Ignatz the Insane

That's the only reason I was looking up Fortunatas.

OK! Thanks, I found it. Teamwork power training. Thanks, as I said, I have little experience with Fortunatas.

Ok, pardon my ignorance, I'm looking at the Fortunata, Widow, and Night Widow training, and don't see mez protection. What am I missing? I see Crab Spiders and Bane Spiders with mez protection. Is that what you meant?

How about Mez protection?

Kinda? I mean, the closest would be a Fortunata with Soul Mastery I guess. Are Fortunatas as durable as Sentinels? Looking for objective analysis here, I have little experience with Arachnos Widows. Edit: Also Fortunatas have no access to a heal. Not sure that matters.

We have a few clues for what the original designers thought: -The name itself, Sentinel. Of course, this could mean the literal defination of Sentinal, or it could be from Mass Effect's version of a Sentinel, or another I can't think of. -Ranged damage and sturdy defense/resist/mez protection. -Sentinel Ancillary pools. They're the only class that has heals available in this catagory (Fire and Electric Mastery). They all have a melee attack, a ranged hold, and a PBAoE attack, although Electric Mastery inexplicably has a PBAoE damage aura. Dark, Fire, Electric, and Ice all have ranged immobilize. Ninja has a ranged AoE with tiny damage (with debuffs) instead and Psionic has a ranged AoE sleep. Finally, those that don't have heals have either toggle or PBAoE debuffs or a PBAoE buff (Link Minds). From this I gather Sentinels are a mostly ranged damage dealer with good durability with the option of decent support powers.

The more I think about it, the more I believe leveraging Sentinel durability is the best way to improve team utility. As mostly ranged attackers with excellent resists/defense/mez protection, they can take on quite a few attackers in relative safety. Because of this they are a joy to play solo. My Fire/Bio is one of my favorite characters. They're fine for teams at the default settings, or even most +1-3 Task Forces, but I'd rather play almost any other class for high difficulty content. I do think it's important to note that most teams aren't pushing the envelope from what I've seen (I could be wrong).

Gelum or Frigus, (Latin for frost/cold). Inimicus (Latin for hostile). I kinda like Inimicus Frigus personally, but it's possible I'm weird.

Um, you're responding to a post from two years ago from a poster who last logged in a year ago so.... Good work buddy?

Can you give me an example of a game that was perfectly balanced?

I'm with you on liking Hover. I have a couple of melee characters who use Hover. As far as I know, @Sovera uses Hover on all their Fire Armor builds, so it's definately doable.

One of the biggest hurdles for older games is player fatigue (for me anyway). When I first found Homecoming, I played many hours for a year or so. After that, I'd play a month or two, take a break. The breaks are getting longer lately. Now, as long as Homecoming is around, I'll fire it up once in a while. New content helps bring me back. I think the Devs understand this.

Oh, no worries! I agree that the values and additions would need to be relatively small. But look at the name of the AT itself: Sentinel. A guardian for the team. The vast majority of complaints are related to team utility.

I'll reiterate: Reverse Cosmic Balance. In other words, rather than increasing values for themselves, they increase values for team members.

Agreed. I also agree that a straight damage buff probably isn't the right way to go. I see them as a more hybrid AT. How about giving them a kindof reverse Cosmic Balance to aid teammates? Every Blaster in the team gives a bit of Mez Resistance (protection? I dunno), Tanks give damage, Defenders give Defense, and so on. Obviously these values would be small, but it would give Sentinels value in teams.

I think Claws compares favorably to any Scrapper Primary personally. I leveled a Claws/Energy Aura and a Claws/Bio, mostly solo, and they were both fantastic. Claws is second only to War Mace for me. I also really like Energy and Katana. I prefer Dark Melee on Tanks, Street Justice on Stalkers, Savage on Brutes. Titan Weapon is great at 50 but 'twas a pain to level. I've never tried Kinetic Melee or Broadsword, they're next on my list. Beyond that....do yourself a favor and try these out yourself. You have tons of character slots, and money is trivially easy to make in this game. I suggest soloing a Scrapper to the early twenties slotting as you go with SOs to get an idea if you like something. Then worry about spending a bunch on IOs. Check out the Market Forum and Guide Forum for ideas on easy ways to make money.

I was gonna suggest either War Mace/Bio or War Mace/Shield, but I think this is correct. I just really dig War Mace solo.

My Scrappers were much happier when I decided - if my target gets knocked out of range, I'd just tab to the next closest and start swingin'. I don't let it bother me anymore. Besides, it's rarely a problem. Most folks either hover above the crowd and knock them into the ground or use knockback strategically and knock strays toward the spawn. Knockback and Knockdown are terrific mitigation as well. In the very rare occasion when my Scrappers are running around like headless chickens, I either take a detour away from the group if it's steamrolling or leave the team. I also don't have a problem using a slot for Knockback to Knockdown. My characters who do are still super. It's not a big deal (for me).

I love the idea of a melee hybrid tank like the DnD Paladin. I could see a long recharge single target heal, an AoE protection aura against fear, Cure Disease could perhaps be something like Clear Mind, and for spells at higher levels a self buff and team buffs. I dunno, I'll give it some thought for something more specific, but I really dig the idea.

This is probably a hot mess. I've seen and done several iterations of both Bio and Staff, and they vary quite a bit. Sometimes I want to proc out DNA Siphon, sometimes use it as another emergency button(as I did here). Hope this at least gives you an idea.

Are you talking about a (few) particular mission(s) or the game in general? Travel time between missions and zones has largely been eliminated with all of the different teleport options. There are travel options from the P2W vendor from the getgo, and it takes perhaps 10 minutes looking up and finding the Exploration Badges in Atlas for the first time, opening up a zone Teleportation power. From there, a bit of street sweeping in each zone for one Exploration Badge opens up that zone for teleportation. Add to that Mission Teleport, Team Teleport, Base Teleport, and Ouroboros and travel times between zones is really fast. I can't think of another MMO where travel is faster. Even before the options we have now, CoH probably had the fastest travel times between zones.

I rather like the Sentinel APPs and PPS. Lots of useful things: Immobilizes, Melee attacks, Buffs, Debuffs, Holds, Pets, PBAoEs, even a couple Heals. This not only gives utility to the Sentinel, it gives some great slotting opportunities for IO set bonuses. At higher levels I play my Sentinels more like Blappers to utilize those tools, and really enjoy it. Although I think Sentinels could probably use a tweak or two, I don't think the APPs and PPS are the problem.

This will only be a partial answer, but I documented a character leveling to the mid 30s and recorded the following: At level 12 upgraded SOs for 192k At level 17 upgraded SOs for 560k. At level 22 upgrade SOs for 737k. Obviously this doesn't include the cost of the initial SOs(I think I bought them at level 7) nor does it include SOs I bought while leveling. If I had to make a guess, I spent around 500k influence buying SOs. The cost for upgrading will continue to increaese beyond level level 22, but at level 27 I switched to IOs. I wish I had more data for you, but hope this gives you a good idea.

The Dev team is openly working on new difficulty settings for some content. My advice is have some patience and see how that plays out. I agree that most of the TFs are ridiculously easy nowadays, including the ITF, even at max difficulty. For myself, I'll issue a thumbs up or down depending on the new settings.

What level content are you doing? Cuz on some fast moving high level teams, by the time Total Focus lands, the spawn has been obliterated, often including the moke I'm trying to punch. Yea, Energy Melee is way better now, but it, War Mace, Titan Weapons, and Radiation Melee can sometimes be frustrating to play on steamrollers. SO much AoE endgame....