Psi/? Build Help!

[Neuro-son]

So I have put my ego away and have tried sentinels moving from blasters and absolutely love the AT no matter what people say about them. Currently i am playing a water/rad sent that is awesome for aoes and team play but it seems like i am really lacking ST damage. I have always loved the visuals and idea of psychic blast and want to make a sentinel with that power. I am asking for help for good secondaries that pair well with it! I dont mind expensive builds and am really big in visuals if that makes any sense lol maybe dark armor would look really awesome but i know there is always some downfalls of it. Any help would be amazing and if anyone has a psychic sentinal and would love to share their build and the damage it does compared to other primaries that would be awesome too!

[oldskool]

Water Blast does have the weakest ST out of all of the primaries and one of the strongest AoE toolkits.  So don't gauge Sentinel ST damage based off a set that doesn't specialize in it.  I'm not saying you are doing that but it is something to be mindful of. 

 

Just a quick note, if you type "psi" in the search bar and search "this forum" you're going to get a lot of results.  Help with Psychic Blast seems almost as popular a topic as help with Dual Pistols.  

 

Psychic Blast a few notable weaknesses.  Understanding those weaknesses will help you understand why certain power sets are "good".  

 

1) The most glaring issue is robot resistance to psychic damage. 

2) Slow cast times for Psionic Strike and Scramble Thoughts.

3) Anemic area damage potential.

4) Some end game limitation on max performance.

 

In the case of #1, a way to get past this weakness (at least lessen it) is to use damage procs to help diversify damage type.  Psychic Blast by itself doesn't have a lot of great options to diversify damage on its own.  Telekinetic Blast is about it and Scramble Thoughts for making the most out of the Apocalypse (negative damage) proc.  Will Domination is a very strong power but once you've put targeted procs in the other two you're left with the PvP toxic proc.  This ties into #4.  I highly recommend taking on an Epic/Patron pool Hold power to stuff procs into it.  This not only strengthens the attack chain (ties to #2) but diversifies damage further.  The Hold category can introduce a purple smashing damage proc (Unbreakable Constraint), a lethal proc (PvP hold set), toxic damage (PvP ranged damage set), and more psi damage (Ghost Widow's set, etc.).  

 

#2 and #4 are also somewhat related.  Psionic Strike is essentially a skippable power if all you care about is maximizing damage potential.  The core ST attacks of Psychic Blast are TK Blast, Will Dom, and Scramble Thoughts.  You want to try to chain cast these as much as possible without relying on Mental Blast or Psionic Strike at all.  Mental Blast is pretty bad.  It is so bad that using it, even for Offensive Opportunity, can actually lower your total damage than if you hadn't used it at all.  Psionic Strike could be good if it had more proc potential, but it doesn't.  If you're skipping these to make room for Epic powers, then your build is going to be rather backloaded on power.  This a common problem on virtually all min-max Sentinels, but this is a power set I actually recommend it to overcome issue #1.  

Quick point about the above though...  Take it with a grain of salt.  Not every enemy you face is a freaking robot.  Clockwork, a common low level enemy faction, aren't robots and you can curbstomp them rather easily.  There are multiple AV's with powers such as Unstoppable or Moment of Glory that are helpless against psychic damage.  Still, psychic damage is one of the higher resisted types in end game factions and it is a potential problem you won't avoid in Gold side arcs.  So while I would recommend a consideration to build in a certain way here it is not all doom and gloom.  

 

Issue #3.  Psychic Scream isn't great.  Most cones on Sentinels are 'meh' but Psychic Scream is the 'meh' of 'meh'.  Tornado gets better at level 18 but it has a default 20 second cooldown with a 2.5s animation (arcanatime).  So you're AoE may feel pretty terrible until you finish the build.  An Epic AoE can help but again this further backloads the performance in the build.  

 

OK, so what makes for a complimentary secondary here?  

 

1) Bio Armor

2) Radiation Armor

3) Energy Aura

4) Super Reflexes

5) Electric Armor 

 

A runner up is Invulnerability just because Sentinel Invulnerability is not only really strong but it is because of its differences from its melee counterparts (actual end management, an absorb, etc.).  

 

Any other set would just be because it is something you want to play for flavor or whatever.  While the stuns of Psychic Blast and Dark Armor do have some synergy neither of these really overcome any of the flaws.  

 

Bio Armor is simple to understand why it works.  Bio Armor directly adds damage.  Furthermore it can add toxic damage which can help diversify damage output.  I'm not recommending Bio Armor because it is one of the best defensive sets because it most certainly isn't that.  Bio Armor is the most direct method to add more punch that is really worth your time.  Fiery Aura could also be a runner up, but frankly I don't care for Sentinel Fiery Aura in anyway shape or form.  

 

2 through 5 are easy to explain.  It's all about the recharge.  Particle Shield, Entropy Aura, Quickness, and Lightning Reflexes all add +20% global recharge.  This is a considerable boost to being able to prune out powers like Mental Blast, Psychic Scream, and Psionic Strike from your loadout.  These effects help smooth out your power availability which is, in turn, a damage increase.  

 

I'm rather partial to either Super Reflexes (the Sent version is quite strong) or Energy Aura.  Either of these two are fairly self-contained power sets that can eventually soft-cap their defenses without much, if any at all, assistance from slotting your attacks.  This is especially true of Super Reflexes.  Radiation Armor is something you're already playing so you know about its other damage boosters in Meltdown and Ground Zero plus its solid healing capability.  Electric Armor is also very solid on Sentinels.  

So there you go.  5 secondary powersets within the Sentinel choices that help with Psychic Blast's weaknesses.  Other options can be good too but don't answer the challenge to the weaknesses nearly as well, in my opinion.

[Neuro-son]

@oldskool Wow thank you for that in depth explanation. I am definitely going to take all of this into consideration! I really like rad armor and it gets the job done for sure but maybe its time for SR for a change! One day i really hope they do something with dark armor because from a visual and supevillian standpoint it would be amazing theme power

[Neuro-son]

Would regen be viable either? cause iv heard regen is viable on a sentinel but nothing else?

[oldskool]

12 hours ago, Neuro-son said:

Would regen be viable either? cause iv heard regen is viable on a sentinel but nothing else?

You may be confusing the term viable with optimal.  Viable means something works and optimal means something is the best.  Regeneration hasn't been considered "optimal" ever since it was nerfed back in the before times.  That said, Regeneration has always been viable.  Every Sentinel secondary is viable.  Some are better than others (optimal) but they are all

able to contribute to a functional character (viable). 

Edited September 8, 2020 by oldskool

[TygerDarkstorm]

So, I'm still leveling her, but I'm going to plug my psy/fire sentinel. @oldskool already wrote up a lovely post about psychic blast and what the likely optimal secondaries are, so I won't touch any of that. And again, take my thoughts on my choice with a grain of salt; I haven't tested this at level 50 or anything, I'm not a min/maxer, and making builds is not something I fully understand yet, so there may be a reason why my sent's combo is a bit of a unicorn. But somebody asked this question on reddit a while back and there were some others in agreement with the decision, so here we go.

 

I wanted to try a psychic blast character and like the way the set looked on sentinels compared to the other AT's, and knowing that psy damage can be resisted pretty strongly in the later game, wanted to make sure I was thoughtful about my secondary. I'm sure bio is probably one of the most obvious choices, but I'm kind of over it and don't like the way it looks, even on min FX unless I have a character concept that fits it. I stumbled across fiery aura, saw the T2: Molten Embrace (increases the damage of all your attacks while also adding a chance for a small fire DoT--this power replaces the damage aura the melee classes get). Much of the other powers I'm familiar with from my FA brute, but Molten Embrace seemed like the compliment psychic blast needs.

 

I am sure the secondaries given by oldskool may be better in many ways, but FA fit my character's concept and, so far, seems like a pretty good mesh for psy blast, though this sent likely won't be as tough as my fire/rad sent (who has helped tank a couple of TF's as she's leveling) without serious investment. I haven't soloed with her in a bit, and she's been a bit stalled at level 20, though that's mostly because I have a serious case of altitis and sometimes the slow animation times of psy turn me off, but I like my little unicorn sent and am curious to see how the powersets continue to work as I get her into later game.

[Big Soto74]

I have a Psi/Ninja and I like it a lot. The Damage buff from getting Shinobi Iri (20%) and the movement bonus is nice. It was also easy to get soft cap positional defense and the self heal and endurance click powers come in handy.

[oldskool]

54 minutes ago, Big Soto74 said:

 The Damage buff from getting Shinobi Iri (20%) 

This statement is a little misleading.  The 20% buff is only valid when the Shinobi-Iri stealth effect is active.  Once your stealth is suppressed so is the damage buff.  This functionally works as a sneak attack-like buff to the first attack in combat.  It is not a persistent 20% damage buff (I wish!!).