*** Sentry (Dark Avengers) ***

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Comments

  • NorthernPolarity
    NorthernPolarity Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    Mawtful wrote:
    There was a big public outcry for the Daken incident though, so I'm sure the devs have learned a lesson or two from that. Looks like it's back to "stealth" changes - that way people will keep on spending ISO on Sentry, even in the hours, minutes before the nerf.

    Lmao, I was caught off guard by this comment. The first part made me think you would say "There was a big public outcry for the Daken incident though, so I'm sure the devs have learned a lesson or two from that. I don't think we'll see a nerf for a while, and the devs will probably tell us beforehand", but nope, what I got was the good old everything is a ploy to sell more ____, in this case iso!. Because that's the motivation for everything that they do! Completely ignoring the general upward trend of communication that they've shown in the past couple of months.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Sentry was indirectly buffed. Looks like his World Rupture animation was sped up significantly.
  • Sandmaker
    Sandmaker Posts: 208 Tile Toppler
    NorthernPolarity wrote:

    Lmao, I was caught off guard by this comment. The first part made me think you would say "There was a big public outcry for the Daken incident though, so I'm sure the devs have learned a lesson or two from that. I don't think we'll see a nerf for a while, and the devs will probably tell us beforehand", but nope, what I got was the good old everything is a ploy to sell more ____, in this case iso!. Because that's the motivation for everything that they do! Completely ignoring the general upward trend of communication that they've shown in the past couple of months.

    Better be careful there. Keep making posts like these, and people are going start thinking you're a ploy by D3 to throw people off their ploys.
  • Raekwen
    Raekwen Posts: 113 Tile Toppler
    Phantron wrote:
    raek13 wrote:
    The amount of time that it takes for people to notice you once you become unshielded is almost negligible. If you want to add that amount of time to the amount of time it takes for someone to decide to snipe you and beat your team, sure.. you might have a 30 second buffer or so? That assumes people are going one fight and reshielding, which really only happens at the highest end. The end result is that the window to be out has shortened some, but it will really only affect players that play slowly.

    If the time to notice you're unshielded is negligble then shield hopping would never work in the first place because at that range you're fighting teams with similar if not identical characters and by definition if the lead you've for shield break is not significant then in the time it took you to beat someone, someone else would've beat you and shield hopping wouldn't work. But this is clearly not what happens.

    Since the cost to skip is not trivial not to mention people have better things to do with their lives then hitting skip all day, the lead time for breaking a shield can be significant, and it must be significant or shield hopping could not have worked in the first place.

    It may be a bit of an extreme circumstance, but I know in a lot of higher end alliances, the moment anyone unshields it gets announced. If someone is looking at you as a snipe target, you don't have long until you're hit. There isn't any buffer time, once you hit the button to break your shield you can be found.

    I mean, I guess if youre talking about the first day of an event when people aren't really paying attention you might be able to get in an extra fight now. But it really isn't significant. If you're making a point that the speed is going to drastically change the game at the upper end, then you're talking about during the peak times, when speed means everything. But those are the times you'll get almost instantly noticed and called out. During this last event, I noticed almost no difference, with the exception that I shortened my time window out slightly. Fights without rainbows went from an average of around one minute to 55 seconds or so.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    The friend of my enemy's friend's enemy's is me.
  • Mawtful
    Mawtful Posts: 1,646 Chairperson of the Boards
    NorthernPolarity wrote:
    <snip> nope, what I got was the good old everything is a ploy to sell more ____, in this case iso!. Because that's the motivation for everything that they do! Completely ignoring the general upward trend of communication that they've shown in the past couple of months.

    Haha. Sorry to throw a curve ball like that. Also, sorry for basically just being a sour, grumpy, old biscuit.

    To be fair, demiurge have stepped up their communication game considerably.
    To continue being fair, I think demiurge do actually want to make a fun and interesting game.

    In contrast, D3 are a metric-driven company out to make money. I have no doubt that buffing the 1 character that's already considered (by many) overpowered and pay2win right before the biggest week in the game yet (anniversary week is going to have some big prizes) is going to help encourage as much spending as possible. If they nerf him around the middle of Season 7 that should cause the most disruption to people's plans to grab the first 4* Thor cover. And disruption = $.

    Anyway, it's all a bit mysterious. IceIX insists that Sentrybombing is a niche strategy and that "he's still very low on the actual userbase usage rate", yet he's all I ever see in PvP - even at sub-300 points in the recent Black Panther tournament (actually, this event was quite weird: 500-800 points was almost entirely 2* teams + loaner BP, and some of those were not even max level 2*s). I know I'm not alone in this sort of thing.

    I think the problem is that Sentry is not a transition character; although strong, he really shines when paired with other 3*'s like Daken (still) and The Hood. This means he's not a thorn in the side of every player. It certainly means that he's a huge problem to players trying to make the transition from 2* to 3* roster, since he's likely an unsurmountable wall (although Anti-Gravity Device might actually mean he's not WR'ing you). In the 3* tier, I feel that his best counter is probably The Hood, but that means we usually end up with fairly limited mirror matches. I think a character like Mystique, operating as a kind of 3* version of OBW, could counter Sentry fairly effectively while still being useful in other matches.

    I'm probably rambling now. What was my point again?
  • pmorcs
    pmorcs Posts: 126 Tile Toppler
    Ben Grimm wrote:
    MPQ-themed filk band).


    NO.
  • Lystrata
    Lystrata Posts: 322 Mover and Shaker
    NorthernPolarity wrote:
    You act as if you actually expect the devs to think about the unintended consequences of their design. I dont see how this is any worse than the debacle that is beast blue.


    ... wait, Beast has blue? icon_e_wink.gif


    On topic... erm, well. Hell if I know. Don't use Sentry.
    /vital input.
  • over_clocked
    over_clocked Posts: 3,961
    I don't understand why max a skill you won't ever use unless going to die otherwise, which Supernova is. My Sentry/Hood/featured teams are often 'redless' so to speak since I don't consider Sentry's red a usable one. The number of times my Hood dies to friendly Supernova is higher than my Hood dying to enemy Supernova. Granted, level 3 does more self-damage, but you don't want to use that skill anyway, ever, since resorting to Supernova means: a) you are in PvE and have all the time/healthpacks in the world; b) your hop failed and you could retreat to save your time even instead of trying to limp out on a Supernova.
    It falls firmly in the category of the moves that are always more beneficial for the AI than for the player, same as all fake healing skills (except Anti-Gravity Device), protect tile moves, Headbutt, etc. Thus not deserving more than 3 covers for the sake of being cover-maxed.
  • Spoit
    Spoit Posts: 3,441 Chairperson of the Boards
    Phantron wrote:
    raek13 wrote:
    The amount of time that it takes for people to notice you once you become unshielded is almost negligible. If you want to add that amount of time to the amount of time it takes for someone to decide to snipe you and beat your team, sure.. you might have a 30 second buffer or so? That assumes people are going one fight and reshielding, which really only happens at the highest end. The end result is that the window to be out has shortened some, but it will really only affect players that play slowly.

    If the time to notice you're unshielded is negligble then shield hopping would never work in the first place because at that range you're fighting teams with similar if not identical characters and by definition if the lead you've for shield break is not significant then in the time it took you to beat someone, someone else would've beat you and shield hopping wouldn't work. But this is clearly not what happens.

    Since the cost to skip is not trivial not to mention people have better things to do with their lives then hitting skip all day, the lead time for breaking a shield can be significant, and it must be significant or shield hopping could not have worked in the first place.
    It depends on when you do the skips. Once you get above 1k, I've usually been able to find another worthwhile match within like 5 skips of a queued node clear
  • Spoit
    Spoit Posts: 3,441 Chairperson of the Boards
    NorthernPolarity wrote:
    Mawtful wrote:
    There was a big public outcry for the Daken incident though, so I'm sure the devs have learned a lesson or two from that. Looks like it's back to "stealth" changes - that way people will keep on spending ISO on Sentry, even in the hours, minutes before the nerf.

    Lmao, I was caught off guard by this comment. The first part made me think you would say "There was a big public outcry for the Daken incident though, so I'm sure the devs have learned a lesson or two from that. I don't think we'll see a nerf for a while, and the devs will probably tell us beforehand", but nope, what I got was the good old everything is a ploy to sell more ____, in this case iso!. Because that's the motivation for everything that they do! Completely ignoring the general upward trend of communication that they've shown in the past couple of months.
    If by a couple months you mean exactly 1 month, when they finally got a community manager. The con season in july-august was like the most bunkered up they've ever gotten
  • OnesOwnGrief
    OnesOwnGrief Posts: 1,387 Chairperson of the Boards
    Personally speaking, before the rewards given from the recent Black Panther PvP, I've been running a 5/4/3 Sentry for quite a while at 150 for a couple of weeks. With that build I have been using him since 125 and have been able to shield hop effectively depending on the opponent. I have gained quite a few defensive wins and would believe that most of those may have been for to Supernova. The self damage isn't exactly that much on Sentry and I find myself being able to get a match in no problem if the board is full of red and I'm sticking to 2 color AP boosts. Health packs don't seem to go any faster since I tend to time them to replenish between shield hops.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Spoit wrote:
    Since the cost to skip is not trivial not to mention people have better things to do with their lives then hitting skip all day, the lead time for breaking a shield can be significant, and it must be significant or shield hopping could not have worked in the first place.
    It depends on when you do the skips. Once you get above 1k, I've usually been able to find another worthwhile match within like 5 skips of a queued node clear[/quote]

    It's probably not hard from your point of view but remember from the point of the guy breaking shield, all he has to do is put up his shield before you can finish the game even after you queued him up. You can certainly find a guy that's worthwhile quickly but still not win the game before that guy puts up a shield again and that's all the guy putting up a shield cares about. If it didn't work like this then people wouldn't be able to shield hop effectively in the first place.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    locked wrote:
    I don't understand why max a skill you won't ever use unless going to die otherwise, which Supernova is. My Sentry/Hood/featured teams are often 'redless' so to speak since I don't consider Sentry's red a usable one. The number of times my Hood dies to friendly Supernova is higher than my Hood dying to enemy Supernova. Granted, level 3 does more self-damage, but you don't want to use that skill anyway, ever, since resorting to Supernova means: a) you are in PvE and have all the time/healthpacks in the world; b) your hop failed and you could retreat to save your time even instead of trying to limp out on a Supernova.
    It falls firmly in the category of the moves that are always more beneficial for the AI than for the player, same as all fake healing skills (except Anti-Gravity Device), protect tile moves, Headbutt, etc. Thus not deserving more than 3 covers for the sake of being cover-maxed.

    Better in defense.
  • over_clocked
    over_clocked Posts: 3,961
    OOG, sure, if you like the AI having more fun than you, Supernova is THE ultimate skill to max icon_lol.gif
    ark123 wrote:
    Better in defense.
    I do not care for defense since I'm not the AI, you see...
  • Spoit
    Spoit Posts: 3,441 Chairperson of the Boards
    Phantron wrote:
    Spoit wrote:
    Since the cost to skip is not trivial not to mention people have better things to do with their lives then hitting skip all day, the lead time for breaking a shield can be significant, and it must be significant or shield hopping could not have worked in the first place.
    It depends on when you do the skips. Once you get above 1k, I've usually been able to find another worthwhile match within like 5 skips of a queued node clear

    It's probably not hard from your point of view but remember from the point of the guy breaking shield, all he has to do is put up his shield before you can finish the game even after you queued him up. You can certainly find a guy that's worthwhile quickly but still not win the game before that guy puts up a shield again and that's all the guy putting up a shield cares about. If it didn't work like this then people wouldn't be able to shield hop effectively in the first place.[/quote]
    Sure it can. You don't actually have to hit people the very instant you queue them. The whole point is that you queue up all 3 nodes with people that break while your shielded and then hit them when you break, which could be hours later.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Pwuz_ wrote:
    Has anyone else noticed that the countdown tiles for World Rupture speed up today? I was using the rental one in the PvE and set off World Rupture, and was surprised by how quickly they each triggered. Stealth Update?
    yea.. was about to post this, but scrolled 2 pages before and saw your post. It should be stealth in one of a minor client update recently. Well, the animation now is like MHawkeye's speed shot. But then when the AI is using them, it is still slow and damaged per CD tile reflects individually, instead of adding and stacking up in numbers when we use them while playing.
  • OnesOwnGrief
    OnesOwnGrief Posts: 1,387 Chairperson of the Boards
    locked wrote:
    OOG, sure, if you like the AI having more fun than you, Supernova is THE ultimate skill to max icon_lol.gif
    ark123 wrote:
    Better in defense.
    I do not care for defense since I'm not the AI, you see...
    Well that would be true if the majority of my points weren't still coming from my own victories. I guess I didn't say it very well but Sentry works Very well when it comes to what he does. Max Sacrifice and Rupture isn't exactly needed to get that done even if you're just using WR and Sacrifice. It helps, but no way is it unusable. It's still very effective.

    P.S. My Hood is still at 5/5/3 :/
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    pmorcs wrote:
    Ben Grimm wrote:
    MPQ-themed filk band).


    NO.

    So are you volunteering to play banjo?
  • Pwuz_
    Pwuz_ Posts: 1,214 Chairperson of the Boards
    locked wrote:
    OOG, sure, if you like the AI having more fun than you, Supernova is THE ultimate skill to max icon_lol.gif
    ark123 wrote:
    Better in defense.
    I do not care for defense since I'm not the AI, you see...

    But the AI does play defense for you 100% of the time. Sacrifice isn't the skill I fear Sentry pulling off when I'm fighting a team with Sentry. Depending on what else is going on, World Rupture isn't the scariest thing either since it can be planned around. Supernova usually destroys EVERYONE on both sides.

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