oldskool

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.

Fun stuff. So, I run a frankenslotted setup in my attacks (Pistols, Suppressive Fire, Executioner's Shot) with +5 Acc/dmg, Acc/dmg/end, Dmg/end Thunderstrike sets. The other 3 slots are all procs of some kind. That combination there is really the only secret sauce that makes my build any different from those posted. I do push 5 purple sets (I have an Apocalypse mule in Dual Wield with no proc) to get my global recharge at 195%. The high recharge is only necessary to push Executioner's Shot availability when it is not slotted with recharge enhancement. Pistols + Suppressive Fire = 3.036 seconds of animation time on the Arcanatime scale. My Executioner's Shot with just global recharge refreshes every 3.36 seconds. Another option is to run Executioner's Shot + Pistols + Suppressive Fire + Pistols which can allow for Executioner's Shot to have a 4.224 second cooldown. Funny enough, that is also the same rate of time you'd want Piercing Rounds to recharge in order to make Piercing Rounds - Pistols - Executioner - Pistols gapless. However, the proc stacking of Suppressive Fire makes it a better choice for speedy pew-pew. I only take PR on my Defender and Corr to use the higher -resistance debuff due to their class modifiers. I don't run Tactics because I have a high level of accuracy and don't mind using a yellow inspire if I get debuffed on to-hit. I do get the convenience of having Gaussian's proc in that power, but the tick rate on solo play is very low. However, if you buff teammates with Tactics the proc will check for every member giving you a slightly inflated result. Watching the clip, I wonder the overall value of Decimation proc. I see it go off a couple of times, and it is possible one of those was a lucky Gaussian. However, it seems to add little value to me. I do currently run it, but I've been considering dropping it. Destiny-wise, I often run Rebirth for 98% of the content I play. It is an underrated power, but Barrier is also nice. Ageless is too, but I don't feel I need the endurance or the recharge.

I've been struggling with why folks complain about them in the manner they do for years. There are valid criticisms of the Sentinel's design. However, some of that does have a lot to do with current power creep. There was an intent in the AT to resolve some quality of life and make a new playstyle out of it. A lot of that work has been undone on HC for better and for worst. It is unfortunate that the Sentinel has not had a review yet, but it is on the HC dev team radar. They'll get to it when they get to it. The fact there hasn't been a huge rush to fix it should also indicate it isn't as broken in their eyes as people make it seem. All that said, the Sentinel is still perfectly viable for content even in this version of HC. Is it as strong as other DPS options? No, but you're not bringing your team down either unless said team is trying for something very specific (i.e., speed runs). I play Dual Pistols across the ATs that have it. I can assure you my Sentinel does better single target damage than the Corruptor and Defender blast set vs blast set. Both of those other ATs also have force multipliers in their support sets which help them out considerably. However, it is not a fair comparison to make that my Defender is reducing enemy resist by an additional 30% and stripping off 40% defense therefore the Sentinel sucks. [I should note that for Blasters, I prefer blapping with Dual Pistols vs full range. It becomes a hard comparison when my build is leveraging melee to the degree it does. Still, AoE is better on the Blaster and single-target isn't so far above my Sentinel it bothers me much.] This leads me to the last underlined comment there. I'm sorry you feel as concerned about your characters, of whom I hope you have fun playing, because of reading the toxic drivel in forums. Shame on us all for presenting something that should be a fun experience to outsiders looking in as some kind of "you're doing it wrong" try-hard approach. Criticisms are fair game, but when they get to a point people ask if they did something wrong it goes a bit too far. The reason for that is, you didn't do anything wrong picking a Sentinel and having fun with it. If you didn't do that fully solo, then you're grouping to help gain that experience and Incarnate material cache. It doesn't sound like anyone is kicking you out because of your choice. You may find some other ATs perform stronger in the intended role, but don't let forum posters here stop you from enjoying yourself.

There is a lot to unpack in both of those questions. 1) "Poor damage" is subjective and ill-defined. There is truth that there is a historic issue with balancing ranged powers vs melee powers. Melee powers often do more damage per hit than ranged ones do in the same tier. However, that's just single target. Also, ranged powers often have faster animation times which actually does help offset the disparity somewhat. Still, the primary focus of the ranged power set has historically been area of effect and the historic strength of melee has been single target. The lines here have gotten blurry over time. 2) Blasters are known for "good damage" due to a combination of things. One of those things is a tendency to overhype the AT on the verge of hyperbole. Is the Blaster good at range damage? Yes, if we're talking about AoE potential. That AoE potential is often driven by access to a multitude of powers not being just the primary as well as both Aim and Build-Up. The single-target melee powers in the Blaster's secondary more often than not do more damage than their primary alternative. Blasters are pretty good at range. They are better at it than other ATs due to higher base scalars, power accessibility, and even Defiance. However, the Blaster is not optimal at range only. It is viable, but not optimal. The Sentinel is an interesting case study in deconstructing power balance. The AT was an experiment post shutdown as noted many times in other threads. The changes it attempted to make had a certain spirit in mind but its execution falls apart due to a number of other factors. The Sentinel range sets had changes to single-target with what seems to be a spirit of improvement. Damage within the ranged sets was smoothed out a bit across a snipe change (which was a power category often skipped by players) and adding damage to CC powers. This actually would cause the Sentinel to do *more* single target damage at a baseline for any builds *not* using a snipe in the rotation. The snipe availability that exists now completely breaks this dynamic. Now, all blast sets or ATs with a snipe have access to a high damage-per-activation power with more reliability than they ever had. The Sentinel's quality of life change here became a moot point. Now, the increase of single-target damage to smooth out Sentinel design came with it a restriction on AoE potential. See how that original interplay between blast sets and melee sets had a design choice? That seems to have been replicated in the Sentinel. They were granted more single-target options and so they lost AoE potential. Of course, this concept of AoE potential kinda goes out the window now with the Tanker changes. The design change to reduce range doesn't seem to be a punishment. It was a design decision on compromise. The single-target damage seems intended to be a bit higher and the AoE reduced. In order to increase some risk the range was taken into consideration and reduced. However, some of the AoE cones were changed to compensate this. Not every single Sentinel cone was stepped on by this range change. Some powers are the same. Some of them have wider arcs by less engagement range. There was some thought to balance here. Anyway, those are my thoughts on addressing those questions. Be wary of hyperbolic statements casually flung around here. It probably isn't an attempt to mislead, but that is going to be a common outcome.

Poor Reed... I do understand how Benjie is viewed as the quintessential brick character (like, even literally) but good old Reed has a lot going for him that gets overlooked. 😞 Same with SusieQ. She's by far the most powerful character on the team and Reed is practically indestructible. Reed's physiology is such that his tensile strength when wrapping around an enraged Hulk can hold it for a time. Reed hasn't been cut by Adamantium when facing off against a mind controlled Wolverine either. Let Johnny and Ben take some spot lighting. Reed and Sue can quietly be super strong and hang out with the most powerful being in the Marvel Universe, their son Franklin. 😉

Fixed a little. 😉 I think Fire Blast is a good all around set. It has potential for AoE if you use Rain of Fire with an AoE immobilize. This is on top of Fire Ball which is a great AoE power. Rain of Fire and something like Fire Cages gets you 16 targets to hit. That may let you feel more like other ranged ATs with the same caps. Not many Sentinel primaries have this option. Furthermore, ones that do don't have the same baseline single target damage that Fire Blast does. Given that Fire Blast is a reasonably solid set, it doesn't hurt it (nearly as much) to go full sets for defense and resistance bonuses unlike many other sets. Where a lot of other sets can feel highly reliant on multiple procs for performance, Fire Blast doesn't. So the Fire Blast/Willpower combo can turn out to be a pretty strong character. You can potentially softcap Smashing/Lethal/Fire/Cold/Energy/Negative defense scores while also pushing resistances pretty hard. You get all of that backed by 600% to 700%+ regeneration on a character that can still fight from hover playing keep away. It can be surprisingly effective. Similar strategies with Fire Blast can be applied to just about every one of the Secondaries. Even the ones that may seem a bit subpar can be built up with the IO system without hindering FB too much. My own Fire Blast build runs with Energy Aura. Originally I wanted to go Fire/Fire/Fire, but the visuals didn't do it for me. Energy Aura has some customizable glows to it and with the right colors it looks a bit like burning embers falling around with an internal glow. I did something similar with Ice/EA that makes it look like snow.

Only lately? 😆 The Sentinel offered me an opportunity to explore ranged sets deeper than I had ever bothered to on Live. On Live, whenever I bothered with a ranged set it was an means to an end with a support AT like the Corruptor or Defender. I never liked the gameplay of the Blaster, and I still don't. The Sentinel was a compromise on mechanics while still allowing a freedom of expression I couldn't find elsewhere. The Sentinel is still a very fun AT to play for me regardless of common forum knowledge.

Well, it isn't new that is for sure. If anyone ever complains just do what I do and say... "It was Agatha all along!"