Resist or Defense

[Pharce]

I’m curious what do you perfer?

 

Do you like starting with a resist set then stacking whatever you want, regen, defense from pool powers, and IOs, etc.?

 

or

 

Do you like starting with a defense set and building from there?

 

This is not about what’s best but what you like and why.

 

i really like starting with a resist set normally and have great success with that. Though i am building a /nin now that i’m enjoying though he is only lvl 30. My main is a fire/rad that i have built to have positional defense in the mid 20s.

[Hyperstrike]

Honestly, I'm good with either, or the various hybrid sets.

[Generator]

The two Sentinels I've played to date have both been Resist, but that was just b/c I had Electric and Radiation-themed concepts in mind, so I went with those.

[Radiaria]

So... Here goes:

 

With IO's, good slotting capability, and the choice, typically Resistance-based sets will outperform Defense-based ones HOWEVER...

 

as a sentinel, that isn't so much the case.

 

Sentinels have lower health and won't always make the "best use" out of resistance sets. The defense based sets are typically better suited for their playstyle.

 

I don't think any set is disadvantaged for surviving in its own way, but I do think that there are some sets that do more for you than others. 

 

That said, a fire/fire sentinel is very damaging, tons of fun, and very sustainable!

[Heraclea]

I would say that the old resistance v. defense debate isn't  really all that big of a consideration for sentinels.  I generally think that defense generally is better than resistance in the end game, but that resistance plays the whole game better.  Defense sets tend to wither when exemped to levels where all the pieces of the puzzle aren't there and key set bonuses become unavailable.  There is also a lot more -defense than -resistance in the late game. 

 

But my main sentinel is exclusively ranged, a lot more so than my electric/electric blaster, and has several tools to keep excessively friendly mobs at bay.  The main thing you want generally from a defensive set is a +recovery power.  Sets like Willpower, Ice, Bio, Fire, Ninjitsu, and Rad and maybe even Regen favor the sentinel, and I seldom recommend Regen for anything.  Some of these are defense based, some resistance, but they all have various ways of refilling your blue bar, and that's the main thing you should look for in an armor set. 

Edited October 4, 2019 by Heraclea

[Pharce]

19 hours ago, Heraclea said:

I would say that the old resistance v. defense debate isn't  really all that big of a consideration for sentinels.  I generally think that defense generally is better than resistance in the end game, but that resistance plays the whole game better.  Defense sets tend to wither when exemped to levels where all the pieces of the puzzle aren't there and key set bonuses become unavailable.  There is also a lot more -defense than -resistance in the late game. 

 

But my main sentinel is exclusively ranged, a lot more so than my electric/electric blaster, and has several tools to keep excessively friendly mobs at bay.  The main thing you want generally from a defensive set is a +recovery power.  Sets like Willpower, Ice, Bio, Fire, Ninjitsu, and Rad and maybe even Regen favor the sentinel, and I seldom recommend Regen for anything.  Some of these are defense based, some resistance, but they all have various ways of refilling your blue bar, and that's the main thing you should look for in an armor set. 

Not so much debate as preference. I have noticed another bonus to /rad and /elec they have great absorb shields as well. My lvl 50 rad with accolades has 1707hp i hit the absorb shield it goes up 713 to have a total of 2430hp. My absorb is up every 30 seconds. Add in 17.4hp/s. Plus high resist and positional hitting 20% or so. Perfect no. But i feel that when I eventually do get hit I won’t go down. Also the absorb shield greatly buffs my recovery.

 

with /nin I’m seeing how different it is t build the other way and how well soft capped defenses are. But i’m still early in that ptocess. Should be fun though just different from what I normally do. Just curious how many prefer to start with defense base and how many prefer to start with resist. And maybe get a few tips as to why.

[Kruunch]

You can reach soft caps on Defense with a Sentinel. Resists are capped at 75%.

 

So it depends how tough you want your Sentinel to be. If you want to stand in the middle of a pack of mobs, I'd suggest Defense for a Sentinel.

[Gulbasaur]

I play a fortunata, which is another lower HP archetype, and I'll throw in another vote for defence as when it gets above about 30% you're pretty untouchable, although in reality you want a bit of both. I feel like you need more resistance for it to feel different because defence gets a bit of a head start as enemies have a fairly low chance to hit to begin with. I have tanked with my fortunata, which meant that both of his hit points were important and I don't think I could have done that if it was resist-focused. 

 

However, with IOs, it's easier to add significant defence into a resistance set than vice versa and defence buffs are everywhere so resistance might be a better call long term. I had trouble fitting in IO sets that didn't add melee defence after a while and I'm way over the cap with it. I've hit a wall adding more resistance, whereas adding defence to my rad/rad brute felt quite easy and lots of people run maneuvers at higher levels so I end up swimming in defence while my resistance stays the same. 

 

tldr: It's easier to add defence to a resist powerset than the other way round. Defence buffs are much more common that resistance buffs. If you're min-maxing for end game play, mostly resistance and a bit of defence is probably a good bet. If you just want to rock about solo, defence will feel more impactful.

Edited October 6, 2019 by Gulbasaur

[Shoulung]

On a slightly different take, I can pick up one resistance toggle in all the normal power pools versus what, five defensive toggles? For that reason it makes sense to me to go with resistance based sets over defense, because defense is so much easier to build up outside your secondary, and we haven’t even touched on what primaries like dark can do to help out, or the parry skills for melee types.

[Gulbasaur]

On 10/7/2019 at 5:31 AM, Shoulung said:

On a slightly different take, I can pick up one resistance toggle in all the normal power pools versus what, five defensive toggles? For that reason it makes sense to me to go with resistance based sets over defense, because defense is so much easier to build up outside your secondary, and we haven’t even touched on what primaries like dark can do to help out, or the parry skills for melee types.

That's a fair assessment. It's fairly easy to add about 15-20% defence or resistance through sets, only 20% defence is great because of the way it's calculated and the way it runs off whichever number is higher so you can focus on two or three stat, while 20% damage resistance is merely better than nothing as you need an even coverage for it to be meaningful.. 

 

You have to compromise a lot to reach 45% defence through just IO sets and power pools (damage and utility are usually the first to go, looking at other people's builds), so I really do prefer the hybrid sets that give you a solid base to build off, but yeah. I recently respecced out of a few defence powers because I was sitting at 55% melee defence before any click buffs and picked up medicine instead. 

Edited October 8, 2019 by Gulbasaur

[Shoulung]

Yeah, the hybrid powers like wp are nice, and I’ve got a regen brute, scrapper, sentinel  and stalker so what’s good us goes out the window for whatever my fantasy is atm.

[Pharce]

16 minutes ago, Shoulung said:

Yeah, the hybrid powers like wp are nice, and I’ve got a regen brute, scrapper, sentinel  and stalker so what’s good us goes out the window for whatever my fantasy is atm.

Do any of the sentinel set have resistance and defense. I know /nin have a small 7% resist all built in, any others?

[oldskool]

2 hours ago, Pharce said:

Do any of the sentinel set have resistance and defense. I know /nin have a small 7% resist all built in, any others?

A good bit of secondaries are mixed defense type.  Radiation/Electric/Fire is all resistance.  Super Reflexes is all defense.  Regeneration has little resistance and mostly active healing.  I guess that is its own thing.

 

Off the top of my head the following sets have some amount of resistance (even if small) and some amount of defense (even if small): 

Ninjutsu

Energy Aura

Ice Armor

Willpower

Bio Armor

Invulnerability

Dark Armor

 

Am I missing any or did I just rattle off everything available to Sentinels?

 

Edited October 8, 2019 by oldskool