Re making sentinels

[Sunsette]

This is indeed including the Hybrid doublehit in that. I'm using a Fire/Rad/Psi with Mind Probe and Dominate, Dominate procced out with damage procs and Decimation Buildup (again, thanks to your work shining a light on PPM and recharge). Attack chain is Blaze - Flares - Dominate - Blaze - Flares - Mind Probe. This gives me 360 DPS reliably against Pylons, which translates to about 300ish DPS when you factor in Hybrid downtime and a running AV making me bunnyhop after them. Essentially, either I manage to whack them with Mind Probe regardless, or I swap Mind Probe for Fireball in my rotation.

 

(It can be less if we're looking at particularly jumpy AVs, of course. Hi Rommie :D )

 

Throw in Lore, and oh boy. With a Musculature Longbow Cataphract and -RES from our inherent and the Fury proc in Inferno, we're getting to ridiculous numbers. Your standard lvl 50 AV drops in less than a minute with that setup.

 

Not gonna lie, this ended up being an extremely demoralizing post for me. With all the effort I've put into my builds, my Pylon DPS comes out to about 165, and this is after a roughly 25% DPS increase from my PPM findings. Sitting here wondering 'why did I even bother'.

 

I know Energy Blast isn't the greatest, but sheesh. I could get another 15% increase by bringing melee back in, but I'm increasingly less a fan of mixing up melee as I've pulled out my defenses to get as much offense as possible. Nothing gets me in the neighborhood of 300.

 

I'm at 180 while Double Hit is active.

 

I'm this close to just throwing in the towel and rerolling as fire.

[nihilii]

Aw :( It kind of feels like it should be possible to go to 220ish and maybe beyond with just a plain swap from Flares to Power Bolt and Blaze to Power Push? Significantly less damage on PP, but also running the chain gapless.

 

I posted my build in the Pylon thread which might or might not give some insight: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,1253.msg58036.html#msg58036

 

But perhaps I'm wrong and/or the tradeoffs are unacceptable. Energy gets a raw deal in being "forced" to slot a KB to KD proc in PP.

 

Either way there's an issue where the supposedly best powers of the primary sit unused. If something is to be done with Sentinels beyond bugfixing and inherent rework, I'd love for devs to take a look at longer animation times and speed them up as much as possible while retaining the feel - or even bumping damage just a tad if that's easier. IMHO, higher tier attacks should always have better DPA by a healthy enough margin you want to include them.

[Sunsette]

Aw :( It kind of feels like it should be possible to go to 220ish and maybe beyond with just a plain swap from Flares to Power Bolt and Blaze to Power Push? Significantly less damage on PP, but also running the chain gapless.

 

I posted my build in the Pylon thread which might or might not give some insight: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,1253.msg58036.html#msg58036

 

But perhaps I'm wrong and/or the tradeoffs are unacceptable. Energy gets a raw deal in being "forced" to slot a KB to KD proc in PP.

 

Either way there's an issue where the supposedly best powers of the primary sit unused. If something is to be done with Sentinels beyond bugfixing and inherent rework, I'd love for devs to take a look at longer animation times and speed them up as much as possible while retaining the feel - or even bumping damage just a tad if that's easier. IMHO, higher tier attacks should always have better DPA by a healthy enough margin you want to include them.

 

The problem lies in the fact that Power Push is the only noticeable 'spike' in DPA damage and it's not a very big spike either on a per second basis or considering how fast the animation is (meaning the spike is for a relatively small amount).

 

Energy's numbers are really consistent and the only reason to take one attack over another, besides Power Push, is what fits your attack chain best. Fire is very, very spiky. I put up an analysis here.

 

Honestly, I wasn't expecting to wow anyone but I really wasn't expecting anything this bad.

[Heraclea]

My experience is that my Sentinel brings a lot to teams, plays more like a traditional 'blaster' than my highest level blaster does, and does not solo all that well like my high level melees do, or even the blaster. 

 

My plans for both blaster and sentinel are maybe slightly unorthodox.  My sentinel has no melee attacks and tries to stay out of melee.  Ninja caltrops at her feet help with that.  What she does put out is soft control, in the form of slows that are specifically slotted for, knockdown that is also slotted for, and most importantly, all of her attacks that will take it contain -recharge procs that reduce incoming damage on the whole team.  I have not tried to turn the sentinel into a tank; I did not bother with stuff like tough and weave. 

 

My blaster is a stealthist and sapper, which adds to her team utility.  She solos easier than the sentinel does, especially on old time simple objectives like glowie hunts and boss spawn kills.  Her contribution to team utility is that she can drain the endurance of just about any mob short of an archvillain.  Her slotting tries to balance this with damage.  She is also much more melee oriented than the sentinel; her big saps are PBAoEs, so she follows the tank into the middle of the mobs.  She runs Temporary Invulnerability and has a number of trouble bubbles she can pop if they activate in time. 

 

My experience with both ATs may be atypical.  My sentinel is hardly a solo god.  Even the blaster works better on solo stuff like Roman wall work.  Both are built to bring value to teams.