Re making sentinels

Ok so I make so apologies to those that do, but I really don't like sentinels. That doesn't mean I wont team with them or think others should not play them I just don't get the appeal of playing a AT that can stand in melee range with the brutes and scrapper but do defender level damage.(Or what feels like it to this old blaster) So I got to thinking why is it ok for a scrapper to do this outstanding damage in melee range but a sentinel because they have ranged powers are limited to crap damage in comparison in both melee and ranged play? Which then made me think of something else I said to a friend when trying sentinels was "I really miss the ability to smack a bone crusher on these dude when they all come running up to me" So that made me think why can sentinels not have some stronger melee attacks? Would that break the AT? I mean it doesn't break dominators to have a set that mixes range and melee with the melee attacks doing more damage.

So I had this idea for a sentinel set that had tiered power selections. If you look at most damage dealing power sets they kind of follow a pattern. The first power is a weak but fast attack, the second a stronger but slower attack, third a lot of times a AOE etc. So working on that basic power set design why not give each tier a one time choice between taking a weaker (sentinel current power level) ranged attack and a similarly themed (ice energy etc) scrapper level melee attack. You could only select one of the two choices to prevent from being able to take mostly upper level attacks but it would allow you to build a character that has some melee capabilities when in melee range and the normal current sentinel ranged capabilities. Kind of like ending up with something more like the dominator assault sets, accept you actually get to pick between the power choices all along the leveling path.

Sentinels IMO (and I am sorry if you disagree) are a solo class AT, they really hold no special place in team mechanics. Every AT does what they can do better then they can. Blasters do better damage, brutes and scrapper also do better damage, Khelds can be tanks or better blasters etc. I personally think sentinels "niche" should be the outright best AT to solo with. And with their current level of defenses, if you gave them choices that allow them to mix the stronger melee attacks with the weaker ranged and ranged AOEs of blaster I think they would finally fit into that slot without breaking anything when they are teamed. They would be doing less damage at range then blasters like now, and do no more then equal base damage in melee then a scrapper which they have mostly equal defenses with.

If not a pick your own system, just to rework the basic sets into similar assault sets like dominators have would prob be nice also.

New AT would be better than changing the current AT.

I feel Sentinel performance is fairly inline with other ATs, and epics hold surprisingly good results (major thanks to Sunsette for her extensive advocacy work). It might be that we need time to discover its potential, because it's all new.

For me, it took more than 3 months to finally get the most out of my sent. Pretty happy with it now!

I just don't get the appeal of playing a AT that can stand in melee range with the brutes and scrapper but do defender level damage.

Hyperbole, much?

Sentinels stand at range.  Shorter range than Blasters, sure.  But still at range.

As for damage?

Blasters: 1.000 melee, 1.125 range

Sentinels: 0.95 melee, 0.95 range

Defenders: 0.550 melee, 0.650 range

Corruptors: 0.750 melee, 0.750 range

Sentinels, clearly, are MUCH closer to Blasters than Defenders (or even Corruptors) in terms of damage potential, especially in melee.

Meanwhile, their defense scale is 0.700 .... just short of Scrappers at 0.750.

Essentially, they are a Blaster with Scrapper secondaries, and then all of it watered down just a tiny bit to keep from becoming an all-powerful Tankmage.

Sentinels IMO (and I am sorry if you disagree) are a solo class AT, they really hold no special place in team mechanics. Every AT does what they can do better then they can. Blasters do better damage, brutes and scrapper also do better damage, Khelds can be tanks or better blasters etc. I personally think sentinels "niche" should be the outright best AT to solo with. And with their current level of defenses, if you gave them choices that allow them to mix the stronger melee attacks with the weaker ranged and ranged AOEs of blaster I think they would finally fit into that slot without breaking anything when they are teamed. They would be doing less damage at range then blasters like now, and do no more then equal base damage in melee then a scrapper which they have mostly equal defenses with.

But they could be, my suggestions.

Give them melee powers, on my Elec/Elec Sentinel I am in melee range all the time anyway, why not have a punch or 2.

Shields 'Grant Cover' power, either make it inherent or give it as a toggle. This would give more of a need for them in teams, maybe even give it a lesser taunt effect.

"You are able to use your shield to defend nearby allies. Any teammates who remain nearby gain a bonus to their defense. (NOTE: The defense bonus from this power is only applied to nearby team mates, but not yourself.) Additionally, while this power is active, the user and his team mates will gain some resistance to defense and recharge rate debuffs."

Or something to that effect.

Respectfully disagree. If anything, why play a scrapper when you can get close to that in protections and much better aoe, which is king in teams?

I'm not really suggesting people shouldn't play scrappers. But I feel confident you haven't fully wrapped your brain around sents, or their playstyle doesn't match your preferences.

@QuiJon you really think Sents are weak? I know of someone that has solo'd AVs (Calvin Scott to name one) with their Sent and yet with their MM and Dom or Corr, I forget which, couldn't do the same feat... You just have to understand their mechanics

Respectfully disagree. If anything, why play a scrapper when you can get close to that in protections and much better aoe, which is king in teams?

 

I'm not really suggesting people shouldn't play scrappers. But I feel confident you haven't fully wrapped your brain around sents, or their playstyle doesn't match your preferences.

The lowered enemy caps in AoE would disagree with you. I don't even know why we have that in place, but 5-6 enemies VS hitting 10-16 enemies is sort of bad.

Though I do not agree that sentinels need a major rework.

Two simple improvements

* aoe cap up to 7-8

* make opportunity work like dominate

The lowered enemy caps in AoE would disagree with you. I don't even know why we have that in place, but 5-6 enemies VS hitting 10-16 enemies is sort of bad.

Some lowering of that, I can see.  But not to the point of "half or less".

Where most ATs get 10-16, Sents should maybe get 8-12.

A question about the AOE cap. I ran some tests in the Perez Park.

With water blast, I was hitting more than 6 targets with Water Burst, Steam Spray, and Geyser.

Does the level of the mobs effect the cap?

What am I misunderstanding?

Sent are almost in a good place. There not saposre to be blasters. I play both same sets play very different.

What gets me is Sent have more aoe powers so sustained aoe should be higher, but then there's the cap it just doesn't make sense.

The inherit is clunky but ok not that great though  they could fix it but I think it would be much easier to adjust three things over inherit.

1. Remove aoe cap or adjust it higher.

2. Increase hp

3.  Add brutes puchvoke (optional)

Sent run a great sweet spot of off tanks. When playing or play with sent. In a team wipe scenario. Sent and tanks usually are the one surviving these situations. Sent do have there nitch. Everyone focusing on damage but not every AT should be the same and giving Sent +damage will take away from the AT. Instead they should focus on what makes sent different longevity and I believe that will come in hp and letting a sent hit more targets will show it to outshine in sustain aoe damage.

A question about the AOE cap. I ran some tests in the Perez Park.

 

With water blast, I was hitting more than 6 targets with Water Burst, Steam Spray, and Geyser.

 

Does the level of the mobs effect the cap?

 

What am I misunderstanding?

Honestly, I have no idea what everyone is about with numbers of 5, 6, 7 thrown around.

Fireball and Inferno hit 10 (normal versions hit 16).

Perhaps cones who usually hit 10 only hit 6 on sents? All cones suck anyway, skip them. ;)

Spray stream is a 40deg cone. A really nice one actually, I can hit more than 6 target in my testing.

I just don't get the appeal of playing a AT that can stand in melee range with the brutes and scrapper but do defender level damage.

Hyperbole, much?

 

Sentinels stand at range.  Shorter range than Blasters, sure.  But still at range.

 

As for damage?

 

Blasters: 1.000 melee, 1.125 range

Sentinels: 0.95 melee, 0.95 range

Defenders: 0.550 melee, 0.650 range

Corruptors: 0.750 melee, 0.750 range

 

 

Sentinels, clearly, are MUCH closer to Blasters than Defenders (or even Corruptors) in terms of damage potential, especially in melee.

 

Meanwhile, their defense scale is 0.700 .... just short of Scrappers at 0.750.

 

Essentially, they are a Blaster with Scrapper secondaries, and then all of it watered down just a tiny bit to keep from becoming an all-powerful Tankmage.

I actually saw someone in help channel the other day insisting that defenders do better damage than sentinels.  Of course he might be right in very specific combo's (say kinetic/sonic), but of course he didn't qualify it and just called the whole AT junk.  I didn't even bother getting into it with him beyond the silent facepalm I did.

I love this AT and do not want to see it radically changed.

If you don’t like an AT don’t play it.

I don’t really like playing Brutes, but you don’t see me screaming at the top of my lungs that they must be changed because they don’t fit my style of play or what I think is fun.

This is not a melee AT and should not be destroyed in its current incarnation to make a few haters happy.

However there is a relatively simple addition that “might” make the haters happy.

I say “might” because the hate I see for this AT is just silly and I think there are some that will not be happy unless this AT is totally destroyed for the rest of us.

Anyway the simple fix is to add Dominator Assault options to this AT’s primary option.

It would make this AT have more Primary Options than any other AT, but I don’t think that would hurt anything.

I will finish with one request.

Please stop advocating for the destruction my favorite AT.

I was there at launch of CoH and the launch of CoV, and this is the happiest I have ever been with the game.

A question about the AOE cap. I ran some tests in the Perez Park.

 

With water blast, I was hitting more than 6 targets with Water Burst, Steam Spray, and Geyser.

 

Does the level of the mobs effect the cap?

 

What am I misunderstanding?

 

Honestly, I have no idea what everyone is about with numbers of 5, 6, 7 thrown around.

 

Fireball and Inferno hit 10 (normal versions hit 16).

 

Perhaps cones who usually hit 10 only hit 6 on sents? All cones suck anyway, skip them. ;)

This is correct. As far as I've noticed, cones hit 6, all other AoEs hit 10, and while I wouldn't mind an increased target cap, I don't understand why this is one of the sticking points. I'm sitting at vet level 93 now, and have seen astonishingly few scenarios outside of farms where I'm massively over target cap on any of my AoEs. Brutes and Tankers usually don't do LoS pulling necessary for a true herd, at least on Everlasting. And hell, I frequently solo on +4/x8.

I wouldn't mind the target cap being increased, but while I am an advocate for this AT being buffed, I just don't see the target cap as the major hindrance some others do.

Also, thanks for the kind words earlier up thread.

I actually saw someone in help channel the other day insisting that defenders do better damage than sentinels.  Of course he might be right in very specific combo's (say kinetic/sonic), but of course he didn't qualify it and just called the whole AT junk.  I didn't even bother getting into it with him beyond the silent facepalm I did.

A solo Defender gets a 30% damage boost.  Couple that with aggressive Debuff'ing of enemy resistance and defense, and well-slotted attack powers?  Compared to a fairly baseline (IOs but no sets) Sentinel?  Sure, I can see it.

But, as I'm sure you will agree, that's a ridiculously biased comparison, there.

I actually saw someone in help channel the other day insisting that defenders do better damage than sentinels.  Of course he might be right in very specific combo's (say kinetic/sonic), but of course he didn't qualify it and just called the whole AT junk.  I didn't even bother getting into it with him beyond the silent facepalm I did.

 

A solo Defender gets a 30% damage boost.  Couple that with aggressive Debuff'ing of enemy resistance and defense, and well-slotted attack powers?  Compared to a fairly baseline (IOs but no sets) Sentinel?  Sure, I can see it.

 

But, as I'm sure you will agree, that's a ridiculously biased comparison, there.

Yep, as I said he offered no qualifiers, making a blanket statement, which is pretty ridiculous, and potentially misleading as it was during a conversation where someone was asking about whether sentinels were worth playing in particular.

 

I love this AT and do not want to see it radically changed.

 

If you don’t like an AT don’t play it.

 

I don’t really like playing Brutes, but you don’t see me screaming at the top of my lungs that they must be changed because they don’t fit my style of play or what I think is fun.

 

This is not a melee AT and should not be destroyed in its current incarnation to make a few haters happy.

 

However there is a relatively simple addition that “might” make the haters happy.

 

I say “might” because the hate I see for this AT is just silly and I think there are some that will not be happy unless this AT is totally destroyed for the rest of us.

 

Anyway the simple fix is to add Dominator Assault options to this AT’s primary option.

 

It would make this AT have more Primary Options than any other AT, but I don’t think that would hurt anything.

 

I will finish with one request.

 

Please stop advocating for the destruction my favorite AT.

 

I was there at launch of CoH and the launch of CoV, and this is the happiest I have ever been with the game.

Words of wisdom right there.

I empathise with people who see Sentinels and think "almost there, but not quite what I want". It can be frustrating to see potential that falls short.

But, people who advocate for radical changes have to realise a lot of us find Sentinels as is to be their favorite toys. It's a hard sell to tell us you want to make our toy different so it's better. Even if for you it'd be an objective plus, for some of us it might feel like you're breaking our toy.

IMHO, changes to Sentinels should focus on fixing outright bugs (Blazing Blast doing less than listed damage) or improving things from a number standpoint *without significant playstyle revamps*.

Melee in primaries? Yuck.

Punchvoke? Here's the funny thing: as much as I'd see Punchvoke as a buff, intuitively, I've found my Sentinel to be my BEST AV soloer. Simply because I can maintain a 300ish DPS attack chain at range while the AV is running for the hills.

So I'm enjoying stalker level defenses with an AV that spends half of his time running away rather than attacking - which in practice gives me *tanker* level mitigation, because there's not much you can't survive when you get attacked only once per 10 seconds or so.

How about the Crimson Prototype in Market Crash, famous for debuffing maxHP to 1 on meleers? Why, I let my Lore pet run in first and attack right after, and the aggro snaps back and forth between me and my pet, ensuring debuffs never stack to a deadly point.

The Sentinel AT in general is full of little gotchas like this where things you feel are hinderances turn out to be boons as you get used to it.

We know the Homecoming devs were looking at the inherent, anyway. So let's see what they do with that.

I like Sentinels as they are mostly. It would be very easy for them to become OP and game breaking. But they were carefully designed not to do so. And again, for those people that want to play something that actually resembles a classic comic book superhero (The Punisher, Iron Man, Firestorm, etc..) Sentinels fit the bill.

Also, Sentinel performance varies widely, depending on what Primary and Secondary are chosen. Dark/Nin is AWESOME for example.  The more synergies between the chosen power set, the better that Sentinel will play. The other AT's are little more forgiving in that regard.

I broadly agree with your (very-well-put!) points, nihili, but it did raise a question for me -- did you say '300-ish DPS'? I ask because I'm not sure how that number is reached, unless you're including Hybrid and Lore incarnate abilities, which I haven't seen good numbers for.

This is indeed including the Hybrid doublehit in that. I'm using a Fire/Rad/Psi with Mind Probe and Dominate, Dominate procced out with damage procs and Decimation Buildup (again, thanks to your work shining a light on PPM and recharge). Attack chain is Blaze - Flares - Dominate - Blaze - Flares - Mind Probe. This gives me 360 DPS reliably against Pylons, which translates to about 300ish DPS when you factor in Hybrid downtime and a running AV making me bunnyhop after them. Essentially, either I manage to whack them with Mind Probe regardless, or I swap Mind Probe for Fireball in my rotation.

(It can be less if we're looking at particularly jumpy AVs, of course. Hi Rommie :D )

Throw in Lore, and oh boy. With a Musculature Longbow Cataphract and -RES from our inherent and the Fury proc in Inferno, we're getting to ridiculous numbers. Your standard lvl 50 AV drops in less than a minute with that setup.

Very, very nice. Makes sense -- just checking. :)

 

Perhaps cones who usually hit 10 only hit 6 on sents? All cones suck anyway, skip them. ;)

I would agree until I found steam spray in the water blast set.

I think I will start another thread on AOE and cone caps, so as not to de-rail this one.

A solo Defender gets a 30% damage boost.  Couple that with aggressive Debuff'ing of enemy resistance and defense, and well-slotted attack powers?  Compared to a fairly baseline (IOs but no sets) Sentinel?  Sure, I can see it.

 

But, as I'm sure you will agree, that's a ridiculously biased comparison, there.

Absolutely, haha. It compares the Defender's inherent and powersets against the Sentinel's naked damage scale. I mean, I think Sentinels are a bit undertuned, but not that much.

It's not obvious from looking at numbers in Mids, but on a single target, sentinel damage is on par with scrappers, including crits. The damage scale is only 0.95, sure - but then you've got -25% resist from Opportunity, which effectively brings it up to 1.1875, slightly above the scrapper's 1.125. Offensive Opportunity's ~10% bonus damage matches the extra damage from crits. Opportunity doesn't have 100% uptime, but it's pretty high, and unlike the scrapper, -res boosts everyone's damage.

But since Opportunity is an ST debuff and the Offensive proc is only applied to one target even for AoE powers, that math is way worse outside of AV fights. If that was tweaked a bit - say, your t1 or t2 apply -20% res on every use during Opportunity - then the inherent would feel more useful, the AT would be more competitive, and there would be a clear answer to "what is the Sentinel's role on a team?": target selection. "Target through the Sentinel" would be a useful team strategy that makes you do more damage. And since you're only debuffing one target at a time, it doesn't step on the toes of support sets too much.