drbuzzard

I'm agreeable with most of what you suggest, but I am completely against messing with the nuke recharge times. I consider those the one bright spot of the class right now, and it is what makes them at least somewhat offensively unique.

Radiation emission, or darkness affinity are likely what you want. They both do a bang up job of debuffing the heck out of enemies. You don't have to do any targeted buffs or heals either. They both have heals, but they are AOE heals. Now it seems like you don't want to do direct damage, hence you're best off as a controller IMO. Since you want a strong control set which is fairly simple, I'd say Earth or Ice. Both of these have good area knockdown powers which can just leave a spawn flopping around like fish.

Yeah, I have no idea either. I sure as hell couldn't.

Actually I know of blasters who've soloed +4x8 ITFs, so I don't know that the sentinel even has that niche to themselves. IMO sentinels are nice easy introductory characters.

Yeah, it's rather like in mission 2 of an ITF. You're stuck in a tunnel, and if you hit a cyst with cimerorans and khelds you're in deep doo doo. The cimerorans will chew up your defense, and then the energy damage and slows will get you. If you have a past softcapped SR sent and you just kill the cyst you can solo it. Most other builds are toast (I've tried a lot of mixes).

Yeah, that would get you splatted quick.

Ok, you dive into a +4x8 spawn by yourself on an ITF and see how long you last without being optimized. Hint, it won't be long. Yes, you could hoverblast, but in tunnels, that doesn't really work.

Well as always YMMV, but sentinel defenses will not softcap anything without IO help (even with pool powers). I want my defensive sentinels softcapped, and my resistance ones as resistant as I can get them. This requires a fair bit of IO work. However I always get them to perma hasten in addition to this, so I don't feel a problem with my approach. When you need to do procs, recharge, and defenses, then you have issues. Mind you I build my sentinels to do stupid hero tricks, where I run off and solo +4 ITF spawns just to see if I can, and I usually can.

This really isn't a bad idea at all. The defenses really do justify the ability to pull more aggro from AOEs. It would still leave fixing the inherent. Perhaps couple adjusting the AOE caps with the negative scourge suggested elsewhere and it makes sentinels into a ranged alpha eater option to tanks as the melee alpha eater.

Yeah, the usual method for sentinel boosting is to take one of the proc compatible primaries (rad, DP) and load up on procs. Thing is, you make sacrifices when doing this by giving up set bonuses. IMO the best thing going for the sentinel primaries is the fast recharging nukes, and if you can't get recharge set bonuses from your primary, you're not optimizing the best thing in the primary by making them available more. You also have to make the counterintuitive slotting of avoiding recharge reduction. It's a clunky solution IMO, so I generally don't do it (have one alt that way, but only one of 20ish sents).

At 50 a blaster can have perma status protection via clarion, or they can just buy a defense amplifer and have a bit which is usually enough on a defense build. If they rely on the amplifier, they can do radial ageless and get some DDR. Granted, this is also a budget version of sentinel defenses and only at endgame, but the sentinel can never get blaster damage.

This would be my preference since I don't want any of the assault business.

Until there's actually something gained by doing hardcore TFs other than bragging rights, I'm quite sure they won't be a balance consideration. Heavy mitigation is only really important at extremes. For most of the game, it's just a shiny trapping.

Which ones? Ok, if I had to pick the weak sisters: Dominators (instances in which controls are really important are rare IMO, and a controller does more as a force multiplier than a fairly meh damage secondary) Khelds Sentinels Every other AT does a decent job of contributing to a team IMO (if I was picking for something actually hard, if not that, then it doesn't matter at all).

Have you compared a EM/SD scrapper on that pylon time? You know as well as I do that ATs aren't even close to balanced across power sets. Isn't EM king of single target now? Honestly, I think the ship you mention has sailed. I would suspect the idea is to make all the ATs playable on teams and solo. This is still a work in progress. I rather doubt any real balance is ever likely to be in the cards. That's probably fine for a legacy game which never really did balance worth a damn.

This notion seems to have a strong following, though personally I don't want it. I want a ranged armored AT. I'm really no fan of the assault sets.

When people start setting records for solo TFs or farming with tanks, you'll have a point. Damage is king. Mitigation is nice, but once you get enough, more is pointless. More damage is never bad.

Yeah, This reminds me of the argument when they buffed tankers. Let's look at the game from a time spent vs. rewards earned. Does being immune to damage gain you anything? Past a point, no, not a damn thing. You can phase shift to your heart's content but it won't get you drops, XP, or influence. Yes, sentinels are pretty damned survivable. However their damage is tepid, and for the vast majority of content (and certainly enough for the purpose of generating rewards), their mitigation is past necessary. Blasters can get close enough and do far more damage thus generating rewards at a faster clip.

Actually this is a cute thing about how they did resistance debuff. They made it so that damage resistance always acts as debuff resistance in the same amount. This is universal (except for bugs which have existed at times). What that results in mathematically is that resistance debuff is always a damage boost equal to the debuff %. To demonstrate: Say target A has damage resistance 0% to damage type. You hit it with that 100 point blast you do 130 damage. Target B is loaded with damage resistance of 50%. You debuff that 30%, which is resisted to 15%. Then the resistance is 35%. Before the debuff you do 50 damage. After the debuff you do 65 damage (which is 30% more). Voila, tidy math. I have to believe that was intentional.

It's more valid on some sets than others. On the resistance sets, the .7 vs. .75 is usually followed in the numbers (looking at fiery aura, or electric armor for example) though they have different powers in the set so mitigation gets shifted again.

Though I've got a kooky idea since we're crunching numbers. How about we numerically compare that 4 blaster team to a 4 sentinel team? (apples to oranges all things considered, but I will over simplify to make it completely invalid). 4 blasters, make them all ranged /dev so constant 20% damage buff from targeting drone, and assuming they can maintain a 40% damage boost from defiance (I usually keep it higher, but whatever). 100x1.125x2.6 = 292.5 x4 = 1170 OK, 4 sents .95 x 2 = 190 x4 = 760 this though will have opportunity up for 2 of 4 all the time -shiny. so x1.6 = 1216 But that is for +0 Of course we were doing +4s Blaster 1170 x.48 = 561 Sentinel 760x .48 x (1+(.48x.6)) = 469 Simple, but kind of explains that MoITF time.

This really is the issue here. He is taking the sentinel resistance debuff in a force multiplying vacuum. The game is very focused on force multipliers, and you end up with much more powerful teams, the more of those you add. With 3 buff/debuff classes on a team, the odds of no force multipliers is negligible.

It depends on the set, but people look at the stated scalar defense value of .7 vs. .75 for scrappers. Given how much the sentinel sets are changed, it's probably not the most valid comparison.

I don't think I undersat I don't think I get what you are using for numbers. I mean if we're using that base 100 damage generic attack multiplied by scalar it would look like brute = 100 x .75 x 2.8 (since you're giving 90% fury which is generous, and actually favors the sentinel) =210 (you forgot enhancement, which I am rounding to 100%-lazy) defender 100 x2x .65 =130 controller 100 x2x .55 = 110 blaster 100x1.125x2= 225 corrupter 100x.75 = 150 tanker = 100x.95x2= 190 scrapper = 100x1.125x1.16x2 = 261 So I get 1501 Then sentinel= 100 x .95 x2 =190 1430 for the team x 1.05 = 1501 Ooh, wonder if that is indicative of their original math? Of course when opportunity up it is much higher 1430 x 1.25 =1787 average 1644 (for opportunity 50% uptime), so better. That's 9.5% better. But then we need to actually try some level shift against +4s (x.48) 720 for the scrapper team sentinel without opportunity 702 with opportunity 768 for 50% opportunity 735. At +4 the sentinel team has a 2% edge (and no accounting for build up and different DPA from the power sets themselves). So more when opportunity is up, less when not. On balance the sentinel helps. Of course a real debuffer acting at 30% or 22.5% would be better still.

Yeah, it seems clear to me that the making of sentinels was never finished. I consider the concept of the sentinel (in terms of ranged damage with defenses) as a core comic book hero type which the game had skipped over. It really is a needed AT. However it was never finished in the sense of being balanced into a roll beyond filling a gap in hero types from comic books. They needed a few balance passes which simply never happened. What we have seems to have been a first pass trying to avoid stepping on blaster toes, but going too far.