Lazarillo

FWIW, there are are GM codes to do this to characters, at least up to the "i25" release HC originally launched under. So unless changes made since then would mess with it (not impossible I suppose), it is doable. But then you toss in what happens when you can 6-slot everything and the fact that means stacking an extra 50+ set bonuses into a build and...yeah, it's not viable at all from an actual gameplay standpoint. At times, I'll admit part of me wouldn't be completely opposed to the sometimes-suggested alternative of trading power slots for enhancement slots. But simply adding them out of nothing would not go over well.

I basically don't. Only real exception, at least presently, is my Arachnos Widow, who has a Fortunata build and a Night Widow build. I use the former primarily, but occasionally switch just for fun, or because I'm fighting something like Carnies where Psi attacks are...not useful. I also have a Katana/Rad Brute who I was going to do a "high level" and "low level" build for (due to Katana being so late-blooming), but in practice, I don't play him nearly enough that that's ever become something worth investing in.

Same universe where people don't act in character in RPGs.

You are wiser than most. I'd actually be afraid to post my opinions on Defense and DDR.

Freak minions and LTs are worth slightly lower than standard XP. This was put into effect back before the game's original closure, as they were considered weaker than a lot of enemy groups (particularly for teams) and can rez themselves for "double" rewards from a single mob. You may or may not recall the infamous "Dreck farms" that even exploited this simplicity. I don't remember the exact change to the curve, but the enemies you were fighting for Unai Kemen appear to give about 80% of what they "should" based on those AE values, which sounds about in line with my recollections. Now, that all said, I couldn't tell you what the values for Freaks are in AE, and if they're halved relative to this curve, too. But it shouldn't be too hard to investigate.

I've had this happen once or twice on Vigilantes, with missions to fight Carnies sending me to the Rogue Isles...in a couple cases even when I was in Paragon when I called the contact, I'm pretty sure! I did not save any screenshots, though. Just kinda chuckled and headed to the appropriate zone. If anything, it usually makes a certain amount of sense to me. After all, it's not like there's some shortage of heroic NPCs to butt heads with when you're playing Redside...

Sure, though bear in mind that it's pretty high-end (it's my main, after all) and not exactly what's considered the "meta" these days because I have certain goals in mind when I build stuff, and I'm not a fan of procs, either. So it may not be entirely to taste (and I'm sure there are plenty of people who will jump in and tell me how wrong and bad it is). But it does me damn well nonetheless so it might at least be a decent starting point.

Since HC started (and heck, even for the last year or two of the game's original lifetime), I've play Time/Rad as a sort of on-again-off-again "main" (currently at the "on again" stage, at that), and the way I always explain it to people is that I have that little blue shield for an AT icon because I'm there to be a tank. It's an incredibly fun build that's pretty close to untouchable. At lower levels, you've gotta herd stuff up a little bit and get a feel for where/when to drop a Distortion Field, but is extremely sturdy outside of the occasional mez breaking through your defenses and kinda ruining your day. And then at 50 you hit Incarnates and can get mez protection, and a 50%-uptime taunt aura through Hybrid, and you really, truly do become a "tank", more or less, and basically just fling yourself into the front lines. I put myself on pull-duty for a Mothership Raid yesterday, it was good times. And that's on top of the general team benefits. You can extend your sturdiness to your whole team for the most part, and soften up some of the harder targets, too. It's good stuff. The biggest limitation, at least in my build, is that it tends to be a leeeeetle demanding on Endurance, but as long as I can keep myself from bottom-ing out between Chrono Shifts, it's not too much trouble.

No, see, that's the thing. Sentinels are already "good enough". You can do whatever content with one, or with a team, or whatever. They don't need any more, from that regard. They'll be worse than any other options, but that will still be the case even if you buff their damage (unless you buff their damage enough then make it so that whoever they got buffed past are always the worse option).

There is not and there never has been a way (the buff numbers thing is unrelated), but it's kind of a Mandela effect. Ask in Help, and half the people on the server will insist that they totally saw the option at one point. The closest there is to a few toggles that pop up numbers (and only a certain few, not all of them) defaulting to a numbers-hidden option with the ability to customize them to "Show Floaters" and have the numbers appear.

In that case, we come back to:

I mean, if that's the case, then the entire thread is kinda moot. Sentinels are also "close enough" and fine. There's no reason to make any changes to them at all. But the premise of "here's what should change" is kinda predicated on the idea that they need to change.

Even with that, Corruptors on their own are really about even with Sentinels, I'd imagine. And that's assuming Corruptors are playing a secondary that allows them to consistently maintain that extra damage (most have some level of this, but not all, and for some, Recharge times and the like mean they can't be maintained completely). The added damage from a Corruptor tends more to come in the form of what they do to their teammates' damage. The general question remains, as well, that needs to be solved by any hypothetical Sentinel fixes: "Why would I want a Sentinel on my team instead of a Blaster/Scrapper?" (and the somewhat related "From a non-concept perspective, why would I want to play a Sentinel instead of a Blaster/Scrapper?") and it needs to do so without simply replacing that with the other question: "Why would I want a Blaster/Scrapper on my team instead of a Sentinel?" (and the somewhat related "From a non-concept perspective, why would I want to play a Blaster/Scrapper instead of a Sentinel?" You basically can't accomplish that by changing damage numbers. You end up either leading to the replacement question, or you still end up with them getting passed over because they don't do the right "kind" of damage.

This is confusing to me, because Corruptors have lower damage than Sentinels even now, but higher target caps. Should they therefore get the Sentinel target treatment? I mean, I'm not sure that's really an effective argument? Sentinel sets have been altered to do less damage than other blast sets, too. The whole point reason we're having this discussion in the first place is that Sentinels are underpowered by design, and that such is rather heavy-handed. The intent here is not to build around such sets per se, but to allow a moderate level of support from their sets, just as you wouldn't build a VEAT around the leadership abilities, but nonetheless, they're a vital part of what that AT brings to a team (since Sentinels, presently, bring basically nothing to a team that wouldn't be better served by anything else). Well, uh, yeah, that's why there were three other buffs mentioned that could all work together to give and fill a niche for the AT. Any one on their own would probably not be meaningful. All of them together could potentially allow Sentinels to be reasonable teammates without trivializing some other AT.

Thinking on it, playing on the idea of Sentinels working as "jack of all trades"-types, here's what I think would probably work best to make them not just feel like inferior Blasters/Scrappers while not also making them step on the toes of those other ATs: No changes needed to damage or defensive numbers. Target caps should probably be put in-line with other ranged ATs. Due to the fairly low damage, there's no reason to reduce these. Similarly, bring attack ranges in line with the other ranged ATs, too. It's not necessary but would help for cones, especially. Significantly buff the secondary effect numbers of the damaging attacks. I'm not sure exactly the most efficient way to go about this, but overall, debuffs from attacks should be better than Corruptors, maybe even on par with Defenders. This would allow some potent but not overwhelming Support from Sentinels (again, similar to VEATs...if kind of the opposite side of the coin...VEATs buff the team by activating their defenses...Sentinels support by attacking). Decouple target-marking form Opportunity. Give Sentinels' t1 and t2 powers an effect like Bruising was for Tankers. No stacking from the same user, but stacking from multiple Sentinels would be okay and mechanics-appropriate, IMO...if it could also be made that applying the debuff to one enemy removed it from others. Alternatively, replace Aim in the blast sets with a target-market toggle. This could prevent spread while still allowing stacking...however it breaks cottage rule and could cause trouble for sets like Dual Pistols where there's already a vital utility replacing Aim. Turn Offensive/Defensive Opportunity into their own click powers (just like Domination, which apparently inspired the mechanic, does). Extend the benefit to the entire team. This would give better control of the mechanic and making it a team buff balances its current lack of potency. By focusing Sentinel buffs on things that Sentinels currently can't do, essentially, but that their clear-VEAT-inspirations can, we end up with a similar sort of AT that can jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none without the enforced theme, and which overall should feel more welcomed on teams.

I coulda sworn I remembered reading this got fixed. But I ran the mission tonight and, uh, guess not.

Not sure about Night Ward (I'll do it some day), but I'd lean towards Rad or Electric, with some support from the Leadership pool. Energy resistance is going to be the biggest boon. However, First Ward and late game Praetoria-related content (assuming you do those to) throw a nontrivial amount of Confuse at you, so grabbing Maneuvers and then Tactics for some protection against that is not a bad idea. That breaks down if Terrorize comes up, but I don't think it does...

Fortunatas have team support and solid controls as well. It feels like Sentinels are "trying" to be Fortuantas...they're just not versatile enough to do so. Which actually comes to how I think they're supposed to feel "in character" on a team, too. They're the lead-from-the-rear types, kinda similar to Masterminds, but with teammates for "pets". The ideas of marking targets and creating "opportunities" feels very much in line with that. However, this ability to provide support is far too weak to feel meaningful. Another reason why I think the key to fixing the AT is to approach it from the inherent.

Shhhhh...don't get the dev's looking too much at Faraday Cage.

"Jumping" jumping, or "oh, whoops, that piece of the cave map was 6 inches lower than the one you just stepped on" jumping? Honestly, I like this wings-when-flying idea, just for that reason. Running around certain maps gets hard to see when characters' wings do their animations so constantly.

I don't know if this is kind of a tangent or not, but I was running my Energy/Bio Sentinel the other day (the only really one I've really leveled) and one thing kinda notable hit me: Tankers used to have an inherent that would automatically put a small resist debuff on an enemy when they used their t1 ability. This was deemed generally kind of poor and Tankers ended up with buffed damage all around instead. The Sentinel inherent is that same debuff...but with extra steps to activate it. That probably says right that all about a big problem Sentinels are gonna have on top of everything else.

Yeah, this happened to me the other day, too. Kept meaning to post it and then I lost the image evidence I made. But Geode Shards are spawning at a minimum level of 35, it seems to me. Continuing that arc even up to 32 and 33, they were always 35.

I run a Claws/Willpower and it's pretty grand (heck, I'm actually making a second because it's my only alt that's hit Vet level 100 and run out of rewards!). Willpower has a lot of nice perks for Scrappers in that it has a taunt aura (so stuff is less prone to run from you) and it also comes with protection to Terrorize, which isn't all that common, but can't be obtained through things like IOs or pool powers. These couple of things mean that while it might not be the strongest choice, it is one of the most versatile. On the other hand, Willpower's very vulnerable to debuffs, so having something like a Destiny power from the Ageless Radial tree is going to be vital. Depending on your exact goals, that might be very helpful. And on the Claws side, it's grand. Stick a KB->KD IO into Shockwave, and the Critical Strikes proc into Follow-Up, and you're pretty golden, with quick, powerful attacks that can juggle even many of the tougher enemies while you take down their friends with Claws' rather potent AoEs. I've yet to find any other melee sets, really, that are really as grand for taking on an army as Claws.

Five if you count the potential proliferation of Envenomed Daggers to a "throwing weapons" set. 7 if you count the Shuriken and Exploding Shuriken options from the Scrapper/Stalker APP (which are slightly different powers than the ones in Martial Assault). Throw in a Widow's Poison Dart or some sort of minor control power and the only thing that would really need "work" for such a blast set would be the nuke.

"Mobile Dummy Combatant", basically, it's a Rikti Pylon you can summon to DPS-check your characters. It's essentially an accolade power tied to a hidden fight in the ASF that from what I understand, only appears at the highest difficulty rank.