Astredax

My fire/bio kills a pylon in about 4 min, and it's built defensively to softcap to all but psi. I'm sure it can be brought lower if you focus on offense with more procs etc. I'd guess 3:30 or maybe 3:00 as a cap for fire/bio.

I will take a more in depth look later when I’m not on mobile, but just looking at the forum post I would recommend dropping rad siphon and slotting contaminated strike instead and also slotting parasitic aura a bit more heavily. Rad siphon is a trap - a lot of rad’s dps is from contaminated targets, and siphon will strip contamination when used, leading to lower DPS. With ablative carapace, dna siphon, and parasitic aura you already have plenty of healing. Also, put both of the -res procs in irradiated ground (achilles and fury of the gladiator)

Wasn't the point of the changes to make the tank vs brute dynamic be tanks = 90% damage brute damage vs brutes = 90% tank survivability? If the best time was 1:55 on a brute and 2:09 with a tank then it's a 10% difference in damage for the absolutely most well tooled primary/secondary combo that benefits tankers the most, so wouldn't that be mission accomplished?

The thing about the secondaries is there's a pretty large difference when you're talking about with IOs and without IOs. With IOs Bio or Energy Aura are probably the strongest defensive secondaries, without them it's probably super reflexes, invuln, or maybe willpower. If I had to say best all-around pick at all stages of the game, I'd say Energy Aura. Its top end IO'd out performance is lower than Bio, but it's gonna be good at protecting you from 1-50 and doesn't require the super specific type of build Bio does for softcapping.

It improved the damage of the radial assault, but these changes IMPROVE the strength of core assault AND make the increased damage from core assault stack with team damage buffs more easily. Second, I've been min maxing the shit out of a bunch of tanker builds with these changes, and there is finally a reason to actually make tankers. The changes are a net positive for solo damage for all of the high end builds I've made - this is a net increase against strong AVs etc. in a solo situation because bruising was resisted by the purple patch (9.6% debuff after you have an alpha slot level shift). Will they do slightly less damage with a full team against an AV? Yes. But they will do significantly more damage in every other situation, and are also going to be better at buffing teammates via leadership, which they will also be better at running due to the end changes. Taking assault pretty much gives you half of your bruising debuff back anyway - only characters stacking tons of damage already through IOs or Kin would have significantly better performance from utilizing a tank's bruising than from the leadership buff. I'm sorry you don't like the changes and are losing bruising, I can see how some people might have been attached to that inherent. If you look at it objectively it's not really even a significant single target nerf, and the damage scalar changes have definitely made tanks more attractive to me. I haven't made a tanker since the game relaunched, and I'm going to be making one for the first time since I20.

I made a /rad brute on the test server that sits at 90% resist to everything (toxic, psi, cold, literally everything) at all times. You have to manage ageless and some cooldowns though.

I've got a fire/bio that's softcapped to everything but psi and can take a pylon down in about 4 minutes or so, maybe faster but I haven't checked since I respecced to do even more damage. It can also take out +4 AVs without using -regen effects. If you want to push fire/bio sentinel damage as high as it can go you actually want to take the psi pool for dominate and mind probe. Combine those with blaze and then you use flares for filler. Ageless to handle the endurance drain is pretty important if you're against a single target too since dominate costs so much endurance.

No one seems to have suggested it yet, but if you want to be a tank style sentinel I'd recommend water blast. Not only do you get a decent heal, which you can use with a def based set that you'll almost certainly want to use to do early tanking, your AoEs have a huge radius and high target caps, so you can get at least a little aggro on everything (though keeping it might be harder). Not only that, they knock your enemies around, so it helps you take that alpha strike without dropping dead before you get all your super cool god-mode IOs for surviving armageddon.

I like Fire/Bio. You can cap all your defenses and you still get the extra damage boost from Bio while doings so. I've been able to solo every villain group on +4/x8 using the build, including arachnos and rogue vanguard, although rogue vanguard required purples. It can solo AVs too, but it's annoying without envenomed daggers because they run away a lot even if you stand in melee.

Just tested it, looks like you’re right. For some reason it isn’t working. I’d personally just go for 3 +5 def/recharge IOs from different sets. You only lose the tohit bonus. Good to know about this, will add it to the list of stuff to change for v2 of the build. Damage-wise, i know I’ve beaten a number of blasters on pylon time, but it’s still significantly longer than the top tier brutes/stalkers/scrappers. Iirc my time hovered around 4.5-5 minutes when i added both -res procs to the build. Fighting AVs is a little annoying since they run away a lot for whatever reason. Rotation has good points for using throwing knives, killing AVs goes pretty fast with those.

Hey, I made the build you put up there - it’s pinned in the sentinel discord. Do you mind telling me what you mean by hamidon enhancements don’t work in link minds? They absolutely work for me on live - recharges when you expect it to and the def numbers in combat attributes seem to show it working too.

I wouldn't swap for dark - the stuff you'd want the debuffs for ends up resisting debuffs super heavily, so they aren't as useful as you'd hope. Ithink psionic and fire are the two good sentinel APPs - if you're going to switch off of Psionic, go for fire. The thing about those two pools is their damage abilities are basically swapped - fire's AOE is stronger but recharges slower, while it's melee recharges faster but has lower DPA. Psionic is the reverse. In your case, you probably want a slower recharging, higher DPA ability, so I'd personally keep psi. Link minds is nice, but unless you're planning on soloing super high level stuff, you probably don't need it that badly. Mind linking your build? It's a little hard to give better advice than that without seeing it. Plus I'm curious for myself. Got my Fire/Bio to the point where it's super strong, looking for a new project to work on, and was thinking EA - although I haven't actually tried softcapping without Agility, the idea is nice since you could take musculature and make up some of the lost damage from swapping off bio.

I use psychic mastery. Main reason to use it is for link minds and/or psychic shockwave. Shockwave is a pbaoe on a short cooldown, which is great for a sentinel since it will hit more enemies than and is easier to aim than our cones. It also has some minor -recharge and CC, but I don't notice that so much. Link minds combined with maneuvers will see you giving the team around 8-9% defense to all. It's nowhere near widow numbers, but it's a nice bonus. More importantly it helps a number of sets softcap solo, so I'd say that's its main purpose. It's what lets my fire/bio softcap, so that extra 5.5 defense from link minds is a pretty big deal for some characters. Mind probe has a high DPA so it's quite good too, although the recharge is a little long. I don't see much use for dominate or mass hypnosis, but dominate could be good if paired with dark/ or elec/.

Stay Water/Bio if you like the look, most of the people in help chat have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to Sentinels. Most of the time they don't even know the secondaries are different from scrapper/tanker secondaries. A lot of them will even say stuff like fully built Sentinels can't solo +4/x8 because their defenses are too low....like...Total nonsense things. Just make a build on test and you can see that's not true. Regarding Water/Nin, there's basically no mechanical reason to not go SR rather than ninja. You already get a heal from water, you don't need a second heal in Ninja, and SR has strong defense debuff resist and the master brawler absorb shield, which are going to be generally more useful than the blind and 8% resistance. Bio is basically the best secondary if you spend a ton of inf, while SR, Fire, and EA are the best if you don't want to do that. Water is one of the better primaries - it's not gonna be as easy to solo an AV as it would be with Fire, Beam, and maybe psi, but it's got its own strengths.

You should be able to drop one into your fireball: annihilation, chance for -res debuff. You can stick fury of the gladiator in Inferno too if it's not six slotted for one of the defense types.

Psy blast is total crap to start out with, but when you pair it with the psi mastery it's actually one of the higher DPS sentinel powersets and has some good secondary effects baked in too. The downside is that the ability that activates the offensive version of your passive is straight crap, but you'll have to take it and slot it anyway if you wanna use offensive opportunity. It should pair really well with SR since out of all the sets SR has the most reason to use defensive opportunity while also giving you quicker recharge so that you can stop using mind blast asap. Fire/Fire is kind of similar to regeneration in some ways - you probably aren't gonna be tanking a full +4/x8 group without inspirations like an SR/EA/invuln/Bio/Maybe WP could potentially do, but if you take the fighting pool you're gonna be pretty survivable, all things considered. You won't drop dead like a blaster does, anyway. You can also get a damage aura, in case you didn't know: the elec APP for sentinels gives you access to one. It won't be thematic, but it's there if you want it.

I'm speaking from a fire/bio perspective, but I'd second skipping breath of fire. I'd actually take blazing blast while leveling, or at least until you have some good recharge going, then ditch the power afterwards. I do, however, think the sentinel APPs are pretty good: the melee attacks in particular are worth your time. Mind probe is super high DPA, and charged brawl isn't that far behind, and the elec damage aura is also pretty nice if you're going to be in melee anyway.

Were you using Hybrid? That does seem a bit low if you were, my Fire/Bio Sentinel comes out to 251 without hybrid running, and that's on a build that's made for defense rather than offense. Maybe work on the attack chain or integrate some -res stuff? I put a proc in my nuke. Someone had the idea of putting a proc in fireball to get more -res, gonna try that next time I respec.

This is probably accurate, but I don't think 10:45 is the ceiling here. My fire/rad sentinel is at ~215 DPS (7:16), on one try starting when Hybrid was on CD. Attack chain Blaze -> Flares -> Blazing -> Flares, Aim with Gaussian BU + Inferno with Arma Fire and Fury -RES. Setup: Hybrid T4 (doublehit), Reactive T4 (-75% res, -25% dot), Cardiac T4 Given that Meltdown < Offensive, I'd expect a Fire/Bio to push this time down. End management being a nonissue, you could likely include Fireball in your attack chain with an additional -RES proc too! ** Edit: crafted T4 Degen (-75% maxHp, -25% dot) on the aforementioned fire/rad sentinel, and gave it another go. 5:20, ~247 DPS. Hybrid was ready right away, so, this might account for more difference than Degen vs Reactive. Or, it could be luck. Just did this on my fire/bio, it has T4 Agility, T4 Doublestrike, and T4 Degen. Got roughly 4 mins 35 seconds give or take a couple seconds, DPS should be 260something, was just trying to ballpark it. When I didn't use hybrid, it was pretty close to your time using hybrid, interestingly enough. I don't have gaussian's in Aim, and the build is kind of made to be defensive so it has softcap to everything, 70% S/L resist etc. etc. I'm sure this could be brought down using a build that had an optimized attack chain, procs, etc. I used Blaze, mind probe, flares, blaze, flares, flame blast, blaze. If blazing blast gets its damage bug fixed, swapping in blazing blast would allow for a better attack chain as well. Also, the fireball idea is a good idea since my end bar basically never moves. I don't have the -res in it, and honestly forgot to fireball instead of fire blast, so that also dropped my time a bit. I guess a sentinel might actually be able to get sub 4 minutes if you do all those things and have a better damage build.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.962 http://www.cohplanner.com/ Click this DataLink to open the build! Level 50 Mutation Sentinel Primary Power Set: Assault Rifle Secondary Power Set: Regeneration Power Pool: Leaping Power Pool: Fighting Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Leadership Ancillary Pool: Ninja Tool Mastery Hero Profile: Level 1: Burst (A) Superior Sentinel's Ward - Accuracy/Damage (7) Superior Sentinel's Ward - Damage/RechargeTime (27) Superior Sentinel's Ward - Accuracy/Damage/RechargeTime (31) Superior Sentinel's Ward - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance (33) Superior Sentinel's Ward - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/RechargeTime (33) Superior Sentinel's Ward - RechargeTime/Chance for +Absorb Level 1: Fast Healing (A) Doctored Wounds - Heal/Endurance (3) Doctored Wounds - Heal (5) Doctored Wounds - Endurance/Recharge (5) Doctored Wounds - Heal/Recharge (7) Doctored Wounds - Heal/Endurance/Recharge Level 2: Disorienting Shot (A) Apocalypse - Damage (15) Apocalypse - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (43) Apocalypse - Damage/Recharge (43) Apocalypse - Accuracy/Recharge (43) Apocalypse - Chance of Damage(Negative) Level 4: Buckshot (A) Ragnarok - Damage (15) Ragnarok - Damage/Recharge (45) Ragnarok - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (45) Ragnarok - Accuracy/Recharge (45) Ragnarok - Damage/Endurance Level 6: Slug (A) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage (46) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance (46) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance (46) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance/Recharge (31) Thunderstrike - Damage/Recharge (31) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge Level 8: Aim (A) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff (9) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - Recharge/Endurance (9) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Recharge/Endurance (11) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Recharge (11) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - Chance for Build Up (13) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Endurance Level 10: Reconstruction (A) Preventive Medicine - Heal (13) Preventive Medicine - Heal/RechargeTime (27) Preventive Medicine - Heal/RechargeTime/Endurance Level 12: M30 Grenade (A) Overwhelming Force - Damage/Chance for Knockdown/Knockback to Knockdown (33) Superior Frozen Blast - Accuracy/Damage (34) Superior Frozen Blast - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance (34) Superior Frozen Blast - Recharge/Chance for Immobilize (34) Superior Frozen Blast - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (36) Superior Frozen Blast - Damage/Endurance/Accuracy/RechargeTime Level 14: Quick Recovery (A) Performance Shifter - Chance for +End Level 16: Instant Regeneration (A) Preventive Medicine - Heal (17) Preventive Medicine - Heal/Endurance (17) Preventive Medicine - Endurance/RechargeTime (19) Preventive Medicine - Heal/RechargeTime (19) Preventive Medicine - Chance for +Absorb (25) Preventive Medicine - Heal/RechargeTime/Endurance Level 18: Dismiss Pain (A) Healing IO Level 20: Integration (A) Numina's Convalesence - Heal/Endurance (21) Numina's Convalesence - Endurance/Recharge (21) Numina's Convalesence - Heal (23) Numina's Convalesence - Heal/Recharge (23) Numina's Convalesence - +Regeneration/+Recovery (25) Numina's Convalesence - Heal/Endurance/Recharge Level 22: Super Jump (A) Winter's Gift - Slow Resistance (20%) Level 24: Kick (A) Empty Level 26: Incinerator (A) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage (39) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance (40) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance (40) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance/Recharge (40) Thunderstrike - Damage/Recharge (42) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge Level 28: Resilience (A) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/+Def 3% (29) Gladiator's Armor - TP Protection +3% Def (All) (29) Unbreakable Guard - +Max HP (48) Resist Damage IO Level 30: Combat Jumping (A) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed Level 32: Full Auto (A) Superior Opportunity Strikes - Accuracy/Damage (37) Superior Opportunity Strikes - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance (37) Superior Opportunity Strikes - Accuracy/Damage/RechargeTime (37) Superior Opportunity Strikes - Damage/RechargeTime (39) Superior Opportunity Strikes - RechargeTime/Chance for Opportunity (42) Superior Opportunity Strikes - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/RechargeTime Level 35: Second Wind (A) Preventive Medicine - Heal (36) Preventive Medicine - Heal/RechargeTime (36) Preventive Medicine - Heal/RechargeTime/Endurance Level 38: Tough (A) Resist Damage IO (39) Resist Damage IO Level 41: Weave (A) Defense Buff IO (42) Defense Buff IO (48) Reactive Defenses - Scaling Resist Damage (50) Shield Wall - +Res (Teleportation), +5% Res (All) Level 44: Tashibishi (A) Damage Increase IO Level 47: Hasten (A) Recharge Reduction IO (48) Recharge Reduction IO Level 49: Maneuvers (A) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed (50) Luck of the Gambler - Defense (50) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance Level 1: Brawl (A) Empty Level 1: Prestige Power Dash (A) Empty Level 1: Prestige Power Slide (A) Empty Level 1: Prestige Power Quick (A) Empty Level 1: Prestige Power Rush (A) Empty Level 1: Prestige Power Surge (A) Empty Level 1: Sprint (A) Empty Level 2: Rest (A) Empty Level 4: Ninja Run Level 2: Swift (A) Empty Level 2: Health (A) Panacea - +Hit Points/Endurance Level 2: Hurdle (A) Empty Level 2: Stamina (A) Performance Shifter - Chance for +End (3) Performance Shifter - EndMod Level 0: Portal Jockey Level 0: Freedom Phalanx Reserve Level 0: Task Force Commander Level 0: The Atlas Medallion Level 50: Agility Core Paragon ------------ Here's what I was able to come up with after thinking about it for a little while. You will have to tweak it a little because it's not as great as it could be and it's a bit expensive, but it's a place for you to start. You get 34% ranged def, around 25 to the other positions, close to 50% S/L resist, and you aren't super far away from perma hasten, although you aren't exactly close either. Just posting this since you didn't get any responses, I'm sure this can be further optimized.

For synergy with SR, don't worry about +def - you can get waaaay past the softcap on an SR sentinel easily. Instead, I'd go for a self heal, which would mean dark/ or water/.

Go for typed defenses instead of positional ones. You can cap every type except psi and get psi to the low 30s - enough for capping it with a purple. You will have to slot three melee attacks to cap the S/L def, though. Brawl, boxing, and one of the APP attacks. If "wasted" slots drive you nuts, you can try going for pure ranged defense, I think it would be possible since my build has 42% melee that I wasn't actually trying for.

You have to take it to trigger your offensive opportunity, yes. But you should actually be taking it anyway because it's higher DPA than flame blast. Actually, it's the second highest DPA ability in fire: blazing blast is bugged and not doing as much damage as the detailed info says it is.

One thing about the melee attacks is that they work as kinetic combat set mules for sets with typed defenses - getting almost 4% S/L def is pretty great considering how hard it is to get S/L def on a character with only ranged attacks. I'd also say the PBAoE attacks are super worth it for any sentinel with a cone attack - breath of fire is pretty shitty to be honest. I dropped it in favor of psychic shockwave and didn't look back - easier to hit multiple targets, higher number of potential targets hit, same-ish recharge.

Thinking about it more, /SR might be a lot better for this than ninja simply because of the extra endurance recovery. I heard the master brawler heal is not too different from the ninja heal in magnitude once you get to about 50-60% health, so I think there should actually be enough effective HP recovery with defensive, the proc, and the absorb shield. I'm still not exactly sure how the procs per minute works out with an AoE attack vs a single target attack, but I stuck it in the AoE just so you wouldn't have to figure out how to afford two sets of the winter event enhancements. It might be better in a single target attack like you slotted it.