Sovera

I'm going to go out on a limb and take a guess based on my own bias, but the reason stalkers are not more popular is that no one, no one, likes runners. Someone over the Stalker forums was mentioning their first baby stalker and how if it was normal for fights to take so long (ok, they had the difficulty at +3 thinking it would be better that way) since mobs would run all over the place making him chase them. That's my experience as well and why I don't play Stalkers. I could be wrong and speaking just out of my own perceived annoyances with the AT, buuuuut...

You do have a bit too much resistances slotted. It's not a huge deal, but if you can lower them by 10% you could reassign those slots somewhere else. As Rad Armor you sweat endurance so Cardiac is not needed. I'd say Musculature. Though it does not add much none of the other alphas really help much in your particular case (resistance based tanker, so don't need help with resists; very endurance positive so don't need endurance reduction; aiming for proc bombs so recharge will hinder those). Slotting for AoE defense gives you little. I'd say keep on aiming towards S/L until you softcap. While it will get whittled fast under defense debuffs it will help against any other factions who do not do that. Slotting for psi/toxic makes sense since they are a weak point of the set, but, you have a shield that doubles as a small heal, plus a second heal, plus Ice Patch. And there aren't many mobs that actually do either. A bit of LoS breaking and Ice Patching should keep them flopping as you kill those troublesome ones (IMO). I've butchered your pretty build all neatly put together for a truly generic one. You get the usual 40% to S/L I aim for, knowing that Barrier will softcap you. You have 79-80% resistances with one stack of the Tanker ATO, 85% with two, and either a third stack or Barrier will finish capping it. Again, the other Destiny Incarnates are not of big use since you don't need heals, or recharge, or endurance. Your single target rotation will have to use Frost - which is a better option than Frozen Fists regardless - so you get both Tanker ATO procs in use be it ST or AoE. Frozen Touch -> Ice Sword -> Frost -> Ice Sword. Small gap. Start over. When Hasten is down (though you do have Beta Decay to whittle the 16 seconds it is down) you can add Frozen Fists. I've skimmed all the slots for endurance since with Particle Shielding (use it on CD both for the recovery and the shield) and Radiation Therapy with a Theft of Essence you should never know what endurance problems are. Keep in mind your original build is solid and you'll do all content with it the way you have it built to your tastes.

I think everyone has said what needed to be said, but just to reiterate: - +3 is a bad setting for early leveling. You won't have the accuracy and they will resist a lot of the damage because of the level difference. I would never go more than +2 myself, and I can honestly say my difficulty settings stay firmly at +1 until level 50 where it jumps to +4. - Soloing with a Stalker does not encourage large spawns though, but (until the patch in the PTS hits) KM is actually singularly well suited for the job thanks to Burst doing 100% crit. In my experience BU + Gaussian + Burst will one shot minions. This tappers off by level 30-ish. - There is a bit of a nuance in making use of the re-hide proc. Because of the time spent traveling between spawns it gives enough time for the proc's internal CD to reset, so I found the best way to use it in an AoE situation was: Build-up, Burst, use normal attacks. When Burst is nearly recharged then use AS. Logic says to use AS immediately after Burst, but then what do we use the Hide proc? It's better to always use AS before our second hardest hitting skill. This may require some muscle training to steep in but it's just the smartest way to do it. With Energy Melee, for example, I'd recommend Total Focus, AS (fish for Hide procs), Energy Transfer (buffed by Total Focus and buffed by the possible Hide proc). With KM it is the same. Outside of starting a fight already in Hide in an AoE situation AS before Burst. In a ST situation AS before KM's T3. This is the wrong forum to say this (:D) but consider something like Fire/Claws Tanker to do early soloing. Mobs no longer run away and you have two extremely potent AoEs before level 20 that make Stalkers green with envy (in return they will annihilate bosses in a way Tankers can only gawk at). I personally find more fun to wade into +1x8 straight at level 15-ish and face a ton of mobs (also more XP and more drops though neither is particularly important with double XP and millions made from merits) than I do killing 1-2 mobs, but this is personal preference.

Hyperbole. On to more pleasant topics. I've tried KM on all ATs and actually leveled them to max. Just like Savage Melee the set has beautiful animations and just like Savage Melee it is hurt by the higher level powers being so bad that the general advice is in not taking them. This is obviously just something that needs a tuning pass but the small team and the LARGE number of issues the current dev team is tackling makes progress necessarily glacial. Hemorrhage was only taken with Stalkers, and the fix to the bug now has the advice in the Stalker forums not to take it. It means the set relies on the T1, T2, and T4 to do ST damage. I shouldn't need to say that such low tier attacks do not good damage make nor should sets have their stronger attacks not taken. I'm half surprised Devastating Blow does not have the same advice given since I feel the same about it. Too much of a wind-up (plus really dumb looking animation), and outside of Scrappers/Stalkers it does not feel rewarding to push that button. The same applies to KM. T1, T2, and T3 are the powers advised to use. This requires only a pass to make the T9 numbers more appealing, but frankly, I don't think that numbers would be enough. The set is just like Claws in the way that its gimmick is super fast beautiful animations (with KM they even visually chain into each other which has an important, non number related, appeal). Imagine Claws being Claws but the last attack is a near three second wind-up? With all the downsides of huge winding up animations, such as the -bad- feeling it invokes when we whiff. The way I found to make KM do decent damage was using quadruple damage procs for each attack and even then it was not spectacular damage due to the fast animation and native fast recharges involved, but as others mentioned above everyone loved and straight out mentioned KM as a fun set thanks to the 100% crit out of hide. Removing this is fine. Normalizing and all, but it does imply the set needs a complete rework.

Enflame has two uses. Drop it on a mob and it is hurt by Enflame while dropping fire patches like Irradiated Ground from Radiation Melee. Drop Enflame on a friendly and it does the same minus hurting the friendly, which basically acts like a damage aura. It's not biggo damage but it is still another damage aura. On a Tanker with an agro aura of their own Enflame shouldn't even make mobs run away. Unfortunately we cannot Enflame ourselves though enflaming an enemy is still an option, but less interesting since the mob dies quickly and we need to re-apply next spawn.

I've only done part of the gold side and, yeah, it's hard, it's slow, and we are forced to stay low level for way too long without access to more powers to help things out. As for the rest you're like me, in a tamer version 😄 I have something like 60+ alts most leveled to 50, but abandoned for the next shiny thing. I rarely return to them though I've re-leveled some of my favorites. Not all factions are problematic. Funny enough Rikti are this huge lore problem but are one of the easiest factions with bland energy damage and practically no debuffs. Then you go and fight romans with their spears and swords and it's touch and go for most tankers to stay up 😄 As for the Fighting pool, yeah, that large S/L resistance boost would mean that with the Tanker ATO you would be capped at least to that, but about Tactics, no. Focused Accuracy gives a large 75% or something resistance to debuffing ToHit which is the real strength of the power. We can sit inside a Hurricane-ing Tsoo sorcerer and our accuracy will barely budge. Tactics does not have this so it's extra accuracy will simply be swiped off. That said it's a semi-niche thing depending on what content you do. Banished Pantheon, Circle of Thorns, Tsoo in Dark Astoria, I think some of the robots do it too. Regarding Ice Patch it's not going to be super important most of the time. In my experience once you're out of Vhaz range (Posi 1 and 2) you then barge through everything until the ITF without being slowed, and thus without a need for Ice Patch. I want to like Ice Patch but after actually using it I find its contribution to my survivability is negligible. Which is very weird since mobs are constantly flopping? But that's what my experience with it amounts to: HP is dipping, I use it, HP continues dipping. I had high hopes it would help against defense debuffing mobs but it did not seem to influence things much. But the difference with the most recent patch is that we can apply it in 1.57 seconds now, not nearly 4 seconds, so it's easy to incorporate it in the attack chain and it lasts long enough where before I would actually weight whether to use it or not. It also has a nice CC component versus annoying mobs like healing Freaks or T9 popping PPs where if they are flopping they are not activating those powers. As for Hover and readjusting you're going to readjust for Frost to hit most mobs anyway, and instead of being body blocked as a ground dweller Hover allows to easily move around. But it's a personal taste and the new Sorcery pool does look pretty attractive. If I could Enflame and Spirit Ward myself I'd definitely pick it up, but as it is I've no pressing desire to use it on someone else.

From what I recall (but it's been so long...) Hibernate shed agro completely so it was a dick move for a Tanker to use it since suddenly boom, wild hungry mobs attacking the herd of squishies. That said if the tank died the result would have been the same, which was what prompted the use of Hibernate in the first place? I was looking at it since I've been messing with Ice Armor builds... and I'm actually impressed. Eve underslotted it's up in less than one minute? Did I read that correctly? How can Ice Armor even be killed if they get nor just a full heal, but the ability to sit invulnerable while debuffs expire 😄

You're most welcome. I was helped at the start so I'm giving back now. Later you'll help others too 😄 Things I would do myself but I'm a workhorse following the same routine, would be working in Focused Accuracy to avoid being miserable against -ToHit debuffing mobs. It wouldn't need to be on all the time but when needed it would be there (yellows are not enough to protect against -toHit, I know, i've tried, even gobbling 2 mediums I was still floored). I don't have the actual numbers for Arcane Bolt since Mids would need to be updated, but with Ice Melee in particular the set lacks a third hitter. Using Frost is because of commodity. Though using Frost works great in the thick of it since it is wide and hits hard enough, when in a pure ST scenario it falls a bit behind due to the long animation time. So, I think yes (but not backed by math). There are many combos like Energy Melee, Dark Melee, and, yes, Ice Melee, where I would look at the build and go hmmmmmmmm, if only I could slot in a Force Feedback SOMEWHERE, but Kick is too weak to use as an attack, Cross Punch is better but requires two powers so I can usually only fit it at level 30-ish which defeats the purpose. Arcane Bolt on the other hand can be fit in as early as level 4 and is now respectable (kinda amazed really, I've ranted in the past how the devs make the pools carefully nerfed so the population rarely uses them and they turned Sorcery into a very respectable source of buffs and attacks). Heck, I've seriously considered asking a friend of mine to do a duo with me where we both take Sorcery..... since we could Spirit Ward and Enflame each other 😆 Despite having said this I have a hard time fitting in Sorcery in my builds. I'm just so used to Fly. Sorcery would nullify two LotG mules straight away which is a turn off and Mystic Flight is not Hover for ease of moving between enemies... though I suppose that role could be taken by Athletic Run and abandon the 3D aspect of Hover.

There isn't much to be done about the holes. That's just how the set is made. But you're protected from S/L and E/N which are the important bits. I didn't want to mess too much with your power picks so I'm not sure I've really improved much on anything. Things to consider: - Splitting Gauntled Fist for double 6% to E/N. - Scrounging slots and using the recently buffed Arcane Bolt (Mids wasn't updated to reflect the buffs yet, which include faster animation times) as an actual attack. Mostly because it has a place for a Force Feedback which would help accelerating all your cooldowns. If this is done it could replace Frost (Freezing Touch, Ice Sword, Frost, Ice Sword is the rotation I use myself), or allow to proc bomb Freezing Touch (which adds another 130 damage, but then there is a 1 second gap with the previous chain. Instead it could be something like Freezing Touch, Ice Sword, Frost, Arcane Bolt. Or maybe use 5 Hectactombs in Freezing Touch and go Freezing Touch, Ice Sword, Arcane Bolt, Ice Sword. You will have to decide what you'd like, but steer off Greater Ice Sword IMO. - There are two floating slots you can use where you'd like.

Well, something got chopped off alright.

It got fixed. So now it's useless on all ATs 🙂

Not sure what you're complaining about. The build looks rock solid with the only caveat you're abusing resistances who are near all above 90%. Anything over 90% is wasted. Don't forget your Tanker ATO proc in Lightning Field stacks up to three times and each time is worth 6.7% to all. Now that said I did change some of your slotting though I was unable to really lower the resists so you could account for the Tanker ATO procs (this proc is too important to be put on a toggle which is a bad place for procs in general so it got moved to Smite. Early level you should be doing Siphon, Shadow Punch, Smite, Shadow Punch. Later on it will be Midnight Grasp, Smite, Siphon, Smite. So plenty of chances for the Tanker ATO to proc), removed Cardiac since you're Lightning Armor and breathe endurance, removed Ageless for the same reason and exchanged it for Barrier to be a panic button for yourself and the squishies under your wing. You get Fold Space (you don't need Physical Perfection when you have Power Sink). Barrier gives 5% though for most content you shouldn't -need- to be at 90% to all, but if you do use Barrier you get 5% to defenses softcapping S/L and with two stacks of the ATO as well you get Negative capped. Psi will be a bit behind cap but not in a lethal manner.

I did, but just mentioned it in passing. I leveled a second one to max but it did not pass muster. Just like Elec Melee the single target damage just didn't please me, and, just like with Elec Melee, having lots of AoEs did not make the AoE-ing good. That said it does have the sole defense stacking skill in the Tanker AT. Parry does not stack, Divine Avalanche does not stack, Defensive Sweep does not stack.... but Guarded Spin does. So that's another 45% melee/smash added. Skysplitter can be slotted with 5 Hectacombs + another damage proc, but the proc bomb adds nearly 200 damage.

It's adorable how you post something confusing enough that several people show their confusion, but you're confused that they are confused about your confusion.

You're late by a couple years, but this has been argued to death in the past. - Yes, most Sentinel players have moved to Blasters since IOs nullify the defense advantage Sentinels have. But Sentinels have immunity to CC since level 6-8 which no other ranged AT gets to enjoy until level 50 and taking Clarion. - No, Sentinel defenses are not bad, wtf? Are you talking about just slotting your secondary and you're softcapped to defense or hardcapped to resistance? No, of course not, but neither are Scrapeprs or Brutes? Da heck. Only Super Reflexes or Tankers get that. Sentinels can reach good numbers even without the help of their secondary and achieve earlier than Blasters. A Blaster's defenses are a carefully build castle of cards that crumbles the moment they start exemplaring. - Sentinel damage is bad in spreadsheet terms. Comparing Sentinel damage to Blaster damage in practice has people ignoring the fact a Sentinel will use their nuke every spawn where a Blaster will use theirs every two spawns. While the Blaster nuke will do more damage it's mostly overkill. Dead things are dead, they can't make them deader than dead. Spreadsheets also ignore that people are throwing their Judgements and even without those people are annihilating packs of mobs under 10 seconds. A Blaster's damage advantage is there if we are doing one minute long fights, but most fights are over in seconds. We could make a case for AVs, but, again, that's when people will throw 3-5 Lore pets at the AV and it dies in seconds too. Does a Blaster do more damage than a Sentinel? Yes. Does it matter? Not in practice. Does it bother players enough to drop Sentinels and play Blasters? Yes. - Is there a case to be made to roll a Scrapper instead of a Sentinel then? Better damage, be in melee anyway, same immunity to CC? Yes. Do it. But if wanting to play a ranged character for fun instead of min maxing then Sentinels are solid, sturdier than other ranged characters, and avoid the CC trap everything but meleers needs to contend with. It's just not the min maxed option.

Carrying from @MTeague quite detailed explanation: - Claws has very good AoE damage thanks to being able to run Follow-up, Spin, Shockwave, then repeat. Spin does double the damage of other PbAoEs. The 'downside' is that Shockwave is a cone but at 90º degree and it has a 40y range and can slow a ForceFeedback proc which accelerates all cooldowns. Shockwave also recharges so fast that mobs have barely got up before being planted on their butts again. This is a LOT of mitigation. - Claws has two places to slot Force Feedback procs which helps a lot with cooldown heavy secondaries. - Claws' Build-up mechanic is Follow-up. Instead of a straight 100% damage buff for 10 seconds it gives a stacking damage buff. This is good and this is bad. It's good because we run around with 75% damage all the time. This buffs everything from damage auras to epic attacks and secondaries who also have attacks. It's 'bad' because it does not have the sheer burst of using Build-up + Gaussian then drop a couple AoEs and clean most minions in the first seconds of combat. - Claws ST damage is top notch on top of the top notch AoE damage. - Claws animations are a bit clumsy and dated. -Savage has a typical cone usually ignored, a PbAoE which does normal PbAoE damage, then Savage Leap which is another PbAoE. The recharge of Savage Leap is awkward but can be put down to about 12 seconds. It takes to damage procs very well and despite the mechanic of doing more damage the further away from the target the damage procs make it worth to use even in melee range. Being a second PbAoE there is no need to reposition yourself as with Shockwave in order to catch the most mobs with the cone. - Savage has one place for a Force Feedback proc. - Savage ST damage is mediocre thanks to a few different factors: a) The Build-up power has a stupid long 2.3 animation time instead of the typical 1.1. b) Savage Melee's heavy hitter is badly tuned which means there is no longer a single AT where it is worth to use Hemorrhage. Instead the set relies on using its T1, T2 and T4. Being able to do good damage while using a T1 and T2 is near impossible and this shows. - Savage Melee animations are overall gorgeous.

Why not? To me it's a mark of happy pride managing to shuffle the IO Tetris mini-game. Like when I'm checking some builds over the Tanker forums and people were happily bragging about their 90% resists while I'm just, myeah, but 90% is easy. What about 90% as well as 45% S/L? And then Hasten under 135? Because sometimes I'll see the opposite which is someone reaching for perma Hasten and we see the skeeviest of slotting chasing recharge bonuses up to and including slotting non damage sets into attacks. I speak only for myself but that's what it is. Same as going to WoW and managing to earn enough in-game currency to pay for the sub. Is it because I can't afford it? No, a single of my frequent sushi meals would pay for the sub, but it's a mini-game for me. What are we to even do with all the slots and powers? Once all attacks can be chained without gaps, endurance is taken care of, Hasten is down to under 140 second, everything is at ED caps and +3 mobs are at the cap to be hit... what else to spend the slots? Chase even more recharge? I suppose whittling those 15-20 seconds off Hasten can be a goal, but why not defensive layers? That's my reasoning anyway.

I have reached level 50 and started down the incarnating road. With the experience from actually leveling and playing the build I've made tweaks to the original I had posted and changed things around though mostly minor changes. Burn's heavy proc approach has been kept. Unlike what I have done with the Brunker I don't want to drop more Burns (which evens out. More Burns is about the same as dropping heavier Burns as per my testing) since it would mean more Melee time. When I drop Burn I want it fat and heavy and explosive. Skimming a few slots I stopped with the idea of slotting Cauterizing Blaze. The heal is tiny and not very important when having Healing Flames on a 13 second timer. Instead I added to the endurance per second with a Miracle. Speaking of recovery I've found the blue bar dwindles slowly but steadily, then the dwindling is neutered when Defensive Opportunity kicks in. It's not enough to promote growth though. Consume could really do with more slots, but it is what it is. The combo of Defensive Opportunity has been enough to arrest endurance until Consume is back up but your milleage may vary. That said I used a grand total of two Recovery Serums since having started the character since we don't take agro as much and are not subjected to sapping like meleers are. I've also added a leveling build for newcomers to have guidelines.

An ice patch animating in 1.57 instead of 3.7 will make a big difference. It may be worth revisiting my Fire/Ice tanker.

Always once minimum. While leveling I put an extra slot in Hasten and Build up to reach 95%+ recharge, and there is no point in slotting the melee Winter sets since the normal version only gives 1.85%, so I instead use four slots instead of five and slot Kinetic Combats for 3.75%. Level 50 is also when I swap from Kinetic Combats or Obliteration sets to purple IOs. So, of course, a respec once at 50. And then there's my latest Sentinel where I put an extra slow in Aim while leveling and had to respec out, then took Punch instead of Inferno at 32... and had to respec out, and then reached 50, respeced, and then later decided i didn't need epic pools and respecced AGAIN.

I'll post more on the thread I started, but the Fire/Fire is behaving very well. Burn was key to make me feel like I'm doing damage on a Sentinel. I have it at level 50 and all IOed out. Just lacks incarnates. Earlier today I was in a TF and had a phone call. We were three or four stalkers, a controller, a defender, and me as the sole sentinel. Up to then we had been killing without a prob at +1, but pushing it to +2 made mobs spawn as +3. When I had to take the phone call things went to hell. Wipes, people trickling back and getting killed. I finish my call and interrupt the 'we should reset the mission' with a 'wait, c'mon, you did it without me'. And then low key went in, Aim + Gaussian, Inferno, Burn, Fireball, Rain of Fire, start picking at the enemies. We get a -second- pack of mobs as a patrol that joins in. A few die again, I hide behind things to break LoS, heal up, drop another Burn. Aim has recharged, go into another Aim + Inferno. Heal has recharged, use it. We cleared it. After that I just asked to let me go in first and there were no other wipes 😄 This is what I do on my Tanker, but it was pleasant to achieve the same result on the Sentinel.

Not at all. Reading back I can see my answer wasn't in the best phrasing. But, yeah, I speak only for myself anyway, but after a ton of Sents way early in HC and a big emphasis on Bio as -the- damage boosting secondary and never being satisfied I find Burn bridged that gap (for myself anyway). I haven't thrown it at a pylon or anything and Burn can be hit and miss while also lacking the total damage it will do on a Tanker due to agro keeping mobs in place. But I think that as long as we accept our role as a magnet to a tank's back I have satisfying HP dips all around me by pushing buttons which is something I didn't have. But in truth I find the same with Tankers. Despite Bio being the OP thing I have consistently Fire Armor to behave better for damage. Burn at level 18 beats Adaptation at level 6. We press it, things die all around us. And with the Sentinel it is what happens as well. Honestly meleers get the full package in CoH thanks to early design that stratified in place. It's why that I, an avid ranged player who never ever ever touches melee in other games, will come to CoH and only play melee. No CC, sturdy defenses allowing to shrug most damage, most of the time self heals. And some of the best damage in the game. Then we have ranged who are plagued by CC, are squishy (often needing to reach 50 -and- IOed to the gills, and never examplar, and even so should never be in melee since 5% hits hurt tremendously at +5 and no resistances backing it up). In exchange they have... uh... Um... Aah... range, I guess? Wide AoEs. Burst with their nukes. Sentinels straddle the line with the caveats we all know about the AT but at least for me this build ends being satisfying. Heck, I'm playing with a friend who was tanking for our teams and I was all aaaaah, so calm, so relaxed. I just press buttons. I'm out of the way, no debuffs are hitting me. Positron low level CoT with their enormous -def and -acc debuffs? Who cares, I'm not in range of Darkest Night or Earthquake and the ghosts are hitting the tank so I can Aim and AoE stuff down. Sometimes I get agro but since I'm floating out of melee ranged there is a lot less damage and a purple or two keeps me safe. No need to worry about chasing mobs and all AoEs are larrrrge. So, that's my answer as to why not a Scrapper/Brute. It's different from what I'm used to 🙂

Yeah, you missed what I wrote... We need to go into melee to drop Inferno and/or Burn, then we can hit the space bar for two seconds to be flying out of the way. Why not? Indeed, why not. Choices. Because a Scrapper/Brute is melee and a Sentinel is ranged. Because we get a nuke to open every fight with. Because we don't need to twiddle our thumbs with a frown as Maiden stays in her blue circles. Take your pick, and stick to Scrapper/Brute if it is what you like to play.

I have run Sentinels exhaustively at the start of HC, then got completely bored by the mediocre damage and dumped the AT. I recently spent many months playing Tankers, specifically the Fire Armor variant. Having reached a point where I needed a change I started looking at Sentinels again (nothing like time to gloss over old faults) and started theorycrafting something together with that Tanker experience... and I think it worked out well. So with all of that said I think this is the first time I felt a Sentinel was doing good damage. Dropping into melee will not be a problem since anything that can grab agro will steal it from us and regardless the end build will have 45% S/L defense (with Barrier's 5%) and averaging 60-65% resistance to most. Combined with the ability to just float a bit out of melee range and Healing Flames recharging in 13 seconds I've taken the ITF's last boss' auto-hit without much concern. No one needs to live in melee and be subjected to all the hard hits and debuffs that live there. Leveling build:

I wanted to play something else than a Tanker and decided on a Fire/Fire Sentinel myself. I always battled against the mediocre damage of Sentinels but after months and months of Fire Tankers I have a healthy respect for the damage Burn brings and decided to give it a try with a Sentinel. I mean, harm it surely won't do. Only done both Posis but it's been fun actually. Been so very long I've just hovered our of the way and do pew pews. The end build will have 45% to S/L (with Barrier) and around 60% to S/L and 58% to E/N (with Barrier). 128 seconds Hasten is decent. I do reckon it is 100% not a solo build though. Rain of Fire will make enemies run, Burn will make enemies run. Surviving should be easy as always on a Sentinel. Just hover up in the air and do pew pews. Then follow the Tank and drop Burn and Inferno.