blaster survives better because it has a mass AoE Hold up every 25 seconds) and go on a rampage, with the Blaster uncaring that the Sentinel has CC and a defensive secondary, while doing twice the Sentinel's damage (Aim empowered Inferno does 600 damage on the Sentinel. Regular Inferno with no aim or BU does 1k damage on the Blaster).

 

Edit: this might seem like I'm contradicting what I said above, but I'm really not. Both posts are equally true.

Your path to CC immunity means TaskForces and/or powerleveling. Not everyone plays the game that way. I never did not really. When I do taskforces if at all it's for the merits. Not the XP.

[Sovera]

1 minute ago, DocRadio said:

Your path to CC immunity means TaskForces and/or powerleveling. Not everyone plays the game that way. I never did not really. When I do taskforces if at all it's for the merits. Not the XP.

Sure? I don't get the reasoning, but there is no one single 'correct' way. I don't even consider runnings TFs as powerleveling. I see it as: I need XP to level. At maximum level I want the accolades since they are all pretty easy to get. I run TFs, get the XP I need to level, get merits to gear the character, get progress for the accolades. A single TF is all it takes to be high enough level to do the next one, so no need to repeat them (outside of Numina at 35 since this playstyle means I reach level 33 and need to do something for the last two levels).

[Hopeling]

1 hour ago, Sovera said:

[A Blaster nuke] does on average twice the damage [of a Sentinel nuke].

 

Sentinel's Inferno + Aim  is 600 damage (with the Offensive Adaptation of /Bio it should go up to around 800 damage), while a Blaster's inferno without Aim or BU does 1k. *With* it their Inferno does 2k.

In case anyone else is confused like I was by the juxtaposition of these two statements, Inferno is an outlier among nukes, in that the Sentinel version loses most of its "free" DoT damage. For most other power sets, it's more like 600 vs 1200, instead of 600 vs 2000. That's certainly still a big difference though, especially in combination with a higher target cap.

27 minutes ago, Sovera said:

Saying a Blaster will diminish their offense to stack defense is a bit daft. What can they add more when recharge has reached near perma?

Hybrid Melee is a pretty direct tradeoff against more damage from Hybrid Assault. Rune of Protection is also not an easy power to fit into a build, requiring one of your pools and three power choices. It may not trade off directly against offense, but it probably trades off against SOMETHING, even if it's just Tactics or a travel power.

 

For what it's worth, I think the game is less than 90% AoE at the "level 50 and Incarnated-out" stage, although it depends on what you like to do with your game time. Hard targets like AVs or high-resist EBs (Cimeroran monsters, War Walkers) feature pretty heavily in many high-level TFs and trials. AoE is still very important, but an ST specialist has a lot more opportunities to shine in an STF or Tin Mage or Lambda than they do in level 35 radio missions, and with so many Judgements flying around, clearing minions is rarely a concern.

[DocRadio]

22 minutes ago, Sovera said:

Sure? I don't get the reasoning, but there is no one single 'correct' way. I don't even consider runnings TFs as powerleveling. I see it as: I need XP to level. At maximum level I want the accolades since they are all pretty easy to get. I run TFs, get the XP I need to level, get merits to gear the character, get progress for the accolades. A single TF is all it takes to be high enough level to do the next one, so no need to repeat them (outside of Numina at 35 since this playstyle means I reach level 33 and need to do something for the last two levels).

I didn't say "correct" or "incorrect". I simply stated that it's not the way "I" play.

Besides I'm not all that stoked on the idea of getting status protection at level 50+ (after finally unlocking the destiny slot). That's a lot of levels of sucking down breakfrees. Unless you go in for tactical arrow that is.

[Obitus]

2 hours ago, Sovera said:

The praise on Sentinel damage is becoming a bit hyperbolic. When I said earlier that their damage in *practical* terms was good what I meant was that their nuke + Aim is available at every spawn making half of it dead from the start and only leftovers to mop. A Blaster does not do 'a little bit' more damage. It does on average twice the damage.

 

Sentinel's Inferno + Aim  is 600 damage (with the Offensive Adaptation of /Bio it should go up to around 800 damage), while a Blaster's inferno without Aim or BU does 1k. *With* it their Inferno does 2k. One recharges in 25 seconds and the other in 40 seconds, sure, but because Inferno does so much damage there is no point in popping Aim + BU with it and a player can do Inferno + AoEs on one spawn, and then the next spawn use Aim + BU + AoEs.

It certainly isn't my intention to hype Sentinel damage output.  I've been fairly bear-ish on Sentinels overall; I think Sentinels are stronger than Blasters as a self-contained unit - i.e. that their defensive advantage dwarfs Blasters' offensive advantage - but that's not saying much.  Just about every AT is stronger than the average Blaster in those terms.   Even now, after the most extensive Blaster buffs in the history of the game (which, as we often jokingly predicted on the old Blaster forum, only came just as the game closed).

 

So you could argue it either way.  You could say that Sentinels have stronger numbers, overall, which I think is indisputable.  You could also say that Sentinels' lower damage and lower target caps rob them of a proper niche or role, besides solo shenanigans.  If you wanted to be especially pessimistic, you could say that Sentinels are just lower damage Scrappers.

 

Still, I take issue with numbers like @modest's, first of all obviously because they're wrong, but also because they perpetuate the popular misconception that Blasters have far and away the best offense in the game.  That just isn't true, at least in a general sense.  Sure, in examples like your nuke comparison, the Blaster comes out looking badass, but comparing nukes ultimately isn't any better than comparing Pylon times, and I would argue it's actually far more misleading.

 

Re: Pylon times, using my lazy method of simply searching the Pylon thread for keywords, the best Sentinel performance I can find is Nihilii's Fire/Rad/Psi (note, not Bio) @ 2:20, or 401 DPS.  Granted, this run included a melee attack, but I think we can all agree that this score is more than competitive with the average Blaster build, and particularly the average ranged Blaster (i.e. without melee attacks).  Quite frankly this score will blow away most ranged Blasters, as the balance between Blast sets is extremely uneven.

 

For contrast, the best Blaster score I found using my lazy method is again Nihilii, this time with an experimental Fire/Atomic/Pyre build, at 1:39, or 519 DPS.  That is an amazing, amazing score.  It's also highly atypical, and relies on the aforementioned proc-monstering approach.  I believe he also stacked -RES procs in Inferno and Fireball, which again is atypical.

 

The point isn't so much that Blasters can't get good offense on top of soft-capped DEF; they clearly can.  Mature Blaster builds just have less wiggle room to slap in situational offensive boosts like those RES procs, which are quite frankly relevant mostly in long-term situations like Pylon tests.  Blasters need set bonuses more than Sentinels do.  As you point out, Blasters also need Clarion more, which again limits their flexibility relative to high-end Sentinels.

 

Anyway, the idea that Sentinels do half or less of Blaster damage, on average and in practice, is completely wrong.  The best case you can make for that position is when you compare big AoE attacks with full target-cap saturation, and as Hopeling points out, melting minions is rarely a concern at end game.

Edited September 9, 2019 by Obitus

[modest]

2 hours ago, Sovera said:

The praise on Sentinel damage is becoming a bit hyperbolic. When I said earlier that their damage in *practical* terms was good what I meant was that their nuke + Aim is available at every spawn making half of it dead from the start and only leftovers to mop. A Blaster does not do 'a little bit' more damage. It does on average twice the damage.

Yes, this is exactly what I found. However, I'm happy to be proven wrong. I would also be very happy if Sentinels got a buff to their damage output.

2 hours ago, Sovera said:

Saying a Blaster will diminish their offense to stack defense is a bit daft. What can they add more when recharge has reached near perma? Procs, sure, but Blasters do so much damage that they don't even *care* about procs and their best offensive set doesn't even take well to procs. I recently tried a radiation blaster with quadruple procs expecting some unholy marriage of blaster damage and a proc monster only to be disappointed at 5 minute pylon times. That's how much disparity there is between Blaster sets unlike Sentinel's homogenization (Aim + BU + Radiation's Blast's T9 doing 1200 damage while Inferno does 2k. Procs? Whatever for?).

I also came to this same conclusion in regards to blasters with procs. I took a dual pistols/atomic blaster to incarnate and found that I could not get anywhere near the damage of a Fire Blast/ blaster no matter how I slotted it.

 

2 hours ago, Sovera said:

 

- The difference between the two is not all that large for someone who loves a Sentinel. It's not like playing one means insta-kick from teams. I mean, yes, the average Sentinel using a theme and six slotting their build like normal will see 6-7 minute pylon times (I'm using pylon times as a reference, not because pylon times matter) while someone in the in will be proccing the heck out of their build and picking their secondaries with care. Simply by loading up in procs my Rad/Ninjutsu went from 6 minutes to 4 minutes. I keep using Nihilii's Sentinel as a reference since he had the best times I saw yet, but by picking /Rad he went to 3 minutes. If a Blaster gets an average of two minutes if doing *well*, then three minutes is pretty darn close. But that three minute time is not going to be for the average player though. That said there are Fire Blasters in the pylon thread with 4-5 minutes (perhaps using Flares as a filler (yes, I'm roasting you @modest, come at me! *flees!* 😄 )).

 

Flares will almost always raise your DPS simply because of its good DPA. However, if you have high enough recharge, then I suspect that incorporating Char and/or Blazing Bolt into your attack chain will raise DPS more than Flares. 😝

 

3 hours ago, Obitus said:

Just want to reiterate that there's something way off about these numbers.  I don't have the time or the energy to go through the theorycrafting at the moment, but let's look at what various high-end builds do in the RIkti Pylon thread.

 

If you go there, you'll find that Sentinels like Nihilii's have very good single-target DPS, competitive with most ranged Blasters.  The reason for this is partially the power of procs; if you stack 6 damage procs in, say, Dominate from the Epic Pool, you end up with an attack with a 5-6 second cycle time and an average damage of 451 just from procs alone.  Since that damage doesn't care about your AT scalars, this is an enormous equalizer, both inter-AT and intra-AT.

Okay, after looking through the Rikti Pylon thread I see one Sentinel that managed to reach a clear time that compares to a good blaster. That is an impressive accomplishment for the player, but less impressive for the archetype as a whole.

 

I don't really buy the argument that a single skill in one of the epic pools somehow makes up for the low damage in a Sentinel's primary class. It's not a good sign when skills in an AT's primary class deal less DPS than skills in the epic pools.

3 minutes ago, Obitus said:

Still, I take issue with numbers like @modest's, first of all obviously because they're wrong, but also because they perpetuate the popular misconception that Blasters have far and away the best offense in the game.  That just isn't true, at least in a general sense.  Sure, in examples like your nuke comparison, the Blaster comes out looking badass, but comparing nukes ultimately isn't any better than comparing Pylon times, and I would argue it's actually far more misleading.

If you're going to make statements like this, then you're going to have to qualify them with numbers or my reaction is going to be to dismiss what you've written as opinion.

 

I created these characters on Justin (two patches ago, before the instant snipes went live) so I can say that my DPA calculations are accurate because I have tested them in game. Have you done the same? I am willing to be proven incorrect if you can show some evidence that I am.

 

No one in this thread has claimed that Blasters have "far and away the best offense in the game". That is a strawman argument.

9 minutes ago, Obitus said:

Anyway, the idea that Sentinels do half or less of Blaster damage, on average and in practice, is completely wrong.  The best case you can make for that position is when you compare big AoE attacks with full target-cap saturation, and as Hopeling points out, melting minions is rarely a concern at end game.

Please provide some evidence that it's completely wrong. For single target damage, Sentinels deal around half of the damage of a fire blast Blaster based on tests on the Justin test server, and based on simply calculating each skill's DPA with arcanatime and building attack chains.

 

It is completely possible that you're able to build a Sentinel that has far better slotting than my build. It's also possible that you (and other Sentinels) use better attack chains than me. If that's the case, then please show your work.

[Sovera]

I keep talking of 3 minutes in Nihilii's run, but I completely forgot/missed his 2:20 run(s). Dayum! That's... that's downright Blaster territory. Firmly in there actually. And with a gimped Fire set that has its big attack bugged. I'm not sure if he didn't click on his Hybrid toggle.

 

I was pondering leveling a Rad/Bio I recently cooked up but I don't think it will ever catch up. The slow attack chain with two 1.8 animations and one 2.2 make for a glacial rotation. With the Rad/Ninjutsu I only reached 4 minutes despite all the procs built into it and I don't think /Bio will shave two minutes. I blame the slow animations.

Edited September 9, 2019 by Sovera

[nihilii]

I could have been more explicit in the runs Obitus linked: this was with Hybrid on (you can sort of guess it by comparing it with the 330 DPS Melee Hybrid results above, as obviously I'm not getting +60 DPS from just the passive damage bonus of Assault).

I think there are faster blaster runs, Ice/Fire blasters hitting 1:20 or somesuch. From my understanding these tend to be farmer builds heavily specced towards melee damage output (well, towards maximum AoE damage output, which happens to be melee with Hot Feet, Burn, Cauterizing Aura, Fire Sword). Which makes you wonder how would a Fire/Fire blaster perform, presumably you'd sit in melee and find some combo of Blaze, Fire Sword, Burn and Blazing Bolt with maybe some filler (or maybe not! Burn -> Blaze -> Fire Sword -> BB -> Blaze -> Fire Sword).

 

Hmm...

[Knottewe]

3 hours ago, Sovera said:

The praise on Sentinel damage is becoming a bit hyperbolic. When I said earlier that their damage in *practical* terms was good what I meant was that their nuke + Aim is available at every spawn making half of it dead from the start and only leftovers to mop. A Blaster does not do 'a little bit' more damage. It does on average twice the damage.

 

Sentinel's Inferno + Aim  is 600 damage (with the Offensive Adaptation of /Bio it should go up to around 800 damage), while a Blaster's inferno without Aim or BU does 1k. *With* it their Inferno does 2k. One recharges in 25 seconds and the other in 40 seconds, sure, but because Inferno does so much damage there is no point in popping Aim + BU with it and a player can do Inferno + AoEs on one spawn, and then the next spawn use Aim + BU + AoEs.

 

The best pylon time I saw with a Sentinel was 3 minutes. The best time with a Blaster was 1:30-ish, though usually around 2 minutes which *is* pretty close.

 

Saying a Blaster will diminish their offense to stack defense is a bit daft. What can they add more when recharge has reached near perma? Procs, sure, but Blasters do so much damage that they don't even *care* about procs and their best offensive set doesn't even take well to procs. I recently tried a radiation blaster with quadruple procs expecting some unholy marriage of blaster damage and a proc monster only to be disappointed at 5 minute pylon times. That's how much disparity there is between Blaster sets unlike Sentinel's homogenization (Aim + BU + Radiation's Blast's T9 doing 1200 damage while Inferno does 2k. Procs? Whatever for?).

 

And what will a Sentinel add to their offense once they defense is softcapped? The only thing is procs, which are more the territory of ST and not AoE, and the game really is 90% AoE.

 

 

Bottom line:

 

- Without a DPS meter like Recount it does not matter nor will we ever manage to know who is staying ahead. It's a pity really, because I *loved* the mini game of trying to be the best. It's what pushed me to get better and in raid guilds where I was #1 in damage I stopped trying while if I was 2nd or 3rd I'd scour the net for theorycrafting and test and experiment and keep pushing to improve.

 

- Blaster has the burst when it needs it (ITF, Cyst, pack of kheldian bosses, Sentinel does 600 (800 if /Bio) damage, Blaster does 2k. In fact, it does a lot more since it will then continue to unload their AoEs while still empowered by Aim and BU) but can pace themselves to keep up with a Sentinel's sustain by not blowing BU + Aim + T9 every time that they are up. This is what's called a low ceiling. No matter what the Sentinel will never get past that 600-800 ceiling while a Blaster can pick and choose whether to play in sustain damage mode or burst mode.

 

- The difference between the two is not all that large for someone who loves a Sentinel. It's not like playing one means insta-kick from teams. I mean, yes, the average Sentinel using a theme and six slotting their build like normal will see 6-7 minute pylon times (I'm using pylon times as a reference, not because pylon times matter) while someone in the in will be proccing the heck out of their build and picking their secondaries with care. Simply by loading up in procs my Rad/Ninjutsu went from 6 minutes to 4 minutes. I keep using Nihilii's Sentinel as a reference since he had the best times I saw yet, but by picking /Rad he went to 3 minutes. If a Blaster gets an average of two minutes if doing *well*, then three minutes is pretty darn close. But that three minute time is not going to be for the average player though. That said there are Fire Blasters in the pylon thread with 4-5 minutes (perhaps using Flares as a filler (yes, I'm roasting you @modest, come at me! *flees!* 😄 )).

I agree with the intent of what you're saying here, a well built blaster will always out damage a well built sentinel. 

 

But....not all blasters are built for maximum damage, nor are sentinels, or any class for that matter. 

 

So just to prove that point I went and did some math. Using the Flavour of the Month posts as reference I deduced that almost a third (32.3%) of level 50 blasters have no access to both aim and build up due to set choices, and 8.5% have neither, thats almost 1 in 10.

 

What this really comes down to is that the people that post on  these forums are the top 10%. And I dont mean the top 10% damage, I mean the top 10% invested. We care and we try and we like to talk to or read posts from other people that care and try. So the people posting here that care about damage do alot more damage than vast majority of people playing the game.

Edited September 9, 2019 by Knottewe

[Sovera]

2 minutes ago, nihilii said:

I think there are faster blaster runs, Ice/Fire blasters hitting 1:20 or somesuch. From my understanding these tend to be farmer builds heavily specced towards melee damage output (well, towards maximum AoE damage output, which happens to be melee with Hot Feet, Burn, Cauterizing Aura, Fire Sword). Which makes you wonder how would a Fire/Fire blaster perform, presumably you'd sit in melee and find some combo of Blaze, Fire Sword, Burn and Blazing Bolt with maybe some filler (or maybe not! Burn -> Blaze -> Fire Sword -> BB -> Blaze -> Fire Sword).

 

Hmm...

What? No Flares?

 

*flees harder!*

[Knottewe]

Just now, Sovera said:

What? No Flares?

 

*flees harder!*

I was actually typing that as you posted it

[modest]

7 minutes ago, Sovera said:

What? No Flares?

 

*flees harder!*

 

7 minutes ago, Knottewe said:

I was actually typing that as you posted it

Thank you, I needed that laugh. 😁 I'm willing to laugh at myself and admit that I like Flares more than its practical value.

 

But Flares has a great DPA!

[Knottewe]

Its cool man, Flares can be the new cowbell 😁

[Obitus]

3 minutes ago, modest said:

If you're going to make statements like this, then you're going to have to qualify them with numbers or my reaction is going to be to dismiss what you've written as opinion.

 

3 minutes ago, modest said:

Please provide some evidence that it's completely wrong. For single target damage, Sentinels deal around half of the damage of a fire blast Blaster based on tests on the Justin test server, and based on simply calculating each skill's DPA with arcanatime and building attack chains.

 

It is completely possible that you're able to build a Sentinel that has far better slotting than my build. It's also possible that you (and other Sentinels) use better attack chains than me. If that's the case, then please show your work.

We debated Blaster offensive capability endlessly on the old forums.  This is a dead-horse argument that I don't feel compelled to rehash.  It's mostly moot at this point anyway; Blasters got some great buffs, post-i24.  I still think they pay too high a price in the abstract for their offense, but they're strong when played well, and they maintain their distinctive feel.

 

I have a fair bit of experience theory crafting this stuff.  Your numbers are wrong, not in a gee-let-me-recheck-the-details kind of way, but rather in a lol-wow-holy-moly sort of way.  I don't say that to be mean; we all make mistakes.  Your numbers are just so dramatically inflated for Blasters, and likely deflated for Sentinels, that you may mislead readers.  So I would ask you to show your work, because you really haven't shown any so far; you've just thrown around facially silly numbers, along with a few screenshots of Mid's flawed DPS calculator.

 

A brief skim of the Pylon thread proves my point.  The most impressive Blaster scores rely heavily on melee attacks.  They're not Flares-ing their way to greatness.  Think about it; here's your listing of your Blaster build's attack numbers:

 

23 hours ago, modest said:

Your DPA calculations are significantly off. Even if the only incarnate that I use is Musculature Core Paragon:

• Blaster Flares: Damage 177, DPA 149
• Blaster Fire Ball: Damage 193, DPA 162
• Blaster Negatron Slam Damage, 292 DPA 170
• Blaster Blaze Damage 457, DPA 385

Since Flares, Blaze, and Fireball all have the same activation time (1.188 seconds, Arcanatime), we can simplify your attack chain (Flares - Blaze - Flares - Fireball) as (149 + 385 + 149 + 162) / 4 = 211 DPS.   You said you could score 427 DPS, without Aim or Build Up, using this build!  Sure, you disclaimed that these numbers are only with Musculature, but if you can get 200+ DPS out of Hybrid Radial Assault, then I'll eat my hat.

 

I'm not taking crazy pills, nor am I knee-jerking.  The napkin math I've used above is far from perfect, but it's good enough to show that something's way off in your model.  Recheck whatever method you used to come to your conclusion. 

 

I'm also not sure why you think "Sentinels" should be compared to Fire Blast Blasters specifically.  If you want to compare ATs, then you compare like power sets and builds.  All else being equal, Sentinels do quite a bit more than half of Blaster damage.  Yes, Fire is an outlier for both ATs.  As I said, Blast sets are notoriously uneven performers.  That's one of the historical problems that hurt the Blaster AT, and now by extension also the Sentinel AT.

23 minutes ago, Sovera said:

I keep talking of 3 minutes in Nihilii's run, but I completely forgot/missed his 2:20 run(s). Dayum! That's... that's downright Blaster territory. Firmly in there actually. And with a gimped Fire set that has its big attack bugged. I'm not sure if he didn't click on his Hybrid toggle.

Nihilii is an extraordinary player.  What I want to emphasize is that both of his results are extraordinary.  Your average endgame Blaster build isn't chucking out 400+ DPS either, certainly not from range.  The average endgame Fire/* Blaster build can't even reach those numbers - and certainly not with @modest's Flares-Blaze-Flares-FB attack chain. 

 

Both builds in this case lean pretty heavily on procced out Char/Dominate, the Sentinel more so.  But it's an option that's available to everyone, and thus we have to take it into account.  (I'm also not sure that Nihilii even soft-capped his Blasters for the Pylon experiments, which is a bigger deal when you don't have a whole defensive secondary to fall back on.)

[DocRadio]

1 hour ago, modest said:

 

Thank you, I needed that laugh. 😁 I'm willing to laugh at myself and admit that I like Flares more than its practical value.

 

But Flares has a great DPA!

I took Flares on my Fire Blaster. It gives me something do while I wait for blaze to come up. My Sentinel is a few seconds away from perma hasten, so I don't need the filler attack.

[Sovera]

5 minutes ago, Obitus said:

The average endgame Fire/* Blaster build can't even reach those numbers - and certainly not with @modest's Flares-Blaze-Flares-FB attack chain.

Yes, we have established that in the last two pages and now I'm starting to feel like we are bullying the poor guy.

[Obitus]

2 minutes ago, Sovera said:

Yes, we have established that in the last two pages and now I'm starting to feel like we are bullying the poor guy.

Again, it isn't about piling on.  We all make mistakes.

 

But after he tells me to supply evidence that he's wrong, when the truth is staring him in the face, I feel like I have to dunk on him a little.

Edited September 9, 2019 by Obitus