drbuzzard

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.

It is possible to be a good AOE stalker if you use electric melee. The set does a while lot of damage to groups, and thundrestrike does extra damage out of hide. For single target, I've been quite enjoying my radiation melee/bio stalker. The damage on one target is simply excellent. However I am finding that violating my policy that all stalker builds should be on defense sets is reinforcing the policy since I lose hide to AOEs and the build is quite squishy. Haven't quite attained the last bio power so perhaps durability will get a big boost there, but so far it's pretty soft (compared to energy aura at least).

It's a matter of how and what I like to play. I tend to get too much tanker mentality in my head, and cascading failure from lack of DDR is a thing when I play a character hard. I play against things which do a lot of the debuffs, and once one lands, without enough DDR, you can pretty easily get that cascade failure. This is not me blasting a few people with a team, this is me taking on x8 spawns solo.

Given that it is easy to softcap, and has very good defense debuff resistance, I tend to think that SR can make the most durable sentinels. It's what I find in my stable of sentinels. I have WP, SR, FA, and Ninja all at 50. I have not decked out FA and Ninja fully, but I'm also not really sure I want to go to the trouble given where I see them to be currently. I am working up an Energy aura build, and I think it will be pretty tough, but harder to softcap than positional. I have worked up a build with electric armor which caps resistance most of the way around (except psi, neg, and toxic) but have yet to start the alt. Also on the subject of incarnate, my SR has spiritual for the alpha as I consider perma-hasten a high priority on any sentinel build as getting nukes up often is very nice.

Having the rage damage bonus with the scrapper damage scalar would be over the top. Were it switched to just build up, sure, though I doubt people would want it then.

Ahh, this brings me back to the old days before the devs gave out numbers for power performance we used to measure attack strength in brawl index (the multiplier of the powers damage above that of brawl, both unslotted).

I have one brute who's well enough decked out to be more durable than most tanks. He's got taunt, because I don't mind running him in a pretty tanker fashion. I had room for the power, and I don't use any slots on it. My other brute doesn't have taunt (though they are pretty durable as well).

I should probably revise my opinion on Bio since it actually does boost damage as advertised. It's still a bit clicky for my game style, but it seems to be pretty powerful if you want an all out damage build.

Good point. However it is hard to find things at lvl 45 which don't resist lethal. Sure, there are carnies, but they actually take extra damage from lethal, so it would skew it the other way.

One thing about all the comments about blasters with softcap builds, people really do not appreciate the value of defense debuff resistance. The blaster will have exactly zero. When facing enemies which debuff defense they will have a catastrophic collapse of their defenses and crater quickly. SR (probably what I consider the defensively best Sentinel secondary) has a good bit of defense debuff resistance and can actually keep it together in those instances. Hence in doing an ITF, if the melee comes to me on my hyrd/SR, it's no big deal. The defenses hold and I can keep blasting. A blaster would be face down. As you fight the nastier stuff in the game, debuffs are everywhere and unless you pick and choose the easiest enemies, those IO softcap builds are actually quite fragile when not based on sets with defense (and other) debuff resistance.

The description claims 25% so exceeding that is pretty good.

Those are the raw data from combat log yielding percentages. The %s are from a 45 archery/bio sentinel shooting a 43 rikti mentalist with his single target attacks in efficient mode, then offensive mode. Hence they are the total effect including the enhancement boost from offensive mode as well as the toxic damage. The various damage types are broken down (suffixes of L=lethal, F=fire, T=toxic).

on a +2 nemesis sniper for toxic as a damage percentage for single target. 79.8 for 7.28 9.1% toxic 95 for 10.71 11.27% 185.97 +5*11.85 for 21.01 8.56% 216.33 for 24.4 11.27% Ok, from some testing on the archer/bio in offensive mode. 43 mentalist (-2) efficient mode snap shot 72.66L aimed shot 86.5L blazing arrow 169.31L +5*16.36F= 251.11 perfect shot 196.96L offensive mode snap shot 81.96L +10.68T =92.64 aimed shot 97.51L +15.71T = 113.22 blazing arrow 190.89L+5*5*18.44F +30.81T =313.9 perfect shot 225.05L +35.85T=260.9 So snap shot 27.5% aimed shot 30.89% blazing arrow 25% perfect shot 32.46% Ah, so with the toxic, the stated 25% increase in offense is actually understated. That is pretty solid if you want to focus on offense on your sentinel. Mind you some of the variability above could be a function of debuff being present or expiring as I didn't pace the shots off evenly with a long wait.

I didn't see any mention of toxic damage when I was looking at damage numbers in my combat log, but I was checking on a tanker for bio armor rather than my sentinel and I probably wasn't paying enough attention. I'll fire up my archery/bio and take a look. If it adds that much it is pretty respectable. It could well be I'm just so deterred by the nerf to archery that bio got a bad name from me. Though I will still argue that SR is the best of the sentinel sets simply because of defensive utility (it does lack an offense boost like some sets admittedly of course).

OK, time to go back a clean up information which probably isn't so helpful. Now I've got a lot more play and analysis under my belt, and it's best if I don't mislead people. At this point I've played every secondary to 50, and of the primaries only energy blast hasn't made the slog to 50 simply because I hate the knockback tax (almost all powers have knockback and hence you would need to slot in a knockback to knockdown IO to prevent scatter). Here's the numbers for the primaries for easy comparison https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ys_WYSHarVfYLmvtiSnPkac8u0Eds9lbjTYqhy8LOG0/edit?usp=sharing. It's just the top DPAS powers (or all the single target, with a few exceptions- damage per activation second). A thing to note when looking at this table, while the in game numbers provided at character creation are 'true' because they come from the game files, they can be deceptive. Beam rifle is the main culprit here since it includes extra damage from disintegrate in the DPAS calculation, when often it's damage done to secondary targets. From a quick perusal of the sets, you'll see that fire sits well up there (as always). However it's got a rather annoying repulsion effect on one of its hard hitting attacks (blazing blast) which you cannot undo, so this makes it shine a bit less than the wonders of blaze, and good AOE would make it appear. Then Ice also has a DPAS attack in excess of 100 (bitter ice blast) which should make people clamber to make ice sentinels, but to 'compensate' bitter freeze ray got the hell nerfed out of it with a slow animation compared to all other versions, and the T1 and T2 attacks are among the lowest in the primaries for DPAS. Hence we end up with electrical as one of the most popular. It's got a fairly hard hitting attack in zapping bolt for 87 DPAS, and the rest being at least OK. Tesla case is easily amplified using procs because of the hold. The funny thing about the current state of sentinels, being the damage class which doesn't do terribly much damage, is that it means people find tricks to force damage out of the sets. As I mentioned before, you can proc up attacks to increase your damage, and most high end sentinel builds do that nowadays. This actually amplifies the appeal of such sets as radiation blast or dual pistol, both of which actually have downright poor DPAS (especially DP), but all the attacks can be procced with a few so you can effectively 'cheat' in damage. For the secondaries, the numbers in game don't really require any analysis so, sorry, no spreadsheet. However I can point out a few things which aren't obvious. Bio armor, which is a conglomeration of resistance, defense, regeneration, heals, and absorb, may seem like a hard set to grasp, is probably the way to go if you want to be damage focused due to offensive mode which gives 25% damage enhancement and some toxic DoT. I'll deal with the pros and cons of it in a specific post. Regeneration is actually one of the better secondaries as it is very fire and forget with an amazingly nice power in Instant Regeneration. Of course this is a rather odd name for a power which doesn't actually provide regeneration, but it does provide a rapidly replenishing absorb which allows you to shrug off a lot of damage that never makes it to your hit points. Effectively this feels a lot like the classic toggle instant heal of the glory days of regeneration, definitely more so than the regeneration dregs which exists on the other ATs. If you want to regenerate for real, willpower is the set for you, but it also includes defense and resistance, and can be formidable. Otherwise in general, for pointers on sentinel secondaries, they are all their own thing. None are complete maps over from the sets for the melee ATs. They all get some power which helps with endurance. They mostly get some power which boosts your damage output (either via straight up damage increase or via recharge boost. Now as you're not a brute or tank, the resistance sets are capped at 75% resistance, which can hurt quite a bit if you mix it up in melee. Hence, don't mix it up in melee. All of the resistance focused sets (fire, electric, dark, radiation) get significant heals and most some other health boost so they work better than you might imagine for the resistance levels. Truth be told, though, if you want to be the toughest sentinel possible, defense is the way to go. Given that the softcap of 45% defense translates into 90% mitigation, clearly this is a good deal compared to the 75% mitigation from resistance. Of course it's not that simple, but nonetheless, this is a fairly valid approach. Super Reflexes is very good on sentinels since it gives out high positional defense, high defense debuff resistance, and allows for toggle status protection and an absorb shield. This makes it (IMO) the best version of the power set across ATs. Energy aura is another strong set which provides a good bit of typed defense, a heal, and decent resistance on top of it all. Ninjitsu is another positional defense set, which includes a heal and an endurance booster, but requires a click status protection power (a big minus IMO) and has minimal defense debuff resistance which can be very painful. Invulnerability is also a defense set in effect, though with very strong lethal/smashing resistance on top (which can mitigate its lack of defense debuff resistance). Last, and least comes ice armor. While I would claim that sentinel secondaries are well engineered versions of the sets ported over from the melee ATs, this is belied by ice armor. Ice armor is crap (IMO of course, but so's this whole screed). The defense numbers are not great, it mixes in resistance to fire and cold, and no defense for those, and much of your defense is provided by having to pop your endurance regain power. Thus it has to be slotted for defense. Basically I considered it a hot mess, and stripped out IOs from my ice armor sentinel rather quickly after fiddling around.

I take the fighting pool if I think it can make me really durable. If I don't think that's really possible, I skip it. My fire/fire sentinel doesn't have it, nor do I plan to respec into it as i can't really imagine making a build which will make him outright tough. I'll live with him healing up his boo boos. My SR, WP, and nin sentinels all have it, and are quite durable (or will be once I get all the IOs slotted on my /nin one).

Ah, now I realize my problem, I checked with a sub 47 character. My bad. I'll just get rid of this.

Was looking at the merit vendor last night. The category of Very Rare recipes has been removed. I have seen no announcement to this effect (though it is possible I missed it). I can't say I'm pleased with this development.

I tend to avoid the T2 attacks myself simply because the benefits of defensive opportunity are too tiny for me to care about them, so I'd rather have even a slight damage boost. It seems to me that every sentinel secondary has tools for endurance recovery and self healing (or at least some absorption). Hence I just don't see the defensive opportunity utility.

As uncommon as Sentinels appear to be at the high levels, it seems to me there's a misplaced perception about their effectiveness. I have two at 50, and they are plenty effective. In theory, yes, a blaster does more damage. In practice, however, I find that a blaster has to be so much more careful (or can die a lot) about aggro that a sentinel can keep up in dishing it out.