Sell me a sentinel

[KaizenSoze]

About playing sentinels and blasters -

With blasters, a great part of the game (grouped) is holding back and adjusting aggro generation to the melee players ability to hold aggro. I need a good tank/s in the group to be able to go all out right from the start. The impression that I get from the discussion that while sentinel’s damage potential is lower, it is more often, up to always, able to go all out on damage and reach this full potential - because it can deal with the blow back from tanks losing aggro hold.

 

Interesting.

OK, I guess I’ll just have to try it out and see how it plays out.

Now, I need a new RP concept for another alt...

 

Most of the time I do not even care what the melee is doing. As soon as the mob aggros, I start firing.

 

I spend my time lining up my next AOE or cone, not worrying about over aggro-ing. If there is a second group or ambush, then often I engage the new threat to give the group time to adjust. Hover plus rad armor resists, heals, and buffer, give me a lot of durability. Also, never discount the scrapper level mezz resistance. On top of that, water blast has a lot of soft control with KDs and slows.

 

Don't get me wrong, I love a good melee-ers, they gathers the mobs into a nice tight groups. :)

 

[GetRidOfWires]

Beam Rifle/Bio Armor should sell anyone on a Sentinel. Take the Disintegrate mechanic and add the Offensive stance of Bio and Offensive Opportunity with Assault. Just Bio and Assault alone adds another Damage SO worth of increase across the board. A self-heal, armor, Mez protection, the list goes on. Very powerful combo, that allows you to make mistakes and still survive.

[Heraclea]

I would say that the main thing Sentinels have going for them that Blasters don't is solid mezz protection.  Some of the sets have knockback or immobilize holes that are easily fixed with set IOs or Combat Jumping.  I find characters that are subject to a lot of forced AFKs unpleasant to play. 

[Anubys]

On 7/15/2019 at 11:38 AM, Destlin said:

they do better sustained AoE dps than a blaster,who is king of burst AoE in this game. Every mob they hit takes 5% more damage from all sources and they give a 20% damage increase with vulnerability. They pay for their tankiness and utility  with a 10 mob cap instead of 16. Their power sets are a bit different than blasters as well which is nice. And it has been my experience so far that they were by far the easiest to kill AV's with, now that is only out of level 50 brute, scrapper, blaster, corrupter and the sentinel. I have not gotten any of the other classes to 50 so i can't say on that front. The only real had sell i could give is to try one out and most likely fall in love with the class like the rest of us did. Dark has low damage though I guess because the to hit debuff ( which is crazy good)but the rest are good with a couple outliers. Fire does amazing ST dps and pretty good AoE and water does amazing AoE dps with insane CD on gyser.

 

TLDR: sents are crazy fun.

I had a build on pines of a Dark Blast/Bio Armor Sentinel that I tried on Justin and it was insane. I will say that I did stick at least two damage procs on each attack power (one from ranged or AoE damage, and one from the accurate tohit debuff set, and it was MOWING through mobs in DA. I should try soloing the EBs in a few of the arcs, or even try my hand with soloing AVs just to see how it compares to my Fortunata.  

[Khan668]

On 7/15/2019 at 12:53 PM, Lockpick said:

I have the following at 50:

 

Huntsman SOA

DP/MC Blaster

DP/EM Blaster

DP/Ninjitsu Sentinel

 

All of these guys are ranged and shoot guns and they are all fun to play.  I leveled my Huntsman SOA first and then I played my DP/Ninjitsu Sentinel to about 42 and felt the damage was lackluster.  I then went to my DP/MC and then DP/EM.  Damage was better, but I was always taking big hits or getting defeated.  I went back to the DP/Ninjitsu and took him to 50.  The lower damage no longer bothered me because I was defeating enemies quickly enough for me and I am rarely defeated.  The only 2 times I have been defeated since hitting 50 are in Apex TF during the Battle Maiden fight when I cannot move out of the blue fast enough.  The DP/Ninjitsu Sentinel has at least 45% defense to melee, range, and AOE, so is a beast.  DP also looks cool when linked to MC or Ninjitsu.

 

The Huntsman SOA may be the best of the bunch though.  He also has at least 45% defense to melee, range, and AOE, and brings buffs to the team.  He just doesn't look as cool as the DP guys and coolness does count.

You happen to have abuild for DP/Nin? Levelling one now and have no idea how to build him. Can't seem to settle on a Pistol 2ndy. Have a /time blaster, /Nin and a /MA. I'm more used to melee and am cluelss on ranged, I keep dying lol.

 

[Rathulfr]

3 hours ago, Khan668 said:

You happen to have abuild for DP/Nin? Levelling one now and have no idea how to build him. Can't seem to settle on a Pistol 2ndy. Have a /time blaster, /Nin and a /MA. I'm more used to melee and am cluelss on ranged, I keep dying lol.

 

Paging Dr. @oldskool!  Paging Dr. @oldskool!  He's the DP/Nin expert 'round these parts.

[drbuzzard]

One thing about all the comments about blasters with softcap builds, people really do not appreciate the value of defense debuff resistance. The blaster will have exactly zero. When facing enemies which debuff defense they will have a catastrophic collapse of their defenses and crater quickly. SR (probably what I consider the defensively best Sentinel secondary) has a good bit of defense debuff resistance and can actually keep it together in those instances. Hence in doing an ITF, if the melee comes to me on my hyrd/SR, it's no big deal. The defenses hold and I can keep blasting. A blaster would be face down. 

 

As you fight the nastier stuff in the game, debuffs are everywhere and unless you pick and choose the easiest enemies, those IO softcap builds are actually quite fragile when not based on sets with defense (and other) debuff resistance.  

Edited July 26, 2019 by drbuzzard

[oldskool]

4 hours ago, Rathulfr said:

Paging Dr. @oldskool!  Paging Dr. @oldskool!  He's the DP/Nin expert 'round these parts.

Hah! I posted in their thread about DP and secondaries.  

Any expertise I may have is only because of the people that contribute to the forums.  Plenty of people here have given me a great deal of inspiration to go back to the drawing board numerous times like Zepp and BrandX.  I also found some great inspiration in the Defender and Corruptor boards on using the debuffs of the set.  

But, the pair has sort of become my pet project lately, so there is that.