evetsleep

Specifically Whitecap (proc'ed) and Shifting Tides. I haven't tested it personally, but from what I recall in other threads shifting tides can do Hot Feet level damage in the right situations. If you have a taunting pet that brings things in, I suspect that damage could rack up quickly. Add into that a confuse to keep them from damaging the tree or yourself...it does look to be quite the nice combo. Really I'm honestly surprised Marine didn't get tuned in this patch. If you like a more active Controller, marine is really in a league of it's own almost. I love me some storm, but it's damage is a little late blooming and doesn't offer any self buffs\heals like Marine does. Basically throwing caution .. ahem ... into the wind. I like storm with less active primaries like illusion personally..so I can focus on throwing out tornadoes and thunder storms, but it is quite amazing with plant.

I wouldn't say Dark Armor on sents is awful personally, but what's fun for me may not be for others. Dark Armor really wants you to be in melee range so if you're more a blasting from a distance kind of sent, then it probably isn't for you . For me, I tend to play close and and use epic melee attacks, so I don't find dark armor problematic and this lets me leverage the CC aura's as part of my "defense". I've taken fire, radiation, and electric blast the furthest (I do have a sonic, but it's a pain to play with DA). I personally like electric the best and radiation second (for stacking disorients). I've been meaning to try beam\dark since it has a number of stuns that I bet would work nicely (again..when focused on close\melee range)....and with that ...another alt will be born today! Fire is 🔥. It does have that single target repel which can be the opposite of what you want to do with dark armor. Although you could pick an epic power like chained fences to keep baddies in rain of fire while they're mezzed. You could also do the same with ice blast too.

My hot take is psi/stone. Stone brings so much to the table and when it comes to Psi being resisted you have fire proc from brimstone to help soften the blow. At least that how I look at it with mine. Yes, it's clunky, but that's kinda what I did about it.

This is one of those topics that comes up often.... over here 🙂. Mayhaps drop your suggestion there...if you search for Mastermind in that forum you'll see all sorts of interesting ideas. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/45-suggestions-amp-feedback/

Also since the enforcers leadership powers do not effect players, not only do players not get the bonus +damage or +tohit, but they also don't get other benefits like Taunt\Placate resistance and Confuse\Fear resistance (and importantly ... to me +Perception). The perception part can certainly be addressed with a yellow inspiration, if you have one. It's rare but when a baddie has a stealth or a power like Flash Arrow, it's super annoying, especially if your secondary powers rely on being able to see your opponents in order to support your henchmen. It rarely happens, but another neeto thing about Thugs is that their leadership powers stack with other MM thugs. So if you're teamed with other MM's that are Thugs, all the Enforcer leadership powers will affect the other MM's henchmen.

I have quite a few bubblers and I, more or less, agree with this. Generally speaking when I want to solo with one of my bubblers I take one of my MM's off the shelf (or maybe eve one of my controllers like fire/ff or arse/ff). I find solo'ing with a corruptor\defender force field toon not impossible, but too slow for my tastes.

I have all of these. Necro/traps is fun and does reasonably well...solo at least. But time just is a cake walk (power boosted +defense and all the other bells/whistles makes it stupid strong). Marine is more offensive and is more DPS focused (and busy). Honestly Necro goes with absolutely everything...even Sonic. Have a concept that works (because it's king) and have fun and don't worry about the meta performance combinations.

Kind of surprised no one's mentioned it, and I had to take mine off the shell to remind me, but my electric/poison controller (poison trap does -recovery\-end) with fold space does some really impressive -end and maintains it with all the drains + the Poison version of Poison trap. Sure it's not as tough as an elec/elect/elec sentinel, but I'm been thoroughly impressed with how quickly and how it maintains endurance drain. Won't win any damage awards of course.

1. Yes, for the first hit, which will wake them upband then they're no longer under containment. 2. No. Using sleeps in an unorganized group where they don't know (or care) that you're using a sleep is a recipe for frustration. I generally don't recommend using sleeps unless you're on a team which is going to work around it. There is one exception and that's pulsating sleeps like you find in electric control and arsenal control. The sleeps are repeatedly reapplied and thus a little more useful. Arsenal's sleep also is a lovely proccable AoE proc'able sleep, so I often I use that as a damage power. Mind controls sleep isn't like these and this is mostly useful solo.

So here's the thing. Having fun is objectively the most important part (why are you here otherwise?). If it's not fun to you, then it's a waste of time. Who really wants to spend hours playing a toon that they don't find fun just because it hits some kind of performance objective? Concept is king and have fun! Always rule #1 and avoid chasing the meta/FoTM. So take that stick and swing it with a smile. Nothing to be ashamed of there 🙂

I have one of these and it's a ton of fun with capped defenses to just run in and out of close range blasting & burning everything in sight. Really it's a testament to super reflexes. It's such a great secondary for sentinels.

After seeing another thread recently on rad I was inspired to make Necro/red a few weeks ago. Necro, in it's current state, is in a really good place and can go with anything which makes this pairing attractive. The -ToHit from rad and necro meshes well and it really starts to feel powerful once choking cloud comes into play. My Necro/rad is still not done, but it's a solid pairing if you can look past a secondary which heavily uses anchor powers with relatively a small radius. I find it a fun pairing and would say they synergize well

One of my most common uses for Blazing Blast, beyond damage, is to punk Super Stunners into a corner and/or away from team mates before they croak. Everyone hates them and there real party poopers if you are standing near them when they die the first time (unless you're electric armor of course). It's actually quite useful as a positioning power.

Except in this case, sentinels don't have the stealth power (Energy Cloak), so like a number of sentinel secondaries (and in some cases primaries) they play very different than other versions of their power sets. Instead of Entropic Aura they get Entropy Shield (effectively the same except the +recharge is a flat 20%), Power Armor (+resistance to all and +HP), and repelling force (+defense to all), and instead of energy drain they get Power Drain (just does +end/-end, unlike the melee version where you get +def). I actually find that in later levels I don't really need Power Drain and often just pre-pop Energize to get the -End discount where as with a melee version I often would use Energy Drain to get the +def that it offers. So playstyle changes a bit. There is nothing wrong with playing a ranged sentinel btw (from my view), but there is a lot of damage to be found when you start to get ancillary powers (if that's your bag). For me, it often depends on the primary...if the T9 is a PBAoE, then I often dip into an ancillary pool which provides additional PBAoE's to chain them together. Since the recent buff to sentinels I feel like a perform a lot better this way (for my playstyle).

The only thing that really stinks (to me....so very much subjective) is the Ice Armor port to sentinels. I've tried a number of times and it just feels far too squishy to be worth it. Quite a few don't like Dark Armor, but if played in melee range can do quite well (my personal favorite is electric\dark sentinel). I have (quite literally) every sentinel combo and Ice Armor is the only one that truly isn't fun to me. I'm sure there are some who would enjoy it...to each his\her\their own. I do agree with the overall sentiment that defense based armors tend to perform better (they're just easier to drive).