Sovera

Woo! Welcome back to the fold We missed you! Check the guide in my signature for varied tips and since you're still level 3 it's worth picking up the Amplifiers (guide explains this) if you have some spare change at hand (or even start the character again since only level 3 and that's about 3 minutes to reach that level again). I have a Claws/Rad, but it's not strictly speaking for leveling. Since you're going to be super poor right at the start (do read the guide in the signature to fix that as you can make about 3 million in the first 30 minutes of making your character which pays for all the basic SO/IOs you will ever need) ignore the expensive stuff at first and follow the rule of thumb of 'one accuracy, three damage, one endurance reduction, and then depending on how you feel one more endurance reduction or a recharge' for attacks. Three resistance for your armor, and if you feel the one endurance reduction afterwards. You need Mids to open the file (also in the guide), and if you find you're not too comfortable yet figuring how to translate the end-game build into a leveling build let me know and I'll turn it into a basic leveling one until you get your sailor legs. Scrapper (Claws Rad).mbd

It's not strictly needed to worry about examplaring so low. At most I'd say worry about examplaring to level 20 which is where you'd be if doing the very first TF (puts you at level 16, which gives access to all powers up to level 21 even if our last power is at level 20). For end-game you want to set the relative level to +3 which is where the Alpha incarnate will put you to (no more level 4s, at least while level 45+ because it does not work 44 and down). Other tips that work in general but especially with Dark Armor is how it's more important to slot endurance reduction on attacks instead of toggles, and in DA's case in particular go easy on the myriad toggles. They are objectively too weak for their worth since they only work on minions and we bash minions in the first seconds of combat anyway. But yes, I'm glad to see you got those problems licked. Remember to buy Recovery Serums while leveling off the START vendor since they are cheapo, and if you haven't buy the Amplifiers next time (they grow more expensive as we level so level 1 is the right moment to do so). My signature has a guide with other tips if you're a new veteran (:D), and if you ever feel like branching out the (near) immortal build was tailored for newcomers.

For Radiation Therapy you use a Theft of Essence if you want a little extra for the endurance. I have a Scrapper I built last if you want to see the GZ and RT slotting I did. Scrapper (Fire Melee - Rad Armor).mbd

Why wouldn't it?

I think you've nailed most of it so it's mostly a little bit of min-maxing now. Now, there are two ways to approach defense on a Sentinel (IMO): 1 - We reach 45% to all defense. 2 - We lean on being a low agro ranged character and aim for 33%, and then if things get hairy we eat a small purple that pushes us to 45%. 3 - We build to 40% and use Barrier for the last 5%. I've found the second approach works fine for me and the build was already at that sweet spot, but in the process it got closer to the third sweet spot. Things I did change: - Assault provides very little (about or less than 5% despite what the tooltip might say) so I took the liberty of picking a travel power. Just put it back in if you'd like. - Knocked about a minute off Hasten which in turn also helped Psychic Focus and Psychic Wail. These last two are your bread and butter and you want them up and available at every group if possible. This is, IMO, more important than chasing resistances as dead mobs don't hurt. - I respected your incarnate choices (small change to Musculature since the damage loss is minimal in practice (ignoring the misleading tooltip) and a bit more recovery never hurt) and pushed S/L resistances to 75%. If you were to change from Rebirth to Barrier (which is what I'd do since one is proactive and the other is reacting to damage already taken) you could knock 5% resistances off S/L (take all slots from Dominate for example, or change the four Titanium coatings for Unbreakable Guards, etc) and move the slotting around. Perhaps get the last % to have S/L defenses to 40% since then Barrier would then make ALL your defenses at 45% (again, more important than building for resistances IMO) while also adding another 5% to all resistances which would bump S/L back to 75%. - A lot of the F/C resistances you were building for were sacrificed. This is a fair trade off in my book as not only is that damage type not commonly found but you have defenses versus it. But this is just one way to build. - Shuffled all your powers for leveling/exemplaring. I'm sure that there is still room for improvement. I would personally try to see if it was possible to make a tighter and leaner attack chain that does not require four attacks as that would free powers and slots, but the build should do all content as is. Mellfis Black 6- Sentinel (Psychic Blast - Willpower).mbd Edit: ah chrissakes, nevermind, I only now noticed you had Support Core Embodiment toggled on for some reason. Well, okay, small change of plan. It's back to sweet spot 1 where. Barrier is no longer the clincher (It's still 5% to all resistances and defenses at minimum and is a panic button so it would be my pick anyway but it's your character). Revised build aiming for sweetspot 1. One small purple in a moment of crisis will get all defenses to 45%. Even solo it shouldn't be needed all the time since you can now open for each group with Psychic Focus and Psychic Wail which will get half the group dead. I couldn't get the S/L resistances quite to 75% but the Reactive Defences proc will skirt it the moment your HP goes to 90% so meh. I'm sure it can be done with a bit more shuffling but I've spent too long on this already. Mellfis Black 6- Sentinel (Psychic Blast - Willpower) V2.mbd Consider Stone Armor since it's a large improvement over Willpower.

Post the file and I can take a look.

I couldn't make it do good damage even with quadruple procs in each attack. It's slow to animate and nowadays we can't even rely on Defensive opportunity (since it has been removed) for endurance to do the quadruple proc approach.

Tremor. Fault is terrible at what it does. At least it alleviates problems when needing room for power picks though I don't agree making powers terrible so that they can be insta skipped.

Hmm. Sure. Kinda? Earth's Embrace COULD be a pass. All it adds is 20% Toxic and another about 1.100+ HP (EE says about 700 HP but there is some multiplicative at play. Probably the accolades?) to the build (from 3534 down to 2466). This in turn also affects regeneration of course (63 HPS down to 44 HPS) which is the only sustain the set has, but, inspirations and incarnates could take over. That said it's a 1.1k buffer for all effects comparable to an absorb shield like Bio or Rad has. But both Bio and Rad could pass Ablative or Particle Shield too if they wanted. It might not be a GOOD plan, but it's a plan 😄 It's also what would affect the build the least, IMO. As mentioned above Mudpots is the agro aura so invaluable, Minerals is +recharge and psi defense so invaluable, and Brimstone is both damage proc and fire/cold/toxic resistance which is needed since the build has no F/C/Toxic defense. While leveling I push EE way back since the heal is miniscule and having near or be at softcap defense is godmode that doesn't require more. Early leveling mobs hit slower and weaker to help leveling players. Mobs get stronger the close we are to 50, but, we are at such a power creep peak with IOs (and especially with Stone Armor) we might never even notice it. That said Toxic can be nasty and we have no defense against it so we need to rely on resistances.

I know, right? It all goes well until I have cleared the group and it's down to beating up the boss. Yeah. It's expensive but it's the only set that has an acc/end/rech and acc/end/rech is what is lacking.

It would be plenty bad to skip any of those three. Minerals is your source of psi defense. Without it you'd be naked to psi since you don't even have psi resist. You'd also lose the +recharge baked into the power. Mudpots is your agro aura. Without it you'd be relying on punchvoke and Taunt only. Definite no in my book. Brimstone you'd lose resistance to Fire, Cold, and Toxic, on top of losing the Brimstone damage proc. As a Tanker you kinda want all the help you can get for a bit more damage, IMO. Stone Armor does not have defense against Fire/Cold so you survive that damage on your resistances, which you'd be skipping if not taking Brimstone. The only skippable power IMO is Granite. And yeah, it's difficult to fit everything which has held me back more than once on some Stone Armor combos, but on the other hand it's nice to have a set that is solidly good instead of SOME sets I will not name where I'll always skip three or more powers that are simply so bad. If they are that bad and are never picked then there is something wrong with the set. But it does make fitting things easier.

I was summoned! Are you sold on Elec? The ST is lacking which keeps pushing me away, but if you're into that pairing then give it a try. You'll have 85% to S/L and 62% to E/N. To garnish it you'll have 40% to melee defense as well. If you take Barrier, which I recommend, you'll have the last 5% for defense and S/L resistances. E/N will be the small hole at only 67%. Open with Build-up, Lightning Rod, Burn, Thunder Strike, Chain Induction, Havoc Punch, Jacob's Ladder, Havoc Punch. After that if there are still more than one enemy up keep the rotation going. Each time Burn is up it can substitute one Havoc Punch. Chain Induction is a weak link where it's neither a good AoE skill (it's a chain, and they suck in this game) or a good ST skill (because it's an AoE it does poor ST damage) but it animates really fast and it's needed to have a gapless ST rotation. If you have just one enemy then ThunderStrike, Chain Induction, Havoc Punch, Jacob's Ladder Havoc Punch. Burn isn't a good ST skill, but, if so much as two enemies are in range then use it as mentioned above. The upside of the build is that in AoE situations we can go ham on the AoE. Lightning Rod is an AoE, Thunderstike is an AoE, Chain Induction is an AoE, Burn is an AoE, Jacob's Ladder is an AoE. The downside is that most of Elec AoE is mediocre to bad. Thunder Strike is a very weak AoE, Chain Induction is not only weak but because it's a chain there's a chance the chaining will be interrupted. Jacob's Ladder is a cone and they suck. The star is Lightning Rod who will easily clean half a spawn when backed with Build-up while leveling. The other downside is the single target damage of Elec. Fire Armor will help with Firey Embrace but gone are the days Burn would be a solid help for ST for the sets with weak ST. If you feel like trying something else than Elec then Claws/Fire Brute was my best all arounder character for a good chunk of my play time with blenderizing in AoE and solid ST (2:30 pylon times which is not something Elec could hope to match). Fire Melee is also the new hotness but I'd recommend the Tanker version since they have, IMO, the best version of Fire Melee with two PbAoEs. Brute (Elec Fire).mbd

Claws is the opposite of hitting like a truck. Claws is an AoE blender machine (though this is at its peak on Scrappers since they get slightly faster Spin/Shockwave) with fast animations. Spin, in particular, is way overtuned for a level 6 power. Follow-up means we play with a perma 70% damage boost plus the accuracy it comes with. Shockwave allows to bite more than we can chew with the constant KD spam. In the same vein Focus is good soft CC with the KD spam and can be used with good effect to prevent problematic mobs to activate powers. Usually it's all about using Follow-up, Slash, and Focus for single target, and Follow-up, Focus, Spin and Shockwave for AoE (just Follow-up, Spin, Shockwave for Scrappers) with Shockwave having an Overwhelming unique to make the KB into KD. With both Shockwave and Focus able to slot Force Feedback procs any build that pairs with Claws will have its cooldowns appreciatively shorter.

To have fun. When you no longer have fun you play something else. This applies to the AT as to the game and most things in life.

It's valid, it's just not very efficient, but, remains valid. The thing is that we usually start combat with Build-up and murder half the group and Build-up (with a Gaussian proc) allows to bull through most -ToHit BS if you use it for that purpose. But it is enough of a problem that I always take Focused Accuracy to be just about immune to those debuffs since it offers a colossal 80% something resistance. Without resistance to -ToHit debuffs then accuracy melts like defense melts against defense debuffers without DDR. So it's not to say the approach of loading on accuracy is a bad approach, but, you don't need more than 95% for most of the game and only a few factions will do -ToHit debuffs, at which point you can toggle Focused Accuracy for them. I build for having it up 100% of the time which allows me to ease up on accuracy slotting. But that's just how I build and not the only way to build. As for procs ED means we can't go higher than 100% anyway, so once we are are 95%-ish and another slot won't increase the damage more then we can add a damage proc to bypass the ED restriction. You don't specifically need to do it but it helps with the damage if damage is something you care about. Most people who builds Tankers just focus on being super sturdy.

After downloading the new Mids it works. So, at first glance: You don't need so much accuracy. Your attacks are on average 134% or more to hit +3 enemies so that Kismetic and all those LotGs could be swapped to give yourself damage procs, a second recharge in Melt Armor (and a first recharge too I guess?), a end mod in Stamina, etc. Do consider a Winter's -20% recharge in Super Jump. I would probably lean a bit harder on the resistances like swapping in four Titanium Coatings in Tough and/or Shield Walls in all the toggles, swap the Ragnorok for Bombardment etc, but it's a choice to go that high into the defense angle as well. Everything looks well in order so it's just min maxing according to where you wish to take the build.

It might be the Death from Below as well. Welcome back! Newbie guide in my signature with more tips!

The file has no slotted enhancements

Do read the rest of the thread first though. Despite OP's good intentions it is a big waste to use merits on SOs.

I'd go with Titanium Coatings for more resistances all around. The other sets just add more defenses that SR should not be hurting for.

The top of the hill in the ITF's first mission.

Kinda. Impossible to be at health cap with a Fire Armor since we don't have a big HP buff like Invuln or Stone has. Only the small passive from Consume but at best 2.9k (2.6k without) but the cap is 3.4k. The rest like Energy resists (of course, 90% to most except psi 25-30% and Toxic at near 50% by stacking Healing Flames), defenses (Martial Arts version with 45% to melee/ranged/AoE or any other secondary and just 45% to S/L). It's the Turtle build in my signature.

Remember also that as Yomo said that the CC has a duration. You might not notice it on a +0 or +1 enemy but since you're not a controller you won't be slotting for duration and instead for damage. Because of that the stuns will happen but be blips. The only one who will make longer duration stuns is indeed Energy Melee since every attack has a chance to stun and those will stack up fast enough you can even stun AVs (while their triangles are down). The talk of slotting stun procs usually misses this angle. The stun may or may not go off, but then it lasts for a very short duration.

Welcome aboard, new friendo! There's a guide in my signature for these moments. Use the /help and /lfg channels liberally for questions as everyone's pretty friendly to newcomers.

If you're building for melee you're automatically building for S/L as well. So if those ranged attacks have a S or L component it's helping.