oldskool

You could consider that IO set sort of a throw away set. It grants an absorb shield which is nice to have but trying to guarantee its proc in a power like Midnight Grasp becomes an overall DPS loss for little survival gains. Midnight Grasp and Siphon Life will be better carries for damage procs (like the Mako Lethal) which will grant them better average damage returns. Finally, the build is already easy to weave Shadow Punch between Midnight Grasp and Smite Siphon Life. So its spammability will eventually trigger its proc, but the build isn't reliant on it. I also like to split that set into 2 powers to boost Energy Resistance a bit further, but the posted build looks like it has some Incarnate tanking in mind without worry of external support.

Edit: Re-thinking this... If you're fresh 50 and you don't have your level shift then any +4 content is going to be bumpy. If you do get into the melee mix in the ITF, then level 54 goons have a good chance to rip you up. Sure, against 1 on 1 your defenses have a 5% chance of you getting hit. Against multiple that chance starts to become more likely over time. Also, the streak breaker can be a bitch. Broadsword attacks have a 7.5% defense debuff. Sentinel Invul's DDR isn't very high. With the buffed accuracy on +4 enemies and a couple of unlucky hits your defenses will start to go down. I'm sure you know that, but I feel it is worth pointing out. A comparison of a fresh 50 vs 54's isn't exactly a fair comparison. I happen to like using Disintegrate - Lancer - Piercing Beam. Lancer triggers the disintegrate effect 100% of the time now, and Piercing Beam will get bonus damage. Piercing Beam does have a resistance debuff attached to it, but against +4's you're not going to be seeing the full -9.6% effect. Also, you're damage in general is weakened against +4s. Again, not really a fair place to compare. Single Shot, against a tougher target, will grant you up to 100% regeneration debuff. Against AVs that can be significant DPS gains. Offensive Opportunity's bonus damage effect will yield you something like 3~ DPS over time much like Assault. Its not much, but Sentinels pick up a LOT of pennies. Adding 1 PvP toxic dmg proc to Disintegrate and Lancer Shot can net you more DPS too. I put 5x Decimation + 1 PvP toxic in Disintegrate. One of those Decimation's is the build-up proc. Over time you will trigger it and for 5 seconds you'll get bonus damage. Yay! I put 5x Apocalypse in Lancer with 1 PvP toxic. Piercing Beam is largely fine as is. You can put the Sentinel's Ward set in either Cutting Beam or Refractor. You could put 5x Opportunity Strikes in Overcharge plus Achilles' Heel. If you're willing to come down on defense you can build up your damage by shifting set bonuses around. Invulnerability is already very durable and you'll max health easily with Accolades. It shouldn't be a shock that SD/WM does more damage. Tankers just got a boost to their damage scalar. War Mace has been a very strong melee set for a long time. Melee in general has higher base damage. Plus Shield also pushes damage. Tanker Changes + General Melee Superiority + War Mace Outlier + Shield Defense = not a fair comparison to much in the game. Incarnate wise, I think you're pushing way too much defense on an AT that doesn't need it. Musculature Core and Reactive Radial are both solid all purpose damage boosts. Degenerative Core is also good for tough targets but may be bugged right now. Assault Radial is my preference over Core but that is kind of a toss up.

This is a fair point and worthy of me explaining my choice of words there further. Cloak of Fear has 5% to hit debuff for a cost of 0.52 end per second with a 60% accuracy hit check. Against +4 enemies that's 26% accuracy. In contrast, Cloak of Darkness is 5% defense with a 0.26 end per second cost and no hit check. Weave is also 5% defense for 0.33 end and no hit check. Maneuvers is 2.28% defense at a 0.39 end rate. Maneuvers is kinda pricey on end but it also has no hit check. Cloak of Fear isn't a bad power at all in my opinion. I agree with you on that. However, I do find CoF to be a niche power that needs to be evaluated in a given build plan. My Dark/TW could potentially include that power (I may even do that) and the endurance cost itself isn't much of the problem in a full build. For me its finding the slots to make its to hit check, because it has to hit in order for that debuff to be of any use, work. So when I say its not my favorite for this pairing what I really mean is this: 1) I don't have the slots right now to offset the low accuracy for its endurance cost. 2) I have no need for the extra mitigation - Defensive Sweep is a part of a 10 second block of attacks. This puts me at 48.5% melee defense as long as the attack doesn't miss at all. My accuracy takes my level shift into account so my miss rate is 5%. This isn't a character I exemplar with as it is backloaded on power. If I did exemplar my miss chance with Defensive Sweep expands to 10%. 3) My damage, prior to the patch, is such that clearing minions is trivial. The fear isn't a big deal for mitigation with this build, and enemies that are defeated have fewer chances to hit in the first place. Additionally, TW includes Knockdown which is mitigation all on its own. I often see an idea that Cloak of Fear is a reason to take Dark Armor. (I'm not putting those words in your mouth its a generalization) To me, the reason to take Dark Armor boils down to these concepts: 1) On a Tanker you can cap Smashing/Lethal/Negative/Fire/Cold/Psi with a good IO plan. You'll likely cap Energy with 2 stacks of Superior Might of the Tanker. Toxic will be the lowest unless you specifically try to target it with sets. In other words, Dark Armor is a great heavy resistance set with no reliance on a T9. 2) Dark Regeneration is amazing when build right. 3) Cloak of Fear, Oppressive Gloom, and Soul Transfer are all niche powers making them optional tools in your kit. That flexibility on build choice is a huge draw to me. 4) Its a sexy looking set with Soul Noir. When I recommend against Cloak of Fear it isn't due to the power being a bad pick. It is due to weighing its function vs other available options. Its endurance cost isn't the only thing heavy about it. It wants slots in order to make it more functional too. That's a cost that needs to be considered. Agreed on both points. Though I highly recommend all those things. If you manage to build enough recharge to run Rend Armor - Follow Through - Arc of Destruction - Crushing Blow - Follow Through then you're going to be using around 4.5-5 endurance per second. During Momentum that attack sequence can be complete in just under 6 seconds. My toggles, including Assault, cost 1.93 end per second (I don't always run Assault). With Cardiac that drops to 1.49. With conserve power my total cost to run toggles plus an attack chain is right around 4 end per second. Without Accolades I have 3.85 end per second. With Accolades I have over 4 eps. Conserve Power just makes pushing the most extreme attack chain easier. For most enemies that is overkill so Conserve Power isn't necessary. Defensive Sweep is also a fine bridge power to give defense and lower overall endurance cost (at the expense of damage). When I run Conserve Power it is during solo play and/or against tough targets where having a highly damaging ST chain in my back pocket is worth doing. No one needs it though. P.S. I too use Ageless for DDR.

Is the pair good? I think so. I love mine. Is it endurance heavy? Yes, it can be. You can also learn to pace yourself even without IOs like Performance Shifter or Incarnates like Cardiac/Ageless. All of those things will make your life easier later, but while you're learning the pair you will need to slow down at times. Putting an endurance reducer in all your attacks and toggles goes a long way to helping you out. Putting 3 slots in Stamina to make sure you can have some quality IOs +1 Performance Shifter proc go a LOOONG way to fixing your issues. By 35+ you can take Conserve Power and eventually Physical Perfection. That will take care of a lot of it. Titan Weapons will drain a lot of endurance when running its highest damage rotation. You need to be pushing some pretty serious recharge to do that, and that means you're likely running Hasten. Hasten crashes and that hurts your endurance. Plan for that. Dark Regen costs a lot of endurance, but you can work with that. Death Shroud is just damage to all enemies which works even if you are castings something like Taunt. It wants a few endurance reducers early on but this becomes manageable. Its also passive damage which is great. Cloak of Fear, if you take it, should be used tactically. Honestly, Its not my favorite power with this set, and not once have I felt a need to take it. My own Dark/TW is pretty decked out with IOs and it is about as much of a blender as I'm going to make it. Even before the Tanker damage changes it was doing high enough damage that fearing minions with Cloak of Fear was just a waste of time. Oppressive Gloom is similar. Generally, I only take those powers if I am planning to stack something with them, and TW isn't great at that. Pace yourself as you build it up, and pace yourself as you start buying your final IO sets. Pace yourself as you start building your Incarnates. Pace yourself. Once you get a handle on your endurance you'll learn when you can really push your limits. If teaming with support that can buff your endurance you'll be a happy Tanker. Once you complete your build the endurance drain isn't that big an issue anymore. You just might not see that while you first start with it. Pace yourself.

I think you should!! Those attacks can take on multiple categories so they have proc options. My Ice/Ice/Ice just runs the core of Chilling/BiB/BFR and its not horrible. (Edit: P.S., Also curious to know how that Psy/Dark turns out. Lots of Stuns in there plus Stealth should feel super safe for play along side the heavy hitters in the primary. It was a combo I was very close to rolling myself.)

Not a huge shock with Psy. Before I wrote the write-up in the collaboration thread Psy/SR was one of the first experiments. Psy/Nin was next. Currently there is a Psy/WP in my roster as the final evolution of that concept. Will Dom - Scramble Thoughts - Will Dom is available to anyone that wants to push recharge which SR is great at. Add on Dominate and Mind Probe and it gets really strong. Even TK Blast with procs is nothing to sneeze at. Psychic Blast and Psychic Mastery are like a match made in heaven. Its one of the few primary set + epic set that I'd really recommend as a deep dive. I've also done the comparison of the Sentinel with this powers vs a ranged only psy-Fortunata. The Sentinel is really quite good. Enough to make the choice a blurry pick due to all of the other goodies that Widows have. My current Fort runs a mix of melee and psi. This allowed my head canon to free up my concept to revisit a Psi Blast Sentinel. At the moment, I'm aiming to play around with Psionic Strike because I want to explore it a bit more. On paper its kind of a hot mess, but I want to give it another shot. Plus, I like the look of it. While I do cringe at pushing procs hard on holds + a melee, I do like to dabble into the Epics as of late. My two natural origin weapon based concepts (DP/SR, and AR/SR) are a bit more free to push some procs in Caltrops than my DP/Nin currently can. My elemental concepts (Fire, Ice and Electric) all take the AoE Immobilize. That's especially nice for Fire/Fire as I'm using both Burn and Rain of Fire with Fireball spam as necessary. Anyway, I don't want to side track further. Though this does seem like a fine thread to discuss general discovery of the Sentinel as it is all about making effective characters at its core. Why else would anyone care to make a spreadsheet if it wasn't to try and discover ideal power combinations?

Darkest Night all by itself is a bit overrated. In Dark Mastery you do gain access to Smite, Engulfing Darkness, and Netherworld Grasp (I think that's the name??). These 3 powers are all rather decent. You don't need to slot the Epic hold like a micro nuke in order for it to be useful, but it is an option. So with that said, I tend to prefer Dark Mastery over Soul Mastery as I feel the tools are generally more useful. Midnight Grasp in Soul can be very powerful but its base recharge was longer than I cared to tinker with. Another Epic pool that I feel is thematic to the vampire idea is Psychic Mastery. Mass Hypnosis and Dominate are both representative of the mind control powers of the classic vampire. Mind Probe colored red has a quasi blood/life force look to it. Link Minds is you sharing your psyche with others. All of these powers are great and all well within a theme. I have an entire stable of vampiric characters that go all the way back to my first 50. I did play with Dark/Dark/Dark for a bit but ultimately swapped that concept to a Dark/Dark Controller. My Sentinel that fills that concept is Water Blast/Dark Armor with red colorings. For a time, she ran Psychic Mastery doing everything I just mentioned above where the D3 ran with Smite/Engulfing Darkness. Bonus points: Use the Soul Noir with the armors and the "with eyes". Use primary black and secondary red. This will give you glowing red eyes whenever the armor with it is active. For the Aura in the costume menu select the bats, and I prefer when in combat only. Get yourself a macro for the villain pose and use that while in Atlas Park or where ever. It looks pretty rad when using Hover/Fly to pose with shadowy bats swarming around you while armors are up.

Which kinda makes me sad that abusing procs in Dominate and taking Mind Probe are such huge swings in DPS. I guess its not that much different from just stuffing the primary powers with procs, but something about relying on Epics as cornerstones just rubs me the wrong way. Then again, I also like to play in content low enough that I lose those powers. So there is that. I have been toying around with some more sets (Fire/Fire/Fire, Ice/Ice/Ice, Elec/Energy, AR/SR, etc.), and I've been having fun with that discovery. Lightning Bolt - Zapping - Tesla isn't horrible if you want to bypass the Epics. For AR, Disorienting Shot - Slug - Disorienting Shot - Burst with multiple procs has been enlightening. SR's Quickness being a driver to get me to 185% global recharge before the generic Ageless recharge bonus. Incinerator still works depending on how you want to slot things, but not using it has been a slight gain. I probably should have included that sustained AoE DPS is a bit silly in general when any of the Sentinels can clear things just fine. Especially after using Aim, but still serviceable even for Dual Pistols. Though sometimes I feel that opinion is held between just you and I. LOL

That's the AoE number from the Rack and Stack cell. Something from the very first cell "Rack and Stack's current rankings should not be taken seriously by any means". Keep in mind, Thunderous Blast has a fairly long animation time (so does Full Auto). Short Circuit also has a fairly long animation time and it is also PBAoE (which may or may not complicate things). Ball Lightening is the fastest animating option in the set and its decent. This might inform someone that perhaps they may wish to consider taking an Epic/Patron AoE option like Psychic Shockwave (or whatever floats someone's boat) to pad out gaps. This ignores Short Circuit's other functionality as well as its ability to accept 5 different procs if you wanted to add them.

You're a player of refined tastes.

While interesting, this list is largely useless for gauging any level of effectiveness. Bio Armor and Rad are both shiney and new so having high levels of player engagement isn't a big surprise. Regeneration's popularity is no surprise at all. It was widely popular, and may still be, within the PvP community. Bio Armor also has a strong following in PvP, for Sentinels at least. Ice Armor has visuals that don't really mesh well with a lot of concepts and that was a trend even in past. Hell, Ice Blast on Sentinels isn't that popular. The two most popular pairings of that primary are Ice/Regen and Ice/Bio both of which can have a PvP focus. Ice/Ice is #26. Ice Armor doesn't show up again until slot #58 with a Water Blast pairing. It doesn't show up again after that until the 100's. I wouldn't be shocked at all if a majority of the player base didn't even know how Sentinel Ice Armor works. If the set doesn't look appealing visually, then no one is going to really dive into it. It doesn't help one bit that no one is singing any praise of the set so the FOTM re-rollers give no F's about it. Not saying anyone should be singing praise for the set, Ice Armor is a pain in the ass, but since no one really talks about it there is no generated interest. No generated community interest + poor visuals (even the minimal effects versions are off putting to some concepts) = low player engagement. Spot 26 and 58 show a thematic pairing. Spot #1 for play at 50 is Fire Blast/Fiery Aura followed by Electric/Electric, Radiation/Radiation, Energy/Energy, Water/Bio. That's the top 5. Fire Blast/Rad is also thematic but effective. That's #6 and I'd suspect that's in large part due to the Pylon thread plus Youtube. After that there is another series of thematic pairings. Invulnerability is in a bottom 3 of sets played at 50. That's BAFFLING to me. Super Reflexes being below Fiery Aura is also kinda laughable. Willpower being where it is also isn't a huge surprise, but it also screams to me that people gravitate towards what they are familiar with. Willpower, in my experience, isn't more effective than either Sentinel Invul or SR. Hell, my SR builds can achieve endurance management on par with Willpower due to Enduring while often pushing more challenging content on top of it. All this list shows is that there is actually very little exploration in the Sentinel AT beyond an obvious thematic pairing or just trying out new powers for the sake of it. That seems consistent with a general consensus of the community at large that the Sentinel isn't that serious of an AT to play in the first place. Pointing out Ice Armor's bug is great, and I'd love it to get reviewed. However, I really doubt that's a reason why it is hardly played. People probably see it in the listing of powers and think "nah, that's not my character". Edit: So why do I think Ice is a pain? - Well, for the leveling experience it can be a little awkward against fire. Against Smash/Lethal or Energy its really not much of an issue. Frigid Shield isn't great. Looking longer term, there are 2 power that grant you maximum health. The double dip on max health would be more appreciated if the HP cap was higher or if most Sentinel builds really worried a lot about melee in the first place. Its real easy to cap HP with Ice Armor (which isn't a bad thing), but I'm not sold on how it got there from a design perspective. Having the same T9 as Stalkers is something that I find welcome. Players can soft-cap the typed defenses with Ice Armor. Just because you can though doesn't necessarily mean you should. In an ideal world with a better Frigid Shield, Ice Armor is a mixed mitigation set like Energy Aura. It's not quite there, in my opinion, but it isn't as terrible as it sounds... once you IO the hell out of it. There are numerous places to slot Aegis to raise that Fire/Cold defense gap. My own Ice/Ice/Ice currently shoots for 32% to everything. That was the original build plan. By pure accident it gets 35% to Fire/Cold and far more to S/L/E/N. I'm OK with that. Hoarfrost as a heal plus maxed out HP by looking at my keyboard funny is fine for handling Psi damage. Icy Bastion has a number of nice perks going for it, but I wish I could have it more often. Since Ice Armor can be built to be pretty functional, once you IO it, I found a lot of opportunity to put procs in the 3 main attacks I use. So the set works but it could use some refinements. Perhaps even a pass for those just trying to level with it since being a decent set at 50 with IOs isn't really a wonderful place to be.

Since you've already started the Bio/Dark you may as well keep it. You should keep it not just for the convenience of avoiding re-rolling but others too. Either option responds well to the IO system and sets. You can make an extremely durable Invul character regardless of which secondary you take. Bio Armor can be pretty tough too with its absorb shields, healing, and defensive adaption. However, Dark Melee helps to offset the mitigation penalties of Offensive Adaptation in Bio Armor a bit with the to-hit debuffs. Siphon Life and Dark Consumption (name to be changed) can be welcome on either set. Its a good time to be picking up Dark Melee even for the buff to just Shadow Maul on the beta server. Bio Armor is a flexible set that can give you more damage while Dark Melee helps keep up your defenses.

Electrical Mastery or Mu for electric cages/ball lightening shouldn't be off the table if you're wanting a more Miles Morales/Jessica Drew vibe with their bio-electric powers. May be a bit too flashy but felt it was worth bringing up. Current version of Peter Parker can lift 25 tons and for a time during an arc it was 30 tons. Spider-man is noted to have a minor healing factor. His category there is "enhanced" and he is capable of regularly recovering from severe injuries far far fast than normal persons. His healing isn't in the same realm as Deadpool, Wolverine, or Sabertooth (or other primary "regenerators). This can give a good excuse for pursuing Willpower on Scrappers if you like as they don't get the truly absurd levels of regen that Tankers can get due to pushing HP. Heightened Senses as a power is a fair stand in for Danger Sense. I wouldn't write MA either since you can change some of the kicks to punches. Eagles Claw, as ridiculous as it is, fits in my own conceptual view of an acrobatic combat style. Street Justice, Super Strength, or others are still great ideas.

1) Sure, totally up to you! Having more move speed for Hover is always nice. I like to check the speed it can get up with global bonuses vs default Swift + Sprint. If I can meet or exceed that with no real slotting investment, then I am happy. I'll use actual Fly (and Afterburner if I take it) for real door-to-door speed. 2) I think so. You can take all but the damage/recharge for just about any attack. Since the power at that point wouldn't run with modified recharge the proc just becomes better at its bonus damage. 3) That's a good question and it is impossible for me to answer without playing your build (which I haven't). Shiver is a cone which seems like it is a bit more ideal to open with from range while other powers like Chilling Embrace are PBAoE centered on you. Most of your other powers in Ice (except the mention of Chilling Embrace) are single target for applying slows. Your Cryo Ammo attacks with AoE coverage would be Empty Clips/Bullet Rain... I guess Hail of Bullets as an opener. Shiver could be overkill too.

Actually this thread got me interested in rerolling an AR/SR Sentinel with a big focus on proc damage. I spent the majority of the week with my free time rigging up some attack sequences and modeling them over time. So far I am happier with the results vs my first couple tries with it. A heavy proc build with AR makes it more tolerable but really the powers need to stand on their own. I happen to really enjoy taking the under performers in the Sentinel and trying to figure out ways to make it work better. Unfortunately, for the efforts I put in anyone else can just play Blaster/Corruptor AR with an easy to access Sniper Rifle and just have a far easier time.

Full sets or procs? With full sets, I can see that. Piercing Round or no? Piercing Rounds has been a DPS loss for me in all my testing. My first run of tests went with full sets and Piercing rounds (Piercing - Pistols - Executioner - Pistols). I think my first Pylon run was 12 minutes. After some build tweaking I pushed it down to 8-9 minutes. After dropping Piercing Rounds it went lower. When I started to introduce procs my times stabilized around 8 minutes. When I refined my slotting my times dropped to 6 minutes. That was many months ago. Since then I have refined things further with greater uptime on Achilles' Heel and predictable uptime on Opportunity. I really should run a new test. Anyway, this is also another reason why I think the Sentinel needs a review. The inherent requires far more thought about maintaining its uptime in pretty much every primary not called "Fire Blast". Several of the middling performance set (by Sentinel standards, not other ATs) are heavily reliant on procs to increase their DPS by upwards of 100%. That's a pretty big problem in my opinion. Tangent -- I've been retooling an Assault Rifle Sent due to the poo-poo post about it. Before I really didn't do a good deep dive on the manipulating the Opportunity mechanic, but now I've got 60+% uptime. The power pruning, retooling, and Opportunity considerations turned out to be a +20 DPS swing in just napkin math. No set, not a one, should require that much calculation in order for it to feel even remotely acceptable. That's my issue with the AT. It works, but you have to put a lot of effort in to it. So yeah, supporting you're point Crysis. 😉

Those MA numbers!!!

I appreciate your reply, truly. I'm really not just talking Empathy though. I'm talking the concept to the entire Defender AT. Storm Summoning was something I wanted to talk about before, and I'm glad you bring it up. Storm is a tier unto itself. Note, I currently running a Dark Miasma/Dual Pistols/Soul Defender. Back on live I played Dark/Dark Defender. I have a Rad/Rad Defender, a Trick Arrow/Archery Defender, and for a time ran a Dual Pistols/Dark Miasma/Soul Corruptor. On live, back in the day, I played a Sonic/Sonic Corruptor and a Fire/Dark Corr. My primary Sentinel is Dual Pistols/Ninjutsu. By no means do I want to suggest that Dual Pistols is perfect, but I've played it on 3 different ATs on Homecoming. Hell, my experience in doing so taught me so much about the set itself and what it can do. All 3 ATs inspired me to write the really long write-up about the set in the sticky at the top of this forum. Dark Miasma is great support, its easily my favorite next to Rad Emission. I'm not kidding when I say my Sentinel out damages my Defender. Though my Defender absolutely has broader appeal in team play. Since my Defender is also designed with procs it also happens to do more damage than it really should. Without those procs Tar Patch doesn't do enough to make it out pace a Sentinel's base damage scalar or its better options on single target. Furthermore, Incendiary Ammo functions on AT damage so that is an advantage to both Blasters/Sentinels where the Defender/Corruptor have far better debuffs. We're treading into the territory of classes I play with the majority of my time. I'm not sure you actually play a Defender. Maybe you do and we just have completely different perspectives. Last summer I ran some Pylon tests with the Sentinel, Corruptor, and Defender. I joined in on some other threads around the web about my findings. I'll share them again here. Without any procs, and pushing full sets, the Sentinel in this scenario comes out ahead of the Defender even in solo with 30% on Vigilance. The Defender's base scalar is already low. In solo play Scourge and Vigilance are awfully blurry. In team play where Defenders start gaining endurance benefits over damage Scourge can pull ahead for the Corruptor. In the case of Dual Pistols, the Sentinel still has an edge. So I started pushing damage procs. Again, the Sentinel still edges out a little bit but the gap does start to close a lot. Where the Defender and Corruptor really skew the numbers isn't Pylon test. It's fighting groups. Tar Patch + fully saturated Soul Drain into Hail of Bullets + Bullet Rain is pretty potent stuff. I wouldn't exactly think of that as a given for most Defenders/Corruptors just a certain series of build decisions. In real play I juggle no ammo or chemical rounds on my Defender for the super sweet debuffs. Not running Incendiary ammo is a big drop in personal damage, but totally worth on Defenders for force multiplication. Trick Arrow/Archery running full sets vs procs is mostly just ass for personal damage. Running a proc monster Offender can get you into a 5-6 minute Pylon kill range. That's pretty sweet but its ceiling isn't a lot lower than that. Some Sentinel builds go 4 minutes but they aren't debuffing everyone and their brother either. So point to you about team support, but that was never in question. My Rad/Rad also abuses procs. That combo just isn't fair to compare with anything though much like Storm Summoning. Having some reasonable damage through procs plus imposing stupid levels of debuffs like -45% to-hit and defense is kinda broken. My old Fire/Dark was definitely a monster. Fire/Kin is also quite strong, but that's no secret that Fulcrum Shift is what makes it. Hell, a Fire/Kin Controller is a monster. So is Plant/Storm and a few others. My Gravity/Time does pretty silly levels of area and ST damage. My Dark/Dark Controller's pets (Haunt, Shadow-Puppy, even Fluffy) all have negative energy procs. That stuff adds up! Again though we're talking about procs with IOs that turn those particular builds into monsters. Tankers often took longer to take out an enemy. Many of my Sentinels can accomplish a Pylon downing in 6 minutes and some easily do it faster than others (and I haven't gone that far with my new Fire/Fire Sent). I do need to build procs into my attacks to make that happen across a lot of primaries so that's hardly indicative game balance, but its there. Of course, I also have no problem in dropping 600+ million on my builds either. So its easy for me to climb the ivory tower and say how my play experience is "OK". Anyone just throwing together a casual Sentinel build is probably going to think its total butt for a DPS class and get turned off. So again, point taken. Actually those kinds of points are exactly the kind of thing I was wanting to advocate. I think the Sentinel feels like a fairly smooth ride, but it does have more than a few bumps to smooth out to make it more accessible. Just being near immortal for most the game isn't really a compelling reason to play it for many, and the damage feels like it has a lower ceiling than it should for a DPS class. So I'm with ya. Final notes about snipes. Ya know, back before snipes weren't always as accessible as they are right now. Blasters really needed to build that 22% to-hit in order to make those snipes rotational. That was a pain in the butt. In some cases it pretty much means that snipes weren't available in the general rotation option. So Sentinels come along as a new design that waters down the old snipe into a rotational attack or replaces it. Then you get bolstered CC powers and all of a sudden the Sentinel has new ST chains available that Blasters didn't. Fast forward through 2019, and now snipes are far more available across the different ATs which kicks the Sentinels one big gimmick right in the crotch. Hence the reason why I mentioned the current power creep. The lack of the snipe isn't really the issue. Its that snipes as they exist now make the concept of the Sentinel design superfluous. I'm not trying to convince you to give this another shot. If you don't think the damage is there now, then I doubt you'll find what clicks for you elsewhere in this AT. However, if the potential for doing anywhere between 230 to 300+ DPS is abhorrent, then investing into this AT any further isn't for you. There are several ATs that can accept a 500 million to 1+ billion influence build and squeeze out more damage. Just keep in mind that very little in this game needs a lot more personal DPS than the 200-230 range. You'll certainly clear things faster, but its not like there was much challenge there in the first place. Anyway, good talk. Again, I appreciated this one.

Totally agree here. I do feel Sentinels have a very high opportunity cost that is disproportionate with their end effect. I wouldn't be surprised if that's where the OP is ultimately going here. I know I expressed a giant wall of text to get there, but piling on hyperbole gets to me. Ultimately, I'm rather torn. I get the complaints, I get the divide in opportunity cost, but at the same time I don't think the AT is in such dire straights as it often said to be. 😕 Then on the other hand... just how much DPS do you need*? *Answer = all of it, obviously Again, also agreed. Blasters can get away with chasing less damage in their overall build because of things like a higher base scalar, Defiance, and the ability to juggle Build-Up and Aim. Sentinel builds are the complete opposite, most of the time, and look for ways to close the damage divide. Sentinels don't ever completely close it, and I don't think I was suggesting they do, but the mere pursuit of it does have a noticeable impact in real play. I've never cared for comparisons to Scrappers directly (or Blasters for that matter) and that's mostly due to just how lopsided melee vs range really is. I'm probably a player that is a polar opposite of many. I originally started CoH in 2004 looking for a melee DPS'er. Yet my love of the underdog got me into a Dark/Dark Scrapper back when you could only run 1 toggle at a time but Hasten six slotted with nothing but recharge was a thing. In CoV I did a 180 mostly playing a Corruptor, then Dominator and Mastermind. I jumped on the SoA and SS/WP too. Right before shutdown I found out just how much I loved the Controller. Homecoming pops back, I totally think I'm going to play melee again... nope. The Sentinel draws me. Next thing I know my first few alts are all Controllers and a couple Defenders. I mean I've had the same Stalkers in my roster for a year, and I love them to death, but I just don't spend nearly as much time on pure DPS melee anymore. I do love me some Tankers too. Times change ya. So I guess my entire perspective on what's acceptable DPS is due to this big roller coaster of various ATs. The only two ATs I haven't spun back up are the Dominator and Corruptor (Correction, I retired one pretty quick but it was a fun ride. It's a Defender now.) which is ironic given their place in my CoV journey. At one point I did have over 50+ characters. I ended up purging all but 20 and now I've added back 7. I'm probably going to hold at 27 for most of this year. So I've forgotten ones that I re-rolled!! LOL

I'm really digging Sentinel Electric Blast, paired with Energy Aura, and Thunderous Blast could use an animation pass... for all ATs.

What kind of Tanker are we talking here? Also, before I go any further I want to state the following in bold text: I'm on board with buffs for the Sentinel. Please don't take the things I'm about to state as if I'm fanboying and can't see issues. I feel as if I have beaten this horse to death, but it also irks me to see context tossed to the wind in favor of carefree discussion. I do commend an open discussion about the AT and how to improve it. I also think that can be done without getting into hyperbole. I want to support your ideas, but just set aside some of the loaded rhetoric. You tried Fire Blast and felt that it didn't live up to whatever sense of competitiveness suits you. I'm 100% OK with that, and I get it. However, I do think you are missing a bit of the forest for the trees with the Sentinel. This is likely why you see the push back that you do, and probably why it all seems frustrating. 1) Fire Blast wasn't changed nearly as much as some of the other sets. If you're going to compare Fire Blast's ST with Blaster/Corruptor/Defender you're not going to see a whole lot of change. The snipe attack is different, and Inferno is different. That's about it. The basic attack chain isn't too far off conceptually from any of the other ranged attack ATs. This isn't true for all Sentinel primaries. I'm not pulling rabbits out of my ass when I say some Sentinel sets have better ST than their counterparts in other ATs. Electrical Blast is one. Psychic Blast is another. There are others. Hell, most of them. Any of the previous ranged sets that had a CC power were converted to a high damage attack. Some of these being the best attack in the entire set (e.g., Sonic Blast's version of Screech). These changes fundamentally alter how several of these sets play. So some (some criticism is fair) of the commentary is really disingenuous, and forgive me here, and flat out ignorant of how the AT functions. I think compared to the core concept of other ranged sets, what I call the cousin sets, that the Sentinel's ST isn't that bad. Hell, its a strength of the AT from a view of complete ranged gameplay. To me some of your complaints are like we're playing two completely different games. 2) You talk about powers in apples to apples comparisons and also in a vacuum. If you want to compare the attack chain of just a ranged set from a Blaster and Sentinel on base numbers alone you're going to miss the point there too. How many Blaster builds bother with their offense in the same manner as a Sentinel? I'm looking things like Incarnates where Sentinels have more flexibility and freedom to run Musculature Core than Blasters running Agility Core. I'm looking a Assault Radial vs Clarion, and so on. I'm looking at how easy it is for some builds with defense heavy secondaries to run damage procs in their primary. That's a reality of the game. Now look, I'm not an idiot and I understand full well that a Blaster can run damage procs. If a Blaster did that, then yes their damage potential will sky rocket. Same goes for a Blaster pushing Musculature. Just for disclosure... I've built a Blaster that does just that. So in the realm of hyper specialization into the Blaster's role of damage it will out perform the Sentinel, hands down. However, Sentinels can have an easier time leveraging that damage in their optimization options which in real game play make things far more blurry. 3) In point #2 I'm in no way saying that an optimized Sentinel is always better than an optimized Blaster. More likely this... Certain kinds of optimization work out on Sentinels far better than I think you're giving it credit. I seriously doubt that level of expenditure in your time and influence is of any value to you, but it exists. You're not wrong that a Blaster can do much of what a Sentinel can and do it better. What the Sentinel does better than the Blaster though is allow for a far easier ride to 50 and even in some cases of exemplaring. In some cases a Sentinel can tread pretty close on Blaster ST but a Blaster will always have the upper hand on AoE. Hell, Defiance alone pushes Blaster ST once they get rolling. The option of having both Aim + Build-Up also helps. Though build vs build, there can be times that it takes Defiance + Build-Up in order for that Blaster to really out class some Sentinel builds. 4) Comparing melee vs range is like comparing apples to Saturn. These things are so grossly disparate and have been for so long that there isn't really a contest in discussing them. You did hit a nail on the head about that a few times, but its worth calling out again. 5) Not all Defenders play equally. Seriously. Last I checked people still like playing Empathy. I've grouped a few times with full support Defenders. Sentinels have the Dominator's damage scalar. There isn't anyway that Sentinels do less damage than your average Defender player. Hell, MANY Corruptor builds too. For Defenders in particular you have to really go out of your way to push damage procs AND run one of the top 5 primaries for debuffing/buffing (self). Same too goes for Corruptors. While we're at it, same to goes for Controllers. No joke there are Controller builds capable of 1-2 minute Pylon times. That's not normal either. 6) So back to the Tanker. What kind are we talking here? One where the player goes out of their way to make a Tanker-Scrapper TankMage to post awesome times on the Pylon thread? For every one of those there are multiple more Tankers that specialize on taking damage without a real worry about dishing it out. I guess you could say those players are "unoptimized", but I mentioned before that the player base that pushes hardcore is still pretty small. I couldn't care less that my 3 tankers are capable of making one of my Stalker's damage look embarrassing*. I know how I designed those characters and I 100% completely fault the IO system for their ability to do it too. *Not saying my Tankers out damage my Stalkers, but more a commentary that the Tanker changes have given them a surprising amount of damage. Two of my Tankers are proc abusers so the base damage increase just pushed them easily into the 300 DPS realm which to me is just nuts. 7) I've got a Sentinel in my roster right now for each primary except for Radiation Blast and Energy Blast. Those two sets are ones I'm not ready to go into because I've played them a lot in the past and they weren't really my favorites (like most of the Darkness sets). So over the course of playing 15+ Sentinels, both in live and test purposes, I've gotten pretty used to Opportunity. I think Opportunity is rather clunky for what it is, but at the same time I think people have a tendency to just dismiss it like it doesn't do anything. Sentinels always apply a -5% debuff. Then on top of that they can get another -20% resistance from their inherent while also getting some bonus damage. Opportunity lasts 15 seconds. I've gotten in the habit of building my Sentinels to try to get Opportunity active in just over 13 seconds. Some primaries can actually use the ATO for Opportunity to reduce that gap even further. Some dramatically so (like Water Blast). It certainly isn't the greatest inherent, but it also does more than it gets credit for. As someone pointed out before, the Sentinel is a moderate damage dealer in pretty much every arena it exists in. It just doesn't compete right at the same scale as other specialists ...when built for specialization. Do you think that most players break 300 DPS? In playing this game, I seriously don't. From the way you have responded, and the way a few others too, I can see why you may not believe me if I'd say I have impressed people playing my Dual Pistols Sentinel. I really don't need your belief, because I've actually experienced it. You can take my experience however you like. Phew... That said, you have some nice ideas to address some of the gaps. Hopefully the class gets some love because I've seen a few other threads in the same realm of "tried, don't care for it because too little damage". As I've said before, if you have to bend over backwards to make the Sentinel work (and that's pretty much what my builds look like) then something is off. Still, Sentinels aren't always half the damage of all Scrappers. Its a bit much. 😉 Final note. Some of the recent changes really make Sentinels look a lot worse than they probably did around May 2019. We've seen a spike in power for Tankers. We've seen a much smoother version of instant snipe. We've some tweaks here and there. The power creep will just make it worse.

Some alternative choices - for fun. 😉 Radiation Blast is fun for lowering defenses. Dual Pistols is a big tool kit of debuffs with its ammo system. Standard ammo (basically not using any of the Swap Ammo options) includes defense debuffs in a few powers. Piercing Rounds has a resistance debuff that can hit a few targets. Cryo ammo converts those previously mentioned debuffs into slow effects. Chemical ammo changes the base debuffs into a negative damage effect. I have a Dark Miasma/Dual Pistols Defender that's just a fun configurable debuffer. Rad/Rad is also classic, but X/Sonic is hard to beat.

Are you there Derp? Its me, Margaret.

This thread needs something, but I can't quite put my finger on it...

At this point there is a good bit of hyperbole being tossed around. Attempting to defend/counterpoint is really just making it a lot worse. Takeaways: - The Sentinel just doesn't do the kind of damage a specific player would like, and they aren't alone. That's fine. - The Sentinel has some perks to it that don't necessarily appeal to everyone beyond the damage equation. Also fine. - The rest begins to tread into cherry picking for the sake of winning. Can this stop? Signed: A person that actually plays Defenders and finds a good bit of this to be bullshit at this point. 😂