Sovera

I know you want to be useful, but considering a pylon dies in 4-5 seconds does it really matter? Plink it to get contribution and move along with the herd to the next pylon. This mostly shows how the MM has fallen behind with the game's evolution. Pets don't have a travel power, so even so much as using Hover will leave them behind, and if we switch to Fly we might as well forget having them for the next pack. By the time they have arrived someone has used their T9 and there are but a few scattered mobs left.

? Elaborate, my TL;DR fellow.

You still have an Overwhelming Force in Tornado instead of Sudden Acceleration, (despite having read how overwhelming is only a *chance* of turning KB into KD I tested it to be sure and it worked just fine in Tornado, with the bonus of adding damage to it) and do you really feel that replacing Tactics is a good gamble? Your pets will be -1 and -2 and you haven't particularly slotted them for accuracy.

Why the overwhelming force instead of Sudden Acceleration in Tornado? You have nothing to heal yourself or your pets. Is the plan to drop insps on them? I feel like dropping Dual Wield for O2 would help more than trying to fish for FF procs. Hasten is already near perma and a single FF proc from Tornado will do the trick. Other than these little quibbles I think you have a lovely build here. I particularly like how we can go around in Bodyguard mode and just let the pets go nuts, because Storm is doing damage during the alpha. With other MMs I'm forced to drop out of BG to direct the pets. In fact, I'mma make one this moment. Altitis, GO! Edit: Btw, from what I recall reading BG mode just tacks on 75% resists, it does not add 75% on top of what resists we have. That means depending on how much time you spend in BG mode chasing resists may not be all that useful.

I tried a BR/SR thinking it would be a beast in defensive terms, but found the lack of self healing too much a problem. Throwing the character at a +4x8 had it die very very fast with Aid Self unable to keep up between interrupts (a single interrupt IO wasn't of much help) and the low-ish 30% heal despite being a fire farm (no cascading failures) and being softcapped. Much like Oldskool I believe Ninjutsu to be the near perfect secondary and the more I play Bio chasing the 30% extra damage mirage the more I think it so. In the end my Bio builds require me to keep purples to softcap which could be reds instead, and that by itself replaces the 30% damage boost of bio.

It is very good. Typical panic button, you click it and you're near immortal. But I found that I very rarely needed it to the point it sat there not being used. If you want a panic button that is it though. But I find when I die it is rather instant instead of being whittled down. In a team we hardly need the purple inspirations less alone a panic button. Solo I found just Ablative was enough to mitigate the damage with Rebuild DNA for recouping HP (not strictly necessary since Ablative boosts our regen as well). In particular with this build who has a ton of self healing from the primary as a Sentinel (in AoE situations).

You have infinite merits in the test server, so head to the merit vendor (there's one in the City Hall of Atlas) and buy as many enhancers as you require to superior all your needs.

Anything that reaches 45% defense and has a built in heal. Of course the 'toughest at WHAT' applies. Pylons? That implies long term sustain and enough res to mitigate the hits. +4x8 in a team? Not need for much with a team sharing agro. +4x8 solo? Burst damage taking down the mobs mitigates the need to be all tricked out in defense. All around toughest thing impossible to kill? No such thing, the devs placed tricks around the game to prevent that. Either auto hit abilities or sapping or carnies or whatever.

As I play I'm thinking that AoE caps don't matter as much as it may seem. We almost always initiate with a T9 after all. Two or more will be going off in a team. Minions are almost always wiped out in the initial T9 burst, and the remainder lieuts and bosses don't make more than ten targets. In practical terms the AoE cap is not, I feel, as limiting as it looks on paper. Radius is more important and we have heaps of that. That said any AoE that only hits six targets is just bad bad bad and ought to be fixed. At *least* ten targets, please. My new elec/bio is doing a tremendous job at clearing out packs due to being able to have an AoE rotation it can sit down in the middle of a spawn and exert. As a bonus it also saps coincidentally, not something aimed for, but a happy side-effect. I just did a Manticore TF and reliably keeping the bosses from pulling their T9s was satisfying, furthermore as not built or even aiming for it, simply doing a DPS rotation.

Probably my last post on this build since I've done as much with it as I cared. I was hoping for a bit of conversation and less of a monologue, but I'm guessing I'm too long winded and my basic ramblings don't have the hard math to back them to make for a conversation. It's my belief the last build I posted works very well, and if anything it is the build I would advise for a newbie sentinel. The constant CC starting in the very low levels with AoE KD and AoE Sleep (later replaced by Fire Cages) + refilling Opportunity with a single cone + the vampiric effect of AoE Defensive Opportunity makes leveling and teaming a breeze and a pleasure. No endurance problems, lots of HP returns, lots of CC to give time for regen to work. As I mentioned in the title Sonic/Bio is a hidden gem hardly ever mentioned but it deserves more credit. The only thing it lags behind is solo farming. The cones do not lend themselves well to it and I find all the re-positioning to cost so many seconds that my nuke has recharged before I've finished a +2 spawn. I would have liked to do a pylon test just for numbers, but I'm still lacking a few purples and T4s, and I've moved on to another build since I don't really grind the end-game much (hello altitis). I may return just for that since transferring IOs is allowed (though only 7 tabs is too few to hold a full build's IOs, argh) but for now I'm leveling an AoE beast build I'll post about later.

With the exception of Dark Armor it's baked into the the CC protection.

One of the new servers made it so controllers had their pets at level 1. When I saw that I was blown away. SO level IOs and pets both at starting at level 1 would make the low levels so much smoother. We just slog through the first 22 levels without any slots because why bother when they give almost nothing. Imagine not waiting until level 22 to actually slot stuff. Even a no inf lowbie can slowly buy stuff to at least improve their accuracy. No need to tell someone to 'bear with it' and 'just grit your teeth' to reach level 32/38. The low levels are not hard, just not much fun. I feel the fun factor would grow geometrically when the slow controllers are actually helping with the damage or soloing from the straight go.

I don't know what you mean. I rarely if ever get CCed in normal play, excepting ITF's final boss or the DiB final boss double Shivans who seem to cut through CC protection. That said you can consult Pines/Mids and check the differences between scrappers and sentinels.

Alright, I don't see where I can improve this further, but I welcome advice. There were plenty of small changes incorporated in this. Super Speed got ditched for Stealth. I took the trouble of messing with Pines' options to suppress Stealth so we see the actual defense while in combat and the magic number has been (mostly) achieved at 32.2% for all except S/L which is slightly higher than the goal. The stealth IO is now slapped on to Sprint for the combined effect of perfect Stealth, which was something I really really really wanted. Athletic Regulation got worked in (HELLO DDR! And some minor hover speed too, I guess). I removed Force Feedback because of two reasons. One of them is that perma Hasten has been achieved and in any case the recharge proc is tied to my solo mode. Solo mode I will be using the cones, but not in teams, so the proc's usefulness will be situational. The second reason is that the only thing that still benefits from *more* recharge is my nuke, and in practical terms less than 25 seconds is not needed. I'm not going to use my T9 twice in a pack (well, normally I wouldn't unless it got down to 15 seconds like Archery's) and between cleaning up the harder mobs, picking up stragglers and moving to the next pack 25 seconds is about right solo. In teams others will be chomping at the bit to use their T9/Judgement so a few extra seconds will not matter IMO. Both cones were played around with. They now have each a proc to help kill big packs faster. Howl got Ragnorok for the simplest of reasons that the KD proc would have been wasted in Shockwave who already performs KD 100%. In either case it is sort of wasted since Shockwave and Howl are almost almost gapless and by the animation time of getting back up on their feet mobs are ready to be slammed back down. So perhaps eek out a few % more by replacing the KD proc by the damage. I don't feel it matters much either way. Despite wanting to give at least one damage proc per attack I ended up giving Sentinel's Ward to Shriek. This is because Shriek is my least used attack with Scream, Screech, Scream, Shriek as my planned attack chain though I probably will have enough for Screech, Scream, Shriek (start with the hardest hitter, if it's still alive use the second hardest, if it's still alive use the third. No point in starting with Shriek and then animate/use endurance in two extra attacks). But also because I wanted to fit Sentinel's Ward *somewhere*. Due to the animation time and base recharge I don't think Shriek gets much usage out of procs anyway. Scream ended with Opportunity Strikes but I am not sure to whom this would have gone better. Screech or Scream. With its longest base recharge and animation Screech is going to carry the procs. But which? Do I want Screech with a better chance to do damage procs, or do I want Screech with a better chance to fill up my Opportunity bar in ST which is when Sonic's Opportunity bar fill up lags behind? On another hand the Opportunity Strikes proc chance is notoriously low so am I wasting Screech's slightly better proc carrying with it instead of further improving it being Sonic's ST mini nuke? My gut says improve Screech mini nuke duties but I don't have the math to back it considering improved uptime of Offensive Opportunity and the damage boost plus -res that comes attached to it. I threw more endurance recovery at the built with a Performance Shifter proc at Inexhaustible and a Panaceia in Health (the slot could have gone to Inexhaustible and made no difference, IMO) and some minor changes in slotting choices in attacks, I'm not sure if it has reached a neutral or even positive status, but as no longer requiring Barrier then Ageless is there as an option. Gaussian's BU in Amplify for a boost and a -res in Dreadful Wail are the last changes. Now, for a pack the -res is going to be of small use since it will hit 1-2 mobs in the whole thing, but my reasoning is that in a pack it will not matter much since it is literally trash we bulldoze over. But when fighting a hard mob Dreadful Wail will be used in conjunction with Amplify and the recharge times make it almost certainly work, so the -res will be present while we are still boosted by Amplify and returning to our ST chain. Perhaps a damage proc will be more useful for the same scenario? The (last?) revised build: Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.962 http://www.cohplanner.com/ Click this DataLink to open the build!

Dayum, it just goes to show we keep on learning. Time to rejig my current build and add these babies in. I have but one like to give you, @nihilli, but in my heart you got a dozen.

Oh, really? I've sort of ignored it as an endurance recovery tool. Pines does not show the endurance recovery for it or the Performance shifter.

People actually read the build? I just jump straight to importing it to Pines.

Performance Shifter chance for end, Miracle unique, Numina unique, Luck of the Gambler 7.5%. Steadfast 3%, Gladiator Armor 3%. As a sentinel you won't need the KB protection IO, but that one's a Karma or a Steadfast.

Same as you do on Live. Find a portal (Talos, Atlas, etc, by the tram station), go to Night Ward. Right in front of you is a mansion on top of a hill. Go in. Done.

Here we are again. I was going to continue this on Sunsette's Project thread following up with @oldskool but felt it would just derail the purpose of the original thread. With trying to maximize procs being the new rage I have tried to cobble something as well. If anyone has tried the Elder Scrolls Online combat (ugh) they will be familiar with the concept of 'throw AoE DoTs on the floor then keep on doing your ST rotation'. This follows the same idea which is why I did not go for Dark. Throw Ice Storm + Blizzard on ANYTHING THAT MOVES! Packs of mobs, even hard targets. Then pick a hardier target and go to town with the ST rotation. Bonus points by applying Fire Cages first, which has a 5 second recharge, then apply both rains, which coincidentally require 5 seconds to cast, so once cast we can reapply Fire Cages and neatly keep everything bunched up for the rains, even bosses. Frost Breath is kept for solo play/exemplar where we have a better handle on the flow of battle but also as a mule (if we need to mule might as well go for a useful power). For endgame teams Frost Breath is not expected to find use. At first I tried for the very proc heavy approach of three procs per attack frankenslotting the remaining slots. But this cost too much recharge and left a big-ish gap in the rotation requiring a fourth attack. We do have a fourth attack in Chill Ray/Fire Cages though. I decided to go for a weaker approach with just two procs per attack. @Redlynne posted math on why a Decimation BU proc on a T1 can be made to work and the math seemed solid so I incorporated the idea. With Bitter Ice Blast I'm torn between five slotting a Decimation for the recharge, but then only have one damage proc in the attack (I don't particularly favor the BU approach anyway preferring damage procs), five slotting Apocalypse with the proc and then adding another one, or finally use three ACC/DMG HOs and then three damage procs. The problem lays in the gaps that it causes. Ice Bolt + Bitter Ice Blast + Ice Bolt only achieves 3.7-ish seconds with Bitter Freeze Ray recharging in 4.4 seconds if slotted for recharge. This makes a compelling argument for Ice Blast since a longer animation time would 'stretch' the recharge requirements. Unfortunately Sentinels require our T1 for Offensive Opportunity. That said Defensive Opportunity still applies the -20% res (arguably the most important part of the whole Opportunity shtick) and getting endurance could be considered an indirect benefit that changes Incarnate and slotting approaches. In any case it is not a *big* gap and for normal play this could be a moment to insert Fire Cages. If we are taking down a spawn it does a bit of AoE damage while stopping runners (everyone knows about those, there will always be some who will see things are going badly and run to the other side of the map and then come back later to shoot us in the back). But it also applies to hard targets such as an AVs as well since my god do they love to run nowadays! That said using Fire Cages can be otherwise said to be a DPS loss (though we can rejig the slots and incorporate a -res proc in it though I did include those in the rains) in a more min maxed setting but if using it in the ST chain then it might further 'stretch' the recharge requirements allowing for the whole three procs per attack. Three proc slots would be a lot of recharge bonus lost though, and that would *increase* the recharge requirements. Bitter Freeze Ray's slotting alternates with Bitter Ice Blast. If one is using Apocalypse then the other will be using the HO/Decimation slotting. I am really not in love with the uber slow 2.6 animation. That's on a go-to-the-kitchen-and-make-a-sandwich level. Perhaps Chill Ray could be considered since it animates nearly a second sooner, but it would be difficult to make a compelling argument when Chill Ray does nearly half the damage of Bitter Freeze Ray. An alternative that would lose Fire Cages and cram a useless pre-power into the build would be the mighty Dominate. Very low base damage though, and the useless pre-power makes it a hard sell. What makes Dominate so strong for other ATs is obtained in Bitter Freeze Ray with the exception of Dominate's much much faster animation times at the cost of doing three times less base damage than Bitter Freeze Ray. Other alternatives: with all the proc slotting we can/are be short on accuracy, so ditching Combat Jumping and Athletic Regulation to grab Maneuvers and Tactics. Our poor endurance though... I ramble, it's late, so here's the build: Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.962 http://www.cohplanner.com/ Click this DataLink to open the build!

I've been browsing your Dark proc oriented builds, @oldskool, and you seem to be on to something. Someone over the Defender part of the forums is also leaning on Dark as the best proc carrier. I've seen some good arguments towards Ice though, and at this point I am not sure which will fit better with that goal in mind. That said Ice sins for the rains not carrying procs very well but in practical terms the rains work rather well in a Elder Scrolls sort of thing, which is basically throw both AoE DoTs on the ground and then start picking the hardier enemies while they tick. Even if someone T9 and killed most minions both slows in both rains would keep the hardier mobs slowed and keep on damaging them (the flee effect should not be ignored either. Slooooowly fleeing mobs are mobs not attacking back). Someone over the Corruptor side of the forums showed an Ice build also very proc heavy that seemed interesting, but I have not placed both side by side to dissect which appears better (especially since both would need to be tweaked for a Sentinel). Speaking of dissecting someone over the Scrapper side of the forums showed a Blaster doing some amazing under two minutes times. Well worth looking into though considering we too have Dominate.

Lowered the defenses to 33%-ish. Slotted in some procs, but I'm not sure if it is well done since I'm eschewing the part of PPM where we slot minimal or no recharge into attacks in order to maximize procs happening. But this will do as a first sketch to further refine along the way. Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.962 http://www.cohplanner.com/ Click this DataLink to open the build!

Another update. I haven't gone up very far. T2 Musculature and Degenerative after some false starts regarding incarnates. But as I play the end-game-ish I realize the part of Sonic that made me love the build and have fun is not useful in the end-game. What made Sonic a riot was being beastly survivable (I'm leveling an ice sentinel, and dying so much pre-22 thanks to the agro of the rains and ice breath. My sonic laughed at this including the final pack of simulacrum bosses in Posi 1), and the ability to cycle AoEs. Of course they do anemic damage compared to the big hitters, but that makes sense. In my finished build Frost breath does 182 damage (aim up, no BU, no procs, not including Offensive Adaptation) while Sonic's Howl does 105. That's a 73% damage increase. But now Frost Breath needs 5 seconds to recharge where we are doing ST damage and Sonic has Shockwave doing 81 damage (and more importantly, working at proccing Force Feedback). While this evens out (two cones doing the damage of a single Frost Breath) what is the difference? The difference is that both Shockwave and Howl do the Opportunity fill out *per* enemy hit. That means one cone on a full pack and it's up, we are 90% of the time under Defensive Opportunity, and each cone is healing a nice chunk. Frost Breath does not have this where every mob hit counts. In fact, neither does Fire, nor AR's Buckshot (but Flamethrower does). I do not have a Water sentinel high enough to test Steam Spray but BR's Cutting Beam does have the Opportunity-per-mob. Coupled with the Force Feedback and the build is pretty tough to kill in big groups. In fact, tougher the fewer team mates there are, and noticeably tough the more in trouble the team is. The problem lays in that cones are super finicky to use. Did the target either move slightly to the side or got knocked? Suddenly we miss most of the targets unlike a Fireball effect. Someone T9 or Judgemented and only three or four mobs are left. Other than the fact they will be most likely scattered and running around is there a point in using low damage cones instead of STing one of those harder targets and kill it dead? The AoE in Sonic is sustain AoE. Think of like WoW where sustain AoE is important when a trash pack may take a minute to kill. But in CoH between 30 second T9s and Judgements and 8 man teams cycling these then burst AoE is the absolute ruler. So, that said, it's not that bad. It's just a matter of changing perspectives. The cones are good for soloing, they are good for examplaring, and they are good if we split up from the main group or the team, for some unfathomable reason, is going down. Because, after all, WE TOO have a 30 second T9 and Judgement, we can participate, we are not tied to the cones as our sole means of AoE contribution even if it would be nice to have a Fireball type of power to weave in that is less finicky regarding aiming. Revising the numbers in the OP my elec Stalker's Lightning Rod shows as doing 697 damage in Pines, but I had the BU proc on Aim which Pines takes in consideration. With the same BU proc on Aim on the Sonic which I had not placed in the original numbers, plus Bio's Offensive Adaptation, our T9 goes up to... 694 damage. The next thing I'll be working at will be lowering the defense numbers to 32% in order to free up slotting in the attacks in order to fit in procs. Check the Defender forums where there are some very good threads regarding damage procs and PPM. This will require to munch on a purple when in trouble instead of relying on Barrier. On the other hand it does free Barrier to pick up something else if wanting.

I have to say, Nihili, you really make me want to continue playing my sonic character and test myself. Though not in this particular thing since getting players or dual boxing just to try it would be more than I'd like to get myself into.

I revised the numbers posted since the initial impromptu post-something-while-having-breakfast wasn't well fleshed out. The numbers in ST are closer but depending on how procs work in AoEs Bio boosts those by a good margin. As for what you said, hmmm, I personally don't agree. Healing and resistances crumple like paper under a beating. Healing and resistances work to mitigate the hits that do come in. I speak under the throw-myself-at-a-high-level-pack approach and not a follow-the-tank. That said a 32% approach is much less demanding and if taking too much damage a single purple candy will greatly mitigate damage while said healing and resists keep us up.