Sovera

I played a Scrapper KM almost to 50 but felt disappointed and let it be. The same reason I felt that way applies to Stalkers but is corrected a little bit, and that's that the rotation is fast if we only use the early attacks, sure, but the attacks are all low damage *because* they are early ones. Stalker helps in the ST damage (as it always does) by substituting the T1 for AS (obviously a large large upgrade). Just three ST attacks leads to some annoyance in how we can't do a gapless AS, T3, T2, AS, since AS will not have recharged by then. We must do AS, T2, T3, T2, AS, which makes AS' hidden proc go 'wasted' on a T2. If we are doing max level content only then Moonbeam/Zapp can sort of takeover (Moonbeam better, but Zapp gives access to another AoE) as AS, Moonbeam, T3, T2, but Moonbeam's large recharge makes it awkward to use for every rotation. Otherwise yes, KM is not just really pretty but fast and fluid. It only has one AoE but it's decent in how it comes early and allows to fit in a Force Feedback and the recharge is sort of perfect to try always use AS before it to fish for auto crit.

I do that all the time. I don't own a Tanker, but all my characters play like one in the sense they jump into a group first and unload AoEs and aim to kill the hardest target in there. But once the team catches up I never stay there moping up. You call it bad playing, I call it normal playing. Even on a +4x8 a full group annihilates spawns. A full team all competing to kill is an orgy of attacks trying to nail a mob before it dies and there are a lot of animations flying to hit a corpse. I'm not trying to change your mind with this but if there are two or three anemic lieutenants and a half HP boss left and there are 5-6 team members dealing with them I don't see the need to stay, nor do I believe those few scattered mobs to be an actual threat to the team. I would rather be bouncing to the next group, unload AoEs, and when the team arrives the mobs are nice and clustered around me to be ravaged by their AoEs.

Controllers want to feel useful and that means spamming their skills. The solution isn't to gripe but to gently insist on team chat to *not* spam mass immobilizes until the enemies are close. Some might not care, some will, but without communication no changes will happen for sure.

They haven't, no worries.

Second iteration of the final build. Seeing how I find myself not using Cutting Beam there was no point in having it overslotted. Changed things around and placed the Opportunity proc in Disintegrate to get more of a bar refill during ST rotations which is when it comes in slower. I could definitely remove Cutting Beam since I don't use it, but if exemping under level 28 I lose Overload and that's when having a second AoE is welcome. As it turns out Cross Punch mules Avalanche which was something I had not explored previously. This opens the epic pool and since I needed a melee attack to mule why not go for the big guns? Having KO Blow and not put a FF proc in would have been practically a sin since despite playing the character 100% ranged sometimes something flies into range, and then a Popeye punch to the crotch is just too nice to pass up.

We're at 12%, near the top.

We have a patch, maybe it is out today!

x10 😄

Also, this was the most fun I had with a Sentinel. Just look at those gifs. CC *and* near immortal!

Done and done.

After a tepid attempt at Dual Pistols I turned to a Beam seeking more damage. In the low levels we can feel it. The Disintegrate effect has noticeable chunks of HP removed which is noticeable coming from a Dual Pistols. This wanes later on, but I think (without having pylon tested for metrics) that the single target is actually decent. For a Sentinel. I expected more from the Disintegrate spreading having visions of loadsa splash damage, but not really. The splash damage is not all that being just a carrier for the effect which is ACTUALLY meant to trigger MORE damage when skills are used on something that has Disintegrate. In practice this doesn't work out too well since everything dies too fast. I took being level 40+ running a +3 ITF to finally feel I could use this mechanic. So, in practice. Using AoE or ST skills on a target that has Disintegrate makes it take extra damage. While leveling and everything dying fast this can be mostly ignored as nothing +0 lasts long. Open with Cutting Beam, use Refractor Beam, pick a target, use Disintegrate, Charged Shot, then Lancer Shot. This will spread Disintegrate and the next uses of Cutting Beam and Refractor Beam will thus do more damage to those affected. Piercing Beam might be better if it hits more than once mob, but screw dat 2.64 animation. Still, both Piercing and Lancer are interchangeable so pick what you'd like. After 32 things finally pick up. The AoE rotation becomes Disintegrate, Aim, Overcharge, Refractor Beam, Charged shot, cycling Disintegrate (to start the spread), followed by Charged Shot (to activate Defensive Opportunity which in AoE situations ought be up 90% of the time, but also also to fish for Force Feedback procs) and Refractor Beam (doing a bit extra damage to those who have Disintegrate). These three can be used near gapless even before the build is finished. In ST situations replace Refractor for Lancer Shot. I've stopped using Cutting Beam at this point though I suppose an argument could be made for using it. But long animation cones that do double digit damage are just 🙂 . I suggest trying it and see how it works out. In my experience the Aim + Overcharge alpha kills most minions leaving only lieutenants and bosses and those are being tackled by the rest of the team, so using the cone for 4-5 mobs doesn't feel interesting and I prefer to help killing the hard targets with Refractor Beam tossed in as a nod to AoE. A more advanced rotation (if things live that long) would be Disintegrate, Charged Shot, Refractor Beam, Lancer Shot, Charged shot, Refractor Bem. Basically using Disintegrate only every two rotations. The good interactions with the build: Defensive Opportunity *really* likes Cutting Beam, Disintegrate (I think) , Refractor Beam, and Overload. A single use of any of these on a group and the opportunity bar fills to the max. This also means a use of these ALSO triggers Defensive Opportunity flooding us with small heals and endurance. As a purely ranged character on top of this it means not only decent self healing that tops us but also that my experience is leveling at 90%-100% endurance the whole time which is why there is no attempt at adding more Recovery to the build. The expensive end game build. Cremate and Fire Sword Circle are meant to be fillers and not really be used. Some might say not using Fire Sword Circle would be a waste and I possibly agree with them (mobs do try to come to us, this character is an agro magnet). Use if you'd like. Mids also says there are two free slots but it's just Mids not able to handle Fire Sword where it is. Leveling build/I don't have money for the super expensive stuff build. No effort has been made to fix the defense. This is merely an interim build:

Well, in my case, Scrappers are the only thing worth playing. Anything else is faffing around. Even at low levels my Claws scrapper will plunge into a group, Spin, get a crit and wipe several minions. On the other hand any Sentinel will go three AoE rotations (use all AoEs, wait for recharge, do it again) before killing even level minions. That's... just... bad. But when I get bored of meleeing I do come back to Sentinels because they just start early. They are tough, and at 32 they start wiping groups partly on their own. If you never played one this level 32 thing is what they live off on with 25 second nukes once all is slotted up. But outside of it the damage is just nothing special. But approach a spawn, pop Aim, drop the nuke, quickly throw the rest of the AoEs while Aim is still up and most things are pretty hurt with all minions dead. The sad thing is afterwards with everything still alive and the nuke recharging 😄 Anyway, I'm being too pessimistic. It's good fun to be tough and zoom around shooting things and not have to chase them. It's also nice to not have to worry about CC or being squishy. I would recommend a Beam/ sentinel, I guess. The ST damage seems nicer to me (I haven't tested yet to see if it actually is better from others I have played) while the AoE seems about the same as the others (two digit AoEs, wooo! The AT really is balanced around that fast recharging nuke). If you want I have a Beam/Bio and I was thinking of throwing a quick write-up for it.

I've looked at this combo and even cooked up a build, but the damage numbers were so abysmally low, even on a Sentinel's standards, that I didn't touch it after theorycrafting a build. The one thing that would liven up the build would be removing the 15 second CD on repeating Water Jet, but with the 15 seconds, eh. It does seem to have nice AoE though. But after playing water a couple of times the combo system is too unwieldy. There is a disconnect in the devs who cooked Water/ and Beam/ with the actual gameplay. Things happen too fast to be building combo points and the 5% chance is an artifact of ye old D&D times that messes with combo building too. That said go for it, maybe you will enjoy it. Your build had a lot of empty slots so it is hard to gauge things. I will say that you probably do not need at all all those slots in Stamina and Health. Defensive Opportunity is all your need. I'm leveling a Beam/Bio atm and unlike my scrappers who are touch and go with endurance all the way to 40+ this gal is either at 90% endurance or 100% for the whole duration (though mind the Beam/ interacts very nicely with Defensive Opportunity which may not be the case of Water). By the same token I find I hardly ever use Rebuild DNA so I have it at minimal slotting which is more than enough. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've had to use it on a 100% ranged character who has Ablative as a first line of defense. Were Water with any sort of melee range skills like a PbAoE nuke and you might need that extra heal more, but this is not the case. Important: pre-emptive munching on purples is better for your health than munching on greens. Use your favorite base macro and replenish your purple insps between missions. I'm going to throw you the build I had worked out, just shift things according to your desires (like taking out Flight/Afterburner for Athletic/etc). Cremate and Fire Sword Circle are mules and not particularly meant to be used, so again, shift around at will.

It's not the tanker thread. The overwhelming response has been 'yes please, can we have it yesterday?'.

Yes, I've abandoned my DP/Bio as well. I thought it would get better but it hasn't. I can't help but feel that feel Sentinels are a baby class. Fun to play with a bit but clunky and weak so at some point we move back to a real AT. My Beam/Bio is feeling good, but looking under the hood and it's also weak. AoEs doing double digits means painfully whittling down enemies. While my Claws Scrapper has Spin doing 200 damage, and if it crits then double that. It's common for me to plunge into a spawn and do Follow-Up and Spin and most minions are dead, and no need to wait 25 seconds to do it again.

*vibrates harder still*

Throw it into your SG bank so another character can use it if they ever need it?

Ugh, I had the build all planned and with that I'll have to re-tweak it 😄 Thanks for the tip though.

The 'instead of a knockdown it does extra fire damage' wording doesn't actually interfere then?

For you DP experts what ammo choice are you using? For procs to be use the lethal ammo must be used?

S'done already.

I had a triple procced pure range Rad/ sentinel which I used to think did amazing damage until I tested and had a 4 minute pylon kill and no tweaking improved it (6 minutes without using procs). 4 minutes is sort of decent since my my pure ranged tanky Blaster did it in 3 minutes, but it's slooooow. Perhaps if it had cool short animations instead of lengthy ones it would at least be a blender.

Adding to the idea above, a marked target loses the base 5% chance of missing we have baked in (why do we still have this DnD artifact? Either we are accurate enough to hit or not, and as I joked on a TF yesterday if I had 95% chance to fail missing winning the lotto I would like to do it on CoH). It may not be glamorous, it might not be -res, but no missing attacks would be a bump in the damage both in team or alone.

I'm going to add more to Replacement's words. This *is* turning needlessly hostile for what is a bit of harmless banter on the forums, but what Solarverse did I would have appreciated when I ran an underleveled team against Market Crash's last boss. We tried, we got defeated several times, people gave up. Three times, and they gave up... Only later did I learn that the last boss does a -HP debuff and knowing this did I pay attention and sure enough there are no defenses and resistances in the world that can keep us up when we go from 1.7k HP to 600 HP. So if someone had said, after the first wipe, 'Guys, if you are being targetted take a few hits but then run away for someone else to take the aggro so the debuff drops' then I'm sure we could have managed it without the disbanding. And while a lot of people here are acting as if they were born bred and raised suckling on CoH's teat I'm pretty sure that they had to learn it. A widow blinding or the Red Prototype doing a -HP debuff are good things to be made aware of. Personally even now I drop the SG macro base into the chat when running a TF instead of assuming everyone knows of it by now. And I still get the occasional 'oh hey, this is *very* useful!' indicating someone didn't.

That was exactly my reaction as well. And plus not needing so many sets allows to aim for different goals with an EA. That said your 'mistake' was aiming for 45% since the last 5% are a bitch. 40% is the sweetspot allowing for some more freedom in recovery and recharge bonuses. As for /Bio's S/L resistance it hovers around 63-65% with Offensive up, add another 5% if going the Barrier route. I'd personally not aim for incarnate softcap. 45% is fine for most everything and a small purple throws us at near incarnate cap, and those can be easily replenished between missions. Defense debuffs are /bio's big weakness though, no lie. ITF is that achille's heel. But depending on the build it can work, we can't just act like the build is immortal to *everything*. WM in particular can face the ITF thanks to all the CC. Mobs aren't attacking if they are on their back and the hard hitting WM does is killing them in droves while they flop.