Water/Bio Questions

[TungstenShark]

I have a little experience with Bio (but from the Scrapper side) and zero experience with Water Blast, so I'm looking for some guidance from the community. I came up with a concept I really like which lead me to these two powersets on a Sentinel (which I have almost zero experience with also).

 

For Water Blast, are any of the powers skippable? They all look pretty good, with the exception of maybe Aqua Bolt. I suspect there is not a hard and fast attack chain, given how much AoE is in the Water set. Are any of the attacks proc-friendly, or is it best to just slot for sets and damage (and not frankenslot to chase procs)? Does the set need to chase Recharge? I like the fact the set is ranged with no melee-range powers. Not that I mind melee-range, but I prefer not to jump back and forth if I can avoid it.

 

On the Bio side, at least with the Scrapper version, none of the powers are skippable. I am still still learning the differences between the two ATs. How best to slot for survivability? Should Tough and Weave be included (along with other defense powers like CJ or Hover)?

 

What about Epic powers or Incarnates?

 

Does anyone have a good build to share? I'm not worried about the cost, as I like having something to shoot for at 50. I feel like I don't have a good handle on the Sentinel AT in general and how best to build/slot this powerset combo.

[TungstenShark]

So here is what I have started with, looking around the forums a little bit, trying to focus on the defensive side first. I skipped Aqua Bolt and Steam Spray in Water (this gives me 3 single target attacks and 3 AoEs) and Parasitic Leech in Bio. I am not sure if these are good choices to skip or not, so open to feedback. I want to try and get my typed Defenses to 40% in Offensive Adaption and let Barrier carry the rest of the way to the softcap. Resists...I'd like to push S/L as high as possible and bring the rest along as much as possible. I intend to play this at range, though in this iteration I did choose Knockout Blow from the Epic pools to fit in a FF proc and 4-slot Kinetic Combat bonuses. Certainly open to changes though.

 

The offensive Water attacks I have not slotted yet as I'm still trying to work out the numbers and determine proc potential. Any and all feedback would be appreciated!

 

Hero Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.6.0.7
https://github.com/ImaginaryDevelopment/imaginary-hero-designer

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 50 Magic Sentinel
Primary Power Set: Water Blast
Secondary Power Set: Bio Armor
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Leviathan Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Hydro Blast -- Empty(A), Empty(3), Empty(3), Empty(5), Empty(5), Empty(7)
Level 1: Hardened Carapace -- UnbGrd-ResDam(A), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(7), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(9), UnbGrd-Rchg/ResDam(9)
Level 2: Water Burst -- Empty(A), Empty(13), Empty(15), Empty(15), Empty(17), Empty(17)
Level 4: Environmental Adaptation -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), ShlWal-ResDam/Re TP(19)
Level 6: Dehydrate -- Empty(A), Empty(19), Empty(21), Empty(21), Empty(23), Empty(23)
Level 8: Fly -- Empty(A)
Level 10: Adaptation 
Level 12: Hover -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx(25)
Level 14: Afterburner -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A)
Level 16: Ablative Carapace -- Pnc-Heal/EndRedux(A), Pnc-EndRdx/Rchg(25), Pnc-Heal/Rchg(27), Pnc-Heal/EndRedux/Rchg(27), Pnc-Heal(29)
Level 18: Water Jet -- Empty(A), Empty(29), Empty(31), Empty(31), Empty(31), Empty(33)
Level 20: Rebuild DNA -- Pnc-EndRdx/Rchg(A), Pnc-Heal/EndRedux(33), Pnc-Heal/Rchg(33), Pnc-Heal/EndRedux/Rchg(34), Pnc-Heal(34)
Level 22: Inexhaustible -- PrfShf-End%(A)
Level 24: Boxing -- SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg(A), SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx(34), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(36), SprBlsCol-Rchg/HoldProc(36), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(36), SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(37)
Level 26: Whirlpool -- Empty(A), Empty(37), Empty(37), Empty(39), Empty(39), Empty(39)
Level 28: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(40)
Level 30: Tidal Forces -- RechRdx-I(A), GssSynFr--Build%(40)
Level 32: Geyser -- SprOppStr-Acc/Dmg(A), SprOppStr-Dmg/Rchg(42), SprOppStr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(42), SprOppStr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(42), SprOppStr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(43), SprOppStr-Rchg/+Opportunity(43)
Level 35: Knockout Blow -- KntCmb-Acc/Dmg(A), KntCmb-Dmg/Rchg(43), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(45), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx(45), FrcFdb-Rechg%(46)
Level 38: Tough -- StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), GldArm-3defTpProc(46)
Level 41: Weave -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx(46)
Level 44: Maneuvers -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), LucoftheG-Def(48), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx(50)
Level 47: Genomic Evolution -- UnbGrd-Rchg/ResDam(A), UnbGrd-Max HP%(48), UnbGrd-ResDam(48), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(50)
Level 49: Athletic Regulation -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Defensive Adaptation 
Level 1: Brawl -- KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(A), KntCmb-Acc/Dmg(11), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx(11), KntCmb-Dmg/Rchg(13)
Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run 
Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Health -- Pnc-Heal/+End(A), Mrc-Rcvry+(40), NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(45)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- PrfShf-End%(A), PrfShf-EndMod(50)
Level 10: Efficient Adaptation 
Level 10: Offensive Adaptation 
Level 0: The Atlas Medallion 
Level 0: Task Force Commander 
Level 0: Portal Jockey 
Level 0: Freedom Phalanx Reserve 
Level 1: Opportunity 
Level 50: Barrier Core Epiphany 
Level 50: Musculature Core Paragon 
------------

Edited December 30, 2019 by TungstenShark

[carnalchaos]

Hiya welcome to the wonderful world of Sentinel's.  I have looked at this combo several times and it looks pretty amazing.  I would caution you about going defensive too early in the build you really want to slot up your attacks if your leveling this build up.  If its being farmed up then don't worry about it.

 

So as to water blast they are all good and early on as you level I would take them all.  Once you start loading up on recharge you can trim some out and aqua bolt would be he one I drop as well too.  Word of warning, currently only your first two attacks trigger opportunity so you will be limiting yourself slightly if you don't take them early.   IMHO you need steam spray in there its really a heavy hitter with a wide cone and a decent timer.  If anything I would maybe argue that whirlpool is the one to take out but I hesitate to recommend that since I don't fully understand the tidal mechanic minigame in the set.

 

Bio armor is slightly different on Sentinels and I think its actually ideal in this form.  Our heal is no longer a sapper type but a stand alone heal and with the low numbers on the res/def shields the set revolves around the absorbance shields and heal.  So it blooms late but you are just fine using range and the base armors till then.  Finally late game you can go a lot of different ways and really tank up the set as you did with fighting pool.  I like s/l resistance along with f/c/e defense.  With the two absorbance shields alternating up time you can skimp a lot on defense or resistance if you want.  The layering effect is really powerful.

 

Oh and athletic regulation is an incredible combination with hover it almost feels like regular speed flight...its not but its close.  Close enough that you can probably drop fly as well to save a power pick.    So the level 28 and 35 powers are somewhat optional but I almost always try to find a way to fit them both in. 

 

About the stances with the penalties on Sentinels I always run offensive or efficient and almost never the tank one.  The level 35 bio armor power almost perfectly cancels out the penalty so I usually squeeze it in as my last power in the build.  Also personal taste but you already took maneuvers and inexhaustible is such an amazing endurance recovery power that I would look to squeeze in assault as well.  35% damage boost is nothing to sneeze at and with devastations or purple sets you can squeeze out another 10-15% for an amazing 50ish percent boost to damage.

 

[Sovera]

I've looked at this combo and even cooked up a build, but the damage numbers were so abysmally low, even on a Sentinel's standards, that I didn't touch it after theorycrafting a build. The one thing that would liven up the build would be removing the 15 second CD on repeating Water Jet, but with the 15 seconds, eh.

 

It does seem to have nice AoE though. But after playing water a couple of times the combo system is too unwieldy. There is a disconnect in the devs who cooked Water/ and Beam/ with the actual gameplay. Things happen too fast to be building combo points and the 5% chance is an artifact of ye old D&D times that messes with combo building too.

 

 

That said go for it, maybe you will enjoy it.

 

 

Your build had a lot of empty slots so it is hard to gauge things. I will say that you probably do not need at all all those slots in Stamina and Health. Defensive Opportunity is all your need. I'm leveling a Beam/Bio atm and unlike my scrappers who are touch and go with endurance all the way to 40+ this gal is either at 90% endurance or 100% for the whole duration (though mind the Beam/ interacts very nicely with Defensive Opportunity which may not be the case of Water).

 

By the same token I find I hardly ever use Rebuild DNA so I have it at minimal slotting which is more than enough. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've had to use it on a 100% ranged character who has Ablative as a first line of defense. Were Water with any sort of melee range skills like a PbAoE nuke and you might need that extra heal more, but this is not the case.

 

Important: pre-emptive munching on purples is better for your health than munching on greens. Use your favorite base macro and replenish your purple insps between missions.

 

 

 

I'm going to throw you the build I had worked out, just shift things according to your desires (like taking out Flight/Afterburner for Athletic/etc). Cremate and Fire Sword Circle are mules and not particularly meant to be used, so again, shift around at will.

 

Spoiler

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1552&c=714&a=1428&f=HEX&dc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

 

[TungstenShark]

Thanks @Soveraand @carnalchaos! Some of your comments echo my own limited experience with Sentinels, mainly, what is this class trying to do and why would you play it over other ATs? The theorycrafting seems to be much more encouraging than the actual gameplay and output, but I also want to try one all the way to 50 before closing the book on them. And who knows, maybe the AT gets some love at some point and they become more viable. Thanks for the pointers on specific powers and slotting...very helpful!

Edited December 31, 2019 by TungstenShark

[Sovera]

2 minutes ago, TungstenShark said:

Thanks @Soveraand @carnalchaos! Some of your comments echo my own limited experience with Sentinels, mainly, what is this class trying to do and why would you play it over other ATs? The theorycrafting seems to be much more encouraging than the actual gameplay and output, but I also want to try one all the way to 50 before closing the book on them. And who knows, maybe the AT gets some love at some point and they become more viable. Thanks for the pointers on specific powers and slotting...very helpful!

Well, in my case, Scrappers are the only thing worth playing. Anything else is faffing around. Even at low levels my Claws scrapper will plunge into a group, Spin, get a crit and wipe several minions. On the other hand any Sentinel will go three AoE rotations (use all AoEs, wait for recharge, do it again) before killing even level minions. That's... just... bad.

 

But when I get bored of meleeing I do come back to Sentinels because they just start early. They are tough, and at 32 they start wiping groups partly on their own. If you never played one this level 32 thing is what they live off on with 25 second nukes once all is slotted up. But outside of it the damage is just nothing special. But approach a spawn, pop Aim, drop the nuke, quickly throw the rest of the AoEs while Aim is still up and most things are pretty hurt with all minions dead.

 

The sad thing is afterwards with everything still alive and the nuke recharging 😄

 

Anyway, I'm being too pessimistic. It's good fun to be tough and zoom around shooting things and not have to chase them. It's also nice to not have to worry about CC or being squishy. I would recommend a Beam/ sentinel, I guess. The ST damage seems nicer to me (I haven't tested yet to see if it actually is better from others I have played) while the AoE seems about the same as the others (two digit AoEs, wooo! The AT really is balanced around that fast recharging nuke).

 

If you want I have a Beam/Bio and I was thinking of throwing a quick write-up for it.

[TungstenShark]

18 minutes ago, Sovera said:

Scrappers are the only thing worth playing. Anything else is faffing around.

I too am a Scrapper at heart, so I feel this on a deep level. 🙂 Or, I am a melee-er at heart, as I also enjoy Tankers (and some Brutes). But I wanted to try other ATs/powersets I have little familiarity with this time around as well. I stopped playing Live around Issue 3 due to computer/family issues and never came back, so there is a lot I never experienced. I want to like the Sentinel AT. It should be like a ranged Scrapper, but in practice falls well short. I was hoping /Bio would help bridge the gap a little bit better.

 

I definitely encourage you to pot your Beam/Bio build! More shared community knowledge is always a good thing!

[Sovera]

1 hour ago, TungstenShark said:

I too am a Scrapper at heart, so I feel this on a deep level. 🙂 Or, I am a melee-er at heart, as I also enjoy Tankers (and some Brutes). But I wanted to try other ATs/powersets I have little familiarity with this time around as well. I stopped playing Live around Issue 3 due to computer/family issues and never came back, so there is a lot I never experienced. I want to like the Sentinel AT. It should be like a ranged Scrapper, but in practice falls well short. I was hoping /Bio would help bridge the gap a little bit better.

 

I definitely encourage you to pot your Beam/Bio build! More shared community knowledge is always a good thing!

Done and done.

[Sovera]

Also, this was the most fun I had with a Sentinel. Just look at those gifs. CC *and* near immortal!

 

 

[SeraphimKensai]

My water/bio sentinel that I rolled up on Christmas has to this day solo'd the following AV's (+1, and yes AV's not Elite Bosses):

Dr. Vas from Posi 2

Clockwork King from Synapse

Vandal from Citadel

Jurassik from Numina

And every single Praetorian AV except Tyrant.

 

Yes it's IO'd to the teeth, I used envenomed daggers, and yes I did pop dropped inspirations (nothing crazy like an ultimate inspiration), and i didn't have a +1 level switch incarnate until I got to Blackswan in Hero's Hero.

 

They can be built to be strong. Yes we give up some damage for survivability, but they can get the job done. Mind you I'm open for new inherent ideas.

[Seroster01]

I've got a Water/bio at 50, and he was one of my favorite characters thus far on Homecoming. I'll throw his build on at the end; I put it together several months ago, but I feel like since then I've gained a better grasp of how Homecoming-era characters should be built.  As such I've fiddled with it a bit today (& will probably fiddle with it some more), but it should show most of what I'm trying to get across. Also, be aware that I plan my builds with essentially no maximum budgets, as I've got some market tricks that allow me to make "large" (it's in quotes because it's more about IO prices being held abnormally low due to the server-specific market/crafting shenanigans) amounts of money when I want to put the effort in. Anyone could do similar things if they wanted to, and TBH there's many ways to make "large" amounts of money on HC servers if folks put some effort in.

 

Aaaaanyway, the biggest trick for having a good time with Water/Bio is to get Tidal Forces (Water's Aim-equivalent) basically ASAP. For best results, stick a Gaussian's BU in there, and then use it when you need a burst.  OFC Aim powers are usually good for this, but the powers in WB that benefit from Tidal Power benefit quite a bit from it, so having 3 stacks on demand is very useful. TF will give the normal Aim effects, & a Gaussian's BU will have 90% chance to proc so long as there's less than 69% recharge reduction slotted. Combine the 2 & on most activations you'll end up with 3 TP stacks, +90% To-hit, +105% damage, and +33% range for the next 5 seconds (then Gaussian's will fall off & it'll drop down to normal Aim levels). On the subject of recharge reduction: Given how impactful TF is for Water, you may need to slot it w/ more +rech in the lower levels than would keep it at a 90% chance to proc, but after you get your build fleshed out & get more global +rech I would move down to a single 50+5 Recharge IO, or whatever you need to stick in it to keep it within a few seconds of Geyser's recharge time.

 

On the topic of Geyser, Water/Bio gets a very substantial increase in power when they have access to it (Water T9 nuke). If you've got enough +rech, you can start every fight with Aim>Geyser>Steam Spray. This combo will typically CC most of the group immediately, & then the DoTs from those abilities will kill just about anything that isn't a boss before they can recover from Geyser's Knockup and/or disorient. OFC the target cap (in-game Geyser's listed cap is 10 & I think Spray's the same) means you won't normally kill everything in an 8-man spawn with this, but you'll wipe out most of them. When you combine the power of this opening volley with the alpha-soaking abilities of Ablative Carapace, Water/Bio becomes a very good combat initiator. At lower levels you can do the neutered version of this by going TF>Water Burst>[whatever]. That'll do decent damage & all the mobs hit will be knocked down (in a peculiar turn of events, Burst at least claims it hits 16 targets in the in-game UI, which is nifty if true but I've never directly tested it).

 

Water's ST damage is a bit mediocre, but one thing that will help significantly is to put multiple damage procs in Water Jet. On paper it's not a great proc mule, as it's got a relatively short base recharge & a low-ish activation time. What makes it useful from a proc mule perspective is that when you cast it with a 3 stack of TP it refreshes itself instantly. End result is that if you play your TP stacks right you'll end up having about 2x as many chances for those to proc as they would in an identical power without the reset effect. One of the areas I'm quibbling on with the build I'm sharing is whether losing out on 10% global recharge is worth adding an additional proc to Water Jet. I'll have to play around with it later & see how it feels.

 

Now that I've said all that I'll just link the build. I thought I had more things to talk about, but of course I can't recall what they were now.

Sentinel - Water Blast - Bio Armor.mxd

Edited January 1, 2020 by Seroster01
Removed several orphaned words due to re-writes + poor proofreading

[Papaschtroumpf]

I finally got back to my baby water/bio, so looking for a build to tweak. As far as survivability your build takes the "middle road". you are one small purple off the defense cap on everything but Psi.

 

I wouldn't want hover for concept reasons, so I'd likely take combat jump and free the 3rd slot. where would you put it?

I'll add a stealth IO in one of the sprints so that when combined with Superspeed I'm invisible but you can choose not to be

Does the overwhelming force in Steam Spray proc most of the time? Or should I consider putting a non proc KB->KD IO even if it loses a tiny bit of damage (because of ED, it's not much difference)

 

can you explain why you didn't take Whirpool?

Edited March 10, 2020 by Papaschtroumpf

[oldskool]

9 hours ago, Papaschtroumpf said:

I finally got back to my baby water/bio, so looking for a build to tweak. As far as survivability your build takes the "middle road". you are one small purple off the defense cap on everything but Psi.

 

I wouldn't want hover for concept reasons, so I'd likely take combat jump and free the 3rd slot. where would you put it?

I'll add a stealth IO in one of the sprints so that when combined with Superspeed I'm invisible but you can choose not to be

Does the overwhelming force in Steam Spray proc most of the time? Or should I consider putting a non proc KB->KD IO even if it loses a tiny bit of damage (because of ED, it's not much difference)

 

can you explain why you didn't take Whirpool?

That person may not give a quick reply since the thread is from December and there is nothing to flag them this question even exists. 

So... @Seroster01, you've been paged. 

Not everyone cares for how Whirlpool works making it a possible skip.  

I play a Water Blast/Dark Armor and I skipped Steam Spray.  This is mostly due to not wanting to deal with the cone (though the target cap makes it worth considering) due to how I play it.  

The loose slot from hover, if taking CJ, could go into Maneuvers for a Def/End to reduce some cost a bit.  The current flight slot in Hover looks like it may be wasted anyway since flight speed looks over capped. 

[Seroster01]

20 hours ago, Papaschtroumpf said:

I finally got back to my baby water/bio, so looking for a build to tweak. As far as survivability your build takes the "middle road". you are one small purple off the defense cap on everything but Psi.

 

I wouldn't want hover for concept reasons, so I'd likely take combat jump and free the 3rd slot. where would you put it?

I'll add a stealth IO in one of the sprints so that when combined with Superspeed I'm invisible but you can choose not to be

Does the overwhelming force in Steam Spray proc most of the time? Or should I consider putting a non proc KB->KD IO even if it loses a tiny bit of damage (because of ED, it's not much difference)

 

can you explain why you didn't take Whirpool?

9 hours ago, oldskool said:

So... @Seroster01, you've been paged.  

I just happened to check the forums today, got the ping so we lucked into a relatively quick response. I'll preface this post with the following: This post will probably be even more rambling than normal, cause I just got back from a long trip that involved me wrangling babies for the entire duration & had physical therapy earlier in the day. So I'm pretty tired, & then realized half way through typing this up that Oldskool was responding to Papa's post. Hopefully it remains coherent enough to be good advice... 😂

 

Part 1) I'll disagree with Oldskool with my stance that I'd never skip Steam Spray. Steam spray is pretty powerful for an AOE ability with the usability stats it has, by which I mean it has pretty high Damage per Activation relative to it's cone size, target cap, & recharge time. As such it becomes a core part of my opening strike, but folks are playing from melee or such I guess I could see skipping it maybe? With a bit of planning you can get some +range bonuses from a few places, which always pairs well with cones (Slotting Posi's, using both ATO sets, & Intuition radial will get it ~68 ft range). IMO it's one of WBs best overall powers, if not outright THE best power when compared as a complete package.

 

Part 2) This is probably irrelevant since Oldskool just mentioned it in passing, but AFAIK, Mids is calculating Hover speed very wrong (well, flight speed in general, but 99% of the time Hover's the only power that this would matter for). I had a talk with Pine (the person who'd updated the build planner some in the SCORE era) & he said that at some point in the last 6-8 months he'd partnered up with a couple of people to work on the builder. To try & keep this concise, they did some updates that helped with some things but resulted in some new errors. Unfortunately, after a bit of time the other people he was working with basically just disappeared & dropped contact & Pine couldn't resume development because he didn't know how to use GITHub (I don't either, so I couldn't help him.😑) I don't THINK it's been updated since then, & if it has it's not being picked up with the auto-update feature. I haven't been playing much lately & thus haven't really looked into any of this in the last month or so, but given that the flight speed cap is ~58 MPH & character's in-game flight speed is listed as ~53 MPH, I'd imagine that's still an issue.

 

Part 3) I'm not sure where I'd put that extra slot to be honest. As I mentioned, I made this character relatively early in my HC time & I feel like I've if I were going to play this character heavily again I'd probably start over on slotting & try to fine-tune it more. I don't know that it would be super different than what it is now, but I can't say for sure. The first suggestion I'd have is a pretty generic one; pull that slot out of CJ/Hover & put it in Hurdle w/ a high-end Jump IO. Slotting Hurdle is surprisingly good return on investment for jump speed, to an abnormal level IMO. I'm not sure I'd put there personally, simply because I have a distaste for using jumping as primary movement in a lot of the more common mission maps (I seem to easily get stuck in small corners or on weird objects) & it'd probably be even worse at higher jumping speeds. A more complicated suggestion that I'd still say is relatively simple is to take that slot & put it in Inexhaustible, then take the 1 spare slot out of health & put it on Inexhaustible as well. What you'd then do w/ those slots is to figure out what 2-p heal set has a unique you'd like to put there & stick that in 1 slot & the set's Heal-only IO in the other. This would boost both your max HP & your regen rate a relatively minor amount because the enhanceable part of Inexhaustible is pretty small, but because those 2 things are basically in a feedback loop with each other you'd end up with a bit more HP/s than the actual #s would appear to give on paper. Panacea would be the "best" fit from a pure mechanical standpoint, since PVP IO set bonuses work at any level, so you could get a 50+5 for the heal IO & the set bonus work all the way down to 10... but the bonus for +5ing that IO isn't very big, & when i was playing this character endurance was pretty much a complete non-factor, so IDK if the +recovery is really worth caring about. Preventive Medicine has a pretty nice 2p bonus & the unique is solid for most characters, but you'll have a lot of absorb already from Bio's other stuff. From my own brief fiddling, what I think I'd suggest for this route is using a Catalyzed Numi Heal along with the Regen/Recovery unique for that 2p Regen bonus. With the rest of the build & full accolades, you'll end up with 1840 HP & 38.09 HP/s instead of 1814 & 33.54 HP/s. 4.5 HP/s doesn't sound that extreme, it's actually about a 13% increase in HP/s (Note that this isn't the same as the "Regeneration bonus", which actually gets a 57% bonus from this slotting) for 2 slots worth of investment, & as always layered mitigation is great in COH however you can get it. Ultimately this isn't likely to make or break a character, but in long fights it can have a significant impact. As a final comment here, there's a lot of uniques and/or procs that could be fit into many of these powers if they strike your fancy, & as I'll discuss later you could potentially use that slot + a few re-assign a few others to put in Whirlpool.  I probably wasted more time on this idea than my ideas on the subject were worth..

 

Part 4.) I don't really think it's worth sticking the stealth IO in a different power, at least at this point in the game. As the character is constructed right now (in a moderately stripped down state because I looted a lot of his IOs for other alts) he hits the run speed cap with just Ninja Run turned on while running Offensive Adaptation+Athletic Regulation. IDK how it all works on the back end, and this may be a bug, but somehow Athletic Regulation + Offensive Adaptation gives a disproportionately large increase in the base magnitude of movement powers. For a numerical breakdown, Ninja Run w/o Offensive Adaptation says it gives a 20.05 MPH boost to run speed. When I toggle Offensive Adaptation on it spikes up to 65.65 MPH. I don't THINK it's supposed to work that way, but I'd never thought to ask if it was a bug until I saw the magnitude of that difference just now. Aaaanyway, since Ninja Run will set him to the maximum run speed & also has far better vertical mobility than SS, I use it as my "travel power". The only reason I took/use SS at all is that for the cost of a single power pick & a cheap IO I have almost perfect stealth in PVE (No normal mob will be able to see you, but there's still Snipers & multiple enemies that just ignore stealth). 

 

Part 5.) Overwhelming Force slotted in Steam Spray wasn't terribly well thought out in retrospect, & I can't remember exactly why I have it there. Steam Spray has no innate KB, so I didn't put it there for anything relating to that part of the IO. I THINK I slotted it there because I was trying to figure out how to get the damage to the ED cap & had one lying around from a point in time where I thought I'd slot it in Water Burst to keep it from scattering Clocks all over if I ran Synapse with him. Ultimately it didn't work particularly well for that, so I redid my slotting for WB & ended up w/ the OF proc as a spare IO, which I then decided to put it into Steam Spray for the aforementioned reasons. I will say that I ended up liking it quite a bit, as it does seem to proc a pretty significant amount (I read either in-game or on the forums from someone that it's close to a 100% proc chance if it's put in a non-KB power, & it procs frequently enough that feels like it might well be, but that doesn't match up w/ any other proc in the modern game & I haven't empirically tested it.) Even with that in mind, there's probably better procs you could put there from a damaging perspective.

 

Part 6.) Whirlpool ultimately just fell out of my build due to what would best be described as slot squeeze. WP might have been OK w/ no extra slots, but when I made this build I didn't think WP with only 1-2 slots would be a better option than any of the powers i took after 32. It looks like a good power on paper, & it probably is, but I didn't feel like it worked very well in my build at the time. After launching my Alpha (Tidal>Geyser>Steam Spray) just about any minions were dead & LTs were either dead as well or close to it. WP is a 2s cast w/ for a long-term DoT & ultimately seems more useful for the CC than the damage in a normal mob fight, especially if everything was dead after my opener. Had plenty of attack powers at that point & WP seemed out of place, so I dropped it. If I made the guy over again I might try to fit it in somewhere, IDK. If you wanted to work it into the current build IDK what level I'd actually take it, BUT if you swipe a few of the less important slots I've discussed (the CJ, the OF out of Spray, and or the 2nd slot in Health spring to mind) you could use them for WP at whatever level you want & just replace one of the powers I took at 35+ since they're all 1-slot wonders to round out the build at the end.

 

Anyway, hope this helps. Gonna get ready for bed, if I remember I'll check back in tomorrow to see if you've digested this wall of text. 😉

[Sovera]

5 hours ago, Seroster01 said:

Part 2) This is probably irrelevant since Oldskool just mentioned it in passing, but AFAIK, Mids is calculating Hover speed very wrong (well, flight speed in general, but 99% of the time Hover's the only power that this would matter for). I had a talk with Pine (the person who'd updated the build planner some in the SCORE era) & he said that at some point in the last 6-8 months he'd partnered up with a couple of people to work on the builder. To try & keep this concise, they did some updates that helped with some things but resulted in some new errors. Unfortunately, after a bit of time the other people he was working with basically just disappeared & dropped contact & Pine couldn't resume development because he didn't know how to use GITHub (I don't either, so I couldn't help him.😑) I don't THINK it's been updated since then, & if it has it's not being picked up with the auto-update feature. I haven't been playing much lately & thus haven't really looked into any of this in the last month or so, but given that the flight speed cap is ~58 MPH & character's in-game flight speed is listed as ~53 MPH, I'd imagine that's still an issue.

Man, you did not lie about the rambling 😄

 

I just want to add that Blopper did something -precious- with this thread about movement speed in the Guide section. But basically buying Jump Pack and the Steam Jump not only maxes Afterburner's hardcap but also pushes Hover to Flight speed. And since both packs can be used in an alternated fashion this is effectively a permanent thing.

 

And it only costs 100k ^^

[Papaschtroumpf]

Thanks for the long but well considered answer. I think you sold me on Steam Spray.

Why do you care is the Kb->kd procs when it's not slotted in a power with KB?

 

I tried to rework the slotting from scratch to get maxed S/L defense and perma hasten but was not happy with the holes it left in that attempt. 

[Seroster01]

57 minutes ago, Papaschtroumpf said:

Thanks for the long but well considered answer. I think you sold me on Steam Spray.

Why do you care is the Kb->kd procs when it's not slotted in a power with KB?

 

I tried to rework the slotting from scratch to get maxed S/L defense and perma hasten but was not happy with the holes it left in that attempt. 

The OF KB>KD is extra unique, as in addition to doing that stuffs to KB powers, it will actually ADD a chance for KD to a power if it doesn't have it already. Thus my small discussion of how often it procs.

[Seroster01]

Deleted due to messing up the intended quote...

Edited March 11, 2020 by Seroster01

[Seroster01]

5 hours ago, Papaschtroumpf said:

I tried to rework the slotting from scratch to get maxed S/L defense and perma hasten but was not happy with the holes it left in that attempt. 

Yeah I didn't like the results when I tried to get to softcap. IDK if you did this or not, but if you want to work towards this you could try just getting to 40% & running Barrier Core for a Destiny, since Barrier Core will always give at least 5%.

Edited March 11, 2020 by Seroster01

[Papaschtroumpf]

8 hours ago, Seroster01 said:

The OF KB>KD is extra unique, as in addition to doing that stuffs to KB powers, it will actually ADD a chance for KD to a power if it doesn't have it already. Thus my small discussion of how often it procs.

good to know.

[Papaschtroumpf]

Now at level 43. Pretty fun to play, Bio makes everything so survivable,especially with the added CC from Water

I find the damage a little lacking though, this is my first Sentinel, I'm guessing it's a sentinel issue rather than a Water issue?

I soloed the Tina McIntire at x8+1 and it was slowish. I had EBs, not AVS, I don;t think I could damage AVs enough.

[oldskool]

11 hours ago, Papaschtroumpf said:

I'm guessing it's a sentinel issue rather than a Water issue?

The perception there may be a bit of both.  

 

Sentinels do have spikey damage reliant on an inherent that is impossible to have 100% uptime on without actively trying to build for it.  Even then, uptime isn't a guarantee.  

 

Water Blast in particular has high AoE damage potential but unfortunately rather low single target damage potential.  

 

Water Blast is a great set to experiment with in order to overrule both of those conditions, within reason of course, due to how IO's and the AT operate.  

 

Things to look forward to: 

 

1) Including a 1-2 punch pairing in the Epic sets.  You can take any of the decent melee attacks and combine it with a hold power using procs to add a tremendous amount of damage.  That bonus damage does come at a steep price though. You need to be level 35 in order to unlock it, and you likely won't see much use of either if you exemplar too low.  If you only play at 50+, then that doesn't matter much at all.  

 

2) Water Blast is loaded with proc opportunities.  These can greatly push Water's low-ish ST damage into a realm where it can be a bit more tolerable.  I don't really bother with pushing multiple procs in AoE powers, since I don't feel it is necessary, but Water's got options there if that is your bag.  Water Jet - Dehydrate - Hydro Blast is a really simple sequence to run that doesn't take really complicated build mastery to use.  When Tidal Forces allows it, you'll get an extra Water Jet.  Still, almost all of these powers have access to the Slow category for Impeded Swiftness in addition to the basic ranged PvP toxic proc.  Several other powers have access to others like Knockback - Explosive Strikes set (e.g., Hydro Blast), or defense debuffing (Dehydrate).  

 

3) Whirlpool makes unique use out of the Opportunity Strikes ATO proc.  Opportunity lasts for 15 seconds once you've build it up.  In a high recharge build you can potentially bring Whirlpool's recharge down to 16-18 seconds.  The Strike's ATO proc will grant you +37 meter, or about 1/3 of the bar needed to use Opportunity, against any targets it hits.  It checks against all enemies in its field of effect and applies the benefit once.  Against the full 10 target limit on the power that is a lot of chances it goes off.  Even against a single enemy this proc chance is around 20+% all by itself (considering the 5pc set's recharge modification).  That's as good, and often better, than a lot of ST powers.  The proc chance will go up if you use no other sources of direct recharge beyond that single ATO proc (it has an unavoidable recharge mod in it).  The difference with ST powers is they will often grant you 100+ meter whenever they trigger but their base recharge often isn't enough to make it reliable (some powers are outliers though).  Still, Whirlpool makes this option a bit more reliable, especially in big groups, where you know you can get a third of next opportunity in a single casting.  This will mean you're second Hydro Blast (if using Water Jet - Dehydrate - Hydro) will automatically trigger Opportunity.  That's roughly 11 seconds depending on if you take advantage of Tidal Forces to use another Water Jet.  Spamming your AoE can be slightly faster.  Defensive Opportunity doesn't sound like much, but it is still -20% resistance.  You can also combine with Annihilation's -12% and Achilles' Heel -20%.  

 

Water Blast can get a lot better.  You should still temper your expectations because it likely won't be super amazing without abusing Mind Probe + Dominate, but it can definitely shine very well on Sentinels. 

Edited March 17, 2020 by oldskool

[Papaschtroumpf]

Thanks, some food for thoughts. I definitely can get better at monitoring tidal stacks and opportunity to maximize damage.

 

My build is currently almost identical to the one posted above. At 43 Geiser is not well slotted but it's still a great power 

 

[Seroster01]

As Oldskool mentioned I've never been just terribly impressed with Water's ST damage, which is one of the reasons that character is semi-retired. What I will say is that leveling through the 40s commonly seems to be a lull point for many of my characters. If you have the resources for a full build at 50 things will feel a lot different simply due to how impactful the various purple IOs are on a build. Resetting Water Jet is very important for ST DPS, and if you're doing that well then it also gets a significant boost in effectiveness when it gets slotted with multiple procs (getting 2x the proc chance for a single CD). Other things to consider are switching out something in Dehydrate for an Achilles proc. I'd thought about doing this in the build but never did for some reason that I can't recall (& since I can't get on my PC cause I'm having to entertain my nephew, can't examine it right now to find out.)

Edited March 17, 2020 by Seroster01

[Papaschtroumpf]

I'm soloing x8+1 in the early 40s (Tina's "army" arc. It's become a "tradition" for me to solo it), so I'd hardly call that ineffective, but my fire corruptor or archery blaster would tear through x8+4 at the same level.

I find myself stealthing on this character because because killing is a bit slow.

 

I always use attuned enhancements (I examplar a lot after 50) and they scale as I level up. I always use the non-purples that offer similar benefits just in smaller quantities (like Positron Blast instead of Ragnarok or whatever it is), so while purples and superiors push it up a notch, the 40s do feel a lot like what 50 will (the biggest difference being builds that have perma Dom or perma Hasten at 50 but doi quite get there until then).