oldskool

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.

Energy Blast has some challenges on meeting the high damage thresholds of the current power creep meta. Sentinels have this problem in particular, but EB can come across as particularly bad. So here are some ideas on how to reduce some of that annoyance: 1) Frankenslotting attacks, i.e. mixing shallow set bonuses or just one off procs, can yield some creative results. Since EB has all KB attacks you can socket the Explosive Strikes chance for Smashing damage everywhere if you wanted. You can slot Force Feedback chance for Recharge pretty much anywhere. You can use Sudden Acceleration KB to KD to reduce some nuisance associated with knock attacks too. 2) Frankenslotting drastically lowers your overall set bonus options. This can be a big hinderance for building a lot of recharge or defense. So go with secondary power sets that are more self-contained. The 4 "ease of use" sets mentioned above can all do this. Super Reflexes and Energy Aura are, in my opinion, the best at this. Both of these sets can soft-cap defenses, provide some kind of health benefit (e.g., absorb or higher regen), and also give you bonus recharge. These sets aren't super tanky from the perspective of resistance benefit, but I find they don't need to be. There will be some content that can auto hit you and that is obnoxious. However, for 90% of everything else these work very well. Invulnerability will generally have lower defense and resistance with fewer set bonuses, and no recharge perk. Still, Invul is remarkably sturdy and you can still hard-cap your Smash/Lethal resistance at 75%. That is on top of having a passive absorb unique to Sentinels and Dull Pain. Nin can be a fickle set. It has a lot of good perks to it but building it in a frankenslot mindset can get tough. Still, it rewards some creative builds and has a lot of opportunity for diversity of IO sets. 3) When you get into the Incarnate range start looking for additional damage sources vs additional defensive sources. You shouldn't need Agility on a Sentinel. Agility has some uses and it is a good Alpha, but it is just better on other ATs. Same goes for others like Spiritual. Look for the ones with damage benefits like Intuition Radial (not really recommend for EB) or either version of Musculature. Cardiac can be beneficial with Dark Armor in particular, but that is at the cost of damage. 4) Consider an Epic pool to add in a melee attack or two. Sentinels can gain access to single target melee and area melee later on. The melee attacks are pretty strong but some do have really long downtimes. You could also consider abusing an epic hold with damage procs. I'd be cautious of putting all your eggs in that basket, but it is no secret that an epic ST attack plus proc loaded hold is a ton of damage. It is so much damage it can be near equal, or better, than your entire primary. I wouldn't be shocked to see that go away eventually, but for now enjoy. Finally, temper your expectations. Sentinels can be a lot of fun and especially so with thematic characters. However, Sentinels aren't keeping up with the power creeping being pushed out right now. They're actually pretty good when viewed through the perspective of how the game *used to be*. They can even be really good if you push a build abusing current proc mechanics. This an AT that requires a lot of investment just to be somewhat behind the current curve. Hopefully that will change, but I'm not holding my breath either.

My answer wasn't targeted for solo, and the tanker leaving or not is irrelevant as Sentinel's aren't tanks. The sticky I mentioned discusses example sets to shoot for. There are a few Willpower posts in this sub you can search for. Same goes for Psychic Blast. I'm not trying to mislead you. Willpower isn't complicated. Psychic Blast isn't either. Mental Blast is the worst attack in that set even considering the Opportunity mechanic. Everything else is either general use or something niche for how you want to play (i.e., Psionic Strike). You can take almost all of the powers from both sets and have a 100% competent character to play and even do it on SOs. SOs are the most budget friendly source for enhancements I can think of. Now, if you're looking for really specific ideas here are some. Thunderstrikes in your attacks up to 6 slots for each single target power. The damage modification is more of what you're after here vs the set bonus. Decimation 5pc for the recharge bonus is another good option if you can afford that. Go for the proc in a power like Psionic Strike or Scramble Thoughts. That means only 1 power can have the full 6 set bonus. Get a single Gaussian's chance for Build-Up and put it in your Aim power. If you want to put a full level 50 IO of recharge or an SO of recharge you can do that too. For your AoE *any* cheap 5pc is going to be fine. Bombardment or Positron's Blast are particularly useful due to recharge bonuses. For your Willpower slots you can really go with whatever you want. You're not going to soft-cap much of the defenses on Willpower without spending a ton, and frankly it is overrated AF. Instead, maybe look at getting some Unbreakable Guard (I think that is the name I recommend in the sticky) at 4 slots to raise melee defense a bit. Thats for when stuff gets in your face. For your regen powers you can easily stack any 3 slot health set of your choosing. Maybe even spare a 4th slot if you can because many sets get a +% to healing in that spot. If you have enough slots then 5 slot at least Up to the Challenge with Doctored Wounds because again, recharge. Any of the cheaper defense sets are going to be fine because Luck of the Gambler may be out of your price range. You can easily get by with 3 to 4 slots in any of the +defense powers like Heightened Senses. If you can build up enough money for both of the 3% global defense uniques, then get them and put them in the passive health/resistance power. Boom. Done. That's a budget build explained.

Just curious do you feel it is that way at all times? I run Hydro with procs, but I also don't rely so heavily on Dominate in my own Water build. Hydro, Dehydrate, and Water Jet do less damage than what you have. However, it isn't such a loss in practice that it changes my decision to push an epic single target. I had tried to use Aqua Bolt and I had worse results. It has been a while since I bother to really play around with Water to test. I've just mostly kept my build as is for the past 8 months without issue.

Well the highlighted and underlined is news to me. In February of this year you started a post on Assault Rifles, just for example: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/14407-assault-rifle-really-needs-some-love/ I've read other posts by you. I've seen where you express an opinion on the Sentinel. I had, wrongly, assumed you had some idea of the AT. Now you're saying you don't know what you're doing on Sentinels. I had an impression you had a better understanding. Forgive me for that. I had, wrongly, assumed you had an idea/concept up your sleeve in the way your build was constructed. I didn't want to go into a long explanation because I wasn't sure of what you wanted. Forgive me for that. There is a LOT to unpack in your choices. However, knowing now that some of the root here is a logic on how Blasters work vs Sentinels the choices make a little more sense. TL;DR: Sentinels shouldn't be built like Blasters. Sentinels can enable a very different style of play. Lean into that if you're going to bother with the AT. That out of the way, I had started to go into a lot with your build and I backed off. I thought, Dr. Mechano posts a good bit and this is being posted as something of a test case (my interpretation of your use of "test run"). Perhaps I'll ask some pointed question FIRST. Obviously that wasn't a good idea because you took it as a personal attack. It wasn't. Let's just get the 500lb gorilla out of the way. Why did I ask if it was as disappointing as it looks? Because just looking over the cool downs of the powers you picked, and the powers themselves, your effective output on paper is less than 100 DPS not counting Opportunity uptime. That is the kind of baseline DPS that gets people to rage on this subforum about "Defenders do more DEEPs than Sentinels". Water Blast on Sentinels is capable of more damage than that in both single target and AoE. You also noted in your OP that you wanted thoughts on the build. My thought is it looks disappointing from a damage dealing perspective. I play Water Blast on the Sentinel. It is capable of much more than your build, but again I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. Sorry I did that. Turning on Assault in the build is a tiny improvement as is even using Musculature. That stems in part because of the slotting decision on Dehydrate. <--- Hence why I asked. Anyway, as Underfyre notes, Water Jet is the damage spender of the Tidal Forces mechanic. Water Jet, even on its own, does very solid damage for Sentinel single target. Your response of "but Blasters don't take it" makes sense in retrospect. Again, I assumed you knew something I didn't. Hence the questions to open dialogue and not me trying to read your mind on what you wanted. Now that I see you want some information explained I'll just do that. Water Jet gets a double use mechanic under Tidal Forces. There is a very slight server pause on when the refresh happens. Once you gain the special secondary WJ proc the animation is faster while still retaining its base properties. The cooldown on enhanced Water Jet is 15 seconds. That isn't a reason to skip it on Sentinels though, because what else are you using attack time for? Blasters have the luxury of an entire secondary with rather high DPA melee options. You skip Water Jet on Blasters because you don't need it depending on what secondary you're running. You should take Water Jet on every other AT that uses the set. You could potentially make some concessions on Corruptors or Defenders, I suppose. However, those two ATs could potentially be leaving DPS on the table where Blasters don't. Sentinels don't have nearly the number of options to improve damage, sub level 35, that *any* of the other ranged blast using ATs do. Steam Spray for Sentinels is actually a big deal. It is a cone, sure, but is one of the few cones on Sentinels with a 10 target cap. That is unique. Steam Spray also hits like a truck, in Sentinel scale that is, and has better downtime than your Arctic Breath would. Not only does Steam Spray do good damage and hit more targets, it also does some fire damage helping to diversify damage against resistance. Steam Spray is actually a very solid choice. You can skip it, sure, but I'd think there would be some reasons for that choice. So I asked you about that. If any of this information is news to you, then forgive me for thinking you knew more. The way your build is currently construction it relies heavily on Water Burst. WB is the weakest AoE option in your entire kit and it looks like the focal point of the build. Hydro Blast isn't a bad T2 but it is the focal point of your entire set of ST options. Both Water Jet and Dehydrate can contribute more. Knockout Blow has such a long base recharge that unless you are building around it that power can hinder your damage vs helping it. In your build's case you *need* Knockout Blow because otherwise your overall DPS is even worse. You didn't ask for any improvements to the build or how to optimize it. Maybe you implied it and I obviously missed the intent. If you wanted to optimize the damage you're capable of, you can look at whatever Underfyre is talking about. I don't need to pick apart Underfyre's work because I trust the reasons on the decisions being made even without seeing it. Still let's walk through some thoughts to support their work. Water Blast's damage can be improved through damage procs. Super Reflexes is one, if not *the*, best proc enabling secondary in my experience. Super Reflexes can easily hit the low 40% positional defense numbers without too much thought. Yes, it does requiring stacking some pool powers, but you're doing that. Sentinel Evasion functions just like Stalker Evasion in that you have just one power with all consolidated AoE defense. This makes building AoE defense on Sentinel SR *very* easy. Melee and Range on Sentinels can easily be brought to 45%. Melee can get 5% from the ATO. Range can get 2.5% from the other ATO and even a 3 slot Thunderstrike or two will finish soft capping that defense. You could push to 50%+ if you wanted, but I don't feel it is necessary for the damage potential you give up. Still, it is a consideration to make depending on the content you want to solo. Once Super Reflexes gets you into 45% defense range, you can then focus on improving damage. There aren't good set bonuses at 6 slots to be doing this on Sentinels. Sentinel damage scaling on pure set building also isn't nearly as strong as Blasters. However, if you don't mind frankenslotting some attacks, especially Dehydrate, you can push considerably more damage on your single target with various procs. You could also make a decision to push AoE harder and use ST as a fall back. You could potentially do both but run risk of hindering your base accuracy/to-hit which may require you take Tactics. I say *maybe* because you can go several directions here. Any knockback enabling attacks can take Explosive Strikes. Any -defense attacks (i.e., Dehydrate) can take 3 procs. Dehydrate can also take on Touch of the Nictus negative energy proc *and* Theft of Essence if you want to get particularly creative. Water Blast has a lot of options here. That is why it is such a good set on Sentinels. You don't need 99% ED in your damage if you plan to take the Musculature Alpha. You can push into 80% range on 3 enhancements then use boosters to +5 those and Musculature Alpha to bring up back into the 120 to 130% ED range on damage. That is while also using 3 other slots to bring in additional damage with pretty good proc chance as long as you're not using Aqua Bolt or slotting directly for recharge. The strategy above does want to abuse high levels of global recharge. Super Reflexes is also good at enabling that too because you get +20% recharge with a power pick. Hasten on top of that and you're rocking 90% global recharge. Master Brawler with 6 slots using Preventative Medicine gets you a large recharge perk. At that point you're probably looking for spots to throw Luck of the Gamblers, Reactive Defense (full set - ideally in Weave or Evasion), the two 3% uniques, and the two ATOs for their overall bonuses. You'd be rocking quite a bit of recharge and defense by then. You can achieve 185% global recharge pairing any primary with Super Reflexes. How do I know this? It is because I have done it and done it more than once. It does require making some decisions on focusing in on ST or AoE. Also, in my case, I make a decision to skip travel powers. I rely on Ninja Run, Sprint, Swift, and Quickness to get me around. It isn't that bad to me and I sometimes even beat players with travel powers to missions. For flight zones I use jet packs. If you don't want to make those sacrifices for concepts, then that is fine. You can still hit, or get darn close, to perma-Hasten on Super Reflexes.

If all you're planning to do is run radios in PI, then you don't need much from a build. PI radios are about as tough as rolling your face on your keyboard. Sure, that's snarky, but it isn't far off reality. In less snarky (mind you it is tongue-in-cheek) words, you could run on all single-origin enhancements and be *fine* for what you're asking. If you'd like a bit a of a primer on what powers are good in Willpower and some basic ideas on where to start with slotting, then please browse the sticky at the top of this subforum. Willpower is a very basic set. It's simplicity is the beauty of its design. You give it a little bit of love and care with planning and you can have a pretty effective character. Psychic Blast is fairly easy. Skip Mental Blast. It's pretty much crap. Strongly consider taking the very first AoE attack you get and definitely the second one. That's just to cut down boredom of being limited to just 1 AoE and your T9. If you're not planning on going full on with some tricked out build, then go ahead and take Psionic Strike. It hits pretty freaking hard even if it takes a long time to animate. It works very well as filler if you're trying to keep things simple. TK Blast, Will Domination, and Scramble Thoughts are your best attacks available to you. You can, potentially, make an attack routine just out of those three attacks with incredibly high recharge. If you're not pushing for perma-Hasten, then Psionic Strike is your filler. It also has very satisfying crunch to it. Use 5 to 6 slots in your attacks and you're well on your way. Now, if you're looking for a build that is a lot more complicated than the above we'll have to have a talk. However, for general leveling and just radio missions feel free to explore the powers. Willpower is hard to build "wrong". It can be done, but you kind of need to try to mess it up. Psychic Blast only gets really complicated when you're crafting some bleeding edge build. Otherwise the set by itself is pretty mediocre. It too is hard to break unless you waste a lot of time hitting that Mental Blast button.

Search and you shall find... I'm sure I would probably do something differently now, but there are several ideas in this thread you should look over to get some ideas.