Sentinel: Energy Blast/Willpower

[mad_foot_sr]

[mad_foot_sr]

I've had success with this combination. Now I have gone to the '2nd' build for this toon. As you know, this is expensive, so not all the cool stuff is placed yet (like damage sets). They're just basic. But I run him with others so I can get used to where the keys are for the powers on the trays.

 

Anyone else have this combo? Haven't been able to find much about them...

[Warshades]

On 4/28/2025 at 4:58 PM, mad_foot_sr said:

Anyone else have this combo? Haven't been able to find much about them...

 

My guess would be because neither sets are particularly popular. Knockback is a real nuisance for teams to deal with, scattering enemies makes it harder for AoEs to hit all enemies and in turn increases the time to clear things. There are ways to mitigate this by hovering/flying above enemies when attacking with energy blast and the knockback effect will mostly just knock enemies down instead of scattering (or else directing the knockback to a nearby wall so they don't go far), but this does take a particular play style to not annoy teammates (unless you plan to solo). You could slot the KB to KD IOs in your AoE attacks to not have to worry about positioning when using your attacks, but that will lower your damage output as it reduces the number of procs you can use or else excludes some 6 set piece bonuses.

 

Willpower on a sentinel is rather weak imo. The whole point of the set on melee ATs is to get massive regen with RttC when surrounded by mobs with a mixture of resist/defenses. The sentinel version of RttC was changed to UttC where it no longer scales from the amount of enemies that surround you. This wouldn't be a terrible thing since you are playing a ranged attack set, but the regen from UttC is a good deal weaker than a saturated RttC. Not only that, but regen is directly related to your max HP and sentinels have much lower max HP than tankers/brutes. As a result, they gain less hp/sec from regeneration. Having said all of that, you don't need tanker or brute level survival with a sentinel as you're not expected to be the tank on a team, but Willpower also lacks any sort of useful offensive buffs that other secondaries get. Sets like /energy, /elec, and /sr have powers that can increase recharge speed. Other sets like /shield, /rad, /stone, /fire, and /bio can increase damage output. Willpower, imo, could really use some sort of unique buff to make it more desirable to use as a power set.

 

At the end of the day, you should still play whatever combo you want and have fun playing. However, some unpopular power sets and combinations may be much harder to find builds for and imo, both energy blast and willpower tend to be unpopular and a combination of both even more so.

[Octogoat]

I can confirm that /rad on sentinels is spiffy