Sentinels. Why???

[Bionic_Flea]

Sentinels. Why???

 

Because.

 

Why not?

[Jimpy4]

All I Know is I have an Ice/Willpower sentinel that through thoughtful choices in enhancement sets and incarnate abilities can kick some but and act as a halfway decent controller. I actually convinced some people in a tinplex of that fact. A sentinel takes more thinking in leveling up, enhancement slots and sets, and incarnate abilities. With my playing style, my blasters get killed a lot, my sentinels, not so much.

 

Also, I like to take underpowered characters and try to make something out of them. It keeps the game interesting.

Edited June 22, 2021 by Jimpy4
I realized I wasn't finished rambling

[Nightmare Shaman]

2 hours ago, drbuzzard said:

Or perhaps they have tried them and found them lacking. 

 

I've got, oh, 20ish sentinels decked out to at least 50+3 (with IOed builds of course). Almost all of which didn't get any PLing. I've tried all the secondaries to 50, and only energy blast didn't get pushed to 50 (because I didn't want to annoy myself with the KB>KD tax). 

I've played them through all sorts of content, incarnate, leveling up, TFs, hard stuff (not 801 though) and easy stuff. As I said in the second post of this thread, sents are fun for the ride to 50, but once there, fall behind other classes. They simply lack in damage. When HC popped up, my first this to build was a sentinel. Then I built sentinel after sentinel seeking the holy grail of something which was impressive at 50. They were always OK at 50, but no better than that. 

 

After a while I started with blasters (never liked them on live since they were so squishy). The damage was eye opening, and with some planning, IOs and incarnates, you can be plenty tough enough for stuff at 50. I have trouble taking seriously people who actually compare blaster to sentinel damage based on the scalars. There's also inherents and other factors which made a big difference. Just the inherents create a much larger gap than .95 vs. 1.125. This topic has been beaten to a bloody pulp over on the sentinel forum, so this rather long thread is quite redundant. 

 

Oh, and anyone who brings up stalkers or scrappers in comparison to sentinels simply makes me laugh. Those are two of the highest damage ATs in the game (yes, blasters are higher). Sentinels, manifestly are not. 

Yes, blasters do more damage then sentinels.  Blasters do more damage then almost everything.  That is never the point of contention.  The point is really "what difference does that make".  They still do damn good damage and have mez protection and better mitigation than what is available to blasters at any level.  The simple truth is that a blaster doing "more damage" than a sentinel or any AT does not make a sentinel ineffective, obsolete, unfun, or unnecessary.  They are an option. 

I personally hate blasters.  And, I imagine there are others who feel the same.  My sentinel can take an alpha from most mobs at max level and survive.  Most mobs he can sustain survivability while still doing damage.  He also does quite good, constant damage without the need to get into melee range.  All this with mez protection, max resistance to virtually all damage types, with high regen, a good heal every 45 seconds, an endurance sapper every 20 seconds, and a nuke on a 45 second timer.  It's a different playstyle with a different purpose but a similar result.  

Stop trying to make sentinels blasters.  We are better and worse than blasters and the same can be said in the other direction.  

[JnEricsonx]

I like my Sentinel.   Granted, I feel like his gun isn't as powerful as I would like, but he stays alive.

[Blackbird71]

2 hours ago, drbuzzard said:

Well actually you do address one issue there. The sentinel ATOs are pretty much crap. Now admittedly ATOs vary in value by AT with some being downright transformational for the AT (scrapper is probably the standout). The sentinel ones are completely meh. The procs from the sets are quite meh, and the set bonuses are only so so. Yes, I do use them, but that's because they get you a decent recharge bonus. However one glaring fault is that ignore that many sentinel sets are resistance based, and give no resistance bonuses. 

I was more thinking along the lines of that without IO sets in general, it wouldn't be possible to make Blasters (and others) so survivable as to render Sentinels' defenses trivial. Without IOs, Sentinels have a niche.  With IOs, they are overshadowed.

[Blackbird71]

3 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Don't you have to click off hide for escorts now? How would that be different than a click you get with the inherent to suppress hide when needed?

 

Replacing Hide with another power and making Hide inherent, then adding another patch-power to suppress it means one more clicky on the bar (Hide replacement + Hide suppressor).  

Plus, in a way, it's cheating one more power into Stalkers' repertoire than they should have.

Edited June 22, 2021 by Blackbird71

[Hexquisite]

26 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

Plus, in a way, it's cheating one more power into Stalkers' repertoire than they should have.

 

I was about to say this. You wanna play a stalker? You lose one power from the Defensive set of your choice. In return, you get free stealth at level 1 that is a fantastic defense set mule, and massive ST damage.

 

Stop being greedy. 😛

[Naraka]

5 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

In my head, all powers should be identical across the board. All sets as well. Diversity would be derived from AT Mods and Inherents.

 

If GW2 was any more current indication to me, it's easier to balance across multiple forms of PvP, PvE and specific content if you create more iterations of powers rather than relying on a global data source.  So you can balance a power for a certain mode or for a certain AT much easier.  Because if a power underperforms for a certain AT, there would be no way to fix it outside of buffing that power for every AT or buffing the specific AT across all powers.

 

5 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Edit: And, yes, for the blast sets, either all would get the snipe or none would.

 

This would make it FAR easier to balance all the archetypes on both the inter and intra-AT fronts.

 

I don't think so.  I do think it would make powersets more bland and samey.  Having unique aspects to powersets is a good thing.  Is it good for balance?  Probably not, but if people actually believe the mantra "diversity is our strength", you have to accept not everything is equal and THAT'S OKAY!

 

Same for differences between AT.  Because inherents aren't actual powers most of the time but rather flags/additions to powers themselves, having differences in powers actually incentivizes players to try different ATs because Dual Blades will play differently on different ATs, Ice Control will have a different feel on a Controller vs a Dominator, a Tanker will have a different experience with Dark Melee than a Brute, etc etc you will feel a mechanical difference and thus more game to play.

 

As for issues with Stalker's inclusion of Hide in it's secondary, any effect you might need to add to its secondaries, I see no reason why it couldn't just be added to that set's Hide.

Edited June 23, 2021 by Naraka

[Naraka]

12 minutes ago, Hexquisite said:

 

I was about to say this. You wanna play a stalker? You lose one power from the Defensive set of your choice. In return, you get free stealth at level 1 that is a fantastic defense set mule, and massive ST damage.

 

Stop being greedy. 😛

 

It's a blessing and a curse.  In the case of Invulnerability, they actually combine 2 passives into one to make room for Hide as a freebie; in Dark Armor, the defense and mez protection from Cloak of Darkness is split between Hide and Shadow Dweller and you don't get unsuppressed stealth in combat; for Regen, you just straight up lose a large chunk of +recovery for Hide but gain a little bit of defense instead...and any taunt/damage/buff aura disappears.

 

 

[drbuzzard]

3 hours ago, Nightmare Shaman said:

Yes, blasters do more damage then sentinels.  Blasters do more damage then almost everything.  That is never the point of contention.  The point is really "what difference does that make".  They still do damn good damage and have mez protection and better mitigation than what is available to blasters at any level.  The simple truth is that a blaster doing "more damage" than a sentinel or any AT does not make a sentinel ineffective, obsolete, unfun, or unnecessary.  They are an option. 

I personally hate blasters.  And, I imagine there are others who feel the same.  My sentinel can take an alpha from most mobs at max level and survive.  Most mobs he can sustain survivability while still doing damage.  He also does quite good, constant damage without the need to get into melee range.  All this with mez protection, max resistance to virtually all damage types, with high regen, a good heal every 45 seconds, an endurance sapper every 20 seconds, and a nuke on a 45 second timer.  It's a different playstyle with a different purpose but a similar result.  

Stop trying to make sentinels blasters.  We are better and worse than blasters and the same can be said in the other direction.  

 

 

Well that's certainly profound 'they are an option'. Wow. Never thought of that. 

 

Oh wait, yes I do realize it's an option. It's an option I've played extensively. I also happen to notice it's a sub par option. Maybe you don't mind them being sub par, but most people do. 

 

Nobody wants to make them into blasters. People want to make them something roughly comparable to other ATs in value. They don't need a huge amount of help, but they do need help. They are the lowest damage of the damage ATs and it's by a fairly wide gap. The fact that you think they do good damage shows you must not play other damage ATs. Heck, it's common knowledge that the top sentinel builds all have to leverage procs to do compelling damage. 

[Snarky]

I did not start this thread because I dislike Sentinels.  No, not even close.  I love the concept of Sentinels.  i ran Brutes for years rather than Blasters because I prefer toughness to outright damage.

 

Having said that.  (and without data mining DPS calculations until I could write a college research paper on it.) Sentinel get seriously shorted on the doing damage end.

 

As a AT with a secondary armor set the most logical comparisons to doing damage would be Tanks, Brutes, Scrappers, Stalkers.  Based on health, resistance caps and other factors you might logically assume their damage fell somewhere between Brutes and Scrappers.  You would be wrong.  Very very wrong.  

 

One strange but simple fix (which might be impossible) is to make every Sentinel attack ranged, nukes and all.  This game deals out far less damage at range than it does at melee and that would provide a very different way to balance the AT.  Yes, you do far less damage than a Scrapper.  But you can sit at 80 range and pour out non stop damage in a Really Hard Way attempt (or other combat) and therefore have very consistent damage potential to bring to the team.  A slight bump in the damage Scalar (which I have argued previously would not be enough) in combination with this change would (in my eyes) balance the AT and create something unique.  and playable.

 

There are many possible tweaks to the AT but the point of the thread is that it is long past time to go from saying "something should be done" to "doing something"

[siolfir]

19 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Let's roll with this a second. If Sents are cruising around with stalker level mitigation coupled with the ability to always fight from range which equals more mitigation, where should their damage levels be? Obviously not up at blaster levels as their only mitigation is range. Nor brute levels for that matter.

 

That places them in the tank levels of damage output.

 

Tanks are the aggro management set and stalkers are the boss killers, with scrappers and brutes in betwixt, so what do we do to get sentinels to tank damage output but with their own identity apart from "protected ranged damage dealer" other than just buff their AT dam mod and call it a day?

And Sentinels and Tankers share a 0.95 damage modifier, with Sentinels getting melee target caps (5 for cones/10 for radial) and Tankers getting ranged caps (10/16). So undoing the target cap nerf for the blast sets would get them much closer.

 

17 hours ago, Chaos String said:

If Hide is inherent, how do I escort hostages?  Call a brute?

If Hide was inherent, I would assume they would just make it a toggle. You know, like Sprint is inherent, but is a slottable toggle? There's no need to overthink it.

 

13 hours ago, Hexquisite said:

I was about to say this. You wanna play a stalker? You lose one power from the Defensive set of your choice. In return, you get free stealth at level 1 that is a fantastic defense set mule, and massive ST damage.

 

Stop being greedy. 😛

It's not free, though - if it was inherent, it would be free, because then the secondaries could/would be the same. Now some sets roll the removed power into something else, but most don't, and Stalkers lose things in their version of the powerset, often (but admittedly not always) for the worse.

Edited June 23, 2021 by siolfir
rewording response about target caps, adding conclusion about it

[Replacement]

I hate the focus on Sentinel damage. I'm not arguing it shouldn't be touched at all, but direct comparisons to blaster and scrapper are the path to always having a "loser."

 

I'll always back changes that give the AT another axis of what they bring to the table.

 

Neither here nor there, but I recommend Provoke on many sentinel builds.  I find it fun, and it's super nice to be able to help control aggro and utilize your durability without "committing" the way a taunting melee needs to.

[Snarky]

37 minutes ago, Replacement said:

I hate the focus on Sentinel damage. I'm not arguing it shouldn't be touched at all, but direct comparisons to blaster and scrapper are the path to always having a "loser."

 

I'll always back changes that give the AT another axis of what they bring to the table.

 

Neither here nor there, but I recommend Provoke on many sentinel builds.  I find it fun, and it's super nice to be able to help control aggro and utilize your durability without "committing" the way a taunting melee needs to.

So many things in this game are all or nothing.  If your try to turn Sentinels into a class with agro management powers....   in my opinion  you are adding complexity and mediocrity instead of simplifying and adding excellence.  

[arcane]

2 hours ago, Snarky said:

As a AT with a secondary armor set the most logical comparisons to doing damage would be Tanks, Brutes, Scrappers, Stalkers.  Based on health, resistance caps and other factors you might logically assume their damage fell somewhere between Brutes and Scrappers.  You would be wrong.  Very very wrong.  

I don’t understand why you would think this at all. Range and lack of taunt reduces risk. Why would they do as much damage as AT’s with so much more survivability risk? Tanker damage or less seems about right. Everyone knew tankmage would be broken without severe drawbacks.

[drbuzzard]

51 minutes ago, Replacement said:

I hate the focus on Sentinel damage. I'm not arguing it shouldn't be touched at all, but direct comparisons to blaster and scrapper are the path to always having a "loser."

 

I'll always back changes that give the AT another axis of what they bring to the table.

 

Neither here nor there, but I recommend Provoke on many sentinel builds.  I find it fun, and it's super nice to be able to help control aggro and utilize your durability without "committing" the way a taunting melee needs to.

A while back I suggested that sentinels become stars at resistance debuffing instead of getting a damage boost. Just make the inherent more effective, and more general. However Captain Powerhouse doesn't really like resistance debuffing, so this is an unlikely outcome. 

 

Also, given how tanks were already a bit put out by aggro management on brutes, I doubt any taunt feature will happen. 

[ZemX]

17 minutes ago, arcane said:

I don’t understand why you would think this at all. Range and lack of taunt reduces risk. Why would they do as much damage as AT’s with so much more survivability risk? Tanker damage or less seems about right.

 

Are you seriously suggesting Sentinels are effectively less at risk of dying on a team than Tankers are?  Because I really doubt that.  The entire reason Tankers (and Brutes) have so much more durability is to compensate for the greater risk they can put themselves in.  They wouldn't be able to tank at all if that weren't true.

 

On top of that, why would you even play a Sentinel if Tankers could both outdamage them AND survive more aggro, all the while performing a usually valuable team role of controlling aggro?  Aesthetics would be the only reason and it's one cited often by Sentinel players in threads like this.  It's not an invalid reason... but it's not balance either.

[roleki]

Different strokes for different folks; I can see where Sentinels would not appeal to the "DPS-is-king" crowd, but I still don't understand why it is the target for spontaneous open mockery... there are people who go so far as to start ragging on Sentinels when there's not even a Sentinel in the ZONE, let alone on our team.  I sometimes feel the urge to ask them to show me where the Sentinel touched them.  It's like that.

 

Meanwhile, I occasionally take my Beam Rifle/Energy Aura Sentinal out to an MSR, and on more than one occasion have had some Brute or Blaster or whatever joking in chat about Sentinels ON THEIR WAY BACK FROM THE HOSPITAL.  I guess some people deduct travel time from their DPS calculations.

[arcane]

7 minutes ago, ZemX said:

 

Are you seriously suggesting Sentinels are effectively less at risk of dying on a team than Tankers are?  Because I really doubt that.  The entire reason Tankers (and Brutes) have so much more durability is to compensate for the greater risk they can put themselves in.  They wouldn't be able to tank at all if that weren't true.

 

On top of that, why would you even play a Sentinel if Tankers could both outdamage them AND survive more aggro, all the while performing a usually valuable team role of controlling aggro?  Aesthetics would be the only reason and it's one cited often by Sentinel players in threads like this.  It's not an invalid reason... but it's not balance either.

If a Sentinel and Tanker are both playing the way their archetype allows them to - one hangs out at range and doesn’t  draw aggro, and the other draws all the aggro - then yes, the Sentinel should not be at any risk while the Tanker may or may not be at some. If you are not playing that way, which many of us don’t, then of course Sentinels rapidly begin to be more squishy. But balance is going to be based on what an AT can do, not on the meta of everyone charging into melee anyway.

 

The bottom line is tankmages can’t be balanced without severe drawbacks. Don’t like it? Try to survive on a blaster or try to kill with  a melee set. Everyone with a brain knew tankmages weren’t going to have blaster modifiers.

Edited June 23, 2021 by arcane

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, ZemX said:

On top of that, why would you even play a Sentinel if Tankers could both outdamage them AND survive more aggro

 

Cuz the blast sets are purty. As it is, my shield/em tank survives better AND clears everything faster than my fire/bio sent for a variety of reasons, so... what you state is already the case.

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, arcane said:

If a Sentinel and Tanker are both playing the way their archetype allows them to - one hangs out at range and doesn’t  draw aggro, and the other draws all the aggro - then yes, the Sentinel should not be at any risk while the Tanker may or may not be at some.

 

On a team of course. Solo you're getting 100% of the aggro all the time unless stealthed or pulling. And I don't stealth or pull with my armored characters.

[ZemX]

7 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Cuz the blast sets are purty. As it is, my shield/em tank survives better AND clears everything faster than my fire/bio sent for a variety of reasons, so... what you state is already the case.

 

Isn't that what I said in the very next sentence?  And yes, it's rhetorical.  I know they are already at or below Tanker damage.   Frankly, Tankers shouldn't be doing Tanker damage, but that's a whole other flame-war as I'm sure you know. 🤪

Edited June 23, 2021 by ZemX

[arcane]

Just now, ZemX said:

 

Isn't that what I said in the very next sentence?  And yes, it's rhetorical.  I know they are already at or below Tanker damage.   Frankly, Tankers shouldn't be doing Tanker damage, but that's a whole other flame-war as I'm sure you know. 🤪

Yeah, I wanted to say Sentinels should do Tanker damage, but I added “or less” because I’m not sure they should be doing *this* “Tanker damage”.

[Alchemystic]

Maybe we should look at the individual Sentinel powersets and how they're utilised in other archetypes, instead of directly comparing Sentinels to Blasters or Scrappers.

 

Blast:

• Blaster - Huge focus on damage output when paired with Manipulation powersets. It's safe to say that the Blaster deals more reliable damage than the Sentinel but struggles to survive.
• Defender - Not the strongest AT but they're more focused on wearing down their foes with debuffs or helping allies. Not as much damage as the Sentinel, but make up for it by ensuring the team can soak damage for them.
• Corruptor - Another strong contender for damage output with some benefit from debuff and ally support. Probably more reliable damage thanks to Scourge and likely just as likely to rely on others to protect them.

Armor:

• Scrapper - Mostly damage focused but can serve as a stand in for a Tanker or Brute if necessary. Probably more reliable than Sentinel in both damage and survivability.
• Stalker - Stronger damage output, but not as durable as the Scrapper. While they do more damage, I think they have almost equal survivability.
• Tanker - Made to hold the aggro of massive mobs while enduring their damage. Less damage for sure, but far greater survivability.
• Brute - More durable than the Scrapper but without as much mob control as the Tanker. Definitely deals more damage and better built for survivability.

 

It would seem that on most fronts Sentinel would be outclassed in terms of raw damage output by a majority of archetypes that share one of their powersets, so I think focusing on how to make that secondary more useful could be a good direction to go in. They're going to be more survivable than Blasters, Defenders and Corruptors, at least on paper, which is what I think should set them apart.

 

To that end, I think opting for the Tanker approach might work nicely here. While I don't expect them to be able to match Tankers in terms of how much aggro they can handle, their ability to keep their distance while having armor to offer them a little more protection means they can likely take more aggro than other ranged archetypes, and perhaps even Scrappers and Stalkers.

 

So my two cents would be to simply raise their target and aggro caps. Not enough so that they outperform Tankers in mob wrangling, or Blasters in damage output, but enough so they sit nicely between the two archetypes and serve a nice little niche no other archetype does. As for their Inherent power? That should play an important part in realising this design. With the increased AoE we're likely going to see an increase in damage, and a focus away from single target damage, so Opportunity in it's current state would likely not be a good fit.

 

Perhaps we can play on the theme of debuffs similar to Opportunity? Maybe as your Opportunity bar increases, your single target attacks deal a scaling debuff to enemy AoE defense. 

 

 

Edited June 23, 2021 by Tyrannical

[ForeverLaxx]

19 hours ago, Blackbird71 said:

Replacing Hide with another power and making Hide inherent, then adding another patch-power to suppress it means one more clicky on the bar (Hide replacement + Hide suppressor)

I know this thread is about Sentinels, but since the concept of "inherent Hide" was brought up again by BillZ's quest to make every version of a powerset identical across ATs (something I don't personally agree with, for the record), the idea of a "free" inherent power already exists with Dominators. All Hide would have to be is a free, unslottable toggle power like how Domination is a free, unslottable click power. Hide already softcaps your AoE defense while active (and invisible) so it needs no slots there, it already costs nothing to run so no slots there either. All you actually lose is a "free" LotG proc mule, which might be worth getting one of the other powers originally lost from the set back.

 

All that said, though, Hide also took the place of some of the armor's own +Stealth power so it's not a simple cut/paste job where all Stalkers get Hide for free and the powerset goes back to having what would technically be an additional stealth power with very minor, if any, use outside of PvP builds.

 

His "simple fix" starts getting complicated really quickly once you go further down the rabbit hole than I think he realizes.

Edited June 23, 2021 by ForeverLaxx