oldskool

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.

What's the reason for skipping Water Jet and Steam Spray? Why slot Dehydrate as a heal? Have you actually played this? If so, is it as disappointing as it looks?

That's a lot better for damage. I'd suggest giving it a try on the test server when you can to make sure it checks all the boxes you're looking for. It may feel a bit squishier than what you had. However, enemies should fall a good bit faster. Also, you're a bit stacked on melee and taking Cremate. Burn could be a choice if you're mixing things up in melee. Hell, even Cross Punch is good. You've got lots of options. I tend to get in moments where I revisit my builds and change things every few months. So never be afraid to experiment and tweak it later.

Overall, this is a really good job. I'm not sure I'd go with Agility Core here though. I tend to prefer either Musculature, either one in this case, or Cardiac. Occasionally, I like Intuition Radial for certain characters. With Dominate you could run the Acc/Dmg for your accuracy needs and just go all procs for the rest. The IO with recharge hurts proc effectiveness and you have plenty of filler attacks as it is. I don't have too much to nitpick. There are certainly things I might do differently like with endurance sustain. However, you have 17s on Obscure Sustenance. Use that off cooldown every time you have a target and you're endurance issues shouldn't be much of a problem.

I think you may be giving up too much damage for the resistance plan you have. You have 3 purple sets in the build so cost shouldn't be that big a deal. However, you've used really crappy sets like Tempest purely for the resistance bonus. 1) Sentinels don't tank. You don't have the aggro management to consistently hold it. 2) Sentinels can absorb alpha strikes without bending over backwards to do it. You may have gone a bit too far here. 3) Damage scale is a weakness of Sentinels and the build above is an upgrade over a true "pillow fists" attempt but that is purely because Fire is a good set. 4) Overall slotting is really inefficient due to chasing resistance. Fire Blast is an utterly craptactular power. It doesn't deserve Apocalypse. It probably doesn't deserve to be in your build either. Defensive Opportunity isn't that great for sustain. It could have some uses because Fire's offense can suck endurance quickly and Fiery Aura's end management isn't great. I'd recommend setting a priority of doing damage first. Look at ways to improve your global recharge so you can focus on the stronger attacks in the Fire set. Dump crappy powers like Fire Blast and Rain of Fire (though Rain can potentially fit with Fire Cages anyway). Re-think your idea to skip Aim and how it interacts with Inferno for spiking damage. Reconsider taking Char, you shouldn't need a hold, and contemplate either Cremate for damage or Char for damage with procs. You don't need Fly and Superspeed, but if those are conceptual go for it. Not using at least 5 slots in Blaze seems almost criminal as Apocalypse would be so much better there. The Sentinel ATO sets are good for their bonuses but their proc effects are largely garbage. You can easily put those sets in lower priority powers. You can also get creative with their placement, but the way things currently are is a bit of a mess.

If speed and efficiency do not matter, then it does not matter what you run to "farm" on this character. Pick your favorite combos and go with it. You can run with a heavier Smashing/Lethal resistance set up, like Invulnerability, and run those kinds of missions. I've run AE farms with Super Reflexes. I've run AE farms with fricking Defenders. If completing these as fast as possible isn't your goal, then really just about any character can be made to run the missions.

What you have will work out just fine. It could maybe use some refinement in set choice and placement, but really it isn't that huge an issue. You've got the core powers that work which is the biggest hurdle to pass. Instead of nitpicking every decision you made just look at the character block in the spoiler. That's a build that has just as much defense and resist, slightly more recharge, slightly better DPS in the gun attacks, and still has 5 slots that I didn't even bother using. You could even change things around in some of the powers if you really wanted. Assault is the very last pick and it could be swapped out with Super Speed or Super Jump. It could be used at any point in the leveling process vs just 49. You can switch it around if you like. The point here is that Quickness + Swift + Sprint + Ninja Run is still pretty freaking fast. You could skip a travel power if you wanted (I do) and be just fine. If you know maps fairly well you can even beat some players to doors on occasion. For areas that have to have flight there is the flight pack. I have so much time on those that the occasional flight needs are covered well enough. Good luck!

"Efficacy". I guess it depends on what the desired result is. If you're looking for the ultimate BA build, then Regen hasn't been that ever since it was originally nerfed into the ground. Sentinel Regen is actually very good due to the regenerating absorb barrier it has, but it is still regen which means it has less mitigation layering than other sets. You can stack stack some set bonuses with the offensive powers to help reduce this issue but any -defense attacks can make you crumple to the floor. So does Psychic/Regen/Psi scratch an itch for people? No doubt about it. Are those characters destined for the greatest heights in PvE? Probably not. Now, if they jump into PvP that is a whole different animal.

Another way to go is focusing on Piercing Beam vs Charged Shot. One can also add some procs into Lancer, Piercing Beam, and Refractor Beam. Refractor can, and maybe even should, hold two -resistance procs. Piercing Beam has at least 3 damage proc options due to being an AoE and it also naturally provides additional resistance debuffing. So I trend towards favoring Disintegrate, Lancer, Piercing -> floating option. The floating option can either be Refractor or Single Shot for me, but I do have Charged Shot available as well. My Beam/Invul is one of the few Sentinels I run that has all of the primary powers. While I don't have full on perma-hasten, I still have 158% global rchg which is about 7 seconds of downtime before any Ageless effects. Since I put the Sentinel's Ward into Overcharge, I still have just under a 25 second recharge of that power. I tend to feel that Bio Armor works well with recharge stacking too, but the frankenslotting may hinder some defensive options. Still, my point is Beam is a very flexible power set when it comes to slotting and power use.

Some things to caution/consider: 1) Dark Blast vs Gloom isn't necessarily a big positive. The value here is going to depend a lot on global recharge because in general Gloom > Dark Blast. Offensive Opportunity by itself isn't worth that much of a DPS increase. It often ranges in the low single digits (+3 to 6 overall DPS). 2) Life Drain as a heal is hot garbage, and frankly isn't worth the pick most of the time. Gloom's base damage-per-activation is higher than Life Drain. With enough recharge you can chain cast Gloom, Abyssal Gaze, and Antumbral Beam. So Life Drain is optional. It can be a fun power though, and it can also benefit from various damage/utility procs from various sets. 3) You do want defense (melee, range, aoe) at, or very close to, 45%. Dark Blast as a set includes a good bit of -to hit which can help pad things out for you. Still, the more +defense you can build the better off you are. 4) You started off asking for something fairly specific (X and Y sets plus Mystic Flight). Unfortunately, not that many people post builds in this subforum. My recommendation is to do two separate searches. One search for nin and one search for dark. You should be able to cobble together a build by looking at how others have constructed their characters. That should work even if they aren't doing specific things like taking Mystic Flight (which as a power doesn't require anything for slots). Dark Blast and Nin have some synergy with the debuff plus defense. That said, there isn't so strong a synergy here that a specific path exists. You can build Nin to soft-cap or get really close. You can do that with *any* primary. You can get a consistent set of damage out of Dark and that isn't unique to using Nin, at all.

There is certainly some room to grow your search-fu grasshopper. The post below was literally the top (non-sticky) post in this subforum before you essentially created the same topic, again. All is not lost though. If you read this post you'll see an idea of how you can search to create this build without someone having to do it for you. Also, note Bill's comment about stacking recharge. That's essentially the build. Good luck!

If you haven't checked out the subforum yet, I'd highly recommend doing a search for "regen" and one for "fire". There are pages worth of */Regen and Fire/* builds on this subforum. There is no synergy between Fire and Regen other than their mutual benefit from stacking recharge. This means you can simply take ideas from any number of builds and just mash them together. There are a few folks that used to post pretty actively in here that played Fire/Regen but they aren't as chatty in this sub anymore. Hell, most folks only seem interested in threads that dump on the AT. Those tend to have the highest numbers of views. It's like how people tend to slow down at a car accident not for safety but to stare at the carnage.

Notable is a bit loaded. I'd say no though. The repel will still happen. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone talk about Master Brawler's recharge. MB is a fine on the default slot and it is a great set mule beyond that. You can push more healing in it if you want a larger absorb. I usually just click MB before an alpha strike and I'll refresh it if I feel like I am taking too many hits. What I don't do is click on cool down. You mention the idea of being used to clicking Practiced Brawler. Please note, PB and MB are two very different powers. PB is the mez resistance power and in order for you to have mez resist you have to activate it. MB pushes all of the mez resist into the toggles effectively making your resistance passive. It replaces the need to click for mez resist with an absorb shield that is effectively optional in game play.

That "no" part of the comment is a pretty big comment. I think it is fairly accurate for most Blasters. It isn't accurate for Defenders or many Corruptors. Though I guess it depends on what you're basing this on. If you base survival purely on mez resistance than Sentinels have an advantage. If you base it purely on passive mitigation then Sentinels have better than 0 the first armor toggle they turn on. However, this ignores active mitigation available to Blasters, Corruptors, and Defenders. For Blasters the options of active mitigation is fairly limited for most of the AT. Ice Blast is an exception to that. Still, Blasters can apply holds and immobilizes to singular enemies. So they have to pick their fights early on. Certain support sets can neuter enemy to-hit. Unfortunately, those often have longer cooldowns so they aren't available every spawn if you're moving really fast. However, if you solo on a Corr/Fender you can totally wait for those cooldowns to refresh. A Dark Miasma Defender can have more than 1 option for gutting to-hit chance even before the mid-20's. By the 30's once Fluffy comes into to play enemies are far less dangerous. Early on Sentinels can still get overwhelmed. They don't have the base hit points of Tankers or Brutes. I've had lowbie Sentinels crumple from being focus fired before. The mez resist isn't a big help when you get dropped by big attacks you can't absorb. When it comes to damage I've played more than one ranged blast set on at least 3 out of 4 ATs with access to it. When it comes to Dual Pistols I've played it on all the ATs it is open to. Due to how I build my Sentinels, they are almost always behind the Blaster in single target damage. Sometimes that gap isn't very big and sometimes it is. Often times it takes the use of the Blaster secondary to push it further. When it comes to Corruptors and Defenders the Sentinel is still ahead on single target. In AoE Corruptors can be far better. Defenders can be only marginally better but this depends on what powers I am leveraging. Any whole sale Sentinels do less damage than Defenders, or even many Corruptors, is a load of crap.

Here are some observations from having run both: Nin gets its AoE defense earlier than than SR. However, AoE defense building to 45%+ can get a little tricky for Nin depending on your build plan. If you plan to just run a ton of Winter Sets with their innately high AoE defense, then this isn't a problem. If you want to run frankenslotting slot with procs, then it can potentially be an issue. SR gets its AoE defense later, but the set is so self-contained it can soft-cap defenses no matter what you do with your primary. Depending on your primary the endurance heal in Nin can become completely superfluous to the build. With the right end procs and power slotting endurance isn't a big issue. It is a great power for exemplar content though. SR has passive endurance recovery on the scale of Quick Recovery from Regen/Willpower. This means you do not need to click a button to recover endurance which in turns means no time spent clicking a power that does 0 damage. I have 4~ end per second on my SR Sentinels. The click heal vs click absorb isn't much of a debate. They both have their merits. Fully slotted, Master Brawler grants me over 400 extra hit points and the cooldown is trivial. The ability to absorb damage with this ability is quite strong. So much so that it makes it feel on par with the click heal in Nin. Six of one, half a dozen of the other here. Shinobi-Iri and Quickness both let me run fast enough to get to missions without a noticeable difference between the two. Shinobi-Iri stacks aggro reduction with the Stealth IOs where Quickness does not. This does give Nin an advantage in using PBAoE powers with impunity. Nin has far more IO set diversity options going for it due to powers like Blinding Powder (purple confuse set!!) than SR does. This can give users some creative wiggle room and that really was fun to explore. Nin and SR both have a number of quality of life features going for them. However, SR can be easier to build in more damage with any primary you pair it with. Powers like Quickness can allow for attack patterns that just aren't possible with other secondary sets. This is especially true when you start incorporating damage procs because the +20% recharge makes up for not having set bonuses. So far each of my SR heroes easily achieves 185% global recharge where other sets without a Quickness-like effect hit 165%. That can be the difference between running an extra filler hit or not. It can be the difference in how you slot a specific power. SR grants that on top of allowing you to soft-cap the positional defenses without as much headache as Nin.

No you can't switch it. Fun fact though. Despite the "minor" damage of Flares it is actually a better power from an efficiency standpoint than Fire Blast is. Flares is a better power from its damage-per-activation metric. It ends up being a better "filler" power to the real heavy hitters (i.e., Blaze). Offensive Opportunity being triggered by Flares gives it one other reason to take it. TL;DR: Flares isn't a waste, and in most cases Fire Blast (the T2) can be a waste.

4m30s is pretty good for a game that hasn't really increased any of its difficult yet has made a new damage meta despite that.

No problem. It was easy because I've played this combo and used it to test a number of things.

I'd be OK with teaming up with anyone running an experimental build. In fact, I don't bother to check people's builds and then lend advice without their asking for it at all. That's just being a jerk. I'll just be a jerk on the forums where people share builds openly. 😁 Since you've opened up the idea for "optimization" suggestion, then let's go with that. You're proposed idea is not optimized, but I think you know this. Let's look at the glaring holes in the plan and see how it can be fixed (and it can - somewhat). You're skipping Reconstruction and replacing it with Life Drain. You're also skipping Instant Regeneration. The logic behind this is that your team mates may need to babysit you. OK, so while I may not get annoyed with a player doing this, you can put money on it that it will piss off some people. You're essentially making a glass cannon Sentinel with subpar defenses and an unknown qualifier for damage. If you're just running vanilla sets and no procs in Dark then the damage could potentially be lackluster. You're purposefully skipping Instant Regeneration which is a power that sets Sentinel Regeneration apart from its melee counterparts for kicks and hoping no one cares. You're swapping Reconstruction, a cornerstone power of the set, for Life Drain. That latter part does sound bizarre. Most folks know that Reconstruction's 25% heal is better than Life Drain's heal. What most folks probably don't know is that the Sentinel version of Life Drain is only 2/3's of every other version of the power in the game. That's right, in the dev's infinite wisdom the defensive modifiers on the Sentinel apply to *everything* including its version of Life Drain. This makes that skill far, far, weaker for healing than I think you really understand. If you need to use Life Drain in combat, and slot it as a heal, then you're hurting your damage potential further. Fast Healing, Health, and Integration alone are not enough. Passive regen in this game isn't a great means to avoid kissing the floor. You need to layer other mitigation strategies in order to help. The Regeneration power set has very shallow options for mitigation layering. You can build up some defense and resistance but you still benefit from an active heal like Reconstruction. Can you build a character with powers you want as outlined above and still include the options in Regen that make it work? Yes. You're going to have some slotting issues so you'll need to prioritize the important powers, but you can certainly make this work. Dark Blast (Take these): Gloom, Umbral Torrent, Abyssal Gaze, Aim, Dark Obliteration, Antumbral Beam, Blackstar Regeneration (Take these): Fast Healing, Reconstruction, Quick Recovery, Instant Regeneration, Dismiss Pain, Integration, Resilience You can still take every pool power, include Soul Mastery, that you listed originally. However, with the planning above you'll have access to a much stronger heal and a passive absorb barrier that will regenerate on its own timer.

I've seen this conflating of "Offensive Opportunity" with just "Opportunity" a few times in this thread. We're all aware that the inherent has multiple effects, right? Right? We all know that Opportunity in its current form will always apply a minor resistance and defense debuff on a target after the first successful hit, right? We all know that once you trigger either Offensive or Defense Opportunity that a single target gets a -20% resistance debuff for 15 seconds, right? We all know that both Offensive and Defensive Opportunity grant their own independent buffs that last for 15 seconds and are target agnostic, right? If you didn't know any of the above, then now you do. Offensive Opportunity, the damage boost version, is not limited by target. The big resistance debuff is, but not the damage boost effect. Same goes for Defensive Opportunity. The resource return applies to attacks being dealt during 15 seconds not a specific target. The big resistance debuff is not a requirement to return health or endurance for the duration. Now, is it a problem that the largest damage boost of the effect (the big resistance debuff) is limited to one target? Yes; I completely agree there, but I just want to make sure we all understand the current design while tossing around ideas here.