Assault Rifle and Sentinel - The battle of Fun VS Practical VS Theoretical.

[Vulgaris]

I've been having fun despite the shortcomings of the mostly lethal type and the somewhat chunky animations and subjective taste picks. But I am also running into some head scratching scenarios and the curse of "Is mids wrong or am I wrong" as it keeps rearing it's ugly head from time to time when I do real world tests and more or less have inconclusive results.

I'm on the fence whether or not burst is a total skip or not still as it feels like a perfectly fine single target chain attack but the broken up damage feels like it gets res taxxed harder, but it is also the only single target move I can put an Achilles into. But then skipping that leaves me with the oddball 3 piece single target combo tossup between disorienting shot, buckshot and slug. And slug despite it's decent base damage has a so so animation commitment.

 

That and other confusing thoughts such as M30 grenade having typed damage boon due to having some fire with the lethal and is more of a reliable AOE than buckshot. And giving me another power that can crowd mow besides flamethrower and full auto. That and Buckshot of which I tend to treat like a better DPA slug currently.

But then I wonder if M30 grenade is ever even worth it because it has the most atrocious damage per animation of the entire set out the box, and a beefy endurance cost to add insult to injury - And carries the KD tax on top.  Can it be procced out and saved or is it a total bait pick?

Then we have incinerate which if the enemy can stay put works a treat. But I feel like I never should use it or bust it out especially in group content unless I see that we have a dom or a controller or it's a type of EB or AV that isn't going to auto flee from it.

And finally Full Auto - oh Nuke "Normalization"... We will have words some day. But not today -  I also wonder if full auto would be better served loaded up with procs or straight damage given every little hit that gets boosted counts and adds up.

The TL;DR: being I think I need some advice and maybe some Sentinel AR tips and tricks as as I feel I am not seeing the full picture or potential still.

[FupDup]

For Ignite, the important thing to note is that it will always deal full damage to the primary target even if they run. Only secondary targets can escape the DoT by running. Ignite is advertised/slotted as AOE, but in practice it's actually a single-target power with some occasional AOE as a cherry on top. Due to Sents lacking Sniper Rifle, Ignite is a mandatory part of your ST attack chain. 

Edited March 21 by FupDup

[Vulgaris]

I suppose another crossroad I have is-  Which hybrid assault to run. Since the two fire moves and full auto are essentially DoTs. But the rest of the kit is rapidly cycling single hits.

[FupDup]

Sents have a high enough base damage modifier that, in an environment with few damage buffs/insps active, Assault Core can give greater damage returns than Radial. However, Radial still has the advantages of bypassing the damage cap (if you're heavily damage buffed by allies/insps then Core doesn't do much or anything), energy damage type (helps against lethal-resistant enemies), and requires no stack building/maintaining (pretty easy to do on a Sent but it's still a little bit of added convenience).

 

It's hard to go wrong in this case because even the "worse" choice is still going to be good (unless you're using Core and get a lot of external damage buffs), but Radial is a "safer" choice because of the damage cap thing. 

[Underfyre]

11 hours ago, FupDup said:

Sents have a high enough base damage modifier that, in an environment with few damage buffs/insps active, Assault Core can give greater damage returns than Radial.

 

This is wrong. The only instance that Core is better than Radial is when used with Storm Blast because that set doesn't benefit from procs, just raw damage. Even then it's only a marginal difference.

[357trall]

Many powers in Assault Rifle can be proc'ed well, and that used to be the best way to up sentinel damage. There is the sentinel guide that is stickyed if you want in depth info on all the power sets. In general burst and m30 grenade can be skipped, they don't proc well and are lackluster attacks. Buckshot is really good, takes aoe procs and I use it for both aoe and single targets. Flamethrower takes aoe procs, Full Auto takes defense dbuff procs, Slug takes knockback . AR has alot of proc potential that helps with being a lethal set.

[Vulgaris]

16 hours ago, 357trall said:

Many powers in Assault Rifle can be proc'ed well, and that used to be the best way to up sentinel damage.

There's a tricky issue with that- in That my setup to get my AR/SR Sent to a nice cushy place defensively to get a slight buffer of above softcap, 70+% Minimum DRR and 100% status resist. I have too many LOTGs and my sentinel ATOs also give me a bit too much +recharge to really benefit from procs I thought? I heard or thought I heard that if you're more or less over 60 percent recharge bonus procs just stop being as appealing.

[Underfyre]

On 3/27/2024 at 7:41 AM, Vulgaris said:

I have too many LOTGs and my sentinel ATOs also give me a bit too much +recharge to really benefit from procs I thought? I heard or thought I heard that if you're more or less over 60 percent recharge bonus procs just stop being as appealing.

 

Global recharge doesn't affect proc rates, just enhanced recharge. You can only have 5 of each set bonus though (ie. 5 LotG, 5 10% recharge, 8.75%, 7.5%, 6.25%, 5%).

Edited March 31 by Underfyre

[Vulgaris]

On 3/28/2024 at 6:01 PM, Underfyre said:

Global recharge doesn't affect proc rates, just enhanced recharge.

I actually had no idea this was the case. This opens up a few avenues for me for sure then.

Edit: Thank you everyone for the info and in general being helpful too. I'll play around with my setup here and there and figure things out.

Edited March 31 by Vulgaris