drbuzzard

I suppose I should test it to be sure, but I skipped fault on the test stalker because it says 'may do damage' which sounds an awful lot like it's random if it does damage or not. I guess I understand the change which created seismic mallet. Stalkers already do crazy damage, so siesmic smash might be excessive. Though after playing stalkers with the fixed EM, I can't imagine that seismic smash at full force would have been all that excessive. ET when going properly (which should be every time if you play it right) is far more damage (DPAS). Also the quickened total focus also stands as a respectable DPAS attack now. Stone melee on brutes (or tanks) was always a hotshot in single target DPAS because of the combination of heavy mallet and seismic smash. We lose heavy mallet here. (stone punch is good because it is quick, but really not godly or anything). I suppose the idea was that assassin strike coupled with seismic smash would be excessive. Well I know this set won't be tempting me to abandon my EM stalkers. As for other things- there's a number of powers tied to being on the ground. Thematically that makes sense and all, but it does put a kibosh on hover fighting. Fighting romans on the walls of Cimerora I found out the hard way that Geode only worked on the ground.

Yeah, the placate seems to come last after the proc. I noticed a couple other odd things from the placate. It seemed to have variable aggro suspension. So for example, you're in the second mission of the ITF and you're destroying the crystals which spawn an EB led team to come after you. If you placate that team, sometimes they would forget all about you, and other times they would eventually get back on track. Also when I was fighting Romulus in mission 3, I was fighting him with a bunch of the surrounding lackies. I placated the bunch and beat down the AVs. One of the bosses walked away and never came back. The other boss moseyed away, but came back. I was certainly under the aggro threshold at that point so it couldn't be that.

Yeah, I can't say I'm expert with the before version of placate since I've been skipping it for years since they fixed stalkers so long ago.

OK, tried it out. The perfect zinger damage proc doesn't cause any aggro. It appears that the proc hits before the placate sets in.

The proc was in, though I didn't really test to figure out if it could aggro targets. I suppose I can check that tonight. I only really used it to peel off lackeys.

OK, built up a stalker to test out the placate change. Just to get a twofer out of it, I took the character solo on the Aeon SF. It certainly appears to work pretty well. I was using an EM/EA stalker, and clearly this is no AOE king (added the weapon EPP to get the exploding shuriken to shore that up). However even in the first mission where the research scientists all summon a posse of spider bots, I could get by by placating the crowd as I focus on the boss. It's a good tool now, in contrast to the past where placate was simply a power to skip. I also appreciate that something can be slotted into it, as I put in perfect zinger for the bonuses. Overall my evaluation is that it is working as intended, and took a dud power and made it worthy of serious consideration in any build. A very good change overall.

Suppose you'll have to test, but resist does provide its own debuff resistance, and an excess (which unstoppable has) should keep up good numbers if you bother to enhance it.

Yeah, been playing an elec/regen build on beta, and the changes are pretty nice. In particular the volt sent changes help a lot and synch nicely with the static build up. Also, to be rather honest, the earth blast fails to impress looking at the numbers.

Now the new issue looks pretty cool and all, but looks like sentinels remain the red haired stepchild of the game. There's a new blast set for everyone else but sentinels (defender, corrupter, blaster). I think the consensus is fairly universal that the AT needs help, but nope. I rather wonder if the dev decided that a tank mage was a bad idea, so they want the class to just fade away.

Exactly this. I put in money at the initial kickstarter. Since then what I've gotten in the way of updates is artwork and meh fiction about the world. I think there may be a costume creator by now. There's nothing to actually play, but damn they are good at begging.

I played the SoH beta a while back, and the game does work. The art work for the interiors can be nice, but the character animations are a bit clunky. I expect that game to launch eventually, though if it will succeed is another matter. I'll try it since I tossed some money that way, but they have some issues. CoT is the poster child for vaporware.

I've come to be pretty fond of exploding shuriken. The pool has an endurance boost power, and the DPAS of exploding shuriken is amazing for an AOE. It would be a good attack if it were single target even.

Yeah, you have to consider the whole package before you decide on how much damage an AT does. For example stalkers do 1.0 damage scale, but owning to a whole lot of criticals which they can actually control, they arguable do the most damage for melee (single target). If they aren't kings, they are quite close.

The fact that you get to make an AT which really is very comic booky is what I like about sentinels. I remember when VEATs came on the scene back on live, I jumped on that because it allowed the ranged tanky type. A SoA became my de facto main. However you are very limited in choices with a VEAT both aesthetically and in powers if you want to be a ranged blaster. Sentinels open up a wealth of choices in powers, and don't leave you with ugly cyber legs sticking out of your back.

The odd thing, is that that newer or older, the sets all predate sentinels and their associated ports.

Yeah, I was downright ticked when I went to the trouble of getting the KB->KD IO from SBB for it, and it didn't really help.

I'm going through slowly. Did a couple today. It's not complete revisions, but some tidying here and there.

This power is why I avoid fire blast sentinels. I'm not sure what the designer was on at the time, but he sure wanted to piss off the players. I used to put in something to remove the knockback, but it does no good with the repel. It's had that since the start of HC. I've been calling for the repel to go away for a while now, to no avail of course. Then again many have been calling for help for sentinels since the start, also to no avail.

If they 'fix' (rather like a tomcat I suspect) procs, then the weaknesses of sentinels is likely to be really glaring, and maybe they will move to do something.

Actually I really should go back and clean up my posts in here. With more research I realize that a lot of them are pure bunk, and I've redone basically all the described builds.

Actually regen on sentinels is one of the best sets. Because of the way it leverages a fast refilling absorb shield, it feels a lot like the old days of Instant Heal toggle, though without being over the top (because the absorb shield is limited in size). If you are generating pure regeneration, yes a willpower sentinel will do better, but that absorb shield is damned impressive. I was dubious about sentinel regen before I tried it. Yes, you can just minimize and get by on the WP defenses, but when you do stack it all up, it can be quite durable. Been a while since I've played my psi/WP sentinel, but I have pretty high regen, 75% l/s resistance and I think I softcapped f/c/e/ne. It was very survivable, though defense debuff would tear them up.

Beam Rifle is an interesting set. It's fun because of the disintegrate mechanic, but it's actually a bit sub par by the numbers. I used to play the heck out of it, until I realize it was doing crap damage. Fire, ice, and elec are the best of the bunch for having the peak DPAS attacks. Ice is also good for proccing if you want to go that route (elec also has a proccable hold). I think electric is my favorite sentinel set at the moment. It hits hard, has a ranged nuke, and the animations are all quite good.

You did mention an invuln sentinel (and yes, sentinels still lack), but they have a cool version of invulnerability. It's funny that the shortcomings of sentinels eclipse the fact that there was a lot of really cool design decisions made when they updated sets for the AT. Every set gets an endurance boosting power of a sort, and generally there are lots of helpful boost. Well except ice armor, ice armor sucks on sentinels.

While you may not like this opinion, there's something to be said for a set having powers you can skip. Having power slots for pools or epics isn't a bad thing.

Not on a sentinel since I can stay at range and pull little enough aggro due to lower damage. On a scrapper? I'd say yes. I've played exactly one, and it died like a mayfly because I played it like the rest of my melee builds which are generally either softcapped or at 90% resistance.