Sentinel thoughts and experience

[Nehetar]

First off let me say. I have been waiting patiently for someone to play a high level Sentinel enough to actually have some reliable thoughts to say about the AT without being too biased about it being "new and not original", "bad combination" or my favorite "bah humbuck".

 

Now I am of course biased as well as are we all but I love playing every aspect of this game (least pvp but have done so) and blasts with defences actually sounds like a wonderful combination in my opinion.

 

I also did the mistake of thinking: Blaster primaries with Scrapper secondaries, that sounds nice (or horrible if you're not excited about it like me). This is a big mistake. These are not blaster primaries and they certainly are not scrapper secondaries. They may be very similar but there are some big differences wich lends themselves very nicely to this particular combination.

 

Without going into detail about every single one there are the following differences between blasters and sentinels:

 

Primaries

 

No snipes, this is actually a huge change that makes a lot of sense for the AT. Instead you get a single target blast with great damage. For some sets that is a gamechanger (I'm looking at you electricity blast), for others its a bit of a bloat . I love that particular change and I feel like I can easilly make a nice single target chain out of any powerset without having to try to perma-hasten to keep attacking.

 

Damaging utilities, so what I mean is that in most sets you have some sort of hold, disorient, sleep, what have you and they used to be a nice addition for a blaster to keep things in check while you murder the other stuff. For a Sentinel those kinds og powers have gotten a pretty big damage buff included in the utility it still gives. In a set that is not as scared of incoming damage this is great as now you can pick and chose how you slot those powers, do you want more damage with a short mez to detoggle opponents? Or do you want a good mez that incidentally does decent damage. These powers are really gonna shine with the right frankenslotting I'd think.

 

Secondaries:

 

No damage auras, Or any other type of aura that puts you in a forced melee. This is actually a pretty huge change from the other AT defense sets. You are not forced to stand in a huge chunk of mobs to get the damage out that you need. Seeing as the Sentinel is a mid-range its pretty ncie not to have to hug the damage. Instead every defence set gets a new type of power. For example willpower will get you a huge chunk of regen with its toggle regardless of foe position.

 

Other changes, By this I mean that every single defence set has been altered more than a little for the Sentinel. An example is regen that has no Instant healing click but instead has a power as a toggle as it used to be, albeit a very changed version of the old power. Now it gives an absorb health pool every few seconds that stacks up to some set amount. My own experience with this is that the power is actually crazy good.

 

Epic power pools:

 

Now this is something I can finally talk about, having gotten a high level Sentinel now that has had an opportunity to see what's out there and test some stuff.

 

Every pool seems to follow the same theme of powers to chose from

 

An aoe root

A medium damage melee attack

A single target stun/hold

A PBAOE damage attack (somtimes with added bonuses)

A power unique to each set (Dark gets an anchor debuff, Elec a damage toggle, Ice gets snowstorm and so on)

 

At first I was disappointed in the choices. But after some consideration I came to the conclusion that it was actually mostly fine. My initial reaction was mainly because my high level Sentinel has Dark Blast and as such I all ready have a single target hold that I use in my damage rotation (slotted for damage). So my first reaction was biased out of me not feeling the set did enough for me. I have changed that perspective about the mez portion of the set. That is its strength I would say. Having an AT that survives well at mid-range against decent opponents sounds like a perfect match for an aoe root and an added single target mez. Not to mention that some primaries would love an aoe root that also gives -knockback to contain some of their own inherent knockbacks.

 

I do however not see the need for a medium damage single target punch in the slightest. Every Sentinel blast set has extra single target damage powers added to them as I have all ready talked about. Why would I ever want a mediocre punch to get me into melee?

 

The AOE's are a nice addition for some primaries. The Sentinel nuke seems to leave minions with a sliver of health fully slotted so a PBAOE as a follow up can be a good addition to the nuking.

 

Then there is the unique powers. I haven't tried them out myself yet so I will reserve judgement. On paper I do think they have good potential (the dark toggle gives -damage and -accuracy to mobs wich sounds like a match made in heaven for my regen Sentinel).

 

 

Lastly I'd like to say that the two I have been playing are an Ice/Rad (26 atm) and a Dark/Regen (mid 40's atm) so I haven't tried out the AT with any IO sets yet. I have given some thought to what kind of global buffs I'd want and I might shoot for +damage and ranged/aoe defence and see how that works out. It will require some testing.

 

If anyone wants to talk shop about the AT or join me in missions to see how incredibly well I survive even the most ridiculous situations on my Dark/Reg then give me a shout @Project Nova (play on Excelsior)

 

Go hunt. Kill. Skuls.

[Nehetar]

Some more thoughts that came to me while fiddling around with character creation.

 

Sentinel inherent is twofold. One part is giving the entire team a +% damage multiplier by attacking the same target as a sentinel does. I haven't tested this at all so I have nothing to say about it at the moment.

 

The other part though is a bar that fills up (very fast in teams) and gives you a choice when full. Use your tier 1 blast to get a big damage boost for yourself or use a tier 2 blast to attach some healing to each of your attacks. The healing is nothing that has ever done anything for me but seeing as I play regen mostly that isn't surprising at all.

 

The problem is that the better buff (+damage with tier 1 blast) means that you cannot skip the tier 1 blast in your primary. For some sets that is actually a bit of a problem since you now have even greater selection of single target damage (covered above). Archery for example has a minor damage tier1 power that I would love to just skip. But with this inherent I cannot skip it unless I resign myself to never getting the much better Sentinel buff on my attacks.

 

If anything is done to rebalance this archetype at any point I really think that this is the biggest offender to the AT.

 

Go hunt. Kill. Skuls.

[HelenCarnate]

The melee attack is on par with the damage of your higher damage rangede attacks. This means when stuff gets close and with enough recharge you can have a decent attack chain without having to throw in your tier 1 or 2 attacks to fill the gaps.

[Without_Pause]

Only got it to 12, but Water is one of the most pure fun sets I have seen. Went Water/sr, but changed to /nin since I haven't done that yet and coming back I want to try as much new-to-me stuff as possible.

[Marshal Valor]

I know you like Regen, but I have played a regen ALOT to know how it works out. The worst thing that they did to the Sentinel AT was take away Instant Healing. The set sucks for regen time. It actually lags behind other sets like Bioarmor, Willpower, and Radiation Armor. The shield from Instant Regeneration is nice, don't get me wrong, but it pales in comparison to Instant Healing, even with the shield. I had been maining a regen Sent, and all I can say is just how disappointed I am in it compared to some of the other sets. Even Willpower while lacking in defensive percentages, blows Regen out of the water with it's actual healing done.

[Rocketmandb]

My thoughts on the class as a whole:

 

- I haven't gotten to full-on IO set levels yet, but I think the defenses can work.

- I like secondaries with positional defense - makes it so much easier to slot Thunderstrikes and max out ranged D.

- I hate the inherent power. The defensive version gives you crap healing. The offensive gives a nice damage boost, but much of the time you're in an attack cycle, miss that your bar is up, fire the tier 1 blast as a filler attack, and get the defensive version. The whole thing doesn't last long enough to be of much use.

- Because of the way the inherent works, you can't use it (much) for alpha AoE attacks - note that a lot of the newer power sets trend away from massive initial AoE strikes.

- I'm not sure exactly how you build up your inherent bar, but I believe that it goes up the same amount per hit. Interestingly, cone attacks (at least the one on my archer) give you a tick for each enemy hit with the attack, but it seems traditional AoEs only give you one. If this is true, it makes the sets with two cone and/or wide attacks quite nice - and they make the inherent much better.

 

I just rolled a Water/Bio this morning (the Clam) to see how bio works with the class - I like the extra damage from offensive adaptation. My higher level is an Archery/Nin. I like that the quick attacks and early cone for inherent build up

[moghedan]

I am 50 with a Fire Regen.

 

Never played it in any competitive setting, but with PUGs it is the powerhouse of the team.

[Dissolv]

I rolled one up to see what the AT was about, AR/Electricity, and although only lvl 12, he really surprised me. 

 

Compared to the Kin/Rad Scrapper I'd just played through those levels he was more survivable -- mainly due to attacking at range and being able to pull at will.  He also seemed to hit just as hard, and with a little bit of cone mixed in as well.  Really at those levels it is more about damage output and good early attack chain, but Kinetic melee gives a very early 3 single target attacks, same as the Sentinel.  The inherent is actually quite excellent for boss killing, and I took out a couple of early Elite Bosses entirely by saving the buff, then unloading every attack I had to drop about half of the hit points of the boss(es).  Defensive opportunity I was happy to see triggers for every target hit, so buckshot was sometimes able to restore a visible amount of health.  Offensive Opportunity is clearly better though.  This is also not a big deal now that I have a regen power, but it was a nice gimmick to keep on rolling in the very early game. 

 

Endurance has been an issue already (and with only 1 of 3 toggles running, ugh), but a big factor in that is the mad spam nature of the build, with every chance to build up the Opportunity bar or quickly cycle through attacks during an "Opportunity", the attack spam was never ending.  I still use Taser, which is worth the endurance to either do a sliver of remaining damage, or during any offensive opportunity. 

The numbers for AR Burst power are listed as -7% defense for 8.00s on target, and -20.00% resistance to all damage for 15.00s on target.  Disorienting Shot has only -20.00% resistance to all damage for 15.00s on target (and the 3 Mag stun for 2.22s) on target.  Since I always lead with Burst, that is likely why I couldn't ever see the "lower" damage of the AT.  On a team I certainly would, and it seems worth testing out, especially at higher levels.  Update -- nope, after actually testing the actual numbers are just 5% difference.  I can't explain the "feeling" of doing just as much or more damage.  /shrug

 

Other than those first impressions, I have to say that I've been enjoying him much more than I expected, and have put two scrappers aside for the moment.    I'm looking forward to more time on CoH (of course), but this guy is going to dominate my play time, I'm very sure.