Caveat Emptor

[Snarky]

My problem with Regen on Sentinels is the same as it is on Brutes.  Willpower does it better.  On Brutes Invulnerability (with i/o build) easily outshines Willpower.  Not so on Sentinels (or so I think)  This is because Invul is meant to take the Alpha.  Sentinels do not do that.  Sentinels need what Willpower was designed for, supercruise.  Regen is just too much of one good thing and not enough of other stuff.  Willpower, while missing the mark on a 'heavy' class slightly, finds a true home on Sentinels.  Regen, best suited for very high health characters (and even then it is a comically crazy set) just does not quite meet a Sentinels best needs.

 

I would suggest you reroll this a /Willpower basically.  I am currently experimenting with Willpower Sentinels and liking the results.  The armor requires next to no slotting to do 80% of what it would do if you stripped all slots from your attacks and built all the power into the armor.  (which is crazy, and ineffective)  with a tiny I/O slotting into it you get endless Blue bar and very good health recovery when you get into a hard corner.  pop some insp, get out, heal up.  It will not be Tanky.  It will not take an Alpha.  It will be the sustain you need if you play smart.

 

 

[drbuzzard]

Actually regen on sentinels is one of the best sets. Because of the way it leverages a fast refilling absorb shield, it feels a lot like the old days of Instant Heal toggle, though without being over the top (because the absorb shield is limited in size). If you are generating pure regeneration, yes a willpower sentinel will do better, but that absorb shield is damned impressive. I was dubious about sentinel regen before I tried it. 

 

Yes, you can just minimize and get by on the WP defenses, but when you do stack it all up, it can be quite durable. Been a while since I've played my psi/WP sentinel, but I have pretty high regen, 75% l/s resistance and I think I softcapped f/c/e/ne. It was very survivable, though defense debuff would tear them up. 

[Bill Z Bubba]

On 6/7/2021 at 3:45 PM, Rathulfr said:

Basically, if you want to play a Sentinel for maximum effectiveness, you're going to play a Psionic Mastery/* Sentinel: they're all Psionic Mastery Sentinels, regardless of whatever other primary or secondary choose.  Your primary power set is almost irrelevant, because you're going to replace it with Psionic Mastery's Mind Probe + Dominate at levels 35+. 

 

I'm not disagreeing as I've seen the numbers, but does anyone else find such a situation absolutely appalling? It's amazingly bad design.

 

Edit: For the record, I've enjoyed my rad/regen Sentinel. Based him off the ghouls from Fallout.

Edited June 28, 2021 by Bill Z Bubba

[Sunsette]

9 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

I'm not disagreeing as I've seen the numbers, but does anyone else find such a situation absolutely appalling? It's amazingly bad design.

 

Edit: For the record, I've enjoyed my rad/regen Sentinel. Based him off the ghouls from Fallout.

 

It's an amazingly perverse design, yes. I've heard procs are getting looked at; I just hope that it doesn't delay the Sentinel improvements we're all hoping for. But both issues need addressing.

[drbuzzard]

9 hours ago, Sunsette said:

 

It's an amazingly perverse design, yes. I've heard procs are getting looked at; I just hope that it doesn't delay the Sentinel improvements we're all hoping for. But both issues need addressing.

If they 'fix' (rather like a tomcat I suspect) procs, then the weaknesses of sentinels is likely to be really glaring, and maybe they will move to do something. 

[Sunsette]

My feeling is that since Sentinel performs well enough pre-Incarnate and is a new addition, they're going to hand out whatever buffs they think are necessary to the ATs Sent conceptually competes with, then finally go back and hit Sent. Whether or not that's the true intention, that's how it looks like it's shaking out.

[SmalltalkJava]

11 hours ago, drbuzzard said:

If they 'fix' (rather like a tomcat I suspect) procs, then the weaknesses of sentinels is likely to be really glaring, and maybe they will move to do something. 

Yes. As far as I can tell proc's really cover up a lot of sentinel damage gaps.   Rad/Beam/Water with proc's is a day and night difference.  

[Sunsette]

I don't have numbers but I suspect the bulk of Sent players are not building to use a proc-heavy attack chain. Those players are going to disproportionately favor blasters and even then I would guess it's a minority of characters

[Rathulfr]

On 6/27/2021 at 9:57 PM, Bill Z Bubba said:

I'm not disagreeing as I've seen the numbers, but does anyone else find such a situation absolutely appalling? It's amazingly bad design.

 

Yes, it is appalling, and it is bad.  I don't think the design flaw is in the Sentinels, though there are design flaws there that do need to be addressed.  The design flaw is the procs, which are ridiculously OP and can completely override any base AT/power/character design.  Many procs totally subvert and/or fundamentally alter powers into things they were never intended to be. 

 

Edited June 30, 2021 by Rathulfr

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, Rathulfr said:

Yes, it is appalling, and it is bad.  I don't think the design flaw is in the Sentinels, though there are design flaws there that do need to be addressed.  The design flaw is the procs, which are ridiculously OP and can completely override any base AT/power/character design.  Many procs totally subvert and/or fundamentally alter powers into things they were never intended to be.

 

Again, I don't disagree, but in this case I was speaking more toward how a single epic power pool eclipses the others so completely that it becomes the go to for so many.

[Rathulfr]

52 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Again, I don't disagree, but in this case I was speaking more toward how a single epic power pool eclipses the others so completely that it becomes the go to for so many.

 

My apologies, I conflated the two things in my head.  Procs need work.  Sentinels need work.  Agreed: a single Epic Power Pool shouldn't render useless an AT's primary power pool, IMO.

 

[nihilii]

2 hours ago, Rathulfr said:

Agreed: a single Epic Power Pool shouldn't render useless an AT's primary power pool, IMO.

The only real imbalance with Psi Mastery compared to other epics is Dominate being 16s base rech whereas most holds are 32s base rech.

For reference... in other ATs, epic Dominate is *also* 16s base rech. Defender epic Dominate is relatively stronger than Sentinel epic Dominate, as Defenders have access to more -RES and have lower base damage (= get same absolute boost from procs, relatively higher boost).

 

Mind Probe is good, not overwhelmingly so. Psi's strength lies in having this 1-2 punch of strong attacks on 16s and 20s rech, which happens to fit well with primary gaps if you stick to just the 2 or 3 best DPA attacks there.

 

But... Psi Mastery will never render your primary useless. Most Sentinel primaries can reach about 300+ DPS, pure range. Adding /psi mastery will let you get to 400+, provided a jump in melee for Mind Probe. The jump in melee in itself can translate to less effective DPS.

 

(But if we ignore the conditional nature of melee, my own best DPS on Sents is an Elec/Bio.../Ninja. Sting of the Wasp + The Lotus Drops both take a -RES proc and can boost DPS beyond what Dominate + Mind Probe do, in the right conditions.)

 

Either way, in a best case scenario you're looking at /psi making up 25% of your single target damage output. Hardly makes the primary irrelevant.

 

Perhaps at the heart of your point, there was a sentiment along the line of... "picking /psi is more relevant to performance than picking any primary compared to any other primary"? Which is mostly a result of Sentinel primaries being uniquely well balanced within the AT, compared to other ATs where there's wider gaps between top performers and bottom performers.

 

Other powers in /psi mastery are not as stellar as they look on paper, IMHO.

Link Minds: +5% defense!! That you have to recast every 90 seconds. With a 4 SECONDS animation cast. Yeah, I tried to make this one work for months for me. Just didn't seem worth it. It's enough of a drag recasting the real Mind Link or Farsight, and these two have much beefier defense bonuses.

 

Psionic Shockwave: does not do the damage advertised in Mids, it's much closer to half that. I suspect many think Psi is OP partly based on this. I fell prey to that mistake too. Other epics have stronger AoEs, although in a smaller radius.

 

Mass Hypnosis is actually a fav of mine, but I don't think most people care for AoE sleeps.

 

Barring Prococalypse, I think the most likely nerf to /psi mastery is Dominate bumped to 32s rech. That's it. That change alone would likely bring it close to par with other epics, many of which have equally proccable 32s rech holds; and some of these epics come with stronger PBAoEs, AoE immobilizes (which are fantastic to avoid runners or increase mitigation, as enemies do less damage at range).

 

As alluded above, I think /psi mastery is incidentally much more powerful on Defenders than it is on Sentinels. Yet hardly anyone seems to call for nerfs on Defenders. Likely because 1) many people just won't see Defenders as a damage AT, 2) Defenders have juicy misc choices in other areas, be it Conserve Power + Power Build Up, or Power Boost, or Soul Drain.

 

/soul post epic snipe nerf for Scrappers is probably still more dominant than /psi is for Sentinels, too. Moonbeam deals tremendous damage when boosted up by a guaranteed Critical Strikes primary T9, and Shadow Meld shores up your already impressive Scrapper defenses to godhood on a need basis. You might say running no local recharge Critical Strikes + Moonbeam attack chains is more optimized than what the average player does, but so is running Dominate with 5 damage procs on a Sentinel.

If looking from the outside, say because psi mastery doesn't fit concept, I wouldn't blame anyone unhappy with Sentinel performance looking at psi as the perfect scapegoat (to explain why some other people are happy with their Sents). Is /psi the best? In most cases yes. Is just picking /psi a binary switch between sucking and rocking? Hell no. If you're running a standard build with 6-piece IO sets and you let loose with attacks randomly, you're simply not going to get to the same performance as someone running maximum procs on every attack and an optimized attack chain. You'll see /psi pop up often in builds  because it is the current best, not because it makes everything obsolete. Just like you're going to see /soul in most DPS scrapper builds, tanker builds, brute builds...

 

(Well, OK, someone running 5-6 piece IO sets everywhere in their primary, then picking Dominate and stuffing 5 damage procs there, might find Dominate über strong compared to their primary. Still, anyone who tried to make an attack chain out of just Dominate and Mind Probe would soon see DPA isn't the be all end all unless there's enough powers to fill out a chain.)

Edited June 30, 2021 by nihilii

[Underfyre]

4 hours ago, nihilii said:

But... Psi Mastery will never render your primary useless. Most Sentinel primaries can reach about 300+ DPS, pure range. Adding /psi mastery will let you get to 400+, provided a jump in melee for Mind Probe. The jump in melee in itself can translate to less effective DPS.

 

Only the upper echelon of primaries will break 300+ on a pylon run. "Average" sets are sitting around the 250 range, 220s at the low end. This is with them all using Psi. The lowest end do not use Psi. There's a very wide margin between the best sets and the worst sets (Electric high, Psi Blast low).

Edited June 30, 2021 by underfyre

[Sunsette]

220ish was what I got with NRG/NRG/Fire i believe. If I dropped perma hasten and optimized just for pylon I could probably get that a bit higher but that gets into the realm of, well, optimizing for pylon rather than general high performance, which I think costs too much on a Sent who doesn't have money for multiple billionaire builds.

 

And tbh I'm not sure why exactly you *wouldn't* run 5-6 piece sets in most powers for a general purposes build; proccing out an epic pool when you're sure that you have everything online makes sense. You're talking either a lot of investment or hyper specialization for max level if you're running multiple frankenslot attacks since they tend to be terrible on endurance. These aren't the level of tweaks other ATs need to follow, so i don't think that's the common player experience. 

Edited July 1, 2021 by Sunsette

[Underfyre]

5sho. Proc heavy builds are end hungry to the point of needing Cardiac Alpha to sustain, so only the strongest of primaries are worth doing it to. Once you step into Cardiac territory, you're obviously taking a hefty hit from the lack of Musculature, so your primary better be pulling some weight to make it worth the loss.

[nihilii]

3 hours ago, underfyre said:

Only the upper echelon of primaries will break 300+ on a pylon run. "Average" sets are sitting around the 250 range, 220s at the low end. This is with them all using Psi. The lowest end do not use Psi. There's a very wide margin between the best sets and the worst sets (Electric high, Psi Blast low).

When I say primaries "can" reach X DPS, I'm talking best case scenario. Go all out, full procs, likely /bio armor, Musculature+Ageless+Assault. Elec, Fire, DP, Dark, Rad, Sonic, Ice are all up there - that's 7 out of 13 so technically most.

 

I'll give you this is just on the edge, but either way... One can take 200 DPS as a baseline (or even 100 DPS!) and /psi mastery will still be far from rendering primaries useless. Your main damage dealing is always going to be your primary, and that's even before we consider AoEs.

 

2 hours ago, Sunsette said:

And tbh I'm not sure why exactly you *wouldn't* run 5-6 piece sets in most powers for a general purposes build; proccing out an epic pool when you're sure that you have everything online makes sense.

 

I'm mostly looking at this from the angle of skewing one's perception of how OP Dominate supposedly is. If you procced a couple attacks and used the Dominate slots to cram a full set elsewhere, the difference wouldn't seem as stark.

 

I don't want to claim there's anything wrong with traditional slotting patterns, I only take offense to the idea /psi mastery is a cornerstone of Sentinel builds to the point primaries become useless in comparison.

 

1 hour ago, underfyre said:

5sho. Proc heavy builds are end hungry to the point of needing Cardiac Alpha to sustain, so only the strongest of primaries are worth doing it to. Once you step into Cardiac territory, you're obviously taking a hefty hit from the lack of Musculature, so your primary better be pulling some weight to make it worth the loss.

 

There are many choices one can make, but IMHO there's hardly ever a reason to go Cardiac on Sentinels, when Ageless is so tempting. Sentinel mitigation levels are high enough combined with range they're basically above Brute levels of survivability in practical gameplay, and Sentinel secondaries tend to be "full service" with healing/absorb always taken care of even on sets where you wouldn't expect it (i.e. SR).

 

So Rebirth is eh. Clarion is hardly ever necessary on an AT with native mez protection. What is left, Barrier? Barrier can be admittedly nice, but then again with a 75% res cap, you don't necessarily get as much mileage out of it. It's hard to justify even massive +def alone when luck insps are so efficient and team defense buffs tend to abound... compared to the build freedom of Ageless, anyhow. If there is ever an AT that seems designed for the Musculature/Ageless build pattern, it's Sentinels, even if there's no design and just happenstance here.

Edited July 1, 2021 by nihilii

[Underfyre]

I'm just saying a I have a Dark/Fire build that simply won't function without both Ageless and Cardiac. 3/5 of the attacks in the rotation are procced, plus running 10 toggles. Endurance vanishes quickly towards the tail end of Ageless. All this for a slightly above average damage output, assuming 250 is average. The steps I take to not use Bio.

[nihilii]

Fair enough. I guess /fire has it harder than everyone else, only native end management being a long recharge click that's hardly worth it against a lone target.

 

Man... /fire does not get a fair shake, when you look at the end improvements other secondaries get. Even Dark Armor gets a bone, but nothing for Fire. If only it had Fiery Embrace.

[Sunsette]

Perhaps we should make a new project thread to hash out a dream list of corrections, focusing on the powersets we are personally most experienced and invested in? Then forward it to the suggestions forum. 

[Bill Z Bubba]

7 hours ago, Sunsette said:

Perhaps we should make a new project thread to hash out a dream list of corrections, focusing on the powersets we are personally most experienced and invested in? Then forward it to the suggestions forum. 

 

That'd be easy for my fire/bio sent. Replace the KB/Repel/Hold in Blazing Blast with 100% chance Mag 4 Immobilize.