Sovera

The question boils down to the same as usual: want more damage? Go Brute. Want to be sturdier? Go Tanker.

I can only say that after lots of testing with Sentinels I never noticed Decimation doing anything.

There are zero rules against such. Farming is neither banned nor frowned upon. Now I'm going to speak my opinion, and this being the Sentinel part of the forums it is mostly Sentinel lovers here so they might disagree out of love for their character/AT... ..but Sentinels are singularly badly equipped for farming. - They do middling damage. This means unlike a Blaster they do not exterminate mobs at a quick pace. It's mostly whittling them down. The lack of damage is not as felt during 'real' play because the spawns are spread apart and by the time one is finished moping the Sentinel can Aim + nuke the next one and start over. But in a crowded farm map there are just more and more enemies. Farming is not about being super tough but doing lots of damage to keep things moving. - They have no worthwhile CC. Controllers do low-ish damage but can buff themselves and, most importantly, spam mass CCs to stay safe and keep the enemies in place. This allows them to whittle stuff down. Sentinels can spam mass immobilizes at best and it's not enough as the enemies eventually crowd over and part of them are immobilized at range and part are in melee. - They lack an agro tool. Brutes, Tankers and some Scrappers can just go ham and the enemies stay close. With a Sentinel they run off to the ends of the globe once their Hp reaches 20-30%. This means there is a constant stream of enemies running back and forth further slowing things. Farming works with anything. Sentinels, Blasters, heck, some people farm on Defenders and Masterminds. But I'm going to say if you intend to actually farm then make a nice Fire Armor Tanker and discover how they do more damage than the Sentinel and are sturdier. Or try something a little bit outside of the box. You can ouro some mission arcs that can be run pretty fast for a nice 12-20 merits. If you want you can even run them at x8 like an actual farming map and kill everything as you work towards the mission(s) goal. By the end you'll have killed enemies like in a farm and have obtained merits on top of that. Simply doing TFs (solo or otherwise) also involves lots of enemies being killed and drops, then merits on top of. Soloing fast TFs like Yin gives you 20 merits for 40 minutes work if running with x8 enemies, or 15 minutes if running at x1. Most of this is just slow though. Even an unoptimized Brute/Tanker can go into a farm map and make 5 million in 5 minutes just in raw inf. Doing a Tinpex a day makes you 80 merits. Running a back to back Hami raid gives 120 merits. Both in total take an hour to run. Check the Market side of the forums. It is chockful of tips that makes marketers laff at the pittance that farmers earn in an hour.

On a Tanker it's not difficult. You get nearly 20% from the ATO.

More like, auto hit meets 95% defense slows 😄 I was looking at an old build i never did try to level. Kinda impressive to be softcapped (with an amplifier) at level 24. Or just 40% defenses at 24 without amplifier. Hmm... Old build though, need to work touch of Fear in.

I was doing those but stopped once realizing they were the equivalent of radio missions. I'd rather experience the story from start to end than be in an endless loop. I'm biased, but Fire/Ice Tanker. At that difficulty there will not be enough debuffing and the damage will quickly kill most things. As always killing faster works best. Like my Shield/EM Tanker that survived much better but killed so slowly I actually died more often than on a Fire Armor. But it's my opinion. A SR Tanker would laugh at debuffs. With DM or Rad Melee for heals it should be perfectly safe since I think it could reach softcap levels by level 24 or something last I checked. ...unless the attacks are auto hit.

Fortunately I just AoE everything down, but the challenge is certainly present with an at level character. As mentioned it is hilariously difficult (well, it -is- at x8). Even now I'm doing the book arc with Epoch and mercenary and confronted with the praetorian clockwork, and while in the past I've mentioned how much their debuffing sucks it actually feels like a breath of fresh air as I collect XP to improve my character for the bigger threats since they are so much easier. The stacking of the varied debuffs (especially slows) makes a difference as my recovery gets hit, my accuracy gets hit, my defense gets hit. With the clockwork they just debuff defense and I can counter with purples and kill fast. But killing fast when my Burn suddenly has 30 seconds to recharge is difficult.

Latest Mids does this.

No, I just misunderstood what you meant. That's on me.

Well... Obviously I'm pushing the envelope because I'm doing content meant for eight people. But being flooded with debuffs is not just 'new content is harder'. Lets not compare Clockwork, Council and Freaks to Talons and the living spells thing. Gold was definitely harder than Blue with plenty of debuffs happening that stacked fast. But I'm approaching the content on a x6 or x8 setting and obviously a large team or smaller groups would make the difference. Two days ago I dropped out of a First Ward team because on a team of 8 running at +0 we just melted things before they did anything in return.

Instead of being upset I'm actually feeling challenged. Now I want to solo it all at x8. I need to uncover all the arcs so I can find them over Ouro.

... on a leveling character. And holy guacamole, I now get why people say it is insane. My only experience is doing it on a level 50 and of course all IOed to the gills I'd burn through things while watching curiously why my level-appropriate-team would struggle and sometimes die. So far I've fought the animated spells with the auto-hit-always-on slow aura, which complete with the 'orb of blizzard' conspired to leave most of my cooldowns on the double digits. Nothing to press since nothing is available. Managed to slog through it with big pauses Now I'm doing a Talon mission and I'm bombarded with defense debuffs, -recovery, slows, AND, my FAVORITE, -jump and -fly whatever. So I am literally down a ledge and the mobs are at arm's length but I am unable to reach them, while they are content to plink me from afar and keep on spamming that -fly and -jump power. I had to run down a tunnel while gobbling purples hoping they would miss enough times that I could..... jump the little ledge and reach them... (They did btw, no deaths so far thanks to a bucket full of insps) Okay, at 30 I'll get EvM which has -fly protection and I'll spare a slot for 20% slow resistance on Fly. Wish me luck!

Yes, but one accuracy, three attack, and then two end reduction could be a thing, but this is very old school. It seems understandable you're running out of endurance if you're using generic IOs or SOs. Check my signature for some tips if you're strapped for cash. Slotting a Panaceia proc, Miracle +recovery and a Performance Shifter proc will all alleviate things. But just alleviate. Ice Armor is heavy since it's designed to rely on Energy Absorption.

Not sure if it's an achievement thing you're working for or just the badge, but there's an NPC you can talk to instantly move from one alignment to the other.

Ice Armor does that. That's because it 100% relies on Energy Absorption to be used at every pack pretty much. As Zork said pick Recovery Serums since they are so cheap and live off them until Energy Absorption can be picked.

Then let me help you by saying that Axe goes like a house on fire (see what I did there?) with Fire Armor. Thanks to the first AoE having a FF it does the same job of Dragon Tail in accelerating all the build's cooldowns. You'll find it in page 6. The WM I tried as well, it is in page 3.

It doesn't have -res though. It's just a bad copy from Tankers back when they had -res in their primary. You can check the in-game info but you'll see it's just Mids. Not even Tankers have the -res now. Frozen Fists is acknowledged as terribad due to the lengthy animation and T1 damage. But Ice Melee is lacking in attacks so it tends to be used. GiS is just... like, wow, bad. It animates in the same time as Frost but only hits one target and does a whooping... nine more damage. I suggest Freezing Touch, Ice Sword, Frost, Ice Sword. Repeat. You can focus on a boss and ignore the rest of the pack and by repositioning you'll be killing everything at the same time you're walloping the boss.

And as you said the prices keep up. For sure we used to sell converters for 90-120k, but purples were also worth 24-25 mill. Now we sell them for 70-75k... but the purples are worth 17-18 mill. RL this ain't where converters would drop to 70-75k and purples go up to 30-35 mill.

As an aside Praetoria has... so... much... content... I tried to do it once by Ouro. My god, it never ended. So... many... arcs... Which would have been fine if I was not locked at level 10 for most of it and with access to minimal AoE. I completely burned out by the time I got to the level 14-19 ones. That said I ought to have run them at x1 just for the sake of experiencing it.

Well, Bio is squishy until you get all the defenses in place. But I suppose that is true of everything. Consider that Ice Bio I posted recently so you're not as squish, or Claws/Invuln. EA too is great but it once more demands being in the 40s to have all defenses in place. In a team it does not matter much since everything dies in seconds. At most just don't charge into the alpha without Ablative up.

I bit the bullet and am currently leveling the Fire/Spines. Not quite sure what to think of it though. On one hand I went into Posi 1 0x6 with bosses at level 18 (for those not in the know this means Burn with one slot and Ripper, my only other AoE, with three slots, and no IOs in Hasten and BU) and walked out without a death. Then I went into Posi 2, same, and somewhat to my surprise Vahz melted. I'm not really sure why, but it just melted. I looked back to Mids and the three ST attacks are still weak so I can't really say what happened, except perhaps that using both T1 and T2 meant that I had a nice attack chain going with minimal pauses. Ripper also helped a bit with the FF proc I guess. Speaking of Ripper it feels like a disappointment to be honest. Such a slow animation, such low damage. I also don't 'feel' the 180º angle, perhaps because I was using Frost which is only 90º, but with the Tanker buff (which Ripper doesn't get) turned it into 135º. With its long cone it was easy to catch a lot of enemies and it still does a ton of damage despite showing as only 227 compared to Ripper's 294. I already had the same reaction to Shadow Maul VS Frost where SM also had much better Mids numbers but when using both Frost just seems to vastly overperform. Perhaps it is only a case of perception. As it is the combo has a certain Axe feel about it. As I posted a few pages back it too was brutal in taking down Posi 1 and 2. It too had an early AoE which took a FF proc and an early BU. But I have no real complaints so far other than the combo will need Quills and Throw Spines to finally get an identity. It's just difficult to judge a secondary when Fire Armor carries so hard. On the other hand it's great to play with concepts since we know it's not going to be a slog.

Just a small update on the Ice/Bio. Definitely very squishy. Ablative helps but gets, well, ablated. Without the defenses all in place I found I actually died three times during Citadel. Yeah... against Council. Shamefur dispray! But also because my amplifiers had run out and I wasn't Ice Patching. Once I started dropping Ice Patch at the start of the fight no more deaths. But it was a case of going in, getting whittled to half during the alpha, then try to squeeze another AoE and during the 2.5 seconds getting the other half whittled down by the post alpha before I could use DNA Siphon or Ablative. The damage is as good as expected from a Scrapper paired with Bio on top of. Even at Manticore it wasn't uncommon to have a PP pop their T9 after BU + Freezing Touch + Frost + Frozen Aura. Needless to say the pack of mobs was mostly dead as well. Frozen Aura is a godsend to finish up moping enemies because leveling with a single AoE is sad (still better than none, eh Super Strength?). I decided to remove the critical proc from Ice Sword and place it on FT so it is less awkward to use. In an AoE situation I want to use FT - Frost - FA, not use Ice Sword. This means the proc won't be available at the very low levels and that FT won't be buffed by it, but it means the lower damage skills will get a damage boost where FT already hits hard enough by itself. The slotting of DNA Siphon is still malleable. I'm not sure how useful the Theft of Essence ends up being considering how good DNA is at replenishing the blue bar, or how useful the healing it gets from Panacea though it doubles as a second heal. The bonuses from Panacea are crappy where six slotting Synapse Shock has much better bonuses, but do we really need more endurance? In long ST fights we're going to suffer anyway and may need to use a Recovery Serum either way. So, dunno. Slightly altered build. Last I played it was soloing Manticore's TF which was going fine though I ended up dying from more burst. Even with the defenses mostly in place they remained porous.

One of the very very last combos I had yet to try: Fire/Spines. I haven't actually started on it because I keep staring at it from all angles and trying to decide whether it is worth the attempt or not. It does have an early FF-able AoE like Martial Arts, and it does have an early BU like Ice so it's a mix of both worlds. But the ST is weaker even just comparing to Martial Arts... but it does have a second damage aura which will narrow the gap. Hrrm... I'm not sure yet whether to go for it or not. I've started by drawing from my experience with Fire Melee and ditched Spine Burst. It's a carbon copy of Combustion with the glacial 3.2 animation and damage so low it would not kill a clockwork's Gear. With a different primary this might matter more but having Burn it makes no sense (IMO) to keep such a trap as Spine Burst. Then I got rid of Impale. It is the hard hitting skill but by the time it has animated I can do Barb Swipe and Lunge instead and have done more damage (Impale 328 damage VS Barb Swipe for 153 and Lunge for 253 = 406. 2.64 animation VS 1.85 + 1.05 = 2.90) while also making leveling and exemplaring much smoother. This leaves Ripper for ST and AoE. With an FF proc in it it will speed the build like Dragon's Tail does when in AoE. This is an obvious AoE bent build with Ripper, the second damage aura and Throw Spines, which is in turn a carbon copy of Shockwave but without the FF proc. But at this point I'm hrrrm-ing all over since I ditched Shockwave in my Claws build, so doesn't that mean having a second cone would just have me park it as well? Perhaps Shockwave being 90º and Throw Spines being 180º (?!) will make a difference. But in my experience as much as we say CoH is an AoE game we don't need a lot of AoEs. By the time we have done two-three AoEs most things are dead and we are back to ST to mop up. In my experience with Axe, who also had an early BU and a FF-able early AoE, the build ought to melt low level content. It does lack either the defensive Ice Patch or Storm Kick for the end game. I'm unsure how much survival the -recharge actually adds though lots of AoE and killing fast has always been the best defense.

Just to give some slotting ideas I'll post something with a frankenslotted Rad Siphon. In regards to flopping I'm not sure which is better. There might be something to be said for using both though it may lead to mobs being knocked back instead of down if both activate at the same time. As it is I've just added both in. You're making an effort to cap out Fire/Cold defenses but they aren't common. Energy/Negative is much more common and wasn't as high as it could be. If you feel you want more F/C you can scrounge a slot from somewhere and add a 6th Avalanche to cap that out too. I honestly don't feel that Rad has a lack of AoE that it needs to be propped by the epic pools. Just by hitting things with your ST attacks you're triggering mini AoEs. So because of that and Fire/Cold not being super important I'll take Lightning Ball out. It's just a suggestion though if you feel like trying it on the PTS you can see if you feel the lack of that extra damage. In exchange those slots will go to Fusion and Hasten which ought to improve your damage regardless. I've scrounged a bit on the recovery because of DNA Siphon and Recovery Serums being so cheap. For regular play DNA Siphon at every spawn will keep you topped off, it is the long ST fights where your endurance might hurt.

Not nearly enough. My friend list is an ocean of grey which means I nearly have to break the ice and start from scratch every two weeks. It comes to a point I'm as content to be browsing the web while tabbed out and just check if someone approached or a friend logged on. Which is in no way conducive to RP, but breaking the ice over and over gets (got) tiring. This reflects in my ability to keep a character. I used to RP a character for years and years. Now the most it lives is a couple of months before I start a new one trying to capture the early RP fun.