oldskool

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.

Opportunity has multiple parts. 1) Most (all? - can't confirm at the moment) attacks impose a very minor debuff pair on targets (this is negative defense and resistances). This does not stack with itself but it will be continually refreshed until your target dies is arrested. 2) Once meter is built to 90% your first two attacks will highlight. 3) On a successful hit with either attack a single target will get a big target under them. That target will have a -20% resistance debuff to all damage types. This lasts for 15 seconds. 4) The first attack in a primary grants "Offensive" mode which adds a minor damage effect to all of your attacks for the next 15 seconds. 5) The second attack in primary grants "Defense" mode which adds a minor resource restore effect (both health and endurance) to your attacks for 15 seconds. #4 & #5 can apply to your area attacks therefore hitting multiple targets with it. #3 is only applicable to one target and it does not transfer on death. As a side note, this mechanic in general is fairly crappy in its current state and will likely get scrapped by the HC team. Also, you don't need both the T1 and T2 attack since their 4 & 5 effects aren't so powerful that they make or break a build. You may want both of those powers for any number of reasons but you don't need them to be effective. None of the above includes discussion of any current bugs/exploits that may exist in certain powers/sets. I don't expect any of that functionally to remain if this mechanic is scrapped.

No. It doesn't go deep enough into what happened with the Scrapper nerfs. You see, you have to remove all of the aglets from your shoelaces and toss out all of your fluoride products in order to see the truth. The REAL truth. The real truth is that all dogs do NOT go to heaven. Often times dogs to backyard barbecues. No, no, it isn't for a dinner of grilled hot dogs but instead it is for avocados. Avocados wrapped in tissue paper. THAT is the reality that NCSoft didn't want you to know about. Look, we all get it. Dogs cheat a poker. Scrappers were all originally intended to wear their shoes on their hands and punch with their feet. The game couldn't handle this. So the back ground metrics and evade frames were added to compensate for the lack of stopping power of the F-150 fired from the hip. All you have to do is go on a test server and put a Scrapper next to a Brute. The results are immediately clear: refrigerator. Given all of the facts above, I'm not sure why there is any debate. You all must be macaroons to think otherwise. TAKE OFF THE BLINDERS SHEEPLE!! The way you know something is fraud is because you can't prove it!

@Fortunetellerget out of my head! LOL, this song is exactly what was in my mind every time I read "pushing your Scrapper to the limit". This thread has become the best thread because of the sheer laugh factor.

You'll know that...

@OnePatriot procs and Agility Alpha work against each other. You're reducing the effectiveness of the Pistols/Suppressive Fire slotting by doing that. Did you select Impervium Armor for the Psi defense? If so, then I'd dump that idea. You need more Smashing/Lethal defense. You can use a set like 4pc Unbreakable Guard to work your way up. So 2 powers with this 4pc set soft-caps S/L. That could Tough and Power Armor or some other combination. Since you can soft-cap without Agility, Musculature becomes an ideal path for damage. Obviously you can go other directions for various reasons but none of them will push your damage like Musculature Core will. (Musculature and Intuition Radials are lesser damage buffs... and you're not really making use of Intuition's strength). You're chasing some resistance buffs like the Aegis unique. It's OK, but I'd prioritize that last on list. Soaking Psi damage isn't something EA is great at and you're unlikely to notice a significant difference with what you have anyway. You have 7 copies of the LotG recharge IO. You can only make use of 5. I don't think Afterburner needs a speed IO but it can be a nice mule for specific globals like the PvP armor one. i think you can drop a slot from both Flight and Afterburner OR you could find a 2pc travel set piece to go there. You don't need to dramatically change much here. You're stacking regen with 2pc PvP and LotG. I'd prioritize this lower on the list since regeneration isn't a great form of mitigation. You're better off running 5 slots in Pistols with the Superior Winter's Bite set than doing what you're doing with Executioner's shot. Put procs in Executioner's Shot and Suppressive Fire if you have to choose. Pistols has about a 29-30% chance to trigger the damage effects and 8-10% for Decimation. You're chance to trigger those in Executioner's Shot is much higher which will improve your damage more. That's it though. While I'm not super fond of Winter Sets (I don't think the expense is necessary here) what you have works. It just needs to be tweaked to the areas that deserve focus and lower the priority on the effects that aren't really going to help as much as you think.

So to sum things up then we can say... K. There really isn't any more to discuss, end thread. This will just turn into circular arguments over fantasy. Let it die. Let it die in fire because that's fitting.

What is the point of Scrappers? Let's ask Conan...

OK then. I think the Defense build is trying too hard and the Offense build isn't doing enough. In the spoiler below is an approach to merge both ideas into one character. No, it doesn't cap the resistances but 71% S/L is pretty close. Cardiac Alpha slot would hard cap that and raise the others up a little. In the build below, I do what I normally don't do, and that's bring in both Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom. These two effects actually can work together. Enemies not feared can be stunned and vice versa. It can remove an awful lot of incoming damage when you're in melee range. Oh, you should be in fair close quarters. I saw hover. Dual Pistols is not a great set for playing it safe from a distance. Dark Armor is actually decent at neutering minion damage in melee. I'd say give it a whirl on a test server before burning a respec. Normally, I'd prefer to have Maneuvers but you're only missing like 2% defense without it. Since DA doesn't exactly soft-cap all positions or types, who cares? Jack-of-all-trades defense. Something to think about here... I kept much of the plan similar to yours. It's not a bad plan at it's heart. However, you can make a choice to push melee/smash/lethal or not. By this I mean you could sub out Aegis (AoE focus) for Unbreakable Guard (melee focus). Also, Hail of Bullets grants about 10% for several seconds during the opener. Cloak of Darkness + a Stealth IO can let you do that fairly safe. Nitpicks... Obscure Sustenance kinda blows for procs. It's effectively a single target power that doesn't really need to be targeted because it has this weird sphere-like range going for it. Basically, it has all of the drawbacks of being an AoE and really none of the perks. The damage procs don't go off against multiple targets. Just one. I've tried it with Theft of Essence, and I pulled that thing right out. Wasn't happy with the results. One nice thing it has going for it though is the really high native accuracy. You can just use a regular heal set and you'll be OK. I like Preventative Medicine here but you can go a different route with it. You had some accuracy IOs in your other versions. The power doesn't need it. Just push that recharge down so it can be available every 20 seconds or less. This is a maintenance buff and not an oh shit button. Dual Wield is pretty much garbage. In your "Offense" build DW looks better until you turn on Incendiary Ammo. Then the DPA of Pistols actually equals DW despite your proc slotting. In the build below my Pistols set up, and it isn't even maximized on procs, is adding an average +40 DPA to the power (over your offensive build's DW that is). That's before you account for the damage increase from Achilles' Heel. Pistols is the better of the two powers and it also gives you Offensive Opportunity. You shouldn't need Defensive Opportunity if you're on top of Obscure Sustenance refreshing and have Health/Stamina slotted well. Get your Accolades too because it just helps. Piercing Rounds is also garbage. The power can have its niche and all depending on what one was doing. However for doing "good" damage it is pretty much a dead power. In teams enemies will be dead long before the animation finishes and hits its 3 target cap. In single target Suppressive Fire outclasses it in every way. Sentinel Dual Pistols is the kind of combat archetype of lots of rapid fire hits and not really the big chunky ones. You can effectively chain cast multiple powers with less than a 2 second animation and reap benefits from multi-proccing. Piercing Rounds can do some interesting things on Defenders and Corruptors but for Sentinels and Blaster's it's kind of a let down. You're definitely chasing the FF:Recharge gimmick a lot. It's not always a bad idea. However, I think the initial implementations you had aren't nearly as mindful of why it is powerful. It's a strong IO for lowering the cooldown of really big effects. DP/DA doesn't really have any big flashy "save my bacon" or "destroy the world" kinds of things. You'd lower the cool down on Hail of Bullets by a few seconds (which does have value) and likely increase your casting of Bullet Rain (again, value). However, against a boss this isn't nearly that amazing and that's why Pistols/Suppressive/Executioner get the slotting they do. So the question becomes do you want to shave a few seconds off being able to cast an AoE or do more meaningful damage against targets that can take you down? Either way is a battle of attrition but Cloak of Fear/Oppressive Gloom reduce a significant bit of that for the lower tier enemies. You'll never beat a Blaster in AoE. You're not even going to get all that close either on a Sentinel with Dual Pistols. This has a lot to do with Blasters getting Build-Up in their secondary plus their target caps and general damage through Defiance. However, the single-target damage shouldn't be so night and day if you run some procs. So the build below tries to make that up. I'd suggest one of two Alpha slots to work on first. Either Cardiac or Musculature. You give up damage with Cardiac but you get some resistances plus endurance reduction which is nice quality of life. You can always invest in the T1 Cardiac and then work towards Musculature as you go to get that one up to T4. Play your cards right and you shouldn't need Ageless for endurance despite having Cloak of Fear. Obscure Sustenance will set your end recovery to 5 per second for 10 seconds and then scale down for the next 10 seconds, and then again for 10 seconds, and then drop off. This is why getting this activated every 20 seconds or less is ideal. It's to keep your endurance recovery high enough to offset the toggle use. On the plus side your regeneration rate will spike to over 1,000% for several seconds and it's final drop off doesn't happen until a full minute. An alternative idea to the entire Flight pool (fly/hover/afterburner) is Sorcery (Mystic Flight/filler/Rune of Protection). Rune of Protection gives you a pseudo resistance T9 power which Dark Armor lacks. You don't need it, but it can be a nice to have. Same goes for Unleash Potential in Experimentation.

It's very likely an exploit since that is not how the descriptive text handles the effects. It's also been known, to some I guess, for at least a year. I've never pulled it off myself, but then again I don't put a high value on taking both the T1 and T2. So it's gimmick doesn't really translate very well to effective damage dealing in all cases. A set like Sonic can get use out of its T1 and T2 due to the nature of the set. It's not always that way with every primary. Sonic also seems to have some other beneficial bugs in the AoE powers. Each AoE hit double dips the Opportunity mechanic. So these attacks not only build more meter than they should doing they also double dip the effect. This means you'll get more out of Defense Opportunity healing than you would on other sets without this bug. Assault Rifle's Flamethrower does the same thing but Buckshot doesn't from my testing. It makes hitting a large spawn with Full Auto (with Opportunity Strikes) + Flamethrower a practical guarantee for 100% meter in two power clicks. I think there were a few other AoEs that did quirky things with Opportunity too, but I don't recall which those were specifically. It's a cute gimmick, but it doesn't make the inherent all that much better for most sets (for Sonic it actually does).

How is sharing the build going to help without Mids? I'll just write out suggestions then. It's anybody problem. Tankers and Brutes can stick enemies due to taunt mechanics. Enemies will flee when they take damage even as Scrappers, Stalkers, etc... I've use the Caltrops power from the Ninja Tools pool to actively encourage enemy running. That power slows them though so it isn't as disruptive as it sounds. There are a few advantages to that strategy. 1) Fleeing enemies aren't attacking which is damage reduction in its own right. 2) It keeps enemies out of melee range where they would do more damage anyway. 3) My range is a strength here. Shooting them in the back isn't nearly as annoying as chasing them as a melee. Not encouraging you change from Psi. Its a really powerful set. Just noting that running enemies can be exploited if you plan for it. You're Nin though. You don't need to worry about enemies running from Hail of Bullets if you can get the drop on them. And.... you can. Shinobi-Iri + Stealth IO reduces aggro down to the point where you should be able to launch Hail of Bullets before Enemies notice you. At the end of the animation the power will knockdown some of the targets if running an elemental ammo or all of them if you run just standard (all being all 10 targets successfully struck). Even if they start running at the beginning of the animation as long as they were hit by it they will take damage. With Psi Mastery, especially Link Minds, you can soft-cap the positional defenses far easier than without. You can do this on fairly minimal slotting too which is fantastic. You may want to increase slots for other bonuses, but a bare minimum approach will still get you there. I'll walk you through some ideas and you can ponder them. First off, let's talk powers you can skip. You can't take everything and you don't need to. You can skip Dual Wield and Piercing Rounds. You don't need Defensive Opportunity when you have both Seishin-teki Kyoyo and Kuji-in Sha. With high recharge either of those clicky powers will keep you topped off. Dual Wield, unless you're building it out with procs, is a damage loss when compared to your other options. It's an OK power but you have far better choices. Same goes for Piercing Rounds. Piercing Rounds has been a DPS loss for me every time I've had it. So I no longer take it unless I am building something very specific with it (as I do on my Defender). In Nin you can skip Blinding Powder and Kuji-In Retsu. You don't need either. Period. This means in Pistols you should take: Pistols Empty Clips Suppressive Fire Swap Ammo Bullet Rain Executioner's Shot Hail of Bullets Swap Ammo cannot be enhanced. Everything else should get 6 slots. I tend to prefer trying to get Pistols, Executioner's Shot, and Suppressive Fire to run at least 3 procs each. These can be 1 utility plus 2 damage or whatever combination you wish. The two ATOs can go in Bullet Rain/Empty Clips. Neither of these are dramatic improvements to Sentinels; which is unlike the ATOs in other ATs. They are good for their bonuses, especially the 10% global recharge. Hail of Bullets should get the Purple PBAoE set (5 slots of it at least) if you can afford it. Slap the PvP -resistance proc as the 6th slot whenever you can. Its a damage boost. Alternatively, you could put Force Feedback Chance for Recharge there. For Nin you should take: Ninja Reflexes Danger Sense Shinobi-Iri Kuji-In Rin Seishin-teki Kyoyo Kuji-In Sha Bo Ryaku Kuji-In Rin doesn't need additional slots. Bo Ryaku doesn't "need" extra slots either. You may find yourself running out of slots so putting that as a low priority isn't that big a deal. Any of the +plus defense powers only need a total of 3 slots to be effective when you have Link Minds in the build. I'd recommend adding a 4th slot to one of them for the Kismet +accuracy. That's fairly important if you're pushing procs in the attack powers and a little less important if you're stacking +accuracy (still try to make room for it anyway as an anti-debuff measure). Kuji-In Sha can work on a few slots or all 6. All 6 means you should be planning to use Preventative Medicine for the full bonus. Otherwise some other sets like Doctored Wounds or Panacea can work at 5 slots for their recharge bonuses. Seishin-Teki Kyoyo doesn't need more than a few slots either. 6 slot Performance Shifter can be a thought if you need AoE defense, but otherwise you just want to drive the recharge down a bit. You can easily get this power into a 17-20 second recharge range with some minimal slotting and global recharge. If you're burning endurance faster than this power can keep up, then something is wrong. Dual Pistols isn't that heavy on endurance. That's about it. Luck of the Gambler is one of your best bets for sets since you can get additional 7.5% global recharge out of it 5 times. It stacks with other 7.5% set bonuses (the LotG effect is not consider a set bonus at all). You should consider taking Boxing or Kick to unlock Tough and Weave. You don't need more than 2-3 slots here. Tough and Bo Ryaku can both take one of, or both, of the 3% global defense IOs. That's an easy 6% defense to everything. Weave can be another LotG carrier. Consider taking Maneuvers and 2-3 slot it. Put something like Reactive Defense (defense, def/end, scaling resistance) in there. Consider taking Assault too. Its minor damage but it will buff allies too. Combat Jumping is also nice to have and grants a spot to put either a generic defense IO or the PvP 5% resistance or whatever you want. Strongly consider Hasten. In Psi - Mind Probe Dominate Link Minds Mind Probe and Dominate can add a lot of damage. Mind Probe with at least 5 slots can hold the purple melee set or some other beneficial global recharge set like Crushing Impact. You don't need that power for defense sets but those can be options too. Dominate can be made into a damage monster with 6 lots using mostly damage procs. You can also just use it as a hold and go minimal slots for global recharge with Basilisk's Gaze. Link Minds - slot it with some defense sets. Ideally you want some def/rch or def/rch/end in that power to get it closer to a 90 second recharge. If you're following along, every single power mentioned here adds up to the 24 power picks you're limited to. It also accounts for most of the slots. The remaining slots can be put into Health and Stamina. Health using the 4 unique procs is a good way to handle those slots. Stamina should get a Performance Shifter +end if nothing else. The above also gets you at least 45% defense to Melee/Range/AoE during Link Minds and at least 150% global recharge to get you started. With those metrics you're Alpha Slot for the Incarnates has no real need to get Agility at all. You can go for Musculature and buff your damage further. Your Interface and Hybrid slots can also be damage oriented as much of your defense is already taken care of. Your Destiny slot can be whatever you want to fill in your gaps. You don't need Ageless but it can be nice. Ageless does have a path which adds Defense Debuff Resistance (Radial Epiphany path) which is really handy for Nin. You're not going to hard cap resistances on Nin so Barrier also becomes attractive. Rebirth's healing can have a noticeable impact on high defense builds. I think it is an underrated Destiny. P.S. You don't need a travel power with Shinobi-Iri + Ninja Run + Sprint. It's about as fast as default Flight with more than enough vertical mobility to leap over obstacles. You can dump Assault for a travel power or even for a 1 slot wonder with Mass Hypnosis. Nothing above is locked in stone but merely one way of putting it all together.

FF doesn't stack. (You can keep refreshing it, but it doesn't apply +100% recharge each time even if Mid's lets you toggle it on) Since you're not asking for feedback, I'll refrain from further commentary too.

I haven't played that combo specifically. I've used Dual Pistols with Nin and currently prefer it with Super Reflexes. Energy Aura I have on a couple other characters since the flashy effects work better for their look. I can't imagine the combo being all that different from what I've played previously though. I like to play fairly close to the action since Hail of Bullets is a point-blank power. I'd play in close quarters even if the T9 was ranged only. Hover blasting is for pansies Blasters. All kidding aside, Energy Aura is a really good defensive set once you've put the time into it. Dual Pistols isn't for everyone. Some people really like it, and a lot of people don't. I happen to prefer Dual Pistols on any of the ATs that aren't Blasters. It's just not a set that works well for me on that AT. On Sentinels though it can be pretty good. Maybe not be-all-end-all great, but pretty good. Energy Aura can be fairly self-contained. So if you look at some builds with just */EA you'll get some ideas on how to slot it. Then, if you look at some builds with DP/* you can just fill in the gaps. Neither of these sets depend on each other to do their thing.

Short answer; yes. Longer answer; Antumbral Beam is the second highest base damage power in the set (Blackstar is first). Antumbral Beam has the highest damage-per-activation out of all the powers followed closely by Abyssal Gaze, then Blackstar, then Gloom, and so on. (funky slotting with procs can change that hierarchy) What you may be experiencing right now is that you can cycle Gloom and Dark Blast much faster than you can Antumbral Beam due to its default long cooldown. This is where stacking global recharge later becomes so beneficial to damage. You can drop its cooldown into a range where the power is available after you cast Gloom and Abyssal Gaze. Even on less recharge you may only cast 1 Dark Blast in that cycle before AB is back online. So it gets a lot better the faster you can get it to recharge, and recharge also impacts powers like Ablative Carapace, Rebuild DNA, and Parasitic Leech (you won't make that perma but you can significant improve uptime).

Bio Armor can be a bit of a late bloomer. As I've noted before, sometimes folks get really lost in the weeds of hearing "Bio Armor is the R0XX0R$!". Yet, few times people really talk about the reality of what makes it so good. Generally, that's significant IO investment and that also doesn't happen at level 23. Dark Blast is decent on its own, but like most Sentinel damage it will bloom fairly late once you start stacking IOs. Sentinels are fairly straight forward and easy to play/understand. However, if this were another MMO they'd be known as being highly gear dependent to maximize what they are capable of. I tend to find this more so than many other ATs. There is a vast difference in full build vs leveling on Sentinels. Sure, that's true of several ATs, but few times has that difference felt so stark in contrast. What I'm saying is... exercise patience if you like the character. The combo you have is a good one, and it can get a lot better than it currently is... over time. All of that said, I think you may have jumped on a few additional toggles from the Leadership pool a bit early. Assault isn't that powerful. It is nice to have, but it will always only be 10.5% base damage. So you're granting yourself 5~ damage to Dark Blast, 9~ damage to Gloom, and so on. That's it. You'll buff your teammates in the exact same way. Assault can be a nice power to have due to its inability to take on sets and performance at a single slot. I often find that utility good... later. Tactics is potentially a great power. There isn't really anything wrong with having it early on... if you've planned for it. I have no opinion on Mystic Flight. Rune of Protection is a fine choice if you feel like you're the one taking the bulk of the alpha strikes. However, you may or may not really need it. This may also be a pretty big misunderstanding of the strengths of the combination you've selected. Keep the idea of RoP in the back of your mind. It is a sound idea, seriously, but you may not need it at all later down the road. You've skipped a few items that I personally think are are important. 1) Abyssal Gaze is actually a very strong attack for Dark Blast. It is second fiddle to Antumbral Beam. You should consider picking this up at some point. 2) Aim. Aim is burst damage on a timer. For 10 seconds you gain 50% to-hit (which isn't that amazing) and 50% damage which is quite nice. Later on this can be significantly improved with the Gaussian's proc "Chance for Build-Up" which has a potentially very high chance (depends on your slotting) of granting you 80% more damage for a 5 second window. 3) Ablative Carapace 4) Assault over Maneuvers In the case of #3 Ablative Carapace grants you an absorb shield. This is bonus effective hit points. It also buffs your regeneration rate. The Absorb shield system is something Bio Armor does very well and could be a reason why RoP isn't as amazing as it seems later on (that will depend on your comfort with incoming damage). Later down the road at level 38 Parasitic Leech is a very long cooldown with a significant amount of absorb and health benefit. Leech is a cone with a fairly long range, but don't be scared of melee range with this combo. Blackstar, your level 32 power, is a point-blank range AoE with a -35% to-hit debuff with a 20 second long duration. You don't need to enhance that debuff, but the damage on that power is substantial especially when backed up by Aim (and more so again with Gaussian's in it). For #4, Maneuvers offers defense which Bio Armor is fairly light on outside of elemental attacks. This is partially where a squishy factor of Bio Armor exists. Bio Armor has no Smashing/Lethal defense. It has some resistance to that plus healing capacity. Still, without defense you run risk of taking on more damage than you'd care for. Sentinels, as durable as they can be, are not tanks. They're not even off-tanks. They can handle an alpha strike, but sustained team aggro management is outside the scope of their kit. You can shoehorn this in with the Presence power pool, but you're potentially kneecapping your potential to turn the AT into something it is not. Still, if this is a path you'd like to take then fly on you beautiful butterfly. Damage probably won't feel "maximized" at your level range. There are tricks you can do to push it later on, but at the low levels it is a game of patience. You need slots. You need powers. You should look at recharge (more of it later) to really push damage. Do you need to respec right now? Nope. Just temper your expectations a bit and keep pushing forward. In the 30's you'll get more slots as the power picks slow down. You can refine things or correct "mistakes" around that time. You can plan for a respec at 50 and just enjoy taking/trying powers on the way there. If your friends aren't complaining about damage in a group, then just have fun. One tip though... You're approaching level 26. You can skip Life Drain if you like. I think you should take it to experiment with it once you have time, but it is not a priority pick despite its late level unlock. The heal it has is tiny and its damage isn't better than Gloom. You could twist this around later on with IO procs to make Life Drain a lot better, but this is an advanced method of slotting. While your in the noob process just know that for Life Drain all that glitters is not gold. You should strongly consider taking all of the Bio Armor powers as you go. They can be quite powerful and get even better with a lot of global recharge (Hasten + set bonuses).

The bolded point below... You sure about this? If you remove all the procs Ball Lightning has a DPA of 94 in Mid's. Add the procs back and the DPA goes to 154. The resistance debuff of -12.5% isn't accounted for though and that is a damage boost when it triggers. You've got Charged Bolts down to recharging within the animation of Zapping Bolt which is a decent way to go (Charged - Zapping - Charged). Total animation time is 3.56 seconds which is greater than your current Tesla Cage. You could run those 4 powers over and over without gap. If you want to introduce Ball Lightning you could tack it on at the end or wherever. It has a 5.95 second recharge which is 0.01s longer than that 4 attack sequence. Your initial end cost on BL is still pretty high to spam. Energize helps offset this. I think you could swap the Acc/Dmg of the two sets you used to Acc/Dmg/End (both sets have that) and then boost them if you wanted. You'd still reclaim the 85% accuracy and get significant endurance costs on top of it. The damage you're carrying is still largely focused on the procs. Since you may be looking at a 5+ second animation sequence you could consider gutting out the recharge of Tesla Cage and proccing it out. You could dump the Thundestrikes in Charged Shot and put the Opportunity Strikes set there. Since you're likely going to weave that attack as your filler the changes don't hurt you too much. Plus, Opportunity Strikes isn't that great a proc, but firing it off more frequently might be an option. Tesla Cage could run just enough Acc/Dmg/End and then allow for at least 4 slots of damage procs. Two of those procs can be purple sets (Apocalypse, Unbreakable Constraint) with a very high chance to trigger as long as no recharge is in enhanced in the power. This moves the DPA from 129 (in Mids) to at least 241 with 4 procs. A 5th proc would push it higher. This also significantly increases your overall damage to a single target. You don't need to 3 slot Hasten if you opt to use boosters later. If you're only ever going to use the default slot in Aim, then may as well make it the Gaussian's Build-Up proc. That is also significant damage burst every Aim cycle. I don't know if I'd bother with Rune of Protection, but to each their own. You'd certainly get some boost out of it on the incredibly rare occasions where lots of negative or toxic damage was flying around. Orange inspirations can also work for that in a pinch. You've got the scaling damage resist IO planned. It starts at a low %, but it builds toward a high number. It'll cap your S/L resist making Rune of Protection a lot more limited towards two exotic damage types. If it is worth the power lot for you to mule the set, then cool.

I've been doing exactly that. I'll turn the inherent off to get an idea of baseline, and then figure out uptime. Basic 5% plus average uptime contribution. Its definitely a good tip.

The Gaussian's proc in Tactics will artificially inflate damage numbers in the build above, but it is also a valid way to go. Picking up Cardiac there doesn't hurt so much on damage because of the use of procs in Dominate and Tesla Cage (this is more for @Enku367's benefit than anything else).

I think you've been too hard on yourself about crafting a build. The above is certainly a reasonable place to start. Quick ideas... Thunderous Blast - change to 5 slots and consider slapping Ragnarok in there for the 10% global recharge. That'll bump you up to 157.5% recharge. You can also go with 2 +4's in Hasten as the +5's don't really get you a whole lot for the cost. If you keep 6 slots in Short Circuit consider the Superior Avalanche set if you can afford it. At a minimum go for the 5 slot which is a whopping 5% melee defense. You'll get some more fire/cold resist too which is cute. Alternative could be Obliteration 6 slot for all of its perks with a nice melee defense boost at 6 slots. I'd consider at least 5 slots of Super Blistering Cold in Havoc Punch. Again, pretty nice bonus for Smash/Lethal defense, but more importantly its pushing your Melee %. Alternatively 5pc Hecatomb would be a minor damage increase. Full 6 slots of Blistering Cold gets you more fire/cold defense which isn't too horrible. Cold enemies are rare, but fire shows up. You could dump the Devastation set in Zapping Bolt for Apocalypse for another 10% recharge and a decent bump in damage. Tesla Cage could keep the Acc/Dmg, Dmg/End, and Acc/Dmg/End from Thunderstrike. The other slots could add Unbreakable Constraint: Chance for Smashing Damage (purple proc!), Ghost Widow's Embrace: Chance for Psionic Damage, and Neuronic Shutdown: Chance for Psionic Damage. Alternatives could be Gladiator's Net: Chance for Lethal, or Gladiator's Javelin: Chance for Toxic if you want to diversify the damage from psionic a bit. Everything else would be me being super nitpicky about really minor changes here and there. The above changes (additions in most cases) raise your Melee defense to 35% and your global recharge to 167.5%. You're averaged ranged damage goes up with the above changes, but you're durable enough to be in melee range when you do it. That means Short Circuit and Havoc Punch both can get some use. Congrats, you've built a character that looks functional!