oldskool

My observations: 1) Heavily backloaded on damage until 44 as everything revolves around Knockout Blow and Cross Punch. 2) Water Burst is the only AoE until 44 (not counting Geyser due to downtime) and Water Burst is the weakest AoE option. 3) Numina unique is better, slightly, than that Heal/End in Inexhaustible. 4) Tactics isn't necessary unless you like everything about it but the +to-hit. 5) Lots of expensive IOs to push elemental defenses at the expense of questionable damage decisions post-44. Dehydrate and Steam Spray are better than they look. Whirlpool does have a downside of making enemies run out of it, but it can be a strong AoE option. Water Blast struggles on single-target but excels at AoE. Knockout Blow looks better on paper than it actually is. KB can be incredible, but it has a base 40 second recharge. This makes it incredibly difficult to build it into a short window of attack cycle. You're going to hit recharge cap and still won't be able to hit KB often enough to make it worth your time. You have Aqua Bolt > Water Jet > Aqua Bolt spam as filler for most of the character's career. That is surprisingly strong for what it is but it still falls short of the potential. Offensive Adaptation is required to move damage potential up and comes with a significant hit to resistances. Good things: 1) Recharge intensive. Bio Armor does work well with high recharge to leverage its 3 heal powers. 2) The set choices are good, but the question I have is are those choices worth a loss in damage? Prolonging combat for defense at the expense of taking things out faster doesn't make a lot of sense unless it is a Tanker. Even then, a Tanker can do damage. 3) The power choices are generally good, but the build is just incredibly backloaded. It requires Offensive Adaptation, Musculature Core T4, a Hybrid Assault, an offensive Interface, *and* consistent Force Feedback procs to keep pace with AV regeneration. That's just stalemating. Water Blast in general kinda hovers in that range anyway, but it could be a little better. So what's important to this build? Damage? Mitigation? Looks? There may be some tough choices to make in order to improve it in any of those categories because this pair can't do everything.

I did explain why in the same post with the build. In short; neither power is needed.

I normally don't care for Winter Sets, but if you want to get crazy with the defense potential here you go... 😆 | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1482;691;1382;HEX;| |78DA6594594F135114C7EFB45381B2CB529622B605CB5286567D50A3E1C1AA89424| |2C4E86333B497B630B64DA74679F453F8055CC0ED495CBE83EB930B10B798A80914| |777DAAA773FE40939964F29BF9DF7BCEFFDE33E7CEC4A568DDDD1397C784D270D4D| |04D333625338574461AEE33329ECA648D6C725E94AF2ABABD9B83B1D37A2629135A| |F4826EC426D366216B985D5B8351392333A6D4CEA50D2397BD28F3A275329B35B47| |1A92764DE4CA573B16959D0DD9638959332516F3D1E4F2753942159B7393B472F5D| |C772E9B8B69D5BCFCFC52674B320F3F31DB4A401BA57830257C9255EA842445451F| |71C7CCC6C7A023E65F63D63CA720205B13F9D96B6E317F88759FD0FF4D0C41E55B8| |F7F2FBDB2042295679C4F9F63C04EF814BCCE07DF00173867C9DECEB74C23708DF2| |1F886FE32DF918F0B3EAE3B1C1FBA0D2E304716C19BE02DE67B8AAD629F528A3C6B| |F859A96953AC717713F303CDAB8547ED2AC78EAE80AFC0D7CCC81B7099A90F0951C| |F791DF5C8DB80BC0DA7780F4B834234C2BBF1336B912FCC8FE4DD0CEFE688C3D276| |86C11073D708A881A3CC59DA530BBC5BBEF27A5A8BE0159E13A7F5B5E11BB72DB2D| |6BE005E65765D03AF33BD379849CAEF417E0FD6DD817577AC31FD74363AB1B7CE61| |42A45A78C1398AEFC677EE466D7CADCC006A1468612A94A787EB207A4A74894F549| |95E54A6F708AF68F761F0007890E93B048EF1AA9C94CD0F673F3A2C800EEB4387F5| |A1C3CED32AFBE1DC1F1296A652FC00AA36F083E70D7E07D7C1223A7603FCC66CA7D| |8618E15C3D8F5347D050D9AE6638F046961F88631CFAB6E9DE672D352156607CB67| |D465F5F0906D346C532236659F4DD96F53C66DCAA4BA75BE856229354D746A5929A| |DB96954A91C2D6E2B0EE52CEFC6719218A46AFAB832EBB6A88DCAA80DEE5CC76FA6| |8A0E7E19E41F70D977B9E279A5E274FF07DAA20A22| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

This is helpful, thank you. There can always be balance within a character build. The value of that balance is completely subjective. I feel a responsibility to explain my choices, and I am going to do that. I'll watch my tone, but this is intended to teach not demean. I have very strong feelings against dumping builds without discussion. I know it looks simple AF for some, but it really just isn't. There is a lot of thought that can go into this and it is easy to F up in real play. First off, Regeneration is notorious for being a set that requires healing and rez. Sentinel Regeneration has some strengths that the melee version doesn't have, but it is still Regeneration. It still holds some fundamental babysitting issues and those are very tough to overcome completely. The set relies heavily on passive healing which is the weakest form of damage mitigation this game has. In addition to this, Regeneration needs to balance cooldowns like Reconstruction to have burst heals. I happen to personally like Second Wind and Moment of Glory. However, these two powers have cooldowns that are about 90 seconds even with high global recharge. When you get more comfortable with how Regen plays you could explore those two powers later. I'm skipping them in this build because I feel their use is a lot more advanced. Success with Regeneration builds lies in practice and recognizing windows where you can safely go nuts as well as when to back off. Here is how this build tries to help you: 1) Hover is slotted with a set for defense but really I want you have some better flight speed for combat hover. This is so you can choose when you want 360 degree movement control like hovering overhead to shoot down into the floor with KB powers. You'll need to practice when to weave in for Mind Probe/Nova and when to let heat die down. Sometimes eating too much aggro just happens. 2) Most of your defenses are around 25%. Barrier Core Epiphany is a suggested Destiny. That'll grant you 30% total defense for most of that Destiny's duration once you hit T4. A small purple inspiration gets you just shy of soft-cap defense. Please note, enemies that use lethal damage will strip your defenses quickly if even one hit lands. Cimo's with their broadsword attacks will chunk your defenses in melee range in seconds. AVs with radiation powers will put you into negative defense in a few hits. 3) Resistances in this build aren't really a focus but Smashing/Lethal is 54% which is respectable. Barrier also buffs this by the same 5% for the remaining effect duration. Rebirth is an alternative Destiny that has synergy for you. Note that Accolades are selected. Accolades are important for Regeneration because they boost your hit points which is how health regeneration scales. The Judgement is the one you want. The other Incarnates are all offensive focus and my preference. Those are my standard recommendations but other variants are valuable in their own way. Attacks. This is where the struggle for balance exists. This is really backloaded because Mind Probe and Dominate carry your damage. That means exemplaring for lower level Task Forces may feel like your damage is tanking. It will. That's a problem with Energy Blast and Sentinel design. I can't fix this in a build. For tough targets and you are at range: Dominate -> Power Push -> Power Burst -> slight delay -> Power Push -> Power Bolt -> repeat until dead. For tough targets and you are in melee: Dominate -> Mind Probe -> Power Push -> Power Burst -> slight delay -> Power Push -> repeat until dead. Use Power Bolt only when Opportunity is active or as filler when enemies are out of range as above. The slight delay notation is because Power Push recharges every 2.5 seconds and Power Burst animates in 2.244 seconds. So there is going to be a slight pause before you can use Power Push again. That delay is totally fine and just being a little patient is better for your damage. Focused Power Bolt does more direct damage and could be substituted for Power Burst if you want. These two powers a fairly close in effectiveness. I opted to keep the one with the slight faster casting time for more reasons than I am going to explain here. Power Blast just isn't necessary in this build so it is skipped entirely and not recommended at all. For AoE just use Energy Torrent, Explosive Blast, and Nova as you need. Fill in with Dominate, Mind Probe, and Power Push as priority powers where you can. You could further backload this by dumping Energy Torrent and shifting several power selections earlier to maybe open up Psychic Shockwave. 6pc Obliteration is a good set option as an alternative. I didn't consider this at first, but I want to bring it up as a possibility. Power selection order wasn't done with any idea towards complete optimization. Power Burst opens up at level 6 but is delayed to 26. I wanted to have the flight powers as early as I could tolerate and Hasten. I prioritize AoE for early play and Regen powers as primary defense early on. This isn't set in stone and you can go with what you want. However, the intent of this design is to really just focus on higher level play because that is where it is strongest. I always try to be sensitive to the idea of lower level team play though. All of that said, I do not claim this is perfect. I am sure someone more savvy/creative than I am can do a better job. Still, this should give you some ideas. Also, pushing damage further likely won't net you huge gains but it could impact your defenses. The reverse of this is also true where a heavier push on defenses will lower your offense. Good luck. I hope this works for you.

You can build pretty much whatever you wanted with that level of investment. I'd still highly recommend being patient with your purchases. You may already do that, but I feel it is worth stating. [What I mean here is putting in bids on IOs and waiting for a as long as you can vs buy it now pricing.] So what is more important to you? Defense or damage? Regeneration isn't a set known for its ability to just avoid or soak damage. The set heals and that's about it. Energy Blast has a low ceiling on where it can perform but if you dive into the Psionic Mastery pool it can get a lot better. Sentinels in general struggle with damage when using full sets and Energy Blast struggles there too. How important is it for you to have Knockback or Knockdown? Now that I know your budget it gets a bit easier to understand what kind of slotting can be done. Now comes the tough questions part because the Energy/Regen combo just can't do everything you asked. You can stack damage and you can build some more mitigation. However, you can't max both because the concepts are just in conflict with the two sets due to their design. Adding in knockdown to control knockback just makes this worse.

This isn't limited to /Fire. IO set diversity in ranged and TAoE attacks is pretty terrible next to melee counterparts. This makes building more defense in with IO sets a pain. It makes it a decision of using Winter Sets or not, or expanding your attacks to include melee or not. If you're happy with the build, then good. You could probably change some things and even lower some of your defenses if you wanted. Just prioritize damage first, aim for mid to upper 60's on your S/L resistance or higher, and then your healing. Another thing to maybe consider with Fire Blast in particular is endurance consumption. Fire can be expensive to spam when you use Fireball rotationally. Your current end drain of 2.91/s looks low to me. Consume isn't that great but you may want to invest a little more recharge there. Accuracy is important too because missing with that skill hurts. You invest a lot into Maneuvers but Weave is better. It is a slight gain, but if you're looking for gains... well slot Weave. You're spreading yourself a little thin. I do like to try to get multiple defenses into the 30's myself. However, this is a build with Burn which puts you more at risk in melee. May as well consider focusing on just one positional like melee vs trying to turn Fiery Aura into Super Reflexes. Tailor the build's defensive strengths towards the content you expect to handle the most. Then, just acknowledge the other areas of weakness are a risk you are willing to accept. That's how I try to approach builds. Though I did get completely tired of that and just shifted my resources towards building other versions of my heroes with more comfortable secondaries. Obviously not universal advice there, but I am just being real as to why I use Invul/Energy Aura/SR so much.

I don't mean this question to sound like a put down, but what don't you get? Is it power selection? Is it what sets are good? Is it order of power use? If you have a build right now, or the one I had up for a limited time before, and you're still struggling it is easier to help when the problem is clear. Just giving out a build doesn't automatically make a character good either. You noted before about damage for a Sentinel. So you seem aware that there is a damage ceiling on the AT. There is an even lower ceiling on Energy Blast. So making a build do "good damage" is all about subjectivity. What I find to be acceptable may not be acceptable to you. You may not have *any* issues what so ever regardless of learning disability or not. It could be a combination of factors like high expectation or just lack of practice in execution. If you can help me understand what you're not getting, then it makes it far easier to help you tailor something you may like. Also, Energy/Regen just may not be the character for you, but let's try to figure out answers to the questions above first.

I'm about to drop some advice. Take it with whatever grains of salt you want. Take it or leave it. This is not me crapping on your build. I have 100% no idea on your playstyle or preferences. However, looking over what you have I suspect you may not know some things about Dual Pistols and especially the potential of the set on Sentinels. If you like Piercing Rounds, then we can find some ways to keep it while working around it. However, Piercing Rounds and Dual Wield are both dead weight most of the time. They are dead weight due to recharge scaling and animation capping your damage efficiency. Dual Wield is the worst power in the Sentinel DP set. Suppressive Fire is better than Dual Wield even with Incendiary Ammo despite that power not getting a damage over time effect. Note, Suppressive Fire also splits damage evenly at 50/50 vs all other powers which split 70/30 under the elemental ammo effects. This means Suppressive Fire can do slightly more damage when enemies are less resistant to the element than they are lethal. Piercing Rounds is weighted down by its animation time. Piercing Round's most effective benefit is the ability to hit 3 targets which is made better by the two Sentinel ATOs which widen its fire arc. It becomes much easier to tag more than one target which is where Piercing Rounds has higher efficiency. Piercing Rounds does gain a significant damage buff from Incendiary Ammo but it is only slightly ahead of Suppressive Fire in a vacuum. In actual play where animation times restrict damage Suppressive Fire can make an attack sequence stronger when just one target is the focus. What does this mean? It means you're skipping both Executioner's Shot and Empty Clips for no good reason. It means you have a lot of options to skip two powers out of Dual Pistols. This would require a REALLY long write up to explain why. I want to spare you that. So instead, let's look at some options that don't fundamentally redesign your entire build. 1) Piercing Rounds as the center piece. Piercing Rounds in your current build has a 4.6s cooldown. Pistols x 2 + any 1.848 animating attack is exactly 4.224 seconds. This means you can do the following: Piercing Rounds -> Pistols -> 1.848 attack -> Pistols -> 0.4 second delay -> repeat into infinity. The 1.848 attack could be your choice of: Dual Wield, Empty Clips, Bullet Rain, Suppressive Fire, or Executioner's Shot. Out of all of those "fillers" Executioner's Shot is by far the strongest option against a single target like a boss, EB, or AV. This puts Dual Wield and Suppressive Fire into the dead weight category. Dual Wield has the weakest damage and the Defensive Opportunity effect is a drop in the bucket for Willpower. Suppressive Fire is out classed by Executioner's Shot. Suggestion: Dump Dual Wield and Suppressive Fire for Executioner's Shot and Empty Clips. Why Empty Clips? Well, you don't need either Dual Wield or Suppressive Fire for starters. Next up during your 28 second downtime off Hasten you're looking at a big DPS hit no matter what you use. May as well use Empty Clips which can hit 6 targets which makes its damage contribution exponentially better against bigger spawns. Empty Clips also recharges quickly making it better in team play as well as the fact that any of your AoE attacks can trigger that Opportunity Strikes proc per target. Ideally you swap that Ragnarok set into Empty Clips and put the ATO into Bullet Rain. However, this is a minor nitpick as both of those sets have really crappy procs. They are there for the 10% recharge and their 6th slot is just minor buffage. 2) Dump Piercing Rounds. Dump Dual Wield too. That 2.64 cast time of Piercing Rounds holds it back from being better than it should be. Note above how Pistols x2 + 1.848 = 4.224 seconds. That's around your Piercing Rounds downtime. How much damage can you do in that downtime? A lot. A lot more than I think folks really realize. Your current best chain is just over 100 DPS every 6.86 seconds. That's almost 7 seconds of time. Just swapping Executioner's Shot into the sequence above is more than a +30 DPS boost. Executioner's Shot really is that good. You could easily swap to Executioner's Shot -> Pistols -> Suppressive Fire -> Pistols. That takes 6.072 seconds to complete. It too is stronger than what you have. While the raw numbers are slightly less than Piercing Rounds -> Pistols -> Executioner's Shot -> Pistols do note that the time difference is around 0.8 seconds. That's significant. Furthermore, you could do Executioner's Shot -> Suppressive Fire -> Pistols. This completes in 4.224 seconds. So in the time your Piercing Rounds is refreshing you can do more DPS with this combo *and* it is repeatable with a minor delay you may not really notice. This translates into higher sustained damage over time and faster recovery from lost damage due to misses. That is something that Piercing Rounds struggles with. A missed PR hit is a massive loss. So in this example both Dual Wield and Piercing Rounds are potentially dead weight where Piercing Rounds has some arguable value against 2+ targets. Still, if you wanted you could dump Piercing Rounds here too and pick up Empty Clips which can hit more targets. Empty Clips gets better once the target saturation is 4+ but it also has a wider firing arc (again improved by Sentinel ATOs) and out performs Piercing Rounds at all 6 targets. On top of this Empty Clips recharges faster, thus giving you damage SOONER, and it animates faster which is also a damage improvement. This doesn't go into proc abuse at all. I can guarantee you Pistols, Suppressive Fire, and Executioner's Shot with procs eclipses any combination of Piercing Rounds on single target by about double the damage you're currently looking at. I've tested this numerous times and it is how I have build my Dual Pistols characters ever since. OK, that's a long lesson on Dual Pistols in Sentinel-land. I trimmed that down because I could go into a lot more depth, but this is already real long. Let's look at some other slotting choices. Tough: Consider dropping that Psi resist IO for 4pc Unbreakable Guard. That will boost your S/L defense a little but your melee more. High Pain Tolerance: Consider dumping that End/Rch IO for the Steadfast 3% defense. You trade the set bonus to Psi for 31% melee defense, 33% Fire/Cold, 27% S/L, and 36% En/Neg when combined with the slotting suggestion for Tough. That's one small purple inspire (12.5%) from softcap defense for multiple categories. Assault: Endurance reduction. Recharge isn't that helpful. Fast Healing: Drop to 3 slots. Remove a heal/rch/end IO. Health: Move the slot from Fast Healing to Health. Dump a slot placed at 50 and add it to Hasten. Replace the Numina Health with the proc. Add the Miracle proc. Hasten: add a slot as above with recharge. When you can +4 both. Why these changes? 1) The loss in resistance isn't that big deal as your defense will increase. You also have Strength of Will which can cap your S/L resistance anyway. You could fill in downtime with orange inspirations and even the Barrier Destiny would be useful here. Speaking of Strength of Will, swapping to a level 50 common IO for resistance will improve all of your other resistances by 2%+ at a cost of -6% Psi resist all the time or just a -4% psi difference while SoW is active. Not sure how important 60%+ Psi resist is to you, but 54% isn't that bad either. 2) You overvalue +regen bonuses as well as the +heal in the Numina set. If you use the Numina and Miracle procs you're not going to see a difference in effect. Sure, you'll go down from 810% regeneration to 793% but you're going to recover 57 hp/s vs 59 hp/s. You can tell me if 2 hp/s is worth that to you or not. On top of that change the procs will add +0.5 end/s which doesn't count the Performance Shifter. This can be nice to have once you get all of your Accolades as sudden you go from 3.29 e/s in your build to over 4. If you plan to run Assault and Tactics that extra end can be nice to have. 3) Adding a slot to Hasten and giving it +4 boosters each gets you 6 seconds of downtime on Hasten vs 28 seconds. If you read through the suggested changes to your attacks you can tell this means you have considerably higher uptime on much tighter attack sequences which are in turn significant damage gains to your build. That's it. I won't offer any dramatic redesigns to set choices or other slotting. Anything I'd suggest to do that is really just minor preference because what you have isn't bad at all. I just include a crap ton to thought because Dual Pistols attacks seem woefully misunderstood. That doesn't mean I think the set couldn't use a buff but it can be used in a far more effective way without getting crazy with procs. Good luck!

And I can take that criticism. I recognize my tone can be harsh at times. It wasn't intended to be an insult to you. Anyway, apologies if you felt demeaned.

As above, but I'll add a few things. Standard ammo is 100% lethal damage. On top of this, it includes knockback for some powers like Dual Wield and Executioner's Shot. Hail of Bullets has a 100% chance to knockdown at the end of its animation during Standard Ammo effects. In addition to all of this, Pistols, Empty Clips, and Executioner's Shot all reduce defense during standard ammo. Piercing rounds reduces resistance. Suppressive Fire is a mag 3 stun. The negative defense and resistance effects run off the Blaster scale which is low when compared to Corruptors and Defenders. However, it is still something so it may be something to consider swapping to in groups or when situations call for it. When you use any ammo power the inherent knockback of the power is turned off and Hail of Bullets changes to having a *high chance* of knockdown vs guaranteed knockdown. Most attacks retain 70% lethal damage and the remaining damage becomes whatever the elemental ammo type is (i.e., cold, toxic, fire). Suppressive Fire switches from being a stun to becoming a mag 3 hold with any elemental ammo equipped. Fire ammo is the de facto damage booster so run that if you have no other options.

The build is impressive when it comes to ranged defense and that is really it. You mentioned the DP/Nin build was low damage and you stopped playing it. I think you're going to find history repeating itself. Sentinels just don't do big damage with full set investment and skipping over the Epics. A simple matter of fact is procs push Sentinel damage into the current extreme DPS meta. Epic powers make it even stronger. Beam may do a bit more for you than DP did when considering generic IO sets, but I just don't see this wowing you when you open with how underwhelmed you were before.

Just for future readers; Sentinel Willpower really doesn't require soft-cap defenses in order for it to function. The higher the defense stacking gets the less reliant on purple inspirations you will be. However, you're still going to want those purple skittles on hand facing some enemies. With this in mind players can decide if the return on investment in to defense is worth the opportunity cost in potential damage slotting. In this case, Fire Blast is such a strong performer that it isn't hurt too much. Then again, "too much" is a beauty is in the eye of the beholder statement. Stacking defense on Willpower will never keep pace with the damage meta, period. Then again, Sentinels have a huge problem with this as so much damage is consolidated into two specific powers in a specific epic pool. TL;DR: Soft-cap defense is overrated when it comes at a compromise to the goals of your character. There is a concept of building for "just enough" where you can strike a balance. This makes the character more flexible though a bit reliant on other sources (i.e., Incarnates, Inspiration, Teammates).

The damage on paper is better than you may give it credit. This gets even better when using Musculature Core Alpha, the Assault series, and a high damage Interface like Reactive or Degenerative. The build can run Blazing Blast -> Blaze -> Fire Ball -> Flares -> 0.5 second pause -> repeat. That's pretty solid all ranged damage potential during Hasten. During the downtime window of Hasten more Flares will be used to fill in gaps. Using Frostbite or Block of Ice are just utility choices at the expense of damage uptime. Still, the above is better than what Water Blast is capable of on single targets due to the nature of how Water Blast works. Water Blast, should be a bit ahead on AoE due to the options that exist in that set and the strength of powers like Steam Spray and Whirlpool. Also, the build you shared illustrates my previous point on just how expensive it can get to try to raise defense. The build soft-caps elemental defenses, but still has 22% smashing/lethal which is quite common. Also, without any defense debuff resistance that 22% gets shredded by any enemies with a automatic weapon. The near cap resistances to S/L, even outside of SoW/Rune are absolutely helpful though. 18 individual Winter Set IOs. Each ranging between 18 to 20+ million per slot. The OP is looking at around half a billion influence just to slot 4 powers using buy-it-now pricing. It is something to be mindful of. Again, it is a good build but it has a lot of considerations to it that need to taken into account. Unknown budget, power preference, and all of that you mentioned (This is more for the OP than anything).

Fire Blast isn't too complicated. May seem like it at first, but it really isn't. The following powers are all candidates for skippage: Fire Blast (T2), Fire Breath, and Rain of Fire. Generally, Wizards in Chicago do not use their hands or mouths as flame throwers. It is their hands that tend to get in the way of flamethrowers and give them throbbing scars to remember their stupidity. Calling down rains of fire also isn't really in the schtick either. So conceptually passing on those powers works. Big fuego Fireballs is what it is all about. Fire Blast, the power, isn't really a good power when you get into the nuts and bolts of it. However, it may be useful to you to help bridge a gap in your attack use. You want to be constantly hammering the forces of darkness with your best attacks while questioning your own moral character. Fire Blast isn't really one of those best power picks, but it can help if you're not building up high levels of recharge. Maybe your in house air spirit didn't want to craft you a potion of haste today. I hear certain air spirits get uppity. For Willpower you don't really need to 6 slot anything. High Pain Tolerance is the only one that really benefits from 6 slots in the most generic of ideas. This is because you can enhance both the hit points and resistance of the power. Maximizing those features would take 3 SO or common IO quality sockets each. Depending on your choice in sets you could mix and match too. There are a lot of varieties that can make the power effective. The other powers like Mind Over Body and the like can be functional at 3 to 4 slots regardless of your enhancement choices. You could opt to fully slot a set into any of those powers, but the point is you don't have to. If slots look tight, then consider reducing the slots in Willpower first. Prioritize attacks. Big fuego makes wizards happy. You can skip Resurgence and possibly Strength of Will. I personally like SoW. I personally tend to think people don't see the value in it for the endurance steroid it can be and focus way too much on the resistance effect of Smashing/Lethal. You see, as a Tanker, my Willpower Tanker doesn't *need* the extra S/L resistance. I'm *well* aware of this. However, that power does push my other resistances which has value to me. Even with a ton of endurance procs and two passive end powers the Super Strength side of that character *still* drains end fast AF. This is because that Tanker can chain cast Knockblow, Foot Stomp, and Cross Punch. Yes, I have that much recharge as well as Force Feedbacks. Fire Blast when using Fireball rotationally can be consuming as much as 4 to 5 endurance per second. So unless you plan to shoehorn your Destiny pick into Ageless, SoW can have a purpose. This can let you consider either Rebirth or Barrier as alternatives which are considerably strong steroids for Willpower. Word of warning: Willpower cannot max out defenses on Sentinels. Especially not if your unwilling to stack the crap out of additional +defense sources like Maneuvers, Weave, Hover, Combat Jumping. Willpower on Sentinels is hurt by the lopsided nature of the IO system. What I mean here is that Willpower is really strong on melee because melee IO sets disproportionally support a range of +defense set bonuses. Sentinels just don't have access to this unless you have the influence to tap multiple versions of the Winter Set category. Slotting in that manner can, potentially, hurt your damage output. Those sets are highly focused on defense and not so much on things like recharge. Without knowing just how many powers out of the Sorcery pool are desired or how many of the Ice Mastery powers are desired I really can't help much more than that. This is *your* character. Not mine. As long as you understand that Willpower is going to have some fragility to it when making a concept build you'll be OK. Rune of Protection in Sorcery isn't a bad choice here. Another thing to think about is that if you plan to mix things up by calling on the mantle of a certain seasonal effect you may be in melee a good bit. The Melee Genome series of Hybrid Incarnates might be appealing to you. Assault Genome is just the standard damage one, but Melee is a decent defense one. As you can see, coming up with a build in a vacuum has a crapload of considerations to it. I even go into some Incarnate choices because Willpower will always have holes. At least until we get more sets that have defense traits that aren't just +range/energy/negative. Incarnates are good at plugging some of those holes. *edit: ... If you're used to playing Scrappers, then Sentinels actually have far more in common with that AT than it seems. It is generally a mistake to view Sentinels as anything close to comparable with Blasters, Corruptors, or Defenders. Unfortunately, Sentinels don't quite do the damage of Scrappers nor do they have their wide diversity in set choices. Still, the two ATs have a lot of conceptually similar traits going for them. Lean more on that and the Sentinel won't seem so intimidating to build.

There is nothing to interpret. You read it correctly. The power never scales off targets. As in, the power doesn't suddenly add more targets as you level. Obscure Sustenance essentially grants you three regeneration and recovery effect buffs which stack. Each buff has its own duration. The recovery effects have the shortest duration and the regeneration effects are effectively permanent (60 second duration of the longest effect and the power has a default 60 second cooldown). The recovery effects drop down one grade every 10 seconds or so and finish within 30 seconds or so (running off memory). The regen effect drop off rates are a bit longer. Obscure Sustenance is most effective as a proactive endurance maintenance buff as long as there is an enemy within its range. My endurance per second spikes over 5 end per second for 10 seconds whenever I use it which is huge. So trying to maximize the uptime is pretty important. I generally recommend trying to keep the cooldown at 20 seconds or less. This lets you keep the second strongest recovery buff active with a very high degree of uptime. The lower you can get the cooldown the better, but no need to break the build for it. Obscure Sustenance is the polar opposite of Dark Regeneration. It has a completely different purpose than the melee set version. Also, due to the spherical nature of the power and limited target cap procs do not work very well. Theft of Essence kinda sucks as do most melee PBAoE set procs. I use a full set of Preventative Medicine in the power since the high innate accuracy means you need to slot... A ZERO accuracy in it. 😉

Hate mechanic as in aggro control? Sentinels don't do well with this by default so I wouldn't ever recommend it. I tend to feel that most of the Sentinel sets play very much the same. This is probably because I've played/tested all of the primaries and actively swap between no less than 4 Sentinels at the moment. So fun is totally subjective. I'll focus on suggestions that are just more effective for the level of investment you're looking to give (which is low; and there is nothing wrong with that). Anyway, Fire Blast is hard to beat for cheap deeps. Fire is an incredibly effective set for a lot of reasons and it remains a top tier primary regardless of ranged AT. Sentinel Fire Blast can easily skip Fire Blast (the second choice power at level 1), Fire Breath, and Rain of Fire. You don't need any of those to be competent because Fireball (available at freaking level 2) is really powerful. Now, Fireball's base recharge is 16 seconds. So you might want to pick up Fire Blast early on and plan to drop it with a respec at around level 20 when you pick up Blaze and Blazing Blast. Or you may want to keep it. Just change things around in the build below. For secondary, I'd recommend Invulnerability. Invulnerability on Sentinels is a bit more newb friendly than its cousin set Willpower. Willpower on Sentinels can be good, but it just requires a lot more investment than Invulnerability does. Invulnerability can get fairly high typed defenses and Smashing/Lethal resistance without *any* set bonuses at all. On top of this you have Dull Pain which gives you more hit points and also heals you. Furthermore, Sent Invul gets Durability which gives you stamina and helps offset some of the drain of running toggles. It gets even better because Environmental Protection is a power that functions as two separate powers in every other incarnation of Invul. Huge value here. Unstoppable is the one power that is generally worth skipping. Since both suggestions let you skip 4 powers without much penalty this opens up so many doors to being creative elsewhere. Want Hover and Fly? Go for it. Want more defenses through Fighting and Leadership? Go for it! I added Cremate and Fire Sword Circle because why the hell not? The build in the spoiler is slotted with just level 50 IOs. The number of slots is useful with a wide range of various sets. So you could keep much of the build as it is whenever you get around to a larger investment in the character. The power scaling will only get better with more influence but the framework is pretty competent. I also included some thematic but potent Incarnate power options for when you get there. Each is just the T1, but those are the ideal places to start. Work Musculature towards the Core path (T4) as soon as you can. Maxing the Alpha slot has really good return on investment. Musculature is generally preferable to others since Sentinels don't requirement much help from any of the other Alphas (less return on investment).

I regret responding to this thread. In hindsight, I don't think anything I posted was as helpful as I had hoped it was. It was also probably harsher than I really intended it to be and I shouldn't have done that. I started with both an explanation of powers which were core to your request and ideas on how you could do it yourself. You had a roadmap to success at your fingertips. You had enough information to do it on your own. You kept asking for a build. So I gave you one. Like you noted, you got what you wanted not what you needed. Your post history shows little more than a various collection of "help with build" threads. You haven't contributed anything to the community that I can see. I see little moments in your history where you actually thank people for offering advice. You only seem to bother when they dump something from Mids. Goodbye indeed.

I hope you change your mind about that. Alternative playstyles are worth discussing. However, they invite challenge by their very nature. Maybe next you'll think about a counter argument to support your style vs just saying maybe I won't speak on this topic again. Using loaded language like trying to up sell sapping as if no other build can do it is also going to get you challenges. Hell, if I shut up the first time I was challenged I wouldn't have been back here. I also wouldn't have grown my understanding of the game. I also wouldn't have been able to help others find a path that fits them.

I'm not sure about whatever monolithic regen sent build you're talking about. A player could skip Second Wind and that decision will likely revolve around the cooldown the power. Even if you push a high recharge build Second Wind will still have a downtime longer than a minute. It is a clutch heal but not nearly as effective for healing throughput as Reconstruction is. I happen to like Second Wind. I tend to suggest taking it and Moment of Glory more often than I don't. That said, both powers could be dropped if something else works out better for the player.

Enemies only look forward to defeat as it is. The question becomes how long does that take to achieve. Sapping may limit the build on damaging dealing options that otherwise could have been there. Sapping may, depending on the build/the player/a team/etc..., just prolong the inevitable. Sapping also has limitations against more powerful enemies. In order to close that gap there needs to be more compromises made. I have a Sentinel that takes advantage of a lot of Stun. I didn't go out of my way to improve that stun because it is at its most effectiveness against minions. Minions. Who cares about those goobers? This is why sapping is noted as being a gimmick. Sentinels can certainly pull it off but it isn't really the best way to build them either. To each their own though.

(Edit 2) This original post included a build, but ultimately I wasn't that happy with it personally. The requestor finally got the build they kept asking for so keeping it here no longer seems worth it to me. Especially since it isn't something I really felt comfortable endorsing. When it comes to making up builds on demand it becomes a chore to do. There are just too many questions to ask and no real answers to formulate a better path. This would mean I would need to craft multiple avenues to answer the original question. This is the entire reason why giving advice was the first decision made.

(Edit 2) In hindsight the original reply was too much and the effort seems largely wasted. However, there may be value n a TL;DR version. Big PP damage for Sentinels is consolidated into Mind Probe + Dominate from Psionic Mastery. The damage potential of these two attacks alone can eclipse the contribution of most primaries. This is a universal thing that can be abused on any Sentinel. There are a number of threads discussing this so no need to elaborate here. Energy Blast can make use of some proc damage to help close its damage weakness. This comes at the expense of pushing full sets for things like recharge and defense bonus. Regeneration fundamentally thrives off higher hit points and recharge (to a degree). Stacking additional defense requires a combination of power selection and full set bonuses. Maxed defense for Regeneration is in direct competition to maxed damage for Energy Blast. It isn't possible with the IO sets available to Sentinels to make a character that fits both. Managing KB is a player skill issue. If Hover is taken it can used to place the character above enemies and fire down. That will shoot them into the floor. Using walls can also help limit scatter. This can be difficult for Explosive Blast and Nova, but it is worth practicing. EB core powers are pretty much all but Focused Power Burst and Power Blast. Energy Torrent can potentially be skipped in favor of something else. Regen core powers are all but Second Wind and Moment of Glory. The later two powers can be useful but they are optional depending on goals. Taking all of the core powers is only 14 out of all power selections. Hover, Flight, Boxing or Kick, Tough Weave, Mind Probe, Maneuvers, and Link Minds can all be taken. Exact set bonuses will depend wildly on preference and funds.

There is more to damage-per-second than just AT scale. You scoff at "max deeps" like people are a bunch of fools. Get off that high horse, please. Many of us here aren't the idiots you seem to think we are. P.S. I do generally agree that there is a hyper-focus on damage that can go into the realm of silliness. However, that doesn't mean that the Sentinel cannot be optimized to do more damage within the confines of its own design. Doing that isn't something that is worthy of snickering at people for. Especially when it isn't impossible to both improve damage AND retain durability on the same character.

Depending on the Corruptor, I can see that. Same goes for Blasters or even Defenders. You may already know this, but I'm not sure everyone else does. Dehydrate has different healing values for each AT. Sentinels have the worst modifier out of all of the ATs. This is also true of Life Drain in Dark Blast which is really freaking odd since *every* AT has a 10% return. Sentinel's don't. Blasters actually start off with the biggest bang per heal on Dehydrate. Makes some sense there since they have the weakest baseline mitigation out of all 4 ATs with access to Water Blast. On 3 out of 4 ATs, Water Blast has a disproportionately high focus on AoE when compared to single target. This is exacerbated by the fast snipe meta when viewed against other sets. So common forum knowledge leans towards focusing on the strength of WB's AoE potential. This means you could skip certain primary powers or slot them in different ways depending on how the secondary enhances the overall play. In the case of Defenders that would be the primary. Sentinels don't get this luxury. Sentinel secondary sets are raw mitigation sets with a few options that include damage boosters. Those damage boosters still don't really compare with various support sets or the manipulation sets of Blasters. So on your Corruptor you could see a gain of 19% healing on Dehydrate, base, while stacking it on other mitigation. You could focus really heavily on your 16 target-cap AoEs and layer that with other offense like in Storm Summoning. You're not going to notice much of a drop in damage by slotting Dehydrate as a heal with Storm. Same goes for Defenders and their Storm Summoning is even stronger as a primary. Blasters, depending on secondary, can find other ST powers in that can warrant utility slotting on Dehydrate. On Sentinels utility slotting of Dehydrate hinders its role. Dehydrate is available earlier on Sentinels. It is also the second highest single target damage attack in their kit. You won't find another high damage attack (filling a ST role) until Water Jet, and then again until 35 if you take an epic ST melee power. Aqua Bolt and Hydro Blast can serve a slightly different function on Sentinel Water Blast. You don't even need both. Sentinels don't have the high target caps on AoE like the 3 other ATs do. Sentinel damage is more distributed between single target and AoE. In other words, the focus is a bit more balanced between the two modes. This isn't to create an argument about how effective that outcome is. This is observational information on the core structure of what the AT actually does. I go into depth on this else where in this subforum. So with all of that long explanation out of the way, why does this matter with Super Reflexes? Wouldn't slotting for healing be better because it works with the dodge rate? Simply put, yes, but there is a catch. Master Brawler changes the nature of Sentinel mitigation with SR vs how it exists on Scrappers, Stalkers, or Brutes. MB creates additional effective hit points that do not exist on other ATs. Dehydrate can absolutely layer that with an SO enhanced +14% baseline heal. However, you don't need it. Even Dark Melee/Super Reflexes players don't slot Siphon Life for healing. Siphon Life is actually a good DPA power that fits within the rotational nature of play. Dehydrate on Sentinels can function in a similar fashion with the same kind of logic. Due to how dodging works, and layered with MB, even the basic 7% heal in Dehydrate (which is the *lowest* version of the effect across all ATs) is enough to keep you healthy. When Sentinel SR is created with the health return procs currently available, and using MB as needed you don't really need a devoted heal. At least this is my experience having played SR with other primaries that don't heal at all. I can still safely run tough content just relying on natural regen and the +hp procs like Panacea and Power Transfer. So my original question was more of a Socratic question. I could have easily asked the question as why bother enhancing the lowest health modifier out of all ATs vs enhancing the second best single target attack on an AT that should be considering both attack modes? What works on one AT doesn't necessarily work on this one. Can you slot Dehydrate for healing here to pad out health? Yes. Are there going to be better uses of the enhancement; specifically on the Sentinel? Absolutely.

TL;DR: You don't really need to change anything, but I'm going to point out some thoughts for you to think over. I'll let you in on a secret.... You don't need to be that tanky. I have a Water Blast/Dark Armor build with *very* similar loadouts. I hit 32% positional defenses and my resistances are very similar to yours. I survive just fine. Of course Dark Armor has some innate +defense from Cloak of Shadows, but still... I have less than soft-cap. I still survive. I have the exact same epic powers. Energize is a far stronger direct heal than Obscure Sustenance could ever dream to be. I still survive with sub-hardcap resist and less than soft-cap defense. Take all of that for whatever value it is to you. Somethings to think about: Dehydrate on Sentinels can be a good attack and especially so with procs. Also, you don't need both Aqua Bolt and Hydro Blast. You don't need access to both Offensive and Defensive Opportunity unless that is some kind of character goal or a fetish (😜). You could just take Aqua Bolt and flex another power in if you wanted. I personally like Whirlpool but I get that it isn't for everyone. You're right in that Steam Spray is a good choice on Sentinels. It bypasses the cone target restriction unlike others of its kind in the AT. It is a trait shared with Sonic Blast on Sentinels. I'm not fond of Agility on Sentinels but with the build as it is you should do you. I prefer Musculature on Sentinels to help raise their damage which is a place where they can struggle sometimes. Still, what you have works. So I am not sure I'd worry too much about that choice unless you're interested in a full rebuild into a very different direction.