What is a Sentinel?

[Chalkarts]

Where exactly in the spectrum of roles does a Sentinel sit?

 

Are they DPS, Tanks, solo specialists?  What do they do?

 

I've built one, (water/willpower) I'm very interested in leveling it to 50, but i'm not sure what exactly to do with it.

It'll be fun flying around blasting things with fluids but is that all it can do?

 

 

[oldskool]

Sentinels do ranged damage while having better durability than the other ranged archetypes earlier.  That's what they do.  They're not a support/tank/pet/control class.  The inherent (Opportunity), as it currently stands - subject to change apparently, offers some very limited potential for team offensive support.  However, that tiny bit of support is not something I'd worry a lot about.  Damage is your primary job along with not falling on your face. 

 

What part of Water and/or Willpower is the portion that is getting you hung up on the "not sure what exactly to do with it"?  

 

Water Blast has great area of effect damage options.  You can do so-so single-target, but AOE should be your jam.  Willpower is one of, if not the most, hands off defensive power set in the game.  Willpower is quite simple to work with if you understand the most basic features of the game mechanics regarding enhancements. 

[Chalkarts]

16 minutes ago, oldskool said:

Sentinels do ranged damage while having better durability than the other ranged archetypes earlier.  That's what they do.  

 

What part of Water and/or Willpower is the portion that is getting you hung up on the "not sure what exactly to do with it"?  

 

Water Blast has great area of effect damage options.  You can do so-so single-target, but AOE should be your jam.  Willpower is one of, if not the most, hands off defensive power set in the game.  Willpower is quite simple to work with if you understand the most basic features of the game mechanics regarding enhancements. 

Willpower and I are old friends, I had a SS/WPR in live.

I was just not sure if I was missing something.  It just seemed too easy to just be tough and blasty.

but cool.

If you're on everlasting, look out for Raw Sewage

[nihilii]

As a Sentinel, your role is to confuse your team about your role so you can do absolutely anything you want to.

[Rathulfr]

IMO, Sentinels are for soloing (or duoing).  Their damage isn't great (the other DPS ATs outperform them pretty handily), but their durability is considerable.  You can take hits and rarely get mezzed.  When you're solo, you're not necessarily trying to kill everything as fast or as big as possible.  When you're solo, do you really care if it takes you 5 seconds or 7.5 seconds to kill a mob?  Not really, if you can stand toe to toe with them and not get mezzed that whole time.  Pure DPS classes survive by killing quickly: Sentinels survive by not being killed as quickly.  So Sentinels really shine solo and at lower levels, where they can tackle the content with confidence. 

 

Where they start to fade is end-game, when everyone else finally has the levels, powers, and builds to survive as well, without giving up on damage output.  A level 50 Sentinel (believe me, I've played quite a few) simply cannot keep up with the damage output of a level 50 Blaster, Scrapper, or Brute.  It's at that point, at 50+3 T4, that I took a long hard look at my Sentinels and decided that I'd rather play an equivalent Blaster.  Don't get me wrong: I love my Sentinels, I really do.  But at the end of the day, and at max level with a full build of IO sets, my Blaster does way more damage and is almost as durable (under most conditions -- there are notable exceptions).

 

So if you want a character for soloing, especially lower-level content, then I recommend the Sentinel.  But if you want a character for end-game, you might try something else, instead.

 

[biostem]

I think of sentinels as an attempt to encapsulate resilient ranged attackers, a la Iron Man and War Machine, while taking into consideration game balance, (hence the lower defensive values and damage numbers).  Their primary sets have been adjusted to skew them towards single target attacks earlier on and their AoE target caps have been lowered, so it also seems that they are meant to stand "mano a mano" with fewer, more powerful enemies, too.

Edited September 27, 2019 by biostem

[SmalltalkJava]

6 hours ago, biostem said:

I think of sentinels as an attempt to encapsulate resilient ranged attackers, a la Iron Man and War Machine, while taking into consideration game balance, (hence the lower defensive values and damage numbers).  Their primary sets have been adjusted to skew them towards single target attacks earlier on and their AoE target caps have been lowered, so it also seems that they are meant to stand "mano a mano" with fewer, more powerful enemies, too.

I feel the same.   It’s an Iron Man type of AT.   The game  IMO never had that opportunity before sentinels 

[Pharce]

Sentinels are for fun. So that depends your definition of course. For me that means end game nuking every mob and killing half of them and standing there moping up the rest, if my team hasn’t. It also mean when i’m on a pug team that is really bad and they all die i keep going till all the enemies are out.

 

as this game has no real need for a perfect team they fit in very well. Plus when I actually want to read game text of a story arc I haven’t done i can solo it and take my time with the story.

[Hargn]

16 hours ago, nihilii said:

As a Sentinel, your role is to confuse your team about your role so you can do absolutely anything you want to.

QFT

Sentinel hidden mechanic: "Team confuse"

[Snakebit]

/ team

 

"Hey, what's that crosshair thing"

 

"Sentinel inherent"

 

"Cool, what's it do"

 

"Sentinel inherent"

 

"What's it do"

 

"It's the sentinel inherent"

 

***Roll a sentinel****

 

/help "What's the sentinel inherent do" 

 

"Sentinel inherent"

Edited September 28, 2019 by cejmp

[SaintD]

*gets to the end of Mass Effect 3*
"Choose red, green, or blue."
"Ok. Um....red?"
...
...
...
"What did that d-"
"Sentinel inherent."
"GOD DAMN IT!"

[Chalkarts]

From examining the powers and abilities of the sentinel I think I've decided my role will be DPS and group survival. 

I'll take teleport friend and revive in the pool powers so i can save a group on runs.

[Pharce]

9 minutes ago, Chalkarts said:

From examining the powers and abilities of the sentinel I think I've decided my role will be DPS and group survival. 

I'll take teleport friend and revive in the pool powers so i can save a group on runs.

Nice i like this idea. Ive been thinking of making one like this. A durable dps minor support. Let us know how you like it.

[Crysis]

Everything already said is true.

 

Properly slotted, Sentinels can do some lightweight tanking.  I often do on my Fire/Rad.  Hit Aim, jump into spawn with Stealth in, Ground Zero+Inferno for the alpha wave attacks and then cleanup.  Works really well.  Reminds me a little of playing my Plant/Fire Dom.

 

 

[Teirusu]

39 minutes ago, Crysis said:

Everything already said is true.

 

Properly slotted, Sentinels can do some lightweight tanking.  I often do on my Fire/Rad.  Hit Aim, jump into spawn with Stealth in, Ground Zero+Inferno for the alpha wave attacks and then cleanup.  Works really well.  Reminds me a little of playing my Plant/Fire Dom.

 

 

I 110% agree with this! 

 

Sentinels with a half-way decent build can face-tank and be quite effective at eating a mob's alpha.  The reasoning is two fold.  Being ranged attackers, they can open up from range, so they won't see the heavier attacks, usually.  Not only that but they can open up with AIM + T9s + Regular AOEs and remove a decent chunk of the spawn pretty much at the start.  After that a Tanker/Brute coming in and using their AOEs will take the aggro right off you since everything they have has Taunt.  Sentinels can do this on nearly every spawn due to their faster recharging T9.

 

While you can make Blasters/Corruptors/Etc. that can perhaps do this sometimes, (Or most of the time)  it's certainly not as as easy/cheap and typically shoe-horns you into specific builds, powers, and concepts that people might not want.  On the other hand, Sentinels can pretty much do this out-of-the box and only get better at it as time goes on.

[Chalkarts]

After playing my Sentinel for a couple more levels, I am entertained.

 

My old Willpower tanker from Live was slotted for pure regen, 2 pieces from a ton of different sets, stacking regen to ridiculous levels.

He was nigh invulnerable, but he was also in the enemies face for every punch.

 

If I trick out this character the same way, since they're primarily ranged, he'll get hit much less often and regen too fast for anything to actually kill him.

 

I had a lot of fun in PvP with my old rapidregen tanker, this could be great for the same reasons.

Edited September 28, 2019 by Chalkarts

[drbuzzard]

Way I see sentinels working best at high level is that, while they certainly can't do the highest damage, they can drop a 10 target nuke for pretty seriously high damage every 22 second or so (assuming perma-hasten). With some other AOEs thrown in, this is effective clearance of minions. Yes, while playing my sents I do have blaster nuke envy, but my nuke is ready for every spawn, they have to decide when to use theirs more carefully. I also get to jump into the middle of things with little care (depending on secondary of course) and blast away. I won't say, however, that I'm against them improving the class. It does take some work to keep up at high level, and I can see the damage difference quite clearly playing my stalkers and brutes. I look forward to them being made a real version of 'ranged scrappers' as the goal has been stated.