Crysis

Ill/Storm is chaos. Gleeful, hand wringing, amazing chaos. Fun build and quite powerful.

I did a PUG late last night EST….like around 1130P. Was an 8 person balanced team set on Relentless @+4. I’m pretty sure a few of us, this was our first time. Took just over 3 hours and we defeated all AV’s, did all objectives and (I think) got most of the badges. Honestly, while I found it interesting story line, it’s a slog. I don’t think I’d do it again other than with friends. I was on Sent, T3 Alpha, Destiny and Lore only for the level shifts. Died a -whole- bunch, although as the SF continued I learned how to avoid most deaths. Some are just insta-ganked depending on what’s going on and who kills what that’s near you. Not having inspirations really hurts. I don’t realize how how much I actually use skittles until you can’t access them. Fun but took far longer than I was prepared for it. Nonetheless, stuck with it, got the goodies. Really generous rewards though. I think I got well over 300 threads, 50-60 Astrals and I don’t know how many Emps out of the deal. Vet leveled twice also.

Which is -exactly- what makes Fire/Rad/Fire a nice combo for a Sent. Aim+Fireball+Inferno+GroundZero+FireSword Circle is a really good spawn killer. Throw Fire Cages in there just before FSC if you are down to just a few left standing and the rest is an easy mopup. Which is why I hope and pray that whenever Sents get "fixed" what will be fixed is the aggro and target limits. The lower base damage is fine if they leave recharge alone, but even more so if they up our target/aggro limits.

I thought it was 10 for T9’s but 5 or 6 for AoEs or Cones. However your T9 on Sents has a lower base recharge than on Def/Corr/Blasters. Which is necessary because you’ll need to fire it off more frequently to have the same effect. Unlike most other ranged attackers I find I just work my T9 into the normal rotation and make sure I shift targets frequently. It’s also why a Fire/Rad/Fire Sentinel plays as well as it does because you basically get several AoE’s, a nuke and a mini-nuke to clean up a spawn, assuming you shift your targets between shots.

I fairly consistently encounter this on RWZ raids if I get defeated and have to zone back to hospital. If I resummon my henchmen after my hospital rez and then someone TP’s me back to raid my henchmen remain stuck at RWZ base. Even /releasepets doesn’t work. I have to fly myself back to base and there the gang is even though they are no longer controllable by me. I’ve instead just started dropping a Ouro, zoning out of RWZ entirely and then re-entering. That seems to finally release them and allow me to resummon.

Hit 50 with a slightly modified version of Sovera’s build last night. Not sure if I’ll bother with incarnates as this is a Sentinel. A few observations: -Just as with /EA on my MM nearly drained Lieutenants and Bosses have wonky code and tend to run. At least my pets don’t follow them and aggro everything they run by. But that coding needs to be fixed. It’s annoying at best and can prolong fights waiting for the runner to come back at worst. -with the above caveat the END draining does offer good defense mitigation when it happens. But since Sovera’s build skipped SC mine did also. Honestly the END drain needs to be total and fast for it to offer any benefit at all as all the critters need is a sliver to keep fighting. As I neared 50 I found it harder to drain many of the higher level mobs. -I played on offensive adaptation 38-50 and the extra damage bonus is def noticeable vs other Sents. I’ve played Bio on several other alts but never on a Sent before. I did make a handful of changes to the build posted…..dropped Pulverizing for Knockout Blow as a finisher and/or threat remover for stupid stuff like those Repair Bots, Surgeons and the like. I also took Parasitic Leech which is a nice buff in addition to providing a little more aggro inducement. Lost the slots in Brawl (hate wasting slots on a power I’ll never use) but ended up with roughy same defense thanks to 6 slotting KO Blow. As Sovera’s note indicated playing as a flying/hovering near range blaster gives some nice natural defense even if ranged isn’t soft capped. Make sure to visit tailor to choose no pose on Hover unless you like your toon looking like it’s being dragged around by the genitals. -+4/x8 solo is easily done with most missions post 44 or so. Arachnos and a few others can cause you some concerns due to ranged debuffs but that’s about the only threat to survivability. As noted, the new VS is a toggle and since as a Sent you’ll seldom/never get mezzed it’s a nice bonus. There seems to be a bug or maybe WAI but it doesn’t stay toggled during a zone change and/or between missions for me. I have to often resummon upon zoning and would find myself going half the mission, realize it was taking longer to defeat spawns and/or drain enemies and then realize my VS wasn’t running. So it’s a noticeable benefit when it’s helping. And because it tends to follow you (mostly) if you are hover blasting it will be also. Nice build @Sovera. Might be my second favorite Sent build I’ve played. If we ever get the promised buffs this could jump to number one which is still a Fire/Rad/Fire Sent.

A part of me wishes they'd use some of our monthly donations to upgrade the file storage limits of this board. Honestly, I spend more time on the board than I do in-game since my playtime is limited to a couple of hours a few evenings per week.

Necro'ing my own post here because I finally solved this. And I'm feeling mighty stupid as to what the "Fix" is for me. When I'm in Mids, I almost always have the Totals tab selected. Well apparently, you can REMOVE a slot while that tab is selected, but you can't ADD a slot unless you toggle back over to the Info tab. Once I did that....I can freely re-assign slots all day long. The tipoff for me was that whenever I'd remove a slot and get "stuck" not being able to add it elsewhere, I would be forced to save my incomplete build, exit Mids, then re-load that same build and the slot would instantly be available to re-assign. But re-loading the build also auto-defaults the log-in state to the Info tab being selected (as opposed to Totals). I feel reeeeeeeeeeeeely stupid I didn't realize what was happening. So for me at least...problem is now solved.

I'm waiting for the complaints about "the game isn't hard enough" and ignoring this even exists.....

I dunno...still not feeling the whole value of "End Drain" even with these changes. Unless you perma-drain to zero (nigh impossible) there's little more value in End Drain than say -Recharge. I did this with a Kin/Elec Def back in Live days and it wasn't really all that useful even back then. Not sure it's any different now.

Regen on Sents is entirely a different animal than Regen on any other melee class. It’s very effective for the AT. So good that it almost makes me wish it would be THE replacement for Regen overall.

Was going to say the same. I have a small girl named Anna Mae (get it?) who is in full chainmail armor and wields the Excalibur Titan Weapon blade.

Superspeeders rule the end-game of steamrolling mission content. If you ain’t first, you’re last!

Yawn….. Doesn’t anyone have any new, original things to bitch about? Here’s one: Why is the END bar blue? Seriously, who decided THAT was the appropriate color for Endurance?

True, and I think most do likewise. Which is fine since availability of the pets comes so late game and no way to really change their uptime. Heck, outside of soloing AV’s or TF “zerg” tactics, I often forget I even have Lore pets.

If you really want a head scratcher dig into Lore pets, particularly the support pet. Understanding what each one does vs the others across all the choices is crazy. I’m just glad the fire farmers figured out early the ugly BP one was the best.

My first-ever Homecoming character was a Fire/Kin Controller because a) I knew I could farm with it (Warrior Earth map, but others exist) easily on -JUST- SO's and/or generic IO's and b) it would be quickly eclipsed by a "real" brute fire farmer. Fire/Kin with the changes to Bonfire turned out to be uber effective and I still pull this toon out on occasion, but the sole reason to build it was to use it to power-farm other alts until I was able to level a Spine/Fire brute in AE. At the time HC released, I wasn't sure that AE was going to allow fire farms the way Live did. And I didn't have any idea what the marketplace was going to be like for IO's (didn't even know they would be seeding it that the time). Thus, I leveled the easiest, cheapest farmer I could, a Fire/Kin controller. Since then, just about everything has eclipsed this. But I keep her around for nostalgia.

Well yeah maybe but why does a Sent have to worry about being a "Hover Blaster" when they are a Sent with significantly strong defense/resistance armor already in the AT? I mean for a Blaster yeah, I get you. And I think the Electric changes will benefit Sent's quite a bit. But I've never built a Sent for hover blasting because....not needed.

Do you take and use your primary attacks? Do you take and use pool attacks? I have no endurance issues on my MM's if I'm basically letting my pets do all my DPS. You get penalized in this game as an MM for trying to "outperform" DPS by adding in your own on top of what the henchmen dish out. There's design reasons for this and I've come to accept them to keep the MM class from getting to OP status. Huge native +RES, achievable softcap +DEF and very achievable high +RECH. Throw attacks in there (even if we didn't have an END penalty for them) even WITH the class modifier dampening and you will take some MM builds and push them right into tank mage territory. But if your primary playstyle is as a support player to your henchmen, which is a -VALID- playstyle, then yeah, I don't have END issues either. Play the class to the exploitable fullest....and yes, I most certainly -DO- have END issues that are seldom fixed until Destiny>Ageless T4 comes along, even with temp buffs. I can play the game just fine, it's just slow and seldom at +4/x8 from levels 38-50 until I get my END worked out.

The fundamental problem with any of these successors actually becoming a reality is what’s often referred to as the “MVP” (Minimum Viable Product) quandry. To achieve any possible level of success as a competitor to Homecoming or it’s variants requires them to effectively MATCH the level of functionality and content currently available from the SCORE release. That’s no small task. Anything LESS in terms of functionality, scope and content will likely be met with a very large yawn from the admittedly already SMALL potential customer base that are currently playing on the SCORE variant servers. If after 8+ years they STILL haven’t achieved a level of parity with where COH sunsetted, it is delusional to think they will EVER catch up. Better graphics/engine notwithstanding there’s just no way these projects have any chance of succeeding to commercial viability levels. As science projects/novelties….maybe. As products….not a chance. Think about it for a moment. If the ORIGINAL COH development team tried, and largely failed, with Champions Online to create a successor to COH ‘classic’ what makes anyone think a bunch of amateurs have any chance whatsover? Put a fork in these projects, turn the page, enjoy Homecoming or one of its of variants for what it is and that’s that. What we have is all we are going to get until/unless a professional gaming dev company decides the superhero genre is ripe for a highly funded/marketed successor. All this time and nothing more than basic demoware is proof we have limited talent working on these successors and nothing more than wishful thinking to show for it.

Masterclass for BR/Dev right here. Actually, in the late game, I end up respeccing out of Trip Mines and slot Caltrops up a ton with procs. It actually works better for steamrolling teams I've found. Fast cast, great proc's and Bonfire to boot.

Don’t forget the Medkit or whatever it’s called temp power from P2W vendor. It’s a cheap form of Aid Self and/or always having green inspirations with you.

Which ironically is why I like to play /Storm MM’s so much. I always have “pets” to cast and they actually do decent damage and some decent debuffs so I feel like I’m contributing something to steamroll teams.

If I could cast an AOE version of Enflame or Hot Feet on those dudes, it would be a dream come true.

No, they need to be on fire. All the time. Running amok. About the paddock.