Sovera

I find EA a bit squishy for actual tanking. The first thing that struck my mind is that you really have a lot of attacks. I doubt you need them all. So I trimmed them down to Body Blow (Body Blow and Smashing Blow seemed pretty interchangeable in terms of damage and animation time but Smashing Blow requires an extra power pick), Focused Burst and Concentrated Strike. This is very examplar unfriendly though, but it depends on what you have in mind for the character. You can buy the P2W attacks if you intend to exemp down to Posi 1 or 2, or even Synapse. Or ditch Torrent and take Smashing Blow instead if you do intend to exemp down to such low levels. A rotation of Focused Strike, Body Blow, Focused Burst, Body Blow, Focused Strike should be easily done. For AoE you have Torrent with the IO to not scatter mobs everywhere, Burst, Electrifying Fences and Ball Lightning. Hasten is at 125 seconds and with the Force Feedback in both AoE and ST attacks you're going to have it and Energize able to be perma-ed. The endurance recovery isn't huge at 3.5 without incarnates (and with accolades), but with Energize and Power Drain you should be alright. I took flying instead of Super-Jump + Super Speed but it's easy to just change to your whims. The Kismet finishes softcapping attacks against +3 which is where you'll be after the first incarnate level shift. No luck for psi resist/defense, sorry.

Yes? I know what Meltdown does.

Call me blind, but perhaps it's because I just woke up, but I don't see any visible improvements. 170 second hasten, no defense layer, big boost in psi resistance (good), some in cold and fire (inconsequential in end game), overall slightly worse resistances on the more common damage types, loss of an extra AoE.

I wanted to try a /Rad since I never really did a resistance set before (ignoring an abandoned /FA). I ended up going for Rad/ because it works so well mechanically, even though it does feel pretty clunky with the long-ass weird animations (it is one of the few sets where I prefer to just wait for my shorter attacks to recharge instead of using my super long winded Devastating Blow.). I feel Rad/ works better on a Scrapper. Since it is my first /Rad I don't know if I did a good job of it. Tips are welcome. The premise is a gimmicky softcap melee defense relying on Beta Decay's -ToHit. I know it is not exactly perfect (I remember testing it on a Blaster and both pylon and level 54 mobs did not resist the -ToHit but I did not test on AVs) and the radius is short (8 yards, but to be hit in melee mobs will be in those 8 yards anyway), but it's primarily a resist set after all. The defense is just an extra layer. The gimmicky part can be ignored by swapping the six slot ATO from Atom Smasher to Devastating Blow and five slotting Superior Avalanche into Atom Smasher. Either way the Destiny slot goes to Barrier as a panic button since I don't feel we gain much from Ageless. Hasten is at pretty damn decent 125 seconds with the Force Feedback in Radioactive smash able to push it to perma and not even mentioning the extra recharge when surrounded by enemies from Beta Decay. Considering I have seen some /Rad builds pushing for 170 seconds Hasten this part worked out better than expected. I had no slots for Electrifying Fences, but eh, I often finding myself not using it since it makes enemies not hug me and it certainly helped me choose to slot Ground Zero instead. Fusion + Ground Zero + Atom Smasher and we don't have minions to fight. The resistances are at: 83% S/L 76% Fire 44% Cold (low, but not terribly important in the end game) 75% energy 63% negative (eeeeeeh) 67% toxic 25% psi (eeeeeeeeeeeeeeh) All of these gain an extra 5% minimum from Barrier. Endurance recovery is low at 3.06 EPS on Mids, but it has another 0.60% from Gamma Boost that Mids ignores and Particle Shielding to help. At level 31 and with no accolades or anywhere near being slotted I'm at 2.70 EPS with Gamma Boost and my endurance drains rrrrreally slowly with Particle Shielding taking up the slack once I get to half blue bar. Tough and Weave have not yet been taken and will be a further drain but by then I should be better slotted with endurance reduction in attacks. If there is interest I can whip out a leveling build that I suspect should be able to softcap melee earlier than level 50. But I just stock up on purples between missions and use them when needed. At level 31 it's no longer a juggling act and I often don't pop purples any longer.

Overall I would say a character just for soloing I'd make a Rad/Bio (I actually do have one). The heal from Radiation Siphon is just nuts and Irradiated Ground ensures it is up often. 300 HP every few seconds tops health very easily when it matters which is hard fights. Easy fights are just a blur of AoE. The rest of the time it's all on Ablative or DNA Siphon, the swiss knife skill.

The quartermasters do not sell insps (only SOs), but all the others you've mentioned do and are great choices. I didn't want a human nurse in my base but the Combat Log was *perfect*. Kudos!

You might want to check that you have the latest Hero Designer from here. I'm going to assume to mean the last iteration of the build, so Shockwave has the other three Superior Brute's Fury + Sudden Acceleration KB >KD + Force Feedback proc + Javelin's Volley acc/dmg/end/rech boosted to +5.

There are plenty of /Bio builds out there that you can grab one and just substitute the primary. I can't tell you the best attacks or rotation for FM but, again, hunt for a FM guide and mash the two together.

/Bio tends to be stupid since it's super survival on top of being an offense oriented set. I'm currently playing a Claws/Bio which exemps really well and has an early AoE. I have the build on the forums. Rad melee is also pretty fun while being stupidly survivable on account of the passive healng in Radiation Siphon that, on my Scrapper, healed for 300 HP. It also mitigates the lack of early AoE (it only has the 'real' AoE at 32) by having the Contaminated splash damage mechanic and Irradiated Ground that actually does more damage than a regular damage aura since A) it does not require accuracy, B) takes in a LOT of damage procs (in fact the usual slotting for it is six procs), and finally, C) it drops a patch on the ground every 5 seconds giving it double the value. Resist based armor sets are pretty good too but I never played one so I can't tell you more about them.

You da man woman!

While it's not actually solo what I like the most is duoing stuff. Solo itself is dull and repetitive. And in the case of finding glowies even worse. But duo we can chat and split up to find glowies and go woooo when we win. Nothing stops a full team and that makes it as interesting as the RP events where the leader did not take in consideration a possible loss so everything is railroaded into finishing ez pz. With the memorable exception of doing Market Crash with under leveled characters, as a +3, which we slogged through *slowly* and losing one person along the way, and when reaching the giant robot we wipe three times and the team disbands (after trickling back one by one and engaging the fight making them be defeated one by one).

We need more insp sellers. I've been running to the hospital each time I want to stock up. Why do the guys around miss Liberty stop stelling insps at level 20? Or the NPC we can put in the base?

Slight update. Messed with things, lost some resistance, gained some recharge, picked up Slash for the -res, patched the (small) negative hole, threw the second ATO proc into the aura so it goes off on its own. Had to mule a Kinetic Combat *disgusted shudder*. This one is definitely a level 50 build as Slash's longer cooldown only really fits in with all the recharge in place otherwise there will be big gaps. So the advice is still to level with Strike, Focus and Follow-Up. Did a Posi 1 and the build felt slow as molasses so shifted things around to get Hasten much earlier, but this is not strictly necessary as I just want to be extremely exemp friendly with this build (it's my favorite so far even if lacking the big oomph of my Rad Scrapper doing Fusion + Gaussian proc + Devastating Blow + Scrapper crit).

I asked on chat but other than a laconic 'badges' none seemed interested in answering. There are winter lords chasings, baby farms, etc, but what *are* the rewards for doing wintery stuff?

I'm rather pleased with this combo and despite not breaking any new grounds I felt like it can be of use in case of someone is looking for this particular combo. I like it quite a bit because we get an early PbAoE which tides us over until 32 (something Super Strength definitely could use) while boasting of something I also really like which is short animations. No big wind-ups for two and a half seconds while we watch the mob we were targeting be killed by someone else. It also boasts of a complete AoE chain that fits my second criteria of 'things I really like' which is not being forced to do single target attacks while surrounded by enemies since my AoEs are recharging. At end level I can Follow Up for the damage boost, then Spin, Shockwave and start again. Incidentally floating on top of mobs (instead of in the middle of them) allows us to do the whole AoE rotation including Spin and Shockwave (with Shockwave behaving like a PbAoE) without need for repositioning. There is a lot of soft CC in the form of KD happening. Focus has a chance for it, Shockwave does it 100% of the time, Spin has a chance too. It also exemps pretty well even down to Posi 1 since it still gets the full attack chain and the AoE. Unlike SS which boom, goes back to single targetting everything. Sad. I also aimed at 40% defense to everything (except Fire/Cold since it's a rare combo in the end game, but scrounge a slot and finish the slotting in Strike if it matters to you) to let Barrier take care of the last 5%. Claw's low endurance and fast recharging costs plays well with this approach allowing to ignore Ageless. Hasten is a fair bit off being perma but we hardly need it. Both Focus and Shockwave have a FF proc to speed things up but don't get too excited about them since the short CD plus short animation plus slotted recharge makes the chance of them proccing low. Still, we hit fast and lots of times so why not have them slotted? Everything has been calculated (though there is always room for improvement). The general sloting + the Kismet + one use of Follow-up leaves the build at 90-95% hit chance against +3 which is where our first level shift leaves us. The Fury proc would have sat better in the aura, but I had no real place to slot the six Unrelenting Fury and not mess the other set bonus. As a compromise I placed it in Follow-Up which will always be used be it in in ST or AoE. ST rotation is Follow-Up, Slash, Focus and then play whack a mole to which of the three is back up. After level 32 and while our slotting is not firmly in place Shockwave can help with any gaps though it is more endurance expensive. Downsides of the build? We don't get to crow about omfgdidyouseethatchunkofHPIjustdeletedoffthatboss!? and we do a *lot* of small hits which means we might need to hit something twice as much as someone who is doing slow ponderous crushing moves. This suits me though, I like doing small hits and not have huge wind-up moves that animation lock me in place. Slash resistant mobs are noticeably slower to take down as well. Robots and Wolves from Council needs more hits. This is what I am using. Cheapo build. No particular effort has been to patch all the holes since it's an interrim/leveling build. Scrapper (Claws Bio leveling).mbd For leveling I recommend to take Swipe until level 18 and then respec out of it. I would also place an extra generic recharge IO in Spin (and the other attacks) at least until Hasten is picked otherwise there will be large gaps before we get all the slotting in place. I'm currently 31 and no longer have those big gaps between all the recharge set bonus and Hasten. Buy a jetpack off the START vendor to use until Fly unlocks.

Others here have said that they managed it though. All a matter of blocking LoS until the -HP debuff has passed or somesuch.

Funny enough I just come from raging against Market Crash's last boss. It always has a 22.5% chance to hit. I thought it was due to some incarnate shiz, but not, after loading up on purples ON TOP of my softcap it still had 22.5%. I then tried loading up on oranges but despite lasting longer I still got two shot eventually. I was unaware of the -HP since I've messed with my buff icons and it doesn't show. It made me so disgusted with my Sentinel, which frankly I had been eyeing sideways for a while, that I feel I'll just ditch it and go back to something that actually does damage like a scrapper.

Remember you can swap the animation from breath to a palm attack.

This is my experience leveling a Sentinel after all these months of playing one all the time (I have something like 28 saved builds for Sentinels compared to 4 builds for scrappers, 3 Blasters, 5 Controllers, etc). And this is leveraging my understanding of procs and each attack having two, no recharge, etc. I pity the regular players leveling a Sentinel without the experience to load up on damage procs to help what frankly feels like anemic damage.

Range *is* a defense. Lets not play petty games and pretend it is not. Just a few days ago I was doing a Yin and when it was Clamor time someone clicked on the computers and suddenly boom, the initial ambush now had the second ambush on top of it and at exemp level 25ish the team was not ready to handle it and most of the team wiped. At that level Blasters aren't tough enough yet and the meleers we had couldn't keep up with their low level skills not completely slotted. Of the eight only three survived and whittled the ambush down. I was floating when I saw things were going pear shaped, and munching purples, but the damage I was taking I know very well that if I was on the ground taking melee damage on top of ranged damage (plus mobs wasting time running around trying to get to me by jumping on the upper rafters) then I would have been licking ground especially once my purples were gone. Which is where a Sentinel shines. All Sentinel players have their stories of surviving a wipe and eventually killing everything. In this context a Sentinel's toughness is welcome. It's just wasted once we reach high level and both meleers and Blasters then fix their defensive holes. It's a bit like a Hunter in WoW. A Beastmaster's ability to do damage on the run without having cast times makes them enormously overpowered during hard fights as they are learned. But once the fights are learned and the casters and melee know their role and where to move, and when, they start overshadowing Hunters. It is what I mentioned a page ago. Were this the original CoH then Sentinels would have a place in it. The tough ranged character who does less damage than a pure damage dealing AT. Watch them do asspulls! Watch them hold the line once the meleers get overwhelmed! But with the IO end game fixing the defensive holes but not having an answer to do the same in upping damage (increasing recharge is the only way, but putting in lots of defense does not exclude also adding recharge) there is no real downside to just play a pure damage dealer. I think their real strength is something we never bring up and that is how they are so well balanced. Pick a blaster. You want damage? You play Fire. Playing anything else is gimping yourself to do a third of the damage. Ice with procs can keep up with Fire who doesn't even care about procs, which seems like a bad thing, but actually means they can ignore them and focus on grabbing set bonus, something which proc users are gimping themselves out of. But anything else is just disappointing as damage is traded for dubious utility. I had a Radiation Blaster triple procced in all attacks and I expected a lot out of it having come from a Sentinel with the same primary, only to see it do some Sentinel level numbers. I dropped it, made a new blaster, picked Fire, and *without* procs discovered a *large* difference. A Sentinel though? Want Ice? Go for Ice. Want Radiation? Go for Radiation. Want Fire? Go for Fire. But you don't want HAVE to go Fire if we want damage. The sets are perfectly balanced (at most Assault Rifle could use a tweak for it's T9) allowing to pick the thematic flavor as desired being sure we are not gimping themselves. TW, SS, StJ and Fire for Blaster could sure enjoy some of that. Btw, this is just me having a conversation shooting the breeze here. I have no vested interest in lobbying a 'Save The Sentinels' cause. At most it's an academic thing just talking between ourselves. I no longer play a Sentinel (and I think this is a common thing if were to take a poll) so to me it does not really matter if they are buffed or not.

Only in numbers though, but yes, when I hear the semi-cringe inspiring roleplay ideas to buff Sentinels with things like perception, ToHit and scouting ahead, then the Crab Spider does all of that and more. But they lack build diversity. Two choices VS 100-ish choices makes EATs underpopulated for a reason.

Check my link in the post above where I tested the variable % of Offensive Adaptation. Who knows but the devs? Obviously doing a flat 25% as advertised that it would do was not an option though.

Despite my naysaying I'm actually leveling another Sentinel to cleanse my palate of all the brutes and scrappers. A Sentinel instead of a Blaster because of their strengths.... which is not being armored and having CC protection but rather being able to toss Blizzard every 24 seconds instead of 40+. I have this whole gimmicky build who is purely ranged but still softcapped and has the purple KD proc in Frost Breath, the Overwhelming KD proc in Ice Storm (not sure if it will actually work well, but didn't get to test before the servers went down), and Blizzard having native KD baked in. Hardcapped slow and recharge debuff on mobs plus a ton of slippery amusement. It will be good for funsies if nothing else.

Throw it against a pylon for testing purposes. My best time on pure ranged attacks on a Sentinel is four minutes.

SR was the squishiest armor I tried both as a Tanker and as a Sentinel. You'd somehow expect otherwise, but not really. But I also stress tested beyond what the game (usually) throws at us. As a rule we are not at the agro cap for minutes on end. As a Tanker, good grief, the fact it did not have a heal meant I had to get Aid Self, and Aid Self simply became a part of my rotation. AoE, AoE, ST attack, Aid-Self. Knowing Aid-Self recharged in 6 seconds it was amazing the spam I did. The scaling resists only really became noticeable at around 30% HP which was really living on the edge. It was pretty stressful, and more than once I was watching Aid Self's CD with hawkeyes urging it to recharge faster. My Sentinel did not even manage that. The first 30 seconds of stress testing and it was hugging the floor since it lacked the increased everything a Tanker gets. Aid Self did not nearly keep up. Now, that said, for regular play SR is fine. We meet a pack of 10-12 mobs of which more than half are minions, we use Aim, we throw our nuke, most minions are dead, we throw the rest of our AoEs and then start picking at lieuts and bosses. It is not particularly difficult since after the first few seconds we may be fighting 4-5 mobs. The most rounded set for me is Ninjutsu. Baked in stealth (less alpha if we start combat without mobs shooting at us before half are dead), endurance recovery clicky, heal (no need to mess with Aid Self), softcapped defenses and better resists that work straight from 100% HP. The status protection being a clicky can be annoying but with keybinds we can make it and Hasten alternate being our autos. Energy Armor is just squishy and I don't know why even softcapped, but it handled stress tests pretty poorly (same applies to regular playing as mentioned above). Bio is simply the most survivable of the sets I played so far if we don't mind being locked into Barrier (it always gives 5% minimum defense so we can aim for 40% across the board) and convoluted slotting to reach softcaps. The noob trap of the extra 25% damage from Offensive Adaptation is A) not actually a 25% damage boost. It actually goes as low as 8.5% on the nuke, and B) there is such a tight power and slot budget that we lose what little we gained. Procs make a HUGE difference. My Rad/Ninjutsu without triple procs in all attacks needed 6 minutes to break a pylon (obligatory 'pylon killing mentioned not because it matters but as a metric') and WITH procs needed four minutes. To compare my Rad/Bio also had triple procs AND Offensive Adaptation, but the DPS loss from the tight slotting made the gain from Offensive a wash as it too ended up needing four minutes to break a pylon.