drbuzzard

The sentinel lost their unique fire single target and got the new ignite power. I consider this a bit of a loss, but not huge.

I think they need a balance pass. VEATs are drastically better in performance. HEATs amount to being an odd mix of powers in human form, a lousy blaster, or a lousy tanker. I suppose it's nice to be flexible to suit what a team may need, but on a server where near unlimited alts can be made, you can instead have an optimized blaster and tanker as they are needed. Unless I missed it (which is possible since I don't follow HEATs much, I only recently leveled up my WS) while there have been balance passes of fairly major effect on blasters and tankers, the HEAT which mimics both remains a pale clone of the way those ATs used to be. Heck, just on that basis they need a bit of love. I built up a humanform WS made for durability and recharge which can, if all the fluffies stay alive, do OK damage. He'll also sit at 85% resistance to most things which when coupled to a very nice corpse dependent heal is very durable. However you can't just dive right in. All WS abilities (or good ones) depend on enemies or their bodies. The lack of status protection is also pretty annoying since 85% resistance isn't much good if you are just mezzed all the time. Both my crab spider and my fortunata do more damage, and do more for a team in general through force multiplication. Honestly, I'm not really sure how one should go about fixing the HEATs. People seem to like them as is I suppose, but then I've had people defend petless MMs as well. PB did not appeal after looking at powers/numbers. I made and played to 50 my WS, and as mentioned above it is acceptable. I imagine I'll keep it for theme events or something, but I would not bother to play it otherwise. I have a multitude of more effective alts which are both more fun to play and do much more for a team, or are worlds better solo.

I'll comment on the questions by AT ( I favor sentinels, stalkers, and tanks). like most- On sentinels I favor SR, on stalkers, I favor energy aura, and on tanks, I quite like electric armor, but you need to make a careful build since the heal is a bit slow. Pair it with a secondary which heals and it works well. Least- sentinels- ice armor is crap, stalkers- regen or a resistance set. Most dislike regen since it's just not great and you lose the endurance power. Tanks- just looking at the numbers makes me skip ice armor. I've played the rest just fine. Overtuned? You want me to nerf call? Nah. Pass. Undertuned- ice armor on sentinels, heck probably ice armor in general. Regen is a hot mess anywhere but sentinels. I rather wish the click status protection sets had an alternative like on sentinel SR. On sentinels or stalkers I like defense based sets. The 75% resistance caps for the ATs make them a bit soft at the extremes, and I tend to push my luck. I don't mind resistance as much on sentinels since I can stay back a lot easier and distance avoids the AOEs. Defense amounts to 90% mitigation so I go with that. On tanks I like resistance sets because they can get to 90%. Of course I understand the def>res>heal mantra, but teams are very quick to hand out def, and rare to hand out resistance, so if you have a resistance tank, you'll likely end up a resistance+defense tank on good teams. Sentinels have a good version of regeneration which is fun to play, but they are not aggro magnets. On a more aggro focused even sentinel regen would possibly be too soft. Regen on everything else is far too much of a click fest to interest me. I know my reaction time wouldn't be up to optimal play. WP is OK for the regen rate, but against the things which focus on its defense, it is very weak since it has no DDR. I take taunt on tanks mostly because teams will often complain if you don't have it even if you're holding aggro just fine. It is good for grabbing stragglers. I don't much take it on brutes (and I'm not really talking brutes since I don't play mine much). I have tanked pretty much everything short of being the Hammi HP sponge, having done solo, small teams, big teams, league, and relentless. One of the reasons I favor resistance is that the game has a lot of ways around defense that happens in high end content. I've mentioned before electric armor is nice because it allows you to cap resistance to everything except toxic (with alpha), and if you throw in dark melee, siphon life is up enough for enough healing to keep you alive through some rough stuff. I imagine radiation melee's radiation siphon would work for this as well, but I don't much care for the set.

Recently made a poison defender to try out the set (and I had a name+concept in mind). It's pretty powerful with very strong debuffing potential, meh healing, and an amazing rez. I don't much, however, care for the tier 9 since it's pretty much asking to die. Sure on normal content, it works all well and good, but once you hit hard stuff, having to keep a defender in melee range without the ability to heal yourself like a kin is damned close to suicide. Given my druthers, I'd make it so the debuff could be anchored on a teammate like disruption field from sonic resonance. Sure this would further penalize the ability of a poison to solo, but given no self heal, I think they are already pretty limited, and this would greatly increase their survivability on teams doing challenging content. Also the fact that 2 powers are wasted (IMO) on holds on this set is not a great design. Sure, I imagine that synergizes well on a controller to lock things down (or even with ice blast), I prefer to keep to buffs and debuffs. I find a force multiplier is usually more valuable than a control. I doubt these will be popular suggestions. I've already commented on sonic in another thread, though it's a hybrid as one might say. I have yet to make a trick arrow, though I suppose I'll get to it. I've played dark plenty in the past and it is a solid set, though again, I could do without the hold.

It's a pretty set, and an interesting to play set. That doesn't make it a particularly powerful set. Got one to fiddy, and it will sit. It's just not worth the intricacies of playing when there's little payoff.

I've been a fan of sonic since its inception back on live. However the buffs to forcefield really show how one dimensional the set really is at this point. Ok, mostly one dimensional. You either buff or debuff resistance in most everything. There are a few exceptions, but they have issues. I'll go by Power: 1. Sonic Barrier- fine 2. Sonic Siphon- very one dimensional, could use some other sort of effect. Heck, the force field equivalent knocks the target down at least. 3. Sonic Haven- fine 4. Sonic Cage- I suppose some people find uses for cage powers, I consider it an easy skip. Cage powers usually just protect the target from competent people on your team who already meant to kill the annoying mobs you'd hit with this (Sappers, Surgeons, etc.) I wouldn't mind something else, but I also don't mind an easy skip. 5. Disruption Field- Fine. This one used to be pretty awful when it pulled aggro back to the sonic, but that was fixed a long time ago. 6. Sonic Dispersion- fine 7. Sonic Repulsion- If you drop a KO->KD IO into it, it can be splendid. However the noise it makes appears to tick off a team more than the protection that it generates makes them happy, so I often keep it off. The endurance cost is so damned high, it's hard to justify. If the noise could be fixed somehow, the power might be good, though the fact that you need a special IO to make it bearable is not a great design decision (I'm not a fan of knockback). 8. Clarity- basically a waste spot in the face of sonic dispersion running all the time. If it did more in the way of buffing it might actually be worth taking. 9. Liquefy- this power is actually pretty good while in use. However the uptime is so absolutely horrible, that it's a major come down when you've finally achieved it as your capstone power. 300 seconds recharge for 30 seconds of debuff. Even with perma hasten this recharges in 81 seconds so you're at a fairly pathetic percentage of uptime. The debuff numbers are quite good, but on a fast moving team, the location based nature of the debuff means it's fairly meh, and if you hit a hard target, not many AVs drop in 30 seconds, so again, meh. This one could use some love. So in a set of 9 powers 4 are fine. Every other power has significant issues. Sonic could definitely use some love. I'd have to look for actual scarcity numbers, but it is pretty rare in play. If you're odd enough to try and solo without a pet handy (corr or def) with the set you basically have 3 powers, with one on a overly long timer (siphon, dispersion, and liquefy).

I never got around to responding to this (didn't read the whole thread either so if I'm repeating, forgive me). However I thought my idea was worth adding. I had an idea of a new blast set. Thrown Weapon - I have some ideas for powers, but have not fleshed out the whole set idea. 1. quick toss - use a fast backhand animation, keep the damage OK though. Many sets have a tier 1 which is pure garbage, and it would be nice not to have it that way again. As storm avoided this I expect the Devs now get that DPAS is important and make sure the attacks are all at least decent. X. Strong throw- use the impale animation for pretty high damage (would have to be to make impale damage have good DPAS). Y. fan of grenades- not really sure how to do this but the idea to toss a spread of explosives that detonate on hitting the ground. I'm not sure if this would be a pain to code, but it's mostly just a special effect. There's plenty of options here for different ideas. I guess I am a bit too late though.

I should note that I think energy is a splendidly effective sentinel secondary, but I just prefer the sets with passive endurance recovery methods. I'm lazy and just want to blast like a hyperactive 5 year old.

If you are solo, things will either stick around you because of aggro, or they will scatter like roaches with the lights on if they are in one of the storms without any other reason to be there (like you as a target). Personal aggro will keep them in place somewhat. On a team, regen is fine particularly if you have an aggro magnet like a tank or brute. I imagine you could build to find a way to keep things in place at a distance, but those are only so so in effectiveness (IMO of course).

Ultimately I made a storm/SR (started it as /regen, but found it a bit soft since you need to stay in the middle of things when solo to keep stuff in your storms). I'm not the biggest fan of storm blast, though it does have a good fun factor and looks great. I just find it a bit meh on teams, and I always team. I have come to the conclusion that SR is my favorite sentinel secondary though. It is yet another instance in which sentinels get the best version of a defense set.

Ok, tried it out against evens and it does not do the damage listed. As you say, though, it's still a solid hitter with a fast animation for a PBAOE.

Damn, I guess I never noticed it at over 300 damage and that should have made me suspicious. Then again I'm usually fighting +4s. I'll try it out on evens sometime.

I'm not sure why I had not looked closely enough already, and from seeing builds around here, I get the impression that nobody else has. Did anyone else notice that the ice mastery set does really nice damage? Sure, ice sword is no mind probe, but it still does reasonably good DPAS (damager per activation second) of 82 (mind probe is 90). Among all the epic pool melee single target attacks, it's only beat by mind probe, KO Blow, and Havoc punch (which is king). The real gem is frozen aura. That is a great power to take if you have a melee AOE nuke. It's got a recharge of 40, and does 173 in 10' radius to 10 targets. Couple this with your T9 nuke and you're doing well past blaster nukes on your nice short sentinel recharge. Sentinel nukes do about 193, blaster nukes do 250 (base without other stuff). Add in 173 on a timer shorter than the sentinel nuke timer, and you're clearing some spawns. Frozen Aura even has a fast enough animation that it is fairly high DPAS (77). So if you're going to be mixing it up in melee anyway, you might want to take a closer look at ice mastery. Actually I'm a bit concerned about posting this in case it gets a nerf because people notice it.

For the lazy man to make this work, and I was too lazy to go all the way, you find a low level enemy and nuke it with a fiddy. He didn't specify any details. I took a lvl 50 sent and nuked a lvl 2 hellion. This is obviously sub optimal, but I did 5k damage. No debuffs, just aim and 2 red candy. Heck, I didn't even bother to use vulnerability. With more effort I could get over 10k. I don't think it's worth doing.

If you are on a team with anything but corrupters and maybe a tank, you're sub optimal. That's just how the game works. Complaining that sentinels are less than optimal is like saying water is wet. So are scrappers, brutes, etc. Sentinels are at least roughly competitive now. Given good slotting, and knowing how to play the game, I can keep up even on good teams (perhaps not with my storm, but with a better sentinel).

While I'd agree that Storm blast on a sentinel is not the best choice by any means, this is a bit hyperbolic. You certainly don't need to door sit and will still contribute. I've got my storm/SR sentinel to 50 now and it does work OK. Of course I have a lot of sentinels which work better, but storm does have its uses in certain places. One good case is BAF trials. With my normal high levels of global recharge in the build I could spam perma Category 5 (and storm cell, but that's perma anyway) during the prisoner escape phase, and that a good job of blocking things. One thing that shocked me was even with only +1 level shift I was getting the pissed off AV rings from Nightstar and Siege at the end. I would not have assumed by damage to be so good, but I guess all the effects stacked do amount to a good bit of damage. I have trouble decoding the City of Data on this set (as it's all powers triggering sub powers) so really getting how much damage potential it has is not clear. The limitation of storm blast is the same as the limitation of any of the location based buff/debuff sets. It does suffer a bit on high speed teams. However you will eventually hit an AV unless you're doing radio missions (for some reason I don't grasp) or farming. On AVs the powers work pretty well as long as you have a tank along to keep them in place. Without a tank things can get scattered a lot which will cut your damage.

Yeah, I always build to the fast recharge nuke. Neat thing on storm is you can actually get near perma on the T9 nuke since it is DoT. It would be great solo, but on teams it would just be wasted damage.

I built a storm/regen on test, and it worked OK. I'll probably build one on live just to give a review of the set, but I can't see it becoming one of the top tier sets because of the weak nuke.

I placed them in places on the battlefield where I thought they would help.

I made a crab spider using the rifle attacks and soul mastery (like one I have on live). Being as though I just wanted to test redraw, I simply went to the Vanguard base and blasted away at the target dummies. The redraw that plagues the character on live was completely gone, so I'm happy. I didn't test all that extensively.

Made a sentinel (storm/regen) yesterday. Built them for recharge (+112% before perma hasten) with spiritual core alpha. The recharge was quite over the top. This resulted in roughly perma category five, which was kinda neat. The trial run was wiping out wall spawns in Cimerora. Damage was OK. Lightning strike hit pretty hard (though not extremely), and the rest was OK. It was definitely a change of pace having the attacks be indirect. Very much it has a Storm (the character) feel to it. The perma category five will be fun to use solo, but the slow build up to damage means it really won't shine on teams. Mind you, I didn't have a team to test with, but with most other sets having front loaded damage, this will result in a large chunk of the Cat 5 damage being wasted on corpses. Overall it's a cool set with really cool animations, but it will likely be shunned by high performance oriented players. It will be a hit with role players. Oh, also the aim equivalent is rather weak, I assume this is because it does other things. I did pop storm cells, but I'm not sure I really understood the point. I guess I need to understand the mechanic better.

I find that it, coupled with fire having lousy T1 and T2 powers makes the set not terribly appealing to me. Blaze is great and all, but it doesn't offset other aspects of the set which are meh.

Yeah, it's a knockback/repel combo which you can't undo. It amounts to a solid mechanic for taking a target out of a fight for a bit of time, but if you like to keep things bunched up to cook them, it's annoying.

I'm not pointing fingers, but I read somewhere that it's been found that the people who wanted help with coding found more success with posting wrong code than with simply asking nicely. Many people can't resist the urge to correct wrong things. Luckily I'm aware of this or I'd actually consider firing up Mids.

The amount of -regen that a sent (every AT) gets from BR is pretty small. Envenomed daggers are a better option. One should focus on DPAS (looks like the proc route above- there's better experts on that than I.