Hjarki

+100% damage on your ultimate every time it's up is about 50% more damage. Since the rapidly recharging ultimates are really the only advantage Sentinels have over other AT, I'd call this a pretty big deal. The Sentinel-with-Aim is going to be competitive (aside from target caps) vs. the Blaster for sustained AE dps. The Sentinel-without-Aim is not - and they're not going to be competitive with any other style of damage either.

There really has been a bifurcation between people who are simply trying to get an objective gauge of dps and people who are actually competing on pylons. Both are certainly reasonable approaches, but we shouldn't confuse the two. As noted, pet-based classes have some enormous advantages that don't tend to exist in the game at all. But even more conventional builds like TW/Bio don't turn in times really reflective of their effectiveness - the wind-up time of Titan Weapons is (mostly) meaningless on a pylon but hugely important in actual play.

On a Blaster/Defender/Corruptor, not having Aim is manageable. On a Sentinel, it's crippling because you use it before every ultimate. So that's Aim + Gaussian's + Ultimate for massive damage every spawn.

I tend to think "why play /Cold when you could play /Storm?". The two power sets are very similar in many ways, but Storm brings a lot more damage. However, Cold does complement Dark relatively well. The shields will keep the Umbra Beast active while the debuffing will add a bit of damage.

Electric Blast on a Corruptor isn't particularly strong damage. Kinetics also doesn't buffer the Voltaic Sentinel (which isn't very good even before you consider this).

My thoughts on each set: Dark Affinity. While this is a strong set and thematically appropriate, there's almost no synergy. Dark Affinity is an in-your-face set while Darkness Control is most definitely a stand-at-range set. Stacking -hit on top of -hit isn't really all that useful given that your Fearsome Stare will normally floor hit chances (with standard global defenses) anyway. Radiation. While this has a decent array of abilities, I tend to view it as a bit 'archaic' from the standpoint of doing much the same things as other sets (just not as well). However, it's a basically solid set, albeit one that isn't going to help keep your Umbra Beast alive all that effectively (Umbra Beast is the bulk of Darkness Control's damage). Electric Affinity. This is a decent set for pet-based builds, but it's also a low offense set. Pairing a low offense secondary with the weak offense of Darkness Control will probably be a bit frustrating. The bubble also isn't all that useful for Darkness Control since the Umbra Beast already has status protection and the extra resist could be gottten more effectively elsewhere.

Fire is certainly near the top for single target dps but its AE dps really isn't much to write home about. It also tends to lack the features that make slotting for extra damage possible. Electrical is actually a serious contender for single target, but it depends on build. Ice isn't all that great on Sentinels. Pretty much everything is either the same or nerfed from the Blaster/Defender/Corruptor version. The fantastic Freezing Ray gets changed into a lower dpa Sleep. The awesome Blizzard gets nerfed down to being just a standard ultimate. The result is a set with terrible single target performance coupled with mediocre AE performance. Dual Pistols is another set I don't like on Sentinels. While you can go proc-happy with the set, it just doesn't deliver all that much damage in either ST or AE. It has slow activations and the fact that your Hold is now a viable attack doesn't counterbalance the lack of Aim or any high dpa attacks. Water is the best AE set of those mentioned - by a wide margin. It has two knockback AE for Force Feedback procs. Geyser and Whirlpool are both the best damage of their class (ultimate, location AE) for Sentinels. It's also better single target on Sentinels than on other AT because the balance of damage is shifted slightly towards Water Jet. Moreover, Water Jet is one of the most proc-friendly attacks around due to its special mechanic. However, Water doesn't have a 'killer the runner' big ST attack.

My current preference is Staff/Energy/Soul. Staff is just a generally solid Stalker set: Force Feedback-friendly attacks, with a PBAoE. Unusually large radius PBAoE. Most Stalker PBAoE are 7 yards; Staff is 10 yards. Slow, high damage attack for exploiting criticals. The Perfection mechanic gives you both better defense and better offense than could ordinarily be expected from the set. Stackable, enhanceable Melee/Lethel Defense. Ranged attack Likewise, Energy has some significant virtues: Provides a +20% recharge bonus. Provides both a heal and some endurance management Disorient toggle that stacks with Disorient from primary so you can achieve useful Mag. It's also a 'minimal nuisance' build. You don't have to spend a lot of time clicking random stuff just to keep things going. You're not dependent on things like AE drain heals that fail you when you're faced by a single target. You just go out there and do damage with enough protection to keep yourself alive at the same time.

I recognize that it's a solid Cone. However, it's still a Cone. This means you need to worry about positioning, which isn't necessary for the other AE. This might not be a big issue for a Blaster, but Sentinels can stand in the middle of a crowd and let it coalesce around them. Given that you've got so many other AE, I find it superfluous. It will overall reduce your attack chain damage (albeit not by a lot). However, the real problem is that it creates situations where your attack chain is interrupted because you don't want to burn Tidal Power on Dehydrate. I keep wanting to like it - especially on mana-intensive builds where Theft of Essence is incredibly potent - but I keep ditching it. You can do this without Dehydrate due to the combination of Master Brawler, IO uniques, ATO proc and regen. Against most resist categories, you're probably going to end up being hard-capped around 25% health so in the infrequent circumstances where you get hit the attack isn't all that large.

I generally take both T1 and T2 attacks because it creates a more viable attack chain. Dehydrate, on the other hand, I'll almost always skip because it's a power I so rarely ever want to use - there are very few situations where I want to be consuming Tidal Power for a minor heal. On a Sentinel, Water is probably the strongest AE set and it's single target performance is bumped up a bit by re-balancing the rotation towards Water Jet. I also generally skip the Cone. While it does decent damage, I find ranged Cones are in general problematic because they effectively have a minimum range so you need to be constantly jockeying around to line everything up. I don't like Ice on a Sentinel. It gets pretty much across-the-board nerfs. It has weak T1/T2 attacks, the best ST attack gets nerfed and Blizzard gets nerfed. It's also increasingly hard for me to justify playing attack sets without an AE KB - it just adds so much power to the set when you can slot those FF procs that it's nearly impossible for other sets to compete.

On my Tanker, I have Dragon's Tail on autofire.

Let's start with the good news. Super Reflexes on a Sentinel is the best version of the set. Master Brawler is a huge upgrade over Practiced Brawler and Sentinels are the only ones who can hard-cap resists from 0% just using SR (admittedly, this only happens at 0% health so you still need to invest in resists a bit). It's definitely a solid set and you're going to almost certainly take 7/9 powers. That being said, don't expect the sort of bumbling into Incarnate soft-cap that you would with a Tanker. The bad news is that it comes paired with a Sentinel Blast set. In general, Sentinel Blasts have: Better control attacks Worse sniper attacks Better ultimates Worse debuffs (than Defenders/Corruptors) Arguably better/worse cones Since Dual Pistols has a control attack, no sniper attack and only one (not terribly good) debuff, it's a 'better' version if you ignore the damage scale issues. That being said, there are two main reasons people play Bual Pistols. The first is style - it's got great animations. The second is the ability to layer procs everywhere. Not only does it have two KB AE for Force Feedback, but virtually every single target power can equip 3+ procs of various sorts. The problem with this is that 'proc monsters' don't really work well for non-support AT. While procs like Force Feedback or Theft of Essence can actually fuel your build, the standard damage procs don't scale with content. So if you're a Defender, a 'proc monster' can make your performance acceptable while you're alone and help you a bit while in a small group. But you're going to be vastly out-classed by actual dps AT in a full team/league. However, on a Defender it doesn't normally matter because in a group that size, your primary will normally be providing a enough of a force multiplier that you don't even need to blast to justify your place on the team. The same is generally true of a Controller, Corruptor or even a Mastermind. But it isn't true of a Sentinel. As a result, the Sentinel 'proc monster' is fairly solid solo but their value rapidly diminishes as you scale up the team size because all those damage procs they're depending on to balance the scales between Dual Pistols and, say, Fire aren't enough to actually bridge the gap. Thus, you should temper your expectations. You'll do great solo or maybe in a duo; in a full team/league you'll feel underpowered compared to your allies.

Those variables are essential to evaluating a set. If a set is really strong except for a single hole, but that hole is filled effectively by an epic pool it's not really a 'hole'. Attack rotations are essential to actually evaluating the damage potential of a set. While looking at attacks in isolation can often be useful, you really need to know the rotation you'll be using to see how it will perform as a whole. I do think a bit of a caution needs to be used with respect to the 'proc-ability' of a set. While some procs - notably FF in AE powers - dramatically change the damage output of a set, most procs are merely additive damage. So while I can say with reasonable certainly that a Water Blast Sentinel (or Blaster/Defender/Corruptor) is better at AE damage than a Fire Blast Sentinel due to FF procs, I can't say the same thing about a ST attack chain unless I first assume some level of +damage. If my build's attack @ +200% damage can bridge the ST dps gap with a single proc in each of the attacks, I would need two such procs @ +400% (above Sentinel damage cap, but principle remains the same).

I can afk on a x8/+3 Fire Farm with 90% FR, 20% defense and healing/regen strictly from uniques just fine. No need for greens/purples. In any case, it's a matter of testing to see what is necessary rather than assuming you need maximum mitigation.

You don't actually need all three Cones - you can create a pure Howl/Shockwave rotation. For that matter, you don't even need Shockwave since it's basically the same thing as Wall of Force (which has a slight slotting advantage due to not needing KB -> KD). Even then, I'd argue that slotting Howl purely as a debuff and just relying on an attack like Thunder Strike to deal damage makes a lot more sense in most circumstances. The same is true in terms of single target damage. Piling on the "maximum -res" rotation is useful if you're fighting alongside an entire team. But if you're fighting solo (or potentially with one another), it makes a lot more sense to have a third attack in your rotation that isn't Sonic so you have some form of pure damage to exploit that -resist rather than adding a bit more -resist.

I think a lot of people are missing the point of why I made that list. It's merely an example of questions you need to ask about a build to ensure you're hitting the right balance. A good (simple) example of this would be fire farms. All you need is Fire Resist, Fire Defense and regen/healing. But your goal with the build isn't to get as much as possible. It's to get the bare minimum necessary to survive the farm so you can put everything else into raw offense. Now, I know from long experience that the 'bare minimum' for that particular purpose is hard-capped resists, 20% or so Fire Defense and a standard slotting of uniques coupled with the random amounts of regen you get from set bonuses you'd pursue for other reasons. But you'll still see a lot of builds soft-capping their Fire Defense because they're 'over-engineered' - they just assume they need all that superfluous defense instead of finding the sweet spot where they can then shift focus to offense. The same is true for general tanking, but it's more complex because you're dealing with a wide array of potential attacks. Which is why you need to break down what those potential attacks are and how much they matter - so you can avoid inefficiently investing in mitigation you don't actually need.

Whirlwind has a small radius, an activation time too long to be all that useful in terms of protection and you'll find the Force Feedback proc rate relatively low.

Whirlwind tends to be not as good as Repel... which isn't very good either. This is especially true given you're playing Water, which already has plenty of Force Feedback opportunities that are a lot better. The problem with these abilities is that the activation time and radius are simply too low to be any sort of meaningful defense while simultaneously requiring you stay in melee range when you have no particularly good reason to do so. Water has no melee-only abilities and Time only has one (Time's Juncture, which can be useful as a defensive measure for enemies that get too close but doesn't justify entering melee range in the first place).

It's really not that tricky. If you're healing melee, you simply target the player you want to heal. Healing purely ranged characters tends to be less 'tricky' than 'impossible' since they're frequently not in proximity to any enemy.

The point I'm trying to make is that there are many forms of attacks and no Tanker is good against all of them. So you have to pick what you're going to be good against and how you're going to be good against it. You can't just say "I want to be tough!".

I'm not sure what you mean by "Toughness". Or, for that matter, "painful".

Stone Tanks are Psi vulnerable, it receives no significant healing/endurance management and there are considerable drawbacks to being in Granite armor. So while Granite Armor makes it incredibly easy to reach resist/defense goals, it's often not the route you want to go. However, as I noted, my list of questions (which is far from comprehensive or even weighted towards what an individual might care about) is more about establishing in your own mind what you want to accomplish - and then not wasting effort on things you don't care about.

The basic notion you're stumbling at - that excess mitigation is, well, excess - is reasonable. However, you have to strike some balance if you're going to do your job - and a lot of those balances aren't a particularly efficient approach. I think the easiest way to approach the problem is to make a list of "can I tank this?". No build can tank everything. Some things to think about: Can your build exemplar down to Positron? Numina? Can your build tank Lord Recluse without the towers being down? Can your build survive the mass -defense debuffs of ITF and certain DA content? Can your build tank Hamidon? Can your build efficiently farm? You might also consider how much in the way of temporary powers/consumables you need to do your jobs. Anyone can 'tank' with enough Inspirations, temporary powers and panic buttons. But if you're leaning heavily on these abilities, you're going to find that you often can't be as effective as if you weren't.

Electric Affinity is the only way to give across-the-board status protection to your pets (and yourself). It also provides blanket resists backed by strong multi-target heals and absorbs. As I noted, it's the best set for keeping your pets alive and active. Additionally, it solves most of your problems with endurance/recharge (rather than introducing new ones as many other sets do). I suspect part of the problem rests with the statement: "defence will keep your pets alive more than resistance". Which really isn't the case. Defense tends to mean you don't need to heal all that much when you're fighting enemies that aren't particularly challenging. But it tends to fail catastrophically when you ramp up the difficulty because you go from situations where you have to keep busy with healing to ones where no amount of healing is possible because your pets are getting one-shot. Moreover, Defense is worthless for bodyguard mode. There are just too many situations where it's helpful to back off some of your pets to outlast an enemy. In terms of Kinetics, it's defensively stronger than two of your other choices (Dark and Storm) just based on Increase Density. On a single target, the stacking -damage debuffs can potentially cut down damage almost as much as capping resists would and you can basically full-heal all of your pets every few seconds.

I tend to view Time Manipulation as a 'universal' support set in that it's more like an Armor set - it provides a comprehensive set of benefits to the player that can be used with any other set, but it doesn't really complement any set particularly well. Kinetics is far less universal. There are certain sets it works well with, and certain sets it works poorly with. You also need a considerably more complex build to get it to work well, but ultimately it will generally be a more powerful build.