Explain the Sentinel

[Xandyr]

Hi folks. I've yet to really play a Sentinel yet...mainly bc I've really been enjoying my tank(s) and playing a couple of MMs. I think I'll delve into this new class, but I know nothing about them. I looked at doing a Dark/Energy Aura Sentinel, but I'm open to anything.

 From what I've gathered, they're basically a ranged scrapper? Decent ranged damage and decent defense? Their inherent power is Opportunity? What exactly is that? On a team, what "role" are you? Damage? Semi-tank? 

 So, please enlighten me. Thanks in advance!

[Mercurias]

Sentinels are effectively ranged DPS with a defense/resistance type secondary rather than a Control/DPS/Support Secondary.

 

I don’t remember the specific numbers, but their attacks are weaker than those of Blasters on average. They also have a smaller maximum number of enemies that their AoEs can damage at once. Their health pool is also fairly small.

 

Opportunity is an AT feature attached to the class. As they damage mobs, the Opportunity bar fills. When it hits 100%, you trigger Opportunity with either your T1 or T2 attack. Your T1 attack will cause your target to have a Resistance Debuff. The T2 will cause your attacks to recover amounts of your endurance. Opportunity is nice, but it isn’t as big a deal as, say, Fury for Brutes or Domination for Doms.

 

As a broad rule with many exceptions, the low health pool of Sentinels means that Defense is likely the safest option for survival (Because resistance works better for ATs with high pools of health that can absorb the steady damage). 

 

A solid, high-synergy Sentinel to consider would likely be Dark/SR or Dark/Nin. Dark Blast reduces enemy ToHit, making defense more effective, as well as a heal and solid AoE damage. Super Reflexes softcaps quickly and has a built-in global Recharge reduction power. Ninjutsu also softcaps quickly, and while it lacks the Recharge reduction, it includes both a heal and an endurance recovery power to help keep you running.

 

Personally I would go for Dark/Nin and slot a Force Feeback Proc into Torrent, then juggle enemies nonstop to give yourself a near permanent +100% Recharge boost while also maintaining your -ToHit debuffs and having two heals and an endurance recovery power to fall back on if you take damage or have prolonged fights.

 

Sentinels are effective solo characters, and their damage is still significant even if the numbers are lower than those of Scrappers or Blasters. Just like any other AT, it depends on your power choices, build, and player skill rather than only the archetype.

Edited October 19, 2019 by Mercurias

[Chalkarts]

I've been playing one for a couple weeks and am loving it.

 

It was explained to me as the CoH version of Iron Man.  Tough as hell but fights with blasts instead of punches.

 

Mine is Water/Radiation

It's a resistance set, but I'm setting him out for regen so hopefully the damage will be reduced enough that he can just heal it faster than he takes

[Coyotedancer]

I've found I can actually off-tank with my Dark/Bio/Dark Sentinel, so with a solid build (Helped by Dark's "Neener-neener! You can't touch me!" debuff in my Tavaris' case. XD) they really are pretty hard to knock down. The damage sets feel vary uneven, though. Some definitely seem to hit harder than others.

 

Dual Pistol, Water Blast and Fire seem fine.

 

I've compared being in front of my Dark to being in the path of a glacier. He's slower than proverbial Christmas, but there's not a thing the goons can do to stop him.

 

Archery felt like a total slog. Ice likewise. AR has some systemic issues. Sonic? A little better than Ice, but still slow and not quite as "Inevitable Doom" as Dark.

I haven't tinkered with Rad yet, but I suspect it's in the same category as the Dark... Slow but very hard to stop.

 

(ETA: For reference, while I do team quite a bit with my Dark, I've done mostly solo or duo/trio small-team play with the others I've tried out, so no clue how that Archery/WP or the Water/Fire, for instance, would have handled on a full team of eight or in a large league.)

 

Edited October 20, 2019 by Coyotedancer

[Hedgefund]

Not too long ago I hit 50 for the first time with a Sent.  I had been hesitant to roll one because I kept thinking "Why make a Sentinel when I can just make a Blaster with good def bonuses?"  It turns out the survivability is a real difference.  Even a well build blaster is still a house of cards that comes crumbling down with the wrong debuff or two.  With a real armor, the survival tools are much stronger.

 

My Sent was Sonic/Bio with a lot of +Def bonuses.  It's very very sturdy, comparable to most anything not brute or tank out of everything I've played (for sturdiness).

 

As far as role goes, I'll just say I play it the same as any "assault" AT.  Like a Blaster, there's nothing to do but shoot things, so... that's my role. Kill things, stay alive.

 

For Opportunity, I don't worry about it too much.  For a truly hard target, I'll go for offensive, but for the most part, I just adhere to my attack chain and whatever opportunity is up is what gets used.

[SaintD]

It's a 'tough ranged' AT, which is why people compare it to Iron Man.

Previously, every ranged attack set was paired with a support/control set, so it was only possible to make a tough ranged damage dealer (like Iron Man) by effectively breaking the game with set enhancements to build that toughness on an AT that doesn't otherwise allow you to do that. It wasn't an inherent part of any AT that had ranged attacks, mechanically they were all built to be squishies.

Sentinels don't actually really fill any sort of mechanical hole that the game needed filling, they've been made to fill a conceptual hole. Previously you couldn't make Totally Not Master Chief or Spess Mehreen 69k without them being just as squishily faceplant prone as a halfling in a face kicking competition, simply because they had the audacity to hurt people with a gun instead of their fist. With the addition of Sentinels, you can finally pick up a gun or throw crap at enemies while actually being as Invulnerable as your giant suit of power armour would suggest.

Mechanically Sentinels don't do as much damage or have as good defenses as the melee classes (on both fronts, or massively in one of those two aspects) as a counterbalance to being ranged, which is why so many people probably look at them and ask what they are and what to do with them. It's an AT that exists entirely to mechanically support a whole range of hero concepts that weren't possible before.

[drbuzzard]

13 hours ago, SaintD said:

It's a 'tough ranged' AT, which is why people compare it to Iron Man.

Previously, every ranged attack set was paired with a support/control set, so it was only possible to make a tough ranged damage dealer (like Iron Man) by effectively breaking the game with set enhancements to build that toughness on an AT that doesn't otherwise allow you to do that. It wasn't an inherent part of any AT that had ranged attacks, mechanically they were all built to be squishies.
 

This isn't quite true. Soldiers of Arachnos can me made into tanky ranged attackers as well. They have cooked in thematic limitations, and the damage types are pretty limited (too much lethal), but it was possible (or a mix of psi and lethal for widows). I had a tanky ranged crab as my main back on live. I even remade him here, but since I've had access to sentinels with decent ranged damage types, I simply don't play the crab at all anymore.

I fully agree with the above that the difference between them and blasters is survivability. I finally got around to building a blaster here to see how the changes from live make them play (my first main was a blaster). I made a BR/dev blaster (original main was a AR/dev, but again I hate lethal damage at endgame) and finally got it to 50 this weekend and respecced into a build I like.

 

The road to 50 was filled with death. I mean death wasn't a frequent visitor, he was my damned roommate. If I looked at something wrong, I'd be eating floor tile. It doesn't take long to get to 50 these so even with being a sometimes animate corpse, it wasn't unbearable.  Now at 50 I've got a build which is OK for survivability, but is more optimized for damage, and good lord that is a lot of damage compared to my sentinels. However, as I noticed while playing with blasters, you don't do damage when dead. If aggro isn't locked down, s single pissed off boss will simply ruin your day. On my sentinels a single pissed off boss is nothing. You can easily survive long enough to take him out. On my blaster, even with all my tricks in play, it's iffy. Yes I could up the defenses on the blaster, but the tradeoff would be damage, and honestly why build a blaster if not for damage? Also those defenses would be highly brittle (being IO based with no debuff resistance) so sometimes they'd be fine, and sometimes almost useless. Sentinels have stacked defenses with debuff resistance and status protection. There's simply a large difference in survivability. I also agree that the defensive builds are the most powerful sentinel secondaries, though the resistance sets all seem (or the ones I've tried) to throw in decent quantities of regen coupled with resistances and a heal, so they are pretty survivable. They can't tank by any means, but if you pull aggro to yourself, a few enemies won't be a big deal. On defensive builds you can stomp out x8 spawns solo.

 

It should be noted also that the above description of the inherent is wrong. Both forms of opportunity cause a 20% resistance debuff to the target in question. However offensive opportunity gives you a bit of a damage and to hit buff, while defensive grants some endurance recovery and healing (small amounts for both opportunities). Truthfully the defensive one is probably more useful for endurance issues you might encounter early on as you level up. The parts which are different pale into insignificance by endgame where the 20% debuff is what you care about.

 

I believe the devs here will be revamping sentinels, and I agree they do need some help. While I do enjoy playing them, their DPS for a DPS class is a bit too low. A bit of buffing of that, and some tweaks to the inherent and they should be quite good.

[Chalkarts]

28 minutes ago, drbuzzard said:

I believe the devs here will be revamping sentinels, and I agree they do need some help. While I do enjoy playing them, their DPS for a DPS class is a bit too low. A bit of buffing of that, and some tweaks to the inherent and they should be quite good.

I feel like they should be able to do enough damage to draw some hate, since they can take the hits.

Or maybe have one provoke type attack, just a single good hate generator so they can save it until they need to rescue the blaster.

Make them a true Off tank.

[Cutter]

26 minutes ago, Chalkarts said:

I feel like they should be able to do enough damage to draw some hate, since they can take the hits.

Or maybe have one provoke type attack, just a single good hate generator so they can save it until they need to rescue the blaster.

Make them a true Off tank.

I made a similar suggestion in the Suggestion thread, and @Captain Powerhouse explicitly stated that Sentinels will not gain any sort of in-AT taunt capability. I recently dinged 47 on my Water/Regen, who feels nigh-invincible, and am seriously looking at snagging Provoke at 49 for just this reason.

[Shazbotacus]

15 hours ago, SaintD said:

Sentinels don't actually really fill any sort of mechanical hole that the game needed filling, they've been made to fill a conceptual hole. Previously you couldn't make Totally Not Master Chief or Spess Mehreen 69k without them being just as squishily faceplant prone as a halfling in a face kicking competition, simply because they had the audacity to hurt people with a gun instead of their fist. With the addition of Sentinels, you can finally pick up a gun or throw crap at enemies while actually being as Invulnerable as your giant suit of power armour would suggest.

So much this. Thanks to the Sentinel, I can have my BR/Energy army dude/Totally Not Master Chief in power armor be as tough as he looks. Now if only the Crey Juggernaut armored helmet and backpack were available to finish that particular power armor costume.