Sentinel Archetype info

[marcussmythe]

This AT is going to be awesome in PVP. I might make my fire/nrg Blapper into a sentinal instead.

 

Maybe?  I dont know if theyll burst hard enough to drop people in PvP.  That said, theyll be fun.

 

My question is whether x8/+4 is on the menu.  I SUSPECT that the reduced damage (from being a purely ranged attacker) will make up for the lost resilience as compared to a scrapper, but Im not there to test it yet.  Similar for Giant Monsters.

[Judicator]

I'm currently running AR/SR Sentinel and I love it. However, I never take the disorient low damage type of attacks and it is my tier 2. I'm not really sure I need the defensive opportunity as I'm pretty good at cycling my inspirations, but I'm nervous not to have it. Any thoughts on this?

[marcussmythe]

I'm currently running AR/SR Sentinel and I love it. However, I never take the disorient low damage type of attacks and it is my tier 2. I'm not really sure I need the defensive opportunity as I'm pretty good at cycling my inspirations, but I'm nervous not to have it. Any thoughts on this?

 

I have not noted great value in the defensive opportunity.  I have not in 23 levels felt that I was glad to have the opportunity or that the healing it provided made any difference.

 

Mind you, the OFFENSIVE opportunity isn't much better.  But opportunity is on the whole a sufficiently weak 'special ability' that I would not choose powers I dont like, or waste slots on them, for its sake.

 

IMHO its the synergy of medium defense, medium offense, with the opportunity advantages created by operating purely at range, that make the Sentinel AT shine.

[Player2]

My issue with Sentinels is that the part about Blasters that made their squishiness so apparent was their often melee range secondary attacks.  With the Blaster secondaries gone, the aggro has seemed less of a concern and so my need for defensive capability from the Sentinel secondaries comes off as less than thrilling.

 

I feel like Sentinels could have been better off if they had combination melee & ranged (like Dominator secondaries) as their primary set.

[marcussmythe]

My issue with Sentinels is that the part about Blasters that made their squishiness so apparent was their often melee range secondary attacks.  With the Blaster secondaries gone, the aggro has seemed less of a concern and so my need for defensive capability from the Sentinel secondaries comes off as less than thrilling.

 

I feel like Sentinels could have been better off if they had combination melee & ranged (like Dominator secondaries) as their primary set.

 

I fear that if the Sentinel Primary set had both ranged and melee attacks, the AT would simply be a poor scrapper with an additional ranged attack or two.

 

In all fairness, between pool powers, epic powers, and the like, 'ranged scrapper' is already buildable...

[FUBARczar]

My issue with Sentinels is that the part about Blasters that made their squishiness so apparent was their often melee range secondary attacks.  With the Blaster secondaries gone, the aggro has seemed less of a concern and so my need for defensive capability from the Sentinel secondaries comes off as less than thrilling.

 

I feel like Sentinels could have been better off if they had combination melee & ranged (like Dominator secondaries) as their primary set.

 

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, something more like a Dominator's Assault secondary seemed appropriate, just take out the snipe and any power_boost/aim/build_up

 

edit- and without any boosts just give them dmg modifiers of something like 1.05 to 1.125 for both range and melee.  Seems like a fair trade-off

 

Having a mix of shorter-ranged range attacks and melee attacks forces them to stay close to the battle for a good attack chain, and they still benefit from the utility of having some range. 

[FUBARczar]

A good set could look like: 

Dark Assault:

1-Dark Blast  2-Smite  3-Gloom  4-Night Fall  5-Heart of Darkness  6-Engulfing Darkness  7-Life Drain  8-Moon Beam  9-Midnight Grasp

 

But the difficulty comes when adapting Blast sets that don't have a melee counterpart like Dual Pistols or Sonic.

[PrinceTycho]

Grifter would probably fit into the archtype as well. Dual Pistol/'take your pick'. (Will or SR maybe)

[Lazarillo]

So something I noticed today, which is probably a bug/glitch, but kinda interesting anyway: I just started trying a Fire/Ninja Sentinel, and sometimes after my Opportunity wears off, the bar was staying full.  I suspect it's related to one or two possibilities (which may be connected).

 

1. I notice that there's a very short time, like a tenth of a second or less, when the bar switches back to its normal color at the end of Opportunity, but before it resets.  Possibly triggering damage during this very, very short window is the cause.

 

2. Related to the above, being as I was playing Fire/, it's possible that the DoTs are having a similar effect to what I described in (1).

 

Anyone else run into something like this?  I can't seem to make it happen, but it's super gravy when it does.

[srmalloy]

My issue with Sentinels is that the part about Blasters that made their squishiness so apparent was their often melee range secondary attacks.

 

This was why I liked Energy Manipulation for my Assault Rifle Blaster -- the must-take Tier 1 Power Thrust was a 'get away from me' extender, and Build Up, Boost Range, Power Boost, and, Conserve Power all fed the primary; the attacks in the secondary are pointless and ignorable, giving you more room for other things. I'm going to have to try a Sentinel, although I really liked being able to hit targets at "see that dot?" range (Snipe and LRM were about 270 yards with Boost Range up).

[ParaBruce]

This seems like the thread to ask this question in: is there anyone doing a master roundup of the archetype changes? Like, I learned about a bunch of sentinel changes just today on Discord, but honestly, as a 50-something old fart, Discord is not my best medium. I like stuff written down with more separation and durability, when I can get it.

 

Thank you in advance to any leads on this!

 

[marcussmythe]

This seems like the thread to ask this question in: is there anyone doing a master roundup of the archetype changes? Like, I learned about a bunch of sentinel changes just today on Discord, but honestly, as a 50-something old fart, Discord is not my best medium. I like stuff written down with more separation and durability, when I can get it.

 

Thank you in advance to any leads on this!

 

"A bunch of Sentinel Changes"?

 

As in they are planning on -making- changes to Sentinels?  Or?

[ParaBruce]

A bunch of changes made, apparently.

 

[MuonNeutrino]

So I was trying to figure out what Opportunity did as well, with some testing I think I've got a bit more insight into what's going on with this ability.

 

Ignoring the meter mechanic for starters, the information in the inherent description about defense and resistance appears to be correct. All primary attacks appear to inflict a 3.75% defense debuff and a 5% resistance debuff on targets hit. This does not stack from the same sentinel, whether by repeated uses of one power or uses of different powers. The inherent description suggests it can stack from different sentinels; this would bear some testing. The debuff amounts are affected by the purple patch, so they are smaller against enemies higher level than you and larger against enemies lower level than you.

 

As for the meter mechanic, attacks from the primary (plus brawl) increase the bar by an amount that more or less depends on the recharge of the attack. (The character I tested this on doesn't have any pool attacks to test, so I don't know if those count.) From the attacks I have available to me the increase seems to be roughly equal to base recharge plus about 4-6; the increase is consistent over multiple uses of the same attack but the bonus amount seems to follow a slightly different formula for different powers. (Brawl (2s): +6.73, Power Bolt (4s): +7.92, Power Blast (7s): +12.61, Power Burst (10s): +14.92.) AoE attacks seem to have the area factor divided in, though again the formula isn't exact. (Energy torrent (12s, area factor 2.38): +8.41.) AoEs do *not* give more bar if you hit more than one target - the amount is fixed. The amount gained appears to be set by the *base* recharge, as it did not change after slotting a recharge enhancement.

 

If not used the bar decays, though quite slowly. In my testing it took a couple seconds more than 2 minutes for the bar to decay from 100%-0%, for a decay rate of about 0.8 units/sec. Interestingly enough, the decay seems to be paused while in combat - both enemy attacks against you (hit or miss) and your attacks against enemies seem to pause the decay for a few (4-5ish) seconds.

 

Once the bar is above a certain threshold, which seems to be 90% from my testing, your tier 1 and tier 2 attacks gain the ability to set off your Opportunity inherent. This is indicated visually by a red ring around the tier 1 and a green ring around the tier 2. Successfully hitting (missing doesn't count) with your tier 1 activates Offensive Opportunity, and hitting with your tier 2 activates Defensive Opportunity, both for a duration of 15 seconds. When triggering either type of opportunity, a large targeting reticle graphic will appear under the feet of the enemy you attacked. This represents a 20% resistance debuff placed on that target, which lasts for the same 15 seconds. Like the resistance and defense debuffs from the base inherent, this debuff is affected by the purple patch.

 

Offensive Opportunity causes your attacks to gain a bonus tick of damage. This bonus tick applies no matter what target you are shooting, and seems to be equal to about 18-20% of the attack's damage (consistent across multiple uses of the same attack, but varying slightly between different attacks). Interestingly enough, this bonus tick of damage appears to ignore damage buffs, as it was unaffected by slotting a damage enhancement or using a red inspiration. It does, however, increase as usual with resistance debuffs on the target

 

Defensive Opportunity causes your attacks to heal you for an amount equal to roughly 26-27% of the attack's *base* damage. This seems to be independent of the damage actually inflicted on the enemy - it does not vary when slotting damage enhancements or using a red inspiration, and it also does not vary when attacking targets of different levels or under the effects of different amounts of resistance debuffs.

 

The combat log also indicates that attacks under Defensive Opportunity also restore some amount of endurance, but does not report the exact number. Anecdotally, when watching one's endurance bar while attacking one can see that the bar does drop and then immediately bounce back up, but it is difficult to tell by exactly how much. The endurance recovery amount seems to be less than the endurance cost of the attack, but still quite significant. More testing is needed to determine what controls the amount of endurance recovered.

 

Whether the percentages of bonus damage, healing, and endurance recovery changes based on the level of the user is unknown. The majority of this testing was done on a level 8 Sentinel; at the end of the test I allowed myself to level to 9 and then re-checked the bonus amounts and did not see any significant changes in the percentages, but even if the amounts do scale one level may not be enough to cause a noticeable difference.

[marcussmythe]

Very good and detailed information.  Thank you.

[Montaugh]

Something I did not see mention of was the AOE target numbers.

 

Cones target a max of six people.

AOE and PBAOEs target a max of 10 people.

I believe the only exception was sonic, as the cones in sonic targeted 10 people.

 

This differs from the blaster/defender/corr ranged sets as cones target 10 and AOE/PBAOE target 16.

 

[marcussmythe]

Something I did not see mention of was the AOE target numbers.

 

Cones target a max of six people.

AOE and PBAOEs target a max of 10 people.

I believe the only exception was sonic, as the cones in sonic targeted 10 people.

 

This differs from the blaster/defender/corr ranged sets as cones target 10 and AOE/PBAOE target 16.

 

Ugh.  That seems unnecessary.

[Novacat]

Probably got added hand-in-hand with the range loss, but yeah, definitely unnecessary. It's already just "less positioning" and no longer "ranged", having slightly lower overall damage even with Offensive Opportunity up than blasters too... The lower number of targets will really drive down the DPS in endgame when playing in groups.

[marcussmythe]

Probably got added hand-in-hand with the range loss, but yeah, definitely unnecessary. It's already just "less positioning" and no longer "ranged", having slightly lower overall damage even with Offensive Opportunity up than blasters too... The lower number of targets will really drive down the DPS in endgame when playing in groups.

 

Ultimately, early design choices with the Blaster rather restrict what can be done to the design space later on.  Blasters get range and damage and little enough else, and thus anything that can do damage at range has to be carefully watched to avoid undermining their role on the trip up to 50.

 

I think theyll probably still show real well on messy or imperfect teams at endgame.  And in all fairness, on a ‘really ideal’ team, almost anything is useful - and pretty much everything is less useful than more buff/debuff would be.  :)

[nukeglory]

And of course, the bigger your team the more useful those resistance penalties are going to be.

[Novacat]

Although it's worth noting that Blasters don't have to be set in stone either. I24 was already estimated to be a lowball set of fixes to refine upwards later - and that was under the assumption that no one else got buffed to widen the gap again.

[Super Homer]

Something I did not see mention of was the AOE target numbers.

 

Cones target a max of six people.

AOE and PBAOEs target a max of 10 people.

I believe the only exception was sonic, as the cones in sonic targeted 10 people.

 

This differs from the blaster/defender/corr ranged sets as cones target 10 and AOE/PBAOE target 16.

 

They wanted Sentinels to compete more with Scrappers and other melee, so it uses caps that are more similar to melee ATs. No clue what the deal is with Sonic cones, but maybe its because that set has no targeted AoE attack. The sonic T9 AoE does seem to have the 10 target cap other powers have.

[Tankshock]

<lots of useful info>

 

Thanks for taking the time to do this and post it.

[Vindarten]

Been running a Dual Pistols/Willpower guy for a bit.  Just hit level 20 and Quick Recovery was a huge help.  No longer running out of endurance every other fight.

Survivability has been hit or miss.  Willpower is more for the theme so it's likely not the best choice.  But it's fun.  I don't regret building him and am looking forward to when I can buy SO enhancements.  Should be the make or break point depending on performance.

[GritIron01]

Rad/Rad Sentinel has been a blast and fun to play.  Not Invincible but certainly fun.

 

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.962

http://www.cohplanner.com/

 

Click this DataLink to open the build!

 

Rhegulus: Level 50 Magic Sentinel

Primary Power Set: Radiation Blast

Secondary Power Set: Radiation Armor

Power Pool: Sorcery

Power Pool: Fighting

Power Pool: Speed

 

Hero Profile:

Level 1: Neutrino Bolt -- EntChs-Heal%(A), EntChs-Acc/Dmg(3), EntChs-Dmg/EndRdx(15), EntChs-Dmg/Rchg(45), EntChs-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(45)

Level 1: Alpha Barrier -- UnbGrd-Max HP%(A), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(3), UnbGrd-Rchg/ResDam(7), UnbGrd-EndRdx/Rchg(34), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(34), UnbGrd-ResDam(37)

Level 2: Irradiate -- Avl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(A), Avl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), Avl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15)

Level 4: Arcane Bolt -- FrcFdb-Dmg/EndRdx/KB(A), FrcFdb-Rchg/KB(5), FrcFdb-Rchg/EndRdx(23)

Level 6: Mystic Flight -- WntGif-RunSpd/Jump/Fly/Rng/EndRdx(A), WntGif-RunSpd/Jump/Fly/Rng(7)

Level 8: Proton Armor -- TtnCtn-EndRdx(A), TtnCtn-ResDam(9), TtnCtn-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(9), TtnCtn-EndRdx/Rchg(34), TtnCtn-ResDam/Rchg(37), TtnCtn-ResDam/EndRdx(37)

Level 10: Gamma Boost -- NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(A), NmnCnv-Heal(11), NmnCnv-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(11), NmnCnv-Heal/Rchg(40), NmnCnv-EndRdx/Rchg(42), NmnCnv-Heal/EndRdx(43)

Level 12: Electron Haze -- Dtn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(A), Dtn-Acc/Dmg(13), Dtn-Dmg/Rchg(13)

Level 14: Fallout Shelter -- EndRdx-I(A)

Level 16: Cosmic Burst -- Thn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(A), Thn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(17), Thn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(17), Thn-Dmg/Rchg(23), Thn-Dmg/EndRdx(40), Thn-Acc/Dmg(40)

Level 18: Proton Stream -- Dcm-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(A), Dcm-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(19), Dcm-Dmg/EndRdx(19)

Level 20: Rune of Protection -- GldArm-3defTpProc(A), GldArm-RechRes(21), GldArm-RechEnd(21), GldArm-Res/Rech/End(29)

Level 22: Kick -- RechRdx-I(A)

Level 24: Tough -- StdPrt-ResDam/EndRdx(A), StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(25), StdPrt-ResKB(25), ResDam-I(29)

Level 26: Neutron Bomb -- PstBls-Dam%(A), PstBls-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(27), PstBls-Dmg/Rng(27), PstBls-Dmg/Rchg(45), PstBls-Dmg/EndRdx(46), PstBls-Acc/Dmg(46)

Level 28: Particle Acceleration -- Flight-I(A)

Level 30: Weave -- ShlWal-ResDam/Re TP(A), ShlWal-Def(31), ShlWal-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(31), ShlWal-EndRdx/Rchg(31), ShlWal-Def/Rchg(43), ShlWal-Def/EndRdx(43)

Level 32: Atomic Blast -- Obl-%Dam(A), Obl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(33), Obl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Obl-Dmg/Rchg(33)

Level 35: Ground Zero -- ShlBrk-%Dam(A), ShlBrk-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(36), ShlBrk-DefDeb/EndRdx/Rchg(36), ShlBrk-Acc/Rchg(36)

Level 38: Meltdown -- ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), ImpArm-ResDam/Rchg(39), ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(39), ImpArm-EndRdx/Rchg(39)

Level 41: Proton Therapy -- DctWnd-Rchg(A), DctWnd-Heal(42), DctWnd-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(42), DctWnd-Heal/Rchg(46), DctWnd-EndRdx/Rchg(48), DctWnd-Heal/EndRdx(50)

Level 44: Aim -- RechRdx-I(A)

Level 47: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(48), RechRdx-I(48)

Level 49: Particle Shielding -- NmnCnv-Heal/EndRdx(A), NmnCnv-Heal/Rchg(50), NmnCnv-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(50)

Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)

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 -- Flight-I(A)

Level 2: Health -- RgnTss-Regen+(A)

Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)

Level 2: Stamina -- PrfShf-End%(A)

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