Best ranged tank build for a sentinel?

[ninja surprise]

3 hours ago, FUBARczar said:

 I should have said that SR has the least dimensions, is not multifaceted,

Ah I get ya.

Lots of sets are great until you're dead. Then you're glad you took a set with self-rez!

[ninja surprise]

On 11/5/2019 at 6:51 PM, FUBARczar said:

 

So like I said b4, SR is great most of the time, and then it's not and you are dead. And I also said to each their own, so have at it.

Ok this is unscientific but for the last two weeks I've been testing on Pineapple looking for my new favourite build. Tried various combinations of Brutes and Scrappers with:

Primaries: Radiation Melee, Electric Melee, Psionic Melee

Secondaries: Willpower, Shield Defense, Invulnerability, Super Reflexes

 

All were soft-capped to at least S/L, with SR and SD soft-capped to the three positions. Took them solo into a +0/x8 ITF to fight a bunch of Cimeroan traitors to see how they stood up.

 

Willpower is like an energizer bunny, just keeps going with endless health and regen until incoming damage overwhelmed it, then defeat.

Basically the same with Invulnerability, but with Dull Pain it lasted longer, took longer to whittle down.

Shield Defense hardly ever got hit but if health got towards 50% defeat was close behind. Sometimes instant defeat in the middle of a spawn.

Super Reflexes was surprisingly hardy. Defense-debuff-resistance meant my defense never went negative, whereas it did for the other three.  I opened the Combat Attributes and as health went down Damage Resistance went up, to 50% at about 1/4 health. But the enemies could still hardly ever hit me vs guaranteed death by now on the others.  Worst debuff was the Minotaur's Fetid Howl which did something like ~20% reduction to damage resistance. 

So SR is Positional Defense  +scaling DR +DDR +recharge +slow resist and counts as multi-faceted IMHO.

 

Shield cracked and died quicker than SR. If you have a self-heal from somewhere it's even better, like with Dark Melee. I tried adding the Call of the Sandman Heal Self proc to the first two Electric Melee punches but they didn't help much. 33% chance for a 67HP heal is a drop in the bucket. Haven't tried Aid Self yet though, may do a respec and see how it works while surrounded.

 

[FUBARczar]

18 hours ago, ninja surprise said:

Ok this is unscientific but for the last two weeks I've been testing on Pineapple looking for my new favourite build. Tried various combinations of Brutes and Scrappers with:

Primaries: Radiation Melee, Electric Melee, Psionic Melee

Secondaries: Willpower, Shield Defense, Invulnerability, Super Reflexes

 

All were soft-capped to at least S/L, with SR and SD soft-capped to the three positions. Took them solo into a +0/x8 ITF to fight a bunch of Cimeroan traitors to see how they stood up.

 

Willpower is like an energizer bunny, just keeps going with endless health and regen until incoming damage overwhelmed it, then defeat.

Basically the same with Invulnerability, but with Dull Pain it lasted longer, took longer to whittle down.

Shield Defense hardly ever got hit but if health got towards 50% defeat was close behind. Sometimes instant defeat in the middle of a spawn.

Super Reflexes was surprisingly hardy. Defense-debuff-resistance meant my defense never went negative, whereas it did for the other three.  I opened the Combat Attributes and as health went down Damage Resistance went up, to 50% at about 1/4 health. But the enemies could still hardly ever hit me vs guaranteed death by now on the others.  Worst debuff was the Minotaur's Fetid Howl which did something like ~20% reduction to damage resistance. 

So SR is Positional Defense  +scaling DR +DDR +recharge +slow resist and counts as multi-faceted IMHO.

 

Shield cracked and died quicker than SR. If you have a self-heal from somewhere it's even better, like with Dark Melee. I tried adding the Call of the Sandman Heal Self proc to the first two Electric Melee punches but they didn't help much. 33% chance for a 67HP heal is a drop in the bucket. Haven't tried Aid Self yet though, may do a respec and see how it works while surrounded.

 

that's interesting, I wonder how sets like Bio, Radiation and Ninja would compare

 

[FUBARczar]

18 hours ago, ninja surprise said:

Ok this is unscientific but for the last two weeks I've been testing on Pineapple looking for my new favourite build. Tried various combinations of Brutes and Scrappers with:

Primaries: Radiation Melee, Electric Melee, Psionic Melee

Secondaries: Willpower, Shield Defense, Invulnerability, Super Reflexes

 

All were soft-capped to at least S/L, with SR and SD soft-capped to the three positions. Took them solo into a +0/x8 ITF to fight a bunch of Cimeroan traitors to see how they stood up.

 

Willpower is like an energizer bunny, just keeps going with endless health and regen until incoming damage overwhelmed it, then defeat.

Basically the same with Invulnerability, but with Dull Pain it lasted longer, took longer to whittle down.

Shield Defense hardly ever got hit but if health got towards 50% defeat was close behind. Sometimes instant defeat in the middle of a spawn.

Super Reflexes was surprisingly hardy. Defense-debuff-resistance meant my defense never went negative, whereas it did for the other three.  I opened the Combat Attributes and as health went down Damage Resistance went up, to 50% at about 1/4 health. But the enemies could still hardly ever hit me vs guaranteed death by now on the others.  Worst debuff was the Minotaur's Fetid Howl which did something like ~20% reduction to damage resistance. 

So SR is Positional Defense  +scaling DR +DDR +recharge +slow resist and counts as multi-faceted IMHO.

 

Shield cracked and died quicker than SR. If you have a self-heal from somewhere it's even better, like with Dark Melee. I tried adding the Call of the Sandman Heal Self proc to the first two Electric Melee punches but they didn't help much. 33% chance for a 67HP heal is a drop in the bucket. Haven't tried Aid Self yet though, may do a respec and see how it works while surrounded.

 

It's interesting that you died tho on a +0/8, because I have solo'd a +4/8 master ITF with a Psi/Shield Stalker. On my first attempt I got all the way to Romulus at the end, where I did finally die after a prolonged battle.   But I guess you just stood there until they killed you?

[plainguy]

I didn't read much of what was posted.. Being honest..

 

Willpower will get you full positional defense capped. Not many blaster types can do that..  You will be able to solo 4/8 without incarnates being applied. 

 

[ninja surprise]

6 hours ago, FUBARczar said:

It's interesting that you died tho on a +0/8, because I have solo'd a +4/8 master ITF with a Psi/Shield Stalker. On my first attempt I got all the way to Romulus at the end, where I did finally die after a prolonged battle.   But I guess you just stood there until they killed you?

Yeah I just ran around killing the Immunes types and aggroing everything to see how it went. Builds weren't optimized beyond soft-capping with some additional recharge. So Invuln, Shield, and Willpower weren't capped on damage resistance.

 

New thing I noticed: The Sentinel version of SR has a new power, Enduring, for +end and more scaling damage resistance.

[Roderick]

10 hours ago, ninja surprise said:

New thing I noticed: The Sentinel version of SR has a new power, Enduring, for +end and more scaling damage resistance.

Sentinel SR doesn't have a toggle and an auto for AoE defense; they're both combined into the Toggle. It gives slightly more Def than the two combined, but the same Defense Debuff Resistance as just the toggle and no scaling resist. Enduring adds the missing Debuff Resist and Scaling Damage Resistance back in.

 

I'm not sure why they did that. The extra Recovery is nice, but not really necessary, especially when Sentinels can take Master Brawler and not have to pay Endurance for their Mez protection.

[Haijinx]

On 10/24/2019 at 2:59 AM, Hyperstrike said:

The main problem with SR, though, is what I refer to as the "eggshell" effect.

You quite literally have NO other mitigation under all that Defense.

This means anything that can reliably crack your Defenses pretty much PASTES you.

Also, since you floor out at a minimum 5% chance To-Hit, larger groups make you statistically less pleasing to the RNG Gods.

The next thing you know, you're frenching the floor, and if you could still think, it'd be "MMMMM!  Is that MINWAX?"
 

Except SR still is incredibly durable.  

 

It gets decent scaling resist when you are hit hard,  so those follow up hits really don't get to you like you'd think they would.  

 

 

[Hyperstrike]

2 hours ago, Haijinx said:

Except SR still is incredibly durable.  

 

It gets decent scaling resist when you are hit hard,  so those follow up hits really don't get to you like you'd think they would.  

 

 

 

Here's the info for the scaling Resist in Dodge.

    Unresistible Stacking +7.5% Melee Defense for 2.5s
    Unresistible Stacking +8.65% Res(Base Defense) for 2.5s
    Unresistible No BuffsStacking minmax(60 - source.kHitPoints%, 0, 100) / 60 * 0.2 Res(Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative) for 2.5s

[Haijinx]

9 minutes ago, Hyperstrike said:

 

Here's the info for the scaling Resist in Dodge.

    Unresistible Stacking +7.5% Melee Defense for 2.5s
    Unresistible Stacking +8.65% Res(Base Defense) for 2.5s
    Unresistible No BuffsStacking minmax(60 - source.kHitPoints%, 0, 100) / 60 * 0.2 Res(Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative) for 2.5s

They stack with the others, i think at 1% health you get 60% resist to all with the 3 passive sets.  40% with the 2 passive sets.  

 

Add in resist IOs and tough and you do fine.   Generally you get tagged into the red, but then the other hits never come and you regen back to the green. 

 

My SR tanker is nigh unkillable and I never got aid self or anything.  SR brute is decent also. 

 

SR scrapper is really good after level 35, but before that you will get hurt a lot by AOEs.  

 

You have to run tough though since the set has no place to slot the 3% defense global IOs

 

Some nice perks is you are immune to defense debuffs, and slows rarely affect you.  

 

Sent SR has a end recovery bonus, so has some added utility.  

 

 

 

[Hyperstrike]

Sloppy assertion.

You are not "immune to Defense Debuff".
"Immune" implies a permanent, ongoing status.

Elude, a NON PERMABLE POWER, can boost your DDR over 100% for its duration.
So, even with your Recharge sitting at 400%, you're still going to have downtime.

 

[Big Soto74]

I built some of my Sentinels to have at least Soft Cap Defense with some resist too. It helps me stay alive since my playstyle is more  like a Blapper (Blaster + Scrapper). My damage isn't near a Blaster or scrapper, but that is the playstyle I use on my sentinels.

 

WB/Invul/Mako

 

Dark/Dark/Dark

 

DP/Ninja/Mako

 

Dark/SR/Soul

Edited November 17, 2019 by Big Soto74

[Sovera]

SR was the squishiest armor I tried both as a Tanker and as a Sentinel. You'd somehow expect otherwise, but not really. But I also stress tested beyond what the game (usually) throws at us. As a rule we are not at the agro cap for minutes on end.

 

As a Tanker, good grief, the fact it did not have a heal meant I had to get Aid Self, and Aid Self simply became a part of my rotation. AoE, AoE, ST attack, Aid-Self. Knowing Aid-Self recharged in 6 seconds it was amazing the spam I did. The scaling resists only really became noticeable at around 30% HP which was really living on the edge.

 

It was pretty stressful, and more than once I was watching Aid Self's CD with hawkeyes urging it to recharge faster.

 

My Sentinel did not even manage that. The first 30 seconds of stress testing and it was hugging the floor since it lacked the increased everything a Tanker gets. Aid Self did not nearly keep up.

 

 

Now, that said, for regular play SR is fine. We meet a pack of 10-12 mobs of which more than half are minions, we use Aim, we throw our nuke, most minions are dead, we throw the rest of our AoEs and then start picking at lieuts and bosses. It is not particularly difficult since after the first few seconds we may be fighting 4-5 mobs.

 

The most rounded set for me is Ninjutsu. Baked in stealth (less alpha if we start combat without mobs shooting at us before half are dead), endurance recovery clicky, heal (no need to mess with Aid Self), softcapped defenses and better resists that work straight from 100% HP. The status protection being a clicky can be annoying but with keybinds we can make it and Hasten alternate being our autos.

 

Energy Armor is just squishy and I don't know why even softcapped, but it handled stress tests pretty poorly (same applies to regular playing as mentioned above).

 

Bio is simply the most survivable of the sets I played so far if we don't mind being locked into Barrier (it always gives 5% minimum defense so we can aim for 40% across the board) and convoluted slotting to reach softcaps. The noob trap of the extra 25% damage from Offensive Adaptation is A) not actually a 25% damage boost. It actually goes as low as 8.5% on the nuke, and B) there is such a tight power and slot budget that we lose what little we gained.

 

Procs make a HUGE difference. My Rad/Ninjutsu without triple procs in all attacks needed 6 minutes to break a pylon (obligatory 'pylon killing mentioned not because it matters but as a metric') and WITH procs needed four minutes. To compare my Rad/Bio also had triple procs AND Offensive Adaptation, but the DPS loss from the tight slotting made the gain from Offensive a wash as it too ended up needing four minutes to break a pylon.

[FUBARczar]

7 hours ago, Sovera said:

Bio is simply the most survivable of the sets I played so far if we don't mind being locked into Barrier (it always gives 5% minimum defense so we can aim for 40% across the board) and convoluted slotting to reach softcaps. The noob trap of the extra 25% damage from Offensive Adaptation is A) not actually a 25% damage boost. It actually goes as low as 8.5% on the nuke, and B) there is such a tight power and slot budget that we lose what little we gained.

 

Procs make a HUGE difference. My Rad/Ninjutsu without triple procs in all attacks needed 6 minutes to break a pylon (obligatory 'pylon killing mentioned not because it matters but as a metric') and WITH procs needed four minutes. To compare my Rad/Bio also had triple procs AND Offensive Adaptation, but the DPS loss from the tight slotting made the gain from Offensive a wash as it too ended up needing four minutes to break a pylon.

So how does the offensive damage bonus work?  I see it variable in testing, but is it based on recharge? damage?  or some other measure?

[drbuzzard]

When I tested Bio, it did more damage than is obvious  because it tacks on toxic damage in addition to the enhancement type boost. I found that it did give around 20-30% damage boost (much of it being toxic).

[Sovera]

3 hours ago, drbuzzard said:

When I tested Bio, it did more damage than is obvious  because it tacks on toxic damage in addition to the enhancement type boost. I found that it did give around 20-30% damage boost (much of it being toxic).

Check my link in the post above where I tested the variable % of Offensive Adaptation.

 

3 hours ago, FUBARczar said:

So how does the offensive damage bonus work?  I see it variable in testing, but is it based on recharge? damage?  or some other measure?

Who knows but the devs? Obviously doing a flat 25% as advertised that it would do was not an option though.

[Haijinx]

On 11/17/2019 at 2:58 AM, Hyperstrike said:

Sloppy assertion.

You are not "immune to Defense Debuff".
"Immune" implies a permanent, ongoing status.

Elude, a NON PERMABLE POWER, can boost your DDR over 100% for its duration.
So, even with your Recharge sitting at 400%, you're still going to have downtime.

 

No you get around 95% DDR without Elude. 

 

That's immune in real gameplay. 

 

I haven't taken elude since way back before ninja run came out.  I used to use it as a travel power. 

[Hyperstrike]

5 hours ago, Haijinx said:

No you get around 95% DDR without Elude. 

 

That's immune in real gameplay. 

 

I haven't taken elude since way back before ninja run came out.  I used to use it as a travel power. 

Okay.  Strange.  Must've been an error in Mids when I attempted to just 3-slot the entire set with Defense.  It only registered 60%.

It's working now and showing 123% with 3-slotted Generic Defense.
I yield the point.