FupDup

I always sell my white salvage for 101 and yellows for 1001 to be a good samaritan...and because they usually sell for the "full" price anyways so I get to save some money on the auction house fees. 😊

A lot of items probably would have to be re-created as "new" costume pieces, closely referencing the model and textures of the existing models to make it faster and easier than starting entirely from scratch.

Depending on the armor set and what kind of content they're going up against, pushing over 45% can be useful as either a buffer against defense debuffs or for getting closer to the incarnate softcap of 58.75%. If we're on a set like Invuln there's no reason to go over 45% (and can even get away with lower), but for something more defense-focused it could have value if you're doing harder content than PI council farms and are doing it solo (no teammates to draw aggro or buff you).

Oopsie doodles. I'm going crazy because there was a Sentinel discussion about Archery recently and I was autopilot so I thought this thread was that one. 😖

The OP is asking for a full ranged blast set, because as you said the Dominator version is quite lackluster if you only take the ranged attacks.

Inherent Stamina.

I could maybe see up to 4 slots of Shifter in Stamina for the 2.5% recovery bonus, but even then I'd rather 3-slot Stamina up to the ED cap and then 2-slot Panacea in health for the same set bonus and a little extra regen.

To quote someone else from that recent poll thread: I'd also add that it has very high synergy with the very strong Energy Aura secondary that also gets some benefits compared to what other ATs get, or Elec Armor that is kinda neat too but not quite as much. And I guess there's Ice Armor too but that one is generally not well regarded...

He just spams that in response to literally any thread suggesting power balance changes. He's trying to parody people who say that buffing bad things would cause power creep, except he's going waaay too far with it.

Besides higher regen per second, more HP also means a greater buffer to eat burst damage with.

That is unlikely because there are several people who deeply, deeply, adore the current "super clicky" design of Regen and consider that its single most important identity/theme. Considering how it only took like 2 or 3 people to make the devs keep Beanbag in Assault Rifle, any kind of redesign that made Regen on other ATs act like the Sent variant would never have a chance in hell of making it in. We're just gonna have to work within the current design as best we can with stat buffs and adding some more goodies to existing powers (like some debuff resistances). A part of me also likes Sents getting so many unique changes to powersets that no one else is ever allowed to touch, which is why I almost like how Sents are the only AT that gets Aim in Assault Rifle. They're the official "fuck the cottage rule" AT and I love to see it.

To be fair, Assault Rifle is actually good now. Assault Rifle. Freaking Assault Rifle of all things. If AR can be buffed, Regen does have a tiny sliver of hope, maybe. But it might take a while around here...

In terms of raw power, Assault Rifle stomps Archery into dust after the AR revamp. Especially in terms of AOE, Assault Rifle is almost unmatched (while also being equal/better at ST than Archery too). Archery, meanwhile, only has average AOE by Sentinel standards (on other ATs it gets higher regards because of a fast recharging nuke, but all Sent nukes have normalized damage/recharge so it loses that benefit). Another benefit is that AR has several sources of fire damage, while Archery is almost entirely limited to lethal. And Arch has very limited proc options, while AR has more because it has more secondary effects (KB on 3 powers, -def on Burst, stun on the T2 blast). TL;DR: Assault Rifle wins this comparison without contest, assuming the goal is performance (but in terms of theme/concept they're very different).

I generally don't, but that's because I'm more of a "concept" person than building toons top-down with a specific meta role in mind. Also, not all sets of a particular damage type are created equally. For example, Archery, DP, and Broadsword are kinda mediocre lethal sets but Battle Axe and Claws are very stronk.

Enemies will always have a minimum of 5% chance to hit you no matter how high you push your defenses. The only purpose of going over the softcap is to build a buffer against debuffs (or hit the incarnate cap). Another point I forgot to mention is that the AT probably affects this comparison too. As a WP tanker, you're going to have very high HP, resists, and regen so that you probably don't have much reason to go over the cap. On a class with lower HP/resists it might be more useful.

There are two situations to consider: A. Incarnate content has a much higher softcap at 58.75%. B. Going over either softcap (normal or incarnate) can give you a little extra wiggle room against defense debuffs. Most people say "lol no never do it." My stupid opinion is that if you can go a little over without making overly large sacrifices, it's fine to do so. Especially if your armor set doesn't have high resists or other "layers" to fall back on besides raw defense (resist sets probably should never consider the incarnate cap and don't usually even need to hit the normal one either). It also depends on how much you plan to solo vs. teaming (if teaming it doesn't matter much because other people can carry you, but it can help solo, especially if doing the aforementioned incarnate stuff solo or fighting groups with lots of debuffs).

Assault Rifle gives off "commando" type vibes, like Rambo, Terminator, Duke Nukem, or Serious Sam. A big macho dude (or dudette) who's got an entire arsenal in their pocket. DP is more edgy assassin sneaky stuff like the Matrix, John Wick, Deadpool, Bayonetta, or Reaper from Overwatch. For gameplay, AR has a lot of cones which could mean a lot of repositioning to line them up after using melee attacks. DP only has one cone so it has much better synergy with melee-intensive playstyles. And if you did DP/Nin that's basically Deadpool.

My experience is the opposite: Back in the early live days, I struggled to get invested into the game because I could play for many hours a day every day for weeks and not really have much to show for it. It was like pissing in the wind. I mostly only played on free trials for a little bit because it was just an endless Sisyphus simulator. I can only push that boulder up the hill so many times without it moving anywhere before I say "fuck this" and find something else to do. And this was before all that incarnate jazz (like before VEATs got introduced and a short while after). In the HC era, I've invested more time into my first toon than all of my live ones combined (not that there were many) precisely because I can actually make real progress playing casually (solo, not using boosters or such, no farming). My time actually gets respected and rewarded now. As a result, I've made way more alts here than I did on live (only made a handful back then because it was too much of a slog). If people are getting T4 incarnates in a "couple of hours," that only happens with major boosting/power leveling. And that's kind of their own fault for choosing to use those things. That doesn't happen in "normal" play.

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.