Sovera

I just tested and it works for me, but here's the long one.

You forgot one of the +3% defenses unique IO (there are two) so that's a boost right there. With some minimal slotting changes you can be at 40% to everything and then rely on Barrier for the last 5% ignoring Shadow Meld in the process. If you split Superior Stalker's Guile in half you get 10% to S/L instead of just 5%, and if you use five Superior Blistering Cold you end with another 5%. So you can easily get it to 40% down the range. Don't forget to +5 your isolated IOs for some extra oomph (right click the IO, for example the ones in Hasten, then place the cursor over it and press + five times before choosing it again. You can buy Boosters in game for this, but it's a level 50 thing). I have a build I never got around to try since after making it on HD I looked at it and wasn't enamored on how Jacob's Ladder was sort of needed and Thunder Strike is such a loooooong animation, and Lightning Rod's damage is a bit heh considering the long recharge, but you can take a look and maybe get some extra ideas. Relying on Shadow Meld isn't a bad strategy either. Your ST rotation is probably going to be AS (fish for Hide procs), Chain induction to use the Hide proc (If Jacob's Ladder doesn't auto crit from Hide as ST skills do. Chain Induction isn't a ST target but technically I think it passes as one due to the slotting), Jacob's Ladder, and then Havoc's Punch. Rinse and repeat. In AoE situations try to use Thunder Strike instead of Chain induction so it can make use of the Hide proc, which is going to push everything back so much you probably only need Chain Induction before AS has recharged.

I get what you mean, but that's melee talk, not ranged. A ranged character doesn't really need massive resistances since they aren't in the thick of things, especially an Archery one that has no PbAoEs like Fire's Inferno. Still, sure, why not? I find the heal Destiny might be more useful since a SR is there blocking damage and with scaling resists helping but once greens run out that's that.

Why would you even take Barrier with SR...? Go for the heal, I guess, you won't need Ageless for sure. Did some tweaking. It honestly could do with more because you have too many attacks ( Blazing, Stunning and Perfect shot are enough for a complete attack chain with Aimed Shot tossed in once in a while to keep Defensive Opportunity going, which would open a slot for something else, whatever, a travel power?). You had a *ton* of extra accuracy EVEN without Tactics on. We're talking something like 140% accuracy when it softcaps at 95% (against +3 which is where we end once incarnates kick in, and before incarnates we don't usually fight +4 anyway). So I dialed it back down. Even now it's still a bit too much for many attacks but Rain of Arrows and Fistful of Arrows were hurting so I added the Kismet back in. So in the same vein if you turn Tactics on it will be grossly over the accuracy but I let it stay since it's your build, although if there is one power that could be removed for a travel power (or whatever) this is it since it's not going to add anything. You also were over the softcap. Since SR doesn't care about defense debuffing this was adding nothing, nor was it enough for incarnate content, so I tried to dial it down a bit but it's difficult with Maneuvers and Weave in, which leads me to.... You took Maneuvers and Weave, which makes four powers just for those two, which is something SR has no need of to reach the softcap. Since no fancy slotting was needed to reach softcap thanks to those two I just went ham on recharge and Hasten is now almost perma and will be in 90% of the gameplay since Exploding Arrow with the Force Feedback will make sure of it. There is no real reason for the Force Feedback for Hasten but it will make Rain of Arrows/Aim recharge a bit faster. On the same vein of since-you-took-Maneuvers-and-Weave and no fancy slotting was needed I also went ham on damage procs to help with the damage. Due to the fast animation and fast recharges they won't go off often, but hey, why not? Due to the lack of procs we can slot in (basically only the toxic proc) I didn't see the point of doing the same thing I did for Blazing Arrow. Blazing Arrow, taking two damage procs and with the new slotting, goes from the previous 278 damage to 407. Now there's a reason to use Aimed Shot with the ST rotation becoming Blazing Arrow, Perfect Shot, Stunning Shot, Aimed. Snap Shot is a mule and not used, but it could be kept for when exemping down and needing a filler. Better resists. Native 21.5% S/L instead of zero. Native 14% negative/energy instead of zero. Once losing HP SR's scaling resists will add to the IO's scaling resists. Worse Recovery. Down from 3.32 EPS to 3.18. But, I personally would remove all the extra slots (leaving only the Panacea and the Performance Shifter's procs) since the Sentinel's Defensive Opportunity does the job all on its own, but s'up to you. Offensive Opportunity does not add all that much. Things you could do would be removing Maneuvers and Tactics (I would leave Tough + Weave since Tough allows for the slotting of uniques SR otherwise couldn't use) and take Aid-other + Aid-Self. Some minor rejigging of slots would be needed but you'd have a self heal and not need to rely on greens. You could also take Fly and Afterburner since you already have Hover.

Oof, yes, good catch on deciphering cential as sentinel.

I hope it was just today. But I went from a verrrrrrrrrrrrrrry occasional crash to have four under five minutes. The third one I even rebooted the computer but no go. I can play for hours doing TF after TF with multiple characters using powers and graphical explosions and lots of moving NPCs. But I sit down to just type and this happens: The error occurred in cityofheroes.exe at relative address 0x562150. Google was of no help. Do we have a 'things to try before giving up'?

I don't think there is that option to automatically return to the back of the character. What I do is use the middle button to turn the camera without moving, and then control + middle button to reset the camera.

You'll definitely need to post your build. But as a Sentinel and playing a 100% ranged set like Archery you have zero reasons to be in melee range anyway. Just take Hover and outside of tight Council caves you'll be fine.

Duo teams are my absolute favorite, and up to four. But once at eight it's turn off the brain and just mash buttons. We need a difficulty setting where all mobs turn to bosses so they live longer and hit harder. It still wouldn't do a thing once at 50 and IOed out though.

You don't need to focus on defense if you float out of harm's way and plink at mobs. Fire is pretty good at it with the heaviest ranged attacks of the AT. You can sneak into the middle of enemies with Super-speed + stealth IO, unleash Drain Psyche, unleash Inferno (since both are PbAoEs), then just float out of the way and go ham with ranged attacks. Anything the mobs throw at you will be healed by Drain Psyche's regen. It will be weaker against solo enemies, but if you are in a team someone is grabbing the aggro. Now if you really dislike flying and floating then you take a large portion of your indirect defense (simply not being in range of melee which is where the heavy damage comes from) and yes, you'll need to work on defense. Don't expect huge improvements, but I think about 33% to all is achievable without *too* much hassle, and then munch on a single purple inspiration if, if, you are in trouble or expecting to soak an alpha. My Fire/Atomic managed 40% with tricky slotting and then ghetto added the last 5% defense by relying on the small 5% -ToHit aura. It did fine though, but it also relied on Hover and Tough and Weave. 33% would probably not require all of that, so you just need to decide what your goals are. Drain Psyche is so good you can almost ignore defense with it, but it's not nearly good enough if you stay in melee. Not even 100 HP regen (not always achievable in the first place) can keep up with incoming damage without defenses in place.

Pretty darn decent though. I've seen other attempts at making Psi Melee work and they were not as good. You seemed to have hit the nail on the head regarding trying to maximize Insight upkeep.

Everything works well. Ice/Bio has good AoE and good ST, plus a panic button in Ice Patch for hard fights. Kinetic Melee blooms earlier with all the ST attacks and AoE you'll use being obtained by level 18.

Yes, it's in the message you quoted.

You need a special level 49 map for that. The whole mechanics are explained in the Guide section of the forums in the Farm Fresh Builds thread.

Now that I'm 36 I was comparing KM to Ice, the Stalker I was leveling. Damage wise the two sets seem to sort of be balanced. Ice has Freezing Touch that, according to HD in my current build, does 500 damage. KM has the strongest attack outside of AS being Smashing Blow doing... 268. Eek. But Ice's AS does 460 damage and KM's does 560 so the distance isn't that far apart and the fast pace of attacks of KM lends itself to the Stalker mechanic of building crit chance stacks. This is more of a DPS thing though. DPA it 'feels' better to throw big crits around with alternating CDs. In AoE Ice has two which is always better than just one. One of them is a cone though but being part of the ST rotation it does add 'splash'. KM only has one but it opens early and the auto crit in Hide is pretty potent when combined with BU + Gaussian since it does nasty things to everything in range. It also takes a FF proc which helps for all things recharge related especially in the low levels. Overall both sets seem pretty balanced one against the other. Even in AoE the fact KM's AoE is circular, opens early, takes a FF, and can auto crit from Hide procs does a lot to catch up to the fact Ice has two. It still 'feels' better to spam two AoEs than to be completely surrounded and be forced to plink with ST attacks while the single AoE recharges.

I had a bit of a mustard rising on this when I made a thread in the Bug forums that Posi 1 is bugged since if we start the TF at level 8 (minimum level) we don't increase our level while in it and are still at level 8 when we reach Doc Buzzsaw... who spawns as a level 15. It's the only mob who does (I presume, since being a +7 enemy it is simply impossible to defeat it) and if this happens by accident or because none of the characters is higher than eight, then the TF cannot be completed. The general consensus seemed to be 'it's coding, all AVs spawn at max level for the TF SO THERE IS NOTHING THAT CAN BE DONE'. Excuse you? It's coding. I'm 100% sure something can be done including and up to removing the current boss and replacing it for a custom made one, or, simpler, make the TF minimum level 10 since at least a +5 character *can* be defeated albeit with a lot of difficulty.

After all this talk I wrote above I decided to pause my Ice/Bio Stalker to try the KM/Bio Stalker. I have it at 27 atm, it starts slow, but funny enough Burst is when the set blossoms. BU, Burst, AS, Smashing Blow is a perfectly acceptable opening and Burst auto-crits out of Hide have made me *cocky*. Especially because of that thing I mentioned of AS and Burst having the same recharge, so it's super easy to be in Hide, Burst, AS, filler, filler, AS, Burst, as not only do they align well but a Force Feedback proc in Burst goes together like a house on fire. Talk about ignoring the fact Stalkers are meant to have poor AoE.

*100%

It's not like you need huge amounts of recharge since you're forced to have so many attacks. Brutes and scrappers are fine, but it's like I said above. Personally I went /Bio as usual.

Maybe a Stalker, IMO. KM works well if you only use the T1, T2 and T3 attacks. It looks super pretty and the animations are decently fast. But it suffers from two things: 1 - All three attacks are low level, so they do low damage. 2 - The set is balanced around KM's Build-Up mechanic which makes it do a fantastic job when paired with the fast attacks. But the BU is slow-ish at 2 seconds animation (it can be made to have about 35 seconds recharge and 20 seconds uptime., so 15 seconds downtime) which can feel like a drag and does not offer burst (no popping KM's BU and pop a big attack) and outside of it the damage is not that amazing. There were times I felt like, do I pop BU to deal with this half HP boss and lieutenant and waste the rest traveling to the next spawn where it will not be up. Or so I whittle the boss with normal damage to have BU for the start of the next spawn? Stalker helps because AS is a phenomenal upgrade, and the BU effect is replaced by a normal one. The problems with a Stalker are: 1 - Despite the BU being replaced by a normal one the damage of the set was not tuned (Scrapper actually does slightly more base damage on top of a better BU mechanic). But it's the traditional 80% damage boost for 10 seconds with about 25 seconds-ish recharge that allows for burst. They both have 15 seconds downtime, but a Stalker can be constantly fishing for BU procs with their ATO. 2 - AS has an awkwardly long recharge that does not allow to simply replace the T1 in the Scrapper's simple rotation (T3, T2, T1) or we get near one second gaps trying for AS, T3, T2, T3. This forces to take the T1 anyway (one second animation meshes with one second gaps). So AS (fish for Hide), T3/Burst (use Hide proc, Burst also auto crits when in Hide), T2, T1, AS, repeat. Both AS and Burst recharge in about 4.5 seconds and the T3, T2, and T1 make for... 4.5 seconds. Ish. The low damage-ish of the low level attacks is compensated by the constant BU refreshes thanks to the Stalker procs and AS.

ITF is the achille's heel on any /Bio of mine 😄

In the planner there are normal and superior ATos, Event IOs, etc. So I don't know what they mean then.

After you said I thought I misremembered and went to hunt it up. Turns out it was about 1 minute 26 though there was controversy if the numbers were good or not. Apparently other players tried the same build and got 2 minutes. Still darn decent. https://web.archive.org/web/20120906191954/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=130754&page=130

Actually widows had one of the first one minute times according to the old boards. I remember reading about it a couple months ago. I'm not surprised at the Fortunata since despite what HD claims I never felt the ST chain to be overpowering (or perhaps I don't take into account the DoT). But it was nice and fluid plus dat huge radius nuke *drool*....