Maelwys

Glancing it over; the regular attacks seem like Bite/Claws/Wings/TailSlap; which are all melee attacks? Sentinel is primarily a Ranged attack class; although it gets access to a few melee attacks via Pool powers and Epic/Patron Pools. If you typically don't bother with the racial attacks and lean more into your feat-based Lightning blasts and breath attack/spells then fair enough; but if you wanted a more feral melee attacker then a "Savage Melee" Tanker/Scrapper/Brute might be an option (with either Fiery Armor or Electric Armor). The bit about dragons being immune to Sleep and Paralysis and having Damage Reduction and Spell Resistance definitely sounds like you'd want an AT with a proper armor set rather than a Blaster (or even a "Permadom" Dominator). "Immunity to Lightning Damage" isn't really possible as in CoX that'll cap out at 90% on a Brute/Tanker and 75% on Scrappers/Stalkers/Sentinels... but you can push it fairly high. A typical IOed Fiery Armor Sentinel will have ~40% or higher Energy Resistance and 75% Fire Resistance; whereas an Electric Armor Sentinel will be the other way around + so may be better if shrugging off Energy Damage attacks is thematically important to you. A few people have mentioned Invulnerability. It's a good set with multiple layers of damage mitigation... and the FX of its active toggle powers can be minimized to the point of invisibility (so you can see your costume clearly!). However it focuses more on Defense (which to translate into DnD terms is effectively like having a very high Armor Class which applies to both incoming attack rolls and spells; but always has at least a 5% chance to fail - just like an enemy rolling a Nat20 on their attack roll!) and Smashing/Lethal Damage Resistance so it'll be difficult (but not impossible) to cap its Energy Damage Resistance.

Electricity Mastery (Sentinel Epic Pool) would give access to Shocking Field; which is an Electricity Aura (and unlike most damage auras it applies a non-stacking DoT; so you don't actually need to remain in melee range if you don't want to - merely brushing against your target once every 10 seconds is enough to deal maximum damage) In CoX having higher "Perception" than normal in-game allows you to see hidden stealthy/invisible enemies. At baseline perception (500ft) PVE enemies with Stealth abilities such as Circle of Thorns Nerva Demons and Tsoo Ancestral Spirits can often become fully invisible to you even standing 0ft away... but almost any perception buff above baseline will allow you to see them; and the more perception you have, the further away they'll become visible to you. Certain defensive powersets have abilities which grant +Perception; although Fiery Armor does not and neither does Invulnerability. Other common ways to increase Perception are to slot a Rectified Reticle IO (I'll often put one into Aim or Build Up) and/or to take Tactics from the Leadership Pool (which tends to make more sense for Support ATs like Defenders/Controllers/Corruptors/Masterminds). Some other ATs get additional toggle abilities that grant +Perception and ToHit; such as Targeting Drone or Focussed Accuracy... but the only one I'm aware that's available to Sentinels is Coordinated Targeting from Mace Mastery. IMO devoting a single slot to a Rectified Reticle IO is the easiest method here + will ensure that you're able to see anything worth seeing in PVE at close-ish range (~110ft). D&D Racial Blindsight ranges tend to be the region of 30-60ft anyway. Sentinels have additional resistance to Perception debuffs (10% IIRC?); as well as a Inherent (Opportunity) that builds up over time and allows you to apply a debuff onto a single enemy... this debuff is typically used for reducing their damage resistance but it also includes a -Stealth debuff. So if YOU can see enemies; then you can tag them and allow teammates to see them too. The thing you may need to compromise on is an "Electric Breath Attack" - the only elemental attacks with breath animations I'm aware of are Fire Breath (Fire Blast) and Frost Breath (Ice Blast). However the Electrical Blast powerset does have a very powerful ranged nuke in Thunderous Blast; which on a Sentinel recharges comparatively quickly! Once you get to 50; Incarnate abilities will open up some other methods of representing stuff... like a Reactive Interface Slot (adds Fire damage to your attacks) and an Ion Judgement slot (a big ranged AoE Electrical damage blast) and Rebirth Destiny (infrequent but fairly powerful AoE Allied Healing) so you won't actually need to be tied to a specific AT/powerset combo if you feel you can wait until the level cap for your character's powerset to become fully fleshed out. I guess a leading question here would be what class are they in Pathfinder? I don't see that listed anywhere... I'm more familiar with 5e but "Chosen by a deity" and "Order" suggests Paladin or Cleric; which might be better represented in CoX by Tanker or Defender/Corruptor than a Sentinel. You could make a decent Sword + Board Paladin or Cleric with a "Shield Defense" Tanker (plus Warmace, Battleaxe, Broadsword, whatever... or even Firey Melee) if you're prepared to wait until level 50 for Ion Judgement to represent your Electrical "Breath Blasts".

Sentinel is definitely a good shout, but I'd veer towards Electric Blast (which as a set is actually best performancewise on a Sentinel due to Tesla Cage dealing noteworthy damage) and Fiery Armor (for the self-healing and additional Fire Damage, plus Resistance based damage mitigation and +HP from consume) to best fit the theme. For Demon Summoning there are a few appropriate Lore Pet options, and both the Fire and Electric Epic pools contain limited allied healing options.

Both are true here. Psuedopets have their own inherent ATBE that needs taken into account; which is typically (always?) 0.5s for both basic "Entity Creations with Redirects" (e.g. Tar Patch) and fancier "Power Executions" (e.g. Tanker Lightning Rod). So you take the original ATBE of the parent Clicky power that is triggered by your own character and add another 0.5s to it from the ATBE of the Pseudopet's subpower(s) to get the final point that its abilities actually become active. Some pseudopets are coded as multiple power redirects (see Sleep Grenade) which mean that more than one of its "abilities" kicks in simultaneously... but there's always that 0.5s delay beyond the initial parent Clickypower. Checking the code it appears that right after a power's fInterruptTime has elapsed (if any) there is a single call performed to GetTargetEntities (which is what does the initial check to see what targets are in the power's area of effect). However there are subsequent additional checks performed to see if each target is actually "valid" (can you Find it? is it on the Ground? is it Dead? etc.) and to see if each target is still capable of being hit by the power (is it Intangible? is it Untouchable? was it Blocked? did it Miss? did it Fail?) which would all be reliant on the relevant ATBEs elapsing.

You have four attacks unslotted so if you're following a predefined build, then getting those completed would be a good idea. The lack of 45% S/L Defense will be what's hurting you most. I'm guessing one of the missing sets is a "4x Kinetic Combat". You could fill in the rest via "5x Superior Blistering Cold" or "5x Superior Gauntleted Fist + 6x Touch of Death". A quick attempt to fill it out + rejiggle the superflous slots from Boxing + Jump Kick is below which at least meets the bare minimums with all passive accolades enabled. It'll be very tight on recovery though; so it might be better to toggle on Hover + shift some slots to EndRed unless you're running Ageless constantly.

These are the current stats of that build (with all toggles running except for Focussed Accuracy; and all passive accolades enabled) You're a smidge below the HP/Sec requirement even with all accolades added; but more importantly you're a good 10% Resistance and 7.5% Defense under par for S/L.

+ Hybrid = Assault Radial Hybrid for Brutes or "Active" Tankers (you're there to pop red insps) and Assault Core Hybrid for "AFK" Tankers. + Destiny = Ageless grants +Recharge plus +Recovery; AFK builds generally only benefit from the +Rech to get their one autofire AoE up sooner. + Lore = Banished Pantheon Radial (Immortal pet that deals AoE damage); or Carnies Radial (grants you a constant +damage buff; largely worthless to Brutes) + Alpha = Musculature Core (best for damage) or Spiritual Core (for some AFK builds where more local +Rech aspect in their autofire AoE > more damage aspect) + Judgement = Whatever (personally I like Void for the -damage debuff) + Interface = Reactive Radial (any of the "chance for damage" ones work; but -res wins for secondary effect over anything else. Degen's -MaxHP is only useful vs AVs) Why are you chugging two Purples with the AFK build? That's for the ACTIVE build; and is intended to tide you over survivabilitywise for the first 60s of the farming run (until you've killed enough mooks that lots of inspirations are rolling in from drops + you've gotten all your buffs/heals up). The AFK build already has softcapped defense so adding more via insps won't help. From the OP: Subsequent versions of the various AFK builds may have enough +Regen by default without any +HP accolades... but it's worth noting that the "35 HP/Sec passive regeneration" requirement is an absolute minimum. You will still occasionally die to unlucky streaks of incoming damage getting past your defense. You really only need enough recovery to keep your Toggles running after Ageless drops off... but if you're already getting the three +HP accolades others then picking the +Endurance one up too is easy enough. Getting all four passive accolades takes a few hours maximum. In order to reduce (but not eliminate) the likelihood of coming back to a dead toon; you'll want as much +MaxHP and/or +Regen as you can get. Personally I always aim for >40 HP/Sec and >2200 MaxHP; which is easy enough to get on a Tanker whilst maintaining 45% Defense and 90% Resistance but trickier for a Brute. If you have a +MaxHP ability like Consume or Earth's Embrace or Dull Pain then popping it before you go AFK will also increase your survivability drastically. You can also choose to summon the intangible Banished Pantheon Radial Support Lore Pet to take some of the heat off you; and/or keep to the far edges of the map instead of the middle (to reduce the number of hostile mobs simultaneously firing at you).

You're unlikely to get a response from the OP as they've been gone for a while. However there's a slightly more updated list (June 2024) by the same author here: Note that this isn't a "universally accepted" ranking list - Ston tended to lean pretty hard into Procs, Epic Blasts and Cross Punch which is not everyone's cup of tea. That said; compared to before Battle Axe is HUGELY better and is firmly "S tier" now... Fiery Melee's new -Defense has given it access to two more Damage Procs and Achilles' Heel -Res; so I'd place it S Tier in Single Target damage but still a bit lacking in AoE... and Radiation Melee has had Irradiated Ground's proc rate nerfed so IMO drops a tier.

Fireball only has an ATBE of 0.6s - so its mechanical effect kicks in pretty quickly despite what the motion of its projectile "tracking and homing in on you" suggests. And to be clear: stuff like "Jousting" tends to work just fine as long as the power is uninterruptable. AFAIK whenever you activate a power the game engine looks at both your current position and the power's specified range + area of effect then selects an appropriate number of targets to affect with it - after which the game waits until the power's ATBE time elapses before attempting to "apply" the power's effects using the caster's and target's stats at that later point in time (e.g. Power Activation + ATBE) . So as long as those previously-selected targets are still capable of being affected by the power once the ATBE time has elapsed its effects will trigger just fine. But problems can occur if any/all of the targets get killed/teleported/phased/KB'ed/whatever in the interim. Pseudopet abilities like Damage Patches and Rains are particularly susceptible to this issue because of the additional delay caused by spawning a separate entity which in turn triggers the actual power effect (which is why Rise of the Phoenix never deals full damage unless you slot it for KB>KD!) ... but regular PBAoEs aren't immune. And Kinetic Melee is sloooo-ooooo-ow.

Kinetic Melee powers are notorious for having a long windup time; which is known as Animation Time Before Effect (ATBE) "under the hood". KM's Burst has a ATBE of 2.167 seconds and a Radius of 8ft. For comparison MA's Dragon's Tail is only 0.5s, Katana's The Lotus Drops is 0.833s, WM's Whirling Mace is 0.8s. Spine's Spine Burst also has a fairly long windup time (1.667s) but almost double the others' Radius (15ft). With those other powersets if you're activating their AoE power whenever you have a lot of enemies tightly packed around you, then chances are that those enemies will still be sufficiently tightly packed around you when the power effect actually triggers + so most of them will be affected by it and receive damage. But not so for Burst - by the time its effect actually kicks in many foes may well have since moved out of range (and/or be dead already) and so will end up being unaffected by it. Therefore unless you have a means to Immobilize or Taunt things, I suspect your best bet is probably to use Burst as an opener before the mobs "run away" AI routine kicks in (and potentially using Fold Space if the critters are too spread out and/or locked into ranged attack mode).

NYEH-HEH-HEH-HEH-HAH-HAH-HAH!

"Boosts are copied to entity" = "Take a copy of whatever Boosts are currently active on the summoner and duplicate each of them onto the pet/pseudopet" (it literally takes a copy of any buff/debuff active at the time of casting and duplicates it onto the newly summoned entity; including the current remaining duration. This includes the effect of Clicky buffs and Inspirations as well as the effect of Autos/Toggles and Set Bonuses - although the remaining "current buff duration" of any Autos/Toggles/SetBonuses typically expires after a few seconds and so is usually only relevant for the first few "ticks" of a pseudopet ability). This is what lets a Fire Blaster's Rain of Fire benefit from popping Red Inspirations and Aim/Build Up. "Entity has Creator's modifiers" = "Use the summoner's modifiers instead of the default 'pet/pseudopet' modifiers" (this is your Archetype attributes and modifiers - values such as Melee Res Dmg and Damage Smashing and Elusivity Melee - which translate into things like your Damage, Resistance and Hit Point base numbers and maximum limits). This is what lets a Fiery Aura Brute's Burn Patches cap out at 700% damage instead of 400% damage. Whenever these two flags are present together it allows a buff to be applied onto a Pet/Pseudopet and for that Pet/Pseudopet to benefit from the summoner's higher caps. You can see this in action by comparing the Blaster version of Bonfire (which has both "Boosts are copied to entity" and "Entity has Creator's modifiers") with Rain of Fire (which only has "Boosts are copied to entity") - the former has the Blaster 500% damage cap; but the latter only has the 400% Pet damage cap. "Ignores enhancements and other boosts" however is an odd one. It forbids the summoned entity from inheriting any boosts from its parent summoner; so in theory it should never be paired with a "Boosts are Copied to Entity" flag in the same power effect... but CoH is full of old redundant and/or spaghetti code. (IIRC it used to be that lots of power effects had this flag and/or "Ignores External Strength Boosts" on them by default because in days gone by it was possible to slot certain Hamidon-Origin enhancements into powers which resulted in boosting them in strange/unusual ways. For example, +Damage Resistance Enhancement is coded the same as +Damage Enhancement under the hood; so slotting a Damage/Range HO into Sonic Barrier would boost it by 33% instead of 20% and for a loooong time it was far more efficient to use -ToHit/-Def/End HOs in the likes of Tactics and Fortitude than +ToHit/+Def/End HOs). I can kinda-sorta understand why it'd be useful for Mastermind Henchmen summon powers to still possess this flag; as otherwise you could pop a powerful self-only buff like Rune of Protection or Surge of Power or Hoarfrost right before resummoning them.

Look here and note the "Boosts are copied to Entity" flag on the far right. Then look here and note the 240s Duration and the lack of an "Ignores External Strength Boosts" flag on the top left (which is the thing that prevents "Secondary Effect Boost" from the likes of Power Boost and Radial Clarion from affecting particular long-duration buff abilities) You pointed out the Radial Clarion interaction yourself in the bubble rework feedback thread. Radial Clarion applies its effect on your Henchmen directly; but last I checked Power Boost works just fine too as long as you're prepared to resummon your T2s at least once every 4 minutes. For anyone else following this: before the Robotics powerset rework, the Protector Bots bubbled each ally separately via Single Target buffs and it was far too much of a hassle to leverage this. But these days they only utilise a single AoE buff every 240s and it is very simple to force them to reapply it (all you need to do is cancel the currently active buff on yourself and they'll immediately refresh it on everyone). - - - - - - - - - - EDIT: Just hopped onto Brainstorm and did a quick test. Looks like despite that "Boosts are copied to Entity" flag, active buffs on the MM are not currently actually getting copied onto the Henchmen... so at present Power Boost indeed won't work for this but Clarion Radial still does. with ED-Capped Defense with ED-Capped Defense + Radial Clarion with ED-Capped Defense + Resummoning Pets (with either Power Boost and/or Radial Clarion active on the Mastermind at the point of resummoning) Last I actually ran a copy of Power Boost on a Bots was admittedly a good few years back. And double-checking the Protector Bots summoning power I see an "Ignores Enhancements and other boosts" flag there too (which isn't present on regular pets) that may well be effectively negating the other one... 🍝 💻

I'd advise against judging Blaster survivability before getting access to their sustain toggle. That said... again: SENTINEL. Energy/ with /Rad or /EA or /SR; and pick up an ally assisting ability or two via Epic/Patron pools

IIRC the only damage proc slottable within Brine itself is Touch of the Nictus... one damage proc combined with the flat -MaxHP is enough to one-click-delete low rank enemies but it won't even tickle AVs. On teams -Res and -Regen Debuffs are always going to pull the bulk of the weight (Shifting Tide Inherent Cold Damage Proc shenanigans notwithstanding!) against tough single targets; and Marine has piddly -Regen. So personally I'd much rather just drop a Whitecap + Brine and then Blast rather than spam Brine repeatedly. That said; with sufficient teammates and Lore pets to throw at something really all you need is Shifting Tides!

FWIW an endgame AV has 30677.2 HP, and a GM 70679.18 HP. Whilst 5k isn't a negligible proportion of that, anyone trying to stack it to noteworthy levels really needs to remember @Auroxispoint about Brine's -HP getting less and less effective the lower the target's current HP is. IME spamming it for the first ~10s or so of the fight makes a difference; but after that recasting it becomes kinda pointless.

FWIW it's quite possible for a Primary like Bots/ to end up with softcapped personal and henchmen Defenses regardless of your Secondary powerset (and in Bots' case you only really need either Power Boost or Radial Clarion Destiny; with both being total overkill)

576 HP in regular endgame content (Lv48+1) +MaxHP can boost that up to 864. /Marine will not only get its current HP up to 864, but also layer Absorb, Defense and Resistance on top. And many of the Primary MM powersets now get enhanceable Resistance via their T1 upgrade. Throw in the Aura IOs, ATOs, Maneuvers and Barrier Destiny/Support Hybrid and the little buggers actually become quite Tanky.

It does indeed.

The Force Feedback +Recharge Proc isn't an offensive one. As long as a power takes Knockback set IOs you can stick a FF Proc in it and that Proc will then get a chance to trigger "on power activation" (instead of "on inflicting damage" or even "on inflicting knockback/knockdown"). Therefore if you're using Trip Mine as a PBAoE attack (and you should) then you'll be granting yourself a rather hefty regular recharge buff... and getting your Nuke (e.g. Rain of Arrows) up faster whilst inflicting decent AoE damage? More than worth it IMO. The fact that you can't Damage Proc it up stops it from being overpowered; but it's still a good power pick if you're utilizing it as a set mule + a FF Proc.

Trip Mine on a /Devices Blaster is actually decentish because it's uninterruptible. Trip Mine on a /Traps (anything except a MM) is total whittle. Unfortunately neither are worthwhile for offensive procs because they self destruct and vanish before damage procs get a chance to activate. But they're a decent spot for gaining set bonuses (5 piece Armageddon minus the proc?) and can make good use of a Force Feedback +Rech.

Then check AA's "Active" Spines/FA Brute build here (I linked the thread above already but this is likely the specific post you'll want)

It's that time again... "DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-(inhale)-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!"

I'm without access to a PC until Friday, but you really need to decide if you want to AFK Farm or Active Farm (the two have very different build goals) and also if you're completely wedded to the idea of a Brute or not (since Tankers are considerably more effective for farming in all but a few specific powerset combos and Spines/FA isn't one of them) Further Reading: