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Stalkers. Sure they're melee... but kind of glass cannony until the upper levels when they can scrap consistently without eating pavement. And even then, they're more the strategic type than the wade into massive spawns and dominate like scrappers and brutes.

Honestly, I like versatile blasters. That means getting up in your target's grill to optimize all your damage. The idea of a purely ranged blaster bores me. If I want to hover blast I default to Sentinels. Sure they don't have the front loaded damage, but they have defense and status protection. They also famously lack any sort of melee focused attacks so Hover blasting just makes sense. All that being said Devices, Tactical arrow, and even Martial add decent tools to a hover blaster strategy.

I literally had a defender say... great You have armor and mez protection. I can concentrate on keeping the tanker upright thereby avoiding a team wipe. And she did... and I'd roll in and obliterate shit every few minutes with inferno. Never needed a buff.

Indeed. Following up Blaze with Bonesmasher... That's why you play Fire/EM.

I've tried both of them... was underwhelmed by both. Beam doesn't have a lot of AoE options so cutting beam is a consideration, though I think the damage is lackluster. Gun Drone on the other hand... Unless I'm missing something... Is there any point in that power at all?

Solid build. I'm considering dipping into psychic mastery for my NRG/Invul sent. How good is "link minds"

I didn't take Burn until the late levels. I got tired of immobiles being a weakness. Turns out I was leaving potential damage on the table. It works well with Fire Sword Circle.

Nice. In my experience /Fire wasn't the best set for mitigation. I took a Fire/Fire/Fire sent to the late veteran levels. He's my main. I'll admit he's not fully optimized. I heavily invested in recharge and damage at the cost of resist and defense but I can still pretty much solo anything. Right now I'm doing Water\Bio and Elec\Elec builds. Both are in the mid game and show great promise.

I was thinking the same thing. Also 200 +Recharge without hasten might be overkill. One could probably curtail a bit of that in lieu of additional ranged defense. Still overall it's a very solid build.

You won't need luck. I just hope you have fun.

I don't care of the sentinel inherent, but I hope they don't eff the Archetype up. Having a ranged class with status protection has been a literal dream come true.

I have a water/bio Sentinel. Water is a solid AoE centric set. It has decent single target oomph that is inferior to ice, and decent AoE that is inferior to Fire. But it also has a fairly decent heal which the other two lack. Bio gives you solid protection along with a boost to damage. It's versatile and pretty much pairs well with any primary.

I have a 50+ DP/Martial blaster. She's a hoot to play, and damn near untouchable. The rare status effect that hits me is shrugged off by the built in breakfree power in Martial. I can just rick roll anything that isn't an AV or GM.

Fact is blasters have to build a certain way, take certain incarnates and then they "might" come close to sentinel level of survivability. Extra defense and insane damage are pretty potent. I think blasters outclass them in raw damage but superior? I don't see it.

I was just playing one of my lowbie blasters. Ice/NRG... very serviceable, but one slip, one miscalculation and you're horizontal. Sentinels don't experience that at level 22.