Frosticus

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.

I wonder if they data mined the current sets with stances what they would find? I play a lot of bio armor and i bet 97% of my playtime is spent in offensive mode. I only change stances if something defeats me and I feel that more durability would have kept me in the running vs killing them faster, which isnt often as killing them faster is usually the best solution.

1 stack at most

If I were to say one thing to any savage user it is that forgoing set bonuses in favour of procs for savage leap should be top priority.

Tex do you find that sleet has any negative interaction with the fear of fearsome stare? ie allowing them to retaliate a bit more? or is it of little consequence given how great sleet is? Ice is always my go to epic and i have it on my fire/sav but haven't gone that route yet on my dark/sav.

On my dark/sav unkindness is the little spoon to the big spoon that is fearsome stare. Unkindness can take 2 -res procs and they fire about 50% of the time each. The power also doesn't root you so that is interesting for re-positioning (ie backing up a bit for long range feral charge). Fearsome stare is often enough mitigation, but if more is warranted you can use heart of darkness after porting in. Heart of darkness can also take a -res proc and will fire at 90% rate with up to about 60% rech slotting in the power. I'm still batting around epic sets myself. I've done a few respecs now. I think ball lightning is a good choice to think about if you take mu. You can alternate surge of power and melee core hybrid for late game content. That promotes almost full time scrapperlock :) I can't personally get behind hover on /sav. I prefer the rapid combat movement of bunny hopping cj+hurdle as it makes me play more aggressively.

I can't say I have seen it double proc on my main target, but I'll watch this evening. it can crit, though it is unrelated to hidden status. I can't say for certain the crit chance is boosted in a team either as stuff happens pretty fast. Probably easiest to test the scrapper version with their ato on that aspect. Assuming the scrapper version can crit as well. It is a funny power with regard to line of sight. The straight forward part is that you need to be able to see your target upon activation. But if you can't see the enemies beside your target it won't hit them. It doesn't miss them, it just doesn't even check against them. You'll see this if you use it while falling (ie off a building). Even if you lose sight of your main target it will still hit him, but his buddies won't be affected. More commonly, if some enemies are behind an obstacle it won't roll against them. I feel it has a strange interaction with regard to the adaptation toxic proc that bio adds on occasion. I'll watch that more closely going forward as well. Finally, like feral charge, it rolls its procs regardless of whether you hit or not with the attack (definitely vs your main target, can't say for the surrounding area). The power has an auto hit portion (the teleport to enemy I guess) and an aoe attack (damage) portion.

when you toggle on focused acc you have close to 30% tohit buff and 90% global acc. plus your lowest acc slotting in an attack is like 60%. in all that is a lot more than is needed. You only need about 20% tohit bonus and 45% acc (global or slotted doesnt matter) to hit +3s at 95% rate.

Feral charge - dominators Not quite the beast that savage leap is. If someone else could test this power that might be beneficial. From what I see it rolls procs like a st melee attack ONLY against your target (65% for 3.5ppm). Procs do occur on the surrounding targets (5 cap), but with much lower frequency. I'm guessing the procs on the surrounding targets roll with aoe probability, which considering it is a 15ft aoe with 10 sec base rech...it isn't great probability. That said, the aoe factor of the power is more of a bonus that anything and feral charge remains one of the most enjoyable powers for me at least.