Best ranged AoE

[Snarky]

Simply asked. What is the best Primary for a Sentinel who will only be at 40+ range and who wants to concentrate on AoE?  And why?  Also this will prob work best in teams because I do not see myself soloing large mobs.  So do certain AoEs that might be close have an edge in teams like Rad DeBuffs etc

[azamean]

Assault Rifle is one of the best for AoE, got two large cones (one fire dmg), Ignite is basically a ranged location Burn, and Full Auto does awesome damage. It only suffers due to the highly resisted form of damage.

 

If you wanted something a bit different, Elec has two nice AoE's (one is PBAoE however) plus a ranged nuke, Ice has two rains which you can stack together for very high damage (plus all that slow), Water Blast also has a lot of AoE with a damage patch (Whirlpool), another AoE, a cone and a ranged nuke. And then of course Fire, how could we forget that one :)

 

 

[Fedifensor]

If you’re only going to be at 40+ range, it’s worth saving up to start getting the Sentinel Archetype set IOs.  Each set gives a +7.5% range bonus when 3-slotted, so if you divvy the two sets up between 4 different powers then you can get up to +30% range on everything.

[drbuzzard]

Fire is possibly king, though while it does have 4 AOEs (fireball, fire breath, rain of fire and inferno), a couple have their issues. Fire breath is a narrow cone, and rain of fire scatterings enemies out of its effects.

 

I'm actually liking psi pretty well since while it only has 3, the damage type is not very resisted in the late game, which is quite nice. Fire is fairly good this way as well. I have a lvl 45 sentinel who is stalled because the lethal damage of archery is so very resisted.

[Nihil]

I actually think water out does fire as an AoE set it has just as many AoE, a targeted, a location, a cone (a very wide one at that), and a ranged nuke. It also has slows and knock ups as secondaries so it is easier to keep enemies in you AoE. It also has a pretty solid ST rotation with you being able to build up tidal power to double tap it's big ST attack. All around water is a very strong and solid set.

[Siphus]

And it's a balanced set because water dmg sucks. They couldn't give all these goodies to one set without a downside.

[azamean]

Fire is possibly king, though while it does have 4 AOEs (fireball, fire breath, rain of fire and inferno), a couple have their issues. Fire breath is a narrow cone, and rain of fire scatterings enemies out of its effects.

 

I'm actually liking psi pretty well since while it only has 3, the damage type is not very resisted in the late game, which is quite nice. Fire is fairly good this way as well. I have a lvl 45 sentinel who is stalled because the lethal damage of archery is so very resisted.

 

I'm leveling a Psi and loving it, however i don't think it fits the ops criteria. Psychic Scream is awesome and has a very wide cone but is capped at 6 targets and Psi Tornado is one of the lowest base damage at only 47dmg at lvl 50. And the nuke is melee range. But I think Psi is the single target king, Scramble Thoughts has a base dmg is 188, one of the highest of any Sentinel power

[Hopeling]

What is the best Primary for a Sentinel who will only be at 40+ range and who wants to concentrate on AoE?  And why?  Also this will prob work best in teams because I do not see myself soloing large mobs.

In all honesty, the best thing for that is a Blaster. That's not a putdown to sentinels; the thing you're asking for is simply what blasters are built for. They have longer range, they have higher target caps on their AoE, and without defenses there's actually a reason for them to stay far away. If you're staying at 40+ feet on a Sentinel, you're barely in range to hit things, and completely out of range for many AoE powers, especially cones. Even when you can hit things, you hit 6 instead of 10, or 10 instead of 16. And of course, between AT multipliers and Defiance, Blasters just do more damage overall.

 

But if you specifically want to do this with a Sentinel anyway, then AR, Fire, or Water would all be fine choices. Buffs and debuffs don't favor any set in particular.

[Snarky]

Yeah I have tried Blasters and they do not quite do this because by design the set is custom built for Blapping and you have to hard tweak and mine for anything else.  With the Sentinel secondary set independent of range and a set like will that just throws blue energy fuel at you the possibility to set at range not be messed and comfortably blast is enticing

 

I think I will keep trying ice.  Are the two target area powers there target capped or is it anything in that area?  Thanks for the input

[Hopeling]

Every power in the game is target capped. You can see the target cap in the power info.