oldskool

Water Blast as a whole is very friendly to damage procs which can seriously up your damage at the price of skipping over 5 to 6 piece set bonuses. The one power that is easy to skip is Aqua Bolt. I'd recommend you strongly consider all the others. If you like adding in a procced out Dominate and Mind Probe those can also add significant damage to single targets of which WB is very weak too overall.

I think the answer there is in how the balancing seems to trend across Sentinel sets. What may have been one primary's "thing" on other ATs isn't necessarily the same "thing" on Sentinels. Seems like most, if not all, powers with a hold duration of 9 seconds on ATs like the Blaster (e.g., their version of Abyssal Gaze) were changed to roughly 2 seconds on Sentinels. I don't foresee a direct port of Freezing Ray without a change to how all of the Sentinel primaries work. It's hold would be dropped to a 2 second duration under the current trends. A neat interrupt sure, but if you'd be expecting to hold bosses like the other ATs can, then I think we may all be disappointed. Bitter Freeze Ray on Sentinels has just over a 7 second duration per the in-game info box (Mid's has it listed as the same duration as other ATs). Since Sentinels have an entire secondary devoted to passive defense (including toggles as passive) there appears to be some harsh penalties in the AT for active mitigation (like holds). Tacking on sleep to Chilling Ray seems like an afterthought, but the alternative would be a gutted version of Freezing Ray either way. So the "why not" appears to be that the "balancing" decision was leaning against the Sentinel using effects like hold for mitigation. So Freezing Ray was replaced with a new power that includes Sleep since that effect isn't too egregious. Sleeps were also mentioned to be under review at some point to make them better. So asking for a change to a hold may not work out as well. We'll see. Regardless, what CC effect Chilling Ray has wasn't a deciding factor in why I took it. It was because it does more damage than Ice Blast or Bolt. However, that too is a different complaint... What irks me more about the change of this power isn't the lack of a hold, but its damage change. Freezing Ray is pretty close in DPA to Bitter Ice Blast. Chilling Ray isn't close to Bitter Ice Blast at all. My issue there is that the change appears to have no rhyme or reason to it. Chilling Ray was given damage similar to Slug and Stunning Shot from Assault Rifle and Archery respectively. Other primaries have a more damaging power in that same slot with Fire having Blaze as an outlier at that level. P.s., I couldn't tell you what Ice Blast's "thing" is supposed to be on Sentinels. If using multiple holds as a form of mitigation was the thing elsewhere, that identity is gone and replaced with nothing really. This is also a trend in Sentinels. Power set homogenization. Though for Devil's Advocacy, I always saw Ice as the "slow everyone" set and that hasn't really changed.

So Sentinel Ice Blast should have access to 3 powers with a Mag 3 Hold?

Or I can just use an unslotter. If I could go beyond 6 slots in Enduring, I probably would. 😉

I just recently swapped my Dual Pistols/Ninjutsu Sentinel over to Dual Pistols/Super Reflexes. I liked my original /SR plan so much I decided to also remake my original Assault Rifle character again (like the 3rd or 4th time now) with /SR. Both characters are now 50. My Dual Pistols/Nin character has been completely respecced with a a different loadout more to the liking of the original concept I once had. Anyway, Super Reflexes on the Sentinel shouldn't be compared too closely with its melee cousins. So I'll parrot a bit of the Pros/Cons from @MTeague with a few differences... Cons: No AoE defense until Evasion and then you get A LOT of AoE. - Recommendation: Plan to take Boxing/Kick, Tough and Weave before level 26 to give you some foundation. You can push off Dodge/Agile for a while. You are largely dependent on defense and this can feel dangerous while leveling. Defense debuff resistance is less than that of Scrappers and Stalkers due to only have a 0.7 defense modifier vs 0.75. You can potentially be overwhelmed, but it does take a lot of successful hits in order to really be a bother. Still, if you can swing it, aim for more than 45% to give yourself a buff. I recommend that for Scrappers/Stalkers too. That's it though. Skipping Elude is a non-issue when you see what it does. Sentinel SR has built-in endurance management. Elude's bonus recovery is superfluous. Sentinel SR can soft-cap defenses and your Incarnate Destiny choices become wide open for any level 45+ content. You could leap frog Elude and Barrier if you wanted, but I see little value in doing that. Pros: Master Brawler. This power trumps the con of "no real resistance". This power gives me +400 HP absorb right now. Its cooldown is stupidly short. This power is very strong and shouldn't be dismissed. I have around 20-25% resistance to Smash/Lethal/Fire/Cold. I was running some farm maps of those types yesterday. I survived just fine through a combination of proactive Master Brawler and straight up dodge tanking. Auto-Hit attacks, which aren't common in normal content, would be a problem. For most other things SR is very, very, very safe. Enduring grants you a 30% recovery buff right out of the box. This is slightly stronger than Stamina. It also grants you some Psi defense. I personally don't feel it is worth the time to enhance the defense much, but this still grants you a lot of opportunity for slotting (e.g., a LoTG). SR can feel like it needs a lot of powers, but it really doesn't need a lot slots. I have just the default slot for both Dodge and Agile. Both mule a single Luck of the Gambler for recharge. My Melee and Ranged defenses are still over 47%, respectively. I opted to minimally slot Evasion (just 3 slots) because the AoE defense you get is very high. Quickness makes you run faster. This combined with Swift, Sprint, and Ninja Run is close to baseline Fly (perhaps better if you slot some movement speed bonuses). I have a 67mph run speed and 42ft jump height. No other travel power necessary beyond purchasable flight packs or using the jump jets for areas that require more vertical movement. Super Reflexes can basically cover all your defense needs easily with some additional support out of the pools (e.g., Weave, Maneuvers, Combat Jumping/Hover, or IO's). This lets you run wild with procs in your primary if you want since you don't need to worry about chasing multiple Thunderstrikes to cap a defense category. Accuracy can become an issue if you push that too much (so Tactics can be considered), but still you don't need to fully slot attacks for more than recharge bonuses. Both my DP and AR builds leverage procs for single-target damage. If you're planning to go with Energy, then you could run Gladiator's Javelin, Explosive Strkes, and Force Feedback for procs in a few attacks with little performance hit in terms of your defense. In my opinion, Sentinel SR has far fewer downsides than it has upsides. It is the strongest defense-based set out of the mix, it allows you to build offense without sacrificing defense, and Master Brawler/Enduring really close its gaps. As others have said before, Sentinel SR is likely the best version of the set that exists much like Sentinel Regeneration. You may hit some rough patches while leveling, but the wait is well worth the effort it takes to fully realize the set.

I'm of the opinion that the term "min/max" is a bit misused in the context of CoH. Min/max here really just means optimization. Hell, at its core, that's all min/max ever was. Min/max is a legacy term from pen and paper RPGs, especially Dungeons and Dragons. In DnD you often rolled randomly for attributes. If you were using the option to assign those attributes, you could place your highest rolls into the attribute necessary for the class and then toss the low rolls into the "dump stats". The randomness could get you anywhere between a 3 to an 18. On the more extreme ends of min/max, you start dumping other things in order to push focus into a singular role or thing. This kind of min/max would create highly specialized characters, often times Fighters or Wizards, that weren't good for anything other than their one trick. When min/max gets to a point of being disruptive this term isn't used nicely. Its used as an insult. Playing a "munchkin" is a term that derived from highly disruptive min/maxers. These players built characters in order to "win" in a game system where "winning" was loosely defined. There is a card game series that is called Munchkin, and this is an homage to this kind of jerk game play. In essence you build cards, steal cards, and try to build a character that is as ridiculous as it is powerful. A legendary "munchkin" build in the past decade+ was "Pun Pun the Shapeshifting Kobold". City of Heroes isn't really built for that level of obnoxiousness but the term min/max is so overused it is just a part of regular gamer lexicon. What you see in build discussions is attempts to optimize defense and/or resistance. There is a ceiling for optimization which varies wildly across character builds. However, in the end what you want to try to do is get as close to the soft-cap of defense (which is 45%), and the hard-cap of resistance (which is 75% for all but VEATs/HEATs/Brutes/Tankers). That's just optimizing damage mitigation. If you can also swing it, you want to balance this with trying to improve damage output. The most common way to do that is increase recharge and remove the weakest attacks from your selection. Alternative measures also include incorporating damage procs if the attack set can manage it. The value of damage procs is going to vary greatly across the different ATs and should not be viewed as universal or in a vacuum. Now that is out of the way, Sentinel armor sets (0.70 scale) are numerically weaker than those found in Scrappers and Stalkers (0.75 scale). However, in actual play those numbers fall around 2% difference [Edit: Also worth noting that an IO build plan can reduce this difference to zero. Several sets can hit 45% defenses or cap Smashing/Lethal Resistance at 75%. This creates a "so what" situation. So what if a Sentinel's Psi resist is 38% vs a Scrapper's 40.5% Psi resist.] So it isn't much. Many Sentinel secondaries offer variants that include new mitigation features that don't exist elsewhere. Usually that's absorb shields like how Super Reflexes has Master Brawler or Regeneration's Instant Healing. Where those absorb shields actually function well (some like Frigid Shield don't) that makes the set more durable than its base numbers might suggest. This appears to be the case with Regeneration and is compounded by limiting enemies to just ranged attacks. What I think you may be seeing is that enemies with ranged options often do less damage than their melee attacks. That's not really new. It is just going to be noticeable if you kite enemies a lot and then swap to a melee character and mix it up. Several bosses also have multiple melee attacks while maybe only having 1 ranged attack. That can also be significant damage avoided. Those enemies will cast their 1 ranged power and then run at you. If you can maintain distance they can't hurt you until that ranged attack recycles. This is why I don't mind powers that cause enemies to run on my Sentinels. This makes the caltrops power in Ninja Tools functional as both an offensive tool and defensive tool. Enemies will turn around and run, slowly, while I shoot them in the back. While they run, I am not taking damage. Worst case, they turn around and shoot at me. That's still better than eating whatever high DPA melee option they might have had ready.

Invulnerability offers exactly 0 protection against anything other than Smashing/Lethal at level 14. Temp Invulnerability at level 14 with nothing slotted is giving you 21% smashing/lethal resistance. Resist Physical Damage will only add 7 more to that. At level 14 your base hit points aren't much either. By level 16 you can get Unyielding which is going to get you 3.5% more smashing/lethal resistance and 7% to all but Psi. I experienced something similar early on when I was first running a Beam Rifle/Willpower character. That's when I stopped trying to solo at that level and looked for teams. You really want to get into Single Origin enhancements or generic IO's of level 25+ as fast as you can. I feel that holds true for most, if not all, characters too. The early teens can feel especially dangerous since that is also when a lot of enemy factions start casually getting more CC in their attacks too. I still remember when the Trolls felt like a threat to me on my old Regen Scrapper prior to getting Integration at 16. Keep in mind, the grass isn't greener for Electric Armor at level 14. By level 14 you'd have Charged Armor, Charged Shield, Conductive Shield, and Energize. That's 24.5% resist against most Smash/Lethal/Fire/Cold, 49% Energy, and 14% Negative. The Circle of Thorns have enemies that deal Negative damage some of which use Midnight Grasp, a Tier 9 Scrapper attack (back when DM was Scrapper exclusive). Energy Aura will likely feel worse. You won't have but 11 to 14% defense to some attacks (variable based on type), and no higher than 10% resistance to a few elements. What you really want is higher chance to be missed by enemies and that's not going to happen any time soon. Yes, your defensive options prior to SO's is going to feel a little light. Try to get into some Positron's teams and let others take the aggro for you. I know I have seen the Sentinel listed as "the solo AT", but just try to ignore the total BS of "common forum knowledge". You need to establish a baseline of defense and offense before you can really get rolling. In order to do that effectively, you want Single Origin enhancements or better. That means get to level 22 ASAP and its best to do that with friends (or random people you can tolerate). If you're still running without Aim then you're also creating battles of attrition in which you will lose at that low of a level. That is also a problem that isn't going to go away. The ranged attacks you have are going to seem like they are hitting like wet noodles. That is in part due to the disparity of ranged damage vs melee damage, and also due to your options for enhancements being pretty crappy between training/dual origins. So repeat, team up if you are struggling and re-evaluate at a later date. I can guarantee you that you will likely find similar issues with any of the other armor sets. I find it very doubtful your time to kill is going to improve a lot by making comparisons of sets up to 14th level either. Fire Blast would yield you more damage, but that is so slight for level 14 it isn't the issue. Radiation Blast, at level 14, is actually going to do less damage than Energy Blast. Again, while it is likely technically less, it is going to be droplets in an ocean. The real issues between power sets doesn't start to become prevalent until you start analyzing nearly complete characters (i.e., full power/slot load out) and their specific gearing parameters. In other words, you're still too low for any of these decisions to be real game changers.

Easy there sparky. I spent quite a bit of time testing Opportunity last summer. For a few weeks I devoted about 4 hours a week, mostly in a single play sessions, sitting on the test server when it was call Justin observing behavior. BUT since you decided to say I was 100% wrong and so erroneous on my conclusion, I just logged into two characters I have at 50. One has full IOs, and the other doesn't. The one without a full build only has a single Performance Shifter +End proc which easy to monitor since it has its own message. My full IO build for this is Dual Pistols/Nin. In triggering defensive opportunity my endurance gain during the 15 second duration was a net positive vs running without it. My build drives my attack chain cost very low though and my natural restore is far greater. Still, even using Bullet Rain on the Comic Con map, I notice an increase in endurance. Panacea and Performance Shifter procs have their own message in the combat logs. The other character has very low end management since it isn't complete. Its a Water Blast user that an old hold over for tests. I drove down her endurance to 65% out of 100% (no end buffs). During Defensive Opportunity her endurance drain held between 62% and 66%. Without Defensive Opportunity running endurance fell off from 65% to 33%. I triggered Defensive Opportunity, and endurance went from 33 to 38%. Then the endurance held between casts and slowly started to creep upwards. Edit: And during the summer I ran a few Pylon tests with Dual Pistols. I noticed a difference in endurance drain without using Defensive Opportunity before I had finished my build. I included Dual Wield in my tests there after since using it to trigger Defensive Opportunity was enough end drain halt/return for me to ignore using the Endurance heal entirely. This became a minor DPS increase vs using the click restore since that power has a long animation and DW at least does some damage. Edit 2: Logged into Brainstorm and rolled up a Radiation Blast/Random Secondary. (All toggles turned off - only attacks drained end) 1) Gave myself xp to 50 via Freebies macro 2) Went to Rikti War Zone for the dummies 3) Used Brawl, X-Ray, Neutrino, Irradiate only. 4) While building Opportunity, endurance drained from 100 to 75. 5) Waited for X-Ray to recharge and triggered Defensive Opportunity at 90% end. 6) Attacked until 15 seconds were over 7) Noted endurance-- 100% 8 Restart test to build Opportunity 9) Used Neutrino to trigger Offensive Opportunity 10) Ended 15 second run at 80% endurance 11) Let endurance build to 100% again. 12) Built Opportunity - Triggered Defensive again. 13) Initiated attacks at 90% endurance. 14) Ended with 100% endurance 15) Repeated Offensive Opportunity. Started at 90% endurance and ended at 75% endurance. Conclusion: Without using either Opportunity it is easy to drain endurance from 100 to 75. Using Offensive Opportunity drains end at the same rate as not using any inherent effect at all. Defensive Opportunity ended the attack sequence at 100% each time. The above can be replicated by anyone. Knock yourself out. Improving endurance efficiency can convert Defensive Opportunity into positive gains for the duration or so I have observed when I actively build for that. Trying to hammer out really expensive AoEs may change end return. Radiation Blast's base costs run 18 for Irradiate and 15 for Haze and Bomb. Conversely, I run Empty Clips which is a base cost of only 10 and Bullet Rain which has a base cost of 16. When I just tested my level 50 I was noting positive increase to my endurance during Empty Clips (modified 6.48 end) and there were no procs from Panacea or Performance Shifter. Though both of those did proc the moment I stopped attacking. So even without endurance modification in powers of a level 50 Water Blaster and a level 7 Radiation Blaster they were seeing either neutral endurance loss or positive return (due to lack of a full chain there is time for natural endurance restore, sure) during Defensive Opportunity. In a character with actual slotted endurance management, Defensive Opportunity became positive endurance gain during AoE situations. Though it really isn't necessary for that character since they have layers of end management. Edit 3: - Leveled to 50. Rad Blast/Rad Armor - none of the passives that help endurance were taken. 1) No passive endurance added, no enhancements to Stamina slotted 2) All attacks run 1 accuracy common IO, 1 end reduc and 1 recharge reduc 3) Proceeded to use the 4 single target attacks same as before. 4) No inherent and Offensive Opportunity would drain endurance down. Defensive Opportunity always ended in the 90's to 100. Conclusion: Yup, Defensive does build endurance. Yes. Combat log tells you exactly how much health you gain back. It also has a message to the effect (paraphrase) "and you restore some endurance". In order to see the endurance doing anything positive I use the Combat Attributes monitor to see exactly how much endurance is running in the bar. You can watch endurance drain with an attack sequence with and without Defensive Opportunity and literally watch the numbers vary only slightly. If you build additional endurance management this can turn into positive gains.

Fixed that. Smashing/Lethal/Negative/Psi/Fire/Cold are all the ones with the easiest time to raise. Energy and Toxic are tougher, even on a Tanker.

I have this combo. You can get away with a lot due to what Staff brings to the table. Guarded Spin can get you to the melee/lethal defensive soft-cap with a bit of help by your build. This means you don't need to go all out on defense. Cardiac Core can help you close the cap on Smashing/Lethal resistance, but again this depends on what direction you took to build it. Musculature Core is the bee's knees for adding more damage, but I opted for quality of life. I only skipped Placate and Cloak of Fear from their respective sets. I have little use for Placate but I view all of the Staff powers like a set of tools. Cloak of Fear just offers me too little for the endurance but Oppressive Gloom at least works with Sky Splitter. Shadow Meld is nice, but optional. You could go with the endurance boosters in the epics instead if you like. Try to build for 32.5% melee defense at least. Guarded Spin will push you further. Try to build for 70% smashing/lethal resistance. Then go for as much recharge as you can muster. Don't forget to socket some KB protection IO somewhere. Shouldn't be too bad as long as you aren't trying to soft-cap everything, hard cap all resistances, and then skimp out on recharge/damage.

Defensive already restores endurance. This kinda reminds of me of some of the suggestions thrown around last year. Like folks would say the AT needs a 10% damage boost over what Mids was reporting. Which was like "Well, you're in luck because the in game scalar is 0.95 not 0.75". Or other humorous musings like giving 5% damage buff. People didn't notice that their powers already impose a minor defense and resistance debuff at all times. What got me to notice was seeing powers that have 0 debuffs on other ATs have them in the Sentinel power description. These effects also show up under a Power Analyzer used against targets. The inherent for Sentinels is utterly cryptic and clunky. It is no wonder people hate it because it isn't easy to understand nor is it easy to use. On top of that, it isn't at the level of class defining that others end up as like Domination or Fury. So on top of tweaks, it also needs a clear description of what it does. Flavor text is nice and all but it sucks for making informed decisions.

I've never noticed the bar depleting faster based on target choice. When I was testing this last year it seemed pretty constant regardless of target priority. Post combat, the bar will deplete after a delay sort of like Domination and Fury. In combat there is very minor decay but it is offset by the frequency of attacking. At least that has been my experience. You don't need 100% meter to trigger the inherent either. The rings will appear as soon as you hit 90 out of 100. In both cases, the target of the opportunity will receive a -20% resistance debuff for 15 seconds. This is highlighted by a big target under the enemy. The color of the target matches whatever color you have chosen for your power. Yes, you can have different color targetting flashes for your T1 and T2 if you want. Your teammates will now do more damage to this specific target for the next 15 seconds (or until it drops). That's the extent of the team effect. The Sentinel gains a personal damage or resource restore (restore = both health and endurance) buff depending on which version of opportunity is running. Offensive mode gives bonus energy damage, that was appearing to be proc-based, and that bonus damage is unenhanceable determined by base damage of the power. So the more you push enhancement diversification into a power, the less meaningful Offensive Opportunity becomes. For my characters running 132+% damage enhancement Offensive Opportunity contributes somewhere in the ballpark of +3 DPS overall (give or take a point or two). Defensive Opportunity isn't enhanceable either nor does it scale well, for the healing, in later levels. Defensive Opportunity does return endurance and it appears to be the exact same amount regardless of character build. The endurance return can be very noticeable when hitting 10 targets with an AoE. That and the resistance debuff make Defensive Opportunity fairly valuable otherwise it isn't worth worrying about. Offensive Opportunity is better for damage but only in such a minor fashion.

You're trying to do too much. You seem to try to do too much in every discussion on builds I've seen. I too like to tie concept to characters, but I have to scale things back in these games. Also, if you're questioning the durability contribution of Invulnerability as a secondary powerset through the lens of level 13, then your expectations might be a tad too high. I haven't found my Sentinels to be all that squishy in comparison with Stalkers/Scrappers of similar levels. Hell, even at level 13 for a Tanker you can feel a bit squishy but at least Dull Pain is easy to fit in before 10th level. My thoughts... Skipping Aim is a big mistake. If you think the damage of the character is slight, then why skip the one power that gives you bursts of damage? Yes, it has a cool down but it has 10 seconds of uptime. You can build for 25-30 seconds of cooldown. That's significant damage you're leaving on the table. Power Push is literally the best attack in the entire set and you're skipping it. Cross Punch without slots is a waste of time for damage. It looks like you'd like to have a little bit of a melee attack routine for close quarters. Air Superiority, Boxing, and Cross Punch does very, very, very little damage*. If you keep this slotting your ranged attack sequence is going to do 4 to 5 times the damage. If you think the damage is anemic now at level 13 using just the blasts, you ain't seen nothin' yet. (*I helped someone build an Emma Frost character that mixed the pool powers with some blasts for fun. If you take both Boxing and Kick then Cross Punch gets a bigger boost. Cross Punch with slots can do decent damage all by itself. Not slotting any of that though is pretty much a waste of your effort. Unfortunately, Energy Blast is a bit hungry for powers and slots making this hard to pull off.) Leviathan Mastery has Knockout Blow. That power is worth getting, but only if you plan to slot it. It can give you that Super Strength punch that you seem to be looking for. Boxing/Air Superiority are pretty much garbage though. Blasters and Dominators mix ranged attacks and melee attacks FAR better than the Sentinel can. Melee for Sentinels is nearly an afterthought since the worth while selections are so backloaded (level 35+). I have an homage character similar to yours. They weren't full energy in form, but very similar in scope to the Eternals. So the character could do a lot of things like manipulate energy, use super strength, be durable, use telekinesis, and be a telepath. That character was a Gravity/Energy Dominator at one point, and is now currently an Invulnerability/Energy Melee Tanker. The Dominator gets the power selection fairly right but the durability is the trade off. The Tanker gets the melee right, with Lazer Beam Eyes for flavor, and the durability right. That build has to give up all the other esoteric effects. The overall slotting isn't worth discussing because an IO build can have very different allocations vs an SO build. Like you may not want 4 slots in Weave when you can get the set bonus you want in 2 or even 6. The best thing you can do, is build this character as a Sentinel first and rationalize your character's concept to it second. Make this a container for what the character can do in this game instead of trying to mimic another medium. You'll be far happier with the character because of it.

DB is fine. If you like it, then go for it. The overall community for Homecoming is a fraction of the size of live. Having expectations about high amounts of chatter on all powers or combinations is going to lead you to disappointment. A lot of returning players are veterans too. So a large amount of conversation is going to be focused on new powers and new IO set combinations. There really isn't new territory to unlock with Dual Blades, but the lack of discussion doesn't mean it suddenly sucks. DB is usable on any archetype, period, full stop. DB gets better and better with the IO system. That's your 30,000 ft view of it. To get a bit more granular, the DB combo system excels more on Scrappers, Brutes, and Tankers than it does on Stalkers. I do not care for the combo mechanic on the Stalker at all. However, if you build for heavy recharge to only use Assassin's Blades, Ablative Strike, and Sweeping Strike the set becomes one of the top damage dealing primaries. For Scrappers, Brutes, and Tankers you can also build to ignore the combo system. However, the basic Blinding Feint into Attack Vitals combo is easy to build for while still yielding very high returns. DB doesn't really offer great synergy, in my opinion, with any particular armor sets. Instead, it is the choice of armor set that will be working for Dual Blades. If you want a high recharge build to focus on the highest possible damage, then you really want to consider secondaries with recharge boosts like Super Reflexes (you have several choices now FYI). If you don't care about that and don't mind using the combo system, then your secondary doesn't matter nearly as much. I happen to have a Dual Blades and Dark Armor Scrapper. I appreciate the damage aura it brings, but honestly it isn't necessary. DB has AoE options already built in. I'm just adding icing on the cake.

This is better in the Suggestion's sub forum, but how cool would it be to have a Shield Toss Primary to go with it?

Those kinds of classes were the inspiration for playing Dark Armor/Titan Weapons as a Tanker. I wouldn't consider Stalkers much of a "knight". Even if you're going the route of an Anti-Paladin they still are heavy armor wearing warrior types and not shadow skulking rogues. I'd suggest SD/WM Tanker for being the in-your-face brawler type that this kind of archetype suggests.

Exactly. Also, there are no direct Rocky movies after 4 (Creed is a spin off). I also hear there is no other Ghostbusters movies than the one that premiered in 1984.

The short end of it: I don't think it is worth wasting resources to plug the Psi hole. Enduring does provide some defense against Psi, and you can enhance it beyond just endurance mods. You have 2 powers left. Maneuvers, like Weave, is Defense to All so that will add some more Psi defense. Combat Jumping, while running, also is Def to All. You should be able to hit 24%+ without thinking about it too hard. In the Maria J arc you do face off against a lot of Carnies. Note, most of them do not have Psychic attacks. Attendants/Jugglers - these do lethal and energy damage. Your energy resist is very low and your lethal isn't much higher. They shouldn't be hitting too much unless you're pushing higher difficulty where they gain to hit buffs against you. Any Strongman - these do mostly smashing damage and they have a lot of attacks Fencers - these do mostly lethal Any Illusionist - their offense consists of Spectral Wounds (which doesn't hit very hard) and Blind (which also doesn't hit very hard). Seneschals - fire damage of which you have little resistance to. The psychic damage you're likely experiencing is Psychic Visage. That's the PBAoE that goes off when you kill them and it also drains end. There is a very easy way to deal with this... kite them a bit when at low health and don't be too close when they die. This can be tough if a bunch get in your face but taking multiple Carnies out in close proximity means you're eating a lot of Visage blasts. Don't try to tank those if you can. P.S., Your Overcharge slotting is fine as is. It is the least of your worries.

Just one slight nitpick, @underfyre. Defensive Opportunity does in fact return endurance per target hit over the duration of 15 seconds. That's per target hit and it currently includes AoE. That would mean a power like Fire Ball becomes endurance positive against multiple targets. Now, is that a great reason to take Fire Blast in this write-up? Probably not, but it is worth noting that the real value in Defensive Opportunity is linked to endurance return not its heal. Also worth nothing, PPM is clamped to a 5% floor and 90% ceiling. If you're weaving Flares between every attack you're getting a 6%~ chance to trigger Decimation every 1.188 seconds (Fire Ball and Blaze animations) or 1.848 (Blazing Blast). That becomes significant over a longer period of time BUT I do like that proc in powers that can trigger it with more reliability if I can manage it. Dominate is one such candidate.

I have this combo at 50. My DB/DA doesn't bother with Hasten. I have 82.5% global recharge which is enough to run Blinding Feint - Attack Vitals (Ablating Strike, Vengeful Slice, Sweeping Strike) on repeat. That combo takes 5.28s to animate (with Arcanatime) and with some boosters in the Dmg/Rec in Blinding Feint its gapless (BF for me recharges in 5.24s). Dark Regen is available every 12-ish seconds which is fine. I also took the Sweep combo (Power Slice, Typhoon's Edge, One Thousand Cuts), but I do not need it. Typhoon's Edge is a decent enough AOE plus Death Shroud plus Sweeping Strike. I happen to like 1k Cuts though so I have it in my build. I skipped Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom for my own reasons though they are easy to fit in to the build if you want them. Soul Transfer is conceptual so I took it. The rest of the character build is devoted to plugging mitigation holes to make it more tanky. With Cardiac Alpha I cap Smashing/Lethal resist, nearly cap Psi and hit over 60% Fire/Cold/Negative. Energy and Toxic land at 40%. Defenses are all in the 30+ range and I didn't take Shadow Meld (which is a great option too). The pairing works very well regardless of your level of optimization desires. BF-AV combo is enough damage and it is incredibly easy to build for. DA is just a solid secondary that can be pretty flexible too. In practice this pair is a really hard one to build "wrong". Hell, everything about my character is designed around "just enough". Just enough defense that a small purple will soft-cap or nearly soft cap all positionals (AoE is 2% shy of that). Just enough resistance except Energy/Toxic - both hard ones to plug for non-Tankers. Just enough recharge to make my attacks seamless.

I only agree that Stunning Arrow is easy to skip. The others all have various uses and ESD is the opposite of suck. Its over powered.

The perception there may be a bit of both. Sentinels do have spikey damage reliant on an inherent that is impossible to have 100% uptime on without actively trying to build for it. Even then, uptime isn't a guarantee. Water Blast in particular has high AoE damage potential but unfortunately rather low single target damage potential. Water Blast is a great set to experiment with in order to overrule both of those conditions, within reason of course, due to how IO's and the AT operate. Things to look forward to: 1) Including a 1-2 punch pairing in the Epic sets. You can take any of the decent melee attacks and combine it with a hold power using procs to add a tremendous amount of damage. That bonus damage does come at a steep price though. You need to be level 35 in order to unlock it, and you likely won't see much use of either if you exemplar too low. If you only play at 50+, then that doesn't matter much at all. 2) Water Blast is loaded with proc opportunities. These can greatly push Water's low-ish ST damage into a realm where it can be a bit more tolerable. I don't really bother with pushing multiple procs in AoE powers, since I don't feel it is necessary, but Water's got options there if that is your bag. Water Jet - Dehydrate - Hydro Blast is a really simple sequence to run that doesn't take really complicated build mastery to use. When Tidal Forces allows it, you'll get an extra Water Jet. Still, almost all of these powers have access to the Slow category for Impeded Swiftness in addition to the basic ranged PvP toxic proc. Several other powers have access to others like Knockback - Explosive Strikes set (e.g., Hydro Blast), or defense debuffing (Dehydrate). 3) Whirlpool makes unique use out of the Opportunity Strikes ATO proc. Opportunity lasts for 15 seconds once you've build it up. In a high recharge build you can potentially bring Whirlpool's recharge down to 16-18 seconds. The Strike's ATO proc will grant you +37 meter, or about 1/3 of the bar needed to use Opportunity, against any targets it hits. It checks against all enemies in its field of effect and applies the benefit once. Against the full 10 target limit on the power that is a lot of chances it goes off. Even against a single enemy this proc chance is around 20+% all by itself (considering the 5pc set's recharge modification). That's as good, and often better, than a lot of ST powers. The proc chance will go up if you use no other sources of direct recharge beyond that single ATO proc (it has an unavoidable recharge mod in it). The difference with ST powers is they will often grant you 100+ meter whenever they trigger but their base recharge often isn't enough to make it reliable (some powers are outliers though). Still, Whirlpool makes this option a bit more reliable, especially in big groups, where you know you can get a third of next opportunity in a single casting. This will mean you're second Hydro Blast (if using Water Jet - Dehydrate - Hydro) will automatically trigger Opportunity. That's roughly 11 seconds depending on if you take advantage of Tidal Forces to use another Water Jet. Spamming your AoE can be slightly faster. Defensive Opportunity doesn't sound like much, but it is still -20% resistance. You can also combine with Annihilation's -12% and Achilles' Heel -20%. Water Blast can get a lot better. You should still temper your expectations because it likely won't be super amazing without abusing Mind Probe + Dominate, but it can definitely shine very well on Sentinels.

Things of note for the build below: 1) Yes, it is using boosters in a few powers to help push some numbers like defense/accuracy. However, the end result lets you hit enemies that are +4 to your level without the need for the endurance drain in Tactics. 2) Your current build can run Power Bolt - Power Blast - Power Push on repeat. That takes 4.356 seconds to fully cycle. The build below uses Power Burst - Power Push - Focused Power Bolt. That takes 6.464 seconds to cycle. It also does about twice the damage. Power Bolt gets taken purely to trigger to Offensive Opportunity once your meter is full. There is NO reason to use that attack at all. Power Burst - Push - FP Bolt can be run indefinitely at the recharge in the build (180%). 3) Hasten isn't using any boosters, but some boosters will make it perma (+3 in both drops it to 120.9 second recharge). 4) Note, Energize is now effectively permanent. 5) Aim with the Gaussian's set will give you better occasional burst damage when the Build-Up proc triggers. This has a 25 second cooldown, just like Nova. That's a big improvement over the default 38 seconds on your current Aim and 31s Nova. 6) If you're bothering to take Flight, do take Afterburner -- or don't bother. You can cap flight speed with just Hover and vendor based jetpacks. The build below takes Afterburner for fun. 7) You don't need Chain Fences if you slot KB/KD IOs. 8 ) You don't really need any of the Sentinel ATOs, but Opportunity Strikes is in FP Bolt because it can be a decent spot for it. If you don't give an F about the knockback in Energy, then you could go nuts with full sets. You could also go for more damage procs. 9) The original build pushes a lot of elemental defense at the expensive of a lot of endurance drain. You should be able to live with just "high" Negative defense unless you are purposely facing a lot of Dark Blast using enemies. Generally Smashing, Lethal, and Energy are the more common types at end game. Psychic, Cold, and Negative aren't really worth considering though Cold is married to Fire in set bonuses. 10) Your Incarnate Alpha option will be more favorable towards Musculature Core which is a pretty big damage boost vs Agility which will not be much of a damage boost at all. One could shift around some sets and what not for preference. I just made this pretty quickly to illustrate that the build could be improved by thinking about it in a very different manner. Good luck! | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1480;710;1420;HEX;| |78DA65934B4F13611486BF69A7C2502E2D97722B3005612897D2021A351A23B6189| |126448CBA6B1A3AB6639A29694B026A34FE055DA0D19D08BAD08D46FD291A75E556| |40054417A69E99F372493A69F3CC9CEF9CF3BEDF2DBE18AD7E7DE1FE5921D59ECF2| |60B85C4AC6E160D53CF56C6178AC9A29133053DFE2B19A3A0C68D74A6A84EE8EAB5| |4CB2A85ED4526A34A75E8F5658097B6589CB4933ADA7423153CFA7971213D4B3783| |018D56FE86641DF1B3DB7904F0AF74C2E970D4D66ADE655F6FBECBCAEA76A386C45| |0D335D677F4DEBC9949E2F648CF9B6D8BC3117DAEF1BCBEA73893849E9F9A516B2D| |34BFF4D4DE029C9E21921228BE135E6C80AB80A7E936D2EF5D1B764D7384593C435| |1B4EA222863799917F34DC218B9F1A5245C9251D77D8B93DA3E018F3E838780C84C| |E2DD27142C7099D010F73A89119F1327F918E0B3AAE27044D114796C147CC96C7E0| |538BB26883CE16D556A0B6E2257BA87C01AE30AB9E83ABCCEA35E63DF2A8B04749F| |9EEE4B175E636F575A3AF3BCCF9B5436088E9898023CC7A787293A11AAE15353DBC| |FEB749AB8EB5445D80633BA4E18586F7BDB0D7BEFE0DB3F12DF88EE9FBC0353E682| |C52BF06AC6FC3367B0EEE3007FE807F997728B709B94DC8D590AB2157DB652AE4BD| |193E9BB16FBFC9672B7CB67E65FDB62FCCCE8FE06766E013B3073E5F058568E77E8| |E769C2F3FCE9B7F8B35BB49B303FBD031C8F3EC047749BB0BDA5D67789DD5D3E009| |F02433700A84B683FA76631FBA4BF40827457AB112BD3EC93EE57DCD6084DDF48D3| |265CAED476E3F5622689F5C45043DCC4803D34BB98398E5E024D70F4D8197987769| |174270137AC84E854F8830626168F8E5FD5B4D3FCBF54059245C16B19AE15E23325| |696335E16992E8BCCC8FB775E487644F1D04DE64869BD8A46A122E1646F1EC41CD2| |559E833C25D9B7540EF0DC370ED7F573DD8FC3750F783D1CCBA0CA393783D6AC5CB| |6F67FC35DF7F0| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

Frigid Shield needs a pass by the team and I wish it worked like the Blaster version. Moisture Absorption is a small defense booster, but more importantly it adds to your max endurance. Mid's isn't showing the impact to endurance gain per second by using MA and adding 15+ end to yourself. Duration is 100s and base recharge is 60s. Icy Bastion grants you recovery and regen on top of everything else it does. Doesn't really matter if you're running Ageless with the endurance recovery aspect. Still, it is a crashless T9 which will likely cap a few of your resistances with less downtime than Rune of Protection (an alternative if you want it). Can you live without those powers? Maybe. Ice Blast can be a little heavy on endurance consumption vs what I am used to playing. I'd take the approach of seeing how the rotation feels and then determine just how valuable things like Moisture Absorption are (from an end management perspective). Icy Bastion is one of things you can layer with Ageless at its peak, but still you could probably get by without it if you really wanted. Barrier is also an option. I changed my Ice/Ice/Ice baby build. So stop, collaborate and listen. This ice build is back with a brand new invention. Currently hitting 39% smash/lethal defense, 35% fire/cold, and 44% energy/negative under Moisture Absorption. Psi is low, but thems the breaks. Resistance 29% smash/lethal, 36% fire, 30% toxic, cold capped, and the rest nothing noteworthy. Icy Bastion puts Smash/Lethal at 74%, caps Fire and toxic while putting Energy/Negative to 54%. I wanted to get as close to 32.5% defense to the major types as possible for use with purple inspires. This let me put some damage procs into Chilling Ray, Bitter Ice Blast, and Bitter Freeze Ray. Those three make up the bulk of the rotation, and under Ageless can be the rotation. Ice Blast used as filler and Ice Bolt taken purely to trigger Offensive Opportunity if practical (Defensive is prioritized for the endurance per hit for 15 seconds). I only bothered with Frostbite in Ice Mastery to combine with Ice Storm and Blizzard.

As I allude in my response, there is no reason at all why you can't do both. Pistols with 2x PPM 3.5 damage procs should trigger at least 1 of those 30% of the time assuming 0 recharge enhancement in the power. Decimation: Build-Up would have something like an 8-10~% chance to trigger per activation. The floor on triggering (heh) that event chance, as pointed out by Red before, is 5%. So even enhancing recharge to the point where it would drop the Build-Up proc chance from its native rate to less than 5% will still yield 5%. Then the Chuck Lots Of Dice™ method of using this attack frequently gives you more opportunities over time to try and get the event to happen. Powers like Executioner's Shot, Dual Wield, or even Suppressive Fire all have 1.848 second Arcanatime animations. It isn't that hard to get Pistols to recharge within that time frame and you can skip Hasten to do it too. How fast you want to hammer out powers like Piercing Rounds or Executioner's Shot become the guiding lights on where your final recharge needs to be. Obviously, that ignores other core powers like Overgrowth where you may want it to be active as close to perma as feasible. All of that is exactly why I use Pistols between each attack and it is also why I put it in this thread here. The Defender has the opportunity to make use of multiple sequence types depending on how you're approaching the slotting and what the goals are. Also, in other words, the Build-Up proc in Pistols is worth it and it doesn't matter much if you enhance its recharge. So that's an option to run 5 pc Decimation for a recharge bonus OR just frankenslot the hell out of it. Nature can cover you on endurance costs and to hit if you can get Overgrowth on all the time. I was toying with ideas on this last night since the pairing is really interesting. 😉 Edit: Some more food for thought. On the 3 characters I mentioned before these run either Musculature Core (Sentinel) or Intuition Radial (Defender and Corr). In all cases 3 slots are devoted to granting me enough accuracy to guarantee hitting +4's even in exemplar content and some slight endurance modification to reduce costs. My damage modifier on my Sentinel in all of my attacks with procs is still 132%. With Pistols having a rough 30% chance to proc on a PPM 3.5 proc that's still adding an average 20 pts of damage per attack. That's pretty considerable damage given the baseline of the power itself while also having the option to meet or exceed ED in damage modification with the right Alpha Incarnate. I also checked my Defender and I did change my split slots on the ATO to just parking them in Empty Clips and Bullet Rain. I have another 5x set in Piercing Rounds and Hail of Bullets. On my Defender I only have 2 frankenslotted powers (Pistols and Executioner's Shot) as Dual Wield is a coin toss power for me. I leverage Piercing Rounds for the debuff more than I care about personal DPS.