oldskool

It would be on the lower end of most AoE costs but moderate end of single target. Keep in mind AoE vs ST isn't the only factor on how endurance works.

Ah, that's not what I consider the tool tip. I'm referring to the detailed power breakdowns where you see the effects. I didn't even notice the "All DMG" in the short power description. That makes more sense for the confusion. That is a typo. Dodge doesn't do this.

Why do you think you failed? If your in-game character sheet is showing less than 45% are you using the basic or superior versions of Sentinel's Ward and Frozen Aura? Invul on Sentinels has no foe requirement. Neither does Sentinel Willpower for that matter. Ice Bolt is better than Ice Blast. Bitter Freeze Ray is worth slotting as an Attack. You could probably reduce slots in Snow Storm (and your S/L defense) to add a bit more to Bitter Freeze Ray. That should improve some damage and especially so if you keep using damage procs there. Damage in general will feel better once you get your Alpha slot finished and I'd recommend you go the Musculature path. Assault and Interfaces can also boost your damage so it won't feel too so much like being Captain PillowFist which is pretty common for Sentinels chasing full sets vs proccing out attacks.

1) I've never paid attention to Toxic and Psi resistance on other ATs. That said, I can assure the game's tool tip doesn't say "resistance to all damage". Agile, Dodge, and Lucky explicitly detail which resistances scale and those don't include Toxic and Psi. Again, I haven't ever bothered to track those resistances so I could be wrong. However, the game doesn't call them out. This is no different on the Sentinel but the Enduring is just a replacement for Lucky. 2) The one mechanical benefit Practiced Brawler has is that it can stack magnitude. I don't think that is worth it, but it is possible. Master Brawler is less "perma" in practice and more "available when I need/want it". This is because the duration of 30 seconds isn't relevant to a finite pool of temporary hit points. The game will streak breaker you and you will get hit. Those +400 hp (if you enhance the absorb) will vanish if you get a lot of unlucky hits. I've had it drop off within seconds and then have breather room while I just dodge everything. Then the cool down is over and I can put the shield back if I need it. I don't constantly refresh this skill and only do so as I feel it is necessary. 3) I wouldn't bother enhancing the Psi defense. I suppose one could do that if they had spare slots. I generally don't spare slots for that purpose nor do I bother enhancing Agile or Dodge. I just don't feel those are necessary investments on Sentinel SR but YMMV. Positional defenses only include positional defenses. They do not include psi defense. Psi defense is there for that purpose. What really happens is the game often uses two flags for attacks. One flag is a mode and other a damage type. So an attribute on an attack would look like "ranged_psionic" or "ranged_fire". The game will check which flagged defense category you have that is higher and use that to calculate results. So an attack like Mental Blast may have "ranged_psionic" in the game files. This means your ranged positional defense would check against that attack if that is the high value (and it should be). However, some powers like Dominate were flagged (and I think they still are... but haven't checked) as "psionic". So your ranged defense is useless there. Since Dominate is a hold power with a low damage effect you'd hardly notice this hitting you in practice due to the hold resistance and insignificant damage. There is no toxic defense in the game so any attacks typed as "toxic" without melee or range or just going to hit you. Some boss fights are like that and Vaz vomit is just toxic. My impression is that Sentinel SR is ahead of other versions. This is due to Master Brawler, Enduring and getting the Stalker version of Evasion. All of these things combined make it much stronger than the melee counterparts. The only exception for giving this a run is the Tanker version because the scaling resistance is amazing on that AT. Experience wise I actively play a Dual Pistols/Super Reflexes Sentinel and an Assault Rifle/Super Reflexes Sentinel. I've also played SR on a Tanker, Scrapper, and Stalker.

Willpower just isn't as strong on Sentinels as it is on melee. You can make Willpower fairly durable but Sentinel's don't have the hit point scaling to really abuse regeneration rates. The regeneration toggle on Sentinels doesn't scale with enemies, period. It is a flat rate. You can build around 700%+ regeneration with 2000 hit points. That's not nearly as impressive as what melee builds can achieve, even Scrappers. If all you do is hover at range and pew pew then Willpower is fine. *Any* set is fine if that is your game plan. However, the investment it takes to push Willpower's defenses to compete with other, stronger, sets will quickly show you how fragile Willpower really is. Willpower is OK on Sentinels. It isn't terrible but it isn't great when compared with other options. Invulnerability for Sentinels had an overhaul. It is functionally superior to Willpower in almost every way except against Psi damage. With the right set items you can plug that psi resist to modest levels while having a clutch heal in Dull Pain. Sentinel Invulnerability is quite powerful.

I play Water/Dark. My power loudout is similar but my slotting is vastly different. I happen to lean on primary attack powers over the epic ones. This is a matter of preference, but I am also fully aware of just how much damage Mind Probe + Dominate does. I only use that combo on exactly 1 character. I have a tendency to exemplar quite a bit so I don't find a high value in having my offensive capacity backloaded to level 35+. On the character that I do this I don't exemplar. It breaks their functionality. I'm going to walk through your build and toss ideas around in no structured order because that is how my brain works. Cloak of Fear. This power has 0 synergy on Sentinels when it comes to stacking the Fear effect. Fear is OK but since it only targets minions the value is a bit diminished. The to-hit debuff is a nice feature, but it also requires that the power hits first. You have no accuracy in that power and its base accuracy is absolutely terrible. This works by design though because the pulses come out rather fast. So it will do what it needs to do eventually. That said, it isn't nearly as reliable for mitigation as it seems especially given the high endurance cost it comes with. That damage proc won't be contributing much either. Oppressive Gloom, Water Blast, and Psychic Shockwave do have synergy. You have a number of stun powers that stack with each other. This does work. I run this. Fun fact, Whirlpool slows enemy speed. Stun forces them to walk vs run. Enemies try to run out of Whirlpool. When enemies are stunned and in Whirlpool they try to walk out... slowly. Water Blast has enough AoE options with large enough range that the stunned "drunk" walk doesn't save them from Steam Spray, Water Burst, or Geyser. I don't use an AoE immobilize in my build and I've never felt a need for it. Link Minds has a long animation but otherwise it is a great power to layer more defense. If you use 5x LotG in that power you can drive down the recharge while also getting a 3.75% S/L resistance bonus. This is one of the set bonuses that helps me hit 68% S/L resist without considering Cardiac or other resistance Alpha slot in the Incarnates (which would get me closer to 75%). Since I have the 3% scaling resistance not being right at 75% isn't a big deal. As my health goes down that resistance value goes up. I skipped a travel power to use Maneuvers and Combat Jumping. Ninja Run works for the character. You could skip Cloak of Fear and pick up Maneuvers. You could even build for flight speed and just run Hover. You have loads of options. Cloak of Darkness is worth more than the slots you gave it. It is the same value as Weave. Speaking of Weave, I use the exact same slotting strategy in Cloak of Darkness, Weave, and Maneuvers. You could use Red Fortune if it is cheaper than Reactive Defense. The set bonus at 2 pieces is identical. I tend to use 3pc Aegis in several of my resistance toggles for Aoe/Fire/Cold defense. I do use 3x Steadfast +Gladiator unique in Obsidian Shield. This is because I was going to use the KB IO and 3% defense *anyway* and I opted for the extra slot for full Steadfast to get the Resist/End IO. That also happens to net me small hit point bonus. Why not right? Speaking of hit points... If you have to ask if you were building for too much regen then the answer is almost always yes (I always like to build in more recovery to a point though). That answer also holds true for Regeneration, Willpower, and Bio Armor all of which are heavily invested in passive regeneration. Regeneration is the worst form of damage mitigation but it also scales with hit points. Stack your hit points higher and you start to regenerate more health per tick. There is an argument to be made about striking a balance, but in general stack hit points first. Your passive healing will fall in line naturally. You have a right idea about Obscure Sustenance and recharge. I see that Heal/Rch IO there. However, there things you may not know about how this works. First off, that power has tremendously high accuracy. The base accuracy is enough all by itself. I run some Preventative Medicine in that power (S/L resist bonus in the low set range). That Theft of Essence proc will hardly ever go off. This power isn't Dark Regeneration. It is unnecessarily penalized as an AoE since it has a sphere it works in but only hits one enemy. Procs in that power suck pretty bad. This is the opposite of Dark Regeneration in the melee version where procs can be a great idea. The direct heal on Obscure Sustenance is pretty much garbage. However, this power spikes your health regeneration for a minute. That spike starts really high (which Mids shows, mind you) and it goes down a sliding scale 2 more times over 60 seconds. Your endurance recovery spikes too but only for 30 seconds. The strongest endurance benefit lasts 10 seconds. Having this power recharge within 20 seconds allows for you to have high uptime on the stronger aspects of the effect. That final endurance recovery scale isn't that great. Tenebrous Regeneration can be fine with just 1 level 50 health IO. It can be nice with sets too. What you do is totally up to you. It is a good power but it may drop in priority. Attack wise I don't disagree with the powers in either build. However, you may want to take some ideas on slotting from Underfyre. I personally do not bother with proccing out all attacks. I value some damage % increase in my AoEs and focus procs into select single target attacks once I get the base damage improvement I want. Either path is a viable one.

It does take getting used to. I tend to prefer Defenders over Corruptors personally, but I do want to rebuild a /Traps Corr at some point. Always loved that set on that AT. I have a lot of Sentinels but I also play Defenders, Tankers, and Controllers. There are already plenty of brilliant folks contributing in those forums so I don't speak out there that much.

Apocalypse is in Power Push but could be swapped if that was a preference. The slotting on Power Burst could be used in Focused Power Bolt or any other combinations. You all do you. 🙂

Defenders have a lower damage scale than Sentinels. However damage scale isn't really the prime factor to consider for Defender overall damage output. Defender primaries are support sets but these sets include some incredibly potent force multipliers. Some sets like Storm Summoning can be so strong due to pet use they eclipse the damage dealing secondary by quite a bit. Storm Summoning can be so powerful it can make Controllers do ridiculous levels of damage which is well outsider their AT modifiers. So "overall" damage isn't as simple as comparing blast to blast numbers. Same can be said for Blasters who mix melee with ranged attacks. Those brave souls are capable of so much more than their blast sets would lead one to believe.

The Opportunity inherent and mechanic is likely up for some kind of rework. What that will look like is anyone's guess. Whether or not there will be any review of the power sets themselves for buffs is also up in the air. For the most part, Sentinel secondary power sets are pretty good. They scale at 0.7 of the Tanker scale where as Stalkers and Scrappers scale at 0.75. That's about 2~% on defenses and resistances. Not too big a deal but I find it annoying. Sentinel damage scale is 0.95 but the damage issue is compounded with a legacy system that really did pamper melee heavily. In a world where snipes weren't all insta-cast, the Sentinel's snipe replacements had a place in the game. Now they just don't compete all that well. If the inherent doesn't contribute to damage or teamplay then folks might be a bit pissed off. 🙂 That said, Sentinels can do better damage than much of community ever bothers to give it credit. It just isn't on par with the power creep because the AT hasn't had a pass like Blasters (twice now), or Tankers, or whatever is the FotM.

That role was already stated to be a ranged damage dealer like a Scrapper but with a rollercoaster mechanic on damage. It isn't performing in the manner it was supposed to. That's a paraphrased statement. I don't play whatever that is. If oldschool beatdowns include Double Dragon, Bad Dudes, or Street Fighter, then yeah. 😛

So for the first point that is a matter of several long and heated threads about the AT. Sentinel is a very jack of all trades and master of making flame threads. However, Sentinels can be really good at point number two. That is building something that is different and that can be fun for the right player. If you take Cross Punch earlier, then plan to be in a lot melee. This shouldn't be a big deal later on once you start getting the heals and shields. Parasitic Leech is a big cone so being close isn't going to be a problem. Running Cross Punch -> Aqua Bolt -> Water Jet -> Aqua Bolt, etc... is something you can do at high recharge. Cross Punch is really good so that isn't a complaint. If you're in melee range then Steam Spray becomes a nice addition. Both Sentinel ATOs widen the cone and it hits 10 targets. Something to at least consider. You don't need Tactics and Vengeance so you have some powers you could dump if you wanted. Dehydrate could be a filler if your attack chain feels light and it will heal you. You could potentially skip it if you like. I'd consider reducing some of your elemental defense in bonuses and look for melee ones. Your resistance powers can take the Unbreakable Guards for 4pcs which is a nice melee defense boost. At 3 slots you get Energy/Negative resistance which you are weak on. It is worth looking at. Bio Armor here has a bit of defense debuff resistance so stacking defense is a pretty decent plan. I don't have a build per se. I'm tinkering in Mids as I type so I know you can get into the 30's+ on Melee, and each of the elemental defenses. You will take a hit on S/L resistance, but the Bio Armor absorbs are really strong. Sentinels are plenty durable but they aren't close to Tankers. Anyway, what you have has potential just tossing some ideas around to think about other avenues and all that.

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).