Maelwys

Tanker AoE damage has plummeted recently (due to the new "overcap" mechanics vs >10 foes; and the lower proc rate from moving their AoE radius increase from a global buff to a baked-in value) to the point where Brutes are generally superior even versus >10 foes unless you're getting external damage buffs (such as popping damage insps like candy). As a result they're still OK for active farming; but not for passive (AKA "AFK") farming. They can survive just fine, but their killspeed isn't great... which makes Tankers a safe option for AFK farming, but not a particularly efficient one. FWIW... an average haul on my AFK-farming RadM/Stone Brute (which is the combo that is AFAIK by far the smoothest ride at present) is on average about 80m/hr including drops (I'll typically AH anything worth >100k; and just NPC-vendor the rest). And since it's possible to have have three such toons going per non-busy server shard; multiply that by three (or by two plus an active farmer if you can be bothered... as a good Active Farming toon will defeat things about twice as fast as an AFK toon!) However the aforementioned Brute outputs considerably more damage than AA's Elec/Rad Tanker when AFK farming - so even without popping any insps (enter map, hit Hybrid + Destiny + Lore + Judgement, then wait) they'll clear the bulk of an Asteroid map in ~5-6mins. So I'll generally use a map that kicks you out after 5mins, not after 10.

Your MM gets the benefit of "set bonus" special enhancements, not your pets. Currently the only way to shoehorn a special enhancement's effects onto a pet is if it's coded as a proc and the pet summon power or one of the upgrade abilities can inherit enhancements of the same type (like placing a Panacea proc into the T2 Necro upgrade, or a Kismet into the Ninja one) https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Set_Enhancements_with_Special_Effects

IIRC the "don't aggro" flag can be overwritten by outside rider effects like procs. So a simpler solution might be to grant the participants of the content in question a dummy 100% proc effect which only applies to their confuse powers (it could be coded as a confuse set enhancement) and which inflicts a negligible offensive effect that causes the target(s) to notice the caster.

I always take the Rectified Reticle +Perception IO in any build which doesn't have perception buffs; because otherwise certain PVE enemies like CoT Ghosts and Tsoo Ancestors can go "full invisible" and become very annoying (especially on 'defeat all' missions). Sentinels have 550ft Perception instead of 500ft; which is half a Rectified Reticle. It's almost (but not quite) useless.

It shows. I already pointed the reasons out in the very post you're quoting. And frankly, the day that Scrappers get Epic/Patron pool Nukes is the day that the final nail gets hammered into Brutes' coffin. Seriously, if you hate Sentinels that much... then just don't play them. Personally I believe that (Clarion Destiny and Dispersion Bubbles notwithstanding) there is a sufficient "gap in the market" for a Ranged Damage AT with inherent Mez Protection and a Nuke every ~20-25s to carve out a decent niche.

I don't think that's true... IIRC Siren's Song applies the Sleep "after 0.25s" precisely to avoid procs waking them up... So by all means proc it up and potentially stick an Annihilation -Res in it too. Also since you're going for -Res; I'd very much recommend picking up Corrosive Vial from the Experimentation pool and using it for an Achilles Heel proc. And ideally Electricity Mastery for Thunderstrike (damage procs plus a Fury of the Gladiator -Res proc!)

Given that Kinetics will comfortably cap a team's damage even on a Mastermind... I'd go Corruptor every day of the week. The difference therefore comes down to Sonic Blast, which deals more damage on a Corruptor but inflicts more -res on a Defender. (and to be perfectly honest; I'd probably just swap to BR or DP + then stack damage procs and Achilles Heel -Res... Sonic Blast is better than before but it's still not great)

My two current favourite Sentinels (the ones I keep coming back to) are BeamRifle/Ninjitsu and Seismic/EnergyAura. The Beam Rifle toon technically deals less damage over time (before Aim, Vulnerability and Incarnate Clickies it's ~256 DPS and the Seismic is ~307) but its Nuke is far more team-friendly and since Refractor Beam is (despite the short description!) a real AoE rather than a Chain it procs pretty decently; so I honestly don't mind the lack of a Snipe on Sentinel BR. Whilst Ninjitsu is objectively worse than Energy Aura at practically everything except for one big burst per mob... Shinobi-Iri + Aim (with Gaussian) + Overcharge is just 🧑‍🍳💋

This bit's pertinent. IIRC the Opportunity bar gains 50% (one usage of Vulnerability) in 30s. So two Sentinels cycling Vulnerability back-to-back can keep it up on ONE foe indefinitely. It's a decent debuff... -15% Resistance that isn't affected by target level (e.g. Purple Patch) but since it's low uptime and non-AoE it's not very useful outside of AV/GM fights. Compared to other ATs with "Ranged Blast" powersets; Sentinels also suffer a bit whenever they're fighting very large numbers of targets. They're inherently (ha!) a bit underwhelming in the regular "let's steamroll through hordes of mooks as fast as possible" meta despite their fast-recharging Nukes (a big FOOM on a ~20-25s timer is nice in theory, but gets let down by the fact that it only hits 10 targets). So I do think that they need a little bit of a boost in terms of non-nuke DPS. Not a huge amount though... just enough that Sentinels would occasionally be more mechanically effective than a different "DPS" AT for something other than a +5 AV/GM fight. It might be a pipe dream, but eventually I'd like a hypothetical intelligent team leader to (i) consider Scrappers/Stalkers/Sentinels to be largely interchangeable in terms of contribution (albeit weighted towards slightly different things!) and (ii) consider it to be worthwhile using some combination of those ATs to fill at least 2-3 slots on a regular squad.

It was first posted in 2020. But @Underfyre last updated the spreadsheet in July 2025. "Welcome to the Sentinel DPS Spreadsheet v3.0.1, Issue 28, Page 2" IIRC the rack/stack builds are particularly well done and things like sneaky undocumented damage buffs in BR disintegrate are factored in. (Even if my own Sentinel attack chains diverge a fair bit from them!)

It's probably easiest to just use MacSkull's PPM Calculator Spreadsheet (make a copy) plus City of Data v2 for the base numbers to plug into it.

Depends on the Powerset. With Elec Blast, Sentinels are definitely better off due to Tesla Cage dealing noteworthy damage. With Ice Blast, notsomuch (as Chilling Ray is a very poor substitute for Freeze Ray). For AoE damage, IIRC averaged out Sentinels will occasionally win due to their faster Nuke recharge... but again that's heavily powerset and build dependent. Archery's Nuke is miles better on the Blaster; and other sets can pull ahead by leveraging non-Nuke AoEs (like Fireball) and/or secondary powerset PBAoEs. And Blasters can consistently hit 6 more targets (as there are very few Sentinel AoEs that have a target cap > 10) Honestly though the real clincher is the Secondary powersets - Sentinels don't get the extra oomph from Blapps or Build Up; and little tricks like nuking from hidden (Ninjitsu) or Procbombing Ground Zero (Rad Armor) unfortunately don't close the gap. All that said, I'm personally pretty fond of Elec Blast, Beam Rifle and Seismic Blast on Sentinels. They are particularly well suited to staying at range constantly (or closing to melee maybe once every 10 seconds to trigger Shocking Field...)

Sentinels can dish out very decent levels of damage output, if you build them sensibly. Whilst they will not approach min-maxed Blaster levels of damage output (nor IMO should they) they can comfortably compete with most Brutes; and even with some low-to-mid-tier Scrapper Primaries (I've got a SeismicBlast/EnergyAura Sentinel that has almost exactly the same level of ST damage output as my Katana/Regen Scrapper, including averaged Crits but not Vulnerability). They do not however get access to Taunt auras, which reduces their effectiveness when enemies are unclumped. Their draw is not being a lower-damage more-survivable Blaster, but being a Scrapper with a Ranged Damage powerset. This distinction is important, because Sentinels get very few melee attacks; and if you try to play them as a melee toon then you'll be very disappointed... so instead, play them as a Scrapper with longer range and a fast-recharging Nuke. Make the most out of their inherent Mez Protection, Absorb/Heals and DDR. And don't sleep on Vulnerability. Also, World of Confusion is pants. Even ED-capped for Confuse aspect you're barely getting 50% uptime on its pathetic Mag2 CC, so without the Contagious Confusion Proc (and a decent AoE with a Cupid's in it, or Arctic Air) IMO it's a total waste of endurance.

In a regular "build up" or "aim" power, a Gaussian Proc will have a capped (90%) chance to activate as long as you aren't slotting a lot of local recharge aspect (~71% local recharge or more). This effectively results in your Build Up power granting double it's regular ToHit and Damage buff for several seconds. It's an extremely useful spike damage boost that can be used right before a string of powerful attacks (and/or a Nuke). Although my Blasters typically slot it into Aim to give them a better average damage boost over time.

"works". ... 😛

As BA pointed out, whenever @Troo wrote "average" they were (I assume) not replying to you but to @Lazarus No need for any disjointed noses - just a case of not using the quote button...

First off... a Brute's AoE potential (yes, even the Epic/Patron AoEs which have a 16 target cap) pales in comparison to Corruptor/Defender/Sentinel/Blaster Nukes. On teams; Brutes are there to hold the aggro and deal a bit of damage; they're not there to be a major source of AoE damage output. Secondly: a Brute on Live is currently able to inflict more damage with the same attack to 10 foes than a Tanker to 16; even with comparatively low levels of Fury (see numbers on Axe Cyclone here - at Fury levels of 60+ the Brute wins!). Tankers only wins for AoE if the entire team is being Fulcrum Shifted, and the Brute always wins at ST damage. Thirdly: If you want ST damage, bring a Scrapper or a Stalker. At least (unlike the previous poster) you're not claiming that Tankers, VEATs and Controller AoEs can hit an infinite number of targets. And that Brutes = Sentinels. I know it's Friday, but some people seriously need to lay off the Windowleen... 🤦‍♂️

Aye; IIRC the detailed power window often doesn't cleanly separate out the buffs for different entities (like 6% to players and 12% to critters). It wouldn't be the first time someone looked at the Core Support Buffs and thought "hey that power says it'll give me +12% so does that mean pets will get +24%?". Unfortunately though it's only +6% for you and +12% for pets. Which does make Radial a bit more attractive... 😉

It was the style at the time.

Radial is 80ft radius, +8% Buff for up to 255 allies https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=incarnate.hybrid.support_genome_9&at=corruptor Core is 50ft radius, +6% buff for up to 255 allies that are flagged as "player" Core ALSO has a SEPERATE +12% buff for up to 255 allies that are flagged as "critter" (READ: "pets and henchmen and npcs") https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=incarnate.hybrid.support_genome_8&at=corruptor Note that Radial affects EVERYONE (it's just that the buff is +2% higher for players and -4% lower for pets/NPCs) and has a larger range than Core. So if you have lots of friendly pet/npc allies in a tight formation; go Core... otherwise, go Radial.

Nope, fine here. One of the devices I've been playing on recently is actually an older laptop with an unsupported CPU that I just forcibly upgraded to Win11 25H2 last week. I did go through the usual "turn off all the faff and uninstall all the bloatware" steps though, but that shouldn't really have had much impact on stability. I know certain Graphics cards really don't play nicely with older games on Win11; so you could potentially try using something like dgvoodoo2 etc. as a passthough + see if it makes any difference?

I'll echo @biostem's Ryzen 7 recommendation. My current Laptop is a reasonably recent Ryzen 7 (the exact CPU model is listed as a "Ryzen 7 7730U") and it runs COH just fine. I picked it up last November for ~£430 new. Whilst its GPU performance isn't stellar even compared with my rather old Desktop rig... CoH really isn't that taxing. It'll run 3x windowed instances quite happily.

MMs are in fact the only AT that do NOT get access to patron pets (presumably for this very reason!) https://cod.uberguy.net./html/powerset.html?pset=epic.mastermind_leviathan_mastery&at=mastermind https://cod.uberguy.net./html/powerset.html?pset=epic.mastermind_mace_mastery&at=mastermind https://cod.uberguy.net./html/powerset.html?pset=epic.mastermind_mu_mastery&at=mastermind https://cod.uberguy.net./html/powerset.html?pset=epic.mastermind_soul_mastery&at=mastermind (the VEAT Soldier class do get access to patron pets though; and my "Crabbermind" makes good use of theirs!) 😉

Looks fine to me. That particular IO is unique though - are you already using one of them elsewhere in your build by any chance?

Typically builds that use Procs would also use enhancements that boost multiple aspects (Invention Set IOs or Hamidon origin HOs/DSyncs) so that they're getting as much benefit from the power's non-proc enhancement slots as possible. E.g. 2x ACC/Dam HOs plus 4x Procs.