Frosticus

Proc'd out savage leap is among the best aoe attacks in the game. It most closely compares to a sentinel nuke, but with half the recharge and a very fast cast. It is up every 15 or so seconds with a perma hasten build and procs at 89% for 3.5ppm IOs. It also ensures you move faster than anyone else from spawn to spawn. Psychic wail is great too. It, along with aim, and follow up, are why I made a melee fort instead of nightwidow, but that is a 2.5 min power vs a 40 sec base rech power that do similar damage in game. 16 vs 10 targets, but leap moves you super fast around the battle too. Truthfully I rolled savage on a whim because someone said hidden hemo was good. It really is, I think it is only less than crushing uppercut in terms of damage (albeit a dot, but much faster cycle time). Unhidden hemo is meh, so use it accordingly. But savage leap is the absolute star of the set.

savage leap is 15' and damage application is near instant with the teleport being extremely quick too. I was actually referencing rending flurry as it is very easy to convert it into the 15' version as part of your alpha.

proc'd out savage leap, the option of a fairly quick 15ft pbaoe and hidden hemorrage make savage arguably the best aoe set and among the best st sets. lethal kinda holds you back sometimes.

Prior to set bonuses, doms objectively struggle with: - hitting +lvl enemies/debuffers as they largely lack tohit buffs - being slot starved as both primary and secondary are fairly demanding - endurance management as controls are costly and high rech/ds attacks chew through end - lack of full time mez protection - attack chain flow seeing as many assault sets are clunky until their lvl 38 power - encouraged to fight in melee range without armor/hp/mez protection - lack of burst damage - limited access to sustain powers - lack of aoe damage prior to epics, but no shortage of aoe aggro potential I wouldn't say doms are wimpy without perma-dom, but it certainly circumvents a fair number of their weaknesses. I would say that doms benefit as much or more than any other AT from set bonuses, IO's and team buffs though. I personally don't think I would enjoy a dom without IO's, but once you start getting some nice set bonuses and frankenslotted powers they are an extremely enjoyable AT.

I feel defense buffs are aplenty amd many people build for high personal defense. So that somewhat devalues things like cold shields. However adding thermal res shields to that mix makes everyone super sturdy. plus thermal is very rare. kin is great and all but it is like a light switch if the caster lags on speed boost applications. Which can get a bit tedious for the kin ime.

just about every set has 3 fast low tier attscks . Some are animated more coherently so they feel smoother. For example - Katana is very fast but has weird hitches and pauses so I personally dont feel the speed. Whereas dual blades flows really well and ends up feeling faster imo. Consider savage melee. the telenuke is near instant and is up often enough to be used as movement and damage.

fulcrum, seeds, transference, creepers, aoe immob, creepers and siphonspeed/ir to move quickly to the next spawn. then you want fissure. everything changes once you can focus almost entirely on offense.

How much do you need? You should strive for enough recharge to run the attack chain you want and to have other pool powers/epics up as often as needed. there is no point in having Assassin strike recharged while you are in the middle of GPB. More recharge than that is of little value other than to protect against debuffs( but /sr with a few winter pieces can be immune to slows) and will be outperformed by other bonuses such as +dam, procs, hp, etc. No you can not perma elude.

controllers are probably the strongest AT in the game. They get overshadowed in the rolling nuke format, but they are absolute powerhouses when it comes to tackling difficult content. Doms are maybe the most dynamic AT in that they excel at control and do a mix of both melee and ranged damage, but when controls fail they have little to fall back on. I surely would enjoy an illusion dom.

I had a 50 earth/fire on live back in the good old days. It is a fantastic pairing and /fire has only gotten better with fast snipes.

any/any no seriously, stalkers solo as well or better than any AT right out of the gate and it only gets better from there. sets with aoe can look to upping team size fairly early. sets with st can look to upping difficulty fairly early. Everyone has their favorite. Secondaries just come down to what you prefer as well. The all deal with incoming damage in their own way and they are all good at it (even fire). I prefer to have an endurance management tool to reduce downtime. many sets do. From a solo perspective you'd be hardpressssed to make a bad stalker combo imo.

This is absolutely true. As an example I have a fire/sav in the low 40s and it is still a struggle. I ended up taking aid self :p. Bonfire is great but you still get lots of pot shots coming at you. I have a dark/sav also in the low 40s and it has been so much easier from the moment I unlocked fearsome stare. side note: why are dom fire imps still only sometimes summoning 2 imps?

/fiery is a bit lackluster until blazing bolt and blaze. then it is crazy single target. /earth and /martial push you into melee range which can be tough until your controls are very solid and/or you have some epic shield and io bonuses. perma dom is of course very nice as it makes your controls rock solid all the time so you dont have to worry as much about being squishy. they tend to be very late bloomers.

That's what I said, GM's and some things that have a strong tendency to flee. You don't need -regen for most AV's. But some AV's will run all over the city to get away from your storm powers even with PA taunting. Those ones an ill/cold will be much faster. Interestingly enough I have a plant/kin and a plant/poison. I've posted extensively on the plant/poison combo a couple months ago and it certainly delivers. Plant/traps is too slow. By the time you get acid mortar and a trip mine out both the plant/kin and plant/poison are moving on to the next spawn. One could potentially leverage it on a farm map where you don't have to move much, but even with softcap def and confused mobs you still get hit a lot. To the point where I don't see trip mine being reliable. But seeing is believing, so someone could probably make a go of it. That said, I can't imagine anyone walking away from a plant/kin being disappointed.

ST - raw damage: ill/storm ST - where -regen matters (gms) or you can't prevent fleeing: ill/cold Aoe minion muncher: plant/poison dark control can maybe do more st damage, but you have to keep things alive.

it's not great. but the sudden acceleration kb>kd is fantastic in bonfire. A must have which will provide you with all the knockdown one could desire.

I personally dont touch the recharge of savage leap. It is basically the perfect proc power as is with 3.5 ppm rolling at I think 89%? (I'd want to check that again). And with the damage cut in half when used point blank. So once per spawn is usually all I need. Otherwise I jump back and then use it again. not the most efficient, but definitely fun haha.

I use 4 damage procs and the - res. +5 arma damage and musculature radial. I'm /bio so with offensive, tactics and kismet, plus 45% acc set bonuses I can forgo slotting acc. It moves savage leap from being lightning rod's little brother into making savage melee a top tier aoe set across all ATs

just from what I recall but the 3 "villainous" ATs (corrs, stalkers, doms) were at the bottom with sents. the name theory isnt a theory, players prefer being heroic. It's why a set like empathy can have hundreds of times as many people compared to pain.

The reality is that exhaustion doesn't have any negative attributes and blood stacks just improve rech and end discount. The +rech is nice for long cool downs, but you should have an attack chain that doesn't rely on blood stacks. that said: I try not to let hemo exhaust me on teams, So 4 is good. But I won't skip hemo just to avoid exhaustion heh. rending flurry I will describe below while addressing your last question. Opener: target something meaty near the middle of the spawn. build up >ball lightning > savage leap (with 4 damage procs and a -res proc) > AS (which usually rehides) > rending flurry (at 5 stacks so bigger aoe) > kill stragglers. Ball lightning travels medium speed and savage leap is instant, so the damage lands at the same time from the two attacks. edit: for single target always use hemo from hide. If AS rehides and hemo isn't up then use your snipe. I almost never use maiming slash outside of AV fights That will take out an entire spawn so fast that people will start talking about how awesome blaster nukes are even though there is no blaster on the team haha. Hit build up (which has likely instantly recharged from all the aoe) and do it all again approx 10.5 seconds after you last used savage leap.

It was the FOTM thread from the devs. dunno where it is, but I think they were right in there with doms and stalkers - they are both fantastic ATs but havent shaken the poor reputation they garnered from their original implementation and arguably villainous names.

I think mostly cause CP said he is looking at a fairly drastic revamp of their inherent and some subsequent changes to make them play more evenly. that and dont they rank near the bottom of AT popularity despite being brand new to everyone and conceptually cool? If he thought it was as simple as upping their damage I think he would just do it....? Or was your question rhetorical?

I'm pretty strongly of the mindset that their damage to survivability ratio is off. While they are conceptually cool and desirable, they fail in that they play with almost no risk and no reward. Tanks also play with little risk, but they bring tremendous team benefit so that directly translates to satisfying reward. Sentinels have low risk, but what reward beyond being conceptually cool? Their damage is mediocre (in most cases), they offer little buff/debuff, they have little impact on the success/failure if a team is on the cusp and they have limited show stopper powers. I could be wrong but I bet the data would show they solo the slowest, but suffer the least defeats in teams of all the armored AT's excluding tanks. And people want more defenses added to them? I think the .7 was intentional, but doesn't go far enough. I'd look at 0.6 and I'd look at improving their damage respectively. And then add something interesting to their inherent that addresses their value in a team setting.

ya spring attack just leaves a lot to be desired imo. genetic corruption is just another layer of mitigation. In defensive mode it is noticable as it significantly boosts resistances relative to offensive mode. But, it is imo pretty skippable if you play almost exclusively in offensive like myself.

I imagine that our current end game was envisioned more as a stepping stone to more difficult content that was never created. So the fact that fully kitted out teams are ganging up on mediocre difficulty content isnt a compelling argument to give sentinels OP team auras. I'd probably make sentinels self sufficient as an enjoyable AT and give them a version of the kheldian inherent but as a team buff. Making them enjoyable is tricky though.