Why Sentinel vs Blaster?

[Obitus]

4 hours ago, modest said:

I would have to recreate my old build to test this damage chain again. Frankly, I think that you and others are correct that Flares --> Blaze --> Flares --> Fireball won't achieve 427 DPS without Aim or Build Up. That was the number that I arrived at when I tested it on Justin. It's 100% possible that I had Ionize (build up) or Aim on auto fire and didn't notice it, or some other dumb mistake that skewed my results.

All right then, excellent.  That wraps up the only real point of contention.  No hard feelings. o7

 

As to the Blaster build you posted, it's a good Pylon build, basically a rehash of the Nihilii approach.  We can tweak it a bit, but your scoring 400+ DPS with the new and improved attack chain wouldn't really demonstrate anything novel. 

 

If you do want to max Pylon damage, though (and don't care about soft-capping Ranged DEF, which is currently sitting at 39.5% in your build, with suppressed Stealth active), I'd do the following:

• replace one of the damage procs in Inferno with a -RES proc.
• add a sixth slot to Char for an extra proc, which would have to be a Decimation BU proc, or at the very least a damage enhancement.  You have two free slots so this shouldn't be a problem.
• Replace the ToHit enhancement in Aim with a 50+5 Rech enhancement, and add another slot to Ionize to add a 50+5 Rech (while keeping the Guassian's proc, naturally).
• You might want Leadership to improve the Snipe's damage, though you shouldn't have too much downtime on the full bonus given your potential ~77% uptime on (either of) Aim/BU, with the slotting change above.  in any case, a Kismet proc would help and it wouldn't require a massive rework.
• If you really wanna go whole hog on the Pylon killing goal, then you could even break the Blaster's Wrath set to slot a -RES proc in Fireball.  You'd lose the excellent ranged DEF bonus, of course, but you'd retain the global recharge.

From a general usability standpoint, I would say that the build isn't one that I'd like to play.  Among other things, it could use some Endmod in your sustain power (which would allow you to drop Ageless for Clarion); personally I'd focus more on defenses, and of course it seems like a waste to take Flame Mastery but skip out on Bonfire with a KB-to-KD proc, not to mention the lack of Beta Decay - but it's a fine build for a niche application, and you say that you have an alternate for general play anyway.

 

(You could gain a fair bit of build/slotting flexibility by dropping Negatron Slam, which really won't add much given that your big three ranged attacks all have higher DPA.  Something like Beta Decay 6-slotted with Cloud Senses would give you slightly less global recharge, but also extra ranged DEF - in fact, just barely enough to get you up to the Ranged soft cap if you switch on suppressed stealth and swap the Blaster's Wrath set in Fireball to the Superior version.)

 

That speaks to one of the points in this thread, which is that Sentinels can more easily afford to skimp a bit on DEF.  I accepted long ago that I'll never achieve peak Pylon DPS on my Blasters because I don't run Pylons on builds that I wouldn't want to use in general gameplay.  I can possibly get close, at least on paper, which is a nice little motivator for refining my builds (endlessly), but I'm never gonna be the guy who designs a build specifically around Pylon hunting.

 

If you'd like to talk through more general builds, I'd be happy to do that, but this probably isn't the thread for it.  As long as we're laying our cards on the table, though, here's an export of my Fire/Temporal, below the spoiler:

 

Spoiler

Highlights of this build:

- 175% global recharge

- Soft-capped ranged DEF

- 30% global damage (before Defiance/Assault Hybrid)

- 6 procs in Char, 2 procs in Blaze, 2 procs in Snipe, 1 proc in Fireball

- Musculature Core Paragon

- End-sustainable (or near enough) without Ageless

- perma-Hover at 40+ MPH

- still no -RES procs, though

- also no melt armor, which IIRC Nihilii's Fire/Plant did

 

This is about as balls-to-the-wall single-target offensive as I can make the build without rendering it unplayable (for my taste).  I haven't tried this particular revision against the Pylon, but I did take a previous revision (with IIRC two fewer procs in the rotation) up against the Pylon three times, and didn't quite reach 400 DPS.  So call it user error or whatever you like, but that's where I'm coming from when I balk at your claim that 400 DPS is easy, or that it's "dead average" for Blasters.

 

Hero Plan by Hero Hero Designer 2.23
https://github.com/ImaginaryDevelopment/imaginary-hero-designer

Click this DataLink to open the build!

 

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Even with all of that said, I'm inclined to go with this revision instead, which sacrifices Assault and 10% in global recharge to pick up much more resistance:

 

Hero Plan by Hero Hero Designer 2.23
https://github.com/ImaginaryDevelopment/imaginary-hero-designer

Click this DataLink to open the build!

 

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Edited September 10, 2019 by Obitus
formatting

[oldskool]

On 9/10/2019 at 12:42 AM, natewest1987 said:

Sooo.  That was 🍿, but did we arrive at a conclusion re: why sentinels over blasters?? I really want an excuse to make a sentinel for farming 

I doubt there would be a conclusion to a debate on Why Sentinel over Blaster.  The question on its face feels like a zero sum game.  As if the reason for wanting to play a Sentinel in the light of having access to Blasters must mean that a Sentinel is better than a Blaster.  Perhaps, that logic isn't applicable to everyone in this thread, but it would be naive to believe this isn't a thought process of others. 

Anyway, Sentinels can farm if that is what you want to do with it.  That is not the same as saying they are more efficient than other archetypes.  If you're just looking for an excuse to make one, then what is holding you back?  Is it a sense of making something that isn't optimized to complete a map in 4 minutes but instead completes it in 6 minutes?  If that's the case, then make a Blaster or a Brute or a Scrapper. 

(Edit) Hmm, that last bit sounds harsher than I intend it.  Blasters/Scrappers have higher damage caps [multipliers] (duh, I know), but that matters if all you're doing it crushing Red inspirations in a Farm to complete it as fast as possible.  That means either of those are going to do more damage than a Sentinel [when at the damage cap].  Either choice of Blaster/Scrapper is going to be a risk vs reward scenario vs building a far safer Brute that is very efficient in relation to the investment.  You probably already know this, but I feel it is worth stating purely due to the nature I already expressed in the very question of "Why Sentinel over Blaster".  The follow-up of "for farming" can honestly expand this to "Why Sentinel over [Blaster/Scrapper/Brute/Tanker/Defender/Corruptor/VEAT/HEAT/etc...]".  That's just a giant circular argument waiting to happen when the real answer is just "do what you enjoy".  There are times where I don't feel like logging in on my purpose built farmer and just run farm maps on whatever character I happen to be playing.  Want to farm on a TA/Archery Defender?  Do it.  It can be done.  It just won't be fast.  Same can be said for a lot Sentinel builds.


 

Edited September 13, 2019 by oldskool

[drbuzzard]

10 hours ago, natewest1987 said:

Sooo.  That was 🍿, but did we arrive at a conclusion re: why sentinels over blasters?? I really want an excuse to make a sentinel for farming 

If your goal is targeted AE farming, then there's no point to a sentinel. With a blaster you can tailor a build which will be more than adequate for enemies you get to choose, and sentinels simply don't do the AOE damage. However sentinels have more versatile defenses so are more durable in general usage than blasters. If you like doing a wide variety of TFs and trials, then a sentinel will be more survivable.

 

I play my characters up (mind you I don't dawdle, it doesn't take a real long time) and I dislike dying a lot or standing around mezzed. I also play the WST every week as well as plenty of other PUG TFs that come up. Every time I think of making a blaster, I just make another sentinel since I simply have no desire to put up with the unpleasant aspects of leveling up a blaster. The end products I have in my level 50 sentinels are pretty damned effective, and I don't have people complain about my performance. I understand I could certainly exceed the damage output, but I know I couldn't beat survivability.

 

I really don't farm, except for a bit of it in DA where you can use level shifts from incarnate, though the varied damage types and debuffs make a sentinel a good choice. You have to be past 45% def to be softcapped, and the debuffs and everything flying around means that cascading failure is inevitable for a basic 45% softcapped build. My Hydro/SR sentinal can farm in there fairly well (though my brute is a bit better). Perhaps a blaster could be built for it, but that would take a better hero designer than myself.

[Hopeling]

15 hours ago, Obitus said:

How many samples do we really have, though?  Very few people have ever played a Sentinel, much less taken one up against a Pylon.

Incidentally, searching for other Sentinel pylon scores reveals that - at least, according to a search for the keyword "sentinel" - Nihilii's Fire/Rad times are the only recorded pylon times for a Fire/ sentinel. So it's not that most players are around 200 DPS and Nihilii is somehow at 450, it's that nobody else has even tried.

 

It makes me want to roll a Fire/Bio sentinel and see what can be done.

[Knottewe]

52 minutes ago, Hopeling said:

Incidentally, searching for other Sentinel pylon scores reveals that - at least, according to a search for the keyword "sentinel" - Nihilii's Fire/Rad times are the only recorded pylon times for a Fire/ sentinel. So it's not that most players are around 200 DPS and Nihilii is somehow at 450, it's that nobody else has even tried.

 

It makes me want to roll a Fire/Bio sentinel and see what can be done.

I have 5 lvl 50 sentinels of various specs, although none of them fire, and I've never been able to get past 4 minutes. I'm admittedly not the greatest player so it could be pebkac.

 

I'm working on one currently that I hope can get to 3 minute range, but I don't have high hopes.

[Sovera]

1 hour ago, Hopeling said:

Incidentally, searching for other Sentinel pylon scores reveals that - at least, according to a search for the keyword "sentinel" - Nihilii's Fire/Rad times are the only recorded pylon times for a Fire/ sentinel. So it's not that most players are around 200 DPS and Nihilii is somehow at 450, it's that nobody else has even tried.

 

It makes me want to roll a Fire/Bio sentinel and see what can be done.

I was in your boat at the start of the week. I *wanted* to try a Fire sentinel and level it up. But I looked at the numbers and they did not *look* amazing. And then I looked at Blazing Bolt *still* being bugged four months later and no ETA, so I went with the tried and true Rad for triple procs.... The damn animations are so *glacial* though. I half feel I ought to have gone Fire anyway and hope that the devs will have fixed it, but if they haven't in four months...

 

Just looking at the character creator and it does not seem the the homogenization did Fire any favors. Someone correct me if wrong, but the attacks seem to be on par with the other sets and what damage Fire's DoTs add are eclipsed by being able to slot procs that Fire is unable to. Even the T9s are all equal.

 

Where it shines is in the blazing fast animations. The T2 is an 1.8 animation (I found Defensive Opportunity better than Offensive because of endurance), but since there would be no procs then attacks could be better slotted which would remove the need for Endurance and thus Defensive, I guess, Blaze still that beautiful 1.1 all attacks aspire in City of Animationlock, BB is 1.8 which is boo, but okay.

 

I tried Rad already and it did not get great times. Only 4 minutes despite all the procs. I blame all the uber slow animations though. 1.8, 1.8 and 2,2. That's basically one extra attack for Fire in the time Rad does a full rotation.

Edited September 10, 2019 by Sovera

[Knottewe]

1 hour ago, Sovera said:

I was in your boat at the start of the week. I *wanted* to try a Fire sentinel and level it up. But I looked at the numbers and they did not *look* amazing. And then I looked at Blazing Bolt *still* being bugged four months later and no ETA, so I went with the tried and true Rad for triple procs.... The damn animations are so *glacial* though. I half feel I ought to have gone Fire anyway and hope that the devs will have fixed it, but if they haven't in four months...

 

Just looking at the character creator and it does not seem the the homogenization did Fire any favors. Someone correct me if wrong, but the attacks seem to be on par with the other sets and what damage Fire's DoTs add are eclipsed by being able to slot procs that Fire is unable to. Even the T9s are all equal.

 

Where it shines is in the blazing fast animations. The T2 is an 1.8 animation (I found Defensive Opportunity better than Offensive because of endurance), but since there would be no procs then attacks could be better slotted which would remove the need for Endurance and thus Defensive, I guess, Blaze still that beautiful 1.1 all attacks aspire in City of Animationlock, BB is 1.8 which is boo, but okay.

 

I tried Rad already and it did not get great times. Only 4 minutes despite all the procs. I blame all the uber slow animations though. 1.8, 1.8 and 2,2. That's basically one extra attack for Fire in the time Rad does a full rotation.

I cannot agree with you more, if they fix it I will make one.

 

My most recent effort is using dark as the primary for the procortunity  but it takes 9.5 seconds to get through the rotation so I can't see it beating fire. The snipe replacement is the worst offender. My toon just stands there at the end of the animation for half a second doing nothing while I wait for the projectile and sound effect, its maddening.

 

Rad seems like it should be so much better than it actually is. Numbers wise everything seems excellent, but when you actually play it everything except neutrino bolt, x ray beam, irradiate, and atomic blast feels so clunky. Neutron bomb and Electron Haze being the worst offenders.

[Shadowfane]

Check the latest beta server test patch..

[Knottewe]

2 hours ago, Shadowfane said:

Check the latest beta server test patch..

Well shit. Hopefully I can get through Greedfall, Borderlands 3, and maybe Outer Worlds before this hits live.

[nihilii]

Amazing. Now to think about the new best fire blast attack chain. Perhaps Blaze -> Blazing Bolt -> Fireball -> Blaze -> Mind Probe - Dominate. No more Flares... 😉

 

(Well, ok, you still want to swap Fireball for Flares whenever Opportunity is up.)

Blaze -> BB -> Flares -> Fireball -> Blaze -> BB -> Flares -> Dominate should make for a nice attack chain at range, too.

Yum. Time to rebuild everything to fit BB in.

Edited September 11, 2019 by nihilii

[Sovera]

1 hour ago, nihilii said:

Amazing. Now to think about the new best fire blast attack chain. Perhaps Blaze -> Blazing Bolt -> Fireball -> Blaze -> Mind Probe - Dominate. No more Flares... 😉

 

(Well, ok, you still want to swap Fireball for Flares whenever Opportunity is up.)

Blaze -> BB -> Flares -> Fireball -> Blaze -> BB -> Flares -> Dominate should make for a nice attack chain at range, too.

Yum. Time to rebuild everything to fit BB in.

At first glance simply changing Flares for Fire Blast *seems* like it would allow for Blaze (1.2 animation, 3.11 recharge), Blazing Blast (1.8 animation, 3.44 recharge) and Fire Blast (1.8 animation, 1.4 recharge).

 

1.8 + 1.8 = 3.6, Blaze has recharged when the cycle starts again. 1.2 + 1.8 = 3 seconds, Blazing Blast has a 0.44 gap before it recharges which can be filled with Fireball (1.2 animation, 4.46 recharge).  1.2 + 1.8 + 1.8 = 4.8 animation which fits Fireball's recharge. But if we add Fireball we can move back to Flares because 1.2 + 1.2 + 1.8 + 1.2 = 5.4 animation which is more than enough to get Blaze and Blazing Bolt back up.

 

Or we ignore the 0.44 gap since it's so minor. The tiniest bit of latency, Hasten/Destiny going off, etc etc and half a second is gone making the rotation take 1.2 + 1.8 + 1.8 + 0.44 = 5.24 animation + gap. Sort of a wash except in EPS. My Rad/Bio Fire/Bio mock-up has some endurance problems due to being so tight in slots so EPS is a consideration.

 

Using Fire Blast is not perfect because Fire primes for the beautifully short animations and we mar it with FB, but Fire Blast incidentally does Defensive Opportunity which can be a consideration for some builds because of the endurance recovery, and it also does more damage (121 Flares VS 189 Fire Blast) though it eats more animation time. That Fire/Bio I mentioned is using KO Blow for the Force Feedback proc to accelerate the build (and because T9 levels of damage ST every 12 seconds, sure) that can take the place of Fire Blast/Flares, or even Fireblast/Flares + Fireball combined.

 

Edit: Though including Fireball has its perks since it too could take the -res proc.

Edited September 11, 2019 by Sovera

[nihilii]

I'm testing stuff right now on Pineapple (new Justin), and results are promising.

The Blaze BB Fireball Blaze MP Dominate isn't that much more damaging than Blaze Dom Flares Blaze MP Fireball, although perhaps that's my lack of familiarity with the chain yet (it becomes important to watch the Opportunity bar and use Flares at the right time).

However... I got 291 DPS (under 4 minute kill) on first try using Blaze -> BB -> Flares -> Fireball -> Blaze -> BB -> Flares -> Dominate. No Inferno, no Hybrid activation! This is a pure ranged attack chain dealing almost 300 DPS, and I didn't even spec BB for recharge so there is a small gap. I'll fix the gap and see what comes out of it.

(This is still on a fire/rad - so a fire/bio could push this further too.)

Edited September 11, 2019 by nihilii

[Sovera]

I'm going to move this out since it's derailing the topic of the thread.

[TheAdjustor]

This is a very interesting thread, thanks to everyone that has participated in it. If I may interject there seems to be some talking at cross purposes and old assumptions being used.

 

1) just what is endgame content ? Our two raids ? Incarnate trials ? Task forces ? Re-Running early content through Ouro ? If you answer the question of what you want to do first it makes it much easier to answer the question of why one AT or another.

 

2) Fighting at range vs fighting in melee.  If your goal is to do damage a blaster isn't your choice at all, blasters do the best ranged damage which isn't saying much and is pretty useless unless you always plan on flying or running with a tank or other aggro magnet. Both Blasters and Sentinels need to be in melee to do their top damage and even so there's only a few combinations that are actually worth the effort.  Cryptic really hated the idea of ranged damage for some reason.

 

3) There's a lot of reference to the pylon thread. There's two problems there. Originally on the old forums they tried to discourage builds that specifically built to kill pylons. Pylons were picked because they were a target that provided some challenge to survive, and had a large enough reservoir of HP that they would provide a good measurement that wasn't just burst damage. These days we would probably need soloing Reichsman and his entire room to provide a good measurement.

 

[Obitus]

I'm going to revisit the @modest debacle, because now he's off in Sovera's thread posturing again:

 

1 hour ago, modest said:

I am happy that you included at least one DoT tick in your calculations. Other players seem to completely disregard the DoT effect when calculating damage, or they assume that the DoT effect is already included in the skill's in-game displayed damage. The DoT is a significant part of Fire Blast's appeal.

lol, still trying to pretend that everyone else is too stupid to understand your numbers?

 

After your tepid acknowledgement that your numbers were wrong, I was happy to let you save face, but c'mon dude.  We both know you didn't pull those numbers from "in game."  You pulled them from the Hero Designer, without understanding what the numbers mean, and then when people challenged those numbers, you made up a post-hoc story about how you did exhaustive testing on Justin.  Yet somehow, when you were asked to post your build, you claimed you lost it.

 

Why do I not believe your story?  Well, for one thing, because your numbers don't make any sense otherwise.  This is what you listed for your attack stats, with Musculature and slotting:

 

On 9/8/2019 at 6:50 PM, 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

 

From this listing, I extrapolated 211 standing DPS, which is a far cry from your claim of 427 DPS, without Aim or Build Up.  Then you wriggled around trying to add the DoT and various other things on top of the 211 to post-rationalize your absurd conclusion.

 

Anyone who's the slightest bit familiar with Fire Blasters can tell you at a glance that 457 damage on Blaze includes the DoT (and possibly a bunch of other things, as Mid's includes just about everything, albeit in a flawed way, by default).  Your assumption that 457 is before the Fire Dot, before global damage bonuses, and before procs, is completely outside of the realm of possibility.  But here, if you still think you can wriggle out of this, here's a screenshot of my Fire Blaster's in-game display for Blaze.  This includes Musculature Core Paragon:

 

 

And here's the coup de gras.  Notice the red circle I drew?  The in-game display flat out tells you that the "average damage" value at the top of the window includes the average value of the Fire Dot.  Or did you simply not bother to scroll down?

 

Hell, just comparing different powers in different blaster power sets would reveal to you how silly it is to assume that the Hero Designer, the in-game display, and most importantly people on the forums, aren't taking the fire dot into account.  Of course we take the average Fire Dot into account.  How stupid do you think we are?  And how could you really think that Blaze had a 385 DPA before the DoT?  No wonder you thought Fire Blasters could effortlessly score 400+ DPS!

 

I really have no wish to continue feuding with you man.  Just stop insulting people who are more informed than you are.  Thanks.

 

EDIT:  By the way, if you're still confused, let me spell out the math in the screenshot for you.  The "average damage" at the top is the initial damage value of 309.70 (which I circled), plus the average value of the DoT, which goes like this:

 

• (32.87 * 0.8) + (32.87 * 0.8^2) + (32.87 * 0.8^3) + (32.87 * 0.8^4) + (32.87 * 0.8^5) =
• 26.296 + 21.0368 + 16.82944 + 13.463552 + 10.7708416 = 88.3966336
• 88.3966336 average DoT + 309.7 initial damage = 398.09 average damge

Edited September 11, 2019 by Obitus

[modest]

10 minutes ago, Obitus said:

I'm going to revisit the @modest debacle, because now he's off in Sovera's thread posturing again:

 

lol, still trying to pretend that everyone else is too stupid to understand your numbers?

I appreciated your last post in which you shared your build and suggestions for improving my build. Thank you for that.

 

I get my numbers from the combat log in-game on the server formerly known as Justin.

26 minutes ago, Obitus said:

We both know you didn't pull those numbers from "in game." 

I can't believe that I have to do this, but here are a couple of screenshots of the various builds that I tested in-game on Justin in June.

 

At this point, it seems like you're going out of your way to take offense at what I write, even if it is not directed at you and has absolutely nothing to do with you. I think that it's best if we simply didn't reply to each other in the future.

[Obitus]

1 hour ago, modest said:

I get my numbers from the combat log in-game on the server formerly known as Justin.

Posting screenshots of your character-select screen doesn't explain your errors.  You made a specific claim - that everyone else is too stupid to include the Fire DoT, in fact that everyone else assumes the in-game display includes the Fire DoT.  As I showed, the in-game display explicitly includes that DoT.

 

You have no rebuttal to that.  Instead you wriggle around picking at irrelevancies.  Proving that you've been on Justin doesn't substantiate your numbers, nor does it give us any idea of how you derived them.  You're trying to tell me that you recorded your character hitting for 457 damage with Blaze, before the Fire DoT, unbuffed, and before procs?  How?  Were you fighting debuffed targets?

 

Far more likely that you read 457 average damage from Mid's.  Occam's Razor. 

 

Edit to add this pic of my build with Musculature, a purple proc in Blaze, and Assault turned off:

 

 

449.7.  Pretty close to 457.

Edited September 12, 2019 by Obitus

[Rathulfr]

1 minute ago, Obitus said:

Posting screenshots of your character-select screen doesn't explain your errors.  You made a specific claim - that everyone else is too stupid to include the Fire DoT, in fact that everyone else assumes the in-game display includes the Fire DoT.  As I showed, the in-game display explicitly includes that DoT.

 

You have no rebuttal to that.  Instead you wriggle around picking at irrelevancies.  Proving that you've been Justin doesn't substantiate your numbers, nor does it give us any idea of how you derived them.  You're trying to tell me that you recorded your character hitting for 457 damage with Blaze, before the Fire DoT, unbuffed, and before procs?  How?  Were you fighting debuffed targets?

 

Far more likely that you read 457 average damage from Mid's.  Occam's Razor.

 

Obitus, I find your post unnecessarily hostile.  It seems like you're going out of your way to insult @modest and calling him a liar.  Unless you can prove your assertions that he's being intentionally deceptive, you're just being slanderous.  He might have misunderstood or misrepresented his findings, but that's a far cry from accusing him of falsifying his data.  That just crosses the line, man, and it's not cool.

 

[Obitus]

1 minute ago, Rathulfr said:

Obitus, I find your post unnecessarily hostile.  It seems like you're going out of your way to insult @modest and calling him a liar.  Unless you can prove your assertions that he's being intentionally deceptive, you're just being slanderous.  He might have misunderstood or misrepresented his findings, but that's a far cry from accusing him of falsifying his data.  That just crosses the line, man, and it's not cool.

Considering that he goes around in other threads passive aggressively insulting the rest of us, this is a pretty mild response.  I notice that neither you nor he addressed the substance of my posts.  Whining about my tone won't change the facts.

• Do you dispute that, contra @modest, the in-game display does, in fact, include the average Fire DoT?
• Do you dispute that 457 damage is an outlandishly high number for Blaze, if you don't include the Fire DoT, among other things?
• Do you dispute that @modest has yet to provide any evidence to support his numerical conclusions, despite all of his posturing earlier about how everyone else had the burden of proof?
• On that note, do you dispute that he suddenly lost his build when people asked for some evidence?

 

[Rathulfr]

8 minutes ago, Obitus said:

do you dispute that he suddenly lost his build when people asked for some evidence?

 

Yes.  He posted his Sentinel build, if you scroll back.  He also posted a Blaster build, when I asked him for it.  The original point of this whole thread was "sentinel vs blaster", so I wanted to see what he was using for comparison.  And he provided both.

 

It seems like you're laser-focused on the Fire DoT thing, which is a minor thing beside the point of the thread.  And the more you post, the more unhinged you sound.  Just give it a rest, man.

 

Edited September 12, 2019 by Rathulfr

[Obitus]

11 minutes ago, Rathulfr said:

Yes.  He posted his Sentinel build, if you scroll back.  He also posted a Blaster build, when I asked him for it.  The original point of this whole thread was "sentinel vs blaster", so I wanted to see what he was using for comparison.  And he provided both.

He did not post the Blaster build with the original attack chain of Flares-Blaze-Flares-Fireball.  He said he lost it, then posted a different build that incorporated most of the recommendations his critics, including me, had mentioned.

 

As I said, I was happy enough to let him slide on that, after he offered a tepid acknowledgement that he might've been wrong.  But then he goes to Sovera's thread and makes a passive aggressive comment about how "other players" too often fail to take into account the Fire DoT, etc.  This is pretty obviously a reference to his debate with me, in which he tried (poorly) to argue that the Fire DoT should be added on top of his numbers.  (And by contempt-laced implication, that I was stupid for not realizing that.)

 

In any case, his assertion in Sovera's thread is provably false, as I showed.  Whining about my tone, from him or you, won't change that. 

Edited September 12, 2019 by Obitus

[Rathulfr]

5 minutes ago, Obitus said:

He did not post the Blaster build with the original attack chain of Flares-Blaze-Flares-Fireball.  He said he lost it, then posted a different build that incorporated most of the recommendations his critics, including me, had mentioned.

 

As I said, I was happy enough to let him slide on that, after he offered a tepid acknowledgement that he might've been wrong.  But then he goes to Sovera's thread and makes a passive aggressive comment about how "other players" too often fail to take into account the Fire DoT, etc.  This is pretty obviously a reference to his debate with me, in which he tried (poorly) to argue that the Fire DoT should be added on top of his numbers.  (And by contempt-laced implication, that I was stupid for not realizing that.)

 

In any case, his assertion in Sovera's thread is provably false, as I showed.  Whining about my tone, from him or you, won't change that. 

Whatever, man.  It's obvious you're beefed with him, and now it's personal.  It makes you sound like the bad guy here, not him.  I'm out.

[Obitus]

24 minutes ago, Rathulfr said:

 

It seems like you're laser-focused on the Fire DoT thing, which is a minor thing beside the point of the thread.  And the more you post, the more unhinged you sound.  Just give it a rest, man.

Of course this whole @modest debate is a bit of a derail, but there's good reason for questioning his numbers.  The entire thread revolves around the balance between Blaster vs Sentinel; it's in the title.

 

If @modest's numbers were even close to accurate, then Blasters would have 2-3 times as much offense as Sentinels, not just in target-saturated environments, but by default, more or less at all times, single-target or AoE.  And if that's true, then we can easily argue that soft-capped Blasters are rolling around effortlessly pwning things that Sentinels would struggle to defeat.

 

But the truth is that Blasters don't have that huge a damage advantage.  It turns out that the best Blaster scores in the Pylon thread are extraordinary, and it seems almost always from builds that made defensive compromises.  This is important if you care about the thread's topic.

 

I also think it's funny that you posted at me three times on this page to whine about my tone, but when I respond to you I'm just showing how "unhinged" I am by posting so much.  Thanks for your totally on-topic help, Miss Manners!

Edited September 12, 2019 by Obitus

[nihilii]

1 hour ago, Obitus said:

And here's the coup de gras.

Coup de grâce. Unless you're hitting him with your belly. 😛

49 minutes ago, Rathulfr said:

Obitus, I find your post unnecessarily hostile.  It seems like you're going out of your way to insult @modest and calling him a liar.

I can understand where you're coming from, but I think it's also plain as day modest overinvested himself into incorrect theories, and now there's cognitive dissonance being protected.

I made (make?) my share of questionable posts due to being too committed to my position, so I can relate with modest... and I can also relate with Obitus, because I must have lost a couple hours of my life writing and deleting long posts to "call out" modest since the beginning of this thread, in full XKCD someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet fashion... Look at me, relating with everyone. I'm such a people's person.

But seriously, we all make mistakes. No big deal, and no reason to let it get between good conversations and good data.

Edited September 12, 2019 by nihilii

[Obitus]

1 minute ago, nihilii said:

I made (make?) my share of stupid posts due to being too committed to my position, so I can relate with modest... and I can also relate with Obitus, because I must have lost a couple hours of my life writing and deleting long posts to "call out" modest since the beginning of this thread, in full XKCD someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet fashion.

lol, this is exactly the image that popped in my mind as I was typing some of these.

 

It's silly, but it passes the time.  And as I say, there is a broader context to this feud that relates to the thread's topic.

 

o7