ETA on Shield & Seismic for Sentinels?

[kwsapphire]

Do we have a rough ETA on when Sentinels may get Seismic Blast and Shield Defense?

 

I know the AT needs to be reworked...

... Will sentinels get these sets when they're reworked?

... Is this likely to happen in 2022?

 

I have a character concept that works best as Seismic Blast & Shield Defense. Trying to decide if I should wait until I can go that route, or roll up a less-than-ideal combo for the concept. Not like I don't have enough toons to keep me busy if I have to wait, but yall know how altitis is. 🙂

[Underfyre]

I feel a level of doubt on Sents ever getting Shield Defense. As for Seismic Blast, I can't really come up with a viable excuse for not pushing it out with every other AT.

 

The only thing I can think of is the cooldown reduction mechanic and how it would interact with Meteor. After putting the mechanic in my spreadsheet, it drops the cooldown to around 20 seconds, depending on how many Earth abilities your rotation is holding. A Sentinel would probably only have 2 since we use our Epic pool abilities as standard parts of our rotations. A 20s T9 does sound kind of powerful, but unless someone is chain pulling to the Sentinel, they probably aren't going to be using their T9 on the same pull, and it was more than likely going to be up for the next pack anyway. 

[Erratic1]

3 hours ago, underfyre said:

I feel a level of doubt on Sents ever getting Shield Defense. As for Seismic Blast, I can't really come up with a viable excuse for not pushing it out with every other AT.

 

They didn't have the time to complete the changes to the set for Sentinels and it will be coming in a later patch is what I read elsewhere in the Beta forum.

[Underfyre]

15 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

They didn't have the time to complete the changes to the set for Sentinels and it will be coming in a later patch is what I read elsewhere in the Beta forum.

 

I read that too, and granted I have no idea what kind of leg work goes into adding a new set to an AT, but that sounds flimsy. I hope that it's because they have something bigger planned for Sentinels finally, but I'd be foolish to hold my breath.

 

[Saikochoro]

I want shield defense for sentinels so much. I would be beyond ecstatic if they got it.

[Erratic1]

2 hours ago, underfyre said:

 

I read that too, and granted I have no idea what kind of leg work goes into adding a new set to an AT, but that sounds flimsy. I hope that it's because they have something bigger planned for Sentinels finally, but I'd be foolish to hold my breath.

 

 

If you have idea what work goes into adding a set to an AT how can you conclude it is a flimsy excuse?

[Underfyre]

On 12/18/2021 at 7:30 PM, Erratic1 said:

 

If you have idea what work goes into adding a set to an AT how can you conclude it is a flimsy excuse?

 

"At some point, most likely not in time for Page 3. Sentinel sets need customization and that is best done after the set has any and all quirks an features finalized."

 

The "customization" is what I'm referring to as flimsy. Only a handful of Sentinel sets have/need a degree of customization to them, ie. Assault Rifle has a Build Up, Incinerator instead of Ignite, its Snipe replaced. That's a fringe case because of how out of the norm AR was. Seismic isn't that fringe of a set. It's really straight forward as power picks go. Seismic does have a handful of new mechanics to it, but none of them need more smoothing out for Senitnels than the other ATs needed.
 

[Erratic1]

3 minutes ago, underfyre said:

 

"At some point, most likely not in time for Page 3. Sentinel sets need customization and that is best done after the set has any and all quirks an features finalized."

 

The "customization" is what I'm referring to as flimsy. Only a handful of Sentinel sets have/need a degree of customization to them, ie. Assault Rifle has a Build Up, Incinerator instead of Ignite, its Snipe replaced. That's a fringe case because of how out of the norm AR was. Seismic isn't that fringe of a set. It's really straight forward as power picks go. Seismic does have a handful of new mechanics to it, but none of them need more smoothing out for Senitnels than the other ATs needed.
 

 

All sentinel ranges are shorter. Arcs are sometimes different (e.g., Archery Fistful of Arrows). Sometimes entire powers are different (Sentinel Dark Blast: Dark Obliteration vs Blaster Dark Blast: Tenebrous Tentacles or Sentinel: Beam Rifle not getting a snipe power where Blaster Beam Rifle does). It does not look like just using a formulaic procedure to decide the changes.

 

As for Seismic Blast not being a fringe set...by definition it was a new set, utterly unrepresented in use previously. Given the abovementioned differences between sets (which was skimming some examples and in no way an attempt to be exhaustive) I can see there being a bit more involved than you seem to indicate.

 

 If you want to believe the developers are evilly trying to deny people who enjoy playing sentinels enjoyment for however long it takes for Sentinel port to arrive for unclear, nefarious purposes that is a choice I will not attempt to dissuade you from.

[Underfyre]

2 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 If you want to believe the developers are evilly trying to deny people who enjoy playing sentinels enjoyment for however long it takes for Sentinel port to arrive for unclear, nefarious purposes that is a choice I will not attempt to dissuade you from.

 

Quite the opposite. As I said earlier, I hope it's because they have something bigger for Sentinels coming down the pike.

[KaoticKarl]

On 12/18/2021 at 7:45 PM, Saikochoro said:

I want shield defense for sentinels so much. I would be beyond ecstatic if they got it.

Said it in another thread.. I want to pair Shield with Dual Pistols... hopping blasting kapow-pow wholesome goodness!

 

Or maybe fire and elec too. Regardless the primary, I'd be super excited for a shield sent.

[DreadShinobi]

2 hours ago, KaoticKarl said:

Said it in another thread.. I want to pair Shield with Dual Pistols... hopping blasting kapow-pow wholesome goodness!

 

Like katana, claws, and dual blades being mutually exclusive with shield defense, you should probably expect dual pistols and shield defense to be invalid as we do not have character models sporting 3 arms.

[KaoticKarl]

2 hours ago, DreadShinobi said:

 

Like katana, claws, and dual blades being mutually exclusive with shield defense, you should probably expect dual pistols and shield defense to be invalid as we do not have character models sporting 3 arms.

Yeah, but if we're sending wishes to Santa Claws, might as well go big, right? 😄

 

Intentional misspell, of course!

[ironjoe]

On 12/20/2021 at 10:34 AM, underfyre said:

The "customization" is what I'm referring to as flimsy. Only a handful of Sentinel sets have/need a degree of customization to them, ie. Assault Rifle has a Build Up, Incinerator instead of Ignite, its Snipe replaced. 

 

On the beta testing side we had gone in so long with different iterations of tests that Seismic came at the end in a whirlwind. Replacing the Snipe and getting in the rounds of beta testing would have pushed back the release to public beta, which would have pushed back the release of the whole patch to past the holidays with how timelines were matching up. So it not being included was due to that and wanting to get it released before the holidays. On the other end I keep seeing signs of life of having other thoughts about Sentinels so I would keep optimistic about other changes in the future, I just have no clue what they might be though.

[AgentForest]

On 12/21/2021 at 8:37 PM, DreadShinobi said:

Like katana, claws, and dual blades being mutually exclusive with shield defense, you should probably expect dual pistols and shield defense to be invalid as we do not have character models sporting 3 arms.

 

Shield Defense often requires special animations for the attack set.  Some sets cannot accommodate that, but others can.

Titan Weapons, Claws, Katana, Staff, and Dual Blades don't work with shields because they're two-handed, but so were several other sets originally (some of the Kinetic Melee and Stone Melee attacks, for example).  Not all of the moves needed to change, but they had to make certain attacks swing use only the right hand.  I feel like this could be done with pistols, as they don't "require" two.  They'd need to make new animations, but it's perfectly doable.  Assault Rifle wouldn't work well with a shield, nor would Beam Rifle, but almost every other ranged attack set would need tweaks to animations.  For example, Fire Blast would need a right-hand only set of animations for the shots so your shield could remain in place.  This is likely why Shield Defense wasn't ported to Sentinel yet.  It requires more than just tweaking that specific move set to work well with a ranged class.  It requires changing animations that were never intended to be one-handed from every blast set available to Sentinels.

 

That said, if/when Shield Defense is ported to Sentinels, they'd have to make a pass over the blast set animations to make sure they fit, and I feel like Dual Pistols would just be made "Pistols" and would use one-handed animation if you had Shield Defense, but the two-handed animation as an option if you didn't.  I don't see why they wouldn't make pistols work with shields on some level if they already have to go over all the other blast sets too.

On a side-note, I feel like Claws, and Dual Blades could have one-handed animations made for them just to work with Shield Defense.  Those are also power sets that really have no requirement to be two-handed beyond tradition.  A new set of one-handed animations would work wonders for those too.

[DreadShinobi]

On a biomechanical level, using just one arm for all your attacks over and over again incites a repetitive action muscle strain so horrible that I don't think my character could logically reach level 10 without serious injury to oneself.

[kelika2]

would sents even get against all odds even if it did get perliftertiated?