Noob needing build help - Dark/Bio

[Renbletz]

Hello!

 

I've been playing for a couple of days with a few friends now, and have gotten my dark/bio sentinel up to level 23.  In teams with my friends, she's GREAT.  But solo, she feels comparatively fragile and weak.

 

I don't have a character planner outline for her, since she's only 23 and I don't know most of the complicated IO sets and attunement sets and stuff... but I was curious if anyone wouldn't mind spending some time at least giving me some pointers towards maximizing this set?

 

FWIW, here's an overview of what I have so far:

 

Spoiler

* Most of my abilities are fully slotted with level 25 IOs, shout out to Sovera for an awesome newbie guide!

 

* Sorcery power pool set: acquired Mystic Flight.  I selected this pool to also get access to Spirit Ward and Rune of Protection on the assumption that I'd be offtanking in groups.

 

* Leadership power pool set: Acquired Assault and Tactics, with plans to grab Manuevers at some point as well.  I really like the notion of toggles (which is both great and detrimental - between this and bio armor, I have a lot of toggles, but they get endurance hungry), and this power pool offered some great ones.  Particularly Tactics.  Tactics is slotted with -Endurance Cost and two +ToHit buffs, Assault has two -Endurance Cost.

 

* Dark Blast: I have Dark Blast, Gloom, Umbral Torrent, Dark Obliteration, and Antumbral Beam.  Blast/Gloom/Obliteration each have 4 slots so far, Torrent/Beam each have 3.  I'm running Prestige Damage/Recharge, Damage, and Accuracy mods on each ability.  Dark Blast and Gloom each also have Recharge Speed, and Obliteration has To Hit Debuff.

 

* Bio Armor: I have picked up Hardened Carapace, Inexhaustible, Environmental Adaptation, and Rebuild DNA so far.  Each has two slots.  HC has +DamResist and -Endurance cost, Inexhaustible has +Healing and +Endurance Mod, Environmental Adaptation is running +Defense and -Endurance Cost, and Rebuild DNA hasn't been filled in yet because I don't know what to do with it so far.  I keep forgetting to use Rebuild DNA in tight situations, which may partially explain my soloing woes.

 

* Inherent Fitness:  Stamina has 2 Endurance Mod enhancements, and Health has a Healing enhancement.

 

* So far, Adaptation wise, I run Efficient Mode 90% of the time, and Offensive Mode when I'm angry at something and want it to die.

 

For fights in teams, I try to open with a Dark Obliteration on the center-ish of the enemy group to get aggro on the enemy group as well as get a ToHit debuff on as many as possible, followed by an Umbral Torrent to CC and debuff on as many of the other enemies as I can.  With my two friends (one a Fire/Thermal Corruptor and the other a Plant/Radiation Controller), I mostly serve as the tank, so my goal is less maximized dps and more spreading and maintaining the ToHit debuff as widely as possible.  We generally run at +6 Team Size, +0 Level and it feels about right.

 

For soloing, I'm mostly using Dark Blast, Gloom, Blackwand, Antumbral Beam, and Nemesis Staff to focus-fire down individual targets after trying to AOE them a bit with Dark Obliteration/Umbral Torrent (again, mostly for the ToHit debuff).  I solo at +0 Team Size, +0 Level, and while I don't often DIE, I kill things slower than I'd like and often have to rest inbetween pulls as well as pop a number of Inspirations (particularly against Orange/Red enemies).

 

 

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I'm loving the character theme, but I'd like to make sure I'm maximizing my potential, as well as overall improve my soloing capabilities a bit.

 

Thank you so much! 😄

 

[Underfyre]

Even for just leveling I can't stress how important it is that you are hitting everything versus doing more damage when you do hit. At +0 your attacks have a baseline 75% hit chance, then another 3.75% once you hit them and Opportunity comes into effect. Grabbing a Kismet +6% hit chance may be a tall order since they cost ~5m last I checked, but that will bring you to 84.75% hit chance. From there you abilities will only need 15% more accuracy to be hit capped. This is theoretically the optimal approach versus taking Tactics and losing an entire ability slot instead of a single enhancement slot. Tactics brings you to 89.75% hit chance, so you still need a single accuracy enhancement in each ability anyway. My qualm with Tactics and Assault is their very high endurance cost to keep up.

 

Having Environmental Adaptation active grants an additional 7.5% to hit when under Offensive Adaptation, so once you're in a position to have that up all the time instead of switching back and forth to Efficient, that plus Tactics will have you hit capped. By that time you may or may not be going against +1 or higher and all this advice will have been for naught.

 

 

[oldskool]

Bio Armor can be a bit of a late bloomer.  As I've noted before, sometimes folks get really lost in the weeds of hearing "Bio Armor is the R0XX0R$!".  Yet, few times people really talk about the reality of what makes it so good.  Generally, that's significant IO investment and that also doesn't happen at level 23.  Dark Blast is decent on its own, but like most Sentinel damage it will bloom fairly late once you start stacking IOs.  

 

Sentinels are fairly straight forward and easy to play/understand.  However, if this were another MMO they'd be known as being highly gear dependent to maximize what they are capable of.  I tend to find this more so than many other ATs.  There is a vast difference in full build vs leveling on Sentinels.  Sure, that's true of several ATs, but few times has that difference felt so stark in contrast.  

What I'm saying is... exercise patience if you like the character.  The combo you have is a good one, and it can get a lot better than it currently is... over time.  

 

All of that said, I think you may have jumped on a few additional toggles from the Leadership pool a bit early.  Assault isn't that powerful.  It is nice to have, but it will always only be 10.5% base damage.  So you're granting yourself 5~ damage to Dark Blast, 9~ damage to Gloom, and so on.  That's it.  You'll buff your teammates in the exact same way.  Assault can be a nice power to have due to its inability to take on sets and performance at a single slot.  I often find that utility good... later.  Tactics is potentially a great power.  There isn't really anything wrong with having it early on... if you've planned for it.  

 

I have no opinion on Mystic Flight.  Rune of Protection is a fine choice if you feel like you're the one taking the bulk of the alpha strikes.  However, you may or may not really need it.  This may also be a pretty big misunderstanding of the strengths of the combination you've selected.  Keep the idea of RoP in the back of your mind.  It is a sound idea, seriously, but you may not need it at all later down the road.  

 

You've skipped a few items that I personally think are are important.  

 

1) Abyssal Gaze is actually a very strong attack for Dark Blast.  It is second fiddle to Antumbral Beam.  You should consider picking this up at some point.  

2) Aim.  Aim is burst damage on a timer.  For 10 seconds you gain 50% to-hit (which isn't that amazing) and 50% damage which is quite nice.  Later on this can be significantly improved with the Gaussian's proc "Chance for Build-Up" which has a potentially very high chance (depends on your slotting) of granting you 80% more damage for a 5 second window.  

3) Ablative Carapace

4) Assault over Maneuvers

 

In the case of #3 Ablative Carapace grants you an absorb shield.  This is bonus effective hit points.  It also buffs your regeneration rate.  The Absorb shield system is something Bio Armor does very well and could be a reason why RoP isn't as amazing as it seems later on (that will depend on your comfort with incoming damage).  Later down the road at level 38 Parasitic Leech is a very long cooldown with a significant amount of absorb and health benefit.  Leech is a cone with a fairly long range, but don't be scared of melee range with this combo.  Blackstar, your level 32 power, is a point-blank range AoE with a -35% to-hit debuff with a 20 second long duration.  You don't need to enhance that debuff, but the damage on that power is substantial especially when backed up by Aim (and more so again with Gaussian's in it).  

 

For #4, Maneuvers offers defense which Bio Armor is fairly light on outside of elemental attacks.  This is partially where a squishy factor of Bio Armor exists.  Bio Armor has no Smashing/Lethal defense.  It has some resistance to that plus healing capacity.  Still, without defense you run risk of taking on more damage than you'd care for.  Sentinels, as durable as they can be, are not tanks. They're not even off-tanks.  They can handle an alpha strike, but sustained team aggro management is outside the scope of their kit.  You can shoehorn this in with the Presence power pool, but you're potentially kneecapping your potential to turn the AT into something it is not.  Still, if this is a path you'd like to take then fly on you beautiful butterfly. 

 

Damage probably won't feel "maximized" at your level range.  There are tricks you can do to push it later on, but at the low levels it is a game of patience.  You need slots.  You need powers.  You should look at recharge (more of it later) to really push damage.  

 

Do you need to respec right now?  Nope.  Just temper your expectations a bit and keep pushing forward.  In the 30's you'll get more slots as the power picks slow down.  You can refine things or correct "mistakes" around that time.  You can plan for a respec at 50 and just enjoy taking/trying powers on the way there.  If your friends aren't complaining about damage in a group, then just have fun.  

 

One tip though... You're approaching level 26.  You can skip Life Drain if you like.  I think you should take it to experiment with it once you have time, but it is not a priority pick despite its late level unlock.  The heal it has is tiny and its damage isn't better than Gloom.  You could twist this around later on with IO procs to make Life Drain a lot better, but this is an advanced method of slotting.  While your in the noob process just know that for Life Drain all that glitters is not gold.  You should strongly consider taking all of the Bio Armor powers as you go.  They can be quite powerful and get even better with a lot of global recharge (Hasten + set bonuses).  

[Renbletz]

Great feedback, thank you so much!

 

I'll continue to be patient with the class then, as I do really like the overall feel of it.  I'm also glad you mentioned that we're not tanks nor offtanks; I was sold to the Sentinel class with the description "mage tank", so I suppose I've had a bit of a misconception of what it's capable of.  Thanks for clearing that up!  I'll probably continue to focus on being able to tank damage some due to the layout of my team with my friends (they're both super-squish), but I'll plan on a respec at some point down the line if we're going to start doing things with public groups.

 

I did pick up Life Drain last night, and you're right - it is kinda lackluster.  The heal is better than nothing, but only just.  I also got Abyssal Gaze, and THAT is a show-stopper.  Love it.

 

If you don't mind a further question - Is Antumbral Beam worth using?  I've been finding its damage per activation cycle to be similar to my Gloom and even Dark Blast, which has had me using it only when everything else is on CD.

 

Again, thank you so much for your replies!

 

 

[Underfyre]

Baseline, Antumbral Beam is doing 50% more damage than Gloom is and 300% more than Dark Blast. It is absolutely worth using.

[oldskool]

58 minutes ago, Renbletz said:

Is Antumbral Beam worth using?  I've been finding its damage per activation cycle to be similar to my Gloom and even Dark Blast, which has had me using it only when everything else is on CD.

Short answer; yes. 

 

Longer answer; Antumbral Beam is the second highest base damage power in the set (Blackstar is first).  Antumbral Beam has the highest damage-per-activation out of all the powers followed closely by Abyssal Gaze, then Blackstar, then Gloom, and so on. (funky slotting with procs can change that hierarchy)  

 

What you may be experiencing right now is that you can cycle Gloom and Dark Blast much faster than you can Antumbral Beam due to its default long cooldown.  This is where stacking global recharge later becomes so beneficial to damage.  You can drop its cooldown into a range where the power is available after you cast Gloom and Abyssal Gaze.  Even on less recharge you may only cast 1 Dark Blast in that cycle before AB is back online.  So it gets a lot better the faster you can get it to recharge, and recharge also impacts powers like Ablative Carapace, Rebuild DNA, and Parasitic Leech (you won't make that perma but you can significant improve uptime). 

[Renbletz]

Awesome, thank you both!