Rathulfr

And if you want to try a ranged alternative, */WP Sentinels are very forgiving in solo play. I have an Energy/WP Sentinel at 50+3 that was quite fun to level up.

Agreed. In fact, Iron Man is the inspiration for my main character, be it Blaster or Sentinel. But right now, the problem is that I'm getting, "we don't need you, Sentinel". When I mained a Sentinel, I was almost constantly having to justify my spot on a team. Finally, I just quit fighting it and went back to Blaster. I'm looking forward to the changes.

TBH, I haven't played my ATA Blaster in weeks, since I started playing my EBTM. I'd probably slot it the same as Chronos, Temporal Healing, and any of the other defense powers. Upshot might have gotten 2 or 3 recharges, Agility stayed single-slotted (it can't take any IO sets), Eagle Eye got Numina's 6-slotted for its bonuses, and Gymnastics got either LotG, Reactive Defenses, or Red Fortune.

Oddly enough, I was just thinking about this and wondering if Sentinels couldn't be given something like "Leadership Lite" as an Inherent: a team buff for a small percentage of defense, damage, and accuracy/to-hit. If Sentinels are spotters/lookouts, then their alertness benefits everyone on the team, as they keep everyone informed of target positions and activities. Of course, this bumps them up against the role of VEATs, who also have built-in Leadership powers. Perhaps the difference would be that the Leadership Lite of Sentinels wouldn't stack with the Leadership powers activated by other team mates? I dunno. Just thinking aloud... (more edits) Perhaps the Sentinels' Leadership Lite would buff other attributes, instead of conflicting/stacking with Leadership? Buffs to recharge, recovery, and/or regen might be good? That would also swing them clear of Corruptor/Defender buffs/debuffs.

I must've missed the part of the conversations where someone suggested we marry Tankers to Empathy to create Paladins. I'd like to see a melee/support class like a Paladin, but even Paladins (at least in the D&D or WoW sense of the word) aren't just tank-healers. In fact, what I liked the most about playing Paladin in WoW was that I healed by doing damage: a certain percentage of my spells did both damage and healing, or toggled between damage/healing, depending on the target.

Same here. Everyone tells me I'm a fool for buying purples with Merits, that I could make more money by converting them to boosters/converters for sale on the AH, but that just seems like more time/effort than it's worth. I play the game, I get merits, I buy purples -- simple as that. I still buy/sell things on the AH, but I don't "play" the market: I just don't find that fun.

Thanks for contributing to the conversation, @Captain Powerhouse! I appreciate your time, I know you're busy. Hmm... That's sort of the way I've described it to others, to differentiate it from "tankmage" or "blapper", which I consider different things. Sentinels definitely need some love to make their damage comparable to Scrappers, though. Scrappers have the same base damage modifiers as Blasters, do they not? But I imagine that Sentinels' BDM won't be buffed that much. But even so, I'm not sure I understand how that would make a Sentinel a more valued contributor to a team. In fact, picking "ranged Scrapper" as a model is probably the worst comparison in those regards, because Scrappers don't contribute much else to a team besides damage. I was kind of hoping that Sentinels would offer something more than that. I guess the proof will be in the pudding, when CP gets around to working on this some time in the future (and definitely not Soon™).

Don't let the turkeys get you down. Knockback is the Energy Blaster's damage mitigation mechanism: EMBRACE THE KB! However, I have learned the following tips and tricks for being a "responsible" KB King: Hover is your friend: get above your targets and knock DOWN, not back. If you're above them, your KB will knock them to the floor. Check your targets: are they being used as debuff anchors? If so, skip over that one, and choose a different target. Is your tank working on that target? If so, skip that one, too. Check your geometry for backstops: if you can't KB down, can you KB into a wall or corner instead? Single-target KB is fine: but know that if you knock 'em back, you're committed to knocking them out. Don't start what you can't finish alone. AoE KB is a headache for everyone else on the team. Slot the Overwhelming Force or Sudden Acceleration KB-to-KD conversion procs into your AoEs a.s.a.p. I put the OF set in Explosive Blast and the SA proc in the 6th slot of Nova (I don't take Energy Torrent, because I hate it).

My priorities are: Keep blasting, always. Feed the Blue Bar, always. Prioritize ranged defense over anything else: the other positions/types will come along for the ride. Get used to mezzes and the taste of warehouse floor: you'll never be rid of them. (LOL)

Oh, now I understand. Welcome to the wonderful world of blasters! 😁 Here's my leveling build for my A/TA Blaster. You might find it useful for modeling/adjustments.

With Temporal Healing (+50% Recovery, a.k.a. Eagle Eye in Tactical Arrow) and Stamina (+42% recovery, slotted)? Um, almost forever? My end use is under 2/sec, and my EndRec is over 4/sec. And that's with nine (9) toggles running. On my A/TA Blaster, I run ten (10!) toggles simultaneously. I barely ever see my blue bar move, much less "run dry".

Here's a slightly revised build that keeps Hasten and Super Speed, but restores Assault by dropping Vengeance. Losing +10% damage for +7.5% recharge isn't worthwhile (especially not if that additional 7.5% is "wasted" by long animation times).

Tactical Arrow has Upshot (+30% Recharge for 10 sec) and Agility (+20% Recharge auto), while Temporal Manipulation has Chronos and Time Lord, which offer equivalent bonuses to recharge. I have both Chronos and Time Lord in my build, so you would have the same benefits if you take Upshot and Agility. I also have a 50+3 Archery/TA Blaster, who has both of these, as well.

It occurs to me that the 1 second I gained is about the same benefit I get when Force Feedback: 33% Chance for +100% Recharge procs. It's still proc'ing, but again, that has no effect on animation times, so my rotation was still 5 seconds total. So basically, that entire proc is wasted now, too. I'll have to keep testing with an additional emphasis on watching Nova to see if that matters.

Because (a) I like playing ranged DPS, and (b) I hate chasing down targets. I play my Sentinel like a Brute: I jump into the fray and just blast the s*t out of everything I can. More times than I can count, my Sentinel has been last man standing, even after the tanker goes down. There's nothing like that feeling, which is why I love playing tankmage. But honestly, once my Blaster got to 50 and was fully built out with IO sets, his ranged, smashing, and lethal were at the 45% soft-cap, and melee was at 33%. So he's almost as durable as my Sentinel. The Blaster is still vulnerable to mezz and cascade failures, but that doesn't happen often. So the trade-off for significantly better damage is worthwhile, and now my Sentinel is collecting Day Job badges. 😒 I need a reason to play my Sentinel now: something a Sentinel can do that's unique/different than my Blaster. It sure ain't damage, and durability ain't it either. I wouldn't mind lower damage if I could actually tank as a Sentinel, but I have no aggro management tools (setting aside the Presence pool, which I've actually considered). A measly 5% -Res debuff (20% when Opportunity knocks) simply doesn't cut it when compared to Corruptors or Defenders. So what is my role? What does a Sentinel actually do that isn't done better by another AT?

Thistledown, represent! (And it's "Hub", not "Sub".)

One of the things that folks don't consider when just looking at the numbers is the animation times for attack powers. Hasten reduces recharge time, but not animation time. Energy Blast powers have really long animation times, so it takes time to cycle through each of the powers in a rotation. It doesn't matter if the powers recharge quickly if I'm still busy cycling through the previous power. If I'm still busy with firing off my T3 power, it doesn't really matter if my T1 comes back in under 1 second. So the recharge provided by Hasten can sometimes be "wasted" while I'm waiting for animations to finish. Just for chuckles and grins, I respec'ed my build to drop Stealth, Invisibility, and Assault, so that I could take Hasten, Super Speed (for stealth), and Vengeance (to mule LotG +Recharge). I lost 5% of my defense for +70% recharge (for a total of +172%). That seems like a good trade-off on paper, right? That basically shaved a grand total of about 1 second off my normal single-target rotation. One (1) second. I ran a bunch of missions and there was no significant difference/improvement to my damage output. I was still churning through my same rotation in about 5 seconds (instead of 6), because Hasten doesn't improve animation times -- they're still the same. So the net improvement to my rotation was only 17%: that means that 53% of the +70% provided by Hasten was "wasted". Sure, my other powers recharged faster, but I don't use them all the time. So I could maybe justify it for those, or for long AV fights, but otherwise... meh. So is a net +17% improvement to recharge worth a loss of 5% defense? I'm not sure yet: I'm willing to keep trying it out for the moment. YMMV *shrug*

At least he's using the crosswalk, so he's not jaywalking.

+1: I can confirm that I encountered this bug just now. Thanks! Couldn't train it while leveling up, nor did it appear upon respec.

/macro RoA powexec_location target Rain of Arrows

TL;DR: Increase Sentinel base damage modifier to 1.0. I'd like to add some general comments, instead of specific suggestions. Back in retail, an Energy/Energy Blaster (50+3) named Rathstar was my main for 8 years (2004-2012). When Homecoming came along, I re-created that main, and got him up into the 40s within the first few weeks. But along the way, I decided to try out this new "Sentinel" thing. *record scratch* I then proceeded to play about a dozen different Sentinel builds, most of them well into the 30s, and half of them to 50. Rathstar was reborn as an Energy/Willpower Sentinel, and he became my 50+3 T4 main. Most of you here in this neck of the forums will recall my many posts declaring my love for, and defense of, Sentinels. But something was still off, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I had converted from Blaster to Sentinel because of the latter's durability. I love playing "tankmage". But I was definitely feeling more "tank" than "mage". And the more I played my Sentinels into higher levels and end-game content, the more I noticed that my damage output wasn't at all competitive with that of Blasters. And I don't mean by a little: it was significantly less damage. I respec'ed over and over again, trying to improve my damage output, but to no avail. Then a friend pointed out some of the features of the newer Blaster secondaries, and the improvements that had been made to all of them. I tried out a few, and the difference was stark -- night and day. The damage output of Blasters isn't just a little better than that of Sentinels: it's ridiculously better. I resigned myself to what had to be done. Rathstar was re-reborn again, this time as an Energy/Temporal Blaster. My Energy/Willpower Sentinel was relegated to "evil twin" status: I changed his costume (I added a van dyke and a scar) and alignment (villain), and renamed him "Wrathstar". The bottom line here is Sentinel damage is weak compared to an equivalent Blaster. Yes, the base damage modifier explains most of that, but not all of it. I suspect that Blaster secondaries complement their primaries with better synergy, which makes sense, because they were designed that way. Sentinel secondaries were designed for melee ATs, so they don't synergize well with ranged primaries. One can say that the base damage modifier of Sentinels is the same as Corruptors, so that should be sufficient, but I would argue no, it is not. Again, Corruptor secondaries and their inherent (Scourge) were designed to complement/synergize the primaries. So Corruptors augment their base damage with signficant buffs/debuffs. So Sentinel damage can't even really compete with Corruptor (or some Defender) damage, either. I would argue that Sentinel damage needs to be buffed because they lack complementary secondaries, unlike Blasters and Corruptors, which have them. I won't argue that the Sentinel base damage modifier needs to be increased to the same value as that of Blasters, but increased to above Corruptors wouldn't be unreasonable. A base modifier of 1.0 would probably be the upper limit. I've already posted my preference for removing the AoE caps and changing Opportunity, above. Thanks for suffering through the long rant.

The main objections to Sentinels are: weak damage and they don't offer anything significant to teams. Removing/changing the AoE caps would address some of the first objection. Changing the inherent to something simpler and more obviously beneficial to the team would address the second objection. I think the Opportunity trigger needs to go away entirely: no more cues or clicks, please. I'd rather have it trigger automatically when the bar is filled. It should also trigger both the offensive and defensive benefits at the same time, and they should apply to everyone on the team, not just the Sentinel. Basically, I'd like folks to say, "yes, we need a Sentinel" instead of, "no, Sentinels not welcome here."

I use all of the original animations.

I'm looking forward to Energy Melee Scrappers! *cross-fingers*

It happened to me, too. Coincidentally, I was also browsing stuff on the /AH, and when I bought something, that seemed to "knock something loose" and my e-mail showed up. Weird.