Kalean

Wow, Nemu, you really evened out those resists and brought them higher. From 33% HP to hit cap on my attempt to 38% on yours - and on top of that, I was always forgetting to add the SDR IO's scaling because it doesn't show in mids. So realistically 43% HP to hit cap on your bespoke version. Thank you very much for that critical eye, that's a pretty huge health pool to hit 75% resist at. As for hover, there's just so much more control over mystic flight with it on, it just feels better and the end difference is so very minimal. You're right it requires more control to stay low to the ground, but that's not a problem for me, this game is not exactly taxing my reflexes. However, that's worthy of note for the build, it's perfectly capable of brain-off facerolling if you don't take hover. Ultimately your version is perfectly what I wanted, minus Vengeance which is a bit situational anyway. I really appreciate the help refining it. Remembering the SDR IO's math makes it clear that we actually hit resist cap at 27% HP even without rune and melee core embodiment, which is pretty darn respectable, if people want to take that skeleton and plug in different powers for theme-y reasons. My mids crashes whenever I try to export data in the full breakdown format, but all the accolades and standard Endurance IOs are kitted out here, including even physical perfection holding numina's. Nemu's right about recovery serum though - I forget about the temp powers available so readily on homecoming. As for the AoE attack chain, by default, I'm looking at Arc > Whirling > Sweep because arc's cooldown is 3 full seconds, and when it misses Whirling doesn't get Momentum to be usable, but it's true, the AoE rotation could be Arc > Whirling > Rend instead if I really need that extra power slot. Food for thought. Definitely a good point about boosting Melee defenses for Incarnate/Cimemorans, too. Hmm.

Oh, I got it up to 45 and put practiced (and the kismet holder) lower on Nemu's advice for the second build, but thank you!

Thanks for the feedback, Nemu. You've always been there to be helpful to everyone with great advice. I did specify that the resists were at 21% hp, so I was aware that the resist numbers were due to scaling resists, that was the intended goal. However, for some bizarre reason I had it in my head that Def Softcap was 40. No excuses, just my own failing memory and inexperience, there. The build already has so much recharge with the FF procs that another lotg seemed overkill since I didn't have any cooldowns that really benefitted from it, figured I'd just buff vengeance's def a little. However, your sample build has a lot of tweaks that encouraged me to take your advice. The thing about rotating Rune / Melee Hybrid is that it's well tested, like you said. This build was aiming to pull that off inherently. That said, taking your advice there with roughly this same resistance chasing does let me boost that hp % up to 33% if I'm alternating melee/Rune without sacrificing the 21% fallback. So I should probably suck it up and do it. I've re-done the build taking some of your advice, though not all. Actually at softcap for all positionals this time, but now also with rune/melee to get those resists to cap at 33. Your advice about having kismet and practiced brawler earlier was appreciated. Two further questions for you, if you have the time. I kept Conserve Power instead of Focused Accuracy; would you say the prevalence of to hit debuffs is high enough that this is crazy? Also, with the softcaps hit and the extra resist, I couldn't really see a great reason to keep defensive sweep and swapped it for Titan Sweep instead. Does that seem reasonable? Crux.mbd

Alright, so this is my first "official" build, any advice would be welcome. (Edit: Am an idiot. Updated build further down in the thread.) My goal was to make sure that in addition to hitting soft cap on defenses, I would also hit softcap on resists before some insanely low health number without hitting like a wet noodle. Ultimately, that health percentage ended up being 21% - at 21% the build is soft-capped at Def and Res, and it still hits pretty darn hard. Our rotation starts with Weaken Resolve with a guaranteed Achilles' proc for -26% res to our main target. Then it splits. AoE rotation will be Arc of Destruction (very high chance of Fury proc), Whirling Smash, and then Defensive Sweep if you think you'll hit five targets, or Rend Armor on the main otherwise. Defensive Sweep is more of a priority if you expect Damage Debuffs. Single Target rotation is Rend Armor, Follow Through, Crushing Blow, repeat. Updated Rotation for build further down thread: Both rotations start with Rend Armor instead of weaken resolve, Defensive has been replaced with Titan for 3+ targets. Issues I've run into so far: Not having a travel power is no fun. Even with Physical Perfection and modded stamina/Numina/Panacea, this build sucks blues like candy. Almost makes me want to take Elude. Chasing those resists may have left me with too little damage. Maybe I'm just missing the double build ups from Fortunata. At 21%, SLFCEN gain an additional 5% and some change from the Scaling Damage Resist, putting it at 75% or higher across the board (except Toxic and Psy, of course.) Thoughts would be appreciated. Crux.mbd

Seems a little bit endurance heavy. Gonna have to lean on Ageless Core or Cardiac Core pretty hard - to the point where they might be good additions to note on the build. Otherwise, seems fun. Maybe throw a control radial in there for chance to fear, immobilize, and stun with gloom, moonbeam, and torrent.

This seems interesting - quite a thoroughly defensive ice bomb. Do you find you need to pace yourself to ensure you don't run out of End?

Having taken Myshkin's 3.0 build to 50, I agree with his following advice: I took it to 50 on an accelerated path, it took me... mmm... ten hours post 50? And some more advice from Myshkin before I started getting the hang of it. Let me re-share that advice with you in case you missed it. Basically, live on Lightning Storm and Freezing rain - and when you get Explosive Blast slotted, start living on that even moreso. Sometimes you will die - I died twice during the Dark Astoria storylines, but for the most part, I ran through +3/+8 (+4 when I got the Alpha Incarnate to level shift) like a bunker buster. The only slowdown was enemies running, which they ... ... they did a lot. Flying enemies. Ugh. Flying Cowardly Bosses? The worst. I basically started ignoring them when they ran and making sure that whenever they came back, they'd fly into two lightning storms and two tornadoes and a hail of snipes. Myshkin is right, this is probably the most fun I've had on a defender.

Having taken this to 50 fairly recently, I was struck by how budget-friendly it was, and how well the combination of a metric ton of chance-to-heal-self worked with defensive opportunity to just completely mitigate taking alpha strikes. In all honesty, it was a very efficient build. I altered it some after play, as the lack of sparky and lack of defense were both hurtful, and also I was able to get it to Alpha, which made the sapping noticeably more effective (hard to believe, I know.) I wanted to try and keep my updated build conscious of your original, both in terms of slotting and budget, but getting where I wanted it still cost another 75~ mil on top of your build. The other costs were about 2% S&L res, 5% fire/cold res, 3 knockback loss (!!!) and 3% negative resist. I also had to go through the Atlas Medallion Accolade to make up for some Max HP lost, but it that had a net positive effect on End too, so it was definitely worth it. The benefits, though - were considerable. This Hero build was built using Mids Reborn 3.4.6 https://github.com/LoadedCamel/MidsReborn Click this DataLink to open the build! Makoshou: Level 50 Technology Sentinel Primary Power Set: Electrical Blast Secondary Power Set: Electric Armor Power Pool: Fighting Power Pool: Leaping Power Pool: Teleportation Power Pool: Speed Ancillary Pool: Electricity Mastery | Copy & Paste this data into Mids Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1646;684;1368;HEX;| |78DA75944B6F525110C7E7C2C50AA5AD7D4081BEE88BF7ABC62EADAFD64D4B526D7| |54B083DE235080458E85730C6AD5FC26FE156BF813171A5B6F661FA505738BDC39F| |1C829EE4DEFCEE9C3933FF99B939F917EBDE8F1FB66E93317CAF526C360B3BAADAB| |2AAAAE2CA17CB56892ED7003F61D80B0F8BD5B2DACB6C5454A9D5B04AC54AE12E1F| |6CCD751DD6D513556DAAAE47E14EE379AD419EED5AAD92D9A92BB5E7B5714B15EB5| |6B53C647FDCB7CA4FF97879CCFEDA551555AF355AC59655AB8636EA5629D30D7F19| |B690E78CAAF132C0CAE6F9F91AE59741586D17D18949B46292837E024E054C3A039| |C0B5CA10B814CAC378C932863745C120257290D480A7CE3DC869EDB406E0F727B90| |DB8BDC5EE41E46EE1CE776EA619C74E6ECB89C0B5CA30BC06F8131FA05F823F09DD| |5B8F4302EA899809A09A8F1438D1F6A0250B31F95B1230C7F24C9DE791727726B09| |0C373D323A8777040EF8F0A0AE61101A42D010828669689886865968586001437AA| |621D1E066970E5CE7A68D682EE608E6344BAB02618C308CC98531393F2718D5758E| |5250BA384FA7804DC02707D18C498BE493D38B34255B0E0E33AEF76A9CDABC28CBE| |27CBA381F3DC0D14ECB96D0B225DA053C167072D449FD5F9C442111D41841451154| |74C89D0FEA2983B42FCD8CD20FC031E040204E87023758F094769AA6282D438FB09| |8197D1433E8549C4202479C7A4E6FE61C861EC7D013187A02434F60E8290C7D9535| |2C18E4EC56B000E129949282DE342A48D391C067FE399735118E657A6DD8634BD31| |B812CBD12F8C2BE316D6C8E18DD9452B2B406B82510E5FA937AFD49D4BF82FA9707| |E4B2E8BA64FA5C16D925A7BBE428E0828BC0B3B87D03B9E0D29E36495F6DDBC83FD| |796D97B55C1BE6DEA66B61B623FF4FCDBFFE83FF6E37EFB9AF4EDA47FE7AD432E80| |64EF4EFB7DA2B7E0F65FFB23EA36| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| 15% more Recharge Resist, 20% more hold/stun/sleep/confuse/terrorize resist, 70% more immobilization resist, and 100% more teleportation resist were all nice, but the real gains were the defense. Bringing AoE and Fire/Cold defenses up above 20%, and everything else up to around 15 (except Toxic, but that got a 5% resistance boost so sshhhh) doesn't sound like a lot, but that combined really well with the resistances basically being at soft-cap to dramatically boost survivability, and the Alpha Slot was definitely worth unlocking and building out, but completely optional still. Additionally, we kept the same (actually a hint more) regeneration but also added Panacea +hp/end, which works out to another ~50% regeneration equivalent on top of what you already had, and of course helpfully more endurance. I found this particularly useful because this build doesn't... ever... stop. On the whole, I'm impressed by all of your clever slotting and good ideas. The only thing I absolutely would change about your build even if I wasn't aiming for more defense, is that I would condense Hasten down to two +5 slots (a 10 million increase! oof.) to free up one additional slot, which could go to anything from a panacaea in health or another PT:Chance to Heal Self in Stamina (why not?) or even to throw in the Aegis Psionic/Status Resist into one of your resist powers. That would still be a 15-20 million increase, though.

Rather than weighing in on the click-y nature of the beta sent (I'm on the fence, it's not that bad, but it's not great either), or on the metrics which plenty of other people have covered, I wanted to weigh in on a fairly obvious solution for people that miss defensive opportunity - harping back on aethereal's suggestion for high opportunity effects, and also their suggestion that tactical tension is desirable. Rather than high opportunity giving yet more damage, I would argue it should apply a scaling (depending on your opportunity level) buff to regeneration and recovery, although it would feel much more satisfying if it added a scaling chance for an hp/end heal to all attacks, similar to the global toxic chance on the Spider's Bite ATO, even if the numbers worked out the same on average . I recognize that most people weren't leaning heavily on Defensive Opportunity for heals, but they were there, and in some builds they were even significant. (Sovera's deprecated Hidden Gem Sonic/Bio comes to mind during the leveling process, and Sarah Bellum's Elec/Elec Sent combined Defensive Opportunity with 6x Power Transfer procs, too, which has been a gem to play.) Keeping that, and the endurance boost, alive in some fashion seems not only appropriate, but desirable. Having to choose between better survivability/sustainability and damage output? That's the most fundamental kind of tactical tension there is, and unlike trying to increase damage at high opportunity, it doesn't tread on the devs' apparent fear of sentinels displacing the original archetypes.

Nothing to apologize for - I'm asking for help, and you're obviously under no obligation to provide it. I was just ... wildly impressed by the quality and depth of your guide - as others have said. I've actually still got a ways to go - this game gives me alt-o-holism something crazy.

These are all well and good - but here's the real question - is there any command to teleport immediately *behind* a target? Gotta get that anime feel.

I've taken this to 50 recently, and it's been an interesting ride. Tons of DPS for a Defender, that proc monstering is doing heavy lifting on power burst, basically turning it into a second snipe (or better sometimes.) Lightning storm with what feels like 100% buildup chance every 30 seconds or so is phenomenal. Nova doesn't hardly cost anything when any of the 3 endurance conservation buffs are on, and even though I burn through endurance like crazy, I'm never out because of your heavy emphasis on +end buffs. I've noticed, however, that I am, to use your metaphor, a bad driver. Enemies, even 3+ elite bosses in a group, are often running and scattering far, far away - desperately afraid to be in that AoE maelstrom of death. I feel like I'm never using optimal rotations outside of the "Freezing Rain, Tornado, Lightning Storm" sequence. Any advice for someone still learning to drive?

Well, that seems pretty intense. I'll give it a run, see if I can get it close to times like yours. Thanks for the suggestion - I love weird off-role builds, they help me learn the ways in which the systems can be bent.

...? What's it play like?

I'd be interested in this one - do you happen to have a build to share?