drbuzzard

Proc rate is based on the recharge time of the power computed from enhancements in the power (alpha counts towards this). Tesla case has a longer recharge, so yes it would proc more. It still won't proc a whole lot especially if you put in a set with recharge in it.

I very often supplement resistance (or regen) sets with tashibishi (caltrops) from the ninja EPP. If you're stuck in point blank range, this will keep them off you long enough to live. This works just fine on my BR/elec clearing the walls in Cimerora. Nowadays sentinels do enough damage that you can kill things off before they wear you down. If I'm on a flyer with space, I just back off for a bit and regen back up. If you want to feel impervious to incoming damage, just play a defense set- softcap is a beautiful thing.

There's a few of concerns: A) You went proc happy in tesla cage. That's probably not a good idea as it still needs to hit targets and you have no accuracy enhancement in it. I'd probably try to do a normal set (perhaps decimation) and then the unbreakable constraint proc since it's the best damage for the slot (at a 4.5 rate it's also a good shot of happening). B) Decimation proc rate is going to be very, very low. It might pop one in ten. I'd probably put that slot somewhere else. C) I'd probably reclaim the sixth slot of ball lightning taking out the knockdown proc. Burst proc chance is fairly low, and I think the slot is better served elsewhere. D) I'd say put a Gaussian's chance for build up in charge up. This gives a good proc chance and is a natural thing to pop before thunderous blast. E) In grounded you have the steadfast protection def special. I'm not sure why. It's the only defense in the build. Instead I'd ditch aegis in tough, and put another titanium coating there, while putting the aegis psi resistance unique here. That will get you a little bit more negative energy resistance. F) You don't have power sink, nor have you fully slotted stamina for endurance, so you will have blue bar issues. I'd put at least one more slot into stamina so you have two 50+3 endurance mods in there (one from performance shifter). Personally when I can hunt up the slots I like 4 slots in stamina with 1 PerfSh proc, 1 PerSh end mod (50+3), 1 power transfer chance for self heal, 1 power transfer end mod (50+3)

You might want to be clear that this -55% to hit is if you slot your best AOE attack for tohitdebuff instead of damage. If you don't it's 35%. That's still pretty good until you consider the purple patch which beats that down pretty quickly (or AVs which resist it).

If you are wanting defense, build a defense secondary. Energy aura is quite good, with lots of defense, a fair bit of resistance, a good heal, and a 20% recharge boost. If theme comes first, then I'd probably just not worry about the numbers too much.

I bet it's old enough so that people leveraged procs instead of the sentinel damage scalar. These days I don't know that I have any procs left in mine. As for regen, this is one of those things which is a touch complicated. Defenses should be looked upon as a survival time kinda thing. So if you are taking a certain DPS you can figure out how long it is before you croak. If your combination of regen+defenses provide enough mitigation to exceed that you can't die. Regen actually works nicely with resistance sets because they effectively multiply the regen (as long as it's one of the covered types). So if you have 50% resistance, you have double the regen. If you get to 75%, you have four times the regen. Optimally you should be pumping up both your regen and resistance if you can. Basically I find on the resistance sets that unless you're trying to tank stuff (I usually play on teams), you will basically regen+resist any miscellaneous damage that comes your way. The heal is if you start getting a bit adventurous.

I often see here people say things like "It's a good idea to have some defense" when you're making a resistance set. Perhaps even the converse gets said about defense sets and resistance, but people are usually bigger fans of defense sets and rarely pad in resistance. What people ought to understand is how to consider the way protection sets work in the game. First off we should start with the relevant limits, known commonly as softcaps. For defense the number is 45% in normal content, and 57% in incarnate content. Any value of defense you have beyond those numbers doesn't actually change the outcomes unless you are debuffed (and perhaps if the attacker has to hit buffs). Normally enemies will hit you 50% of the time, and the defense number subtracts from that (62% in incarnate I suppose). Hence if you are at the softcap, you will be tagged 5% of the time and block 90% of your incoming damage (remember we start at 50% already missing). This is why people generally consider defense the stronger option in most classes because the resistance cap for most classes is just 75%. It is higher for EATs (85%), brutes (90%) and tankers (90%). As mentioned above resistance sets for sentinels cap at 75%, so you still get tagged for 25% of the damage and that's 2.5x what you'll take on a defense set. However resistance is nice since the incoming damage will be in smaller lumps rather than the occasional wallops that come through defense. Sentinels also do some interesting things in the pure resistance sets (fiery aura, electric armor, dark armor, radiation armor) by including strong healing powers and regeneration powers. These actually do a fair job of offsetting the comparative deficiency. I will say having played all the secondaries , the defensive sets are definitely more durable, and you can do more showboating while surviving, but it's not that big a margin. Resistance sets will usually give you enough time to back off if you need to. So let's get back to my initial point after all that digression. Why is it a bad idea to add a little defense to a resistance set? Well there's the consideration of opportunity cost. If you choose to do one thing, you can't do another thing. If, say, you're picking an IO set and you add some defense to a resistance set and you could instead add resistance, you are making an error. Say we're making an electric armor sentinel? You're currently sitting at 65% lethal/smashing resistance. You can add either 3.75% defense with a set bonus or 3% resistance. What do you choose? Sure, 3.75% sounds better (and effectively you double defense numbers since the cap works against 50%, so 7.5%) however you need to consider what effect this has one incoming damage. Your enemy shoots you for 100 damage. The increase in defense will nab you 7.5% reduction in damage. What will the resistance do? You'd go from 35 to 32. That's taking 91.4% of the former damage, vs. 92.5%. Sure this is small, but the closer you get to your cap of 75, the bigger the effect will be. Thus you should also chase your caps as the closer you get the more it helps. Say you were at 70, and get to 73, it would be 90%. Since defense only has to work its way to 45 (57 maybe if you want), it's easier to satisfy, but again, chase that 45%. Another important consideration is debuffs. Many attacks carry debuffs and defense is very often that debuff. If you don't have a set which resists those debuffs any defense you've added will collapse quickly. Even if you have maybe 40% defense debuff resistance, it will collapse quickly. Among sentinel sets only SR has really good debuff resistance, so you should monitor your defense and when you start to see it drop, run (this is known as cascade failure). Resistance has a nice feature in that debuff resistance is baked in at your current level of resistance. If you get your sentinel to 70% lethal/smashing resistance, then any debuff will only hit you at 30% effect. This is another reason to chase those numbers. When you're at the high end of the game content debuffs are flying around constantly. Yes, defense makes them miss you, but only until they start landing and then you die from cascade failure. So for the TLDR (guess that should be at the top, but tough), stack like with like until you hit a cap or softcap, then add the part that your secondary isn't strong in only then.

I don't do builds for myself. I just work up the character as I go. Sometimes this calls for respecs, but it is what it is.

Yeah, that's my point. I was thinking of doing a post which showed the math nice and simple for people. It's one of those things I have trouble convincing people of in tabletop games very often.

Can't really argue with this. Immunity to drain isn't always useful, but when it is, you get to shine.

We clearly have very different design approaches, but I would caution against neglecting your heal and regeneration powers. Energize and charged shield both need to have either a healing set or at least 2 lvl 50+3 heal IOs in them. Your resistance simply isn't that great with a 75% cap to assume you don't need to heal yourself.

Well yes, yes I did. I've been contemplating a post on marginal defense improvement so I can stop hearing the 'it's good to have a bit of defense on a resistance set' when the resistance set is nowhere near capped.

If you're going to try to leverage the -to hit of dark blast, you should play a defensive set to get some synergy going. With a resistance set the effects will be minimal and hard to notice.

A) There was a thread on charged shield recently. I suspect they just wanted a solid +10 end and leave it at that. B) I do the rechargeable pet set on voltaic sentinel since it gives global recharge. I build sentinels to do damage and survive, endurance drain, while a better mechanic than it was, still isn't that great. There's better sapper builds. C) Think I use them in thunderous blast and zapp. I imagine someone better at proc math can make a better suggestion. I don't really consider the proc effects that important or great. D) There's multiple different IOs for that, but I wouldn't skip grounded since it's got a few other things it can do such as immobilize protection, end drain resistance, and more negative energy resistance. I guess an efficient alternative would be combat jumping with a blessing of the zephyr KB proc.

To be honest, you really need to play seismic blast on the ground. The in game information doesn't make it clear, but there's stuff tied to you being on the ground. You build up seismic stress which has a couple of effects. One it acts a bit like a mobile ice patch, making melee attackers fall down some of the time. Second, and more important, when it is built up, it makes stalagmite into the hardest hitting single target attacks among all sentinel primaries with a DPAS of 150. Stone armor has an obvious synergy, and a decent fire proc in brimstone armor. I'm not personally fond of the set since it's typed which is a bit harder to softcap, and it keeps fire/cold as resistance, so you're a bit softer against those. Geode is pretty damn good for an 'oh shit' power though. It's basically hibernate. Personally I like other secondaries, but that's some matter of taste.

Shocked is basically a damage proc triggered by electrical attacks. I have trouble decoding what City of says about it, but it does fair damage and can jump from target to target effectively making electric blast a much better AOE set than it would first appear. Voltaic sentinel is worth getting IMO because it's basically just extra damage which also amps up the shocked mechanic (getting you even more AOE damage even though VS only does a single target blast. ) The absorb proc is definitely skippable. However the set requires all six ATOs to get the recharge boost, hence I always use all six. The opportunity proc is to be spammed as you say, though vulnerability charges up pretty quickly as it is. The T9 in electric armor is definitely something I skip. The crash is real hard, and you can cap all resistance except toxic without it. he T8 is more a matter of if you can fit it. It's nice to be able replenish endurance some times, though it's generally the second thing to go for me (after the T9). One tip on the set, it's generally assumed that electric has a negative energy hole, but that's only relative to the otherwise very high resistances. If you bother to slot grounded for resistance, you can get negative energy pretty high, comparable to fiery aura for example.

Not that it necessarily matters, but I updated my sonic/EA 'guide' in the pinned post for the sonic updates.

OK, this I don't understand really, particularly the Mind Link business. I've used the IO trick, but I don't really see why it even exists. Heck I tried to use the same trick on victory rush, but it doesn't cooperate with it. I guess the mechanic for alpha is it's basically jamming in another enhancement, and that gets stopped. I don't know that I'll ever get the logic behind a lot of the decisions in how the game was made.

That's pretty weird as it's not mentioned to be immune to enhancement in the power. Odd. Thanks for checking.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind that. It would also be nice to toss in the performance shifter +end proc. You know, I've never tried to couple this power with agility to see if the alpha slot would enhance it.

Honestly with the sonic updates, I'd have to go back and redo all my advice. The set has changed a great deal. Howl is now the weak sister of the cones, and you really don't want to skip siren's call (very good damage).

I have a radiation blast sentinel from the pre buff days slotted with loads of procs. I think I have a lady gray and other stuff in pretty much every attack (other stuff -always damage proc-determined by type of attack, ranged, ranged AOE, PBAOE). I think I managed to have 2-3 per attack. I don't really consider it necessary anymore, and if I wanted to go back and respec I'd be changing set bonuses to support my defenses and recharge some more.

Elude should ultimately be unnecessary since it is easy enough to softcap (even incarnate) all positions on an SR sentinel. If you take the power, just use it as a LotG global recharge mule. If you actually expect to use it, pure recharge is plenty since it will add to what you already have and it adds a lot. I would spend more than 1 extra slot on it at all with 2 50+3 common recharge reduction IOs in there.

It seems like people have finally realized that sentinels have gotten a substantial boost. I've been seeing a whole lot of them lately in the leveling up pipeline. By this I don't mean farms, I mean DFB, Positron TF, Yin TF, and PI mission teams. Quite a few of them would do well to read the notes though since I see a lot of them never using vulnerability on targets. I've made 5 new ones since the boost (1 isn't 50 yet), but I've always had alititis.

If you focus on lots of recharge you can have blizzard up every 22 seconds or so (perma hasten of course). Cycling that with ice storm means you will be handing out a lot of AOE pain. Go with an Ice/Energy and you'll be very sturdy, and a 20% recharge bonus is baked in already. That will probably do you well.