page 3 [FOCUSED FEEDBACK] Sentinel Archetype Adjustments

[aethereal]

2 minutes ago, MDLittle said:

I am, likewise, a tad concerned about the inherent not building when not in combat, but I have a solution to this conundrum. As a sentinel, one would think being observant and spotting the stealthy would be essential to their purpose. How about having stealth perception max at 0 opportunity, and steadily decrease as the meter builds to represent the sentinel focusing more on what's currently visible instead of keeping an eye out for stealthy targets. This way, a sentinel's going to be highly alert at the beginning...but as conflict is engaged, they cease 'scanning the horizon' (so to speak) and focus more on the problem at hand. As it currently stands, a sentinel is almost completely oblivious to stealth at 0 opportunity, and increases when focusing on those...they can already see.

 

That's very flavorful and everything, but in practice in City of Heroes there aren't stealthed enemies lurking around outside your vision: stealth is a tactical add in combat.  Losing your ability to see actual invisible foes in combat in trade for the ability to see nonexistent enemies that are waiting for a good moment to ambush you is just 100% a nerf.

[MDLittle]

3 minutes ago, aethereal said:

 

That's very flavorful and everything, but in practice in City of Heroes there aren't stealthed enemies lurking around outside your vision: stealth is a tactical add in combat.

Yes, there are stealthed enemies that can't be seen right away in City of Heroes. Thank you for your observation.

[Shin Magmus]

24 minutes ago, MDLittle said:

Yes, there are stealthed enemies that can't be seen right away in City of Heroes. Thank you for your observation.

   Where?  I've never seen any?  They must be too stealthy for me. 

[aethereal]

24 minutes ago, MDLittle said:

Yes, there are stealthed enemies that can't be seen right away in City of Heroes. Thank you for your observation.

No, there practically aren't.  Most enemies who stealth idle unstealthed.  There are a few who idle stealthed, but they also hang out in groups with other unstealthed enemies.  The ability to see through stealth, only while not in combat, is practically totally useless.

[MDLittle]

2 minutes ago, Shin Magmus said:

   Where?  I've never seen any?  They must be too stealthy for me. 

Well, once the new inherent adjustment kicks in...you won't. At the current time and moment, sentinels don't have that problem...they will. Thanks for your observation.

Edited Wednesday at 08:50 PM by MDLittle

[Shin Magmus]

7 minutes ago, MDLittle said:

Well, once the new inherent adjustment kicks in...you won't. At the current time and moment, sentinels don't have that problem...they will. Thanks for your observation.

   It won't be a problem at all actually.  Not only is a single 1-slot perception IO enough for most characters to combat the very very few stealthed enemies AND perception debuffs, and not only does Tactics fix this problem for the entire team while being a Pool Power and commonly ran on many supports, appearing on almost every team you'll find yourself on... but...

 

   Yellow Inspirations give perception in the very very few cases where you actually don't have enough and you really need it.  So it won't be a problem for anyone, just like it isn't a problem now.  I play the video game. 

[MDLittle]

12 minutes ago, Shin Magmus said:

   It won't be a problem at all actually.  Not only is a single 1-slot perception IO enough for most characters to combat the very very few stealthed enemies AND perception debuffs, and not only does Tactics fix this problem for the entire team while being a Pool Power and commonly ran on many supports, appearing on almost every team you'll find yourself on... but...

 

   Yellow Inspirations give perception in the very very few cases where you actually don't have enough and you really need it.  So it won't be a problem for anyone, just like it isn't a problem now.  I play the video game. 

So...tactics, io's and inspirations - despite the fact that Sentinels are 'supposed to be' the observant AT. It's 'not a problem' since they can just resort to using whatever lesser observant AT's use to resolve their lack of perception. Interesting points, again...thanks for your observations.

[aethereal]

If people actually want to give Sentinels a buff that's a.  vaguely on the theme of them being people who are "sentinels" and is perception-related, and b.  is more useful than +perception, you could consider to-hit debuff resistance.  To-hit debuffs aren't super common, but they're more common than stealth, and when you deal with an enemy group that strongly debuffs your to-hit it's genuinely pretty annoying.  If sentinels were strongly resistant to that, I feel like most players would go, "Oh, that's nice," sometimes.  Kinda like having resistance to end drain -- most enemies don't drain your end or your to-hit, but the ones that do are impactful enough that you like resisting them.

 

But none of this solves the issue (if it is an issue) of opportunity not building out of combat, because there are very few stats that are meaningful out of combat in this game.

[Chris24601]

For me, the only real issue with opportunity only building in combat is that due life situations I am having to log off frequently (to handle situations that would boot me for inactivity anyway).

 

Every time I return my meter has to build up from zero again.

 

This isn’t an issue on live because it builds pretty quick, but in testing it was something of a pain.

 

A simple fix that would solve my only complaint about only charging in combat entirely is to just let the bar start at full so I can enter my first combat at the same value it does on live.

[stryve]

I had been curious how exactly the changes to Perception worked out, so I ported my Dark/Dark to Beta and compared the numbers with Live.

On Live, he has 1146.42 ft. total perception with +550 ft. base.

 

On Beta, with 0 Opportunity he has 1146.42 ft. total perception with +55 ft. base.  With 100 Opportunity he actually maxes out at 1268.3 ft. total with an additional 137.5 ft. from Opportunity.

 

So in conclusion, your standing Perception will be completely unchanged on Beta, with a relatively minor increase in combat (he's getting 266.42 and 330 ft. from Tactics and Cloak of Darkness respectively.).

[Sovera]

Building the meter back isn't super long. By the time I finish a pylon test of two minutes it's up. Assumin Vuln is only used once per group the meter should be back to full for the next group. 

 

This disregarding the *not* using Vuln might just be better in practice since 20% crit on all targets hit by AoE for the duration of the fight (nuke doesn't crit though, but everything afterwards) should(?) trump Vuln on one target and a weaker Vuln chained to four other mobs.

 

And Sents already get a perception buff with a full meter, but perception is fairly useless by itself when a single IO is usually enough to spot stealthy mobs. And even if they are or not stealthed it doesn't make them more dangerous.

[Kaika]

Found a bug

 

Psychic Shockwave in Psionic Mastery is currently displaying CRITICAL HIT floating text on all hits, and displays it twice on actual crits

 

Edit: I had a pic, but it always uploads completely blank, weird.

 

Edited Saturday at 08:56 AM by Kaika

[CoeruleumBlue]

I personally wouldn't change Opportunity to not work out of combat or stop nukes from critting. As of now, the only valid use for Sentinel is basically as a nuke AT somewhat similar to a ranged Stalker and even then it seems weak at that, especially since Stalkers can already get ranged attacks in varying ways. Making Sentinels so they constantly have to be firing off attacks and their nukes don't even work is just going to make them way worse based on everything I've heard from Sentinel players about how to play and build Sentinels, not better.

 

The most popular way to play Sentinels seems to be just for the endurance drain on Electric Blast but that role seems better served by Defenders, who can give basically everyone armor already and get extra endurance drain from a lot of the support sets. The only unique niche for Sentinels seems to be as a nuke AT that has armor to help you survive between the nukes and possibly give you procs to make them stronger like with Ninjitsu or Stone Armor, and even that I heard would have worked better if they had control sets instead of blast sets as primaries, but that's only something I heard once. 

 

Everything in this change seems like it'll make Sentinels worse, not better. Maybe just up their damage to blaster levels instead of defender levels because they don't get manipulation sets anyway so they can't even fight in melee until they get Epic Pools or unless they take a lot of Fighting Pool but I would also rather just roll a blaster than run around using a bunch of Fighting Pool attacks all day, and they are automatically slower at stacking debuffs as well since they don't get any from manipulation sets or support sets.

 

Honestly I think Vulnerability never worked with them anyway. Since many attack options for Sentinels apply debuffs, but Sentinels don't get any other debuffs, I think I'd just make it so the debuff automatically applies to enemies they attack and stays on them until the enemies die, the Sentinel dies, or both. Then it can apply to way more than five enemies and it would make sense for the Sentinel to have armor in case they get too much aggro doing that. 

[Heatstroke]

3 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

I personally wouldn't change Opportunity to not work out of combat or stop nukes from critting. As of now, the only valid use for Sentinel is basically as a nuke AT somewhat similar to a ranged Stalker and even then it seems weak at that, especially since Stalkers can already get ranged attacks in varying ways. Making Sentinels so they constantly have to be firing off attacks and their nukes don't even work is just going to make them way worse based on everything I've heard from Sentinel players about how to play and build Sentinels, not better.

 

The most popular way to play Sentinels seems to be just for the endurance drain on Electric Blast but that role seems better served by Defenders, who can give basically everyone armor already and get extra endurance drain from a lot of the support sets. The only unique niche for Sentinels seems to be as a nuke AT that has armor to help you survive between the nukes and possibly give you procs to make them stronger like with Ninjitsu or Stone Armor, and even that I heard would have worked better if they had control sets instead of blast sets as primaries, but that's only something I heard once. 

 

Everything in this change seems like it'll make Sentinels worse, not better. Maybe just up their damage to blaster levels instead of defender levels because they don't get manipulation sets anyway so they can't even fight in melee until they get Epic Pools or unless they take a lot of Fighting Pool but I would also rather just roll a blaster than run around using a bunch of Fighting Pool attacks all day, and they are automatically slower at stacking debuffs as well since they don't get any from manipulation sets or support sets.

 

Honestly I think Vulnerability never worked with them anyway. Since many attack options for Sentinels apply debuffs, but Sentinels don't get any other debuffs, I think I'd just make it so the debuff automatically applies to enemies they attack and stays on them until the enemies die, the Sentinel dies, or both. Then it can apply to way more than five enemies and it would make sense for the Sentinel to have armor in case they get too much aggro doing that. 

 

Honest question.. do you actually PLAY Sentinels ?

[Steampunkette]

Sentinels are to Blasters what Stalkers are to Scrappers.

 

Single-target killers.

 

Yes. A Blaster can pop Build Up and Aim to jump closer to the damage cap with their 1.125 scalar to dish out amazing damage, briefly, and typically used in an AoE Nuke situation. But on a team the Build Up advantage dissipates when everyone's sitting at the damage cap because of well timed Fulcrum Shifts.

 

But a Sentinel drops Vulnerability, then Aim, then lays waste to the person they've targeted while also boosting the damage output of their team on that one target until they're a grease stain on the floor. Not only do they get a 1.1 damage scalar, and the same 500% cap, but they make their target take even more damage. This functions while at the cap, unlike Build Up.

 

AoE Vulnerability is going to be a nice change for overall output in cleave situations, don't get me wrong. And crits will be a final step in bringing Sentinels in line with overall output (It's why it's 40% chance and 40% value at cap for a 16% increase over and above the 500% damage cap). But Sentinels will always be about putting one target down with prejudice!

 

This update is all about making them great at small area cleaving, too.

 

The only change I'm still hoping to see is the IO proc to be increased to 15 vulnerability 3.5 times per minute.

 

 

Edited Saturday at 02:41 PM by Steampunkette

[Bill Z Bubba]

Looking at my DP/SR Sentinel:

Knowing that they're about to get buffed from .07 to .075 mitigation scaler;

Knowing that Evasion got hyper-buffed to 19.95% defense instead of being the same as FF and FS at 12.95 so that the devs could replace Lucky with Enduring;

Knowing that sentinels are capable (this character doesn't do it because she's over the softcap all the time now and will be more so after the buff) of hovering to stay out of melee almost perpetually;

Knowing I'd miss it but think the following anyway;

 

Just drop the absorb from Sent Master Brawler (edit) and don't add anything new to PB. Make new SR MB nothing but a toggle that provides nothing more than what PB provides.

 

The balance point is that PB is a click, wastes time, has to be watched and MB costs a hell of a lot more endurance over time.
Nothing special needs to be added. Balance is already right there.

Edited Saturday at 03:37 PM by Bill Z Bubba

[DrunkFlux]

16 hours ago, Steampunkette said:

Sentinels are to Blasters what Stalkers are to Scrappers.

 

Single-target killers.

 

Yes. A Blaster can pop Build Up and Aim to jump closer to the damage cap with their 1.125 scalar to dish out amazing damage, briefly, and typically used in an AoE Nuke situation. But on a team the Build Up advantage dissipates when everyone's sitting at the damage cap because of well timed Fulcrum Shifts.

 

But a Sentinel drops Vulnerability, then Aim, then lays waste to the person they've targeted while also boosting the damage output of their team on that one target until they're a grease stain on the floor. Not only do they get a 1.1 damage scalar, and the same 500% cap, but they make their target take even more damage. This functions while at the cap, unlike Build Up.

 

AoE Vulnerability is going to be a nice change for overall output in cleave situations, don't get me wrong. And crits will be a final step in bringing Sentinels in line with overall output (It's why it's 40% chance and 40% value at cap for a 16% increase over and above the 500% damage cap). But Sentinels will always be about putting one target down with prejudice!

 

This update is all about making them great at small area cleaving, too.

 

The only change I'm still hoping to see is the IO proc to be increased to 15 vulnerability 3.5 times per minute.

 

 

 

I had a rough experience earlier today in a team attempting the newest TF blind on 4star on my blaster, and I admit in that attempt that I wish I was on a sentinel instead, as my blaster was a energy blast user, i couldn't nuke effectively when there was toxic gas everywhere causing me to be defeated in 3 seconds of entering to attempt to hit Nova(which has a 3 second activation time).  Even jousting didn't work.  So having sentinels also being a viable alternative for content i'm less familiar with is going to be nice whenever i'm playing ranged DPS.

[Bill Z Bubba]

Finally checked it out. Did a fresh copy of my fire/bio sent to test, went and hit a pylon, spammed vulnerability, got 2:50.

Logged back into live, repeated the test, 2:54.

Should I have noticed something different?

Oh, I see, don't click vulnerability for crits. Back to test.

Don't click Vulnerability at all: 2:38
Click vulnerability only when circled red: 2:46

 

Am I doing something wrong here? Based on this (granted VERY tiny sample size,) seems I'm best off by never clicking vulnerability at all.

[bAss_ackwards]

21 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Am I doing something wrong here? Based on this (granted VERY tiny sample size,) seems I'm best off by never clicking vulnerability at all.

 

Isn't the design that using the ability is a force multiplier for team damage, while keeping the bar filled is for increased solo damage output?

[Bill Z Bubba]

8 minutes ago, bAss_ackwards said:

Isn't the design that using the ability is a force multiplier for team damage, while keeping the bar filled is for increased solo damage output?

 

I guess that makes sense. So, WAI.

[Sovera]

49 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Finally checked it out. Did a fresh copy of my fire/bio sent to test, went and hit a pylon, spammed vulnerability, got 2:50.

Logged back into live, repeated the test, 2:54.

Should I have noticed something different?

Oh, I see, don't click vulnerability for crits. Back to test.

Don't click Vulnerability at all: 2:38
Click vulnerability only when circled red: 2:46

 

Am I doing something wrong here? Based on this (granted VERY tiny sample size,) seems I'm best off by never clicking vulnerability at all.

 

On 12/5/2025 at 10:56 PM, Sovera said:

Been running some pylon tests so I'll save the trouble for others: over multiple pylons using or saving Opportunity made no difference for single target damage. Using each time Vuln dropped from the target or just mashing buttons gave the same times with literally 5-6 seconds apart.

 

 

Untested, but from a mix of common sense and gut feels:

 

* Since the crits apply to AoEs the AT gets a boost (40% chance of a 40% crit is abouts 16% extra damage) for solo or fast teams. No point fussing about Vuln if everything is melting well. If they are not then Vuln multiplied by 8 is going to beat the 16% of hoarding it.
* Nukes don't get crits so using Vulnerability (which then chains to a lesser extent surrounding foes) on a boss before unleashing the nuke might be mathematically better(?) but since everything else crits then I wouldn't use Vuln again as each use cuts 20% crit chance off.

* The difference between using and not using, or trying to use min-max as above is probably going to be so minimal if actually looking at mission completion times that a Sentinel can not use it and not be missing out and still come out ahead with these changes. Chalk another boost for the ailing AT.
* The ATO that increases the meter doesn't do enough.

   * Simple test: used Vuln, kept attacking, Vuln ran out. Used a second time, kept attacking. Vuln ends. Not enough meter to use a third time.
   * This scenario applies with and without the ATO slotted into ST attacks.

 

On a spreadsheet the ATO will probably save X seconds before a new charge of Vuln is up, but the cost of slotting a set without damage procs should(?) cost more than getting Vuln sooner, especially with this change that rewards a full bar at all times.

 

[Shin Magmus]

   Guys, -Res debuffs are more powerful on teams than they are solo, full story at 11.  Sentinels now have a way to temporarily sacrifice some personal DPS in order to apply -Res for the team, which will be a gain for most 8 person teams pretty much any time you do it.  Also, when you're doing a solo test you have to factor in the cast time of every single buff on yourself, or debuff on the enemy, that you use.  That time is time you aren't attacking, which is why for Pylon tests people aren't taking powers like Weaken Resolve but they ARE getting better value by picking sets or using attacks which slot -Res procs: those procs are firing off and inflicting that debuff without adding any cast time because the attacks are already part of your chain.  Once again relying solely on Pylon tests leads to dubious, easily misinterpreted results.

[Arcadio]

Don't know if it's intended but rain powers are not critting how they should be. What I'm seeing is that they binarily have about ~40% chance to roll any crits at all, there's been many casts that have no crits over the 76 ticks which should be a huge statistical anomally. Also, it looks like the chance to crit might be rolling twice. I'm getting around 10-15 crits when they do roll which is about 76*0.4^2 = 12.

 

Edit: Actually just noticed the crits hit for double damage, so 10-15 crits is still the ~16% more damage so that makes sense. Still the binary chance for having crits at all seems wrong.

Edited Sunday at 03:30 PM by Arcadio

[Midnight Mystique]

On 12/13/2025 at 6:40 AM, Steampunkette said:

Sentinels are to Blasters what Stalkers are to Scrappers.

 

Single-target killers.

 

 

 

 

Odd, my thoughts are exactly the opposite. I equate blasters, with their snipes and generally better single target damage (than sents) to ranged stalkers and sentinels to ranged scrappers. While SOME sentinels have decent single target damage, most power sets lose a lot of single target damage with the conversion of snipes to standard blasts and sentinels get screwed over on a few other single target attacks (chilling ray anyone?).

 

On the flipside, while they have lower AOE target caps than a blaster (much like a scrapper) having a 90s base recharge on the t9 means even with moderate recharge (say, 90% in power, 60-70% or more global) you can have it up either every spawn or every other spawn. Combine that with some fairly decent aoe's in ancilliary/epic pools and that makes up for the crappy cones. 

 

Factor in the armor set which means all those PBAOE attacks can be performed safely, without having to invest all your set bonuses/power picks in capping ranged or S/L def means you are much more like  a scrapper. 

 

[Steampunkette]

1 hour ago, Midnight Mystique said:

Odd, my thoughts are exactly the opposite. I equate blasters, with their snipes and generally better single target damage (than sents) to ranged stalkers and sentinels to ranged scrappers. While SOME sentinels have decent single target damage, most power sets lose a lot of single target damage with the conversion of snipes to standard blasts and sentinels get screwed over on a few other single target attacks (chilling ray anyone?).

 

On the flipside, while they have lower AOE target caps than a blaster (much like a scrapper) having a 90s base recharge on the t9 means even with moderate recharge (say, 90% in power, 60-70% or more global) you can have it up either every spawn or every other spawn. Combine that with some fairly decent aoe's in ancilliary/epic pools and that makes up for the crappy cones. 

 

Factor in the armor set which means all those PBAOE attacks can be performed safely, without having to invest all your set bonuses/power picks in capping ranged or S/L def means you are much more like  a scrapper. 

 

1.1 to 10 targets compared to 1.125 to 16.

 

Blasters can hit the entire group at once, harder, than the Sentinel can. Sure their snipe hits harder than the Sentinel's snipe-replacement (even in quick mode!) and so do all their other attacks. But...

 

But the Sentinel can pick a target to wreck through their inherent debuff. And on a team, with any coordination, the output is multiplicative on that -one- target.

 

Blaster can wipe out the group with Cones, Targeted AoEs, etc, way faster than a Sentinel can. But against a sufficiently hard target, with a team to work with, the Sentinel puts out more single-target than the Blaster does through the additional damage Vulnerability provides to them, and the group.