oldskool

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.

Ragnarok is "OK". The reason why I suggest swapping it out is because Bombardment gets you some resistances to stack plus 5% recharge. You can't fully 5 slot the purple Immobilize set in your current build so may as well swap Ragnarok for that one and actually make gains in recharge. If you like Paralyzing Jolt, keep it. I would probably run Maneuvers, but you don't have to do it. You don't need tons of Luck of the Gamblers in your build. If you go through all of the bullet points I presented you can hit 172.5% global recharge with only 1 LotG. With boosters in Hasten that is only 1~ second off perma.

@Doctor Megalomaniac you're on the right track. I'll throw out some suggestions to consider which may (or may not) be helpful for you. 1) I'd consider swapping out Power Blast for Power Bolt. Bolt would make things feel a bit smoother, in my opinion, but the real reason is Offensive Opportunity > Defensive Opportunity (if only slightly). Energize is effectively perma so the endurance resource restore from Defensive might be a bit less appealing. Energize also gives you a lot of regen and the minor heal isn't that big a deal. Bolt and Blast have very similar damage per activation so it isn't a big deal either way on that front. The very minor damage effect of Offensive Opportunity could be a slight improvement since Energy Blast overall is a bit lacking. The bulk of your damage is in Burst, Push, and Focused PB anyway so the T1 vs T2 debate is minor, at best. 2) I agree that 2 slot Hasten would be ideal. 3) There could be some general slotting adjustment ideas to tighten things up I'd consider lowering the slots in Combat Jumping down to 3. I'd use maybe a Defense IO + 3% armor from Reactive (for slight S/L resist) and the 5% PvP. Move a slot to Hasten. You could boost both of those recharge mods to +4 each and get closer to perma-hasten. You don't need 6 slots of Ragnarok (or even that set at all). I'd move one slot to Havoc Punch and 5 slot that for the set. That's 5% Smashing/Lethal defense and 2.5% melee. I'd maybe swap the set in Charged Armor to another Unbreakable Guard. This would move melee defense to 29% I'd run a full Def IO plus Def/End in Weave vs what you have. You don't need the endurance reduction that bad with Energize. This will bring Melee defense right at 30.2% I'd maybe drop a slot (or more, or even remove) from Paralyzing Jolt and 5 slot Chain Fences. With Chain Fences you could swap the set to Trap of the Hunter for Smashing/Lethal resistance. You could run the 5pc purple set and remove Ragnarok out of Explosive Blast. EB could take on Bombardment instead. You could run the same set in Energy Torrent. This would get you 68% S/L resistance with 172.5% recharge. So not bad on some compromises there. You'd lose some HP but only lose an effective 2 hp regen per second. Cardiac Alpha would push your resistance to 74% on Smashing/Lethal if you wanted to go that route. Endurance issues wouldn't be a thing with all of that endurance reduction. Alternatively, you could run Musculature for more damage which I would recommend. Either one of these paths would work really well though.

Sonic is broken but that bug is in favor to the player. All of Sonic's cones seem to double dip the Opportunity mechanic. It is the only set where this effect is so pronounced. Some sets don't do this at all or a few others may have one AoE power that does it (i.e., Assault Rifle). Players can also exploit the system queue to stack both Offensive and Defensive Opportunities at the same time. That's also not intended by the description of the effect, but it is possible. Anyhoo, these are all of the exploits that I didn't want to get into because they aren't the fundamentals of how the mechanic is supposed to work.

This statement is a little misleading. The 20% buff is only valid when the Shinobi-Iri stealth effect is active. Once your stealth is suppressed so is the damage buff. This functionally works as a sneak attack-like buff to the first attack in combat. It is not a persistent 20% damage buff (I wish!!).

You may be confusing the term viable with optimal. Viable means something works and optimal means something is the best. Regeneration hasn't been considered "optimal" ever since it was nerfed back in the before times. That said, Regeneration has always been viable. Every Sentinel secondary is viable. Some are better than others (optimal) but they are all able to contribute to a functional character (viable).

Water Blast does have the weakest ST out of all of the primaries and one of the strongest AoE toolkits. So don't gauge Sentinel ST damage based off a set that doesn't specialize in it. I'm not saying you are doing that but it is something to be mindful of. Just a quick note, if you type "psi" in the search bar and search "this forum" you're going to get a lot of results. Help with Psychic Blast seems almost as popular a topic as help with Dual Pistols. Psychic Blast a few notable weaknesses. Understanding those weaknesses will help you understand why certain power sets are "good". 1) The most glaring issue is robot resistance to psychic damage. 2) Slow cast times for Psionic Strike and Scramble Thoughts. 3) Anemic area damage potential. 4) Some end game limitation on max performance. In the case of #1, a way to get past this weakness (at least lessen it) is to use damage procs to help diversify damage type. Psychic Blast by itself doesn't have a lot of great options to diversify damage on its own. Telekinetic Blast is about it and Scramble Thoughts for making the most out of the Apocalypse (negative damage) proc. Will Domination is a very strong power but once you've put targeted procs in the other two you're left with the PvP toxic proc. This ties into #4. I highly recommend taking on an Epic/Patron pool Hold power to stuff procs into it. This not only strengthens the attack chain (ties to #2) but diversifies damage further. The Hold category can introduce a purple smashing damage proc (Unbreakable Constraint), a lethal proc (PvP hold set), toxic damage (PvP ranged damage set), and more psi damage (Ghost Widow's set, etc.). #2 and #4 are also somewhat related. Psionic Strike is essentially a skippable power if all you care about is maximizing damage potential. The core ST attacks of Psychic Blast are TK Blast, Will Dom, and Scramble Thoughts. You want to try to chain cast these as much as possible without relying on Mental Blast or Psionic Strike at all. Mental Blast is pretty bad. It is so bad that using it, even for Offensive Opportunity, can actually lower your total damage than if you hadn't used it at all. Psionic Strike could be good if it had more proc potential, but it doesn't. If you're skipping these to make room for Epic powers, then your build is going to be rather backloaded on power. This a common problem on virtually all min-max Sentinels, but this is a power set I actually recommend it to overcome issue #1. Quick point about the above though... Take it with a grain of salt. Not every enemy you face is a freaking robot. Clockwork, a common low level enemy faction, aren't robots and you can curbstomp them rather easily. There are multiple AV's with powers such as Unstoppable or Moment of Glory that are helpless against psychic damage. Still, psychic damage is one of the higher resisted types in end game factions and it is a potential problem you won't avoid in Gold side arcs. So while I would recommend a consideration to build in a certain way here it is not all doom and gloom. Issue #3. Psychic Scream isn't great. Most cones on Sentinels are 'meh' but Psychic Scream is the 'meh' of 'meh'. Tornado gets better at level 18 but it has a default 20 second cooldown with a 2.5s animation (arcanatime). So you're AoE may feel pretty terrible until you finish the build. An Epic AoE can help but again this further backloads the performance in the build. OK, so what makes for a complimentary secondary here? 1) Bio Armor 2) Radiation Armor 3) Energy Aura 4) Super Reflexes 5) Electric Armor A runner up is Invulnerability just because Sentinel Invulnerability is not only really strong but it is because of its differences from its melee counterparts (actual end management, an absorb, etc.). Any other set would just be because it is something you want to play for flavor or whatever. While the stuns of Psychic Blast and Dark Armor do have some synergy neither of these really overcome any of the flaws. Bio Armor is simple to understand why it works. Bio Armor directly adds damage. Furthermore it can add toxic damage which can help diversify damage output. I'm not recommending Bio Armor because it is one of the best defensive sets because it most certainly isn't that. Bio Armor is the most direct method to add more punch that is really worth your time. Fiery Aura could also be a runner up, but frankly I don't care for Sentinel Fiery Aura in anyway shape or form. 2 through 5 are easy to explain. It's all about the recharge. Particle Shield, Entropy Aura, Quickness, and Lightning Reflexes all add +20% global recharge. This is a considerable boost to being able to prune out powers like Mental Blast, Psychic Scream, and Psionic Strike from your loadout. These effects help smooth out your power availability which is, in turn, a damage increase. I'm rather partial to either Super Reflexes (the Sent version is quite strong) or Energy Aura. Either of these two are fairly self-contained power sets that can eventually soft-cap their defenses without much, if any at all, assistance from slotting your attacks. This is especially true of Super Reflexes. Radiation Armor is something you're already playing so you know about its other damage boosters in Meltdown and Ground Zero plus its solid healing capability. Electric Armor is also very solid on Sentinels. So there you go. 5 secondary powersets within the Sentinel choices that help with Psychic Blast's weaknesses. Other options can be good too but don't answer the challenge to the weaknesses nearly as well, in my opinion.