Sir Myshkin

If you want something interesting to poke holes in it with, this is a build I put together quite a bit back now designed around being on a team and cycling Meltdown and Adrenal Booster back and forth for a constant buff in favor of using something like Aim for short-term bursts. I used to have the math figured out for it back in the day, don't have it laying around anymore so I couldn't tell you what it's supposed to do, but it's definitely not an atypical Sentinel.

Saw this request yesterday but I wasn't near my computer to actually post a reference build. The referred Linea builds are older ones that are focused on survivability (packed defense for a lot of different damage types) which tends to make them a bit more costly because of the enhancement choices. Of them the "Old Two" is probably the most reasonably non-overboard option. This is something I have on file more geared towards performance in the damage realm (ahem, proc style of course) based off working knowledge of Kin/Elec from back on Retail. I swapped to Robotics/Kin MM with Homecoming for plenty of my own reasons and never rebuilt this character:

I would recommend Water over Dark just because it functions similar to how Energy does with Knockdown. It is super crazy and a lot of fun!

Hold on, I have it here. One moment... A small cut of mission one, MoITF Solo Run at +4/x8, Buffed Enemies. Storm/Energy Defender. Storm/Water would actually operate the same fashion. This was the kind of character that ran ahead of Tanks to prepare the room for the Tanker. "There is a team en route to collect your corpses. I am here to provide the arrangements for you to be corpses on their arrival." Oh, but if you want something a bit more "supportive" then I'd drop a line on Trick Arrow/Archery as a fun runner up. Time/Dual Pistol is a good choice as well, but once it sets buffs it becomes a pretty "forget-me-not" set until the next buff wave.

Imagine a tissue, this is Regen. Imagine a piece of card stock paper, this is Tough. Imagine a slice of cardboard, like a shipping box, this is Weave. Now imagine setting up four rows of these vertically positioned with a couple finger widths between each like so: | .. | .. | Now imagine grabbing a hose, hooking it up to the faucet, and attaching a spray nozzle with multiple settings. Hit the first row with Mist. We’ll be here a while before that water manages to get through, that’s like +1. Row two, switch to Soak, bit faster, +2. Row three, Shower, +3, really starting to appreciate that extra layer. Row four, set that nozzle to Jet and let it rip, +4, things are getting hectic now! Neat right? Now repeat that imaginative thought process, but without “Tough” and “Weave”, just the “Regen” tissue. And that’s why Regen layers its options as much as possible.

So wait, am I supposed to Force Bubble into the spawn first, and then cast Mass Confusion? This seems the most logical course of action.

I'd say the only thing I've ever done, purely out of interest of "is it possible in volume in the most harmless consideration possible" was buying large quantities of common salvage a rate just a bit below fee and vendor cost (like 200 I think it was, vendors 250 isn't it? Can't recall at the moment), then taking that bulk assortment and vendoring the whole lot out just to see what the time investment would look like, and how that could be translated into earning a billion Influence. Not really a nefarious act, provided a set and stable minimum asking price for thousands of common salvage for well over a week, and all it cost anyone was my own personal time to eventually go "nah, 250k a day isn't worth the workload."

I've joined teams that have differed in the past. Got picked up on my Ice Armor while there was a Granite previously on the team, the Granite differed responsibility to me, glued to my side and detoggled all of their armor shields and went full rogue melee. It was rather amusing. I don't prime Tanks, and my other one doesn't even have the actual Taunt power of the pure fact he doesn't require it between raw damage, gauntlet, and debuff capacity to grab enemy aggro and hold it. It's fairly impossible for him to "alt tank" without moving into a separate room from the team. "Hey team, I brought you a present!" Primary Level: Visibility, Damage, Debuff Secondary Level: Taunt and Threat Level Taunt, the act of, and/or the power that creates it can insert itself at any stage of the primary level and supersede any single aspect of that tree. Threat Level is something modified by things like Damage, or powers like Super Speed. Two players standing side by side with varying threat levels, the higher level will take priority response by the enemy. You could call this the three D's of Tanking. Distraction (Taunt or Visibility/LoS), Damage, Debuff. Okay, no one really calls them that, but that's basically what it is. It is possible for a player to strip aggro from a Tanker if they do enough damage to a target for their threat level to rise beyond what Taunt modifies for a Tanker. One of the best examples to see something like this in game is the B.A.F. Incarnate Trial with Seige AV since its red ring component is built around aggro management on Seige. When aggro is developed, a ring appear, as threat level grows, more rings appear until a third generates and the character is locked down. The faster that process builds, the faster aggro was obtained. My Taunt-less Rad/SS/Soul Tanker can obtain three rings within about 15/s, and is incapable of going "whole hog" on Seige during that phase beyond a few pot shots without getting locked out the entire time even if there are multiple other Tankers present because of his damage level, and the ability to stack additional debuffs onto the AV in conjunction with Gauntlet effects.

I haven't really been playing much, maybe I'll consider a short sprint with my Beam/EA just to see a time or two with it (I know it can clear it, just don't know about speed). On the Blaster note, I posted a knowingly bad run of ~6:00 for an Ice/Atomic Blaster that falls a bit behind typical optimal Melee runs (5:00-6:00), but an organized/clean run is ~5:00-5:20 depending on a runner. A proper AoE Blaster build should be able to handle the Trapdoor Test fancifully better than 5:00 if someone were to make the effort. Actually, take that back, did a discount double check, Ratch_ did post a Fire/Fire Blaster at an average of 4:00ish minutes so... yeah, point made. 2:48 on a Plant/Dark/Leviathan Controller. Clearly your Sentinel needs buffs badly. jk jk Breaking 4:00 for a Sentinel I believe is good from what I remember. I'd really have to dig to try and find my Beam/EnA but if I remember right it was somewhere between 4-5 minutes which tends to be in line with most Defender DPS. Alright, I'm back out this thread, see you kids in nine more pages!

From my perspective: Abyssal Gaze is actually a pretty solid attack on its own right, the hold aspect means you get to drop a ton of procs into it and it becomes a beefy power to throw around, I definitely wouldn't trade off that opportunity, especially considering it ends up making it one of the stronger attacks in rotation. Positron Cell on the other hand is somewhat garbage unless you're desperate for the hold/mule (personal opinion). On my Ice/Atomic I have access to three holds and the hold AoE, took two, still nothing ever lives long enough for me to notice/care if a hold ever sticks in the first place and Dark has more effective (faster) AoE/Cones. There's a couple of decent 4-piece options for -ToHit that can go into Beta Decay, but my experience with Atomic has been that unless I was under constant mez protection or Clarion, I found myself missing that a random blip of a sleep or a hold or a whatever had dropped Beta often enough that it was irritating. I wouldn't ever consider excluding it from the build, but I also tend not to expect anything from it other than "nice to have" which has since always had me hesitant to invest more than an Achilles -Res and an Enzyme. Metabolic on the other hand, there's several good procs you can toss in there and a little health bump gets it going well enough. You only need to devote two slots to the healing aspect of Life Drain with a couple of boosters to be a max value. Preventative Medicine is a good option (Heal, Heal/End at +5 will give 2.5% S/L bonus and 18.5% Heal). That leaves you the other four slots to do with...whatever. Or go five slots of something like Superior WO's for the 5% E/N and a +5'd Heal IO. If you just want it as a heal, however, four slots max, make it hit, get your heal, move on, its DPA just isn't there compared to many of your other abilities (even Electron Shackles is better).

I want to toss out there that you kind of have to play Kinetics like a self-buffing blast set that happens to filter into other players more than it is a "support" set. Transfusion and Transference are both really strong abilities, and Speed Boost is often a godsend power in early levels for a lot of players, but as you've experienced that tends to brick wall your feeling of usefulness pretty quick. That feeling... it didn't go away for me and I now have a Kin shelved indefinitely, I just don't find it fun being the "Fulcrum Shift" player on teams that don't really tend to even need that kind of a buff anyway. My advice for you would be to reverse your approach to the Kinetic aspect and focus on the damage aspect of your Corruptor and you'll find that the natural occurrence of your other abilities will trickle impact appropriately. Building with that in mind, especially with how little slotting Kinetics uses, gives you a prime chance to really pack slots in each attack and carry a decent selection of both AoE and ST abilities. Example (flip for a Corr): Beyond that, in your Alt-journey, if you find you're not satisfying your itch for a proper "support" character, then come back and take a swing at this: Fair warning, this is a build that has no training wheels and the education process is a steep and brutal one, but once you get used to the timing and watching for the power pop-ups, this thing will not only be a monster in a team, it'll be a monster solo because everything it does is AoE meaning it supports you as well. The reason I suggest this one is A) it's a really fun concept, and B) if you were attracted to the general concept of what Kinetics wants to do, but are finding it lackluster, then Nature is probably going to fill that void for you more completely. It contains a good amount of team support in a variety of powers across a lot of different unified effects, but the +Dam, +End, and Healing are still there along with additional +ToHit, expanded healing with Bloom effects, and +Res added into the mix. The set also has a much better leveling progression than Kinetics in the sense that you can gather up a lot of early powers that are good in the 1-30 range and then respec out of the less needed/used ones in the 35+ range pretty easily (like the resurrect).

Im staying out of this one 😅

For what it’s worth, for a Sentinel to start off at an even playing field with a Blaster they have to begin with a ~30% Damage Buff at base, however most Blaster abilities are going to scale slightly higher with their AT’s modifiers so a fully enhanced Blaster at 50 versus a fully enhanced Sentinel is unfortunately a lot more than just “20%” off. There’s also the fact that Blaster inherent instantly starts ramping that damage with each consecutive attack far more consistently than any benefit from Opportunity. And I apologize that I don’t remember the math off the top of my head since I haven’t done it since over a year ago, but an average Sentinel has to come up with a pretty sizable constant global buff (like 60%) at 50 to base line even medium/average Blaster damage let alone power builds. I could get a build to do some similar tricks with Build Ups and Adrenaline Rush and such, but it still wasn’t quite there.

My phone’s auto correct does not understand what you mean 😄

You'll be happy to find that what's in-game and what's in-Mid's are two different things. You can actually slot the regular Def Debuff sets in several of those powers unlike how Mid's is coded, my biggest point of contention for this is Negatron Slam of which I have an Achilles proc slotted in-game, but Mid's does not allow for. I would dare argue that Atomic is a case of secondaries where having S/L/E is probably going to be favored over Ranged since you'll find yourself far more often actually up-front and personal with enemies due to things like Beta Decay and Atom Smasher. Actually back-pocketed a Dark/Atomic build during Mad King experiments, have one on hand that covers pretty much everything but a few points of defense (grab a base defense buff or... well just about anything you want will fill the gap in-game).

A heartfelt experience from someone who went into playing a Sentinel with zero expectations early on into Homecoming's life: A long time before, back in the days of yore, I had a character concept that I really wanted to try and get off the ground which only worked as a Blaster as being the only high-yield Ranged class in the game. My goal was a long-ranged canon, truly using the concept of "range" as my actual "defense", but to my dismay Blasters still just didn't really fit the bill and I often found it faceplanted more than I'd ever felt comfortable with. There's just too much stuff in the early game that's office buildings and sewage plants that make the idea of a vast open orbital satellite like character from really shining, and it killed the dream for me. In comes the prospects of Sentinels and having baked in armor along for the level-up ride, and I thought "hey, why not revisit the idea and see how I feel about it?" Now I can't get nearly the same total net range as I could've before, but I was also now in a position where that didn't matter nearly as much. I loaded up procs into my attacks as the slots became available and I hit the XP pavement. I noticed slash felt by the time I got into my 40's that the game started to feel tipsy-turvy. Early on there's a lot of even exchange, but as sets grow, slots get slotted, and powers get expanded, AT's start to shimmer and shine, and I noticed in a team scenario that it was pretty easy for a Blaster to quickly out class me if one was present, but only if they were. If it was a few Melee and I, we were a pretty even bunch, at least enough that I didn't feel too wildly out of place. By the time I got my Sentinel to 50, slotted, and marked with a couple of Incarnate abilities I came to terms with the fact that despite it being a somewhat fun journey to 50, I had come to feel a tad bit lacking in the end, like I'd been eating an ice cream cone and found out much too late that the entire time there'd been a hole in the bottom and it'd leaked down my shirt while I was eating the top. I don't regret making the Sentinel and have no intention of deleting him, I'm just quietly waiting to see if some passive buff comes along that gives them a better purpose or toolkit than what they have now that might peak pique my interest in playing the character once again.

Just for clarity: having -Regen is definitely beneficial in a battle against an AV, but it isn’t a necessity. The biggest thing to overcome in a battle with an AV is their Regen, and than can be done by raw damage, or debuffs, of which just flooring their -Res can be enough for a Defender to do the work they need to no different than how melee builds can leverage small additions of -20 to -32.5% from a couple of procs to wildly swing their “DPS”. Both Poison and Time are capable of supporting a set in taking down an AV, although Poison leverages a lot more -Res in the process.

Definitely check out the Proc Monster thread (link in signature) for help with procs on Defenders. As far as AV killing is concerned, at least even con setting you should be able to handle quite a few of them regardless of the choice in power sets. Some of the biggest components to taking down hard targets aren’t just damage but debuffs, so things like -Resistance, -Regeneration will play a big part. Certain sets provide bigger impact and debuffs like Radiation, Cold, Traps, whereas some others don’t have any like Force Fields which make the struggle more difficult. For blast sets you’ve got some like Sonic which have built in debuffing with -Res, but are inherently weaker in damage to offset that, and others like Fire which are aggressively strong damage dealers. While I couldn’t personally get past the visuals of the set, Posion is a good call for being an AV hunter paired with Fire or Ice as a suggestion.

To be fair shortly after Homecoming came online I spent a lot of time testing mechanics and procs with a lot of powers, so I might have an unfair advantage. Adding to that the theory crafting process for me isn't just one build, but variations, rebuilds, sometimes I'll even end up with alt forms for different purposes/goals before I pick one I might play myself. Once a character hits the road I rarely find my expectations to have been wrong in how it plays from last build to end 50.

The only respecs I’ve done have been the result of power changes (Tankers, Trick Arrow). All of my builds are planned and crunched before a character ever hits level one.

Definitely not suggesting you entirely give up your build for mine, in fact you could easily trade out Shadow Maul and/or Touch of Fear for one of (or either) of those picks, but I would highly encourage the inclusion of Smite over something like Shadow Punch for filler. Obviously Punch has to be taken, but there's enough headway in the build to flip around two power picks, and if you'd rather trade out for Gloom and Dark Obliteration I could respect that. I will say however that Dark Consumption is likely going to be a power you find sitting unused in your power tray. I have plenty of experience with Dark Melee, and I've packed an excessive amount of hours on an */SR Scrapper to know that there's just not enough out there in the game that ever concerned me from an endurance stand point. Short end of it if you're planning on leveling into the build, sure pick up Consumption along the way it'll help if you're going to gimp on slotting out enhancements, but you'll likely find yourself getting rid of it at 50 with a completed build.

You could easily do either one and be good either way. Ice Armor having slows also incorporated will add into keeping things in contaminate range. Bio Armor is a generally beastly secondary either way.

Want to point out a specific thing being mentioned in this thread: The Force Feedback +Recharge proc does actually have a natural limitation, albeit not an actual "hard coded" limitation. There are only a handful of abilities in the game that can be chained together with a high probability that would generate even just three stacks of the proc fast enough. The tightest proc-inclusive attack chain I personally managed was two, with an occasionally fleeting third stack. To be clear, with the current proc algorithm set in the game the proc cannot be infinitely stacked, there is a natural limitation in place just by the mathematical order of things. Yes those few circumstances that exist to get three stacks can make some very fun and interesting builds, but they're also very difficult and temperamental builds to play and are why so few actually try them out. That aside, one can never have enough procs! So sayeth the Mad King.

Alpha: Musculature Judgement: Soul Drain will force you into Melee, having a powerful ranged (AoE) tool can be useful as a Tanker so either Pyronic or Ion Interface: Go off the beaten path and pick up something that's not common in teams like Cognitive or Spectral, still contain a damage component but have a slightly different debuff flair. Destiny: Rebirth Radial will prove a worthwhile heal and passive regen for a Super Reflex character, well worth having on tap. Hybrid: Melee Core for added +Res. Between that and passive effects in SR, your "panic" moments won't be much in the panic department. Lore: Roll a d20. I did want to offer up some build slotting suggestions more than anything that could help shore-up some oddities and slotting inconveniences you're facing. Build I had doesn't include Soul Mastery, with the Tanker modifications and the adjustments to Dark Melee it may not really be necessary, but take a look and see what you might take away from it. It's iCap