Blaster or Sentinel?

[Bonkleberry]

16 hours ago, 0th Power said:

Aren’t hellions resistant to fire damage though?

Yes, thus the lowered numbers I was getting. Both ATs were essentially doing 1 less point of damage than they should have done.

[Wavicle]

On 7/5/2020 at 5:00 PM, Coyote said:

 

I'm saying that there are two things you can say about Sentinel damage, and I feel one is right and one is wrong:

1: Sentinel damage is lower than Blaster damage. Absolutely correct. And fair, because clearly Sentinel defenses are better than Blaster defenses, and also their inherent can buff a team's damage while the Blaster's inherent is part of the reason why its personal damage is higher.

2: Sentinel damage is "lacking". I feel this is wrong, although if your definition of "lacking damage" is "lower than Blaster", then I suppose it would be a true statement. But in that case, what isn't lacking damage besides a Blaster? So, while "lacking damage" is more of an opinion, I've run damage chains and DPA calculations on Sentinel powers WITH PROCS versus other non-Blaster ATs, and Sentinels seem okay to me. Their damage looks comparable to Corruptors and Defenders and Dominators... they lose out on AoE compared to those due to damage caps, but they gain due to having a nuke up for every spawn in most situations, plus a second "half-nuke" in Engulfing Darkness with procs. I mean, my Dark/Nin will have an every-spawn opener of Blackstar plus ED for over 800 points of AoE damage. Yes, target caps are lower, but that's still higher than most Defenders and Corruptors have available as an every-spawn AoE combo.

 

So, in the end, I'm saying this:   Blaster Damage > Sentinel Damage > "lacking damage", for my definition of lacking damage. And be aware that I consider an AT that can't open with an every-spawn AoE salvo of at least 600 damage as "lacking damage". But other than maybe Khelds, I'm not sure there is such an AT. Individual powerset combinations within some ATs, yes. But I think that every AT in general has multiple options that can open up with 600+ AoE, and actually all Sentinel builds can do that.

Toughness is only a small part of AT balance. Contribution to team effort is a larger part.

Toons with Taunt abilities, especially AoE Taunt abilities, have something to contribute to the team besides damage. Toons with Support abilities or CC have something to contribute to the team besides damage.

Blasters contribute a lot of damage, a little CC, nothing else.
Stalkers contribute a lot of damage, a little CC, nothing else.

Dominators contribute a lot of damage, a good amount of CC, nothing else.
Scrappers contribute a lot of damage, a little Taunting, nothing else.

Sentinels contribute a little damage, a little Support, nothing else.

To me it seems clear that Sentinels need to be more correctly balanced alongside Scrappers and Dominators.
 

[Six-Six]

@Wavicle This is my main frustration with a Sentinel. While I love them solo, I always feel like I'm not bringing anything to the team other than Leadership, and a (negligible) amount of debuff. To put it another way (although the way you did was very clear and concise)... When a team member has but a sliver of HP left, Taunt, buffs and CCs can save them from certain doom. All a Sent can do is help kill what that team member can kill himself.

[Haijinx]

I don't think stalkers are in the same category as blasters for damage OR cc. 

 

Blasters do a whole lot more overall damage.   And has access to either a lot more damage, or much better controls than the stalker.

 

The stalker of course a lot tougher. And does great against hard targets. 

 

But my billion influence stalker build can't hold a candle to my barely built fire blaster when it comes to most flying orange numbers spamming my field of view.  

 

 

[Wavicle]

I'm not saying they are the same, they don't provide equal damage in the same situations. But they do both provide big numbers in their respective situations, enough to be of good value to the team. Perhaps CC is not the right word, Stalkers AS secondary effects and speed in eliminating specific targets are of use to the team. Since the addition of Assassins Focus there is no longer a question, in my mind, of the usefulness of Stalkers on the team. Exactly how I quantified it might be slightly off, but the greater point stands.

[Saikochoro]

Well I don’t think anything comes close to the joy of playing a dual pistols martial combat blaster. 
 

I personally didn’t like the low damage output of sentinels compared to blasters so I gave up on them pretty earlier on. I am sure that sentinels can be built tanker. Of that I have no doubt. 
 

However, blasters can be built pretty dang tough especially when they pick up rune of protection. I have a soft capped s/l/e defense + 70% s/l and 45-50% e/n/f/c resistance blaster with just over 50% up time on rune.  And that is without sacrificing damage or recharge. The blaster can survive easily and dish out insane damage. 
 

I would put my vote in favor of blasters. That said, this thread has renewed my interest in sentinels and I plan to create and kit out a few to challenge my own vote. 

[Six-Six]

On 7/3/2020 at 12:42 PM, JnEricsonx said:

I've got a couple concepts in my head, one for AR, one for Beam Rifle, and one for Energy Blast.  Any of them could qualify for either AT, but, I've yet to make a Sentinel, so, anyone want to break down that AT in more detail/experience for me?

I'll say it again, I love my Sentinels. But I think I've out grown them... either by playing too much of them (I have 10 L50s), or by experiencing other ATs.

While I won't get into the debate of Sents vs Blasters in terms of damage and defences, I would like to note that on most of my Blasters, a big problem that I had was/is Mez protection. Most of my Blasters (1 at 50, 44, and 5 lowbies) are always getting held, immobilised, stunned and put to sleep. My incarnate still has qualms about facing Rikti and Widows. None of my Sentinels worried about Mez (they had other worries, but mez wasn't one of them).

My two inf on your short list:
AR, play Blaster
Beam, play Sent
Energy Blast, either (but build for KB... loads and loads of KB... enough to knock the AV out of the map) 😃 
 

[Saikochoro]

So as a I stated above this thread renewed my interest in sentinels.  I also have started to really like energy aura so I wanted to try that on all archetypes that could take it.  So I power leveled a beam rifle / energy aura sentinel to 50 and gave it a full build of set IOs yesterday. 
 

It is softcapped to all types, except Psionic. It has 72.5% resist to S/L and 50-55% to E/N/F/C and a smaller amount to toxic and Psionic resistance. These are with rune of protection that has about 50% uptime. 
 

I don’t have a lot of experience with sentinels so I still played it safe. I ran a few radio missions fighting council and CoT at +2/8.  My health barely moved at all. I never had to use energize to heal myself. I also rarely had to use my endurance recovery even though I was attacking the entire time and kept sprint on.

 

Opportunity bar filled extremely fast. It was up every mob and sometimes twice per mob if the mob had a lot of bosses. I would open with the nuke, which would completely fill the bar.  I didn’t take my tier 1 blast so I used defensive opportunity each time. The heals provided healed any and all damage that the mobs managed to get in. There was one point (and only one time) where the mobs got in a few lucky hits and I dropped to half health while rune was on cooldown. However, opportunity was ready and I used defensive opportunity and within a couple seconds I was back to full health. 

I didn’t have time to try +4/8 yet, but I’m confident I could do so with the easier mob groups at least. 
 

Now for comparison. I am confident on my main blaster, which is dual pistols / martial combat. It is softcapped to s/l/e and almost softcapped to negative energy. Nominal resists, but does have rune. 

 

I have no problem jumping into +4/8 council mobs on that one. Not a good test as they are an easy mob, but comparable because that’s what I did with the sentinel.  Also my blaster has the t3 musculature alpha and the sentinel doesnt. So blaster has a level shift and extra damage. 
 

My blaster definitely clears mobs noticeably faster. Even at +3/8 (taking a level off to account for level shift) versus +2/8 on my sentinel. Blaster also kills bosses faster. The blaster kills the mobs fast enough that they don’t really have a chance to beat down on my defenses enough to start getting my health down.  I hardly ever get mezzed. I give credit to placing the blaster ATO set with mez protection in burst of speed. I use burst of speed to leap into a mob and it always procs. 

 

So, yes, sentinel do indeed to appear to be more survivable. The damage was decent, but noticeably less than blaster. They are two different blast sets so that is also a variable. 
 

I am going to play my sentinel and push it to its limits with higher difficulty and harder mobs. I feel confident that it will likely survive a lot better than the blaster will on harder mob factions. However, I don’t think it will ever have the same damage potential. I think that is a fair trade off. 
 

I will report again later after I’ve played sentinel some more. 

[MTeague]

I do think Sents could stand to have some boosts to damage and/or a reworked inherent. 

 

They should never get too close to blaster damage (unless managed by craptons of procs, or other AT-independant mechanics).

Lesser damage is the price you pay for a scrapper-like-secondary tree.

 

I don't think it's wrong for Sentinels to match Scrapper damage BEFORE critical hits are factored in. 

But Scrappers are critting machines, and Sentinels do lesser damage (by not having crits) in exchange for having vastly greater freedom to attack at range. 

 

That said, I don't know about anyone else, but I tend to snag the Presence Pool taunt on my Sentinels. 

I don't think I've given it more than 2 slots, but just having an AE taunt that's fairly reliable (yes, it can miss/needs to hit, but between tactics and set bonuses, it's pretty reliable), allows for some decent offtanking / oh-I-guess-I-am-the-tank-this-time options.