Sovera

I like it. I've been sotto voce advocating for the removal of Brutes, but, I can imagine the meltdown, the nuclear crisis, if simply having Tankers be closer to them in damage spawned a multi year long quite vocal feud. But, Brutes muddy the water. Blasters are the undisputed kings of ranged damage. Sentinels don't get close but are there for someone who wants to be ranged Scrapper. Defenders the kings of buffs and debuff. Corruptors do close but are more focused on damage. Controllers focus on CC and buffs/debuffs, but Dominators don't step on their toes since they focus on CC and damage. Scrappers are masters of melee damage and Stalkers are pretty close but maybe not as much due to the Stealth tax that allows them to cheese part of the game (in theory). Tankers are the kings of tanking. What about Brutes? Can't be too tanky, can't be too damaging, can't have ATOs touched because it might tilt that tanky/damaging balance. There's a third option for Brutes which is dropping their extra tanky and have their caps be the same as Scrappers. NOW their damage can be upped so all three are on the same ballpark and their gimmick is the steamroll approach without variable damage where a crit will waste itself on a low HP minion and then not go off during a whole boss fight (until 50 when Superior ATOs come in). But I predict another complete meltdown.

Now that I'm 50 and got T4 Musculature and I'm slowly incarnating the character I've come to a few conclusions: - It's one of the best Sentinels I've played. I know I've said it in the past but each one raises the bar and currently I have this at the highest tier. Lots of AoE, fast recharging, two FF procs to speed things up, and the ST damage feels solid even for a Sentinel. - I was building for Degenerative but talked myself into Reactive to further push the damage. I'm not going to go solo crazy as I do on my Tankers since I don't have the patience to chase mobs. - Because of the teaming I'm counting the seconds until the nuke comes back so I've dropped the extra damage proc to shave two seconds off of it. - The endurance is truly well in hand to a point I never bother with Rebuild DNA (to be fair the team is constantly spamming their incarnates and Ageless is a very common one to be found, but doesn't change what I'm saying). But even outside of a team, such for the pylon tests below which means three minutes of non-stop hitting a target with all toggles up, I never had to touch Rebuild DNA, and I haven't even knocked the accolades down which tells me I could skimp on one slot from Stamina and add an Unbreakable unique for another 90 HP. It's not super important either way. I also took the time to try a pylon and it was... pretty nice? Musculature 45%, Degenerative Radial Flawless (75% chance of DoT). Assault Core for Hybrid not clicked. 2:46 on first try. 2:30 the second try. This handily beats most my Brutes and also beats my best Sentinel time (Elec/Bio at 3 minutes) though it's not the best recorded Sentinel time. But, I'm not picking epic pool attacks nor having to go into melee so as far as I'm concerned this is good. Of course these results are a bit skewed because I have an Achilles's proc AND Vulnerability used on CD, which I don't always use against regular mobs. Maybe bosses. Still, impressive for such a sturdy little thing. While I was at it I decided to test Reactive with 75% chance for fire DoT. This has always been strictly worse than Degenerative in this test since Pylons/AVs/GMs are the single thing Degenerative are really good at while having nearly no effect on regular mobs. 3:06 at the first attempt. 2:50 on the second try. One last for good luck: 2:52. Close enough though, once again, skewed because Pylons like -res effects since they are not +3 or +4 which devalues the worth.

Unless hurting for endurance I'd go (and did go) for Musculature 45%. As oldskool said there is no half pondering. Sentinels's damage is a tad weak so moar moar moar. You can further it a bit more by taking Reactive from Interface that adds a -res proc on top of a damage DoT. The difference will be minimal but present. Honestly it's probably smart to go for it rather than Degenerative from Interface since Degenerative's effect is even more minimal unless fighting an AV (or a pylon) at which point Degenerative leaps ahead. But, how often do we solo AVs? Specifically solo, since in teams there will be others with Degenerative (and it doesn't stack once the target has five of it).

With this patch changes you probably want to go back to Brutes.

Added a section for mods.

Could I tempt you into having this in the CoH Modder tool, Solar? Just for ease of use.

While I was at it I tested the other attacks and the news aren't as good. Hydro Blast: without proc Mids says it should do 283 damage. In game it does 210. Dehydrate: according to Mids it should be doing 449 with the Wet mechanic. In game it's 284. Brrrrutal. Now to do the same percentual math game with procs (in theory no shenanigans should happen since there is no wacky Enhanced mechanic). Hydro Blast's 210 with procs becomes 262. Dehydrate with Wet mechanic and procs becomes 355. Much sadness through the land. Still, more damage than originally though but firmly hinging on Water Jet. O ye who were so maligned! Original wrong damage: Water Jet = 294x2 = 588. Dehydrate = 531. Hydro Blast = 357. Total = 1476 Correct-ish damage: Water Jet: 385 damage. Enhanced Water Jet: 715 damage. 1.1k total Hydro Blast: 262. Dehydrate: 355. Total = 1717 I only later noticed/remembered that pylons have 20% resistances to all which partly explains the difference between Mids and in-game. The total ST is thus not correct since I calculated the base damage on the pylon (which is fine) but for the procs I just added them percentually (which is probably not fine). I don't think it matters greatly since it's not like a build will be played or not played because it does more or less 10-15% damage.

As I was posting the bugs in Mids' discord one of the devs, Zed, mentioned that the combo system isn't working either so I'm talking mad shit about Water Jet but the second use will do a sizeable amount more than regular Water Jet. That's 80 points of unslotted damage there, and he says it's affected by slotting. So I did what any normal person would do and copied my character to the test server, gave myself T4 Musculature and hit a pylon a few times. Without any procs slotted and no three combos I was doing 63 Smashing damage, 190 Cold Damage, and 24 Toxic (from Adaptation). Without procs slotted and with three combo points I was doing 76 Smashing, 228 Cold, and 28 Toxic, followed by three ticks of Cold damage at 69 (noice), 57, 57. A few tests show the numbers don't vary. So, normal Water Jet hits for 277 without procs. Enhanced Water Jet hits for 515 without procs. Now to add the proc damage. Fair warning that this will be cobbled and is not backed by real math. I'm going to look at Mid's damage without procs and then see the percentual increase with them, and then add that percent. So, in Mids, with damage procs, the average damage is 265 (that's already way lower than in-game WITHOUT damage procs). In Mids, without damage procs, it's 190 (again, this should be 277). 190 to 265 is a 39,4% damage increase. Adding 39% to normal Water Jet gives me 385 damage. Adding 39% to Enhanced Water Jet gives me 715 damage. Okay, lets take this with a huge grain of salt since the last numbers are napkin math. I'm not 100% sure there isn't a small dip in proc damage from Enhanced Water Jet's faster animation slightly lowering the proc chances and thus lowering the proc chances, but, I was talking mad shit about Water jet on how it does 265 x2 and thus 530 but it's actually meant to be doing 1.1k 😄 Just for completion sakes the base numbers without Adaptation or procs are: - Enhanced Water Jet: 57 smashing, 172 cold and three ticks of 57, 57, 57 - Normal Water Jet: 57 smashing, 172 cold.

Well, yeah, it's an end-game build with as much eked out as possible within my building parameters.

Finally reached 50 and transitioned to the final slotted build. The bad news is that Mids is slightly off on the numbers it presents from what I have in-game. The good news is that the real numbers are higher than Mids says. Namely S/L resistance is capped at 75% and E/N is also at 16.6% in-game instead of 14.9% of Mids. On the other hand it shows EPS at 3.63 without accolades where I'm actually at 3.35. Not a big deal since endurance is well in hand in actual game play with only the occasional Rebuild DNA needed. I would usually say to keep S/L at 70% and use Barrier to cap the last 5% but I don't see the point. Doing this would save two slots though. Not sure it warrants the effort but keeping S/L at 69.5% and saving those two slots (res/recharge in Tough and the Celerity in Sprint) could be another 4.5% more for E/N by placing one slot in Aim and change the two recharge IOs for three Adjusted Targeting and the last slot in Punch for two Touch of Death.

After a second look at the slotting I realized that the +3 Hami was an expensive overkill considering the 45% Musculature since it was pushing into ED territory. So I've ditched the 100 million +3 Hami for a 5-6 million +5 Thunderstrike and lowered the damage by a minute percentage (Water Jet does 265 instead of 268) with the added bonus of pushing E/N to 44.4%. Also dropped the second purple in Geyser to further lower the price since the stats are almost the same (loss of 0.02 endurance per second). A good trade. The three Thunderstrikes don't need to be +5 in order to keep their bonuses starting at level 27 if attuned and the damage difference will be again minimal (from 265 to 251) though the accuracy will drop to 89% instead of 96%. I don't particularly care about the extra defense in the low levels if exemplaring so I'll +5 them, but not doing so would lower the price tag to roughly 500k-1 mill per Thunderstrike.

Warshades is spot on, no notes. For ST attacks the 'usual' rotation is Midnight Grasp, Smite, Siphon Life, Smite. You can have a much earlier rotation that is snappier with Siphon Life, Shadow Punch, Smite, Shadow Punch but it's less damaging and more appropriate for a Brute for the fast paced combat. Definitely want some AoE in there otherwise you're fighting one mob at a time. I'd never skip on Shadow Maul though Touch of Fear is debatable (but I'd still try to keep it since it's what's available). But Warshades already covered this. As you've already linked to the other thread I suggest looking at duplicating the slotting since I went through the whys. Aura of Insanity for example, why I didn't push for defense, and the effort to reach 100% recharge debuff with no more than one Psycho Barrier stack. Some in the thread pointed that three Hamis were overkill and they might be on to something, but it's just one slot so easy to add or remove later on.

Made some small tweaks to the build and update the OP with more numbers.

To be fair it was widely out of date. Collating your posts into their own thread and asking that one to be pinned might work out better.

Yeah, and as I play I find the rotation rights itself even when the 5% miss happens leading to Dehydrate eating the combo points. I'll edit that out as well.