Sentinels: Dark Blast and Armor (nonsensical?)

[arthurh35353]

So I'm tooling along on my Sentinel with Dark Blast and Dark Armor and going, some of these powers don't actually make sense for a 'primary' damage and armor powers.

 

Firstly: Aim. Why isn't this build up? Or is this a technical gimping of the AT so that it can't intrude on blasters and corruptors? At level 45 I can barely defeat -1 minions with my nuke+aim. And that seems very, very odd.

 

Second: Tenebrous regeneration. Literally only allows healing enhances, no secondary at all.  Might be okay except... for thirdly (IMO, should get partly passive endurance regen to all the GD toggles that Dark Always Has).

 

Thirdly: [Obscure Sustenance] This is the Endurance recovery power masquerading as a healing power. And built so weird I want to scream. It's a PBAOE (no target) that only hits one target. Set to 2.0 accuracy with a weirdly scaled drop-off endurance recovery power. And it's actually set up so that you can not improve the endurance part, just make it cost less and faster (but which increases it's End Cost per second).  It's like it took all the worst parts of PBAOE then slapped the worst parts of a single target power and said 'screwy enough for Dark!'

 

The Tank/Brute/Scrapper versions are all much more powerful, but designed to be in melee.

Edited July 4, 2022 by arthurh35353

[Bopper]

46 minutes ago, arthurh35353 said:

Firstly: Aim

Aim is for Ranged powersets. Build Up is for Melee powersets.

 

Look at Blaster version of Dark Blast and you'll see they also get Aim.

[Rudra]

1) Sentinel Dark Blast has Aim because Sentinel primaries all get Aim. Just like Defender and Corruptor damage sets get Aim instead of Build Up. That is, if their attack set even has Aim at all. Corruptors do not get Build Up.

 

2) Tenebrous Regeneration only speaks of regeneration in its description and it only boosts regeneration for effect. So not taking other secondary effect enhancements makes sense.

 

3) Obscure Sustenance only speaks of healing and regeneration in its description. So it is not a recovery boost power masquerading as a healing power. It does actually boost both regeneration and recovery though. My guess is that it the recovery bit was added during testing, but they forget to update the description and allowable enhancements. I agree that it should be updated to reflect what it does and allow enhancements for it. And I agree its PBAoE should have a better max targets than 1. That or no longer be a PBAoE and instead be a targeted attack like Life Drain. (Let me emphasize that this is just my guess as to why it works this way. I do not actually know.)

 

As for the Tanker, Brute, and Scrapper versions being better? I should really hope so.

[Glacier Peak]

Sentinels are not Blaster. Sentinels are not Scrappers or Tankers. You shouldn't compare Sentinel's blast sets to Blasters and you shouldn't compare Sentinel armor sets to Scrappers or Tankers. Just looking at Dark Blast, your single target attack rotation should be Aim (+Range, +To-Hit, +Dmg) then Gloom, Abyssal Gaze, and Antumbral Beam. If you're interested in outputting more damage per cast, drop some procs in to them. They have decent to high proc rates and will add more damage to your single-target rotation. If you are more concerned with AoEs, there's Umbral Torrent, Dark Obliteration, and perhaps Blackstar - mind you that Blackstar recharges in 90 seconds and drops enemy To-Hit, so that could potentially be a part of your attack rotation if you have enough global recharge or recharge slotted in the power.

[arthurh35353]

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

2) Tenebrous Regeneration only speaks of regeneration in its description and it only boosts regeneration for effect. So not taking other secondary effect enhancements makes sense.

Should it also only allow 3 slots max, as it can only take healing slots? It's kinda gimpy with only one thing.

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, arthurh35353 said:

Should it also only allow 3 slots max, as it can only take healing slots? It's kinda gimpy with only one thing.

Why should it have a lower slot limit than other powers? One heal set has 4 enhancements, one has 5 enhancements, but the other 6 heal sets and both accurate heal sets have 6 enhancements in their sets that give set bonuses. You lost me with this comparison.

 

Edit:

There are multiple powers that only take one type of enhancement set. Like Build up which only takes To Hit Buff sets. There are also powers that take no enhancement sets. Like Assault which can't slot any sets at all. Are those also kinda gimpy with their only one thing or less? That is just the way those powers are set up. And they are set up that way based on what enhancements will affect them. Since Tenebrous Regeneration only heals, what other sets do you think it should take? What other sets could have any impact on it? Do you want to slot it for recovery? It doesn't affect recovery so those enhancements would do nothing.

Edited July 4, 2022 by Rudra

[TheZag]

The most fun i had playing a sentinel was when i made a scrapper with all ranged attacks.  Overall i think sentinels need a look but big projects get held back because they take a long time.

 

As for your sentinel specifically,  the nuke has half the damage as other blast using ATs but also half the cooldown.  Thats why its not hitting the minions very hard.  The secondary effects are the same though,  so blackstar does just as much -tohit as other ATs.  Get alot of recharge and use it as an opener on every mob.  

  Obscure Sustenance does sound wonky but maybe a PBAoE that only hits 1 target is what makes it obscure.  But I would think there is room for improvement on that ability.

 

[arthurh35353]

6 hours ago, Bopper said:

Aim is for Ranged powersets. Build Up is for Melee powersets.

 

Look at Blaster version of Dark Blast and you'll see they also get Aim.

Yeah, that's fair. I thought I remembered different, but maybe I remembered  a secondary blaster set that included build up.

  

4 hours ago, Rudra said:

Since Tenebrous Regeneration only heals, what other sets do you think it should take? What other sets could have any impact on it? Do you want to slot it for recovery? It doesn't affect recovery so those enhancements would do nothing.

Considering the tank/brute version "heal" is a pretty active power with damage/to-hit/recharge it seems very strange in comparison, I just didn't go into depth well.

 

  

2 hours ago, TheZag said:

As for your sentinel specifically,  the nuke has half the damage as other blast using ATs but also half the cooldown.  Thats why its not hitting the minions very hard.  The secondary effects are the same though,  so blackstar does just as much -tohit as other ATs.  Get alot of recharge and use it as an opener on every mob.  

Half the damage, smaller AOE and lower maximum number of people for half the recharge...

 

And most of that damage difference is probably from the AT difference. I would suspect that originally it was knocked down to the Sentinel scalar with the smaller AOE and max, and it came across very gimpy. So they made it recharge faster. Which just sort of papers over the issue and costs END faster. (Even with OS fairly kitted out, I'm burning END faster than I can keep up with in a group.)

 

I do wonder if they gave a recharge and endurance cost discount to let you spam attacks if it would feel better?

Edited July 5, 2022 by arthurh35353

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, arthurh35353 said:

Considering the tank/brute version "heal" is a pretty active power with damage/to-hit/recharge it seems very strange in comparison, I just didn't go into depth well.

The brute Dark Armor heal is Dark Regeneration available at level 16. Tankers get it at level 8, but the armor is their primary power set, not their secondary. Sentinels get Tenebrous Regeneration at level 2. Then they fortify that with Obscure Sustenance at level 16.

 

Dark Regeneration does minor damage in a 20 feet radius with a 10 target cap, has a base 30% heal (I did the math to be sure), 30 second recharge, base END cost of 33.80, and does not apply a To Hit debuff to anything. It is strictly a heal with a minor damage PBAoE.

 

Tenebrous Regeneration has a base regeneration buff of +100%, is an auto-power so it is always on and can not be turned off by any power, and has an END cost of 0 for being an auto-power.

 

There is no comparing them.

 

Obscure Sustenance? Yeah, that seems borked to me. Your comparison of Tenebrous Regeneration to a Dark Armor Brute's or Tanker's heals though? Makes no sense.

Edited July 5, 2022 by Rudra
Edited to correct 3- to 30.

[arcane]

What is this thread even