drbuzzard

I cannot imagine making anything with Energy Melee anymore as it currently stands. It's just not great at anything.

Way I see sentinels working best at high level is that, while they certainly can't do the highest damage, they can drop a 10 target nuke for pretty seriously high damage every 22 second or so (assuming perma-hasten). With some other AOEs thrown in, this is effective clearance of minions. Yes, while playing my sents I do have blaster nuke envy, but my nuke is ready for every spawn, they have to decide when to use theirs more carefully. I also get to jump into the middle of things with little care (depending on secondary of course) and blast away. I won't say, however, that I'm against them improving the class. It does take some work to keep up at high level, and I can see the damage difference quite clearly playing my stalkers and brutes. I look forward to them being made a real version of 'ranged scrappers' as the goal has been stated.

I have a strong feeling that the reason resistance all resists resistance debuff is how it is done. I could imagine it doesn't actually change the resistance number, but just tags incoming damage with a damage increase of the %. Of course I have not looked at the code, so that's just a wild guess.

I know nobody probably wants to hear it, but resistance debuffs have to be resisted or they would be fairly overpowered. As it is they work the same on targets with resistance as without. You apply a 20% resistance debuff to a target with no resistance and you do 20% more damage. Say you apply the same thing to one of those EB cyclopses in the ITF with unstoppable up? They have 90% resistance to all (but glorious psi which makes them drop like rain). The 20% is resisted by the resistance (all resistance is resistance debuff resistance) so you do 10% of 20% so 2%, which also increases damage by 20% (as you will now be fighting a cyclops with 88% damage resistance). If it did an absolute debuff said cyclops would go from 90% to 70% and you'd be doing 300% of what a team without the debuff did.

This would also mean that if you have anyone on the teams sidekicked they would be utterly useless due to the purple patch.

Actually ice melee does quite good damage. You just need to dip into pools to flesh it out due to a small number of attacks (and the tier 1 sucks). It has a good wide cone and a reasonably good PBAOE I probably would pass on ice armor myself. Ice melee couple with SR would likely work quite well (as long as you can stand click status protection).

Been playing an ice melee/energy aura stalker recently. I'm actually quite impressed. While the tier 1 attack is complete garbage, the rest is actually pretty damned good. It has a nice wide cone, and a fairly powerful PBAOE for the t9. Freezing touch is a truly great power with high damage (dot though), a fast animation, and a hold on top of that. The weakness of the set is a shortage of single target attacks, but you can feed in some pool powers to fill games. When set up properly the single target DPS is downright amazing. Ice patch is very good for keeping you alive.

What are the defensive numbers generated? I really don't get the impression that the build is softcapped for any position but ranged (though I would have to check).

I'd have to say that the basic design considerations for sentinels sort of reflect views which have always been the case with COH. There's a huge over valuing of being at range (why blasters were and still mostly are glass cannons) and because of this sentinels, while granted defensive sets, get comparatively weakened ones and then take a hit in damage and target numbers to top it off. While I do enjoy my sentinels, it's not because they are the best damage dealers. It's because I've long wanted a tankmage, and while you can also do that with VEATs (and I do have a tankmage VEAT here), they have a lot of limitations baked in which pin you down in playstyle. My ranged crab is tough as nails, and buffs parties quite well, but since the damage is almost all lethal, it's feels like I'm slapping things at endgame. I prefer to play my various sentinels who can use other damage types. Thing is though, I can also see on my other alts (brutes and stalkers) what high damage looks like and it is somewhat of a downer. I think the idea of giving up on the inherent and boosting damage is a good one since let's be honest, this current inherent is a hot mess. The only place the 20% debuff is worth much is AV fights, and I waste opportunity far more than I get to leverage it as something useful. We'll see what they come up with. I've been pretty pleased with the tanker revisions on test right now, so I think some hope is in order.

I have 50s with SR, WP, Elec, Energy, Ninja, bio, and fire. Speaking to which is the most durable, It would have to be between SR and Energy Aura. As others have said, softcapping really is the way to go with sentinels since a 75% resistance cap is well short of the effective 95% mitigation that softcapping offers. Since you're chasing softcapping, having a defensive set to start with is a good idea. Thus as I see it, your choices are between SR, ninja, and EA. Every one of my 'finished' builds have perma-hasten on them since getting your nuke up for every spawn plays to the strength of sentinels. so the fact that SR and EA have 20% recharge boosters gives them an edge (as well ad the fact that ninja has click status protection, which I dislike). Energy and Super reflexes each have their own advantages. For considerations of defense, super reflexes simply is better as it is positional, which is easier to softcap and holds up against psi and toxic just fine. It also includes a heaping helping of defense debuff resistance, which against certain content is very helpful (ITF for example). Energy Aura in contrast adds a pretty decent amount of resistances to the mix, so when that hit slips in (and something will) it doesn't hurt as much. Also SR offers absorb instead of a heal, while EA has a real heal. Now this is not to say that resistance builds can't be durable. They can be plenty durable, but not durable enough to jump into +4x8 spawns with impunity and drop your nuke with worrying at all.

I skipped power surge, as you can get most things commonly encountered at least fairly high in resistance and the crash from surge is pretty damned rough.

I'm pretty sure it increases my healing a good bit. You can watch it in the combat logs.

I believe it is generally easier to softcap positional defenses as the IO bonuses are more common. In addition to that, it protects you from things the typed defenses usually don't cover. Arguably my 'main' is my sonic/energy aura, and while he's very durable, he's got fairly glaring holes to psi and toxic. Luckily those are not common enough that I can't get by them with judicious use of barrier.

I have both /elec and /energy sentinels at 50. I like both, but energy aura is really a lot more durable. Softcapping is a lot better for survival than getting to the 75% hardcap to resistance (which I've hit on a couple things, and coupled with the high regen, it's pretty damned tough). My energy aura sentinel can effectively tank, which doesn't go so well on the /elec one when I've tried (against resisted damage types). Energy also adds a fair amount of resistances to various things, so even after something gets past my defense, I don't take full force of a hit. As for the 20% recharge boost in /elec, energy has the same thing, but in the status toggle instead of a passive (like in /elec or /SR).

I agree. The resistance sets got put in the red haired stepchild position here. They are definitely better for defensive builds.

For my purposes the set bonuses were helpful. Of course YMMV. I have to imagine people at least like the large recharge bonuses. I find recharge is a key goal to chase on Sentinel builds to get the T9 nuke up as often as possible.

I think I also have them in AOEs. Personally I don't worry much about the procs. I value the set bonuses instead. Some other ATOs are great and make for a huge change (stalker, scrapper), but the sentinel ones are so so.

OK, tried the fire/rad with the new patch. The difference in radii did have a noticeable effect with my damage auras, but it's didn't require much more than a bit of circling to piss everything off and come in to get toasty. I believe the damage aura from radiation melee reached about as far as blazing aura (tested with each separately). I also fiddled with the proton cone, and it's OK, though the dot nature is why it was hiding in my damage auras. I'll have to say the current radius expansion is probably correct. At the double size, the damage auras were arguably too good, and holding aggro should require at least some effort. The current patch on test is about where I'd like it to be.

OK, just tried the new patch on test, Built a different tanker because I wanted to try the rage business as well. This time it was a decked out radiation/SS tanker at 50 doing LGTF mission 1 again. Foot stomp did nice work, and I coupled it with crosspunch for some more AOE goodness. I didn't find that beta decay did nearly as well in the aggro grabbing business as blazing aura had in my previous testing. This could be somewhat due to the radius change, but I'm not convinced of that because a foot stomp would quickly get the attention of a spawn and get them into hugging distance. I am curious if the 'tanker modifies melee cones' power affects pool powers, because if that is so crosspunch must really suck without it. It was very hard to get that cone lined up to affect more than maybe 3 or 4 targets. I should try the previous build again, though to get a better feel for the change in radius. Will post again once I do.

OK, tried out a Radiation Armor Super Strength tanker on test just now. Leveled it up to 50, decked it out with IOs and incarnate stuff, and took on the first mission of the LGTF on +1x8. Relevant to this thread, the circle around rage which is suppose to indicate when it was OK to click it to avoid the crash doesn't work properly. I'm not sure what it bases things on, but I didn't use an excessive recharge build, but I definitely could have stacked rage had I tried. I was trying to avoid it, but got caught once because the circle was not accurate and got hit by the 'weakened'. Thereafter I just watched the buff icon instead, and was able to avoid the crash. This is evidently a bug which ought to be resolved.

OK, gave a shot to trying this out on test yesterday. Made a fiery aura/radiation melee tank, advanced it to 50, and decked it out with IO and incarnate goodness. Then I took it on the first mission of LGTF at +1x8. Biggest change that I noticed was the radius effect on blazing aura (and maybe irradiated ground, I wasn't sure if that one reached out so far, suppose I should try it by itself). The radius coupled with the aggro changes (and I suppose AOE target number as well) meant that every spawn I wandered into was on me like stink on poop, and I got attention immediately. They also proceeded for the huddle to get nice and toasty. Atom smasher was good for reaching out and touching at more range, and that was nice. I didn't really get a good feel for proton sweep, but I will test further to get an idea of how that change affects it. I currently skip that power because even slightly narrow melee cones are something I find more annoying than they are worth. The damage increase was there, but didn't really stand out like the other effects so I can't say I really noticed it. I will test further today with the revised changes.

Actually, I'd suggest you get on teams in DA. Incarnate content plays by different rules, and is inherently harder (higher number to softcap for example). Sure, in an era of incarnate heroes, normal PI content is fairly laughable, that's true. However there's also incarnate content which isn't.

I'm going to add a vote for just making it not stack but have no crash, though apparently that will upset certainly parties. My rad/SS tanker hasn't reached rage yet, but when I get there, I'd prefer it to just be able to be set on auto-click without having a penalty for it. I did like the suggestion of a toggle, with an optional click for double with a crash, but that's probably a lot of trouble to code.

I will have to go onto test and try this out, but it looks like good stuff. Whether or not the numbers need to be tweaked remains to be seen, but I like the concept behind it. Tankers having more AOE capacity allows for better aggro acquisition and control. This allows them to do their perceived job much more effectively. Having them do more damage and increasing their cap, makes them less of a 'liability' at the high end of teams (note, I've never seen a tank skipped over or done it myself when forming a team, but in terms of theory crafting an idea team on live, tankers don't fit). I don't mind the endurance change of course. As it is, I simply avoid defensive sets which don't have endurance tools. This would make more tanker primaries palatable. Currently on live, I have a number of tankers, but I rarely have a desire to play them since I have brutes which can just do the tanking job basically as well, but I also get to bring the pain.

If your goal is targeted AE farming, then there's no point to a sentinel. With a blaster you can tailor a build which will be more than adequate for enemies you get to choose, and sentinels simply don't do the AOE damage. However sentinels have more versatile defenses so are more durable in general usage than blasters. If you like doing a wide variety of TFs and trials, then a sentinel will be more survivable. I play my characters up (mind you I don't dawdle, it doesn't take a real long time) and I dislike dying a lot or standing around mezzed. I also play the WST every week as well as plenty of other PUG TFs that come up. Every time I think of making a blaster, I just make another sentinel since I simply have no desire to put up with the unpleasant aspects of leveling up a blaster. The end products I have in my level 50 sentinels are pretty damned effective, and I don't have people complain about my performance. I understand I could certainly exceed the damage output, but I know I couldn't beat survivability. I really don't farm, except for a bit of it in DA where you can use level shifts from incarnate, though the varied damage types and debuffs make a sentinel a good choice. You have to be past 45% def to be softcapped, and the debuffs and everything flying around means that cascading failure is inevitable for a basic 45% softcapped build. My Hydro/SR sentinal can farm in there fairly well (though my brute is a bit better). Perhaps a blaster could be built for it, but that would take a better hero designer than myself.