drbuzzard

I don't have builds in pine's (which I said and you even quoted) and don't really have the time and interest to do so right now. If there's an easy way to screen cap it on a mac, let me know and I'll post that.

One comment on the OP's build is that it seems more set on spending money than softcapping. All those LotG pieces are rather expensive, and probably not really worth it. You do need the global recharge of course, but going beyond that is just sinking influence. Also, I don't really think you should need leadership pool. Those are a huge endurance drain for marginal performance benefit. Though if you are going to take them, do vengance instead of tactics since it gives a big boost even if you don't slot it. I just took a look at my sonic/EA and I didn't use a whole lot of sets for defensive boosting and got to over softcap. s/l 48.9% f/c 49.07 e 58% ne 47.01 psi 25% This is with 182% global recharge including perma hasten. Mind you the above numbers do include T4 agility alpha which helps a bit. It would be marginally below softcap in a few things without that. Notable sets for defensive numbers: Thunderstrike- gets you are lot of energy/neg energy and the latter is a weak spot, so one set at least is a good idea. Both ATO sets at six slotting as the one that was skipped to six gives energy/negative energy defense at six. Kinetic Combat- big lethal/smashing defense bonus obliteration - more l/s def (bonus is better for melee, but you take what you can get l/s is hard to come by ranged) Aegis- big f/c def bonus full performance shifter in energy drain for more f/c def A big 'advantage' of sonic vs. beam rifle is that there's a number of powers which clearly can be skipped. This left room for the psi pool which got me a melee attack for kinetic combat and another PBAOE. I also saved a bunch of slots by doing plain def and resistance50 IOs at +4. My BR character is electrical armor, and while I did get my resistances to s/l/f/c/e all to 75%, I made no effort on defense at all. I have all the BR attacks and no epic pool at all. I'd probably second the notion that you can skip charged shot (not that I did, and not that I need it due to perma hasten meaning I could no doubt do a chain without it), but getting all my stuff so high in resistances means I don't really want to mess with how it works all that much.

It's possible to softcap energy aura(except psi of course). I've done it on my sonic/EA sentinel. The above build, however doesn't do it. I don't have a pines build for mine however, so I'd have to work it up to show how to do it.

First time I did Posi back in the day was on my Ar/Dev blaster. This must have been issue 1 or so. Don't recall how big the team we started with was, but at the end it was just me and a tanker left (from quits and whatever else) finally finishing the damn thing off like 4 hours later. I don't think I ran it again until it was revised.

Oh yea, forgot Omega Maneuver. It's a nuke. However, it doesn't do nuke damage, and has twice the recharge. It's simply full of win.

Oh yeah, panacea goes off all the time when you are at full health, but it pops regularly enough, that it does help when you are down some. Preventative medicine is nice because it actually procs more when your health is down.

It's powerful and easy for the devs to implement. It benefits teams, and lets sentinels stack easily. Maybe I'm a bit different, but mechanics that work interest me, not flashy buttons to mash which have limited actual effect.

Of course my initial suggesting of simply being the king of resistance debuffing requires a lot less trouble by both the devs and the players, offers a different playstyle feel, and benefits a whole team. But I suppose nobody else liked a simple solution.

The fighter pool gets better the more of it you have (in attacks), so if you use all, it's +30% damage to boxing and kicking. I'm not sure if it's enhancement or base than changes though. If enhancement, that's fairly underwhelming. The ice melee tier 1 is truly awful. It makes jab look choice. It's really slow, for really bad damage.

On my radiation armor tanker I skipped the tier 9 and I don't really find that I miss it. I understand it is a fairly nice power, but you can be plenty tough enough with it. One thing I do find on radiation armor is having particle shielding on auto click is a major bonus to your survival.

The cage powers in sonic and forcefield are pretty damned useless in most cases. Yes, I suppose they could be handy in rare instances of a single critter that needs to be put in time out, but most of the time, they just annoy the crap out of your team.

I admit to not really doing the proc thing, and I certainly don't optimize around it even on builds where I do put in procs. I stated my case for more recharge, and that's simply bringing the nuke up as often as possible. I don't kill pylons for fun, or have a goal of soloing AVs so eking out the max single target DPS is not on my radar. I follow the holy school of AOE damage that reaps one greats rewards in COH. The best tools sentinels have for that is the nuke, so I say nuke as often as possible.

I agree elude isn't worth the trouble. Softcapping can be done easy enough without it, but that does assume weave. All my final sentinel builds tap into the fighting pool to one degree or another. I have yet to make a dual pistols character, so I can't claim expertise in that part of it, but I do have a finished and incarnate softcapped (50-60s) Hydro/SR sentinel. I make sure every defensive power is taken to the ED limit. Even the small numbers add up. I'd need to fire up my PC to work up a build myself. I also make it my tenet of sentinel builds that they all get perma hasten. The current strength of sentinels, IMO, is the fast recharging tier 9 nuke, so that should be up as often as possible, and that means perma hasten. I'd be dropping elude, but I don't know that you're all that close to perma hasten without it. I also never take musculature alpha. While it certainly seems popular, I consider it well sub optimal. I usually go with spiritual and sometime with agility (if I want well past softcap for incarnate stuff). If you consider that at best musculature is giving you more or less 16% more damage for well slotted powers, that's pretty unimpressive. Alternatively, spiritual at T4 gives you an extra 30% recharge in every power (or more up to 45% if it is below cap). Couple with a set like SR that gets a base global recharge of +20%(that is, assuming a person is sane and takes quickness) and you've only got 50% to dig up for perma hasten. Throw in the mandatory 5 lotg GRs, and you're at 87.5%. Just placing the 2 ATOs will get that. You can then play games with procs or other games for more defense.

While occasionally see people get picky in asking for TF membership, there's only very rare and select instances where AT choice is kind of important. The LGTF needs holds for the hami section to be easy, and the LRSF is best with a tough tank or brute for convenience at the end (of course there's some other tricks, but generally). Short of that, there's really no need to worry about team composition. If you want to make an alt which will be a quick pick, I'd say buff/debuff especially something well known and loved like a kinetics defender.

However post patch, they will still play very differently, both in terms of style and how you advance. That's not even vaguely interchangeable.

They are under special salvage. They get you six cards drawn I think and the outcome is random. I've never bought more than a single, since at 25M it's a bit steep. Will probably get a lot of them while the event is up since it's the only opportunity. If they are like hero packs, the enhancements should average a bit over 1 per pack.

Did a refit on my psi/WP build this weekend, upping the S/L resistance to cap, and getting the defenses (non S/L positional) to the high 30s. It's amazing the difference in durability. I also cleaned up the offense, but that's not really relevant here.

You know, I'd actually say the design of sentinel secondaries is their greatest strength. Perhaps I'm being a touch hyperbolic, but I think they knocked it out of the park when they adapted most of the secondaries. The sentinel versions of SR, Ninja, Regen and Energy Aura are the best in the game. The rest are all quite solid as well (this is not to say that the 70%->75% change should be skipped though because I prefer consistency). They did an interesting job of layering effects to grant a solid degree of durability no matter if you're resistance, defense, or mixed without making any of the sets huge outliers in power.

So even if they were buffed they would still hold no appeal? No matter how much they were buffed? Now granted, it won't happen, but say they had damage parity to blasters, you still would not bother?

If you are claiming a crab is a better sentinel than a sentinel, it would require comparing like to like. This is a pretty basic approach to comparison. Sentinels don't have pets, so excluding pet damage is logical. I mean you could say that masterminds are like corrupters because they have some blasts with their pets, and a support secondary, and because the pets do more damage than the corrupter, the mastermind is a better corrupter. That would be nonsense, as would this claim. Now if you want to simply argue that crabs are a better AT, I won't dispute that. They can be built to be more survivable and put out more damage. That's not really debatable and hence why sentinels need some help. However if I want to play a crab like I play my sentinel, It's not as good (as I've said before, I hate pets, so making a crabbermind doesn't appeal).

You could avoid words in my mouth (or just referencing me at all). I said a not fully optimized build. That doesn't mean I didn't use IOs. It wasn't gimpy, just not all out. That's also the case for the sentinel builds I compared to.

No, they are not solidly behind crabs without pets. You have done nothing to demonstrate that superiority. You didn't even address any of my points. I guess that means this isn't worth your time or mine, which is fine.

Ok, first off I'm not taking talking about a crabbermind. Sentinels in no way compare to pet build crabs. Crabberminds are some of the most expensive builds out there and do top damage. I may change mine into that, but my goal was a blasting tank and as I hate pet classes, having those two pet powers wasn't going to happen. My build was meant to be a sentinel version of a crab. I picked the powers with the best DPAS (burst, single shot). That doesn't include channel gun BTW (which has lousy DPAS especially if you have to keep pulling out your rifle). Omega maneuver is pure crap, so I can't really imagine why anyone would pick that up after trying it (which I have, and it's a nuke with all the recharge and none of the damage of a real nuke- it does about the same damage as a sentinel nuke on 4 times the recharge- what a bargain!). Longfang is lethal, so there goes that one and it has lousy DPAS anyway. Yes, venom grenade is splendid, and I use that of course. I didn't take one of the patron pools, though I suppose I should to try and get some other damage types in there. Mu is decent as I recall. The difference is that with a not very tuned sentinel (which pretty much all of mine have been when they just get to 50) I've made it past Honoree every time (except the archer. which I doubt I bothered to try). With a comparatively built, not terribly tuned crab I failed. Yes, it is not the optimal crab. However it is the crab which was built to match a sentinel, so saying a crab is the best sentinel isn't quite the truth. A crab with pets is the best sentinel (and those pets are a large chunk of the damage)? Hardly.

I do have a crab spider, but the fact that you're stuck in lethal damage for the most part if you build a blasting type, means I prefer sentinels. One thing I do when I hit 50 is Rammiel's arc in Oro to open the alpha slot. My sentinels(except the archer, who sits now) didn't have trouble with Honoree, but my crab did (because of that lethal damage issue). I don't even consider builds which do lethal damage anymore since it is simply awful at high level. Crabs do mostly lethal, so I don't play that one either. He's damned tough though I admit.

Oh, must have missed when the scrapper scalar went up. Thought only blasters had the 1.125. My mistake. If it went up that much, it would be noticeable.