drbuzzard

Solo, I'd generally say stalkers are as easy as it gets. You're hidden so you choose what fights you want, and can do them carefully. Your damage is high and bursty so you can clean those fights up fast. I think energy aura is the best secondary, while the primaries are a bit more of a mix of contenders. Stone, Ice, Fire, electric, and energy melee are my preference. If you start to mix with teams, the damage of a stalker goes up, but you will have more expectations ("Kill the surgeons!" for example). The pace will not be as well suited to a stalker (though you can be scrappery and it works well, but it's different than solo most likely). Sentinels are also easy solo, and have the advantage of being survivable blasters on teams with a simple role of blast. I think stalkers are still easier to solo, but sentinels are a close second.

Appreciate the suggestion, and if I have a hankering to play the khelds again, I'll probably do it.

OK, respecced my WS into a build to use it. It does seem to work, and certainly improves damage over my former all human form build. However it certainly is hard on the eyes. I play with sound off so at least I was spared that part. There's also issues in getting stuck in a form you don't want and having to get back to human, but that could be dealt with given practice. It may well put khelds up in the DPS sweepstakes, but it doesn't really make we want to play mine. I'll wait on a revamp.

Thanks.

So, correct me if I'm wrong since it is not directly spelled out. There's a bug in shape shifting which recharges powers immediately and perhaps also cuts activation times. This allows flipping between optimal attacks to make a crushingly good attack chain.

Ok, I'm kind of piecing this together from various mentions, but could someone explain in simple terms what this trick amounts to?

I have a lot of stalkers. I take placate if I have a power to burn, but it drops off pretty quickly if I need the power for an attack or to shore up defenses. Most of my stalkers lack it. I won't deny it is useful, especially after the buff, but it doesn't suit my play style very well, and to be honest even on the alts that have it, I rarely use it.

I suppose I used the wrong term. Brimstone armor adds fire DoT proc to all attacks. I meant that.

Bio is. definitely I'd say top 2 of the sentinel secondaries (SR being the other top one, though better protection and less offense). I do have bio armor sentinels, but I don't like things which are very 'clicky'. Mind you, this preference means I'm not a top end player because the best performance comes from people who are good at high rates of clicks. Then again if you're good at the high click rate game, you might as well be on a blaster.

To be honest I'm not the biggest fan of the mixed defense sentinel secondaries (bio, invuln, stone, ice but with the exception of energy). They often leave you wanting in protection. At least bio and stone compensate with offensive punch. Stone also does defense against l/s which is very common and often mixed in with other damage types so the defense still works. If you want protection, SR is far better. If you want more utility, stone will be better (DoT toggle, heal, recharge boost, regen, to hit boost, lots of stuff). I made an electric/stone to see how well that bag of utility suited me, and it got to 50 and sits. I have other sentinels I prefer a lot more.

It depends on your playstyle. I find SR to be the easiest sentinel secondary (energy aura is likely second). Electric is OK, though because it's resistance, you to cap at 75% mitigation and will need to stay on your toes more. Stone is solid with a bunch of different things protecting you, though generally I build for defense and lean a lot on geode. Bio gives you the most offensive oomph, but I find it to be very clicky, and it would be too soft if I was stuck on the ground for how I like things. Bio is resistance mostly for l/s and that can be rough capped at 76% and mixing it up (no worse than electric I suppose).

Oh, one other thing I've been thinking of. The performance bands of sets in an AT can be pretty wide. The best blaster set vs. the worst blaster set (or combo) is quite a spread. Hence I'd guess it is possible to build some sentinel combos which actually exceed low end blaster performance (other than that AOE business). Not based on looking at pylon tests, but I'd guess the sentinel king would be electric/bio/electric.

Blasters clearly do more damage than sentinels. I often think it gets overhyped a bit, but the AOE gap is pretty big and that's more of what drives it than anything else. Defiance when it's at full tilt is about 30% damage boost. Couple this with the effects of good secondary attacks (which means some secondaries, certainly not all) and build up, and they clearly do more damage. At the high end of players, people are fast enough on the inspirations and generally run all the boosts, so blasters are plenty survivable enough that the sentinel edge in this regard isn't really necessary (not to mention that on hard mode teams barrier coordination and mandatory support component means your own defenses are of lesser consequence). It is funny, though, that sentinels are not at all wanted on those top end teams, though vulnerability is one of the best debuffs in the game and they do have the same damage caps as blasters (500%) and nearly the same scalar (1.1 vs. 1.125) while those teams always run with kins and function mostly at the damage cap. Hence the defiance edge vanishes, and it comes down to AOE caps and the good secondary attacks. Against a tough target I would imagine replacing a single blaster with a sentinel wouldn't be a bad idea just for vulnerability being spammed. Vulnerability being immune to the purple patch is a bigger deal than most recognize. Personally I like sentinels because I'm not quick on the inspiration use, and I often let the boosts expire. I also don't much care for the upper end of hard mode content, so it doesn't really matter. Truth be told, for a new player without a lot of resources, sentinels are likely a much better choice than a blaster. They are simply easier.

I think I have 2 sonic/sonic defenders, but that's on different servers. I do have every sentinel primary with super reflexes (maybe not storm). I have most sentinel primaries with regeneration secondary.. I tend to re-use defensive sets that I like a lot.. I also have a lot of alts.

Didn't notice that error. I'll have to fix it when I get around to doing this up again. I need to anyway since Marine Affinity came out. Though the uptime% on HT does make me wonder why people go on about how great it is as a debuff. Really Lingering Radiation is definitely a better regeneration debuffing solution.