I think Sentinels were a missed opportunity

[Frostbiter]

Why does everyone keep saying Blasters don't have mez protection. Defiance 2.0 is mez protection. You can fire off your Primary T1 and T2 and your Secondary T1 under any status effect. Something held you? Kill it! Something put you to sleep? Kill it! You get the idea. About the only thing that trips you up is Placate.

 

Anyway, I like the Sentinel archetype, it definitely plays like a ranged scrapper. Blast everything right in the face.

[Heatstroke]

2 hours ago, Sovera said:

 

Even in this thread we have people acting like we are in a 100 meter dash race and we gotta be first. Which brings me back to the earlier example I gave of GW2 and how a casual game (at the time, ever since they introduced fractals and raids and etc) was hellbent in shaving every second off a run since they were 'meant' to do X runs an hour.

 

But CoH is not a 100 meter dash. There isn't even a DPS meter to be ashamed of. Any and all 'downsides' of a Sentinel are in people's heads. It doesn't do as much damage as a Blaster? So what? Few things do more damage than a Blaster. It's not as sturdy as a Tanker? So what? Few things are sturdier than a Tanker. Does that mean we delete all other ATs other than Blaster or Tanker?

 

'But a Sentinel does not bring much to the team other than damage'. Bruh, it's not the kind of game where team compositions matter outside of hardmode TFs, people solo TFs, people do TFs with 8 of one type of AT.

 

A lot of stuff is in people's heads or in spreadsheets. Lets have a team with a Sentinel. Lets do a TF. Now lets keep the exact same team composition and take a Blaster. Will the TF be finished earlier or more easily because the Blaster is there?

 

 

Hi I dont quite understand what my comment relates to your post. I hope I didnt give the wrong impression because that certainly wasnt my intention. I have played every AT to 50 and find most of them enjoyable.

[Heatstroke]

1 hour ago, Frostbiter said:

Why does everyone keep saying Blasters don't have mez protection. Defiance 2.0 is mez protection. You can fire off your Primary T1 and T2 and your Secondary T1 under any status effect. Something held you? Kill it! Something put you to sleep? Kill it! You get the idea. About the only thing that trips you up is Placate.

 

Anyway, I like the Sentinel archetype, it definitely plays like a ranged scrapper. Blast everything right in the face.

 

 

Because Blasters dont have mez protection. They have the ability to use weaker attacks WHEN mezzed. Your still mezzed, you are not protected FROM being mezzed, which is what mez protection is.

 

When my blasters get mezzed I can attack, with my two weakest attacks. My Sentinels dont get mezzed. They can use every attack in their arsenal all the time. Huge difference

[Frostbiter]

36 minutes ago, Heatstroke said:

 

 

Because Blasters dont have mez protection. They have the ability to use weaker attacks WHEN mezzed. Your still mezzed, you are not protected FROM being mezzed, which is what mez protection is.

 

When my blasters get mezzed I can attack, with my two weakest attacks. My Sentinels dont get mezzed. They can use every attack in their arsenal all the time. Huge difference

 

I like what I said and I'm going to stick to saying it. If you can't kill the enemies causing you problems with your basic attacks I don't know what to tell you.

[FupDup]

If the enemy mezzing you is something high ranked (as opposed to a minion or such), it might take a little while to whittle them down with just a basic T1/T2. Especially since many blast sets often skip either the T1 or T2, so that just leaves one of them depending on how the user built it. And you might be in the middle of a mob when you get mezzed (not always a 1v1), especially since Blasters are a melee AT. 

 

What's more useful than the damage is that you could choose to slot the mezz protection ATO proc in the T1 or T2 to try to use it as a "break free" button in these cases, but I don't like to rely on RNG. 

[Frostbiter]

2 minutes ago, FupDup said:

If the enemy mezzing you is something high ranked (as opposed to a minion or such), it might take a little while to whittle them down with just a basic T1/T2. Especially since many blast sets often skip either the T1 or T2, so that just leaves one of them depending on how the user built it. And you might be in the middle of a mob when you get mezzed (not always a 1v1), especially since Blasters are a melee AT. 

 

What's more useful than the damage is that you could choose to slot the mezz protection ATO proc in the T1 or T2 to try to use it as a "break free" button in these cases, but I don't like to rely on RNG. 

 

What's the purpose of mez protection? I'd say the purpose is to keep you in the fight. And anything short of an EB or AV (I have killed many bosses while mezzed) is short work even with T1 and T2 attacks. I couldn't imagine skipping either one or short slotting them; unless its the Secondary T1, those are still pretty worthless. Blasters have a tool in their toolbox for dealing with mez, use it or don't use it.

[Heatstroke]

3 hours ago, Frostbiter said:

 

I like what I said and I'm going to stick to saying it. If you can't kill the enemies causing you problems with your basic attacks I don't know what to tell you.

 

 

Ok you can stick with what you said.. but harder foes.. AVs wont be beaten by tier 1 and 2 attacks..

Edited January 13 by Heatstroke

[Frostbiter]

20 minutes ago, Heatstroke said:

 

 

Ok you can stick with what you said.. but harder foes.. AVs wont be beaten by tier 1 and 2 attacks..

 

Who claimed that they could? An AV or EB is is too difficult and why I carry a break free or two.

Edited January 13 by Frostbiter

[Seed22]

23 hours ago, Frostbiter said:

 

I like what I said and I'm going to stick to saying it. If you can't kill the enemies causing you problems with your basic attacks I don't know what to tell you.

I mean basic attacks aren’t doing THAT much for you mezzed unless you’re playing on -1x8, which I mean, if you are more power to you I guess.

 

*Before they kill you or the group kills you, I should say

Edited January 14 by Seed22

[Frostbiter]

1 hour ago, Seed22 said:

I mean basic attacks aren’t doing THAT much for you mezzed unless you’re playing on -1x8, which I mean, if you are more power to you I guess.

 

*Before they kill you or the group kills you, I should say

 

I ran two different +4x1 Carnie Radio (lvl 54) missions last night only using my 1 and 2 blasts. First was a warehouse, cleared it in 5 minutes. The next was a cave. I cleared it in 6 minutes. I even had zero issues with a purple Master Illusionist and a Purple Ring Mistress. I didn't use any other attacks.

[BazookaTwo]

On 1/14/2024 at 11:41 PM, Frostbiter said:

 

I ran two different +4x1 Carnie Radio (lvl 54) missions last night only using my 1 and 2 blasts. First was a warehouse, cleared it in 5 minutes. The next was a cave. I cleared it in 6 minutes. I even had zero issues with a purple Master Illusionist and a Purple Ring Mistress. I didn't use any other attacks.

 

Tell us another tall tale

[Frostbiter]

On 1/23/2024 at 8:26 PM, BazookaTwo said:

 

Tell us another tall tale

 

How about a short video? I didn't intend to take this long making it but I hope you enjoy this. I did make a mistake and use Bitter Ice Blast at 2:12 but I did not consider it a large enough mistake to redo the video. Plus it was a minion. There isn't any music. I suggest "Do What You Want" by Bad Religion.

 

 

 

[BazookaTwo]

On 3/2/2024 at 9:26 AM, Frostbiter said:

 

How about a short video? I didn't intend to take this long making it but I hope you enjoy this. I did make a mistake and use Bitter Ice Blast at 2:12 but I did not consider it a large enough mistake to redo the video. Plus it was a minion. There isn't any music. I suggest "Do What You Want" by Bad Religion.

 

 

 

 

Ok, I apologize. That's surprising to me!

[Frostbiter]

6 hours ago, BazookaTwo said:

 

Ok, I apologize. That's surprising to me!

 

No worries. I can see how my claim sounded. I might have to do a video on Malta since I claimed in General chat the other day that Sappers "tickled".

[Vulgaris]

There's something amazingly on brand that blaster discussion has subsumed an entire page of a thread talking about sentinels.

[Psiphon]

On 3/2/2024 at 2:26 AM, Frostbiter said:

 

How about a short video? I didn't intend to take this long making it but I hope you enjoy this. I did make a mistake and use Bitter Ice Blast at 2:12 but I did not consider it a large enough mistake to redo the video. Plus it was a minion. There isn't any music. I suggest "Do What You Want" by Bad Religion.

 

Well done, it's an interesting video and shows the benefits of Defiance. 

To really prove your point, it would be good to see a video of you running this at 54x8 using all of your powers and Defiance when mezzed. Using a tray of break frees when needed, this would be a real test of Blaster performance solo.

 

 

On 3/2/2024 at 2:26 AM, Frostbiter said:

 

 

[Cyri]

Energy/Energy/Psionic Sentinel.  I like her.  Damage is less than hoped, but she's still fun.  Very durable.

[Hardboiled Hero]

On 3/7/2024 at 8:18 PM, Cyri said:

Energy/Energy/Psionic Sentinel.  I like her.  Damage is less than hoped, but she's still fun.  Very durable.

and that pretty much sums up all sentinels.

[ryokoryu]

On 12/3/2023 at 1:03 PM, Sancerre said:

look i dont really care to make this a topic about min-maxing parties or having the bost possible solo character or something along those lines.  i already noted sentinels are quite good at solo play and function perfectly fine in parties.  obfuscating is trying to glow up sentinels to be better than they literally perform.

 

is your platform that sentinel is somehow more beneficial than either blaster or scrapper on a team?

what does a sentinel offer the team other than self-contained damage (reasonably a margin lower than scrapper and blaster) and a (very) small debuff for AV killing?

they offer less aoe (via the 10 target cap) than blasters.

they offer substantially less single target DPS than scrappers (not even stalkers win here ironically)

what is this party buff/utility that you think is so valuable?

 

go ahead and make your case.

 

maybe you just like arguing for the sake of arguing -- i dont know what your game is.  if you are looking to point out that it is a ranged scrapper for semantics sake, that is all well and good but IOs and incarnates have broken the ceiling of what is 'necessary' to be self-contained.  to me, a sentinel is a more defensive blaster -- despite whatever the initial intentions were.  apparently my opinion is invalid to you though, thanks for that.

I think part of your issue is your opinion is about a matter of fact and therefor yes.  Opinions are wrong when they are not about something that is a matter of opinion.  Matters of fact are about facts and the fact is the design is ranged scrapper.  Your statement therefor is correct, your opinion is wrong because it isn't a matter of opinion and your belief in the matter of fact goes against the facts.  Choosing to lie to yourself does not change the truth and people will beat you over the head with the truth when you go spouting "opinions" in matters of fact.  Definitions matter and the roles of scrappers are different than the roles of blasters and when you make a ranged scrapper and someone decides it's an armored blaster the words must be invoked for their meanings.

[ryokoryu]

On 1/8/2024 at 1:54 PM, Exqzr984 said:

Hi all,

 

Being new(ish) to the game, I can offer only a limited experience.

 

But, for me.  Sentinels are just perfect.  I thought I was going to be a Brute Player and one day decided to take my love for SR on my brute and try it on a Water Sentinel.  I cant look back.

 

I dont overly concern myself with Minx Max concepts but rather playstyle and just pure joy.  And for that, Sentinel delivers.   A few have suggested already the ability to plug a front line hole  or swing back to provide cover for the squishies, while putting up some control and consistant damage is what makes them special.  They can go anywhere, be anything, do anything and I love it.

 

That all said, the OP has a point.  Not that his concept should replace Sentinels no no.  Rather, wny not just create another AT - if the Devs could ever get to it.

 

The DESTROYER AT.  Assault plus Armour.  I like it.  Would definitely play it.  This would be Spiderman imo.  Asaault plus SR.

 

Still, Sentinels would be my 10/10.

 

 

I would rather see a control/armor set, or rather armor/control but it would take a lot of reworking to get right.  I would also like to see an armor set more devoted to absorb shields than we have.  Bio kinda does this a little but I like the idea of a sloughing ablative layers off, or maybe theme it as a force field set.  I already have a dystopian gunslinger concept and a robot murderdroid based off of a smart fridge gaining sentience and deciding to murder everyone.  Ice blast of course, maybe make both characters come from the same distant future?

[Ashford]

Honestly, people act like sentinals are useless, they just are in desperate need of tweaking. The small target cap hurts it, the damage needs a slight boost but really not that far behind a scrapper, the buff stacking  on a sentinal needs tweaking. Honestly the only reason sentinals are gimped like this to begin with is because it's an archaic way to address the fact that if sentinals got buffed too much it would make scrappers irrelevent which is dumb because at the end of the day one archetype is being stomped out in favor of the other when there should be marginally little difference to choose a scrapper or sentinal with enough pros and cons to have a case to pick either. 

Edited April 27 by Ashford

[Sovera]

30 minutes ago, Ashford said:

Honestly, people act like sentinals are useless, they just are in desperate need of tweaking. The small target cap hurts it, the damage needs a slight boost but really not that far behind a scrapper, the buff stacking  on a sentinal needs tweaking. Honestly the only reason sentinals are gimped like this to begin with is because it's an archaic way to address the fact that if sentinals got buffed too much it would make scrappers irrelevent which is dumb because at the end of the day one archetype is being stomped out in favor of the other when there should be marginally little difference to choose a scrapper or sentinal with enough pros and cons to have a case to pick either. 

 

They were already tweaked. Prior to that the Sentinels were what the 'previous'(?) team's idea of them was. But now that they were tweaked by HC this is what they want them to be. And tbh it's fair. They are the City of Heroes version of the Beast Master Hunter from WoW.

 

Which is fine by me (yes, I only play BMs in WoW too). My problem with them is less about their damage and more about the pervasive flee code that the NPCS have because a Blaster will burst mobs down and nothing is alive to run, but the Sentinel will take them to half or even one third HP, which is fine, sure, it would only need a few more hits to defeat so it's a fair exchange for the extra sturdyness, but since they were not defeated then INVARIABLY we have ALL the survivors legging it to the hills. Which would not be a problem (if an accumulative XP loss) if the game did not have kill all missions where we can't leave runners doing their thing.