oldskool

That will vary depending on how the build is constructed, what power set you're talking about, and what kind of content we're talking about (solo vs team). The linked post has a spreadsheet calculator where you can plug in the metrics to see which works best for your set up. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/7404-what-the-hell-is-doublehit-a-hybrid-assault-guide/?tab=comments#comment-67414

This is the core of why posting builds without context isn't helpful! 😆 Flight is there because it is a travel power and most people like travel powers. I have no idea what you like, but figure you may want a quality of life power for movement. Flight is also a popular power among players. So figure a base 50/50 shot that Flight may be a good generic pick. Also, as a Tzimisce, there are some monstrous looking wing options to match the vicissitude look that Bio Armor can bring. Maybe the user name holds no relation there, but maybe it does? Why else would anyone pair Dark Blast which has vampiric undertones with Bio Armor? I digress... If you're taking Flight then it is a logical step to take Hover. Hover provides some defense, which is welcome, and functions as in combat 360% movement. Hover is slower and less endurance heavy than using Flight in combat which can feel unwieldy. The final stepping stone on movement in that particular tree is Afterburner which makes you fly even faster. Need it? Not at all. Athletic Regulation makes you move faster even on the ground and using Ninja Run (from the Pay-to-Win vendor, it's free) plus regular Sprint can be plenty fast. I often skip travel powers unless I absolutely want it to match a concept. If I am skipping a travel power I will still often take some select powers from the travel pools. Hasten, in Superspeed, is a global recharge buff that is a straight up power increase. It's not mandatory, but it is so helpful that taking it feels like it sometimes. Combat Jumping, in Super Leaping, is very similar to Hover. CJ is a light weight (low endurance cost) defense to everything power (less than 2% to all) that also helps in vertical movement in combat. Want to bunny hop over enemies? CJ will help with that. Ninja Run, while free, is very endurance expensive and does not work with Combat Jumping (one will deactivate the other). So for running to a mission I toggle Ninja Run + Sprint, and in combat I may only run Combat Jumping as endurance allows. The basic powers of Swift and Hurdle need no extra slots but they will buff your other movement modes. P.S., And if this were a Vampire the Masquerade homage, I'd recommend the possible inclusion of the Psychic Mastery pool in a final build. You can make some the effect look like blood and some the powers fit higher Auspex powers. If I'm off here, then just ignore all that. 😄

If it makes you feel better, I can confirm this works. Having done this on a Radiation Emission/Radiation Blast Defender does turn Rad Blast into a monster set. Not only are you debuffing resistance with those procs you are also debuffing defense. This in turn creates substantial bonus damage to teams, hell even solo. I generally do not slot more than 1 Achilles' Heel in my characters. The reason is a two-fold. 1) Lots of veteran players include at least 1 of these so the uptime has a good chance at being 100% in groups I roll with. 2) I often run recharge heavy build as it is. This usually means my Achilles' Heel carrier is being used somewhere around every 3 seconds to 5 seconds (depends on set, power use in the situation, and so on - you get the idea though). Essentially I am fishing for proc chance by increasing frequency of use. Power sets that can make use of Achilles' Heel, Annihilation, and Fury of Gladiator make for really good core damage sets for the Sentinel AT considering how Opportunity works. Are you sure on Irradiate vs Atomic Blast's proc chance? Atomic Blast has a longer animation and 90 second cooldown vs Irradiate's shorter cooldown and 20 second cooldown. Both have the same radius so the longer cooldown on Atomic Blast should all but guarantee it procs vs Irradiate. Irradiate is still a great place to put procs and increase frequency. I don't know if I'd say it has a better chance to trigger in a vacuum though.

Overall this looks good. Couple things though... Spiritual Alpha is actually going to result in a slight DPS loss for this build when considering the AoE powers with procs. Spiritual and Agility Alphas function as if they were direct enhancement to your powers and not as global recharge. Using Spiritual behaves just like you slapped a level 50+ IO into Whirlpool and Geyser. It gives them 45% enhancement where they didn't have it before. This will impact the procs calculations in a negative manner. Its always the first bits of enhancement that have the largest impact to PPM calculations too. Consider a swap to Musculature for more damage or maybe even Vigor Core for boosted healing/end management. I think the recharge as it is should be fine. You're at 163% which isn't bad at all. Add some +5 boosters into Hasten and you'll only have 5 seconds away from permanent (assuming you drop Spiritual). Ageless will give you 10% global recharge at its lowest rating which goes a long way in filling the gap. You've got a good baseline here. Water Burst gets a boost in damage with Tidal Forces but Steam Spray is more direct against a narrow focus of targets. Water Burst also has the benefit of hitting enemies behind you. Still, this is a really minor thing. If you prefer Steam Spray keep it. I prefer Water Burst since it is a sphere and it lines up well with Geyser/Whirlpool. I don't need to make sure I am aiming properly. Caveat here for me, I run Dark Armor with Oppressive Gloom so herding cats into a cone isn't appealing. I'd rather just smack them all in a sphere. 😛 I'd really, really, really, reconsider the slotting choice of Tactics vs Tidal Forces. You can go 2 slot Tactics. My preference would be Adjusted Targeting (1 full To-hit, and 1 To-hit/end = 14% vs 15.8% from Gaussians x6) that will yield you a 2% global damage increase as icing on the cake. You'd have 100% accuracy against +4 enemies in your least accurate attack (Water Jet). Running no to-hit power will be a loss on to-hit against +4's and there isn't too much I'd shift just to squeeze in the Kismet unique. So I agree with Tactics but not the slotting. Shift the 6 slots to Tidal Forces with the full Gaussian's set. Using Gaussian's in Tidal Forces/Aim vs Tactics is going to yield you more reliable activation of the +Build-Up proc in that set. Using that proc in Tidal Forces means you will have a pretty good chance of it triggering every activation. That's every time you use Tidal Forces, and ideally this is right before Geyser, you've got a good shot at also having Build-Up for 5 seconds. This isn't how this procs works in Tactics. In Tactics it will check after many seconds and it will roll on all allies in range. If you're soloing that's just you and the AoE modifier of Tactics is enormous. In effect running Gaussian's in Tactics has something like a 2% to 2.5% chance to trigger per every pulse of the check which has a long internal interval. Thing is, all procs have a floored chance of 5%. Not a lot better. This changes though when you group up. All allies check the proc. All of them. That includes pets. I run Gaussian's in Tactics on my Masterminds for this very reason. My pets contribute to a chance of Build-Up on me which gives me a cute damage boost when I fire off my attacks. Yes, my Masterminds use attacks because otherwise I find the AT boring AF. 😉 Anyway, Gaussian's in a power like Tidal Forces/Aim gives you more control over the event (the proc), but running it in Tactics can make for some interesting shenanigans in groups.

Welcome! Since you're new I'm not going to post a final build just yet. Posting builds without context isn't really as helpful. Posting builds in that manner is far more valuable once you know more of the ins and outs. You can see the reasons for the decisions and you can go from there. Leveling: There is no harm in just picking up everything as you go. One problem that Sentinels do not have is lack of choice in powers. The way the primary and secondaries work create situations where an early build of all 9 powers from each is a perfectly valid approach. It works that way leveling and can work that post 50 too. You trim powers when you know what you're doing and you have specific goals in mind. Being new, I don't know how you'd be there yet. Bio Armor benefits a lot from its own internal synergies and dependencies. Regardless of how you go in the end plan to take all 9 powers. You will need to make some considerations on priorities in the early levels though. Prioritize Environmental Adaption as pick by no later than level 14. Earlier can be better, but level 14 is a tier in the game where things change. This is linked to how the classic game worked. What I mean here is that Environmental Adaption is your crowd control resist power. Many enemy factions start to introduce more crowd control in the level 14+ range. Enemies like the Trolls (knockback/knockdown), The Lost (sleep/hold), and The Outcasts (knockback/down) start to become more common place. They get more dangerous than they were at level 4. I'd also prioritize Ablative Carapace, and Rebuild DNA. Those are pretty important as self heals usually are. Adaptation is also important. Get it as early as you can. Inexhaustible is good, but you can push it off a bit into the 20's. Resistance to slows and end drain aren't as obnoxious early on. For Dark, plan to take everything at first too. Take both Dark Blast and Gloom fairly early. Take Umbral Torrent too and Aim as soon as you can. Take Abyssal Gaze when it feels comfortable to do so but not much into the expense of your Bio Armor powers. Take Dark Obliteration at 12 and try to take Antumbral Beam at 18. Maybe something like this: | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1310;528;1056;HEX;| |78DA6D93CD4EDB401485C7C429F92101C24F12270E490818481581DA3D2A8476D3A| |8A82CBAB4ACD4A46E5D1B394682258FC38677297F6AFB0E6D7983F4C67326D8184B| |D1999C99F3DD99EB71EFAC3B73F5EE629749F97DDB180EF523D3F12DC7B453BD53D| |FF02DD761E3679A7E8A98D23F1ACEC0FCDCE91ADE377D8F527E7332D5358F4D6768| |76F62C57FFE00D0CC7EAEB6FBCEFAEC7B287AE6B77DEDAD6E08B1F1EE7F8783CB49| |C4181FF73BDBEA9BBC7FA27CBB6958313ABDF79AC30AEDAA3A2A6775EA26D6DD0EF| |87C6F08C64A690ECC86C4A8DAADC80B6B9163749A520936098ABBD8C6A037AAD612| |9F125F05FA8514D819102FF8632096412C864B0764E28320564B2D4E724CFB0E42A| |F7EE34DE7EF2A469ACCB402FE90C697E86D13DADCBA25E16F566D4A8E6512F8F7C9| |9F239F42087B9CDDAF3AAD0DA59CE4FCCB6D01FE86A3BAA3F692FF3D8CB3CF652C0| |1E1685A2DE323275E22F80BF20B8D0563BAAB7C45F027F09FC65704B42C15790291| |1BFC8CFCA8A75EEFD224E199C32380AF255A1E26E80D3244E059C0ADE519A5E900A| |4F85F79BD82B60AF805D579F28D80DD13F6237C1698A3B48DE1AFAB2867EAC0B6D4| |775F4CC539527DF060B16B0AFC1CD4F06B7662B36BB1D737662CEAB98F33AE6BC8F| |3987F2E42B6252E0A4E726DFC8E84F86667176093DFCF7E84D4938B3F644FF86731| |BDC7B08E7F0AE5B500D5A197F3BA85D0D8D6BA1F17FF2ACD54D| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| As for a more "final" build, that is more complicated. Everyone has their preferences and there are a lot of approaches one can take with both of these sets. My own preference for Bio Armor is to focus on global recharge and Hasten uptime. More recharge means powers like Ablative Carapace, Rebuild DNA, and Parastic Leech are available more frequently. I lean on these heavily with my Beam Rifle/Bio Armor build. Recharge builds also have interplay with Dark Blast. Blackstar is a very powerful attack and debuff. The more frequently you can use it the better. Being able to line up Blackstar and Aim around every 25 seconds should be a goal. Do not be put off by the melee range on Blackstar. If you jump in and use Parasitic Leech/Ablative Carapace first you can tank some hits before Blackstar either wipes everything out or makes the remaining enemies miss you more often. Dark Blast as a set has a number of options from using various procs to using full set bonuses. That gets really complicated and what is the best on a scale of min/max is pretty much user preference. CoH isn't that great about cookie cutter builds. I'm sure one can be made, but the variations possible make it impractical to bother. Besides, CoH isn't so demanding that one build something "the best way". As long as you can complete the content you want to complete, then it is a good build.

I've grown to like the Build-Up proc vs an extra damage one.

Not sure what you find useless. General notes: Enhance Focused Fighting, Focused Senses, and Evasion to at least 54%. You can do that on just 3 slots. Dodge and Agile can run the default slot to 3 slots. Depends on just how "useless" you find something like Weave and/or Maneuvers. Tough with both 3% globals. Combat Jumping or Hover. Weave with 54% enhancement. Gaussian's set in Aim. The outline above gets you 43.1% Melee and Ranged and 46.7% AoE. Just turning Maneuvers on without any slots puts Melee/Range at 45.4% and AoE oat 49%. You could completely skip Maneuvers from the build if you wanted. Other notes: Both of the Sentinel ATO sets include 5% to melee and ranged defense. If you use the ideas here on slots (3x total in Focused Fighting, Focused Senses, Weave, Evasion, 2x in Agile and Dodge) then you're in spitting distance of softcap. Both of the 3% uniques in Tough and both ATOs complete the defense cap if you have Combat Jumping/Hover. If you don't want CJ/Hover, then some of the other powers can be enhanced to close that 1.75 to 2.03%+ gap. You still have 51 slots to allocate elsewhere. Edit: Example build below. This gets you just over 45% to the M/R/A without too much trouble. Global recharge 196.3% for spamming Stunning Arrow -> Blazing Arrow -> Perfect Shot without too much issue. You could take or leave Aimed Shot for Snap Shot. The Ward set in your level 1 pick is just fluff and it may or may not trigger when you use it. Don't really need it anyway but the bonuses are nice. You could shift around what sets are where to your own preferences. Both sword powers from the Epic pool are there for having a sword. Linkle uses dual crossbows but Link does use a sword/shield as well as a bow. So the sword powers are there purely for the homage to Legend of Zelda if one wished to use them. They aren't mandatory. The powers could be dropped completely for travel powers and the slots could shift elsewhere. That will drop recharge down some, but the slotting in either Rain of Arrows or Fistful could be changed to the purple set to recoup a portion of the loss. The attack chain would likely need a filler like Aimed Shot or Snap Shot to compensate. Incarnates could be whatever you want. Agility isn't needed so much for softcapping but the recharge would be welcome. The benefit for Agility is if you find the sword powers offensive to the Linkle concept then the recharge boost drops the need for a low level filler attack. The build isn't heavily reliant on procs so this choice isn't detrimental. Musculature is also an option for more damage. | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1447;690;1380;HEX;| |78DA65944B4F135114C7EFB4534B4B29AD407996165A680B74E8A80BE323C6889A2| |8104213373EEA081728694AD342824B177E0137F85AE26BE346A32E7DE2C6E7CE07| |BE766E10133F403D33E74F4332934E7EBDFF7BCEB967EE39F78E2D8FF8EE1FBF744| |828FE2305A352C9656571315F9405F7B8B1B854360AC27CDCF4B66ECDE4268DE2AC| |9CD60E97A7E664F962A4A68FC81959AC482DBB5492E5DCA49C29C86559110D130B0| |B05ED587E768ECC661BADD1A834A665B932972FF9B6C6259AF45A836C49CAE9CEA3| |A5FC94568B3D9E2FCE1BB931A3B2484BB6513A7DF43E4D083C5597F8A80AA1ABA2F| |F03F88699780BBE03DF334F27C94DB17C1DA259B134B5050C30CF908D021B05730E| |D83A60F38C7270720EAAF389B0B4EEC7CC9E07E04366EC11F339F9B890B7EB2621A| |18A1D37C01566E82AB3ED1A33759DF922C1E5307DDDF71C56BCBABBE02AD37B0BBC| |CDF4DD619EA3EFF1B0AFE2F9EDB4B4F406F325C5AD47DCFA75D67CBF98FEEFCCC00| |FF02773E032C73D4B711B789F94863AC5CAD3AF320D9A6BC45CE315B64FAF305FD1| |9A41AC19D459DB99018798CD69664863A68699E7296E13E23661CD66ACA9D006B57| |05CD152A54738496945255BCD3F61DAD95DFC157A88C72AD9B4C3A61DD5EE40B53B| |50ED35CAB81319777EE34EEA5A073F31BB3F835F98A9AFCC0B947198E38B709A3BE| |135C58BA07B22E89E28BA278AEE89A27B7AD03D5314A71779F622CF18F28C21CFA0| |9B4F8869D3B7896AFD034F32436493443E49C459A5D883C8677090777A6800EC079| |3A8628A994B09A1C1473BC8DAF001702FB88FA9EF67F6D2DA19542F632EA87B840E| |76A9B5534D3FB37AF329F3AC9A27A65A1DB0CD666C8A6E5376DB943D3665D4A64CA| |8B82248512CC513A89DF6EA86B7763B6076D3BBEDBE38C53B1AEFE1DD8E9FE0DEFC| |63F3FABBDD0B27248E13D21FE53DF90F4321EED6| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

Ok, so I took the original build and decided to craft two. First one should be a bit more affordable. It still has some semi-expensive choices like LotG, but I do love that set. [Note: After dropping these I didn't really pay a lot of mind to any set overlap. There may be some and that was just me not checking my work. I usually do... 😞]. If I were to go for a cheaper build I don't know if I would worry too much about 45% defense anywhere. Ice Armor is a very difficult set to build in and Water Blast is incredibly power and slot hungry. The two of these together make some tough choices. Still, the cheaper build turns out to do a bit better on single-target due to damage procs. The AoE is still decent and chance for recharge procs should help things out too. The more expensive build gets really close to 45% defense on Smash/Lethal/Fire/Cold/Energy/Negative during Moisture Absorb. Aqua Bolt is a filler and benefits from being pretty cheap so I opted to focus fewer slots there. Since it animates and recharges very fast it isn't super great with PPM calcs. You'd need to hammer the hell out of that power in order to push beyond its low PPM value and Water Blast just doesn't work well that way. Still, you can prime things with Hydro - Aqua - Dehydrate - Water Jet [slight pause] Water Jet again - repeat. That works if Hasten is running or not. In the cheaper version Dehydrate carries the chance for +Endurance. I left it out in build #2 purely as example. The build would likely benefit from it over time. In either build use Whirlpool early for its ability to both debuff resistance (it has good PPM vs 10 targets) and chance to give you a third of your meter in one shot. Hydro Blast, Dehydrate both give around 13 meter. So early on you're looking at 2/3 of the meter being filled up. During Hasten here you could run Hydro Blast - Dehydrate - [slight pause] Hydro Blast - Water Jet - [slight pause - due to how Tidal Works here] Water Jet - Aqua Bolt [Offensive Opportunity auto triggers if it hits] then go about repeating except for Whirlpool. *Edit, so my Ice/Ice Sentinel hits 45% to types other than Psi during MA. The slotting priorities and power choices were a good bit different. Also, I didn't try to use pros with the build and went full sets everywhere. That may actually be the better way to go when dealing with Ice Armor if you really want to push 45% defenses. If you can be comfortable with 32.5% defenses then one small purple inspiration softcaps you. That potentially opens up more build choice. Cheaper one... | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1450;680;1360;HEX;| |78DA65944B6C52511086CF854B2BD0965769292DA5D096F21221746FD4AAD13E243| |6D125B929478A2225174CECB26AD5B59B1A1F0B13ADBAD18546DDBAB73E763EE25E| |63AA26AE0D0E77FED2566E201F77CECC3F73E6CC61F6E254D793A32BFB85D273A8A| |CD56AF97959A9972AB2DC39A7D52FE85A59349F4EFA0E6EADE44F6A95A22CA44E6B| |75A9E70F5254DDDF5A9B926764A52653C71664FE807E7E4917F6DCD2523975A45C2| |A2ED66DC6EFF9AA94856E3637ADA54AD161BCCD48AD20F5DA62A9EA3F5C2D2DA4B6| |5535FD5C7E9612497DD947B58CD377282AF03454718F905145EF5DF0B549088F2AF| |A364CC67B5F875988802A5622B4AE183126E1558CB5D15ED0C90C44E142BA0A749D| |D075AE2B868E7B99F5DDABAC3F4C31668EB1983FA886ADE33DF886D9B5C1EC790BB| |E635EA79A2CC86739C1358C4D83B3E01C7322C71C89F29934F3753EE61AF63C02EF| |336D0FC07566D743E615CA67450FACDFCCACFB1DFCC10C91BE1DFAF6AF5CA7EF23F| |889E9FF0C7E610EA1E79749BF9BF5457788FB768D6C0EE474A0EF49F43D89BE8729| |A70B7D70DD264C90E61A73F826780BBCC3B453133C1C233CA39C2B483A5EE878717| |E119C5F1CF310F7F13EE36E9E0B2BE9F4A3BEFEBFC2B0C5A6D927F68719269F01F6| |510612AC170357697F83881F9CE4FDEC4D8359E655F209C027801E84FE9BBD31AA3| |D88BE075FB1F6C84BF019F89C197A0162064D545F18BD08C37629C277A599731C75| |455057047599292E8ABAA2F0496677EF41259F047C12A87D1F6ACE600F2EF249C12| |7B5E5D3BBDBF7694C88347CD298BD0C662FB3C91C525BF79A3EF488B3B1E6AD6DDE| |914623DEB69A6EB364DA2CD936CB649B65A6CD92535BFF0442312C5667EB9E37366| |DB48A3957307BBFB66D26E5147A775C3166550DF1FE7EEE8C8B72DCEF9D7137709E| |6BE008FBFC03E592DFCD| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| Expensive one... | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1444;683;1366;HEX;| |78DA6594494C136114C7BF69076A299496826C9DAE50DA528656399A18153122182| |2891E9B09FD846A2D645A133DE27EF6E24913131770BDB81EBD83CBCD25DE351135| |F16CEA9B797F81642699FC66DEF6FDBFF7E69BE973E3AD4F0E2DEF158AFF40C5A8D| |58AB3B25A2F5765C573D4A89F358D8AB02E0FDDFDFF3DC56346755E96F413465D9A| |C5FD9455EFDBF48DCB93B25A93FAE13959DC679E593445DBCCE262459F28CF2F50C| |47C8BFD36BB2465A9DD7E9C9246499AB585F2928F032B5664DFC1A5F29CBE55D530| |4F17A76921699EEF212D837487D3025743883D9648B7584E1115DBA68A2E7A28A8A| |2A393B93300FE71DBCCFEA5304D155A1A29A2D1A43C566DDFD0237085995D65E61E| |30471E5AF48808E5BA91EBFEC0BE81F7E01AB8CE4CBD45CD77CC6BA4B58973D5A61| |86B6A0E831AD31F61764499B134CFC25ACFB3EAB26D3B56C03BCCD6BBE03DA6FF3E| |F312ADE7E5DEB8BCDFB85ECB77F007334EF57DA8EFFBCA3A631F99F14FE067F00B3| |3F986EA87547191EAB7611E6D7161FBAE92AD1D6BB6631E01CC2310622668CD20FA| |10CCB3D66C813992638EEACCC228F30AD50DA16E6892B5774E80479851AADB85BD7| |4DD663D3D37C15BCC580FFABA8EF59AE95DF3081735B91B7BE96ED025DC64E9C597| |D53BC6CAFBF2608119D9C5D522DD8AFD655D2695FD50D98F9C3072C2C849505D8D6| |3146D985545C001DA41143B88BEE66E675E31479F81CF998517E04BE6D38C1009AC| |9DC0B493987672837921C527C98A1984BE14F4A5A04F257D69D4496382194C30831| |315A49861C40C232687981C62BC14A3738CD011E3235B1E5DCE2779CF6175DBA9B6| |3B7F2A639D69EBA4341A598737EFB0141C96DD0ECB98C332E5B0CCA89BFF05A1D81| |66F60F3B437365AC8AB6CF7FEDAB2B894E3E8DE24718818E78EFF7464FDDE9E759D| |BF42D70D30C63DF90739DAE7E7| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

There are some good ideas in that build, but a number if things you may wish to consider changing. 1) Geyser - swap to Positron's Blast. The stun set does next to nothing for you here. It's already mag 3 at full Tidal Forces and lasts for 10 seconds baseline. Mid's isn't showing that the duration can be modified. Maybe it can be, but making this last 70% long isn't worth skipping out on 90% boosted damage. Geyser is a very powerful T9. 2) Tidal Forces is a better place for Guassian's than Tactics. You'll be short on to hit in this build so Tactics still has value, OR that Kismet +6% to hit would take you from 78% accuracy on +4 enemies to 90%. 1 slot in a power like Combat Jumping is all you need vs keeping Tactics. Also, take Tidal Forces earlier. It is Aim plus it fuels your Water Burst which gets bonus damage under TF stacks. 3) Dehydrate can be a very strong choice. 4) Whirlpool is a good choice. Especially if you plan to use the Opportunity Strikes set in this build. The cast time and cooldown mean Whirlpool will trigger the proc even on one target more than 20% of the time. Water Burst can't boast that. You can configure Whirlpool's recharge to be around 15 seconds which is exactly the same as the Opportunity mechanic. The proc won't fill the bar but it will grant +37.5% per activation. Additionally, Whirlpool can take Achilles Heel and Annihilation resistance debuff procs. Whirlpool is an excellent power though it does have some drawback as a ground patch effect that enemies will try to flee from. In practice it is still worth it. 5) There is little reason to use 5 pieces of Reactive Defenses vs 5 Red Fortune in Frozen Armor. Yea, the unique is nice, but the set isn't that amazing sub 6. At 6 pieces you'd actually get more recharge than that LoTG is providing. So either use 1 pieces, 3 pieces, 4 pieces or 6. 5 + LotG is kinda pointless. 6) Knockout Blow and Arctic Breath aren't doing your damage any favors here. KB is great when slotted well. Its kinda poop when muling a set though. Plus it takes 18 seconds to recharge, and its effectiveness isn't maximized for its placement. See #3 and 4 for replacements. Overtime those can they work out better due to availability and utility. 7) Sentinel's Ward works better in Water Burst or Geyser. 8 If you didn't want set bonuses most of your powers can take on procs and Water Blast is awesome for that. Again, some good ideas here, but the above is a lot of food for thought.

I concur with @drbuzzard. The power is not a replica of Dark Regeneration. It doesn't scale with targets (only ever needs 1) and its purpose is more towards buffing over direct heal. Use it early. Use it often. Eat well. Live long.

Overall looks good. There are some tight decisions there. The Opportunity Strikes full set has 5% ranged defense and it can work surprisingly well in Piercing Rounds. That'd mess with your slotting on Suppressive Fire though. I tend to lean towards 6 slotting Weave or Shinobi over Maneuvers. The values in those are better. You'd get less than a full percentage in gains for just one at 6 slots, but if you're stacking stuff it can add up. Shinobi can also take Blessing of the Zephyr for some range and AoE defense. I bring that up mostly because your range defense is under vs the others. Its not a huge deal. For soloing resistance debuff is good to have. The key is to try and stack it. The Sentinel inherent imposes a minor -5% non-stacking from self resistance debuff and defense debuff on every hit. The Opportunity mechanic applies -20% that does stack with other sources. Achilles' Heel is another -20%. Fury of the Gladiator if placed in Hail of Bullets is another -20% with about a 90% chance to trigger. It is very unlikely any enemies will completely ignore your debuffs. Even with resisting some of the debuff you're still doing extra damage. So I'd say give it a shot, but I'd understand dropping it. Kismet in Hover for 1 more slot may be better than Tactics if you shuffle some other sets and strategies around.

Taking all the powers and seeing what you like is generally the advice I prefer to give. 😉 The low levels might feel bumpy as you start to build things up but it should get better. Anyway, I hope the character goes well! I hope you enjoy it, and if you have questions feel free to ask. I'm also just a PM away if you'd rather do that.

You're skipping Pistols and Executioner's Shot which are the highest DPA single-target attacks in the entire set. You've replaced those with Dual Wield and Suppressive Fire slotted with utility sets on a damage dealing AT. If I were you, I would go on to Pineapple and test this first before committing to it. Your damage enhancement in Dual Wield is 21.75%. Your damage enhancement in Suppressive Fire is 0%. If this was me, I'd be WOEFULLY disappointed in its damage. I couldn't imagine playing this in exemplar content as it is entirely dependent on Mind Probe and Piercing Rounds for damage in bursts of damage only. There is no coherent attack sequence with those two powers as they can't recharge quickly enough to chain. So your filler options of Dual Wield and Suppressive Fire have next to no damage enhancement. Getting 71% resistance and 45% defense at the expense of doing any meaningful damage seems like you're just working against yourself. Also, Mids has a bad habit of over inflating values at times and it has never had the correct scalar for Sentinels. I can assure you as a matter of fact that Executioner's Shot will out damage Piercing Rounds in a contest of use over time. Pistols, despite its low damage per hit, is one of the highest damage to animation ratio attacks in the set. Pistol is literally second only to Executioner's Shot in terms of DPA. These are easily verifiable in game vs reading the bullshit in Mids. Edit: Below is how I might do it. I cobbled this together kinda quickly just to be more helpful than this post was originally. Obviously, I am trading out 46% melee defense for other things. I do not feel it is necessary to do that with Dark. Especially not if you pairing up a Stealth IO (which I left out) with Cloak of Darkness and Hail of Bullets. Hail of Bullets dropped from stealth will give you +10% defense for 5 seconds and has a high chance to knockdown at the end of the animation. That chance is 100% guaranteed if you use standard ammo vs any of the elemental ones. This is a pretty safe opener even with less defense. You can follow-up with Obscure Sustenance to super charge your regeneration and recovery. Speaking of, with Accolades and Cardiac Incarnate you wouldn't worry about endurance in the first place. You could even consider swapping to Musculature for more damage. I do not trust my version of Mid's on its resistance reporting. It shows me all resistances are overcapped beyond 75%. It does this on my Water Blast/Dark Armor build too, and it is wrong. Hasten is in this build. Even if you want to be lazy at 92% recharge your core single-target attack sequence is still sustainable. While Hasten is running it just makes everything smoother. It puts Obscure Sustenance in a sweet spot of sub 20 second recharge too. Juggle Executioner's Shot - Pistols - Suppressive Fire - Mind Probe (when in close) - Pistols for days. You won't run out of endurance so Defensive Opportunity isn't necessary. Link Minds has actual slotting so it's effect is now perma. You have Hail of Bullets (which is only "OK" as far as T9's go), Bullet Rain, Empty Clips, and Psychic Shockwave for AoE. Empty Clips recharges quite fast and should be available most of the time. Piercing Rounds is not a very good AoE. Don't get me wrong, because I do like it, but its unique cone property is more frustrating than "cool". Sentinels do not need it but it is a fine option. Drop Suppressive Fire if you are so inclined and swap in Piercing Rounds. If so, slot Piercing Rounds with only some of the Positron's Blast set (ignore the any of the /recharge) and use the last 2-3 slots for Impeded Swiftness damage proc and Annihilation's resistance debuff. The defensive slotting in the build chunk is survivable. It's pretty close to how I built my Water/Dark though that build ignores Hasten in favor of Maneuvers for more defense. The offensive slotting is how I run my own Dual Pistols build. So I can tell you from experience that on the offensive side that works, and the defense side does too. 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I'm in a Bio Armor is as good as you built it camp. I apply that same mantra to any AT that takes it and not just Sentinels. Like Nihilii states that what Bio gives up it gains on Sentinels. It is one of the few options in the AT for an offensive oriented secondary on an offensive oriented archetype. So if you're looking to maximize damage then Bio Armor is quite good. If you're looking to soft-cap defenses and hardcap resistances with an easy build then this may not be the set for you. You can push Bio Armor pretty hard on closing its defensive holes through planning out IOs and again that isn't unique to the Sentinel. What I feel is unique to the Sentinel is that you do have to get a bit more creative in the approach. Melee ATs just have straight up more IO options than a pure ranged AT. Bio Armor has this reputation of being amazing, and it is well deserved, but people rarely stop and think about what it takes to do it. Some of that rep started in places like Reddit with predominately folks rolling Tankers who both greatly needed a damage boost and can more easily offset Bio Armors weaknesses. Sentinel Bio Armor has a lot going for it if you invest in it just like any other set.

I have multiple threads about both sets. You should be able to piece together some ideas for a build with that. Dual Pistols is a sort of "world is your oyster" set. All of the powers have a degree of value and you really can fashion multiple attack routines based on preference. There are a few powers that truly stand out as must haves (Executioner's Shot), but its ok to toss a coin to pick your favorites. There aren't many sets with so many good picks within the context of its loadout. Dark Armor peaks in power choices by Cloak of Darkness. You're familiar with it from a melee AT though so it really isn't too different. Tenebrous Regeneration is a regeneration passive that is far stronger than Health. I do not suggest skipping it but it can run on minimal slots. Obscure Sustenance is a replacement to Dark Regeneration. This power is very different. It has a base cooldown of 60 seconds and applies multiple buffs to you each with their own duration. In essence, this grants you 3 each regeneration and recovery bonuses that have their own timers. Within the first 10 seconds the recovery effect is at its peak and then drops down 1 grade. For the next 10 seconds the recovery effect degrades down slightly. For the final 10 seconds the effect is at its weakest though still welcome. The health regeneration lasts longer but drops in tiers just like recovery. The full health regeneration effect lasts 60 seconds. This power is effectively perma on health regen out of the box and it stacks with Tenebrous Regeneration. My Water/Dark has hit 1100% regeneration for 30 seconds with the way I built it and averages around 5 endurance return for 10 seconds. That's not including how the power Dehydrate works in Water Blast. So just like in melee DA, you really should plan to invest in recharge for Obscure Sustenance for nothing else other than that juicy recovery buff. If you can get the recharge into the 20 second range or less, then I'd say that's ideal. The rest of DA is similar but the resistance values are slightly less and there aren't as many resistance bonuses to chase due to a lack of melee powers. So just be aware that while you can hard cap Smashing/Lethal resistance you're probably likely to hit 50% without getting creative. At least, that's been my experience. The Dual Pistols set Chemical Ammo offers -7% damage debuffing to enemies so that's an idea for helping out on survival. You can stick to standard ammo too for times you like knockback/down if you need a breather. Incendiary Ammo makes you do more damage. Cryo has some slows and extra range. I'd strongly consider taking Dual Wield here for Defensive Opportunity so you can maintain your endurance inbetween Obscure Sustenance if you do take Cloak of Fear. Oppressive Gloom's stun effect will stack magnitude with Suppressive Fire in standard ammo only. Any other elemental ammo will remove the stun and grant you a mag 3 hold for a few seconds. If you haven't looked in to the sticky at the top of this subforum, I go into both of these power sets in a bit more depth.

I was able to hold my own against AVs without procs by level 45, but this was generic IOs (no sets). It was not enough damage to take one down but merely chip away at it. If I had Envenomed Daggers, then I may have pulled it off. Maybe. I've solo'ed Clamor in the Penelope Yin TF without my Incarnate abilities. This was a more final version with set bonuses and damage procs. No Envenomed Daggers so it was slower than I'd like, and no real DDR so Clamor's Radiation attacks would eat my defense. Still I could run her around the reactor area, and outside of it, and play line of sight games while my click heal patched me up. This was doable but I wouldn't attempted it again. The Collaboration thread is a sticky in this subforum. Page 3 has my 30,000ft overview of Dual Pistols. I purposefully do not go into deep dives on animation times and Opportunity building like I did in this thread. I did in fact have a version with that, but the post length ballooned far more than I wanted. As it is, this is already very wordy and the intent is for people to read it vs flipping tables then walking away. ;) If you feel I missed something or wish to contribute new findings, then I am more than happy to update it as I have previously. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/6950-collaborative-project-a-guide-to-sentinel-sets/page/3/#comments

Sorry if the above is the ramblings of a madman. I had a lot of this written down last year and once I decided to settle on a path I tossed my work in the trash (lol). So I've had to search my own posts and walk through my thought processes. I figured I would probably not revisit my attack rotation again until after the Sentinel AT is rebalanced as all of my calculations are tied heavily to Opportunity uptime. A removal of the mechanic as it currently stands would very likely result in me going back to the drawing board. This will be especially true if Dual Pistols ever gets an animation pass, a damage pass, and if procs are nerfed into the ground. All 4 factors contribute heavily here and changes to them may inspire a pretty severe overhaul. So my apologies if the above reads like a giant mess, but I can't stress this enough. This is a set that I have spent A LOT of time with and in thought about. Not all of my experimentation is structured but that didn't stop me from tinkering. What I discovered is that Dual Pistols is remarkably build friendly on Sentinels as there are multiple attack sequence paths one can take with potentially close results.

It was with Incarnates BUT my goal was never to take out Pylons for the purpose of doing a results post. So there are caveats here that I need to express. 1) All initial testing was exploring attack combinations focused on recharge and exploring ways of including Gaussian's in Tactics (solo this is really poor, but group wise has potential). 2) Initial tests ran with T1 Musculature Alpha, Reactive, and Assault (turned off). Never used Ageless on this character - still don't have it. 3) Once I felt more comfortable discovering what I preferred I tested again around T4 Musculature Alpha, T3 Degenerative, and T1 Assault (turned off). I've experimented with tossing out caltrops first, then Hail of Bullets, and then rotational powers. I've experimented with just hammering attacks and ignoring the T9 too. When I say about 230~ that's running the Incarnates in #3 opening with Hail (Edit: actually, that may not be true - I may have just used single-target attacks. See below in the suggestions regarding Opportunity) and going into single-target. Suppressive Fire was running 5x Apocalypse + Unbreakable Constraint. Pistols ran 3x Thunderstrike, Achilles' Heel, Lady Grey, and PvP. Finally, Executioner's Shot ran Lady Grey, PvP, and Impeded Swiftness (I believe)). Global recharge was around 180. Since then, I have changed my build. Those three attacks all carry 3x Thunderstrike (Edit: with +5 boosters each). Pistols carries Lady Grey, PvP, and Decimation: Build-Up. Executioner's Shot carries Apocalypse (the proc only - rest of the set mules in DW), Lady Grey (or maybe PvP - haven't logged in a few days), and Achilles' Heel. Suppressive Fire runs Unbreakable Constraint, PvP hold (Lethal), and PvP toxic. Global recharge is between 150-160. I think my build at the time cost 500~ million? Certainly not the most expensive character I have and there are no Winter Sets in my build. There are just the PvP globals and a few procs. Everything else is standard for purple sets and LoTGs. Pricey, but not super fancy. AoE is my lowest defense at 45% and Ranged is my highest at around 48%. One of these days I do plan to go for Ageless in the DDR path, not the other path, but for the time being I have Rebirth and Barrier. As far as defensive Incarnate options go, I'm good. 😉 Attack sequence is Executioner's Shot to apply Achilles' Heel - Pistols to try and trigger Decimation - Suppressive Fire to take advantage - Pistols to retry Decimation and trigger Offensive Opportunity. Repeatable into infinity with my current endurance recovery rate. I only click the endurance heal in extreme cases which is very rare, but incredibly handy against Malta/Carnival. I do have Dual Wield slotted with 5x Apocalypse for the recharge bonus. This is largely a mule but I keep it in my back pocket for Defensive Opportunity on those occasions where I do not wish to click either Nin powers but still want some health/endurance recovery. If I use DW, then I follow up with Bullet Rain. Empty Clips and Bullet Rain house the Sentinel ATOs. The Ward is in Bullet Rain and the other is Empty Clips. I really don't care about how Empty Clips is slotted the set is purely a mule there. Hail of Bullets has the PBAoE 5x purple set with fire proc + PvP resistance debuff proc. I'm going to toss out several ideas for the attacks you have listed, but forgive me if you thought about it already. I'd love to try Piercing Rounds with Annihilation Proc first (-12% resist) -> Executioner's Shot with Achilles' Heel second (-20% resist) - the other two. However, there are some possible issues with this unique to Sentinels due to the Opportunity mechanic. DW, Suppressive, and Executioner all generate 13 meter per hit landed. Piercing Rounds will generate 18 meter per successful activation. It appears to only add this once and not per target. Been a while since I have used it in testing so that may not be true anymore. (Edit: Hail of Bullets only generates 1 opportunity meter per activation and it totally ignores the number of targets. The Opportunity Strikes proc will convert this to 100% meter like it does in all T9s. So all discussion on attack routines below completely ignore Hail of Bullets as it totally botches the entire point of building and spending meter with Dual Pistols. If you plan to use this attack consider running 5x Opportunity Strikes plus Fury of the Gladiator to try to get -40% resistance going as soon as possible. That's quite possibly worth doing, but that is a guess at best.) So the conundrum here is that using those 4 attacks is 2.64 second Arcanatime plus 3 attacks all with 1.848 second Arcanatime animations. That's 8.184 seconds for your first volley. That's 57 opportunity meter built in 8.184 seconds (13 + 13 + 13 + 18). On rotational pass #2 you will hit 88 opportunity before the 3rd attack assuming you are starting off with Piercing Rounds. So if DW is attack #3 then it will build over 90 meter BUT it cannot trigger Opportunity when it also builds the requirement for itself. I've tested that multiple times, and if the attack lands you at 90% meter it will not also trigger on top of itself. You'd need to swap out Suppressive Fire as attack #4 with Pistols (if you have it) or else you will delay triggering Defensive Opportunity until you either interrupt the routine with DW or wait to keep the cycle running. Alternatively you use DW as attack #4 after Suppressive Fire which will guarantee Defensive Opportunity at over 90 meter. Delaying Opportunity is a loss of -20% resistance against a tough target even if you use Defensive Opportunity exclusively. If you use the rotation you propose you will miss out on Opportunity until your next pass unless you swap out Suppressive Fire for Pistols when the inherent is available. You're looking at 13 + 13 + 13 + 18 (57) on pass one at 8.184 seconds. Pass two DW again 70 meter (10.032 seconds) -> Suppressive Fire 83 meter (11.88 seconds) -> Executioner's Shot 96 meter -- Opportunity available 13.728 seconds -> Piercing Rounds 114 meter (-14 since overflow is ignored) 16.368 seconds. Pass #3 - Dual Wield automatically triggers Defensive Opportunity after 16.368 seconds granting you 15 seconds of uptime. You will wait 16-17~ seconds before you trigger it again. (Edit: MOAR edits) Alternative idea - Piercing Rounds - Executioner's - Suppressive - Dual Wield Opportunity first pass builds 57 meter. Second pass you will build 101 Opportunity by the second activation of Suppressive Fire. This guarantees Dual Wield tacked on at the end will trigger the effect on a target. This takes 14.52 seconds to build up. That's not horrible and may be the best way to ensure uptime on the inherent with that rotation. Maybe. Just napkin mathing here and I could be VERY wrong. 😉 Alternative #2 - use Pistols over DW. Pistols has higher DPA for lower damage per hit but the recharge and animation are favorable. Proc chance using 3.5 PPM items is in the 30% per activation ballpark. Pistols generates 8 meter per shot and would shave off some time it takes to unlock Opportunity and in this case Offensive Opportunity would also increase damage for 15 seconds on top of the debuff. Replacing DW with Pistols would change the build time of Opportunity to 13.86 seconds (2.64 + 1.848 + 1.848 + 1.188 + 2.64 + 1.848 + 1.848 + Opportunity triggers). Long form math to show my work. 😉 The above is exactly why I don't use Piercing Rounds on the Sentinel anymore and why I shifted completely to just Pistols(or DW)/Suppressive Fire/Executioner's Shot. Pistols animates in 1.188 seconds (if I recall that right) and the other two in 1.848 seconds each. If I can squeeze out enough recharge (and I have run this before) to run just those 3 that's a 4.884 second animation cycle give or take some lag. However, since I use the procs that I do my actual rotation is extended to pad out time. So I use Pistols twice per cycle which is fine since it recharges ridiculously fast on just global alone. So my current playstyle favors 6.072 animation blocks per attack cycle. That builds me 42 opportunity first volley. Pistols only builds 8 meter per successful hit (8 + 13 + 8 + 13). By cycle pass #2 I will build up 84 meter. The very beginning of cycle #3 will net me 97 meter. My very next attack is Pistols which will automatically use up the meter to trigger Opportunity. I do not need to think about this or when to use the attack. It is built into timing of the sequence. The time it takes before I can use Opportunity is 13.992 seconds. This is of course assuming 0 misses but I have built my character to have 95% accuracy on 54's (T3+ Alpha even overshoots). So a stray shot is possible but tends to be unlikely more often than not. Still they happen. When that happens I can swap Suppressive Fire with Dual Wield to trigger Defensive Opportunity. If that misses then I use Pistols again immediately after that. (Edit: So what I currently use is 0.132 seconds longer which is hardly noticeable than the alternative previously show [PR -> ES -> Supp -> Pistol]. I'm fine with this. With recharge boosting from teammates [on those occasions it happens] where I can run Executioner's Shot - Supp - Pistols this changes. In this set up you use Exectioner's Shot and Suppressive Fire 6 times and Pistols twice. That will build Opportunity in 13.464 seconds. At one point in time I had higher recharge in my attacks making that possible but now I just take advantage in teams when things like Accelerate Metabolism pop up. A difference in the half second range isn't something my old timer self really notices.) Why tell you this? Well, as I am sure you are aware procs like Fury of the Gladiator and Achilles' Heel last 10 seconds. I want to cram as many attacks into that window with my damage procs as possible. I want to cram as many Pistols hits as I can every 3 seconds in order to fish for Build-Up which has an effective of circumventing the low per hit probability through increased rolls of the dice. These all coordinate with trying to have as much uptime on Offensive Opportunity as I can manage without running the Opportunity Strikes proc (which is rather unreliable in Dual Pistols) as possible. Occasionally I do miss Piercing Rounds. I include PR in my Defender/Corruptor builds though so it is a simple matter of swapping characters if I want to use it. I've updated my write-up on DP in the Collaborative Project thread multiple times now after experimenting with a few different set-ups. I can't assume I have thought of everything. So I am genuinely curious to know how your experiment turns out.

It does.

160 DPS? Are you planning to use procs? I could see 160 running Piercing Rounds with no procs and just trying to push recharge. Sentinel Incendiary Ammo seems to brute force past the resistance debuff. This is true too on Blasters but not at all on Defenders and to a lesser extent Corruptors. I'm totally spit balling here from my own observations, but it looks like all of the other ammo types take on AT debuff modifiers. Incendiary Ammo isn't a debuff. It gets AT damage scale. The reverse is true on an AT like a Defender that gets their scalars on everything that too. That'll favor the debuffs over Incendiary every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Sentinel and Blaster Piercing Rounds debuff in standard ammo is -9.6% resistance. Defender... -20%. Corruptors -15%. The resistance debuff is just as resistable as any other that isn't explicitly flagged "non-resistable". Incendiary Ammo adds something like 13~% more damage to Piercing Rounds (running off memory that was done on napkin math from a months ago) and just under 9% on the other attacks. Fire is largely uncontested as things go currently so I think Incendiary was averaging out within a few points of better DPS than juggling Standard Ammo. The DoT is also very short in duration so it will likely fall off before you reapply it. Piercing Rounds can take Annihilation's proc which is -12%, but Suppressive Fire animates faster, recharges faster, and can take on the Hold purple proc. Adding in Achilles' Heel is kind of a wash since it should go in the routine, and my preference is Executioner's Shot for the higher chance. I'll use ES roughly every 4.22 seconds anyway so there are plenty of chances to refresh the debuff or apply it for the first time. Even though Suppressive Fire doesn't gain benefit from Incendiary Ammo for damage it still does very well purely due to taking on multiple procs ideally at least one purple (from the Hold group). Dual Wield can potentially out perform Suppressive Fire purely gauging just Incendiary Ammo and no procs. Just baseline damage they are close when running fire. More fun tangents, Piercing Rounds on Corruptors can make use of the that AT Chance for Negative damage as well as other procs. That's a purple quality proc in a power that can hit 3 targets with a decent chance to pull it off since the narrow cone isn't that awful on PPM calcs. Anyhoo... My DP/Nin runs Pistols, Suppressive Fire, and Executioner's Shot with damage procs. The last time I bothered to time a Pylon was June of last year at 230~ DPS. That was before I did a respec and changed my slotting. Maybe higher or lower now, but I'm very comfortable with the performance. Chain is Executioner's - Pistols - Suppressive - Pistols unless under the effects of more recharge like Ageless/Accelerate Metabolism. Under those heightened recharges I just simplify to Executioner - Suppressive - Pistols. Pistols at the end guarantees Offensive Opportunity every 13 seconds like clockwork barring any misses. It is possible that ammo dancing between Standard and Incendiary is worth it, but that is far too cumbersome for my lazy self to bother with.

This is a great point. Sentinel don't have narrower cones. They do have shorter cones. Almost all Sentinel cone attacks are shorter in length than the other ATs. Archery is an exception as Fistful of Arrows is slightly wider, Full Auto on Sentinels is wider, Sonic Blast's cones are largely untouched, and Psychic Scream is new to the Sentinel version of that set (so not a good comparison). I've already stated what I think needs to be changed. Too much AR's effectiveness is weighted into Burst and Disorienting Shot. I feel that damage could be smoothed out a bit across other powers in the set. Incinerator has very high base damage within the context of the set, but it could use some help. In reflecting, the animation review to shorten it some would increase its overall DPA which I would be happy with. There are other sets that could also use damage passes and animation checks too so AR isn't alone. My reasons for wanting to see those kinds of changes is due to the issue that AR has been historically an AoE set. Its AoE was largely focused into cones, but those were changed for being a Sentinel. The overall single-target, which Sentinels can be very good at, wasn't really changed. So in an ideal world Sentinel AR has some of the worst single-target potential, about middle of the road AoE potential, and a version of Full Auto that is a bit worse off as it becomes dependent on Aim. Aim should be a great buff to make sets experience some burst but shouldn't be the tool that fixes changes made to a set. Survival of +4/8 wasn't my issue with Sentinel AR/Bio. Everything that irritates me about the set stems from how it feels in actual play and the design decisions that made it happen. I had a hard time getting into AR/Dev on Blasters in the past, and the Sentinel version kinda soured me more. As to the idea about using planners and skewed perceptions, I wholeheartedly agree. The last time I used Mids the scalar was still off and some powers are wrong. That's not what I base my judgment on. All I have to do is go in game and look at the tool tip of the power to see the base damage, recharge, and then calculate off animation and Arcanatime. Assault Rifle still comes out behind. There is a bit of hyperbole about the set being dead last for single-target and AoE. Water Blast, without procs, is probably dead last on single-target [Edit - It is.]. Psychic Blast is very likely one of the worst sets for AoE within the entire AT [Edit - Psychic Wail is the only redeeming feature]. Psychic Scream and Tornado have some "meh" base damage with over 2 second base animation times. I don't think either of the DPAs even break 20 or not much over it. Even the worst AoE power in either Assault Rifle or Dual Pistols is still far better than anything in the set other than Psychic Wail. Psychic Wail is more than twice as effective as Hail of Bullets or Full Auto. Dual Pistols players have to run Incendiary Ammunition for Hail of Bullets to not completely suck wind. Full Auto would be the worst T9 in the entire AT if Rain of Arrows didn't exist[Edit - Fixed, I was wrong using old info (shame on me!) and Rain of Arrows is far stronger than I realized]. Archery gets to be the winner of the worst damage to animation ratio on T9 in the AT [Edit - So all of that is wrong. Oops] followed by Assault Rifle, then Dual Pistols, and then Electrical Blast (Thunderous Blast suffers from a really long animation) [Edit - Thunderous Blast and Full Auto are in the same league. Hail without Incendiary isn't anything to write home about either.]. With Dual Pistols running Incendiary Ammunition then Hail of Bullets comes close to Blackstar in Dark Blast, Nova in Energy Blast and within spitting distance of Geyser, and Atomic Blast [Edit - A lot of the T9's all hover around the exact same DPA since they have the same base damage and animation time. Fire's is only slightly better.]. Everything else is better (Beam, Ice, Sonic, Psy, etc... all have better T9's) [Edit - To be fair, Ice, Sonic, and Psy absolutely need their T9's to be worth taking]. Edit: So despite the errors in the tangential rant above, Sentinel Assault Rifle isn't a total loss on its AoE potential. Sure, Full Auto could use a buff but the set still has 3 other AoEs. Full Auto has a 10 target cap like many others of its tier so a slight DPA difference out of the others in the mediocre range isn't that big a loss in practice either. Flamethrower's a fairly damaging extra cone that many other primaries don't get. All things considered Assault Rifle isn't really last at anything, but it doesn't excel at anything either. The last part there circles back to my feelings mentioned earlier in this long winded post. AR is just "meh" at everything and its worsened by having its former legacy of AoE clipped a bit on Sentinels. Its still very playable but for really pushing its capabilities I'd recommend pairing it with Super Reflexes (for procs, more recharge, easy of play). My Dual Pistols/Ninjutsu handles +4/8 just fine. I've solo'ed TFs too. I'm pretty happy with it, but I've also improved the damage through proc abuse too. It's not close in damage, not by a long shot, to my Scrappers or Stalkers. That's ok. Even before the Tanker changes my Dark Armor/Titan Weapons could give clear times on my Sentinels a run for their money. Now, it is a monster nipping at the performance of my main Scrapper while also being largely resistant to all damage except toxic (all others at 90% during ATO uptime - seriously). I do not need my Sentinels to out perform my melee characters, but I would like some design decisions at least revisited for some smoother operations.

You're very welcome!

Are you thinking of sunk cost fallacy? That is when one views previous investments as justification for further expenditure. Like the continuation of a project is rational since it has funds already spent despite forecasting showing little (or even no) return on investment. You've sunk cost and you just keep going regardless of the negative outcome. We can look at our time as investment. We can look at our devotion to an ideology as investment. All of these can potentially be sunk costs too. There are plenty of folks that can argue that playing a Sentinel is inherently sunk cost fallacy. You could also argue that not playing very specific builds are a part of a sunk cost fallacy, but let's not do that here. Can you take any level of influence/infamy investment and pour that into another build that will perform higher? Yes. It is also incredibly narrow-minded thinking in this context since we ignore a few things. First off, there is very little risk in the relation of investment in City of X. You invest time, which has value, but what you get out of that time is (hopefully) enjoyment. If you are not enjoying your Energy/Rad character, then it is a sunk cost to keep going. If you enjoy playing this character, then the time/influence investment is rational (not sunk cost). Your perception is what makes it sunk cost or not as the negative outcome is time invested at your own pleasure. That's harder to quantify. I'm not an expert on Sentinel Energy or Radiation. I'm not an expert on builds either. Regardless, I want to chat with you about how to think about using Mids to evaluate this stuff on your own. You may not be too confident in your Mids skills, but it really isn't that hard if you give yourself some guidelines (that's what I'll try to do). Let's get the Q's out of the way real quick: 1) Yes, I'd consider this a decent pairing. All Sentinel pairings are effectively "decent" by my own standards with some pairings being exceptional. Do these do as much damage as my other characters? No, but that isn't the only thing I care about. How fast I can down a Pylon is not the be all end all of character effectiveness for my tastes. 2) This is where tinkering in Mids becomes important - see below 3) Yes, of course there is, but if you like Energy Blast who cares? 4) No I haven't. Ok, let's look at #2 in a broader context. (sorry wall of text will critically hit) Here is how I approach tinkering in Mids when I am totally clueless to the powersets. I plan to take everything from the primary and the secondary. There ya go. That's my secret! I'll take a look at the Mids options for DPS ratings of the attacks. I know these metrics are off due to scalars, and if I see something that doesn't look right I will reference in game. Things that don't look right would be powers like Screech on a Sentinel showing 13 damage when in reality it does more. Always double check in game, but sometimes these tools can be helpful when they are in the ballpark. For simplicity here is the list: Power Bolt - 46~ DPS Power Blast - 48~ DPS Energy Torrent (Cone that hits 6) - 42~ DPS Power Burst - 52~ DPS Aim - Burst damage booster Power Push - 70~ DPS Explosive Blast (targeted AoE that hits 10) - 26~ DPS Focused Power Bolt - 55~ DPS Nova - 53~ DPS (TL;DR edit: Power chopping block choices in Energy can be Power Bolt vs Power Blast (have to pick one), Power Burst vs Focused Power Bolt, and Energy Torrent vs other. If you run with a lot of Force Feedback: Chance for Recharge then Power Burst, Power Push, and Focused Power Bolt all have value. Power Blast isn't a bad running up in that strategy over Power Bolt. Explosive Blast and Nova also exploit how procs work. Radiation has a lot of strong powers so trimming that down isn't something I would do.) Between Power Bolt and Power Blast you have to pick one. Whichever you pick (or take both) depends a lot on how you feel about Offensive or Defensive Opportunity. Note, Power Bolt does about 52 damage with a 1 second animation (not counting system clock functions) and Power Blast does 86 for slightly longer animation. Yet, these two powers are within 2~ points of effective DPS from either. Power Bolt has almost half the recharge meaning you can fire it almost twice as often as Power Blast. Sounds great! Recharge will change this, but that is a build question. More on that in a minute. Energy Torrent looks fairly poor since it does less damage than the other two attacks. However, it can hit 6 targets which actually raises its effectiveness. Explosive Blast is in a similar boat. Since it can hit more targets it gets more efficient against larger groups. Now, there is a catch here with these two powers. You could plan to take additional AoE from your Epic/Patron pools. These are often point-blank AoEs (so melee range) that will also hit 10 targets. There is synergy in the melee range here with Nova so that's a plus. They will likely be more efficient than Energy Torrent OR you could try to take them on top of both. This is a decision point. Yes, Explosive Blast's damage is rather low BUT this is not the only set with a metric like this. Some even have worse numbers and some have better. Let's just disregard that for moment though and plan out with what we have. Power Burst does rather high (triple digit) baseline damage at the cost of a fairly lengthy animation time. Depending on how the build goes this might end up better than Focused Power Bolt. Why? Power Burst animations faster and it recharges faster. Call this one a decision point too. Aim makes for bigger explosions and the cooldown can be lowered dramatically to align with Nova. No reason not to take this. Power Push looks like a keeper as it has the highest damage per activation out of everything else you have. This attack will be a focal point of a final build deserving 6 slots if you can manage it, but no less than 5 to house the bulk of the Apocalypse set if you feel you need the benefits of the set. Focused Power Bolt does the highest direct damage of the powers next to Nova, but it has a very long animation time. It also has a longish recharge at 16 seconds. You could comfortably skip this power OR you could take it. More on this in a minute too. Nova is the T9 and it is the highest damage AoE you have. Regardless of its DPA ranking you really should take this. Ok, so now we have a general concept of what the powers do in a quasi-vacuum. We know we're likely going to use about 4 out of 5 single target attacks, at least Explosive Blast due to its radius, and Nova along with Aim. Out of 9 powers we've got 2 possible on the chopping block. In order to seal the deal on power skipping there is a another question one needs to ask here. How much recharge do I need, and do I want to exploit damage procs vs getting full set bonuses? This question gets some helpful answers from what our secondary can provide. Right off the bat, we know Radiation Armor is a resistance set with some bonus goodies. Resistance sets will struggle trying to build a heavy amount of defense. I'm not going to say you shouldn't build some defense, but this more in the realm of do not worry too much about hitting 45%. Knowing that Radiation can grant an absorb shield for bonus effective health as well as using Meltdown should guide the build on where to go next. Radiation also has some inherent recharge boost (20%) which works well with Hasten. This also works well with trimming down our number of attacks. So global recharge would be nice, but we haven't answered the other question about damage procs. Building up high levels of global recharge will likely require chasing nearly full (5 piece) set bonuses in the attacks OR really pushing set bonuses in the secondary. Decisions decisions. Either method is valid as Meltdown is your other burst damage booster. The other idea is a mix of effects using Incarnates like Ageless to help grant bursts of high recharge benefit to super charge offense. Energy Blast can benefit a lot from procs. In going about a build like this you may want to consider 3 Thunderstrikes (Acc/Dam, Acc/Dam/End, Dam/End). If you have the means to do it, then boost those 3 by +5. Use the other 2-3 slots in your attacks to exploit Explosive Strikes: Chance for Smashing Damage, Javelin's Volley: Chance for Toxic Damage, 1 Apocalypse: Chance for Negative Damage, and potentially as many Force Feedback: Chance for Recharge as you can get away with. I underlined that one because it may be the key to solving some of the build problems. Recharge. Grant every damn one of your attacks a chance to proc 100% recharge for 5 seconds and you should be able to juggle bursts of recharge to drop Hasten's cool down dramatically. Now, this comes back around to powers on the chopping block. Focused Power Bolt has a base animation of 2.67 seconds and a recharge of 16 seconds. This power is as close to perfect for abusing Force Feedback in your single target kit. Power Push already does good DPA and you want to use it on cooldown. This becomes a good candidate for that Apocalypse proc as well as Explosive Strikes and Javelin's Volley. You plan to spam this which means you get more rolls of the dice even if the per shot chance isn't a guarantee. Alternatively you could potentially abuse Focus Power Bolt too. Explosive Blast and Nova both exploit the hell out of Force Feedback as they can tag 10 targets. Your opener, Nova, virtually guarantees a burst of recharge in this manner where as your follow-ups have chances to keep it cycling. If abusing procs, I may drop Power Bolt from the equation and add a least Force Feedback to all my remaining attacks. I may also drop Energy Torrent depending on other options. I sometimes like cone attacks, and sometimes I don't. Ok, so recharge may be solvable through attacks. That means for Radiation focus on resistances and healing where practical. If you plan on taking outside picks like Tough, Weave, and Maneuvers you can even plan for defense. Upper teens to low 20's are good returns on investment and stack with purple inspirations when times get tough. You also have an absorb shield so make sure you put some healing IOs in there. I can't think of much to skip in Radiation so the build would likely get pretty tight to additional toys, but you should be able to squeeze in a travel power of your liking. After writing all that, hopefully it helps and isn't overwhelming. There are many ways to approach any build and they are matters of preference. Its a slow morning. 😉

Yes and yes.

Oh, that comment wasn't directed at you! I didn't think *you* over thought *anything*. That was directed at the OP who's follow-up took my commentary out of context by stating how bummed they are that Radiation is "near the bottom". That wasn't my intent! Then you're commentary made it seem like I was deliberating ranking them. That's on *me* not you for misunderstanding what I was trying to communicate. I didn't take any of that as a dig. It's just a situation where I was already thinking that was me putting my foot in mouth once again, and sure enough it appears it was. LOL We're good! 😄