drbuzzard

You might want to actually understand the numbers at all before you bring them up. You are so drastically wrong that it went well past funny.

This simply isn't true. As mentioned by others, this sort of thing varies by AT. A blast power in a defender secondary will do completely different amount of damage compared to if it is found in a dominator assault secondary (and I'm reasonably sure neither would be 80% of blaster damage, which itself isn't really a fixed value due to defiance). Once upon a time, when there was just CoH, you could make some reasonable generalizations about primary vs. secondary, but with the current number of ATs, no such generalizations are valid.

People are pushing for softcapping defense at least partly, and that needs leadership and weave if you're working with a non defense secondary. Personally I don't bother on the resistance sets. They have good enough damage mitigation as long as you don't decide you need to be a tank. Don't solo huge spawns or eat large alphas, and don't tank AVs and usually just tough to top up your l/s resistance is good. My ice/rad is my lowest sentinel, so I can't claim to be expert on rad, but I don't think it looks to play a whole lot different from my fiery aura or electric armor ones.

As I get another sentinel almost to 50 I think I've noticed one important really nice thing about sentinels (which may be obvious to others, but I'll comment anyway). They are a well designed AT conceptually (mind you they need a bit of a tune up to get where they ought to be as DPS AT, but conceptually they are well thought out). Almost all the primaries (a couple are duds) have been well tuned to deal with their concept as a tough, mid range damage dealer (mostly small numbers of targets). The adding of damage to control powers was a good way of doing this (and swapping out snipes for good attacks, which suits the mid range notion). Really though, the secondaries is where the Devs shined on making the sentinels. I've now played the majority of secondaries into the 40s, and many of them are simply the best versions of those power sets in the game. For example, every single one has some form of endurance support power. They can be as simple as quick recovery, something which sucks endurance out of enemies, or just a power which ups total endurance (and hence recovery). This is really quite a nice feature and allows you to just play without having to worry too much about endurance management (mind you we end up piling on defensive toggles and making trouble for ourselves anyway, but that's a self created problem). I've about finished up a elec/regen sentinel. I played regen back in the day when it was godly, and then nerf bat after nerf bat beat the every living crap out of the set till it was unrecognizable, and I won't touch again - except on a sentinel because sentinel regen is a whole different kettle of fish. On sentinels they used a combination of toggle absorb, some resistance, and a fair helping of regen to give you a lot of feel of the old regen (pre GDN), but with a ceiling on it where if you push it too far, you are meat. I find it actually a good bit of fun to play, as you can be fairly mindless about it as long as you don't push your luck too hard. You simply take damage, and small quantities are easily ignored. Current regen on other ATs is a clicking game, which I have no desire to play (yes sentinel regen has a couple of clicks, but you really don't need to use them all too much). That's just one example, but ninjitsu, super reflexes, energy aura, electric armor, fiery aura, all play quite a bit differently than their melee versions, and I'd say for the better. The secondaries are really well thought out and good examples of putting together a variety of tools to get a build to a certain level of durability where you can feel powerful, but not game breaking.

But what if they are polite enough not to complain but hate it anyway? I don't complain about it in PUGs, but I know my enjoyment of the game is diminished by people scattering targets willy nilly. I also put KB->KD procs in KB powers if I have them. Being considerate, and hoping others are in turn doesn't make you shitty.

I concur with this suggestion. Romulus seems rather over inclined to panic and runs away when you don't even use a rain or anything such. I'm not even sure what sets him off as he was running from my sonic/EA sentinel when I was soloing that TF. I don't think any of my powers have a fear component.

I'm sure I will be heartbroken to miss a teaming opportunity with you.

Yeah, I honestly had not heard of this particular option either and I've used Null a fair amount. There's a heck of a lot of options in all the bird menus.

Honestly I really wish people would stop with attempts to herd anymore. It seems that far too many people don't understand the aggro or AOE caps which make herding both worthless and dangerous. I used to herd back in the day when it was effective and efficient. It is no longer either, and far too many people seem to have missed the memo.

A single player who decides that everyone around them has too accommodate their play style is the problem child here. Everyone else has to go to Null the Gull just in case they encounter you? No, a punt is a much simple solution. You can solo or find people that don't mind. The onus is on you for trying to make others play your way. As for knock back, while there's the occasional player who handles it well, it's one of those where 90% make the 10% look bad. The number of times I've had a nuke popping off to empty ground because some knockback happy genius just cleared the board of targets without actually killing them is beyond counting. Recently I was in an argument where a tank stated their policy that if someone disrupts aggro, then they can deal with the mess (in this particular case it was a rain power, rather than knock back) and the tank will move on to another spawn. I supported the tanker because if they are expected to run around like a chicken with their head cut off chasing scattered enemies, both efficiency and fun go in the tank. I'm not one to tell others how to play (even group fly, rains, knock back), but that play style comes with the consequences be it dealing with your own aggro, or being kicked (which is very deserved for causing effects on other players that they cannot mitigate at the time).

This is why I find that hover sentinels are the ones I like the best. You keep clear of melee most of the time, and blast with fair amounts of impunity. Of course if you want to drop your PBAOE, you must close, but you can deal with that brief close quarters encounter. In any case, even on my floor bound sentinels, ranged is handy since you don't have to run around constantly. It's also very handy for picking out high value targets like surgeons or sappers.

Except you happen to be wrong. SR has defense, defense debuff resistance (and a lot of it), scaling resistance at low health, and an absorb power (if you go for toggle mez protection). By contrast, regen which seems to be what you think is the winner has regen, heals, absorb, and a small smidge of resistance. With relatively low HP on sentinels regen is hardly the best tool to have as your defensive anchor, and while you can add defense and a bit more resistance, the defense really is an egg shell in this case without any debuff resistance.

Not sure if I missed it, but do we have any idea when this goes live?

Ok, I've given this a good bit of thought. I have a bunch of sentinels at 50, and recently took a blaster up for the sake of contrast. Right now the sentinel is a bit lacking, not seriously gimpy or anything, but a bit lacking as it amount to being the lowest DPS of the DPS classes. It really does need a bit of help. Mind you I still enjoy playing them, as they fill a superhero niche which needed to be filled, but I think the general consensus says they need help. However how do we do this? Right now the sentinel has the opportunity inherent which serves to given minor buffs (depending on version used), a single target resistance debuff of fair value (20%) and every attack applies a -5% resistance debuff as well (not sure how this stacks). Even with these abilities their damage lags well behind a blaster (or scrapper, or stalker, or brute, though worse for a blaster). OK, first off just about everyone recognizes that the inherent is lacking. It pegs you into taking the first two powers, even if one of them is sub par (to be able to full exercise the inherent power), and the effect while apparently according to Captain Powerhouse was meant to give feast or famine damage output, merely takes you out of famine and only against one target. This means you have the DPS class with the 2nd worst defenses doing the least damage (though this is not precise as the armor sets are different on sentinels than elsewhere, but the .7 modifier is what I'm basing this on). So what do we do? I've seen CP mention that he'd like to see Sentinels doing scrapper level damage. Now I suppose you could do that by taking the damage scalar to 1.0 and giving them crits, but that would just seem to be copycatting (as it is used on both stalkers and scrappers). You could have a damage buff built up by attacking, but that is also currently in use by brutes and blasters. I'd say we need something different. Right now the Sentinel provides utility to a team via their debuffs in addition to their DPS (which is a bit sub par now). How about instead of copying a current solution from DPS classes, we go a different way. Go all in on resistance debuff for the class and simplify opportunity to just a 10% resistance debuff in all attacks which stacks up to, say, 50% (done by debuff expiration, rather than a stacking cap so multiple sentinels will stack together rather than not adding). While this sounds like a lot, it's a rare team fighting even level opponents and the purple patch cuts into debuffs pretty severely. I'd say also make the damage scalar 1.0. This will give a completely different feel to the class as it probes for weaknesses on enemies and the whole team can then exploit them. It also would give a different feel in that all fights will have them scaling up gradually in effectiveness no matter if you rush from group to group. Right now brutes and blasters are inclined to rush along to keep fury/defiance up. Stalkers and scappers are spiky in damage due to crits, but it is 'consistent' as not dependent on building things up (though Stalkers do have some of this). It will also not be as big a deal on solo play since the rate of damage scaling up and be adjusted to get to where you want the kill speed to be. Oh, also I don't really see why sentinels get the .7 defense modifier other than baggage from the original devs belief that range is a defense in and of itself (though while that may have been the case in i0-1 which was city of blasters- they then added a bunch of things to make it not the case). Their defense values should be tuned to be in line with the other DPS defensive classes at .75 which really isn't much of a tweak. So to sum up, ditch opportunity as is. Give the class a damage scalar of 1.0 (vs. .95 as current), and increase the resistance debuff on each attack to around 10% that will be tuned to stack to around 50%. Adjust the defensive values to .75 from .7 on armors. The debuff number should be tested to find a proper value, but I'm just throwing 50% out there because it will still put stalkers behind blasters with a good head of defiance (which couples with their higher scalar). Oh also, the ATOs will have to be adjusted. You can keep the sentinels ward proc (though it is rather weak). Perhaps had in a resistance buff at low health one like on one of the tanker sets. Also as there are a lot of resistance sentinel armor sets (more than defense), it would probably be a good idea to have the ATOs include some resistance bonuses.

Ok, I've given this a good bit of thought. I have a bunch of sentinels at 50, and recently took a blaster up for the sake of contrast. Right now the sentinel is a bit lacking, not seriously gimpy or anything, but a bit lacking as it amount to being the lowest DPS of the DPS classes. It really does need a bit of help. Mind you I still enjoy playing them, as they fill a superhero niche which needed to be filled, but I think the general consensus says they need help. However how do we do this? Right now the sentinel has the opportunity inherent which serves to given minor buffs (depending on version used), a single target resistance debuff of fair value (20%) and every attack applies a -5% resistance debuff as well (not sure how this stacks). Even with these abilities their damage lags well behind a blaster (or scrapper, or stalker, or brute, though worse for a blaster). OK, first off just about everyone recognizes that the inherent is lacking. It pegs you into taking the first two powers, even if one of them is sub par (to be able to full exercise the inherent power), and the effect while apparently according to Captain Powerhouse was meant to give feast or famine damage output, merely takes you out of famine and only against one target. This means you have the DPS class with the 2nd worst defenses doing the least damage (though this is not precise as the armor sets are different on sentinels than elsewhere, but the .7 modifier is what I'm basing this on). So what do we do? I've seen CP mention that he'd like to see Sentinels doing scrapper level damage. Now I suppose you could do that by taking the damage scalar to 1.0 and giving them crits, but that would just seem to be copycatting (as it is used on both stalkers and scrappers). You could have a damage buff built up by attacking, but that is also currently in use by brutes and blasters. I'd say we need something different. Right now the Sentinel provides utility to a team via their debuffs in addition to their DPS (which is a bit sub par now). How about instead of copying a current solution from DPS classes, we go a different way. Go all in on resistance debuff for the class and simplify opportunity to just a 10% resistance debuff in all attacks which stacks up to, say, 50% (done by debuff expiration, rather than a stacking cap so multiple sentinels will stack together rather than not adding). While this sounds like a lot, it's a rare team fighting even level opponents and the purple patch cuts into debuffs pretty severely. I'd say also make the damage scalar 1.0. This will give a completely different feel to the class as it probes for weaknesses on enemies and the whole team can then exploit them. It also would give a different feel in that all fights will have them scaling up gradually in effectiveness no matter if you rush from group to group. Right now brutes and blasters are inclined to rush along to keep fury/defiance up. Stalkers and scappers are spiky in damage due to crits, but it is 'consistent' as not dependent on building things up (though Stalkers do have some of this). It will also not be as big a deal on solo play since the rate of damage scaling up and be adjusted to get to where you want the kill speed to be. Oh, also I don't really see why sentinels get the .7 defense modifier other than baggage from the original devs belief that range is a defense in and of itself (though while that may have been the case in i0-1 which was city of blasters- they then added a bunch of things to make it not the case). Their defense values should be tuned to be in line with the other DPS defensive classes at .75 which really isn't much of a tweak. So to sum up, ditch opportunity as is. Give the class a damage scalar of 1.0 (vs. .95 as current), and increase the resistance debuff on each attack to around 10% that will be tuned to stack to around 50%. Adjust the defensive values to .75 from .7 on armors. The debuff number should be tested to find a proper value, but I'm just throwing 50% out there because it will still put stalkers behind blasters with a good head of defiance (which couples with their higher scalar). Oh also, the ATOs will have to be adjusted. You can keep the sentinels ward proc (though it is rather weak). Perhaps had in a resistance buff at low health one like on one of the tanker sets. Also as there are a lot of resistance sentinel armor sets (more than defense), it would probably be a good idea to have the ATOs include some resistance bonuses.

Yeah, a good steamrolling team moves too fast for judgement to recharge. Honestly one of the best things about sentinels is the fast recharging T9 which allows it to keep up with a fast team. When I've got my sents mostly finished (which means perma hasten) I can pop my nukes every 23 seconds or so (and aim of course).

What am I missing that makes regen so tough on sents? I never noticed anything on a casual look.

This isn't quite true. Soldiers of Arachnos can me made into tanky ranged attackers as well. They have cooked in thematic limitations, and the damage types are pretty limited (too much lethal), but it was possible (or a mix of psi and lethal for widows). I had a tanky ranged crab as my main back on live. I even remade him here, but since I've had access to sentinels with decent ranged damage types, I simply don't play the crab at all anymore. I fully agree with the above that the difference between them and blasters is survivability. I finally got around to building a blaster here to see how the changes from live make them play (my first main was a blaster). I made a BR/dev blaster (original main was a AR/dev, but again I hate lethal damage at endgame) and finally got it to 50 this weekend and respecced into a build I like. The road to 50 was filled with death. I mean death wasn't a frequent visitor, he was my damned roommate. If I looked at something wrong, I'd be eating floor tile. It doesn't take long to get to 50 these so even with being a sometimes animate corpse, it wasn't unbearable. Now at 50 I've got a build which is OK for survivability, but is more optimized for damage, and good lord that is a lot of damage compared to my sentinels. However, as I noticed while playing with blasters, you don't do damage when dead. If aggro isn't locked down, s single pissed off boss will simply ruin your day. On my sentinels a single pissed off boss is nothing. You can easily survive long enough to take him out. On my blaster, even with all my tricks in play, it's iffy. Yes I could up the defenses on the blaster, but the tradeoff would be damage, and honestly why build a blaster if not for damage? Also those defenses would be highly brittle (being IO based with no debuff resistance) so sometimes they'd be fine, and sometimes almost useless. Sentinels have stacked defenses with debuff resistance and status protection. There's simply a large difference in survivability. I also agree that the defensive builds are the most powerful sentinel secondaries, though the resistance sets all seem (or the ones I've tried) to throw in decent quantities of regen coupled with resistances and a heal, so they are pretty survivable. They can't tank by any means, but if you pull aggro to yourself, a few enemies won't be a big deal. On defensive builds you can stomp out x8 spawns solo. It should be noted also that the above description of the inherent is wrong. Both forms of opportunity cause a 20% resistance debuff to the target in question. However offensive opportunity gives you a bit of a damage and to hit buff, while defensive grants some endurance recovery and healing (small amounts for both opportunities). Truthfully the defensive one is probably more useful for endurance issues you might encounter early on as you level up. The parts which are different pale into insignificance by endgame where the 20% debuff is what you care about. I believe the devs here will be revamping sentinels, and I agree they do need some help. While I do enjoy playing them, their DPS for a DPS class is a bit too low. A bit of buffing of that, and some tweaks to the inherent and they should be quite good.

Also in addition to the fast snipe mode being damned good by itself for any attack chain, the ability to kill off an annoying enemy at range (I'm looking at you Cimeroran Surgeons) is quite nice.

I have the ghost widow PPP (soul mastery iirc) and between the sniper and single target blast, I can hand out a fair bit of hurt. It's a ice melee/ energy aura build and does very nice damage (even AOE to be honest).

I skip it in pretty much every stalker build. Back on live I had it on the stalker I took to 50, but since being here and doing more sophisticated builds, I find there are simply better uses for a power choice and slots.

Since people are obviously fond of rewards with no effort whatsoever (which AE farms are getting pretty close to, but whatever) just make the commands for free stuff from the test box work on the play server. That's close enough to what's asked for. You know, a big shiny 'I Win' button.

I only bother to 'finish up' characters with full IO work if I see a lot of potential in the build. I have plenty of characters who have made it to 50, and will likely linger there as there's not enough return for the investment of optimization.

On the balance side, GMs don't automatically resist -regen debuffs like AVs, so picking up some envenomed daggers can make them possible.

My sentinels are all either spiritual or agility. IMO the most powerful ability a sentinel has is their t9 nuke on a 90 second timer, so bringing that up as quickly as possible is key. Hence adding in more recharge via the alpha slot makes attaining perma-hasten a lot easier. Every one of my sentinels has perma hasten as a goal if I intend to finish the build. All of the ones I play enough to be incarnated out full do have it. I often start by doing spiritual because it gives the most recharge, and then migrate over to agility to boost more defense as I've been able to afford more recharge from IO bonuses.