FupDup

Tesla Cage is an important part of Elec Blast on Sentinels, because unlike on other ATs, it does a lot more damage here. Don't skip it. Air Superiority is probably what should be dropped in exchange for Tesla. But that unfortunately means we have to drop Evasive as well since that power needs 2 prereqs. Ultimately I think the issue is that you've got too many pool power attacks in conjunction with your primaries, which makes it very hard to slot them all and it's also hard to use them all because you only have so much animation/recharge time budget to work with. Hasten might be entirely overkill with this many attacks (there is a such thing as too many attacks). A consequence of this is that I had a hard time getting S/L defenses up to softcap even with the help of the Agility incarnate ability (only 42.8% without it). People normally avoid Agility (and Spiritual) because the recharge reduces damage proc rates, but since I barely slotted any procs, that's not an issue here. One idea could be to swap Chain Fences with Havoc Punch, which would let you 5-slot Superior Blistering Cold to get a massive boost to those two defense types. But then we run into the slot famine problem again...Or maybe just underslot Charged Bolt and ignore it in favor of the other attacks, since you've got like 800 of them anyways. Here is what I managed to make with it. Note that I have a very unconventional and decidedly "not meta" way of building (i.e. I like to chase sets instead of damage procs). And it might be a little expensive due to all of the purple and winter sets. Eldritch Shock Sentinel (Electrical Blast - Energy Aura).mbd

It might be in part due to the live devs considering resistance more powerful than defense (despite players believing the opposite, or at least about equal at worst). This can also be seen in IO set bonuses (reaching def caps is way easier than res caps using bonuses). And how only a few AT's have greater than 75% res cap. Orange inspirations give a smaller value than purple ones despite res caps being far higher than def caps. Etc. PS: There is also a second resist power available in pools (Rune of Protection) but that's a low uptime clicky that needs 2 prereq power choices. I wish there were more. 🥺

Defense Debuff Reduction. It means that when you get hit by defense debuffs, they have a lesser effect (more DDR = better). Most defense based armor sets come with varying degrees of it, but characters without an armor set generally won't get any.

Vengeance won't be active all the time unless you've got teammates dying all the time, so your real values will generally be lower than that. Evasive Manuevers won't give any defense when you're actively in combat either, and Stealth loses most of its defense in combat (but does keep a little at least). Turn those off in Mids first to see what your "true" defenses are. And 69.1% is just plain excessive. Even incarnate content has a softcap at 58.75% (standard content is just 45%, which is what most people would shoot for). Reallocating some of that defense into resistance would help you survive more because enemy hit chance will never go below 5% and they have streakbreakers to get through eventually. And you don't have any DDR as a Blaster, so debuffs will also cripple those defenses. Many would argue going for a more offensive approach entirely (kill/mezz them before they kill you) for Blasters. Or honestly just play a Sentinel if you want to focus entirely on survival as a ranged toon. Super Reflexes would get you up to either softcap with ease and give you a ton of DDR plus an Absorb clicky. Or go Ninjutsu armor for some sneaky shenanigans but less DDR (but still more than a Blaster can get, which is none).

I guess there's also Decimation, but that doesn't diversify your damage types and it's also unique...Plus another part of my issue was pairing Archery with SR (Nin at least gives a damage boost for the first attack out of stealth). It works entirely fine against targets with only average to low lethal resists because Arch has several high DPA attacks, but against something like a Malta titan it slows down real hard.

Rad/Rad: Lots of PBAOE spam, very blappy Elec/Energy: Similar to Elec/Elec but with defense instead of resistance Water/Invuln: Very tanky but the ST damage was kinda pants (partly my fault for not proc'ing it) Beam/Bio: All around good damage and very tanky, mine was Crysis themed (Bio armor is literally perfect for the Crysis Nanosuit) AR/Fire: Also did this one, was mostly fine but Fire is kinda squishy for my tastes I'll give an anti-endorsement to Archery because it doesn't have the AOE of its other AT counterparts (the nuke normalization hurt it) and the ST is also pants against enemies with high lethal resist. And the lack of secondary effects means you can't lean on procs as much to fix it. So either take it with Bio to shore up the damage or lean heavily into the epic pools. Assault Rifle doesn't suffer the nuke normalization problem as much because you actually get AIM (unlike other ATs) and there's so much excessive AOE in the set that it's hardly noticeable.

Instead of adding a new power, the existing Build Up on Stalkers could just be replaced with a variant that had a larger buff. But really, I don't think such a change is really urgent right now. Stalkers are good, albeit somewhat specialized. More distinction/flavor would be nice but I think that there are other ATs that need help much more. Ideally they should be more significantly different, but as long as Scrappers and Stalkers are both good (which they are) then that's not a bad place to be.

One possibility for an AOE enhancement could be turning Refractor Beam into a true chain attack, because right now the description is a lie. It's actually just a standard 15 ft circular AOE attack like Ball Lightning, M30, etc. This would further distinguish the set from not only its other AT counterpart but also other blast sets (right now the only chain blast attack is in Storm Blast).

Shuriken Blast plz

Get as close to soft/hard caps for res/def/HP as possible depending on armor set (i.e. don't care about defense much if using a pure resist set, vice-versa), then pile on whatever extra stuffs I can like recharge. All builds try to maintain a certain amount of net recovery per second unless they have a clicky recovery power of some sort (in which case I can get away with skimping a little on the blue bar). Don't use Hasten very often, but when I do I make sure it's perma and usually pair it with Spiritual or Agility alpha (depending on armor set type) to make it perma much easier than otherwise. I slot full IO sets most of the time, occasionally frankenslotting for certain bonuses. Hamis are sometimes used for ToHit/End (i.e. Tactics) or Res/End (i.e. Tough).

It's not bugged, it's just weak.

Yeah, Sent epics are a lot more "optional" than most other ATs. You aren't plugging in a gaping open hole like you are on other ATs (i.e. adding armor to an armorless AT or ranged attacks to a pure melee specialist). The main thing Sent epics are there for is a strong ST melee attack (aka min-max). Psi also has the added ranged ST attack of Dominate, if you proc bomb it (without proc bombing it's not really impressive). If you have a primary like Storm or Ice, then maybe one of the immobilize powers would be useful too (because of the annoying afraid effect that patch powers create).

It's interesting how the primary and epic choices are largely agreed upon, but the secondaries are mostly wildly different (Bio barely winning so far).

I was comparing Sent vs. Sent. The Blaster ones don't have a consistent baseline because they have varying recharges. The Sent ones are mostly uniform so if there was an outlier it would stick out pretty hard. Overcharge: 56.7669 energy (inner radius) 137.8187 energy (outer radius) Thunderous Blast: 56.7669 smashing (inner) 137.8187 energy (outer) Atomic Blast: 56.7669 smashing (inner) 137.8187 energy (outer) Dreadful Wail: 56.7669 smashing (inner) 137.8187 energy (outer) Blackstar: 56.7669 negative (inner) 137.8187 negative (outer) Nova: 56.7669 energy (inner) 137.8187 energy (outer) Meteor: 56.7669 fire (inner) 137.8187 smashing (outer) Psychic Wail: 56.7669 psi (inner) 137.8187 psi (outer) Inferno: 56.7669 fire (inner) 137.8187 fire (outer) I stuck with the "single shot" nukes because those are easier to deal with than DOT stuff like Rain of Arrows, Full Auto, or Category 5. This covers almost all of them anyways so it should be enough to form a comparison. All of them share the same recharge. I don't see any outliers among these, at least not in terms of raw damage or recharge (secondary effects can be debated as to which might be better, animation times, other little nuances). If we're going to go with the conclusion of Sent Overcharge being OP, that means we would have to nerf EVERY other Sent nuke because most of them do the same damage with the same recharge. How is Overcharge too strong compared to other Sentinel nukes? And there's also the point that Blasters have a 16 target cap vs. Sentinel's 10, plus defiance, uniform nuke damage instead of inner radius stuff, larger AOE radius (Sentinel nukes are mostly 20ft, Blasters and others are 25ft) more damage granted from Aim, higher damage cap, longer range, Build Up in most secondaries, being actually appreciated by their teammates and the general playerbase...I think the Blasters will be fine.

Overcharge on Sents doesn't seem very out of line to me because it has identical damage stats as Thunderous Blast and most other Sent nukes. Sent nukes are really easy to compare for outliers since they all have the same recharge (other ATs are harder because many of their nukes trade recharge for upfront damage). Some examples: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=sentinel_ranged.beam_rifle.overcharge&at=sentinel https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=sentinel_ranged.electrical_blast.thunderous_blast&at=sentinel https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=sentinel_ranged.radiation_blast.atomic_blast&at=sentinel https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=sentinel_ranged.sonic_attack.dreadful_wail&at=sentinel If anything, I think this makes it look like the non-Sent version of Overcharge is undertuned rather than Sents being too strong. If we nerfed Sent Overcharge for the sake of Blasters' feelings, then it would be the shittier compared to other Sent nukes. And there's no way we're going to nerf every other Sentinel nuke down to the same level of whatever Overcharge would get smacked down to. And I don't think Sents need to be pooped on any more than they are already. Like seriously join the early daily Hamidon raid and there's almost always several people shitting on the AT as if they're griefing their own team worse than a petless Mastermind. Discord has a fair bit of it too. Let Sents have a W for once. Just this once. As a treat.

Seismic Blast's nuke is a good contender for the biggest ball you can throw around, and since it comes from the sky you can pretend you're dunking a basketball or something. Sentinels give up a bit of upfront damage and target cap on nukes, but they can use it faster so you could substitute quality for quantity of balls. Somebody claims to have gotten the recharge on Meteor pretty damn short because of the set's mechanics combined with the AT's shorter base recharge time on T9s.

It's a similar situation as Brutes where the ATO procs are mediocre but the set bonuses are pretty swanky. As for Opportunity Strikes, I normally 5-slot that one for the 10% recharge (there are other places to get that, sure, but it's fairly convenient to finish off the set if you're already invested) and sometimes 6-slot if I need the extra defenses. Since Energy Aura is a typed defense set, the extra 5% E/N defenses at 6 slots might be useful to save slots elsewhere.

The main thing to look forward to is getting your nuke every 30 seconds or less once the build has sufficiently matured, and it's especially nice on Beam since the set is known for its extreme lack of AOE on every other AT. The ATO set bonuses for range also help with QOL a lot.

Before I log off I like to drop an Ouros portal so that somebody who doesn't have it unlocked on that alt yet can grab it.

I usually end up using Flight the most because of the sheer versatility and control it offers. Having several LOTG mule powers doesn't hurt. Second most used is Super Speed because wheeeeeeeee, and Super Jump is third because it just doesn't fit a lot of my toons' themes but I don't dislike it. I used Infiltration once for theme and it was kinda slow but I don't totally hate it. Teleport is the only one that I outright avoid because I tried it once on a Fire/Shield Scrapper and my endurance bar was begging for mercy while going across large zones. I could maybe consider it again if paired with an armor set that came with high recovery by default, but not with an already thirsty set like Shield. No other travel power requires endurance slotting for basic functionality (the others can just mule a Winter's Gift proc and call it a day), and with the extra attention needed to operate it, I just feel like the juice isn't worth the squeeze. I'd rather take Mystic Flight or Speed of Sound as a compromise.

We could alternatively go in the other direction and let the cone extend a bit further and/or make it a little bit wider so it can hit multiple targets more consistently. This would unfortunately result in lower procs rates so the ST damage would suffer a little if you proc'd out the power.

Well, a part of the problem is that a lot of these extraneous things and systems might not need to have existed in the first place. IMO there's a lot of bloat in the system. TO's already got taken out (good riddance) and DO's probably should too. As for SOs vs. crafted IOs, IMO only one of the two really needs to exist to fill in the niche of a cheap filler if you can't slot proper IO sets or something due to either lacking resources or the power not being eligible (i.e. can only put generic recharge in Hasten, generic endurance in Assault, etc.).

SOs work fine as cheap filler pieces up until the tipping point where crafted IOs start to take over. Not every power can take the prestige enhancements (i.e. armor or support stuff), and if you've got a bunch of attacks those 5 won't be able to cover everything by themselves.

The Malta sapper beam.

All I know is that when I played back on live in the days when VEATs were still brand new, leveling was so, so, incredibly sloooooooooooooooooooooooow. It took freaking forever just to gain even one notch on the XP circle. Homecoming with no XP boosters, patrol XP, etc. is leaps and bounds much faster than my distant live server memories. Maybe this boost came on the live server sometime after I stopped playing, or maybe it was introduced by HC, IDK which.