Underfyre

Okay, so as the sheet stands with how it loads with Seismic/Invuln, Invuln has a 10% to hit bonus. Then on top of that, Opportunity gives a 3.75% -defense debuff, which is then reduced by 87% and further by brought down and additional 48% from purple patch to 0.23%. So from the moment you load the sheet up, a Seismic/Invlun Sentinel will start at 49.23% hit chance on a +4 target.

I'm out and about right now so I can't see what you mean, but accuracy is one of the things that hasn't been changed much at all once I had it set right. The only reason it would be higher than the base 39% is if the base accuracy is higher than 1 for the ability. So something like Archery will always be higher than 39% on every ability since they're all 1.05x accuracy.

2.1 up. Have fun fiddling with theoretical Seismic Blast stuff.

Yeah this, I almost always put Sentinel's Ward in the T9, except in Ice Blast. The only aoe Ice Blast has that isn't a pseudopet is Frost Breath which is kinda meh as an ability. Just another reason to not like Ice Blast on Sentinels.

As far as I can tell from City of Data, it looks like both ATOs top off at 6 targets. So in general, as long as it isn't a rain spell, an aoe is the optimal place to put the ATOs. I want to believe VS functions like a psuedopet with regards to how the ATO procs function with it. With peudopets, the ATO will proc a single time on cast of the pseudopet which is applied to the caster. Mildly more useful for Opportunity Strikes than Sentinels Ward since 35 more opportunity is going to go further than a single proc of the 180hp shield. However, since VS is now a toggle, he will most likely function as a toggle, so activation + recharge is now just 10, and arc/radius are just 1. That's a 16.67% proc chance every 10 seconds. Since it will be just going off whenever, I'm not a fan. I'd rather choose the time and place the proc goes off.

Good question, since it's a toggle now it mightshould function off of a 10s recharge for you. Not something I tested. Not something I care to test since Electric has better places for the proc.

If he's starting from rares, then any random thing will do just fine. When starting from uncommons, it's easiest to start from a set that only has an option to flip to a rare, like defense debuffs.

It does buff him, tho not as well as before they changed the cast time/recharge time. It's roughly an 18% damage increase for him now. Bear in mind that putting the 3 bigger damage pieces (DMG, DMG/RCH, DMG/END) from Soulbound, at +5, and with Musculature, will have you at 134.6% damage, so adding another damage enhancement will see a 85% reduction in effectiveness. So in the end, even tho it's "only" 18%, it's 18% that was well out of your reach anyway.

Quite the opposite. As I said earlier, I hope it's because they have something bigger for Sentinels coming down the pike.

"At some point, most likely not in time for Page 3. Sentinel sets need customization and that is best done after the set has any and all quirks an features finalized." The "customization" is what I'm referring to as flimsy. Only a handful of Sentinel sets have/need a degree of customization to them, ie. Assault Rifle has a Build Up, Incinerator instead of Ignite, its Snipe replaced. That's a fringe case because of how out of the norm AR was. Seismic isn't that fringe of a set. It's really straight forward as power picks go. Seismic does have a handful of new mechanics to it, but none of them need more smoothing out for Senitnels than the other ATs needed.

I read that too, and granted I have no idea what kind of leg work goes into adding a new set to an AT, but that sounds flimsy. I hope that it's because they have something bigger planned for Sentinels finally, but I'd be foolish to hold my breath.

I feel a level of doubt on Sents ever getting Shield Defense. As for Seismic Blast, I can't really come up with a viable excuse for not pushing it out with every other AT. The only thing I can think of is the cooldown reduction mechanic and how it would interact with Meteor. After putting the mechanic in my spreadsheet, it drops the cooldown to around 20 seconds, depending on how many Earth abilities your rotation is holding. A Sentinel would probably only have 2 since we use our Epic pool abilities as standard parts of our rotations. A 20s T9 does sound kind of powerful, but unless someone is chain pulling to the Sentinel, they probably aren't going to be using their T9 on the same pull, and it was more than likely going to be up for the next pack anyway.

Primary Powerset: Dark Blast Med-High* Single-Target Damage, High* Area of Effect (AoE) Damage (1 Cone, 1 Targeted, 1 PBAoE), Low* Control (1 knockback), Med-High* Debuff Potential Dark Blast's claim to fame is debuffing the enemies hit chance. This is, unfortunately, a resistible debuff. In most gameplay the resisted amount is negligible, but if you're counting on it in AV/GM fights, don't. Then again, who is successfully soloing AVs/GMs with a Sentinel? Not the vast majority of the player base, that's for sure. Anyway, after a bunch of toying around with slotting and rotations, I found out that Dark has the capacity to be a top end damage set, not quite challenging Fire and Electric, but up there. The reality is that it will be extremely endurance hungry to do it. Beginner's Overview For leveling, Dark is a good set purely because of the To Hit debuff, it pushes survivability to your favor. The set pairs well with resist secondaries that don't have a lot of defense, or regen secondaries that don't have a lot of defense, or some other kind of secondaries that don't have a lot of defense. To-Hit debuffs are just another form of defense, but resistible. On the other hand, there are ways around defense using To-Hit buffs, so technically defense is resistible as well? I dunno. Anyway. Slotting Basic Slotting The vast majority of the attacks have a 1x multiplier, so you're going to have to put a little effort into hitting stuff. At +0 that means your base hit chance is 75%. To get that to the maximum hit chance of 95% you will need to enhance it by 27% by whatever means are available. One level 25 Accuracy IO is sufficient to that end. Going to +1 will drop you to 65%, that will take 47% enhancement. A level 50 IO is only 42.4% before boosting, so you're going to have to start stacking. I'm not going to break it down further, but like I say in all of my write-ups, hitting at all is more important than hitting hard. When you finally get it, Antumbral Beam has a 1.2 multiplier which means that 75% hit chance starts at 90%. If you have a Kismet slotted you'll already be hit capped. Honestly you'll be spending a few million if you purely slot with IOs, but a single Kismet is currently running for 4-5M. It probably isn't worth it for a first timer, but if you have a bank roll behind you, go for it. It will save you slots on accuracy enhancements. Otherwise 2/2/2 on accuracy, damage and recharge won't steer you wrong. Advanced Slotting Since Dark Blast debuffs To-Hit it opens up the To-Hit Debuff and Accurate To-Hit Debuff enhancement sets. This essentially equates to one more damaging proc being available. Don't let me catch you using one of those sets in your primary attacks, you are a damage AT. Act like it. Most abilities have sub 2s cast times, except for Antumbral Beam, so your attack chain is going to be fairly snappy. You will need a bit of recharge to get yourself out of using Dark Blast as filler. • Dark Blast - As is standard for most all Sentinel sets, the T1 is the better option of the two starting abilities. 3.5PPM procs have a 29.17% baseline chance. As usual, I'd probably not bother putting procs in this attack. Standard muling tactics apply. It is a possibility that you will purely be using this ability to trigger Opportunity and not have it as part of your regular rotation, so muling it isn't entirely necessary if you need a set elsewhere. Options are Winter IO for typed defenses, or the Sentinel Ward for positional defenses but the Ward proc is better served in an AOE ability. • Gloom - Most everybody will tell you Gloom is better than Dark Blast, and they technically aren't wrong. Before Incarnates it does do more damage. Once you have your Interface online, it will be worse than Dark Blast. This is because Interface procs don't care about cast times, so faster is better. Dark Blast is faster, so it wins the DPS race. Treat it like Dark Blast slotting-wise. • Umbral Torrent - Ahh, my favorite. A cone. BUT! This one is different! This one has a very fast cast time and a long enough recharge/arc/radius for procs to be somewhat useful. Baseline 3.5PPM proc chance is 50% to trigger, and it has 5 damaging procs available. Now we have a contender. Franketslot this little piggy and find a way to manage its heinous endurance cost, you want this as a rotation staple. However, you could also consider putting the Opportunity Strikes set here since the proc triggers for each target up to 6. It'll be a 7.74% chance if you put the entire set in, or a 14.29% chance if you put just the proc in as part of your frankenslotting. Also definitely consider putting a KB>KD proc on this as it has a little bit of a knockback component to it. Otherwise, the Winter IO set will net you a total 7.5% F/C/AOE defense if don't really feel like pandering to this abilities ridiculous endurance cost. Seriously, consider just putting in a pure endurance IO into this if you plan to incorporate it into your regular rotation. • Abyssal Gaze - Another ability ripe for proc monster status. Moderately low cast time, respectable recharge time and a total 7 procs available, 2 of which are epic. Baseline for 3.5PPM procs is 73.91%, full 90% for 4.5PPM. After taking care of the accuracy of the ability, slot up for procs. Most Epic builds will have 30% in global accuracy, and possibly a Kismet. Those plus a Hami-O Dmg/Acc will be enough to cap at +3 settings. • Dark Obliteration - You should already be taking Umbral Torrent, so this ability will pad out your AOE a bit more. That being said, it's a good place to chuck one of the ATO sets. It hits 10 targets with a base 10.54% (6.5% if you put a full ATO set) chance each, so they should almost always trigger at least once, which is better for Opportunity Strikes than it is Sentinel's Ward. If you choose to proc it out, that will also be just fine. Just don't plan to use this in your regular rotation. It also has a high endurance cost, but doesn't have the damage/proc chance behind it that Umbral Torrent does. • Antumbral Beam - The final piece of the puzzle for your single target rotation. Slot this with Apocalypse set w/proc, and an additional proc. Don't look back. • Life Drain - So you decided to take this. We've already used Apocalypse. Well 5 pieces of it. Putting the last one of those here is an option since it can be boosted up higher than usual for whatever stats you're using. But you could probably just get a Hami-O for that as well. The main point being that you've used the Apocalypse proc already. Which means you have 3 damaging procs left, Decimation and Theft of Essence remaining as procs of merit. As thirsty as this set can be, the Theft of Essence proc may not be a bad choice. The Theft of Essence set doesn't really have bonuses I'm looking for, but if it's what you want, go for it. Otherwise frankenslot it. Or skip it. • Blackstar - Probably the best place to put Sentinel's Ward. It'll give a nice shield to couple with the massive reduction to To-Hit. You could put Armageddon here to eek a bit more damage, but I wouldn't really chalk it up as the preferable choice. You won't be singing about the 6% F/C resists and 4% recovery you get versus the M/S/L defense, and the damage increase is somewhere around 5%. If you 5 slot SW to fit in Fury of the Gladiator, you might miss the 10% recharge. An issue you won't encounter with Armageddon. Up to you, kinda depends on whether you're using a defense set or a resist set, really. Defense will probably manage, resist will be thirsty. Skippable Powers • Dark Blast or Gloom - Pick one, you don't need both. After Interface procs, Dark Blast does more damage, on top of triggering Offensive Opportunity for yet more damage (not a ton tho). • Life Drain – The 0.7 scalar was applied straight across the board for Sentinels, including the heal numbers. So the heal here is fairly weak. This in addition to the long cast time makes this ability less useful than it should be. Rotations The highest damage option. Requires a good bit of recharge. Umbral Torrent's recharge needs to be below 5.59s, and the bigger hurdle, Antumbral Beam needs to be below 4.55s. That equates to 169% combined recharge in UT, and 230% recharge in AB. A bit of a tall order as, depending on slotting you should have between 97.4% to 74.1% from enhancements. That means either 132.6% or 155.9% global recharge. I wouldn't call it the most demanding, but it is kinda on the high side. Umbral Torrent -> Abyssal Gaze -> Antumbral Beam -> Dark Blast/Gloom The lower damage option, but also only requires 95% global recharge to accomplish, assuming some recharge is slotted into DB and AB. Dark Blast -> Abyssal Gaze -> Dark Blast -> Antumbral Beam -> Umbral Torrent The "I took Psi Mastery" rotation. Same rules as the first rotation, but Dominate also needs to recharge in 5.62s. That's 185% recharge, I'd consider the ACC/RCH piece from Unbreakable Constraint, then +5-ing it get 41.4% recharge out of the way. 143% to go, not too hard. Does more damage than just Primary abilities. Umbral Torrent -> Dominate -> Abyssal Gaze -> Antumbral Beam The "I took Psi Mastery and I want to use both Dominate and Mind Probe" rotation. Technically the highest DPS once you include Masteries. Doesn't have super high recharge requirements, but it does require you to wade into melee. You might have decided to stay there after using Blackstar anyway. Still has high endurance use because Dominate and AB have a high endurance cost. To cut Dark Blast out of the picture requires Mind Probe to be under 5.69s, which is a tall order. Like 252% recharge tall order. Blistering Cold will net you 72.6%, leaving with 179.4% to get globally. Which it turns out is lower DPS than slotting procs and just using DB. So just do that I guess, unless you need the defense from Blistering Cold. Dominate -> Antumbral Beam -> Abyssal Gaze -> Mind Probe -> Dark Blast/Gloom Ancillary/Patron Pools: Psi Mastery. Dominate and Mind Probe are super powerful. Another option is Ninja Tools. The ability to slot Fury of the Gladiator and Achilles' Heel to double stack for almost -40% resists does pose the option to boost your damage by a hefty bit, and Achilles' Heel isn't naturally available to Dark Blast, so this is a good way to reach it. Realistically, Fury of the Gladiator in The Lotus Drops is a better option than putting it in Blackstar as well, simply because you'll be using it more frequently. Complementary Choices: Like I said, as a To-Hit debuffing set, this essentially adds to your defense. Adding to defense is something Resist sets sorely need. So Dark, Fire, Electric, Radiation are on the table, as well as Regen. Which isn't technically a resist set. Bio then Fire are your top picks for doing more damage. Otherwise the world is your oyster, pick whatever feels good. Thematically, minimal FX Bio with the right coloring kinda gives off a "Dark" vibe to me. Regen and Radiation can be recolored to blend as well. Really the only set that I can't picture vibing with Dark is Electric Armor, but I'm sure someone could surprise me. Incarnate Abilities: Musculature would usually be my go to. But with 2 abilities that have a chonky endurance cost rolling around your rotation, Cardiac may be in order, just depends on how well you have your recovery set up. Hybrid Assault is your go to. Whether you go for Core or Radial depends on what kind of damage boosts you plan to be around. For solo play, Radial will provide a better damage boost than Core, but in group play where you may have the most minor of chances of reaching the damage cap, Radial will also be better than Core. Skip Core. As endurance hungry as this set can be, I'm going to say that Ageless will be your first pick, but if you find your secondary isn’t pulling its weight, you can take Barrier. Otherwise take whatever you want. But yeah, Ageless. Grab an interface that does a damage proc. Diamagnetic is not useful for damage by any means. It reduces regen by a maximum of 40% which ain't much in the long run, even if it technically counts towards your DPS. When accounting for the effects of -MaxHP on regen, and the fact that you're clearing 4,000 less health, Degen Core is your new king. In the event that everybody around you is also running Degen, fall back to Reactive. Other than that, your Lore choices are just whatever you’re feeling or themeing towards. Or just do what everyone else does and get Banished Pantheon Radial or Longbow.

There are some situations, because of slotting requirements, where Fire will be better for one primary than another, like Beam Rifle. It's the only instance I've found, but I also haven't gone poking around for them.

I dunno, I haven't been a fan of Dark Armor on any AT because of how end hungry it is. Generally it seemed like the only right thing they did for Sents was modify the secondaries to be some of the best in the game. Just not this one. And Fire. And Willpower. And Ice. Other than those, primo.

Off. Topic. Literally the only reason I care. Read the title of the thread. Like I said, if you want to fire up a "Why do Sentinels suck so much?" thread, there's nothing stopping you and plenty of people will join in, but it's also a song that everyone has already sung. To no avail. fixing Sentinels is like item number 1000 of 1000 on the list.

Fire up a new thread to air your grievances.

And clearly missed the topic of this thread. Just as you did. Pick your head up and look for a silver lining, without making it a shit sandwich,

Is this your favorite thing about Sentinels?

It does, but I mean 4-piecing the set. It'll more damage in general from the set, on top of the proc, and give a 4 piece bonus for more damage.

I'd personally swap the slotting for Ball Lightning and Thunderous Blast. Drop 1 of the slots off Hasten; put it on Hover, put it on the end of Ragnarok, just please don't use an entire slot on getting another 7.95% recharge. Probably put Soulbound into VS.

Bio is a better option if you're chasing damage, but it's admittedly frail. Energy/SR/Invuln/Nin are good if you have no intentions on dying. Fire is in the same boat as Bio, but somehow more frail with less damage. Those are the only sets I can speak on with experience.

Yes, when paired with Bio, Electric does some alright damage numbers now, but that's where Sentinels should be when they're using a purely defensive set like SR/Invuln. When we get there, I will be content.

Sent Bio has 25% bonus and also has the toxic damage proc. It does not, however, have a double proccing aoe ability. That is the great equalizer. So the new version of my spreadsheet I've been working on to predict Pylon times says Electric/Fire will take 99 seconds to kill, and it does, but it also says Sonic/Fire will take 112 with Hybrid. Obviously these are averaged numbers, so an outlier could produce lower numbers, or higher numbers. As it is the Ele/Fire has to mash its heal frequently, so I'm probably seeing the lower end.

No, it's exclusively the fact that Burn can hold so many procs and that they apparently have a chance to proc a second time. The 10% damage boost on Molten Embrace is meh, and so is the proc attached to it.