nihilii

I would like to understand the lowered recharge changes. Given that doms have two clicky primaries, they're bound by animation time. So higher recharge is almost always better, and lower recharge is almost always a nerf. But is there a consensus on this? Or is it just me thinking it? Basically, I'm curious to know if this patch's recharge changes were intended to scale back from previous tweaks deemed too powerful, or if the recharge changes are actually meant as an improvement.

I think it's a rad melee thing. I've noticed the same behavior on my rad melee scrapper. It's especially funny when you slot the chance for hold from the melee winter set and end up having a couple enemies you didn't even attack suddenly end up in a block of ice.

Unresistable Opportunity would be brokenly good against targets (ab)using stuff like Unstoppable + other sources of resistance to reach 90% or even 100% resistance. Which could be a good thing. Imagine seeing "Khan TF forming, need Sentinels" on the LFG chat. One can dream. 😉

I used to forget them so often I'd skip them in my build (especially Aim). The Gaussian chance for BU proc is a game changer, though, in that it turns your Aim or BU for an Aim+BU for a few seconds, almost doubling the damage of any big power you have. Now I use them religiously. It's interesting in a way, with no difference in the functional effect, higher incentives managed to change my behavior.

Mind = Blown. That sounds really good. Also, is Umbral Torrent 100% KB like Mids suggests? It seems to me with a KB-to-KD IO this would make for fantastic mitigation against whoever is outside of Blackstar's target cap. A 1.188s power with a 15s base recharge, by the time they get back up on their feet you can knock them down again.

StJ/Rad/Soul brute Degen T3, Vigor T3, Rebirth (unused), no passive accolades yet, fully IOed out but lacking some boosters. Attack chain: CU -> SB -> RC -> Gloom -> SB -> RC Heca + Unbreakable procs in CU. Apoc + Cloud Senses in Gloom. Touch of Death, Perfect Zinger and Achilles Heel in SB. Touch of Death, Perfect Zinger and Mako in RC. Achilles Heel in Beta Decay. Gaussian in Build Up (Combat Readiness, whatever 😉 ) Ground Zero is also slotted with Armageddon and Fury of the Gladiator -res, which I figured might help as a passable attack setting up -RES on the same timer as BU. Using Ground Zero 3:50 = 294 DPS 4:32 = 268 DPS (might be flawed, Meltdown was on recharge) No Ground Zero 4:07 = 283 DPS 3:52 = 293 DPS 4:00 = 287 DPS No Ground Zero, No Build Up 3:46 = 297 DPS 3:46 = 297 DPS First off, I was expecting 200 DPS and hoping for 220-240, while also bracing myself to be disappointed and end up at sub 200. Amazing results, considering this is a character geared for high survivability. [Much credit to @Auroxis , who relentlessly posts impressive builds leveraging Melee Core Hybrid. The idea wormed its way into my head to combine Melee Hybrid, /rad's Meltdown and the brute resistance cap to end up with a character at 90% res to most damage types most of the time. Meltdown + Hybrid + Meltdown makes for an initial 4 minute stretch, then there's a one minute gap before Hybrid is up again; so the longterm uptime is 3/4. Add Vigor-powered Rebirth, radiation's natural healing/regen/absorb, ~20% positional defense through IOs and plug the rest with lucks as needed.] Second, it looks like Ground Zero is at best a wash for ST DPS, although it's probably worth using with external damage sources (i.e. Lore pets) for that burst of -res. I wondered if Build Up was even helpful given Brute's modifiers and Fury. It looks like it isn't, despite the Gaussian proc. This could make the power *more* versatile, in a sense: sitting unused in the tray and always ready for alphas, to counter tohit debuffs or a string of misses losing combo level.

You make a good point. I'll admit to personal bias here: as an adamant CJ+hurdle bunnyhopper, I tend to plan my jump so the height brings me in range of the target, use Aim, jump, activate the nuke, let the momentum carry me away during the animation, resume attacking at range. Because you only need to touch your target during the game tic where you activate the power and not the end of your animation, it's possible to do this with a near perfect success rate. Nonetheless, it's true there is a greater requirement than simply shooting something like Thunderous Blast; and, this is VERY build-and-playstyle specific. For Hover Sentinels, and really for anyone with more respect for their spacebar, the PBAoE/TAoE distinction matters greatly.

Grats on hitting 50! :) I wouldn't 5-slot anything part of my attack chain. Your build could go different ways as is (given the empty slots), but I'd remove one slot from Assault, one slot from Conserve Power and one to two slots from Physical Perfection to make sure Greater Psi Blade and Death Shroud are fully slotted (but again, many ways to skin a cat), and also add one slot to Hasten. I have too many alts and all of them rely on Ninja Run for travel. It's really more than appropriate, either coupled with Sprint or by bunnyhopping thanks to Hurdle. Throw in the P2W Jump Pack/Steam Pack and mission transporter, and there's hardly any trouble keeping up with superspeedsters.

With Offensive Opportunity, leveraging psi epic, in melee, using the primary with damage for a secondary effect. 🙂 There's a lot of conditionals there. My "pure" fire/ DPS was significantly below 285, before epic goodness (and although some of it was due to less procs, there's not a whole lot of procs one can slot in fire attacks anyway). Your rad/ deals this damage at range, so this DPS number remains valid in every situation, give or take a few points for Lighting Field. You've built an attack chain out of 3 powers, one of which is convenient to replace for clicks, which makes for simple muscle memory. You deal much of this DPS through applying "extra" -res through Achilles' Heel, meaning the character is a great force multiplier with teammates and Lore pets! And, you do this on a positional softcapped character, which you tell us gobbles rages in real gameplay. It all sounds very good to me, because pylon DPS is one thing and practical DPS is another. I think what you've achieved is legitimately impressive, regardless how the numbers in a vacuum might look. ~300 DPS at range can outperform ~500 DPS in melee for some situations (hello Apex).

(IMHO) Incarnates for farming tend to be straightforward: Musculature Alpha, Ageless Destiny, Degen Interface, Assault Hybrid. Some may advise swapping Musculature for something else if you consistently hit the damage cap with reds. You probably don't want Spiritual or Agility; even though recharge sounds good, that recharge is directly applied to your enhancements and so it lowers your proc rate. Lore isn't too important, but personally, I like getting the right side for the support pet - more for his intangibility than his buffs. This lets you aggro an extra 17 mobs on you, and/or use mastermind commands to go annoy another spawn and bring them back to you while you're fighting.

I'm actually getting my terms mixed up, I mean to say you're not even using Offensive Opportunity. To me your results are fantastic DPS and I'm looking forward to play my future rad/ sentinel even more, haha. I planned to go /psi once again, but if the DPS is that good, it might not even be worth bothering with a melee attack.

4 minutes = 287 DPS which is the highest Sentinel DPS posted so far without mixing epic attacks into the chain. And you're not even using Offensive Mode! Sounds pretty awesome to me. 🙂 Unless I'm misreading your build, you don't even have the Apoc proc slotted either. Which gives you room to grow this number further still. Damn... Rad is a beast.

I think this is how it goes: - exp/inf: a multiplier is applied, then your personal rewards are divided by the number of players on team. So if you're solo you get 100% of the rewards, if you're on a team of 2 you get 125% of the rewards divided by 2 = 62.5%, and so on. From what I recall, the multiplier is generous enough there is no reason to have a team of 7 instead of 8; even if teammate #8 is leeching, rewards stay the same for the rest of the team. - salvage/recipes: goes to a random team member. No extra bonus for teaming (ergo, if you outperform your teammates, you're better off solo) - incarnate shards/threads: everyone gets their separate drop as if they were solo, so teams are best

I'm not a creative person myself. If I don't get that green tick on first try, I use a synonym, an anagram, an adjective... and it always goes through. Perhaps you should give examples of concepts you're stuck on so the community can help.

I soloed the Hamidon Task Force! (mislabelled ingame as "Lady Grey's Task Force", for some odd reason) So the problem in this TF is green mitos. While they're not mezzed, they have capped resistances and capped regen. On top of that their friends heal them for +200hp regularly. It's hard to run a power analyzer on green mitos, as the moment you step too close, they all blast you with dots. But as it turns out, they only have 7 mag protection. This is doable with just Dominate! Slotted for maximum hold and recharge, and on a build with significant global recharge, you can stack enough magnitude to mez them. From that point on, it's not too hard to defeat them: mitos have about 800hp (I think?), so a volley of your best ST attacks once the hold lands should get rid of the pest. If all else fails, add red insps. Hamidon is tough but not impossible, if you remember you can buy Essence of the Earth inspirations on the market, giving protection against its damage. I blanked out about EoEs, so I made it much harder on myself... But interestingly enough, it's still possible to get through it solo. Hamidon ignores defense and resistance, so regeneration, heals, HP and absorb are your best friends. He also applies -regen/-heal (I think??) with each attack, so if you're the sole target for his powers, you will fall down eventually. I went with Vigor + Rebirth + Melee Hybrid, and this *still* wasn't enough to survive for a couple minutes. The key is to joust him with your Lore pets! If you pick melee Lore pets, staying at range and pulling back when getting hit too much will likely swap the aggro to your Lore. And on the reverse side, whenever Hamidon knockbacks them your own attacks will grab the aggro back to you. So it's feasible to play table tennis with aggro, up to a point anyway because neither your Lore pets nor you will be able to take all that many hits. Bring enough red insps to cap your damage, and fill the rest of your tray with greens! (Better yet, don't be like me: use EoEs.)

It took a while for that merge to happen, which I think was Eva's point.

I would love to hear about your experience! Your Beam/Elec was a big inspiration, and I know for sure my next Sentinel will be Rad/Elec.

Good melee attack sets for your S/L defense: - Superior Blistering Cold (+5% S/L for 5 pieces, very expensive) - Superior Scrapper's Strike (+5% S/L for 3 pieces. expensive) <- split this set in two different powers and get +10% S/L for just 6 slots! - Kinetic Combat (+3.75% S/L for 4 pieces, cheap) Other than that, follow Werner's advice (you should always follow Werner's advice).

I failed a MoSTF today. 😞 Then I licked my wounds, and kept going. So, I soloed a STF today! 🙂 As mentioned before, the first missions are mostly non-events. My build hasn't changed for a while now, but I'm playing around with incarnates. Instead of Barrier, I used Ageless (the debuff side); and Longbow were replaced by Cimerorans. This combination made for higher direct damage: with all the -res we can access as Sentinels, the Cimeroran boss can hit for 800+ at times even on a lvl 52 AV. I also grabbed all 3 amplifiers (defense, offense, survival). It comes out to +180hp, +40% regen, +20% recovery, +15% damage, +15% recharge, +10% tohit, +5% defense, +7% resistance, and some helpful fear/confusion protection. Not bad! To be honest, I was expecting amplifiers to shut down by starting a Master of run ("no temp powers"), and was pleasantly surprised it didn't. I'll take any help here. 😉 Onto the Patrons... Using the same strategy as for my dualbox MoSTF, I started getting the fliers away from the groundbound. Got a single pull right away on Scirocco, and flew him back to the ship (I don't think the Longbow help all that much, but I get a kick out of seeing them try). Mostly an eventless fight, although one has to be careful with his tornadoes doing -def. Then it was time to take a lucky spin on the Ghost Widow roulette. There's the constant worry of that 9.5% chance of landing a Soul Storm. Pulled her to the ship again, but as it turns out Black Scorpion was dutifully following. So I flew back up and fought her in the skies. Well, for all of 20 seconds, before she landed a Soul Storm landing him into the sea. So ends our Master attempt. I was a little bummed it happened so fast, and somehow kept playing on autopilot. So I hosp'ed, toggled up, and ninjajumped back to the patrons while lost in my thoughts... only to find nobody but Mako. Neither my killer nor her pet dog were back to their original positions yet. Might as well try for Mako, then. I pulled him behind that little corner teams like to prep (for the teams who prep, anyway), that one next to the ramp leading down to the patrons. Mako comes alone. No other aggro. Black Scorpion and Ghost Widow eventually make their way back, but they stand still like statues while I whack on poor sharkboy, who is as useless as ever and goes down without a noise. Pulling Black Scorpion again, with Dominate at max range which seems to work really well for pulling singles. I lead him to the very same corner. He's a little stronger than Mako, but again, not a big deal as long as you're careful. Then it was time to try our luck with Ghost Widow... again. Oh joy. But it hit me I was quite silly: I should have done the pulls in that order to start with, leaving Ghost Widow last so she's standing still, limiting exposure to her attacks before unleashing everything. I swapped to Barrier, in the hope it'd help me as well as the pets. As it turns out, a Soul Storm landed right as Barrier expired... ...But, I actually survived that Soul Storm! With full HP + Particle Shielding 700 absorption + Preventive Medicine proccing for 300 + regeneration, passive stats and a luck inspiration, I made it through the duration and even two additional hits (then gobbled other insps in my tray like a madman the moment I broke free). Which makes me think, in retrospect: the right move would have been to go with Rebirth for even more regen, *and* adding overkill defense through luck insps. With 2 tier2 purples, you would maintain 50% defense even when suppressed by Soul Storm. Given decent regen and full HP at the time it lands, you're going to survive that. So, it should be possible to beat her reliably with the right preparation. Down goes the ghost, and spiderman makes his speech. I'm still not big on "bowing down", so I decide to get more insps and give the whole tower business a try. (After taking down the Arachnos flier, which had respawned by that point. +6 reward merits, can't complain.) Frankly, I started the whole thing on a whim and without a clear strategy. I guess I'm going to bunnyhop around, shoot a tower, doing my best to deal damage and not get killed? That seemed to work okay to an extent. Except once the repairmen come out, there's no way to focus on them fast enough while jumping in circles with a Recluse on steroids shooting end drains at you. Nevermind that then, let's turn on the jetpack, fly close to the tower and fight. Maybe Recluse isn't so bad at range? Recluse is still pretty bad at range. Now, the +tohit he gets from whichever tower gives him +tohit (red?) is sizeable, but not insurmountable with our best friend the luck inspiration. I think you need about 85% defense to floor him to his minimum 9.5% chance - which seems ridiculous, but comes down to "only" 2 phenomenal lucks when you start at 24% def as I did. I actually started with Good Lucks, because come on: +25% defense for 5k on one hand, +33% defense for 100k on the other hand. But it felt rather absurd to either use 3 per minute or increase my risk by ~20% just because I was too cheap to spend a little more influence. So we're armed with ~85%ish defense, we've got our /rad clicks, even Rebirth to add a sizeable heal and significant +regen. Life should be good. Life isn't so good. I end up struggling to manage all the moving parts. The repairmen. Recluse draining my endurance. Running a full attack chain on the tower. Lucks running out. Oh, and this took so much time the flier respawned again at some point. A swap to Ageless helped with the end issues, ergo survivability, more than Barrier or Rebirth. Funny how that works. But really, my big mistake lied in going full on offense. At least for the first tower or two, it's a hard enough job managing mitigation. The right move was to wait for lore pets, let them focus on the tower, then make no more than half-hearted attacks myself, instead keeping an eye on repairmen (and of course, making sure I don't die from Recluse). Cimerorans are actually quite adequate at taking down a tower all on their own, as long as you dutifully dispatch repairmen. The blue tower and the red tower fell during the duration of Lore, which made what came next significantly easier. I could now survive Recluse (at range) indefinitely, paying attention. Add one insp per minute to decrease the attention required and increase focused damage on the tower. It still took me *quite* a while to wittle down the towers on my own. You click a long animating power, and boom two repairmen pop up. Then your fireball misses one of them, and a heal goes off. To be sure, those were my mistakes. The rhythm of repairmen spawns is somewhat regular - two waves of either 1 + 2 or 1 + 1, then a lull. Rationally, you should click any long animation in that lull and that lull only. But, it's a long fight and there's a 10-armed guy scratching your back and it's easy to slip up. The yellow tower went down nonetheless. By the time the green tower was at half, Lore was recharged. That last tower fell fast under a joined nihilii-cimeroran effort. Sweet! I'll get to let them loose on Recluse right away. Maybe I can take him down. I couldn't take him down. Rocket missiles from half a country away came swarming on us, then the familiar sight of the Arachnos flier - respawned for the THIRD time - rushed towards us. Hotshot as I might feel taking down the towers, Flier + Recluse didn't seem like a smart move, so I pulled back. Technically, I pulled up in the skies, to take down the Flier without anybody interrupting. If you fly at your maximum range in a direct vertical line, Bane Spiders have no chance to web grenade you down, and you can safely take out the Flier no matter what. So that's done and over. For the fourth time. Now for the big 1-on-1! A level 54 Recluse is still a good threat for most solo characters. I could get his life down, somewhat - but he would get some good hits in, too. At this point, my amplifiers were gone, as I bought 2 hours worth of them (cheapskate, remember? But really, it was a matter of not giving it much thought at the time). I had no insps left either. So, it was a balancing effort between dealing damage and kiting him a little bit. It could have worked as is. But if you know Recluse, you know he goes crazy with boss-level Bane Spider summons when he's low on life. Barely outpacing his regen when he's going easy on you means you're in for some trouble down the line. Stepped out of the mission, grabbed more lucks, went back in. After that, it's mostly a standard, tough AV fight. With lucks I could stay in melee and use Mind Probe / Inferno consistently. Endurance management remains important due to his end drain, so Ageless was used still. 2/3rds of the way in, Lore was recharged again. A welcome addition for the Bane Spider phase. On the flipside, it meant I had to fly and give up melee. Recluse will easily 2-shot a boss level Lore pet with just his AoEs. It turned into a pretty good fight once he brought out his own summons. More incoming damage, more AoEs hitting pets. But, nothing we haven't seen before. Down goes Recluse. The world is safe once again. Our band of heroes is rewarded with a single Synthetic Peroxisome Exposure (Dam/Mez), but that's OK because the other two guys disappeared back into the magical Lore dimension after their 5 minutes were up. More loot for me. Also, I took down the Arachnos Flier an extra two times during the writing of this post. Thanks for the merits, sucker! In conclusion, it seems possible for a Sentinel to do a MoSTF without hoping for a lucky streak (but with ample reliance on lucks!). There's a seemingly reliable strategy for every key part I failed at. Resistance builds with decent regen, decent ST DPS and quick animations have a strong shot. I'm thinking /elec in particular could do very well here. Their regen is great, they have superb end management and they ignore end drain. All things you want in a STF. Go Sentinels! 😁

Combat Jumping (Leaping) and Weave (Fighting) are two popular choices for defense. You can also get the Steadfast res/def unique (+3% def to all, costs about 5 millions) and the Gladiator's Armor teleport protection/def (+3% def to all, costs about 10-12 millions). These two IOs can be slotted in any resistance power. Temperature Protection is a good fit, if you've got that one. On the P2W vendor, there's the Kinetic Shield which gives a hefty amount of S/L defense when you have it toggled on. And then there's the Defensive Amplifier, which gives some (?) defense as a passive during its duration, but it gets pretty costly as you level up.

Psyche is replaced with Penelope Yin, and Statesman is replaced with... nobody. Well, Positron takes his spot in the cutscenes, which makes the dialog sound asinine - just like Ms Liberty, who supposedly sees the good in her uncle Recluse, now replaces Statesman as the STF contact, and as a result rants against Recluse's wickedness and evil. "search+replace" wasn't the most graceful way to handle Statesman's death, methinks.

Bunnyhopping is love. Bunnyhopping is life. I'm cool with buffing Swift, but anyone arguing Hurdle is too strong will find me gnawing viciously at their ankles. Don't mess with bunnies!

Can the game handle this much awesome together?! Play schedule too erratic to partake, but I'd love to read about it.

I feel you've got the right idea here. Generally speaking, softcapped defense, hardcapped resistance to 90% and grabbing about ~300% regen with 2000 hit points makes a character able to survive a +4/x8 farm without any player input. As in, you can be dragged off by the kids and the wife and come back 30 minutes later, and you will find your character at full life. From that point you only need to have passive AoE damage to take down mobs eventually. It's hard to softcap on a budget by lvl 34 - but we can get part of the way. Good news is, Healing Flames is worth a solid ~600% regen if we use it consistently. What I think I would do in your position, would be to use my second (or third) build for a dedicated farming build; put healing flames on auto; and play it to the best of my ability, mostly using Burn and insps and the like. Then when there's real life aggro, it would hopefully slowly wittle the mobs down through damage auras, and stay alive with HF. Example build: | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1124;530;1060;HEX;| |78DA7D53CB6ED340141DBF08499DA689DB3CDA244DA9AA1690A246740DAA2865410| |D11546C232B19528B2831B68BA858F12F3C37FD060AE2F13305C41ECCEDDC434058| |6214E7F89EB9AF7367EC3ED9B18F6F3EBB2634FBFAC88BA2DEBE377E2843CBF5867| |E5F9CAD0C3D35667B3BF2811C47B2BDEBCBF0A8B77D187A75ECB8722465FBAE37F0| |BDD89F8CD91685EE64326AEF496F20C3E8C00FECDF76E08F877965ECFAC38398AC9| |CB2EE05520E9C1B81DF6F6F87FDD8EFF75C2F8AA95895BA58A3E7244B7FDA595F89| |2EB6E8A5630A7D13D8613C5E175809FD6889B714A57194A53D15CACB7C0C0C18CF3| |D02C68CE70F19DF51ACC1D94CA3CB15566E01EF005DC6D5DB8CEF29C6E27AC2AAD0| |4BC314451A64863923A3D3CB3AD5F82914E67E08E5934BD82E916F16F1D915EEE30| |3E59C81F21928B7A1DC86F232C5E5E193478D59D498456E877C0AACC72ABCD155DC| |DC6BE073C6C5178CAD97C0578C1FA98722628B47DC5709F32C618EF398E33CE6570| |E1935AAEBE0541C752A06310BCCE80B505486A2452832C9A702451528AA4251158A| |3E51573564AE5DE66ADF378458C2892FE1A4EBE8B47E426A1C5334D171131D3771F| |217A86683F3690DE46B013F53AD65D45A562A92FFAEBAF9EF5DBC684E6F707229B5| |BB99623A29E64A8AD94A317B29A66BA22C319A62B273D39B9D9CE6A65F0876BFFE6| |174ED3EEEF755BECBABA786B2BFA4A2BEFDCDB47866BF001C5BE4FB| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| Level 36, should be in the 50-100M range, 28% fire defense and 220% regen. I would start at +3/x8 and work my day down if it dies. +4/x8 is generally not worth it without actively playing, as the purple patch hits hard without the incarnate level shift.

/b LF7M for hardcore mission team, scrappers/brutes only, don't come if you can't handle a group on your own As in, I'm thinking people would split up rather than strategize. Path of least resistance and all that.