drbuzzard

I'm slotted with IO sets (think it's purple sent set in RoA). Accuracy is quite high. I was shooting at grays in RWZ so I wasn't going to miss. My test was to see how often it landed. I did it a couple dozen times.

It does 1, 2, or 3. It doesn't do any number all the time. I spent some time testing this on my sentinel, and it was a rather set of chances. If it pulses only once it does damage well below what is normal for sentinel t9s. 2 pulses gets you the sentinel damage norm, and of course 3 gets you above it. Hence it should average 2 pulses but doesn't. That is a problem.

Have you never had it do different number of volleys? I've seen that all the time. It can be 1, 2, or 3. I think I read a developer mentioning it was supposed to be equal chances, but it doesn't work. I took time on my archery sentinel and notices that it only did one most of the time.

That is true, but it does take a while to fall which can be problematic on teams. Though in truth I do complain about it because it is bugged and fixing it would resolve the placing and make archery one of the better sets. It's supposed to have 33% chance of 1, 2 , or 3 hits and right now it mostly just drops once.

Two points: A) Archery is fine in single target (in fact it is quite good there with 3 very high DPAS attacks), but the gimpy t9 makes it lag IMO. B) Dual Pistol is hardly the standard for comparison.

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.

I did not check it, but I suppose that is good to know. It is also close to utterly useless. They ought to just make it properly unique to prevent people from wasting money on them. They are going going for over 4M on the market and I guarantee it's not for status RESISTANCE.

Ok, once upon a time, you used to be able to stack 5 of Impervious Skin Status resistance/regeneration and get all the regeneration bonus (each is 0.1%). I know this was the case as I've used it. It is now described as unique, but still allows you to slot more than one, but you get only the first bonus. When did that happen? If you do make such a change, it seems reasonable that a unique be unique so you can't slot more than one. I didn't bother to check if the status resistance stacked, but really who cares? I have to wonder how many people have been screwed by this and didn't even know.

I have played both fairly extensively (both are defenders). The electrical affinity set is a better healer and buffer. It is a weak debuffer. Best you can shoot for with EA on the debuff side is trying to be a sapper and that is of limited utility. You will do a bangup job of keeping a team healthy and amped up a bit (pun intended). It's not kinetics which has some drastic effects, but it is certainly one of the better sets for keeping people on their feet reactively. Marine is a mixed bag of buffs and debuffs. It plays a bit weird, with something of a kinetics feel to the style as another has mentioned. It is not, however, as drastically powerful as kinetics. It is definitely effective., though lacks some key debuffs (regen, but it does -max HP, so that may work out the same). Honestly I don't keep track of the meta for 4* hard mode. Given that cold seems to have the top spot always taken for the debuff side (for good reason), you might fare better on the repairing people side with electrical in trying to be appealing (though I think nature is favored there).

Yeah, unless people understand mechanics of the game well, you'll be rather invisible. However you can take teams from near disaster, to wrecking crew. The reasons I go with this is it is cheap. If you load your bubbles with lvl 25 or 30 IOs as soon as you can (and maneuvers as well), you can just sock away influence. You don't need to know any fancy play styles. You don't really need to understand mechanics particularly well. Just watch to see if the bubbles are all up, and keep them refreshed. Since you have status protection, you don't even have to worry all that much about yourself. Heck, you could play really cautious, and the team really wouldn't suffer much).

Easy to play, cheap to build, and teams will appreciate- a forcefield/sonic defender. You can hand out softcap defense with just SOs using your primary and leadership (manuevers). Bubbles stay up and the team stays buffed for 4 minutes per application. In the meantime, stay near the squishies and debuff/blast things. Nothing is really demanding, and it will be well received.