oldskool

Are you thinking of Resurgence? Strength of Will is a resistance and endurance recovery buff with no crash that lasts a few minutes. Since WP has low baseline resistance to elements, Strength of Will can pretty much double those values while potentially getting you hard caped to Smash/Lethal (easy to do with Tough). I happen to like the recovery boost the most about it, and well.. there is no downside other than you cannot make it recharge faster. I think I agree with the other statements you make.

I've played WP on every AT now. I played a SS/WP Brute on the live servers pre-Incarnate with perma-hasten and the force feedback +recharge in Footstomp. So my AoE chain on that character was basically Footstomp every 4 seconds. Anyway, defense wise I never got past 32% and the knockdown is really what made him unkillable as it would allow his 1,000%+ regen to work wonders on the hit point stacking I had. That was pre-Incarnate stuff. I never did get to see the glory of layering all of that with Barrier too, but I plan to now. I also played a Dark/WP Scrapper. I currently play a StJ/WP Stalker, a re-creation of the aforementioned Brute, and Beam/WP Sentinel. Here are some general tips and advice. Regeneration rates can look great on paper but if you check the advanced totals the actual hit points per second may not be much to write home about if you skip maximizing your health. I know, it sounds obvious, but I am being serious. Pushing regeneration rate and hit points should be going hand in hand. Just raising regeneration for the sake of it is a waste of time and resources. Not accusing these builds of that, but just sayin'. On recovery, WP is toggle heavy (well, I consider it that because I layer it with other pools - needed some clarity here) and Quick Recovery helps pay for that, at first. However as a build matures and you start adding stuff like Accolades Quick Recovery + Stamina start to shine. I have felt that 1 end mod + the chance for endurance is all I need. That's 2 slots in each power. Furthermore, Fast Healing and Health are just fine with procs. I'm particularly fond of slotting only the procs related to endurance in those. I generally skip Regenerative Tissue but I do like the absorb proc. Anyway, that makes those two powers a total of 2 slots as well since I'm only seriously looking at maybe 4 procs. Up to the Challenge is my Sentinel's heavy lifter for overall regeneration. Willpower (and Bio Armor/Energy Aura) is a typed defense set. Melee AT's have a luxury of different sets with bonuses to either positional or typed defense. The Sentinel doesn't have that without picking up/slotting some melee. Ranged sets just suck for defense bonuses in the current state of the game. Willpower needs to layer defenses. Relying on just baseline regeneration and defense isn't really enough. Your effective hit points gain some mileage from resistance too and Tough from Fighting helps Sentinels a good bit since their Smashing/Lethal defense will always be a challenge to raise. I'm not a fan of Warmth on Sentinels. I'm even less a fan of Warmth with no slotting. The heal just seems too low to be valuable at all. Willpower can get overwhelmed since it's base defense kit isn't dedicated to any one thing. A small heal isn't going to keep you from face planting. I'd think it would be better in practice to focus on immobilizing others, building up defenses (either typed or just Ranged), and letting the passive regeneration take care of it. Speaking of pushing defenses, Willpower has no DDR to speak of. Machine gun enemies are pretty common. That's -7.5% defense each time they land a hit, and they will eventually land a hit. Your defense on WP is going to get stripped down. Doesn't matter if you have 45% or not. The moment a single foe hit you with a defense debuff, the cascading failure starts and it is just a matter of time before you're eating more and more damage. So that in mind, there is some argument that pushing for 45% in *something* is better than not doing so to help buffer the cascade. I tend to lean towards pushing moderate defense (like 32%), accepting the risks, and bolster other aspects of the defense (like hit points/resistance) with fewer slots. This strategy also lets me build up some global damage % on all of these characters using WP. For my Sentinel I have to slot a melee with Kinetic Combats to round out my Smashing/Lethal which is around 31.X% I think. I'm ok with that. Just some food for thought.

I have not checked that about the Hold. It is an interesting thought, but I can't commit much time to test it unfortunately. At least not this week. Anyway, I agree with where you are going. I like Pistols for the proc possibilities and did that myself. Looking good!

Gloom, Abyssal, and Antumbral do the most damage out of the 5 single target attacks but if you are comfortable with what you have no need to change. I skip Life Drain, but that is it.

Dark Blast (the T1 is also the name of the set), Gloom, Abyssal Gaze, and Antumbral Beam are your highest DPA picks in Sentinel Dark Blast. That's even after taking into account the incorrect numbers in Pine's. The scaling is off, but the DPA rates are correct. Just to note for the OP, while the numbers per shot may look similar, the devil is in the details. Gloom animates faster and Life Drain is slower. So as a damage per activation comparison (DPA), Gloom is stronger. It's also stronger by just base numbers too. Even though the T1 Dark Blast may look weak, because it animates faster (and thus allowing you to recover for another attack faster too) it out performs Life Drain. However, that level of performance isn't a huge number on it's face. The other major factor to consider is the Offensive Opportunity (which you seem to grasp already). The utility offered by Life Drain is the value it brings more so than the damage (which is just ok). Any Secondary with a self heal already will probably depreciate the heal in Life Drain. Also worth noting, is that Sentinel's have lower defense values across the board. Life Drain doesn't heal as much as other versions of it do. Typically LD is around 10%+ (depending on AT). For Sentinel's it is less. I'd say LD still has some value for sets without a heal, like Super Reflexes (which gets an absorb as an option, not a true heal). Other sets make LD a preference pick and not a must have.

Are you using 5 other purple sets with a 10% recharge already? That would be one reason why the Superior doesn't show up and the standard does (it's 7.5%). Because I pulled up Pine's and emptied my 5pc ATO socket and my global recharge dropped by 10%. So Pine's does register the Superior Opportunity set bonus. I haven't gone on Justin yet to see if there is a bug. There could be, but see if you're overlapping set bonuses in Pine's.

I have 4, with one that is my favorite, and the others I am working on. While not all of them are maxed out on live, the beta server lets me test my hypothetical builds. I agree there is a sweet spot, but it is also dependent on the Primary/Secondary pairing. As in the the AT's performance feels as if it has a very wide swing depending on what you pick. It's kind of like Controllers in that regard, but without the extreme variance that certain Secondaries provide. For example, my Beam Rifle matures it's attack chain by 26+ where it starts to rely less and less on Single/Charged Shot in the normal rotation. Depending on Secondary, both of those attacks are still good, but your options get better and better. However, my Dark/Regen's attack chain matures 18+ in the realm of attack selection. Life Drain is cool and all, but the first 4 single target attacks all have higher DPA. With /Regen, I have little need for the patch heal. I'm not saying it is a hard pass for all players, but in terms of picking the best DPA single target skills, you are in fact done by level 18. Then you just have to wait on Blackstar if you don't mind the PBAoE but that is really just icing on the cake. Furthermore, some set pairings can pose some IO set bonus challenges down the road. My AR/Bio is one of those pairings. AR is all targeted ranged AoE and single target ranged attack. That severely limits my IO choices within the primary itself in order to bolster Bio's typed defense. You can pick up Epic/Patron pools for more Smashing/Lethal defense, but it may conflict with a person's preferences. It certainly does mine. It's not a huge deal since Bio is pretty tough on its own, but it is worth noting that some pairings do not work as well as you might think. Or at least they will require more creativity than they first appear. Anyway, overall the AT is fun which is the most important thing.

I did notice that! I don't use a travel power. I actually don't use it on many ATs anyway because of Ninja Run, but yeah Shinobi-Iri is nice all around. I've lost some of my love for Suppressive Fire. I keep it, but it has less use for me when running Ammo which I've done since I unlocked it at level 8. Since Suppressive gains no added damage it takes a back seat, and the hold just isn't long enough for me to care. There is something to be said about turning ammo off and using the default secondary effect, but I feel no need to do it. If you run normal Ammo, Suppressive's DPA is actually better on paper and makes it more worth while to use. Incendiary Ammo makes everything else higher though Dual Wield vs Suppressive is a bit more competitive vs it being a washout. That's without considering proc opportunities which Dual Wield can win on. One of my build ideas stuffed procs into DW and it had a lot of potential. This got me thinking though. Suppressive's DPA isn't "bad". Especially for normal ammo. In fact with normal ammo Suppressive's DPA is better than Piercing Rounds and Dual Wield (substantially more so for the latter). So maybe I need to see if a Pistols -> Suppressive -> Pistols -> Executioner or Pistols -> Executioner -> Pistols -> Suppressive would be better with normal ammo. For most things not a Boss, that answer is probably "yes". That chain loses out on the normal Ammo resistance debuff of Piercing and the potential debuff of Annihilation. So it is likely the faster attack chain won't be better against Boss+ since on normal ammo Piercing is a guaranteed -9.6 resistance (assuming none of that is resisted by their resist value, which it will be for AVs). However, if the powers that be did allow Suppressive to gain damage from Incendiary Ammo, it would be a buff to that power and make a a quicker animating chain likely better in all situations unless you really needed that resistance debuff (so virtually only EB/AV). I'd love for Sentinels to have a unique attack chain for DP vs what everyone has. Suppressive Fire has the potential to do that, especially with normal ammo, but those debuffs in Piercing Rounds are strong reasons to keep it as a priority power. I doubt I'll change where I'm at with my build right now, but these are definitely things to consider. I also hope it is obvious I am just thinking out loud, and that this thought process is aimed at pretty tough targets. My build has all the DP and Nin powers. In actual play, I seriously do use all of them. I open with Hail, and follow up with Bullet Rain/Empty Clips. With Incendiary running virtually 24/7 since it removes the knockdowns/backs which I personally don't care for in favor of the damage-over-time element. For clean up, I just fire off the fast attacks like Pistols, DW, and Suppressive. If an enemy has a sliver of health left, I don't shoot them with an Executioner's Shot (no matter how fitting that is) and just hit them with Pistols. The only time a "real" attack chain really matters is against targets tough enough to survive the sequence in the first place. Otherwise just cycle what isn't on cooldown and pepper everything with follow-up shots.

Yeah definitely!

I don't have Overwhelming Force in anything. That's another 3% (with only 3 pieces) and my build isn't capped to it. However, I'd lose 6.25% trading out Positron's Blast in my AoEs since my single targets (Pistols, Dual Wield, Suppressive Fire) already have 4pc Devastations. The 3% damage in my case adds about 4 points of damage but throws the recharge off of other powers from what I planned. So it isn't worth it for me. You may be able to push more but you'll certainly compromise defense and recharge to do it. Plus, the damage increments aren't that big an improvement. Feel free to PM about this particular pairing so we don't continue to hijack the OP's topic.

That looks like someone else's build with some minor changes to put Hecatomb in Boxing. For being defense heavy, it looks fine. A couple things though... With the recharge in that build, you have 0 need to ever weave Dual Wield into the attack chain. Like never. So that Decimation will see very little use. The damage it shows up on paper won't be realistic since the core attack chain (Pistols, Executioner, Piercing of some combination of your choosing) should be gapless. You have far more recharge than I think is necessary OR is realistic. At first glance, Hail of Bullets recharges in 18 seconds. Except that Ageless will drop off pretty quick over the duration so that number isn't real. With just Agility it recharges in 22 seconds. Which is awesome, but with Musculature you're not losing a lot of recharge. You'd also do more damage with it. I didn't bother with the Accuracy/Recharge from Armaggedon in mine. It's the only one I skipped to push more damage per use since the default to hit in HoB is ridiculously high as it is. You have 3 floating slots. Max out Pistols, Executioner's and Piercing. Put a -resistance proc in each. That's two Achille's Heel for the single targets and Annihilation for Piercing. The two Heels won't stack, but that's not the point. You improve up time on the debuff which is where the real damage is going to come from. As I said in the DP/Nin thread, I'm not fond of pushing the range on mine. So I don't split the ATO's. Hell, I don't even bother with Sentinel's Ward, only Opportunity. What I do with my DP/Nin is not "the right way". There is something to be said about breaking up the ATOs and making the max range further, but it just isn't my cup of tea. I can get the drop, Hail of Bullets, my defense jumps from 42% (not considering Barrier) to 52% for 5 seconds. Since Nin Shinobi-Iri and a Stealth IO let you play like a Stalker, dropping your PBAoE T9 is pretty damn safe. Plus I have Blind Powder as a back up, Kuji-In Retsu (the T9), and Barrier. So I stopped worrying about the 45% soft-cap without my other toys and focused more on global damage. My build has 26% because I have 3 Devastations sets, a few other side powers with 2.5% damage (Shield Wall 5pc, Efficiency Adaptor 5pc, etc.) and a few purples with 4% global damage (like Coercive Persuasion in Blinding Powder).

Yeah, I personally have no issue with skimishing on Sentinels so PBAoE's do not even register as an issue to me. So I can see what you're saying about Power Drain. The only Sentinel I have that doesn't have a PBAoE at all, is my Beam/Will. Link Minds has a 90 second duration and can be made perma with recharge. Yes, it has a roughly 4 second wind up time, but you'll have well over a minute of duration on it before you recast. To each their own though. I brought it up because it is yet another direct defense layer to stack with other things like Weave. With your example build, doesn't seem like it would be necessary, but the OP did ask to know about options. I've used Link Minds on other ATs and the animation is something to consider, but I had gotten used to it from playing a Widow and Mind/Psi/Psi Dom. Anyway, the feedback is still good. Hasten is also a to each their own. Depends on how much the OP values recharge. As to the Incarnates, Agility shaves off less than 2 seconds off of Full Auto on my AR/Bio Sentinel while dropping my best attack by 19 per shot, but my next hardest hitter drops by 37. Musculature, is hands down the damage increase in a contest of Alphas. Agility does get me perma-hasten and reduce times off my Secondary but doesn't appreciably alter my attack chain. So from a minor durability perspective Agility is nice, but Musculature is the winner for damage. That above comment about the 2 second reduction also applies to all my Sentinels. Hail of Bullets on my perma-Hasten DP/Nin goes from the current 25 seconds with Musculature to 23 seconds with Agility. Yet, Executioner's shot loses 38 damage. Since I have a gapless attack chain that 38 damage per rotation of Executioner's Shot (not to mention the attacks) nets me far more damage than using Hail of Bullets 2 seconds faster. It's something I've given a lot of thought to. Anyway, I appreciate the insights Sunsette and that build looks pretty awesome! P.S. So leveling up my Beam/Will power, I used Defensive Opportunity so many times I could count it on one hand and still have digits left prior to level 22. At 22 when I took Quick Recovery, I started using it even less. Beam has some long-ish animations. You just don't hammer attacks as fast once you get the real damaging powers post Disintegrate. Since there is so much animation wind-up, I'd think a 30 second long endurance reduction power like Energize would go a long way. Yeah, you can still have Charged Shot in your back pocket for when Energize is recharging, but in a final build I seriously doubt you'd keep it. Anyway, another good point but I wanted to clear up my perspective.

As for Incarnates, I'd recommend focusing on damage with them. I've got 4 Sentinels. There is only one which I flop back and forth on about Agility vs Musculature and that's my AR/Bio. Still, I lean towards Musculature most of the time. Other Incarnate slots are going to be standard damage AT fan favorites. Either the fire dot/resistance toggle or the hit point debuff/toxic. Barrier is a good general defensive option, but Ageless or Rebirth could be interesting too. Use those to whatever flavor you like. I personally prefer Barrier since Sentinels kits come with Health/Endurance management and getting perma-Hasten is possible. I don't find there to be any secret formula on Incarnates with the Sentinel. They do damage and it is best to improve it.

Here are my suggestions. First off, if you have ever played EA on a melee, forget what you know. You must... unlearn. What you have learned. Second tip, Pine's has some issues with Sentinels and with Beam in particular Refractor's information isn't correct. Other tips... The only power you may wish to skip in EA is the T9. Sentinel EA has a collection of changes making it very different from the melee versions. All of the other powers have uses which is a pretty big change from melee EA which might skip several. You get Energize at level 10 which is a heal, regen, and endurance discount. Normally, I'd suggest taking the Tier 2 from the primary (Charge Shot) for Defensive Opportunity. However, with this build you could skip it and never miss it. Actually, a lot of Sentinel builds can actually skip Defensive Opp, but that usually doesn't happen until pretty late. For this particular build, I'm willing to bet you could skip Defensive O from the start and never miss it. You'll still want Single Shot because this activates Offensive Opportunity, at least with how the inherent works currently. Eventually this will collect dust on your power bar and you will use it when it lights up for Offensive. Since you've played Beam before, Sentinel's rotation won't be that big a difference other than how Single Shot works. Offensive add damage, Defensive adds endurance recovery and health per hit, they both put the same -Resistance debuff on a target. Since Energize does everything Defensive O does and you get pretty early, this is why I think you can skip it. Refractor in Pine's still has it as a snipe. It's not. It's a chain AoE and gets a huge damage effect on Disintegrate targets. Since Lancer is getting a 100% chance to spread on Justin, Refractor becomes a hard hitting follow-up with bonus chaining damage and it will be more reliable. Not sure when that's going to be pushed to the live servers. I'd recommend considering adding Fighting, Leadership, and Speed for the common picks there. BR/EA can still have a few open picks for whatever else you want like a travel power of any of the Ancillaries. Psionic Mastery has Link Minds as the 3rd available pick. It may or may not mesh with your theme. I bring up Link Minds because EA has no Psionic Defense. LM can help get you some. Sentinels have a 0.7 defense modifier vs Scrapper/Stalker 0.75. Doesn't sound like much, but it is enough to keep you about 2.X% off from softcap defense vs a melee AT using similar slotting. That means you may not hit 45% as easily and you may need to decide if that is what you want. That's also going to be a decision that varies wildly depending on Primary/Secondary pairs. In general, I try to get my defenses some where that I feel is comfortable for me, but if I don't get to 45%+ I also don't sweat it. Lately, I've been pushing my IO plans for global damage. YMMV That's what I've got for now. Looks like a solid pairing, but I don't currently play it.

I dig it, Zepp. IO enchancers will help in Hasten to get down near perma. I think you might still have something like a 1 second downtime. Not a huge deal. Do you use Suppressive on non-AV targets due to the hold? Pistols has the better DPA especially if you swap the enhancements and put the Apocalypse there. There are a couple of chains you can change up too also (this is for anyone interested). You can turn off Incendiary Ammo -> Piercing Rounds (applies -9.6 resist debuff) -> turn on Incendiary Ammo -> Pistols -> Executioner's Shot -> Pistols. My lazy way is to keep Incendiary Ammo on all the time. Piercing Rounds (5pc Opportunity + Annihilation -Resist proc) -> Pistols (Achille's Heel proc) -> Executioner's Shot (5pc Apocalypse + Heel proc) -> Pistols. Of course this means not pushing out the range by frankenslotting the ATO's. That is something I'm ok with personally, but I just want to throw out the above for sake of discussion. Edit: I ended up completely dropping the Ancillary pools. As much as I wanted them, I just can't bring myself to put in the additional toys which is a little bit of a bummer. I've come to accept the lower values of /Nin as just a general weakness and stopped worrying about 45% soft capping with it. My current plan is at 42%. With Hail of Bullets as an opener from Stealth I'm at 52% for 5 seconds. I can drop Bullet Rain and Empty Clips within that time frame to cause more AoE damage. If I really feel like I need a defensive follow up, Blinding Powder is -7% to hit. Once I can add Barrier into the mix, the smallest value of that closes my defense gap. Plus with Perma-Hasten I can heal every 18 seconds. So DP/Nin can actually be a hell of a lot safer than it looks if you choose to play it more actively. Also Shinobi-Iri + Stealth makes it even more safe to engage. This is something I was also testing with Dark/Regen using the IO and Stealth to drop Blackstar as an opener. In short, It works.

Sentinel Epic/Patrons do have some very neat options. My builds are so tight on powers and slots I just can't fit them in. I *may* do that with my Dark/Regen but it is going so smooth on Justin with what I have, I have no reason to change my plan for more toys.

I have a low AR/Bio and I've come to many of the same conclusions you have. I took my build approach a little differently, but we're in the same ball park. I decided I was comfortable with 26% S/L, 32% elements, and 30% Psi. Incarnates (Agility, Barrier - even at it's lowest) raise it up higher. The lower S/L is more risky, and I'm aware of that, but I opted for more global damage and hit points. In terms of slot allocation. I think the major difference is I decided not to enhance Inexhaustible and barely enhance Genomic Evolution. Mine has a +end proc and calls it a day. Since Parasitic Leech is as ridiculous as it is, sweating over recovery isn't *that* big a deal. It's not perma, but so much of the remainder of the set is like Willpower, I just took idea from how I handle Stamina and Quick Recovery. Since that combo doesn't require a lot of enhancement with Accolades or IO's to the gills either. My Genomic Evolution only holds the two global 3%. That reduces my melee defense (3.13%) and S/L vs your (1.56%). I'm just not impressed with Genomic. I toyed with a few other slots and enhancers, but I just came to the conclusion Shield Wall and Reactive Defense globals are more resistance for the slots. Other than that, our slotting decisions are so close it's uncanny. I just ultimately went with different sets (pretty much because I have too - more on that in a sec). Like I have 4 Devastation + Achille's Heel in Burst vs 5pc Decimation in Flares. I also can't use the Avalanche set since I have no PBAoE in my Primary, so again another loss on the defense. So yeah, since my Primary choice is all single target and targeted ranged AoE my options are so limited I just said screw it. Though with what you're saying, I probably won't have an issues, and most certainly won't with Incarnates. Anyway, thanks for sharing, it's a cool build!

You know you mentioned the Psi Melee before when you responded to me, and Psi's mechanics as being something unique just didn't click with me. I haven't really given Psi much a look other than just browsing the animations to see if it interested me. Your perspective makes a lot more sense now with some context. Side note, how do you like Psi?

You'd think that was the case, but it is a bit silly (and I don't take your statement as you being serious either). Anyway... I feel QS has value, but you obviously seem to understand Focused Burst is a DPA difference not in your favor. If that is your preference, then go for it. If you enhance up with your attack chain you're going to be stomping goons left and right. No, it probably won't win you the fastest time on a Plyon test with FB in the rotation, but that doesn't mean it will be "bad". I mean, Moonbeam going to hit like a truck, so do it?

If you're basing this on Pine's, then please note it is inaccurate for Sentinels. Not just damage, but entire powers* within sets as well as some secondary effects of other powersets are misleading/entirely wrong**. *Refractor Beam in Sentinel Beam Rifle still flags it as a Snipe, that it takes Snipe sets, it's damage is as high as it is (in Pine's), etc... In reality, Refractor Beam is a chaining AoE and has lower damage than a snipe (but benefits massively from Disintegrate). **Dark Blast in Dark Blast shows the duration is 15 seconds. For what, I have no idea. The to hit debuff lasts 6 seconds in reality. The duration on Abyssal Gaze is "5 seconds". On what? I have no idea either. The hold lasts just over 3 seconds. The to hit debuff lasts 10 seconds which is the same as everything else in the set that is not the Tier 1 or Tier 9. Blackstar does in fact last 20 seconds and does in fact impose -35% to hit. My test DB/Regen refreshes Blackstar every 26 seconds.

Maybe your expectations at level 25 are still a little high? I don't me to sound snarky, but endurance requires management for awhile. Accuracy is also going to be the bane of your existence as every whiff sucks off endurance but prolongs combat. What are you doing for attacks? Can you pace yourself a little to conserve some energy? I often hold back while leveling up unless I have inspirations or buffs to fall back on. I see no reason to dump all your end on trivial fights either. Once your character is fleshed out with IO's, by all means go ham all the things, but until then maybe slow down?

This checks a lot of anime boxes... Ninjutsu arts? Check Impractically large weapon? Check Cat girl costume....? Cheeeeck? All kidding aside, that build idea looks awesome and fun!

I can see where you would assume that is what I was thinking. I'm not basing a judgment based on Assault itself. In other words, I'm saying moving a power from 82 damage per activation to 90 damage per activation is the threshold of where "acceptance" is. Or we add 3 more damage to a 30 damage T1 power and so on. I realize the damage adds up once all attacks considered are enhanced, but that value isn't going to be an earth shattering metric. If 10% is all it would take to make more people think the damage was acceptable, then the hyperbolic arguments about current performance seem even more absurd. (Not accusing anyone specifically, but the overall gauge of community feedback around the "Sentinels SUCK" --- but if they did 10% more damage it'd be good. Give me a break.)

10% base damage isn't a lot. I spun up a character, gave them Assault (10.5%), and took a look at the numbers. If that is all it would take to make them more "acceptable", then their actual damage isn't that bad. Especially not when you consider just how easy it is to make an attack chain. I'd love a damage boost, but damage isn't my concern with the AT. I do think the defense value needs to be moved from 0.7 to 0.75. Their damage being what it is doesn't justify the lower across the board defense when that same modifier also applies to things like Mezz resistance. Minor annoyance, but I'd like to see it reviewed if it hasn't been. The big issue though, is Opportunity. Not just what it provides, but how it is triggered. I've played 4 Sentinels so far. They are very fun. However, I find some Sentinels do want to keep their Tier 1 and Tier 2 in their rotation from start to finish. Dual Pistols is one of those sets. Pistols and Dual Wield DPA are good enough when using Incendiary Ammo that their attack rotation doesn't vary from other AT's. Suppressive Fire gains no damage from the ammo toggles. It loses ground the more you build up your character. This means my attack chain includes both triggers (heh) to Opportunity. If I want to use Offensive but I've just clicked Pistols when the circle comes up, then I have to decide to skip Dual Wield for a moment. I either eat the gap, or I use Suppressive Fire. With high levels of recharge, Pistols recharges so fast that gap isn't as obnoxious as it sounds, but it is cumbersome prior to that. I'd much rather have two buttons not tied to my attacks to activate the inherent or something else. And the attack routine issue comes up in Dark Blast and Assault Rifle too. Both of those sets have 2 good DPA Tier 1 and 2 attacks that cycle with 2 other attacks. It takes more recharge than is practical for most players to get to a point where you can completely drop that. My Beam Rifle Sentinel is very different though. Once you more of the set you can largely ignore Single Shot and Charged Shot in favor of everything else. I keep them to activate which ever Opportunity I want. However, I'd love the option to completely drop one in favor of something else. I can already do that, but that means I have to ignore the situational value I find in DefensiveO over the more common value I find in OffensiveO.

My pre-edit reply went into opportunity costs vs spending and planning as purpose built vs common occurrence. I've been doing risk management for years and weighing cost benefit analyst is so second nature I apply it to games too. When I play around with builds, I look for what I feel is "just enough" for whatever content I want to push with a build. I love to plan long-term, but I also don't sweat things like "optimization" much. A lot of returning players and new ones look over various threads like ones on this forum. I find it important to stress that the constant optimization they see isn't required, it's fun for some to come up with, but it isn't necessary. This is also a team game. Groups can, and often do, close gaps in whatever build weakness an individual has. You can't guarantee a "perfect" team, but most teams where the players are awake while doing content is still going to work out. I used to post on the old forums, but that was pre-issue 6 stuff. I was pretty chatty about Dark/Dark Scrappers back then since they were rare and often denigrated for their existence. Even after I stopped actively posting I kept on it and read your posts quite a bit. They were always insightful. I'm just bouncing the same ideas at this point which is kinda off topic now, but we're in agreement here.