oldskool

That is my primary Blaster. Despite the nerfs to Tac Arrow, I still really like it. I kinda miss playing it as a Defender, but my original build was super gimmicky. I haven't given it a try since the HC buffs, but since I already have a Blaster with a conceptual theme I see no point in doing it right now. I do like Dual Pistols/Martial Combat conceptually and visually. My build had pretty solid S/L defense plus respectable defenses elsewhere. However, I generally don't like weapon redraw and so it tends to make me like certain pairings less. The only exception are my DP/Traps Corr and Dark/DP Defender. They're doing other things and the weapon swap isn't too bothersome. One of the things about Blasters that tends to keep my interest low is the general array of powers. None of it really excites me (outside a very small band of it), and I'd rather play the glass cannon control plus damage on the Dominator. The Dominator pulls off the schtick better and caters to my bias of liking the control sets. So, it really is a range of things about the Blaster both in mechanics and broader appeal that just doesn't resonate with me. I think it is awesome that folks love the AT, but it just isn't for me outside only a couple characters. Sentinels are the opposite. Its probably the fact that my very first hero ever was a Scrapper and so the armor set life is my jam.

A Blaster died and didn't just automatically delete the target from existence by looking at them? Say it ain't so! I tend to slot 3x Thunderstrike, as described above, in Pistols, Suppressive Fire and Executioner's Shot. This leaves those three powers with 3 empty slots each. Suppressive Fire can hold the purple Unbreakable Constraint proc, and two other damage ones of your choice (either psionic in hold powers or toxic in damage from the PVP). Pistols I already described. For Executioner's Shot I run it slightly differently. I run the Apocalypse negative damage proc, Achilles' Heel for resistance debuff, and one damage proc (your choice but I like Toxic or Lady Grey for more negative). I have enough recharge that Executioner's Shot doesn't need a full set and this is why I run the loadout I do. I use the ATOs in Empty Clips and Bullet Rain, all 6pcs of both, and Armageddon plus pvp resist debuff in Hail of bullets. You could sub in a Force Feedback there for faster AoE recharge if that is your preference. My Defender runs Force Feedbacks in most powers even ones like Executioner's Shot and Dual Wield. You can get real creative with the set and that is why I like it so much. My slotting isn't necessarily the highest possible damage but it is a good balance of certain bonuses, enhancement, and procs.

I enjoy the dialog. My Dual Pistols Sentinel is one of my favorite characters. I always wanted to like the set before on live, but never did get into it (of course the animation times were worse on its release so...). Since then, I've played the set on the other ATs too and actively play a Dual Pistols Defender and occasionally a Corruptor. Its 'meh' on Blasters without blapping and that experiment get shelved for lack of interest. Anyway... You don't *need* Decimation Build-Up proc and most definitely don't *need* it in Pistols. There was a point where I found it a clever idea, from other discussion elsewhere, that Decimation can potentially be 'OK' *if* you're spamming Pistols in between other attacks. So, Pistols -> Suppressive Fire -> Pistols -> Executioner's Shot -> Pistols, etc... and repeat into infinity and beyond. Having this set up also means you need just enough total recharge (global and/or slotted in the power) in Executioner's Shot to have it recharge in 4.224 seconds. Keeping in mind, this is also the exact same time constraint that Pistols -> Executioner's Shot -> Pistols -> Piercing Rounds has. Anyway, the point here is you spam Pistols in order to keep trying to roll the dice and check for that Decimation proc. The proc itself does not have a very high chance to trigger and so that is why increasing chances is really just tossing more dice rolls. Is it effective in actual practice? No, no it isn't. If you want it to be more reliable, then it should go in a power like Executioner's Shot. However, Achilles' Heel is better there, in my opinion. For more consistent damage in Pistols, I'd suggest running some procs and not using recharge in the power (it does not need it). I personally, I like to use 3 each of Thunderstrike (acc/dmg, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end) and +5 each of them. Then, I'll use Touch of Lady Grey's Negative Proc, the PvP toxic proc, and the Shield Breaker lethal proc. Each one has a 28% or 30% chance to go off individually and should average around 19 to 20 damage. Using the Thunderstrikes, like I do, pushes the enhancement effect from 73% (no enhancement boosts) up to 89%. ED rolls in at 99%. You're looking at a step up for a 4th enhancement slot from 89% to 99% or 10% difference on boost to base damage. Pistols has 52 on its base damage. What is 10% of this? If you guessed "5" you'd be right. So it seems to make some sense that at slot #4 putting an average 20~ damage proc here seems like a better step up than just going for more damage enhancement. Musculature Core Alpha, the largest bonus enhancement for damage, will let you ignore some ED cap. However, the strategy above will still get you into 126% total damage enhancement all things considered. You'll start hitting ED cap again around 134%. 134 - 126 = 8... Still not a huge leap vs the proc. As I mentioned before, I have 195% recharge (I promise I'm not bragging, I have a point here) which gets me closer to having a seamless sequence of Executioner's Shot -> Suppressive Fire -> Pistols. This is seamless at 3.03 recharge in Executioner's Shot. I'm 0.3 seconds off this. I'm older now, but human perception generally doesn't notice really tiny shifts in second delays like this. Professional gamers can be an exception and as you get older it may change too. So, in other words, my Boomer (OK, I'm not that old...) eyes don't really notice and I also personally don't mind. The alternative here, as has been shown in other builds, is to use Dual Wield to trigger other procs (Explosive Strikes, Impeded Swiftness, etc.) as an alternative. This requires even less recharge and still does competitive damage. Hats off to those that play that way. I've always had consistently better results with Pistols than with Dual Wield, but again YMMV. TL;DR: There is a specific trick to using Decimation Build-Up in Pistols and in the grand scheme of things it isn't worth doing. I've found that my average DPS with that proc vs another damage proc has been roughly the same. In other words, no appreciable benefit to running it vs not running it. Who knows, your luck may be better than mine so give it a try if you like, but don't assume (like I sometimes do) it is better than it really it.

Bill is my brother from another mother. Blasters are generally too squishy for me to enjoy. I've had a few I like, but I really only spend time with one right now. I tend to like one of two modes of play. I either like to sit back and control the field and support or I like to smash face without thought. I lack the required 300 IQ to play Blasters.

Hmmm. Not sure how your non-Force Feedback recharge would have decreased. When I made the suggestions your build's native global recharge of 140~% went up by 10 the first change I made. There are a number of ways you can pile on native global recharge with Super Reflexes and still hit soft-cap defense. So, I'm not sure why you're not capping, or getting real close, to all 3 positions either. For context, my DP/SR has 195% global recharge without Ageless or Force Feedback (I don't currently use that in my setup at all; don't need it). My lowest positional defense is AoE at 44.91%. The loss of global damage was expected, and predictable, but it shouldn't set you back much if you're optimizing procs in your attacks. You could lose AoE through-put if you stop using a lot of Force Feedbacks, but that's just personal preference for me. I don't think it makes a significant enough change to my gameplay to run Force Feedback, but for everyone else YMMV. HP and regeneration are a fun thing to talk about. With Accolades you're looking at 16 hp returned to you per second. If you managed to push HP upwards closer to 2000 you'd only gain around 4pts more health per second at a regen rate of roughly 240%. That isn't worth doing in my opinion. Power Transfer gives me 60 hp and Panacea gives me 65*. These are procs but they are stable enough that they become significant contributors to my health return in between the times I am actually hit. On top of that, Master Brawler gives me 400+ temporary health via the absorb. I tend to find this is enough for much of what I do in the game. I'm very against stacking regeneration for the sake of stacking regeneration. There is merit in building up hit points, BUT there is an opportunity cost to that which needs to be weighed. My Sentinel has roughly the same total HP as my Scrapper and Stalker. Both of those are also Super Reflexes characters and they too survive pretty well. However, there is a difference in having Master Brawler that I find noticeable. Finally, Rebirth Destiny can ramp your base regeneration high enough that the health return becomes much more noticeable. The ability to both dodge hits and absorb some hits allows Rebirth to pull a lot more weight. That's why I recommend taking a look at it because it feels really underrated. It can shine with some builds and Super Reflexes is one of those, in my opinion. TL;DR, there are better ways to improve health return vs looking at set bonuses for regeneration. *I feel I need to explain something further here. Yes, both Power Transfer and Panacea are procs and have a delay in their triggering. However, they can average out over time to being considered along with my health regeneration. So two procs grant me 6 health regen per 10 seconds. It would take me a significant effort to pile on regeneration percentage in order to accomplish the same thing. Additionally, it would take a lot of HP piling to get close. In either case of the latter, this is going to come from set bonuses spanning multiple powers. However, just two power slots with procs accomplish that kind of effort on their own. That's my perspective on why they become significant contributors to health restoration over time. The clarity here should help, I hope.

Just an FYI, but those procs in Obscure Sustenance aren't going to work like you probably hope. That power has weird design features like using AoE ranges but only effects one enemy. In other words, it is no where close to being the AoE proc bomb that its cousin Dark Regeneration is. Furthermore, Theft of Essence isn't that reliable so do not count on this power fueling your endurance much. I'd say, you're better off slotting OS as a regular old heal power with either Doctored Wounds, Panacea, or Preventative Medicine for the global recharge benefit. Tenebrous Regeneration is a power that you could potentially skip if you wanted. All it does it push regeneration, nothing more, and while that value is high the general use of passive regeneration kinda sucks. Likewise, Cloak of Fear isn't that great of a proc carrier for an aura power either. At least, the damage it suggests isn't as reliable as it is really functions. That on top of its base endurance cost (and crappy base accuracy) makes it less useful for that kind of slotting, in my opinion. I also generally don't value CoF much without using some other form of fear to handle more difficult targets. Oppressive Gloom makes sense with the power pair, and the Epic, due to stun stacking which you can notice some results with. It'd be nice to see Psychic Focus with one more slot to hold Gaussian's Build-Up proc. It is a nice damage increase. Scramble Thoughts is a deceptive power. It looks like it sucks because the animation is so long. It is actually one of the strongest powers in your tool kit making it better than Psionic Strike (which actually does suck in comparison to almost everything else). The Apocalypse set would work well in Scramble Thoughts allowing for it trigger the bonus negative damage more frequently. You could do something similar with Psionic Strike too, but well, it is just one of the powers in the tool kit that is basically inferior to your total array of options. Other than that, I don't have much more to say. The pairing of these two sets can be difficult to build with, and having higher resists is a decent way to approach it. So, is it viable as is? Of course. It'll be viable with some changes too. Do you mean is this optimal? No, but then again neither half of this power combo is going to be "optimal" when the conditions are either A) the most damage (this power pair won't do that) or even B) having the best survivability for the hardest content (Dark Armor on Sentinels can struggle there). Still, the combination of stun stacking can actually go a long way making this more durable than it has any real business being. The psionic damage type will be nice for certain enemy factions but some will be frustrating due to late game psi-enemies being overly punitive to the type for players. So there will be areas it shines as a niche power combo but plenty of other areas where it will seem merely "OK".

There are several decisions that I frankly don't understand. 1) You're under on defense because you're not using the 3% defense to all uniques. You could easily slot Tough with the 1 Steadfast that is Resist/End (for some sustain help) + the 3% defense to all. The 3rd slot can be for the Gladiator's 3%. That'll get you +6% to all. You will lose some of the endurance reduction and the energy resistance. 2) Point 1 leads me to this, I think you're chasing resistances at an expense for very little gained. For Sentinels, the combo of having high defenses (at least softcap) plus Master Brawler's absorb is surprisingly durable. You could even add another fun layer with Destiny Incarnates like Rebirth to heal whatever actually hits you later *or* take on Barrier. Super Reflexes is a little glass cannon-y in concept but really the Sentinel version is fairly tough. I'd suggest trying to focus on things like Recharge and Defense. 3) I think some of the breaking up of sets like Overwhelming Force are also a bit of a waste. You're getting 12% regen... 'meh' and 3% damage... 'double meh'. Keep in mind how damage buffs work. They buff your *base* damage. You're looking at the possibility of stacking a bunch of small-ish damage buffs to fundamentally account for what is effectively less than the value of a regular damage enhancement. Sure, this can add on once you've hit ED in slotted powers, but you're still only effecting the base damage. In other words, you're looking at about 3 pts of damage if the base value of a power is 100. This is why damage procs get spoken about so much. If a proc has 30% chance to grant you 71 damage, then its average is 21 damage. Hopefully, that adds some context on why people may slot for procs vs pushing that one extra slot for a 3% damage boost. 4) The slotting of Hail of Bullets doesn't make a lot of sense. First off, you're not going to be consistently running 257% global recharge. MIDs, by default, turns on your procs. Unless you're actually triggering all of those Force Feedbacks your actual recharge is going to be an average of your baseline plus the uptime of that proc. That proc, as you have it, is going to rely on enemy density so there is a level attrition you may be missing (or maybe I am missing your intent). The 5th slot of the Ward set would raise your melee defense to 44.7% easy-peasy. The 6th slot would get you 10% more global recharge and work towards making you less reliant on Force Feedback (which you are heavily reliant on now). There are a couple slotting options for Hail of Bullets that I personally like. 1) Use either of the full ATO sets. The Ward set is better here than the Opportunity set, in my opinion. 2) For better damage, you could opt for 5pc Armageddon + Fury of the Gladiator -20% res proc *or* Force Feedback. Armageddon gets you a nice purple quality fire damage proc that has a high chance to trigger given the base recharge of the power. In other words, it should go off most of the time. 5) Ragnarok in Bullet Rain is OK, I guess. Overall, Ragnarok is not a great set. You're not in any danger of exceeding the 5 copies of the 10% recharge bonus. So, you could dump that set and switch it for the Ward Set out of Hail of Bullets and include Armageddon that way. Net gains, more damage for Hail, better defense to melee, and 10% more recharge. 6) Empty Clips could keep the frankslotting you have, or you just put a set in there for some ranged defense if you like. I don't see a lot of value in how you have it set up right now. Additionally, you could slot the full Opportunity Strikes set in Empty Clips and do something different with Pistols. Up to you. 7) Do you actually use Kick in combat? If you're looking for a slot to steal, that Explosive Strikes slot is one. That is only going to add an average damage of 8pts. That Force Feedback proc there is worth even less if you never actually use Kick but some folks love this strategy. I don't even slot Boxing or Kick on my power bar and so I don't ever bother enhancing it with anything. 8 ) You don't need the Karma KB protection in Agile. Master Brawler should grant you enough KB protection. 9) I'm not sure there is a lot of value in how you have Suppressive Fire set up. The duration of the hold is like 2 seconds. I don't find it worth enhancing. I get the damage procs, do that, but the utility slotting doesn't make sense to me. That said, I am very much for trying to end fights faster vs worrying about locking down enemies. I personally don't find a lot of creative room to make utility powers in the Sentinels work because their base durations are pretty crappy. I have other characters better suited to that kind of gameplay so I just avoid it here. 10) I'm not fond of 6pc Apocalypse but I get it if you're worried about resistance. Still, see my early comment on high defense plus absorb. 11) Do you need Piercing Rounds? Want, I can understand, but need it? What is confusing here is that it looks like some of the slotting is going out of your way to make really strong powers suck and sucky powers even worse. Right now, Piercing Rounds is your second highest damage attack. However, your single target attack options aren't that coherent. You could leverage a chain of just Pistols, Suppressive Fire (if it were slotted better for damage), and Executioner's Shot OR Pistols, Executioner's Shot and Piercing Rounds. As it stands, you can't really do either without 100% uptime on Force Feedback (see the problem?). In order for Piercing Rounds to make a gapless/comfortable attack sequence it needs to recharge in the time it takes to run Pistols -> Executioner's Shot -> Pistols. That's 4.224 seconds, by the way. You're at 5.1 seconds which creates downtime. You're either going to fill this time with Pistols or Suppressive Fire which is a damage loss. If you pushed more global recharge without Force Feedback, and leveraged procs better in Suppressive Fire, you could completely dump Piercing Rounds and average a slight damage gain. This is because the current attack animation time of Piercing Rounds becomes a drag on Sentinel DPS in particular. This is made worse by how Sentinel Piercing Rounds has less side benefit than it does on any other AT (its standard ammo mode is weaker than all versions that exist and it doesn't actually exceed the value of Incendiary Ammo; at least in solo play). 12) You're past the 5 versions of 12% regeneration in set bonuses so the slotting of Master Brawler could use some work. Also, you're missing out on the Numina Regen/Recovery proc in Health, so I'd look for a slot to include that too. For Master brawler, you may as well go for one of the 3 sets that net you more recharge. Either full 6pc Preventative Med, or 5pc Panacea or Doctored Wounds. I get the stacking of resistance that appears to being achieved here, but again... see my early points. Obviously none of the above matters one spit if you don't care about whatever difficulty you currently feel happy with. However, I do in fact play this power combo, and I can assure you it can add around 100 DPS to its gains with some significant changes. Most of that change is really just a different focus. That is, focusing less on trying to cover resistances, and more on building up the strength of the pair which is faster shooting. In order to get faster you need more recharge and Super Reflexes can enable this in spades. It is really good at both defense and recharge. It is not good, at all, in stacking resistance.

I'm not a mind reader, but I think there are contextual things that are being overlooked when providing advice here. The OP is using a lot of very expensive sets that often carry with them high defense bonuses. There is also a tendency to use full sets in some cases seemingly without regard to what those sets are doing in those powers or why those sets have value in other builds. For the OP: 1) You don't need Unstoppable, and the way it is slotted has no value to you for lower level content; other than the PVP IO. That Steadfast slotted at level 38 isn't as helpful. 2) If you take Link Minds, then know it has a long cast time and its highest value is often in trying to make it up 100% of the time. Your build doesn't do this and slots it as a single item mule. You can do better with that power slot, in my opinion, like using the low endurance cost Combat Jumping or Maneuvers for team buffing. 3) Speaking of endurance, the endurance management of this build is likely going to feel very constrained. 4) The build seems to be trying to achieve 45% or just really high defenses. Invulnerability doesn't *need* this and it really depends a lot on the content you plan on playing. 5) You don't have the damage to sustain the highest levels of difficulty on your own within a short time frame thus making #4 seem contradictory to the build's goal (which I am making assumptions on). 6) Your highest damage effort is going to involve Mind Probe, due to your slotting across the powers, but you dropped Irradiate which is also pretty good. 7) Psychic Shockwave isn't as good as Mids presents it. You'd be better off using the same slotting in Irradiate if you're dead set on slotting a PBAoE like this. 😎 Dominate isn't suggested to use it as a hold. This can be abused for damage by using multiple damage procs from a variety of different sets. This means giving up set bonuses. 9) I agree with Underfyre that Durability slotted for heal is 'meh'. You can also slot it for endurance and increase your overall blue bar size. This has an impact on how Stamina recovers by a percentage and overall leads to better endurance recovery. So, that is another way to slot it. 10) Hasten should have at least 2 slots for recharge because the actual build won't have as high an uptime on that 148% recharge that shows in Mid. That's not reality. 11) With Accolades, this build is going to go well over the hit point cap making certain decisions questionable. Like the Unbreakable Guard unique isn't really necessary. 12) The stacking of so much fire/cold resist and defense is head scratching. Energy and Psionic are the real damage holes here but they seem ignored. What is being missed here is trying to understand what is this build going for? A simple "is it good" isn't a great question. "Good" means different things to different people and for each person there will be an entirely subjective opinion. However, if the goal is I want enough survivability and damage to feel comfortable, then that is something people can help work towards. Another follow-up to that is, what difficulty level are you aiming for? That matters too, because it is going to influence how certain decisions in the build go. Edit, below is a build to use as illustration on what folks will often present as options of improvement. This is about increasing the single target damage, which is not great on Rad Blast as a baseline, and it goes a lot more glass canon. Resistances, defenses, these aren't huge concerns here. That said, Link Minds can have almost 100% up time here (it is effectively permanent) which puts most of the typed defense over 34% which means any small purple inspiration will softcap. Hit points only slightly over the cap with accolades, but the HP buff from Dull Pain is also permanent. Damage boosting Incarnates are already factored in and the Accolades are there because I like to see how they interact with buffs for hypothetical progress. Anyway, here you go...

If you've ever used a rain-style power before, then you'll know what to expect from Whirlpool. Some people hate both cones and rain powers. If that is you, then skip it. If you want, several epics/patrons have area immobilize powers that open up at level 35. That should help to lock some enemies in place as Whirlpool damages them over time.

I'd still recommend using an endurance reduction in your attacks vs expanding a power like Instant Healing to compensate. Attacks cost more endurance than your toggles do. The drain on your blue bar is going to come from two sources: 1) Missing attacks, this is a net loss of endurance with no gains at all. 2) Chain attacking at targets. This is going to burn your blue bar faster than your toggles ever could. It is tempting to skip end redux on Regen because of Quick Recovery. You can do that later once Quick Recovery and Stamina have some enhancement. The stronger enhancement percentage is usually around level 22 (for invention origin enhancements at least). This means you can actually socket level 25 IOs at level 22. These will never decay like single origin enhancements which have cost savings over several levels afterwards. I'd consider trying to put at least level 25 endurance boosting IOs into QR and Stam around level 22. You may only be able to create 1 or 2, but try to get 3 each as soon as you can. Then you can see how endurance feels in your attacks and drop them as you go for more damage.

I do hope you realize this word use of yours is incredibly loaded. I'm not too sure what "comfortably" means here to you vs how it means to me. "Too much hassle" is also equally loaded. I also want to be real with you, welcome to Sentinel by the way, but you may want to lower your expectations just a bit. Sentinels have their own share of design challenges which means that they aren't exactly in a position to be face rolling +4/x8 content solo without investment. You can absolutely solo +2/x# content with any power combos you want with a low to mid-grade build. However +4/x8 can get bogged down as enemies become massive bags of hit points and feel like damage sponges. So, to me "comfortably" means moving through spawns at a reasonable pace. By "reasonable" I mean more of a feeling like I am not taking forever to take out enemies. That feeling, at +4/x8 especially, requires investment and that investment will also include Incarnates (at least tier 3 Alpha slot for the better general accuracy due to level shifting). As Bill notes, Fire/Bio is going to do some decent damage... when you invest in it. There will be a night and day difference between a low investment version of that build and one that spent 500 million+ influence. Anyway, all that said, just about every Sentinel primary has the potential (with the right build and investment) to stalemate the baseline regeneration of an even level AV. By the old server standards this was pretty good. Stalemating isn't exactly progress though so you do need to exceed that in order to chip away at their health or use temporary powers like envenomed daggers to slow their incredibly high regeneration rate. The higher you take the difficulty, like up to +4, the less effective you are. Still, things like the envenomed daggers will still help against those big game targets. Regular old minions won't be too bad, but bosses can easily take your damage without some investment in the build or a good strategy. Fire is solid on Sentinels but it is not overpowered like it is on the other ATs (it was rebalanced for the AT, not anyone else). Electrical Blast is actually a very solid contender to Fire Blast. Those are the two off the top of my head that have the strongest baseline. Beam Rifle can be good if you utilize the first power, the T1, because it comes with a regen debuff. It can be pretty strong but it really does depend on how you build it. The fact that the other ATs have easier access to the snipe now pushes Beam Rifle further for single target on all other ATs. On Sentinels, you get an extra AoE instead. Any of the other primaries with debuffing secondary effects (Radiation, Dark, Dual Pistols, Ice, etc...) become a lot stronger when built up with damage procs associated with their respective debuffs. This is perhaps why you've seen good things about Ice in particular, because without damage procs it isn't that great. Psionic, Sonic, and Assault Rifle either have some struggle bus issues, lack proc potential, or both. Any one of those can still pull off good things, but the investment ceiling is probably higher. Also, they work well with very specific secondaries when you're looking to maximize their damage capacity. For Secondary power sets, most of them are generally good. Ice Armor and Fiery Aura can be a challenge to build with which in turn may hinder damage (it is variable with Fiery Aura to degree it is worth it). There are other sets like Bio Armor and Radiation Armor that can offer damage at bit of a sacrifice to mitigation. Super Reflexes, Energy Aura, and Invulnerability are quite powerful at what they do and are reasonably forgiving. Out of the three, Energy Aura is the least forgiving on closing its defensive gaps but it isn't as big a gulf as say, Ninjutsu (which is still good but not necessarily as easy to build). All of the other secondaries not mentioned can have some merits in their own ways but aren't exactly something I'd declare damage enhancers. Additionally, some may add considerable build complexity that requires a better understanding of the pros and cons of what you're doing. They are all 100% playable but only excel in certain situations. As noted earlier, this is just me being realistic with you. None of this is to turn you off of playing a Sentinel. I remember my first one, a Dual Pistols/Ninjutsu build, holding off an AV in a team setting long enough for folks to revive. Before I completely tanked on endurance I was even making headway on hurting that one (very slowly though). This was just in the 40's. My current main Sentinel is Dual Pistols/Super Reflexes (I just prefer SR over Nin) and it is capable of handling quite a bit that I throw at it. It is no where near as fast as my Stalker or Scrapper, but it is steady.

The answer to this question unfortunately involves another question (OK several). How much value is there for DPS to you? Would you value the utility or the damage? What kind of difficultly are you planning to play at because these choices will feel more severe the high up the scale you go. Blinding Powder is 'meh'. It isn't nearly as powerful as you'd hope it was in this description. I've used it for a bit, and I prefer it for the confuse effect. This power can hold the purple confusion proc that infects others with confusion. It's pretty nice for that, and the full 6 slot purple confuse set is actually really strong for its set bonuses. Do what makes you feel happy. Tashibishi can be slotted in a number of ways or not slotted at all (it can still be useful on just the default). You may want to consider combining Tashibishi, slotted with slow sets or a partial set with some slow enhancement, and your ice AoE powers. Enemies will try to escape, but they will do so slowly which can let you slash them in the back with the epic AoE. The range is limited, a bit, but you're bound to catch some enemies. In other words, you're epic/patron pool choice does not matter that much given that what you're doing is building to a concept. You do you. Ninja Tools isn't terrible. The Ice Epic pool may be option. You get an AoE immobilize, to lock in enemies for your Ice Storm/Blizzard and I think it still has Ice Sword? That should still fit the theme if I'm thinking of the same game with a certain cold ninja. OK, then don't take Hasten. No one is going to twist your arm to do that, but no one being honest is going to sit here and lie to you telling you there isn't a reason why Hasten is so valuable. As long as you are aware and OK with the decision, then by all means do what you like.

It depends. "Soloing" cannot be viewed in a vacuum when the level of difficulty in CoX is 100% modular. You can opt to keep your difficulty set to team size of just you with an enemy scalar of 0 or 1. This is as easy as the game allows and therefore you don't require a min-max build, at all. You may still find some struggles here and there with some enemy factions later, but this is a problem across all ATs anyway. Tough and Weave get better the more you want to min-max and in turn push harder content by yourself. The reason being is that Tough gives you more slotting opportunities from the resistance sets plus the resistance itself. Weave just helps push you to soft-cap defense due to its high base bonus which also helps in harder content. You get Stamina and Health for free at level 2. You should invest some slots into those anyway because getting recovery is great. There are unique invention slots you can add to those, like Numina, Miracle, Panacea, and the like that will help with endurance issues eventually. Hasten isn't required if you're not trying to push the most powerful version of your build possible. However, if you are doing that, then Hasten is potentially a damage increase because the heightened recharge allows you to only use the most powerful attacks you have vs relying on extra fillers. This concept is almost completely irrelevant if you're not aiming to push the toughest content you can solo, and even then you'd need a specific build plan to do that. You're not ready for that, yet, anyway. So in other words, you may not need Hasten, or maybe you do if you want to push bleeding edge. The only person that can truly answer this is you.

You have influence. You just don't know it yet. Fresh character? Step 1... browse threads in the link below and learn how to turn your pennies into millions, if not billions. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/51-the-market/ If you have no patience for the above, what so ever, then the "leveling build" is still very simple. Step 2... Leverage single origin enhancements OR if you have some materials and funds build some invention origin enhancements after level 25. Your attacks: 6 slot them. Go with 2 accuracy, 1 end, 1 recharge, 2 damage. You can shift these about if you feel your accuracy is comfortable. Your toggles in Energy armor: use 1 endurance benefit and 3 each of either defense or resistance. Your passives, there are like 2 here, use 3 each of either resistance or defense as is relevant to the power. You still have power choice room for Boxing or Kick to open up Tough and Weave. Slot them like the other toggles. You'll have 3 open powers, do whatever you like. 3 Slot Energize with some recharge. Give your Stamina and Health 3 slots for their respective enhancements. You can either 2 or 3 slot Hasten with recharge. Done. ^^^^ This is leveling accomplished on a shoestring budget. Worrying about set bonuses without the means to buy them is a waste of your time, full stop. If you build some wealth and comfort, then you can worry about a build later. Do note, you get 5 respecs on Homecoming across your character's journey to 50. You can explore powers and slotting as you please. It looks like the path you are on already is fine. You could still pick up Aim for the damage boost. You can opt to skip Power Drain and Overload. I'd suggest taking Ice Storm, but if you hate it then skip it. You don't need Ice Blast. You're not going to close the defensive gaps in Energy Aura without investment. The two best IOs you could ever buy are the Steadfast and Gladiator's 3% defense to all and they stack. That'll set you back millions of influence. Still, just putting 3 defense slots into each of your relevant powers should get you 30-33%. You'll need set bonuses, and millions of influence - even for multiple cheap sets -, in order to softcap any given type. This is why I suggest you not worry about it right now. Enjoy the ride, and worry about a build when you can afford it later in both influence and respec options.

If the idea is to include Vengeful Slice, then people may as well just use Attack Vitals. Attack Vitals includes both Ablative Strike and Sweeping Strike. Vengeful Slice is the filler between the two. Getting Blinding Feint -> Attack Vitals to work gapless takes significantly less investment than going comboless. If recharge is still an issue, then adding Power Slice to the end of Attack Vitals is another way to go. Blinding Feint -> Attack Vitals -> Power Slice doesn't even require Hasten. You can get this on just set bonuses for recharge with some recharge reduction in Blinding Feint (because that is the hurdle to cross here). You can easily get Blinding Feint to recharge in less than 6.864 seconds (the animation barrier here) with very very low investment. Blinding Feint -> Ablative Strike -> Sweeping Strike -> Power Slice is the compromise choice if you're sub 300% recharge in Ablative Strike. Super Reflexes can meet or exceed 160% global recharge which should open up this option to pretty much anyone spending a lot of investment in the power combo. Vengeful Slice, even with procs, is not that great outside of the Attack Vitals combo. Once a player stacks more and more recharge the value of Attack Vitals starts to diminish. Still, this isn't to say BF -> Attack Vitals is bad. That entire attack flow often gets spoken about if it is total garbage, and it isn't. That is one of the beauties of Dual Blades. It really doesn't require massive amounts of recharge to function which allows it to pair with so many different armor sets. That by itself is pretty amazing. If you want to take Dual Blades to the absolute maximum of its performance, and it still doesn't require this, you have to pile on ridiculous levels of recharge.

Unfortunately, Regeneration is not a powerset that lends itself to high defense. The Sentinel is also somewhat handicapped by not having the breath of access to melee/smash/lethal defense bonuses that Scrappers, Tankers, Stalkers, Brutes, or Blasters have. In other words, your expectations on where this build can go may be a bit too high. What you have is about as a good as the defenses get without sacrificing your damage. Can you push more defense? Maybe a bit, but will impact your damage? Most likely, yes. If you want some more defenses, then maybe reconsider the slotting of the ranged AoE powers to full 6 slot Artillery for the 3.13% ranged defense. Try to build that one category vs all of them. Then leverage Hover to maintain range. You may be able to get around 28% to even 32% for range defense. If you really want to forgo damage, then you can probably push all the way to 45% of one type. If you want defense stacking, then this is not the secondary for that, sorry.

Any number of reasons: 1) It is an AoE Immobilize which mitigates some enemies running out of other AoE. 2) Duration on said Immobilize is quite long. 3) It is additional, relatively low overhead, AoE damage that can compound with Lightning Field. 4) It has a 30ft radius which is pretty damn massive. 5) It can hit more targets than the normal cap for Sentinels. 6) It can interact with Interface Incarnates. 7) The OP is using it to stack S/L defense to soft-cap due to the set that is in it. 8) More focus on AoE damage than single target.

How about an example of the same conceptual idea but in Scrapper form (since this is the Scrapper forum and there are posts about SJ/SR in the Stalker community already). I purposefully leave some powers empty. You can put whatever sets into those powers you want, or no sets at all, or whatever. The defense is already at 45%, at least, and global recharge at 160%+. Any tweaks will just improve it from here. I saw your question about a Dual Blades/Super Reflexes build. I slot my DB/SR Scrapper very similarly to this. At least for the SR side. There are enough power slots left over to push global recharge well over 185%. My DB/SR goes just over 200%. That is just a matter of using all 5% global recharge x 5 sets (Crushing Impact, Red Fortune), 10% global recharge x 5 sets (Superior ATO, Purple sets), and all 5 Luck of the Gambler 7.5% recharge IOs on top of the 20% of Quickness and 70% off Hasten. That's how you get 200% global recharge off Super Reflexes. Anyway, I'm fond of using 1 Luck of the Gambler plus 5x Red Fortune in a few powers. The full Reactive Defenses set, I use Weave for it out of habit, is a nice 8.75% recharge. All of this really starts to add up with Quickness, Hasten, and other set bonuses. You'll see below I don't 6 slot all the defense passives. I may add a few other slots to those, as needed, but they are not an initial priority to me. The posting below still has 1 power open and 7 slots. I'd consider loading up Health to 5 slots in total running every unique proc that exists (Numina, Miracle, Preventative Medicine, Panacea, Regenerative Tissue), and maybe doing something similar to Stamina (Performance Shifter, Power Transfer, Synapse's Shock, etc.). The point of the below is to show there is a lot of flexibility. If you are worried about gimping anything from here, don't be. The combination is pretty high performance as it is and practice with the combos themselves is more important anyway. Why SR vs NIN? SR is easier to build for, comes with 20% global recharge - which I wanted -, and has better defense against debuff. NIN is a pretty cool set but the tools it comes with aren't what I am looking for.

I don't see why not. I play SJ/SR as a Stalker so my perspective is a little skew there. However, the design fundamentals shouldn't be that different. Also, Stalkers get Assassin's Strike vs Rib Cracker. Rib Cracker has a much lower endurance cost compared to Assassin's Strike. All that to say, I don't find endurance to be a problem on my Stalker but it does have room for one more endurance proc than a Scrapper would. That may be offset, somewhat, by Rib Cracker's lower cost to use. The key on sustaining endurance is to use the endurance benefiting procs. End bonuses that go into Health: - Numina's Regen/Recovery proc - Miracle's Recovery proc - Panacea's hit point heal/endurance proc End bonuses that go into Stamina, and ideally Physical Perfection (Stalkers also get Superior Conditioning, but Conserve Power may find use to you): - Performance Shifter's chance for +endurance which can be slotted in both powers ^^^^ This is it. That combination of specific endurance procs and powers should remove the bulk of your endurance issues. None of the above gimps damage. Super Reflexes is relatively low investment when it comes to additional powers. You really only need the core tool kit plus Tough, and Weave. Tough allows you to slot both 3% global defenses and Weave can get you nearly the rest of the way there. You may opt for one more power that buffs defense like Combat Jumping (the cheapest endurance option), Stealth, and/or Maneuvers. This means you can hit high defense with very few toggles. You may even omit those extra toggles entirely depending on specific sets you want. Running fewer toggles means more endurance is available for your smashy smash. The issue, as I always see it, is when you are leveling up any toggle heavy character the endurance costs can seem extreme. It will eventually get better and using the endurance specific procs will help substantially. Slot those as early as you can to ease the leveling.

This is just stating the obvious. However, in context, it also makes the previous argument worse. You see, I was giving the benefit of the doubt that by the existence of stacking holds from Cold Blast plus Char were looking at a problem of a Blaster building up multiple mag 3 options. Same goes for Defenders like ones running Dark Miasma, Time Manipulation, and any primaries with a single target hold available (or more). Corruptors can also get Char. Any of these can get Web Envelope Cocoon. However, if we're just going to point out that each of these can potentially get something like Char this becomes a highlight of 1 power on a 16 second to 32 second cooldown subverting two entire archetypes. Doesn't that come across as a bit silly?

This seems a tad bit hyperbolic. Blasters, Defenders, even Corruptors, need to pick some very specific blast sets in order to gain a hold. In the case of Defenders and Corruptors, the same secondary sets are also available to Controllers. There are specific combinations on these ATs that can gain access to 2 to 3 holds. However, this access alone doesn't necessarily devalue the whole of an archetype like the Controller or Dominator. That is, unless there is a majority of players running those specific combinations. I sincerely doubt that is actual reality. Also, just because holds can have damaging procs, and Blasters/Defenders/Corruptors have certain powers with 10 to 32 second cooldowns, doesn't change how Overpower or Domination works. All it does is allows those specific powers to trigger those procs more regularly... on a longer cooldown. I don't see the problem. Also, I play Controllers, Defenders, and Corruptors. I run procs in those builds. I still don't see this as a problem.

Was considering the same change.

Super Reflexes can get you to 201+% global recharge pretty easily. An ATO, like Super Critical Strikes, can get you 99%. That'll set Ablating Strike to 1.5s cooldown. Super Reflexes can also stack 1 LotG with 5x Red Fortune to get an effective 12.5% recharge out of a few powers. My Scrapper has that in 3 powers. Reactive Defense, full set, is a nice 8.75%, and there is plenty of room for 5x purple sets at 10% each. I'm tinkering with this myself. Right now, I'm looking at Hecatomb + Achilles' Heel in Ablating Strike which cuts the recharge down to 1.66s for me if I do nothing else. Sweeping gets Armageddon + Fury of the Gladiator. Blinding Feint has some room for procs. Even with a 1.66 cooldown the attack chain is still pretty solid. I could also swap out AB with Power Slice. It is lower overall damage but requires less recharge. I am curious though where good places to put the ATOs are. The global crit one is kind of a no-brainer as a mule somewhere, but the Super Critical Strikes has options. Right now, I have it in Typhoon's Edge as it seems more practical in AoE situations. Since I solo a lot, I value the Achilles' Heel and Fury of the Gladiator combo. I guess I could dump that if there is a better way to go.

I thought AR was more fun than it should be. It has a flamethrower...

Yeah, a boost of roughly 4-6 DPS is about where my napkin mathing is coming. I could replace it with a damage proc and likely not notice much, if any, real difference.