Silly Sentinel Tricks

[nihilii]

Following the trend of Stupid Scrapper Tricks and Crazy Controller Tricks, what have you all been up to with your Sentinels?

 

I've had some luck doing the following (on a tricked out fire/rad/psi, making ample use of inspirations):

 

1.) solo Apex in under 25 minutes consistently. I find this especially fun to do, because our ranged advantage plays out against the Blue Stars of Doom, and it's at the sweet spot of difficulty where you can die if you slip up but it's not overwhelmingly frustrating. To top it off, with a reward of 40 merits, 1 empyrean and 1 component at the end, it's never wasted time.

 

2.) solo a master STF up to tower Recluse (finished up tower Recluse with my second account hovertanking). Anything before the patrons isn't particularly threatening, with honorable mentions to Silver Mantis and her massive defense debuffs, and Aeon and his clones. For the patrons, I abused flying to fight Scirocco alone, then Mako alone (Mako and Scirocco pulled together), then GW alone (flying again), then Black Scorpion last. Ghost Widow is always a threat on a master STF, knowing she has a 1/12 chance to land a near instakill move in Soul Storm! So I made sure to pack up a bunch of reds for that one, as well as use Storm Elementals for Lore so they could fly too.

 

3.) solo a master RSF up to the final phalanx (finished up with a second account permadom confusing Penelope Yin... no guts all glory :D ). No real hurdle, and quite a thrill to take on the Vindicators all at once. :)

 

4.) solo a master ITF. Is it even worth mentioning, when blasters do the same on +4/x8 and scrappers speedrun it in 35 minutes? Well, I find it a decent challenge anyway, what with Rommie superjumping all over the place and defense debuffs flying everywhere!

 

5.) solo most lvl 54 AVs 1-on-1. Given that my "1" includes trusty Lore pets... ;) Although they aren't a necessity for most AVs. I find Sentinel damage mitigation against AVs to be spectacular, because our lack of aggro control means the AVs tend to cut and run pretty often. Some seem more cowardly than others, the Arachnos big timers are content to stay and take a pounding.

 

6.) solo GMs, all the way up to lvl 50 (Giant Monsters have a hidden level even though it doesn't show). Heavy Lore and Envenomed Dagger use, with the toughest ones it's sometimes about keeping their regen stable through Envenomed Dagger + DPS until Lore is up again.

 

7.) duo the Lambda trial with a SS/bio brute friend... which made me think it *should* be soloable, and might be pretty fun to do so as you'd have to switch between each of the two paths to keep the timer going and collect your 10 grenades and acids. I don't understand why pickup leagues clean the outdoors before jumping inside, as you can get in right away and get credit for mobs in the courtyard.

 

8.) solo +4 Market Crash, aka Crimson Prototype really. -regen doesn't work on this bad boy! So sheer DPS it is, through Lore and attacks, all the while avoiding the robot's endless -maxHP moves. This is once again a situation where lacking aggro control helps us, as you can pull back for a few seconds and let your Lore pet grab the aggro, then move back in and attack again.

 

I wonder if Sentinels could:

 

- solo RSF.

Perhaps the mass sleep strategy could work, on a Sonic/*/Psi? Open up with Siren's Song and chain Mass Hypnosis for mag4+ sleep. But there's two issues with that, each use of Siren's Song will wake them up for a few moments which is an opportunity for Numina to do her thing (I think she casts Clear Mind?), and Mass Hypnosis doesn't last all that long either.

Another option could be to exploit flying again as to clear the flying Phalanxers first. It seems like they even have different jumping ranges, too - BAB climbs on the globe easily, and Synapse does too sometimes, but I've never seen Yin or Manticore get up there. So perhaps this could be exploited to clear Positron, Citadel and Numina first, then BAB and Synapse, then Manticore and Yin.

 

- solo STF.

This is tough because we don't have -range in Confront or Taunt like meleers. The hovertanking strategy + Lore is already hard enough to pull off solo, what with repairmen and the arachnos flier. I'm honestly not sure how to even approach this. In a non-master attempt, one could go all out and use temp powers like shivans I suppose, while kiting Lord Recluse to the best of your abilities.

 

- solo LGTF.

Hamidon being the tough spot, with the healing mitos and their insane resistance while not mezzed. Do we even have anything capable of breaking through their hold resistance? Or is there any trick besides that?

 

- solo Khan/Barracuda

In *theory* we should be able to do this, at least the Barracuda version (I think Reichsman's Unstoppable is less potent there?). In practice, it's quite a test of endurance.

 

So what about you? Share your cool accomplishments!

[Sovera]

Some good accomplishments there, though once incarnates, lore pets and temp powers come in I think any AT could do the same and not so much sentinels. But I haven't leveled anything to 50 less alone pick incarnates and solo the stuff you've done, so hey :D

[nihilii]

Absolutely, you're right. I'd go as far as to say for any specific challenge, there's an AT better suited to it than a Sentinel. Still, it's fun to see how far we can go with what we like!

 

Just got done soloing a Tin Mage, which was... interesting. The hardest part of solo Tin Mage is not Neuron or Bobcat, but the gigantic DPS sponges nicknamed "Goliath". Before some build improvements a couple weeks back, I plain couldn't outpace their regen with Lore + daggers, and even now it remains difficult.

 

On top of that, I had a ridiculous string of bad luck in the final mission:

- start to fight Bobcat, server lag comes in with the Goliaths; that particular lag where it seems mostly smooth, but you've got spikes on your netgraph and so you get "skips" in gameplay and in your power tray every now and then. It's so bad I end up having to pull back.

- now the 2 Goliaths are out and patrolling for me, might as well take them on first. As I get one of them down to 1/3 health, I'm hit with the alpha slot bug where you're suddenly considered NOT alpha slotted until you switch alphas - which requires being out of combat, and makes you fight as a level 46 against lvl 54s in the meantime... Obviously had to pull back. But hey, I can reslot and come back fast enough it will be hardly more than a bump in the road, right?

- except I ended up running low on insps, so I had to pace them out near the end. Lore pets are out... Goliath has a sliver of health left... And whoomph. I take a 800 hit from one of them and a 1100 hit from the other before I have a chance to react, and go down.

 

Indeed, a brute could have fared much better in those same circumstances. It's about having that extra leeway for mistakes.

 

Eventually the bots went down, then came Bobcat alone (no real trouble if you fly, she's down to Shockwave and Focus), followed by Neuron (fun fight for a fire/rad with all his clones: you can't expect to hit him with your nuke, but on the flipside you get guaranteed end refills from Ground Zero). Final time: 1 hour 30 minutes... Not one of my finest moments. :D

[Sunsette]

ugh, those goliaths are so boring. I like Apex so much more because Battle Maiden is a mobility/awareness check, everything about Tin Mage is the tanky-spankiest. Well, D11 isn't so bad I guess, and on the other hand, the first half of Apex is ALSO boring. Goliaths are boring! They look so cool but they're just brick walls that barely even hurt.

[marcussmythe]

Thats an impressive list - lots of things Ive not done/tried on my TW/Bio, and quite a few that I dont think can be done by melee, or anyone without serious debuffs.

 

Ultimately thats what 'silly X tricks' come down to at endgame, I think... ability to debuff (especially regen), and ability to mitigate incoming damage (range, etc.).  I think Sentinel may be a good choice for such things, maybe Beam/Rad?

[Sunsette]

Beam/Bio will probably be the best for most of these. Bio's weaknesses are mostly cost and an extreme loss in power from exemping unless you maintain two builds. Beam is similar.

[marcussmythe]

You may well be right - Im just coming off being touched in a bad place by Apex.

[tjknight]

Out of curiosity. What powerset combinations are people using to achieve some these amazing feats?

[nihilii]

You may well be right - Im just coming off being touched in a bad place by Apex.

 

Incarnate TFs and trials in general almost seem designed with passive aggressiveness. As if the developers in charge of balance were bothered they couldn't fix the supremacy of melee in overall PvE without creating an uproar, so they flat out invented special mechanics to give melee a harder time.

 

Out of curiosity. What powerset combinations are people using to achieve some these amazing feats?

 

I'm using a fire blast/radiation. It's likely fire/bio, beam/bio (as mentioned), sonic/bio would all experience great success. /bio being a minmax darling for offensive mode, but really, sentinel secondaries are full of goodness.

[Destlin]

I use a build very similar to nihilii's fire/rad/psi and he ain't lying when he says he does cool things with it. I know /bio is the better dps set but there is something about radiation that just FEELS smooth.

[marcussmythe]

Well, and is more DPS the gatekeeper here?  It seems to me the buy in for cool tricks is survivability, once you reach the ‘can crack regen’ threshold.  Hydra Spit and Blue Circles were the main killers for me in Apex - and thats as a TW/Bio Scrapper.

 

Of course, a hoverblasting sentinel is going to eat way less damage due to being at range, so bio might be worthwhile there - but at the least Hydra Spit doesnt care how far away you are - and Radiation while lacking Bioarmors innate DEF likely just builds for ranged DEF rather than a typed rainbow.

 

As for Beam Rifle vs Fire - Fires got higher straight damage, and a less resisted damage type.  That might leverage it past beam rifles -Regen once you get a very high recharge and proc cycle.

 

As for Psi - I assume the draw is the extra DEF out of link minds?

[Hopeling]

Does anyone have an example of a high-end /Bio sentinel build for stuff like this? I feel like I can never get a typed defense build I'm happy with on a sentinel.

[Destlin]

The draw of /psi anciliary is that you get an amazing ST chain from it. you use Mind probe and Dominate in your chain and they just fit so well(Fireball replacing Mind Probe for pure range fights). That and Dominate can be frankenslotted and have another buildup. I don't actually cap my ranged def and while i could use an inspiration to do so I just don't ever need to. Hover is hands down the best defense in this game. Radiation just has so much going for it.

[nihilii]

^^ Destlin says it all.

 

I love radiation too, it's such a well-rounded "convenience" powerset. You've got resistance to every damage type, great regen and recovery, a little absorption, a Quickness clone, Ground Zero can be slotted to fill up your end bar and helps to heal your Lore pets. You have resistance to slows only second to Ice Armor, making it easy to cap with winter sets.

 

On my own build (which is here for reference: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,1253.msg58036.html#msg58036), I'm barely around 20% ranged/AOE. Lucks and Barrier do the job well enough in a pinch. As long as resistance + maxHP (+ absorb) are enough to take a couple hard hits, life is good.

 

I think I'd definitely value more DPS more than extra survivability. 2 lucks can bring any resistance secondary to the defense softcap, and Barrier makes you effectively invincible for 20 seconds; whereas 2 rages cannot double your DPS, and Ageless will not bump you to the damage cap. When tackling the tough stuff, keeping up with their regen is often the real challenge. Start with 300 DPS, you lose a third of that against a +4 AV, you lose another 100 DPS from their regeneration. Any damage mitigation power they have, or any time you spend using mitigation of your own, lowers that figure still.

 

From that perspective, /bio has what it takes to handle incoming damage bursts with Ablative Carapace, Rebuild DNA and Inexhaustible; and then, offensive mode gives you a damage buff, extra damage, a tohit buff, a range buff and a movement buff. That last one might sound silly, but it's a sizeable advantage as well. A /bio sentinel in offensive mode is close to capped run speed *while in combat*. It makes for easier maneuvering and kiting.

 

Regarding Apex pylons, I believe each tentacle has an autohit damage aura. This is what makes them seem hard when you're right in melee whacking on that pylon. On a ranged character, they become trivial to take down.

[marcussmythe]

Regarding Apex pylons, I believe each tentacle has an autohit damage aura. This is what makes them seem hard when you're right in melee whacking on that pylon. On a ranged character, they become trivial to take down.

 

... Because of course they do.

 

Yannow, I dont think its an 'anti melee' thing, so much as a 'No Clue How this Works' thing.  The early WoW Raids had a bad, bad melee penalty, and CoH was probably going through the same thing as a part of the learning curve.

 

Ive got a Fire/Bio in her late 30s.  Maybe I'll finish that out and report back how its going.  The more I roll it around in my head, the fact that the Sentinel version of Bioarmor is more agnostic to being surrounded, coupled with the fact that Hover is the best mitigation single power in the game, might well get me there. 

 

Hmm.

[Sunsette]

no, I'm pretty sure it's anti-melee.

 

I just don't think it's undeserved.

 

People would be pissed if their scrappers/brutes weren't miniature gods but there was also a weird design directive around constraining blasters, so the iTrial design people -- who, while not perfect, actually did have a grasp of engaging mechanic design -- came up with a crude but effective fix to ensure that you didn't have a repeat of eight scrappers running STF/LRSF.

 

There's a lot of fundamentally weird or flawed gameplay decisions I'd never repeat from CoH base but I think their biggest one was the Scrapper/Blaster discrepancy and yet it's the one they were most stubborn about not really addressing.

 

I say this from the perspective of someone who mostly played scrappers and brutes in live.

[Hopeling]

CoH had basically no melee penalty for a really long time, to the point that "is there any reason to bring a blaster instead of a scrapper?" was a serious point of discussion. Having some fights that aren't melee-friendly is fine; none of this content was actually supposed to be soloable.

 

Some of the Incarnate content went overboard on the melee penalty IMO - Marauder's ground punch is dangerous, but if you're at full HP and pop heals right afterward, you can get by. Autohit unresistable attacks that deal multiple ticks to bypass the one-shot code are a bit much though. That fight is frustrating as a melee character, even on a team. I think marccussmythe is right that they were still figuring it out a bit.

[BrandX]

no, I'm pretty sure it's anti-melee.

 

I just don't think it's undeserved.

 

People would be pissed if their scrappers/brutes weren't miniature gods but there was also a weird design directive around constraining blasters, so the iTrial design people -- who, while not perfect, actually did have a grasp of engaging mechanic design -- came up with a crude but effective fix to ensure that you didn't have a repeat of eight scrappers running STF/LRSF.

 

There's a lot of fundamentally weird or flawed gameplay decisions I'd never repeat from CoH base but I think their biggest one was the Scrapper/Blaster discrepancy and yet it's the one they were most stubborn about not really addressing.

 

I say this from the perspective of someone who mostly played scrappers and brutes in live.

 

Couldn't have worked to well, as Apex and Tin Mage TFs were completed by Scrapper Only teams.

 

Unless you're talking strictly iTrials, but then, aren't those over 8 member teams anyways?

 

 

[marcussmythe]

no, I'm pretty sure it's anti-melee.

 

I just don't think it's undeserved.

 

People would be pissed if their scrappers/brutes weren't miniature gods but there was also a weird design directive around constraining blasters, so the iTrial design people -- who, while not perfect, actually did have a grasp of engaging mechanic design -- came up with a crude but effective fix to ensure that you didn't have a repeat of eight scrappers running STF/LRSF.

 

There's a lot of fundamentally weird or flawed gameplay decisions I'd never repeat from CoH base but I think their biggest one was the Scrapper/Blaster discrepancy and yet it's the one they were most stubborn about not really addressing.

 

I say this from the perspective of someone who mostly played scrappers and brutes in live.

 

I largely agree.  I think a better design paradigm would have been something like a sentinel, with more damage (enough more that in game damage push amounted to about what scrappers do after we count the increased DPS uptime being at range offers) and less survival than the Sentinel Secondaries offer (because being at range IS a powerful form of defense - though not enough to be ‘range is your defense’ for launch blasters).  This ranged damage dealer would sit in place of the Blaster, and we wouldnt have needed sentinels. 

 

As it is, I think Sentinels kinda take it in the shorts compared to Stalkers/Scrappers/etc. on damage, but my Sentinels (who is not lvl 50 Purple, Ill grant) has always been far less likely to die in missions compared to my scraps/brutes/tanks at the same level.. suggesting to me that with range taken into account, Sentinels are over-defended and under-damage.  This is a good arguement for pursuing bioarmor on a Sentinel, as it lets you trade survival for damage.

 

That said, OP is dropping GMs while wearing ‘Utility’ radiation armor, rather than ‘Damage’ Bioarmor.  But OP would probably be doing that with a Blaster, given his obvious focus on task.

[Obitus]

That said, OP is dropping GMs while wearing ‘Utility’ radiation armor, rather than ‘Damage’ Bioarmor.  But OP would probably be doing that with a Blaster, given his obvious focus on task.

 

This deserves some emphasis, IMO.  Nihilii was always one of our best players/builders.  If it weren't a Sentinel he'd be doing equally ridiculous stuff on something else.

 

FWIW, I've been messing around with a Fire/Bio Sentinel lately, and thus far I've only been able to match Nihilii's Fire/Rad Pylon numbers, not exceed them - which suggests either that his slotting is better, or that his execution is better, probably both.  Hovering at ~55 MPH is hilarious, btw.

 

As it is, I think Sentinels kinda take it in the shorts compared to Stalkers/Scrappers/etc. on damage,

 

They do, and they don't.  In principle, their damage scalar is pretty high; the problem is that that's largely hypothetical given that their specific powers are so often lackluster.  The former suggests that the devs had intended for Sentinel damage to be quite respectable.  The latter suggests that they were afraid of making Sentinel damage quite respectable, in the general case.

 

On the surface, Sentinels are just Blast Set + Scrapper defenses.  But when you delve into the numbers, it seems that  their version of the Blast sets is often unaccountably weaker in some significant way.  (Except in the case of Sonic, where the Sentinel version is markedly stronger leaving aside the debuff, which is weak on Sentinels.)  This is especially important because, as Sunsette implied earlier, blast sets weren't all that awesome on average to begin with, at least in the realm of single-target DPS.  (And Sentinels have a huge disadvantage in the realm of AoE, relative to other Blast-set ATs, given their Scrapper-tier target caps.)

 

Fire's a bit of an outlier in both senses; it was always one of the strongest Blast sets, and it takes a pretty small penalty in the Sentinel port - losing out on its analogue to the fast snipe (both in theory and in practice, as Blazing Blast is bugged ATM), but otherwise losing nothing relative to the Blaster version.  Actually, the Sentinel T2 is slightly better than the Blaster version too, because it has a slightly longer recharge timer, which raises its damage scale (though of course the Corruptor/Dominator/Defender version of the T2 Fire Blast is better still, with its shorter animation time).

 

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that I don't really get some of the design decisions behind Sentinel blast sets.  Of course it would be unreasonable to expect a class that never officially made it out of Beta to have a highly streamlined design, so take the complaint with a grain of salt.

[Sunsette]

no, I'm pretty sure it's anti-melee.

 

I just don't think it's undeserved.

 

People would be pissed if their scrappers/brutes weren't miniature gods but there was also a weird design directive around constraining blasters, so the iTrial design people -- who, while not perfect, actually did have a grasp of engaging mechanic design -- came up with a crude but effective fix to ensure that you didn't have a repeat of eight scrappers running STF/LRSF.

 

There's a lot of fundamentally weird or flawed gameplay decisions I'd never repeat from CoH base but I think their biggest one was the Scrapper/Blaster discrepancy and yet it's the one they were most stubborn about not really addressing.

 

I say this from the perspective of someone who mostly played scrappers and brutes in live.

 

Couldn't have worked to well, as Apex and Tin Mage TFs were completed by Scrapper Only teams.

 

Unless you're talking strictly iTrials, but then, aren't those over 8 member teams anyways?

 

I didn't mean strictly so much as "being really anti melee in incarnate content in general was probably at least partly responsible for making sure Blasters didn't completely disappear from incarnate content in live." While CoX was never the most endgame focused, when you start adding an endgame and a whole type of class is invalidated in it, you risk people just dropping the class over your whole game.

 

Auto hit is crude, yeah, but there's just no penalties for being a blaster at all in incarnate content. In WoW, there were general "anticaster" mechanics from the get go at all levels, just as there were general anti melee mechanics, even if none of these were great when first introduced.

 

To me that makes incarnate content smack less of "interesting mechanic for the sake of it" and more "interesting mechanic meant as balance corrective for the game as a whole"

[marcussmythe]

Well, it worked, I'll give them that.  Took a shot at Tin Mage.  Neuron First - got Neuron, couldnt handle Bobcat.  Dropped out, mailed myself all the super inspirations, timed them, burned bobcat, but she spawned two goliaths on her way down, couldnt take them both at once, couldnt separate them, and dropping out to send myself more super inspirations would respawn her, defeating the purpose.  I suppose I could have friends mail stuff to my global, or mail two or three full racks of various super inspirations, but at that point, is it really even doing the thing?

 

Looking at Bio vs Rad on Sentinel.  Bio would do a bit more damage (good), but (at least on stuff like Tin Mage or Apex) you really dont have/cant afford the crowds that Bioarmor wants to justify its existence, I dont think.

 

OP is getting amazing results with fire, but I keep glancing over at beam rifle and going '-150% Regen as part of my attack cycle'.  Thats.. really hard to get away from.  Now, with 87% Debuff Resist on the 54 AVs, its going to take a bit over 5 applications to floor them, and I dont think you can keep a 5 stack with Disintegrate.. but it would take most of the starch out of their regen.

[Hopeling]

Disintegrate's -regen doesn't stack, sadly (nor does Single Shot, incidentally). It's basically ~20 extra DPS for free, which is cool, but it's not flooring any AVs.

[marcussmythe]

Really?  Why in heaven's name not?  -Daggers- Stack!

 

They really lean hard on their 'Buffs/Debuffs Rule the Game' narrative, dont they?

[Sunsette]

Forgot AVs can resist -regen. (I never had any debuffers in live.) Fire is definitely the king of soloing.