lhsabre

I find that a lot of the time I will end up choosing powersets based on aesthetics just as much as their strengths, and I tend to choose sets that don't obfuscate my character's costumes when they're on. While there are definitely enough sets that don't have wild VFX or have Minimal FX options, there are plenty others where the powers can be coloured but not removed. Now, I don't necessarily want every set to have a Minimal FX option, what I would love to see are Combat Only VFX, much like how they're done with auras. That way we don't have to detoggle a bunch of powers just to look at our characters, and remember to power everything back on once we hit the mission. And if we wanted to "power up" in a social encounter, it's as simple as entering a combat state. I don't know just how much work it would take to enable this, but at least the possibility seems to exist, considering how many auras have exactly this ability. I'd love to love sets like Dark, Fire, Ice, Radiation, etc. Armor sets, or others like Sonic with its big radio wave bubble only having active FX in combat. Also, obviously being a cosmetic option, having them Combat Only or "Normal" can be as simple as a costume change, which allows for some creative options, too. If the suggestion's already been made or already shot down, let me know, but it would be something that would get some people like me to try out sets that they don't necessarily aesthetically enjoy.

I actually quite enjoy both tutorial arcs and have played them multiple times--on characters where going through the phases as a starting hero/villain make sense. On the other hand, there are other things to run outside of the Twinshot/Dr. Graves tutorial arcs if you're tired of them or they don't make sense for your character. There's a lot of content that frankly doesn't really make sense for some of my characters to do, but with a bit of imagination I do my best to rewrite in my head--or just end up dropping the contact and picking up a new one. There's so much content in this game that I swear I'm still running into contacts and arcs I never played on Live. It was and still is one of the best thing about City of Heroes/Villains: it's so established that there's so much content to make it easy to drop an arc you're not enjoying and pick up another. Ultimately, I don't know why people are bashing Twinshot and Dr. Graves. Just...don't run those arcs? They're not for you at this point.

Continuing the story content (if at all possible) and releasing/fixing some of the things that were on the roadmap when the original game was cancelled. Other than that, you've been doing an outstanding job supporting the game!

My biggest gripe so far with Regen for Sentinels (I'm only at 20) is that Integration should have come a tier or two earlier. I dislike having my biggest mitigating power pushed back to level 20 earliest. I would have taken pushing Quick Recovery further down the list to accomplish that. I also would have pushed Second Wind up the list by quite a bit, even with its self-resurrect ability and Instant Regeneration down. Second Wind will either be your replacement for Dull Pain or the thing you hit because you didn't have that extra level of mitigation and got downed because of it. Instant Regeneration is useless at the level you get it at, as its scaling at low level is trash and it is otherwise ineffective without SO or better slotting. The teen levels for Sentinel Regen are, while not atrocious, definitely sub-par to regular Regen. As a whole set, including MoG, it still fares worse than what I remember from Scrapper due to the lack of Instant Healing, but it's still a fun set. I just don't like the organization of the powers. MoG is the same MoG I had with my old Scrapper, and getting it to a roughly 20% uptime due to sets and Hasten? I don't complain about that at all.

The set itself (Energy Aura) is limiting in the amount of S/L def that it provides, let alone with Sentinel mods. The highest that I got S/L def was around 38%, which isn't terrible, but I made sure to supplement it with resist as much as possible (42%). These are base level 50 numbers, nothing fancy, no purples, no Incarnate stuff or anything. Honestly, while it'd be fun to softcap all damage types, I don't see it happening without some huge post 50 investment and some potentially character gimping options (Fighting pool attacks aren't as bad as they used to be--they're quite good!--but depending on Primary may not flow very well with your build). I'm content with not softcapping S/L considering the decent S/L resists that can be had, plus the regen from Energize being another damage mitigation method. Of course, your distance may vary. All I'll say is that with Sentinel, yes it's hard to softcap S/L def.

Quake, Black Canary, both can be made with a similar build (perhaps differing secondaries--I just chose Regen because I wanted to see the differences in Sentinel, notes on that in some later post when I get further with it), but the Sentinel AT is allowing us to open a can of options that just weren't really available in CoX before, and just like me in D&D, I just love messing around with interesting and weird combos and making a working character out of it. In this case, I made her a former teen actress/popstar whose mutant debut allows her to change her physique, regenerate grievous wounds, but cost her the normal use of her voice as it continuously keeps damaging and healing over. With some special implants that show as glowing neck bolts on her character that modulate the damage and healing, she's able to use this to her benefit, allowing her to channel her voice into a weapon. Otherwise, with work from some of her previous contacts in the film/stunt industry, she's learned how to use her constantly regenerating body as a weapon, unafraid of using full strength as the damage inflicted on her body by doing so regenerates immediately. In any case, I found it an interesting test case for the question of how pool powers interact with the Sentinel inherent, and the answer is: beautifully. One thing that I noticed, and I still require testing, is that it seemed that my Fighting pool powers were also applying -res debuff on enemies that I hadn't hit with my Sonic powers. I will also test with Brawl, but it may seem that the inherent debuff may work with more than just the primary powers!

From what is known so far, debuffs from multiple Sentinel inherents stack, but debuffs from the same Sentinel's inherent only refresh duration. It would sound OP but be aware that the debuffs are affected by debuff resistance.

As far as I understand, Defensive softcap is 45% assuming a white (common) minion enemy. You may want to build out a tad on top to accommodate for some enemies having buffs/powers that boost ToHit/Accuracy, or -def debuffs but 45% is a good place to be as most sets have other methods beyond pure Defense to mitigate damage. Sentinels share Scrapper HARD cap for resistance, at 75%.

I’ve made a number of Sentinels now, and especially at lower levels have been finding the endurance refund to be enough to recharge my endurance during a fight. Not fully, but by the end of Defensive Opportunity, I always end up with more endurance than when I started. Granted, when reaching mid- to upper-levels, most characters will find endurance management to be less taxing, but I at least have found Defensive Opportunity to be significant. Offensive Opportunity on the other hand seems far more useful once you’re into SO+ territory as an established character. I can also attest to the attacks from the Fighting pool working properly with the inherent, both in building the bar AND benefitting from Opportunity. I assume the rest of the Pool attacks do as well. I’ve been working on a weird thematic build of a Fighting/Sonic/Regen where I picking very selectively from the Sonic primary to fit in all the Fighting attacks + Tough and have an extremely sustainable attack chain in the late teens with solid damage due to the inherent and Sonic’s -res debuffs and the recharge and accuracy buffs from Cross-punch. I love that the Fighting pool has become a legitimate method of doing damage assuming you pick up all 3 attack powers, as each attack owned adds 15% damage to the other 2, plus bonus effects. That on top of Sentinel’s slightly-less-than Scrapper Defense and some of the harder punching or cone-based Sonic attacks and I’m not afraid to take this character into melee all the time.