Saikochoro

When I first started homecoming I was pretty excited about sentinels. However, I also started playing blasters as well as I didn’t play blasters on live. To me the damage difference between the two was very noticeable. I teamed a lot so I wasn’t as concerned with survivability. So I dropped sentinels for a good while and played a bunch of blasters. Several months later I decided to give sentinels another go. I got two to 50, fully IO’d with all the goodies, and incarnated them. One was a beam rifle/energy aura and the other was a fire/bio. The beam rifle/energy aura is extremely survivable. No issues whatsoever soloing pretty much anything other than super heavy psi or toxic damage. The survivability increase over any of my blasters is night and day. Yes, the blasters still do more damage, but the br/ea sentinel still cleared maps fairly quickly and was a lot of fun. That said, the fire/bio sentinel was what really made the difference for me. Not quite as tough as the br/ea sentinel, but still certainly tougher than blasters. However, I was actually very impressed with the damage output of this sentinel. Yes, blasters still do more, but as I played this sentinel I never once thought “man I wish this did more damage.” I have found that when I want to play a ranged character I will now almost always play this fire/bio sentinel over any of my blasters. The thing I like best about sentinels is the fact that I don’t have to chase mobs and get into melee range, but I also don’t have to worry about mez or survivability. To me, sentinels are the most relaxing AT to play because they have more flexibility than other ATs due to their combination of range and armor. So when I just want to kick back I’ll hop on one of my sentinels.

I just did my first run of the new strike force last night. Reading about it I was thinking I was going to need a super survivable character to run it. So I brought my shield/ma tanker. I think we ran it on malicious and I neglected to look at the notoriety. But bosses were yellow or orange so it can’t have been +4. So it was a low difficulty run. The person leading the strike force was very experienced with it and had good explanations and strategies. So low difficulty settings + experienced leader + uber tanker and it turned out to be a breeze. That said, I’m interested in seeing how a full kill all AV run at max difficulty would go. Once I experience that I feel like I will be able to make a better judgment on the strike force.

Dual blades is best on scrappers and stalkers. It’s a top tier melee set for both of those archetypes. I feel like it does decent on tankers as well. I feel like brutes get the least out of the set because they don’t get as much benefit out of blinding feint. Still it’s a great melee set for any archetype. If willpower is the armor set you are set on, then I do either tanker or scrapper depending on if you want more damage or more survivability. If you are open to other armor sets, then I’d recommend either energy aura or bio armor. Bio armor gives another nice boost to damage and can put out some impressive damage with dual blades. Energy aura is just a very robust armor (one of the best in the game) and offers everything except good psi protection. Dual blades loves recharge and energy aura helps with that directly and also indirectly through build flexibility. My top recommendations for dual blades: 1. Dual blades/bio scrapper 2. Dual blades/energy aura stalker If you wanted a willpower and dual blades combo, I’d try it on tankers to see if you like it.

Shoot for to softcap defense on f/c/e/n. Shoot for hardcap s/l resistance. When I say shoot for I don’t mean to meet those goals at all costs. Don’t completely neuter your damage to chase survivability. WP gives you some good mitigation for psi so that is a plus. Where you are able get some Regen and +max hp, but I wouldn’t go crazy on that. Rise to the challenge will be your main then source in any case. The reason to go scrapper is to have better damage than a tanker or brute. So I wouldn’t go crazy trying to make you scrapper as tough as tank. You won’t be able to no matter what you do and you lose sight of the goal of a scrapper - to do crazy damage while still surviving. Dual blades thrives on recharge. You have basically two really good options for damage. You can do blinding feint + attack vitals combo on repeat. This doesn’t require as much recharge and is easier to accomplish with a more defensive focus, but still does great damage. Or you can go blinding fient>ablaiting strike>sweeping strike. This requires A LOT of recharge, but is very high damage. Make sure to put the -res procs in ablaiting and sweeping strike.

Out of your options I would hands down choose savage melee/shield defense. You get the double telenuke still (proc out savage leap) and it is faster and just overall better version of elec/shield defense in my opinion. Shield defense is one of the best armors in the game. Energy aura is also fantastic, but since it wasn’t one you mentioned I am not going to try to convince you to use energy aura. Shield defense is top tier along with energy aura. It can be built very tough and contrary to opinion further up in the thread is easy enough to softcap and still put procs in attacks and have decent rech and also take dps focused incarnates. Not only that, but it give you a great damage boost in AAO and a good AoE. I have played and fully kitted out savage/shield, electric/shield, and savage/EA. I didn’t do electric/ea because I don’t feel that electric is really that great of a primary. Both can handle pretty much content you throw at it. I enjoy the savage/shield better than the savage/ea. That said, you can have fun with just about any power combination. The most important factor is: which one interests you the most? It really doesn’t matter if it is the absolute best, because even the “lower tier” combos can do awesome in pretty much all content. Pick whichever calls to you the most.

Not the caps. The actually modifiers for mitigation.

I don’t want to run into an issue where brutes can easily achieve all the mitigation benchmarks as easily as tankers as that would then put tankers in the spot brutes are now. So I was trying to find a middle ground. Something to help brutes be tougher without investing so heavily into mitigation set bonuses. Full on 87.5% might work for all mitigation modifiers. It was either that or keep most modifiers at scrapper levels, except for resistance and just give brutes tanker modifiers for resistance only. Either way, I’d like to see how that would play out.

I used to be a brute main through and through back on live. I love brutes. That said, ever since the major tanker buffs I have a hard time wanting to make a brute over a tanker. The only things brutes have over tankers is better single target damage and a couple powersets. The damage gap is significantly less now than before the buffs, especially in terms of AoE. And if I want good single target damage why not just make a scrapper. They are more damaging than brutes and still survive well. Yes, brutes can get to the tanker caps, but the biggest problem is they don’t have the tanker mitigation modifiers. So they have to invest very heavily into defense & especially resist set bonuses to be able to even approach tanker sturdiness. This then takes away A LOT of slots that could be used to push damage. The biggest reason I play brutes is simple - energy aura. Energy aura is an amazing armor powerset - easily one of the best when built right. It is fairly easy to build too so you have those extra slots you need to push mitigation set bonuses. So you can get a fair amount better mitigation overall than if you are a energy aura scrapper. If tankers ever get energy aura then it’s game over for brutes for me unless they change something on brutes to compensate. Occasionally I like Regen brutes too. But again, if tankers ever get Regen I will just make a tanker instead. Balancing brutes and tankers is hard because they can very easily invalidate each other. Make it too easy for brutes to reach tanker mitigation (giving them all the tanker mitigation modifiers) and then why make a tanker when the brute is as survivable and does better damage? Same with if tanker damage is just too low to justify the extra survivability. Give tankers too much damage comparative to brutes? We are then at the “why make brutes when tankers are much sturdier and do almost as much damage?” I like the tankers do relevant damage now. So I don’t particularly want them nerfed. However, brutes need something to help them a bit in comparison to tankers. My suggestion is to give brutes slightly higher mitigation modifiers for resistance only. Make brutes have to work to get their defenses up, but give them maybe even the tanker modifiers for resistance only. This will make it a bit easier to be tough brute, but still not as easy as a tanker. This would close the toughness gap somewhat just like the damage gap was closed. Then it would be a hard choice - brute or tanker?

When I think of a generalist all rounder tank I immediately think willpower/claws. Claws is just a good attack set that has both good single target and good AoE damage and is uncomplicated. WP is set and forget and doesn’t really have any holes. You get some good defense, good resists, great Regen, good recovery. It is not be the strongest armor, but it’s layered nature doesn’t really have any wholes or weakness in the majority of content. The only weakness is no DDR, but again it’s layered mitigation so it’s not a death sentence to have defense failure. It’s also not a busy set that requires clicking and paying attention to it. However, since neither of those powersets are ones you are considering here are my recommendations for ones you are considering: I recommend shield. Shield defense is the absolute best tank primary in my opinion. It is incredibly durable and has great offensive bonuses. It’s ONLY weakness is no inherent healing, but that is easily covered by IOS, secondary powerset, or maybe some greens. Invulnerability might be the most iconic armor for tanks and might be slightly more durable, but not by much and it doesn’t have the offensive bonuses that shield does. Shield pairs extremely well with dark melee. It’s like they were made for each other. Siphon life covers the healing weakness of shield perfectly. Soul drain adds to the bonuses you already get from AAO. Between those two you can maintain a very high uptime of an obscene damage bonus. Dark melee also alleviates any concerns you might have with endurance management also. Top tier combo in my opinion. A lot of people like paring electrical melee with shield for the double telenukes, but electrical melee just doesn’t cut it in terms of single target damage. If you want double telenukes, then pair shield with savage melee. Proc out savage leap and this combo is basically a much better version of electric shield. Now for what I consider to be possibly the most obscenely powerful character I have ever played. Shield defense/Energy melee tanker. This thing probably shouldn’t exist. It is absolutely bonkers. Absolute top tier survivability with obscene single target damage and burst. The AoE even got improved with the revamp so it’s not like AoE Is horrendous. Sure it’s not a farming build. But for general content and hard AV fights, this is the most powerful character I’ve ever played.

I submit 44,440,000,000.

I didn’t have a single build that had capped recharge and I highly doubt it was the norm. The recharge I had for rune of protection on all of my characters with always within a few seconds of 180s. This is at about perma hasten levels of recharge and is fairly common for higher end builds. That gave 50% uptime for rune and left plenty of gaps in coverage. I will also say again that rune was used for more than just mez protection. There were people such as myself that used it mainly proactively and for resistance every bit as much as mez, if not more in some cases. I hate that the whole resistance attribute has just been swept under the rug. Resistance uptime has been nerfed along with the mez protection uptime and is an equally valid complaint for those who have tested and don’t agree with the change. I also think the argument of chaining powers together to negate an entire aspect of the game is flawed. First off, you can entirely negate the mez aspect of the game with break frees and p2w powers regardless of archetype or power picks. If this were really a problem, then break frees and p2w powers are guilty of this as well. If the goal post is then shifted to powers being chained together to synergize too well together to provide a strong bonus, I think that is equally flawed. Other powers can be chained together to provide strong synergy and power outside of rotating RoP with incarnates. Where do we draw the line of what synergy is allowed? What makes RoP such an obvious outlier that it had to be nerfed? It is not the only power than can be rotated or synergize with other powers to create a strong effect. If the answer is that it negated a mechanic of the game, then I reiterate that inspirations and p2w powers exist. Not to mention the shenanigans that the entire IO system has allowed. I don’t want inspirations nerfed, p2w powers removed, and certainly don’t want the IO system removed. I just find it odd that rune of protection is being held as such an outlier for reasons that don’t make sense given the other things that are in the game. But it doesn’t matter. The decision has been made. I respect the devs authority to do whatever they want with the game. I appreciate all the work they do. I especially appreciate that they put the full revamp in for testing along with the rune nerf. But, I don’t have to agree with the changes they make do nor do I have to agree that their reasoning makes sense.

I just got done testing the new changes. Spirit Ward/Inflame: I never really cared about spirit ward or inflame. These changes don’t make them interesting enough for me to consider taking sorcery for them. I’ll let others who use those powers more give more detailed feedback on them. Mystic Flight: buffs to it don’t hurt anything. If I’m being honest though I don’t go into sorcery for the travel power. I just take it because I already decided to go into the pool. Still buffing mystic flight makes the pool more attractive to some I’m sure. Arcane Bolt: I was intrigued by this and so tested it. I have no interest in arcane bolt on archetypes that have blast sets already so I focused my testing on melee archetypes that don’t have as many ranged options. Buffing this power doesn’t hurt, but after testing it’s still not worth going into sorcery for this power. If I want a ranged option I will take moonbeam/gloom. Not saying this is a bad change, just saying it’s not enough to make up for the RoP nerf in deciding whether or not to take sorcery. Rune of Protection: My builds generally got the recharge down to 180 seconds give or take a few (about perma hasten levels of recharge). So with the first iteration of the nerf I was at about 33% uptime. This change locks in 33% uptime, but requires me to activate it more often. As such, this is even worse for the proactive way I use rune. I will run one more test once they fix rune respecting slotted recharge to confirm, but given my testing and dislike of the first change I am confident in my conclusion. I appreciate the work that went into the sorcery pool revamp. I also appreciate that the revamp was put forward to be tested with the rune nerf. I sincerely hope that it makes the pool more popular and that many people enjoy the set more. This however has made the decision to completely drop the sorcery pool from my builds an easy one.

Agreed. I personally don’t choose fiery aura for mitigation. I choose it for damage. It has better damage tools than any other set including bio and shield. It just pays more for those tools. But that’s cool just as you said. Fire is the best at what it does, and what it does isn’t very nice!

A market + converter tutorial would be good to add to the game.

SS/Fire brute was my very first 50 back in the day. That along with my EM/WP brute were my mains back in the day. I have yet to recreate my ss/fire brute on homecoming as I have enjoyed having great offense and great defense with other combinations. I don’t think fiery aura will ever eclipse something like invuln or shield in terms of survivability. However, fire offers the best boost to offense of all armors. So, today I have decided to recreate my first 50. Unlike most of my builds I make I am not trying to softcap M or s/l in addition to the resist. I am also not trying to hardcap all resistances. Instead, I’m going for a moderate amount of melee defense (high 30s), hard cap s/l/f resist, and get moderate resist for e/n (>60%). Then I’m going to go full steam ahead on damage, damage, damage. Killing the enemy will be my primary mitigation. I’ll see how I enjoy it once it is fully fleshed out.

I have about 2b influence. I usually fluctuate between 1-2b. If I don’t have a lot of alts planned, then the influence accumulates. Then I end up power leveling 5-7 alts into their mid 30s so that gets my farmer some cash. I also usually convert 100-200 enhancements around this time to earn a buffer. I also have a base with lots of purples/ATOs/winters/procs so I don’t have to buy everything. By the time I’m done with that batch of alts I’ll be closer to 1b. I like to keep 1b on hand in case I’m feeling particularly lazy and don’t feel like marketing. I haven’t actually logged into my marketer for probably 2 months even though he has a tray full of enhancements to convert. Just haven’t felt like it. I’ll probably start doing it again once my base runs dry.

I usually just keep it at its native slot and put in the Achilles heel -res proc.

Because there are people, such as myself, that do use it for the resistance every bit as much as the mez, even on squishies. This solution would be even worse than what they are doing in my opinion. The fact that it has both attributes is a huge reason why I have picked RoP thus far.

Gotcha. Glad I didn’t lash out then haha. Not that I should have even if you were trying to call me out. I actually have found that I enjoy using RoP on my regen melees than on my blasters for instance. Thus my focus on the power in that instance is on the resistance uptime. I actually found that out through experimenting with the pool powers and trying to break from the standard leaping/fighting/speed/leadership meta.

I’m glad that unleash potential works for you and that you feel it is a valuable pick. I am not sure what you are insinuating with the bolded part of your comment. Are you saying that you feel I am coming purely from a tank perspective and that I don’t experiment with builds or power picks?

I don’t particularly want to go down a rabbit hole on this particular argument. I understand that the devs said they don’t want to things to bypass entire game mechanics. But IOs, incarnate powers, and p2w powers already do this to a much greater degree than rune of protection. Many powers have synergy such that 1+1=3. That’s part of the fun of the game. However, I have to really scratch my head at the argument that things shouldn’t bypass game mechanics when amplifiers exist. If I wanted to I could just skip clarion, melee hybrid, and RoP and just go full damage and buy amplifiers. I understand the magnitude of protection isn’t as high, but it’s still there. If anything I think we should encourage using power picks 1st, enhancements 2nd, incarnates 3rd, inspirations 4th, and p2w powers last. Not saying we should get rid of them, but the target on RoP just seems odd given the fact that amplifiers, IOs, and incarnates exist. Plus I don’t really like that the whole resistance use of the power is being dismissed or ignored by a lot of people. Anyway, the devs have made their decision. I will adapt accordingly.

I personally feel the duration for those is just too short to be worth the pick. That may work if they are mainly used reactively as a break free. But if it is being used proactively or used for longer term mez protection I think the current nerf is better. My personal opinion on the matter was that it was perfect how it was. On most builds it had about 50% uptime give or take a few percentage points. That is with about perma hasten level recharge, which I feel is more realistic for most builds than being at recharge cap constantly. It was up often enough to be worth the pick and had a duration long enough to not be annoying to click all the time. I concede that 60 seconds is a long enough buff to help out, but I still disagree with the uptime nerf. I feel that 50% uptime at perma hasten levels of recharge is perfect. I understand that others, including the devs, do not agree with that stance. So I understand that it will not be changing back. That said, I wouldn’t want it further reduced in duration. Others may feel differently.

I don’t think the goal should be to make it purely a reactive click. That is only one way that it was used. I’m fine with people disagree with that stance, but there are people who used it primarily proactively instead of reactively.

You know thinking about it again, I don’t want to dissuade you from doing this one as a brute also. Your original plan was to make both brutes and there is honestly nothing bad about doing EM/Bio as a brute as well. Fury will still pump a lot of damage into ET and TF. Bios regen will compensate for energy transfers -hp. When built right, brutes can get 80-90% smashing lethal resist making use of their higher caps. If your original desire was to go brute, then I recant my previous recommendation and would say make both a brute. Then make a scrapper later in addition to the brutes!

If you aren’t set on both being brutes then I’d suggest the following: Spines/Rad brute - they can take advantage of higher resistance caps. I personally feel EM pairs better with bio so that’s why I am sticking spines with rad. EM/Bio scrapper - maximum single target destruction. Even though they can’t get full crits on ET and TF they still hit harder than brutes. Plus if scrapper crits on ET they get a heal! Scrappers get more mileage out of offensive adaptation as well.