nihilii

Honestly, I have no idea what everyone is about with numbers of 5, 6, 7 thrown around. Fireball and Inferno hit 10 (normal versions hit 16). Perhaps cones who usually hit 10 only hit 6 on sents? All cones suck anyway, skip them. ;)

New AT would be better than changing the current AT. I feel Sentinel performance is fairly inline with other ATs, and epics hold surprisingly good results (major thanks to Sunsette for her extensive advocacy work). It might be that we need time to discover its potential, because it's all new. For me, it took more than 3 months to finally get the most out of my sent. Pretty happy with it now!

I've made a SS/DA for Hand Clap + Oppressive Gloom stacking mag4 stun (now that Hand Clap can be slotted with a KB to KD IO, it's as good as Stone Melee's Fault). It works beautifully. Until that thread complaining about Rage blew up, I didn't even notice the defense debuff! Simply because my modus operandi is to open the 10s of no damage using Hand Clap, then managing clicks/insps and repositioning during the remaining time.

Street Justice has pretty fast animations and also is just plain pretty, period. Perhaps the finest animations in the game. And then, the T9 hits like a truck. Claws is an older set and rougher around the edges, but it's got much stronger AoE than StJ with Spin and Shockwave. Shockwave slotted with a KB to KD IO is also fantastic soft control. So it depends what you want. Both sets are fast. Both sets can be powerful in their own way. Personally, I'd stick with claws, if only because a rad/claws tanker sounds unique and fun.

With the way procs work now, you can make the epic version of Melt Armor's long recharge work for you: an Achilles Heel proc in there is nigh guaranteed to proc, and turns a -10% res power into a -30% res power for a few seconds. Like Papaschtroumpf says, if you want Fireball regardless, you might as well get Melt Armor.

^ I'm unimpressed by both procs (although perhaps I undervalue what Opportunity Strikes does for me). Sentinel Ward is somewhat disappointing because the absorb is affected by the purple patch. If you're fighting +4s, even levelshifted you end up getting a paltry +200 absorb when it procs. And, yeah, it's either slot it in a long recharge power, typically your nuke, where you could have an Arma proc and Fury of Gladiator -res... or slot it in a normal attack and have it proc (relatively) rarely. I mean... I'll take what little extra we get. There's just envy looking at game-changing boosts some other ATs get.

Fire/Rad Sentinel, going with Psi epic The plan was to use Blaze -> Flares -> Dominate/Mind Probe -> Flares -> repeat and alternate the psi attack But as it turned out, my fingers settled naturally into Blaze -> Flares -> Dominate/Mind Probe -> gap, and the DPS seems similar or better (with room to improve given the gap) blz - flr - x - flr 2:47 - 357 DPS 2:58 - 343 DPS 3:01 - 339 DPS blz - flr - x - gap 2:42 - 364 DPS 2:47 - 357 DPS at this point I swapped my apoc dam for a dam/rech 2:39 - 369 DPS 2:40 - 367 DPS Given that I will still have a 0.3s gap when everything is maxxed out, I wonder if Fire Blast would do better replacing Flares. But since I hate HATE hate the animation since the blaster nerf ("buff") where they added that awkward pause for the sake of normalization, I'm going to avoid crunching the numbers and pretend it doesn't.

Due to the way PPM works, I feel it's a good idea to put the Critical Strikes proc in your highest recharge attack that isn't your best attack. For example, I have it in Burn on my /fire scrappers, and it goes off pretty much all the time, which makes for an excellent followup with the T9 from my primary. The proc itself triggers a +50% chance to crit for 3 seconds and change. As in, you go from ~10% chance to crit to ~60% chance to crit for those 3 seconds.

Master Brawler in your case, no question! Once you pick it, Focused Senses and Focused Fighting start giving you mez protection. So you'll never have to click anything for your mez protection, only use Master Brawler when you want to get damage absorption. It's very hard to argue for Practiced Brawler. Some players will say they prefer being able to doublestack their mez protection. Given SR gets hit so little to start with, I find the use case strenuous (at least compared to the absorption Master Brawler gives + the convenience of "always on" mez protection that doesn't eat your autoclick power nor take you out of the fight for 2 seconds every 2 minutes).

Fire/Rad Sentinel, with a new direction: Blaze - Cremate - Flares, with procced Char replacing Flares whenever up (and the usual Aim+Inferno). Musc and Degen T4. Jump in, pop Meltdown and Hybrid, start attacking. Procs Blaze = Apoc + Javelin Cremate = Heca + Touch of Death Char = Decimation BU + Unbreakable Constraint + Gladiator's Net + Javelin + GW Embrace Aim = Gaussian BU Inferno = Arma + Fury -res 2:43 - 363 DPS (hybrid started on recharge) 3:03 - 337 DPS (managed to detoggled myself) 3:21 - 318 DPS (detoggled myself again...) 2:43 - 363 DPS 2:55 - 346 DPS (got a double BU nuke, then screwed it up a few seconds later by waiting for Char instead of attacking) Switched to Ageless at this point (previously unused Barrier); not the recovery one, the debuff resistance one. 3:04 - 336 DPS (end crash once more, popped Ageless too soon) 2:38 - 370 DPS (missing 2 nukes in a row, ow) 2:38 - 370 DPS Pretty sizeable improvement over the previous build in theoretical DPS despite ample user error... which I'm lukewarm about. On a sent AV soloing is basically a Benny Hill chase skit, so Cremate isn't so hot. But then the DPS difference *is* sizeable when the conditions are right, so, tough choices. If only our benevolent overlords could fix Blazing Blast, it'd bridge the gap. ;)

Props on the solo LRSF!! Witnessing Penny's WTF damage as an ally in the Malaise/Mother Mayhem mission, where she can basically solo them in a couple minutes, always made me wonder how far would Confuse get you. And now thanks to you we have the answer. :D The Orestes Rifle reduces Miss Liberty's damage output significantly - damage, tohit, I'm not sure how she is affected exactly, all I know is without Orestes Rifle meleers go splat against her, and with it she's a meek kitten (same goes for Doc Aeon in the STF and the power of thorns, same mechanics). Obviously, you don't care about any of that as an illusion controller. Yum, PA.

I think Sunsette's point isn't to suggest you should forgo set bonuses entirely, but that it is entirely possible and likely that a highend build with set bonuses in most powers might gain from underslotting recharge in a select few attacks.

59% is good, and relatively easy to get on SR. I can't agree with the idea it's overkill, unless you always have a team behind you. If you want to solo incarnate arcs on +4/x8, those levels of defense are useful (especially as the IDF has further tohit buffs). 80-90% melee def? Largely overkill in most scenarios.

Fire Armor is high on offense and low on defense in general. People tend to make them as Brutes, especially with the love for farming. But there's nothing wrong with Fire/StJ as a tanker. You can make it quite sturdy with all the new IO sets, and do decent damage. Such a Tanker also gets to bring much more -RES to a team than his scrapper/brute counterparts, between the inherent and the higher modifier on Rib Cracker; and everyone loves -RES. :D Fire/ also makes up for StJ's lackluster AOE, which is nice. Here's how I'd build it, in 10 minutes: | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1494;724;1448;HEX;| |78DA6594594F135114C7EFB453704A594ACB2654286B29505A85173510234B541A2| |BA26FA6196028636B4BDAC6C8A389EB7770C1C4FD81073511F7F8255CC037D717D4| |B8C4F860EAE9FD1FB14927E9FDDDFBBFE7CC59E6DE864F8C3896C74F0E0BC5B13BA| |16732D1293D1937D2B6B01E336744FE29A55F03D4E888316724334660444FC7A3BB| |D2C752E926DE091B09C3084CEAB3A69E355349AC8523924A25021386BE602663E57| |23166C6E6B3B4AAFCB7356BA433F3E68253AEF7248F9B1973DA4C98D945D7E88239| |13184D1AE9D86234AC67B2467AB19E92F1D3EFBE4683924F2F67132FAD428434617| |F013A5E8115AFC1AA55B07A0D5CEE12FC90EF79556AEA59B0FA1C587B0AAC3F0D6E| |3E03AE505C85E32ABFF13ECB0FE64F50FD45F4A8A2A48E0C3DE4BB15FA03F2B5C2D| |7621D50A45612043785C0876463631B1BDB54B04DBDB451C523B2299549E46CA587| |D87F12B41F007B0F33A7C0FE83E03DAA5D43ED420B09A93D26A18C6B2AAB819D631| |F726E1F077BBF83FD7BC1D01898A3C75A9E1F855F8E7D72EC97632D1D9D4A7E7125| |BFB8EA8F904D71AF5A6431DE358BD43BDD282EF406BA42BE4E4ED41921B46AC24A9| |A8B9BE3E2E6B8B939A141F8AB6453031BA58663D6BA4127EDD5F15E1DEFB571DCA7| |D484068ED7B01F397CF309D1C8F9376E47C14D43CC9D60CB0ED03BCC7C4EBE2E4DB| |82896877D3D3750E396EBCC6BCCAB60CB2DE64DF009E5D2CC07B4F99345F6ABED2D| |D8FE8EF91EECFBC0FC08DEA10FDCCABEAD717CE0EEA3CC39660CF4CF334DF02EF97| |6B06FC7151CF8CE25E605B0EB22F312F332B844E5FB50AFF00D1254AB784675F470| |4F7BDA11E376B91001B60B0CE1825453AF82AC05BDB06B52372EA910717CFF6E75E| |3D2E7FC85FBF2B4058B945091B2AD48192852268A9488CA614951A4A255D1558692| |5BB76FFC2508A50FD97FF9AF29CA3A4E469B17FC5C68EF83FDD742AD05DA117BDE1| |B31F482F974C13C52301F76911BCFFF0215950124| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| Choices might be weird/personal, so adjust as needed. Either way, it ends up with S/L/F hardcapped, C/E/N at 60% res, a decentish 30% def to all. The big idea is to pop FE and BU, then go to town with Burn -> Initial Strike -> Rib Cracker -> Crushing Uppercut -> Shin Breaker -> Rib Cracker, repeat. Might be better chains, but this should let you stack about -50% res reliably, -70% when Achilles Heel proc. Not too shabby! Focus on bosses, let the rest die to Burn and Blazing Aura. As for incarnates, ideally a combo of Musculature+Ageless for easy content and/or when carrying lucks, and Cardiac+Barrier for harder stuff where you need the survivability.

Great guide! For teams who haven't done the arc at all before, it's worth noting anyone who's in the finale gets a reward roll. That is to say, if you have 8 players... You can start the DA arc together. Autocomplete the first 3 missions. Then turn off autocomplete at the end. And run each's person finale, back to back. [Edit: used the wrong word here, I meant the "collaborative mission" complete. Not the autocomplete that lets you skip a mission every 3 days. Sorry!] 16 components for every team member (8 rolls + the common/uncommon that drops naturally), and 8 empyrean merits which is worth a rare in itself, in about 40 minutes. Beats running Apex + Tin Mage!

Dance Dance Revolution. The better your moves, the less defense debuffs affect you. Most defense sets know how to get down, but bio armor has no sense of rhythm whatsoever.

I wouldn't sweat hitting the softcap on /bio. At a quick glance your build looks great, save for one thing: you're not taking Parasitic Aura! This is a key power for /bio, think of instant healing + dull pain + adrenalin boost's recovery all rolled into one. With Parasitic Aura, Brutes can sit in packs of +4 cimerorans, getting debuffed all the way to -100% def, and laugh at the incoming damage. Admittedly scrappers don't share the 90% RES cap so you won't quite be able to pull that off, but it should illustrate just how potent the power is anyway.

Does the Critical Strikes proc affect Concentrated Strike? It doesn't feel that way on my KM, but perhaps I've been unlucky (haven't bothered to test it in a controlled manner). I was under the assumption CS doesn't truly crit and has a 20% chance to recharge Power Siphon instead, meaning it wouldn't get any benefit from anything improving your crit chance.

I'll sidestep the "is it tanking or not" debate, but I will say I've been on teams where I'm effectively the one taking the alpha and having most mob aggro towards me. It's chaotic, things run everywhere, but we get the job done with minimal teammate deaths. And I mean that not as in "+2/x2 newspaper", but as in "duoing the LRSF with a /kin corruptor". :) Sentinel defenses are decent, and enemies deal significantly lower damage at range... Really, you can be sturdier than scrappers. It's just an aggro control problem. But even there, attacking first and attacking consistently on a team where no teammate has aggro powers will tend to leave you the aggro forever. I've had 5-10 minutes AV fights where aggro is focused on me the full time. Sometimes I lose it for a few seconds because I'm spending too much time on clicks, then it snaps back the moment I resume attacking fulltime. The necessity of taunt (power, auras, punchvoke) comes up where situations get chaotic or when weaker teammates WITH taunt powers bit off more than they can chew. A Sentinel is never going to be a real tank in the sense of stealing aggro from someone in trouble, but they can be effective damage sponges soaking up most of the incoming nastiness... and then there's a whole primary to get rid of said nasties. :P

Pretty good! Thanks. Perfect. Cheers :)

/bio is undoubtedly king, first because you also have a -RES aura boosting both your auras and your attacks, second because you're the only damage aura secondary with a taunt effect meaning everything will stay nice and tight around you to be damaged. Then there's the fat damage buff from offensive. On brutes you can argue for different choices, but on scrappers /bio outclasses every other choice.

There is a knockback set called (IIRC) Sudden Acceleration with a non-unique KB to KD IO, so with some slotting sacrifices you can turn several KB powers into KD!

Wait... How do you +5 the whole build in one go? And while I'm on "suggesting things that might already be there but I'm too dumb to find", could we have a setting to fill up every slot in a given power with a specific set in just one click? It's scary how much of my Homecoming Hero Designer (HH?) time is spent on clicking to add one IO, then clicking to add another IO of the same set, rinse repeat 5-6 times per power.

The Longbow Cataphract has Plasma Blast, a 10s recharge attack that does ~880 damage and 30 seconds of -500% regen. Both paths have it. I prefer left path for longer duration + extra damage with the Nullifier.

If you want a little extra boost, slot a Gaussian Chance for Build Up proc in Aim. Due to the way procs work, it will go off most of the time when you pop Aim. So instead of a 50% damage buff from Aim, you're looking at a 130% damage buff from Aim + Gaussian. :) It makes for an excellent one-two combo with Inferno and Ground Zero, as they all share the same recharge time. Also yes Pine's is incredibly addicting. :D