Spaghetti Betty

Hello! I'm the lunatic goblin that only thinks about damage when building a toon! So what in the world am I doing in the Sentinel forum? Well, I am here to drop the one Sent I've ever had fun playing! I've soloed with it, teamed with it, and it's even been on some 4*s! Lemme preface the build drop a bit by talking about what I like about each set. Sonic Blast is what I consider to be one of the strongest primaries a Sentinel can pick. The main reason being the massive amount -RES that is brought to the table. A lot of the powers are also relatively quick and the nuke is super spammable, even if you don't have Amplify up. That stun is nasty and can instantly swing a battle into your favor if placed right! While Fiery Aura can be a bit on the squishy side, it's good enough! What I really chose it for was the extra offense it adds to the mix. Having a rez is nice, too, because sometimes winners die! Psionic Mastery is a force to be reckoned with. I wouldn't be lulled too much by Link Minds. The Sentinel version is pretty weak and not what I'm here for. Instead, special attention should be paid attention to the attacks provided. They're all super strong! You'll see in the build below that I opted to skip Psychic Shockwave, which is unfortunate, but I have Burn! Anyways, here's the build: breakcore sonicfire - Sentinel (Sonic Attack).mbd Now, before you start throwing tomatoes, hear me out! Do I have a smooth attack chain? Nope! Am I facetanking +4x8 mobs? Uh-uh! What this build does well is fit in nearly any scenario that is presented to it. Do we need a little AoE? Here I go! Hey, we need to dump some burst damage on this AV! I got you covered! Man, we could really use just a little bit of -RES! Say no more! And it does so with impressive grace and doesn't have a funny face! So I guess the next thing I can do is try to preemptively answer any questions that may pop up! Why no Shout? I mostly didn't take Shout because Mind Probe and Dominate are both quicker and deal more damage. Inherent -> Amplify -> Screech -> Mind Probe -> Dominate will slam a 54 boss in an instant, and that's good enough for me. If I didn't pick Psi as my epic, I might have taken it! No Siren's Song? It's super good now! There are a number of reasons for this. With Burn and Mind Probe being an essential part of my offense, I can't make great use of cones. I went with Howl over Siren's Song because Howl applies -RES. As a bonus, I didn't take Shockwave because I didn't wanna pay the KB2KD tax on it. How good is Cauterizing Blaze? I don't know! I'm not sure if I would recommend this build to the average player, but as someone that looks at Sentinels and would rather player a Scrapper or Blaster, this one continues to shine on my roster and sometimes I even log into it without a second thought! That's a huge win!

The costume creator lets you preview (and customize) each power in your primary and secondary, but if you want to see how they work in gameplay, you can always hop over to Brainstorm and try them all with no commitment!

I fixed this for you!

I would say Energy Melee, Battle Axe, Super Strength, Fiery Melee, and Katana are all vying for top 3, but I don't have the attention span to do any real testing to back that up!

Try Super Reflexes/Dark Melee! It's the definition of cruise control. By level 20, most enemies will be whiffing their attacks, and by 35, you'll be an unstoppable beast! Works great on SOs, but can really be pushed once you start learning the Invention System. A tried and true combination that's been around since the launch of the game*! *-for Scrappers

It's a top 3 melee now!

These days I PL alts to 27 to save them from an early delete. Before that, I would grab a ton of p2w stuff, crank my difficulty to x8, and grab a legacy contact. Hammering out 2 indoor missions this way is enough to qualify for The Hollows. Following the same format through there will usually have me at 20 by the time Frostfire is done with.

If I take a long break, I'll usually grab a 50 I remember being real fun and running some radios to shake off the rust. I find everything else starts coming back to the surface after playing something breezy for a bit.

With my routing strategies, it was A-OK and we even had 0 Witty deaths!

Apologies in advance for the word soup that follows. I'm horrible at organizing my thoughts! I'm not the biggest fan of Tower builds, so I would be scrutinizing from a very offense-oriented point of view. Stone Melee is fantastical at utilizing FF procs! So much so that I would argue you could forego slotting Purples for recharge and just load up on procs instead! What you really want to be doing with those funds is loading up on Winter sets. I know you stated you avoid using them out of fear of the price, but they pay for themselves! Just slotting a 2-piece of most Winter sets will grant you Slow Resistance, which lets you mitigate -recharge debuffs. Since you're Rad Armor, you'll be taking every debuff to the face, so being immune to the most problematic of them is great value! Just get Lords of Winter Super Packs instead of trying to buy the enhancement directly from the AH. It's more cost effective and you get a lot of bonus goodies! Radiation Therapy is missing 1 critical IO - Theft of Essence: Chance for +Endurance. This extremely balanced IO has a very high chance to sap End from every target hit, guaranteeing a full refill on click. This will handily solve any End problems you might have running Stone Melee! Fault should absolutely be slotted for damage. It's on such a low timer that the KD spam alone will be enough control to keep you very safe! Take advantage of it slotting Ranged AoE sets and drop an Anhilliation: Chance for -Res in there. It has a good proc rate and will soften up targets so that Tremor can actually do something! 1 overarching thing that I disagree with in your build strategy is overslotting Maneuvers, Weave, and Tactics to try and build DEF. Rad Armor Tankers absolutely do not need DEF in order to be impervious to 98% of content. Having great RES, a great heal, 3k effective HP (whatever you have now + 800-1k absorb from Particle Shielding), and a secret 4th thing is more than enough to deal with mobs! By the way, the secret 4th thing is Rad Armors ability to inflate your damage through clever use of the IO system! Here, I can post a build to provide an illustration of what I mean. **This is 100% a no expense spared endgame build** Tanker (Radiation Armor - Stone Melee).mbd As you can see, my Tanker here sacrifices a tiny bit of protection for a ridiculous amount of offensive output. You were asking about Ground Zero, so check this out! This is a nuke. There are no ifs ands or buts about it. You have a nuke in your armor set. In fact, this is a nuke too! A nuke that heals your HP and End?! On top of your armor set being a Blaster primary, Stone Melee's proc math is excellent and is where the set can really be taken to the next level. I hope some of these ideas help you out!

My team did great! We slammed our ITF out at a 49 minute pace, even though I purposefully accidentally turned off all temporary powers! Wow! Every pull was mayhem, and that's exactly how my pics came out!

PLV is at least right about Dragons Tail. It's meant to be a buzzsaw AoE ala Spin, Foot Stomp, etc. MA is an ST specialist set, but Dragons Tail is designed for you to spam it when it's up in between your ST attacks. You could always take another AoE from an epic pool if that's not enough for you. Might I suggest Dark Obliteration? Imagine playing MA at launch when it was just a cone!

I think we're losing him fellas!

I have a ton of experience with Staff, and I think it's a tie between Stalker and Tanker for me! It's really better ST vs unrivaled AoE. It's a pretty easy proc to throw in Guarded Spin for me. It's a great DPA power so you'll already be using it a lot. It's not the most optimal but I prefer Guarded Spin -> Precise Strike -> Serpent's Reach -> AS* (hide) -> Serpent's Reach/Snipe. The correct answer is neither! If you're fighting a big target, you want to hold onto your perfection stacks for the damage bonus. EotS is a fantastic AoE and I'll argue spending stacks on that in mob scenarios, but I can't ever see Sky Splitter being a good payout since it's so slow. Geode is great! I find using it can be a bit tricky because it seems like there's a brief window upon activation where it can be broken immediately (I haven't tested this to be sure), but it has saved my Spaghetti on lots of 4* runs! Placate is fantastic after it got buffed into an AoE, and Staff definitely appreciates the extra spike damage from going back into Hide. It doesn't need any slots so I say stick it out and make sure to use it lots.

I'm not into that stuff you perv!

You got your knothole plugged at the tiki bar?

It works on any door that doesn't load you into an instance. You have to emote as you're clicking the door so that it plays over the door entering animation. Try holding forward as you're coming out. If you can move within a second of exiting the door, you did it right.

No thanks. I already had 3 this week.

If you bind /e opengift, you can mash it while clicking on a door and it'll override the animation. This lets you act immediately after passing through a door/vator. I think /e ultimatepower works for this as well!

I like to pick out an idle emote for a lot of my toons! I'm not great at writing bios, so having a little action for them to perform is the closest thing I can get to adding extra character. But I'm always using /e opengift since it gets you through doors faster!

Cordon Bleus are great! It's like a big chicken nugget that's also a Hot Pocket!

There are so many good ones now! Argh! I choose Moose!

Tankers and Defenders (and Corruptors) by a long shot. These ATs have the benefit of superior Defensive scaling out of the box which means they aren't taking much risk by skimping out on some set bonuses. Bonus points go to any set that has multiple opportunities to slot Force Feedback: Chance for +Recharge, as this will allow you to "fake" your global recharge in combat without hindering your proc chances.

Rad Melee's #1 flaw is the huge endurance tax associated with a lot of its key powers, like Irradiated Ground (.52 end/s) or Atom Smasher (20.18!!!!). This makes any armor with supreme endurance management an ideal pairing! To that extent, Elec, Rad, and Bio (and to a lesser extent Ice (Ice tends to run heavy on end because it has so many heavy toggles)) are great cruise control choices for it, providing tons of freedom slotting-wise since they will handily deal with the End demand without much extra investment. That's not to say other armor pairings can't manage End, but oftentimes end up having to go out of their way to slot for it, causing other areas of your build to feel a bit restricted! This is absolutely not ideal, since Rad Melee will start shining when you're allowed to proc bomb its attacks for a massive return!

Glad you enjoyed it! Make sure to show your friends!