oldskool

In order for Sentinels and Blasters to have roughly identical ST DPS, then the AT needs a significant overhaul. The scalar difference right now is 0.95 vs 1.125. On top of this, Sentinels almost always impose a -5% resistance debuff. Once you attack a target successfully, that debuff is there, and it will constantly refresh as long as you're hitting a target. The only Sentinel set that had no significant change to its core rotation or power constructs was Water Blast. Dehydrate and Whirlpool are in different selection orders. Geyser was normalized like the rest of the Sentinel T9s. Other those things there was no CC power conversion nor was there a snipe. That's the only set that is as close to apples to apples as it comes. All other sets have some change that makes a true one on one comparison impossible. Snipe powers really do impact Blaster damage quite substantially. Many of those, even run on just basic fast snipe damage, do nearly double the damage of the highest damage Sentinel power. That doesn't mean that Blaster ST does double that of a Sentinel, but instead it creates a far more significant contributor to overall damage. In order for Sentinels to get near Blaster single target right now, Sentinels have to stuff powers with damage procs. The more the merrier, and a fully procced Dominate is ideal for true e-peen waving. A PPM 3.5 proc is 71 damage. 71 damage is more than a 100% increase in damage over the common T1 power (which are often 52 dmg). Even if the expected average damage contribution of a proc is only 20~ damage, that is still a significant damage improvement within just one power slot. It can get exponentially better. Some of the better heavy hitters of the Sentinel do around 120 to 140+ damage. That means the average proc is around half the value of the entire power's damage when it activates. The general trend of powers is the higher the damage the longer the recharge and sometimes even the animation. This means the average expected rate of proc trigger is even better than a T1's. In other words, you're getting more than +20 dmg per slot on average. The other day I was doing some testing with some snipes. Even baseline fast snipe damage can be a significant difference over the best of what a Sentinel can offer through just basic damage slotting. Rotations across the primaries are still different enough that the gaps have a lot of variance. Still, these DPA power differences are hard to dismiss. What I'm saying here is that a jump from 0.95 to 1.0 isn't enough. Improving the current implementation of Opportunity won't be enough either unless it can be made permanent, and that is probably unlikely to happen. Blaster snipe powers plus Defiance's regular availability are both contributors to single target damage disparity. So it isn't just an AT scalar issue. There are individual damage scalar issues on top of having an unreliable, and often split, inherent. If the Sentinel's AoE capacity is to remain lower than that of a Blaster's, then, I think it is fair that Sentinel single target be compensated higher. I agree that it should take Blaster melee in order for them to exceed Sentinels, and that should be inclusive of Sentinel Epics [edit: by the way, this is already largely true. Most blapper or range/melee mix are going to out perform most Sentinel builds handily. It isn't that hard to build a Blaster to do this, but it can get more complicated for the Sentinel to try to narrow the gap. So current design works. However, the gap can be tightened to allow for easier build creation for 90% of the player base vs the tiny few min/maxers.]. This maybe a tall order that sounds easier to say than do though when considering current use of procs in epic holds (an issue in every AT that can abuse it). The more I think about it, the more my position evolves. This is the issue as I see it: What is the baseline of comparison? -- Blaster comparisons are utterly flawed. Blasters are not a ranged only AT. Their secondaries are wildcards that can open up more damage from the early levels up through the end game. There just isn't any point in comparing half of that AT's damage potential with the vast majority of the Sentinel's all range design. If the comparison point is more like Scrappers, then Sentinel balance needs to consider its wider AoE potential against Scrapper ST DPS. Perhaps the happy middle is Sentinel AoE > than (most) Scrapper AoE but Sentinel AoE < Blaster AoE. Sentinel ST > Blaster ST, but Sentinel ST < Scrapper ST. This isn't a really clean view of the current state of the game either. Some Blaster builds can out damage Scrappers in ST and AoE. So I'm not sure if the idea of even using Blasters as a measuring stick is worth anyone's time. Blasters are a conceptual island. They effectively have two primary power sets just like Dominators do. Team support. Should the Sentinel have any at all? Is it an alternative ranged heavy damage AT with defensive properties or is it some jack-of-all-trades VEAT-lite AT? I don't think the idea of a "role" for the Sentinels needs to be all that complicated. Blasters are, by design, the most singularly focused damage AT in the game. The fact they can play almost exclusively at range is a feature, but it isn't necessarily all they do. Scrappers by their original design were durable single-target specialists. This is readily apparent in their power designs of legacy sets, and I've played the game long enough to remember the developer chats. Sentinels fill a niche role that didn't exist. That is one of nearly full range damage plus durability. Whether or not it can off-tank is about as important to me as tanking on my Stalkers. That's to say, not at all. The idea that the Sentinel has an inherent that can benefit teams is nice, but there is absolutely nothing else in the primaries or secondaries that support that design. So do they need to have that niche too? If we're going to go down the rabbit hole of Sentinels offering nothing to teams due to their primaries and secondaries, then what about Scrappers or Stalkers? Especially Stalkers. What do Stalkers bring for team support? Sneaking to glowies is a nice side benefit of the AT but it isn't exactly how the AT is advertised. It is a single target damage specialist. DPA of powers. Scrappers/Stalkers work well by design because melee power sets were designed against defensive secondaries. Scrappers, Stalkers, Brutes, and now Tankers all do very good self-contained damage within their melee sets because those sets where designed like that. Ranged attack sets clearly were not. Blaster design is just damage. It isn't ranged damage, it isn't melee damage. It is all damage. Since the original design team believed that range was a huge defense tool, and it can be, they opted to make things like snipe situational bursts of damage plus crash-included large scale T9 nukes. Melee sets = sustained damage, and ranged sets = bursts. That seems to be the original concept. We've moved away from that because in practice being so heavily dependent on range sets doing bursts of damage really kind of sucked for Blasters. So now they have crashless T9 powers and snipes that are rotational. Sentinels are effectively playing with design paradigms that are now several issues old and aren't going to be sustainable if this trend continues. I'm not really sure where this AT is going to go. Its functional for my tastes right now. I can play in +2/x8 or +4/x8 easily, and I can do that on Stalkers/Brutes/Scrappers/Tankers/Blasters too. The AT certainly does need some cleaning up, but minor scalar changes won't do it. At least not without something that dramatically addresses the DPA disparities between various powers. Edit: Ideally, I think the pecking order should be something like Stalker -> Scrapper = Brute -> Sentinel on a single targets. AoE could be reversed. I think, again totally ideally, comparisons of Sentinels vs Blasters/Defenders/Corruptors needs to be dropped off into the dumpster. The Sentinel is about as analogous to those former ATs as my cup of coffee is to a nuclear reactor. Sentinels have more in common with the melee ATs than they do the ranged ones. Even then direct parallels aren't close to perfect. Sentinels already fit into the pecking order laid out. They just need some tightening up to narrow whatever gaps exist in the dev's eyes. What we peon players think is just our own speculation.

Welcome to Sentinels, I hope you enjoy your stay. Builds in and of themselves are largely worthless concepts without knowing specifics from the user. Sharing them without context or thought can sometimes be more harmful than helpful. Water/Energy is a great combo because both power sets are individually wonderful. Water Blast's greatest strength is its area damage. It is a bit weak on single targets, but it can manage. Just don't have high expectations on obliterating the highest challenges with the default kit. Energy Aura is a mixed mitigation set that leans heavily on typed defense. One thing I love about defense sets is that they can run perfectly well with low slotting investment. They can also be great on full (all 6) slots. This is due to great IO sets like Red Fortune, Luck of the Gambler, and Reactive Defenses. So often when folks are new to playing Sentinels, and looking for builds, I'll just suggest take the powers as you go. That's probably not what you want to hear, but you should explore the sets on their own merits. Sentinels have interaction with powers like Aqua Bolt and Hydro Blast. So I highly recommend you experience that for yourself vs someone telling you "what's best". What is best in this game is not universal. Primaries and secondaries can sometimes behave differently in various combinations. Keep that in mind as I will share with you what powers you could potentially skip, if you so chose. In Energy Aura, you could potentially skip Overload which is the final power. Overload will grant you soft-capped defense to almost all of the typed defenses (i.e., Smashing and Lethal) for its duration. It can do that just within that single power. It also has a substantial endurance recovery benefit, a max hit point benefit, and defense debuff resistance. Energy Aura can built to soft-cap all of those types without Overload. Energy Aura has more than one endurance recovery related effect. So really Overload comes down to a HP increase which you don't need and DDR which is useful though not worth the power pick. If you're still new and you have a slim budget, then consider taking Overload to fill the gaps until you can drop it completely. Some folks skip Power Drain too as it is an endurance solution that you may not need. I tend to always take it though so YMMV. So that's 2 powers you could potentially skip. In Water Blast, you can potentially skip Aqua Bolt. While you're still leveling up the character, or running non-min/max IO sets, then Aqua Bolt still can benefit your build. Aqua Bolt brings with it Offensive Opportunity which includes the side benefit of a minor damage boost for 15 seconds. This benefit will drop off the more you pile on other +damage modifiers. It may still be beneficial to your end build. So while Aqua Bolt is skippable since its general damage is the weakest out of your options, it can still provide some conditional value. Water Burst or Whirlpool could potentially be skipped. I wouldn't drop either while leveling up, but you may find you don't care for how Whirlpool functions. If that's your preference, then I can see skipping it. Steam Spray is actually far better than it sounds on paper. I used to recommend skipping it since it is a cone, and some folks hate cones. I won't do that going forward. Steam Spray is well worth taking since it is both high damage and it breaks the mold for how Sentinel target caps function in cones. Do consider taking everything else. Slotting. Prioritize slots for your attacks. Sentinels, regardless of their reputation, are a damage AT. They're not tanks, off tanks, or supports. I don't suggest you try to build like one and instead just stick to the strengths of the AT. Energy Aura doesn't really need heavy investment into its toggles and passives. You can even potentially get away with just 2 overall slots in powers like Energy and Power Drain (if taken). The toggles can be fine on 3 to 4 total slots. I'd recommend a regular endurance reduction SO or common IO plus generic +defense/resistance in their appropriate powers. Entropy Shield cannot take any sets and it doesn't need any additional slots. Just put a regular endurance reduction there and call it a day. You could take all 8 attacks, fully slot them at 6 each, then the 7 core EA powers and slot them between 3-4, and still have around 15-18 slots left to play with. You'd have 8 additional powers left over to do whatever you wanted. General goal though should be to soft-cap (or get very near it) most, if not all, of the primary types of damage. You get there by filling in with powers like Weave (Fighting Pool), Maneuvers (Leadership), Combat Jumping (Leaping), Hover (Flight), Stealth (Concealment), and/or Link Minds (Psychic Mastery). You can't take all of those, but using those powers to fill in gaps is how you do it. Then there are the 3% to all defense IOs from the Steadfast and Gladiator's Armor sets. The rest of the recipe is pure personal preference. There are a lot of ways to solve this problem. I have my own ways of going about it, but I've seen equally valid approaches to a competent build. Defense, and getting it high enough, is one of your first priorities. Next up, I'd say you want to get some recharge to make Energize as near permanent as you can. Its a big endurance cost discount AND it will boost your regeneration rate. You can improve it via slotting it heavier OR pushing more global recharge. Energy Aura is excellent for this since Entropy Shield can get you 20% global recharge right in the set, and eventually you can stack all 5 Luck of the Gambler +recharge pieces. Final issue to solve is damage. You can enhance the powers through full sets if you like, and that is the simplest way to go about it. Water Blast also has a lot effects in each power which can present unique IO opportunities like damage procs. I find that Sentinel Water Blast AoE damage is pretty good on its own. I don't generally put a lot of procs in my AoEs (some are fine though). I do like to heavily proc powers like Hydro Blast, Dehydrate, and Water Jet if I can manage it. Since Energy Aura can cover your defense and recharge this becomes a pretty attractive option. Anyway, if you've read all of this, hopefully you understand why dumping a build isn't that easy. There are a lot of considerations that can go into a build, and what is good or not is a personal decision. Maybe you don't care about min/maxing the single target damage. Maybe you do. Or maybe you're just looking for a power combo that works well together. Well, Water/EA does work well together, and it isn't that easy to break it. It can be potentially tough to optimize it, but almost anything you do with it should work for 90% of the game.

I'm not sure you were doing yourself any favors by copying that build. First off, Incarnates. You don't need Clarion, at all. You could pick up Barrier instead, or Ageless, or Rebirth for that matter. Support Hybrid is OK if that what you're trying to pull off. Supporting a team. If you're intention was getting more defense, then Melee Hybrid (either flavor depending on where the build goes) can be a bit more useful to you personally. The Assault hybrids are there for damage. The damage is OK (purely because Sentinel Electrical is pretty good by default), it could be better, but what you have is OK. There are several things I generally agree with in the build, but there is just so much more of it that begs the question of "what is this?". I personally don't understand the appeal of Lightning Field in this build and the skipping of Short Circuit. Short Circuit is also PBAoE and complements that choice. However, melee defense is pretty low compared to your other categories. That seems somewhat contradictory. I'm not sure if you know this, but Tesla Cage has the highest base damage of any of your single target attacks. Unenhanced its 120 dmg at 50. Slotting it like a damage power and enhancing it by the 126-134% like your other powers will give you a substantial DPS increase. Tesla Cage is one of the rare powers on Sentinels where it has a reasonable base CC duration (8 seconds), but its damage is real value of the power. In a Blaster/Corruptor/Defender build it can make sense to slot the CC powers for their CC. Those ATs do not always have passive defensive abilities in their non-range powers. Sentinels have an entire secondary devoted to mitigation. There is very little reason to kneecap your damage to chase CC duration that isn't necessary. Lightning Bolt can potentially be a good choice. It will depend a lot on where you'd end up on recharge if you change your build plan. You could run Tesla Cage (seriously, slot it for damage) -> Charged Bolts -> Zapping Bolt -> Charged Bolts on tougher singular targets. Charged Bolts would need to recharge within Zapping Bolt's animate (1.188) to pull that off. As it is right now, you'd have a minor 0.1 gap for the second Charged Bolt. Even slight gaps aren't that bad. Average human reaction time generally won't notice even a quarter second of lag time from visual mediums. Anyway, you don't necessarily need Lightning Bolt, but you probably do want a bit more global recharge. Regen benefits a lot from global recharge to make powers like Reconstruction available more often. Second Wind too. Hell, even Moment of Glory. Let's talk about how MoG interacts for a moment. Moment of Glory has a 15 second duration and it is practically guaranteed immortality for that time frame except vs psionic damage. It does have a long recharge, and it cannot be made permanent. It is not an "oh crap" button. It can be, but I find heals are better for that, especially Second Wind. MoG can work just as well as "that spawn looks tough, let's be nearly immune to the alpha". Furthermore, MoG and Barrier can play leap frog with their effects. Barrier when activated will have a huge spike in defense and resistance then wind down to just 5% to resist/defense for the remaining duration. This is also why I brought up Melee Hybrid (though Support could work too). You'd end up with 3 powers to juggle eating certain alpha strikes when you deem it necessary. That kind of strategy can help you ease off trying to push high defenses with IO sets alone. The logic of pushing high defenses on Regen is actually tough to do on Sentinels (largely due to a number of limitations in set diversity plus power damage scaling) without hindering your overall damage potential (which you're doing with this build). So that's the big topics. I won't go into each power specifically beyond what I've said. I tend to prefer pushing more recharge first. If I can get defenses to 20%, then great. Otherwise, I don't chase Winter sets for their lopsided Fire/Cold defense unless I am specifically trying to tackle those kind of enemies. Energy, Smashing, and Lethal defense are far more common, and you could use more of those bonuses. You don't need to try to soft-cap Regen, and really you shouldn't unless you're OK with the decline in damage that comes with it.

That's a direction I started to take with a new Fire/Energy Aura I'm experimenting with. I didn't go nearly as all-in as this build does, but adding procs to Fireball is definitely a way to go.

This.

You're in luck. Thankfully, Fire Blast doesn't have great slotting options for damage procs nor does it need them. You can explore some full, or nearly full sets. Are you ready to break your wallet? Good, because general Willpower on Sentinels is incapable of soft-capping defense of any type, and it doesn't naturally cap its resistance to smashing/lethal damage (at least not without Strength of Will, the T9). What can turn Willpower from 'meh' to pretty good are IO set bonuses. The melee ATs have far better options, and generally more numerous powers, in order to make use of the IO system. Bear in mind, Willpower came out around the same time as IO sets and seems very much like it was tuned with it in mind. Sure, the old devs could say "nah bro", but c'mon. Its pretty obvious. So how do you turn things around and abuse set bonuses here? Things to think about: Both 3% to all defense IOs. You can slot these in High Pain Tolerance if you like. I'd consider 6 slotting that power and combining it with... Unbreakable Guard in as many powers as you can stuff it. That's High Pain Tolerance, Mind Over Body, and Strength of Will. Strength of Will can have its uses beyond just a mule so consider taking it. [Forgot Tough, take Tough] Aim - you get Aim! - Full Gaussian's set grants defense to all types and slightly more to positionals. Sentinel ATOs - Both of these give you defense to Range, Energy/Negative, Melee, and Smashing/Lethal. Use all 6 pieces. The Opportunity Strikes isn't horrible in Flares since you can potentially weave it between most of your attacks. The Ward set... pick a spot. The proc is pretty awful so it doesn't matter much where it goes. Superior Winter's Bite. Put this in a single target attack like Blaze or Blazing Blast if you took it. Superior Frozen Blast maybe optional. Its mostly focused on Fire/Cold and AoE defense. Call it a maybe depending on your powers and slots. Superior Avalanche in either Inferno or an Epic PBAoE (i.e., Psychic Shockwave -- going Psychic Mastery specifically, you'll see why) Superior Blistering Cold - at least 5 pieces for the Smashing/Lethal defense (5%) in a power like Mind Probe. Link Minds (available by taking Mind Probe + Psy Shockwave) - Depending on your overall recharge this may have some downtime, but it can be worth taking. Weave Maneuvers Your choice of Combat Jumping, Hover, or Stealth depending on how many power slots you have left. In Fire Blast you can potentially skip the following: Fire Blast - the Tier 2 Fire Breath Rain of Fire Skipping those easily opens up opportunity to include Psychic Mastery or whatever other Sentinel Epic/Patron pool your heart desires. If you opt to skip Link Minds, just try to pick up an Epic ST melee and PBAoE. Devote some slots there and use the Winter Sets if you're really intent on pushing high defense. I'd advise against choosing any of the Alpha slot options that do not provide you with +damage %. Agility may look tempting, but let Blasters pick that stuff. Spiritual may seem tempting too for more regen and recharge. You likely don't need either. You should be able to reasonably exceed 32-35% to all of the typed damage other than Psi and achieve at least 68% smashing/lethal resistance when Strength of Will is down. Strength of Will can cap your S/L resist. Now, this is very much a "I don't give two F's about global recharge and all I want is high defense" approach. Here are some other alternative things to either include with the above or look for later. - Barrier Destiny will grant you 5% defense and resistance at its lowest value. The T4 version is pretty much on all the time. - Melee Hybrid options, defense or resistance. Inferno is PBAoE and so this Hybrid option has some synergy being in melee range. - Defensive booster from the Pay-to-Win vendor. You can buy 1 hour and stack its duration up to 8 hours if I am remembering that right. I tend to worry less about soft-capping Willpower, and more about improving recharge. You can still get around 26-32% to most of the types while improving your attack availability with recharge. You can leverage any of the other alternative options to boost your defense conditionally. There are also purple skittles. Keep in mind, Willpower has 0 defense debuff resistance. So no matter how high you stack it, it is always vulnerable to cascading failures as enemies can easily chunk your defense once they start landing hits.

I generally think this is fair advice. However, there is enough room in build considerations/combat flow dynamics that a persons mileage may vary. I've certainly found that putting the +res proc in my quick recharging, low chance powers, was not the direction I wanted to take some of my Tankers. Sometimes it works well, but it doesn't necessarily always work well.

You're being both too generous and a bit misleading at the same time. The Sentinel scalar is slightly better than this and the individual damage difference per power trends around 18% (plus or minus, there are some outliers). So if the same attack sequence were considered against an individual enemy the real damage difference isn't that big on paper. That's not the true story though. Obviously Blasters have a clear advantage on AoE, and I don't want to beat that horse. On single-target things get really fuzz depending on builds. Blasters with fast snipes can have a potentially better overall DPS metric than a Sentinel. However, the build is what determines this not just the powers themselves. Sentinels can absolutely build towards narrowing the gap through things like damage procs. The advantage on Sentinels is that their secondary allows them to pick up those damage pennies where their Blaster cousins are looking for more defense. Still, I've seen more than my fair share of Sentinel builds that are far away from being optimized for damage. My inbox gets these kinds of things frequently. Due to general preferences and the common forum knowledge on defense fear-mongering, I'd wager that Blasters are likely doing far greater than 50% more damage on average in either single or AoE target engagements. That's not really a great reflection of the ATs or their balance, but is dependent highly on individual build preference. General build preference is to push defense regardless of AT and Sentinels can actually suffer greatly for this. Some folks just also feel that things like procs are a complete anathema to how the game should work, and so the core differences get highlighted in those builds. So on average I'd say the Blasters are likely doing far better than the suggestion from either of you posters. That's coming from someone that plays a crap load of Sentinels and spends waaaay too much time trying to help folks narrow the short comings of the AT.

You've gotten solid ideas so far. I'll say, in regards to the quote, what you're asking for is almost everything available. Fun is entirely subjective. However, the ability to make a viable (hell, OPTIMAL) Tanker with investment is present with just about any combination you can think of. Tanker durability in a build with heavy IO investment often trends into the "completely unnecessary" realm. What I mean here, is that 90% of the game doesn't require the level of durability that a Tanker possesses. There is very little content that is so difficult it requires a tightly crafted build. Then, in that content, you have teammates and ideally your Incarnate powers to back you up. With the damage and AoE boost there are so many good secondary attack sets to pick from the world is your oyster. There isn't really a magic answer here. Just some ideas on how to get your feet wet.

This is not a demanding combo on slots. So you're in luck. Super Reflexes: Focused Fighting, Focused Senses, Evasion = At least 3 total slots. Devote to 1 end plus 2 defense SOs/Common IOs OR a Defense, Defense/End, Defense/End/Recharge (or Defense/Recharge depending on how you feel on endurance consumption). Take 1 of Boxing or Kick (the choice doesn't matter). Take Tough and at least 2 slot it. Socket the Steadfast and Gladiator's Armor 3% to all defense uniques (+6% to all defenses!). Take Weave. Slot it in the same manner as your SR toggles. Do the same for Maneuvers. Dodge and Agile can be fine on just the default slot. Both of the Sentinel Archetype Origin (ATO) sets offer boosts to melee and range defense. So you can pick up the leftovers there and in other set bonuses. That'll get you 41.04% smashing and lethal defense with 45.1% AoE defense. I'm not sure what version of Mids you have, but Evasion's true value can be higher than what some versions show. Essentially, Evasion on Sentinels works the same as it does for Stalkers. It is Evasion + Lucky (the passive power on Brutes/Scrappers/Tankers). Other powers... Enduring is essentially a stronger version of Stamina and you should consider slotting it with at least 3 slots (Stamina too). With loaded common IO's these two powers offer you enough passive endurance to really not worry about running dry while attacking. Malta Sappers can still drain you, but generally end isn't an issue for a lot of Sentinels. I highly recommend (as does most of the community) to take Master Brawler over Practiced Brawler. You can devote as many or as few slots as you like. Dual Pistols: Core Powers - Pistols, Executioner's Shot, Bullet Rain, Hail of Bullets, Swap Ammo. Everything else is preference, I promise. I recommend taking Empty Clips and Suppressive Fire. You may skip Piercing Rounds and Dual Wield if you like. If you take Teleport (you'll have enough slots for 3 slots easily), and Hasten (only 2 slot it) with Maneuvers plus Fighting Pool; you're done on power pools. You could take all of the core powers from Dual Pistols, Empty Clips + Suppressive Fire, 6 slot ALL of them, and still have 17+ slots to spare. How you slot your powers on an individual power basis is largely preference too, and there are ways to add more damage via using procs (i.e., Lady Grey: Chance for Negative Damage in Pistols and Executioner's Shot) to improve damage beyond the baseline of the set. If you're not sure about doing that, then that's OK. Don't worry too much on it now, and just enjoy the ride. If you'd like to know more, then feel to ask or I'm sure others will point out their individual preferences.

Yup, proccing up Suppressive Fire isn't a bad way to invest slots. Its certainly better for all the other ATs to have that 90% rate right out the box. Its something I've done on my Dual Pistols Defender before, but not currently.

Will it work for solo and teams? Yes. Can you improve it without adding 20million per slot purples/winter IOs? Yes to that too, but there is a sort of ceiling you'll hit. Some changes you can do simply, and others may need some consideration. First off, I'm not Blaster expert. I'm not just asking this to you, but to the greater Blaster community too. Why Dual Wield over Pistols? Pistols has generally better DPA, and it animates faster making your attack chains smoother. Its Defiance contribution is small, 6%, but if you can weave into fights on singular tough opponents it can stack several times. So is it the animations? Piercing Rounds - Dual Wield - Executioner's Shot - Dual Wield is possible with your build because that takes 8.184 seconds to animate. If Piercing Rounds is the corner stone of how you handle tough targets you need it to recharge in 5.544 seconds. Your Piercing Rounds recharges in 4.69 seconds. Piercing Rounds - Pistols - Executioner's Shot - Pistols animates in 6.864 a seconds. You'd need Piercing Rounds to finish cooling down in 4.224 seconds. Still, that rough half second isn't a big deal. Anyway, this is just one of things that perplexes me about ranged only Dual Pistol Blaster builds. If is just preference, then good on you. There is plenty of other things to do on Blasters than worry about singular routines since you can worry about Trip Mines or your gun drone or whatever. You're under enhancing Weave and Maneuvers. The Gift of the Ancients set in Combat Jumping would server you better in Weave. You'll get more bang for your enhancement making the switch. The enhancements you're using in Weave can just go right into Combat Jumping. Combat Jumping's base defense value is lower than Weaves and it serves better to mule those sorts of things. Combat Jumping is also pretty cheap to run for endurance. Go for the full defense vs the defense/end. You can handle it. You haven't shown the Accolade powers (you can work on those now! woo) but there is some +endurance effects there. You should be swimming in endurance by the time you finish all that. You seem like you may be spending the fortune on Gladiator's Armor 3% defense in Tough, but you're missing the Steadfast Resist/3%. You don't need that Aegis 3 piece. You could dump the Psionic/Status Aegis and swap for a Steadfast. If you do all that, you'll get around 40% to melee/range/AoE. You could probably drop a slot off Field Operative and shift it to Hasten. You could eventually buy some enhancement boosters for Hasten and continue to reduce its cooldown without adding more slots. Dropping some end return off Field Operative is unlikely to break anything. Its got a lot of end already. If you do decide to break up the slots in Tough, then you could swap out the two remaining Aegis with 2 Unbreakable Guard. That'll get you a minor endurance cost reduction dropping some of your toggle costs and attacks. Its not a lot, but it works with all that endurance recovery you have flowing around. Incarnate-wise, You could go with Agility to grant you around a 2% boost to all your defenses, it will lower your recharges across the board, and push that recovery higher. I don't generally care much for that Alpha, but with where you are at, its not a bad choice. Keep in mind, you can always build more Incarnates even in the same category. You can't equipment them all, but you can have them to reconfigure your build if you want. Know this works wonders when you unlock the Destiny slot since there are a lot of goodies in there to switch around. Anyway, I wouldn't worry too much on flipping powers around beyond maybe thinking about Pistols. You can certainly live with Dual Wield if none of the other stuff I mentioned on animation time matters to you. You have enough powers to find something to do other than worrying about a minor nitpick like that. Overall, it looks good though. Much of your decision making on sets and slots, given a constrained budget, make sense to me. You don't really need tons of purples to make Blasters effective anyway so good job!

Um, thanks for the condescending and entirely unsolicited advice? Perhaps next time you opt to write something where your opinion was never desired, nor is it needed, you'll reconsider your tone?

I'm not sure where that post is getting their information from. Damage procs are damage sources. They are reduced by damage resistance, and their damage will improve if that resistance is lowered. This is such an easily verifiable test that the poster is either misinformed and speaking with authority they shouldn't, or they are trolling. I just spun up the game. I decided to jump on a character with multiple procs in an attack but a particularly high chance to trigger one of the purples. Pylons have 20% resistance to almost everything. A PPM 4.5 proc (purple) does just over 107 damage. My attack registered 85 and change damage from Unbreakable Constraint. If that proc were going direct to hit points as the post suggests, then it should do its full 107 damage every time. That's not how the game registers it though.

I take back my original reply. I'd love to see the following: 1) Add up all damage dealt and divide it by time of the fight. 2) Use the formula of this thread. 3) Show the variance. 4) Let us know how you like your crow cooked.

One thought comes to mind. It looks a bit like you're chasing some +damage perks. Hover for example has 4 slots. That 4th bonus is 2% damage. Bear in mind, that's 2% base damage. That's single digits worth of damage per power. Its not much. The defensive perk benefit of enhancing Hover is less than that of the full 6 piece bonus of Gaussian's in Aim. So I'd consider dumping a slot off Hover, and moving it to Aim to complete that set. You'll go slightly over cap on Range (around 48%) which is a nice buffer to have considering Sentinel DDR isn't as high as other ATs. The only thing I'd say beyond that Radiation works well with damage procs. You could improve damage, if you wanted, but what you have right now isn't a bad way to go either. Especially true if you're having fun as it is.

I didn't think you did, and I didn't intend to imply anything different. I've made the critical hit suggestion before but decided to walk through my ideas a little bit. Your comment inspired me to consider some outcomes a bit more thoroughly. The range and lower caps do not seem to be the way they are for no reason to me. There was clearly a balance decision being made. I think the balance decision was not necessarily against the Blaster/Defender/Corruptor alone. Captain Powerhouse mentioned before that behind the scenes there was a concept of the Sentinel having modest damage with periods of damage on par with the Scrapper. So there was some consideration to the melee archetypes within the Sentinel design. It wasn't purposefully made out to be some gimp Blaster as I sometimes see arguments being made. CP was not interested in raising the target caps, at least. Other ideas on improving the inherent and to generally bring the Sentinel upwards are probably on the table. In the meantime we can all have fun speculating and sharing our own visions on what could be. If you'd like to see how grossly overpowered a Sentinel could be with a 1.125 scalar, criticals, full target caps, and a defensive secondary, then one can be altered on a private server. Alternatively, there are other private servers running with versions of the Sentinel with full target caps, Defiance instead of Opportunity, and full on melee secondaries (complete with damage auras). Some of those don't work, but there are combos of that that are potentially overpowered in relation to the Blaster AT. I wouldn't be surprised if the HC team has already thought of this and decided against it. Hell, CP even suggested that the Sentinel not have a direct DPS inherent at all. More like something relate to a to-hit bonus or something completely different from the current set of designs. So we'll see what happens.

I just have very minor thoughts on it because at first glance it looks solid overall (seriously, good job). Flares is better than Fire Blast. Keep the same number of slots for Flares and use the same set. Consider dropping one of the enhancements with /recharge for the Build-Up proc. If you want to keep the 97% accuracy you have on +4 enemies, then I'd maybe drop the damage/recharge. Sacrificing the jump from 67.33% damage slotting to 89.17% isn't that big a deal. Since you're not running Hasten, Flares will be your filler power between casts. So Flares - Blaze - Flare - Blazing Blast - Flares - Fireball - Flare - etc. Weaving in Flares like this means you're rolling the dice each time the power is used to generate that Build-Up event in the Decimation set. That's a potential boost to the damage you'll do for the next 5 seconds. That will catch Blaze, Fireball, or Blazing Blast (maybe even two of those). On top of that, Flares will trigger Offensive Opportunity naturally in your build and that will be a minor damage boost too. Generally skip Fire Blast if you can afford to do so, and you definitely can with the build you have. Other than that, I might consider swapping the sets in Fire Sword Circle and Inferno.

Which is unfortunate. One of the responses in one of those threads could have been written with a bit less condescending tone, but the general idea behind the guide was an interesting read. All builds are always just one way of going about things and almost always viewed through a narrow band of personal preference. I hope you reconsider your stance of build/guides. I've read your DB/EA Stalker chatter and found it interesting. While it may not be how I went with my own character, I wouldn't suggest you delete it. Same goes for your approach to Water/SR. Different perspectives can be helpful to other readers even if those of that post a lot have disagreements.

Fair points. I thought about going all procs on my DP/SR before and maybe running Tactics. I don't need all of the set bonuses I have, but they are my precious. We wants them. So backed off that idea and just went with the boring route I tend to go. I had originally considered doing full on procs with Assault Rifle with /SR too. That's where I started. I loaded M30 Grenade with everything it could take, and just said screw it to set bonuses. Unfortunately, I can't stand playing characters like that so I dropped the idea. I exemplar enough that I don't like having accuracy drop below 90% for even the lower level stuff. As a concession to full procs, both builds have 5 slots in Tashibishi of just that.

Do you think it would be worth losing the Apocalypse set bonuses for more procs in Executioner's Shot? That power has a high accuracy already and Tactics will cap it. Using a damage/end Apoc + the proc still gets some general end recovery and keeps the endurance reduction the same as it is. You could squeeze in Impeded Swiftness, Shield Breaker, and Explosive strikes. The PvP toxic is an option too if you just want all 6 slots to be procs. Executioner's still recharges within Pistols - Suppressive - Pistols so the chain is only dragged out by 1.188 seconds. That's not too bad in practice as it lets you consistently fire Pistols once per 1.848 seconds to fish for procs. That's just a preference of mine though. Having ES + SF precede it makes the delay 3.69 seconds which is still enough time to mess with that Decimation Build-Up.

The original build actually does slightly better damage where the second build has better defense. The second build doesn't need Spiritual Core Alpha but takes it to make Hasten perma which isn't really necessary either. Skipping Tesla Cage looks like a missed opportunity for better damage as it is a solid attack. Voltaic Sentinel's practically free DPS if you can fit it in.

Edit: Originally lots of other stuff here. The poster's comments where both infuriating and insulting. There is just no point at all in continuing a conversation while my words get twisted, put out of context, or my ideas being regurgitated back to me (despite concessions of the underlying point) as if I'm an imbecile.

I've been considering writing something a bit different for that subforum. A kind of "How to Train Your Dragon" but with Sentinels. I've been considering taking my rundown on Dual Pistols from the sticky in this subforum and making a broader scale guide across AT. I've now played it at 50 across every AT, and I find there is enough nuance it plays differently per AT. There are powers that interact differently with inherents or general AT wide modifiers. I'm not sure I have the energy to really bother with either at the moment. I think I need to just take a break from the forums all together but this constant work from home status is making it tough to not take a peek when I have the chance. lol

There are a lot of reasons why I didn't, and I don't see you making notes that I didn't go into Opportunity either. In order to really make use of either inherent, then a build is necessary, and we've already had this talk about how variance exists. So I used numbers from the game. All things considered if the same attacks are used and the same enhancements are applied, then the ratio doesn't change. It wouldn't shift until Defiance started stacking beyond one application, and even then its a tough model since a build assumes a lot. To pretend Opportunity does nothing while showing off Defiance is equally disingenuous. There are a lot of variables that influence Opportunity's impact and its uptime. So it isn't as easy to just say "...but Defiance" and call it a day. Furthermore, Disintegrate and Lancer shot add +12% per stack, and Penetrating Ray adds +11%. Depending on how high you're stacking it, then sure it can be a really big deal. That wasn't my takeaway when running a test with Beam/Dev at all. This "performance car" you speak of definitely wasn't Defiance. It was Penetrating Ray.