Underfyre

2.6.2 up. Adds SR as a baseline damage set to compare what the "damage bonus" of the other sets actually translates to. Before anyone asks, the "bonus" from Stone Armor in Electric Blast is super low because the Voltaic Sentinel doesn't gain the damage proc like it does for the other two sets.

That data chunk gives me an Illusion/Dark Controller.

Lotus Drops had its damage reduced. This in and of itself kind of hurt, but the real reason is just that having an aura doing damage while your super stronk melee attack activates in 1.78s is apparently very powerful. I made builds with both Psi and Ninja mastery and they just fell short compared to Electric. Like, this is just Havoc Punch with Blistering Cold in it. You can load it up with procs to get even more damage out of it if you wanted. The builds I'm using are fa from "maximum dps." They're just very consistent across every defensive set, aiming for a balance of defense and damage. It's not goofy, it's a perfect valid inquiry. But I hate you for making it, because it's just something I've always thought about doing and was too lazy to actually do. So now I'm going to dutifully put together a bunch more builds to add in those "baseline" damage benchmarks.

I can't really speak for sniper beam, but the reason it's at the top is a combination of factors. It's 2 primary abilities have moderate cooldowns, as well as relatively long activation times that play nicely with procs. Then it also has 150% regen reduction tacked onto one of those abilities? The last bonus will probably get the Ice Blast treatment if it's spoken aloud, so if you know, just keep it to yourself.

Oh hey, 4 year anniversary.

2.6 up. Page 7 data added, read first post.

Generally this board gets more response when you put some effort into a build on your end, then we point you in the right direction.

To build off @Wimbochismo, find a slot to put Achilles' Heel into Entomb or Gravestone for a nominal damage boost. It will have the best amount of uptime in Entomb.

Did you read oldskool's guide on psychic blast in the collab thread? drbuzzard even has a guide for Psy/WP in there. Or by guide/build did you just mean "give me a build"?

If you're playing your Sentinel to its maximum potential, you should be in melee range anyway because you're using the 1 melee attack in the Mastery pools. That 1 attack is generally better than most attacks in your Primary pool.

To say the least, there are a list of changes to the Sentinel. Tons of Primary abilities had their recharge changed to match their damage (bad), or had their damage changed to match their recharge (less bad). All of the Epic Holds and area immobilizes were homogenized (bad). All of the Point Blank AOEs had their recharges homogenized as well (also bad). Like Psychic Shockwave was absolutely gutted (horrible). The only good homogenization that happened was Havoc Punch was made to match its source and filtered through the Epic Mastery standard formulas (amazing), and Lightning Field was changed to make it a DoT that sticks to its target so you're not forced into melee (kinda helpful if you don't want to stay in melee?). The end result is none of the Holds are worth taking for damage anymore. In the before times, there was a back and forth between Ninja Tools and Psychic Mastery. Ninja Tools could unlock the Achilles' Heel and Fury of the Gladiator procs for sets that didn't natively have access to them. The two of those were capable of netting you around a 30% (in up-time) resistance debuff and whatever that meant damage wise. Sets that already had those would benefit more from Dominate packed with procs and the Decimation proc for an 80% build up. So there was a back and forth, one was better here, the other better there. That will no longer be the case. Electricity Mastery is your new king. Exclusively. Enjoy hearing Lightning Field all day.

Well, if everything goes through from Beta to Live, there are going to be changes to rotations and mastery suggestions.

Explore here, fifth post down. Not to say I made one, but you can get some ideas.

Thanks for being the first person that's thanked me for the effort I put into this.

So does nobody else think that Possess on Blasters with such a short cooldown is incredibly over powered? Or is everyone here just a Blaster wringing their hands hoping it makes it through beta with no changes?

Don't bad mouth my kids like that.

The short is answer is because it is the highest damage set available to Sentinels. The long answer is because while Blasters have a Tesla Cage that does minimal damage, Sentinels do not, and while Blasters have a secondary that can be used to further increase their damage, Sentinels do not. We have epic sets that occasionally have worthwhile attacks, but it's one or two, not an entire secondary worth of additional attacks. Then top that off with an always-on, autonomous pet that is adding damage to an already high damage set. So there's Tesla Cage, a pet, and you're largely forced to stay within your primary for attacks. Add to that the stigma that Sentinels spent the first two years being viewed as the "lowest damage" AT and you find that people will have the desire to choose the highest damage available just to keep pace with the Defenders.

I feel like this needs a ranked choice.

Chain Fences from Electricity Mastery has a 16 target cap (vs 10), and a much bigger 30 ft radius (vs 10), and an 8 second recharge (vs 20). The only thing Electrifying fences has over that is damage. Choose your poison.

Final DPS.

Yeah, but @Thraxen said he was going to make one. Where's my follow through?

Uhh, no. The rotation you referenced (3-4-20-21-6-(1)-(7)) was Electric/Bio, so I was checking that. The rotation for Psi (2-4-8-20-21) hasn't changed. It uses TK Blast. Currently it sits at the bottom of the charts, but if you can find a better rotation I'll put it in.

Primary Powerset: Water Blast High * Single-Target Damage, Medium-High * Area of Effect (AoE) Damage (1 Cone, 2 Targeted, 1 area), Medium * Control (3 knockdowns), Medium * Debuff Potential Water Blast is one of them new fangled sets that does a couple of things rather than just one. It isn't just pigeon holed into to-hit debuffs, or knockback, or recharge reduction. The abilities are spread between knockdowns, defense debuffs and slows. You even get an underpowered heal! The set functions off of a combo system called Tidal Power that stacks up to 3 times. Your T4 and T7 gain effects at 3 Tidal Power; your heal will heal for (a little) more, and your T7 will cast in 1 second instead of 1.43 and recharge instantly. Your T3 and T9 will gain damage/effects and deplete your Tidal Power regardless of how many charges you have, so keep that in mind. This why your build up, Tidal Forces, only grants a 25% boost instead of a 50% boost. A 3 Tidal Power Geyser does an additional 74.69 damage, a 62% boost. This also increases with enhancements and damage buffs. That means Geyser, even just factoring the 25% damage boost, is doing over 180% more damage. For this set, three-quarters of your damage will be Cold and the other quarter being Smashing. Steam Spray and Geyser are outliers doing Fire(/Smashing) damage. Cold is a relatively low resist rate in the game and fire also being a very low resist rate. Smashing damage on the other hand has a fairly high resist rate. Issue 28, Page 2 update: A new "wet" mechanic has appeared. All powers but Dehydrate apply the wet debuff to your targets. Wet targets take more damage from Dehydrate (2 additional ticks of damage). Beginner's Overview My Water/SR Sent was the second character I made when the servers came back. It's my badger (1371 badges!) and I used it to bankroll all my other various characters. Unfortunately I didn't know crap about Sentinels back then, and most of my CoH knowledge had faded since I last played in I6. I just figured a positional defense set paired with a primary that could heal should be pretty tough. I took Practiced Brawler instead of Master Brawler since nobody seemed to know what it did. Oof. But now I have an intimate knowledge of the set and the AT in general. I mean, it's been 3 years, I better. Anyway, in the early levels you won't be taking major advantage of Tidal Power. Obviously try to use Water Burst when you have some charges built up, but otherwise Tidal Power is kind of just there. Eventually you will get Water Jet and Dehydrate, but the heal on Dehydrate got crippled on its port over to Sentinels, so don't worry much about using it as a heal. Prioritize using your Tidal Power on Water Jet. Initially, Water Blast's claim to fame was that it did massive AoE damage compared to other sets because it exceeded the standard Sentinel target caps. This is no longer the case as of I26, Page 5. The only ability still breaking target caps is Whirlpool, which is a "rain" spell for all intensive porpoises. Fire Blast already has that, as does Archery. So no big deal really. Now the set does above average AoE and below average single target. Have fun with that. Slotting Basic Slotting All of your single target abilities have a 1x multiplier. After leveling two characters recently "the old fashioned way," I've found that most leveling groups aren't going usually over +1. That means your base hit chance is most likely going to be 65%. That means you'll need at least another 47% enhanced accuracy to be capped at 95% hit chance. Yes, this set has a lot of defense debuffs, but you have to hit them first to apply those debuffs. So either make sure your first ability has enough accuracy to hit, or just assume all of your abilities need that much accuracy. That's going to be 2 level 25 accuracy IOs per ability. Whirlpool has a chonky 2x accuracy, Steam Spray is 1.2x and Geyser is 1.4x. For Whirlpool and Geyser this means you're either above cap already, or near enough to it. Steam Spray still needs love, somewhere around 22% more accuracy, so we'll just call that a single level 25 IO. Advanced Slotting With Slows, Defense Debuffs, and knockbacks you have a bevy of additional proc options sprinkled across the powers of this set. • Aqua Bolt - It's the better of your two starting choices and has access to defense debuff procs. Would I bother slotting procs in this? No. No I would not, but I may as well mention them. This ability will most likely be part of your rotation, so you should at least slot it so it will do a little bit of damage. Winter IO or Thundering Strike if you want that Ranged defense. • Hydro Blast - Has a fairly high 50.58% proc chance at 3.5PPM because of it's long cast time, so it's possible this could be turned into a proc monster and be better than Water Bolt, but I haven't checked. For "whole set, mule type" slotting, this is the lower damage option between the two. This ability has access to three more damaging procs from slows and knockbacks. • Water Burst - Once touted for its 16 target cap, is a shadow of its former self, which was was very overplayed for what it was. It has a 15ft radius, so in normal play it was highly unlikely that you would be hitting all 16 targets in any single cast. Even at 10 targets it's unlikely to have full saturation. You have to be hover-blasting solo to get everyone clumped up enough for the target cap to come into play. So nice in thought, less so in practice. The ATO procs will have low 11% chance at 1PPM, so you may want to consider putting them elsewhere if you were shooting for the multitarget thing. A full Winter IO set here will get you 7.5% F/C/AoE defense. This ability also has six damaging procs available, so frankenslotting is an option, but you're going to need set bonuses somewhere and this ability doesn't exactly do a ton of damage. Even at 3 TP it only adds 11.89 more damage. It's 25% more damage, but when 11.89 is 25%, that's kinda low. Just keeping it real. On the other hand, if you go full procs with no enhanced recharge you can add another 165.67 damage (when accounting for the 38.48% 3.5ppm proc chance), but it's going to need some accuracy to be effective. • Dehydrate - Your under-performing heal with a very long activation time. 3.5PPM procs will have a base 57.58% chance, so this is a great ability to stack procs for your single target attack chain. Especially Achilles' Heel. Just be wary about eating your stacks of Tidal Power with this ability on accident. Despite its long cast time, this power does have a place in your single target rotation, especially when it's holding the Achilles' Heel proc. With an 8 second recharge time the standard damage formula forces this ability to do very little damage. T2 abilities have 8 second recharge times, for reference. So this ability does little baseline damage, and it's supposed to sit in your rotation. Using sets here will not do the trick. Stack on all the procs you can while maintaining your 95% hit chance. Issue 28, Page 2 update: Wet targets take 2 additional ticks of damage. • Tidal Forces - As I said, this only increases damage by 25%, but also adds 3 Tidal Power. Definitely put the Gaussian proc in this. Try to use it immediately before you use Geyser. Since it doesn't increase your damage a ton, don't feel bad about not slotting it for recharge. Just try to sync its recharge time with Geyser so they're paired up. • Whirlpool - Breaks the Sentinel target cap rule and has a more reasonable 25ft radius. This ability summons a pseudo-pet. I seem to get a fairly high proc rate on Opportunity Strikes with it even though it should only be a 6.5% chance which makes me think it works more like Force Feedback rather than a traditional proc. Force Feedback is based on the abilities times rather than pseudo-pet times because pets don't benefit from +recharge. Or in this case, they can't build Opportunity. So I guess it has a 27.12% chance, which does kind of mesh with my observations. This ability has an extensive list of procs available but, I mean, you need to get your set bonuses somewhere and pseudo-pets are notoriously bad for procs. So far we've potentially proc-bombed 2 abilities and muled 1 set in our first ability. I'd look at putting either Sentinel's Ward or Opportunity Strikes here for the set bonuses. • Water Jet - This is your "hard hitting" single target ability and plays with the Tidal Power system. At 3 charges your first cast will activate "Enhanced Water Jet" and consume all of your charges. This activation will deal additional damage, recharge Water Jet immediately and will build your next set of TP, so you're already on your way. Being that this is your big hitter, slot it with 5 pieces of Apocalypse with the proc, omitting either the DMG/RCH or the ACC/RCH, and tack one of the three remaining procs on the end. Enhanced Water Jet no longer has a 10 second internal cooldown, so that's nice. Issue 28, Page 2 update: Enhanced Water Jet deals additional damage. • Steam Spray - This is a cone with a nice wide arc and a pretty long radius. It also has a pretty long cast/recharge time. This power is also prime for proc-bombage, but it also has a relatively high base damage, so it is viable as a place for a full set. It's a good place for AoE application of the Achilles' Heel proc with a 62.88% base proc chance. If 5-slotting one of the ATOs is in the cards, I'd do that here with Achilles' Heel in the 6th slot. Otherwise just proc-bombing it will do way more damage. We're here for a good time, not a long time. • Geyser - Your big AOE ability. Gets boosted dramatically by having more Tidal Power behind it. In the old days this is where I would put Sentinel's Ward, but they nerfed it. So now we'll just put Ragnarok here to squeeze out as much damage as we can. Otherwise, either one of the ATOs will also work for set bonuses. Skippable Powers As the "AOE Set" this one doesn't really have much that is skippable. I mean theoretically you can skip Dehydrate or Steam Spray or Water Burst, but either your AoE chain or your single target chain will suffer for it. At least if you skip Dehydrate you don't have to worry about accidentally using your 3 charges on it instead of Water Jet. And I'd honestly skip Water Burst before I skipped Steam Spray. • Hydro Blast – Long activation time, lower DPA. • Water Burst – It doesn't thrill me. Up to you. Rotations Water Jet -> Dehydrate -> Aqua Bolt -> WJx2 -> D -> AB Or just open with Tidal Forces to get to your 3 charges of Tidal Power and start at WJx2. That's it. There isn't a ton of wiggle room for the rotation of this set. Doing anything else will be a loss, and the single target of the set is low as it is. You can obviously insert attacks from your epic/patron sets since most of them have some pretty chonky DPA behind them. Adding one of these will also loosen your recharge constraints. Kind of. Those attacks will want recharge as well. The hitch here is keeping Dehydrate's cooldown below 4.28s, and Water Jet below 3.43s. That's a low 87% recharge for Dehydrate, but a more hefty 192% for Water Jet. Assuming you slotted it with Apocalypse, you have 74.1% of that taken care of, now you just need the other 120% from global recharge. NBD. Otherwise you'll have to pad the rotation with an additional Aqua Bolt. You may be thinking, "Hey, Steam Spray and Hydro Blast both build Tidal Power, can't I use those instead?" Yes. But it'd be at a loss. Steam Spray has a very long cooldown, and Hydro Blast does less damage than Aqua Bolt and a proc'ed Dehydrate, so swapping it in for one of those is a loss. Psi Mastery Rotation Water Jet -> Dehydrate -> Aqua Bolt -> Dominate -> WJx2 -> D -> AB -> Dom Sliding a proc bombed Dominate into your rotation will increase your damage by.. a bit. It's like a 20% increase in DPS. With both Dehydrate and Aqua Bolt being before Dominate, you should have a bit of -Defense in place, so accuracy isn't a pressing concern. Recharge times are: Dehydrate - 5.66s; WJ - 4.82s; Dominate - 6.43s. That's 42% for Dehydrate, 108% for WJ, and 149% for Dominate. As a proc bomb, obviously you want all of that recharge coming from global, which isn't a tall order by any means, but if you need to you can get 41.4% of that out of Unbreakable Constraint pretty easily. Ninja Mastery Rotation Water Jet -> Dehydrate -> Aqua Bolt -> Lotus Drops -> WJx2 -> D -> AB As a proc bomb, Lotus Drops has way too long of a cooldown to fit into every rotation, so it comes in every other rotation. If you're curious, yes, you can toss Sting of the Wasp in the rotation in an attempt to decrease recharge requirements on Lotus Drop, but it will require a massive 261% recharge to get down to the 7.88s required. Your reward for this feat is a lower DPS rotation. Not worth the effort. Numbers wise, you will have to have the same recharge as the basic rotation for Dehydrate and Water Jet. Lotus Drop will need to be down to 12.86s; 118% recharge. Same as Dominate, try to keep this as global recharge and slot everything in this as a proc. This rotation will also increase DPS over the basic rotation, just not as much as Psi. Slotting both FotG and Achilles, even though you should already have Achilles slotted in Dehydrate, will be better than purely damage procs. This will essentially maximize uptime of the Achilles proc. *According to the spreadsheet, this is a lower dps option than using the melee attack from every single other epic mastery. Just not Sting of the Wasp because of its 10s cooldown. Electricity Mastery Rotation (highest dps) (Lightning Field) -> Water Jet -> Dehydrate -> Aqua Bolt -> Havoc Punch -> WJx2 - D -> AB Havoc Punch has the same 28s cooldown that Lotus Drop from Ninja Mastery does. Everything recharge-wise applies here. Havoc Punch every other rotation. Lightning Field all of the time. This set up is theoretically your maximum single target damage. Probably also Multi-target with Lightning Field going. Havoc Punch can be as proc bombed as you can make it, or just slotted with the Armageddon set, you only need to attain the 12.86s recharge. Complementary Choices Water will kind of pair with whatever you want. There's nothing visually thematic that will go with it (yet), but for the "water" theme you could argue that Super Reflexes or Ninjitsu kind of go with the "flow of water" theme. For a "polluted" water thing you can go with Radiation or Bio, or even Dark. It doesn't seem like you need a reason to pair stuff with Water. It's pretty flexible. Damage wise, pairing with Bio will yield the largest damage increase. Stone Armor will be next, followed by Fire. If your predicted build in Mid's is wanting for recharge, Electric, Energy, Radiation or Super Reflexes all have a 20% recharge bonus. Invuln gives a 10% To Hit bonus, but this set has plenty of -Defense, so I wouldn't exactly say it's needed. Ancillary/Patron Pools Chain Fences from the Electric Mastery has a 16 target cap, perfect for trapping packs in your 16 target Whirlpool. It also has Lightning Field, but this set doesn't have much of a reason to be in melee range. Not to say you can't just be in melee range for the fun of it, or because Havoc Punch brought you there. Psi Mastery has the obligatory mention because of Dominate. Ninja Mastery can unlock the Fury of the Gladiator proc for you, otherwise you already have ample access to the Achilles' Heel proc it would be unlocking for other sets. Lotus Drop has a fairly long recharge, so it would only be popping in every other rotation, bringing its usefulness with FotG down somewhat. Incarnate Abilities Musculature Core. This set isn't hurting for recovery, and its nearly forced rotation doesn't really need a ton of recharge. Hybrid Assault is your go to. Periodt. There is absolutely no situation where Core is better. Your secondary will dictate your Destiny slot. If you have an endurance/toggle heavy secondary you can grab Ageless and shore up your recovery while also giving yourself a nice global recharge bonus. If you find your secondary isn’t pulling its weight, you can take Barrier. Otherwise take whatever you want. But yeah, Ageless. Realistically your build should be solid before you go trying to patch holes with your incarnates, but if there was an Incarnate to use for patching, it's your Destiny slot. Grab an Interface that does a damage proc. The -regen proc from Diamagnetic technically counts towards your dps output, but many monsters have regen debuff resistance, making it not a super good option. So feel free to skip that slap in the face. Otherwise Degenerative Core or Reactive Radial are your theoretical maximums.

They're old builds, but they still check out.

Alright, so I pushed a build with Psi/Ninja/Electric masteries. It looks like if you use a (7)-(22)-1-4-6-1-4-20 rotation with Electric Mastery you will see the highest dps. Or 1-4-6/20. However you want to phrase it. If you slot Havoc Punch with a Force Feedback, and it procs, it will be a gapless rotation. Otherwise Havoc Punch will have around a 0.69 gap, then it will get longer as Ageless wears off. Apparently exporting builds in 3.5.5.10 is broken, so here's a data chunk from an older version for the build I used. | Copy & Paste this data into Mids Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1435;667;1334;HEX;| |78DA6593596F125114C7EFC0206B372B655F0A1428CB087E006D698B692BB1B11F6| |0328101C750680013FD2E6E8FE2F2EEB3CFAE1FC0188DD1EEF6C1F5693CCC39B760| |9864F871CFF63FF7DC3B953BABAE7ABDBCC484C995A6D2EDCADB6AABA7B5D4A6AD7| |2BBA7F4B4768B0D1E2BBC51EE926F28AD865A93D69A6AB5D7D1AA4A532E416E2F76| |16B0AAD6D55657954A5A5BBEDE69282DAD2A2F7776DA1D36B1D56E37A5B2D6B8099| |10D87B1DADE55D59A131DCD8167F4BF7F6D57AB4A6795079A7205C4D4CE5D2F3495| |80F76B0A7E04A34FDDC21E8B8C154576B14F7C427C8A2C3E233E477A1687C966F6C| |36C18533F91993FC8FC6FE45E8AC78292F0198DA62FC46F483146455E30A4C962D0| |0B4A665212CCA7282FFE42EE43650BDF832567328CE7F24409692B209345620E950| |E20D9CA2B5BB3286BEB63900F64EDE414ED6EC1303ACA98E9B88A4C6C10D7918750| |D1C937EACC0C8C76E692D0E9FA803D4F2A502C04DCC1A28935F4F741718214753F2| |CA6A8923815C488E910318C0C4790F351E411C8CFF0A499CBB891F325E21232BC4C| |5C41464169968F70760F2B5DD8271E20E70E894748EF311D1EDC70372932B70E0F3| |383C9C3A7EAF1E05EBD97E890C1E9E353F54DE300FC651C947F1383821BB82EAE23| |639014E01503744E41A21D9C21DE4188CEE9040611E17B8ABCC2B9475F13DF10DF2| |2E7DF13DF21E3309018BFDA31BADA71BADA71BAD2F1BF347A085E207961817A4A12| |3F8233CDDB48274DC66E1653C4343183CC64F13C323284A744F60992B33C397B0F7| |BCBDD273E203E44E61F11AF605B4E988AC4A72219E7F232C358819B0A34A85BF819| |5B8C3B1714197FF4C11A92AE8D9BB6C4E1C7CC04C374EC0093F09FE964DCF47DDC7| |43A6EF2668D8E6A464781C127415A7A7074111E5DB0B9E16EF57F0959EDB8| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|